[14.] Where a number of pupils are assembled there arises, naturally, on a small scale, a system of laws and rewards. This system, and the demands which in the world at large spring from the same ideas, must be brought into accord.
The school is a miniature world, to be regulated by the same system of moral ideas as that which obtains in society. Compare [182], [310].
[15.] The concept of an administrative system has great significance for pedagogics, since every pupil, whatever his rank or social status, must be trained for coöperation in the social whole to fit him for usefulness. This requirement may assume very many different forms.
[16.] Of the system of civilization only the aspect of general culture, not that of special training, must be emphasized at this point.
Note.—The principles of practical philosophy which have just been briefly indicated are at the same time the starting-points of ethical insight for the pupils. If the resolve to direct the will accordingly be added, and if the pupil obeys this resolve, such obedience constitutes morality. Quite distinct from this is the obedience yielded, be the motive fear or affection, to the person of the teacher, so long as that higher obedience is not securely established.
[17.] For the business of education, the idea of perfection, while it does not rise into excessive prominence, stands out above all others on account of its uninterrupted application. The teacher discovers in the as yet undeveloped human being a force which requires his incessant attention to intensify, to direct, and to concentrate.
Note.—The maxim perfice te is neither so universal as Wolff asserted, as though it were the sole fundamental principle of ethics, nor so objectionable as Kant represents it to be. Perfection, quantitatively regarded (Vollkommenheit—the state of having come to fulness), is the first urgent task wherever man shows himself lower, smaller, weaker, more narrowly limited, than he might be. Growth, in every sense of the word, is the natural destiny of the child, and the primary condition of whatever else of worth may be expected of him in later life. The principle perfice te was deprived of its true meaning by the attempt to define by it the whole of virtue—a blunder, since no single practical idea ever exhausts the contents of that term. Quite different is the import of the next remark, which applies solely to the practice of pedagogy.
[18.] The constant presence of the idea of perfection easily introduces a false feature into moral education in the strict sense. The pupil may get an erroneous impression as to the relative importance of the lessons, practice, and performance demanded of him, and so be betrayed into the belief that he is essentially perfect when these demands are satisfied.