Pedagogics as a System Part 7

-- 166. (1) Religious feeling presupposes morality as an indispensable condition without which it cannot inculcate its ideas. But if man from a merely moral stand-point places himself in relation to the idea of Duty as such, the ethical religious stand-point differs from it in this, that it places the necessity of the Good as the self-determination of the divine Will and thus makes of practice a personal relation to G.o.d, changing the Good to the Holy and the Evil to Sin. Education must therefore first accustom the youth to the idea, that in doing the Good he unites himself with G.o.d as with the absolute Person, but that in doing Evil he separates himself from him. The feeling that he through his deed comes into contact with G.o.d himself, positively or negatively, deepens the moral conduct to an intense sensibility of the heart.

-- 167. (2) The religious sense which grows in the child that he has an uninterrupted personal relation to the Absolute as a person, const.i.tutes the beginning of the practical forming of religion. The second step is the induction of the child into the objective forms of wors.h.i.+p established in some positive religion. Through religious training the child learns to renounce his egotism; through attendance on religious services he learns to give expression to his religious feeling in prayer, in the use of symbols, and in church festivals. Education must, however, endeavor to retain freedom with regard to these forms, so that they shall not be confounded with Religion itself. Religion displays itself in these ceremonies, but they as mere forms are of value only in so far as they, while externalities, are manifestations of the spirit which produces them.

--If the mechanism of ceremonial forms is taken as religion itself, the service of G.o.d degenerates into the false service of religion, as Kant has designated it in _Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason_.

Nothing is more destructive to the sensibility to all real religious culture than the want of earnestness with which prayers, readings from the Bible, attendance on church, the communion, &c., are often practised by teachers. But one must not conclude from this extreme that an ignorance of all sacred forms in general would be more desirable for the child.--

-- 168. (3) It is possible that a man on the stand-point of ecclesiastical religious observances may be fully contented; he may be fully occupied in them, and perfect his life thereby in perfect content.

But by far the greater number of men will see themselves forced to experience the truth of religion in the hard vicissitudes of their lot, since they carry on some business, and with that business create for themselves a past whose consequences condition their future. They limit themselves through their deeds, whose involuntary-voluntary authors they become; involuntary in so far as they are challenged to the deeds from the totality of events, voluntary in so far as they undertake them and bring about an actual change in the world. The history of the individual man appears therefore on the one hand, if we consider its material, as the work of circ.u.mstances; but on the other hand, if we reflect on the form, as the act of a self-determining actor. Want of freedom (the being determined through the given situation) and freedom (the determination to the act) are united in actual life as something which is exactly so, and cannot become anything else as final. The essence of the spiritual being stands always over against this unavoidable limitation as that which is in itself infinite, which is beyond all history, because the absolute spirit, in and for itself, has no history. That which one calls his history is only the manifesting of himself, and his everlasting return out of this manifestation into himself an act which in absolute spirit coincides with the transcending of all manifestation. From the nature which belongs to him there arises for the individual spirit the impulse towards a holy life, i.e. the being freed from his history even in the midst of its process. He gratifies this impulse negatively through the considering of what has happened as past and gone, as that which lives now only ideally in the recollection; and positively through the positing of a new actual existence in which he strives to realize the idea of freedom which const.i.tutes his necessity, as purer and higher than before. This constant new-birth out of the grave of the past to the life of a more beautiful future is the genuine reconciliation with destiny. The false reconciliation may a.s.sume different forms. It may abstain from all action because man through this limits himself and becomes responsible. This is to despair of freedom, which condemns the spirit to the loss of itself since its nature demands activity. The abstract quietism of the Indian penitents, of the Buddhists, of the fanatical ascetics, of the Protestant recluses, &c., is an error of this kind. The man may become indifferent about the ethical determinateness of his deeds. In this case he acts; but because he has no faith in the necessary connection of his deeds through the means of freedom, a connection which he would willingly ascribe to mere chance, he loses his spiritual essence. This is the error of indifference and of its frivolity, which denies the open mystery of the ruling of destiny.

Education must therefore imbue man with respect for external movements of history and with confidence in the inexhaustibleness of the progressive human spirit, since only by producing better things can he affirmatively elevate himself above his past. This active acknowledgment of the necessity of freedom as the determining principle of destiny gives the highest satisfaction to which practical religious feeling may arrive, for blessedness develops itself in it--that blessedness which does not know that it is circ.u.mscribed by finitude and transitoriness, and which possesses the immortal courage to strive always anew for perfection with free resignation at its non-realization, so that happiness and misery, pleasure and pain, are conquered by the power of disinterested self-sacrifice.

--The escape from action in an artificial absence of all events in life, which often sinks to a veritable brutalizing of man, is the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of all monkish pedagogics. In our time there is especial need of a reconciliation between man and destiny, for all the world is discontented. The worst form of discontent is when one is, as the French say, _blase_; though the word is not, as many fancy, derived originally from the French, but from the Greek ?a?e??, to wither. It is true that all culture pa.s.ses through phases, each of which becomes momentarily and relatively wearisome, and that in so far one may be _blase_ in any age. But in modern times this state of feeling has increased to that of thorough disgust--disgust which nevertheless at the same time demands enjoyment. The one who is _blase_ has enjoyed everything, felt everything, mocked at everything. He has pa.s.sed from the enjoyment of pleasure to sentimentality, i.e. to rioting in feeling; from sentimentality to irony with regard to feeling, and from this to the torment of feeling his entire weakness and emptiness as opposed to these. He ridicules this also, as if it were a consolation to him to fling away the universe like a squeezed lemon, and to be able to a.s.sert that in pure nothingness lies the truth of all things. And yet nevertheless this irony furnishes the point on which Education can fasten, in order to kindle anew in him the religious feeling, and to lead him back to a loving recognition of actuality, to a respect for his own history. The greatest difficulty which Education has to encounter here is the coquetry, the miserable eminence and self-satisfaction which have undermined the man and made him incapable of all simple and natural enjoyment. It is not too much to a.s.sert that many pupils of our _Gymnasia_ are affected with this malady. Our literature is full of its products. It inveighs against its dissipation, and nevertheless at the same time cannot resist a certain kind of pleasure in it. Diabolical sentimentality!--

III. _The Absolute Process of Religious Culture._

-- 169. In comparing the stages of the theoretical and practical culture of the religious feeling their internal correspondence appears. Feeling, as immediate knowledge, and the consecration of the sense by means of piety; imagination with all its images, and the church services with their ceremonial observances; finally, the comprehending of religion as the reconciliation with destiny, as the internal emanc.i.p.ation from the dominion of external events--all these correspond to each other. If we seize this parallelism all together, we have the progress which religion must make in its historical process, in which it (1) begins as natural; (2) goes on to historical precision, and (3) elevates this to a rational faith. These stages await every man in as far as he lives through a complete religious culture, but this may be for the individual a question of chance.

-- 170. (1) A child has as yet no definite religious feeling. He is still only a possibility capable of manifold determinations. But, since he is a spirit, the essence of religion is active in him, though as yet in an unconscious form. The substance of spirit attests its presence in every individual, through his mysterious impulse toward the absolute and towards intercourse with G.o.d. This is the initiatory stage of natural religion, which must not be confounded with the religion which makes nature the object of wors.h.i.+p (fetichism, &c.)

-- 171. (2) But while the child lives into this in his internal life, he comes in contact with definite forms of religion, and will naturally, through the mediation of the family, be introduced to some one of them.

His religious feeling takes now a particular direction, and he accepts religion in one of its historical forms. This positive religion meets the precise want of the child, because it brings into his consciousness, by means of teaching and sacred rites, the princ.i.p.al elements which are found in the nature of religion.

-- 172. (3) In contradistinction to the natural basis of religious feeling, all historical religions rest on the authoritative basis of revelation from G.o.d to man. They address themselves to the imagination, and offer a system of objective forms of wors.h.i.+p and ceremonies. But spirit, as eternal, as self-identical, cannot forbear as thinking activity to subject the traditional religion to criticism and to compare it as a phenomenal existence. From this criticism arises a religion which satisfies the demands of the reason, and which, by means of insight into the necessity of the historical process, leads to the exercise of a genuine toleration towards its many-sided forms. This religion mediates between the unity of the thinking consciousness and the religious content, while this content, in the history of religious feeling, appears theoretically as dogma, and practically as the command of an absolute and incomprehensible authority. It is just as simple as the unsophisticated natural religious feeling, but its simplicity is at the same time master of itself. It is just as specific in its determinations as the historical religion, but its determinateness is at the same time universal, since it is worked out by the thinking reason.

-- 173. Education must superintend the development of the religious consciousness towards an insight into the necessary consequence of its different stages. Nothing is more absurd than for the educator to desire to avoid the introduction of a positive religion, or a definite creed, as a middle stage between the natural beginning of religious feeling and its end in philosophical culture. Only when a man has lived through the entire range of one-sided phases--through the crudeness of such a concrete individualizing of religion, and has come to recognize the universal nature of religion in a special form of it which excludes other forms--only when the spirit of a congregation has taken him into its number, is he ripe to criticize religion in a conciliatory spirit, because he has then gained a religious character through that historical experience. The self-comprehending universality must have such a solid basis as this in the life of the man; it can never form the beginning of one's culture, but it may const.i.tute the end which turns back again to the beginning. Most men remain at the historical stand-point. The religion of reason, as that of the minority, const.i.tutes in the different religions the invisible church, which seeks by progressive reform to purify these religions from superst.i.tion and unbelief. It is the duty of the state, by making all churches equal in the sight of the law, to guard religion from the temptation of impure motives, and, through the granting of such freedom to religious individuality, to help forward the unity of a rational insight into religion which is distinct from the religious feeling only in its form, not in its content. Not a philosopher, but Jesus of Nazareth freed the world from all selfishness and all bondage.

-- 174. With this highest theoretical and practical emanc.i.p.ation, the general work of education ends. It remains now to be shown how the general idea of Education shapes its special elements into their appropriate forms. From the nature of Pedagogics, which concerns itself with man in his entirety, this exposition belongs partly to the history of culture in general, partly to the history of religion, partly to the philosophy of history. The pedagogical element in it always lies in the ideal which the spirit of a nation or of an age creates out of itself, and which it seeks to realize in its youth.

THIRD PART.

Particular Systems of Education.

-- 175. The definite actuality of Education originates in the fact that its general idea is individualized, according to its special elements, in a specific statement which we call a pedagogical principle. The number of these principles is not unlimited, but from the idea of Education contains only a certain number. If we derive them therefore, we derive at the same time the history of Pedagogics, which can from its very nature do nothing else than make actual in itself the possibilities involved in the idea of Education. Such a derivation may be called an _a priori_ construction of history, but it is different from what is generally denoted by this term in not pretending to deduce single events and characters. All empirical details are confirmation or ill.u.s.tration for it, but it does not attempt to seek this empirical element _a priori_.

--The history of Pedagogics is still in the stage of infancy. At one time it is taken up into the sphere of Politics; at another, into that of the history of Culture. The productions of some of the most distinguished writers on the subject are now antiquated. Cramer of Stralsund made, in 1832, an excellent beginning in a comprehensive and thorough history of Pedagogy; but in the beginning of his second part he dwelt too long upon the Greeks, and lost himself in too wide an exposition of practical Philosophy in general. Alexander Kapp has given us excellent treatises on the Pedagogics of Aristotle and Plato. But with regard to modern Pedagogics we have relatively very little. Karl v.

Raumer, in 1843, began to publish a history of Pedagogics since the time of the revival of cla.s.sical studies, and has accomplished much of value on the biographical side. But the idea of the general connection and dependence of the several manifestations has not received much attention, and since the time of Pestalozzi books have a.s.sumed the character of biographical confessions. Strumpell, in 1843, developed the Pedagogics of Kant, Fichte, and Herbart.--

[Sidenote: _Particular Systems of Education._]

-- 176. Man is educated by man for humanity. This is the fundamental idea of all Pedagogics. But in the shaping of Pedagogics we cannot begin with the idea of humanity as such, but only with the natural form in which it primarily manifests itself--that of the nation. But the naturalness of this principle disappears in its development, since nations appear in interaction on each other and begin dimly to perceive their unity of species. The freedom of spirit over nature makes its appearance, but to the spirit explicitly in the transcendent form of abstract theistic religion, in which G.o.d appears as the ruler over Nature as merely dependent; and His chosen people plant the root of their nationality no longer in the earth, but in this belief. The unity of the abstractly natural and abstractly spiritual determinateness is the concrete unity of the spirit with nature, in which it recognizes nature as its necessary organ, and itself as in its nature divine. Spirit in this stage, as the internal presupposition of the two previously named, takes up into itself on one hand the phase of nationality, since this is the form of its immediate individualization; but it no longer distinguishes between nations as if they were abstractly severed the one from the other, as the Greeks shut out all other nations under the name of barbarians. It also takes up into itself the phase of spirituality, since it knows itself as spirit, and knows itself to be free from nature, and yet it does not estrange itself as the Jews did in their representation of pure spirit, in reference to which nature seems to be only the work of its caprice. Humanity knows nature as its own, because it knows the Divine spirit and its creative energy manifesting itself in nature and history, as also the essence of its own spirit. Education can be complete only with Christianity as the religion of humanity.

-- 177. We have thus three different systems of religion--(1) the National; (2) the Theocratic; and (3) the Humanitarian. The first works in harmony with nature since it educates the individual as a type of his species. The original nationality endeavors sharply to distinguish itself from others, and to impress on each person the stamp of its uniform type. One individual is like every other, or at least should be so. The second system in its manner of manifestation is identical with the first. It even marks the national difference more emphatically; but the ground of the uniformity of the individuals is with it not merely the natural common interest, but it is the consequence of the spiritual unity, which abstracts from nature, and as history, satisfied with no present, hovers continually outside of itself between past and future.

The theocratic system educates the individual as the servant of G.o.d. He is the true Jew only in so far as he is this; the genealogical ident.i.ty with the father Abraham is a condition but not the principle of the nationality. The third system liberates the individual to the enjoyment of freedom as his essence, and educates the human being within national limits which no longer separate but unite, and, in the consciousness that each individual, without any kind of mediation, has a direct relation to G.o.d, makes of him a man who knows himself to be a member of the spiritual world of humanity. We can have no fourth system beyond this. From the side of the State-Pedagogics we might characterize these systems as that of the nation-State, the G.o.d-State, and the humanity-State. From the time of the establishment of the last, no one nation can attain to any sovereignty over the others. By means of the world-religion of Christianity, the education of nations has come to the point of taking for its ideal, man as determining himself according to the demands of reason.

FIRST DIVISION.

THE SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION.

-- 178. The National is the primitive system of education, since the family is the organic starting-point of all education, and is in its enlargement the basis of nationality.

--Education is always education of the mind. Even unorganized nations, those in a state of nature, the so-called savage nations, are possessed of something more than a mere education of the body; for, though they set much value upon gymnastic and warlike practice and give much time to them, they inculcate also respect for parents, for the aged, and for the decrees of the community. Education with them is essentially family training, and its content is natural love and reverence. We cannot deny that the finer forms of those to which we are accustomed are wanting.

Besides, education among all these people of nature is very simple and much the same, though great differences in its management may exist arising from differences of situation or from temperament of race.--

-- 179. National Education is divided into three special systems: (1) Pa.s.sive, (2) Active, (3) Individual. It begins with the humility of an abstract subjection to nature, and ends with the arrogance of an abstract rejection of nature.

-- 180. Man yields at first to the natural authority of the family; he obeys unconditionally its behests. Then he subst.i.tutes for the family, as he goes on his culture, the artificial family of his caste, to whose rules he again unconditionally yields. To dispense with this artificialty and this tyranny, at last he abstracts himself from the family and from culture. He flees from both, and becoming a monk he again subjects himself to the tyranny of his order. The monks presents to us the mere type of his species.

-- 181. This absolute abstraction from nature and from culture, this quietism of spiritual isolation, is the ultimate result of the Pa.s.sive system. In opposition to this, the Active system seeks the positive vanquis.h.i.+ng of naturalness. Its people are courageous. They attack other nations in order to rule over them as conquerors. They live for the continuation of their life after death, and build for themselves on this account tombs of granite. They brave the dangers of the sea. The abstract prose of the patriarchal-state, the fantastic chimeras of the caste-state, the ascetic self-renunciation of the cloister-state, yield gradually to the recognition of actuality; and the fundamental principle of Persian education consisted in the inculcation of veracity.

-- 182. But the nationality which is occupied with simple, natural elements--other nations, death, the mystery of the ocean--may revert to the abstractions of the previous stage, which in education often take on cruel forms--nay, often truly horrible. First, when the spirit begins not only to suspect its true nature, but rather to recognize itself as the true essence; and when the G.o.d of Light places as the motto on his temple the command to self-knowledge, the natural individuality becomes free. Neither the pa.s.sive nor the active system understands the free self-distinction of the individual from the rest. In them, to be an individuality is a betrayal of the very idea of their existence, and even the suspicion of such a charge suffices utterly and mercilessly to destroy the one to whom it refers. Even the solitary individuality of the despot is not the one-ness of free individuality: he is only an example of his kind; only in his kind is he singular. Nationality rises to individuality through the free dialectic of its race, wherein it dissolves its own presupposition.

-- 183. Nevertheless individuality must always proceed from naturalness.

Esthetically it seeks nature, but the nature of the activity itself, in order, by penetrating it with mind, to make of it a work of art; practically it seeks it, partly to disdain it in gloomy resignation, partly to enjoy it in excessive sensual ecstasy, demoniacally to heighten the extravagance of its own internal feeling in wild revels.

--The Germans were not savage in the common signification of this term.

They were men each one of whom const.i.tuted himself willingly a centre for others, or, if this was not the case, renounced them in proud self-sufficiency. All the glory and all the disgrace of our race lies in the power of individualizing which is divinely breathed into our veins.

As a natural element, if this be not controlled, it degenerates easily into intractableness, into violence. The Germans need therefore, in order to be educated, severe service, the imposition of difficult tasks; and for this reason they appropriate to themselves, now the Roman law, now the Greek philology, now Gallic usages, &c., in order to work off their superfluous strength in such opposition. The natural reserve of the German found its solvent in Christianity. By itself, as the history of the German race shows, it would have been destroyed in vain distraction. First of all, the German race, in the confidence of its immediate consciousness, ventured forth upon the sea, and managed the s.h.i.+p upon its waves as if they rode a charger.--

FIRST GROUP.

THE SYSTEM OF Pa.s.sIVE EDUCATION.

-- 184. All education desires to free man from his finitude, to make him ethical, to unite him with G.o.d. It begins therefore with a negative relation to naturalness, but at once falls into a contradiction of its aim, which is to convert the opposition to nature into a natural necessity. Spirit subjects the individual (1) to the rule of the family as naturally spiritual; (2) to the rule of the caste as to a principle in itself spiritual, mediated through the division of labor, which it nevertheless, through its power of being inherited, joins again to the family; (3) to the abstract self-determination of the monkish quietism, which turns itself away as well from the family as from work, and const.i.tutes this flight from nature and history, this absolute pa.s.sivity, into an educational ideal.

--We shall not here enter into the details of this system, but simply endeavor to remove from their differences the want of clearness which is generally found involved in any mention of them, so that the phrases of hierarchical and theocratical education are used without any historical accuracy.--

I. _Family Education._

-- 185. The Family, as the organic starting-point of all education, makes the beginning. The nation looks upon itself as a family. Among all unorganized people education is family-education, though they are not conscious of its necessity. Identical in principle with these people, but distinguished from them in its consciousness of it, the Chinese nation, in their laws, regulations, and customs, have const.i.tuted the family the absolute basis of their life and the only principle of their education.

-- 186. The natural element of the family is found in marriage and relations.h.i.+p; the spiritual, in love. We may call the nature of family feeling which is the immediate unity of both elements, by the name of Piety. In so far as this appears not merely as a substantial feeling but at the same time as law, there arises from it the subordination of the abstract obedience of the woman as wife to the husband, of children to the parents, of the younger children to the elder. In this obedience man first renounces his self-will and his natural roughness; he learns to master his pa.s.sions, and to conduct himself with deferential gentleness.

--When the principle ruling the family is transferred to political relations, there arises the tyranny of the Chinese state, which cannot be fully treated here. We find everywhere in it an a.n.a.logical relation to that of parents and children. In China the ruler is the father and mother of the country; the civil officers are representatives of a paternal authority, &c. It follows that in school the children will be ranked according to their age. The authority of parents over children is according to the principle entirely unconditional, but in actuality very mild. The abandonment of daughters by the poorest cla.s.ses in the great cities is not objected to, for the government rears the children in orphan asylums, where they are cared for by nurses appointed by the state.--

-- 187. The distinction of these relations which are conditioned by nature takes on the external shape of a definite ceremonial, the learning of which is a chief element of education. In conformity with the naturalness of the whole principle all crimes against it are punished by whipping, which does not necessarily entail dishonor. In order to lead man to the mastery of himself and to obedience to those who are naturally set over him, education develops an endless number of fragmentary maxims to keep attention ever watchful over himself, and his behavior always fenced in by a code of prescriptions.

--We find in such moral sentences the substance of what is called, in China, Philosophy.--

-- 188. The theoretical education includes Heading, Writing--i.e.

painting the letters with a brush--Arithmetic, and the making of verses.

But the ability to do these things is not looked at as means of culture but as ends in themselves, and to fit one therefore for the undertaking of state offices. The Chinese possess formally all the means for literary culture--printing, libraries, schools, and academies; but the worth of these is not great. Their value has been often over-rated because of their external resemblance to those found among us.