Transcriber's note:
Many words in the text are spelled with or without a hyphen; these are not corrected as both forms occur with almost same frequency and the hyphenated form might indicate an emphasis in words such as re-formation.

PEDAGOGICS

AS A

SYSTEM.

By Dr. KARL ROSENKRANZ,

Doctor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Königsberg.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

By ANNA C. BRACKETT.

(Reprinted from Journal of Speculative Philosophy.)

ST. LOUIS, MO.:
THE R. P. STUDLEY COMPANY, PRINTERS, CORNER MAIN & OLIVE STS.
1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
WILLIAM T. HARRIS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

A N A L Y S I S.

PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM.

[Inquiries from teachers in different sections of the country as to the sources of information on the subject of Teaching as a Science have led me to believe that a translation of Rosenkranz's Pedagogics may be widely acceptable and useful. It is very certain that too much of our teaching is simply empirical, and as Germany has, more than any other country, endeavored to found it upon universal truths, it is to that country that we must at present look for a remedy for this empiricism.

Based as this is upon the profoundest system of German Philosophy, no more suggestive treatise on Education can perhaps be found. In his third part, as will be readily seen, Rosenkranz follows the classification of National ideas given in Hegel's Philosophy of History. The word "Pedagogics," though it has unfortunately acquired a somewhat unpleasant meaning in English—thanks to the writers who have made the word "pedagogue" so odious—deserves to be redeemed for future use. I have, therefore, retained it in the translation.

In order that the reader may see the general scope of the work, I append in tabular form the table of contents, giving however, under the first and second parts, only the main divisions. The minor heads can, of course, as they appear in the translation, be easily located.—Tr.]

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a simple principle with such exactness as Logic and Ethics. It is rather a mixed science which has its presuppositions in many others. In this respect it resembles Medicine, with which it has this also in common, that it must make a distinction between a sound and an unhealthy system of education, and must devise means to prevent or to cure the latter. It may therefore have, like Medicine, the three departments of Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics.

§ 2. Since Pedagogics is capable of no such exact definitions of its principle and no such logical deduction as other sciences, the treatises written upon it abound more in shallowness than any other literature. Short-sightedness and arrogance find in it a most congenial atmosphere, and criticism and declamatory bombast flourish in perfection as nowhere else. The literature of religious tracts might be considered to rival that of Pedagogics in its superficiality and assurance, if it did not for the most part seem itself to belong, through its ascetic nature, to Pedagogics. But teachers as persons should be treated in their weaknesses and failures with the utmost consideration, because they are most of them sincere in contributing their mite for the improvement of education, and all their pedagogic practice inclines them towards administering reproof and giving advice.

§ 3. The charlatanism of educational literature is also fostered by the fact that teaching has become one of the most profitable employments, and the competition in it tends to increase self-glorification.

—When "Boz" in his "Nicholas Nickleby" exposed the horrible mysteries of an English boarding-school, many teachers of such schools were, as he assures us, so accurately described that they openly complained he had aimed his caricatures directly at them.—

§ 4. In the system of the sciences, Pedagogics belongs to the Philosophy of Spirit,—and in this, to the department of Practical Philosophy, the problem of which is the comprehension of the necessity of freedom; for education is the conscious working of one will on another so as to produce itself in it according to a determinate aim. The idea of subjective spirit, as well as that of Art, Science, and Religion, forms the essential condition for Pedagogics, but does not contain its principle. If one thinks out a complete statement of Practical Philosophy (Ethics), Pedagogics may be distributed among all its grades. But the point at which Pedagogics itself becomes organic is the idea of the Family, because in the family the difference between the adults and the minors enters directly through the naturalness of spirit, and the right of the children to an education and the duty of parents towards them in this respect is incontestable. All other spheres of education, in order to succeed, must presuppose a true family life. They may extend and complement the business of teaching, but cannot be its original foundation.

—In our systematic exposition of Education, we must not allow ourselves to be led into error by those theories which do not recognize the family, and which limit the relation of husband and wife to the producing of children. The Platonic Philosophy is the most worthy representative of this class. Later writers who take great pleasure in seeing the world full of children, but who would subtract from the love to a wife all truth and from that to children all care, exhibit in their doctrine of the anarchy of love only a sickly (but yet how prevalent an) imitation of the Platonic state.—

§ 5. Much confusion also arises from the fact that many do not clearly enough draw the distinction between Pedagogics as a science and Pedagogics as an art. As a science it busies itself with developing à priori the idea of Education in the universality and necessity of that idea, but as an art it is the concrete individualizing of this abstract idea in any given case. And in any such given case, the peculiarities of the person who is to be educated and all the previously existing circumstances necessitate a modification of the universal aims and ends, which modification cannot be provided for beforehand, but must rather test the ready tact of the educator who knows how to make the existing conditions fulfil his desired end. It is exactly in doing this that the educator may show himself inventive and creative, and that pedagogic talent can distinguish itself. The word "art" is here used in the same way as it is used when we say, the art of war, the art of government, &c.; and rightly, for we are talking about the possibility of the realization of the idea.

—The educator must adapt himself to the pupil, but not to such a degree as to imply that the pupil is incapable of change, and he must also be sure that the pupil shall learn through his experience the independence of the object studied, which remains uninfluenced by his variable personal moods, and the adaptation on the teacher's part must never compromise this independence.—

§ 6. If conditions which are local, temporal, and individual, are fixed as constant rules, and carried beyond their proper limits, are systematized as a valuable formalistic code, unavoidable error arises. The formulæ of teaching are admirable material for the science, but are not the science itself.

§ 7. Pedagogics as a science must (1) unfold the general idea of Education; (2) must exhibit the particular phases into which the general work of Education divides itself, and (3) must describe the particular standpoint upon which the general idea realizes itself, or should become real in its special processes at any particular time.

§ 8. The treatment of the first part offers no difficulty. It is logically too evident. But it would not do to substitute for it the history of Pedagogics, simply because all the conceptions of it which appear in systematic treatises can be found there.

—Into this error G. Thaulow has fallen in his pamphlet on Pedagogics as a Philosophical Science.—

§ 9. The second division unfolds the subject of the physical, intellectual and practical culture of the human race, and constitutes the main part of all books on Pedagogy. Here arises the greatest difficulty as to the limitations, partly because of the undefined nature of the ideas, partly because of the degree of amplification which the details demand. Here is the field of the widest possible differences. If e.g. one studies out the conception of the school with reference to the qualitative specialities which one may consider, it is evident that he can extend his remarks indefinitely; he may speak thus of technological schools of all kinds, to teach mining, navigation, war, art, &c.

§ 10. The third division distinguishes between the different standpoints which are possible in the working out of the conception of Education in its special elements, and which therefore produce different systems of Education wherein the general and the particular are individualized in a special manner. In every system the general tendencies of the idea of education, and the difference between the physical, intellectual and practical culture of man, must be formally recognized, and will appear. The How is decided by the standpoint which reduces that formalism to a special system. Thus it becomes possible to discover the essential contents of the history of Pedagogics from its idea, since this can furnish not an indefinite but a certain number of Pedagogic systems.

—The lower standpoint merges always into the higher, and in so doing first attains its full meaning, e.g.: Education for the sake of the nation is set aside for higher standpoints, e.g. that of Christianity; but we must not suppose that the national phase of Education was counted as nought from the Christian standpoint. Rather it itself had outgrown the limits which, though suitable enough for its early stage, could no longer contain its true idea. This is sure to be the case in the fact that the national individualities become indestructible by being incorporated into Christianity—a fact that contradicts the abstract seizing of such relations.—

§ 11. The last system must be that of the present, and since this is certainly on one side the result of all the past, while on the other seized in its possibilities it is determined by the Future, the business of Pedagogics cannot pause till it reaches its ideal of the general and special determinations, so that looked at in this way the Science of Pedagogics at its end returns to its beginning. The first and second divisions already contain the idea of the system necessary for the Present.

FIRST PART.

The General Idea of Education.

§ 12. The idea of Pedagogics in general must distinguish,

(1) The nature of Education in general;
(2) Its form;
(3) Its limits.

I.

The Nature of Education.

§ 13. The nature of Education is determined by the nature of mind—that it can develop whatever it really is only by its own activity. Mind is in itself free; but if it does not actualize this possibility, it is in no true sense free, either for itself or for another. Education is the influencing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead him to actualize himself through his own efforts. The attainment of perfect manhood as the actualization of the Freedom necessary to mind constitutes the nature of Education in general.

—The completely isolated man does not become man. Solitary human beings who have been found in forests, like the wild girl of the forest of Ardennes, sufficiently prove the fact that the truly human qualities in man cannot be developed without reciprocal action with human beings. Caspar Hauser in his subterranean prison is an illustration of what man would be by himself. The first cry of the child expresses in its appeals to others this helplessness of spirituality on the side of nature.—

§ 14. Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. We often speak, it is true, of the education of plants and animals; but even when we do so, we apply, unconsciously perhaps, other expressions, as "raising" and "training," in order to distinguish these. "Breaking" consists in producing in an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the senses, an activity of which, it is true, he is capable, but which he never would have developed if left to himself. On the other hand, it is the nature of Education only to assist in the producing of that which the subject would strive most earnestly to develop for himself if he had a clear idea of himself. We speak of raising trees and animals, but not of raising men; and it is only a planter who looks to his slaves only for an increase in their number.

—The education of men is quite often enough, unfortunately, only a "breaking," and here and there still may be found examples where one tries to teach mechanically, not through the understanding power of the creative WORD, but through the powerless and fruitless appeal to physical pain.—

§ 15. The idea of Education may be more or less comprehensive. We use it in the widest sense when we speak of the Education of the race, for we understand by this expression the connection which the acts and situations of different nations have to each other, as different steps towards self-conscious freedom. In this the world-spirit is the teacher.

§ 16. In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the shaping of the individual life by the forces of nature, the rhythmical movement of national customs, and the might of destiny in which each one finds limits set to his arbitrary will. These often mould him into a man without his knowledge. For he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor offend the ethical sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise the leading of destiny without discovering through experience that before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his subjective power can dash itself only to be shattered. If he perversely and persistently rejects all our admonitions, we leave him, as a last resort, to destiny, whose iron rule must educate him, and reveal to him the God whom he has misunderstood.

—It is, of course, sometimes not only possible, but necessary for one, moved by the highest sense of morality, to act in opposition to the laws of nature, to offend the ethical sense of the people that surround him, and to brave the blows of destiny; but such a one is a sublime reformer or martyr, and we are not now speaking of such, but of the perverse, the frivolous, and the conceited.—

§ 17. In the narrowest sense, which however is the usual one, we mean by Education the influence which one mind exerts on another in order to cultivate the latter in some understood and methodical way, either generally or with reference to some special aim. The educator must, therefore, be relatively finished in his own education, and the pupil must possess unlimited confidence in him. If authority be wanting on the one side, or respect and obedience on the other, this ethical basis of development must fail, and it demands in the very highest degree, talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence.

—Education takes on this form only under the culture which has been developed through the influence of city life. Up to that time we have the naïve period of education, which holds to the general powers of nature, of national customs, and of destiny, and which lasts for a long time among the rural populations. But in the city a greater complication of events, an uncertainty of the results of reflection, a working out of individuality, and a need of the possession of many arts and trades, make their appearance and render it impossible for men longer to be ruled by mere custom. The Telemachus of Fenelon was educated to rule himself by means of reflection; the actual Telemachus in the heroic age lived simply according to custom.—

§ 18. The general problem of Education is the development of the theoretical and practical reason in the individual. If we say that to educate one means to fashion him into morality, we do not make our definition sufficiently comprehensive, because we say nothing of intelligence, and thus confound education and ethics. A man is not merely a human being, but as a reasonable being he is a peculiar individual, and different from all others of the race.

§ 19. Education must lead the pupil by an interconnected series of efforts previously foreseen and arranged by the teacher to a definite end; but the particular form which this shall take must be determined by the peculiar character of the pupil's mind and the situation in which he is found. Hasty and inconsiderate work may accomplish much, but only systematic work can advance and fashion him in conformity with his nature, and the former does not belong to education, for this includes in itself the idea of an end, and that of the technical means for its attainment.

§ 20. But as culture comes to mean more and more, there becomes necessary a division of the business of teaching among different persons, with reference to capabilities and knowledge, because as the arts and sciences are continually increasing in number, one can become learned in any one branch only by devoting himself exclusively to it, and hence becoming one-sided. A difficulty hence arises which is also one for the pupil, of preserving, in spite of this unavoidable one-sidedness, the unity and wholeness which are necessary to humanity.

—The naïve dignity of the happy savage, and the agreeable simplicity of country people, appear to very great advantage when contrasted on this side with the often unlimited narrowness of a special trade, and the endless curtailing of the wholeness of man by the pruning processes of city life. Thus the often abused savage has his hut, his family, his cocoa tree, his weapons, his passions; he fishes, hunts, plays, fights, adorns himself, and enjoys the consciousness that he is the centre of a whole, while a modern citizen is often only an abstract expression of culture.—

§ 21. As it becomes necessary to divide the work of teaching, a difference between general and special schools arises also, from the needs of growing culture. The former present in different compass all the sciences and arts which are included in the term "general education," and which were classified by the Greeks under the general name of Encyclopædia. The latter are known as special schools, suited to particular needs or talents.

—As those who live in the country are relatively isolated, it is often necessary, or at least desirable, that one man should be trained equally on many different sides. The poor tutor is required not only to instruct in all the sciences, he must also speak French and be able to play the piano.—

§ 22. For any single person, the relation of his actual education to its infinite possibilities can only be approximately determined, and it can be considered as only relatively finished on any one side. Education is impossible to him who is born an idiot, since the want of the power of generalizing and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an unfortunate only the possibility of a mechanical training.

—Sägert, the teacher of the deaf mutes in Berlin, has made laudable efforts to educate idiots, but the account as given in his publication, "Cure of Idiots by an Intellectual Method, Berlin, 1846," shows that the result obtained was only external; and though we do not desire to be understood as denying or refusing to this class the possession of a mind in potentia, it appears in them to be confined to an embryonic state.—

II.

The Form of Education.

§ 23. The general form of Education is determined by the nature of the mind, that it really is nothing but what it makes itself to be. The mind is (1) immediate (or potential), but (2) it must estrange itself from itself as it were, so that it may place itself over against itself as a special object of attention; (3) this estrangement is finally removed through a further acquaintance with the object—it feels itself at home in that on which it looks, and returns again enriched to the form of immediateness. That which at first appeared to be another than itself is now seen to be itself. Education cannot create; it can only help to develop to reality the previously existent possibility; it can only help to bring forth to light the hidden life.

§ 24. All culture, whatever may be its special purport, must pass through these two stages—of estrangement, and its removal. Culture must hold fast to the distinction between the subject and the object considered immediately, though it has again to absorb this distinction into itself, in order that the union of the two may be more complete and lasting. The subject recognizes then all the more certainly that what at first appeared to it as a foreign existence, belongs to it as its own property, and that it holds it as its own all the more by means of culture.

—Plato, as is known, calls the feeling with which knowledge must begin, wonder; but this can serve as a beginning only, for wonder itself can only express the tension between the subject and the object at their first encounter—a tension which would be impossible if they were not in themselves identical. Children have a longing for the far-off, the strange, and the wonderful, as if they hoped to find in these an explanation of themselves. They want the object to be a genuine object. That to which they are accustomed, which they see around them every day, seems to have no longer any objective energy for them; but an alarm of fire, banditti life, wild animals, gray old ruins, the robin's songs, and far-off happy islands, &c.—everything high-colored and dazzling—leads them irresistibly on. The necessity of the mind's making itself foreign to itself is that which makes children prefer to hear of the adventurous journeys of Sinbad than news of their own city or the history of their nation, and in youth this same necessity manifests itself in their desire of travelling.—

§ 25. This activity of the mind in allowing itself to be absorbed, and consciously so, in an object with the purpose of making it his own, or of producing it, is Work. But when the mind gives itself up to its objects as chance may present them or through arbitrariness, careless as to whether they have any result, such activity is Play. Work is laid out for the pupil by his teacher by authority, but in his play he is left to himself.

§ 26. Thus work and play must be sharply distinguished from each other. If one has not respect for work as an important and substantial activity, he not only spoils play for his pupil, for this loses all its charm when deprived of the antithesis of an earnest, set task, but he undermines his respect for real existence. On the other hand, if he does not give him space, time, and opportunity, for play, he prevents the peculiarities of his pupil from developing freely through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the pupil back refreshed to his work, since in play he forgets himself in his own way, while in work he is required to forget himself in a manner prescribed for him by another.

—Play is of great importance in helping one to discover the true individualities of children, because in play they may betray thoughtlessly their inclinations. This antithesis of work and play runs through the entire life. Children anticipate in their play the earnest work of after life; thus the little girl plays with her doll, and the boy pretends he is a soldier and in battle.—

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it were work. In general, the arts, the sciences, and productions, stand in this relation to each other: the accumulation of stores of knowledge is the recreation of the mind which is engaged in independent creation, and the practice of arts fills the same office to those whose work is to collect knowledge.

§ 28. Education seeks to transform every particular condition so that it shall no longer seem strange to the mind or in anywise foreign to its own nature. This identity of consciousness, and the special character of anything done or endured by it, we call Habit [habitual conduct or behavior]. It conditions formally all progress; for that which is not yet become habit, but which we perform with design and an exercise of our will, is not yet a part of ourselves.

§ 29. As to Habit, we have to say next that it is at first indifferent as to what it relates. But that which is to be considered as indifferent or neutral cannot be defined in the abstract, but only in the concrete, because anything that is indifferent as to whether it shall act on these particular men, or in this special situation, is capable of another or even of the opposite meaning for another man or men for the same men or in other circumstances. Here, then, appeal must be made to the individual conscience in order to be able from the depths of individuality to separate what we can permit to ourselves from that which we must deny ourselves. The aim of Education must be to arouse in the pupil this spiritual and ethical sensitiveness which does not recognize anything as merely indifferent, but rather knows how to seize in everything, even in the seemingly small, its universal human significance. But in relation to the highest problems he must learn that what concerns his own immediate personality is entirely indifferent.

§ 30. Habit lays aside its indifference to an external action through reflection on the advantage or disadvantage of the same. Whatever tends as a harmonious means to the realization of an end is advantageous, but that is disadvantageous which, by contradicting its idea, hinders or destroys it. Advantage and disadvantage being then only relative terms, a habit which is advantageous for one man in one case may be disadvantageous for another man, or even for the same man, under different circumstances. Education must, therefore, accustom the youth to judge as to the expediency or inexpediency of any action in its relation to the essential vocation of his life, so that he shall avoid that which does not promote its success.

§ 31. But the absolute distinction of habit is the moral distinction between the good and the bad. For from this standpoint alone can we finally decide what is allowable and what is forbidden, what is advantageous and what is disadvantageous.

§ 32. As relates to form, habit may be either passive or active. The passive is that which teaches us to bear the vicissitudes of nature as well as of history with such composure that we shall hold our ground against them, being always equal to ourselves, and that we shall not allow our power of acting to be paralyzed through any mutations of fortune. Passive habit is not to be confounded with obtuseness in receiving impressions, a blank abstraction from the affair in hand which at bottom is found to be nothing more than a selfishness which desires to be left undisturbed: it is simply composure of mind in view of changes over which we have no control. While we vividly experience joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure—inwoven as these are with the change of seasons, of the weather, &c.—with the alternation of life and death, of happiness and misery, we ought nevertheless to harden ourselves against them so that at the same time in our consciousness of the supreme worth of the mind we shall build up the inaccessible stronghold of Freedom in ourselves.—Active habit [or behavior] is found realized in a wide range of activity which appears in manifold forms, such as skill, dexterity, readiness of information, &c. It is a steeling of the internal for action upon the external, as the Passive is a steeling of the internal against the influences of the external.

§ 33. Habit is the general form which instruction takes. For since it reduces a condition or an activity within ourselves to an instinctive use and wont, it is necessary for any thorough instruction. But as, according to its content, it may be either proper or improper, advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad, and according to its form may be the assimilation of the external by the internal, or the impress of the internal upon the external, Education must procure for the pupil the power of being able to free himself from one habit and to adopt another. Through his freedom he must be able not only to renounce any habit formed, but to form a new one; and he must so govern his system of habits that it shall exhibit a constant progress of development into greater freedom. We must discipline ourselves, as a means toward the ever-changing realization of the Good in us, constantly to form and to break habits.

—We must characterize those habits as bad which relate only to our convenience or our enjoyment. They are often not blamable in themselves, but there lies in them a hidden danger that they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. But it is a false and mechanical way of looking at the affair if we suppose that a habit which has been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken by an equal number of denials. We can never renounce a habit utterly except through a clearness of judgment which decides it to be undesirable, and through firmness of will.—

§ 34. Education comprehends also the reciprocal action of the opposites, authority and obedience, rationality and individuality, work and play, habit and spontaneity. If we imagine that these can be reconciled by rules, it will be in vain that we try to restrain the youth in these relations. But a failure in education in this particular is very possible through the freedom of the pupil, through special circumstances, or through the errors of the educator himself. And for this very reason any theory of Education must take into account in the beginning this negative possibility. It must consider beforehand the dangers which threaten the pupil in all possible ways even before they surround him, and fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the other hand, to guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridiculous, fruitless, and much more dangerous; for temptation comes not alone from without, but quite as often from within, and secret inclination seeks and creates for itself the opportunity for its gratification, often perhaps an unnatural one. The truly preventive activity consists not in an abstract seclusion from the world, all of whose elements are innate in each individual, but in the activity of knowledge and discipline, modified according to age and culture.

—If one endeavors to deprive the youth of all free and individual intercourse with the world, one only falls into a continual watching of him, and the consciousness that he is watched destroys in him all elasticity of spirit, all confidence, all originality. The police shadow of control obscures all independence and systematically accustoms him to dependence. As the tragi-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, one cannot lose his own shadow without falling into the saddest fatalities; but the shadow of a constant companion, as in the pedagogical system of the Jesuits, undermines all naturalness. And if one endeavors too strictly to guard against that which is evil and forbidden, the intelligence of the pupils reacts in deceit against such efforts, till the educators are amazed that such crimes as come often to light can have arisen under such careful control.—

§ 35. If there should appear in the youth any decided moral deformity which is opposed to the ideal of his education, the instructor must at once make inquiry as to the history of its origin, because the negative and the positive are very closely connected in his being, so that what appears to be negligence, rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or oddity, may arise from some real needs of the youth which in their development have only taken a wrong direction.

§ 36. If it should appear on such examination that the negative action was only a product of wilful ignorance, of caprice, or of arbitrariness on the part of the youth, then this calls for a simple prohibition on the part of the educator, no reason being assigned. His authority must be sufficient to the pupil without any reason. Only when this has happened more than once, and the youth is old enough to understand, should the prohibition, together with the reason therefor, be given.

—This should, however, be brief; the explanation must retain its disciplinary character, and must not become extended into a doctrinal essay, for in such a case the youth easily forgets that it was his own misbehavior which was the occasion of the explanation. The statement of the reason must be honest, and it must present to the youth the point most easy for him to seize. False reasons are morally blamable in themselves, and they tend only to confuse. It is a great mistake to unfold to the youth the broadening consequences which his act may bring. These uncertain possibilities seem to him too powerless to affect him particularly. The severe lecture wearies him, especially if it be stereotyped, as is apt to be the case with fault-finding and talkative instructors. But more unfortunate is it if the painting of the gloomy background to which the consequences of the wrong-doing of the youth may lead, should fill his feelings and imagination prematurely with gloomy fancies, because then the representation has led him one step toward a state of wretchedness which in the future man may become fearful depression and degradation.—

§ 37. If the censure is accompanied with a threat of punishment, then we have the same kind of reproof which in daily life we call "scolding;" but if reproof is given, the pupil must be made to feel that it is in earnest.

§ 38. Only when all other efforts have failed, is punishment, which is the real negation of the error, the transgression, or the vice, justifiable. Punishment inflicts intentionally pain on the pupil, and its object is, by means of this sensation, to bring him to reason, a result which neither our simple prohibition, our explanation, nor our threat of punishment, has been able to reach. But the punishment, as such, must not refer to the subjective totality of the youth, or his disposition in general, but only to the act which, as result, is a manifestation of the disposition. It acts mediately on the disposition, but leaves the inner being untouched directly; and this is not only demanded by justice, but on account of the sophistry that is inherent in human nature, which desires to assign to a deed many motives, it is even necessary.

§ 39. Punishment as an educational means is nevertheless essentially corrective, since, by leading the youth to a proper estimation of his fault and a positive change in his behavior, it seeks to improve him. At the same time it stands as a sad indication of the insufficiency of the means previously used. On no account should the youth be frightened from the commission of a misdemeanor, or from the repetition of his negative deed through fear of punishment—a system which leads always to terrorism: but, although it may have this effect, it should, before all things, impress upon him the recognition of the fact that the negative is not allowed to act as it will without limitation, but rather that the Good and the True have the absolute power in the world, and that they are never without the means of overcoming anything that contradicts them.

—In the statute-laws, punishment has the opposite office. It must first of all satisfy justice, and only after this is done can it attempt to improve the guilty. If a government should proceed on the same basis as the educator it would mistake its task, because it has to deal with adults, whom it elevates to the honorable position of responsibility for their own acts. The state must not go back to the psychological ethical genesis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank of importance the biographical moment which contains the deed in process and the circumstances of a mitigating character, and it must consider first of all the deed in itself. It is quite otherwise with the educator; for he deals with human beings who are relatively undeveloped, and who are only growing toward responsibility. So long as they are still under the care of a teacher, the responsibility of their deed belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in which punishment is administered in the state with that in education, we work much evil.—

§ 40. Punishment as a negation of a negation, considered as an educational means, cannot be determined à priori, but must always be modified by the peculiarities of the individual offender and by the peculiar circumstances. Its administration calls for the exercise of the ingenuity and tact of the educator.

§ 41. Generally speaking, we must make a distinction between the sexes, as well as between the different periods of youth; (1) some kind of corporal punishment is most suitable for children, (2) isolation for older boys and girls, and (3) punishment based on the sense of honor for young men and women.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment is the production of physical pain. The youth is generally whipped, and this kind of punishment, provided always that it is not too often administered or with undue severity, is the proper way of dealing with wilful defiance, with obstinate carelessness, or with a really perverted will, so long or so often as the higher perception is closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical punishment, e.g. that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all the teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally undesirable is the false sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child, and confounds self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, to which a blow is the most natural form of reaction, in which all other forms of influence at last end.

—The fully-grown man ought never to be whipped, because this kind of punishment reduces him to the level of the child, and, when it becomes barbarous, to that of a brute animal, and so is absolutely degrading to him. In the English schools the rod is much used. If a pupil of the first class be put back into the second at Eton, he, although before exempt from flogging, becomes liable to it. But however necessary this system of flogging of the English aristocracy may be in the discipline of their schools, flogging in the English army is a shameful thing for the free people of Great Britain.—

§ 43. (2) By Isolation we remove the offender temporarily from the society of his fellows. The boy left alone, cut off from all companionship, and left absolutely to himself, suffers from a sense of helplessness. The time passes heavily, and soon he is very anxious to be allowed to return to the company of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow-pupils.

—To leave a child entirely to himself without any supervision, even if one shuts him up in a dark room, is as mistaken a practice as to leave a few together without supervision, as is too often done where they are kept after school, when they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness and commit the wildest pranks.—

§ 44. (3) This way of isolating a child does not touch his sense of honor at all, and is soon forgotten because it relates to only one side of his conduct. It is quite different from punishment based on the sense of honor, which, in a formal manner, shuts the youth out from companionship because he has attacked the principle which holds society together, and for this reason can no longer be considered as belonging to it. Honor is the recognition of one individual by others as their equal. Through his error, or it may be his crime, he has simply made himself unequal to them, and in so far has separated himself from them, so that his banishment from their society is only the outward expression of the real isolation which he himself has brought to pass in his inner nature, and which he by means of his negative act only betrayed to the outer world. Since the punishment founded on the sense of honor affects the whole ethical man and makes a lasting impression upon his memory, extreme caution is necessary in its application lest a permanent injury be inflicted upon the character. The idea of his perpetual continuance in disgrace, destroys in a man all aspiration for improvement.

—Within the family this feeling of honor cannot be so actively developed, because every member of it is bound to every other immediately by natural ties, and hence is equal to every other. Within its sacred circle, he who has isolated himself is still beloved, though it may be through tears. However bad may be the deed he has committed, he is never given up, but the deepest sympathy is felt for him because he is still brother, father, &c. But first in the contact of one family with another, and still more in the contact of an individual with any institution which is founded not on natural ties, but is set over against him as a distinct object, this feeling of honor appears. In the school, and in the matter of ranks and classes in a school, this is very important.—

§ 45. It is important to consider well this gradation of punishment (which, starting with sensuous physical pain, passes through the external teleology of temporary isolation up to the idealism of the sense of honor), both in relation to the different ages at which they are appropriate and to the training which they bring with them. Every punishment must be considered merely as a means to some end, and, in so far, as transitory. The pupil must always be deeply conscious that it is very painful to his instructor to be obliged to punish him. This pathos of another's sorrow for the sake of his cure which he perceives in the mien, in the tone of the voice, in the delay with which the punishment is administered, will become a purifying fire for his soul.

III.

The Limits of Education.

§ 46. The form of Education reaches its limits with the idea of punishment, because this is the attempt to subsume the negative reality and to make it conformable to its positive idea. But the limits of Education are found in the idea of its nature, which is to fashion the individual into theoretical and practical rationality. The authority of the Educator at last becomes imperceptible, and it passes over into advice and example, and obedience changes from blind conformity to free gratitude and attachment. Individuality wears off its rough edges, and is transfigured into the universality and necessity of Reason without losing in this process its identity. Work becomes enjoyment, and he finds his play in a change of activity. The youth takes possession of himself, and can be left to himself.

—There are two widely differing views with regard to the limits of Education. One lays great stress on the weakness of the pupil and the power of the teacher. According to this view, Education has for its province the entire formation of the youth. The despotism of this view often manifests itself where large numbers are to be educated together, and with very undesirable results, because it assumes that the individual pupil is only a specimen of the whole, as if the school were a great factory where each piece of goods is to be stamped exactly like all the rest. Individuality is reduced by the tyranny of such despotism to one uniform level till all originality is destroyed, as in cloisters, barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems to exist. There is a kind of Pedagogy also which fancies that one can thrust into or out of the individual pupil what one will. This may be called a superstitious belief in the power of Education.—The opposite extreme disbelieves this, and advances the policy which lets alone and does nothing, urging that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the most careful and far-sighted education fails of reaching its aim in so far as it is opposed to the nature of the youth, and that this individuality has made of no avail all efforts toward the obtaining of any end which was opposed to it. This representation of the fruitlessness of all pedagogical efforts engenders an indifference towards it which would leave, as a result, only a sort of vegetation of individuality growing at hap-hazard.—

§ 47. The limit of Education is (1) a Subjective one, a limit made by the individuality of the youth. This is a definite limit. Whatever does not exist in this individuality as a possibility cannot be developed from it. Education can only lead and assist; it cannot create. What Nature has denied to a man, Education cannot give him any more than it is able, on the other hand, to annihilate entirely his original gifts, although it is true that his talents may be suppressed, distorted, and measurably destroyed. But the decision of the question in what the real essence of any one's individuality consists can never be made with certainty till he has left behind him his years of development, because it is then only that he first arrives at the consciousness of his entire self; besides, at this critical time, in the first place, much knowledge only superficially acquired will drop off; and again, talents, long slumbering and unsuspected, may first make their appearance. Whatever has been forced upon a child in opposition to his individuality, whatever has been only driven into him and has lacked receptivity on his side, or a rational ground on the side of culture, remains attached to his being only as an external ornament, a foreign outgrowth which enfeebles his own proper character.

—We must distinguish from that affectation which arises through a misunderstanding of the limit of individuality, the way which many children and young persons have of supposing when they see models finished and complete in grown persons, that they themselves are endowed by Nature with the power to develop into the same. When they see a reality which corresponds to their own possibility, the presentiment of a like or a similar attainment moves them to an imitation of it as a model personality. This may be sometimes carried so far as to be disagreeable or ridiculous, but should not be too strongly censured, because it springs from a positive striving after culture, and needs only proper direction.—

§ 48. (2) The Objective limit of Education lies in the means which can be appropriated for it. That the talent for a certain culture shall be present is certainly the first thing; but the cultivation of this talent is the second, and no less necessary. But how much cultivation can be given to it extensively and intensively depends upon the means used, and these again are conditioned by the material resources of the family to which each one belongs. The greater and more valuable the means of culture which are found in a family are, the greater is the immediate advantage which the culture of each one has at the start. With regard to many of the arts and sciences this limit of education is of great significance. But the means alone are of no avail. The finest educational apparatus will produce no fruit where corresponding talent is wanting, while on the other hand talent often accomplishes incredible feats with very limited means, and, if the way is only once open, makes of itself a centre of attraction which draws to itself with magnetic power the necessary means. The moral culture of each one is however, fortunately from its very nature, out of the reach of such dependence.

—In considering the limit made by individuality we recognize the side of truth in that indifference which considers Education entirely superfluous, and in considering the means of culture we find the truth in the other extreme of pedagogical despotism, which fancies that it can command whatever culture it chooses for any one without regard to his individuality.—

§ 49. (3) The Absolute limit of Education is the time when the youth has apprehended the problem which he has to solve, has learned to know the means at his disposal, and has acquired a certain facility in using them. The end and aim of Education is the emancipation of the youth. It strives to make him self-dependent, and as soon as he has become so it wishes to retire and to be able to leave him to the sole responsibility of his actions. To treat the youth after he has passed this point of time still as a youth, contradicts the very idea of Education, which idea finds its fulfilment in the attainment of majority by the pupil. Since the accomplishment of education cancels the original inequality between the educator and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay, revolting to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned.

—The opposite extreme of the protracting of Education beyond its proper time is necessarily the undue hastening of the Emancipation.—The question whether one is prepared for freedom has been often opened in politics. When any people have gone so far as to ask this question themselves, it is no longer a question whether that people are prepared for it, for without the consciousness of freedom this question would never have occurred to them.—

§ 50. Although educators must now leave the youth free, the necessity of further culture for him is still imperative. But it will no longer come directly through them. Their pre-arranged, pattern-making work is now supplanted by self-education. Each sketches for himself an ideal to which in his life he seeks to approximate every day.

—In the work of self-culture one friend can help another by advice and example; but he cannot educate, for education presupposes inequality.—The necessities of human nature produce societies in which equals seek to influence each other in a pedagogical way, since they establish by certain steps of culture different classes. They presuppose Education in the ordinary sense. But they wish to bring about Education in a higher sense, and therefore they veil the last form of their ideal in the mystery of secrecy.—To one who lives on contented with himself and without the impulse toward self-culture, unless his unconcern springs from his belonging to a savage state of society, the Germans give the name of Philistine, and he is always repulsive to the student who is intoxicated with an ideal.—

SECOND PART.

The Special Elements of Education.

§ 51. Education in general consists in the development in man of his inborn theoretical and practical rationality; it takes on the form of labor, which changes that state or condition, which appears at first only as a mere conception, into a fixed habit, and transfigures individuality into a worthy humanity. Education ends in that emancipation of the youth which places him on his own feet. The special elements which form the concrete content of all Education in general are the Life, Cognition, and Will of man. Without life mind has no phenomenal reality; without cognition, no genuine, i.e. conscious, will; and without will, no self-assurance of life and of cognition. It is true that these three elements are in real existence inseparable, and that consequently in the dialectic they continually pass over into one another. But none the less on this account do they themselves prescribe their own succession, and they have a relative and periodical ascendancy over each other. In Infancy, up to the fifth or sixth year, the purely physical development takes the precedence; Childhood is the time of learning, in a proper sense, an act by which the child gains for himself the picture of the world such as mature minds, through experience and insight, have painted it; and, finally, Youth is the transition period to practical activity, to which the self-determination of the will must give the first impulse.

§ 52. The classification of the special elements of Pedagogics is hence very simple: (1) the Physical, (2) the Intellectual, (3) the Practical. (We sometimes apply to these the words Orthobiotics, Didactics, and Pragmatics.)

—Æsthetic training constitutes only an element of the education of Intellectual Education, just as social, moral, and religious training form elements of Practical Education. But because these latter elements concern themselves with what is external, the name "Pragmatics" is appropriate. In this sphere, Pedagogics should coincide with Politics, Ethics, and Religion; but it is distinguished from them through the aptitude which it brings with it of putting into practice the problems of the other three. The scientific arrangement of these ideas must therefore show that the former, as the more abstract, constitutes the conditions, and the latter, as the more concrete, the ground of the former, which are presupposed; and in consequence of this it is itself their principal teleological presupposition, just as in man the will presupposes the cognition, and cognition life; while, at the same time, life, in a deeper sense, must presuppose cognition, and cognition will.—

First Division.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

§ 53. The art of living rightly is based upon a comprehension of the process of Life. Life is the restless dialectic which ceaselessly transforms the inorganic into the organic, but at the same time creates out of itself another inorganic, in which it separates from itself whatever part of the inorganic has not been assimilated, which it took up as a stimulant, and that which has become dead and burned out. The organism is healthy when its reality corresponds to this idea of the dialectic, of a life which moves up and down, to and fro; of formation and re-formation, of organizing and disorganizing. All the rules for Physical Education, or of Hygiene, are derived from this conception.

§ 54. It follows from this that the change of the inorganic to the organic is going on not only in the organism as a whole, but also in its every organ and in every part of every organ; and that the organic as soon as it has attained its highest point of energy, is again degraded to the inorganic and thrown out. Every cell has its history. Activity is, therefore, not contradictory to the organism, but favors in it the natural progressive and regressive metamorphosis. This process can go on harmoniously; that is, the organism can be in health only when not only the whole organism, but each special organ, is allowed, after its productive activity, the corresponding rest and recreation necessary for its self-renewal. We have this periodicity exemplified in waking and sleeping, also in exhalation and inhalation, excretion and taking in of material. When we have discovered the relative antagonism of the organs and their periodicity, we have found the secret of the perennial renewal of life.

§ 55. Fatigue makes its appearance when any organ, or the organism in general, is denied time for the return movement into itself and for renovation. It is possible for some one organ, as if isolated, to exercise a great and long-continued activity, even to the point of fatigue, while the other organs rest; as e.g. the lungs, in speaking, while the other parts are quiet; on the other hand, it is not well to speak and run at the same time. The idea that one can keep the organism in better condition by inactivity, is an error which rests upon a mechanical apprehension of life. Equally false is the idea that health depends upon the quantity and excellence of the food; without the force to assimilate it, it acts fatally rather than stimulatingly. True strength arises only from activity.

—The later physiologists will gradually destroy, in the system of culture of modern people, the preconceived notion which recommended for the indolent and lovers of pleasure powerful stimulants, very fat food, &c. Excellent works exist on this question.—

§ 56. Physical Education, as it concerns the repairing, the motor, or the nervous, activities, is divided into (1) Dietetics, (2) Gymnastics, (3) Sexual Education. In real life these activities are scarcely separable, but for the sake of exposition we must consider them apart. In the regular development of the human being, moreover, the repairing system has a relative precedence to the motor system, and the latter to the sexual maturity. But Pedagogics can treat of these ideas only with reference to the infant, the child, and the youth.

FIRST CHAPTER.

Dietetics.

§ 57. Dietetics is the art of sustaining the normal repair of the organism. Since this organism is, in the concrete, an individual one, the general principles of dietetics must, in their manner of application, vary with the sex, the age, the temperament, the occupation, and the other conditions, of the individual. Pedagogics as a science can only go over its general principles, and these can be named briefly. It we attempt to speak of details, we fall easily into triviality. So very important to the whole life of man is the proper care of his physical nature during the first stages of its development, that the science of Pedagogics must not omit to consider the different systems which different people, according to their time, locality, and culture, have made for themselves; many, it is true, embracing some preposterous ideas, but in general never devoid of justification in their time.

§ 58. The infant's first nourishment must be the milk of its mother. The substitution of a nurse should be only an exception justified alone by the illness of the mother; as a rule, as happens in France, it is simply bad, because a foreign physical and moral element is introduced into the family through the nurse. The milk of an animal can never be as good for a child.

§ 59. When the teeth appear, the child is first able to eat solid food; but, until the second teeth come, he should be fed principally on light, fluid nourishment, and on vegetable diet.

§ 60. When the second teeth are fully formed, the human being is ready for animal as well as vegetable food. Too much meat is not good; but it is an anatomical error to suppose that man, by the structure of his stomach, was originally formed to live alone on vegetable diet, and that animal food is a sign of his degeneracy.

—The Hindoos, who subsist principally on vegetable diet, are not, as has been often asserted, a very gentle race: a glance into their history, or into their erotic poetry, shows them to be quite as passionate as other peoples.—

§ 61. Man is omnivorous. Children have therefore a natural desire to taste of everything. For them eating and drinking possess a kind of poetry; there is a theoretic ingredient blended with the material enjoyment. They have, on this account, a proneness to indulge, which is deserving of punishment only when it is combined with disobedience and secrecy, or when it betrays cunning and greediness.

§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are undergoing the most active progressive metamorphosis. In after-life sleep and waking should be subjected to periodical regulation, but not too exactly.

§ 63. The clothing of children should be adapted to them; i.e. it should be cut according to the shape of the body, and it must be loose enough to allow free play to their desire for movement.

—With regard to this as well as to the sleeping arrangements for children, less in regard to food—which is often too highly spiced and too liberal in tea, coffee, &c.—our age has become accustomed to a very rational system. The clothing of children must be not only comfortable, but it should be made of simple and cheap material, so that the free enjoyment of the child may not be marred by the constant internal anxiety that a rent or a spot may bring him a fault-finding or angry word. From too great care as to clothing, may arise a meanness of mind which at last pays too great respect to it, or an empty frivolity. This last may be induced by dressing children too conspicuously.—

§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be accustomed for the sake of their physical well-being, as well as because, in a moral point of view, it is of the greatest significance. Cleanliness will not endure that things shall be deprived of their proper individuality through the elemental chaos. It retains each as distinguished from every other. While it makes necessary to man pure air, cleanliness of surroundings, of clothing, and of his body, it develops in him a sense by which he perceives accurately the particular limits of being in general.

SECOND CHAPTER.

Gymnastics.

§ 65. Gymnastics is the art of systematic training of the muscular system. The action of the voluntary muscles, which are regulated by the nerves of the brain, in distinction from the involuntary automatic muscles depending on the spinal cord, while they are the means of man's intercourse with the external world, at the same time re-act upon the automatic muscles in digestion and sensation. Since the movement of the muscular fibres consists in the change of contraction and expansion, it follows that Gymnastics must bring about a change of movement which shall both contract and expand the muscles.

§ 66. The system of gymnastic exercise of any nation corresponds always to its way of fighting. So long as this consists in the personal struggle of a hand-to-hand contest, Gymnastics will seek to increase as much as possible individual strength and adroitness. As soon as the far-reaching missiles projected from fire-arms become the centre of all the operations of war, the individual is lost in a body of men, out of which he emerges only relatively in sharp-shooting, in the charge, in single contests, and in the retreat. Because of this incorporation of the individual in the one great whole, and because of the resulting unimportance of personal bravery, modern Gymnastics can never be the same as it was in ancient times, even putting out of view the fact that the subjectiveness of the modern spirit is too great to allow it to devote so much attention to the care of the body, and the admiration of its beauty, as was given by the Greeks.

—The Turners' unions and halls in Germany belong to the period of subjective enthusiasm of the German student population, and had a political significance. At present, they have been brought back to their proper place as an Educational means, and they are of great value, especially in large cities. Among the mountains, and even in the country towns, a special institution for bodily exercise is less necessary, for the matter takes care of itself. The attractions of the situation and the games help to foster it. In great cities, however, the houses are often destitute of halls or open places where the children can take exercise in their leisure moments. In these cities, therefore, there must be some gymnastic hall where the sense of fellowship may be developed. Gymnastics are not so essential for girls. In its place, dancing is sufficient, and gymnastics should be employed for them only where there exists any special weakness or deformity, when they may be used as a restorative or preservative. They are not to become Amazons. The boy, on the contrary, needs to acquire the feeling of good-fellowship. It is true that the school develops this in a measure, but not fully, because it determines the standing of the boy through his intellectual ambition. The academical youth will not take much interest in special gymnastics unless he can gain preëminence therein. Running, leaping, climbing, and lifting, are too meaningless for their more mature spirits. They can take a lively interest only in the exercises which have a warlike character. With the Prussians, and some other German states, the art of Gymnastics identifies itself with military concerns.—

§ 67. The real idea of Gymnastics must always be that the spirit shall rule over its naturalness, and shall make this an energetic and docile servant of its will. Strength and adroitness must unite and become confident skill. Strength, carried to its extreme produces the athlete; adroitness, to its extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All immense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away as the idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility; e.g. that by swimming one may save his life when he falls into the water, &c. Among other things, this may also be a consequence; but the principle in general must always remain: the necessity of the spirit of subjecting its organism of the body to the condition of a perfect means, so that it may never find itself limited by it.

§ 68. Gymnastic exercises form a series from simple to compound. There appears to be so much arbitrariness in them that it is always very agreeable to the mind to find, on nearer inspection, some reason. The movements are (1) of the lower, (2) of the upper extremities; (3) of the whole body, with relative striking out, now of the upper, now of the lower extremities. We distinguish, therefore, foot, arm, and trunk movements.

§ 69. (1) The first series of foot-movements is the most important, and conditions the carriage of all the rest of the body. They are (a) walking; (b) running; (c) leaping: each of these being capable of modifications, as the high and the low leap, the prolonged and the quick run. Sometimes we give to these different names, according to the means used, as walking on stilts; skating; leaping with a staff, or by means of the hands, as vaulting. Dancing is only the art of the graceful mingling of these movements; and balancing, only one form of walking.

§ 70. (2) The second series embraces the arm-movements, and it repeats also the movements of the first series. It includes (a) lifting; (b) swinging; (c) throwing. All pole and bar practice comes under lifting, also climbing and carrying. Under throwing, come quoit and ball-throwing, and nine-pin playing. All these movements are distinguished from each other, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, in the position of the stretched and bent muscles; e.g. running is something different from quick walking.

§ 71. (3) The third series, or that of movements of the whole body, differs from the preceding two, which should precede it, in this, that it brings the organism into contact with a living object, which it has to overcome through its own activity. This object is sometimes an element, sometimes an animal, sometimes a man. Our divisions then are (a) swimming; (b) riding; (c) fighting, or single combat. In swimming, one must conquer the yielding liquid material of water by arm and foot movements. The resistance met on account of currents and waves may be very great, but it is still that of a will-less and passive object. But in riding man has to deal with a self-willed being whose vitality calls forth not only his strength but also his intelligence and courage. The exercise is therefore very complicated, and the rider must be able perpetually to individualize it according to the necessity; at the same time, he must give attention not only to the horse, but to the nature of the ground and the entire surroundings. But it is only in the struggle with men that Gymnastics reaches its highest point, for in this man offers himself as a living antagonist to man and brings him into danger. It is no longer the spontaneous activity of an unreasoning existence; it is the resistance and attack of intelligence itself with which he has to deal. Fighting, or single combat, is the truly chivalrous exercise, and this may be combined with horsemanship.

—In the single combat there is found also a qualitative modification, whence we have three systems: (a) boxing and wrestling; (b) fencing with sticks; and (c) rapier and broad-sword fencing. In the first, which was cultivated to its highest point among the Greeks, direct immediateness rules. In the boxing of the English, a sailor-like propensity of this nation, fist-fighting is still retained as a custom. Fencing with a stick is found among the French mechanics, the so-called compagnons. Men often use the cane in their contests; it is a sort of refined club. When we use the sword or rapier, the weapon becomes deadly. The Southern Europeans excel in the use of the rapier, the Germans in that of the sword. But the art of single combat is much degenerated, and the pistol-duel, through its increasing frequency, proves this degeneration.—

THIRD CHAPTER.

Sexual Education.

Note.—The paragraphs relating to Sexual Education are designed for parents rather than for teachers, the parent being the natural educator of the family and sexual education relating to the preservation and continuance of the family. This chapter is accordingly, for the most part, omitted here. It contains judicious reflections, invaluable to parents and guardians.—Tr.

§ 72. Gymnastic exercises fall naturally into a systematic arrangement determined by the chronological order of development through infancy, childhood, and youth. Walking, running, and leaping belong, to the first period; lifting, swinging, and throwing, to the second; swimming, riding, and bodily contests, to the third, and these last may also be continued into manhood. But with the arrival at youth, a new epoch makes its appearance in the organism. It prepares itself for the propagation of the species. It expands the individual through the need which he feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species, but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a special care in the educator.

§ 73. The general preventive guards must be found in a rational system of food and exercise. By care in these directions, the development of the bones, and with them of the brain and spinal cord at this period, may be led to a proper strength, and that the easily-moulded material may not be perverted from its normal functions in the development of the body to a premature manifestation of the sexual instinct.

§ 74. Special forethought is necessary lest the brain be too early over-strained, and lest, in consequence of such precocious and excessive action, the foundation for a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system be laid, which may easily lead to effeminate and voluptuous reveries, and to brooding over obscene representations. The excessive reading of novels, whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of the sexes for each other and its sensual phases, may lead to this, and then the mischief is done.

Second Division.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.

§ 80. Mens sana in corpore sano is correct as a pedagogical maxim, but false in the judgment of individual cases; because it is possible, on the one hand, to have a healthy mind in an unhealthy body, and, on the other hand, an unhealthy mind in a healthy body. To strive after the harmony of soul and body is the material condition of all proper activity. The development of intelligence presupposes physical health. Here we are to speak of the science of the art of Teaching. This had its condition on the side of nature, as was before seen, in physical Education, but in the sphere of mind it is related to Psychology and Logic. It unites, in Teaching, considerations on Psychology as well as a Logical method.

FIRST CHAPTER.

The Psychological Presupposition.

§ 81. If we would have a sound condition of Philosophy, it must, in intellectual Education, refer to the conception of mind which has been unfolded in Psychology; and it must appear as a defect in scientific method if Psychology, or at least the conception of the theoretical mind, is treated again as within Pedagogics. We must take something for granted. Psychology, then, will be consulted no further than is requisite to place on a sure basis the pedagogical function which relates to it.

§ 82. The conception of attention is the most important to Pedagogics of all those derived from Psychology. Mind is essentially self-activity. Nothing exists for it which it does not itself posit as its own. We hear it not seldom implied that something from outside conditions must make an impression on the mind, but this is an error. Mind lets nothing act upon it unless it has rendered itself receptive to it. Without this preparatory self-excitation the object does not really penetrate it, and it passes by the object unconsciously or indifferently. The horizon of perception changes for each person with his peculiarities and culture. Attention is the adjusting of the observer to the object in order to seize it in its unity and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows, for a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so that he may establish a relation with this one. Without this essentially spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. All result in teaching and learning depends upon the clearness and strength with which distinctions are made, and the saying, bene qui distinguit bene docit, applies as well to the pupil.

§ 83. Attention, depending as it does on the self-determination of the observer, can therefore be improved, and the pupil made attentive, by the educator. Education must accustom him to an exact, rapid, and many-sided attention, so that at the first contact with an object he may grasp it sufficiently and truly, and that it shall not be necessary for him always to be adding to his acquisitions concerning it. The twilight and partialness of intelligence which forces us always to new corrections because a pupil at the very commencement did not give entire attention, must not be tolerated.

§ 84. We learn from Psychology that mind does not consist of distinct faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom a potiori fit denominatio to mean that man is distinguished from animals by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must not forget that feeling and representing are not less necessary to a truly complete human being. The special direction which the activity of apprehending intelligence takes are (1) Perception, (2) Conception, (3) Thinking. Dialectically, they pass over into each other; not that Perception rises into Conception, and Conception into Thinking, but that Thinking goes back into Conception, and this again into Perception. In the development of the young, the Perceptive faculty is most active in the infant, the Conceptive in the child, and the Thinking in the youth; and thus we may distinguish an intuitive, an imaginative, and a logical epoch.

—Great errors arise from the misapprehension of these different phases and of their dialectic, since the different forms which are suitable to the different grades of youth are mingled. The infant certainly thinks while he perceives, but this thinking is to him unconscious. Or, if he has acquired perceptions, he makes them into conceptions, and demonstrates his freedom in playing with them. This play must not be taken as mere amusement; it also signifies that he takes care to preserve his self-determination, and his power of idealizing, in opposition to the pleasant filling of his consciousness with material. Herein the delight of the child for fairy tales finds its reason. The fairy tale constantly destroys the limits of common actuality. The abstract understanding cannot endure this arbitrariness and want of fixed conditions, and thus would prefer that children should read, instead, home-made stories of the "Charitable Ann," of the "Heedless Frederick," of the "Inquisitive Wilhelmine," &c. Above all, it praises "Robinson Crusoe," which contains much heterogeneous matter, but nothing improbable. When the youth and maiden of necessity pass over into the earnestness of real life, the drying up of the imagination and the domination of the understanding presses in.—

I. The Intuitive Epoch.

§ 85. Perception, as the beginning of intellectual culture, is the free grasping of a content immediately present to the spirit. Education can do nothing directly toward the performance of this act; it can only assist in making it easy:—(1) it can isolate the subject of consideration; (2) it can give facility in the transition to another; (3) it can promote the many-sidedness of the interest, by which means the return to a perception already obtained has always a fresh charm.

§ 86. The immediate perception of many things is impossible, and yet the necessity for it is obvious. We must then have recourse to a mediated perception, and supply the lack of actual seeing by representations. But here the difficulty presents itself, that there are many objects which we are not able to represent of the same size as they really are, and we must have a reduced scale; and there follows a difficulty in making the representation, as neither too large nor too small. An explanation is then also necessary as a judicious supplement to the picture.

§ 87. Pictures are extremely valuable aids to instruction when they are correct and characteristic. Correctness must be demanded in these substitutes for natural objects, historical persons and scenes. Without this correctness, the picture, if not an impediment, is, to say the least, useless.

—It is only since the last half of the seventeenth century, i.e. since the disappearance of real painting, that the picture-book has appeared as an educational means; first of all, coming from miniature painting. Up to that time, public life had plenty of pictures of arms, furniture, houses, and churches; and men, from their fondness for constantly moving about, were more weary of immediate perception. It was only afterwards when, in the excitement of the thirty-years' war, the arts of Sculpture and Painting and Christian and Pagan Mythology became extinct, that there arose a greater necessity for pictured representations. The Orbis Rerum Sensualium Pictus, which was also to be janua linguarum reserata, of Amos Comenius, appeared first in 1658, and was reprinted in 1805. Many valuable illustrated books followed. Since that time innumerable illustrated Bibles and histories have appeared, but many of them look only to the pecuniary profit of the author or the publisher. It is revolting to see the daubs that are given to children. They are highly colored, but as to correctness, to say nothing of character, they are good for nothing. With a little conscientiousness and scientific knowledge very different results could be obtained with the same outlay of money and of strength. The uniformity which exists in the stock of books which German book-selling has set in circulation is really disgraceful. Everywhere we find the same types, even in ethnographical pictures. In natural history, the illustrations were often drawn from the imagination or copied from miserable models. This has changed very much for the better. The same is true of architectural drawings and landscapes, for which we have now better copies.—

§ 88. Children have naturally a desire to collect things, and this may be so guided that they shall collect and arrange plants, butterflies, beetles, shells, skeletons, &c., and thus gain exactness and reality in their perception. Especially should they practise drawing, which leads them to form exact images of objects. But drawing, as children practise it, does not have the educational significance of cultivating in them an appreciation of art, but rather that of educating the eye, as this must be exercised in estimating distances, sizes, and colors. It is, moreover, a great gain in many ways, if, through a suitable course of lessons in drawing, the child is advanced to a knowledge of the elementary forms of nature.

—That pictures should affect children as works of art is not to be desired. They confine themselves at first to distinguishing the outlines and colors, and do not yet appreciate the execution. If the children have access to real works of art, we may safely trust in their power, and quietly await their moral or æsthetic effect.—

§ 89. In order that looking at pictures shall not degenerate into mere diversion, explanations should accompany them. Only when the thought embodied in the illustration is pointed out, can they be useful as a means of instruction. Simply looking at them is of as little value towards this end as is water for baptism without the Holy Spirit. Our age inclines at present to the superstition that man is able, by means of simple intuition, to attain a knowledge of the essence of things, and thereby dispense with the trouble of thinking. Illustrations are the order of the day, and, in the place of enjoyable descriptions, we find miserable pictures. It is in vain to try to get behind things, or to comprehend them, except by thinking.

§ 90. The ear as well as the eye must be cultivated. Music must be considered the first educational means to this end, but it should be music inspired by ethical purity. Hearing is the most internal of all the senses, and should on this account be treated with the greatest delicacy. Especially should the child be taught that he is not to look upon speech as merely a vehicle for communication and for gaining information; it should also give pleasure, and therefore he should be taught to speak distinctly and with a good style, and this he can do only when he carefully considers what he is going to say.

—Among the Greeks, extraordinary care was given to musical cultivation, especially in its ethical relation. Sufficient proof of this is found in the admirable detailed statements on this point in the "Republic" of Plato and in the last book of the "Politics" of Aristotle. Among modern nations, also, music holds a high place, and makes its appearance as a constant element of education. Piano-playing has become general, and singing is also taught. But the ethical significance of music is too little considered. Instruction in music often aims only to train pupils for display in society, and the tendency of the melodies which are played is restricted more and more to orchestral pieces of an exciting or bacchanalian character. The railroad-gallop-style only makes the nerves of youth vibrate with stimulating excitement. Oral speech, the highest form of the personal manifestation of mind, was also treated with great reverence by the ancients. Among us, communication is so generally carried on by writing and reading, that the art of speaking distinctly, correctly, and agreeably, has become very much neglected. Practice in declamation accomplishes, as a general thing, very little in this direction. But we may expect that the increase of public speaking occasioned by our political and religious assemblies may have a favorable influence in this particular.—

II. The Imaginative Epoch.

§ 91. The activity of Perception results in the formation of an internal picture or image of its ideas which intelligence can call up at any time without the sensuous, immediate presence of its object, and thus, through abstraction and generalization, arises the conception. The mental image may (1) be compared with the perception from which it sprang, or (2) it may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other images, or (3) it may be held fast in the form of abstract signs or symbols which intelligence invents for it. Thus originate the functions (1) of the verification of conceptions, (2) of the creative imagination, and (3) of memory; but for their full development we must refer to Psychology.

§ 92. (1) The mental image which we form of an object may be correct; again, it may be partly or wholly defective, if we have neglected some of the predicates of the perception which presented themselves, or in so far as we have added to it other predicates which only seemingly belonged to it, and which were attached to it only by its accidental empirical connection with other existences. Education must, therefore, foster the habit of comparing our conceptions with the perceptions from which they arose; and these perceptions, since they are liable to change by reason of their empirical connection with other objects, must be frequently compared with our conceptions previously formed by abstractions from them.

§ 93. (2) We are thus limited in our conceptions by our perceptions, but we exercise a free control over our conceptions. We can create out of them, as simple elements, the manifold mental shapes which we do not treat as given to us, but as essentially our own work. In Pedagogics, we must not only look upon this freedom as if it were only to afford gratification, but as the reaction of the absolute ideal native mind against the dependence in which the empirical reception of impressions from without, and their reproduction in conceptions, place it. In this process, it does not only fashion in itself the phenomenal world, but it rather fashions out of itself a world which is all its own.

§ 94. The study of Art comes here to the aid of Pedagogics, especially with Poetry, the highest and at the same time the most easily communicated. The imagination of the pupil can be led by means of the classical works of creative imagination to the formation of a good taste both as regards ethical value and beauty of form. The proper classical works for youth are those which nations have produced in the earliest stages of their culture. These works bring children face to face with the picture which mind has sketched for itself in one of the necessary stages of its development. This is the real reason why our children never weary of reading Homer and the stories of the Old Testament. Polytheism and the heroism which belongs to it are just as substantial an element of childish conception as monotheism with its prophets and patriarchs. We stand beyond both, because we are mediated by both, and embrace both in our stand-point.

—The purest stories of literature designed for the amusement of children from their seventh to their fourteenth year, consist always of those which were honored by nations and the world at large. One has only to notice in how many thousand forms the stories of Ulysses are reproduced by the writers of children's tales. Becker's "Tales of Ancient Times," Gustav Schwab's most admirable "Sagas of Antiquity," Karl Grimm's "Tales of Olden Times," &c., what were they without the well-talking, wily favorite of Pallas, and the divine swine-herd? And just as indestructible are the stories of the Old Testament up to the separation of Judah and Israel. These patriarchs with their wives and children, these judges and prophets, these kings and priests, are by no means ideals of virtue in the notion of our modern lifeless morality, which would smooth out of its pattern-stories for the "dear children" everything that is hard and uncouth. For the very reason that the shadow-side is not wanting here, and that we find envy, vanity, evil desire, ingratitude, craftiness, and deceit, among these fathers of the race and leaders of "God's chosen people," have these stories so great an educational value. Adam, Cain, Abraham, Joseph, Samson, and David, have justly become as truly world-historical types as Achilles and Patroclus, Agamemnon and Iphigenia, Hector and Andromache, Ulysses and Penelope.—

§ 95. There may be produced also, out of the simplest and most primitive phases of different epochs of culture of one and the same people, stories which answer to the imagination of children, and represent to them the characteristic features of the past of their people.

—The Germans possess such a collection of their stories in their popular books of the "Horny Sigfried," of the "Heymon Children," of "Beautiful Magelone," "Fortunatus," "The Wandering Jew," "Faust," "The Adventurous Simplicissimus," "The Schildbürger," "The Island of Felsenburg," "Lienhard and Gertrude," &c. Also, the art works of the great masters which possess national significance must be spoken of here, as the Don Quixote of Cervantes.—

§ 96. The most general form in which the childish imagination finds exercise is that of fairy-tales; but Education must take care that it has these in their proper shape as national productions, and that they are not of the morbid kind which poetry so often gives us in this species of literature, and which not seldom degenerate to sentimental caricatures and silliness.

—The East Indian stories are most excellent because they have their origin with a childlike people who live wholly in the imagination. By means of the Arabian filtration, which took place in Cairo in the flourishing period of the Egyptian caliphs, all that was too characteristically Indian was excluded, and they were made in the "Tales of Scheherezade," a book for all peoples, with whose far-reaching power in child-literature, the local stories of a race, as e.g. Grimm's admirable ones of German tradition, cannot compare. Fairy-tales made to order, as we often see them, with a mediæval Catholic tendency, or very moral and dry, are a bane to the youthful imagination in their stale sweetness. We must here add, however, that lately we have had some better success in our attempts since we have learned to distinguish between the naïve natural poetry, which is without reflection, and the poetry of art, which is conditioned by criticism and an ideal. This distinction has produced good fruits even in the picture-books of children. The pretensions of the gentlemen who printed illustrated books containing nothing more solid than the alphabet and the multiplication table have become less prominent since such men as Speckter, Fröhlich, Gutsmuths, Hofman (the writer of "Slovenly Peter"), and others, have shown that seemingly trivial things can be handled with intellectual power, if one is blessed with it, and that nothing is more opposed to the child's imagination than the childishness with which so many writers for children have fallen when they attempted to descend with dignity from their presumably lofty stand-point. Men are beginning to understand that Christ promised the kingdom of heaven to little children on other grounds than because they had as it were the privilege of being thoughtless and foolish.—

§ 97. For youth and maidens, especially as they approach manhood and womanhood, the cultivation of the imagination must allow the earnestness of actuality to manifest itself in its undisguised energy. This earnestness, no longer through the symbolism of play but in its objective reality, must now thoroughly penetrate the conceptions of the youth so that it shall prepare him to seize hold of the machinery of active life. Instead of the all-embracing Epos they should now read Tragedy, whose purifying process, through the alternation of fear and pity, unfolds to the youth the secret of all human destiny, sin and its expiation. The works best adapted to lead to history on this side are those of biography—of ancient times, Plutarch; of modern times, the autobiographies of Augustine, Cellini, Rousseau, Goethe, Varnhagen, Jung Stilling, Moritz, Arndt, &c. These autobiographies contain a view of the growth of individuality through its inter-action with the influences of its time, and, together with the letters and memoirs of great or at least note-worthy men, tend to produce a healthy excitement in the youth, who must learn to fight his own battles through a knowledge of the battles of others. To introduce the youth to a knowledge of Nature and Ethnography no means are better than those of books of travel which give the charm of first contact, the joy of discovery, instead of the general consciousness of the conquests of mind.

—If educative literature on the one hand broadens the field of knowledge, on the other it may also promote its elaboration into ideal forms. This happens, in a strict sense, through philosophical literature. But only two different species of this are to be recommended to youth: (1) well-written treatises which endeavor to solve a single problem with spirit and thoroughness; or, (2) when the intelligence has grown strong enough for it, the classical works of a real philosopher. German literature is fortunately very rich in treatises of this kind in the works of Lessing, Herder, Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and Schiller. But nothing does more harm to youth than the study of works of mediocrity, or those of a still lower rank. They stupefy and narrow the mind by their empty, hollow, and constrained style. It is generally supposed that these standard works are too difficult, and that one must first seize them in this trivial and diluted form in order to understand them. This is one of the most prevalent and most dangerous errors, for these Introductions or Explanations, easily-comprehended Treatises, Summary Abstracts, are, because of their want of originality and of the acuteness which belongs to it, much more difficult to understand than the standard work itself from which they drain their supplies. Education must train the youth to the courage which will attempt standard works, and it must not allow any such miserable preconceived opinions to grow up in his mind as that his understanding is totally unable to comprehend works like Fichte's "Science of Knowledge," the "Metaphysics" of Aristotle, or Hegel's "Phenomenology." No science suffers so much as Philosophy from this false popular opinion, which understands neither itself nor its authority. The youth must learn how to learn to understand, and, in order to do this, he must know that one cannot immediately understand everything in its finest subdivisions, and that on this account he must have patience, and must resolve to read over and over again, and to think over what he has read.—

§ 98. (3) Imagination returns again within itself to perception in that it replaces, for conceptions, perceptions themselves, which are to remind it of the previous conception. These perceptions may resemble in some way the perception which lies at the basis of the conception, and be thus more or less symbolical; or they may be merely arbitrary creations of the creative imagination, and are in this case pure signs. In common speech and writing, we call the free retaining of these perceptions created by imagination, and the recalling of the conceptions denoted by them, Memory. It is by no means a particular faculty of the mind, which is again subdivided into memory of persons, names, numbers, &c. As to its form, memory is the stage of the dissolution of conception; but as to its content, it arises from the interest which we take in a subject-matter. From this interest results, moreover, careful attention, and from this latter, facility in the reproductive imagination. If these acts have preceded, the fixing of a name, or of a number, in which the content interesting us is as it were summed up, is not difficult. When interest and attention animate us, it seems as if we did not need to be at all troubled about remembering anything. All the so-called mnemonic helps only serve to make more difficult the act of memory. This act is in itself a double function, consisting of, first, the fixing of the sign, and second, the fixing of the conception subsumed under it. Since the mnemonic technique adds to these one more conception, through whose means the things with which we have to deal are to be fixed in order to be able freely to express them in us, it trebles the functions of remembering, and forgets that the mediation of these and their relation—wholly arbitrary and highly artificial—must also be remembered. The true help of memory consists in not helping it at all, but in simply taking up the object into the ideal regions of the mind by the force of the infinite self-determination which mind possesses.

—Lists of names, as e.g. of the Roman emperors, of the popes, of the caliphs, of rivers, mountains, authors, cities, &c.; also numbers, as e.g. the multiplication table, the melting points of minerals, the dates of battles, of births and deaths, &c., must be learned without aid. All indirect means only serve to do harm here, and are required as self-discovered mediation only in case that interest or attention has become weakened.—

§ 99. The means to be used, which result from the nature of memory itself, are on the one hand the pronouncing and writing of the names and numbers, and on the other, repetition; by these we gain distinctness and certainty.

—All artificial contrivances for quickening the memory vanish in comparison with the art of writing, in so far as this is not looked at as a means of relieving the memory. That a name or a number should be this or that, is a mere chance for the intelligence, an entirely meaningless accident to which we have unconditionally to submit ourselves as unalterable. The intelligence must be accustomed to put upon itself this constraint. In science proper, especially in Philosophy, our reason helps to produce one thought from others by means of the context, and we can discover names for the ideas from them.—

III. The Logical Epoch.

§ 100. In Conception there is attained a universality of intellectual action in so far as the empirical details are referred to a Schema, as Kant called it. But the necessity of the connection is wanting to it. To produce this is the task of the thinking activity, which frees itself from all representations, and with its clearly defined determinations transcends conceptions. The Thinking activity frees itself from all sensuous representations by means of the processes of Conception and Perception. Comprehension, Judgment, and Syllogism, develop for themselves into forms which, as such, have no power of being perceived by the senses. But it does not follow from this that he who thinks cannot return out of the thinking activity and carry it with him into the sphere of Conception and Perception. The true thinking activity deprives itself of no content. The abstraction affecting a logical purism which looks down upon Conception and Perception as forms of intelligence quite inferior to itself, is a pseudo-thinking, a morbid and scholastic error. Education will be the better on its guard against this the more it has led the pupil by the legitimate road of Perception and Conception to Thinking. Memorizing especially is an excellent preparatory school for the Thinking activity, because it gives practice to the intelligence in exercising itself in abstract ideas.

§ 101. The fostering of the Sense of Truth from the earliest years up, is the surest way of leading the pupil to gain the power of thinking. The unprejudiced, disinterested yielding to Truth, as well as the effort to shun all deception and false seeming, are of the greatest value in strengthening the power of reflection, as this considers nothing of value but the actually existing objective circumstances.

—The indulging an illusion as a pleasing recreation of the intelligence should be allowed, while lying must not be tolerated. Children have a natural inclination for mystifications, for masquerades, for raillery, and for theatrical performances, &c. This inclination to illusion is perfectly normal with them, and should be permitted. The graceful kingdom of Art is developed from it, as also the poetry of conversation in jest and wit. Although this sometimes becomes stereotyped into very prosaic conventional forms of speech, it is more tolerable than the awkward honesty which takes everything in its simple literal sense. And it is easy to discover whether children in such play, in the activity of free joyousness, incline to the side of mischief by their showing a desire of satisfying their selfish interest. Then they must be checked, for in that case the cheerfulness of harmless joking gives way to premeditation and dissimulation.—

§ 102. An acquaintance with logical forms is to be recommended as a special educational help in the culture of intelligence. The study of Mathematics does not suffice, because it presupposes Logic. Mathematics is related to Logic in the same way as Grammar, the Physical Sciences, &c. The logical forms must be known explicitly in their pure independent forms, and not merely in their implicit state as immanent in objective forms.

SECOND CHAPTER.

The Logical Presupposition or Method.

§ 103. The logical presupposition of instruction is the order in which the subject-matter develops for the consciousness. The subject, the consciousness of the pupil, and the activity of the instructor, interpenetrate each other in instruction, and constitute in actuality one whole.

§ 104. (1) First of all, the subject which is to be learned has a specific determinateness which demands in its representation a certain fixed order. However arbitrary we may desire to be, the subject has a certain self-determination of its own which no mistreatment can wholly crush out, and this inherent immortal reason is the general foundation of instruction.

—To illustrate; however one may desire to manipulate a language in teaching it, he cannot change the words in it, or the inflections of the declensions and conjugations. And the same restriction is laid upon our inclinations in the different divisions of Natural History, in the theorems of Arithmetic, Geometry, &c. The theorem of Pascal remains still the theorem of Pascal, and will always remain so.—

§ 105. (2) But the subject must be adapted to the consciousness of the pupil, and here the order of procedure and the exposition depend upon the stage which he has reached intellectually, for the special manner of the instruction must be conditioned by this. If he is in the stage of perception, we must use the illustrative method; if in the stage of conception, that of combination; and if in the stage of reflection that of demonstration. The first exhibits the object directly, or some representation of it; the second considers it according to the different possibilities which exist in it, and turns it around on all sides; the third questions the necessity of the connection in which it stands either with itself or with others. This is the natural order from the stand-point of the scientific intelligence: first, the object is presented to the perception; then combination presents its different phases; and, finally, the thinking activity circumscribes the restlessly moving reflection by the idea of necessity. Experiment in the method of combination is an excellent means for a discovery of relations, for a sharpening of the attention, for the arousing of a many-sided interest; but it is no true dialectic, though it be often denoted by that name.

—Illustration is especially necessary in the natural sciences and also in æsthetics, because in both of these departments the sensuous is an essential element of the matter dealt with. In this respect we have made great progress in charts and maps. Sydow's hand and wall maps and Berghaus's physical atlas are most excellent means of illustrative instruction; also Burmeister's zoölogical atlas.—

§ 106. The demonstrative method, in order to bring about its proof of necessity, has a choice of many different ways. But we must not imagine, either that there are an unlimited number, and that it is only a chance which one we shall take; or that they have no connection among themselves, and run, as it were, side by side. It is not, however, the business of Pedagogics to develop different methods of proof; this belongs to Logic. We have only to remember that, logically taken, proof must be analytic, synthetic, or dialectic. Analysis begins with the single one, and leads out of it by induction to the general principle from which its existence results. Synthesis, on the contrary, begins with a general which is presupposed as true, and leads from this through deduction to the special determinations which were implicit in it. The regressive search of analysis for a determining principle is Invention; the forward progress of synthesis from the simple elements seeking for the multiplicity of the single one is Construction. Each, in its result, passes over into the other; but their truth is found in the dialectic method, which in each phase allows unity to separate into diversity and diversity to return into unity. While in the analytic as well as in the synthetic method the mediation of the individual with the general, or of the general with the individual, lets the phase of particularity be only subjectively connected with it in the dialectic method, we have the going over of the general through the particular to the individual, or to the self-determination of the idea, and it therefore rightly claims the title of the genetic method. We can also say that while the inventive method gives us the idea (notion) and the constructive the judgment, the genetic gives us the syllogism which leads the determinations of reflection back again into substantial identity.

§ 107. (3) The active mediation of the pupil with the content which is to be impressed upon his consciousness is the work of the teacher, whose personality creates a method adapted to the individual; for however clearly the subject may be defined, however exactly the psychological stage of the pupil may be regulated, the teacher cannot dispense with the power of his own individuality even in the most objective relations. This individuality must penetrate the whole with its own exposition, and that peculiarity which we call his manner, and which cannot be determined à priori, must appear. The teacher must place himself on the stand-point of the pupil, i.e. must adapt himself; he must see that the abstract is made clear to him in the concrete, i.e. must illustrate; he must fill up the gaps which will certainly appear, and which may mar the thorough seizing of the subject, i.e. must supply. In all these relations the pedagogical tact of the teacher may prove itself truly ingenious in varying the method according to the changefulness of the ever-varying needs, in contracting or expanding the extent, in stating, or indicating what is to be supplied. The true teacher is free from any superstitious belief in any one procedure as a sure specific which he follows always in a monotonous bondage. This can only happen when he is capable of the highest method. The teacher has arrived at the highest point of ability in teaching when he can make use of all means, from the loftiness of solemn seriousness, through smooth statement, to the play of jest—yes, even to the incentive of irony, and to humor.

—Pedagogics can be in nothing more specious than in its method, and it is here that charlatanism can most readily intrude itself. Every little change, every inadequate modification, is proclaimed aloud as a new or an improved method; and even the most foolish and superficial changes find at once their imitators, who themselves conceal their insolence behind some frivolous differences, and, with laughable conceit, hail themselves as inventors.—

THIRD CHAPTER.

Instruction.

§ 108. All instruction acts upon the supposition that there is an inequality between present knowledge and power and that knowledge and power which are not yet attained. To the pupil belong the first, to the teacher the second. Education is the act which gradually cancels the original inequality of teacher and pupil, in that it converts what was at first the property of the former into the property of the latter, and this by means of his own activity.

I. The Subjects of Instruction.

§ 109. The pupil is the apprentice, the teacher the master, whether in the practice of any craft or art, or in the exposition of any systematic knowledge. The pupil passes from the state of the apprentice to that of the master through that of the journeyman. The apprentice has to appropriate to himself the elements; journeymanship begins as he, by means of their possession, becomes independent; the master combines with his technical skill the freedom of production. His authority over his pupil consists only in his knowledge and power. If he has not these, no external support, no trick of false appearances which he may put on, will serve to create it for him.

§ 110. These stages—(1) apprenticeship, (2) journeymanship, (3) mastership—are fixed limitations in the didactic process; they are relative only in the concrete. The standard of special excellence varies with the different grades of culture, and must be varied that it may have any historical value. The master is complete only in relation to the journeyman and apprentice; to them he is superior. But on the other hand, in relation to the infinity of the problems of his art or science, he is by no means complete; to himself he must always appear as one who begins ever anew, one who is ever striving, one to whom a new problem ever rises from every achieved result. He cannot discharge himself from work, he must never desire to rest on his laurels. He is the truest master whose finished performances only force him on to never-resting progress.

§ 111. The real possibility of culture is found in general, it is true, in every human being; nevertheless, empirically, there are distinguished: (1) Incapacity, as the want of all gifts; (2) Mediocrity; (3) Talent and Genius. It is the part of Psychology to give an account of all these. Mediocrity characterizes the great mass of mechanical intelligences, those who wait for external impulse as to what direction their endeavors shall take. Not without truth, perhaps, may we say, that hypothetically a special talent is given to each individual, but this special talent in many men never makes its appearance, because under the circumstances in which it finds itself placed it fails to find the exciting occasion which shall give him the knowledge of its existence. The majority of mankind are contented with the mechanical impulse which makes them into something and impresses upon them certain determinations.—Talent shows itself by means of the confidence in its own especial productive possibility, which manifests itself as an inclination, as a strong impulse, to occupy itself with the special object which constitutes its content. Pedagogics has no difficulty in dealing with mechanical natures, because their passivity is only too ready to follow prescribed patterns. It is more difficult to manage talent, because it lies between mediocrity and genius, and is therefore uncertain, and not only unequal to itself, but also is tossed now too low, now too high, is by turns despondent and over-excited. The general maxim for dealing with it is to remove no difficulty from the subject to which its efforts are directed.—Genius must be treated much in the same way as Talent. The difference consists only in this, that Genius, with a foreknowledge of its creative power, usually manifests its confidence with less doubt in a special vocation, and, with a more intense thirst for culture, subjects itself more willingly to the demands of instruction. Genius is in its nature the purest self-determination, in that it lives, in its own inner existence, the necessity which exists in the thing. But it can assign to the New, which is in it already immediately and subjectively, no value if this has not united itself to the already existing culture as its objective presupposition, and on this ground it thankfully receives instruction.

§ 112. But Talent and Genius offer a special difficulty to education in the precocity which often accompanies them. But by precocity we do not mean that they early render themselves perceptible, since the early manifestation of gifts by talent and genius, through their intense confidence, is to be looked at as perfectly legitimate. But precocity is rather the hastening forward of the human being in feeling and moral sense, so that where in the ordinary course of nature we should have a child, we have a youth, and a man in the place of a youth. We may find precocity among those who belong to the class of mediocrity, but it is developed most readily among those possessed of talent and genius, because with them the early appearance of superior gifts may very easily bring in its train a perversion of the feelings and the moral nature. Education must deal with it in so far as it is inharmonious, so that it shall be stronger than the demands made on it from without, so that it shall not minister to vanity; and must take care, in order to accomplish this, that social naturalness and lack of affectation be preserved in the pupil.

—Our age has to combat this precocity much more than others. We find e.g. authors who, at the age of thirty years, in which they publish their collected works or write their biography, are chilly with the feelings of old age. Music has been the sphere in which the earliest development of talent has shown itself, and here we find the absurdity that the cupidity of parents has so forced precocious talents that children of four or five years of age have been made to appear in public.—

§ 113. Every sphere of culture contains a certain quantity of knowledge and ready skill which may be looked at, as it were, as the created result of the culture. It is to be wished that every one who turns his attention to a certain line of culture could take up into himself the gathered learning which controls it. In so far as he does this, he is professional. The consciousness that one has in the usual way gone through a school of art or science, and has, with the general inheritance of acquisition, been handed over to a special department, creates externally a beneficial composure which is very favorable to internal progress. We must distinguish from the professional the amateur and the self-taught man. The amateur busies himself with an art, a science, or a trade, without having gone through any strict training in it. As a rule, he dispenses with elementary thoroughness, and hastens towards the pleasure which the joy of production gives. The conscious amateur confesses this himself, makes no pretension to mastership, and calls himself—in distinction from the professional, who subjects himself to rules—an unlearned person. But sometimes the amateur, on the contrary, covers over his weakness, cherishes in himself the self-conceit that he is equal to the heroes of his art or science, constitutes himself the first admirer of his own performances, seeks for their want of recognition in external motives, never in their own want of excellence; and, if he has money, or edits a paper, is intoxicated with being the patron of talent which produces such works as he would willingly produce or pretends to produce. The self-taught man has often true talent, or even genius, to whose development nevertheless the inherited culture has been denied, and who by good fortune has through his own strength worked his way into a field of effort. The self-taught man is distinguished from the amateur by the thoroughness and the industry with which he acts; he is not only equally unfortunate with him in the absence of school-training, but is much less endowed. Even if the self-taught man has for years studied and practised much, he is still haunted by a feeling of uncertainty as to whether he has yet reached the stand-point at which a science, an art, or a trade, will receive him publicly—of so very great consequence is it that man should be comprehended and recognized by man. The self-taught man therefore remains embarrassed, and does not free himself from the apprehension that he may expose some weak point to a professional, or he falls into the other extreme—he becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer, and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he sets himself down as an unrecognized martyr by an unappreciative and unjust world.

—It is possible that the amateur may transcend the stage of superficiality and subject himself to a thorough training; then he ceases to be an amateur. It is also possible that the self-taught man may be on the right track, and may accomplish as much or even more than one trained in the usual way. In general, however, it is very desirable that every one should go through the regular course of the inherited means of education, partly that he may be thorough in the elements, partly to free him from the anxiety which he may feel lest he in his solitary efforts spend labor on some superfluous work—superfluous because done long before, and of which he, through the accident of his want of culture, had not heard. We must all learn by ourselves, but we cannot teach ourselves. Only Genius can do this, for it must be its own leader in the new paths which it opens. Genius alone passes beyond where inherited culture ceases. It bears this in itself as of the past, and which it uses as material for its new creation; but the self-taught man, who would very willingly be a genius, puts himself in an attitude of opposition to things already accomplished, or sinks into oddity, into secret arts and sciences, &c.—

§ 114. These ideas of the general steps of culture, of special gifts, and of the ways of culture appropriate to each, which we have above distinguished, have a manifold connection among themselves which cannot be established à priori. We can however remark that Apprenticeship, the Mechanical Intelligence, and the Professional life; secondly, Journeymanship, Talent, and Amateurship; and, finally, Mastership, Genius, and Self Education, have a relationship to each other.

II. The Act of Learning.

§ 115. In the process of education the interaction between pupil and teacher must be so managed that the exposition by the teacher shall excite in the pupil the impulse to reproduction. The teacher must not treat his exposition as if it were a work of art which is its own end and aim, but he must always bear in mind the need of the pupil. The artistic exposition, as such, will, by its completeness, produce admiration; but the didactic, on the contrary, will, through its perfect adaptation, call out the imitative instinct, the power of new creation.

—From this consideration we may justify the frequent statement that is made, that teachers who have really an elegant diction do not really accomplish so much as others who resemble in their statements not so much a canal flowing smoothly between straight banks, as a river which works its foaming way over rocks and between ever-winding banks. The pupil perceives that the first is considering himself when he speaks so finely, perhaps not without some self-appreciation; and that the second, in the repetitions and the sentences which are never finished, is concerning himself solely with him. The pupil feels that not want of facility or awkwardness, but the earnest eagerness of the teacher, is the principal thing, and that this latter uses rhetoric only as a means.—

§ 116. In the act of learning there appears (1) a mechanical element, (2) a dynamic element, and (3) one in which the dynamic again mechanically strengthens itself.

§ 117. As to the mechanical element, the right time must be chosen for each lesson, an exact arrangement observed, and the suitable apparatus, which is necessary, procured. It is in the arrangement that especially consists the educational power of the lesson. The spirit of scrupulousness, of accuracy, of neatness, is developed by the external technique, which is carefully arranged in its subordinate parts according to its content. The teacher must therefore insist upon it that work shall cease at the exact time, that the work be well done, &c., for on these little things many greater things ethically depend.

—To choose one's time for any work is often difficult because of the pressure of a multitude of demands, but in general it should be determined that the strongest and keenest energy of the thinking activity and of memory—this being demanded by the work—should have appropriated to it the first half of the day.—

§ 118. The dynamical element consists of the previously developed power of Attention, without which all the exposition made by the teacher to the pupil remains entirely foreign to him, all apparatus is dead, all arrangement of no avail, all teaching fruitless, if the pupil does not by his free activity receive into his inner self what one teaches him, and thus make it his own property.

§ 119. This appropriation must not limit itself, however, to the first acquisition of any knowledge or skill, but it must give free existence to whatever the pupil has learned; it must make it perfectly manageable and natural, so that it shall appear to be a part of himself. This must be brought about by means of Repetition. This will mechanically secure that which the attention first grasped.

§ 120. The careful, persistent, living activity of the pupil in these acts we call Industry. Its negative extreme is Laziness, which is deserving of punishment inasmuch as it passes over into a want of self-determination. Man is by nature lazy. But mind, which is only in its act, must resolve upon activity. This connection of Industry with human freedom, with the very essence of mind, makes laziness appear blameworthy. The really civilized man, therefore, no longer knows that absolute inaction which is the greatest enjoyment to the barbarian, and he fills up his leisure with a variety of easier and lighter work. The positive extreme of Industry is the unreasonable activity which rushes in breathless chase from one action to another, from this to that, straining the person with the immense quantity of his work. Such an activity, going beyond itself and seldom reaching deliberation, is unworthy of a man. It destroys the agreeable quiet which in all industry should penetrate and inspire the deed. Nothing is more repulsive than the beggarly pride of such stupid laboriousness. One should not endure for a moment to have the pupil, seeking for distinction, begin to pride himself on an extra industry. Education must accustom him to use a regular assiduity. The frame of mind suitable for work often does not exist at the time when work should begin, but more frequently it makes its appearance after we have begun. The subject takes its own time to awaken us. Industry, inspired by a love and regard for work, has in its quiet uniformity a great force, without which no one can accomplish anything essential. The world, therefore, holds Industry worthy of honor; and to the Romans, a nation of the most persistent perseverance, we owe the inspiring words, "Incepto tantum opus est, cætera res expediet"; and, "Labor improbus omnia vincit."

—"Every one may glory in his industry!" This is a true word from the lips of a truly industrious man, who was also one of the most modest. But Lessing did not, however, mean by them to charter Pharisaical pedantry. The necessity sometimes of giving one's self to an excess of work injurious to the health, generally arises from the fact that he has not at other times made use of the requisite attention to the necessary industry, and then attempts suddenly and as by a forced march to storm his way to his end. The result of such over-exertion is naturally entire prostration. The pupil is therefore to be accustomed to a generally uniform industry, which may extend itself at regular intervals without his thereby overstraining himself. What is really gained by a young man who has hitherto neglected time and opportunity, and who, when examination presses, overworks himself, perhaps standing the test with honor, and then must rest for months afterwards from the over-effort? On all such occasions attention is not objective and dispassionate, but rather becomes, through anxiety to pass the examination, restless and corrupted by egotism; and the usual evil result of such compulsory industry is the ephemeral character of the knowledge thus gained. "Lightly come, lightly go," says the proverb.—

—A special worth is always attached to study far into the night. The student's "midnight lamp" always claims for itself a certain veneration. But this is vanity. In the first place, it is injurious to contradict Nature by working through the night, which she has ordained for sleep; secondly, the question is not as to the number of hours spent in work and their position in the twenty-four, but as to the quality of the work. With regard to the value of my work, it is of no moment whatsoever whether I have done it in the morning or in the evening, or how long I have labored, and it is of no consequence to any one except to my own very unimportant self. Finally, the question presents itself whether these gentlemen who boast so much of their midnight work do not sleep in the daytime!—

§ 121. But Industry has also two other extremes: seeming-laziness and seeming-industry. Seeming-laziness is the neglecting of the usual activity in one department because a man is so much more active in another. The mind possessed with the liveliest interest in one subject buries itself in it, and, because of this, cannot give itself up to another which before had engrossed the attention. Thus it appears more idle than it is, or rather it appears to be idle just because it is more industrious. This is especially the case in passing from one subject of instruction to another. The pupil should acquire such a flexibility in his intellectual powers that the rapid relinquishment of one subject and the taking up of another should not be too difficult. Nothing is more natural than that when he is excited he should go back to the subject that has just been presented to him, and that he, feeling himself restrained, shall remain untouched by the following lesson, which may be of an entirely different nature. The young soul is brooding over what has been said, and is really exercising an intensive activity, though it appears to be idle. But in seeming-industry all the external motives of activity, all the mechanism of work, manifest themselves noisily, while there is no true energy of attention and productivity. One busies himself with all the apparatus of work; he heaps up instruments and books around him; he sketches plans; he spends many hours staring into vacancy, biting his pen, gazing at words, drawings, numbers, &c. Boys, under the protection of so great a scaffolding for work erected around them, often carry on their own amusements. Men, who arrive at no real concentration of their force, no clear defining of their vocation, no firm decision as to their action, dissipate their power in what is too often a great activity with absolutely no result. They are busy, very busy; they have hardly time to do this thing because they really wish or ought to do that; but, with all their driving, their energy is all dissipated, and nothing comes from their countless labors.

III. The Modality of the Process of Teaching.

§ 122. Now that we have learned something of the relation of the teacher to the taught, and of the process of learning itself, we must examine the mode and manner of instruction. This may have (1) the character of contingency: the way in which our immediate existence in the world, our life, teaches us; or it may be given (2) by the printed page; or (3) it may take the shape of formal oral instruction.

§ 123. (1) For the most, the best, and the mightiest things that we know we are indebted to Life itself. The sum of perceptions which a human being absorbs into himself up to the fourth or fifth year of his life is incalculable; and after this time we involuntarily gain by immediate contact with the world countless ideas. But especially we understand by the phrase "the School of Life," the ethical knowledge which we gain by what happens in our own lives.

—If one says, Vitæ non scholæ discendum est, one can also say, Vita docet. Without the power exercised by the immediate world our intelligence would remain abstract and lifeless.—

§ 124. (2) What we learn through books is the opposite of that which we learn through living. Life forces upon us the knowledge it has to give; the book, on the contrary, is entirely passive. It is locked up in itself; it cannot be altered; but it waits by us till we wish to use it. We can read it rapidly or slowly; we can simply turn over its leaves—what in modern times one calls reading;—we can read it from beginning to end or from end to beginning; we can stop, begin again, skip over passages, or cut them short, as we like. To this extent the book is the most convenient means for instruction. If we are indebted to Life for our perceptions, we must chiefly thank books for our understanding of our perceptions. We call book-instruction "dead" when it lacks, for the exposition which it gives, a foundation in our perceptions, or when we do not add to the printed description the perceptions which it implies; and the two are quite different.

§ 125. Books, as well as life, teach us many things which we did not previously intend to learn directly from them. From foreign romances e.g. we learn, first of all, while we read them for entertainment, the foreign language, history or geography, &c. We must distinguish from such books as those which bring to us, as it were accidentally, a knowledge for which we were not seeking, the books which are expressly intended to instruct. These must (a) in their consideration of the subject give us the principal results of any department of knowledge, and denote the points from which the next advance must be made, because every science arises at certain results which are themselves again new problems; (b) in the consideration of the particulars it must be exhaustive, i.e. no essential elements of a science must be omitted. But this exhaustiveness of execution has different meanings according to the stand-points of those for whom it is made. How far we shall pass from the universality of the principal determinations into the multiplicity of the Particular, into the fulness of detail, cannot be definitely determined, and must vary, according to the aim of the book, as to whether it is intended for the apprentice, the journeyman, or the master; (c) the expression must be precise, i.e. the maximum of clearness must be combined with the maximum of brevity.

—The writing of a text-book is on this account one of the most difficult tasks, and it can be successfully accomplished only by those who are masters in a science or art, and who combine with great culture and talent great experience as teachers. Unfortunately many dabblers in knowledge undervalue the difficulty of writing text-books because they think that they are called upon to aid in the spread of science, and because the writing of compendiums has thus come to be an avocation, so that authors and publishers have made out of text-books a profitable business and good incomes. In all sciences and arts there exists a quantity of material which is common property, which is disposed of now in one way, now in another. The majority of compendiums can be distinguished from each other only by the kind of paper, printing, the name of the publisher or bookseller, or by arbitrary changes in the arrangement and execution. The want of principle with which this work is carried on is incredible. Many governments have on this account fixed prices for text-books, and commissioners to select them. This in itself is right and proper, but the use of any book should be left optional, so that the one-sidedness of a science patronized by government as it were patented, may not be created through the pressure of such introduction. A state may through its censorship oppose poor text-books, and recommend good ones; but it may not establish as it were a state-science, a state-art, in which only the ideas, laws and forms sanctioned by it shall be allowed. The Germans are fortunate, in consequence of their philosophical criticism, in the production of better and better text-books, among which may be mentioned Koberstein's, Gervinus', and Vilmar's Histories of Literature, Ellendt's General History, Blumenbach's and Burmeister's Natural History, Marheineke's text-book on Religion, Schwegler's History of Philosophy, &c. So much the more unaccountable is it that, with such excellent books, the evil of such characterless books, partly inadequate and partly in poor style, should still exist when there is no necessity for it. The common style of paragraph-writing has become obnoxious, under the name of Compendium-style, as the most stiff and affected style of writing.—

§ 126. A text-book must be differently written according as it is intended for a book for private study or for purposes of general circulation. If the first, it must give more, and must develop more clearly the internal relations; if the second, it should be shorter, and proceed from axiomatic and clear postulates to their signification, and these must have an epigrammatic pureness which should leave something to be guessed. Because for these a commentary is needed which it is the teacher's duty to supply, such a sketch is usually accompanied by the fuller text-book which was arranged for private study.

—It is the custom to call the proper text-book the "small" one, and that which explains and illustrates, the "large" one. Thus we have the Small and the Large Gervinus, &c.—

§ 127. (3) The text-book which presupposes oral explanation forms the transition to Oral instruction itself. Since speech is the natural and original form in which mind manifests itself, no book can rival it. The living word is the most powerful agent of instruction. However common and cheap printing may have rendered books as the most convenient means of education—however possible may have become, through the multiplication of facilities for intercourse and the rapidity of transportation, the immediate viewing of human life, the most forcible educational means, nevertheless the living word still asserts its supremacy. In two cases especially is it indispensable: one is when some knowledge is to be communicated which as yet is found in no compendium, and the other when a living language is to be taught, for in this case the printed page is entirely inadequate. One can learn from books to understand Spanish, French, English, Danish, &c., but not to speak them; to do this he must hear them, partly that his ear may become accustomed to the sounds, partly that his vocal organs may learn correctly to imitate them.

§ 128. Life surprises and overpowers us with the knowledge which it gains; the book, impassive, waits our convenience; the teacher, superior to us, perfectly prepared in comparison with us, consults our necessity, and with his living speech uses a gentle force to which we can yield without losing our freedom. Listening is easier than reading.

—Sovereigns e.g. seldom read themselves, but have servants who read to them.—

§ 129. Oral instruction may (1) give the subject, which is to be learned, in a connected statement, or (2) it may unfold it by means of question and answer. The first decidedly presupposes the theoretical inequality of the teacher and the taught. Because one can speak while many can listen, this is especially adapted to the instruction of large numbers. The second method is either that of the catechism or the dialogue. The catechetical is connected with the first kind of oral instruction above designated because it makes demand upon the memory of the learner only for the answer to one question at a time, and is hence very often and very absurdly called the Socratic method. In teaching by means of the dialogue, we try, by means of a reciprocal interchange of thought, to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a distinction. One speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold in his own hand the thread of the conversation and may guide it himself; or, those who mingle in it may be perfectly equal in intellect and culture, and may each take part in the development with equal independence. In this latter case, this true reciprocity gives us the proper dramatic dialogue, which contains in itself all forms of exposition, and may pass from narration, description, and analysis, through satire and irony, to veritable humor. When it does this, the dialogue is the loftiest result of intelligence and the means of its purest enjoyment.

—This alternate teaching, in which the one who has been taught takes the teacher's place, can be used only where there is a content which admits of a mechanical treatment. The Hindoos made use of it in very ancient times. Bell and Lancaster have transplanted it for the teaching of poor children in Europe and America. For the teaching of the conventionalities—reading, writing, and arithmetic—as well as for the learning by heart of names, sentences, &c., it suffices, but not for any scientific culture. Where we have large numbers to instruct, the giving of the fully developed statement (the first form) is necessary, since the dialogue, though it may be elsewhere suitable, allows only a few to take part in it. And if we take the second form, we must, if we have a large number of pupils, make use of the catechetical method only. What is known as the conversational method has been sometimes suggested for our university instruction. Diesterweg in Berlin insists upon it. Here and there the attempt has been made, but without any result. In the university, the lecture of the teacher as a self-developing whole is contrasted with the scientific discussion of the students, in which they as equals work over with perfect freedom what they have heard. Diesterweg was wrong in considering the lecture-system as the principal cause of the lack of scientific interest which he thought he perceived in our universities. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Wolf, Niebuhr, &c., taught by lectures and awakened the liveliest enthusiasm. But Diesterweg is quite right in saying that the students should not be degraded to writing-machines. But this is generally conceded, and a pedantic amount of copying more and more begins to be considered as out of date at our universities. Nevertheless, a new pedantry, that of the wholly extempore lecture, should not be introduced; but a brief summary of the extempore unfolding of the lecture may be dictated and serve a very important purpose, or the lecture may be copied. The great efficacy of the oral exposition does not so much consist in the fact that it is perfectly free, as that it presents to immediate view a person who has made himself the bearer of a science or an art, and has found what constitutes its essence. Its power springs, above all, from the genuineness of the lecture, the originality of its content, and the elegance of its form: whether it is written or extemporized, is a matter of little moment. Niebuhr e.g. read, word for word, from his manuscript, and what a teacher was he!—The catechetical way of teaching is not demanded at the university except in special examinations; it belongs to the private work of the student, who must learn to be industrious of his own free impulse. The private tutor can best conduct reviews.—The institution which presupposing the lecture-system combines in itself original production with criticism, and the connected exposition with the conversation, is the seminary. It pursues a well-defined path, and confines itself to a small circle of associates whose grades of culture are very nearly the same. Here, therefore, can the dialogue be strongly developed because it has a fixed foundation, and each one can take part in the conversation; whereas, from the variety of opinions among a great number, it is easily perverted into an aimless talk, and the majority of the hearers, who have no chance to speak, become weary.—

§ 130. As to the way in which the lecture is carried out, it may be so arranged as to give the whole stock of information acquired, or, without being so exact and so complete, it may bring to its elucidation only a relatively inexact and general information. The ancients called the first method the esoteric and the second the exoteric, as we give to such lectures now, respectively, the names scholastic and popular. The first makes use of terms which have become technical in science or art, and proceeds syllogistically to combine the isolated ideas; the second endeavors to substitute for technicalities generally understood signs, and conceals the exactness of the formal conclusion by means of a conversational style. It is possible to conceive of a perfectly methodical treatment of a science which at the same time shall be generally comprehensible if it strives to attain the transparency of real beauty. A scientific work of art may be correctly said to be popular, as e.g. has happened to Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind.

—Beauty is the element which is comprehended by all, and as we declare our enmity to the distorted picture-books, books of amusement, and to the mischievous character of "Compendiums," so we must also oppose the popular publications which style themselves Science made Easy, &c., in order to attract more purchasers by this alluring title. Kant in his Logic calls the extreme of explanation Pedantry and Gallantry. This last expression would be very characteristic in our times, since one attains the height of popularity now if he makes himself easily intelligible to ladies—a didactic triumph which one attains only by omitting everything that is profound or complicated, and saying only what exists already in the consciousness of every one, by depriving the subject dealt with of all seriousness, and sparing neither pictures, anecdotes, jokes, nor pretty formalities of speech. Elsewhere Kant says: "In the effort to produce in our knowledge the completeness of scholarly thoroughness, and at the same time a popular character, without in the effort falling into the above-mentioned errors of an affected thoroughness or an affected popularity, we must, first of all, look out for the scholarly completeness of our scientific knowledge, the methodical form of thoroughness, and first ask how we can make really popular the knowledge methodically acquired at school, i.e. how we can make it easy and generally communicable, and yet at the same time not supplant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity to please the people, unless science is to become a plaything or trifling." It is perfectly plain that all that was said before of the psychological and the logical methods must be taken into account in the manner of the statement.—

§ 131. It has been already remarked (§ [21]), in speaking of the nature of education, that the office of the instructor must necessarily vary with the growing culture. But attention must here again be called to the fact, that education, in whatever stage of culture, must conform to the law which, as the internal logic of Being, determines all objective developments of nature and of history. The Family gives the child his first instruction; between this and the school comes the teaching of the tutor; the school stands independently as the antithesis of the family, and presents three essentially different forms according as it imparts a general preparatory instruction, or special teaching for different callings, or a universal scientific cultivation. Universality passes over through particularizing into individuality, which contains both the general and the particular freely in itself. All citizens of a state should have (1) a general education which (a) makes them familiar with reading, writing, and arithmetic, these being the means of all theoretical culture; then (b) hands over to them a picture of the world in its principal phases, so that they as citizens of the world can find their proper status on our planet; and, finally, it must (c) instruct him in the history of his own state, so that he may see that the circumstances in which he lives are the result of a determined past in its connection with the history of the rest of the world, and so may learn rightly to estimate the interests of his own country in view of their necessary relation to the future. This work the elementary schools have to perform. From this, through the Realschule (our scientific High School course) they pass into the school where some particular branch of science is taught, and through the Gymnasium (classical course of a High School or College) to the University. From its general basis develop (2) the educational institutions that work towards some special education which leads over to the exercise of some art. These we call Technological schools, where one may learn farming, mining, a craft, a trade, navigation, war, &c. This kind of education may be specialized indefinitely with the growth of culture, because any one branch is capable in its negative aspect of such educational separation, as e.g. in foundling hospitals and orphan asylums, in blind and deaf and dumb institutions. The abstract universality of the Elementary school and the one-sided particularity of the Technological school, however, is subsumed under a concrete universality, which, without aiming directly at utility, treats science and art on all sides as their own end and aim. Scientia est potentia, said Lord Bacon. Practical utility results indirectly through the progress which Scientific Cognition makes in this free attitude, because it collects itself out of the dissipation through manifold details into a universal idea and attains a profounder insight thereby. This organism for the purpose of instruction is properly called a University. By it the educational organization is perfected.

—It is essentially seen that no more than these three types of schools can exist, and that they must all exist in a perfectly organized civilization. Their titles and the plan of their special teaching may be very different among different nations and at different times, but this need not prevent the recognition in them of the ideas which determine them. Still less should the imperfect ways in which they manifest themselves induce us to condemn them. It is the modern tendency to undervalue the University as an institution which we had inherited from the middle ages, and with which we could at present dispense. This is an error. The university presents just as necessary a form of instruction as the elementary school or the technological school. Not the abolition of the university, but a reform which shall adapt it to the spirit of the age, is the advance which we have to make. That there are to be found outside of the university men of the most thorough and elegant culture, who can give the most excellent instruction in a science or an art, is most certain. But it is a characteristic of the university in its teaching to do away with contingency which is unavoidable in case of private voluntary efforts. The university presents an organic, self-conscious, encyclopædic representation of all the sciences, and thus is created to a greater or less degree an intellectual atmosphere which no other place can give. Through this, all sciences and their aims are seen as of equal authority—a personal stress is laid upon the connection of the sciences. The imperfections of a university, which arise through the rivalry of external ambition, through the necessity of financial success, through the jealousy of different parties, through scholarships, &c., are finitudes which it has in common with all human institutions, and on whose account they are not all to be thrown away.—Art academies are for Art what universities are for Science. They are inferior to them in so far as they appear more under the form of special schools, as schools of architecture, of painting, and conservatories of music; while really it may well be supposed that Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, the Orchestra, and the Drama, are, like the Sciences, bound together in a Universitas artium, and that by means of their internal reciprocal action new results would follow.—Academies, as isolated master-schools, which follow no particular line of teaching, are entirely superfluous, and serve only as a Prytaneum for meritorious scholars, and to reward industry through the prizes which they offer. In their idea they belong with the university, this appearing externally in the fact that most of their members are university professors. But as institutions for ostentation by which the ambition of the learned was flattered, and to surround princes with scientific glory as scientific societies attached to a court, they have lost all significance. They ceased to flourish with the Ptolemies and the Egyptian caliphs, and with absolute monarchical governments.—In modern times we have passed beyond the abstract jealousy of the so-called Humanities and the Natural Sciences, because we comprehend that each part of the totality can be realized in a proper sense only by its development as relatively independent. Thus the gymnasium has its place as that elementary school which through a general culture, by means of the knowledge of the language and history of the Greeks and Romans, prepares for the university; while, on the other hand, the Realschule, by special attention to Natural Science and the living languages, constitutes the transition to the technological schools. Nevertheless, because the university embraces the Science of Nature, of Technology, of Trade, of Finance, and of Statistics, the pupils who have graduated from the so-called high schools (höhern Bürgerschulen) and from the Realschulen will be brought together at the university.—

§ 132. The technique of the school will be determined in its details by the peculiarity of its aim. But in general every school, no matter what it teaches, ought to have some system of rules and regulations by which the relation of the pupil to the institution, of the pupils to each other, their relation to the teacher, and that of the teachers to each other as well as to the supervisory authority, the programme of lessons, the apparatus, of the changes of work and recreation, shall be clearly set forth. The course of study must be arranged so as to avoid two extremes: on the one hand, it has to keep in view the special aim of the school, and according to this it tends to contract itself. But, on the other hand, it must consider the relative dependence of one specialty to other specialties and to general culture. It must leave the transition free, and in this it tends to expand itself. The difficulty is here so to assign the limits that the special task of the school shall not be sacrificed and deprived of the means of performance which it (since it is also always only a part of the whole culture) receives by means of its reciprocal action with other departments. The programme must assign the exact amount of time which can be appropriated to every study. It must prescribe the order in which they shall follow each other; it must, as far as possible, unite kindred subjects, so as to avoid the useless repetition which dulls the charm of study; it must, in determining the order, bear in mind at the same time the necessity imposed by the subject itself and the psychological progression of intelligence from perception, through conception, to the thinking activity which grasps all. It must periodically be submitted to revision, so that all matter which has, through the changed state of general culture, become out of date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, what talents he has displayed, what errors committed, and in what relation stands his theoretical development to his ethical status.

—The opposition of the Gymnasia to the demands of the agricultural communities is a very interesting phase of educational history. They were asked to widen their course so as to embrace Mathematics, Physics, Natural History, Geography, and the modern languages. At first they stoutly resisted; then they made some concessions; finally, the more they made the more they found themselves in contradiction with their true work, and so they produced as an independent correlate the Realschule. After this was founded, the gymnasium returned to its old plan, and is now again able to place in the foreground the pursuit of classical literature and history. It was thus set free from demands made upon it which were entirely foreign to its nature.—The examination is, on one side, so adapted to the pupil as to make him conscious of his own condition. As to its external side, it determines whether the pupil shall pass from one class to another or from one school to another, or it decides whether the school as a whole shall give a public exhibition—an exhibition which ought to have no trace of ostentation, but which in fact is often tinctured with pedagogical charlatanism.—

§ 133. The Direction of the school on the side of science must be held by the school itself, for the process of the intellect in acquiring science, the progress of the method, the determinations of the subject matter and the order of its development, have their own laws, to which Instruction must submit itself if it would attain its end. The school is only one part of the whole of culture. In itself it divides into manifold departments, together constituting a great organism which in manifold ways comes into contact with the organism of the state. So long as teaching is of a private character, so long as it is the reciprocal relation of one individual to another, or so long as it is shut up within the circle of the family and belongs to it alone, so long it has no objective character. It receives this first when it grows to a school. As in history, its first form must have a religious character; but this first form, in time, disappears. Religion is the absolute relation of man to God which subsumes all other relations. In so far as Religion exists in the form of a church, those who are members of the same church may have instruction given on the nature of religion among themselves. Instruction on the subject is proper, and it is even enjoined upon them as a law—as a duty. But further than their own society they may not extend their rule. The church may exert itself to make a religious spirit felt in the school and to make it penetrate all the teaching; but it may not presume, because it has for its subject the absolute interest of men, the interest which is superior to all others, to determine also the other objects of Education or the method of treating them. The technical acquisitions of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Drawing and Music, the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Logic, Anthropology and Psychology, the practical sciences of finance and the municipal regulations, have no direct relation to religion. If we attempt to establish one, there inevitably appears in them a morbid state which destroys them; not only so, but piety itself disappears, for these accomplishments and this knowledge are not included in its idea.

—Such treatment of Art and Science may be well-meant, but it is always an error. It may even make a ludicrous impression, which is a very dangerous thing for the authority of religion. If a church has established schools, it must see to it that all which is there taught outside of the religious instruction, i.e. all of science and art, shall have no direct connection with it as a religious institution.—

§ 134. The Church, as the external manifestation of religion, is concerned with the absolute relation of man, the relation to God, special in itself as opposed to his other relations; the State, on the contrary, seizes the life of a nation according to its explicit totality. The State should conduct the education of all its citizens. To it, then, the church can appear only as a school, for the church instructs its own people concerning the nature of religion, partly by teaching proper, that of the catechism, partly in quite as edifying a way, by preaching. From this point of view, the State can look upon the church only as one of those schools which prepare for a special avocation. The church appears to the State as that school which assumes the task of educating the religious element. Just as little as the church should the state attempt to exercise any influence over Science and Art. In this they are exactly alike, and must acknowledge the necessity which both Science and Art contain within themselves and by which they determine themselves. The laws of Logic, Mathematics, Astronomy, Morals, Æsthetics, Physiology, &c., are entirely independent of the state. It can decree neither discoveries nor inventions. The state in its relations to science occupies the same ground as it should do with relation to the freedom of self-consciousness. It is true that the church teaches man, but it demands from him at the same time belief in the truth of its dogmas. It rests, as the real church, on presupposed authority, and sinks finally all contradictions which may be found in the absolute mystery of the existence of God. The state, on the contrary, elaborates its idea into the form of laws, i.e. into general determinations, of whose necessity it convinces itself. It seeks to give to these laws the clearest possible form, so that every one may understand them. It concedes validity only to that which can be proved, and sentences the individual according to the external side of the deed (overt act) not, as the church does, on its internal side—that of intention. Finally, it demands in him consciousness of his deed, because it makes each one responsible for his own deed. It has, therefore, the same principle with science, for the proof of necessity and the unity of consciousness with its object constitute the essence of science. Since the state embraces the school as one of its educational organisms, it is from its very nature especially called upon to guide its regulation in accordance with the manifestation of consciousness.

—The church calls this "profanation." One might say that the church, with its mystery of Faith, always represents the absolute problem of science, while the state, as to its form, coincides with science. Whenever the state abandons the strictness of proof—when it begins to measure the individual citizen by his intention and not by his deed, and, in place of the clear insight of the comprehending consciousness, sets up the psychological compulsion of a hollow mechanical authority, it destroys itself.—

§ 135. Neither the church nor the state should attempt to control the school in its internal management. Still less can the school constitute itself into a state within the state; for, while it is only one of the means which are necessary for developing citizens, the state and the church lay claim to the whole man his whole life long. The independence of the school can then only consist in this, that it raises within the state an organ which works under its control, and which as school authority endeavors within itself to befriend the needs of the school, while externally it acts on the church and state indirectly by means of ethical powers. The emancipation of the school can never reasonably mean its abstract isolation, or the absorption of the ecclesiastical and political life into the school; it can signify only the free reciprocal action of the school with state and church. It must never be forgotten that what makes the school a school is not the total process of education, for this falls also within the family, the state, and the church; but that the proper work of the school is the process of instruction, knowledge, and the acquirement, by practice, of skill.

—The confusion of the idea of Instruction with that of Education in general is a common defect in superficial treatises on these themes. The Radicals among those who are in favor of so-called "Emancipation," often erroneously appeal to "free Greece" which generally for this fond ignorance is made to stand as authority for a thousand things of which it never dreamed. In this fictitious Hellas of "free, beautiful humanity," they say the limits against which we strive to-day did not exist. The histories of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and of others, who were all condemned on account of their "impiety," tell quite another story.—

§ 136. The inspection of the school may be carried out in different ways, but it must be required that its special institutions shall be embraced and cared for as organized and related wholes, framed in accordance with the idea of the state, and that one division of the ministry shall occupy itself exclusively with it. The division of labor will specially affect the schools for teaching particular avocations. The prescription of the subjects to be studied in each school as appropriate to it, of the course of study, and of the object thereof, properly falls to this department of government, is its immediate work, and its theory must be changed according to the progress and needs of the time. Niemeyer, Schwarz, and others, have made out such plans for schools. Scheinert has fully painted the Volkschule, Mager the Bürgerschule, Deinhard and Kapp the Gymnasium. But such delineations, however correct they may be, depend upon the actual sum of culture of a people and a time, and must therefore continually modify their fundamental Ideal. The same is true of the methods of instruction in the special arts and sciences. Niemeyer, Schwarz, Herbart, in their sketches of Pedagogics, Beneke in his Doctrine of Education, and others, have set forth in detail the method of teaching Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Languages, Natural Science, Geography, History, &c. Such directions are, however, ephemeral in value, and only relatively useful, and must, in order to be truly practical, be always newly laid out in accordance with universal educational principles, and with the progress of science and art.

—The idea that the State has the right to oversee the school lies in the very idea of the State, which is authorized, and under obligation, to secure the education of its citizens, and cannot leave their fashioning to chance. The emancipation of the school from the State, the abstracting of it, would lead to the destruction of the school. There is no difficulty in Protestant States in the free inter-action of school and church, for Protestantism has consciously accepted as its peculiar principle individual freedom as Christianity has presented it. For Catholic States, however, a difficulty exists. The Protestant clergyman can with propriety oversee the Volkschule, for here he works as teacher, not as priest. In the Protestant church there are really no Laity according to the original meaning of the term. On the contrary, Catholic clergymen are essentially priests, and as such, on account of the unconditional obedience which, according to their church, they have to demand, they usurp the authority of the State. From this circumstance arise, at present, numberless collisions in the department of school supervision.—

Third Division.

PRAGMATICS (EDUCATION OF THE WILL).

§ 137. Both Physical and Intellectual Education are in the highest degree practical. The first reduces the merely natural to a tool which mind shall use for its own ends; the second guides the intelligence, by ways conformable to its nature, to the necessary method of the act of teaching and learning, which finally branches out into an objective national life, into a system of mutually dependent school organizations. But in a narrower sense we mean by practical education the methodical development of the Will. This phrase more clearly expresses the topic to be considered in this division than others sometimes used in Pedagogics [Bestrebungs vermögen, conative power]. The will is already the subject of a science of its own, i.e. of Ethics; and if Pedagogics would proceed in anywise scientifically, it must recognize and presuppose the idea and the existence of this science. It should not restate in full the doctrines of freedom of duty, of virtue, and of conscience, although we have often seen this done in empirical works on Pedagogics. Pedagogics has to deal with the idea of freedom and morality only so far as it fixes the technique of their process, and at the same time it confesses itself to be weakest just here, where nothing is of any worth without a pure self-determination.

§ 138. The pupil must (1) become civilized; i.e. he must learn to govern, as a thing external to him, his natural egotism, and to make the forms which civilized society has adopted his own. (2) He must become imbued with morality; i.e. he must learn to determine his actions, not only with reference to what is agreeable and useful, but according to the principle of the Good; he must become virtually free, form a character, and must habitually look upon the necessity of freedom as the absolute measure of his actions. (3) He must become religious; i.e. he must discern that the world, with all its changes, himself included, is only phenomenal; the affirmative side of this insight into the emptiness of the finite and transitory, which man would so willingly make everlasting, is the consciousness of the absolute existing in and for itself, which, in its certainty of its truth, not torn asunder through the process of manifestation, constitutes no part of its changes, but, while it actually presents them, permeates them all, and freely distinguishes itself from them. In so far as man relates himself to God, he cancels all finitude and transitoriness, and by this feeling frees himself from the externality of phenomena. Virtue on the side of civilization is Politeness; on that of morality, Conscientiousness; and on that of religion, Humility.

FIRST CHAPTER.

Social Culture.

§ 139. The social development of man makes the beginning of practical education. It is not necessary to suppose a special social instinct. The inclination of man to the society of men does not arise only from the identity of their nature, but is also in certain cases affected by particular relations. The natural starting-point of social culture is the Family. But this educates the child for Society, and by means of Society the individual passes over into relations with the world at large. Natural sympathy changes to polite behavior, and this to the dexterous and circumspect deportment, whose truth nevertheless is first the ethical purity which combines with the wisdom of the serpent the harmlessness of the dove.

§ 140. (1) The Family is the natural social circle to which man primarily belongs. In it all the immediate differences which exist are compensated by the equally immediate unity of the relationship. The subordination of the wife to the husband, of the children to their parents, of the younger children to their elder brothers and sisters, ceases to be subordination, through the intimacy of love. The child learns obedience to authority, and in this it gives free personal satisfaction to its parents and enjoys the same. All the relations in which he finds himself there are penetrated by the warmth of implicit confidence, which can be replaced for the child by nothing else. In this sacred circle the tenderest emotions of the heart are developed by the personal interest of all its members in what happens to any one, and thus the foundation is laid of a susceptibility to all genuine or real friendship.

—Nothing more unreasonable or inhuman could exist than those modern theories which would destroy the family and would leave the children, the offspring of the anarchy of free-love, to grow up in public nurseries. This would appear to be very humanitarian; indeed these socialists talk of nothing but the interests of humanity—they are never weary of uttering their insipid jests on the institution of the family, as if it were the principle of all narrow-mindedness. Have these fanatics, who are seeking after an abstraction of humanity, ever examined our foundling-hospitals, orphan asylums, barracks, and prisons, to discover in some degree to what an atomic state of barren cleverness a human being grows who has never formed a part of a family? The Family is only one phase in the grand order of the ethical organization; but it is the substantial phase from which man passively proceeds, but into which, as he founds a family of his own, he actively returns. The child lives in the Family in the common joy and grief of sympathy for all, and, in the emotion with which he sees his parents approach death while he is hastening towards the full enjoyment of existence, experiences the finer feelings which are so powerful in creating in him a deeper and more tender understanding of everything human.—

§ 141. (2) The Family rears the children not for itself but for the civil society. In this we have a system of morals producing externally a social technique, a circle of fixed forms of society. This technique endeavors to subdue the natural roughness of man, at least as far as it manifests itself externally. Because he is spirit, man is not to yield himself to his immediateness; he is to exhibit to man his naturalness as under the control of spirit. The etiquette of propriety on the one hand facilitates the manifestation of individuality by means of which the individual becomes interesting to others, and on the other hand, since its forms are alike for all, it makes us recognize the likeness of the individual to all others and so makes their intercourse easier.

—The conventional form is no mere constraint; but essentially a protection not only for the freedom of the individual, but much more the protection of the individual against the rude impetuosity of his own naturalness. Savages and peasants for this reason are, in their relations to each other, by no means as unconstrained as one often represents them, but hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in one of Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant loves to surround himself. The scene in which the townsman who thinks that he can dispense with forms among the peasants is very entertainingly taught better, is exceedingly valuable in an educational point of view. The feeling of shame which man has in regard to his mere naturalness is often extended to relations where it has no direct significance, since this sense of shame is appealed to in children in reference to things which are really perfectly indifferent externalities.—

§ 142. Education with regard to social culture has two extremes to avoid: the youth may, in his effort to prove his individuality, become vain and conceited, and fall into an attempt to appear interesting; or he may become slavishly dependent on conventional forms, a kind of social pedant. This state of nullity which contents itself with the mechanical polish of social formalism is ethically more dangerous than the tendency to a marked individuality, for it betrays emptiness; while the effort towards a peculiar differentiation from others, to become interesting to others, indicates power.

§ 143. When we have a harmony of the manifestation of the individual with the expression of the recognition of the equality of others we have what is called deportment or politeness, which combines dignity and grace, self-respect and modesty. We call it when fully complete, Urbanity. It treats the conventional forms with irony, since, at the same time that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit to shine through them in little deviation from them, as if it were fully able to make others in their place.

—True politeness shows that it remains master of forms. It is very necessary to accustom children to courtesy and to bring them up in the etiquette of the prevailing social custom; but they must be prevented from falling into an absurd formality which makes the triumph of a polite behavior to consist in a blind following of the dictates of the last fashion-journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and practise politeness when he does not merely copy the social technique, but comprehends its original idea.—

§ 144. (3) But to fully initiate the youth into the institutions of civilization one must not only call out the feelings of his heart in the bosom of the family, not only give to him the formal refinement necessary to his intercourse with society; it must also perform to him the painful duty of making him acquainted with the mysteries of the ways of the world. This is a painful duty, for the child naturally feels an unlimited confidence in all men. This confidence must not be destroyed, but it must be tempered. The mystery of the way of the world is the deceit which springs from selfishness. We must provide against it by a proper degree of distrust. We must teach the youth that he may be imposed upon by deceit, dissimulation, and hypocrisy, and that therefore he must not give his confidence lightly and credulously. He himself must learn how he can, without deceit, gain his own ends in the midst of the throng of opposing interests.

—Kant in his Pedagogics calls that worldly-wise behavior by which the individual is to demean himself in opposition to others, Impenetrability. By its means man learns how to "manage men." In Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, we have pointed out the true value of egotism in its relation to morals. All his words amount to this, that we are to consider every man to be an egotist, and to convert his very egotism into a means of finding out his weak side; i.e. to flatter him by exciting his vanity, and by means of such flattery to ascertain his limits. In common life, the expression "having had experiences" means about the same thing as having been deceived and betrayed.—

SECOND CHAPTER.

Moral Culture.

§ 145. The truth of social culture lies in moral culture. Without this latter, every art of behavior remains worthless, and can never attain the clearness of Humility and Dignity which are possible to it in its unity with morality. For the better determination of this idea Pedagogics must refer to Ethics itself, and can here give the part of its content which relates to Education only in the form of educational maxims. The principal categories of Ethics in the domain of morality are the ideas of Duty, Virtue, and Conscience. Education must lay stress on the truth that nothing in the world has any absolute value except will guided by the right.

§ 146. Thence follows (1) the maxim relating to the idea of Duty, that we must accustom the pupil to unconditional obedience to it, so that he shall perform it for no other reason than that it is duty. It is true that the performance of a duty may bring with it externally a result agreeable or disagreeable, useful or harmful; but the consideration of such connection ought never to determine us. This moral demand, though it may appear to be excessive severity, is the absolute foundation of all genuine ethical practice. All "highest happiness theories," however finely spun they may be, when taken as a guide for life, lead at last to Sophistry, and this to contradictions which ruin the life.

§ 147. (2) Virtue must make actual what duty commands, or, rather, the actualizing of duty is Virtue. And here we must say next, then, that the principal things to be considered under Virtue are (a) the dialectic of particular virtues, (b) renunciation, and (c) character.

§ 148. (a) From the dialectic of particular virtues there follows the educational maxim that we must practise all virtues with equal faithfulness, for all together constitute an ethical system complete in itself, in which no one is indifferent to another.

—Morality should recognize no distinction of superiority among the different virtues. They reciprocally determine each other. There is no such thing as one virtue which shines out above the others, and still less should we have any special gift for virtue. The pupil must be taught to recognize no great and no small in the virtues, for that one which may at first sight seem small is inseparably connected with that which is seemingly the greatest. Many virtues are attractive by reason of their external consequences, as e.g. industry because of success in business, worthy conduct because of the respect paid to it, charity because of the pleasure attending it; but man should not practise these virtues because he enjoys them: he must devote the same amount of self-sacrifice and of assiduity to those virtues which (as Christ said) are to be performed in secret.—

—It is especially valuable, in an educational respect, to gain an insight, into the transition of which each virtue is empirically capable, into a negative as well as into a positive extreme. The differences between the extremes and the golden mean are differences in quality, although they arrive at this difference in quality by means of difference in quantity. Kant has, as is well known, attacked the Aristotelian doctrine of the ethical μεσοτες, since he was considering the qualitative difference of the mind as differentiating principle; this was correct for the subject with which he dealt, but in the objective development we do arrive on the other hand at the determination of a quantitative limit; e.g. a man, with the most earnest intention of doing right, may be in doubt whether he has not, in any task, done more or less than was fitting for him.—

—As no virtue can cease its demands for us, no one can permit any exceptions or any provisional circumstances to come in the way of his duties. Our moral culture will always certainly manifest itself in very unequal phases if we, out of narrowness and weakness, neglect entirely one virtue while we diligently cultivate another. If we are forced into such unequal action, we are not responsible for the result; but it is dangerous and deserves punishment if we voluntarily encourage it. The pupil must be warned against a certain moral negligence which consists in yielding to certain weaknesses, faults, or crimes, a little longer and a little longer, because he has fixed a certain time after which he intends to do better. Up to that time he allows himself to be a loiterer in ethics. Perhaps he will assert that his companions, his surroundings, his position, &c., must be changed before he can alter his internal conduct. Wherever education or temperament favors sentimentality, we shall find birth-days, new-year's day, confirmation day, &c., selected as these turning points. It is not to be denied that man proceeds in his internal life from epoch to epoch, and renews himself in his most internal nature, nor can we deny that moments like those mentioned are especially favorable in man to an effort towards self-transformation because they invite introspection; but it is not to be endured that the youth, while looking forward to such a moment, should consciously persist in his evil-doing. If he does, we shall have as consequences that when the solemn moment which he has set at last arrives, at the stirring of the first emotion he perceives with terror that he has changed nothing in himself, that the same temptations are present to him, the same weakness takes possession of him, &c. In our business, in our theoretical endeavors, &c., it may certainly happen that, on account of want of time, or means, or humor, we may put off some work to another time; but morality stands on a higher plane than these, because it, as the concrete absoluteness of the will, makes unceasing demand on the whole and undivided man. In morality there are no vacations, no interims. As we in ascending a flight of stairs take good care not to make a single mis-step, and give our conscious attention to every step, so we must not allow any exceptions in moral affairs, must not appoint given times for better conduct, but must await these last as natural crises, and must seek to live in time as in Eternity.—

§ 149. (b) From Renunciation springs the injunction of self-government. The action of education on the will to form habits in it, is discipline or training in a narrower sense. Renunciation teaches us to know the relation in which we in fact, as historical persons, stand to the idea of the Good. From our empirical knowledge of ourselves we derive the idea of our limits; from the absolute knowledge of ourselves on the other hand, which presents to us the nature of Freedom as our own actuality, we derive the conception of the resistless might of the genuine will for the good. But to actualize this conception we must have practice. This practice is the proper renunciation. Every man must devise for himself some special set of rules, which shall be determined by his peculiarities and his resulting temptations. These rules must have as their innermost essence the subduing of self, the vanquishing of his negative arbitrariness by means of the universality and necessity of the will.

—In order to make this easy, the youth may be practised in renouncing for himself even the arbitrariness which is permitted to him. One often speaks of renunciation as if it belonged especially to the middle ages and to Catholicism; but this is an error. Renunciation in its one-sided form as relying on works, and for the purpose of mortification, is asceticism, and belongs to them; but Renunciation in general is a necessary determination of morals. The keeping of a journal is said to assist in the practice of virtue, but its value depends on how it is kept. To one it may be a curse, to another a blessing. Fichte, Göthe, Byron, and others, have kept journals and have been assisted thereby; while others, as Lavater, have been thwarted by them. Vain people will every evening record with pen and ink their admiration of the correct course of life which they have led in the day devoted to their pleasure.—

§ 150. (c) The result of the practice in virtue, or, as it is commonly expressed, of the individual actualization of freedom, is the methodical determinateness of the individual will as Character. This conception of character is formal, for it contains only the identity which is implied in the ruling of a will on its external side as constant. As there are good, strong and beautiful characters, so there are also bad, weak, and detestable ones. When in Pedagogics, therefore, we speak so much of the building up of a character, we mean the making permanent of a direction of the individual will towards the actualization of the Good. Freedom ought to be the character of character. Education must therefore observe closely the inter-action of the factors which go to form character, viz., (α) the temperament, as the natural character of the man; (β) external events, the historical element; (γ) the energy of the Will, by which, in its limits of nature and history, it realizes the idea of the Good in and for itself as the proper ethical character. Temperament determines the Rhythm of our external manifestation of ourselves; the events in which we live assign to us the ethical problem, but the Will in its sovereignty stamps its seal on the form given by these potentialities. Pedagogics aims at accustoming the youth to freedom, so that he shall always measure his deed by the idea of the Good. It does not desire a formal independence, which may also be called character, but a real independence resting upon the conception of freedom as that which is absolutely necessary. The pedagogical maxim is then: Be independent, but be so through doing Good.

—According to preconceived opinion, stubbornness and obstinacy claim that they are the foundation of character. But they may spring from weakness and indeterminateness, on which account one needs to be well on his guard. A gentle disposition, through enthusiasm for the Good, may attain to quite as great a firmness of will. Coarseness and meanness are on no account to be tolerated.—

§ 151. (3) We pass from the consideration of the culture of character to that of conscience. This is the relation which the moral agent makes between himself as manifestation and himself as idea. It compares itself, in its past or future, with its nature, and judges itself accordingly as good or bad. This independence of the ethical judgment is the soul proper of all morality, the negation of all self-deception and of all deception through another. The pedagogical maxim is: Be conscientious. Be in the last instance dependent only upon the conception which thou thyself hast of the idea of the Good!

—The self-criticism prompted by conscience hovers over all our historical actuality, and is the ground of all our rational progress. Fichte's stern words remain, therefore, eternally true: "He who has a bad character, must absolutely create for himself a better one."—

THIRD CHAPTER.