I also studied the boys' play, the whole series of games in the open
air, and learned to recognise their mighty power to awake and to
strengthen the intelligence and the soul as well as the body. In these
games and what was connected with them I detected the mainspring of the
moral strength which animated the pupils and the young people in the
institution. The games, as I am now fervently assured, formed a mental
bath of extraordinary strengthening-power;[71] and although the sense of
the higher symbolic meaning of games had not yet dawned upon me, I was
nevertheless able to perceive in each boy genuinely at play a moral
strength governing both mind and body which won my highest esteem.
Closely akin to the games in their morally strengthening aspect were the
walks, especially those of the general walking parties, more
particularly when conducted by Pestalozzi himself. These walks were by
no means always meant to be opportunities for drawing close to Nature,
but Nature herself, though unsought, always drew the walkers close to
her. Every contact with her elevates, strengthens, purifies. It is from
this cause that Nature, like noble great-souled men, wins us to her; and
whenever school or teaching duties gave me respite, my life at this time
was always passed amidst natural scenes and in communion with Nature.
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