Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

[ PART I
THE DOUBLE BASIS OF PEDAGOGICS]

CHAPTER I
The Ethical Basis

[8.] The term virtue expresses the whole purpose of education. Virtue is the idea of inner freedom which has developed into an abiding actuality in an individual. Whence, as inner freedom is a relation between insight and volition, a double task is at once set before the teacher. It becomes his business to make actual each of these factors separately, in order that later a permanent relationship may result.

Insight is conceived as the perception of what is right or wrong. This perception is founded on the spontaneous, or intuitive, feeling that arises in the mind when certain elementary will-relations are presented to the intelligence. The unperverted mind has a natural antipathy to strife, malevolence, injustice, selfishness; it has a corresponding approval of harmony, good-will, justice, benevolence. These feelings arise, naturally, only when the appropriate ideas are present. Insight, therefore, is a state of feeling or disposition arising from knowledge, or ideas.

When volition has come into permanent accord with educated insight, virtue has been attained. Conscience approves every virtuous act; it disapproves every deviation from virtue. Inner freedom, therefore, is marked by approving conscience; lack of it, by accusing conscience. The development of virtuous character is not so easy, however, as might appear from these simple statements, for virtue has a shifting, not to say a developing character. Elementary as the fundamental ethical ideas may be when presented in the home or in the kindergarten, they are not elementary when met with in modern civilization. At times virtue has been of a military character, as in Sparta and Rome; at other times it has been ecclesiastical, as in the Middle Ages. At the present time, in addition to all that it has ever been from a purely Christian character, it is civil, social, industrial. Virtue in a modern city has a content quite different from that in a pioneer mining camp. Furthermore, virtue is uneven in its development. The race has, for instance, been trained long and hard to respect unprotected property, so that we may fairly say such respect has become instinctive; yet when unprotected property comes into new relations to the individual, as in the case of borrowed books, we may find only a rudimentary conscience. What scholar is not a sufferer from this form of unripe virtue?

[9.] But even here at the outset we need to bear in mind the identity of morality with the effort put forth to realize the permanent actuality of the harmony between insight and volition. To induce the pupil to make this effort is a difficult achievement; at all events, it becomes possible only when the twofold training mentioned above is well under way. It is easy enough, by a study of the example of others, to cultivate theoretical acumen; the moral application to the pupil himself, however, can be made, with hope of success, only in so far as his inclinations and habits have taken a direction in keeping with his insight. If such is not the case, there is danger lest the pupil, after all, knowingly subordinate his correct theoretical judgment to mere prudence. It is thus that evil in the strict sense originates.

It is helpful to give the pupil abundant opportunity to pass judgment upon the moral quality of actions not his own. The best opportunities are at first the most impersonal ones, for where the child himself is immediately concerned, the quality of his judgment may be impaired by intense personal feelings, such as fear of blame or punishment. Literature furnishes the earliest and most copious examples; later, history may be helpful, though there is great danger of taking partial or mistaken views as to the moral quality of historical deeds. A selection of literature is an artistic whole. All the relations can be easily perceived, but any given historical event is likely to be a small section of a whole too vast for the youthful mind to comprehend. It is for this reason that caution is needed when passing judgment upon historical facts.

To encourage the child to pass judgment in these impersonal cases is to sharpen his natural perceptions of right and wrong, and to influence his disposition favorably. One who has been led to condemn cruelty to animals in this way is likely to be more thoughtful himself, and less disposed wantonly to inflict pain. But every resource of authority and persuasion, as well as appeal to sensibility and conscience, must be employed to make virtuous action habitual, and to prevent the generation of evil.