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  PEDAGOGICS
  AS A
  SYSTEM.

  By Dr. KARL ROSENKRANZ,

  _Doctor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at the University
  of Königsberg._

  TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

  By ANNA C. BRACKETT.


  (_Reprinted from Journal of Speculative Philosophy._)


  ST. LOUIS, MO.:
  THE R. P. STUDLEY COMPANY, PRINTERS, CORNER MAIN & OLIVE STS.
  1872.

  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
  WILLIAM T. HARRIS,
  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.




  ANALYSIS.

     {FIRST PART.    {Its Nature.
     {In its General {Its Form.
     {  Idea.        {Its Limits.
     {
     {SECOND PART.   {Physical.
     {In its Special {Intellectual.
     {  Elements.    {Moral.
     {
     {             {          {            {Family     China.
     {             {          {Passive.    {Caste      India.
     {             {          {            {Monkish    Thibet.
     {             {          {
     {             {          {            {Military   Persia.
     {             {National. {Active      {Priestly   Egypt.
     {             {          {            {Industrial Phœnicia.
     {             {          {
     {             {          {            {Æsthetic    Greece.
  E  {             {          {Individual. {Practical   Rome.
  D  {             {          {            {Abstract   {Northern.
  U  {             {          {            { Individual{ Barbarians.
  C  {             {
  A  {             {Theocratic. . . . . . . . . . . .  Jews.
  T  {             {
  I  {             {Monkish.
  O  {THIRD PART.  {
  N  {In its       {
     { Particular  {
     { Systems.    {
     {             {Chivalric.
     {             {
     {             {Humanitarian. {For Special  {Jesuitic.
     {             {              { Callings.   {Pietistic.
     {             {
     {             {                            {The
     {             {              {             {Humanistic.
     {             {For Civil     {To achieve   {
     {             {  Life.       { an Ideal of {The
     {             {              { Culture.    {Philanthropic
     {             {              {             {Movement.
     {             {              {
     {             {              {For Free Citizenship.


PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM.


  [Inquiries from teachers in different sections of the
  country as to the sources of information on the subject of
  Teaching as a Science have led me to believe that a
  translation of Rosenkranz's Pedagogics may be widely
  acceptable and useful. It is very certain that too much of
  our teaching is simply empirical, and as Germany has, more
  than any other country, endeavored to found it upon
  universal truths, it is to that country that we must at
  present look for a remedy for this empiricism.

  Based as this is upon the profoundest system of German
  Philosophy, no more suggestive treatise on Education can
  perhaps be found. In his third part, as will be readily
  seen, Rosenkranz follows the classification of National
  ideas given in Hegel's Philosophy of History. The word
  "Pedagogics," though it has unfortunately acquired a
  somewhat unpleasant meaning in English——thanks to the
  writers who have made the word "pedagogue" so
  odious——deserves to be redeemed for future use. I have,
  therefore, retained it in the translation.

  In order that the reader may see the general scope of the
  work, I append in tabular form the table of contents,
  giving however, under the first and second parts, only the
  main divisions. The minor heads can, of course, as they
  appear in the translation, be easily located.——_Tr._]




INTRODUCTION.


§ 1. The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a simple principle
with such exactness as Logic and Ethics. It is rather a mixed science
which has its presuppositions in many others. In this respect it
resembles Medicine, with which it has this also in common, that it must
make a distinction between a sound and an unhealthy system of education,
and must devise means to prevent or to cure the latter. It may therefore
have, like Medicine, the three departments of Physiology, Pathology, and
Therapeutics.

§ 2. Since Pedagogics is capable of no such exact definitions of its
principle and no such logical deduction as other sciences, the treatises
written upon it abound more in shallowness than any other literature.
Short-sightedness and arrogance find in it a most congenial atmosphere,
and criticism and declamatory bombast flourish in perfection as nowhere
else. The literature of religious tracts might be considered to rival
that of Pedagogics in its superficiality and assurance, if it did not
for the most part seem itself to belong, through its ascetic nature, to
Pedagogics. But teachers as persons should be treated in their
weaknesses and failures with the utmost consideration, because they are
most of them sincere in contributing their mite for the improvement of
education, and all their pedagogic practice inclines them towards
administering reproof and giving advice.

§ 3. The charlatanism of educational literature is also fostered by the
fact that teaching has become one of the most profitable employments,
and the competition in it tends to increase self-glorification.

——When "Boz" in his "Nicholas Nickleby" exposed the horrible mysteries
of an English boarding-school, many teachers of such schools were, as he
assures us, so accurately described that they openly complained he had
aimed his caricatures directly at them.——

§ 4. In the system of the sciences, Pedagogics belongs to the Philosophy
of Spirit,——and in this, to the department of Practical Philosophy, the
problem of which is the comprehension of the necessity of freedom; for
education is the conscious working of one will on another so as to
produce itself in it according to a determinate aim. The idea of
subjective spirit, as well as that of Art, Science, and Religion, forms
the essential condition for Pedagogics, but does not contain its
principle. If one thinks out a complete statement of Practical
Philosophy (Ethics), Pedagogics may be distributed among all its grades.
But the point at which Pedagogics itself becomes organic is the idea of
the Family, because in the family the difference between the adults and
the minors enters directly through the naturalness of spirit, and the
right of the children to an education and the duty of parents towards
them in this respect is incontestable. All other spheres of education,
in order to succeed, must presuppose a true family life. They may extend
and complement the business of teaching, but cannot be its original
foundation.

——In our systematic exposition of Education, we must not allow
ourselves to be led into error by those theories which do not recognize
the family, and which limit the relation of husband and wife to the
producing of children. The Platonic Philosophy is the most worthy
representative of this class. Later writers who take great pleasure in
seeing the world full of children, but who would subtract from the love
to a wife all truth and from that to children all care, exhibit in their
doctrine of the anarchy of love only a sickly (but yet how prevalent an)
imitation of the Platonic state.——

§ 5. Much confusion also arises from the fact that many do not clearly
enough draw the distinction between Pedagogics as a science and
Pedagogics as an art. As a science it busies itself with developing _a
priori_ the idea of Education in the universality and necessity of that
idea, but as an art it is the concrete individualizing of this abstract
idea in any given case. And in any such given case, the peculiarities of
the person who is to be educated and all the previously existing
circumstances necessitate a modification of the universal aims and ends,
which modification cannot be provided for beforehand, but must rather
test the ready tact of the educator who knows how to make the existing
conditions fulfil his desired end. It is exactly in doing this that the
educator may show himself inventive and creative, and that pedagogic
talent can distinguish itself. The word "art" is here used in the same
way as it is used when we say, the art of war, the art of government,
&c.; and rightly, for we are talking about the possibility of the
realization of the idea.

——The educator must adapt himself to the pupil, but not to such a degree
as to imply that the pupil is incapable of change, and he must also be
sure that the pupil shall learn through his experience the independence
of the object studied, which remains uninfluenced by his variable
personal moods, and the adaptation on the teacher's part must never
compromise this independence.——

§ 6. If conditions which are local, temporal, and individual, are fixed
as constant rules, and carried beyond their proper limits, are
systematized as a valuable formalistic code, unavoidable error arises.
The formulæ of teaching are admirable material for the science, but are
not the science itself.

§ 7. Pedagogics as a science must (1) unfold the general idea of
Education; (2) must exhibit the particular phases into which the general
work of Education divides itself, and (3) must describe the particular
standpoint upon which the general idea realizes itself, or should become
real in its special processes at any particular time.

§ 8. The treatment of the first part offers no difficulty. It is
logically too evident. But it would not do to substitute for it the
history of Pedagogics, simply because all the conceptions of it which
appear in systematic treatises can be found there.

——Into this error G. Thaulow has fallen in his pamphlet on Pedagogics as
a Philosophical Science.——

§ 9. The second division unfolds the subject of the physical,
intellectual and practical culture of the human race, and constitutes
the main part of all books on Pedagogy. Here arises the greatest
difficulty as to the limitations, partly because of the undefined nature
of the ideas, partly because of the degree of amplification which the
details demand. Here is the field of the widest possible differences. If
e.g. one studies out the conception of the school with reference to the
qualitative specialities which one may consider, it is evident that he
can extend his remarks indefinitely; he may speak thus of technological
schools of all kinds, to teach mining, navigation, war, art, &c.

§ 10. The third division distinguishes between the different standpoints
which are possible in the working out of the conception of Education in
its special elements, and which therefore produce different systems of
Education wherein the general and the particular are individualized in a
special manner. In every system the general tendencies of the idea of
education, and the difference between the physical, intellectual and
practical culture of man, must be formally recognized, and will appear.
The How is decided by the standpoint which reduces that formalism to a
special system. Thus it becomes possible to discover the essential
contents of the history of Pedagogics from its idea, since this can
furnish not an indefinite but a certain number of Pedagogic systems.

——The lower standpoint merges always into the higher, and in so doing
first attains its full meaning, e.g.: Education for the sake of the
nation is set aside for higher standpoints, i.g., that of
Christianity; but we must not suppose that the national phase of
Education was counted as nought from the Christian standpoint. Rather it
itself had outgrown the limits which, though suitable enough for its
early stage, could no longer contain its true idea. This is sure to be
the case in the fact that the national individualities become
indestructible by being incorporated into Christianity——a fact that
contradicts the abstract seizing of such relations.——

§ 11. The last system must be that of the present, and since this is
certainly on one side the result of all the past, while on the other
seized in its possibilities it is determined by the Future, the business
of Pedagogics cannot pause till it reaches its ideal of the general and
special determinations, so that looked at in this way the Science of
Pedagogics at its end returns to its beginning. The first and second
divisions already contain the idea of the system necessary for the
Present.




FIRST PART.

The General Idea of Education.


§ 12. The idea of Pedagogics in general must distinguish,

  (1) The nature of Education in general;
  (2) Its form;
  (3) Its limits.


I.

_The Nature of Education._

§ 13. The nature of Education is determined by the nature of mind——that
it can develop whatever it really is only by its own activity. Mind is
in itself free; but if it does not actualize this possibility, it is in
no true sense free, either for itself or for another. Education is the
influencing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead him to
actualize himself through his own efforts. The attainment of perfect
manhood as the actualization of the Freedom necessary to mind
constitutes the nature of Education in general.

——The completely isolated man does not become man. Solitary human
beings who have been found in forests, like the wild girl of the forest
of Ardennes, sufficiently prove the fact that the truly human qualities
in man cannot be developed without reciprocal action with human beings.
Caspar Hauser in his subterranean prison is an illustration of what man
would be by himself. The first cry of the child expresses in its appeals
to others this helplessness of spirituality on the side of nature.——

§ 14. Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. We often
speak, it is true, of the education of plants and animals; but even when
we do so, we apply, unconsciously perhaps, other expressions, as
"raising" and "training," in order to distinguish these. "Breaking"
consists in producing in an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the
senses, an activity of which, it is true, he is capable, but which he
never would have developed if left to himself. On the other hand, it is
the nature of Education only to assist in the producing of that which
the subject would strive most earnestly to develop for himself if he had
a clear idea of himself. We speak of raising trees and animals, but not
of raising men; and it is only a planter who looks to his slaves only
for an increase in their number.

——The education of men is quite often enough, unfortunately, only a
"breaking," and here and there still may be found examples where one
tries to teach mechanically, not through the understanding power of the
creative WORD, but through the powerless and fruitless appeal to
physical pain.——

§ 15. The idea of Education may be more or less comprehensive. We use it
in the widest sense when we speak of the Education of the race, for we
understand by this expression the connection which the acts and
situations of different nations have to each other, as different steps
towards self-conscious freedom. In this the world-spirit is the teacher.

§ 16. In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the shaping of
the individual life by the forces of nature, the rhythmical movement of
national customs, and the might of destiny in which each one finds
limits set to his arbitrary will. These often mould him into a man
without his knowledge. For he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor
offend the ethical sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise
the leading of destiny without discovering through experience that
before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his subjective power
can dash itself only to be shattered. If he perversely and persistently
rejects all our admonitions, we leave him, as a last resort, to destiny,
whose iron rule must educate him, and reveal to him the God whom he has
misunderstood.

——It is, of course, sometimes not only possible, but necessary for one,
moved by the highest sense of morality, to act in opposition to the laws
of nature, to offend the ethical sense of the people that surround him,
and to brave the blows of destiny; but such a one is a sublime reformer
or martyr, and we are not now speaking of such, but of the perverse, the
frivolous, and the conceited.——

§ 17. In the narrowest sense, which however is the usual one, we mean by
Education the influence which one mind exerts on another in order to
cultivate the latter in some understood and methodical way, either
generally or with reference to some special aim. The educator must,
therefore, be relatively finished in his own education, and the pupil
must possess unlimited confidence in him. If authority be wanting on the
one side, or respect and obedience on the other, this ethical basis of
development must fail, and it demands in the very highest degree,
talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence.

——Education takes on this form only under the culture which has been
developed through the influence of city life. Up to that time we have
the naïve period of education, which holds to the general powers of
nature, of national customs, and of destiny, and which lasts for a long
time among the rural populations. But in the city a greater complication
of events, an uncertainty of the results of reflection, a working out of
individuality, and a need of the possession of many arts and trades,
make their appearance and render it impossible for men longer to be
ruled by mere custom. The Telemachus of Fenelon was educated to rule
himself by means of reflection; the actual Telemachus in the heroic age
lived simply according to custom.——

§ 18. The general problem of Education is the development of the
theoretical and practical reason in the individual. If we say that to
educate one means to fashion him into morality, we do not make our
definition sufficiently comprehensive, because we say nothing of
intelligence, and thus confound education and ethics. A man is not
merely a human being, but as a reasonable being he is a peculiar
individual, and different from all others of the race.

§ 19. Education must lead the pupil by an interconnected series of
efforts previously foreseen and arranged by the teacher to a definite
end; but the particular form which this shall take must be determined by
the peculiar character of the pupil's mind and the situation in which he
is found. Hasty and inconsiderate work may accomplish much, but only
_systematic_ work can advance and fashion him in conformity with his
nature, and the former does not belong to education, for this includes
in itself the idea of an end, and that of the technical means for its
attainment.

§ 20. But as culture comes to mean more and more, there becomes
necessary a division of the business of teaching among different
persons, with reference to capabilities and knowledge, because as the
arts and sciences are continually increasing in number, one can become
learned in any one branch only by devoting himself exclusively to it,
and hence becoming one-sided. A difficulty hence arises which is also
one for the pupil, of preserving, in spite of this unavoidable
one-sidedness, the unity and wholeness which are necessary to humanity.

——The naïve dignity of the happy savage, and the agreeable simplicity of
country people, appear to very great advantage when contrasted on this
side with the often unlimited narrowness of a special trade, and the
endless curtailing of the wholeness of man by the pruning processes of
city life. Thus the often abused savage has his hut, his family, his
cocoa tree, his weapons, his passions; he fishes, hunts, plays, fights,
adorns himself, and enjoys the consciousness that he is the centre of a
whole, while a modern citizen is often only an abstract expression of
culture.——

§ 21. As it becomes necessary to divide the work of teaching, a
difference between general and special schools arises also, from the
needs of growing culture. The former present in different compass all
the sciences and arts which are included in the term "general
education," and which were classified by the Greeks under the general
name of Encyclopædia. The latter are known as special schools, suited to
particular needs or talents.

——As those who live in the country are relatively isolated, it is often
necessary, or at least desirable, that one man should be trained equally
on many different sides. The poor tutor is required not only to instruct
in all the sciences, he must also speak French and be able to play the
piano.——

§ 22. For any single person, the relation of his actual education to its
infinite possibilities can only be approximately determined, and it can
be considered as only relatively finished on any one side. Education is
impossible to him who is born an idiot, since the want of the power of
generalizing and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an
unfortunate only the possibility of a mechanical training.

——Sägert, the teacher of the deaf mutes in Berlin, has made laudable
efforts to educate idiots, but the account as given in his publication,
"Cure of Idiots by an Intellectual Method, Berlin, 1846," shows that the
result obtained was only external; and though we do not desire to be
understood as denying or refusing to this class the possession of a mind
_in potentia_, it appears in them to be confined to an embryonic
state.——


II.

_The Form of Education._

§ 23. The general form of Education is determined by the nature of the
mind, that it really is nothing but what it makes itself to be. The mind
is (1) immediate (or potential), but (2) it must estrange itself from
itself as it were, so that it may place itself over against itself as a
special object of attention; (3) this estrangement is finally removed
through a further acquaintance with the object——it feels itself at home
in that on which it looks, and returns again enriched to the form of
immediateness. That which at first appeared to be another than itself is
now seen to be itself. Education cannot create; it can only help to
develop to reality the previously existent possibility; it can only help
to bring forth to light the hidden life.

§ 24. All culture, whatever may be its special purport, must pass
through these two stages——of estrangement, and its removal. Culture must
hold fast to the distinction between the subject and the object
considered immediately, though it has again to absorb this distinction
into itself, in order that the union of the two may be more complete and
lasting. The subject recognizes then all the more certainly that what at
first appeared to it as a foreign existence, belongs to it as its own
property, and that it holds it as its own all the more by means of
culture.

——Plato, as is known, calls the feeling with which knowledge must begin,
wonder; but this can serve as a beginning only, for wonder itself can
only express the tension between the subject and the object at their
first encounter——a tension which would be impossible if they were not in
themselves identical. Children have a longing for the far-off, the
strange, and the wonderful, as if they hoped to find in these an
explanation of themselves. They want the object to be a genuine object.
That to which they are accustomed, which they see around them every day,
seems to have no longer any objective energy for them; but an alarm of
fire, banditti life, wild animals, gray old ruins, the robin's songs,
and far-off happy islands, &c.——everything high-colored and
dazzling——leads them irresistibly on. The necessity of the mind's making
itself foreign to itself is that which makes children prefer to hear of
the adventurous journeys of Sinbad than news of their own city or the
history of their nation, and in youth this same necessity manifests
itself in their desire of travelling.——

§ 25. This activity of the mind in allowing itself to be absorbed, and
consciously so, in an object with the purpose of making it his own, or
of producing it, is _Work_. But when the mind gives itself up to its
objects as chance may present them or through arbitrariness, careless as
to whether they have any result, such activity is _Play_. Work is laid
out for the pupil by his teacher by authority, but in his play he is
left to himself.

§ 26. Thus work and play must be sharply distinguished from each other.
If one has not respect for work as an important and substantial
activity, he not only spoils play for his pupil, for this loses all its
charm when deprived of the antithesis of an earnest, set task, but he
undermines his respect for real existence. On the other hand, if he does
not give him space, time, and opportunity, for play, he prevents the
peculiarities of his pupil from developing freely through the exercise
of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the pupil back refreshed to his
work, since in play he forgets himself in his own way, while in work he
is required to forget himself in a manner prescribed for him by another.

——Play is of great importance in helping one to discover the true
individualities of children, because in play they may betray
thoughtlessly their inclinations. This antithesis of work and play runs
through the entire life. Children anticipate in their play the earnest
work of after life; thus the little girl plays with her doll, and the
boy pretends he is a soldier and in battle.——

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it
were work. In general, the arts, the sciences, and productions, stand in
this relation to each other: the accumulation of stores of knowledge is
the recreation of the mind which is engaged in independent creation, and
the practice of arts fills the same office to those whose work is to
collect knowledge.

§ 28. Education seeks to transform every particular condition so that it
shall no longer seem strange to the mind or in anywise foreign to its
own nature. This identity of consciousness, and the special character of
anything done or endured by it, we call Habit [habitual conduct or
behavior]. It conditions formally all progress; for that which is not
yet become habit, but which we perform with design and an exercise of
our will, is not yet a part of ourselves.

§ 29. As to Habit, we have to say next that it is at first indifferent
as to what it relates. But that which is to be considered as indifferent
or neutral cannot be defined in the abstract, but only in the concrete,
because anything that is indifferent as to whether it shall act on these
particular men, or in this special situation, is capable of another or
even of the opposite meaning for another man or men for the same men or
in other circumstances. Here, then, appeal must be made to the
individual conscience in order to be able from the depths of
individuality to separate what we can permit to ourselves from that
which we must deny ourselves. The aim of Education must be to arouse in
the pupil this spiritual and ethical sensitiveness which does not
recognize anything as _merely_ indifferent, but rather knows how to
seize in everything, even in the seemingly small, its universal human
significance. But in relation to the highest problems he must learn that
what concerns his own immediate personality is entirely indifferent.

§ 30. Habit lays aside its indifference to an external action through
reflection on the advantage or disadvantage of the same. Whatever tends
as a harmonious means to the realization of an end is advantageous, but
that is disadvantageous which, by contradicting its idea, hinders or
destroys it. Advantage and disadvantage being then only _relative_
terms, a habit which is advantageous for one man in one case may be
disadvantageous for another man, or even for the same man, under
different circumstances. Education must, therefore, accustom the youth
to judge as to the expediency or inexpediency of any action in its
relation to the essential vocation of his life, so that he shall avoid
that which does not promote its success.

§ 31. But the _absolute_ distinction of habit is the moral distinction
between the good and the bad. For from this standpoint alone can we
finally decide what is allowable and what is forbidden, what is
advantageous and what is disadvantageous.

§ 32. As relates to form, habit may be either passive or active. The
passive is that which teaches us to bear the vicissitudes of nature as
well as of history with such composure that we shall hold our ground
against them, being always equal to ourselves, and that we shall not
allow our power of acting to be paralyzed through any mutations of
fortune. Passive habit is not to be confounded with obtuseness in
receiving impressions, a blank abstraction from the affair in hand which
at bottom is found to be nothing more than a selfishness which desires
to be left undisturbed: it is simply composure of mind in view of
changes over which we have no control. While we vividly experience joy
and sorrow, pain and pleasure——inwoven as these are with the change of
seasons, of the weather, &c.——with the alternation of life and death, of
happiness and misery, we ought nevertheless to harden ourselves against
them so that at the same time in our consciousness of the supreme worth
of the mind we shall build up the inaccessible stronghold of Freedom in
ourselves.——Active habit [or behavior] is found realized in a wide range
of activity which appears in manifold forms, such as skill, dexterity,
readiness of information, &c. It is a steeling of the internal for
action upon the external, as the Passive is a steeling of the internal
against the influences of the external.

[Sidenote: _Formation of Habits._]

§ 33. Habit is the general form which instruction takes. For since it
reduces a condition or an activity within ourselves to an instinctive
use and wont, it is necessary for any thorough instruction. But as,
according to its content, it may be either proper or improper,
advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad, and according to its form
may be the assimilation of the external by the internal, or the impress
of the internal upon the external, Education must procure for the pupil
the power of being able to free himself from one habit and to adopt
another. Through his freedom he must be able not only to renounce any
habit formed, but to form a new one; and he must so govern his system of
habits that it shall exhibit a constant progress of development into
greater freedom. We must discipline ourselves, as a means toward the
ever-changing realization of the Good in us, constantly to form and to
break habits.

——We must characterize those habits as bad which relate only to our
convenience or our enjoyment. They are often not blamable in themselves,
but there lies in them a hidden danger that they may allure us into
luxury or effeminacy. But it is a false and mechanical way of looking at
the affair if we suppose that a habit which has been formed by a certain
number of repetitions can be broken by an equal number of denials. We
can never renounce a habit utterly except through a clearness of
judgment which decides it to be undesirable, and through firmness of
will.——

§ 34. Education comprehends also the reciprocal action of the
opposites, authority and obedience, rationality and individuality, work
and play, habit and spontaneity. If we imagine that these can be
reconciled by rules, it will be in vain that we try to restrain the
youth in these relations. But a failure in education in this particular
is very possible through the freedom of the pupil, through special
circumstances, or through the errors of the educator himself. And for
this very reason any theory of Education must take into account in the
beginning this negative possibility. It must consider beforehand the
dangers which threaten the pupil in all possible ways even before they
surround him, and fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him
to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the
other hand, to guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to
wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridiculous,
fruitless, and much more dangerous; for temptation comes not alone from
without, but quite as often from within, and secret inclination seeks
and creates for itself the opportunity for its gratification, often
perhaps an unnatural one. The truly preventive activity consists not in
an abstract seclusion from the world, all of whose elements are innate
in each individual, but in the activity of knowledge and discipline,
modified according to age and culture.

[Sidenote: _Protection against Temptation._]

——If one endeavors to deprive the youth of all free and individual
intercourse with the world, one only falls into a continual watching of
him, and the consciousness that he is watched destroys in him all
elasticity of spirit, all confidence, all originality. The police shadow
of control obscures all independence and systematically accustoms him to
dependence. As the tragi-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, one
cannot lose his own shadow without falling into the saddest fatalities;
but the shadow of a constant companion, as in the pedagogical system of
the Jesuits, undermines all naturalness. And if one endeavors too
strictly to guard against that which is evil and forbidden, the
intelligence of the pupils reacts in deceit against such efforts, till
the educators are amazed that such crimes as come often to light can
have arisen under such careful control.——

§ 35. If there should appear in the youth any decided moral deformity
which is opposed to the ideal of his education, the instructor must at
once make inquiry as to the history of its origin, because the negative
and the positive are very closely connected in his being, so that what
appears to be negligence, rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or oddity,
may arise from some real needs of the youth which in their development
have only taken a wrong direction.

§ 36. If it should appear on such examination that the negative action
was only a product of wilful ignorance, of caprice, or of arbitrariness
on the part of the youth, then this calls for a simple prohibition on
the part of the educator, no reason being assigned. His authority must
be sufficient to the pupil without any reason. Only when this has
happened more than once, and the youth is old enough to understand,
should the prohibition, together with the reason therefor, be given.

——This should, however, be brief; the explanation must retain its
disciplinary character, and must not become extended into a doctrinal
essay, for in such a case the youth easily forgets that it was his own
misbehavior which was the occasion of the explanation. The statement of
the reason must be honest, and it must present to the youth the point
most easy for him to seize. False reasons are morally blamable in
themselves, and they tend only to confuse. It is a great mistake to
unfold to the youth the broadening consequences which his act may bring.
These uncertain possibilities seem to him too powerless to affect him
particularly. The severe lecture wearies him, especially if it be
stereotyped, as is apt to be the case with fault-finding and talkative
instructors. But more unfortunate is it if the painting of the gloomy
background to which the consequences of the wrong-doing of the youth may
lead, should fill his feelings and imagination prematurely with gloomy
fancies, because then the representation has led him one step toward a
state of wretchedness which in the future man may become fearful
depression and degradation.——

[Sidenote: _Reproof and Punishment._]

§ 37. If the censure is accompanied with a threat of punishment, then we
have the same kind of reproof which in daily life we call "scolding;"
but if reproof is given, the pupil must be made to feel that it is in
earnest.

§ 38. Only when all other efforts have failed, is punishment, which is
the real negation of the error, the transgression, or the vice,
justifiable. Punishment inflicts intentionally pain on the pupil, and
its object is, by means of this sensation, to bring him to reason, a
result which neither our simple prohibition, our explanation, nor our
threat of punishment, has been able to reach. But the punishment, as
such, must not refer to the subjective totality of the youth, or his
disposition in general, but only to the act which, as result, is a
manifestation of the disposition. It acts mediately on the disposition,
but leaves the inner being untouched directly; and this is not only
demanded by justice, but on account of the sophistry that is inherent in
human nature, which desires to assign to a deed many motives, it is even
necessary.

[Sidenote: _Correction_ VERSUS _Satisfaction of Justice._]

§ 39. Punishment as an educational means is nevertheless essentially
corrective, since, by leading the youth to a proper estimation of his
fault and a positive change in his behavior, it seeks to improve him. At
the same time it stands as a sad indication of the insufficiency of the
means previously used. On no account should the youth be frightened from
the commission of a misdemeanor, or from the repetition of his negative
deed through fear of punishment——a system which leads always to
terrorism: but, although it may have this effect, it should, before all
things, impress upon him the recognition of the fact that the negative
is not allowed to act as it will without limitation, but rather that the
Good and the True have the absolute power in the world, and that they
are never without the means of overcoming anything that contradicts
them.

——In the statute-laws, punishment has the opposite office. It must first
of all satisfy justice, and only after this is done can it attempt to
improve the guilty. If a government should proceed on the same basis as
the educator it would mistake its task, because it has to deal with
adults, whom it elevates to the honorable position of responsibility for
their own acts. The state must not go back to the psychological ethical
genesis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank of
importance the biographical moment which contains the deed in process
and the circumstances of a mitigating character, and it must consider
first of all the deed in itself. It is quite otherwise with the
educator; for he deals with human beings who are relatively undeveloped,
and who are only growing toward responsibility. So long as they are
still under the care of a teacher, the responsibility of their deed
belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in which
punishment is administered in the state with that in education, we work
much evil.——

§ 40. Punishment as a negation of a negation, considered as an
educational means, cannot be determined _à priori_, but must always be
modified by the peculiarities of the individual offender and by the
peculiar circumstances. Its administration calls for the exercise of the
ingenuity and tact of the educator.

[Sidenote: _Three Kinds of Punishment._]

§ 41. Generally speaking, we must make a distinction between the sexes,
as well as between the different periods of youth; (1) some kind of
corporal punishment is most suitable for children, (2) isolation for
older boys and girls, and (3) punishment based on the sense of honor for
young men and women.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment is the production of physical pain. The
youth is generally whipped, and this kind of punishment, provided always
that it is not too often administered or with undue severity, is the
proper way of dealing with wilful defiance, with obstinate carelessness,
or with a really perverted will, so long or so often as the higher
perception is closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical
punishment, e.g. that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of
cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all the
teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally undesirable is the
false sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is
affected by a blow given to a child, and confounds self-conscious
humanity with child-humanity, to which a blow is the most natural form
of reaction, in which all other forms of influence at last end.

——The fully-grown man ought never to be whipped, because this kind of
punishment reduces him to the level of the child, and, when it becomes
barbarous, to that of a brute animal, and so is absolutely degrading to
him. In the English schools the rod is much used. If a pupil of the
first class be put back into the second at Eton, he, although before
exempt from flogging, becomes liable to it. But however necessary this
system of flogging of the English aristocracy may be in the discipline
of their schools, flogging in the English army is a shameful thing for
the free people of Great Britain.——

§ 43. (2) By Isolation we remove the offender temporarily from the
society of his fellows. The boy left alone, cut off from all
companionship, and left absolutely to himself, suffers from a sense of
helplessness. The time passes heavily, and soon he is very anxious to be
allowed to return to the company of parents, brothers and sisters,
teachers and fellow-pupils.

——To leave a child entirely to himself without any supervision, even if
one shuts him up in a dark room, is as mistaken a practice as to leave a
few together without supervision, as is too often done where they are
kept after school, when they give the freest rein to their childish
wantonness and commit the wildest pranks.——

[Sidenote: _Sense of Honor in the Pupil._]

§ 44. (3) This way of isolating a child does not touch his sense of
honor at all, and is soon forgotten because it relates to only one side
of his conduct. It is quite different from punishment based on the sense
of honor, which, in a formal manner, shuts the youth out from
companionship because he has attacked the principle which holds society
together, and for this reason can no longer be considered as belonging
to it. Honor is the recognition of one individual by others as their
equal. Through his error, or it may be his crime, he has simply made
himself unequal to them, and in so far has separated himself from them,
so that his banishment from their society is only the outward expression
of the real isolation which he himself has brought to pass in his inner
nature, and which he by means of his negative act only betrayed to the
outer world. Since the punishment founded on the sense of honor affects
the whole ethical man and makes a lasting impression upon his memory,
extreme caution is necessary in its application lest a permanent injury
be inflicted upon the character. The idea of his perpetual continuance
in disgrace, destroys in a man all aspiration for improvement.

——Within the family this feeling of honor cannot be so actively
developed, because every member of it is bound to every other
immediately by natural ties, and hence is equal to every other. Within
its sacred circle, he who has isolated himself is still beloved, though
it may be through tears. However bad may be the deed he has committed,
he is never given up, but the deepest sympathy is felt for him because
he is still brother, father, &c. But first in the contact of one family
with another, and still more in the contact of an individual with any
institution which is founded not on natural ties, but is set over
against him as a distinct object, this feeling of honor appears. In the
school, and in the matter of ranks and classes in a school, this is very
important.——

§ 45. It is important to consider well this gradation of punishment
(which, starting with sensuous physical pain, passes through the
external teleology of temporary isolation up to the idealism of the
sense of honor), both in relation to the different ages at which they
are appropriate and to the training which they bring with them. Every
punishment must be considered merely as a means to some end, and, in so
far, as transitory. The pupil must always be deeply conscious that it is
very painful to his instructor to be obliged to punish him. This pathos
of another's sorrow for the sake of his cure which he perceives in the
mien, in the tone of the voice, in the delay with which the punishment
is administered, will become a purifying fire for his soul.


III.

_The Limits of Education._

§ 46. The form of Education reaches its limits with the idea of
punishment, because this is the attempt to subsume the negative reality
and to make it conformable to its positive idea. But the limits of
Education are found in the idea of its nature, which is to fashion the
individual into theoretical and practical rationality. The authority of
the Educator at last becomes imperceptible, and it passes over into
advice and example, and obedience changes from blind conformity to free
gratitude and attachment. Individuality wears off its rough edges, and
is transfigured into the universality and necessity of Reason without
losing in this process its identity. Work becomes enjoyment, and he
finds his play in a change of activity. The youth takes possession of
himself, and can be left to himself.

——There are two widely differing views with regard to the limits of
Education. One lays great stress on the weakness of the pupil and the
power of the teacher. According to this view, Education has for its
province the entire formation of the youth. The despotism of this view
often manifests itself where large numbers are to be educated together,
and with very undesirable results, because it assumes that the
individual pupil is only a specimen of the whole, as if the school were
a great factory where each piece of goods is to be stamped exactly like
all the rest. Individuality is reduced by the tyranny of such despotism
to one uniform level till all originality is destroyed, as in cloisters,
barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems to exist.
There is a kind of Pedagogy also which fancies that one can thrust into
or out of the individual pupil what one will. This may be called a
superstitious belief in the power of Education.——The opposite extreme
disbelieves this, and advances the policy which lets alone and does
nothing, urging that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the
most careful and far-sighted education fails of reaching its aim in so
far as it is opposed to the nature of the youth, and that this
individuality has made of no avail all efforts toward the obtaining of
any end which was opposed to it. This representation of the
fruitlessness of all pedagogical efforts engenders an indifference
towards it which would leave, as a result, only a sort of vegetation of
individuality growing at hap-hazard.——

[Sidenote: _The Limits of Individuality._]

§ 47. _The limit of Education is_ (1) _a Subjective one_, a limit made
by the individuality of the youth. This is a definite limit. Whatever
does not exist in this individuality as a possibility cannot be
developed from it. Education can only lead and assist; it cannot create.
What Nature has denied to a man, Education cannot give him any more than
it is able, on the other hand, to annihilate entirely his original
gifts, although it is true that his talents may be suppressed,
distorted, and measurably destroyed. But the decision of the question in
what the real essence of any one's individuality consists can never be
made with certainty till he has left behind him his years of
development, because it is then only that he first arrives at the
consciousness of his entire self; besides, at this critical time, in the
first place, much knowledge only superficially acquired will drop off;
and again, talents, long slumbering and unsuspected, may first make
their appearance. Whatever has been forced upon a child in opposition to
his individuality, whatever has been only driven into him and has lacked
receptivity on his side, or a rational ground on the side of culture,
remains attached to his being only as an external ornament, a foreign
outgrowth which enfeebles his own proper character.

——We must distinguish from that affectation which arises through a
misunderstanding of the limit of individuality, the way which many
children and young persons have of supposing when they see models
finished and complete in grown persons, that they themselves are endowed
by Nature with the power to develop into the same. When they see a
reality which corresponds to their own possibility, the presentiment of
a like or a similar attainment moves them to an imitation of it as a
model personality. This may be sometimes carried so far as to be
disagreeable or ridiculous, but should not be too strongly censured,
because it springs from a positive striving after culture, and needs
only proper direction.——

[Sidenote: _Limit in the Means of Education._]

§ 48. (2) _The Objective limit of Education_ lies in the means which can
be appropriated for it. That the talent for a certain culture shall be
present is certainly the first thing; but the cultivation of this talent
is the second, and no less necessary. But how much cultivation can be
given to it extensively and intensively depends upon the means used, and
these again are conditioned by the material resources of the family to
which each one belongs. The greater and more valuable the means of
culture which are found in a family are, the greater is the immediate
advantage which the culture of each one has at the start. With regard to
many of the arts and sciences this limit of education is of great
significance. But the means alone are of no avail. The finest
educational apparatus will produce no fruit where corresponding talent
is wanting, while on the other hand talent often accomplishes incredible
feats with very limited means, and, if the way is only once open, makes
of itself a centre of attraction which draws to itself with magnetic
power the necessary means. The moral culture of each one is however,
fortunately from its very nature, out of the reach of such dependence.

——In considering the limit made by individuality we recognize the side
of truth in that indifference which considers Education entirely
superfluous, and in considering the means of culture we find the truth
in the other extreme of pedagogical despotism, which fancies that it can
command whatever culture it chooses for any one without regard to his
individuality.——

§ 49. (3) _The Absolute limit of Education_ is the time when the youth
has apprehended the problem which he has to solve, has learned to know
the means at his disposal, and has acquired a certain facility in using
them. The end and aim of Education is the emancipation of the youth. It
strives to make him self-dependent, and as soon as he has become so it
wishes to retire and to be able to leave him to the sole responsibility
of his actions. To treat the youth after he has passed this point of
time still as a youth, contradicts the very idea of Education, which
idea finds its fulfilment in the attainment of majority by the pupil.
Since the accomplishment of education cancels the original inequality
between the educator and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay,
revolting to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence
from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned.

——The opposite extreme of the protracting of Education beyond its proper
time is necessarily the undue hastening of the Emancipation.——The
question whether one is prepared for freedom has been often opened in
politics. When any people have gone so far as to ask this question
themselves, it is no longer a question whether that people are prepared
for it, for without the consciousness of freedom this question would
never have occurred to them.——

[Sidenote: _Arrival at the age of Majority._]

§ 50. Although educators must now leave the youth free, the necessity of
further culture for him is still imperative. But it will no longer come
directly through them. Their pre-arranged, pattern-making work is now
supplanted by self-education. Each sketches for himself an ideal to
which in his life he seeks to approximate every day.

——In the work of self-culture one friend can help another by advice and
example; but he cannot educate, for education presupposes
inequality.——The necessities of human nature produce societies in which
equals seek to influence each other in a pedagogical way, since they
establish by certain steps of culture different classes. They presuppose
Education in the ordinary sense. But they wish to bring about Education
in a higher sense, and therefore they veil the last form of their ideal
in the mystery of secrecy.——To one who lives on contented with himself
and without the impulse toward self-culture, unless his unconcern
springs from his belonging to a savage state of society, the Germans
give the name of Philistine, and he is always repulsive to the student
who is intoxicated with an ideal.——




SECOND PART.

The Special Elements of Education.


§ 51. Education in general consists in the development in man of his
inborn theoretical and practical rationality; it takes on the form of
labor, which changes that state or condition, which appears at first
only as a mere conception, into a fixed habit, and transfigures
individuality into a worthy humanity. Education ends in that
emancipation of the youth which places him on his own feet. The special
elements which form the concrete content of all Education in general are
the Life, Cognition, and Will of man. Without life mind has no
phenomenal reality; without cognition, no genuine, i.e. conscious, will;
and without will, no self-assurance of life and of cognition. It is true
that these three elements are in real existence inseparable, and that
consequently in the dialectic they continually pass over into one
another. But none the less on this account do they themselves prescribe
their own succession, and they have a relative and periodical ascendancy
over each other. In Infancy, up to the fifth or sixth year, the purely
physical development takes the precedence; Childhood is the time of
learning, in a proper sense, an act by which the child gains for himself
the picture of the world such as mature minds, through experience and
insight, have painted it; and, finally, Youth is the transition period
to practical activity, to which the self-determination of the will must
give the first impulse.

§ 52. The classification of the special elements of Pedagogics is hence
very simple: (1) the Physical, (2) the Intellectual, (3) the Practical.
(We sometimes apply to these the words Orthobiotics, Didactics, and
Pragmatics.)

——Æsthetic training constitutes only an element of the education of
Intellectual Education, just as social, moral, and religious training
form elements of Practical Education. But because these latter elements
concern themselves with what is external, the name "Pragmatics" is
appropriate. In this sphere, Pedagogics should coincide with Politics,
Ethics, and Religion; but it is distinguished from them through the
aptitude which it brings with it of putting into practice the problems
of the other three. The scientific arrangement of these ideas must
therefore show that the former, as the more abstract, constitutes the
conditions, and the latter, as the more concrete, the ground of the
former, which are presupposed; and in consequence of this it is itself
their principal teleological presupposition, just as in man the will
presupposes the cognition, and cognition life; while, at the same time,
life, in a deeper sense, must presuppose cognition, and cognition
will.——


FIRST DIVISION.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

§ 53. The art of living rightly is based upon a comprehension of the
process of Life. Life is the restless dialectic which ceaselessly
transforms the inorganic into the organic, but at the same time creates
out of itself another inorganic, in which it separates from itself
whatever part of the inorganic has not been assimilated, which it took
up as a stimulant, and that which has become dead and burned out. The
organism is healthy when its reality corresponds to this idea of the
dialectic, of a life which moves up and down, to and fro; of formation
and re-formation, of organizing and disorganizing. All the rules for
Physical Education, or of Hygiene, are derived from this conception.

§ 54. It follows from this that the change of the inorganic to the
organic is going on not only in the organism as a whole, but also in its
every organ and in every part of every organ; and that the organic as
soon as it has attained its highest point of energy, is again degraded
to the inorganic and thrown out. Every cell has its history. Activity
is, therefore, not contradictory to the organism, but favors in it the
natural progressive and regressive metamorphosis. This process can go on
harmoniously; that is, the organism can be in health only when not only
the whole organism, but each special organ, is allowed, after its
productive activity, the corresponding rest and recreation necessary for
its self-renewal. We have this periodicity exemplified in waking and
sleeping, also in exhalation and inhalation, excretion and taking in of
material. When we have discovered the relative antagonism of the organs
and their periodicity, we have found the secret of the perennial renewal
of life.

§ 55. Fatigue makes its appearance when any organ, or the organism in
general, is denied time for the return movement into itself and for
renovation. It is possible for some one organ, as if isolated, to
exercise a great and long-continued activity, even to the point of
fatigue, while the other organs rest; as e.g. the lungs, in speaking,
while the other parts are quiet; on the other hand, it is not well to
speak and run at the same time. The idea that one can keep the organism
in better condition by inactivity, is an error which rests upon a
mechanical apprehension of life. Equally false is the idea that health
depends upon the quantity and excellence of the food; without the force
to assimilate it, it acts fatally rather than stimulatingly. _True
strength arises only from activity._

——The later physiologists will gradually destroy, in the system of
culture of modern people, the preconceived notion which recommended for
the indolent and lovers of pleasure powerful stimulants, very fat food,
&c. Excellent works exist on this question.——

§ 56. Physical Education, as it concerns the repairing, the motor, or
the nervous, activities, is divided into (1) Dietetics, (2) Gymnastics,
(3) Sexual Education. In real life these activities are scarcely
separable, but for the sake of exposition we must consider them apart.
In the regular development of the human being, moreover, the repairing
system has a relative precedence to the motor system, and the latter to
the sexual maturity. But Pedagogics can treat of these ideas only with
reference to the infant, the child, and the youth.


FIRST CHAPTER.

_Dietetics._


§ 57. Dietetics is the art of sustaining the normal repair of the
organism. Since this organism is, in the concrete, an individual one,
the general principles of dietetics must, in their manner of
application, vary with the sex, the age, the temperament, the
occupation, and the other conditions, of the individual. Pedagogics as a
science can only go over its general principles, and these can be named
briefly. It we attempt to speak of details, we fall easily into
triviality. So very important to the whole life of man is the proper
care of his physical nature during the first stages of its development,
that the science of Pedagogics must not omit to consider the different
systems which different people, according to their time, locality, and
culture, have made for themselves; many, it is true, embracing some
preposterous ideas, but in general never devoid of justification in
their time.

§ 58. The infant's first nourishment must be the milk of its mother. The
substitution of a nurse should be only an exception justified alone by
the illness of the mother; as a rule, as happens in France, it is simply
bad, because a foreign physical and moral element is introduced into the
family through the nurse. The milk of an animal can never be as good for
a child.

§ 59. When the teeth appear, the child is first able to eat solid food;
but, until the second teeth come, he should be fed principally on light,
fluid nourishment, and on vegetable diet.

§ 60. When the second teeth are fully formed, the human being is ready
for animal as well as vegetable food. Too much meat is not good; but it
is an anatomical error to suppose that man, by the structure of his
stomach, was originally formed to live alone on vegetable diet, and that
animal food is a sign of his degeneracy.

——The Hindoos, who subsist principally on vegetable diet, are not, as
has been often asserted, a very gentle race: a glance into their
history, or into their erotic poetry, shows them to be quite as
passionate as other peoples.——

§ 61. Man is omnivorous. Children have therefore a natural desire to
taste of everything. For them eating and drinking possess a kind of
poetry; there is a theoretic ingredient blended with the material
enjoyment. They have, on this account, a proneness to indulge, which is
deserving of punishment only when it is combined with disobedience and
secrecy, or when it betrays cunning and greediness.

§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are undergoing the most
active progressive metamorphosis. In after-life sleep and waking should
be subjected to periodical regulation, but not too exactly.

§ 63. The clothing of children should be adapted to them; i.e. it should
be cut according to the shape of the body, and it must be loose enough
to allow free play to their desire for movement.

——With regard to this as well as to the sleeping arrangements for
children, less in regard to food——which is often too highly spiced and
too liberal in tea, coffee, &c.——our age has become accustomed to a very
rational system. The clothing of children must be not only comfortable,
but it should be made of simple and cheap material, so that the free
enjoyment of the child may not be marred by the constant internal
anxiety that a rent or a spot may bring him a fault-finding or angry
word. From too great care as to clothing, may arise a meanness of mind
which at last pays too great respect to it, or an empty frivolity. This
last may be induced by dressing children too conspicuously.——

§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be accustomed for
the sake of their physical well-being, as well as because, in a moral
point of view, it is of the greatest significance. Cleanliness will not
endure that things shall be deprived of their proper individuality
through the elemental chaos. It retains each as distinguished from every
other. While it makes necessary to man pure air, cleanliness of
surroundings, of clothing, and of his body, it develops in him a sense
by which he perceives accurately the particular limits of being in
general.


SECOND CHAPTER.

_Gymnastics._


§ 65. Gymnastics is the art of systematic training of the muscular
system. The action of the voluntary muscles, which are regulated by the
nerves of the brain, in distinction from the involuntary automatic
muscles depending on the spinal cord, while they are the means of man's
intercourse with the external world, at the same time re-act upon the
automatic muscles in digestion and sensation. Since the movement of the
muscular fibres consists in the change of contraction and expansion, it
follows that Gymnastics must bring about a change of movement which
shall both contract and expand the muscles.

§ 66. The system of gymnastic exercise of any nation corresponds always
to its way of fighting. So long as this consists in the personal
struggle of a hand-to-hand contest, Gymnastics will seek to increase as
much as possible individual strength and adroitness. As soon as the
far-reaching missiles projected from fire-arms become the centre of all
the operations of war, the individual is lost in a body of men, out of
which he emerges only relatively in sharp-shooting, in the charge, in
single contests, and in the retreat. Because of this incorporation of
the individual in the one great whole, and because of the resulting
unimportance of personal bravery, modern Gymnastics can never be the
same as it was in ancient times, even putting out of view the fact that
the subjectiveness of the modern spirit is too great to allow it to
devote so much attention to the care of the body, and the admiration of
its beauty, as was given by the Greeks.

——The Turners' unions and halls in Germany belong to the period of
subjective enthusiasm of the German student population, and had a
political significance. At present, they have been brought back to their
proper place as an Educational means, and they are of great value,
especially in large cities. Among the mountains, and even in the country
towns, a special institution for bodily exercise is less necessary, for
the matter takes care of itself. The attractions of the situation and
the games help to foster it. In great cities, however, the houses are
often destitute of halls or open places where the children can take
exercise in their leisure moments. In these cities, therefore, there
must be some gymnastic hall where the sense of fellowship may be
developed. Gymnastics are not so essential for girls. In its place,
dancing is sufficient, and gymnastics should be employed for them only
where there exists any special weakness or deformity, when they may be
used as a restorative or preservative. They are not to become Amazons.
The boy, on the contrary, needs to acquire the feeling of
good-fellowship. It is true that the school develops this in a measure,
but not fully, because it determines the standing of the boy through his
intellectual ambition. The academical youth will not take much interest
in special gymnastics unless he can gain preëminence therein. Running,
leaping, climbing, and lifting, are too meaningless for their more
mature spirits. They can take a lively interest only in the exercises
which have a warlike character. With the Prussians, and some other
German states, the art of Gymnastics identifies itself with military
concerns.——

§ 67. The real idea of Gymnastics must always be that the spirit shall
rule over its naturalness, and shall make this an energetic and docile
servant of its will. Strength and adroitness must unite and become
confident skill. Strength, carried to its extreme produces the athlete;
adroitness, to its extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All
immense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away as the
idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility; e.g. that by
swimming one may save his life when he falls into the water, &c. Among
other things, this may also be a consequence; but the principle in
general must always remain: the necessity of the spirit of subjecting
its organism of the body to the condition of a perfect means, so that it
may never find itself limited by it.

§ 68. Gymnastic exercises form a series from simple to compound. There
appears to be so much arbitrariness in them that it is always very
agreeable to the mind to find, on nearer inspection, some reason. The
movements are (1) of the lower, (2) of the upper extremities; (3) of the
whole body, with relative striking out, now of the upper, now of the
lower extremities. We distinguish, therefore, foot, arm, and trunk
movements.

§ 69. (1) The first series of foot-movements is the most important, and
conditions the carriage of all the rest of the body. They are (_a_)
walking; (_b_) running; (_c_) leaping: each of these being capable of
modifications, as the high and the low leap, the prolonged and the quick
run. Sometimes we give to these different names, according to the means
used, as walking on stilts; skating; leaping with a staff, or by means
of the hands, as vaulting. Dancing is only the art of the graceful
mingling of these movements; and balancing, only one form of walking.

§ 70. (2) The second series embraces the arm-movements, and it repeats
also the movements of the first series. It includes (_a_) lifting; (_b_)
swinging; (_c_) throwing. All pole and bar practice comes under lifting,
also climbing and carrying. Under throwing, come quoit and
ball-throwing, and nine-pin playing. All these movements are
distinguished from each other, not only quantitatively but also
qualitatively, in the position of the stretched and bent muscles; e.g.
running is something different from quick walking.

§ 71. (3) The third series, or that of movements of the whole body,
differs from the preceding two, which should precede it, in this, that
it brings the organism into contact with a living object, which it has
to overcome through its own activity. This object is sometimes an
element, sometimes an animal, sometimes a man. Our divisions then are
(_a_) swimming; (_b_) riding; (_c_) fighting, or single combat. In
swimming, one must conquer the yielding liquid material of water by arm
and foot movements. The resistance met on account of currents and waves
may be very great, but it is still that of a will-less and passive
object. But in riding man has to deal with a self-willed being whose
vitality calls forth not only his strength but also his intelligence and
courage. The exercise is therefore very complicated, and the rider must
be able perpetually to individualize it according to the necessity; at
the same time, he must give attention not only to the horse, but to the
nature of the ground and the entire surroundings. But it is only in the
struggle with men that Gymnastics reaches its highest point, for in this
man offers himself as a living antagonist to man and brings him into
danger. It is no longer the spontaneous activity of an unreasoning
existence; it is the resistance and attack of intelligence itself with
which he has to deal. Fighting, or single combat, is the truly
chivalrous exercise, and this may be combined with horsemanship.

——In the single combat there is found also a qualitative modification,
whence we have three systems: (_a_) boxing and wrestling; (_b_) fencing
with sticks; and (_c_) rapier and broad-sword fencing. In the first,
which was cultivated to its highest point among the Greeks, direct
immediateness rules. In the boxing of the English, a sailor-like
propensity of this nation, fist-fighting is still retained as a custom.
Fencing with a stick is found among the French mechanics, the so-called
_compagnons_. Men often use the cane in their contests; it is a sort of
refined club. When we use the sword or rapier, the weapon becomes
deadly. The Southern Europeans excel in the use of the rapier, the
Germans in that of the sword. But the art of single combat is much
degenerated, and the pistol-duel, through its increasing frequency,
proves this degeneration.——


THIRD CHAPTER.

_Sexual Education._


  NOTE.——The paragraphs relating to Sexual Education are
  designed for parents rather than for teachers, the parent
  being the natural educator of the family and sexual
  education relating to the preservation and continuance of
  the family. This chapter is accordingly, for the most
  part, omitted here. It contains judicious reflections,
  invaluable to parents and guardians.——_Tr._

§ 72. Gymnastic exercises fall naturally into a systematic arrangement
determined by the chronological order of development through infancy,
childhood, and youth. Walking, running, and leaping belong, to the first
period; lifting, swinging, and throwing, to the second; swimming,
riding, and bodily contests, to the third, and these last may also be
continued into manhood. But with the arrival at youth, a new epoch makes
its appearance in the organism. It prepares itself for the propagation
of the species. It expands the individual through the need which he
feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species,
but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a
new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength
becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a
sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a
special care in the educator.

§ 73. The general preventive guards must be found in a rational system
of food and exercise. By care in these directions, the development of
the bones, and with them of the brain and spinal cord at this period,
may be led to a proper strength, and that the easily-moulded material
may not be perverted from its normal functions in the development of the
body to a premature manifestation of the sexual instinct.

§ 74. Special forethought is necessary lest the brain be too early
over-strained, and lest, in consequence of such precocious and excessive
action, the foundation for a morbid excitation of the whole nervous
system be laid, which may easily lead to effeminate and voluptuous
reveries, and to brooding over obscene representations. The excessive
reading of novels, whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of
the sexes for each other and its sensual phases, may lead to this, and
then the mischief is done.


SECOND DIVISION.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.

§ 80. _Mens sana in corpore sano_ is correct as a pedagogical maxim, but
false in the judgment of individual cases; because it is possible, on
the one hand, to have a healthy mind in an unhealthy body, and, on the
other hand, an unhealthy mind in a healthy body. To strive after the
harmony of soul and body is the material condition of all proper
activity. The development of intelligence presupposes physical health.
Here we are to speak of the science of the art of Teaching. This had its
condition on the side of nature, as was before seen, in physical
Education, but in the sphere of mind it is related to Psychology and
Logic. It unites, in Teaching, considerations on Psychology as well as a
Logical method.


FIRST CHAPTER.

_The Psychological Presupposition._


§ 81. If we would have a sound condition of Philosophy, it must, in
intellectual Education, refer to the conception of mind which has been
unfolded in Psychology; and it must appear as a defect in scientific
method if Psychology, or at least the conception of the theoretical
mind, is treated again as within Pedagogics. We must take something for
granted. Psychology, then, will be consulted no further than is
requisite to place on a sure basis the pedagogical function which
relates to it.

§ 82. The conception of _attention_ is the most important to Pedagogics
of all those derived from Psychology. Mind is essentially self-activity.
Nothing exists for it which it does not itself posit as its own. We hear
it not seldom implied that something from outside conditions must make
an impression on the mind, but this is an error. Mind lets nothing act
upon it unless it has rendered itself receptive to it. Without this
preparatory self-excitation the object does not really penetrate it, and
it passes by the object unconsciously or indifferently. The horizon of
perception changes for each person with his peculiarities and culture.
Attention is the adjusting of the observer to the object in order to
seize it in its unity and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows,
for a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so that
he may establish a relation with this one. Without this essentially
spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. All result in
teaching and learning depends upon the clearness and strength with which
distinctions are made, and the saying, _bene qui distinguit bene docit_,
applies as well to the pupil.

§ 83. Attention, depending as it does on the self-determination of the
observer, can therefore be improved, and the pupil made attentive, by
the educator. Education must accustom him to an exact, rapid, and
many-sided attention, so that at the first contact with an object he may
grasp it sufficiently and truly, and that it shall not be necessary for
him always to be adding to his acquisitions concerning it. The twilight
and partialness of intelligence which forces us always to new
corrections because a pupil at the very commencement did not give entire
attention, must not be tolerated.

[Sidenote: _Psychological Faculties._]

§ 84. We learn from Psychology that mind does not consist of distinct
faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different
activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the
other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim
to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom _a
potiori fit denominatio_ to mean that man is distinguished from animals
by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must
not forget that feeling and representing are not less necessary to a
truly complete human being. The special direction which the activity of
apprehending intelligence takes are (1) Perception, (2) Conception, (3)
Thinking. Dialectically, they pass over into each other; not that
Perception rises into Conception, and Conception into Thinking, but that
Thinking goes back into Conception, and this again into Perception. In
the development of the young, the Perceptive faculty is most active in
the infant, the Conceptive in the child, and the Thinking in the youth;
and thus we may distinguish an intuitive, an imaginative, and a logical
epoch.

——Great errors arise from the misapprehension of these different phases
and of their dialectic, since the different forms which are suitable to
the different grades of youth are mingled. The infant certainly thinks
while he perceives, but this thinking is to him unconscious. Or, if he
has acquired perceptions, he makes them into conceptions, and
demonstrates his freedom in playing with them. This play must not be
taken as mere amusement; it also signifies that he takes care to
preserve his self-determination, and his power of idealizing, in
opposition to the pleasant filling of his consciousness with material.
Herein the delight of the child for fairy tales finds its reason. The
fairy tale constantly destroys the limits of common actuality. The
abstract understanding cannot endure this arbitrariness and want of
fixed conditions, and thus would prefer that children should read,
instead, home-made stories of the "Charitable Ann," of the "Heedless
Frederick," of the "Inquisitive Wilhelmine," &c. Above all, it praises
"Robinson Crusoe," which contains much heterogeneous matter, but nothing
improbable. When the youth and maiden of necessity pass over into the
earnestness of real life, the drying up of the imagination and the
domination of the understanding presses in.——


I. _The Intuitive Epoch._

§ 85. Perception, as the beginning of intellectual culture, is the free
grasping of a content immediately present to the spirit. Education can
do nothing directly toward the performance of this act; it can only
assist in making it easy:——(1) it can isolate the subject of
consideration; (2) it can give facility in the transition to another;
(3) it can promote the many-sidedness of the interest, by which means
the return to a perception already obtained has always a fresh charm.

§ 86. The immediate perception of many things is impossible, and yet
the necessity for it is obvious. We must then have recourse to a
mediated perception, and supply the lack of actual seeing by
representations. But here the difficulty presents itself, that there are
many objects which we are not able to represent of the same size as they
really are, and we must have a reduced scale; and there follows a
difficulty in making the representation, as neither too large nor too
small. An explanation is then also necessary as a judicious supplement
to the picture.

§ 87. Pictures are extremely valuable aids to instruction when they are
correct and characteristic. Correctness must be demanded in these
substitutes for natural objects, historical persons and scenes. Without
this correctness, the picture, if not an impediment, is, to say the
least, useless.

——It is only since the last half of the seventeenth century, i.e. since
the disappearance of real painting, that the picture-book has appeared
as an educational means; first of all, coming from miniature painting.
Up to that time, public life had plenty of pictures of arms, furniture,
houses, and churches; and men, from their fondness for constantly moving
about, were more weary of immediate perception. It was only afterwards
when, in the excitement of the thirty-years' war, the arts of Sculpture
and Painting and Christian and Pagan Mythology became extinct, that
there arose a greater necessity for pictured representations. The _Orbis
Rerum Sensualium Pictus_, which was also to be _janua linguarum
reserata_, of Amos Comenius, appeared first in 1658, and was reprinted
in 1805. Many valuable illustrated books followed. Since that time
innumerable illustrated Bibles and histories have appeared, but many of
them look only to the pecuniary profit of the author or the publisher.
It is revolting to see the daubs that are given to children. They are
highly colored, but as to correctness, to say nothing of character, they
are good for nothing. With a little conscientiousness and scientific
knowledge very different results could be obtained with the same outlay
of money and of strength. The uniformity which exists in the stock of
books which German book-selling has set in circulation is really
disgraceful. Everywhere we find the same types, even in ethnographical
pictures. In natural history, the illustrations were often drawn from
the imagination or copied from miserable models. This has changed very
much for the better. The same is true of architectural drawings and
landscapes, for which we have now better copies.——

§ 88. Children have naturally a desire to collect things, and this may
be so guided that they shall collect and arrange plants, butterflies,
beetles, shells, skeletons, &c., and thus gain exactness and reality in
their perception. Especially should they practise drawing, which leads
them to form exact images of objects. But drawing, as children practise
it, does not have the educational significance of cultivating in them an
appreciation of art, but rather that of educating the eye, as this must
be exercised in estimating distances, sizes, and colors. It is,
moreover, a great gain in many ways, if, through a suitable course of
lessons in drawing, the child is advanced to a knowledge of the
elementary forms of nature.

——That pictures should affect children as works of art is not to be
desired. They confine themselves at first to distinguishing the outlines
and colors, and do not yet appreciate the execution. If the children
have access to real works of art, we may safely trust in their power,
and quietly await their moral or æsthetic effect.——

§ 89. In order that looking at pictures shall not degenerate into mere
diversion, explanations should accompany them. Only when the thought
embodied in the illustration is pointed out, can they be useful as a
means of instruction. Simply looking at them is of as little value
towards this end as is water for baptism without the Holy Spirit. Our
age inclines at present to the superstition that man is able, by means
of simple intuition, to attain a knowledge of the essence of things, and
thereby dispense with the trouble of thinking. Illustrations are the
order of the day, and, in the place of enjoyable descriptions, we find
miserable pictures. It is in vain to try to get behind things, or to
comprehend them, except by thinking.

§ 90. The ear as well as the eye must be cultivated. Music must be
considered the first educational means to this end, but it should be
music inspired by ethical purity. Hearing is the most internal of all
the senses, and should on this account be treated with the greatest
delicacy. Especially should the child be taught that he is not to look
upon speech as merely a vehicle for communication and for gaining
information; it should also give pleasure, and therefore he should be
taught to speak distinctly and with a good style, and this he can do
only when he carefully considers what he is going to say.

——Among the Greeks, extraordinary care was given to musical cultivation,
especially in its ethical relation. Sufficient proof of this is found in
the admirable detailed statements on this point in the "Republic" of
Plato and in the last book of the "Politics" of Aristotle. Among modern
nations, also, music holds a high place, and makes its appearance as a
constant element of education. Piano-playing has become general, and
singing is also taught. But the ethical significance of music is too
little considered. Instruction in music often aims only to train pupils
for display in society, and the tendency of the melodies which are
played is restricted more and more to orchestral pieces of an exciting
or bacchanalian character. The railroad-gallop-style only makes the
nerves of youth vibrate with stimulating excitement. Oral speech, the
highest form of the personal manifestation of mind, was also treated
with great reverence by the ancients. Among us, communication is so
generally carried on by writing and reading, that the art of speaking
distinctly, correctly, and agreeably, has become very much neglected.
Practice in declamation accomplishes, as a general thing, very little in
this direction. But we may expect that the increase of public speaking
occasioned by our political and religious assemblies may have a
favorable influence in this particular.——


II. _The Imaginative Epoch._

§ 91. The activity of Perception results in the formation of an internal
picture or image of its ideas which intelligence can call up at any time
without the sensuous, immediate presence of its object, and thus,
through abstraction and generalization, arises the conception. The
mental image may (1) be compared with the perception from which it
sprang, or (2) it may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other
images, or (3) it may be held fast in the form of abstract signs or
symbols which intelligence invents for it. Thus originate the functions
(1) of the verification of conceptions, (2) of the creative imagination,
and (3) of memory; but for their full development we must refer to
Psychology.

§ 92. (1) The mental image which we form of an object may be correct;
again, it may be partly or wholly defective, if we have neglected some
of the predicates of the perception which presented themselves, or in so
far as we have added to it other predicates which only seemingly
belonged to it, and which were attached to it only by its accidental
empirical connection with other existences. Education must, therefore,
foster the habit of comparing our conceptions with the perceptions from
which they arose; and these perceptions, since they are liable to change
by reason of their empirical connection with other objects, must be
frequently compared with our conceptions previously formed by
abstractions from them.

§ 93. (2) We are thus limited in our conceptions by our perceptions, but
we exercise a free control over our conceptions. We can create out of
them, as simple elements, the manifold mental shapes which we do not
treat as given to us, but as essentially our own work. In Pedagogics, we
must not only look upon this freedom as if it were only to afford
gratification, but as the reaction of the absolute ideal native mind
against the dependence in which the empirical reception of impressions
from without, and their reproduction in conceptions, place it. In this
process, it does not only fashion in itself the phenomenal world, but it
rather fashions out of itself a world which is all its own.

§ 94. The study of Art comes here to the aid of Pedagogics, especially
with Poetry, the highest and at the same time the most easily
communicated. The imagination of the pupil can be led by means of the
classical works of creative imagination to the formation of a good taste
both as regards ethical value and beauty of form. The proper classical
works for youth are those which nations have produced in the earliest
stages of their culture. These works bring children face to face with
the picture which mind has sketched for itself in one of the necessary
stages of its development. This is the real reason why our children
never weary of reading Homer and the stories of the Old Testament.
Polytheism and the heroism which belongs to it are just as substantial
an element of childish conception as monotheism with its prophets and
patriarchs. We stand beyond both, because we are mediated by both, and
embrace both in our stand-point.

——The purest stories of literature designed for the amusement of
children from their seventh to their fourteenth year, consist always of
those which were honored by nations and the world at large. One has only
to notice in how many thousand forms the stories of Ulysses are
reproduced by the writers of children's tales. Becker's "Tales of
Ancient Times," Gustav Schwab's most admirable "Sagas of Antiquity,"
Karl Grimm's "Tales of Olden Times," &c., what were they without the
well-talking, wily favorite of Pallas, and the divine swine-herd? And
just as indestructible are the stories of the Old Testament up to the
separation of Judah and Israel. These patriarchs with their wives and
children, these judges and prophets, these kings and priests, are by no
means ideals of virtue in the notion of our modern lifeless morality,
which would smooth out of its pattern-stories for the "dear children"
everything that is hard and uncouth. For the very reason that the
shadow-side is not wanting here, and that we find envy, vanity, evil
desire, ingratitude, craftiness, and deceit, among these fathers of the
race and leaders of "God's chosen people," have these stories so great
an educational value. Adam, Cain, Abraham, Joseph, Samson, and David,
have justly become as truly world-historical types as Achilles and
Patroclus, Agamemnon and Iphigenia, Hector and Andromache, Ulysses and
Penelope.——

§ 95. There may be produced also, out of the simplest and most primitive
phases of different epochs of culture of one and the same people,
stories which answer to the imagination of children, and represent to
them the characteristic features of the past of their people.

——The Germans possess such a collection of their stories in their
popular books of the "Horny Sigfried," of the "Heymon Children," of
"Beautiful _Magelone_," "Fortunatus," "The Wandering Jew," "Faust," "The
Adventurous Simplicissimus," "The _Schildbürger_," "The Island of
Felsenburg," "Lienhard and Gertrude," &c. Also, the art works of the
great masters which possess national significance must be spoken of
here, as the Don Quixote of Cervantes.——

§ 96. The most general form in which the childish imagination finds
exercise is that of fairy-tales; but Education must take care that it
has these in their proper shape as national productions, and that they
are not of the morbid kind which poetry so often gives us in this
species of literature, and which not seldom degenerate to sentimental
caricatures and silliness.

——The East Indian stories are most excellent because they have their
origin with a childlike people who live wholly in the imagination. By
means of the Arabian filtration, which took place in Cairo in the
flourishing period of the Egyptian caliphs, all that was too
characteristically Indian was excluded, and they were made in the "Tales
of Scheherezade," a book for all peoples, with whose far-reaching power
in child-literature, the local stories of a race, as e.g. Grimm's
admirable ones of German tradition, cannot compare. Fairy-tales made to
order, as we often see them, with a mediæval Catholic tendency, or very
moral and dry, are a bane to the youthful imagination in their stale
sweetness. We must here add, however, that lately we have had some
better success in our attempts since we have learned to distinguish
between the naïve natural poetry, which is without reflection, and the
poetry of art, which is conditioned by criticism and an ideal. This
distinction has produced good fruits even in the picture-books of
children. The pretensions of the gentlemen who printed illustrated books
containing nothing more solid than the alphabet and the multiplication
table have become less prominent since such men as Speckter, Fröhlich,
Gutsmuths, Hofman (the writer of "Slovenly Peter"), and others, have
shown that seemingly trivial things can be handled with intellectual
power, if one is blessed with it, and that nothing is more opposed to
the child's imagination than the _childishness_ with which so many
writers for children have fallen when they attempted to descend with
dignity from their presumably lofty stand-point. Men are beginning to
understand that Christ promised the kingdom of heaven to little children
on other grounds than because they had as it were the privilege of being
thoughtless and foolish.——

§ 97. For youth and maidens, especially as they approach manhood and
womanhood, the cultivation of the imagination must allow the earnestness
of actuality to manifest itself in its undisguised energy. This
earnestness, no longer through the symbolism of play but in its
objective reality, must now thoroughly penetrate the conceptions of the
youth so that it shall prepare him to seize hold of the machinery of
active life. Instead of the all-embracing Epos they should now read
Tragedy, whose purifying process, through the alternation of fear and
pity, unfolds to the youth the secret of all human destiny, sin and its
expiation. The works best adapted to lead to history on this side are
those of biography——of ancient times, Plutarch; of modern times, the
autobiographies of Augustine, Cellini, Rousseau, Goethe, Varnhagen, Jung
Stilling, Moritz, Arndt, &c. These autobiographies contain a view of the
growth of individuality through its inter-action with the influences of
its time, and, together with the letters and memoirs of great or at
least noteworthy men, tend to produce a healthy excitement in the
youth, who must learn to fight his own battles through a knowledge of
the battles of others. To introduce the youth to a knowledge of Nature
and Ethnography no means are better than those of books of travel which
give the charm of first contact, the joy of discovery, instead of the
general consciousness of the conquests of mind.

——If educative literature on the one hand broadens the field of
knowledge, on the other it may also promote its elaboration into ideal
forms. This happens, in a strict sense, through philosophical
literature. But only two different species of this are to be recommended
to youth: (1) well-written treatises which endeavor to solve a single
problem with spirit and thoroughness; or, (2) when the intelligence has
grown strong enough for it, the classical works of a real philosopher.
German literature is fortunately very rich in treatises of this kind in
the works of Lessing, Herder, Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Humboldt,
and Schiller. But nothing does more harm to youth than the study of
works of mediocrity, or those of a still lower rank. They stupefy and
narrow the mind by their empty, hollow, and constrained style. It is
generally supposed that these standard works are too difficult, and that
one must first seize them in this trivial and diluted form in order to
understand them. This is one of the most prevalent and most dangerous
errors, for these Introductions or Explanations, easily-comprehended
Treatises, Summary Abstracts, are, because of their want of originality
and of the acuteness which belongs to it, much more difficult to
understand than the standard work itself from which they drain their
supplies. Education must train the youth to the courage which will
attempt standard works, and it must not allow any such miserable
preconceived opinions to grow up in his mind as that his understanding
is totally unable to comprehend works like Fichte's "Science of
Knowledge," the "Metaphysics" of Aristotle, or Hegel's "Phenomenology."
No science suffers so much as Philosophy from this false popular
opinion, which understands neither itself nor its authority. The youth
must _learn how to learn to understand_, and, in order to do this, he
must know that one cannot immediately understand everything in its
finest subdivisions, and that on this account he must have patience, and
must resolve to read over and over again, and to think over what he has
read.——

§ 98. (3) Imagination returns again within itself to perception in that
it replaces, for conceptions, perceptions themselves, which are to
remind it of the previous conception. These perceptions may resemble in
some way the perception which lies at the basis of the conception, and
be thus more or less symbolical; or they may be merely arbitrary
creations of the creative imagination, and are in this case pure signs.
In common speech and writing, we call the free retaining of these
perceptions created by imagination, and the recalling of the conceptions
denoted by them, _Memory_. It is by no means a particular faculty of the
mind, which is again subdivided into memory of persons, names, numbers,
&c. As to its form, memory is the stage of the dissolution of
conception; but as to its content, it arises from the interest which we
take in a subject-matter. From this interest results, moreover, careful
attention, and from this latter, facility in the reproductive
imagination. If these acts have preceded, the fixing of a name, or of a
number, in which the content interesting us is as it were summed up, is
not difficult. When interest and attention animate us, it seems as if we
did not need to be at all troubled about remembering anything. All the
so-called mnemonic helps only serve to make more difficult the act of
memory. This act is in itself a double function, consisting of, first,
the fixing of the sign, and second, the fixing of the conception
subsumed under it. Since the mnemonic technique adds to these one more
conception, through whose means the things with which we have to deal
are to be fixed in order to be able freely to express them in us, it
trebles the functions of remembering, and forgets that the mediation of
these and their relation——wholly arbitrary and highly artificial——must
also be remembered. The true help of memory consists in not helping it
at all, but in simply taking up the object into the ideal regions of the
mind by the force of the infinite self-determination which mind
possesses.

——Lists of names, as e.g. of the Roman emperors, of the popes, of the
caliphs, of rivers, mountains, authors, cities, &c.; also numbers, as
e.g. the multiplication table, the melting points of minerals, the dates
of battles, of births and deaths, &c., must be learned without aid. All
indirect means only serve to do harm here, and are required as
self-discovered mediation only in case that interest or attention has
become weakened.——

§ 99. The means to be used, which result from the nature of memory
itself, are on the one hand the pronouncing and writing of the names and
numbers, and on the other, repetition; by these we gain distinctness and
certainty.

——All artificial contrivances for quickening the memory vanish in
comparison with the art of writing, in so far as this is not looked at
as a means of relieving the memory. That a name or a number should be
this or that, is a mere chance for the intelligence, an entirely
meaningless accident to which we have unconditionally to submit
ourselves as unalterable. The intelligence must be accustomed to put
upon itself this constraint. In science proper, especially in
Philosophy, our reason helps to produce one thought from others by means
of the context, and we can discover names for the ideas from them.——


III. _The Logical Epoch._

§ 100. In Conception there is attained a universality of intellectual
action in so far as the empirical details are referred to a _Schema_, as
Kant called it. But the _necessity_ of the connection is wanting to it.
To produce this is the task of the thinking activity, which frees itself
from all representations, and with its clearly defined determinations
transcends conceptions. The Thinking activity frees itself from all
sensuous representations by means of the processes of Conception and
Perception. Comprehension, Judgment, and Syllogism, develop for
themselves into forms which, as such, have no power of being perceived
by the senses. But it does not follow from this that he who thinks
cannot return out of the thinking activity and carry it with him into
the sphere of Conception and Perception. The true thinking activity
deprives itself of no content. The abstraction affecting a logical
purism which looks down upon Conception and Perception as forms of
intelligence quite inferior to itself, is a pseudo-thinking, a morbid
and scholastic error. Education will be the better on its guard against
this the more it has led the pupil by the legitimate road of Perception
and Conception to Thinking. Memorizing especially is an excellent
preparatory school for the Thinking activity, because it gives practice
to the intelligence in exercising itself in abstract ideas.

§ 101. The fostering of the Sense of Truth from the earliest years up,
is the surest way of leading the pupil to gain the power of thinking.
The unprejudiced, disinterested yielding to Truth, as well as the effort
to shun all deception and false seeming, are of the greatest value in
strengthening the power of reflection, as this considers nothing of
value but the actually existing objective circumstances.

——The indulging an illusion as a pleasing recreation of the
intelligence should be allowed, while lying must not be tolerated.
Children have a natural inclination for mystifications, for masquerades,
for raillery, and for theatrical performances, &c. This inclination to
illusion is perfectly normal with them, and should be permitted. The
graceful kingdom of Art is developed from it, as also the poetry of
conversation in jest and wit. Although this sometimes becomes
stereotyped into very prosaic conventional forms of speech, it is more
tolerable than the awkward honesty which takes everything in its simple
literal sense. And it is easy to discover whether children in such play,
in the activity of free joyousness, incline to the side of mischief by
their showing a desire of satisfying their selfish interest. Then they
must be checked, for in that case the cheerfulness of harmless joking
gives way to premeditation and dissimulation.——

§ 102. An acquaintance with logical forms is to be recommended as a
special educational help in the culture of intelligence. The study of
Mathematics does not suffice, because it presupposes Logic. Mathematics
is related to Logic in the same way as Grammar, the Physical Sciences,
&c. The logical forms must be known explicitly in their pure independent
forms, and not merely in their implicit state as immanent in objective
forms.


SECOND CHAPTER.

_The Logical Presupposition or Method._


§ 103. The logical presupposition of instruction is the order in which
the subject-matter develops for the consciousness. The subject, the
consciousness of the pupil, and the activity of the instructor,
interpenetrate each other in instruction, and constitute in actuality
one whole.

§ 104. (1) First of all, the subject which is to be learned has a
specific determinateness which demands in its representation a certain
fixed order. However arbitrary we may desire to be, the subject has a
certain self-determination of its own which no mistreatment can wholly
crush out, and this inherent immortal reason is the general foundation
of instruction.

——To illustrate; however one may desire to manipulate a language in
teaching it, he cannot change the words in it, or the inflections of the
declensions and conjugations. And the same restriction is laid upon our
inclinations in the different divisions of Natural History, in the
theorems of Arithmetic, Geometry, &c. The theorem of Pascal remains
still the theorem of Pascal, and will always remain so.——

§ 105. (2) But the subject must be adapted to the consciousness of the
pupil, and here the order of procedure and the exposition depend upon
the stage which he has reached intellectually, for the special manner of
the instruction must be conditioned by this. If he is in the stage of
perception, we must use the illustrative method; if in the stage of
conception, that of combination; and if in the stage of reflection that
of demonstration. The first exhibits the object directly, or some
representation of it; the second considers it according to the different
possibilities which exist in it, and turns it around on all sides; the
third questions the necessity of the connection in which it stands
either with itself or with others. This is the natural order from the
stand-point of the scientific intelligence: first, the object is
presented to the perception; then combination presents its different
phases; and, finally, the thinking activity circumscribes the restlessly
moving reflection by the idea of necessity. Experiment in the method of
combination is an excellent means for a discovery of relations, for a
sharpening of the attention, for the arousing of a many-sided interest;
but it is no true dialectic, though it be often denoted by that name.

——Illustration is especially necessary in the natural sciences and also
in æsthetics, because in both of these departments the sensuous is an
essential element of the matter dealt with. In this respect we have made
great progress in charts and maps. Sydow's hand and wall maps and
Berghaus's physical atlas are most excellent means of illustrative
instruction; also Burmeister's zoölogical atlas.——

§ 106. The demonstrative method, in order to bring about its proof of
necessity, has a choice of many different ways. But we must not imagine,
either that there are an unlimited number, and that it is only a chance
which one we shall take; or that they have no connection among
themselves, and run, as it were, side by side. It is not, however, the
business of Pedagogics to develop different methods of proof; this
belongs to Logic. We have only to remember that, logically taken, proof
must be analytic, synthetic, or dialectic. Analysis begins with the
single one, and leads out of it by induction to the general principle
from which its existence results. Synthesis, on the contrary, begins
with a general which is presupposed as true, and leads from this through
deduction to the special determinations which were implicit in it. The
regressive search of analysis for a determining principle is
_Invention_; the forward progress of synthesis from the simple elements
seeking for the multiplicity of the single one is _Construction_. Each,
in its result, passes over into the other; but their truth is found in
the dialectic method, which in each phase allows unity to separate into
diversity and diversity to return into unity. While in the analytic as
well as in the synthetic method the mediation of the individual with the
general, or of the general with the individual, lets the phase of
particularity be only subjectively connected with it in the dialectic
method, we have the going over of the general through the particular to
the individual, or to the self-determination of the idea, and it
therefore rightly claims the title of the genetic method. We can also
say that while the inventive method gives us the idea (notion) and the
constructive the judgment, the genetic gives us the syllogism which
leads the determinations of reflection back again into substantial
identity.

§ 107. (3) The active mediation of the pupil with the content which is
to be impressed upon his consciousness is the work of the teacher, whose
personality creates a method adapted to the individual; for however
clearly the subject may be defined, however exactly the psychological
stage of the pupil may be regulated, the teacher cannot dispense with
the power of his own individuality even in the most objective relations.
This individuality must penetrate the whole with its own exposition, and
that peculiarity which we call his _manner_, and which cannot be
determined _à priori_, must appear. The teacher must place himself on
the stand-point of the pupil, i.e. must adapt himself; he must see that
the abstract is made clear to him in the concrete, i.e. must illustrate;
he must fill up the gaps which will certainly appear, and which may mar
the thorough seizing of the subject, i.e. must supply. In all these
relations the pedagogical tact of the teacher may prove itself truly
ingenious in varying the method according to the changefulness of the
ever-varying needs, in contracting or expanding the extent, in stating,
or indicating what is to be supplied. The true teacher is free from any
superstitious belief in any one procedure as a sure specific which he
follows always in a monotonous bondage. This can only happen when he is
capable of the highest method. The teacher has arrived at the highest
point of ability in teaching when he can make use of all means, from the
loftiness of solemn seriousness, through smooth statement, to the play
of jest——yes, even to the incentive of irony, and to humor.

——Pedagogics can be in nothing more specious than in its method, and it
is here that charlatanism can most readily intrude itself. Every little
change, every inadequate modification, is proclaimed aloud as a new or
an improved method; and even the most foolish and superficial changes
find at once their imitators, who themselves conceal their insolence
behind some frivolous differences, and, with laughable conceit, hail
themselves as inventors.——


THIRD CHAPTER.

_Instruction._


§ 108. All instruction acts upon the supposition that there is an
inequality between present knowledge and power and that knowledge and
power which are not yet attained. To the pupil belong the first, to the
teacher the second. Education is the act which gradually cancels the
original inequality of teacher and pupil, in that it converts what was
at first the property of the former into the property of the latter, and
this by means of his own activity.


I. _The Subjects of Instruction._

§ 109. The pupil is the apprentice, the teacher the master, whether in
the practice of any craft or art, or in the exposition of any systematic
knowledge. The pupil passes from the state of the apprentice to that of
the master through that of the journeyman. The apprentice has to
appropriate to himself the elements; journeymanship begins as he, by
means of their possession, becomes independent; the master combines with
his technical skill the freedom of production. His authority over his
pupil consists only in his knowledge and power. If he has not these, no
external support, no trick of false appearances which he may put on,
will serve to create it for him.

§ 110. These stages——(1) apprenticeship, (2) journeymanship, (3)
mastership——are fixed limitations in the didactic process; they are
relative only in the concrete. The standard of special excellence varies
with the different grades of culture, and must be varied that it may
have any historical value. The master is complete only in relation to
the journeyman and apprentice; to them he is superior. But on the other
hand, in relation to the infinity of the problems of his art or science,
he is by no means complete; to himself he must always appear as one who
begins ever anew, one who is ever striving, one to whom a new problem
ever rises from every achieved result. He cannot discharge himself from
work, he must never desire to rest on his laurels. He is the truest
master whose finished performances only force him on to never-resting
progress.

§ 111. The real possibility of culture is found in general, it is true,
in every human being; nevertheless, empirically, there are
distinguished: (1) Incapacity, as the want of all gifts; (2) Mediocrity;
(3) Talent and Genius. It is the part of Psychology to give an account
of all these. Mediocrity characterizes the great mass of mechanical
intelligences, those who wait for external impulse as to what direction
their endeavors shall take. Not without truth, perhaps, may we say, that
hypothetically a special talent is given to each individual, but this
special talent in many men never makes its appearance, because under the
circumstances in which it finds itself placed it fails to find the
exciting occasion which shall give him the knowledge of its existence.
The majority of mankind are contented with the mechanical impulse which
makes them into something and impresses upon them certain
determinations.——Talent shows itself by means of the confidence in its
own especial productive possibility, which manifests itself as an
inclination, as a strong impulse, to occupy itself with the special
object which constitutes its content. Pedagogics has no difficulty in
dealing with mechanical natures, because their passivity is only too
ready to follow prescribed patterns. It is more difficult to manage
talent, because it lies between mediocrity and genius, and is therefore
uncertain, and not only unequal to itself, but also is tossed now too
low, now too high, is by turns despondent and over-excited. The general
maxim for dealing with it is to remove no difficulty from the subject to
which its efforts are directed.——Genius must be treated much in the same
way as Talent. The difference consists only in this, that Genius, with a
foreknowledge of its creative power, usually manifests its confidence
with less doubt in a special vocation, and, with a more intense thirst
for culture, subjects itself more willingly to the demands of
instruction. Genius is in its nature the purest self-determination, in
that it lives, in its own inner existence, the necessity which exists in
the thing. But it can assign to the New, which is in it already
immediately and subjectively, no value if this has not united itself to
the already existing culture as its objective presupposition, and on
this ground it thankfully receives instruction.

§ 112. But Talent and Genius offer a special difficulty to education in
the precocity which often accompanies them. But by precocity we do not
mean that they early render themselves perceptible, since the early
manifestation of gifts by talent and genius, through their intense
confidence, is to be looked at as perfectly legitimate. But precocity is
rather the hastening forward of the human being in feeling and moral
sense, so that where in the ordinary course of nature we should have a
child, we have a youth, and a man in the place of a youth. We may find
precocity among those who belong to the class of mediocrity, but it is
developed most readily among those possessed of talent and genius,
because with them the early appearance of superior gifts may very easily
bring in its train a perversion of the feelings and the moral nature.
Education must deal with it in so far as it is inharmonious, so that it
shall be stronger than the demands made on it from without, so that it
shall not minister to vanity; and must take care, in order to accomplish
this, that social naturalness and lack of affectation be preserved in
the pupil.

——Our age has to combat this precocity much more than others. We find
e.g. authors who, at the age of thirty years, in which they publish
their collected works or write their biography, are chilly with the
feelings of old age. Music has been the sphere in which the earliest
development of talent has shown itself, and here we find the absurdity
that the cupidity of parents has so forced precocious talents that
children of four or five years of age have been made to appear in
public.——

§ 113. Every sphere of culture contains a certain quantity of
knowledge and ready skill which may be looked at, as it were, as the
created result of the culture. It is to be wished that every one who
turns his attention to a certain line of culture could take up into
himself the gathered learning which controls it. In so far as he does
this, he is professional. The consciousness that one has in the usual
way gone through a school of art or science, and has, with the general
inheritance of acquisition, been handed over to a special department,
creates externally a beneficial composure which is very favorable to
internal progress. We must distinguish from the professional the amateur
and the self-taught man. The amateur busies himself with an art, a
science, or a trade, without having gone through any strict training in
it. As a rule, he dispenses with elementary thoroughness, and hastens
towards the pleasure which the joy of production gives. The conscious
amateur confesses this himself, makes no pretension to mastership, and
calls himself——in distinction from the professional, who subjects
himself to rules——an unlearned person. But sometimes the amateur, on the
contrary, covers over his weakness, cherishes in himself the
self-conceit that he is equal to the heroes of his art or science,
constitutes himself the first admirer of his own performances, seeks for
their want of recognition in external motives, never in their own want
of excellence; and, if he has money, or edits a paper, is intoxicated
with being the patron of talent which produces such works as he would
willingly produce or pretends to produce. The self-taught man has often
true talent, or even genius, to whose development nevertheless the
inherited culture has been denied, and who by good fortune has through
his own strength worked his way into a field of effort. The self-taught
man is distinguished from the amateur by the thoroughness and the
industry with which he acts; he is not only equally unfortunate with him
in the absence of school-training, but is much less endowed. Even if the
self-taught man has for years studied and practised much, he is still
haunted by a feeling of uncertainty as to whether he has yet reached the
stand-point at which a science, an art, or a trade, will receive him
publicly——of so very great consequence is it that man should be
comprehended and recognized by man. The self-taught man therefore
remains embarrassed, and does not free himself from the apprehension
that he may expose some weak point to a professional, or he falls into
the other extreme——he becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer,
and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he sets himself
down as an unrecognized martyr by an unappreciative and unjust world.

——It is possible that the amateur may transcend the stage of
superficiality and subject himself to a thorough training; then he
ceases to be an amateur. It is also possible that the self-taught man
may be on the right track, and may accomplish as much or even more than
one trained in the usual way. In general, however, it is very desirable
that every one should go through the regular course of the inherited
means of education, partly that he may be thorough in the elements,
partly to free him from the anxiety which he may feel lest he in his
solitary efforts spend labor on some superfluous work——superfluous
because done long before, and of which he, through the accident of his
want of culture, had not heard. We must all learn by ourselves, but we
cannot teach ourselves. Only Genius can do this, for it must be its own
leader in the new paths which it opens. Genius alone passes beyond where
inherited culture ceases. It bears this in itself as of the past, and
which it uses as material for its new creation; but the self-taught man,
who would very willingly be a genius, puts himself in an attitude of
opposition to things already accomplished, or sinks into oddity, into
secret arts and sciences, &c.——

§ 114. These ideas of the general steps of culture, of special gifts,
and of the ways of culture appropriate to each, which we have above
distinguished, have a manifold connection among themselves which cannot
be established _à priori_. We can however remark that Apprenticeship,
the Mechanical Intelligence, and the Professional life; secondly,
Journeymanship, Talent, and Amateurship; and, finally, Mastership,
Genius, and Self Education, have a relationship to each other.


II. _The Act of Learning._

§ 115. In the process of education the interaction between pupil and
teacher must be so managed that the exposition by the teacher shall
excite in the pupil the impulse to reproduction. The teacher must not
treat his exposition as if it were a work of art which is its own end
and aim, but he must always bear in mind the need of the pupil. The
artistic exposition, as such, will, by its completeness, produce
admiration; but the didactic, on the contrary, will, through its perfect
adaptation, call out the imitative instinct, the power of new creation.

——From this consideration we may justify the frequent statement that is
made, that teachers who have really an elegant diction do not really
accomplish so much as others who resemble in their statements not so
much a canal flowing smoothly between straight banks, as a river which
works its foaming way over rocks and between ever-winding banks. The
pupil perceives that the first is considering himself when he speaks so
finely, perhaps not without some self-appreciation; and that the second,
in the repetitions and the sentences which are never finished, is
concerning himself solely with _him_. The pupil feels that not want of
facility or awkwardness, but the earnest eagerness of the _teacher_, is
the principal thing, and that this latter uses rhetoric only as a
means.——

§ 116. In the act of learning there appears (1) a mechanical element,
(2) a dynamic element, and (3) one in which the dynamic again
mechanically strengthens itself.

§ 117. As to the mechanical element, the right time must be chosen for
each lesson, an exact arrangement observed, and the suitable apparatus,
which is necessary, procured. It is in the arrangement that especially
consists the educational power of the lesson. The spirit of
scrupulousness, of accuracy, of neatness, is developed by the external
technique, which is carefully arranged in its subordinate parts
according to its content. The teacher must therefore insist upon it that
work shall cease at the exact time, that the work be well done, &c., for
on these little things many greater things ethically depend.

——To choose one's time for any work is often difficult because of the
pressure of a multitude of demands, but in general it should be
determined that the strongest and keenest energy of the thinking
activity and of memory——this being demanded by the work——should have
appropriated to it the first half of the day.——

§ 118. The dynamical element consists of the previously developed power
of Attention, without which all the exposition made by the teacher to
the pupil remains entirely foreign to him, all apparatus is dead, all
arrangement of no avail, all teaching fruitless, if the pupil does not
by his free activity receive into his inner self what one teaches him,
and thus make it his own property.

§ 119. This appropriation must not limit itself, however, to the first
acquisition of any knowledge or skill, but it must give free existence
to whatever the pupil has learned; it must make it perfectly manageable
and natural, so that it shall appear to be a part of himself. This must
be brought about by means of Repetition. This will mechanically secure
that which the attention first grasped.

§ 120. The careful, persistent, living activity of the pupil in these
acts we call Industry. Its negative extreme is Laziness, which is
deserving of punishment inasmuch as it passes over into a want of
self-determination. Man is by nature lazy. But mind, which is only in
its act, must resolve upon activity. This connection of Industry with
human freedom, with the very essence of mind, makes laziness appear
blameworthy. The really civilized man, therefore, no longer knows that
absolute inaction which is the greatest enjoyment to the barbarian, and
he fills up his leisure with a variety of easier and lighter work. The
positive extreme of Industry is the unreasonable activity which rushes
in breathless chase from one action to another, from this to that,
straining the person with the immense quantity of his work. Such an
activity, going beyond itself and seldom reaching deliberation, is
unworthy of a man. It destroys the agreeable quiet which in all industry
should penetrate and inspire the deed. Nothing is more repulsive than
the beggarly pride of such stupid laboriousness. One should not endure
for a moment to have the pupil, seeking for distinction, begin to pride
himself on an extra industry. Education must accustom him to use a
regular assiduity. The frame of mind suitable for work often does not
exist at the time when work should begin, but more frequently it makes
its appearance after we have begun. The subject takes its own time to
awaken us. Industry, inspired by a love and regard for work, has in its
quiet uniformity a great force, without which no one can accomplish
anything essential. The world, therefore, holds Industry worthy of
honor; and to the Romans, a nation of the most persistent perseverance,
we owe the inspiring words, "_Incepto tantum opus est, cætera res
expediet_"; and, "_Labor improbus omnia vincit_."

——"Every one may glory in his industry!" This is a true word from the
lips of a truly industrious man, who was also one of the most modest.
But Lessing did not, however, mean by them to charter Pharisaical
pedantry. The necessity sometimes of giving one's self to an excess of
work injurious to the health, generally arises from the fact that he has
not at other times made use of the requisite attention to the necessary
industry, and then attempts suddenly and as by a forced march to storm
his way to his end. The result of such over-exertion is naturally entire
prostration. The pupil is therefore to be accustomed to a generally
uniform industry, which may extend itself at regular intervals without
his thereby overstraining himself. What is really gained by a young man
who has hitherto neglected time and opportunity, and who, when
examination presses, overworks himself, perhaps standing the test with
honor, and then must rest for months afterwards from the over-effort? On
all such occasions attention is not objective and dispassionate, but
rather becomes, through anxiety to pass the examination, restless and
corrupted by egotism; and the usual evil result of such compulsory
industry is the ephemeral character of the knowledge thus gained.
"Lightly come, lightly go," says the proverb.——

——A special worth is always attached to study far into the night. The
student's "midnight lamp" always claims for itself a certain veneration.
But this is vanity. In the first place, it is injurious to contradict
Nature by working through the night, which she has ordained for sleep;
secondly, the question is not as to the number of hours spent in work
and their position in the twenty-four, but as to the quality of the
work. With regard to the value of my work, it is of no moment whatsoever
whether I have done it in the morning or in the evening, or how long I
have labored, and it is of no consequence to any one except to my own
very unimportant self. Finally, the question presents itself whether
these gentlemen who boast so much of their midnight work do not sleep in
the daytime!——

§ 121. But Industry has also two other extremes: seeming-laziness and
seeming-industry. Seeming-laziness is the neglecting of the usual
activity in one department because a man is so much more active in
another. The mind possessed with the liveliest interest in one subject
buries itself in it, and, because of this, cannot give itself up to
another which before had engrossed the attention. Thus it appears more
idle than it is, or rather it appears to be idle just because it is more
industrious. This is especially the case in passing from one subject of
instruction to another. The pupil should acquire such a flexibility in
his intellectual powers that the rapid relinquishment of one subject and
the taking up of another should not be too difficult. Nothing is more
natural than that when he is excited he should go back to the subject
that has just been presented to him, and that he, feeling himself
restrained, shall remain untouched by the following lesson, which may be
of an entirely different nature. The young soul is brooding over what
has been said, and is really exercising an intensive activity, though it
appears to be idle. But in seeming-industry all the external motives of
activity, all the mechanism of work, manifest themselves noisily, while
there is no true energy of attention and productivity. One busies
himself with all the apparatus of work; he heaps up instruments and
books around him; he sketches plans; he spends many hours staring into
vacancy, biting his pen, gazing at words, drawings, numbers, &c. Boys,
under the protection of so great a scaffolding for work erected around
them, often carry on their own amusements. Men, who arrive at no real
concentration of their force, no clear defining of their vocation, no
firm decision as to their action, dissipate their power in what is too
often a great activity with absolutely no result. They are busy, very
busy; they have hardly time to do this thing because they really wish or
ought to do that; but, with all their driving, their energy is all
dissipated, and nothing comes from their countless labors.


III. _The Modality of the Process of Teaching._

§ 122. Now that we have learned something of the relation of the teacher
to the taught, and of the process of learning itself, we must examine
the mode and manner of instruction. This may have (1) the character of
contingency: the way in which our immediate existence in the world, our
life, teaches us; or it may be given (2) by the printed page; or (3) it
may take the shape of formal oral instruction.

§ 123. (1) For the most, the best, and the mightiest things that we know
we are indebted to Life itself. The sum of perceptions which a human
being absorbs into himself up to the fourth or fifth year of his life is
incalculable; and after this time we involuntarily gain by immediate
contact with the world countless ideas. But especially we understand by
the phrase "the School of Life," the ethical knowledge which we gain by
what happens in our own lives.

——If one says, _Vitæ non scholæ discendum est_, one can also say, _Vita
docet_. Without the power exercised by the immediate world our
intelligence would remain abstract and lifeless.——

§ 124. (2) What we learn through books is the opposite of that which we
learn through living. Life _forces_ upon us the knowledge it has to
give; the book, on the contrary, is entirely passive. It is locked up in
itself; it cannot be altered; but it waits by us till we wish to use it.
We can read it rapidly or slowly; we can simply turn over its
leaves——what in modern times one calls reading;——we can read it from
beginning to end or from end to beginning; we can stop, begin again,
skip over passages, or cut them short, as we like. To this extent the
book is the most _convenient_ means for instruction. If we are indebted
to Life for our perceptions, we must chiefly thank books for our
understanding of our perceptions. We call book-instruction "dead" when
it lacks, for the exposition which it gives, a foundation in our
perceptions, or when we do not add to the printed description the
perceptions which it implies; and the two are quite different.

§ 125. Books, as well as life, teach us many things which we did not
previously intend to learn directly from them. From foreign romances
e.g. we learn, first of all, while we read them for entertainment, the
foreign language, history or geography, &c. We must distinguish from
such books as those which bring to us, as it were accidentally, a
knowledge for which we were not seeking, the books which are expressly
intended to instruct. These must (_a_) in their consideration of the
subject give us the principal results of any department of knowledge,
and denote the points from which the next advance must be made, because
every science arises at certain results which are themselves again new
problems; (_b_) in the consideration of the particulars it must be
exhaustive, i.e. no essential elements of a science must be omitted. But
this exhaustiveness of execution has different meanings according to the
stand-points of those for whom it is made. How far we shall pass from
the universality of the principal determinations into the multiplicity
of the Particular, into the fulness of detail, cannot be definitely
determined, and must vary, according to the aim of the book, as to
whether it is intended for the apprentice, the journeyman, or the
master; (_c_) the expression must be precise, i.e. the maximum of
clearness must be combined with the maximum of brevity.

——The writing of a text-book is on this account one of the most
difficult tasks, and it can be successfully accomplished only by those
who are masters in a science or art, and who combine with great culture
and talent great experience as teachers. Unfortunately many dabblers in
knowledge undervalue the difficulty of writing text-books because they
think that they are called upon to aid in the spread of science, and
because the writing of compendiums has thus come to be an avocation, so
that authors and publishers have made out of text-books a profitable
business and good incomes. In all sciences and arts there exists a
quantity of material which is common property, which is disposed of now
in one way, now in another. The majority of compendiums can be
distinguished from each other only by the kind of paper, printing, the
name of the publisher or bookseller, or by arbitrary changes in the
arrangement and execution. The want of principle with which this work is
carried on is incredible. Many governments have on this account fixed
prices for text-books, and commissioners to select them. This in itself
is right and proper, but the use of any book should be left optional, so
that the one-sidedness of a science patronized by government as it were
patented, may not be created through the pressure of such introduction.
A state may through its censorship oppose poor text-books, and recommend
good ones; but it may not establish as it were a state-science, a
state-art, in which only the ideas, laws and forms sanctioned by it
shall be allowed. The Germans are fortunate, in consequence of their
philosophical criticism, in the production of better and better
text-books, among which may be mentioned Koberstein's, Gervinus', and
Vilmar's Histories of Literature, Ellendt's General History,
Blumenbach's and Burmeister's Natural History, Marheineke's text-book on
Religion, Schwegler's History of Philosophy, &c. So much the more
unaccountable is it that, with such excellent books, the evil of such
characterless books, partly inadequate and partly in poor style, should
still exist when there is no necessity for it. The common style of
paragraph-writing has become obnoxious, under the name of
Compendium-style, as the most stiff and affected style of writing.——

§ 126. A text-book must be differently written according as it is
intended for a book for private study or for purposes of general
circulation. If the first, it must give more, and must develop more
clearly the internal relations; if the second, it should be shorter, and
proceed from axiomatic and clear postulates to their signification, and
these must have an epigrammatic pureness which should leave something to
be guessed. Because for these a commentary is needed which it is the
teacher's duty to supply, such a sketch is usually accompanied by the
fuller text-book which was arranged for private study.

——It is the custom to call the proper text-book the "small" one, and
that which explains and illustrates, the "large" one. Thus we have the
Small and the Large Gervinus, &c.——

§ 127. (3) The text-book which presupposes oral explanation forms the
transition to Oral instruction itself. Since speech is the natural and
original form in which mind manifests itself, no book can rival it. The
living word is the most powerful agent of instruction. However common
and cheap printing may have rendered books as the most convenient means
of education——however possible may have become, through the
multiplication of facilities for intercourse and the rapidity of
transportation, the immediate viewing of human life, the most forcible
educational means, nevertheless the living word still asserts its
supremacy. In two cases especially is it indispensable: one is when some
knowledge is to be communicated which as yet is found in no compendium,
and the other when a living language is to be taught, for in this case
the printed page is entirely inadequate. One can learn from books to
understand Spanish, French, English, Danish, &c., but not to speak them;
to do this he must hear them, partly that his ear may become accustomed
to the sounds, partly that his vocal organs may learn correctly to
imitate them.

§ 128. Life surprises and overpowers us with the knowledge which it
gains; the book, impassive, waits our convenience; the teacher, superior
to us, perfectly prepared in comparison with us, consults our necessity,
and with his living speech uses a gentle force to which we can yield
without losing our freedom. Listening is easier than reading.

——Sovereigns e.g. seldom read themselves, but have servants who read to
them.——

§ 129. Oral instruction may (1) give the subject, which is to
be learned, in a connected statement, or (2) it may unfold it by means
of question and answer. The first decidedly presupposes the theoretical
inequality of the teacher and the taught. Because one can speak while
many can listen, this is especially adapted to the instruction of large
numbers. The second method is either that of the catechism or the
dialogue. The catechetical is connected with the first kind of oral
instruction above designated because it makes demand upon the memory of
the learner only for the answer to one question at a time, and is hence
very often and very absurdly called the Socratic method. In teaching by
means of the dialogue, we try, by means of a reciprocal interchange of
thought, to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the
necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a distinction. One
speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold in his own hand the thread
of the conversation and may guide it himself; or, those who mingle in it
may be perfectly equal in intellect and culture, and may each take part
in the development with equal independence. In this latter case, this
true reciprocity gives us the proper dramatic dialogue, which contains
in itself all forms of exposition, and may pass from narration,
description, and analysis, through satire and irony, to veritable humor.
When it does this, the dialogue is the loftiest result of intelligence
and the means of its purest enjoyment.

——This alternate teaching, in which the one who has been taught takes
the teacher's place, can be used only where there is a content which
admits of a mechanical treatment. The Hindoos made use of it in very
ancient times. Bell and Lancaster have transplanted it for the teaching
of poor children in Europe and America. For the teaching of the
conventionalities——reading, writing, and arithmetic——as well as for the
learning by heart of names, sentences, &c., it suffices, but not for any
scientific culture. Where we have large numbers to instruct, the giving
of the fully developed statement (the first form) is necessary, since
the dialogue, though it may be elsewhere suitable, allows only a few to
take part in it. And if we take the second form, we must, if we have a
large number of pupils, make use of the catechetical method only. What
is known as the conversational method has been sometimes suggested for
our university instruction. Diesterweg in Berlin insists upon it. Here
and there the attempt has been made, but without any result. In the
university, the lecture of the teacher as a self-developing whole is
contrasted with the scientific discussion of the students, in which they
as equals work over with perfect freedom what they have heard.
Diesterweg was wrong in considering the lecture-system as the principal
cause of the lack of scientific interest which he thought he perceived
in our universities. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Wolf,
Niebuhr, &c., taught by lectures and awakened the liveliest enthusiasm.
But Diesterweg is quite right in saying that the students should not be
degraded to writing-machines. But this is generally conceded, and a
pedantic amount of copying more and more begins to be considered as out
of date at our universities. Nevertheless, a new pedantry, that of the
wholly extempore lecture, should not be introduced; but a brief summary
of the extempore unfolding of the lecture may be dictated and serve a
very important purpose, or the lecture may be copied. The great efficacy
of the oral exposition does not so much consist in the fact that it is
perfectly free, as that it presents to immediate view a person who has
made himself the bearer of a science or an art, and has found what
constitutes its essence. Its power springs, above all, from the
genuineness of the lecture, the originality of its content, and the
elegance of its form: whether it is written or extemporized, is a matter
of little moment. Niebuhr e.g. read, word for word, from his manuscript,
and what a teacher was he!——The catechetical way of teaching is not
demanded at the university except in special examinations; it belongs to
the private work of the student, who must learn to be industrious of his
own free impulse. The private tutor can best conduct reviews.——The
institution which presupposing the lecture-system combines in itself
original production with criticism, and the connected exposition with
the conversation, is the _seminary_. It pursues a well-defined path, and
confines itself to a small circle of associates whose grades of culture
are very nearly the same. Here, therefore, can the dialogue be strongly
developed because it has a fixed foundation, and each one can take part
in the conversation; whereas, from the variety of opinions among a great
number, it is easily perverted into an aimless talk, and the majority of
the hearers, who have no chance to speak, become weary.——

§ 130. As to the way in which the lecture is carried out, it may be so
arranged as to give the whole stock of information acquired, or, without
being so exact and so complete, it may bring to its elucidation only a
relatively inexact and general information. The ancients called the
first method the esoteric and the second the exoteric, as we give to
such lectures now, respectively, the names _scholastic_ and _popular_.
The first makes use of terms which have become technical in science or
art, and proceeds syllogistically to combine the isolated ideas; the
second endeavors to substitute for technicalities generally understood
signs, and conceals the exactness of the formal conclusion by means of a
conversational style. It is possible to conceive of a perfectly
methodical treatment of a science which at the same time shall be
generally comprehensible if it strives to attain the transparency of
real beauty. A scientific work of art may be correctly said to be
popular, as e.g. has happened to Herder's _Ideas on the Philosophy of
the History of Mankind_.

——Beauty is the element which is comprehended by all, and as we declare
our enmity to the distorted picture-books, books of amusement, and to
the mischievous character of "Compendiums," so we must also oppose the
popular publications which style themselves _Science made Easy_, &c., in
order to attract more purchasers by this alluring title. Kant in his
_Logic_ calls the extreme of explanation Pedantry and Gallantry. This
last expression would be very characteristic in our times, since one
attains the height of popularity now if he makes himself easily
intelligible to ladies——a didactic triumph which one attains only by
omitting everything that is profound or complicated, and saying only
what exists already in the consciousness of every one, by depriving the
subject dealt with of all seriousness, and sparing neither pictures,
anecdotes, jokes, nor pretty formalities of speech. Elsewhere Kant says:
"In the effort to produce in our knowledge the completeness of scholarly
thoroughness, and at the same time a popular character, without in the
effort falling into the above-mentioned errors of an affected
thoroughness or an affected popularity, we must, first of all, look out
for the scholarly completeness of our scientific knowledge, the
methodical form of thoroughness, and first ask how we can make really
popular the knowledge methodically acquired at school, i.e. how we can
make it easy and generally communicable, and yet at the same time not
supplant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly completeness must not
be sacrificed to popularity to please the people, unless science is to
become a plaything or trifling." It is perfectly plain that all that was
said before of the psychological and the logical methods must be taken
into account in the manner of the statement.——

§ 131. It has been already remarked (§ 21), in speaking of the nature
of education, that the office of the instructor must necessarily vary
with the growing culture. But attention must here again be called to the
fact, that education, in whatever stage of culture, must conform to the
law which, as the internal logic of Being, determines all objective
developments of nature and of history. The Family gives the child his
first instruction; between this and the school comes the teaching of the
tutor; the school stands independently as the antithesis of the family,
and presents three essentially different forms according as it imparts a
general preparatory instruction, or special teaching for different
callings, or a universal scientific cultivation. Universality passes
over through particularizing into individuality, which contains both the
general and the particular freely in itself. All citizens of a state
should have (1) a general education which (_a_) makes them familiar with
reading, writing, and arithmetic, these being the means of all
theoretical culture; then (_b_) hands over to them a picture of the
world in its principal phases, so that they as citizens of the world can
find their proper status on our planet; and, finally, it must (_c_)
instruct him in the history of his own state, so that he may see that
the circumstances in which he lives are the result of a determined past
in its connection with the history of the rest of the world, and so may
learn rightly to estimate the interests of his own country in view of
their necessary relation to the future. This work the elementary schools
have to perform. From this, through the _Realschule_ (our scientific
High School course) they pass into the school where some particular
branch of science is taught, and through the Gymnasium (classical course
of a High School or College) to the University. From its general basis
develop (2) the educational institutions that work towards some special
education which leads over to the exercise of some art. These we call
Technological schools, where one may learn farming, mining, a craft, a
trade, navigation, war, &c. This kind of education may be specialized
indefinitely with the growth of culture, because any one branch is
capable in its negative aspect of such educational separation, as e.g.
in foundling hospitals and orphan asylums, in blind and deaf and dumb
institutions. The abstract universality of the Elementary school and the
one-sided particularity of the Technological school, however, is
subsumed under a concrete universality, which, without aiming directly
at utility, treats science and art on all sides as their own end and
aim. _Scientia est potentia_, said Lord Bacon. Practical utility results
indirectly through the progress which Scientific Cognition makes in this
free attitude, because it collects itself out of the dissipation through
manifold details into a universal idea and attains a profounder insight
thereby. This organism for the purpose of instruction is properly called
a University. By it the educational organization is perfected.

——It is essentially seen that no more than these three types of schools
can exist, and that they must all exist in a perfectly organized
civilization. Their titles and the plan of their special teaching may be
very different among different nations and at different times, but this
need not prevent the recognition in them of the ideas which determine
them. Still less should the imperfect ways in which they manifest
themselves induce us to condemn them. It is the modern tendency to
undervalue the University as an institution which we had inherited from
the middle ages, and with which we could at present dispense. This is an
error. The university presents just as necessary a form of instruction
as the elementary school or the technological school. Not the abolition
of the university, but a reform which shall adapt it to the spirit of
the age, is the advance which we have to make. That there are to be
found outside of the university men of the most thorough and elegant
culture, who can give the most excellent instruction in a science or an
art, is most certain. But it is a characteristic of the university in
its teaching to do away with contingency which is unavoidable in case of
private voluntary efforts. The university presents an organic,
self-conscious, encyclopædic representation of all the sciences, and
thus is created to a greater or less degree an intellectual atmosphere
which no other place can give. Through this, all sciences and their aims
are seen as of equal authority——a personal stress is laid upon the
connection of the sciences. The imperfections of a university, which
arise through the rivalry of external ambition, through the necessity of
financial success, through the jealousy of different parties, through
scholarships, &c., are finitudes which it has in common with all human
institutions, and on whose account they are not all to be thrown
away.——Art academies are for Art what universities are for Science. They
are inferior to them in so far as they appear more under the form of
special schools, as schools of architecture, of painting, and
conservatories of music; while really it may well be supposed that
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, the Orchestra, and the Drama,
are, like the Sciences, bound together in a _Universitas artium_, and
that by means of their internal reciprocal action new results would
follow.——Academies, as isolated master-schools, which follow no
particular line of teaching, are entirely superfluous, and serve only as
a _Prytaneum_ for meritorious scholars, and to reward industry through
the prizes which they offer. In their idea they belong with the
university, this appearing externally in the fact that most of their
members are university professors. But as institutions for ostentation
by which the ambition of the learned was flattered, and to surround
princes with scientific glory as scientific societies attached to a
court, they have lost all significance. They ceased to flourish with the
Ptolemies and the Egyptian caliphs, and with absolute monarchical
governments.——In modern times we have passed beyond the abstract
jealousy of the so-called Humanities and the Natural Sciences, because
we comprehend that each part of the totality can be realized in a proper
sense only by its development as relatively independent. Thus the
_gymnasium_ has its place as that elementary school which through a
general culture, by means of the knowledge of the language and history
of the Greeks and Romans, prepares for the university; while, on the
other hand, the _Realschule_, by special attention to Natural Science
and the living languages, constitutes the transition to the
technological schools. Nevertheless, because the university embraces the
Science of Nature, of Technology, of Trade, of Finance, and of
Statistics, the pupils who have graduated from the so-called high
schools (_höhern Bürgerschulen_) and from the _Realschulen_ will be
brought together at the university.——

§ 132. The technique of the school will be determined in its details by
the peculiarity of its aim. But in general every school, no matter what
it teaches, ought to have some system of rules and regulations by which
the relation of the pupil to the institution, of the pupils to each
other, their relation to the teacher, and that of the teachers to each
other as well as to the supervisory authority, the programme of lessons,
the apparatus, of the changes of work and recreation, shall be clearly
set forth. The course of study must be arranged so as to avoid two
extremes: on the one hand, it has to keep in view the special aim of the
school, and according to this it tends to contract itself. But, on the
other hand, it must consider the relative dependence of one specialty to
other specialties and to general culture. It must leave the transition
free, and in this it tends to expand itself. The difficulty is here so
to assign the limits that the special task of the school shall not be
sacrificed and deprived of the means of performance which it (since it
is also always only a part of the whole culture) receives by means of
its reciprocal action with other departments. The programme must assign
the exact amount of time which can be appropriated to every study. It
must prescribe the order in which they shall follow each other; it must,
as far as possible, unite kindred subjects, so as to avoid the useless
repetition which dulls the charm of study; it must, in determining the
order, bear in mind at the same time the necessity imposed by the
subject itself and the psychological progression of intelligence from
perception, through conception, to the thinking activity which grasps
all. It must periodically be submitted to revision, so that all matter
which has, through the changed state of general culture, become out of
date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable
may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the
requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by
examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a
knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he
has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an
account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement
and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, what
talents he has displayed, what errors committed, and in what relation
stands his theoretical development to his ethical status.

——The opposition of the _Gymnasia_ to the demands of the agricultural
communities is a very interesting phase of educational history. They
were asked to widen their course so as to embrace Mathematics, Physics,
Natural History, Geography, and the modern languages. At first they
stoutly resisted; then they made some concessions; finally, the more
they made the more they found themselves in contradiction with their
true work, and so they produced as an independent correlate the
_Realschule_. After this was founded, the gymnasium returned to its old
plan, and is now again able to place in the foreground the pursuit of
classical literature and history. It was thus set free from demands made
upon it which were entirely foreign to its nature.——The examination is,
on one side, so adapted to the pupil as to make him conscious of his own
condition. As to its external side, it determines whether the pupil
shall pass from one class to another or from one school to another, or
it decides whether the school as a whole shall give a public
exhibition——an exhibition which ought to have no trace of ostentation,
but which in fact is often tinctured with pedagogical charlatanism.——

§ 133. The Direction of the school on the side of science must be held
by the school itself, for the process of the intellect in acquiring
science, the progress of the method, the determinations of the subject
matter and the order of its development, have their own laws, to which
Instruction must submit itself if it would attain its end. The school is
only one part of the whole of culture. In itself it divides into
manifold departments, together constituting a great organism which in
manifold ways comes into contact with the organism of the state. So long
as teaching is of a private character, so long as it is the reciprocal
relation of one individual to another, or so long as it is shut up
within the circle of the family and belongs to it alone, so long it has
no objective character. It receives this first when it grows to a
school. As in history, its first form must have a religious character;
but this first form, in time, disappears. Religion is the absolute
relation of man to God which subsumes all other relations. In so far as
Religion exists in the form of a church, those who are members of the
same church may have instruction given on the nature of religion among
themselves. Instruction on the subject is proper, and it is even
enjoined upon them as a law——as a duty. But further than their own
society they may not extend their rule. The church may exert itself to
make a religious spirit felt in the school and to make it penetrate all
the teaching; but it may not presume, because it has for its subject the
absolute interest of men, the interest which is superior to all others,
to determine also the other objects of Education or the method of
treating them. The technical acquisitions of Reading, Writing and
Arithmetic, Drawing and Music, the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Logic,
Anthropology and Psychology, the practical sciences of finance and the
municipal regulations, have no direct relation to religion. If we
attempt to establish one, there inevitably appears in them a morbid
state which destroys them; not only so, but piety itself disappears, for
these accomplishments and this knowledge are not included in its idea.

——Such treatment of Art and Science may be well-meant, but it is always
an error. It may even make a ludicrous impression, which is a very
dangerous thing for the authority of religion. If a church has
established schools, it must see to it that all which is there taught
outside of the religious instruction, i.e. all of science and art, shall
have no direct connection with it as a religious institution.——

§ 134. The Church, as the external manifestation of religion, is
concerned with the absolute relation of man, the relation to God,
special in itself as opposed to his other relations; the State, on the
contrary, seizes the life of a nation according to its _explicit
totality_. The State should conduct the education of all its citizens.
To it, then, the church can appear only as a school, for the church
instructs its own people concerning the nature of religion, partly by
teaching proper, that of the catechism, partly in quite as edifying a
way, by preaching. From this point of view, the State can look upon the
church only as one of those schools which prepare for a special
avocation. The church appears to the State as that school which assumes
the task of educating the religious element. Just as little as the
church should the state attempt to exercise any influence over Science
and Art. In this they are exactly alike, and must acknowledge the
necessity which both Science and Art contain within themselves and by
which they determine themselves. The laws of Logic, Mathematics,
Astronomy, Morals, Æsthetics, Physiology, &c., are entirely independent
of the state. It can decree neither discoveries nor inventions. The
state in its relations to science occupies the same ground as it should
do with relation to the freedom of self-consciousness. It is true that
the church teaches man, but it demands from him at the same time belief
in the truth of its dogmas. It rests, as the real church, on presupposed
authority, and sinks finally all contradictions which may be found in
the absolute mystery of the existence of God. The state, on the
contrary, elaborates its idea into the form of laws, i.e. into general
determinations, of whose necessity it convinces itself. It seeks to give
to these laws the clearest possible form, so that every one may
understand them. It concedes validity only to that which can be proved,
and sentences the individual according to the external side of the
_deed_ (overt act) not, as the church does, on its internal side——that
of _intention_. Finally, it demands in him consciousness of his deed,
because it makes each one responsible for his own deed. It has,
therefore, the same principle with science, for the proof of necessity
and the unity of consciousness with its object constitute the essence of
science. Since the state embraces the school as one of its educational
organisms, it is from its very nature especially called upon to guide
its regulation in accordance with the manifestation of consciousness.

[Sidenote: _The Modality of the Process of Teaching._]

——The church calls this "profanation." One might say that the church,
with its mystery of Faith, always represents the absolute problem of
science, while the state, as to its form, coincides with science.
Whenever the state abandons the strictness of proof——when it begins to
measure the individual citizen by his intention and not by his deed,
and, in place of the clear insight of the comprehending consciousness,
sets up the psychological compulsion of a hollow mechanical authority,
it destroys itself.——

§ 135. Neither the church nor the state should attempt to control the
school in its internal management. Still less can the school constitute
itself into a state within the state; for, while it is only one of the
means which are necessary for developing citizens, the state and the
church lay claim to the whole man his whole life long. The independence
of the school can then only consist in this, that it raises within the
state an organ which works under its control, and which as school
authority endeavors within itself to befriend the needs of the school,
while externally it acts on the church and state indirectly by means of
ethical powers. The emancipation of the school can never reasonably mean
its abstract isolation, or the absorption of the ecclesiastical and
political life into the school; it can signify only the free reciprocal
action of the school with state and church. It must never be forgotten
that what makes the school a school is not the total process of
education, for this falls also within the family, the state, and the
church; but that the proper work of the school is the process of
instruction, knowledge, and the acquirement, by practice, of skill.

——The confusion of the idea of Instruction with that of Education in
general is a common defect in superficial treatises on these themes. The
Radicals among those who are in favor of so-called "Emancipation," often
erroneously appeal to "free Greece" which generally for this fond
ignorance is made to stand as authority for a thousand things of which
it never dreamed. In this fictitious Hellas of "free, beautiful
humanity," they say the limits against which we strive to-day did not
exist. The histories of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras, Socrates,
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and of others, who were all condemned on
account of their "impiety," tell quite another story.——

§ 136. The inspection of the school may be carried out in different
ways, but it must be required that its special institutions shall be
embraced and cared for as organized and related wholes, framed in
accordance with the idea of the state, and that one division of the
ministry shall occupy itself exclusively with it. The division of labor
will specially affect the schools for teaching particular avocations.
The prescription of the subjects to be studied in each school as
appropriate to it, of the course of study, and of the object thereof,
properly falls to this department of government, is its immediate work,
and its theory must be changed according to the progress and needs of
the time. Niemeyer, Schwarz, and others, have made out such plans for
schools. Scheinert has fully painted the _Volkschule_, Mager the
_Bürgerschule_, Deinhard and Kapp the _Gymnasium_. But such
delineations, however correct they may be, depend upon the actual sum of
culture of a people and a time, and must therefore continually modify
their fundamental Ideal. The same is true of the methods of instruction
in the special arts and sciences. Niemeyer, Schwarz, Herbart, in their
sketches of Pedagogics, Beneke in his _Doctrine of Education_, and
others, have set forth in detail the method of teaching Reading, Writing
and Arithmetic, Languages, Natural Science, Geography, History, &c. Such
directions are, however, ephemeral in value, and only relatively useful,
and must, in order to be truly practical, be always newly laid out in
accordance with universal educational principles, and with the progress
of science and art.

——The idea that the State has the right to oversee the school lies in
the very idea of the State, which is authorized, and under obligation,
to secure the education of its citizens, and cannot leave their
fashioning to chance. The emancipation of the school from the State, the
abstracting of it, would lead to the destruction of the school. There is
no difficulty in Protestant States in the free inter-action of school
and church, for Protestantism has consciously accepted as its peculiar
principle individual freedom as Christianity has presented it. For
Catholic States, however, a difficulty exists. The Protestant clergyman
can with propriety oversee the _Volkschule_, for here he works as
teacher, not as priest. In the Protestant church there are really no
Laity according to the original meaning of the term. On the contrary,
Catholic clergymen are essentially priests, and as such, on account of
the unconditional obedience which, according to their church, they have
to demand, they usurp the authority of the State. From this circumstance
arise, at present, numberless collisions in the department of school
supervision.——


THIRD DIVISION.

PRAGMATICS (EDUCATION OF THE WILL).

§ 137. Both Physical and Intellectual Education are in the highest
degree practical. The first reduces the merely natural to a tool which
mind shall use for its own ends; the second guides the intelligence, by
ways conformable to its nature, to the necessary method of the act of
teaching and learning, which finally branches out into an objective
national life, into a system of mutually dependent school organizations.
But in a narrower sense we mean by practical education the methodical
development of the Will. This phrase more clearly expresses the topic to
be considered in this division than others sometimes used in Pedagogics
[_Bestrebungs vermögen_, conative power]. The will is already the
subject of a science of its own, i.e. of Ethics; and if Pedagogics would
proceed in anywise scientifically, it must recognize and presuppose the
idea and the existence of this science. It should not restate in full
the doctrines of freedom of duty, of virtue, and of conscience, although
we have often seen this done in empirical works on Pedagogics.
Pedagogics has to deal with the idea of freedom and morality only so far
as it fixes the technique of their process, and at the same time it
confesses itself to be weakest just here, where nothing is of any worth
without a pure self-determination.

§ 138. The pupil must (1) become civilized; i.e. he must learn to
govern, as a thing external to him, his natural egotism, and to make the
forms which civilized society has adopted his own. (2) He must become
imbued with morality; i.e. he must learn to determine his actions, not
only with reference to what is agreeable and useful, but according to
the principle of the Good; he must become virtually free, form a
character, and must habitually look upon the necessity of freedom as the
absolute measure of his actions. (3) He must become religious; i.e. he
must discern that the world, with all its changes, himself included, is
only phenomenal; the affirmative side of this insight into the emptiness
of the finite and transitory, which man would so willingly make
everlasting, is the consciousness of the _absolute_ existing in and for
itself, which, in its certainty of its truth, not torn asunder through
the process of manifestation, constitutes no part of its changes, but,
while it actually presents them, permeates them all, and freely
distinguishes itself from them. In so far as man relates himself to God,
he cancels all finitude and transitoriness, and by this feeling frees
himself from the externality of phenomena. Virtue on the side of
civilization is Politeness; on that of morality, Conscientiousness; and
on that of religion, Humility.


FIRST CHAPTER.

_Social Culture._


§ 139. The social development of man makes the beginning of practical
education. It is not necessary to suppose a special social instinct. The
inclination of man to the society of men does not arise only from the
identity of their nature, but is also in certain cases affected by
particular relations. The natural starting-point of social culture is
the Family. But this educates the child for Society, and by means of
Society the individual passes over into relations with the world at
large. Natural sympathy changes to polite behavior, and this to the
dexterous and circumspect deportment, whose truth nevertheless is first
the ethical purity which combines with the wisdom of the serpent the
harmlessness of the dove.

§ 140. (1) The Family is the natural social circle to which man
primarily belongs. In it all the immediate differences which exist are
compensated by the equally immediate unity of the relationship. The
subordination of the wife to the husband, of the children to their
parents, of the younger children to their elder brothers and sisters,
ceases to be subordination, through the intimacy of love. The child
learns obedience to authority, and in this it gives free personal
satisfaction to its parents and enjoys the same. All the relations in
which he finds himself there are penetrated by the warmth of implicit
confidence, which can be replaced for the child by nothing else. In this
sacred circle the tenderest emotions of the heart are developed by the
personal interest of all its members in what happens to any one, and
thus the foundation is laid of a susceptibility to all genuine or real
friendship.

——Nothing more unreasonable or inhuman could exist than those modern
theories which would destroy the family and would leave the children,
the offspring of the anarchy of free-love, to grow up in public
nurseries. This would appear to be very humanitarian; indeed these
socialists talk of nothing but the interests of humanity——they are never
weary of uttering their insipid jests on the institution of the family,
as if it were the principle of all narrow-mindedness. Have these
fanatics, who are seeking after an abstraction of humanity, ever
examined our foundling-hospitals, orphan asylums, barracks, and prisons,
to discover in some degree to what an atomic state of barren cleverness
a human being grows who has never formed a part of a family? The Family
is only one phase in the grand order of the ethical organization; but it
is the substantial phase from which man passively proceeds, but into
which, as he founds a family of his own, he actively returns. The child
lives in the Family in the common joy and grief of sympathy for all,
and, in the emotion with which he sees his parents approach death while
he is hastening towards the full enjoyment of existence, experiences the
finer feelings which are so powerful in creating in him a deeper and
more tender understanding of everything human.——

§ 141. (2) The Family rears the children not for itself but for the
civil society. In this we have a system of morals producing externally a
social technique, a circle of fixed forms of society. This technique
endeavors to subdue the natural roughness of man, at least as far as it
manifests itself externally. Because he is spirit, man is not to yield
himself to his immediateness; he is to exhibit to man his naturalness as
under the control of spirit. The etiquette of propriety on the one hand
facilitates the manifestation of individuality by means of which the
individual becomes interesting to others, and on the other hand, since
its forms are alike for all, it makes us recognize the likeness of the
individual to all others and so makes their intercourse easier.

——The conventional form is no mere constraint; but essentially a
protection not only for the freedom of the individual, but much more the
protection of the individual against the rude impetuosity of his own
naturalness. Savages and peasants for this reason are, in their
relations to each other, by no means as unconstrained as one often
represents them, but hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in
one of Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent
picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant loves to
surround himself. The scene in which the townsman who thinks that he can
dispense with forms among the peasants is very entertainingly taught
better, is exceedingly valuable in an educational point of view. The
feeling of shame which man has in regard to his mere naturalness is
often extended to relations where it has no direct significance, since
this sense of shame is appealed to in children in reference to things
which are really perfectly indifferent externalities.——

§ 142. Education with regard to social culture has two extremes to
avoid: the youth may, in his effort to prove his individuality, become
vain and conceited, and fall into an attempt to appear interesting; or
he may become slavishly dependent on conventional forms, a kind of
social pedant. This state of nullity which contents itself with the
mechanical polish of social formalism is ethically more dangerous than
the tendency to a marked individuality, for it betrays emptiness; while
the effort towards a peculiar differentiation from others, to become
interesting to others, indicates power.

§ 143. When we have a harmony of the manifestation of the individual
with the expression of the recognition of the equality of others we have
what is called deportment or politeness, which combines dignity and
grace, self-respect and modesty. We call it when fully complete,
Urbanity. It treats the conventional forms with irony, since, at the
same time that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit
to shine through them in little deviation from them, as if it were fully
able to make others in their place.

——True politeness shows that it remains master of forms. It is very
necessary to accustom children to courtesy and to bring them up in the
etiquette of the prevailing social custom; but they must be prevented
from falling into an absurd formality which makes the triumph of a
polite behavior to consist in a blind following of the dictates of the
last fashion-journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and
directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and practise
politeness when he does not merely copy the social technique, but
comprehends its original idea.——

§ 144. (3) But to fully initiate the youth into the institutions of
civilization one must not only call out the feelings of his heart in the
bosom of the family, not only give to him the formal refinement
necessary to his intercourse with society; it must also perform to him
the painful duty of making him acquainted with the mysteries of the ways
of the world. This is a painful duty, for the child naturally feels an
unlimited confidence in all men. This confidence must not be destroyed,
but it must be tempered. The mystery of the way of the world is the
deceit which springs from selfishness. We must provide against it by a
proper degree of distrust. We must teach the youth that he may be
imposed upon by deceit, dissimulation, and hypocrisy, and that therefore
he must not give his confidence lightly and credulously. He himself must
learn how he can, without deceit, gain his own ends in the midst of the
throng of opposing interests.

——Kant in his Pedagogics calls that worldly-wise behavior by which the
individual is to demean himself in opposition to others,
Impenetrability. By its means man learns how to "manage men." In Lord
Chesterfield's letters to his son, we have pointed out the true value of
egotism in its relation to morals. All his words amount to this, that we
are to consider every man to be an egotist, and to convert his very
egotism into a means of finding out his weak side; i.e. to flatter him
by exciting his vanity, and by means of such flattery to ascertain his
limits. In common life, the expression "having had experiences" means
about the same thing as having been deceived and betrayed.——


SECOND CHAPTER.

_Moral Culture._


§ 145. The truth of social culture lies in moral culture. Without this
latter, every art of behavior remains worthless, and can never attain
the clearness of Humility and Dignity which are possible to it in its
unity with morality. For the better determination of this idea
Pedagogics must refer to Ethics itself, and can here give the part of
its content which relates to Education only in the form of educational
maxims. The principal categories of Ethics in the domain of morality are
the ideas of Duty, Virtue, and Conscience. Education must lay stress on
the truth that nothing in the world has any absolute value except will
guided by the right.

§ 146. Thence follows (1) the maxim relating to the idea of Duty, that
we must accustom the pupil to unconditional obedience to it, so that he
shall perform it for no other reason than that it is duty. It is true
that the performance of a duty may bring with it externally a result
agreeable or disagreeable, useful or harmful; but the consideration of
such connection ought never to determine us. This moral demand, though
it may appear to be excessive severity, is the absolute foundation of
all genuine ethical practice. All "highest happiness theories," however
finely spun they may be, when taken as a guide for life, lead at last to
Sophistry, and this to contradictions which ruin the life.

§ 147. (2) Virtue must make actual what duty commands, or, rather, the
actualizing of duty is Virtue. And here we must say next, then, that the
principal things to be considered under Virtue are (_a_) the dialectic
of particular virtues, (_b_) renunciation, and (_c_) character.

§ 148. (_a_) From the dialectic of particular virtues there follows the
educational maxim that we must practise all virtues with equal
faithfulness, for all together constitute an ethical system complete in
itself, in which no one is indifferent to another.

——Morality should recognize no distinction of superiority among the
different virtues. They reciprocally determine each other. There is no
such thing as one virtue which shines out above the others, and still
less should we have any special gift for virtue. The pupil must be
taught to recognize no great and no small in the virtues, for that one
which may at first sight seem small is inseparably connected with that
which is seemingly the greatest. Many virtues are attractive by reason
of their external consequences, as e.g. industry because of success in
business, worthy conduct because of the respect paid to it, charity
because of the pleasure attending it; but man should not practise these
virtues because he enjoys them: he must devote the same amount of
self-sacrifice and of assiduity to those virtues which (as Christ said)
are to be performed in secret.——

——It is especially valuable, in an educational respect, to gain an
insight, into the transition of which each virtue is empirically
capable, into a negative as well as into a positive extreme. The
differences between the extremes and the golden mean are differences in
quality, although they arrive at this difference in quality by means of
difference in quantity. Kant has, as is well known, attacked the
Aristotelian doctrine of the ethical μεσοτες, since he was considering
the qualitative difference of the mind as differentiating principle;
this was correct for the subject with which he dealt, but in the
objective development we do arrive on the other hand at the
determination of a quantitative limit; e.g. a man, with the most earnest
intention of doing right, may be in doubt whether he has not, in any
task, done more or less than was fitting for him.——

——As no virtue can cease its demands for us, no one can permit any
exceptions or any provisional circumstances to come in the way of his
duties. Our moral culture will always certainly manifest itself in very
unequal phases if we, out of narrowness and weakness, neglect entirely
one virtue while we diligently cultivate another. If we are forced into
such unequal action, we are not responsible for the result; but it is
dangerous and deserves punishment if we voluntarily encourage it. The
pupil must be warned against a certain moral negligence which consists
in yielding to certain weaknesses, faults, or crimes, a little longer
and a little longer, because he has fixed a certain time after which he
intends to do better. Up to that time he allows himself to be a loiterer
in ethics. Perhaps he will assert that his companions, his surroundings,
his position, &c., must be changed before he can alter his internal
conduct. Wherever education or temperament favors sentimentality, we
shall find birth-days, new-year's day, confirmation day, &c., selected
as these turning points. It is not to be denied that man proceeds in his
internal life from epoch to epoch, and renews himself in his most
internal nature, nor can we deny that moments like those mentioned are
especially favorable in man to an effort towards self-transformation
because they invite introspection; but it is not to be endured that the
youth, while looking forward to such a moment, should consciously
persist in his evil-doing. If he does, we shall have as consequences
that when the solemn moment which he has set at last arrives, at the
stirring of the first emotion he perceives with terror that he has
changed nothing in himself, that the same temptations are present to
him, the same weakness takes possession of him, &c. In our business, in
our theoretical endeavors, &c., it may certainly happen that, on account
of want of time, or means, or humor, we may put off some work to another
time; but morality stands on a higher plane than these, because it, as
the concrete absoluteness of the will, makes unceasing demand on the
whole and undivided man. In morality there are no vacations, no
interims. As we in ascending a flight of stairs take good care not to
make a single mis-step, and give our conscious attention to every step,
so we must not allow any exceptions in moral affairs, must not appoint
given times for better conduct, but must await these last as natural
crises, and must seek to live in time as in Eternity.——

§ 149. (_b_) From Renunciation springs the injunction of
self-government. The action of education on the will to form habits in
it, is discipline or training in a narrower sense. Renunciation teaches
us to know the relation in which we in fact, as historical persons,
stand to the idea of the Good. From our empirical knowledge of ourselves
we derive the idea of our limits; from the absolute knowledge of
ourselves on the other hand, which presents to us the nature of Freedom
as our own actuality, we derive the conception of the resistless might
of the genuine will for the good. But to actualize this conception we
must have practice. This practice is the proper renunciation. Every man
must devise for himself some special set of rules, which shall be
determined by his peculiarities and his resulting temptations. These
rules must have as their innermost essence the subduing of self, the
vanquishing of his negative arbitrariness by means of the universality
and necessity of the will.

——In order to make this easy, the youth may be practised in renouncing
for himself even the arbitrariness which is permitted to him. One often
speaks of renunciation as if it belonged especially to the middle ages
and to Catholicism; but this is an error. Renunciation in its one-sided
form as relying on works, and for the purpose of mortification, is
asceticism, and belongs to them; but Renunciation in general is a
necessary determination of morals. The keeping of a journal is said to
assist in the practice of virtue, but its value depends on how it is
kept. To one it may be a curse, to another a blessing. Fichte, Göthe,
Byron, and others, have kept journals and have been assisted thereby;
while others, as Lavater, have been thwarted by them. Vain people will
every evening record with pen and ink their admiration of the correct
course of life which they have led in the day devoted to their
pleasure.——

§ 150. (_c_) The result of the practice in virtue, or, as it is
commonly expressed, of the individual actualization of freedom, is the
methodical determinateness of the individual will as Character. This
conception of character is formal, for it contains only the identity
which is implied in the ruling of a will on its external side as
constant. As there are good, strong and beautiful characters, so there
are also bad, weak, and detestable ones. When in Pedagogics, therefore,
we speak so much of the building up of a character, we mean the making
permanent of a direction of the individual will towards the
actualization of the Good. Freedom ought to be the character of
character. Education must therefore observe closely the inter-action of
the factors which go to form character, viz., (α) the temperament, as
the natural character of the man; (β) external events, the historical
element; (γ) the energy of the Will, by which, in its limits of nature
and history, it realizes the idea of the Good in and for itself as the
proper ethical character. Temperament determines the Rhythm of our
external manifestation of ourselves; the events in which we live assign
to us the ethical problem, but the Will in its sovereignty stamps its
seal on the form given by these potentialities. Pedagogics aims at
accustoming the youth to freedom, so that he shall always measure his
deed by the idea of the Good. It does not desire a formal independence,
which may also be called character, but a real independence resting upon
the conception of freedom as that which is absolutely necessary. The
pedagogical maxim is then: Be independent, but be so through doing Good.

——According to preconceived opinion, stubbornness and obstinacy claim
that they are the foundation of character. But they may spring from
weakness and indeterminateness, on which account one needs to be well on
his guard. A gentle disposition, through enthusiasm for the Good, may
attain to quite as great a firmness of will. Coarseness and meanness are
on no account to be tolerated.——

§ 151. (3) We pass from the consideration of the culture of character
to that of conscience. This is the relation which the moral agent makes
between himself as manifestation and himself as idea. It compares
itself, in its past or future, with its nature, and judges itself
accordingly as good or bad. This independence of the ethical judgment is
the soul proper of all morality, the negation of all self-deception and
of all deception through another. The pedagogical maxim is: Be
conscientious. Be in the last instance dependent only upon the
conception which thou thyself hast of the idea of the Good!

——The self-criticism prompted by conscience hovers over all our
historical actuality, and is the ground of all our rational progress.
Fichte's stern words remain, therefore, eternally true: "He who has a
bad character, must absolutely create for himself a better one."——


THIRD CHAPTER.

_Religious Culture._


§ 152. Social culture contains the formal phase, moral culture the real
phase, of the practical mind. Conscience forms the transition to
religious culture. In its apodeictic nature, it is the absoluteness of
spirit. The individual discerns in the depths of its own consciousness
the determinations of universality and of necessity to which it has to
subject itself. They appear to it as the voice of God. Religion makes
its appearance as soon as the individual distinguishes the Absolute from
himself as personal, as a subject existing for itself and therefore for
him. The atheist remains at the stage of insight into the absoluteness
of the logical and physical, æsthetic and practical categories. He may,
therefore, be perfectly moral. He lacks religion, though he loves to
characterize his uprightness by this name, and to transfer the dogmatic
determinations of positive religion into the ethical sphere. It belongs
to the province of religion that I demean myself towards the Absolute
not only as toward that which is my own substance, and that in relation
to it not I alone am the subject, but that to me also the substance in
itself is a personal subject for itself. If I look upon myself as the
only absolute, I make myself devoid of spiritual essence. I am only
absolute self-consciousness, for which, because it as idea relates only
to itself, there remains only the impulse to a persistent conflict with
every self-consciousness not identical with it. Were this the case, such
a self-consciousness would be only theoretical irony. In religion I know
the Absolute as essence, when I am known by him. Everything else, myself
included, is finite and transitory, however significant it may be,
however relatively and momentarily the Infinite may exist in it. As
existence even, it is transitory. The Absolute, positing itself,
distinguishing itself from itself in unity with itself, is always like
to itself, and takes up all the unrest of the phenomenal world back
again into its simple essence.

§ 153. This process of the individual spirit, in which it rises out of
the multiplicity of all relations into union with the Absolute as the
substantial subject, and in which nature and history are united, we may
call, in a restricted sense, a change of heart [Gemuth]. In a wider
sense of the word we give this name to a certain sentimental
cheerfulness (light-heartedness), a sense of comfort——of little
significance. The highest emotions of the heart culminate in religion,
whose warmth is inspired by practical activity and conscientiousness.

§ 154. Education has to fit man for religion. (1) It gives him the
conception of it; (2) it endeavors to have this conception actualized in
him; (3) it subordinates the theoretical and practical process in
fashioning him to a determinate stand-point of religious culture.

——In the _working out_ or detailed treatment of Pedagogics, the
position which the conception of religion occupies is very uncertain.
Many writers on Education place it at the beginning, while others
reserve it for the end. Others naïvely bring it forward in the midst of
heterogeneous surroundings, but know how to say very little concerning
it, and urge teachers to kindle the fire of religious feeling in their
pupils by teaching them to fear God. Through all their writing, we hear
the cry that in Education nothing is so important as Religion. Rightly
understood, this saying is quite true. The religious spirit, the
consciousness of the Absolute, and the reverence for it, should permeate
all. Not unfrequently, however, we find that what is meant by religion
is theology, or the church ceremonial, and these are only one-sided
phases of the total religious process. The Anglican High-Church presents
in the colleges and universities of England a sad example of this error.
What can be more deadening to the spirit, more foreign to religion, than
the morning and evening prayers as they are carried on at Oxford and
Cambridge with machine-like regularity! But also to England belongs the
credit of the sad fact, that, according to Kohl's report, there live in
Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, thousands of men who have
never enjoyed any teaching in religion, have never been baptized, who
live absolutely without religion in brutal stupidity. Religion must form
the culminating point of Education. It takes up into itself the
didactical and practical elements, and rises through the force of its
content to universality.——


I. _The Theoretical Process of Religious Culture._

§ 155. Religion, in common with every content of the spirit, must pass
through three stages of feeling, conception, and comprehension. Whatever
may be the special character of any religion it cannot avoid this
psychological necessity, either in its general history or in the history
of the individual consciousness. The teacher must understand this
process, partly in order that he may make it easier to the youth, partly
that he may guard against the malformation of the religious feeling
which may arise through the fact of the youth's remaining in one stage
after he is ready for another and needs it. Pedagogics must therefore
lay out beforehand the philosophy of religion, on which alone can be
found the complete discussion of this idea.

§ 156. (1) Religion exists first as religious feeling. The person is
still immediately identical with the Divine, does not yet distinguish
himself from the absoluteness of his being, and is in so far determined
by it. In so far as he feels the divine, he is a mystery to himself.
This beginning is necessary. Religion cannot be produced in men from the
external side; its genesis belongs rather to the primitive depths in
which God himself and the individual soul are essentially one.

——The educator must not allow himself to suppose that he is able to
make a religion. Religion dwells originally in every individual soul,
for every one is born of God. Education can only aid the religious
feeling in its development. As far as regards the psychological form, it
was quite correct for Schleiermacher and his followers to characterize
the absoluteness of the religious feeling as the feeling of dependence,
for feeling is determined by that which it feels; it depends upon its
content. But in so far as God constitutes the content of the feeling,
there appears the opposite of all dependence or absolute emancipation. I
maintain this in opposition to Schleiermacher. Religion lifts man above
the finite, temporal and transitory, and frees him from the control of
the phenomenal world. Even the lowest form of religion does this; and
when it is said that Schleiermacher has been unjustly criticized for
this expression of dependence, this distinction is overlooked.——

§ 157. But religious feeling as such rises into something higher when
the spirit distinguishes the content of this religious feeling from any
other content which it also feels, represents it clearly to itself, and
places itself over against it formally as a free individual.

——But we must not understand that the religious feeling is destroyed in
this process; in rising to the form of distinct representation, it
remains at the same time as a necessary form of the Intelligence.——

§ 158. If the spirit is held back and prevented from passing out of the
simplicity of feeling into the act of distinguishing the perception from
what it becomes, the conception——if its efforts towards the forming of
this conception are continually re-dissolved into feeling, then feeling,
which was as the first step perfectly healthy and correct, will become
morbid and degenerate into a wretched mysticism. Education must,
therefore, make sure that this feeling is not destroyed by the progress
of its content into perception and conception on the side of
psychological form, but rather that it attains truth thereby.

§ 159. (2) Conception as the ideally transformed perception dissects
the religious content on its different sides, and follows each of these
to its consequence. Imagination controls the individual conceptions, but
by no means with that absoluteness which is often supposed; for each
picture has in itself its logical consequence to which imagination must
yield; e.g. if a religion represents God as an animal, or as half animal
and half man, or as man, each of these conceptions has in its
development its consequences for the imagination.

§ 160. We rise out of the stage of Conception when the spirit tries to
determine the universality of its content according to its necessity,
i.e. when it begins to think. The necessity of its pictures is a mere
presupposition for the imagination. The thinking activity, however,
recognizes not only the contradiction which exists between the sensuous,
limited form of the individual conception, and the absolute nature of
its content, but also the contradiction in which the conceptions find
themselves with respect to each other.

§ 161. If the spirit is prevented from passing out of the varied
pictures of conception to the supersensuous clearness and simplicity of
the thinking activity——if the content which it already begins to seize
as idea is again dissolved into the confusion of the picture-world, then
the religion of imagination, which was a perfectly proper form as the
second step, becomes perverted into some form of idolatry, either coarse
or refined. Education must therefore not oppose the thinking activity if
the latter undertakes to criticize religious conceptions; on the
contrary, it must guide this so that the discovery of the contradictions
which unavoidably adhere to sensuous form shall not mislead the youth
into the folly of throwing away, with the relative untruth of the form,
also the religious content in general.

——It is an error for educators to desire to keep the imagination apart
from religious feeling, but it is also an error to detain the mind,
which is on its formal side the activity of knowing, in the stage of
imagination, and to desire to condemn it thence into the service of
canonical allegories. The more, in opposition to this, it is possessed
with the charm of thinking, the more is it in danger of condemning the
content of religion itself as a mere fictitious conception. As a
transition-stage the religion of imagination is perfectly normal, and it
does not in the least impair freedom if, for example, one has
personified evil as a living Devil. The error does not lie in this, but
in the making absolute these determinate, æsthetic forms of religion.
The reaction of the thinking activity against such æsthetic absolutism
then undertakes in its negative absolutism to despise the content also,
as if it were a mere conception.——

§ 162. (3) In the thinking activity the spirit attains that form of the
religious content which is identical with that of its simple
consciousness, and above which there is no other for the intelligence as
theoretical. But we distinguish three varieties in this thinking
activity: the abstract, the reflective, and the speculative. The
Abstract gives us the religious content of consciousness in the form of
abstractions or dogmas, i.e. propositions which set up a definition as a
universal, and add to it another as the reason for its necessity. The
Reflective stage busies itself with the relation of dogmas to each
other, and with the search for the grounds on which their necessity must
rest. It is essentially critical, and hence skeptical. The explanation
of the dogmas, which is carried on in this process of reasoning and
skeptical investigation, is completed alone in speculative thinking,
which recognizes the free unity of the content and its form as its own
proper self-determination of the content, creating its own differences.
Education must know this stage of the intelligence, partly that it may
in advance preserve, in the midst of its changes, that repose which it
brings into the consciousness; partly that it may be able to lead to the
process of change itself, in accordance with the organic connection of
its phases. We should prevent the criticism of the abstract
understanding by the reflective stage as little as we should that of the
imagination by the thinking activity. But the stage of reflection is not
the last possibility of the thinking activity, although, in the variety
of its skepticism it often takes itself for such, and, with the
emptiness of mere negation to which it holds, often brings itself
forward into undesirable prominence. It becomes evident, in this view,
how very necessary for man, with respect to religion, is a genuine
philosophical culture, so that he may not lose the certainty of the
existence of the Absolute in the midst of the obstinacy of dogmas and
the changes of opinions.

§ 163. Education must then not fear the descent into dogmatic
abstraction, since this is an indispensable means for theoretical
culture in its totality, and the consciousness cannot dispense with it
in its history. But Education has, in the concrete, carefully to discern
in which of these stages of culture any particular consciousness may be.
For if for mankind as a race the fostering of philosophy is absolutely
necessary, it by no means follows that this necessity exists for each
individual. To children, to women, e.g. for all kinds of simple and
limited lives, the form of the religion of the imagination is well
suited, and the form of comprehension can come only relatively to them.
Education must not, then, desire powerfully and prematurely to develop
the thinking activity before the intelligence is really fully grown.

——The superficial thinking which many teachers demand in the sphere of
religion is no less impractical than the want of all guidance into
rightly ordered meditations on religious subjects. It is natural that
the lower form of intelligence should, in contrast with the higher,
appear to be frivolous, because it has no need of change of form as the
higher has, and on this account it looks upon the destruction of the
form of a picture or a dogma as the destruction of religion itself. In
our time the idea is very prevalent that the content itself must change
with the changing of the psychological form, and that therefore a
religion in the stage of feeling, of conception, and of comprehension,
can no longer be the same in its essence. These suppositions, which are
so popular, and are considered to be high philosophy, spring from the
superficiality of psychological inquiry.——

§ 164. The theoretical culture of the religious feeling endeavors
therefore with the freedom of philosophical criticism to elevate the
presupposition of Reason in the religious content to self-assured
insight by means of the proof of the necessity of its determinations.
This is the only reasonable pedagogical way not only to prevent the
degeneration of the religious consciousness into a miserable mysticism
or into frivolity, but also to remove these if they are already
existent.

——External seclusion avails nothing. The crises of the world-historical
changes in the religious consciousness find their way through the
thickest cloister walls; the philosopher Reinhold was a pupil of the
Jesuits, the philosopher Schad of the Benedictines.——


II. _The Practical Process of Religious Culture._

§ 165. The theoretical culture is truly practical, for it gives man
definite conceptions and thoughts of the Divine and his relation to him.
But in a narrower sense that culture is practical which relates to the
Will as such. Education has in this respect to distinguish (1)
consecration——religious feeling in general,——(2) the induction of the
youth into the forms of a positive religion, and (3) his reconciliation
with his lot.

§ 166. (1) Religious feeling presupposes morality as an indispensable
condition without which it cannot inculcate its ideas. But if man from a
merely moral stand-point places himself in relation to the idea of Duty
as such, the ethical religious stand-point differs from it in this, that
it places the necessity of the Good as the self-determination of the
divine Will and thus makes of practice a personal relation to God,
changing the Good to the Holy and the Evil to Sin. Education must
therefore first accustom the youth to the idea, that in doing the Good
he unites himself with God as with the absolute Person, but that in
doing Evil he separates himself from him. The feeling that he through
his deed comes into contact with God himself, positively or negatively,
deepens the moral conduct to an intense sensibility of the heart.

§ 167. (2) The religious sense which grows in the child that he has an
uninterrupted personal relation to the Absolute as a person, constitutes
the beginning of the practical forming of religion. The second step is
the induction of the child into the objective forms of worship
established in some positive religion. Through religious training the
child learns to renounce his egotism; through attendance on religious
services he learns to give expression to his religious feeling in
prayer, in the use of symbols, and in church festivals. Education must,
however, endeavor to retain freedom with regard to these forms, so that
they shall not be confounded with Religion itself. Religion displays
itself in these ceremonies, but they as mere forms are of value only in
so far as they, while externalities, are manifestations of the spirit
which produces them.

——If the mechanism of ceremonial forms is taken as religion itself, the
service of God degenerates into the false service of religion, as Kant
has designated it in _Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason_.
Nothing is more destructive to the sensibility to all real religious
culture than the want of earnestness with which prayers, readings from
the Bible, attendance on church, the communion, &c., are often practised
by teachers. But one must not conclude from this extreme that an
ignorance of all sacred forms in general would be more desirable for the
child.——

§ 168. (3) It is possible that a man on the stand-point of
ecclesiastical religious observances may be fully contented; he may be
fully occupied in them, and perfect his life thereby in perfect content.
But by far the greater number of men will see themselves forced to
experience the truth of religion in the hard vicissitudes of their lot,
since they carry on some business, and with that business create for
themselves a past whose consequences condition their future. They limit
themselves through their deeds, whose involuntary-voluntary authors they
become; involuntary in so far as they are challenged to the deeds from
the totality of events, voluntary in so far as they undertake them and
bring about an actual change in the world. The history of the individual
man appears therefore on the one hand, if we consider its material, as
the work of circumstances; but on the other hand, if we reflect on the
form, as the act of a self-determining actor. Want of freedom (the being
determined through the given situation) and freedom (the determination
to the act) are united in actual life as something which is exactly so,
and cannot become anything else as final. The essence of the spiritual
being stands always over against this unavoidable limitation as that
which is in itself infinite, which is beyond all history, because the
absolute spirit, in and for itself, has no history. That which one calls
his history is only the manifesting of himself, and his everlasting
return out of this manifestation into himself an act which in absolute
spirit coincides with the transcending of all manifestation. From the
nature which belongs to him there arises for the individual spirit the
impulse towards a holy life, i.e. the being freed from his history even
in the midst of its process. He gratifies this impulse negatively
through the considering of what has happened as past and gone, as that
which lives now only ideally in the recollection; and positively through
the positing of a new actual existence in which he strives to realize
the idea of freedom which constitutes his necessity, as purer and higher
than before. This constant new-birth out of the grave of the past to the
life of a more beautiful future is the genuine reconciliation with
destiny. The false reconciliation may assume different forms. It may
abstain from all action because man through this limits himself and
becomes responsible. This is to despair of freedom, which condemns the
spirit to the loss of itself since its nature demands activity. The
abstract quietism of the Indian penitents, of the Buddhists, of the
fanatical ascetics, of the Protestant recluses, &c., is an error of this
kind. The man may become indifferent about the ethical determinateness
of his deeds. In this case he acts; but because he has no faith in the
necessary connection of his deeds through the means of freedom, a
connection which he would willingly ascribe to mere chance, he loses his
spiritual essence. This is the error of indifference and of its
frivolity, which denies the open mystery of the ruling of destiny.
Education must therefore imbue man with respect for external movements
of history and with confidence in the inexhaustibleness of the
progressive human spirit, since only by producing better things can he
affirmatively elevate himself above his past. This active acknowledgment
of the necessity of freedom as the determining principle of destiny
gives the highest satisfaction to which practical religious feeling may
arrive, for blessedness develops itself in it——that blessedness which
does not know that it is circumscribed by finitude and transitoriness,
and which possesses the immortal courage to strive always anew for
perfection with free resignation at its non-realization, so that
happiness and misery, pleasure and pain, are conquered by the power of
disinterested self-sacrifice.

——The escape from action in an artificial absence of all events in
life, which often sinks to a veritable brutalizing of man, is the
distinguishing feature of all monkish pedagogics. In our time there is
especial need of a reconciliation between man and destiny, for all the
world is discontented. The worst form of discontent is when one is, as
the French say, _blasé_; though the word is not, as many fancy, derived
originally from the French, but from the Greek βλαζειν, to wither. It is
true that all culture passes through phases, each of which becomes
momentarily and relatively wearisome, and that in so far one may be
_blasé_ in any age. But in modern times this state of feeling has
increased to that of thorough disgust——disgust which nevertheless at the
same time demands enjoyment. The one who is _blasé_ has enjoyed
everything, felt everything, mocked at everything. He has passed from
the enjoyment of pleasure to sentimentality, i.e. to rioting in feeling;
from sentimentality to irony with regard to feeling, and from this to
the torment of feeling his entire weakness and emptiness as opposed to
these. He ridicules this also, as if it were a consolation to him to
fling away the universe like a squeezed lemon, and to be able to assert
that in pure nothingness lies the truth of all things. And yet
nevertheless this irony furnishes the point on which Education can
fasten, in order to kindle anew in him the religious feeling, and to
lead him back to a loving recognition of actuality, to a respect for his
own history. The greatest difficulty which Education has to encounter
here is the coquetry, the miserable eminence and self-satisfaction which
have undermined the man and made him incapable of all simple and natural
enjoyment. It is not too much to assert that many pupils of our
_Gymnasia_ are affected with this malady. Our literature is full of its
products. It inveighs against its dissipation, and nevertheless at the
same time cannot resist a certain kind of pleasure in it. Diabolical
sentimentality!——


III. _The Absolute Process of Religious Culture._

§ 169. In comparing the stages of the theoretical and practical culture
of the religious feeling their internal correspondence appears. Feeling,
as immediate knowledge, and the consecration of the sense by means of
piety; imagination with all its images, and the church services with
their ceremonial observances; finally, the comprehending of religion as
the reconciliation with destiny, as the internal emancipation from the
dominion of external events——all these correspond to each other. If we
seize this parallelism all together, we have the progress which religion
must make in its historical process, in which it (1) begins as natural;
(2) goes on to historical precision, and (3) elevates this to a rational
faith. These stages await every man in as far as he lives through a
complete religious culture, but this may be for the individual a
question of chance.

§ 170. (1) A child has as yet no definite religious feeling. He is still
only a possibility capable of manifold determinations. But, since he is
a spirit, the essence of religion is active in him, though as yet in an
unconscious form. The substance of spirit attests its presence in every
individual, through his mysterious impulse toward the absolute and
towards intercourse with God. This is the initiatory stage of natural
religion, which must not be confounded with the religion which makes
nature the object of worship (fetichism, &c.)

§ 171. (2) But while the child lives into this in his internal life, he
comes in contact with definite forms of religion, and will naturally,
through the mediation of the family, be introduced to some one of them.
His religious feeling takes now a particular direction, and he accepts
religion in one of its historical forms. This positive religion meets
the precise want of the child, because it brings into his consciousness,
by means of teaching and sacred rites, the principal elements which are
found in the nature of religion.

§ 172. (3) In contradistinction to the natural basis of religious
feeling, all historical religions rest on the authoritative basis of
revelation from God to man. They address themselves to the imagination,
and offer a system of objective forms of worship and ceremonies. But
spirit, as eternal, as self-identical, cannot forbear as thinking
activity to subject the traditional religion to criticism and to compare
it as a phenomenal existence. From this criticism arises a religion
which satisfies the demands of the reason, and which, by means of
insight into the necessity of the historical process, leads to the
exercise of a genuine toleration towards its many-sided forms. This
religion mediates between the unity of the thinking consciousness and
the religious content, while this content, in the history of religious
feeling, appears theoretically as dogma, and practically as the command
of an absolute and incomprehensible authority. It is just as simple as
the unsophisticated natural religious feeling, but its simplicity is at
the same time master of itself. It is just as specific in its
determinations as the historical religion, but its determinateness is at
the same time universal, since it is worked out by the thinking reason.

§ 173. Education must superintend the development of the religious
consciousness towards an insight into the necessary consequence of its
different stages. Nothing is more absurd than for the educator to desire
to avoid the introduction of a positive religion, or a definite creed,
as a middle stage between the natural beginning of religious feeling and
its end in philosophical culture. Only when a man has lived through the
entire range of one-sided phases——through the crudeness of such a
concrete individualizing of religion, and has come to recognize the
universal nature of religion in a special form of it which excludes
other forms——only when the spirit of a congregation has taken him into
its number, is he ripe to criticize religion in a conciliatory spirit,
because he has then gained a religious character through that historical
experience. The self-comprehending universality must have such a solid
basis as this in the life of the man; it can never form the beginning of
one's culture, but it may constitute the end which turns back again to
the beginning. Most men remain at the historical stand-point. The
religion of reason, as that of the minority, constitutes in the
different religions the invisible church, which seeks by progressive
reform to purify these religions from superstition and unbelief. It is
the duty of the state, by making all churches equal in the sight of the
law, to guard religion from the temptation of impure motives, and,
through the granting of such freedom to religious individuality, to help
forward the unity of a rational insight into religion which is distinct
from the religious feeling only in its form, not in its content. Not a
philosopher, but Jesus of Nazareth freed the world from all selfishness
and all bondage.

§ 174. With this highest theoretical and practical emancipation, the
general work of education ends. It remains now to be shown how the
general idea of Education shapes its special elements into their
appropriate forms. From the nature of Pedagogics, which concerns itself
with man in his entirety, this exposition belongs partly to the history
of culture in general, partly to the history of religion, partly to the
philosophy of history. The pedagogical element in it always lies in the
ideal which the spirit of a nation or of an age creates out of itself,
and which it seeks to realize in its youth.




THIRD PART.

Particular Systems of Education.


§ 175. The definite actuality of Education originates in the fact that
its general idea is individualized, according to its special elements,
in a specific statement which we call a pedagogical principle. The
number of these principles is not unlimited, but from the idea of
Education contains only a certain number. If we derive them therefore,
we derive at the same time the history of Pedagogics, which can from its
very nature do nothing else than make actual in itself the possibilities
involved in the idea of Education. Such a derivation may be called an _à
priori_ construction of history, but it is different from what is
generally denoted by this term in not pretending to deduce single events
and characters. All empirical details are confirmation or illustration
for it, but it does not attempt to seek this empirical element _à
priori_.

——The history of Pedagogics is still in the stage of infancy. At one
time it is taken up into the sphere of Politics; at another, into that
of the history of Culture. The productions of some of the most
distinguished writers on the subject are now antiquated. Cramer of
Stralsund made, in 1832, an excellent beginning in a comprehensive and
thorough history of Pedagogy; but in the beginning of his second part he
dwelt too long upon the Greeks, and lost himself in too wide an
exposition of practical Philosophy in general. Alexander Kapp has given
us excellent treatises on the Pedagogics of Aristotle and Plato. But
with regard to modern Pedagogics we have relatively very little. Karl v.
Raumer, in 1843, began to publish a history of Pedagogics since the time
of the revival of classical studies, and has accomplished much of value
on the biographical side. But the idea of the general connection and
dependence of the several manifestations has not received much
attention, and since the time of Pestalozzi books have assumed the
character of biographical confessions. Strümpell, in 1843, developed the
Pedagogics of Kant, Fichte, and Herbart.——

[Sidenote: _Particular Systems of Education._]

§ 176. Man is educated by man for humanity. This is the fundamental idea
of all Pedagogics. But in the shaping of Pedagogics we cannot begin with
the idea of humanity as such, but only with the natural form in which it
primarily manifests itself——that of the nation. But the naturalness of
this principle disappears in its development, since nations appear in
interaction on each other and begin dimly to perceive their unity of
species. The freedom of spirit over nature makes its appearance, but to
the spirit explicitly in the transcendent form of abstract theistic
religion, in which God appears as the ruler over Nature as merely
dependent; and His chosen people plant the root of their nationality no
longer in the earth, but in this belief. The unity of the abstractly
natural and abstractly spiritual determinateness is the concrete unity
of the spirit with nature, in which it recognizes nature as its
necessary organ, and itself as in its nature divine. Spirit in this
stage, as the internal presupposition of the two previously named, takes
up into itself on one hand the phase of nationality, since this is the
form of its immediate individualization; but it no longer distinguishes
between nations as if they were abstractly severed the one from the
other, as the Greeks shut out all other nations under the name of
barbarians. It also takes up into itself the phase of spirituality,
since it knows itself as spirit, and knows itself to be free from
nature, and yet it does not estrange itself as the Jews did in their
representation of pure spirit, in reference to which nature seems to be
only the work of its caprice. Humanity knows nature as its own, because
it knows the Divine spirit and its creative energy manifesting itself in
nature and history, as also the essence of its own spirit. Education can
be complete only with Christianity as the religion of humanity.

§ 177. We have thus three different systems of religion——(1) the
National; (2) the Theocratic; and (3) the Humanitarian. The first works
in harmony with nature since it educates the individual as a type of his
species. The original nationality endeavors sharply to distinguish
itself from others, and to impress on each person the stamp of its
uniform type. One individual is like every other, or at least should be
so. The second system in its manner of manifestation is identical with
the first. It even marks the national difference more emphatically; but
the ground of the uniformity of the individuals is with it not merely
the natural common interest, but it is the consequence of the spiritual
unity, which abstracts from nature, and as history, satisfied with no
present, hovers continually outside of itself between past and future.
The theocratic system educates the individual as the servant of God. He
is the true Jew only in so far as he is this; the genealogical identity
with the father Abraham is a condition but not the principle of the
nationality. The third system liberates the individual to the enjoyment
of freedom as his essence, and educates the human being within national
limits which no longer separate but unite, and, in the consciousness
that each individual, without any kind of mediation, has a direct
relation to God, makes of him a man who knows himself to be a member of
the spiritual world of humanity. We can have no fourth system beyond
this. From the side of the State-Pedagogics we might characterize these
systems as that of the nation-State, the God-State, and the
humanity-State. From the time of the establishment of the last, no one
nation can attain to any sovereignty over the others. By means of the
world-religion of Christianity, the education of nations has come to the
point of taking for its ideal, man as determining himself according to
the demands of reason.


FIRST DIVISION.

THE SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION.

§ 178. The National is the primitive system of education, since the
family is the organic starting-point of all education, and is in its
enlargement the basis of nationality.

——Education is always education of the mind. Even unorganized nations,
those in a state of nature, the so-called savage nations, are possessed
of something more than a mere education of the body; for, though they
set much value upon gymnastic and warlike practice and give much time to
them, they inculcate also respect for parents, for the aged, and for the
decrees of the community. Education with them is essentially family
training, and its content is natural love and reverence. We cannot deny
that the finer forms of those to which we are accustomed are wanting.
Besides, education among all these people of nature is very simple and
much the same, though great differences in its management may exist
arising from differences of situation or from temperament of race.——

§ 179. National Education is divided into three special systems: (1)
Passive, (2) Active, (3) Individual. It begins with the humility of an
abstract subjection to nature, and ends with the arrogance of an
abstract rejection of nature.

§ 180. Man yields at first to the natural authority of the family; he
obeys unconditionally its behests. Then he substitutes for the family,
as he goes on his culture, the artificial family of his caste, to whose
rules he again unconditionally yields. To dispense with this
artificialty and this tyranny, at last he abstracts himself from the
family and from culture. He flees from both, and becoming a monk he
again subjects himself to the tyranny of his order. The monks presents
to us the mere type of his species.

§ 181. This absolute abstraction from nature and from culture, this
quietism of spiritual isolation, is the ultimate result of the Passive
system. In opposition to this, the Active system seeks the positive
vanquishing of naturalness. Its people are courageous. They attack other
nations in order to rule over them as conquerors. They live for the
continuation of their life after death, and build for themselves on this
account tombs of granite. They brave the dangers of the sea. The
abstract prose of the patriarchal-state, the fantastic chimeras of the
caste-state, the ascetic self-renunciation of the cloister-state, yield
gradually to the recognition of actuality; and the fundamental principle
of Persian education consisted in the inculcation of veracity.

§ 182. But the nationality which is occupied with simple, natural
elements——other nations, death, the mystery of the ocean——may revert to
the abstractions of the previous stage, which in education often take on
cruel forms——nay, often truly horrible. First, when the spirit begins
not only to suspect its true nature, but rather to recognize itself as
the true essence; and when the God of Light places as the motto on his
temple the command to self-knowledge, the natural individuality becomes
free. Neither the passive nor the active system understands the free
self-distinction of the individual from the rest. In them, to be an
individuality is a betrayal of the very idea of their existence, and
even the suspicion of such a charge suffices utterly and mercilessly to
destroy the one to whom it refers. Even the solitary individuality of
the despot is not the one-ness of free individuality: he is only an
example of his kind; only in his kind is he singular. Nationality rises
to individuality through the free dialectic of its race, wherein it
dissolves its own presupposition.

§ 183. Nevertheless individuality must always proceed from naturalness.
Esthetically it seeks nature, but the nature of the activity itself, in
order, by penetrating it with mind, to make of it a work of art;
practically it seeks it, partly to disdain it in gloomy resignation,
partly to enjoy it in excessive sensual ecstasy, demoniacally to
heighten the extravagance of its own internal feeling in wild revels.

——The Germans were not savage in the common signification of this term.
They were men each one of whom constituted himself willingly a centre
for others, or, if this was not the case, renounced them in proud
self-sufficiency. All the glory and all the disgrace of our race lies in
the power of individualizing which is divinely breathed into our veins.
As a natural element, if this be not controlled, it degenerates easily
into intractableness, into violence. The Germans need therefore, in
order to be educated, severe service, the imposition of difficult tasks;
and for this reason they appropriate to themselves, now the Roman law,
now the Greek philology, now Gallic usages, &c., in order to work off
their superfluous strength in such opposition. The natural reserve of
the German found its solvent in Christianity. By itself, as the history
of the German race shows, it would have been destroyed in vain
distraction. First of all, the German race, in the confidence of its
immediate consciousness, ventured forth upon the sea, and managed the
ship upon its waves as if they rode a charger.——


FIRST GROUP.

THE SYSTEM OF PASSIVE EDUCATION.

§ 184. All education desires to free man from his finitude, to make him
ethical, to unite him with God. It begins therefore with a negative
relation to naturalness, but at once falls into a contradiction of its
aim, which is to convert the opposition to nature into a natural
necessity. Spirit subjects the individual (1) to the rule of the family
as naturally spiritual; (2) to the rule of the caste as to a principle
in itself spiritual, mediated through the division of labor, which it
nevertheless, through its power of being inherited, joins again to the
family; (3) to the abstract self-determination of the monkish quietism,
which turns itself away as well from the family as from work, and
constitutes this flight from nature and history, this absolute
passivity, into an educational ideal.

——We shall not here enter into the details of this system, but simply
endeavor to remove from their differences the want of clearness which is
generally found involved in any mention of them, so that the phrases of
hierarchical and theocratical education are used without any historical
accuracy.——


I. _Family Education._

§ 185. The Family, as the organic starting-point of all education, makes
the beginning. The nation looks upon itself as a family. Among all
unorganized people education is family-education, though they are not
conscious of its necessity. Identical in principle with these people,
but distinguished from them in its consciousness of it, the Chinese
nation, in their laws, regulations, and customs, have constituted the
family the absolute basis of their life and the only principle of their
education.

§ 186. The natural element of the family is found in marriage and
relationship; the spiritual, in love. We may call the nature of family
feeling which is the immediate unity of both elements, by the name of
Piety. In so far as this appears not merely as a substantial feeling but
at the same time as law, there arises from it the subordination of the
abstract obedience of the woman as wife to the husband, of children to
the parents, of the younger children to the elder. In this obedience man
first renounces his self-will and his natural roughness; he learns to
master his passions, and to conduct himself with deferential gentleness.

——When the principle ruling the family is transferred to political
relations, there arises the tyranny of the Chinese state, which cannot
be fully treated here. We find everywhere in it an analogical relation
to that of parents and children. In China the ruler is the father and
mother of the country; the civil officers are representatives of a
paternal authority, &c. It follows that in school the children will be
ranked according to their age. The authority of parents over children is
according to the principle entirely unconditional, but in actuality very
mild. The abandonment of daughters by the poorest classes in the great
cities is not objected to, for the government rears the children in
orphan asylums, where they are cared for by nurses appointed by the
state.——

§ 187. The distinction of these relations which are conditioned by
nature takes on the external shape of a definite ceremonial, the
learning of which is a chief element of education. In conformity with
the naturalness of the whole principle all crimes against it are
punished by whipping, which does not necessarily entail dishonor. In
order to lead man to the mastery of himself and to obedience to those
who are naturally set over him, education develops an endless number of
fragmentary maxims to keep attention ever watchful over himself, and his
behavior always fenced in by a code of prescriptions.

——We find in such moral sentences the substance of what is called, in
China, Philosophy.——

§ 188. The theoretical education includes Heading, Writing——i.e.
painting the letters with a brush——Arithmetic, and the making of verses.
But the ability to do these things is not looked at as means of culture
but as ends in themselves, and to fit one therefore for the undertaking
of state offices. The Chinese possess formally all the means for
literary culture——printing, libraries, schools, and academies; but the
worth of these is not great. Their value has been often over-rated
because of their external resemblance to those found among us.


II. _Caste Education._

§ 189. The members of the Family are certainly immediately
distinguished among each other as to sex and age, but this difference is
entirely immaterial as far as the nature of their employment goes. In
China, therefore, every man can attain any position; he who is of
humblest birth in the great state-family can climb to the highest honor.
But the progress of spirit now becomes so mediated that the division of
labor shall be made the principle on which a new distinction shall arise
in the family: each one shall perfect himself only in that labor which
was allotted to him as his own through his birth into a particular
family. This fatalism (caste-distinction) breaks up the life, but
increases its tension, for spirit works on the one hand towards the
deepening of its distinctions; on the other, towards leading them back
into the unity which the natural determining directly opposes.

§ 190. The chief work of education thus consists in teaching each one
the rights and duties of his caste so that he shall act only exactly
within their limits, and not pollute himself by passing beyond them. As
the family-state concerns itself with fortifying the natural distinction
by a far-reaching and vigorous ceremonial, so the caste-state must do
the same with the distinction of class. A painful etiquette becomes more
and more endless in its requisitions the higher the caste, in order to
make the isolation more sharply defined and more perceptible.

——This feature penetrates all exclusively caste-education. The
aristocracy exiles itself on this account from its native country,
speaks a foreign language, loves its literature, adopts foreign customs,
lives in foreign countries——in Italy, Paris, &c. In this way man becomes
distinguished from others. But that man should strive thus to
distinguish himself has its justification in the mystery of his birth,
and this is assuredly always the principle of the caste-state in which
it exists. The castes lead to genealogical records, which are of the
greatest importance in determining the destiny of the individual. The
Brahmin may strike down one of a lower caste who has defiled him by
contact, without becoming thereby liable to punishment; rather would he
be to blame if he did not commit the murder. Thus formerly was it with
the officer who did not immediately kill the citizen or the common
soldier who struck him a blow, &c.——

§ 191. The East Indian culture is far deeper and richer than the
Chinese. The theoretical culture includes Reading, Writing, and
Arithmetic; but these are subordinate, as mere means for the higher
activities of Poetry, Speculation, Science, and Art. The practical
education limits itself strictly by the lines of caste, and since the
caste system constitutes a whole in itself, and each for its permanence
needs the others, it cannot forbear giving utterance suggestively to
what is universally human in the free soul, in a multitude of fables
(Hitopadesa) and apothegms (sentences of Bartrihari). Especially for the
education of princes is a minor of the world sketched out.

——Xenophon's Cyropedia is of Greek origin, but it is Indian in its
thought.——


III. _Monkish Education._

§ 192. Family Education demands unconditional obedience towards parents
and towards all who stand in an analogous position. Caste Education
demands unconditional obedience to the duties of the caste. The family
punishes by whipping; the caste, by excommunication, by loss of honor.
The opposition to nature appears in both systems in the form of a rigid
ceremonial, distinguishing between the differences arising from nature.
The family as well as the caste has within it a manifold fountain of
activity, but it has also just as manifold a limitation of the
individual. Spirit is forced, therefore, to turn against nature in
general. It must become indifferent to the family. But it must also
oppose history, and the fixed distinctions of division of labor as
necessitated by nature. It must become indifferent to work and the
pleasure derived from it. That it may not be conditioned either by
nature or by history, it denies both, and makes its action to consist in
producing an abstinence from all activity.

§ 193. Such an indifference towards nature and history produces the
education which we have called monkish. Those who support this sect care
for food, clothing, and shelter, and for these material contributions,
as the laity, receive in return from those who live this contemplative
life the spiritual contribution of confidence in the blessings which
wait upon ascetic contemplation. The family institution as well as the
institution of human labor is subordinated to abstract isolation, in
which the individual lives only for the purification of his soul. All
things are justified by this end. Castes are found no more; only those
are bound to the observance of a special ceremonial who as nuns or monks
subject themselves to the unconditional obedience to the rules of the
cloister, these rules solemnly enjoining on the negative side celibacy
and cessation from business, and on the positive side prayer and
perfection.

[Sidenote: _Buddhistic Education——System of Active Education._]

§ 194. In the school of the Chinese Tao-tse, and in the command to the
Brahmin after he has established a family to become a recluse, we find
the transition as it actually exists to the Buddhistic Quietism which
has covered the rocky heights of Thibet with countless cloisters, and
reared the people who are dependent upon it into a childlike amiability,
into a contented repose. Art and Science have here no value in
themselves, and are regarded only as ministering to religion. To be able
to read in order to mutter over the prayers is desirable. With the
premeditated effort in the state of a monk to reduce self to nothing as
the highest good, the system of passive education attains its highest
point. But the spirit cannot content itself in this abstract and dreamy
absence of all action, though it demands a high stage of culture, and it
has recourse therefore to action, partly on the positive side to conquer
nature, partly to double its own existence in making history. Inspired
with affirmative courage, it descends triumphantly from the mountain
heights, and fears secularization no more.


SECOND GROUP.

THE SYSTEM OF ACTIVE EDUCATION.

§ 195. Active Education elevates man from his abstract subjection to
the family, the caste, asceticism, into a concrete activity with a
definite aim which subjects those elements as phases of its mediation,
and grants to each individual independence on the condition of his
identity with it. These aims are the military state, the future after
death, and industry. There is always an element of nature present from
which the activity proceeds; but this no longer appears, like the
family, the caste, the sensuous egotism, as immediately belonging to the
individual, but as something outside of himself which limits him, and,
as his future life, has an internal relation to him, yet is essential to
him and assigns to him the object of his activity. The Persian has as an
object of conquest, other nations; the Egyptian, death; the Phœnician,
the sea.


I. _Military Education._

§ 196. That education which would emancipate a nation from the passivity
of abstraction must throw it into the midst of an historical activity. A
nation finds not its actual limits in its locality: it can forsake this
and wander far away from it. Its true limit is made by another nation.
The nation which knows itself to be actual, turns itself therefore
against other nations in order to subject them and to reduce them to the
condition of mere accidents of itself. It begins a system of conquest
which has in itself no limitations, but goes from one nation to another,
and extends its evil course indefinitely. The final result of this
attack is that it finds itself attacked and conquered.

——The early history of the Persian is twofold: the patriarchal in the
high valleys of Iran, and the religio-hierarchical among the Medes. We
find under these circumstances a repetition of the principal
characteristics of the Chinese, Indian, and Buddhist educations. In
ancient Zend there were also castes. Among the Persians themselves, as
they descended from their mountains to the conquest of other nations,
there was properly only a military nobility. The priesthood was
subjected to the royal power which represented the absolute power of
actuality. Of the Persian kings, Cyrus attacked Western Asia; Cambyses,
Africa; Darius and Xerxes, Europe; until the reaction of the spiritually
higher nationality did not content itself with self-preservation, but
under the Macedonian Alexander made the attack on Persia itself.——

§ 197. Education enjoined upon the Persians (1) to speak the truth; (2)
to learn to ride and to use the bow and arrow. There is implied in the
first command a recognition of actuality, the negation of all dreamy
absorption, of all fantastical indetermination; and in this light the
Persian, in distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and
reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike practice, but not
that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights on horseback, and thus
appears in distinction from the Indian hermit seclusion and the quietism
of the Lamas as restless and in constant motion.

——The Family increases in value as it rears a large number of warriors.
Many children were a blessing. The king of Persia gave a premium for all
children over a certain number. Nations were drawn in as nations by war;
hence the immense multitude of a Persian army. Everything——family,
business, possessions——must be regardlessly sacrificed to the one aim of
war. Education, therefore, cultivated an unconditional, all-embracing
obedience to the king, and the slightest inclination to assert an
individual independence was high treason and was punished with death. In
China, on the contrary, duty to the family is paramount to duty to the
state, or rather is itself duty to the state. The civil officer who
mourns the loss of one of his family is released during the period of
mourning from the duties of his function.——

§ 198. The theoretical education, which was limited to reading, writing,
and to instruction, was, in the usages of culture, in the hands of the
Magians, the number of whom was estimated at eighty thousand, and who
themselves had enjoyed the advantages of a careful education, as is
shown by their gradation into Herbeds, Moheds, and Destur-Moheds; i.e.
into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. The very fundamental idea of
their religion was military; it demanded of men to fight on the side of
the king of light, and guard against the prince of darkness and evil. It
gave to him thus the honor of a free position between the world-moving
powers and the possibility of a self-creative destiny, by which means
vigor and chivalrous feeling were developed. Religion trained the
activity of man into actualization on this planet, increasing by its
means the dominion of the good, by purifying the water, by planting
trees, by extirpating troublesome wild beasts. Thus it increased bodily
comfort, and no longer, like the monk, treated this as a mere negative.


II. _Priestly Education._

§ 199. War has in death its force. It produces this, and by its means
decides who shall serve and who obey. But the nation that finds its
activity in war, though it makes death its absolute means, yet finds its
own limit in death. Other nations are only its boundaries, which it can
overpass in fighting with and conquering them. But death itself it can
never escape, whether it come in the sands of the desert——which buried
for Cambyses an army which he sent to the oracle of the Libyan Ammon——or
in the sea, that scorns the rod of the angry despot, or by the sword of
the freeman who guards his household gods. On this account, that people
stands higher that in the midst of life reflects on death, or rather
lives for it. The education of such a nation must be priestly because
death is the means of the transition to the future life, and
consequently equivalent to a new birth, and becomes a religious act.
Neither the family-state, nor the caste-state, nor the monkish nor
military-state, are hierarchies in the sense that the leading of the
national life by a priesthood produces. But in Egypt this was actually
the case, because the chief educational tribunal was the death-court
which concerned only the dead, in awarding to them or denying them the
honor of burial as the result of their whole life, but in its award
affected also the honor of the surviving family.

§ 200. General education here limited itself to imparting the ability
to read, write, and calculate. Special education consisted properly only
in an habitual living into a definite business within the circle of the
Family. In this fruitful and warm land the expense of supporting
children was very small. The division into classes was without the cruel
features of the Indian civilization, and life itself in the narrow Nile
valley was very social, very rich, very full of eating and drinking,
while the familiarity with death heightened the force of enjoyment. In a
stricter sense only, the warriors, the priests, and the kings, had,
properly speaking, an education. The aim of life, which was to determine
in death its eternal future, to secure for itself a passage into the
still kingdom of Amenth, manifested itself externally in the care which
they expended on the preservation of the dead shell of the immortal
soul, and on this account worked itself out in building tombs which
should last for ever. The Chinese builds a wall to secure his
family-state from attack; the Hindoo builds pagodas for his gods; the
Buddhist erects for himself monastic cells; the Persian constructs in
Persepolis the tomb of his kings, where they may retire in the evening
of their lives after they have rioted in Ecbatana, Babylon, and Susa;
but the Egyptian builds his own tomb, and carries on war only to protect
it.


III. _Industrial Education._

§ 201. The system of active education was to find its solution in a
nation which wandered from the coast of the Red Sea to the foot of the
Lebanon mountains on the Mediterranean, and ventured forth upon the sea
which before that time all nations had avoided as a dangerous and
destructive element. The Phœnician was industrial, and needed markets
where he could dispose of the products of his skill. But while he sought
for them he disdained neither force nor deceit; he planted colonies; he
stipulated that he should have in the cities of other nations a portion
for himself; he urged the nations to adopt his pleasures, and insensibly
introduced among them his culture and even his religion. The education
of such a nation must have seemed profane, because it fostered
indifference towards family and one's native land, and made the restless
and passionate activity subservient to gain. The understanding and
usefulness rose to a higher dignity.

§ 202. Of the education of the Phœnicians we know only so much as to
enable us to conclude that it was certainly various and extensive: among
the Carthaginians, at least, that their children were practised in
reading, writing, and arithmetic, in religious duties; secondly, in a
trade; and, finally, in the use of arms, is not improbable. Commerce
became with the Phœnicians a trade, the egotism of which makes men dare
to plough the inhospitable sea, and to penetrate eagerly the horror of
its vast distances, but yet to conceal from other nations their
discoveries and to wrap them in a veil of fable.

——It is a beautiful testimony to the disposition of the Greeks, that
Plato and others assign as a cause of the low state of Arithmetic and
Mathematics among the Phœnicians and Egyptians the want of a free and
disinterested seizing of them.——


THIRD GROUP.

THE SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION.

§ 203. One-sided passivity as well as one-sided activity is subsumed
under Individuality, which makes itself into its own end and aim. The
Phœnician made gain his aim; his activity was of a utilistic character.
Individuality as a pedagogical principle is indeed egotistic in so far
as it endeavors to achieve its own peculiarity, but it is at the same
time noble. It desires not to _have_ but to _be_. Individuality also
begins as natural, but it elevates nature by means of art to ideality.
The solution of beauty is found in culture, since this renounces the
charm of appearance for the knowledge of the True. The æsthetic
individuality is followed by the practical, which has indeed no natural
basis, but proceeds from an artificial basis as a state formed for a
place of refuge. In order internally to create a unity in this, is
framed a definite code of laws; in order externally to assure it, the
invincible warrior is demanded. Education is therefore, more exactly
speaking, juristic and military practice. The morality of the state is
loosened as it reduces into its mechanism one nation after another,
until the individuality, become dæmonic, makes its war-hardened legions
tremble with weakness. We characterize this individuality as dæmonic
because it desires recognition simply for its own sake. Not for its
beauty and culture, not for its knowledge of business and its bravery,
only for its peculiarity as such does it claim value, and in the effort
to secure this it is ready to hazard life itself. In its
naturally-growing existence this individuality is deep, but at the same
time without self-limit. The nations educate themselves to this
individuality when they destroy the world of Roman world——that of
self-limit and balance——which they find.


I. _Æsthetic Education._

§ 204. The system of individual education begins with the
transfiguration of the immediate individuality into beauty. On the side
of nature this system is passion, for individuality is given through
nature; but on the side of spirit it is active, for spirit must
determine itself to restrain its measure as the essence of beauty.

§ 205. Here the individual is of value only in so far as he is
beautiful. At first beauty is apprehended as natural, but then it is
carried over into the realm of spirit, and the Good is posited as
identical with the Beautiful. The ideal of æsthetic education remains
always that there shall be also an external unity of the Good with the
Beautiful, of Spirit with Nature.

——We cannot here give in detail the history of Greek Education. It is
the best known among us, and the literature in which it is worked out is
very widely spread. Among the common abridged accounts we mention here
only the works of Jacobs, of Cramer & Bekker's "Charinomos." We must
content ourselves with mentioning the turning-points which follow from
the nature of the principle.——

§ 206. Culture was in Greece thoroughly national. Education gave to the
individual the consciousness that he was a Greek and no barbarian, a
free man and so subject only to the laws of the state, and not to the
caprice of any one person. Thus the nationality was freed at once from
the abstract unity of the family and from the abstract distinction of
caste, while it appeared with the manifold talents of individuals of
different races. Thus the Dorian race held as essential, gymnastics; the
Æolians, music; the Ionics, poetry. The Æolian individuality was
subsumed in the history of the two others, so that these had to proceed
in their development with an internal antagonism. The education of the
Dorian race was national education in the fullest sense of the word; in
it the education of all was the same, and was open to all, even
including the young women; among the Ionic race it was also in its
content truly national, but in its form it was varied and unlike, and,
for those belonging to various great families, private. The former,
reproducing the Oriental phase of abstract unity, educated all in one
mould; the latter was the nursery of particular individualities.

§ 207. (1) Education in the heroic age, without any systematic
arrangement on the subject, left each one perfectly free. The people
related the histories of the adventures of others, and through their own
gave material to others again to relate stories of them.

——The Greeks began where the last stage of the active system of
education ended——with piracy and the seizure of women. Swimming was a
universal practice among the sea-dwelling Greeks, just as in
England——the mistress of the ocean——rowing is the most prominent
exercise among the young men, and public regattas are held.——

§ 208. (2) In the period of state-culture proper, education developed
itself systematically; and gymnastics, music, and grammatics, or
literary culture, constituted the general pedagogical elements.

§ 209. Gymnastics aimed not alone to render the body strong and agile,
but, far more, to produce in it a noble carriage, a dignified and
graceful manner of appearance. Each one fashioned his body into a
living, divine statue, and in the public games the nation crowned the
victor.

——Their love of beautiful boys is explicable not merely by their
interest in beautiful forms, but especially by their interest in
individuality. The low condition of the women could not lie at the
foundation of it, for among the Spartans they were educated as nearly as
possible like the men, and yet among them and the Cretans the love of
boys was recognized in their legislation. To be without a beloved
(ἀïιτης), or a lover (εἴσπνηλας), was among them considered as
disgraceful as the degradation of the love by unchastity was
contemptible. What charm was there, then, in love? Manifestly only
beauty and culture. But that a person should be attracted by one and not
by another can be accounted for only by the peculiar character, and in
so far the boy-love and the man-friendship which sprang from it, among
the Greeks, are very characteristic and noteworthy phenomena.——

§ 210. It was the task of Music, by its rhythm and measure, to fill the
soul with well-proportioned harmony. So highly did the Greeks prize
music, and so variously did they practise it, that to be a musical man
meant the same with them as to be a cultivated man with us. Education in
this respect was very painstaking, inasmuch as music exercises a very
powerful influence in developing discreet behavior and self-possession
into a graceful naturalness.

——Among the Greeks we find an unrestricted delight in nature——a
listening to her manifestations, the tone of which betrays the
subjectivity of things as subjectivity. In comparison with this tender
sympathy with nature of the Greeks——who heard in the murmur of the
fountains, in the dashing of the waves, in the rustling of the trees,
and in the cry of animals, the voice of divine personality——the sight
and hearing of the Eastern nations for nature is dull.——

§ 211. The stringed instrument, the cithern, was preferred by the Greeks
to all wind instruments because it was not exciting, and allowed the
accompaniment of recitation or song, i.e. the contemporaneous activity
of the spirit in poetry. Flute-playing was first brought from Asia Minor
after the victorious progress of the Persian war, and was especially
cultivated in Thebes. They sought in vain afterwards to oppose the wild
excitement raised by its influence.

§ 212. Grammar comprehended Letters (γράμματα), i.e. the elements of
literary culture, reading and writing. Much attention was given to
correct expression. The Fables of Æsop, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and
later the tragic poets, were read, and partly learned by heart. The
orators borrowed from them often the ornament of their commonplace
remarks.

§ 213. (3) The internal growth of what was peculiar to the Grecian State
came to an end with the war for the Hegemony. Its dissolution began, and
the philosophical period followed the political. The beautiful ethical
life was resolved into thoughts of the True, Good, and Beautiful.
Individuality turned more towards the internal, and undertook to subject
freedom, the existing regulations, laws and customs, to the criticism of
reason as to whether these were in and for themselves universal and
necessary. The Sophists, as teachers of Grammar, Rhetoric, and
Philosophy, undertook to extend the cultivation of Reflection; and this
introduced instability in the place of the immediate fixed state of
moral customs. Among the women, the _Hetæræ_ undertook the same
revolution; in the place of the πότνια μήτηρ appeared the beauty, who
isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in the
perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself to the public
admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often approached wilfulness,
caprice and whimsicality, and opposition to the national moral sense. A
Diogenes in a tub became possible; the soulless but graceful frivolity
of an Alcibiades charmed, even though it was externally condemned; a
Socrates completed the break in consciousness, and urged upon the system
of the old morality the pregnant question, whether Virtue could be
taught? Socrates worked as a philosopher who was to educate. Pythagoras
had imposed upon his pupils the abstraction of a common, exactly-defined
manner of living. Socrates, on the contrary, freed his disciples——in
general, those who had intercourse with him——leading them to the
consciousness of their own individuality. He revolutionized the youth in
that he taught them, instead of a thoughtless obedience to moral
customs, to seek to comprehend their purpose in the world, and to rule
their actions according to it. Outwardly he conformed in politics, and
in war as at Marathon; but in the direction of his teaching he was
subjective and modern.

§ 214. This idea, that Virtue could be taught, was realized especially
by Plato and Aristotle; the former inclining to Dorianism, the latter
holding to the principle of individuality in nearly the modern sense. As
regards the pedagogical means——Gymnastics, Music, and Grammar——both
philosophers entirely agreed. But, in the seizing of the pedagogical
development in general, Plato asserted that the education of the
individual belonged to the state alone, because the individual was to
act wholly in the state. On the other hand, Aristotle also holds that
the state should conduct the education of its citizens, and that the
individual should be trained for the interest of the state; but he
recognizes also the family, and the peculiarity of the individual, as
positive powers, to which the state must accord relative freedom. Plato
sacrificed the family to the state, and must therefore have sacred
marriages, nurseries, and common and public educational institutions.
Each one shall do only that which he is fitted to do, and shall work at
this only for the sake of perfecting it: to what he shall direct his
energies, and in what he shall be instructed, shall be determined by the
government, and the individuality consequently is not left free.
Aristotle also will have for all the citizens the same education, which
shall be common and public; but he allows, at the same time, an
independence to the family and self-determination to the individual, so
that a sphere of private life presents itself within the state: a
difference by means of which a much broader sway of individuality is
possible.

——These two philosophers have come to represent two very different
directions in Pedagogics, which at intervals, in certain stages of
culture, reappear——the tyrannical guardianship of the state which
assumes the work of education, tyrannical to the individual, and the
free development of the liberal state-education, in opposition to
idiosyncrasy and fate.——

§ 215. The principle of æsthetic individuality reaches its highest
manifestation when the individual, in the decay of public life, in the
disappearance of all beautiful morality, isolates himself, and seeks to
gain in his isolation such strength that he can bear the changes of
external history around him with composure——"ataraxy." The Stoics sought
to attain this end by turning their attention inward into pure
internality, and thus, by preserving the self-determination of abstract
thinking and willing, maintaining an identity with themselves: the
Epicureans endeavored to do the same, with this difference however, that
they strove after a positive satisfaction of the senses by filling them
with concrete pleasurable sensations. As a consequence of this, the
Stoics isolated themselves in order to maintain themselves in the
exclusiveness of their internal unconditioned relation to themselves,
while the Epicureans lived in companies, because they achieved the
reality of their pleasure-seeking principle through harmony of feeling
and through the sweetness of friendship. In so far the Epicureans were
Greeks and the Stoics Romans. With both, however, the beauty of
manifestation was secondary to the immobility of the inner feeling. The
plastic attainment of the Good and the Beautiful was cancelled in the
abstraction of thinking and feeling. This was the advent of the Roman
principle among the Greeks.

§ 216. The pedagogical significance of Stoicism and Epicureanism
consists in this, that, after the moral life in public and in private
were sundered from each other, the individual began to educate himself,
through philosophical culture, into stability of character, for which
reason the Roman emperors particularly disliked the Stoics. At many
times, a resignation to the Stoic philosophy was sufficient to make one
suspected. But, at last, the noble emperor, in order to win himself a
hold in the chaos of things, was forced himself to become a Stoic and to
flee to the inaccessible stillness of the self-thinking activity and the
self-moving will. Stoics and Epicureans had both what we call an ideal.
The Stoics used the expression "kingdom"; as Horace says, sarcastically,
"_Sapiens rex est nisi——pituita molesta est_."


II. _Practical Education._

§ 217. The truth of the solution of the beautiful individuality is the
promise of the activity conformable to its purpose [i.e. teleological
activity], which on the one hand considers carefully end and means, and
on the other hand seeks to realize the end through the corresponding
means, and in this deed subjects mere beauty of form. The practical
individuality is therefore externally conditioned, since it is not its
own end like the Beautiful, whether Stoical or Epicurean, but has an
end, and finds its satisfaction not so much in this after it is attained
as in the striving for its attainment.

§ 218. The education of this system begins with very great simplicity.
But after it has attained its object, it abandons itself to using the
results of æsthetic culture as a recreation without any specific object.
What was to the Greeks a real delight in the Beautiful became therefore
with the Romans simply an æsthetic amusement, and as such must finally
be wearisome. The earnestness of individuality made itself in mysticism
into a new aim, which was distinguished from the original one in that it
concealed in itself a mystery and exacted a theoretically æsthetic
practice.

§ 219. (1) The first epoch of Roman education, as properly Roman, was
the juristic-military education of the republic. The end and aim of the
Roman was Rome; and Rome, as from the beginning an eclectic state, could
endure only while its laws and external politics were conformable to
some end. It bore the same contradiction within itself as in its
external attitude. This forced it into robbery, and the plebeians were
related to the patricians in the same way, for they robbed them
gradually of all their privileges. On this account education directed
itself partly to giving a knowledge of the Law, partly to communicating
a capacity for war. The boys were obliged to commit to memory and recite
the laws of the twelve tables, and all the youths were subject to
military service. The Roman possessed no individuality of native growth,
but one mediated through the intermingling of various fugitives, which
developed a very great energy. Hence from the first he was attentive to
himself, he watched jealously over the limits of his rights and the
rights of others, measured his strength, moderated himself, and
constantly guarded himself. In contrast with the careless cheerfulness
of the Greeks, he therefore appears gloomy.

——The Latin tongue is crowded with expressions which paint presence of
mind, effort at reflection, a critical attitude of mind, the importance
of personal control: as _gravitas morum, sui compos esse, sibi constare,
austeritas, vir strenuus, vir probus, vitam honestam gerere, sibimet
ipse imperare_, &c. The Etruscan element imparted to this earnestness an
especially solemn character. The Roman was no more, like the Greek,
unembarrassed at naturalness. He was ashamed of nakedness; _verecundia,
pudor_, were genuinely Roman. _Vitam præferre pudori_ was shameful. On
the contrary, the Greek gave to Greeks a festival in exhibiting the
splendor of his naked body, and the inhabitants of Crotona erected a
statue to Philip only because he was so perfectly beautiful. Simply to
be beautiful, only beautiful, was enough for the Greek. But a Roman, in
order to be recognized, must have done something for Rome: _se bene de
republica mereri_.——

§ 220. In the first education of children the agency of the mother is
especially influential, so that woman with the Romans took generally a
more moral, a higher, and a freer position. It is worthy of remark that
while, as the beautiful, she set the Greeks at variance, among the
Romans, through her ethical authority, she acted as reconciler.

§ 221. The mother of the Roman helped to form his character; the father
undertook the work of instruction. When in his fifteenth year the boy
exchanged the _toga prætextata_ for the _toga virilis_, he was usually
sent to some relative, or to some jurist, as his guardian, to learn
thoroughly, under his guidance, of the laws and of the state; with the
seventeenth began military service. All education was for a long time
entirely a private affair. On account of the necessity of a mechanical
unity in work which war demands, the greatest stress was laid upon
obedience. In its restricted sense education comprised Reading, Writing,
and Arithmetic; the last being, on account of its usefulness, more
esteemed by the Romans than by the Greeks, who gave more time to
Geometry. The schools, very characteristically, were called _Ludi_,
because their work was, in distinction from other practice, regarded
simply as a recreation, as play.

——The Roman recognized with pride this distinction between the Greek and
himself; Cicero's Introduction to his Essay on Oratory expresses it. To
be practical was always the effort of the reflective character of the
Romans, which was always placing new ends and seeking the means for
their attainment; which loved moderation, not to secure beauty thereby,
but respected it as a means for a happy success (_medium tenuere
beati_); which did not possess serene self-limitation, or σωφροσύνη, but
calculation _quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_; but which, in
general, went far beyond the Greeks in persistency of will, in
_constantia animi_. The schools were at first held publicly in shops;
hence the name _trivium_. Very significant for the Roman is the
predicate which he conferred upon theoretical subjects when he called
them _artes bonæ_, _optimæ_, _liberales_, _ingenuæ_, &c., and brought
forth the practical element in them.——

§ 222. (2) But the practical education could no longer keep its ground
after it had become acquainted with the æsthetic. The conquest of
Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, made necessary, in a practical point of
view, the acquisition of the Grecian tongue, so that these lands, so
permeated with Grecian culture, might be thoroughly ruled. The Roman of
family and property, therefore, took into his service Greek nurses and
teachers who should give to his children, from their earliest years,
Greek culture. It is, in the history of education, a great evil when a
nation undertakes to teach a foreign tongue to its youth. Then the
necessity of trade with the Greeks caused the study of Rhetoric, so that
not only in the deliberations of the senate and people, but in law, the
ends might be better attained. Whatever effort the Roman government made
to prevent the invasion of the Greek rhetorician was all in vain. The
Roman youth sought for this knowledge, which was so necessary to them in
foreign lands, e.g. in the flourishing school of rhetoric on the island
of Rhodes. At last, even the study of Philosophy commended itself to the
practical Roman, in order that he might recover for himself confidence
amid the disappointments of life. When his practical life did not bring
him any result, he devoted himself in his poverty to abstract
contemplation. The Greeks would have Philosophy for its own sake; the
ataraxy of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics even, desired the result
of a necessary principle; but the Roman, on the contrary, wished to lift
himself by philosophemes above trouble and misfortune.

——This direction which Philosophy took is noteworthy, not alone in
Cicero and Seneca, but at the fall of the Roman empire, when Boethius
wrote in his prison his immortal work on the consolations of
Philosophy.——

§ 223. The earnestness which sought a definite end degenerated in the
very opposite of activity with him who had no definite aim. The idleness
of the wealthy Roman, who felt himself to be the lord of a limitless
world, devoted itself to dissipation and desire for enjoyment, which, in
its entire want of moderation, abused nature. The finest form of the
extant education was that in _belles-lettres_, which also for the first
time came to belong to the sphere of Pedagogics. There had been a
degeneration of art in India and Greece, and also an artistic trifling.
But in Rome there arose a pursuit of art in order to win a certain
consideration in social position, and to create for one's self a
recreation in the emptiness of a soul satiated with sensual debauchery.
Such a seizing of art is frivolous, for it no longer recognizes its
absoluteness, and subordinates it as a means to subjective egotism.
Literary _salons_ then appear.

——In the introduction to his _Cataline_, Sallust has painted
excellently this complete revolution in the Roman education. The younger
Pliny in his letters furnishes ample material to illustrate to us this
pursuit of _belles-lettres_. In Nero it became idiotic. We should
transgress our prescribed limits did we enter here into particulars. An
analysis would show the perversion of the æsthetic into the practical,
the æsthetic losing thereby its proper nature. But the Roman could not
avoid this perversion, because, according to his original aim, he could
not move except towards the _utile et honestum_.——

§ 224. (3) But this pursuit of fine art, this aimless parade, must at
last weary the Roman. He sought for himself again an object to which he
could vigorously devote himself. His sovereignty was assured, and
conquest as an object could no more charm him. The national religion had
fallen with the destruction of the national individuality. The soul
looked out over its historical life into an empty void. It sought to
establish a relation between itself and the next world by means of
dæmonic forces, and in place of the depreciated nationality and its
religion we find the eclecticism of the mystic society. There were, it
is true, in national religions certain secret signs, rites, words, and
meanings; but now, for the first time in the history of the world, there
appeared mysteries as pedagogical societies, which concerned themselves
only with private things and were indifferent to nationality. Everything
was profaned by the roughness of violence. Man believed no longer in the
old gods, and the superstitious faith in ghosts became only a thing fit
to frighten children with. Thus man took refuge in secrecy, which had
for his satiety a piquant charm.

§ 225. The education of the mysteries was twofold, theoretical and
practical. In the theoretical we find a regular gradation of symbols and
symbolical acts through which one seemed gradually to attain to the
revelation of the secret; the practical contained a regular gradation of
ascetic actions alternating with an abandonment to wild orgies. Both
raised one from the rank of the novice to that of the initiated. In the
higher orders they formed an ethical code of laws, and this form
Pedagogics has retained in all such secret culture, _mutatis mutandis_,
down to the Illuminati.

——In the Roman empire, its Persian element was the worship of Mithras;
its Egyptian, that of Isis; its Grecian, the Pythagorean doctrines. All
these three, however, were much mingled with each other. The Roman
legions, who really no longer had any native country, bore these
artificial religions throughout the whole world. The confusion of
excitement led often to Somnambulism, which was not yet understood, and
to belief in miracles. Apollonius of Tyana, the messiah of Ethnicism, is
the principal figure in this group; and, in comparison with him,
Jamblichus appears only as an enthusiast and Alexander of Abonoteichos
as an impostor.——


III. _Abstract Individual Education._

§ 226. What the despair of the declining nations sought for in these
mysteries was Individuality, which in its singularity is conscious of
the universality of the rational spirit, as its own essence. This
individuality existed more immediately in the Germanic race, which
nevertheless, on account of its nature, formed first in Christianity its
true actualization. It can be here only pointed out that they most
thoroughly, in opposition to nature, to men, and to the gods, felt
themselves to be independent; as Tacitus says, "_Securi adversus
homines, securi adversus Deos_." This individuality, which had only
itself for an end, must necessarily be destroyed, and was saved only by
Christianity, which overcame and enlightened its dæmonic and defiant
spirit. We cannot speak here of a system of Education. Respect for
personality, the free acknowledgment of the claims of woman, the loyalty
to the leader chosen by themselves, loyalty to their friends (the idea
of fellowship),——these features should all be well-noted, because from
them arose the feudalism of the middle ages. What Cæsar and Tacitus tell
us of the education of the Germans expresses only the emancipation of
individuality, which in its immediate crudeness had no other form in
which to manifest itself than wars of conquest.

——To the Roman there was something dæmonic in the German. He perceived
dimly in him his future, his master. When the Romans were to meet the
Cimbri and Teutons in the field, their commander had first to accustom
them for a whole day to the fearful sight of the wild, giant-like
forms.——


SECOND DIVISION.

THE SYSTEM OF THEOCRATIC EDUCATION.

§ 227. The system of National Education founded its first stage on the
substantial basis of the family-spirit; its second stage on the division
of the nation by means of division of labor which it makes permanent in
castes; its third stage presents the free opposition of the laity and
clergy; in its next phase it makes war, immortality, and trade, by
turns, its end; thirdly, it posits beauty, patriotic youth, and the
immediateness of individuality, as the essence of mankind, and at last
dissolves the unity of nationality in the consciousness that all nations
are really one since they are all human beings. In the intermixture of
races in the Roman world arises the conception of the human race, the
_genus humanum_. Education had become eclectic: the Roman legions
levelled the national distinctions. In the wavering of all objective
morality, the necessity of self-education in order to the formation of
character appeared ever more and more clearly; but the conception, which
lay at the foundation, was always, nevertheless, that of Roman, Greek,
or German education. But in the midst of these nations another system
had striven for development, and this did not base itself on the natural
connection of nationality, but made this, for the first time, only a
secondary thing, and made the direct relation of man to God its chief
idea. In this system God himself is the teacher. He manifests to man His
will as law, to which he must unconditionally conform for no other
reason than that He is the Lord, and man His servant, who can have no
other will than His. The obedience of man is therefore, in this system,
abstract until through experience he gradually attains to the knowledge
that the will of God has in it the very essence of his own will.
Descent, Talent, Events, Work, Beauty, Courage,——all these are
indifferent things compared with the subjection of the human to the
divine will. To be well-pleasing to God is almost the same as belief in
Him. Without this identity, what is natural in national descent is of no
value. According to its form of manifestation, Judaism is below the
Greek spirit. It is not beautiful, but rather grotesque. But in its
essence, as the religion of the contradiction between the idea and its
existence, it goes beyond nature, which it perceives to be established
by an absolute, conscious, and reasonable Will; while the Greek
concealed from himself only mythically his dependence on nature, on his
mother-earth. The Jews have been preserved in the midst of all other
culture by the elastic power of the thought of God as One who was free
from the control of nature. The Jews have a patriotism in common with
the Romans. The Maccabees, for example, were not inferior to the Romans
in greatness.

——Abraham is the genuine Jew because he is the genuinely faithful man.
He does not hesitate to obey the horrible and inhuman command of his
God. Circumcision was made the token of the national unity, but the
nation may assimilate members to itself from other nations through this
rite. The condition always lies in belief in a spiritual relation to
which the relation of nationality is secondary. The Jewish nation makes
proselytes, and these are widely different from the _Socii_ of the
Romans or the _Metoeci_ of the Athenians.——

§ 228. To the man who knows Nature to be the work of a single,
incomparable, rational Creator, she loses independence. He is negatively
freed from her control, and sees in her only an absolute means. As
opposed to the fanciful sensuous intuitions of Ethnicism, this seems to
be a backward step, but for the emancipation of man it is a progress. He
no longer fears Nature but her Lord, and admires Him so much that prose
rises to the dignity of poetry in his telological contemplation. Since
man stands over and beyond nature, education is directed to morality as
such, and spreads itself out in innumerable limitations, by means of
which the distinction of man from nature is expressly asserted as a
difference. The ceremonial law appears often arbitrary, but in its
prescriptions it gives man the satisfaction of placing himself as will
in relation to will. For example, if he is forbidden to eat any
specified part of an animal, the ground of this command is not merely
natural——it is the will of the Deity. Man learns therefore, in his
obedience to such directions, to free himself from his self-will, from
his natural desires. This exact outward conformity to subjectivity is
the beginning of wisdom, the purification of the will from all
individual egotism.

——The rational substance of the Law is found always in the Decalogue.
Many of our modern much-admired authors exhibit a superficiality
bordering on shallowness when they comment alone on the absurdity of the
miracles, and abstract from the profound depth of the moral struggle,
and from the practical rationality of the ten commandments.——

§ 229. Education in this theocratical system is on one side patriarchal.
The Family is very prominent, because it is considered to be a great
happiness for the individual to belong from his very earliest life to
the company of those who believe in the true God. On its other side it
is hierarchical, as its ceremonial law develops a special office, which
is to see that obedience is paid to its multifarious regulations. And,
because these are often perfectly arbitrary, Education must, above all,
practise the memory in learning them all, so that they may always be
remembered. The Jewish monotheism shares this necessity with the
superstition of ethnicism.

§ 230. But the technique proper of the mechanism is not the most
important pedagogical element of the theocracy. We find this in its
historical significance, since its history throughout has a pedagogical
character. For the people of God show us always, in their changing
intercourse with their God, a progress from the external to the
internal, from the lower to the higher, from the past to the future. Its
history, therefore, abounds in situations very interesting in a
pedagogical point of view, and in characters which are eternal models.

§ 231. (1) The will of God as the absolute authority is at first to
them, as law, external. But soon God adds to the command to obedience,
on one hand, the inducement of a promise of material prosperity, and on
the other hand the threat of material punishment. The fulfilment of the
law is also encouraged by reflection on the profit which it brings. But,
since these motives are all external, they rise finally into the insight
that the law is to be fulfilled, not on their account, but because it is
the will of the Lord; not alone because it is conducive to our
happiness, but also because it is in itself holy, and written in our
hearts: in other words, man proceeds from the abstract legality, through
the reflection of eudæmonism, to the internality of moral sentiment——the
course of all education.

——This last stand-point is especially represented in the excellent
Gnomic of Jesus Sirach——a book so rich in pedagogical insight, which
paints with master-strokes the relations of husband and wife, parents
and children, master and servants, friend and friend, enemy and enemy,
and the dignity of labor as well as the necessity of its division. This
priceless book forms a side-piece from the theocratic stand-point to the
_Republic_ of Plato and his laws on ethical government.——

§ 232. (2) The progress from the lower to the higher appeared in the
conquering of the natural individuality. Man, as the servant of Jehovah,
must have no will of his own; but selfish naturalness arrayed itself so
much the more vigorously against the abstract "Thou shalt," allowed
itself to descend into an abstraction from the Law, and often reached
the most unbridled extravagance. But since the Law in inexorable might
always remained the same, always persistent, in distinction from the
inequalities of the deed of man, it forced him to come back to it, and
to conform himself to its demands. Thus he learned criticism, thus he
rose from naturalness into spirit. This progress is at the same time a
progress from necessity to freedom, because criticism always gradually
opens a way for man into insight, so that he finds the will of God to be
the truth of his own self-determination. Because God is one and
absolute, there arises the expectation that His Will will become the
basis for the will of all nations and men. The criticism of the
understanding must recognize a contradiction in the fact that the will
of the true God is the law of only one nation; feared by other nations,
moreover, by reason of their very worship of God as a gloomy mystery,
and detested as _odium generis humani_. And thus is developed the
thought that the isolation of the believers will come to an end as soon
as the other nations recognize their faith as the true one, and are
received into it. Thus here, out of the deepest penetration of the soul
into itself, as among the Romans out of the fusion of nations, we see
appear the idea of the human race.

§ 233. (3) The progress from the past to the future unfolded the ideal
servant of God who fulfils all the Law, and so blots out the empirical
contradiction that the "Thou shalt" of the Law attains no adequate
actuality. This Prince of Peace, who shall gather all nations under his
banner, can therefore have no other thing predicated of him than
Holiness. He is not beautiful as the Greeks represented their ideal, not
brave and practical as was the venerated _Virtus_ of the Romans; he does
not place an infinite value on his individuality as the German does: but
he is represented as insignificant in appearance, as patient, as humble,
as he who, in order to reconcile the world, takes upon himself the
infirmities and disgrace of all others. The ethnical nations have only a
lost Paradise behind them; the Jews have one also before them. From this
belief in the Messiah who is to come, from the certainty which they have
of conquering with him, from the power of esteeming all things of small
importance in view of such a future, springs the indestructible nature
of the Jews. They ignore the fact that Christianity is the necessary
result of their own history. As the nation that is to be (_des
Seinsollens_), they are merely a historical nation, the nation among
nations, whose education——whenever the Jew has not changed and corrupted
its nature through modern culture——is still always patriarchal,
hierarchal, and mnemonic.


THIRD DIVISION.

THE SYSTEM OF HUMANITARIAN EDUCATION

§ 234. The systems of national and theocratic education came to the
same result, though by different ways, and this result is the conception
of a human race in the unity of which the distinctions of different
nations find their Truth. But with them this result is only a
conception, being a thing external to their actuality. They arrive at
the painting of an ideal of the way in which the Messiah shall come. But
these ideals exist only in the mind, and the actual condition of the
people sometimes does not correspond to them at all, and sometimes only
very relatively. The idea of spirit had in these presuppositions the
possibility of its concrete actualization; one individual man must
become conscious of the universality and necessity of the will as being
the very essence of his own freedom, so that all heteronomy should be
cancelled in the autonomy of spirit. Natural individuality appearing as
national determinateness was still acknowledged, but was deprived of its
abstract isolation. The divine authority of the truth of the individual
will is to be recognized, but at the same time freed from its
estrangement towards itself. While Christ was a Jew and obedient to the
divine Law, he knew himself as the universal man who determines himself
to his own destiny; and while only distinguishing God, as subject, from
himself, yet holds fast to the unity of man and God. The system of
humanitarian education began to unfold from this principle, which no
longer accords the highest place to the natural unity of national
individuality, nor to the abstract obedience of the command of God, but
to that freedom of the soul which knows itself to be absolute necessity.
Christ is not a mere ideal of the thought, but is known as a living
member of actual history, whose life, sufferings and death for freedom
form the security as to its absolute justification and truth. The
æsthetic, philosophical, and political ideal are all found in the
universal nature of the Christian ideal, on which account no one of them
appears one-sided in the life of Christ. The principle of Human Freedom
excludes neither art, nor science, nor political feeling.

§ 235. In its conception of man the humanitarian education includes both
the national divisions and the subjection of all men to the divine law,
but it will no longer endure that one should grow into an isolating
exclusiveness, and another into a despotism which includes in it
somewhat of the accidental. But this principle of humanity and human
nature took root so slowly that its presuppositions were repeated within
itself and were really conquered in this reproduction. These stages of
culture were the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant churches, and
education was metamorphosed to suit the formation of each of these.

——For the sake of brevity we would wish to close with these general
definitions; the unfolding of their details is intimately bound up with
the history of politics and of civilization. We shall be contented if we
give correctly the general whole.——

§ 236. Within education we can distinguish three epochs: the monkish,
the chivalric, and that education which is to fit one for civil life.
Each of these endeavored to express all that belonged to humanity as
such; but it was only after the recognition of the moral nature of the
Family, of Labor, of Culture, and of the conscious equal title of all
men to their rights, that this became really possible.


I. _The Epoch of Monkish Education._

§ 237. The Greek Church seized the Christian principle still abstractly
as deliverance from the world, and therefore, in the education
proceeding from it, it arrived only at the negative form, positing the
universality of the individual man as the renunciation of self. In the
dogmatism of its teaching, as well as in the ascetic severity of its
practical conduct, it was a reproduction of the theocratic principle.
But when this had assumed the form of national centralization, the Greek
Church dispensed with this, and, as far as regards its form, it returned
again to the quietism of the Orient.

§ 238. The monkish education is in general identical in all religions,
in that, through the egotism of its way of living and the stoicism of
its way of thinking, through the separation of its external existence
and the mechanism of a thoughtless subjection to a general rule as well
as to the special command of superiors, it fosters a spiritual and
bodily dulness. The Christian monachism, therefore, as the fulfilment of
monachism in general, is at the same time its absolute dissolution,
because, in its merely abstracting itself from the world instead of
affirmatively conquering it, it contradicts the very principle of
Christianity.

§ 239. We must notice as the fundamental error of this whole system,
that it does not in free individuality seek to produce the ideal of
divine-humanity, but to copy in external reproduction its historical
manifestation. Each human being must individually offer up as sacrifice
his own individuality. Each biography has its Bethlehem, its Tabor, and
its Golgotha.

§ 240. Monachism looks upon freedom from one's self and from the world
which Christianity demands only as an abstract renunciation of self,
which it seeks to compass, like Buddhism, by the vow of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, which must be taken by each individual for all
time.

——This rejection of property, of marriage, and of self-will, is at the
same time the negation of work, of the family, and of responsibility for
one's actions. In order to avoid the danger of avarice and covetousness,
of sensuality and of nepotism, of error and of guilt, monachism seizes
the convenient way of abstract severance from all the objective world
without being able fully to carry out this negation. Monkish Pedagogics
must, in consequence, be very particular about an external separation of
their disciples from the world, so as to make the work of abstraction
from the world easier and more decided. It therefore builds cloisters in
the solitude of deserts, in the depth of forests, on the summits of
mountains, and surrounds them with high walls having no apertures; and
then, so as to carry the isolation of the individual to its farthest
possible extreme it constructs, within these cloisters, cells, in
imitation of the ancient hermits——a seclusion the immediate consequence
of which is the most limitless and most paltry curiosity.——

§ 241. Theoretically the monkish Pedagogics seeks, by means of the
greatest possible silence, to place the soul in a state of spiritual
immobility, which at last, through the want of all variety of thought,
goes over into entire apathy, and antipathy towards all intellectual
culture. The principal feature of the practical culture consists in the
misapprehension that one should ignore Nature, instead of morally
freeing himself from her control. As she, again and again asserts
herself, the monkish discipline proceeds to misuse her, and strives
through fasting, through sleeplessness, through voluntary self-inflicted
pain and martyrdom, not only to subdue the wantonness of the flesh, but
to destroy the love of life till it shall become a positive loathing of
existence. In and for itself the object of the monkish vow——property,
the family, and will——is not immoral. The vow is, on this account, very
easy to violate. In order to prevent all temptation to this, monkish
Pedagogics invents a system of supervision, partly open, partly secret,
which deprives one of all freedom of action, all freshness of thinking
and of willing, and all poetry of feeling, by means of the perpetual
shadow of spies and informers. The monks are well versed in all
police-arts, and the regular succession of the hierarchy spurs them on
always to distinguish themselves in them.

§ 242. The gloomy breath of this education penetrated all the relations
of the Byzantine State. Even the education of the emperor was infected
by it; and in the strife for freedom waged by the modern Greeks against
the Turks, the _Igumeni_ of the cloisters were the real leaders of the
insurrection. The independence of individuality, as opposed to monkish
abstraction, more or less degenerates into the crude form of soldier and
pirate life. And thus it happened that this principle was not left to
appear merely as an exception, but to be built up positively into
humanity; and this the German world, under the guidance of the Roman
Church, undertook to accomplish.


II. _The Epoch of Chivalric Education._

§ 243. The Romish Church negated the abstract substantiality of the
Greeks through the practical aim which she in her sanctity in works
founded, and by means of which she raised up German individuality to the
idealism of chivalry, i.e. a free military service in behalf of
Christendom.

§ 244. It is evident that the system of monkish education was taken up
into this epoch as one of its elements, being modified to conform to it:
e.g. the Benedictines were accustomed to labor in agriculture and in the
transcribing of books, and this contradicted the idea of monachism,
since that in and for itself tends to an absolute forgetfulness of the
world and a perfect absence of all activity in the individual. The
begging orders were public preachers, and made popular the idea of love
and unselfish devotion to others. They labored toward self-education,
especially by means of the ideal of the life of Christ; e.g. in Tauler's
classical book on the Imitation of Jesus, and in the work of
Thomas-à-Kempis which resembles it. Through a fixed contemplative
communion with the conception of the Christ who suffered and died for
Love, they sought to find content in divine rest and self-abandonment.

§ 245. German chivalry sprang from Feudalism. The education of those
pledged to military duty had become confined to practice in the use of
arms. The education of the chivalric vassals pursued the same course,
refining it gradually through the influence of court society and through
poetry, which devoted itself either to the relating of graceful tales
which were really works of art, or to the glorification of woman. Girls
were brought up without especial care. The boy until he was seven years
old remained in the hands of women; then he became a lad (a young
gentleman), and learned the manner of offensive and defensive warfare,
on foot and on horseback; between his sixteenth and eighteenth year,
through a formal ceremony (the laying on of the sword), he was duly
authorized to bear arms. But whatever besides this he might wish to
learn was left to his own caprice.

§ 246. In contradistinction to the monkish education, Chivalry placed an
infinite value on individuality, and this it expressed in its extreme
sensibility to the feeling of honor. Education, on this account,
endeavored to foster this reflection of the self upon itself by means of
the social isolation in which it placed knighthood. The knight did not
delight himself with common possessions, but he sought for him who had
been wronged, since with him he could find enjoyment as a conqueror. He
did not live in simple marriage, but strove for the piquant pleasure of
making the wife of another the lady of his heart, and this often led to
moral and physical infidelity. And, finally, the knight did not obey
alone the general laws of knightly honor, but he strove, besides, to
discover for himself strange things, which he should undertake with his
sword, in defiance of all criticism, simply because it pleased his
caprice so to do. He _sought adventures_.

§ 247. The reaction against the innumerable number of fantastic
extravagancies arising from chivalry was the idea of the spiritual
chivalry which was to unite the cloister and the town, abstract
self-denial and military life, separation from the world and the
sovereignty of the world——an undeniable advance, but an untenable
synthesis which could not prevent the dissolution of chivalry——this
chivalry, which, as the rule of the stronger, induced for a long time
the destruction of all regular culture founded on principles, and
brought a period of absence of all education. In this perversion of
chivalry to a grand vagabondism, and even to robbery, noble souls often
rushed into ridiculous excesses. This decline of chivalry found its
truth in Citizenship, whose education, however, did not, like the
πόλις and the _civitas_ of the ancients, limit itself to itself, but,
through the presence of the principle of Christianity, accepted the
whole circle of humanity as the aim of its culture.


III. _The Epoch of Education fitting one for Civil Life._

§ 248. The idea of the State had gradually worked itself up to a higher
plane with trade and industry, and found in Protestantism its spiritual
confirmation. Protestantism, as the self assurance of the individual
that he was directly related to God without any dependence on the
mediation of any man, rose to the truth in the autonomy of the soul, and
began out of the abstract phantasmagoria of monachism and chivalry to
develope Christianity, as the principle of humanitarian education, into
concrete actuality. The cities were not merely, in comparison with the
clergy and the nobility, the "third estate"; but the citizen who himself
managed his commonwealth, and defended its interests with arms,
developed into the citizen of a state which absorbed the clergy and
nobility, and the state-citizen found his ultimate ideal in pure
Humanity as cognized through reason.

§ 249. The phases of this development are (1) Civil education as such,
in which we find chivalric education metamorphosed into the so-called
noble, both however being controlled as to education, within Catholicism
by Jesuitism, within Protestantism by Pietism. (2) Against this tendency
to the church, we find reacting on the one hand the devotion to a study
of antiquity, and on the other the friendly alliance to immediate
actuality, i.e. with Nature. We can name these periods of Pedagogics
those of its ideals of culture. (3) But the truth of all culture must
forever remain moral freedom. After Education had arrived at a knowledge
of the meaning of Idealism and Realism, it must seize as its absolute
aim the moral emancipation of man into Humanity; and it must conform its
culture by this aim, since technical dexterity, friendly adroitness,
proficiency in the arts, and scientific insight, can attain to their
proper rank only through moral purity.


_1. Civil Education as such._

§ 250. The one-sidedness of monkish and chivalric education was
cancelled by civil education inasmuch as it destroyed the celibacy of
the monk and the estrangement of the knight from his family, doing this
by means of the inner life of the family; for it substituted, in the
place of the negative emptiness of the duty of holiness of the celibate,
the positive morality of marriage and the family; while, instead of the
abstract poverty and the idleness of the monkish piety and of
knighthood, it asserted that property was the object of labor, i.e. it
asserted the self-governed morality of civil society and of commerce;
and, finally, instead of the servitude of the conscience in
unquestioning obedience to the command of others, and instead of the
freakish self-sufficiency of the caprice of the knights, it demanded
obedience to the laws of the commonwealth as representing his own
self-conscious, actualized, practical Reason, in which laws the
individual can recognize and acknowledge himself.

——As this civil education left free the sensuous enjoyment, freedom in
this was without bounds for a time, until, after men became accustomed
to labor and to their freedom of action, the possibility of enjoyment
created from within outward a moderation which sumptuary laws and
prohibitions of gluttony, drunkenness, &c., could never create from the
external side. What the monk inconsistently enjoyed with a bad
conscience, the citizen and the clergyman could take possession of as a
gift of God. After the first millennium of Christianity, when the earth
had not, according to the current prophecies, been destroyed, and after
the great plague in the fourteenth century, there was felt an immense
pleasure in living, which manifested itself externally in the fifteenth
century in delicate wines, dainty food, great eating of meat, drinking
of beer, and, in the domain of dress, in peaked shoes, plumes, golden
chains, bells, &c. There was much venison, but, as yet, no potatoes, tea
and coffee, &c. The feeling of men was quarrelsome. For a more exact
painting of the Education of this time, very valuable authors are
Sebastian Brant, Th. Murner, Ulrich von Hutten, Fischart, and Hans
Sachs. Gervinus is almost the only one who has understood how to make
this material useful in its relation to spirit.——

§ 251. In contrast with the heaven-seeking of the monks and the
sentimental love-making of the knight, civil education established, as
its principle, Usefulness, which traced out in things their conformity
to a proposed end in order to gain as great a mastery over them as
possible. The understanding was trained with all exactness that it might
clearly seize all the circumstances. But since family-life did not allow
the egotism of the individual ever to become as great as was the case
with the monk and the knight, and since the cheer of a sensuous
enjoyment in cellar and kitchen, in clothing and furniture, in common
games and in picturesque parades, penetrated the whole being with soft
pleasure, there was developed with all propriety and sobriety a
house-morality, and, with all the prose of labor, a warm and kindly
disposition, which left room for innocent merriment and roguery, and
found, in conformity to religious services, its serious transfiguration.
Beautiful burgher-state, thou wast weakened by the thirty years' war,
and hast been only accidentally preserved sporadically in Old England
and in some places in Germany, only to be at last swept away by the
flood of modern world-pain, political sophistry, and anxiety for the
future!

§ 252. The citizen paid special attention to public education,
heretofore wholly dependent upon the church and the cloister; he
organized city schools, whose teachers, it is true, for a long time
compassed only accidental culture, and were often employed only for
tumultuous and short terms. The society of the brotherhood of the
Hieronymites introduced a better system of instruction before the close
of the fourteenth century, but education had often to be obtained from
the so-called travelling scholars (_vagantes_, _bacchantes_,
_scholastici_, _goliardi_). The teachers of the so-called _scholæ
exteriores_, in distinction from the schools of the cathedral and
cloister, were called now _locati_, then _stampuales_——in German,
_Kinder-Meister_. The institution of German schools soon followed the
Latin city schools. In order to remove the anarchy in school matters,
the citizens aided the rise of universities by donations and
well-invested funds, and sustained the street-singing of the city
scholars (_currende_), an institution which was well-meant, but which
often failed of its end because on the one hand it was often misused as
a mere means of subsistence, and on the other hand the sense of honor of
those to whom it was devoted not unfrequently became, through their
manner of living, lowered to humiliation. The defect of the monkish
method of instruction became ever more apparent, e.g. the silly tricks
of their mnemotechnique, the utter lack of anything which deserved the
name of any practical knowledge, &c. The necessity of instruction in the
use of arms led to democratic forms. Printing favored the same. Men
began to concern themselves about good text-books. Melanchthon was the
hero of the Protestant world, and as a pattern was beyond his time. His
Dialectics, Rhetoric, Physics, and Ethics, were reprinted innumerable
times, commented upon, and imitated. After him Amos Comenius, in the
seventeenth century, had the greatest influence through his _Didactica
Magna_ and his _Janua Reserta_. In a narrower sphere, treating of the
foundation of Gymnasial Philology, the most noticeable is Sturm of
Strasburg. The universities in Catholic countries limited themselves to
the Scholastic Philosophy and Theology, together with which we find
slowly struggling up the Roman Law and the system of Medicine from
Bologna and Salerno. But Protestantism first raised the university to
any real universality. Tübingen, Königsberg, Wittenberg, Jena, Leipzic,
Halle, Göttingen, &c., were the first schools for the study of all
sciences, and for their free and productive pursuit.

§ 253. The Commons, which at first appeared with the clergy and the
nobility as the Third Estate, formed an alliance with monarchy, and both
together produced a transformation of the chivalric education.
Absolutism reduced the knights to mere nobles, to whom it truly conceded
the prerogative of appointment as spiritual prelates as well as officers
and counsellors of state, but only on the condition of the most complete
submission; and then, to satisfy them, it invented the artificial
drinking festivals, of a splendid life at court, and a
temptingly-impressive sovereignty of beauty. In this condition, the
education of the nobles was essentially changed in so far as to cease to
be alone military. To the art of war, which moreover was made so very
much milder by the invention of fire-arms, must be now added an activity
of the mind which could no longer dispense with some knowledge of
History, Heraldry, Genealogy, Literature, and Mythology. Since the
French nation soon enough gave tone to the style of conversation, and
after the time of Louis XIV. controlled the politics of the continent,
the French language, as conventional and diplomatic, became a constant
element in the education of the nobility in all the other countries of
Europe.

——Practically the education of the noble endeavored to make the
individual quite independent, so that he should, by means of the
important quality of an advantageous personal appearance and the
prudence of his agreeable behavior, make himself into a ruler of all
other men, capable of enjoying his own position, i.e. he should copy in
miniature the manners of an absolute sovereign. To this was added an
empirical knowledge of men by means of ethical maxims, so that they
might discover the weak side of every man, and so be able to outwit him.
_Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur._ According to this, every man had
his price. They did not believe in the Nemesis of a divine destiny; on
the contrary, disbelief in the higher justice was taught. One must be so
elastic as to suit himself to all situations, and, as a caricature of
the ancient ataraxy, he must acquire as a second nature a manner
perfectly indifferent to all changes, the impassibility of an
aristocratic repose, the amphibious _sang-froid_ of the "gentleman." The
man in the world as the man of the world sought his ideal in endless
dissimulation, and in this, as the flowering of his culture, he took the
highest interest. Intrigue, in love as well as in politics, was the soul
of the nobleman's existence.——

——They endeavored to complete the refinement of manners by sending the
young man away with a travelling tutor. This was very good, but
degenerated at last into the mechanism of the foolish travelling of the
tourist. The noble was made a foreigner, a stranger to his own country,
by means of his abode at Paris or Venice, while the citizen gradually
outstripped him in genuine culture.——

§ 254. The education of the citizen as well as that of the noble was
taken possession of, in Catholic countries by the Jesuits, in Protestant
countries by the Pietists: by the first, with a military strictness; by
the second, in a social and effeminate form. Both, however, agreed in
destroying individuality, inasmuch as the one degraded man into a
will-less machine for executing the commands of others, and the other
deadened him in cultivating the feeling of his sinful worthlessness.


(_a_) _Jesuitic Education._

§ 255. Jesuitism combined the maximum of worldly freedom with an
appearance of the greatest piety. Proceeding from this stand-point, it
devoted itself in education to elegance and showy knowledge, to
diplomacy and what was suitable and convenient in morals. To bring the
future more into its power, it adapted itself not only to youth in
general, but especially to the youth of the nobler classes. To please
these, the Jesuits laid great stress upon a fine deportment. In their
colleges dancing and fencing were well-taught. They knew how well they
should by this course content the noble, who had by preference usurped
the name of Education for this technical way of giving formal expression
to personality.

——In instruction they developed so exact a mechanism that they gained
the reputation of having model school regulations, and even Protestants
sent their children to them. From the close of the sixteenth century to
the present time they have based their teaching upon the _ratio et
institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu_ of Claudius Aquaviva, and,
following that, they distinguish two courses of teaching, a higher and a
lower. The lower included nothing but an external knowledge of the Latin
language, and some fortuitous knowledge of History, of Antiquities, and
of Mythology. The memory was cultivated as a means of keeping down free
activity of thought and clearness of judgment. The higher course
comprehended Dialectics, Rhetoric, Physics, and Morals. Dialectics
appeared in the form of Sophistry. In Rhetoric, they favored the
polemical-emphatic style of the African fathers of the Church and their
pompous phraseology; in Physics, they stopped with Aristotle, and
especially advised the reading of the books _De Generatione et
Corruptione_, and _De Coelo_, on which they commented after their
fashion; finally, in Morals casuistic skepticism was their central
point. They made much of Rhetoric on account of their sermons, giving to
it much attention, and introduced especially Declamation. Contriving
showy public examinations under the guise of Latin School Comedies, they
thus amused the public, disposed them to approval, and at the same time
quite innocently practised the pupil in dissimulation.——

——Diplomacy in behavior was made necessary to the Jesuits as well by
their strict military discipline as by their system of reciprocal
mistrust, espionage, and informing. Abstract obedience was a reason for
any act of the pupils, and they were freed from all responsibility as to
its moral justification. This empirical exact following out of all
commands, and refraining from any criticism as to principles, created a
moral indifference, and, from the necessity of having consideration for
the peculiarities and caprices of the superior on whom all others were
dependent, arose eye-service, and the coldness of isolation sprang from
the necessity which each felt of being on his guard against every other
as against a tale-bearer. The most deliberate hypocrisy and pleasure in
intrigue merely for the sake of intrigue——this most refined poison of
moral corruption——were the result. Jesuitism had not only an interest in
the material profit, which, when it had corrupted souls, fell to its
share, but it also had an interest in the process of corruption. With
absolute indifference as to the idea of morality, and absolute
indifference as to the moral quality of the means used to attain its
end, it rejoiced in the superiority of secrecy, of the accomplished and
calculating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by means of
its graceful, seemingly-perfect, moral language.——

——It is not necessary to speak here of the morality of the Order. It is
sufficiently recognized as the contradiction, that the idea of morality
insists upon the eternal necessity of every deed, but that in the
realizing of the action all determinations should be made relative and
should vary with the circumstances. As to discipline, they were always
guided by their fundamental principle, that body and soul, as in and for
themselves one, could vicariously suffer for each other. Thus penitence
and contrition were transformed into a perfect materialism of outward
actions, and hence arose the punishments of the Order, in which fasting,
scourging, imprisonment, mortification, and death, were formed into a
mechanical artificial system.——


(_b_) _Pietistic Education._

§ 256. Jesuitism would make machines of man, Pietism would dissolve
him in the feeling of his sinfulness: either would destroy his
individuality. Pietism proceeded from the principle of Protestantism,
as, in the place of the Catholic Pelagianism with its sanctification by
works, it offered justication by faith alone. In its tendency to
internality was its just claim. It would have even the letters of the
Bible translated into the vivacity of sentiment. But in its execution it
fell into the error of one-sidedness in that it placed, instead of the
actuality of the spirit and its freedom, the confusion of a limited
personality, placing in its stead the personality of Christ in an
external manner, and thus brought back into the very midst of
Protestantism the principle of monachism——an abstract renunciation of
the world. Since Protestantism has destroyed the idea of the cloister,
it could produce estrangement from the world only by exciting public
opinion against such elements of society and culture which it
stigmatized as _worldly_ for its members, e.g. card-playing, dancing,
the theatre, &c. Thus it became negatively dependent upon works; for
since its followers remained in reciprocal action with the world, so
that the temptation to backsliding was a permanent one, it must watch
over them, exercise an indispensable moral-police control over them, and
thus, by the suspicion of each other which was involved, take up into
itself the Jesuitical practice, although in a very mild and affectionate
way. Instead of the forbidden secrecy of the cloister, it organized a
separate company, which we, in its regularly constituted assembly, call
a conventicle. Instead of the cowl, it put on its youth a dress like
that of the world, but scant and ashen-colored; it substituted for the
tonsure closely-cut hair and shaven beard, and it often went beyond the
obedience of the monks in its expression of pining humility and prudish
composure. Education within such a circle could not well recognize
nature and history as manifestations of God, but it must consider them
to be limitations to their union with God, from which death can first
then completely release them. The soul which knew that its home could be
found only in the future world, must feel itself to be a stranger upon
the earth, and from such an opinion there must arise an indifference and
even a contempt for science and art, as well as an aversion for a life
of active labor, though an unwilling and forced tribute might be paid to
it. Philosophy especially was to be shunned as dangerous. Bible
lectures, the catechism and the hymn-book, were the one thing needful to
the "poor in spirit." Religious poetry and music were, of all the arts,
the only ones deserving of any cultivation. The education of Pietism
endeavored, by means of a carefully arranged series of representations,
to create in its disciples the feeling of their absolute nothingness,
vileness, godlessness, and abandonment by God, in order to displace the
torment of despair as to themselves and the world by a warm, dramatic,
and living relation to Christ——a relation in which all the Eroticism of
the mystical passion of the begging-friars was renewed in a somewhat
milder form and with a strong tendency to a sentimental sweetishness.


_2. The Ideal of Culture._

§ 257. Civil Education arose from the recognition of marriage and the
family, of labor and enjoyment, of the equality of all before the Law,
and of the duty of self-determination. Jesuitism in the Catholic world
and Pietism in the Protestant were the reaction against this
recognition——a return into the abstract asceticism of the middle ages,
not however in its purity, but mixed with some regard for worldly
possessions. In opposition to this reaction the commonwealth produced
another, in which it undertook to deliver individuality by means of a
reversed alienation. On the one hand, it absorbed itself in the
conception of the Greek-Roman world. In the practical interests of the
present, it externalized man in a past which held to the present no
immediate relation, or it externalized him in the affairs which were to
serve him as means of his comfort and enjoyment; it created an abstract
idealism——a reproduction of the old view of the world——or an abstract
Realism in a high appreciation of things which should be considered of
value only as a means. In one direction, Individuality proceeded towards
a dead nationality; in the other, towards an unlimited
world-commonwealth. In one case, the ideal was the æsthetic
republicanism of the Greeks; in the other, the utilitarian
cosmopolitanism of the Romans. But, in considering the given
circumstances, both united in the feeling of humanity, with its
reconciliatory and pitying gentleness toward the beggar or the criminal.


(_a_) _The Humanitarian Ideal._

§ 258. The Oriental-theocratic education is immanent in Christian
education through the Bible. Through the mediation of the Greek and
Roman churches the views of the ancient world were subsumed but not
entirely subdued. To accomplish this was the problem of humanitarian
education. It aimed to teach the Latin and Greek languages, expecting
thus to secure the action of a purely humane disposition. The Greeks and
Romans being sharply marked nationalities, how could one cherish such
expectations? It was possible only relatively in contradiction, partly
to a provincial population from whom all genuine political sense had
departed, partly to a church limited by a confessional, to which the
idea of humanity as such had become almost lost in dogmatic
fault-findings. The spirit was refreshed in the first by the
contemplation of the pure patriotism of the ancients, and in the second
by the discovery of Reason among the heathen. In contrast to
formlessness distracted by the want of all ideal of culture of
provincialism and dogmatic confusions, we find the power of
representation of ancient art. The so-called uselessness of learning
dead languages imparted to the mind, it knew not how, an ideal drift.
The very fact that it could not find immediate profit in its knowledge
gave it the consciousness of a higher value than material profit. The
ideal of the Humanities was the truth to Nature which was found in the
thought-painters of the ancient world. The study of language merely with
regard to its form, must lead one involuntarily to the actual seizing of
its content. The Latin schools were fashioned into _Gymnasia_, and the
universities contained not merely professors of Eloquence, but also
teachers of Philology.


(_b_) _The Philanthropic Ideal._

§ 259. The humanitarian tendency reached its extreme in the abstract
forgetting of the present, and the omitting to notice its just claim.
Man discovered at last that he was not at home with himself in Rome and
Athens. He spoke and wrote Latin, if not like Cicero, at least like
Muretius, but he often found himself awkward in expressing his meaning
in his mother-tongue. He was often very learned, but he lacked judgment.
He was filled with enthusiasm for the republicanism of Greece and Rome,
and yet at the same time was himself exceedingly servile to his
excellent and august lords. Against this gradual deadening of active
individuality, the result of a perverted study of the classics, we find
now reacting the education of enlightenment, which we generally call the
philanthropic. It sought to make men friendly to the immediate course of
the world. It placed over against the learning of the ancient languages
for their own sake, the acquisition of the more needful branches of
Mathematics, Physics, Geography, History, and the modern languages,
calling these the real studies. Nevertheless it often retained the
instruction in the Latin language because the Romance languages have
sprung from it, and because, through its long domination, the universal
terminology of Science, Art, and Law, is rooted in it. Philanthropy
desired to develope the social side of its disciple through an abstract
of practical knowledge and personal accomplishments, and to lead him
again, in opposition to the hermit-like sedentary life of the
book-pedant, out into the fields and the woods. It desired to imitate
life even in its method, and to instruct pleasantly in the way of play
or by dialogue. It would add to the simple letters and names the
contemplation of the object itself, or at least of its representation by
pictures; and in this direction, in the conversation-literature which it
prepared for children, it sometimes fell into childishness. It performed
a great service when it gave to the body its due, and introduced simple,
natural dress, bathing, gymnastics, pedestrian excursions, and a
hardening against the influences of wind and weather. As this
Pedagogics, so friendly to children, deemed that it could not soon
enough begin to honor them as citizens of the world, it was guilty in
general of the error of presupposing as already finished in its children
much that it itself should have gradually developed; and as it wished to
educate the European as such, or rather man as such, it came into an
indifference concerning the concrete distinctions of nationality and
religion. It coincided with the philologists in placing, in a concealed
way, Socrates above Christ, because he had worked no miracles, and
taught only morality. In such a dead cosmopolitanism, individuality
disappeared in the indeterminateness of a general humanity, and saw
itself forced to agree with the humanistic education in proclaiming the
truth of Nature as the pedagogical ideal, with the distinction, that
while Humanism believed this ideal realized in the Greeks and Romans,
Philanthropism found itself compelled to presuppose an abstract notion,
and often manifested a not unjustifiable pleasure in recognizing in the
Indians of North America, or of Otaheite, the genuine man of nature.
Philosophy first raised these conceptions to the idea of the State,
which fashioned the cognition of Reason and of the reform which follows
from its idea, into an organic element in itself.

——The course which the developing of the philanthropic ideal has taken
is as follows: (1) Rousseau in his writings, _Emile_ and the _Nouvelle
Heloise_, first preached the evangel of Natural Education, the
abstraction from History, the negation of existing culture, and the
return to the simplicity and innocence of nature. Although he often
himself testified in his experience his own proneness to evil in a very
discouraging way, he fixed as an almost unlimited axiom in French and
German Pedagogics his principal maxim, that man is by nature good. (2)
The reformatory ideas of Rousseau met with only a very infrequent and
sporadic introduction among the Romanic nations, because among them
education was too dependent on the church, and retained its
cloister-like seclusion in seminaries, colleges, &c. In Germany, on the
contrary, it was actualized, and the _Philanthropia_, established by
Basedow in Dessau, Brunswick, and Schnepfenthal, made experiments, which
nevertheless very soon departed somewhat from the ultraism of Basedow
and had very excellent results. (3) Humanity existed _in concreto_ only
in the form of nations. The French nation, in their revolution, tried
the experiment of abstracting from their history, of levelling all
distinctions of culture, of enthroning a despotism of Reason, and of
organizing itself as humanity, pure and simple. The event showed the
impossibility of such a beginning. The national energy, the historical
impulse, the love of art and science, came forth from the midst of the
revolutionary abstraction, which was opposed to them, only the more
vigorously. The _grande nation_, their _grande armée_, and
_gloire_——that is to say, for France——absorbed all the humanitarian
phases. In Germany the philanthropic circle of education was limited to
the higher ranks. There was no exclusiveness in the _Philanthropia_, for
there nobles and citizens, Catholics and Protestants, Russians and
Swiss, were mingled; but these were always the children of wealthy
families, and to these the plan of education was adapted. Then appeared
Pestalozzi and directed education also to the lower classes of
society——those which are called, not without something approaching to a
derogatory meaning, _the people_. From this time dates popular
education, the effort for the intellectual and moral elevation of the
hitherto neglected atomistic human being of the non-property-holding
multitude. There shall in future be no dirty, hungry, ignorant, awkward,
thankless, and will-less mass, devoted alone to an animal existence. We
can never rid ourselves of the lower classes by having the wealthy give
something, or even their all, to the poor, so as to have no property
themselves; but we can rid ourselves of it in the sense that the
possibility of culture and independent self-support shall be open to
every one, because he is a human being and a citizen of the
commonwealth. Ignorance and rudeness and the vice which springs from
them, and the malevolent frame of mind against the human race, which are
bound up with crime——these shall disappear. Education shall train man to
self-conscious obedience to law, as well as to kindly feeling towards
the erring, and to an effort not merely for their removal but for their
improvement. But the more Pestalozzi endeavored to realize his ideal of
human dignity, the more he comprehended that the isolated power of a
private man could not attain it, but that the nation itself must make
their own education their first business. Fichte by his lectures first
made the German nation fully accept these thoughts, and Prussia was the
first state which, by her public schools and her conscious preparation
for defence, broke the path for National Education; while among the
Romanic nations, in spite of their more elaborate political formalism,
it still depends partly upon the church and partly upon the accident of
private enterprise. Pestalozzi also laid a foundation for a national
pedagogical literature by his story of _Leonard and Gertrude_. This book
appeared at first in 1784, i.e. in the same year in which Schiller's
_Robbers_ and Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_ announced a new phase in
the Drama and in Philosophy.——

——The incarnation of God, which was, up to the time of the Reformation,
an esoteric mystery of the Church, has since then become continually
more and more an exoteric problem of the State.——


_3. Free Education._

§ 260. The ideal of culture of the humanitarian and the philanthropic
education was taken up into the conception of an education which
recognizes the Family, social caste, the Nation, and Religion, as
positive elements of the practical spirit, but which will know each of
these as determined from within through the idea of humanity, and laid
open for reciprocal dialectic with the rest. Physical development shall
become the subject of a national system of gymnastics fashioned for use,
and including in itself the knowledge of the use of arms. Instruction
shall, in respect to the general encyclopædic culture, be the same for
all, and parallel to this shall run a system of special schools to
prepare for the special avocations of life. The method of instruction
shall be the simple representation of the special idea of the subject,
and no longer the formal breadth of an acquaintance with many subjects
which may find outside the school its opportunity, but within it has no
meaning except as the history of a science or an art. Moral culture must
be combined with family affection and the knowledge of the laws of the
commonwealth, so that the dissension between individual morality and
objective legality may ever more and more disappear. Education shall,
without estranging the individual from the internality of the family,
accustom him more and more to public life, because criticism of this is
the only thing which can prevent the cynicism of private life, the
half-ness of knowledge and will, and the spirit of caste, which has so
extensively prevailed. The individual shall be educated into a
self-consciousness of the essential equality and freedom of all men, so
that he shall recognize and acknowledge himself in each one and in all.
But this essential and solid unity of all men shall not evaporate into
the insipidity of a humanity without distinctions, but instead it shall
realize the form of a determinate individuality and nationality, and
shall enlighten the idiosyncrasy of its nation into a broad humanity.
The unrestricted striving after Beauty, Truth, and Freedom, actually
through its own strength and immediately, not merely mediately through
ecclesiastical consecration, will become Religion.

The Education of the State must rise to a preparation for the
unfettered activity of self-conscious Humanity.


  THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.

  A PARAPHRASE OF DR. KARL ROSENKRANZ'S
  PAEDAGOGIK ALS SYSTEM.

  BY ANNA C. BRACKETT.

  ST. LOUIS:
  G. I. JONES AND COMPANY.
  1878.


  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by
  WILLIAM T. HARRIS,
  In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


PREFACE.


The translation of "Pedagogics as a System" was prepared and published
five years ago. The wide demand for it that has made itself known since
that time, especially in normal schools, has proved the value of such
works in the domain of education. At the same time, the difficulty the
students have always found in its use——a difficulty inseparable from any
translation of a German metaphysical treatise——has led us to the
conviction that a paraphrase into a more easily understood form is a
necessity, if the thought of Rosenkranz is to be appropriated by the
very class who are most in need of it. As was remarked in the preface to
the translation, we have in English no other work of similar size which
contains so much that is valuable to those engaged in the work of
education. It is no compendium of rules or formulas, but rather a
systematic, logical treatment of the subject, in which the attention is,
as it were, concentrated upon the whole problem of education, while that
problem is allowed to work itself out before us. To paraphrase the
text——or, rather, to translate it from the metaphysical language in
which it at present appears into a language more easy of
comprehension——without losing the real significance of the statements,
is the task which is here undertaken. Free illustrations and suggestions
have been interwoven to give point and application to the thoughts and
principles stated. This translation, or paraphrase, follows the
paragraphs of the original and of the first translation. The analysis of
the whole work, as it appeared in the original translation, is appended
at the end of the "Introduction," as a guide to the student.




THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.


INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. The science of Pedagogics may be called a secondary science,
inasmuch as it derives its principles from others. In this respect it
differs from Mathematics, which is independent. As it concerns the
development of the human intelligence, it must wait upon Psychology for
an understanding of that upon which it is to operate, and, as its means
are to be sciences and arts, it must wait upon them for a knowledge of
its materials. The science of Medicine, in like manner, is dependent on
the sciences of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. Moreover, as Medicine
may have to deal with a healthy or unhealthy body, and may have it for
its province to preserve or restore health, to assist a natural process
(as in the case of a broken bone), or to destroy an unnatural one (as in
the case of the removal of a tumor), the same variety of work is imposed
upon Education.[1]

§ 2. Since the rules of Pedagogics must be extremely flexible, so that
they may be adapted to the great variety of minds, and since an infinite
variety of circumstances may arise in their application, we find, as we
should expect, in all educational literature room for widely differing
opinions and the wildest theories; these numerous theories, each of
which may have a strong influence for a season, only to be overthrown
and replaced by others.[2] It must be acknowledged that educational
literature, as such, is not of a high order. It has its cant like
religious literature. Many of its faults, however, are the result of
honest effort, on the part of teachers, to remedy existing defects, and
the authors are, therefore, not harshly to be blamed. It is also to be
remembered that the habit of giving reproof and advice is one fastened
in them by the daily necessity of their professional work.[3]

§ 3. As the position of the teacher has ceased to be undervalued, there
has been an additional impetus given to self-glorification on his part,
and this also——in connection with the fact that schools are no longer
isolated as of old, but subject to constant comparison and
competition——leads to much careless theorizing among its teachers,
especially in the literary field.

§ 4. Pedagogics, because it deals with the human spirit, belongs, in a
general classification of the sciences, to the philosophy of spirit, and
in the philosophy of spirit it must be classified under the practical,
and not the merely theoretical, division. For its problem is not merely
to comprehend the nature of that with which it has to deal, the human
spirit——its problem is not merely to influence one mind (that of the
pupil) by another (that of the teacher)——but to influence it in such a
way as to produce the mental freedom of the pupil. The problem is,
therefore, not so much to obtain performed works as to excite mental
activity. A creative process is required. The pupil is to be forced to
go in certain beaten tracks, and yet he is to be so forced to go in
these that he shall go of his own freewill. All teaching which does not
leave the mind of the pupil free is unworthy of the name. It is true
that the teacher must understand the nature of mind, as he is to deal
with mind, but when he has done this he has still his main principle of
action unsolved; for the question is, knowing the nature of the mind,
How shall he incite it to action, already predetermined in his own mind,
without depriving the mind of the pupil of its own free action? How
shall he restrain and guide, and yet not enslave?

If, in classifying all sciences, as suggested at the beginning of this
section, we should subdivide the practical division of the Philosophy of
Spirit, which might be called Ethics, one could find a place for
Pedagogics under some one of the grades of Ethics. The education which
the child receives through the influence of family life lies at the
basis of all other teaching, and what the child learns of life, its
duties, and possibilities, in its own home, forms the foundation for all
after-work. On the life of the family, then, as a presupposition, all
systems of Education must be built. In other words, the school must not
attempt to initiate the child into the knowledge of the world——it must
not assume the care of its first training; that it must leave to the
family.[4] But the science of Pedagogics does not, as a science,
properly concern itself with the family education, or with that point of
the child's life which is dominated by the family influence. That is
education, in a certain sense, without doubt, but it does not properly
belong to a science of Pedagogics. But, on the other hand, it must be
remembered that this science, as here expounded, presupposes a previous
family life in the human being with whom it has to deal.

§ 5. Education as a science will present the necessary and universal
principles on which it is based; Education as an art will consist in the
practical realization of these in the teacher's work in special places,
under special circumstances, and with special pupils. In the skillful
application of the principles of the science to the actual demands of
the art lies the opportunity for the educator to prove himself a
creative artist; and it is in the difficulty involved in this practical
work that the interest and charm of the educator's work consists.

The teacher must thus adapt himself to the pupil. But, in doing so, he
must have a care that he do not carry this adaptation to such a degree
as to imply that the pupil is not to change; and he must see to it,
also, that the pupil shall always be worked upon by the matter which he
is considering, and not too much by the personal influence of the
teacher through whom he receives it.[5]

§ 6. The utmost care is necessary lest experiments which have proved
successful in certain cases should be generalized into rules, and a
formal, dead creed, so to speak, should be adopted. All professional
experiences are valuable as material on which to base new conclusions
and to make new plans, but only for that use. Unless the day's work is,
every day, a new creation, a fatal error has been made.

§ 7. Pedagogics as a science must consider Education——

  (1) In its general idea;

  (2) In its different phases;

  (3) In the special systems arising from this general idea,
  acting under special circumstances at special times.[6]

§ 8. With regard to the First Part, we remark that by Education, in its
general idea, we do not mean any mere history of Pedagogics, nor can any
history of Pedagogics be substituted for a systematic exposition of the
underlying idea.

§ 9. The second division considers Education under three heads——as
physical, intellectual, and moral——and forms, generally, the principal
part of all pedagogical treatises.

In this part lies the greatest difficulty as to exact limitation. The
ideas on these divisions are often undefined and apt to be confounded,
and the detail of which they are capable is almost unlimited, for we
might, under this head, speak of all kinds of special schools, such as
those for war, art, mining, etc.

§ 10. In the Third Part we consider the different realizations of the
one general idea of Pedagogics as it has developed itself under
different circumstances and in different ages of the world.

The general idea is forced into different phases by the varying
physical, intellectual, and moral conditions of men. The result is the
different systems, as shown in the analysis. The general idea is one.
The view of the end to be obtained determines in each case the
actualization of this idea. Hence the different systems of Education are
each determined by the stand-point from which the general ideal is
viewed. Proceeding in this manner, it might be possible to construct a
history of Pedagogics, _à priori_, without reference to actual history,
since all the possible systems might be inferred from the possible
definite number of points of view.

Each lower stand-point will lead to a higher, but it will not be lost in
it. Thus, where Education, for the sake of the nation,[7] merges into
the Education based on Christianity, the form is not thereby destroyed,
but, rather, in the transition first attains its full realization. The
systems of Education which were based on the idea of the nation had, in
the fullness of time, outgrown their own limits, and needed a new form
in order to contain their own true idea. The idea of the nation, as the
highest principle, gives way for that of Christianity. A new life came
to the old idea in what at first seemed to be its destruction. The idea
of the nation was born again, and not destroyed, in Christianity.

§ 11. The final system, so far, is that of the present time, which thus
is itself the fruit of all the past systems, as well as the seed of all
systems that are to be. The science of Pedagogics, in the consideration
of the system of the present, thus again finds embodied the general idea
of education, and thus returns upon itself to the point from whence it
set out. In the First and Second Parts there is already given the idea
which dominates the system found thus necessarily existing in the
present.


     {FIRST PART.    {Its Nature.
     {In its General {Its Form.
     {  Idea.        {Its Limits.
     {
     {SECOND PART.   {Physical.
     {In its Special {Intellectual.
     {  Elements.    {Moral.
     {
     {             {          {            {Family     China.
     {             {          {Passive.    {Caste      India.
     {             {          {            {Monkish    Thibet.
     {             {          {
     {             {          {            {Military   Persia.
     {             {National. {Active      {Priestly   Egypt.
     {             {          {            {Industrial Phœnicia.
     {             {          {
     {             {          {            {Æsthetic    Greece.
  E  {             {          {Individual. {Practical   Rome.
  D  {             {          {            {Abstract   {Northern.
  U  {             {          {            { Individual{ Barbarians.
  C  {             {
  A  {             {Theocratic. . . . . . . . . . . .  Jews.
  T  {             {
  I  {             {Monkish.
  O  {THIRD PART.  {
  N  {In its       {
     { Particular  {
     { Systems.    {
     {             {Chivalric.
     {             {
     {             {Humanitarian. {For Special  {Jesuitic.
     {             {              { Callings.   {Pietistic.
     {             {
     {             {                            {The
     {             {              {             {Humanistic.
     {             {For Civil     {To achieve   {
     {             {  Life.       { an Ideal of {The
     {             {              { Culture.    {Philanthropic
     {             {              {             {Movement.
     {             {              {
     {             {              {For Free Citizenship.




FIRST PART.

The General Idea of Education.


§ 12. A full treatment of Pedagogics must distinguish——

  (1) The nature of Education;

  (2) The form of Education;

  (3) The limits of Education.


_I.——The Nature of Education._

§ 13. The nature of Education is determined by the nature of mind, the
distinguishing mark of which is that it can be developed only from
within, and by its own activity. Mind is essentially free——_i.e._, it
has the capacity for freedom——but it cannot be said to possess freedom
till it has obtained it by its own voluntary effort. Till then it cannot
be truly said to be free. Education consists in enabling a human being
to take possession of, and to develop himself by, his own efforts, and
the work of the educator cannot be said to be done in any sense where
this is not accomplished. In general, we may say that the work of
education consists in leading to a full development of all the inherent
powers of the mind, and that its work is done when, in this way, the
mind has attained perfect freedom, or the state in which alone it can be
said to be truly itself.[8]

The isolated human being can never become truly man. If such human
beings (like the wild girl of the forest of Ardennes) have been found,
they have only proved to us that reciprocal action with our fellow
beings is necessary for the development of our powers. Caspar Hauser, in
his subterranean prison, will serve as an example of what man would be
without men. One might say that this fact is typified by the first cry
of the newly-born child. It is as if the first expression of its
seemingly independent life were a cry for help from others. On the side
of nature the human being is at first quite helpless.

§ 14. Man is, therefore, the only proper object of education. It is true
that we speak of the education of plants and of animals, but we
instinctively apply other terms when we do so, for we say "raising"
plants, and "training" animals. When we "train" or "break" an animal, it
is true that we do, by pain or pleasure, lead him into an exercise of a
new activity. But the difference between this and Education consists in
the fact that, though he possessed capacity, yet by no amount of
association with his kind would he ever have acquired this new
development. It is as if we impress upon his plastic nature the imprint
of our loftier nature, which imprint he takes mechanically, and does not
himself recognize it as his own internal nature. We train him for our
recognition, not for his own. But, on the contrary, when we educate a
human being, we only excite him to create for himself, and out of
himself, that for which he would most earnestly strive had he any
appreciation of it beforehand, and in proportion as he does appreciate
it he recognizes it joyfully as a part of himself, as his own
inheritance, which he appropriates with a knowledge that it is his, or,
rather, is a part of his own nature. He who speaks of "raising" human
beings uses language which belongs only to the slave-dealer, to whom
human beings are only cattle for labor, and whose property increases in
value with the number.

Are there no school-rooms where Education has ceased to have any
meaning, and where physical pain is made to produce its only possible
result——a mechanical, external repetition? The school-rooms where the
creative word——the only thing which can influence the mind——has ceased
to be used as the means are only plantations, where human beings are
degraded to the position of lower animals.

§ 15. When we speak of the Education of the human race, we mean the
gradual growth of the nations of the earth, as a whole, towards the
realization of self-conscious freedom. Divine Providence is the teacher
here. The means by which the development is effected are the various
circumstances and actions of the different races of men, and the pupils
are the nations. The unfolding of this great Education is generally
treated of under the head of Philosophy of History.

§ 16. Education, however, in a more restricted sense, has to do with the
shaping of the individual. Each one of us is to be educated by the laws
of physical nature——by the relations into which we come with the
national life, in its laws, customs, etc., and by the circumstances
which daily surround us. By the force of these we find our arbitrary
will hemmed in, modified, and forced to take new channels and forms. We
are too often unmindful of the power with which these forces are daily
and hourly educating us——_i.e._, calling out our possibilities into
real existence. If we set up our will in opposition to either of these;
if we act in opposition to the laws of nature; if we seriously offend
the laws, or even the customs, of the people among whom we live; or if
we despise our individual lot, we do so only to find ourselves crushed
in the encounter. We only learn the impotence of the individual against
these mighty powers; and that discovery is, of itself, a part of our
education. It is sometimes only by such severe means that God is
revealed to the man who persistently misunderstands and defies His
creation. All suffering brought on ourselves by our own violation of
laws, whether natural, ethical, or divine, must be, however, thus
recognized as the richest blessing. We do not mean to say that it is
never allowable for a man, in obedience to the highest laws of his
spiritual being, to break away from the fetters of nature——to offend the
ethical sense of his own people, or to struggle against the might of
destiny. Reformers and martyrs would be examples of such, and our
remarks above do not apply to them, but to the perverse, the frivolous,
and the conceited; to those who are seeking in their action, not the
undoubted will of God, but their own individual will or caprice.

§ 17. But we generally use the word Education in a still narrower
sense than either of these, for we mean by it the working of one
individual mind upon or within another in some definite and premeditated
way, so as to fit the pupil for life generally, or for some special
pursuit. For this end the educator must be relatively finished in his
own education, and the pupil must possess confidence in him, or
docility. He must be teachable. That the work be successful, demands the
very highest degree of talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence; and any
development is impossible if a well-founded authority be wanting in the
educator, or docility on the part of the pupil.

Education, in this narrowest and technical sense, is an outgrowth of
city or urban life. As long as men do not congregate in large cities,
the three forces spoken of in § 16——_i.e._, the forces of nature,
national customs, and circumstances——will be left to perform most of the
work of Education; but, in modern city life, the great complication of
events, the uncertainty in the results——though careful forethought has
been used——the immense development of individuality, and the pressing
need of various information, break the power of custom, and render a
different method necessary. The larger the city is, the more free is the
individual in it from the restraints of customs, the less subjected to
curious criticism, and the more able is he to give play to his own
idiosyncrasies. This, however, is a freedom which needs the counterpoise
of a more exact training in conventionalities, if we would not have it
dangerous. Hence the rapid multiplication of educational institutions
and systems in modern times (one chief characteristic of which is the
development of urban life). The ideal Telemachus of Fenelon differs very
much from the real Telemachus of history. Fenelon proposed an education
which trained a youth to reflect, and to guide himself by reason. The
Telemachus of the heroic age followed the customs ("use and wont") of
his times with _naïve_ obedience. The systems of Education once
sufficient do not serve the needs of modern life, any more than the
defenses once sufficient against hostile armies are sufficient against
the new weapons adopted by modern warfare.

§ 18. The problem with which modern Education has to deal may be said,
in general terms, to be the development in the individual soul of the
indwelling Reason, both practical (as will) and theoretical (as
intellect). To make a child good is only a part of Education; we have
also to develop his intelligence. The sciences of Ethics and Education
are not the same. Again, we must not forget that no pupil is simply a
human being, like every other human being; he is also an individual, and
thus differs from every other one of the race. This is a point which
must never be lost sight of by the educator. Human beings may be——nay,
must be——educated in company, but they cannot be educated simply in the
mass.

§ 19. Education is to lead the pupil by a graded series of exercises,
previously arranged and prescribed by the educator, to a definite end.
But these exercises must take on a peculiar form for each particular
pupil under the special circumstances present. Hasty and inconsiderate
work _may_, by chance, accomplish much; but no work which is not
_systematic_ can advance and fashion him in conformity with his tenure,
and such alone is to be called Education; for Education implies both a
comprehension of the end to be attained and of the means necessary to
compass that end.

§ 20. Culture, however, means more and more every year; and, as the
sum total of knowledge increases for mankind, it becomes necessary, in
order to be a master in any one line, to devote one's self almost
exclusively to that. Hence arises, for the teacher, the difficulty of
preserving the unity and wholeness which are essential to a complete
man. The principle of division of labor comes in. He who is a teacher by
profession becomes one-sided in his views; and, as teaching divides and
subdivides into specialities, this abnormal one-sideness tends more and
more to appear. Here we find a parallelism in the profession of
Medicine, with a corresponding danger of narrowness; for that, too, is
in a process of constant specialization, and the physician who treats
nervous diseases is likely to be of the opinion that all trouble arises
from that part of the organism, or, at least, that all remedies should
be applied there. This tendency to one-sideness is inseparable from the
progress of civilization and that of science and arts. It contains,
nevertheless, a danger of which no teacher should be unwarned. An
illustration is furnished by the microscope or telescope; a higher power
of the instrument implies a narrower field of view. To concentrate our
observation upon one point implies the shutting out of others. This
difficulty with the teacher creates one for the pupil.

In this view one might be inclined to judge that the life of the savage
as compared with that of civilized man, or that of a member of a rural
community as compared with that of an inhabitant of a city, were the
more to be desired. The savage has his hut, his family, his cocoa-palm,
his weapons, his passions; he fishes, hunts, amuses himself, adorns
himself, and enjoys the consciousness that he is the center of a little
world; while the denizen of a city must often acknowledge that he is, so
to speak, only one wheel of a gigantic machine. Is the life of the
savage, therefore, more favorable to human development? The
characteristic idea of modern civilization is: The development of the
individual as the end for which the State exists. The great empires of
Persia, Egypt, and India, wherein the individual was of value only as he
ministered to the strength of the State, have given way to the modern
nations, where individual freedom is pushed so far that the State seems
only an instrument for the good of the individual. From being the
supreme end of the individual, the State has become the means for his
advancement into freedom; and with this very exaltation of the value of
the mere individual over the State, as such, there is inseparably
connected the seeming destruction of the wholeness of the individual
man. But the union of State and individual, which was in ancient times
merely mechanical, has now become a living process, in which constant
interaction gives rise to all the intellectual life of modern
civilization.

§ 21. The work of Education being thus necessarily split up, we have
the distinction between general and special schools. The work of the
former is to give general development——what is considered essential for
all men; that of the latter, to prepare for special callings. The former
should furnish a basis for the latter——_i.e._, the College should
precede the Medical School, etc., and the High School the Normal. In the
United States, owing to many causes, this is unfortunately not the case.

The difference between city and country life is important here. The
teacher in a country school, and, still more, the private tutor or
governess, must be able to teach many more things than the teacher in a
graded school in the city, or the professor in a college or university.
The danger on the one side is of superficiality, on the other of
narrowness.

§ 22. The Education of any individual can be only relatively finished.
His possibilities are infinite. His actual realization of those
possibilities must always remain far behind. The latter can only
approximate to the former. It can never reach them. The term "finishing
an education" needs, therefore, some definition; for, as a technical
term, it has undoubtedly a meaning. An immortal soul can never complete
its development; for, in so doing, it would give the lie to its own
nature. We cannot speak properly, however, of educating an idiot. Such
an unfortunate has no power of generalization, and no conscious
personality. We can train him mechanically, but we cannot educate him.
This will help to illustrate the difference, spoken of in § 14, between
Education and Mechanical training.

We obtain astonishing results, it is true, in our schools for idiots,
and yet we cannot fail to perceive that, after all, we have only an
external result. We produce a mechanical performance of duties, and yet
there seems to be no actual mental growth. It is an exogenous, and not
an endogenous, growth, to use the language of Botany.[9] Continual
repetition, under the most gentle patience, renders the movements easy,
but, after all, they are only automatic, or what the physicians call
reflex.

We have the same result produced in a less degree when we attempt to
teach an intelligent child something which is beyond his active
comprehension. A child may be taught to do or say almost anything by
patient training, but, if what he is to say is beyond the power of his
mental comprehension, and hence of his active assimilation, we are only
training him as we train an animal (§ 14), and not educating him. We
call such recitations parrot recitations, and, by our use of the word,
express exactly in what position the pupils are placed. An idiot is only
a case of permanently arrested development. What in the intelligent
child is a passing phase is for the idiot a fixed state. We have idiots
of all grades, as we have children of all ages.

The above observations must not be taken to mean that children should
never be taught to perform operations in arithmetic which they do not,
in cant phrase, "perfectly understand," or to learn poetry whose whole
meaning they cannot fathom. Into this error many teachers have fallen.

There can be no more profitable study for a teacher than to visit one of
these numerous idiot schools. He finds the alphabet of his professional
work there. As the philologist learns of the formation and growth of
language by examining, not the perfectly formed languages, but the
dialects of savage tribes, so with the teacher. In like manner more
insight into the philosophy of teaching and of the nature of the mind
can be acquired by teaching a class of children to read than in any
other grade of work.


_II.——The Form of Education._

§ 23. The general form of Education follows from the nature of mind.
Mind is nothing but what it itself creates out of its own activity. It
is, at first, mind as undeveloped or unconscious (in the main); but,
secondly, it acquires the power of examining its own action, of
considering itself as an object of attention, as if it were a quite
foreign thing——_i.e._, it reflects (in this stage it is really ignorant
that it is studying its own nature); and, finally, it becomes conscious
that this, which it had been examining, and of whose existence it is
conscious, is its own self: It attains self-consciousness. It is through
this estrangement from itself, given back to itself again and restored
to unity, but it is no longer a simple, unconscious unity. In this third
state only can it be said to be free——_i.e._, to possess itself.
Education cannot create; it can only help to develop into reality the
previously-existent possibility; it can only help to bring forth to
light the hidden life.

§ 24. All culture, in whatever line, must pass through these two
stages of estrangement and of reunion; the reunion being not of two
different things, but the recognition of itself by thought, and its
acceptance of itself as itself. And the more complete is the
estrangement——_i.e._, the more perfectly can the thought be made to
view itself as a somewhat entirely foreign to itself, to look upon it as
a different and independent somewhat——the more complete and perfect will
be its union with and acceptance of its object as one with itself when
the recognition does finally take place. Through culture we are led to
this conscious possession of our own thought. Plato gives to the
feeling, with which knowledge must necessarily begin, the name of
wonder. But wonder is not knowledge; it is only the first step towards
it. It is the half-terrified attention which the mind fixes on an
object, and the half-terror would be impossible did it not dimly
forebode that it was something of its own nature at which it was
looking. The child delights in stories of the far-off, the strange, and
the wonderful. It is as if they hoped to find in these some solution to
themselves——a solution which they have, as it were, asked in vain of
familiar scenes and objects. Their craving for such is the proof of how
far their nature transcends all its known conditions. They are like
adventurous explorers who push out to unknown regions in hopes of
finding the freedom and wealth which lies only within themselves. They
want to be told about things which they never saw, such as terrible
conflagrations, banditti life, wild animals, gray old ruins, Robinson
Crusoes on far-off, happy islands. They are irresistibly attracted by
whatever is highly colored and dazzlingly lighted. The child prefers the
story of Sinbad the Sailor to any tales of his own home and nation,
because mind has this necessity of getting, as it were, outside of
itself so as to obtain a view of itself. As the child grows to youth he
is, from the same reasons, desirous of traveling.

§ 25. Work may be defined as the activity of the mind in a conscious
concentration on, and absorption in, some object, with the purpose of
acquiring or producing it. Play is the activity of the mind which gives
itself up to surrounding objects according to its own caprice, without
any thought as to results. The Educator gives out work to the pupil, but
he leaves him to himself in his play.

§ 26. It is necessary to draw a sharp line between work and play. If the
Educator has not respect for work as an activity of great weight and
importance, he not only spoils the relish of the pupil for play, which
loses all its charm of freedom when not set off by its antithesis of
earnest labor, but he undermines in the pupil's mind all respect for any
real existence. On the other hand, he who does not give to the child
space, time, and opportunity for play prevents the originality of his
pupil from free development through the exercise of his creative
ingenuity. Play sends the child back to his work refreshed, because in
it he loses himself without constraint and according to his own fancy,
while in work he is required to yield himself up in a manner prescribed
for him by another.

Let the teacher watch his pupils while at play if he would discover
their individual peculiarities, for it is then that they unconsciously
betray their real propensities. This antithesis of work and play runs
through the entire life, the form only of play varying with years and
occupations. To do what we please, as we please, and when we please, not
for any reason, but just because we please, remains play always.
Children in their sports like nothing better than to counterfeit what is
to be the earnest work of their after-lives. The little girl plays with
her dolls, and the boy plays he is a soldier and goes to mimic wars.

It is, of course, an error to suppose that the play of a child is
simply muscular. The lamb and the colt find their full enjoyment in
capering aimlessly about the field. But to the child play would be
incomplete which did not bring the mind into action. Children derive
little enjoyment from purely muscular exercise. They must at the same
time have an object requiring mental action to attain it. A number of
children set simply to run up and down a field would tire of the
exercise in five minutes; but put a ball amongst them and set them to a
game and they will be amused by it for hours.

Exceptional mental development is always preceded, and is, indeed,
produced by, an exceptional amount of exercise in the form of play on
the part of the special faculties concerned. The peculiar tendencies
exhibited in play are due to the large development of particular
faculties, and the ultimate giant strength of a faculty is brought about
by play. The genius is no doubt born, not made; but, although born, it
would dwindle away in infancy were it not for the constant exercise
taken in play, which is as necessary for development as food for the
maintenance of life.

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it
were work. Those whose work is creative activity of the mind may find
recreation in the details of science; and those, again, whose vocation
is scientific research can find recreation in the practice of art in its
different departments. What is work to one may thus be play to another.
This does not, however, contradict the first statement.

§ 28. It is the province of education so to accustom us to different
conditions or ways of thinking and acting that they shall no longer seem
strange or foreign to us. When these have become, as we say, "natural"
to us——when we find the acquired mode of thinking or acting just what
our inclination leads us to adopt unconsciously, a _Habit_ has been
formed. A habit is, then, the identity of natural inclination with the
special demands of any particular doing or suffering, and it is thus the
external condition of all progress. As long as we require the conscious
act of our will to the performance of a deed, that deed is a somewhat
foreign to ourselves, and not yet a part of ourselves. The practical
work of the educator may thus be said to consist in leading the mind of
the pupil over certain lines of thought till it becomes "natural" or
spontaneous for him to go by that road. Much time is wasted in schools
where the pupil's mind is not led aright at first, for then he has to
unlearn habits of thought which are already formed. The work of the
teacher is to impress good methods of studying and thinking upon the
minds of his pupils, rather than to communicate knowledge.

§ 29. It is, at first sight, entirely indifferent what a Habit shall
relate to——_i.e._, the point is to get the pupil into the way of
forming habits, and it is not at first of so much moment what habit is
formed as that a habit is formed. But we cannot consider that there is
anything morally neutral in the abstract, but only in the concrete, or
in particular examples. An action may be of no moral significance to one
man, and under certain circumstances, while to another man, or to the
same man under different circumstances, it may have quite a different
significance, or may possess an entirely opposite character. Appeal must
be made, then, to the individual conscience of each one to decide what
is and what is not permissible to that individual under the given
circumstances. Education must make it its first aim to awaken in the
pupil a sensitiveness to spiritual and ethical distinctions which knows
that nothing is in its own nature morally insignificant or indifferent,
but shall recognize, even in things seemingly small, a universal human
significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality
or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate
without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal
comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral
rectitude.

When we reflect upon habit, it at once assumes for us the character of
useful or injurious. The consequences of a habit are not indifferent.

Whatever action tends as a harmonious means to the realization of our
purpose is desirable or advantageous, and whatever either partially
contradicts or wholly destroys it is disadvantageous. Advantage and
disadvantage being, then, only relative terms, dependent upon the aim or
purpose which we happen to have in view, a habit which may be
advantageous to one man under certain circumstances may be
disadvantageous to another man, or even to the same man, under other
circumstances. Education must, then, accustom the youth to consider for
himself the expediency or inexpediency of any action in relation to his
own vocation in life. He must not form habits which will be inexpedient
with regard to that.

§ 31. There is, however, an _absolute_ distinction of habits as morally
good and bad. From this absolute stand-point we must, after all, decide
what is for us allowable or forbidden, what is expedient and what
inexpedient.

§ 32. As to its form, habit may be either passive or active. By passive
habit is meant a habit of composure which surveys undisturbed whatever
vicissitudes, either external or internal, may fall to our lot, and
maintains itself superior to them all, never allowing its power of
acting to be paralyzed by them. It is not, however, merely a stoical
indifference, nor is it the composure which comes from inability to
receive impressions——a sort of impassivity. It is that composure which
is the highest result of power. Nor is it a selfish love of ease which
intentionally withdraws itself from annoyances in order to remain
undisturbed. It is not manifested because of a desire to be out of these
vicissitudes. It is, while in them, to be not of them. It is the
composure which does not fret itself over what it cannot change. The
soul that has built for itself this stronghold of freedom within itself
may vividly experience joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, and yet
serenely know that it is intrenched in walls which are inaccessible to
their attacks, because it knows that it is infinitely superior to all
that may chance or change. What is meant by active habit in distinction
from passive habit is found in our external activity, as skill,
facility, readiness of information, etc. It might be considered as the
equipping of our inner selves for active contest with the external
world; while passive habit is the fortifying of our inner selves against
the attack of the external world. The man who possesses habit in both
these forms impresses himself in many different ways on the outer world,
while at the same time, and all the time, he preserves intact his
personality from the constant assaults of the outer world. He handles
both spear and shield.

§ 33. All education, in whatever line, must work by forming habits
physical, mental, or moral. It might be said to consist in a conversion
of actions which are at first voluntary, by means of repetition, into
instructive actions which are performed, as we say, naturally——_i.e._,
without any conscious volition. We teach a child to walk, or he teaches
himself to walk by a constant repetition of the action of the will upon
the necessary muscles; and, when the thinking brain hands over the
mechanism to the trained spinal cord, the anxious, watchful look
disappears from the face, and the child talks or laughs as he runs: then
that part of his education is completed. Henceforth the attention that
had been necessary to manage the body in walking is freed for other
work. This is only an illustration, easily understood, of what takes
place in all education. Mental and moral acts, thoughts, and feelings in
the same way are, by repetition, converted into habits and become our
nature; and character, good or bad, is only the aggregate of our habits.
When we say a person has no character, we mean exactly this: that he has
no fixed habits. But, as the great end of human life is freedom, he must
be above even habit. He must not be wholly a machine of habits, and
education must enable him to attain the power of breaking as well as of
forming habits, so that he may, when desirable, substitute one habit for
another. For habits may be (§ 29), according to their nature, proper or
improper, advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad; and, according
to their form, may be (§ 32) either the acceptance of the external by
the internal or the reaction of the internal upon the external. Through
our freedom we must be able, not only to renounce any habit formed, but
to form a new and better one. Man should be supreme above all habits,
wearing them as garments which the soul puts on and off at will. It must
so order them all as to secure for itself a constant progress of
development into still greater freedom. In this higher view habits
become thus to our sight only necessary accompaniments of imperfect
freedom. Can we conceive of God, who is perfect Freedom, as having any
habits? We might say that, as a means toward the ever-more decided
realization of the Good, we must form a habit of voluntarily making and
breaking off habits. We must characterize as bad those habits which
relate only to our personal convenience or enjoyment. They are often not
essentially blameworthy, but there lies in them a hidden danger that
they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. It is a false and
mechanical way of looking at the affair to suppose that a habit which
had been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken off by
an equal number of refusals. We can never utterly renounce a habit which
we decide to be undesirable for us except through decision and firmness.

§ 34. Education, then, must consider the preparation for authority and
obedience (§ 17); for a rational ordering of one's actions according to
universal principles, and, at the same time, a preservation of
individuality (§ 18); for work and play (§ 25); for habits of
spontaneity or originality (§ 28). To endeavor by any set rules to
harmonize in the pupil these opposites will be a vain endeavor, and
failure in the solution of the problem is quite possible by reason of
the freedom of the pupil, of surrounding circumstances, or of mistakes
on the part of the teacher, and the possibility of this negative result
must, therefore, enter as an element of calculation into the work
itself. All the dangers which may in any way threaten the youth must be
considered in advance, and he must be fortified against them. While we
should not intentionally expose the youth to temptation in order to
prove his strength of resistance, neither should we, on the other hand,
endeavor to seclude him from all chance of dangerous temptation. To do
the former would be satanic; while to do the latter would be ridiculous,
useless, and in fact dangerous in the highest degree, for temptation
comes more from within than from without, and any secret inclination
will in some way seek, or even create, its own opportunity for
gratification. The real safety from sin lies, not in seclusion of one's
self from the world[10]——for all the elements of worldliness are innate
in each individual——but in an occupying of the restless activity in
other ways, in learning and discipline; these being varied as time goes
on, according to the age and degree of proficiency. Not to crush out,
but to direct, the child's activity, whether physical or mental, is the
key to all real success in education. The sentimentalism which has,
during the last few years, in this country (the United States), tended
to diminish to so great an extent the actual work to be performed by our
boys and girls, has set free a dangerous amount of energy whose new
direction gives cause for grave alarm. To endeavor to prevent the youth
from all free and individual relations with the real world, implies a
never-ending watch kept over him. The consciousness of being thus
"shadowed" destroys in the youth all elasticity of spirit, all
confidence, and all originality. A constant feeling of, as it were, a
detective police at his side obscures all sense of independent action,
systematically accustoming him to dependence. Though, as the
tragic-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, the loss of a man's own
shadow may involve him in a series of fatalities,[11] yet to be
"shadowed" constantly by a companion, us in the pedagogical system of
the Jesuits, undermines all naturalness. And, if we endeavor to guard
too strictly against what is evil and wrong, the pupil reacts, bringing
all his intelligence into the service of his craft and cunning, till the
would-be educator stands aghast at the discovery of such evil-doing as
he had supposed impossible under his strict supervision. Within the
circle of whatever rules it may be found necessary to draw around the
young there must always be left space for freedom. Pupils should always
be led to see that all rules against which they fret are only of their
own creation; and that as grave-stones mark the place where some one has
fallen, so every law is only a record of some previous wrong-doing. The
law "Thou shalt not kill" was not given till murder had been committed.
In other words, the wrong deed preceded the law against it, and perfect
obedience is the same as perfect freedom. No obedience except that which
we gain from the pupil's own convictions has real educational
significance.

§ 35. If there appears in the youth any decided deformity opposed to
the ideal which we would create in him, we should at once inquire into
its history and origin. The negative and positive are so closely
related, and depend so intimately on each other, in our being that what
appears to us to be negligence, rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or
oddity may arise from some real necessity of the pupil which in its
process of development has only taken a wrong direction.

§ 36. If it should appear, on such examination, that the wrong action
was the result of avoidable ignorance, of caprice, or willfulness on the
part of the pupil, this calls for a simple prohibition on the part of
the teacher, no reason being assigned. His authority must be sufficient
for the pupil without any reason. When the fault is repeated, and the
pupil is old enough to understand, then only should the grounds of the
prohibition be stated with it. This should, however, be done in few
words, and the educator must never allow himself to lose, in a doctrinal
lecture, the idea of discipline. If he do, the pupil will soon forget
that it was his own misbehavior which was the cause of all the remarks.
The statement of the reason must be honest, and must be presented to the
youth on the side most easy for him to appreciate. False reasons are not
only morally wrong, but they lead the mind astray. We also commit a
grave error when we try to unfold to the youth all the possible
consequences of his wrong act, for those possible consequences are too
far off to affect his mind. The long lecture wearies him, especially if
it be in a stereotyped form; and with teachers who are fault-finding,
and who like to hear themselves talk, this is apt to be the case. Still
more unfortunate would it be if we really should affect the lively
imagination of a sensitive youth by our description of the wretchedness
to which his wrong-doing, if persisted in, might lead him, for then the
conviction that he has already taken one step in that direction may
produce in him a fear which in the future man may become terrible
depression and lead to degradation.

§ 37. If to censure we add the threat of punishment, we have then what
in common language is called scolding.

If threats are made, the pupil must be made to feel that they will be
faithfully executed according to the word.

The threat of punishment is, however, to be avoided; for circumstances
may arise which will render its fulfillment not only objectionable, but
wrong, and the teacher will then find himself in the position of Herod
and bound "for his oath's sake" to a course of action which no longer
seems the best. Even the law in affixing a penalty to definite crimes
allows a certain latitude in a maximum and minimum of awarded
punishment.

§ 38. It is only after other means of reformation have been tried, and
have failed, that punishment is justifiable for error, transgression, or
vice. When our simple prohibition (§ 36), the statement of our reason
for the prohibiting (§ 36), and threat of punishment (§ 37) have all
failed, then punishment comes and intentionally inflicts pain on the
youth in order to force him by this last means to a realization of his
wrong-doing. And here the punishment must not be given for general bad
conduct or for a perverse disposition——those being vague
generalities——but for a special act of wrong-doing at that time. He
should not be punished because he is naturally bad or because he is
generally naughty, but for this one special and particular act which he
has committed. Thus the punishment will act on the general disposition,
not directly, but through this particular act, as a manifestation of the
disposition. Then it will not accuse the innermost nature of the
culprit. This way of punishment is not only demanded by justice, but it
is absolutely necessary in view of the fact of the sophistry inherent in
human nature which is always busy in assigning various motives for its
actions. If the child understands, then, that he is punished for that
particular act which he knows himself to have committed, he cannot feel
the bitter sense of injustice and misunderstanding which a punishment
inflicted for general reasons, and which attributes to him a depravity
of motives and intentions, so often engenders.

§ 39. Punishment as an educational means must, nevertheless, be always
essentially corrective, since it seeks always to bring the youth to a
comprehension of his wrong-doing and to a positive alteration in his
behavior, and, hence, has for its aim to improve him. At the same time
it is a sad testimony of the insufficiency of the means which have
been previously tried. We should on no account aim to terrify the
youth by physical force, so that to avoid that he will refrain from
doing the wrong or from repeating a wrong act already done. This would
lead only to terrorism, and his growing strength would soon put him
beyond its power and leave him without motive for refraining from
evil. Punishment may have this effect in some degree, but it should,
above all, be made to impress deeply upon his mind the eternal truth
that the evil deed is never allowed in God's universe to act
unrestrained and according to its own will, but that the good and true
is the only absolute power in the world, and that it is never at a
loss to avenge any contradiction of its will and design.

It may be questioned whether the moral teaching in our schools be not
too negative in its measures; whether it do not confine itself too much
to forbidding the commission of the wrong deed, and spend too little
force in securing the performance of the right deed. Not a simple
refraining from the wrong, but an active doing of the right would be the
better lesson to inculcate.

In the laws of the state the office of punishment is first to satisfy
justice,[12] and only after this is done can the improvement of the
criminal be considered. If government should proceed on the same basis
as the educator, it would make a grave mistake, for it has to deal, not
with children, but with adults, to whom it concedes the dignity of full
responsibility for all their acts. It has not to consider the reasons,
either psychological or ethical, which prompted the deed. The actual
deed is what it has first of all to deal with, and only after that is
considered and settled can it take into view any mitigating
circumstances connected therewith, or any peculiarity of the individual.
The educator, on the other hand, has to deal with those who are immature
and only growing toward responsibility. As long as they are under the
care of a teacher, he is at any rate partially accountable for what they
do. We must never confound the nature of punishment in the State with
that of punishment as an educational means.

§ 40. As to punishment, as with all other work in education, it can
never be abstractly determined beforehand, but it must be regulated with
a view to the individual pupil and his peculiar circumstances. What it
shall be, and how and when administered, are problems which call for
great ingenuity and tact on the part of the educator. It must never be
forgotten that punishments vary in intensity at the will of the
educator. He fixes the standard by which they are measured in the
child's mind. Whipping is actual physical pain, and an evil in itself to
the child. But there are many other punishments which involve no
physical pain, and the intensity of which, as felt by the child, varies
according to an artificial standard in different schools. "To sit under
the clock" was a great punishment in one of our public schools——not that
the seat was not perfectly comfortable, but that one was never sent
there to sit unless for some grave misdemeanor. The teacher has the
matter in his own hands, and it is well to remember this and to grade
his punishments with much caution, so as to make all pass for their full
value. In some schools even suspension is so common that it does not
seem to the pupil a very terrible thing. "Familiarity breeds contempt,"
and frequency implies familiarity. A punishment seldom resorted to will
always seem to the pupil to be severe. As we weaken, and in fact
bankrupt, language by an inordinate use of superlatives, so, also, do we
weaken any punishment by its frequent repetition. Economy of resources
should be always practiced.

§ 41. In general, we might say that, for very young children, corporal
punishment is most appropriate; for boys and girls, isolation; and for
older youth, something which appeals to the sense of honor.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment implies physical pain. Generally it
consists of a whipping, and this is perfectly justifiable in case of
persistent defiance of authority, of obstinate carelessness, or of
malicious evil-doing, so long or so often as the higher perceptions of
the offender are closed against appeal. But it must not be administered
too often, or with undue severity. To resort to deprivation of food is
cruel. But, while we condemn the false view of seeing in the rod the
only panacea for all embarrassing questions of discipline on the
teacher's part, we can have no sympathy for the sentimentality which
assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a
child. It is wrong thus to confound self-conscious humanity with
child-humanity, for to the average child himself a blow is the most
natural form of retribution, and that in which all other efforts at
influence at last end. The fully grown man ought, certainly, not to be
flogged, for this kind of punishment places him on a level with the
child; or, where it is barbarously inflicted, reduces him to the level
of the brute, and thus absolutely does degrade him. In English schools
the rod is said to be often used; if a pupil of the first class, who is
never flogged, is put back into the second, he becomes again subject to
flogging. But, even if this be necessary in the schools, it certainly
has no proper place in the army and navy.

§ 43. (2) To punish a pupil by isolation is to remove him temporarily
from the society of his fellows. The boy or girl thus cut off from
companionship, and forced to think only of himself, begins to understand
how helpless he is in such a position. Time passes wearily, and he is
soon eager to return to the companionship of parents, brothers and
sisters, teachers and fellow-students.

But to leave a child entirely by himself without any supervision, and
perhaps in a dark room, is as wrong as to leave two or three together
without supervision. It often happens when they are kept after school by
themselves that they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness,
and commit the wildest pranks.

§ 44. (3) Shutting children up in this way does not touch their sense
of honor, and the punishment is soon forgotten, because it relates only
to certain particular phases of their behavior. But it is quite
different when the pupil is isolated from his fellows on the ground that
by his conduct he has violated the very principles which make civilized
society possible, and is, therefore, no longer a proper member of it.
This is a punishment which touches his sense of honor, for honor is the
recognition of the individual by others as their equal, and by his
error, or by his crime, he had forfeited his right to be their equal,
their peer, and has thus severed himself from them.

The separation from them is thus only the external form of the real
separation which he himself has brought to pass within his soul, and
which his wrong-doing has only made clearly visible. This kind of
punishment, thus touching the whole character of the youth and not
easily forgotten, should be administered with the greatest caution lest
a permanent loss of self-respect follow. When we think our wrong-doing
to be eternal in its effects, we lose all power of effort for our own
improvement.

This sense of honor cannot be developed so well in family life, because
in the family the ties of blood make all in a certain sense equal, no
matter what may be their conduct. He who has by wrong-doing severed
himself from society is still a member of the family, and within its
sacred circle is still beloved, though it may be with bitter tears. No
matter how wrong he may have been, he still can find there the deepest
sympathy, for he is still father, brother, etc. It is in the contact of
one family with another that the feeling of honor is first developed,
and still more in the contact of the individual with an institution
which is not bound to him by any natural ties, but is an organism
entirely external to him. Thus, to the child, the school and the
school-classes offer a means of development which can never be found in
the family.

This fact is often overlooked by those who have the charge of the
education of children. No home education, no private tutorship, can take
the place of the school as an educational influence. For the first time
in his life the child, on being sent to school, finds himself in a
community where he is responsible for his own deeds, and where he has no
one to shield him. The rights of others for whom he has no special
affection are to be respected by him, and his own are to be defended.
The knowledge gained at the school is by no means the most valuable
acquisition there obtained. It must never be forgotten by the teacher
that the school is an institution on an entirely different basis from
the family, and that personal attachment is not the principle on which
its rule can be rightly based.

§ 45. This gradation of punishment from physical pain, up through
occasional isolation, to the touching of the innermost sense of honor is
very carefully to be considered, both with regard to the different ages
at which they are severally appropriate and to the different discipline
which they necessarily produce. Every punishment must, however, be
always looked at as a means to some end, and is thus transitory in its
nature. The pupil should always be conscious that it is painful to the
teacher to punish him. Nothing can be more effectual as a means of cure
for the wrong-doer than to perceive in the manner and tone of the voice,
in the very delay with which the necessary punishment is administered,
that he who punishes also suffers in order that the wrong-doer may be
cured of his fault. The principle of vicarious suffering lies at the
root of all spiritual healing.


_III.——The Limits of Education._

§ 46. As far as the external form of education is concerned, its limit
is reached in the instrumentality of punishment in which we seek to turn
the activity which has been employed in a wrong direction into its
proper channel, to make the deed positive instead of negative, to
substitute for the destructive deed one which shall be in harmony with
the constructive forces of society. But education implies its real
limits in its definition, which is to build up the individual into
theoretical and practical Reason. When this work goes properly on, the
authority of the educator, as authority, necessarily loses, every day,
some of its force, as the guiding principles come to form a part of the
pupil's own character, instead of being super-imposed on him from
without through the mediation of the educator. What was authority
becomes now advice and example; unreasoning and implicit obedience
passes into gratitude and affection. The pupil wears off the rough edges
of his crude individuality, which is transfigured, so to speak, into the
universality and necessity of Reason, but without losing his identity in
the process. Work becomes enjoyment, and Play is found only in a change
of activity. The youth takes possession of himself, and may now be left
to himself. There are two widely differing views with regard to the
limits of education; one lays great stress on the powerlessness of the
pupil and the great power of the teacher, and asserts that the teacher
must create something out of the pupil.

This view is often seen to have undesirable results, where large
numbers are to be educated together. It assumes that each pupil is only
"a sample of the lot" on whom the teacher is to affix his stamp, as if
they were different pieces of goods from some factory. Thus
individuality is destroyed, and all reduced to one level, as in
cloisters, barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems
to exist. Sometimes it takes the form of a theory which holds that one
can at will flog anything into or out of a pupil. This may be called a
superstitious belief in the power of education. The opposite extreme may
be found in that system which advocates a "severe letting alone,"
asserting that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the most
careful and circumspect education fails of reaching its aim because the
inherent nature of the youth has fought against it with such force as to
render abortive all opposing efforts. This idea of Pedagogy produces a
sort of indifference about means and ends which would leave each
individuality to grow as its own instinct and the chance influences of
the world might direct. The latter view would, of course, preclude the
possibility of any science of education, and make the youth only the
sport of blind fate. The comparative power of inherited tendencies and
of educational appliances is, however, one which every educator should
carefully study. Much careless generalization has been made on this
topic, and opinion is too often based upon some one instance where
accurate observation of methods and influences have been wanting.

§ 47. Education has necessarily a definite _subjective limit_ in the
individuality of the youth, for it can develop in him only that which
exists in him as a possibility. It can lead and assist, but it has no
power to create. What nature has denied to a man education cannot give
him, any more than it can on the other hand annihilate his original
gifts, though it may suppress, distort, and measurably destroy them. And
yet it is impossible to decide what is the real essence of a man's
individuality until he has left behind him the years of growth, because
it is not till then that he fully attains conscious possession of
himself. Moreover, at this critical time many traits which were supposed
to be characteristic may prove themselves not to be so by disappearing,
while long-slumbering and unsuspected talents may crop out. Whatever has
been forced upon a child, though not in harmony with his individuality,
whatever has been driven into him without having been actively accepted
by him, or having had a definite relation to his culture——will remain
perhaps, but only as an external foreign ornament, only as a parasitic
growth which weakens the force of his real nature. But we must
distinguish from these little affectations which arise from a
misconception of the limits of individuality that effort of imitation
which children and young people often exhibit in trying to copy in their
own actions those peculiarities which they observe and admire in
perfectly-developed persons with whom they may come in contact. They see
a reality which corresponds to their own possibility, and the
presentiment of a like or a similar attainment stirs them to imitation,
although this external imitation may be sometimes disagreeable or
ridiculous to the lookers-on. We ought not to censure it too severely,
remembering that it springs from a positive striving towards true
culture, and needs only to be properly directed, and never to be roughly
put down.

§ 48. _The objective limit_ of education consists in the means
which can be applied for it. That the capacity for culture should exist
is the first condition of success, but it is none the less necessary
that it be cultivated. But how much cultivation shall be given to it
must depend in very great degree on the means which are practicable, and
this will undoubtedly again depend on the worldly possessions and
character of the family to which the pupil belongs. If he comes of a
cultivated and refined family, he will have a great advantage at the
start over his less favored comrades; and, with regard to many of the
arts and sciences, this limitation of education is of great
significance. But the means alone will not answer. Without natural
capacity, all the educational apparatus possible is of no avail. On the
other hand, real talent often accomplishes incredible feats with very
limited means; and, if the way is only once open, makes of itself a
center of attraction which draws to itself as with magnetic power the
necessary means. Moral culture is, however, from its very nature, raised
above such dependence.

If we fix our thought on the subjective limit——that of individuality (§
47)——we detect the ground for that indifference which lays little stress
on education (§ 46, end). If, on the other hand, we concentrate our
attention on the means of culture, we shall perceive the reason of the
other extreme spoken of——of that pedagogical despotism (§ 46) which
fancies that it is able to prescribe and enforce at will upon the pupil
any culture whatever, without regard to his special characteristics.

§ 49. Education comes to its _absolute limit_ when the pupil has
apprehended the problem which he is to solve, has comprehended the means
which are at his disposal, and has acquired the necessary skill in using
them. The true educator seeks to render himself unnecessary by the
complete emancipation of the youth. He works always towards the
independence of the pupil, and always with the design of withdrawing so
soon as he shall have reached this stand-point, and of leaving him to
the full responsibility for his own deeds. To endeavor to hold him in
the position of a pupil after this time has been reached would be to
contradict the very essence of education, which must find its result in
the independent maturity of the youth. The inequality which formerly
existed between pupil and teacher is now removed, and nothing becomes
more oppressive to the former than any endeavor to force upon him the
authority from which, in reality, his own efforts have freed him. But
the undue hastening of this emancipation is as bad an error as an effort
after delay. The question as to whether a person is really ready for
independent action——as to whether his education is finished——may be
settled in much the same way in education as in politics. When any
people has progressed so far as to put the question whether they are
ready for freedom, it ceases to be a question; for, without the inner
consciousness of freedom itself, the question would never have occurred
to them.

§ 50. But, although the pupil may rightly now be freed from the hands of
instructors, and no longer obtain his culture through them, it is by no
means to be understood that he is not to go on with the work himself. He
is now to educate himself. Each must plan out for himself the ideal
toward which he must daily strive. In this process of
self-transformation a friend may aid by advice and example, but he
cannot educate, for the act of educating necessarily implies inequality
between teacher and pupil. The human necessity for companionship gives
rise to societies of different kinds, in which we may, perhaps, say that
there is some approach to educating their members, the necessary
inequality being supplied by various grades and orders. They presuppose
education in the usual sense of the word, but they wish to bring about
an education in a higher sense, and, therefore, they veil the last form
of their ideal in mystery and secrecy.

By the term _Philister_ the Germans indicate the man of a civilized
state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse
towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an
Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do
not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that
any active life, any new progress, is to them impossible?


ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY.

§ 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It
borrows the results of other sciences [_e.g._, it presupposes the
science of Rights, treating of the institutions of the family and civil
society, as well as of the State; it presupposes the science of
anthropology, in which is treated the relations of the human mind to
nature. Nature conditions the development of the individual human being.
But the history of the individual and the history of the race presents a
continual emancipation from nature, and a continual growth into freedom,
_i.e._, into ability to know himself and to realize himself in the
world by making the matter and forces of the world his instruments and
tools. Anthropology shows us how man as a natural being——_i.e._, as
having a body——is limited. There is climate, involving heat and cold and
moisture, the seasons of the year, etc.; there is organic growth,
involving birth, growth, reproduction, and decay; there is race,
involving the limitations of heredity; there is the telluric life of the
planet and the circulation of the forces of the solar system, whence
arise the processes of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and kindred
phenomena; there is the emotional nature of man, involving his feelings,
passions, instincts, and desires; then there are the five senses, and
their conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating
of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and
sense-perception to that of self-consciousness, _i.e._, to a
recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon
created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the
treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of
the mind, _e. g_, attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception,
understanding, judgment, reason, and the like. Psychology is generally
made (by English writers) to include, also, what is here called
anthropology and phenomenology. After psychology, there is the science
of ethics, or of morals and customs; then, the Science of Rights,
already mentioned; then, Theology, or the Science of Religion, and,
after all these, there is Philosophy, or the Science of Science. Now, it
is clear that the Science of Education treats of the process of
development, by and through which man, as a merely natural being,
becomes spirit, or self-conscious mind; hence, it presupposes all the
sciences named, and will be defective if it ignores nature, or mind, or
any stage or process of either, especially Anthropology, Phenomenology,
Psychology, Ethics, Rights, Æsthetics, or Science of Art and Literature,
Religion, or Philosophy].

§ 2. The scope of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so
vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to
lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere
collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set
forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as a whole.

§ 3. Moreover, education furnishes a special vocation, that of teaching.
(All vocations are specializing——being cut off, as it were, from the
total life of man. The "division of labor" requires that each individual
shall concentrate his endeavors and be a _part_ of the whole).

§ 4. Pedagogics, as a special science, belongs to the collection of
sciences (already described, in commenting on § 1) included under the
philosophy of Spirit or Mind, and more particularly to that part of it
which relates to the will (ethics and science of rights, rather than to
the part relating to the intellect and feeling, as anthropology,
phenomenology, psychology, æsthetics, and religion. "Theoretical"
relates to the _intellect_, "practical" relates to the _will_, in this
philosophy). The province of practical philosophy is the investigation
of the nature of freedom, and the process of securing it by
self-emancipation from nature. Pedagogics involves the conscious
exertion of influence on the part of the will of the teacher upon the
will of the pupil, with a purpose in view——that of inducing the pupil to
form certain prescribed habits, and adopt prescribed views and
inclinations. The entire science of mind (as above shown), is
presupposed by the science of education, and must be kept constantly in
view as a guiding light. The institution of the _family_ (treated in
practical philosophy) is the starting-point of education, and without
this institution properly realized, education would find no solid
foundation. The right to be educated on the part of children, and the
duty to educate on the part of parents, are reciprocal; and there is no
family life so poor and rudimentary that it does not furnish the most
important elements of education——no matter what the subsequent influence
of the school, the vocation, and the state.

§ 5. Pedagogics as science, distinguished from the same as an art: the
former containing the abstract general treatment, and the latter taking
into consideration all the conditions of concrete individuality,
_e.g._, the peculiarities of the teacher and the pupil, and all the
local circumstances, and the power of adaptation known as "tact."

§ 6. The special conditions and peculiarities, considered in education
as an art, may be formulated and reduced to system, but they should not
be introduced as a part of the _science_ of education.

§ 7. Pedagogics has three parts: first, it considers the idea and nature
of education, and arrives at its true definition; second, it presents
and describes the special provinces into which the entire field of
education is divided; third, it considers the historical evolution of
education by the human race, and the individual systems of education
that have arisen, flourished, and decayed, and their special functions
in the life of man.

§ 8. The scope of the first part is easy to define. The history of
pedagogics, of course, contains all the ideas or definitions of the
nature of education; but it must not for that reason be substituted for
the scientific investigation of the nature of education, which alone
should constitute this first part (and the history of education be
reserved for the third part).

§ 9. The second part includes a discussion of the threefold nature of
man as body, intellect, and will. The difficulty in this part of the
science is very great, because of its dependence upon other sciences
(_e. g_, upon physiology, anthropology, etc.), and because of the
temptation to go into details (_e. g_, in the practical department, to
consider the endless varieties of schools for arts and trades).

§ 10. The third part contains the exposition of the various national
standpoints furnished (in the history of the world) for the bases of
particular systems of education. In each of these systems will be found
the general idea underlying all education, but it will be found existing
under special modifications, which have arisen through its application
to the physical, intellectual, and ethical conditions of the people. But
we can deduce the essential features of the different systems that may
appear in history, for there are only a limited number of systems
possible. Each lower form finds itself complemented in some higher form,
and its function and purpose then become manifest. The systems of
"national" education (_i.e._, Asiatic systems, in which the
individuality of each person is swallowed up in the substantiality of
the national idea——just as the individual waves get lost in the ocean on
whose surface they arise) find their complete explanation in the systems
of education that arise in Christianity (the preservation of human life
being the object of the nation, it follows that when realized abstractly
or exclusively, it absorbs and annuls the mental independence of its
subjects, and thus contradicts itself by destroying the essence of what
it undertakes to preserve, _i.e._, life (soul, mind); but within
Christianity the principle of the state is found so modified that it is
consistent with the infinite, untrammelled development of the
individual, intellectually and morally, and thus not only life is saved,
but spiritual, free life is attainable for each and for all).

§ 11. The history of pedagogy ends with the present system as the latest
one. As science sees the future ideally contained in the present, it is
bound to comprehend the latest system as a realization (though
imperfect) of the ideal system of education. Hence, the system, as
scientifically treated in the first part of our work, is the system with
which the third part of our work ends.

§ 12. The nature of education, its form, its limits, are now to be
investigated. (§§ 13-50.)

§ 13. The nature of education determined by the nature of Mind or
Spirit, whose activity is always devoted to realizing for itself what it
is potentially——to becoming conscious of its possibilities, and to
getting them under the control of its will. Mind is potentially free.
Education is the means by which man seeks to realize in man his
possibilities (to develop the possibilities of the race in each
individual). Hence, education has freedom for its object.

§ 14. Man is the only being capable of education, in the sense above
defined, because the only conscious being. He must know himself ideally,
and then realize his ideal self, in order to become actually free. The
animals not the plants may be _trained_, or _cultivated_, but, as devoid
of self-consciousness (even the highest animals not getting above
impressions, not reaching ideas, not seizing general or abstract
thoughts), they are not realized for _themselves_, but only for us.
(That is, they do not know their ideal as we do.)

§ 15. Education, taken in its widest compass, is the education of the
human race by Divine Providence.

§ 16. In a narrower sense, education is applied to the shaping of the
individual, so that his caprice and arbitrariness shall give place to
rational habits and views, in harmony with nature and ethical customs.
He must not abuse nature, nor slight the ethical code of his people, nor
despise the gifts of Providence (whether for weal or woe), unless he is
willing to be crushed in the collision with these more substantial
elements.

§ 17. In the narrowest, but most usual application of the term, we
understand by "education" the influence of the individual upon the
individual, exerted with the object of developing his powers in a
conscious and methodical manner, either generally or in special
directions, the educator being relatively mature, and exercising
authority over the relatively immature pupil. Without authority on the
one hand and obedience on the other, education would lack its ethical
basis——a neglect of the will-training could not be compensated for by
any amount of knowledge or smartness.

§ 18. The general province of education includes the development of the
individual into the theoretical and practical reason immanent in him.
The definition which limits education to the development of the
individual into ethical customs (obedience to morality, social
conventionalities, and the laws of the state——Hegel's definition is here
referred to: "The object of education is to make men ethical") is not
comprehensive enough, because it ignores the side of the _intellect_,
and takes note only of the _will_. The individual should not only be man
in general (as he is through the adoption of moral and ethical
forms——which are _general_ forms, customs, or laws, and thus the forms
imposed by the _will_ of the _race_), but he should also be a
self-conscious subject, a particular individual (man, through his
intellect, exists for himself as an individual, while through his
general habits and customs he loses his individuality and spontaneity).

§ 19. Education has a definite object in view and it proceeds by grades
of progress toward it. The systematic tendency is essential to all
education, properly so called.

§ 20. Division of labor has become requisite in the higher spheres of
teaching. The growing multiplicity of branches of knowledge creates the
necessity for the specialist as teacher. With this tendency to
specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so
essential to the pupil——his rounded human culture and symmetry of
development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be
an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man.

§ 21. From this necessity of the division of labor in modern times there
arises the demand for two kinds of educational institutions——those
devoted to general education (common schools, colleges, etc.), and
special schools (for agriculture, medicine, mechanic arts, etc).

§ 22. The infinite possibility of culture for the individual leaves,
of course, his actual accomplishment a mere approximation to a complete
education. Born idiots are excluded from the possibility of education,
because the lack of universal ideas in their consciousness precludes to
that class of unfortunates anything beyond a mere mechanical training.

§ 23. Spirit, or mind, makes its own nature; it _is_ what it produces——a
self-result. From this follows the _form_ of education. It commences
with (1) undeveloped mind——that of the infant——wherein nearly all is
potential, and but little is actualized; (2) its first stage of
development is self-estrangement——it is absorbed in the observation of
objects around it; (3) but it discovers laws and principles
(universality) in external nature, and finally identifies them with
reason——it comes to recognize itself in nature——to recognize conscious
mind as the creator and preserver of the external world——and thus
becomes at home in nature. Education does not create, but it
emancipates.

§ 24. This process of self-estrangement and its removal belongs to all
culture. The mind must fix its attention upon what is foreign to it, and
penetrate its disguise. It will discover its own substance under the
seeming alien being. Wonder is the accompaniment of this stage of
estrangement. The love of travel and adventure arises from this basis.

§ 25. Labor is distinguished from play: The former concentrates its
energies on some object, with the purpose of making it conform to its
will and purpose; play occupies itself with its object according to its
caprice and arbitrariness, and has no care for the results or products
of its activity; work is prescribed by authority, while play is
necessarily spontaneous.

§ 26. Work and Play: the distinction between them. In play the child
feels that he has entire control over the object with which he is
dealing, both in respect to its existence and the object for which it
exists. His arbitrary will may change both with perfect impunity, since
all depends upon his caprice; he exercises his powers in play according
to his natural proclivities, and therein finds scope to develope his own
individuality. In work, on the contrary, he must have respect for the
object with which he deals. It must be held sacred against his caprice,
must not be destroyed nor injured in any way, and its object must
likewise be respected. His own personal inclinations must be entirely
subordinated, and the business that he is at work upon must be carried
forward in accordance with its own ends and aims, and without reference
to his own feelings in the matter.

Thus work teaches the pupil the lesson of self-sacrifice (the right of
superiority which the general interest possesses over the particular),
while play develops his personal idiosyncrasy.

§ 27. Without play, the child would become more and more a machine, and
lose all freshness and spontaneity——all originality. Without work, he
would develop into a monster of caprice and arbitrariness.

From the fact that man must learn to combine with man, in order that the
individual may avail himself of the experience and labors of his
fellow-men, self-sacrifice for the sake of combination is the great
lesson of life. But as this should be _voluntary_ self-sacrifice,
education must train the child equally in the two directions of
spontaneity and obedience. The educated man finds recreation in change
of work.

§ 28. Education seeks to assimilate its object——to make what was alien
and strange to the pupil into something familiar and habitual to him.
[The pupil is to attack, one after the other, the foreign realms in the
world of nature and man, and conquer them for his own, so that he can be
"at home" in them. It is the necessary condition of all growth, all
culture, that one widens his own individuality by this conquest of new
provinces alien to him. By this the individual transcends the narrow
limits of particularity and becomes generic——the individual becomes the
species. A good definition of education is this: it is the process by
which the individual man elevates himself to the species.]

§ 29. (1) Therefore, the first requirement in education is that the
pupil shall acquire the habit of subordinating his likes and dislikes to
the attainment of a rational object.

It is necessary that he shall acquire this indifference to his own
pleasure, even by employing his powers on that which does not appeal to
his interest in the remotest degree.

§ 30. Habit soon makes us familiar with those subjects which seemed so
remote from our personal interest, and they become agreeable to us. The
objects, too, assume a new interest upon nearer approach, as being
useful or injurious to us. That is useful which serves us as a means for
the realization of a rational purpose; injurious, if it hinders such
realization. It happens that objects are useful in one sense and
injurious in another, and _vice versa_. Education must make the pupil
capable of deciding on the usefulness of an object, by reference to its
effect on his permanent vocation in life.

§ 31. But _good and evil_ are the ethical distinctions which furnish the
absolute standard to which to refer the question of the usefulness of
objects and actions.

§ 32. (2) Habit is (a) _passive_, or (b) _active_. The passive habit
is that which gives us the power to retain our equipoise of mind in the
midst of a world of changes (pleasure and pain, grief and joy, etc). The
active habit gives us skill, presence of mind, tact in emergencies, etc.

§ 33. (3) Education deals altogether with the formation of habits. For
it aims to make some condition or form of activity into a second nature
for the pupil. But this involves, also, the breaking up of previous
habits. This power to break up habits, as well as to form them, is
necessary to the freedom of the individual.

§ 34. Education deals with these complementary relations (antitheses):
(a) authority and obedience; (b) rationality (_general_ forms) and
individuality; (c) work and play; (d) habit (general custom) and
spontaneity. The development and reconciliation of these opposite sides
in the pupil's character, so that they become his second nature, removes
the phase of constraint which at first accompanies the formal
inculcation of rules, and the performance of prescribed tasks. The
freedom of the pupil is the ultimate object to be kept in view, but a
too early use of freedom may work injury to the pupil. To remove a pupil
from all temptation would be to remove possibilities of growth in
strength to resist it; on the other hand, to expose him needlessly to
temptation is fiendish.

§ 35. Deformities of character in the pupil should be carefully traced
back to their origin, so that they may be explained by their history.
Only by comprehending the historic growth of an organic defect are we
able to prescribe the best remedies.

§ 36. If the negative behavior of the pupil (his bad behavior) results
from ignorance due to his own neglect, or to his wilfulness, it should
be met directly by an act of authority on the part of the teacher (and
without an appeal to reason). An appeal should be made to the
understanding of the pupil only when he is somewhat mature, or shows by
his repetition of the offence that his proclivity is deep-seated, and
requires an array of all good influences to reinforce his feeble
resolutions to amend.

§ 37. Reproof, accompanied by threats of punishment, is apt to
degenerate into scolding.

§ 38. After the failure of other means, punishment should be resorted
to. Inasmuch as the punishment should be for the purpose of making the
pupil realize that it is the consequence of his deed returning on
himself, it should always be administered for some particular act of
his, and this should be specified. The "overt act" is the only thing
which a man can be held accountable for in a court of justice; although
it is true that the harboring of evil thoughts or intentions is a sin,
yet it is not a crime until realized in an overt act.

§ 40. Punishment should be regulated, not by abstract rules, but in view
of the particular case and its attending circumstances.

§ 41. Sex and age of pupil should be regarded in prescribing the mode
and degree of punishment. Corporal punishment is best for pupils who are
very immature in mind; when they are more developed they may be punished
by any imposed restraint upon their free wills which will isolate them
from the ordinary routine followed by their fellow-pupils. (Deprivation
of the right to do as others do is a wholesome species of punishment for
those old or mature enough to feel its effects, for it tends to secure
respect for the regular tasks by elevating them to the rank of rights
and privileges.) For young men and women, the punishment should be of a
kind that is based on a sense of honor.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment should be properly administered by means
of the rod, subduing wilful defiance by the application of force.

§ 48. (2) Isolation makes the pupil realize a sense of his dependence
upon human society, and upon the expression of this dependence by
coöperation in the common tasks. Pupils should not be shut up in a dark
room, nor removed from the personal supervision of the teacher. (To shut
up two or more in a room without supervision is not isolation, but
association; only it is association for mischief, and not for study.)

§ 44. (3) Punishment based on the sense of honor may or may not be based
on isolation. It implies a state of maturity on the part of the pupil.
Through his offence the pupil has destroyed his equality with his
fellows, and has in reality, in his inmost nature, isolated himself from
them. Corporal punishment is external, but it may be accompanied with a
keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is
sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment
founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and
have no external discomfort attached to it.

§ 45. The necessity of carefully adapting the punishment to the age
and maturity of the pupil, renders it the most difficult part of the
teacher's duties. It is essential that the air and manner of the teacher
who punishes should be that of one who acts from a sense of painful
duty, and not from any delight in being the cause of suffering. Not
personal likes and dislikes, but the rational necessity which is over
teacher and pupil alike, causes the infliction of pain on the pupil.

§ 46. Punishment is the final topic to be considered under the head of
"Form of Education."

In the act of punishment the teacher abandons the legitimate province of
education, which seeks to make the pupil rational or obedient to what is
reasonable, as a habit, and from his own free will. The pupil is
punished in order that he may be _made_ to conform to the rational, by
the application of constraint. Another will is substituted for the
pupil's, and good behavior is produced, but not by the pupil's free act.
While education finds a negative limit in punishment, it finds a
positive limit in the accomplishment of its legitimate object, which is
the emancipation of the pupil from the state of imbecility, as regards
mental and moral self-control, into the ability to direct himself
rationally. When the pupil has acquired the discipline which enables him
to direct his studies properly, and to control his inclinations in such
a manner as to pursue his work regularly, the teacher is no longer
needed for him——he becomes his own teacher.

There may be two extreme views on this subject——the one tending towards
the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the
pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view
tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil,
even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind
provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the
prosecution of further study.

§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to
be found in the individuality of the pupil——the limit to his natural
capacity.

§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time
that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends
largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.

§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see §
46), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a
necessary instrumentality for further culture.

§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done,
but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if
the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute"
limit——_i.e._, has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation
from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his
fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with
his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of the experience of his
fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common
fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live
for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with
which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience——this
common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more
valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a
great measure impossible.




ERRATA.


§ 26. Last two paragraphs should be within quotation marks, being from
an English author.

§ 29. The second and third paragraphs belong to § 30.——the numbering
being omitted.

§ 33. Line four——"instructive" should be "intuitive."




SECOND PART.

The Special Elements of Education.


§ 51. Education is the development of the theoretical and practical
Reason which is inborn in the human being. Its end is to be accomplished
by the labor which transforms a condition, existent at first only as an
ideal, into a fixed habit, and changes the natural individuality into a
glorified humanity. When the youth stands, so to speak, on his own feet,
he is emancipated from education, and education then finds its limit.
The special elements which may be said to make up education are the
life, the cognition, and the will of man. Without the first, the real
nature of the soul can never be made really to appear; without
cognition, he can have no genuine will——_i.e._, one of which he is
conscious; and without will, no self-assurance, either of life or of
cognition. It must not be forgotten that these three so-called elements
are not to be held apart in the active work of education; for they are
inseparable and continually interwoven the one with the other. But none
the less do they determine their respective consequences, and sometimes
one, sometimes another has the supremacy. In infancy, up to the fifth or
sixth year, the physical development, or mere living, is the main
consideration; the next period, that of childhood, is the time of
acquiring knowledge, in which the child takes possession of the theory
of the world as it is handed down——a tradition of the past, such as man
has made it through his experience and insight; and finally, the period
of youth must pave the way to a practical activity, the character of
which the self-determination of the will must decide.

§ 52. We may, then, divide the elements of Pedagogics into three
sections: (1) the physical, (2) the intellectual, (3) the practical.
(The words "orthobiotics," "didactics," and "pragmatics" might be used
to characterize them.)

Æsthetic training is only an element of the intellectual, as social,
moral, and religious training are elements of the practical. But because
these latter elements relate to external things (affairs of the world),
the name pragmatics, is appropriate. In so far as education touches on
the principles which underlie ethics, politics, and religion, it concurs
with those sciences, but it is distinguished from them in the capacity
which it imparts for solving the problems presented by the others.

The scientific order of topics must be established through the fact that
the earlier, as the more abstract, constitute the condition of their
presupposed end and aim, and the later because the more concrete
constitute the ground of the former, and consequently their final cause,
or the end for which they exist; just as in human beings, life in the
order of time comes before cognition, and cognition before will,
although life really presupposes cognition, and cognition will.


FIRST DIVISION.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION, OR ORTHOBIOTICS.


§ 53. Only when we rightly comprehend the process of life may we know
how to live aright. Life, the "circle of eternal change," is constantly
transforming the inorganic into the organic, and after using it,
returning it again to the realm of the inorganic. Whatever it does not
assimilate of that which it has taken in simply as a stimulant, and
whatever has become dead, it separates from itself and rejects. The
organism is in perfect health when it accomplishes this double task of
organizing and disorganizing. On the comprehension of this single fact
all laws of physical health or of hygiene are based. This idea of the
essence of life is expressed by Goethe in his Faust, where he sees the
golden buckets perpetually rising and sinking.[13] When the equilibrium
of the upward and downward motion is disturbed, we have disease. When
the motion ceases we have death, in which the whole organism becomes
inorganic, and the "dust returns to dust."

§ 54. It follows from this that not only in the organism as a whole, but
in every organ, and every part of every organ, this restless change of
the inorganic to the organic is going on. Every cell has its own
history, and this history is only the same as that of the whole of which
it forms a part. Activity is then not inimical to the organism, but is
the appointed means by which the progressive and retrogressive
metamorphoses must be carried out. In order that the process may go on
harmoniously, or, in other words, that the body may be healthy, the
whole organism, and every part of it in its own way, must have its
period of productive activity and then also its period of rest in which
it finds renewal of strength for another period of activity. Thus we
have waking and sleep, inspiration and expiration of air. Periodicity is
the law of life. When we understand the relative antagonism (their stage
of tension) of the different organs, and their cycles of activity, we
shall hold the secret of the constant self-renewal of life. This thought
finds expression in the old fairy stories of "The Search after the
Fountain of Youth." And the figure of the fountain, with its rising and
falling waters, doubtless finds its origin in the dim comprehension of
the endless double movement, or periodicity of life.

§ 55. When to any organ, or to the whole organism, not sufficient time
is allowed for it to withdraw into itself and to repair waste, we are
conscious of fatigue. While the other organs all rest, however, one
special organ may, as if separated from them, sustain a long-continued
effort of activity even to the point of fatigue, without injury——as,
_e.g._, the lungs in talking while all the other members are at rest.
But, on the other hand, it is not well to talk and run at the same time.

The idea that the body may be preserved in a healthy state longer by
sparing it——_i.e._, by inactivity——is an error which springs from a
false and mechanical conception of life. It is just as foolish to
imagine that health depends on the abundance and excellence of food, for
without the power of assimilating the food taken, nourishment of
whatever kind does more harm than good; all real strength develops from
activity alone.

§ 56. Physical education, according as it relates to the repairing, the
muscular, or the emotional activities, is divided into (1) diatetics,
(2) gymnastics, (3) sexual education. In the direct activity of life
these all interact with each other, but for our purposes we are obliged
to speak of them as if they worked independently. Moreover, in the
development of the human being, they come into maturity of development
in a certain order: nutrition, muscular growth, sexual maturity. But
Pedagogics can treat of these only as they are found in the infant, the
child, and the youth; for with the arrival of mature life, education is
over.


FIRST CHAPTER.

_Diatetics._


§ 57. By diatetics we mean the art of repairing the constant waste of
the system, and, in childhood, of also building it up to its full form
and size. Since in reality each organism has its own way of doing this,
the diatetical practice must vary somewhat with sex, age, temperament,
occupation, and circumstances. The science of Pedagogics has then, in
this department, only to enunciate general principles. If we go into
details, we fall into triviality. Nothing can be of more importance for
the whole life than the way in which the physical education is managed
in the very first stages of development. So generally is this fact
accepted, that almost every nation has its own distinct system, which
has been carefully elaborated. Many of these systems, no doubt, are
characterized by gross errors, and widely differ as to time, place, and
character, and yet they all have a justification for their peculiar
form.

§ 58. The best food for the infant in the first months of its life is
its mother's milk. The employment of another nurse, if a general custom,
as in France, is highly objectionable, since with the milk the child is
likely to imbibe to some extent his physical and ethical nature. The
milk of an animal can never supply the place to a child of that of its
own mother. In Walter Scott's story of _The Fair Maid of Perth_, Eachim
is represented as timorous by nature, having been nourished by a white
doe after the death of his mother.

§ 59. When the teeth make their appearance, it is a sign that the child
is ready for solid food; and yet, till the second teeth appear, light,
half-solid food and vegetables should constitute the principal part of
the diet.

§ 60. When the second teeth have come, then the organism demands both
vegetable and animal food. Too much meat is, doubtless, harmful. But it
is an error to suppose that man was intended to eat vegetables alone,
and that, as some have said, the adoption of animal food is a sign of
his degeneracy.

The Hindoos, who live principally on a vegetable diet, are not at all,
as has been asserted, a mild and gentle race. A glance into their
stories, especially their erotic poetry, proves them to be quite as
passionate as any other people.

§ 61. Man is an omnivorous being. Children have, therefore, a natural
desire to taste of every thing. With them, eating and drinking have
still a poetic side, and there is a pleasure in them which is not wholly
the mere pleasure of taste. Their proclivity to taste of every thing
should not, therefore, be harshly censured, unless it is associated with
disobedience, or pursued in a clandestine manner, or when it betrays
cunning and greediness.

§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are growing and changing so
fast. In later years, waking and sleeping must be regulated, and yet not
too exactly.

§ 63. The clothing of children should follow the form of the body, and
should be large enough to give them free room for the unfettered
movement of every limb in play.

The Germans do more rationally for children in the matter of sleep and
of dress than in that of food, which they often make too rich, and
accompany with coffee, tea, etc. The clothing should be not only
suitable in shape and size, it must also be made of simple and
inexpensive material, so that the child may not be hampered in his play
by the constant anxiety that a spot or a rent may cause fault to be
found with him. If we foster in the child's mind too much thought about
his clothes, we tend to produce either a narrow-mindedness, which treats
affairs of the moment with too much respect and concerns itself with
little things, or an empty vanity. Vanity is often produced by dressing
children in a manner that attracts attention. (No one can fail to remark
the peculiar healthful gayety of German children, and to contrast it
with the different appearance of American children. It is undoubtedly
true that the climate has much to do with this result, but it is also
true that we may learn much from that nation in our way of treating
children. Already we import their children's story-books, to the
infinite delight of the little ones, and copies of their children's
pictures are appropriated constantly by our children's magazines and
picture-books. It is to be greatly desired that we should adopt the very
sensible custom which prevails in Germany, of giving to each child its
own little bed to sleep in, no matter how many may be required; and, in
general, we shall not go far astray if we follow the Germans in their
treatment of their happy children.)

§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be trained, not
only for the sake of their physical health, but also because it has a
decided moral influence. Cleanliness will not have things deprived of
their distinctive and individual character, and become again a part of
original chaos. It is only a form of order which remands all things,
dirt included, to their own places, and will not endure to have things
mixed and confused. All adaptation in dress comes from this same
principle. When every thing is in its proper place, all dressing will be
suitable to the occasion and to the wearer, and the era of good taste in
dress will have come. Dirt itself, as Lord Palmerston so wittily said,
is nothing but "matter out of place." Cleanliness would hold every
individual thing strictly to its differences from other things, and for
the reason that it makes pure air, cleanliness of his own body, of his
clothing, and of all his surroundings really necessary to man, it
develops in him the feeling for the proper limitations of all existent
things. (Emerson says: "Therefore is space and therefore is time, that
men may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and
divisible." He might have said, "Therefore is cleanliness.")


SECOND CHAPTER.

_Gymnastics._


§ 65. Gymnastics is the art of cultivating in a rational manner the
muscular system. The activity of the voluntary muscles, which are under
the control of the brain, in distinction from the involuntary, which are
under the control of the spinal cord, renders possible the connection of
man with the external world, and acts in a reflex manner back upon the
involuntary or automatic muscles for the purposes of repair and
sensation. Because the activity of muscle-fibre consists in the change
from contraction to expansion, and the reverse, gymnastics must use a
constant change of movements which shall not only make tense, but relax
the muscles that are to be exercised.

§ 66. The gymnastic art among any people will always bear a certain
relation to its art of war. So long as fighting consists mainly of
personal, hand-to-hand encounters of two combatants, so long will
gymnastics turn its chief effort towards the development of the greatest
possible amount of individual strength and dexterity. But after the
invention of fire-arms of long range has changed the whole idea of war,
the individual becomes only one member of a body, the army, the
division, or the regiment, and emerges from this position into his
individuality again only occasionally, as in sharpshooting, in the
onset, or in the retreat. Modern gymnastics, as an art, can never be the
same as the ancient art, for this very reason: that because of the loss
of the individual man in the general mass of combatants, the matter of
personal bravery is not of so much importance as formerly. The same
essential difference between ancient and modern gymnastics, would result
from the subjective, or internal character of the modern spirit. It is
impossible for us, in modern times, to devote so much thought to the
care of the body and to the reverential admiration of its beauty as did
the Greeks.

The Turners' Unions and Turners' Halls in Germany belonged to the period
of intense political enthusiasm in the German youth, and had a political
significance. Now they have come back again to their place as an
instrument of education, and seem in great cities to be of much
importance. In mountainous countries, and in country life generally, a
definite gymnastic drill is of much less importance, for much and varied
exercise is of necessity a constant part of the daily life of every one.

The constant opportunity and the impulse to recreation helps in the same
direction. In cities, on the contrary, there is not free space enough
either in houses or yards for children to romp to their heart's and
body's content. For this reason a gymnasium is here useful, so that they
may have companionship in their plays. For girls this exercise is less
necessary. Dancing may take its place, and systematic exercise should be
used only where there is a tendency to some weakness or deformity. They
are not to become Amazons. On the other hand, boys need the feeling of
comradeship. It is true they find this in some measure in school, but
they are not there perfectly on an equality, because the standing is
determined to some extent by his intellectual ability. The academic
youth cannot hope to win any great preëminence in the gymnastic hall,
and running, climbing, leaping, and lifting do not interest him very
much as he grows older. He takes a far more lively interest in exercises
which have a military character. In Germany the gymnastic art is very
closely united with the art of war.

(The German idea of a woman's whole duty——to knit, to sew, and to obey
implicitly——is perhaps accountable for what Rosenkranz here says of
exercise as regards girls. We, however, who know that the most frequent
direct cause of debility and suffering in our young women is simply and
solely a want of muscular strength, may be pardoned for dissenting from
his opinion, and for suggesting that dancing is not a sufficient
equivalent for the more violent games of their brothers. We do not fear
to render them Amazons by giving them more genuine and systematic
exercise, both physically and intellectually.)

§ 67. The main idea of gymnastics, and indeed of all exercise, is to
give the mind control over its natural impulses, to make it master of
the body which it inhabits, and of itself. Strength and dexterity must
combine to give us a sense of mastership. Strength by itself produces
the athlete, dexterity by itself the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both
these extremes. Neither must it base its teaching of gymnastics on the
idea of utility——as, _e. g_, that man might save his life by swimming,
should he fall into the water, and hence swimming should be taught, etc.

The main thought must be always to enable the soul to take full and
perfect possession of the organism, so as not to have the body form a
limit or fetter to its action in its dealings with the external world.
We are to give it a perfect instrument in the body, in so far as our
care may do so. Then we are to teach it to use that instrument, and
exercise it in that use till it is complete master thereof.

(What is said about the impropriety of making athletes and acrobats may
with justice be also applied to what is called "vocal gymnastics;"
whence it comes that we have too often vocal athletes and acrobats in
our graduates, and few readers who can read at sight, without difficulty
or hesitation, and with appreciation or enjoyment, one page of good
English.)

§ 68. There are all grades of gymnastic exercises, from the simple to
the most complex, constituting a system. At first sight, there seems to
be so much arbitrariness in these things that it is always very
satisfactory to the mind to detect some rational system in them. Thus we
have movements (_a_) of the lower extremities, (_b_) of the upper, (_c_)
of the whole body, with corresponding movements, alternately, of the
upper and of the lower extremities. We thus have leg, arm, and trunk
movements.

§ 69. (1) The first set of movements, those of the legs and feet, are of
prime importance, because upon them depends the carriage of the whole
body. They are (_a_) walking, (_b_) running, (_c_) leaping; and each of
these, also, may have varieties. We may have high and low leaping, and
running may be distinguished as to whether it is to be a short and
rapid, or a slow and long-continued movement. We may also walk on
stilts, or run on skates. We may leap with a pole, or without one.
Dancing is only an artistic and graceful combination of these movements.

§ 70. (2) The second set comprises the arm movements, which are about
the same as the preceding, being (_a_) lifting, (_b_) swinging; (_c_)
throwing. The use of horizontal poles and bars, as well as climbing and
dragging, belong to lifting. Under throwing, come quoit and ball-playing
and bowling. These movements are distinguished from each other not only
quantitatively, but qualitatively; as, for instance, running is not
merely rapid walking; it is a different kind of movement from walking,
as the position of the extended and contracted muscles is different.

§ 71. (3) The third set of exercises, those of the trunk, differ from
the other two, which should precede it, in that they bring the body into
contact with an object in itself capable of active resistance, which it
has to subdue. This object may be an element (water), an animal, or a
human being; and thus we have (_a_) swimming, (_b_) riding, (_c_)
fighting in single combat. In swimming we have the elastic fluid, water,
to overcome by means of arm and leg movements. This may be made very
difficult by a strong current, or by rough water, and yet we always have
here to strive against an inanimate object. On the contrary, in
horseback riding we have to deal with something that has a self of its
own, and the contest challenges not our strength alone, but also our
skill and courage. The motion is therefore very complex, and the rider
must be able to exercise either or all of these qualities at need. But
his attention must not be wholly given to his horse, for he has to
observe also the road, and indeed every thing around him. One of the
greatest advantages of horseback riding to the overworked student or the
business man lies doubtlessly in the mental effort. It is impossible for
him to go on revolving in his mind the problems or the thoughts which
have so wearied or perplexed him. His whole attention is incessantly
demanded for the management of his horse, for the observation of the
road, which changes its character with every step, and with the objects,
far or near, which are likely to attract the attention of the animal he
rides. Much good, doubtless, results from the exercise of the muscles of
the trunk, which are not in any other motion called into such active
play, but much also from the unavoidable distraction of the mind from
the ordinary routine of thought, which is the thing most needed. When
the object which we are to subdue, instead of being an animal, is a man
like ourselves, as in single combat, we have exercise both of body and
mind pushed to its highest power. We have then to oppose an intelligence
which is equal to our own, and no longer the intelligence of an
unreasoning animal. Single combat is the truly chivalrous exercise; and
this also, as in the old chivalry time, may be combined with
horsemanship.

In single combat we find also a qualitative distinction, and this of
three kinds: (_a_) boxing and wrestling, (_b_) fighting with canes or
clubs, and (_c_) rapier and sword fencing. The Greeks carried wrestling
to its highest pitch of excellence. Among the British, a nation of
sailors, boxing is still retained as a national custom. Fencing with a
cane or stick is much in use among the French artisan class. The cane is
a sort of refined club. When the sword or rapier makes its appearance,
we come to mortal combat. The southern European excels in the use of the
rapier; the Germans in that of the sword. The appearance of the pistol
marks the degeneracy of the art of single combat, as it makes the weak
man equal to the strong, and there is therefore no more incentive to
train the body to strength in order to overcome an enemy. (The trained
intelligence, the quick eye, the steady hand, the wary thought to
perceive and to take advantage of an opportunity——these are the
qualities which the invention of gunpowder set up above strength and
brute force. The Greek nation, and we may say Greek mythology and art,
would have been impossible with gunpowder; the American nation
impossible without it.)


THIRD CHAPTER.

_Sexual Education._


[This chapter is designed for parents rather than for teachers, and is
hence not paraphrased here. A few observations are, however, in place.]
Great care is necessary at the period of youth that a rational system of
food and exercise be maintained. But the general fault is in the
omission of this care in preceding years. One cannot neglect due
precautions for many years, and then hope to repair the damage caused,
by extreme care for one or two years.

Special care is necessary that the brain be not overworked in early
years, and a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system thereby
induced. We desire to repress any tendency to the rapid development of
the nervous system. Above all, is the reading of the child to be
carefully watched and guarded. Nothing can be worse food for a child
than what are called sensational romances. That the reading of such
tends to enfeeble and enervate the whole thinking power is a fact which
properly belongs to the intellectual side of our question not yet
reached, and may be here merely mentioned. But the effect on the
physical condition of the youth, of such carelessly written sensational
stories, mostly of the French type, and full of sensuous, if not sensual
suggestions, is a point not often enough considered. The teacher cannot,
perhaps, except indirectly, prevent the reading of such trash at home.
But every influence which he can bring to bear towards the formation of
a purer and more correct taste, he should never omit. Where there is a
public library in the town, he should make himself acquainted with its
contents, and give the children direct help in their selection of books.

This is an external means. But he should never forget that every
influence which he can bring to bear in his daily work to make science
pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in the use of
pure, correct English, free from exaggeration, from slang, and from
mannerism, goes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash
distasteful even to the child himself.

Every example of thorough work, every pleasure that comes from the
solving of a problem or the acquisition of a new fact, is so much
fortification against the advances of the enemy; while all shallow half
work, all pretence or show tend to create an appetite in the child's
mind which shall demand such food.

The true teacher should always have in his mind these far-away and
subtle effects of his teaching; not present good or pleasure either for
himself or his pupil, but the far-off good——the distant development.
That idea would free him from the notion, too common in our day, that
the success or failure of his efforts is to be tested by any adroitly
contrived system of examinations; or still worse, exhibitions. His
success can alone be tested by the future lives of his pupils——by their
love for, or dislike of, new knowledge. His success will be marked by
their active growth through all their lives; his failure, by their early
arrested development.




AN OUTLINE OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.

BY WM. T. HARRIS.

[TO BE USED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO PARAGRAPHS 81 TO 102 OF ROSENKRANZ'S
PEDAGOGICS.]


I.

  What beings can be educated; the plant has reaction
  against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; the
  animal has reaction in the form of nutrition and feeling;
  Aristotle calls the life of the plant the "nutritive
  soul," and the life of the animal the "sensitive soul."

  The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new
  individuals——a process of going out of one individual into
  another——so that the particular individual loses its
  identity, although the identity of the species is
  preserved.

That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a
circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be
educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity——a "self-activity," a being
which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding
conditions.

Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must
have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or
race.

If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize, not only its
own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varieties
of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individuality,
it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn, in reality,
cannot develop its possibility without the destruction of its own
individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop of
acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in _kind_ or
species. "The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable
world.

So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life,
unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and
still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses
self-activity in the powers of locomotion, sense-perception, feeling,
emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react
against surroundings, and possess more or less power to assimilate what
is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic
substances, and converts them into nutrition wherewith to build its
cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which
assimilates its surroundings, but also the power of _feeling_, which is
a wonderful faculty. _Feeling_ reproduces within the organism of the
animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the
surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and
appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for
the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the
environment in the form of _feeling_, as in the animal.

In the activity of _feeling_, the animal transcends his material,
corporeal limits——lives beyond his mere body, and participates in the
existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such
being the nature of the activity of _feeling_, which forms the
distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question
meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why
can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man
can?"

In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study carefully
the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed "Feeling,"
and which is known under many names——as, sensation, sensibility,
sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.

Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know
what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete
stages of intellect and will from those which are rudimentary.

Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most
undeveloped manifestation——at the stage where it is common to brutes and
human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at
this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and
where the question of the capacity for education arises.

When we understand the relation of feeling or sensibility to the higher
manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for
education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter
and method, the _what_ and the _how_ of education.

A general survey of the world discovers that there is inter-action
among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form
of human experience. In the form of gravitation we understand that each
body depends upon every other body, and the annihilation of a particle
of matter in a body would cause a change in that body which would affect
every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore,
is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it
is not a manifestation which exists _for_ that part, because the part
does not _know_ it.

There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of
it——as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in
magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external
world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of
the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it
is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that
on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that
which _makes_ it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually
modifying it.

But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity,
and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The
growth of the plant is through assimilation of external substances. It
reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and grows through the
nutrition thus formed.

All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack
individuality. Individuality begins with this power of reaction and
modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a
rudimentary form of reaction and of special individuality.

In the case of the plant, the reaction is _real_, but not also _ideal_.
The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or assimilates it, and
imposes its _form_ on that which it draws within its organism. It does
not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that external
exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a
feeling of that which is external to it. Its participation in the
external world is only that of _real_ modification of it or through it;
either the plant digests the external, or the external limits _it_, and
prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. Hence it
is that the elements——the matter of which the plant is composed, that
which it has assimilated even——still retain a large degree of foreign
power or force——a large degree of externality which the plant has not
been able to annul or to digest. The plant-activity subdues its food,
changes its shape and its place, subordinates it to its use; but what
the matter brings with it, and still retains of the world beyond the
plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret
the rest of the universe from that small portion of it which it has
taken up within its own organism. And yet the history of the universe is
impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as
outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for
recognizing it.

The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not
sufficient to constitute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each
accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth
to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals——new plants——a
ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the
same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular
individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual,
which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from
the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no
longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the
plant is only a life of nutrition.

Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of
the animal the "feeling," or _sensitive_ soul. Nutrition is only an
activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is
only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent
individual.

Therefore we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being
that can be educated——for no individual of it can realize _within_
itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual
process of going out of itself in new individuals, but no activity of
_return_ to itself, so as to preserve _the identity_ of an individual.


II.

  Feeling is a unity of the parts of an organism everywhere
  present in it; feeling is also an ideal reproduction of
  the external surroundings; feeling is therefore a
  synthesis of the internal and external. Aristotle joins
  locomotion and desire to feeling, as correlates; how
  desire is a more explicit recognition of the unity of the
  external and internal than the first form of feeling is;
  feeling reproduces the external without destroying its
  externality, while nutrition receives the external only
  after it has destroyed its individuality and assimilated
  it; desire is the side of feeling that unfolds into will.

With feeling or sensibility we come to a being that reacts on the
external world in a far higher manner, and realizes a more wonderful
form of individuality.

The animal possesses, in common with the plant, a process of
assimilation and nutrition. Moreover, he possesses a capacity to _feel_.
Through _feeling_, or sensation, all of the parts of his extended
organism are united in one centre. He is one individual, and not a
bundle of separate individuals, as a plant is. With feeling, likewise,
are joined _locomotion_ and _desire_. For these are counterparts of
feeling. He feels——_i.e._, lives as one indivisible unity throughout his
organism and controls it, and moves the parts of his body. Desire is
more than mere feeling. Mere feeling alone is the perception of the
external within the being, hence an ideal reproduction of the external
world. In feeling, the animal exists not only within himself, but also
passes over his limit, and has for object the reality of the external
world that limits him. Hence it is the perception of his finiteness——his
limits are his defects, his needs, wants, inadequateness——his separation
from the world as a whole. In feeling, the animal perceives his
separation from the rest of the world, and also his union with it.
Feeling expands into desire when the external world, or some portion of
it, is seen as ideally belonging to the limited unity of the animal
being. It is beyond the limit, and ought to be assimilated within the
limited individuality of the animal.

Mere _feeling_, when attentively considered, is found to contain these
wonderful features of self-activity: it reproduces for itself the
external world that limits it; it makes for itself an ideal object,
which includes its own self and its not-self at the same time. It is a
higher form than mere nutrition; for nutrition destroys the nature of
such externality as it receives into itself, while feeling preserves the
external in its foreign individuality.

But through _feeling_ the animal ascends to _desire_, and sees the
independent externality as an object for its acquisition, and through
locomotion it is enabled to seize and appropriate it in a degree which
the plant did not possess.


III.

  The various forms of feeling——its specialization: (_a_)
  touch, the feeling of mere limits, the indifferent
  external independence of the organism and its
  surroundings; (_b_) taste, feeling of the external object
  when it is undergoing dissolution by assimilation; (_c_)
  smell, the feeling of chemical dissolution in general;
  (_d_) hearing, the feeling of the resistance of bodies
  against attacks: sound being vibration caused by elastic
  reaction against attacks on cohesion; (_e_) seeing, the
  feeling of objects in their independence, without
  dissolution or attack; plant life, nutrition, a process in
  which the individuality is not preserved either in time or
  in space; animal life, as feeling, preserves its
  individuality as regards space, but not as regards time.

Having noted these important characteristics of the lower orders of
life, and found that _reaction_ from the part against the whole——from
the internal against the external——belongs to plant life and animal
life, we may now briefly mention the ways in which feeling is
particularized. In the lower animals it is only the feeling of touch; in
higher organisms it becomes also localized as seeing, hearing, taste,
and smell. These forms of sense-perception constitute a scale (as it
were) of feeling. With touch, there is reproduction of externality, but
the ideality of the reproduction is not so complete as in the other
forms. With taste, the feeling cognizes the external object as
undergoing dissolution, and assimilation within its own organism. We
taste only what we are beginning to destroy by the first process of
assimilation——that of eating. In smell, we perceive chemical dissolution
of bodies. In seeing and hearing, we have the forms of _ideal_
sensibility. Hearing perceives the attack made on the individuality of
an external thing, and its reaction in vibrations, which reveal to us
its internal nature——its cohesion, etc. In seeing, we have the highest
form of sense-perception as the perception of things in their external
independence——not as being destroyed chemically, like the objects of
taste and smell; not as being attacked and resisting, like the objects
which are known through the ear; not as mere limits to our organism, as
in the sense of touch.

Sense-perception, as the developed realization of the activity of
feeling, belongs to the animal creation, including man as an animal.

We have not yet, therefore, answered the question of capacity for
education, so far as it concerns a discrimination between man and
the brute. We have only arrived at the conclusion that the vegetable
world does not possess the capacity for education, because its
individual specimens are no complete individuals, but only transitory
phases manifesting the species by continual reproduction of
new individuals which are as incomplete as the old ones. Plant life
does not possess that self-activity which returns into itself in the
same individual——if we may so express it; it goes out of one individual
into another perpetually. Its identity is that of the _species_,
but not of the _individual_.

How is it with the animal——with the being which possesses sensibility,
or feeling? This question recurs. In feeling there is a reaction,
just as in the plant. This reaction is, however, in an ideal
form——the reproduction of the external without assimilation of it——and
especially is this the case in the sense of _sight_, though it is true
of all forms of sensation to a less degree.

But all forms of sensibility are limited and special; they refer only
to the _present_, in its forms of _here_ and _now_. The animal cannot feel
what is not here and now. Even seeing is limited to what is present
before it. When we reflect upon the significance of this limitation
of sense-perception, we shall find that we need some higher form of
self-activity still before we can realize the species in the individual,
_i.e._, before we can obtain the true individual——the permanent
individuality.

The defect in plant life was, that there was neither identity of
individuality in space nor identify in time. The growth of the
plant destroyed the individuality of the seed with which we began,
so that it was evanescent in time; it served only as the starting-point
for new individualities, which likewise, in turn, served again the same
purpose; and so its growth in space was a departure from itself as
individual.

The animal is a preservation of individuality as regards space. He
returns into himself in the form of _feeling_ or _sensibility_; but as
regards time, it is not so——feeling being limited to the present.
Without a higher activity than feeling, there is no continuity of
individuality in the animal any more than in the plant. Each new moment
is a new beginning to a being that has feeling, but not memory.

Thus the individuality of mere feeling, although a far more perfect
realization of individuality than that found in plant life, is yet,
after all, not a continuous individuality for itself, but only for the
species.

In spite of the ideal self-activity which appertains to feeling, even
in sense-perception, only the species lives in the animal and the
individual dies, unless there be higher forms of activity.


IV.

  Representation is the next form above sense-perception.
  The lowest phase of representation is recollection, which
  simply repeats for itself a former sense-perception or
  series of sense-perceptions; in representation the mind is
  free as regards external impressions; it does not require
  the presence of the object, but recalls it without its own
  time and place; fancy and imagination are next higher than
  recollection, because the mind not only recalls images,
  but makes new combinations of them, or creates them
  altogether; attention is the appearance of the will in the
  intellect; with attention begins the separation of the
  transient from the variable in perception; memory is the
  highest form of representation; memory deals with general
  forms——not mere images of experience, but general types of
  objects of perception; memory, in this sense, is
  productive as well as reproductive; with memory arises
  language.

Here we pass over to the consideration of higher forms of intellect and
will.

While mere sensation, as such, acts only in the presence of the
object——reproducing (ideally), it is true, the external object, the
faculty of representation is a higher form of self-activity (or of
reaction against surrounding conditions), because it can recall, at its
own pleasure, the ideal object. Here is the beginning of emancipation
from the limitations of time.

The self-activity of representation can summon before it the object that
is no longer present to it. Hence its activity is now a double one, for
it can seize not only what is now and here immediately before it, but it
can compare this present object with the past, and identify or
distinguish between the two. Thus recollection or representation may
become _memory_.

As memory, the mind achieves a form of activity far above that of
sense-perception or mere recollection. It must be noted carefully that
mere recollection or representation, although it holds fast the
perception in time (making it permanent), does not necessarily
constitute an activity completely emancipated from time, nor indeed very
far advanced towards it. It is only the beginning of such emancipation.
For mere recollection stands in the presence of the special object of
sense-perception; although the object is no longer present to the senses
(or to mere feeling), yet the image is present to the representative
perception, and is just as much a particular here and now as the object
of sense-perception. There intervenes a new activity on the part of the
soul before it arrives at memory. Recollection is not memory, but it is
the activity which grows into it by the aid of the activity of
attention.

The special characteristics of objects of the senses are allowed to drop
away, in so far as they are unessential and merely circumstantial, and
gradually there arises in the mind the type——the _general form_——of the
object perceived. This general form is the object of memory. Memory
deals therefore with what is general, and a type, rather than with what
is directly recollected or perceived.

The activity by which the mind ascends from sense-perception to memory
is the activity of attention. Here we have the appearance of the will in
intellectual activity. Attention is the control of perception by means
of the will. The senses shall no longer passively receive and report
what is before them, but they shall choose some definite point of
observation, and neglect all the rest.

Here, in the act of attention we find _abstraction_, and the greater
attainment of freedom by the mind. The mind abstracts its view from the
many things before it, and concentrates on one point.

Educators have for many ages noted that the habit of attention is the
first step in intellectual education. With it we have found the point of
separation between the animal intellect and the human. Not attention
simply——like that with which the cat watches by the hole of a mouse——but
attention which arrives at results of abstraction, is the distinguishing
characteristic of educative beings.

Attention abstracts from some things before it and concentrates on
others. Through attention grows the capacity to discriminate between
the special, particular object and its general type. Generalization
arises, but not what is usually called generalization--only a
more elementary form of it. Memory, as the highest form of
representation--distinguishing it from mere recollection, which
reproduces only what has been perceived--such memory deals with the
general forms of objects, their continuity in time. Such activity of
memory, therefore, does not reproduce mere images, but only the
concepts or general ideas of things, and therefore it belongs to the
stage of mind that uses language.


V.

  Language marks the arrival at the stage of thought——at the
  stage of the perception of universals——hence at the
  possibility of education; language fixes the general types
  which the productive memory forms; each one of these
  types, indicated by a word, stands for a possible infinite
  of sense-perceptions or recollections; the word _tree_
  stands for all the trees that exist, and for all that have
  existed or will exist. Animals do not create for
  themselves a new world of general types, but deal only
  with the first world of particular objects; hence they are
  lost in the variety and multiplicity of continuous
  succession and difference. Man's sense-perception is with
  memory; hence always a recognition of the object as not
  wholly new, but only as an example of what he is mostly
  familiar with. Intellectual education has for its object
  the cultivation of reflection; reflection is the Platonic
  "Reminiscence," which retraces the unconscious processes
  of thought

Language is the means of distinguishing between the brute and the
human——between the animal soul, which has continuity only in the species
(which pervades its being in the form of _instinct_), and the _human_,
soul, which is immortal, and possessed of a capacity to be educated.

There is no language until the mind can perceive general types of
existence; mere proper names nor mere exclamations or cries do not
constitute language. All words that belong to language are
significative——they "_express_" or "_mean_" something——hence they are
conventional symbols, and not mere individual designations. Language
arises only through common consent, and is not an invention of one
individual. It is a product of individuals acting together as a
community, and hence implies the ascent of the individual into the
species. Unless an individual could ascend into the species he could not
_understand_ language. To know words and their meaning is an activity of
divine significance; it denotes the formation of universals in the
mind——the ascent above the here and now of the senses, and above the
representation of mere images, to the activity which grasps together the
general conception of objects, and thus reaches beyond what is transient
and variable.

Doubtless the nobler species of animals possess not only
sense-perception, but a considerable degree of the power of
representation. They are not only able to recollect, but to imagine or
fancy to some extent, as is evidenced by their dreams. But that animals
do not generalize sufficiently to form for themselves a new objective
world of types and general concepts, we have a sufficient evidence in
the fact that they do not use words, or invent conventional symbols.
With the activity of the symbol-making form of representation, which we
have named Memory, and whose evidence is the invention and use of
language, the true form of individuality is attained, and each
individual human being, as mind, may be said to be the entire species.
Inasmuch as he can form universals in his mind, he can realize the most
abstract thought; and he is conscious. Consciousness begins when one can
seize the pure universal in the presence of immediate objects here and
now.

The sense-perception of the mere animal, therefore, differs from that of
the human being in this:——

The human being knows himself as subject that sees the object, while the
animal sees the object, but does not separate himself, as universal,
from the special act of seeing. To know that I am I, is to know the most
general of objects, and to carry out abstraction to its very last
degree; and yet this is what all human beings do, young or old, savage
or civilized. The savage invents and uses language——an act of the
species, but which the species cannot do without the participation of
the individual.

It should be carefully noted that this activity of generalization which
produces language, and characterizes the human from the brute, is not
the generalization of the activity of thought, so-called.

It is the preparation for thought. These general types of things are the
things which thought deals with. Thought does not deal with mere
immediate objects of the senses; it deals rather with the objects which
are indicated by words——_i.e._, general objects.

Some writers would have us suppose that we do not arrive at general
notions except by the process of classification and abstraction, in the
mechanical manner that they lay down for this purpose. The fact is that
the mind has arrived at these general ideas in the process of learning
language. In infancy, most children have learned such words as _is_,
_existence_, _being_, _nothing_, _motion_, _cause_, _change_, _I_,
_you_, _he_, etc., etc.

But the point is not the mere arrival at these ideas. Education does
not concern itself with that; it does not concern itself with children
who have not yet learned to talk——that is left for the nursery.

It is the process of becoming conscious of these ideas by reflection,
with which we have to concern ourselves in education. Reflection is
everywhere the object of education. Even when the school undertakes to
teach pupils the correct method of observation——how to use the senses,
as in "object-lessons"——it all means _reflective_ observation,
_conscious_ use of the senses; it would put this in the place of the
_naïve_ spontaneity which characterizes the first stages of
sense-perception.

We must not underrate these precepts of pedagogy because we find that
they are not what it claims for them——_i.e._, they are not methods of
first discovery, and of arrival at principles, but only methods of
reflection, and of recognizing what we have already learned. We see that
Plato's "Reminiscence" was a true form of statement for the perception
of truths of reflection. The first knowing is utterly unconscious of its
own method; the second or scientific form of knowing, which education
develops, is a knowing in which the mind knows its method. Hence it is a
knowing which knows its own necessity and universality.


VI.

  Education presupposes the stage of mind reached in
  productive memory; it deals with reflection; four stages
  of reflection: (_a_) sensuous ideas perceive things; (_b_)
  abstract ideas perceive forces or elements of a process;
  (_c_) concrete idea perceives one process, a pantheistic
  first principle, persistent force; (_d_) absolute idea
  perceives a conscious first principle, absolute person.

We have considered in our psychological study thus far the forms of life
and cognition, contrasting the phase of nutrition with that of feeling,
or sensibility. We have seen the various forms of feeling in
sense-perception, and the various forms of representation as the second
phase of intellectual activity——the forms of recollection, fancy,
imagination, attention, and memory. We draw the line between the animals
capable of education and those not capable of it, at the point of memory
defined——not as recollection, but as the faculty of general ideas or
conceptions, to which the significant words of language correspond.

With the arrival at language, we arrive at education in the human sense
of the term; with the arrival at language, we arrive at the view of the
world at which thought as a mental process begins. As sense-perception
has before it a world of _present_ objects, so thought has before it a
world of general concepts, which language has defined and fixed.

It is true that few persons are aware that language stands for a world
of general ideas, and that reflection has to do with this world of
universals. Hence it is, too, that so much of the so-called science of
education is very crude and impractical. Much of it is materialistic,
and does not recognize the self-activity of mind; but makes it out to be
a correlation of physical energies——derived from the transmutation of
food by the process of digestion, and then by the brain converted into
thought.

Let us consider now the psychology of thinking, or reflection, and at
first in its most inadequate forms. As a human process, the knowing is
always a knowing by universals——a re-cognition, and not simple
apprehension, such as the animals, or such as beings have that do not
use language. The process of development of stages of thought begins
with sensuous ideas, which perceive mere individual, concrete, real
objects, as it supposes. In conceiving these, it uses language and
thinks general ideas, but it does not know it, nor is it conscious of
the relations involved in such objects. This is the first stage of
reflection. The world exists for it as an innumerable congeries of
things, each one independent of the other, and possessing
self-existence. It is the stand-point from which atomism would be
adopted as the philosophic system. Ask it what the ultimate principle of
existence is, and it would reply, "Atoms."

But this view of the world is a very unstable one, and requires very
little reflection to overturn it, and bring one to the next basis——that
of _abstract ideas_. When the mind looks carefully at the world of
things, it finds that there is dependence and interdependence. Each
object is related to something else, and changes when that changes. Each
object is a part of a process that is going on. The process produced it,
and the process will destroy it——nay, it is destroying it now, while we
look at it. We find, therefore, that things are not the true beings
which we thought them to be, but processes _are_ the reality. Science
takes this attitude, and studies out the history of each thing in its
rise and its disappearance, and it calls this history the truth. This
stage of thinking does not believe in _atoms_ or in _things_; it
believes in _forces_ and _processes_——"abstract ideas"——because they are
negative, and cannot be seen by the senses. This is the dynamic
stand-point in philosophy.

Reflection knows that these abstract ideas possess more truth, more
reality, than the "things" of sense-perception; the force is more real
than the thing, because it outlasts a thing,——it causes things to
originate, and to change, and disappear.

This stage of abstract ideas or of negative powers or forces finally
becomes convinced of the essential unity of all processes and of all
forces; it sets up the doctrine of the _correlation of forces_, and
believes that persistent force is the ultimate truth, the fundamental
reality of the world. This we may call a concrete idea, for it sets up a
principle which is the origin of all things and forces, and also the
destroyer of all things, and hence more real than the world of things
and forces; and because this idea, when carefully thought out, proves to
be the idea of self-determination——self-activity.

Persistent force, as taught us by the scientific men of our day, is the
sole ultimate principle, and as such it gives rise to all existence by
its self-activity, for there is nothing else for it to act upon. It
causes all origins, all changes, and all evanescence. It gives rise to
the particular forces——heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.——which
in their turn cause the evanescent forms which sense-perception sees as
"things."

We have described three phases:——

  I. Sensuous Ideas perceive "things."
  II. Abstract Ideas perceive "forces."
  III. Concrete Idea perceives "persistent force."

In this progress from one phase of reflection to another, the intellect
advances to a deeper and truer reality[14] at each step.

Sense-ideas which look upon the world as a world of independent objects,
do not cognize the world truly. The next step, abstract ideas, cognizes
the world as a process of forces, and "things" are seen to be mere
temporary equilibria in the interaction of forces; "each thing is a
bundle of forces." But the concrete idea of the Persistent force sees a
deeper and more permanent reality underlying particular forces. It is
one ultimate force. In it all multiplicity of existences has vanished,
and yet it is the source of all particular existence.

This view of the world, on the stand-point of concrete idea, is
pantheistic. It makes out a one supreme principle which originates and
destroys all particular existences, all finite beings. It is the
stand-point of Orientalism, or of the Asiatic thought. Buddhism and
Brahminism have reached it, and not transcended it. It is a necessary
stage of reflection in the mind, just as much as the stand-point of the
first stage of reflection, which regards the world as composed of a
multiplicity of independent things; or the stand-point of the second
stage of reflection, which looks upon the world as a collection of
relative existences in a state of process.

The final stand-point of the intellect is that in which it perceives the
highest principle to be a self-determining or self-active Being,
self-conscious, and creator of a world which manifests him. A logical
investigation of the principle of "persistent force" would prove that
this principle of Personal Being is presupposed as its true form. Since
the "persistent force" is the sole and ultimate reality, it originates
all other reality only by self-activity, and thus is self-determined.
Self-determination implies self-consciousness as the true form of its
existence.

These four forms of thinking, which we have arbitrarily called
_sensuous_, _abstract_, _concrete_, and _absolute_ ideas, correspond to
four views of the world: (1) as a congeries of independent things; (2)
as a play of forces; (3) as the evanescent appearance of a negative
essential power; (4) as the creation of a Personal Creator, who makes it
the theatre of the development of conscious beings in his image. Each
step upward in ideas arrives at a more adequate idea of the true
reality. _Force_ is more real than _thing_; persistent force than
particular forces; Absolute Person is more real than the force or forces
which he creates.

This final form of thinking is the only form which is consistent with
the theory of education. Each individual should ascend by education into
participation——_conscious_ participation——in the life of the species.
Institutions——family, society, state, church——all are instrumentalities
by which the humble individual may avail himself of the help of the
race, and live over in himself its life. The highest stage of thinking
is the stage of insight. It sees the world as explained by the principle
of Absolute Person. It finds the world of institutions a world in
harmony with such a principle.


  [1] The parallelism between these two sciences, Medicine
  and Education, is an obvious point, which every student
  will do well to consider.

  [2] This will again remind the student of the theories of
  treatment in medicine in diseases which, in the
  seventeenth century, were treated only by bleeding and
  emetics, are now treated by nourishing food, and no
  medicines, etc.

  [3] The teacher will do well to consider the probable
  result of the constant association with mental inferiors
  entailed by his work, and also to consider what
  counter-irritant is to be applied to balance, in his
  character, this unavoidable tendency.

  [4] The age at which the child should be subject to the
  training of school life, or Education, properly so-called,
  must vary with different races, nations, and different
  children.

  [5] The best educator is he who makes his pupils
  independent of himself. This implies on the teacher's part
  an ability to lose himself in his work, and a desire for
  the real growth of the pupil, independent of any personal
  fame of his own——a disinterestedness which places
  education on a level with the noblest occupations of man.

  [6] See analysis.

  [7] Asiatic systems of Education have this basis (see §
  178 of the original).

  [8] The definition of freedom here implied is this: Mind
  is free when it knows itself and wills its own laws.

  [9] Perhaps, however slow the growth, there is real
  progress in liberating the imprisoned soul (?)

  [10] "When me they fly, I am the wings."——_Emerson._

  [11] The story of Peter Schlemihl, by Chamisso, may be
  read in the English translation published in "Hedge's
  German Prose Writers."

  [12] That is, punishment is retributive and not
  corrective. Justice requires that each man shall have the
  fruits of his own deeds; in this it assumes that each and
  every man is free and self-determined. It proposes to
  treat each man as free, and as the rightful owner of his
  deed and its consequences. If he does a deed which is
  destructive to human rights, it shall destroy his rights
  and deprive him of property, personal freedom, or even of
  life. But corrective punishment assumes immaturity of
  development and consequent lack of freedom. It belongs to
  the period of nurture, and not to the period of maturity.
  The tendency in our schools is, however, to displace the
  forms of mere corrective punishment (corporal
  chastisement), and to substitute for them forms founded on
  retribution——_e. g_, deprivation of privileges. See secs.
  42 and 43.

  [13] Faust; Part I., Scene I. "How all weaves itself into
  the Whole! Each works and lives in the other! How the
  heavenly influences ascend and descend, and reach each
  other the golden buckets!"

  [14] Hume, in his famous sketch of the Human
  Understanding, makes all the perceptions of the human mind
  resolve themselves into two distinct kinds: _impressions_
  and _ideas_. "The difference between them consists in the
  degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike
  upon the mind, and make their way into our thought and
  consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with the most
  force and violence we may name _impressions_, and under
  this name include all our sensations, passions, and
  emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul.
  By _ideas_, I mean the faint images of these in thinking
  and reasoning." "The identity which we ascribe to the mind
  of man is only a fictitious one."

  From this we see that his stand-point is that of "sensuous
  ideas," the first stage of reflection. The second or third
  stage of reflection, if consistent, would not admit the
  reality to be the object of sense-impressions, and the
  abstract ideas to be only "faint images." One who holds,
  like Herbert Spencer, that persistent force is the
  ultimate reality——"the sole truth, which transcends
  experience by underlying it"——ought to hold that the
  generalization which reaches the idea of unity of force is
  the truest and most adequate of thoughts. And yet Herbert
  Spencer holds substantially the doctrine of Hume, in the
  words: "We must predicate nothing of objects too great or
  too multitudinous to be mentally represented, or we must
  make our predications by means of extremely inadequate
  representations of such objects——mere symbols of them."
  (Page 27 of "First Principles.")







End of Project Gutenberg's Pedagogics as a System, by Karl Rosenkranz