§ 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.—
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.