The threefold aim of the present study is
a) to investigate the evolution and the main characteristics of the thought which led up to and underlay most of the educational assumptions in the principal German states about the beginning of the nineteenth century;
b) to establish if 'ideas' affecting education and appearing as entirely novel at the same time were not actually conceptions with a very long past;
c) to discover if there be sufficient ground to recommend a scrutiny of the continuation of the same undercurrent of thought with a view, to its possible contribution to the emergence of the 'New Education' of the Australian states; from the first decade of this century. (From Chapter 1)