leads up to unity, and returns to unity at last. This striving in unity
and after unity is the cause of the several aspects of human life. But
between my inner vision and my outer perception, presentation, and
action was a great gulf fixed. Therefore it seemed to me that
everything which should or could be required for human education and
instruction must be necessarily conditioned and given, by virtue of the
very nature of the necessary course of his development, in man's own
being, and in the relationships amidst which he is set. A man, it seemed
to me, would be well educated, when he had been trained to care for
these relationships and to acknowledge them, to master them and to
survey them.

I worked hard, severely hard, during this period, but both the methods
and the aims of education came before me in such an incoherent heap, so
split up into little fragments, and so entirely without any kind of
order, that during several years I did not make much progress towards my
constant purpose of bringing all educational methods into an orderly
sequence and a living unity. As my habitual and therefore characteristic
expression of my desires then ran, I longed to see, to know, and to show
forth, all things in inter-connection.

For my good fortune, however there came out about that time certain
educational writings by Seller,[60] Jean Paul,[61] and others. They
supported and elevated me, sometimes by their concurrence with my own
views, expressed above, sometimes by the very contrary.

The Pestalozzian method I knew, it is true, in its main principles, but
not as a living force, satisfying the needs of man. What especially lay
heavy upon me at this time, however, painfully felt by myself though not
apparent to my pupils, was the utter absence of any organised connection