Chapter 5
§ 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 noteworthy 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.--