For naturalism reduces itself to the affirmation that we think nature, but do not ourselves exist; nature alone exists. We do not exist and yet we think, and we think of nature as existing. We do not exist and yet nature exists, of whose existence we have no other testimony than our thoughts. And if thought is a shadow, what will reality then be? The “dream of a shadow,” in the words of the Greek poet. Is it possible for us to stop at this conclusion? Is it possible for an inexistent thing to vouch for the existence of something which we know only from its attestations? Such is the absurd position we are forced into when we assume that Thought, in equipoise with reality, remains outside of it and leaves it out of its own self.
We give the name of realism to that manner of thinking which makes all reality consist in an external existence, abstract and separate from thought, and makes real knowledge consist in the conforming of our ideas to external things. By idealism on the other hand we mean that higher point of view from which we discover the impossibility of conceiving a reality which is not the reality of thought itself. For it reality is not the idea as a mere object of the mind, which therefore can exist outside of the mind, and must exist there in order that the mind may eventually have the means 74 of thinking it. Reality is this very thought itself by which we think all things, and which surely must be something if by means of it we want somehow to affirm any reality whatsoever, and must be a real activity if, in the act of thinking, it will not entangle itself in the enchanted web of dreams, but will instead give us the life of the real world. If it is not conceivable that such activity could ever go forth from itself and penetrate the presumably existent world of matter, then it means that it has no need of issuing from itself, in order to come in contact with real existence; it means that the reality which we call material and assume to be external to thought is in some way illusory; and that the true reality is that which is being realised by the activity of thought itself. For there is no way of thinking any reality except by setting thought as the basis of it.
This is the conception, or, if you will, the faith, not only of modern philosophy, but of consciousness itself in general, of that consciousness which was gradually formed and moulded under the influence of the deeply moral sentiment of life fostered by Christianity. For it was Christ that first opposed to nature and to the flesh a truer reality,—not the world in which man is born, but that world to which he must uplift himself: that world in which he has to live, not because it is anterior to him, but because he must create it by his will: and this world is the kingdom of the spirit.
In accordance with this conception there is, properly speaking, no reality: there is a spirit which creates reality, which therefore is self-made and not the product of nature. The realist speaks of external existence, of a world into which man is admitted and to which he must adapt himself. But the idealist knows only what the spirit does, what man acts. A nature, ever at work in the progress of the spirit, throbs in the soul of man, who with his intellect and his will re-creates it by its restless, unceasing motion. It is a world which is never created, because the entire past flows and becomes actual in that form which is peculiar to it and in which it exists, namely, the present,—history in the incessant rhythm of its becoming, in the ever-living act of self-production.
On what side of the controversy should the teacher stand who means to absorb into his soul the life of the school? Will he with the realists believe in a reality which must be observed and verified? Or will he as an idealist trust that the only world is the one which is to be constructed by him; that in all this task he can rely only on the creative activity of the spirit that moves within us, ever unsatisfied with what is, incessantly aspiring for what does not yet exist, for what must come to be as being the only thing which deserves to exist and to fulfil life?
There are then these two ways of conceiving culture, the realistic and the idealistic. By the former we are 76 led to imagine that man’s spirit is empty, and that no nourishment can come to it except from the outside world, from those external elements which he can acquire because they exist prior to the activity by which he assimilates them. The latter, admitting only what is derived from the developing life of the spirit, can conceive of culture solely as an immanent product of this very life, and separable from it only by abstraction.
It is evident that the ordinarily accepted view of educators to-day is realistic rather than otherwise. The ideal and therefore the historical origin of the school itself is intimately connected with the realistic presupposition. For the school begins when man for the first time becomes aware of the existence of a store of accumulated culture which should be protected from dispersion. Grammar, for instance, exists before the notion of teaching it arises. Men already possess a language when they make up their minds to teach it to their children. Self-taught and inventive genius, by new observation and discoveries, gives rise to new disciplines; and men, discovering the value of such disciplines, determine to institute a school where they may be cultivated and handed down to the coming generations. In general then, first comes knowledge; then the school as a depository of it. It may be granted that the progress of learning is made possible or at least accentuated by educational institutions; but the fact remains 77 that the school is founded on pre-existing knowledge. Science, arts, customs must exist before they can be taught to others, and they do exist, but not in the spirit of the one who is to acquire them, who must appropriate them as they are in themselves. The Iliad exists: Homer sang: the poems attributed to him were collected into an epic from which we learn of the beliefs, of the aspirations, and of the memories that were dear to the ancient Greeks, and every cultivated person to-day must derive from them his own spiritual substance. The teacher shows to his pupils how best to read, how to understand that epic which is a treasure of the past bequeathed not only to the modern Greeks but to humanity in general. For we all profit from this inherited spiritual wealth in the same manner that every man that comes into the world enjoys the light and the heat of the sun which he surely did not kindle in heaven.
The fact that culture, as the subject matter of education, exists before the exercise of that spiritual activity which can be educated only through its means, seems to the realist a condition without which the school cannot arise. Only as culture develops and spreads does the school grow and expand; and, in the progress of civilisation, as culture becomes specialised, the school is correspondingly differentiated into institutions of ever-growing specialisation. For the school can but follow and reflect the advance of science, of letters, of art,—of 78 humanity in general in all it strives to perpetuate.
All this evidently can be maintained only from the point of view of the realist. For him the school is concerned not with those that already know and therefore have no need of it, but for those who are still ignorant. For them it is instituted; it ministers to their needs, and is therefore adjusted in the direction in which it believes their spirit should be oriented. In the school of physicians, there is not medicine but the learning of it, for if the art of healing were already mastered as it seems to be in the case of the professors, there would be no need of a medical school. There is indeed the professor in the lecture room; but he is there only for the learners, and his rôle has no meaning except in relation to their needs. He is the possessor of science, and as such he teaches and does not learn. The school then is not the possession of culture, but the development of a spiritual life aspiring to this possession; and this aspiration is possible because of the existence of the teacher who has already mastered it, who possesses it, not as his own property, but as social wealth entrusted to him for the use of everybody. He himself is only an instrument of communication. Culture antedates him; it does so even when he is the author of it. For it is not possible for him to impart it to others until he has first elaborated it himself, and not until the merits of his contributions have been in part at least recognised by the world.