| Education | PART I. In its General Idea. | Its Nature. | |||
| Its Form. | |||||
| Its Limits. | |||||
| PART II. In its Special Elements. | Physical. | ||||
| Intellectual. | |||||
| Moral. | |||||
| PART III. In its Particular Systems. | National. | Passive. | Family | China. | |
| Caste | India. | ||||
| Monkish | Thibet. | ||||
| Active. | Military. | Persia. | |||
| Priestly | Egypt. | ||||
| Industrial | Phœnicia. | ||||
| Individual. | Æsthetic | Greece. | |||
| Practical | Rome. | ||||
| Abstract Individual | Northern Barbarians. | ||||
| Theocratic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | Jews. | ||||
| Humanitarian. | Monkish. | ||||
| Chivalric. | |||||
| For Civil Life. | For Special Callings. | Jesuitic. Pietistic. | |||
| To achieve an Ideal of Culture. | The Humanities. The Philanthropic Movement. | ||||
| For Free Citizensip. | |||||
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.
§ 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.