Joyful and unfettered work springs
from the conception of all things as one whole, and forms a life and a
lifework in harmony with the constitution of the universe and resting
firmly upon it.
That this was the true education I soon felt fervently convinced, and so
my first educational work consisted merely in being with my pupils and
influencing them by the power of my life and work; more than this I was
not at all in a position to give.
Oh, why is it that man knows so ill and prizes so little the blessings
that he possesses for the first time?
When I now seek to make myself clear as to the proper life and work of
an educator, my notes of that time rise fresh and fair to meet me. I
look back from now into that childhood of my teacher's life, and learn
from it; just as I look back into the childhood of my man's life, and
survey that, and learn from that, too. Why is all childhood and youth so
full of wealth and so unconscious of it, and why does it lose it without
knowing it only to learn what it possessed when it is for ever lost?
Ought this always to be so? Ought it to be so for every child, for every
youth? Will not a time come at last, come perhaps soon, when the
experience, the insight, the knowledge of age, and wisdom herself, shall
build up a defence, a shelter, a protection for the childhood of youth?
Of what use to mankind is the old man's experience and the greybeard's
wisdom when they sink into the grave with their possessors?
At first my life and my work with my pupils was confined within narrow
limits.
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