Excerpt from Lectures on Pedagogy: Theoretical and Practical The further we go, the better we know childhood, and the more deeply we fathom the laws of human nature the more perfect, also, educational methods become, and the more nearly they approach the truth. It is said that experience is everything and science nothing; but what, pray, is science itself, if not the experience of the ancients and of all those who have preceded us? Then let us not allow ourselves to think, with Diesterweg, that the study of peda gogy is of no account, and that one is born an educator just as one is born a poet.1 Let us not fall into the pre judice of thinking that a professor or a teacher has. No more need of knowing the theoretical laws of education and instruction than we have of learning the functions Of diges tion from a book on physiology, in order that our food may be properly digested. In the matter of education, that which is worth still more than inspiration is inspiration enlightened and regulated by science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.