BASEDOW, John Bernard, a celebrated German writer, born at Hamburg, the 11th September 1723, was the son of a hair-dresser. Ill treatment made him abandon his father’s house. A physician in a neighbouring village took him into his service, and shortly after persuaded him to return home to his father. Being placed in one of the lower classes of the college of St John, the severity of his masters rendered him harsh and violent himself. Forced to submit to a slow and rigorous method of study, he contracted a dislike to patience and regularity, which exercised a marked influence over the whole course of his life. Boor but intelligent, he often performed their tasks for his school-fellows who could afford to pay for it; and they, in return, invited him to their parties of pleasure, which contributed to those habits of irregularity by which ms health and reputation often suffered. In 1744 Basedow went to Leipsic to study theology. He gave himself u P entirely to the instructions of the professor, Crusius, and the study of philosophy. This at first made him sceptical in theology; a more profound examination of the sacred writings, and of all that relates to them, brought ım back to the Christian faith; but, in his retirement, he ιoir∏ed his belief after his own ideas, and it was far from orthodox. Having returned to Hamburg, he 1 ved there without any employment till 1749, when M. de Quaalen, privy-counsellor of Holstein, appointed him preceptor to ħis son. Basedow now began to apply himself to the subject of education. At first he would not teach his pupil Latin otherwise than by talking with him in Latin; and he wrote a dissertation on this subject, published at Kiel in 1751, Inusitata et optima honestioris Juventutis erudienda Methodo. In 1753 he was chosen professor of moral philosophy and belles lettres in the academy of Soroë in Denmark. Here he published in 1758 his Practical Philosophy for all Conditions, in two volumes (Copenhagen and Leipsic, second edition, in 1777), which contained many good observations on education in general, and on that of girls in particular; but he advanced in it opinions by no means consistent with Lutheran orthodoxy, so that the Count Danneskiold, superintendent of the academy, took his place from him, and removed him to the school of exercises at Altona. Basedow still continued to devote himself to theological studies. In 1764 he published his Philalethes, or New Considerations on the Truth of Religion and Reason, within the Limits of Revelation, two volumes in 8vo. The magistrates of Altona forbade the reading of this work. He was not allowed any longer permission to print his writings at Hamburg or Lubeck; the communion was prohibited to him and all his family, and the common people were on the point of stoning him. Basedow, however, was convinced of the truth of his opinions, and displayed prodigious activity in defending them. He wrote his Methodical Instruction in Religion, and the Morality of Reason, Altona, 1764; his Theoretical System, of Sound Reason, 1765; his Essay on Free Dogmatism, Berlin, 1766; his Extracts from the Old and New Testament, and his Essay in Favour of the Truth of Christianity, in the same year. The last of these works he particularly valued himself upon, because he there founds the evidence of Christianity chiefly on its moral purity. In these and other works, however, he maintained several heterodox opinions, as the non-eternity of future punishments; the inequality of the three persons of the Trinity; the insufficiency of the atonement for our sins by the death of Jesus Christ, &c. Constantly persecuted in his theological career, he would have fallen the victim of his incautious zeal, if the count de Bernstoff, minister of state, and J. A. Cramer, another officer of the court of Copenhagen, had not taken him under their protection. He left off giving lessons without losing his salary; and, towards the end of 1767, he abandoned theology to devote himself with the same ardour to education, of which he conceived the project of a general reform in Germany. He began by publishing An Address to the Friends of Humanity, and to Persons in Power, on Schools, on Education, and its Influence on Public Happiness, with the Plan of an Elementary Treatise on Human Knowledge. Hamburg, 1768. He proposed the reform of schools, of the common methods of instruction, the establishment of an institute for qualifying teachers, and solicited subscriptions for the printing of his elementary work, where his principles were to be explained at length, and accompanied with plates. For this object he required 5050 crowns. The subscriptions presently amounted to 15,000 crowns: the empress of Russia, Catherine IL, sent a thousand crowns, the king of Denmark nine hundred. In 1770 appeared at Altona the first volume of his Method for Fathers and Mothers of Families, and for the Chiefs of the People; and, six months after, the first three parts of his Elementary Treatise, in 8vo, with 54 plates. This work, which was praised in all the journals, was translated into French by Huber, and into Latin by Mangelsdorf; but Schlozer, in the German translation of the Essay on National Education by Μ. de la Chalotais, accused Basedow [7:4:424]of having omitted in his plan various Dranches of science, and of having had in view only a pecuniary speculation. Basedow, in despair, offered to return the price of his book to those who were not satisfied with it. Only one man, a Swiss, demanded his subscription. Encouraged by the success of the Treatise, our author continued to write other works on the same subject and on the same principles; among others, his Treatise on Arithmetic, 1773, and Elements of pure Mathematics, 1772. His Agathocrator, or the Education of Teachers to come, 1771, procured him a medal from the emperor Joseph II.; and the visits which he made to Brunswick, to Leipsic, Dessau, Berlin, and Halle, to inquire into the state of public instruction, having enabled him to enlarge and correct his ideas, and convinced him that his elementary work contained many erroneous and hasty assertions, he published a new and improved edition of this work in 1774. The same year he published his Legacy for Consciences, or Manual of Natural and Revealed Religion; a work which he composed in order to make known the real state of his religious opinions, and to clear himself from the imputation of wishing to found a new sect. In his travels he had been well received by the prince of Anhalt-Dessau, who promised him his protection. From that time he had resolved to establish an institute for education at Dessau, and to apply his principles himself in forming disciples, who might spread them over all Germany. Little calculated by nature or habit to succeed in an employment which requires the greatest regularity, patience, and attention, he, however, engaged in this new project with all his accustomed ardour. The name of Philanthropinon appeared to him the most expressive of his views; and he published at Leipsic in 1774 a pamphlet, entitled The Philanthropinon founded at Dessau, containing the details of his plan. He immediately set about carrying it into execution; but he had few scholars, and the success by no means answered his hopes. The institution, badly managed, became a theatre of quarrels between Basedow and the masters who taught in it under his direction. The assistance of the celebrated Campe, a journal which they both composed together, under the title of School Dialogues, from 1777 to 1779, and a public examination which went off with eclat, gave a transient splendour to the Philanthropinon; but in a short time Basedow quarrelled with Campe, made complaints against his prince, quitted and returned to the care of the institution, and exemplifying in his conduct the effects of coarse manners and bad temper, was at length drawn into the most scandalous scenes in his disputes with Professor Wolke, his former coadjutor. This institution was finally shut up in 1793. Basedow for some time had given up all thoughts of education; he returned to his old theological inquiries, and residing sometimes at Magdeburg, sometimes at Halle, sometimes at Leipsic, he took part in the famous controversy excited in Germany by the Fragments of Wolfenbutel, an anonymous posthumous work of Reimarus, published by Lessing. Doctor Semler having written a pretended refutation of the Fragments, Basedow, without difficulty, exposed the ill intentions of the author, who secretly attacked the cause he affected to defend; and, with his usual vehemence and franκness, called upon Semler to declare himself openly, offering to indemnify him with his fortune if this public declaration should prove prejudicial to him. Semler made no reply, and Basedow wrote on. He published his work entitled Jesus Christ, the Christian World, and the small Number of the Elect, in 1784; and the year following, returning to the study which had divided his time and his powers with theology, he gave the public his Neιν Method of Learning to Read, which he employed with success in two schools of little girls at Magdeburg; and in this occupation he passed four hours every day for some time previous to his death, which took place in that city, on the 25th July 1790. He died with Christian firmness and resignation, and desired that his body might be opened wishing, to use his own words, to be still useful to his fellow-citizens after his death. In 1797 a monument of marble was erected on the spot where he was buried.

To manners unpolished and abrupt he joined gross habits; he was fond of wine, of which he drank to excess ∙ in short, with a character in itself unamiable, he seemed by his conduct sometimes to take pains to render his services of no use, and his virtues of no account. Nothing can give a better idea of him than what he says of himself: “The sagacious reader will discover by my writina∙s that I have been especially called to serve the cause of truth and humanity, in following a path hitherto unknown. Myopinions have succeeded one another, as has been seen. I have been at different times Lutheran, sceptic, infidel, a friend to natural religion, a convert to Christianity, a Christian with paradoxical sentiments, and more and more heterodox. In me has been seen a thinker tormented within by his own reflections, and a writer tormented from without because he has been at one time hated, at another misunderstood. Bold and enterprising in my actions, I have always seen, with a faultering heart, the dangers which threatened me, and from which Providence has saved me in part. I have made little account of domestic happiness, of friendship, or society. I have suffered the penalty. Occupied in curing others, I have neglected the health of my own mind. Esteem is due to the sincerity of my opinions, rather than to my conduct. I desired ardently to make it perfect, but this would have required more perseverance and more attention than the meditation of abstract truths; accordingly, I have oftener been dissatisfied with myself than with others, with whom, however, for the same reason, I have been rarely satisfied. My heart has had little,enjoyment of the consolations of religion,because every occasion led me into difficult researches, and thus weakened the force of sentiment. I regard myself as a man and a Christian, such as there are but few in the world, and such as it is not desirable that there should be many.” This frankness, without affectation and without pride, mduces us to honour the character of aman who has rendered some services to his country and his age. His work On the Education of Princes destined to ŵ Throne has been translated into French by Bourjoing. A list of his writings may be seen in Meusel’s Lexico of German Writers from 1750 to 1800, and a further account of his life in Schlichtegròll’s Necrology for 1790. Goethe tells an anecdote of going a journey in company with him and Lavater, who fell into a violent dispute about the Trinity. Basedow consoled himself with the hope of getting some beer and a pipe of tobacco at an inn which he saw before them on the road. When they came to it Goethe made the coachman drive on, to the great chagrin of Basedow, to whom he excused himself by saying, that the sign of the inn was two triangles, and as he had such an aversion to one triangle (the scholastic emblem of the Trinity), he was afraid the sight of two might overcome him. This conceit, according to Goethe, pacified our antitrinitarian divine.

Basedow, in his general writings, endeavoured to appb philosophy to practical purposes, and to give a more popular air to his reasonings than had been usual with Ins countrymen before his time. He held truth to be of littae value without practice, and, indeed, he held its essence to depend chiefly on its utility. He considered external or speculative truth to be a very vague and doubtful thing, and that it is principally the consequences of things to the mind itself, that is, a moral necessity, which determines [7:4:425]it to believe Strongly and consistently on any point, so t that that is true to each individual which makes the most lasting impression on his mind, and which he feels to be pecessary to his happiness. Thus he regarded practical good as the test of speculative truth. He gave great weight to the principle of analogy, and founded the doctrine of a Providence on this principle. He considered common sense as one ingredient in philosophical reasoning, and rejected all systems which appeared to him to exclude it; such as idealism, the doctrine of monads, and a preestablished harmony. His favourite adage in his system of education was to follow nature. He wished the mind to be led to knowledge, virtue, and religion, by gentle means, instead of those of constraint and terror. Indeed, his principles on this subject are very nearly the same as those of Locke and Rousseau; and he seems to have done little else than to give currency in Germany to the same reasonings which those philosophers had taught before him in England and France. He insisted on the disuse of the preposterous and unhealthy dresses used by children and their parents, such as stays, swaddling-clothes, tight bandages round the neck, the knees, &c. He recommended exercise and hardy sports as necessary to the health and activity of the body. He proposed to exercise the judgment by teaching a knowledge of things, and not merely to load the memory with words. He preferred the practical sciences to the speculative, the living to the dead languages, modern to ancient history, things which are more near to those which are more remote. In fine, most of his principles were in themselves sound and good, and have in fact exerted their influence on the actual progress of civilization; they were only erroneous from the excess to which he sometimes appears to have carried them, partly from the natural vehemence of his mind, partly from a natural tendency to paradox on the side of new opinions. Paradox, by exciting attention and enlisting the passions, is perhaps necessary to contend against prejudice; common sense and reason are lost sight of by both parties during the combat; but in the end they prevail, if they have fair play allowed them. Thus, in the present instance, it is now generally admitted that something besides the classics is necessary to a liberal education; nor is it thought requisite to arrive at this conclusion through the antithesis to the vulgar opinion of his day set up by Basedow, viz. that the classics are of no use at all in a rational system of education. (d. d.)