Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model and a
working power was strengthened by the advances of natural
science. Inquiry freed from prejudice and artificial restraints
of church and state had revealed that the world is a scene of
law. The Newtonian solar system, which expressed the reign of
natural law, was a scene of wonderful harmony, where every force
balanced with every other. Natural law would accomplish the same
result in human relations, if men would only get rid of the
artificial man-imposed coercive restrictions.
Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step
in insuring this more social society. It was plainly seen that
economic and political limitations were ultimately dependent upon
limitations of thought and feeling. The first step in freeing
men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal
chains of false beliefs and ideals. What was called social life,
existing institutions, were too false and corrupt to be intrusted
with this work. How could it be expected to undertake it when
the undertaking meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be
the power to which the enterprise was to be left. Even the
extreme sensationalistic theory of knowledge which was current
derived itself from this conception. To insist that mind is
originally passive and empty was one way of glorifying the
possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax tablet to be
written upon by objects, there were no limits to the possibility
of education by means of the natural environment.
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