Transcriber’s Notes
This e-text contains a translation of Herbart’s Umriss pädagogischer Vorlesungen, the main text of whichis divided into numbered paragraphs. De Garmo’s annotations arerepresented here as indented text in the same font size as the main text. Herbart’sown annotations are also indented and have the run-in heading “Note” and are in smaller font.
OUTLINES OF EDUCATIONAL
DOCTRINE
OUTLINES OF EDUCATIONAL
DOCTRINE
BY
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXIS F. LANGE, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English and Scandinavian Philology, and
Dean of the Faculty of the College of Letters,
University of California
ANNOTATED BY
CHARLES DE GARMO, Ph.D.
Professor of the Science and Art of Education,
Cornell University
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1904
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1901,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1901. ReprintedJune, 1904.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
The reasons for translating and annotating Herbart’s “Outlines” are,first, to present to the English-speaking public Herbart’s latest, andalso his most complete, work on education; and, second, to note to someextent at least the advances made in educational thought since Herbartlaid down his pen.
Herbart’s educational writings are distinguished by two markedcharacteristics: 1, their helpfulness in actual teaching; and 2, theirsystematic completeness. The thoughtful reader can see the bearingof each part upon all the others; the purposes of education are socompletely correlated with the means, that, whether the topic underdiscussion be apperception or interest or methods of teaching or schoolgovernment or moral training or the presentation of a particular study,the reader is never at a loss to see the relation of this part to thewhole.
The eminent practicability of Herbart’s thought depends upon hispsychological point of view, which is always that of concreteexperience. The moment one tries to apply rational psychology to actualteaching, one begins to rise into the clouds, to become vague[vi] or,at least, general. The reason for this is that rational psychologydeals with unchangeable presuppositions of mind. We may conform ourwork to these standards, but we cannot modify them, any more than wecan a law of nature. But when we have to deal with an apperceivingc