Chapter 8

--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 [Greek: mesotes], 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.--