§ 17. In the narrowest, but most usual application of the term, we understand by "education" the influence of the individual upon the individual, exerted with the object of developing his powers in a conscious and methodical manner, either generally or in special directions, the educator being relatively mature, and exercising authority over the relatively immature pupil. Without authority on the one hand and obedience on the other, education would lack its ethical basis—a neglect of the will-training could not be compensated for by any amount of knowledge or smartness.
§ 18. The general province of education includes the development of the individual into the theoretical and practical reason immanent in him. The definition which limits education to the development of the individual into ethical customs (obedience to morality, social conventionalities, and the laws of the state—Hegel's definition is here referred to: "The object of education is to make men ethical") is not comprehensive enough, because it ignores the side of the intellect, and takes note only of the will. The individual should not only be man in general (as he is through the adoption of moral and ethical forms—which are general forms, customs, or laws, and thus the forms imposed by the will of the race), but he should also be a self-conscious subject, a particular individual (man, through his intellect, exists for himself as an individual, while through his general habits and customs he loses his individuality and spontaneity).
§ 19. Education has a definite object in view and it proceeds by grades of progress toward it. The systematic tendency is essential to all education, properly so called.
§ 20. Division of labor has become requisite in the higher spheres of teaching. The growing multiplicity of branches of knowledge creates the necessity for the specialist as teacher. With this tendency to specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so essential to the pupil—his rounded human culture and symmetry of development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man.
§ 21. From this necessity of the division of labor in modern times there arises the demand for two kinds of educational institutions—those devoted to general education (common schools, colleges, etc.), and special schools (for agriculture, medicine, mechanic arts, etc).
§ 22. The infinite possibility of culture for the individual leaves, of course, his actual accomplishment a mere approximation to a complete education. Born idiots are excluded from the possibility of education, because the lack of universal ideas in their consciousness precludes to that class of unfortunates anything beyond a mere mechanical training.
§ 23. Spirit, or mind, makes its own nature; it is what it produces—a self-result. From this follows the form of education. It commences with (1) undeveloped mind—that of the infant—wherein nearly all is potential, and but little is actualized; (2) its first stage of development is self-estrangement—it is absorbed in the observation of objects around it; (3) but it discovers laws and principles (universality) in external nature, and finally identifies them with reason—it comes to recognize itself in nature—to recognize conscious mind as the creator and preserver of the external world—and thus becomes at home in nature. Education does not create, but it emancipates.
§ 24. This process of self-estrangement and its removal belongs to all culture. The mind must fix its attention upon what is foreign to it, and penetrate its disguise. It will discover its own substance under the seeming alien being. Wonder is the accompaniment of this stage of estrangement. The love of travel and adventure arises from this basis.
§ 25. Labor is distinguished from play: The former concentrates its energies on some object, with the purpose of making it conform to its will and purpose; play occupies itself with its object according to its caprice and arbitrariness, and has no care for the results or products of its activity; work is prescribed by authority, while play is necessarily spontaneous.
§ 26. Work and Play: the distinction between them. In play the child feels that he has entire control over the object with which he is dealing, both in respect to its existence and the object for which it exists. His arbitrary will may change both with perfect impunity, since all depends upon his caprice; he exercises his powers in play according to his natural proclivities, and therein finds scope to develope his own individuality. In work, on the contrary, he must have respect for the object with which he deals. It must be held sacred against his caprice, must not be destroyed nor injured in any way, and its object must likewise be respected. His own personal inclinations must be entirely subordinated, and the business that he is at work upon must be carried forward in accordance with its own ends and aims, and without reference to his own feelings in the matter.