THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
to prove, by an appeal to the experience both of individuals and of society, that pain preponderates in a high degree over pleasure, evil over good. He does not deny that there is a kind of progress and plan in history; and yet he regards history as, on the whole, an irrational process, the successive epochs of which are so many stages of illusion. The progress of history is, in his view, not the growth of any positive good in history, but the growth of man's consciousness of the nothingness and vanity of human life. The most thorough and uncompromising of the advocates of pessimism is Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen (d. 1SS1). He maintains that the world and life are not only essentially irrational and wretched, but will be eternally so; that his fellow pessimists have no right to promise that the agony of creation will ever terminate; that the hope of the extinction of evil in a world essentially evil is an unreasonable hope, and can be based only on blind faith {Der Widerspruch im Wissen und Wesen der Welt, 2 vols., Berlin, 1880-82).
(Robert Flint.) C. A. Beckwtth.
Bibliography: A. Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, London, 1S91, another transl., ib., 1896; Agnes Taubert, Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner, Berlin, 1873; J. Tulloch, Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion, Edinburgh, 1874; E. Pfleiderer, Der moderne Pessimismus, Berlin, 1875; K. Frantz, Der Pessimismus; seine Begriindung in der modernen Philosophie, Carlsruhe, 1876; J. Hiiber, Der Pessimismus, Munich, 1876; J. Rehmke, Die Philosophie des Weltschmerzes, St. Gallen, 1876; idem, Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre, Leipsic, 1882; J. F. A. Bahnsen, Das Tragische als Weltgesetz, ib. 1S77; idem, Pessimiste-Brevier, Berlin, 1879; idem, Der Widerspruch im Wissen und Wesen der Welt, 2 vols., ib. 1880-82; G. Borries, Ueber den Pessimismus, Leipsic, 1880; A. Bacmeister, Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre, Gutersloh, 1882; J. W. Barlow, The Ultimatum of Pessimism, London, 1882; P. Christ, Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre, Leipsic, 1882; H. Sommer, Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre, Berlin, 1883; idem, Die Religion des Pessimismus, ib. 1884; C. Williams, Modern Pessimism; its Cause and Cure, Bodmin, 1885; J. Hinton, The Mystery of Pain, Boston, 1886; G. Kiissner, Kritik des Pessimismus, Halle, 1888; O. Pliimacher, Der Pessimismus, Heidelberg, 1888; E. von Hartmann, Philosophie des Unbewusstseins, Leipsic, 1890, Eng. transl. of earlier ed., Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3 vols., London, 1SS4; idem, Zur Geschichte und Begriindung des Pessimismus, Leipsic, 1892; J. Sully, Pessimism: a History and Criticism, London, 1891; P. Cadene, Le Pessimisme legitime, Paris, 1894; K. Hollensteiner, Das Weltelend und die Welterlbsung, Gutersloh, 1894; R. M. Wenley, Aspects of Pessimism, London, 1894; S. Faure, La Douleur universelle, Paris, 1895; J. P. Hopps, Pessimism, Science, and God, London, 1895; H. Fierens-Gevaert, La Tristesse contemporaine, Paris, 1899; A. Kowalewski, Studien zur Psychologie des Pessimismus, Wiesbaden, 1904; G. Salkinowitz, Pessimistische Stromungen im Judentum, Bern, 1908; and the literature under Optimism.
PESTALOZZI, JOHANN HEINRICH: Philanthropist and founder of the modern educational system; b. at Zurich Jan. 12, 1746; d. at Brugg (18 m. n.w. of Zurich) Feb. 17, 1827 He was brought up by his mother, his father, a surgeon, having died in 1751; he began the study of theology and of law, but gave up both to become a reformer in education, the stimulus having come in part from Rousseau's Entile, in part from the death of a friend. His earliest effort was an attempt to show the advantage of combining agriculture with manufactures and the education of children. To carry this out, he bought a tract of waste land in the canton of Aargau. This venture proved a fail-
ure, partly through Pestalozzi's inexperience in business, and with it went (1780) also his educational institute for poor children, which he had opened in the farmhouse with fifty scholars. At this time, which was one of great privation and dire poverty, he began to write, the earliest results being Abendstunde eines Einsiedlers (1780; aphorisms which contain his educational program); his celebrated Lienhard und Gertrud (4 vols., Frankfort, 1781-89; Eng. transl., Leonard and Gertrude, 2 vols., London, 1825), which achieved instant and universal success, being translated into practically all European languages; and the sequel Christoph und Else (Zurich, 1782). The Lienhard und Gertrud pictures the reformation of a household and then of a village by the efforts of a good woman. The next important contribution was his Nachforschungen iiber den Gang der Natur in der Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (1797), which reflects the influence of Fichte, whom he had come to know in 1792. When the French invaded Switzerland in 1798, Pestalozzi was given honorary citizenship. In consequence of the devastation of Unterwalden, many children were left orphans and destitute. Pestalozzi collected eighty of these in an old nunnery and took sole care of them, sharing their want and teaching them at the same time. This work was stopped and the children dispersed in 1799 when the French took the building as a hospital. He failed to interest Napoleon in his educational schemes, but published in 1801 Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt (Eng. transl., How Gertrude Teaches her Children, London, 1894) and in 1803 Buch der Mutter, oder Anleitung fur Mutter, ihre Kinder bemerken und reden zu lehren. His ideas were now influential, and the government of Bern gave him a cloister for his school (1804), and the next year he removed to Yverdun on Lake Neuchatel, where the rest of his active life (till 1825) was spent, the institution being for the instruction of both children and teachers. After his retirement in 1825, Pestalozzi wrote Schwanengesang and Lebensschicksale.
The revolution in teaching brought about by Pestalozzi consisted in beginning the education of a child by training the observation, passing then to the realization in consciousness of the facts thus gained, and next to the formulation of them in language. From measuring he passed to drawing, then to writing, counting, and reckoning. The entire aim was thus to evoke the child's native abilities instead of following the earlier method of pouring information into the mind. The centenary of his birth was celebrated in many places on the continent, occasion being taken to found institutions to carry out his ideas, especially his philanthropic plans for the poorer classes. The most noted of these is the Deutsche Pestalozzi-Stiftung at Berlin.
His works were collected as Samtliche Schrijten (15 vols., Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1819-26), and Samtliche Werke (20 vols., Berlin and Liegnitz, 1881-96; ed. Seyffarth, 12 vols., Liegnitz, 1899- 1902) and by P. Natorp in 3 vols. (ib. 1905). A work appearing in English was Letters on Early Education (London, 1827).