in the moral world, and no longer needs the testimony of others concerning himself; he can sit properly in judg ment on himself, and is from now onwards an adult.
152. By means of what has just been said we have closed a gap that remained in our previous lecture and have, for the first time, made our proposal really practicable. Pleasure in the right and good for its own sake ought to be set, by means of the new education, in the place of the material hope or fear that has been employed hitherto; this pleasure, as the sole existing motive, ought to set all future life in motion; this is the essential feature of our proposal. But the first question that arises here is this; 12 178 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION how, then, is this pleasure itself to be created? Created, indeed, in the proper sense of the word, it cannot be, for men cannot make something out of nothing. If our proposal is to be practicable at all, this pleasure must exist originally, and be simply present and innate in all I men without exception. And in fact it is so. Every child without exception wishes to be upright and good, and i does not want merely to be healthy, like a young animal. Love is the essential element in man; it exists, as man exists, whole and complete, and nothing can be added to it, for it transcends the growing phenomenon of the sensuous life, and is independent of it. It is knowledge alone to which this sensuous life is connected, and which begins and develops with it. This development is but slow and gradual with the progress of time; how, then, is that innate love to pass through the years of ignorance, and develop and exercise itself until an ordered system of ideas of right and wrong is formed, to which the motive of plea sure can be connected? Wise nature has removed the difficulty without any assistance from us. Consciousness, starting from within the child, presents itself to him outwardly, embodied in the judgment of the adult world. Until a rational judge is developed in him, he is referred to this world by a natural instinct, and thus a conscience is given him outside himself, until one is produced within him. The new education ought to recognize this truth, but little known until now, and guide towards what is right the love that exists independent of education. Up to now, this simplicity and childlike faith of the young in the higher perfection of adults has been used, as a rule, for their corruption. It was pre cisely their innocence and their natural faith in us that made it possible for us, before they could distinguish good from evil, to implant in them, instead of the good NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 179 that they inwardly wished, our own corruption, which they would have abhorred if they had been able to recognize it.
153. This, I say, is the very greatest transgression of which our age is guilty, and this also explains a phenomenon of daily occurrence; that, as a rule, man becomes so much the worse, more selfish, more dead to all good impulses, and more unfit for any good deed, the older he gets and the farther he has gone from the early days, of his innocence — days which even yet echo, though faintly, in some intimations of the Good. It also proves that the present generation, if it does not completely isolate its successors, will inevitably leave behind an even more corrupt posterity, and this, again, one still more corrupt. An honoured teacher of the human race says of them with striking truth, that it were better that a millstone were hanged at once about their neck, and they were drowned in the depths of the sea. It is an absurd slander on human nature to say that man is born a sinner. If that were true, how, then, could there ever come to him an idea of sin, which, indeed, is possible only in contrast with what is not sin? His life makes him a sinner, and human life hitherto was usually a progressive development in sinfulness.
154. What has been said shows in a new light the necessity of making preparation without delay for a real education. If only the youths of the future could grow up without any contact with adults and entirely without education, one might always test what the result would be. But even if we only leave them in our society, their education takes place of itself without any wish or will of ours. They educate themselves to us; to be like us, that forces itself upon them as their pattern. They emulate us, even without our requiring this, and desire i8o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION nothing more than, to become just as we are. Now, usually the great majority of us are thoroughly perverse, partly without knowing it; and because we are ourselves just as simple as children, we consider our perversity to be what is right. Even if we knew that we were perverse, how could we suddenly lay aside, in the presence of our children, that which a long life has made second nature to us, and exchange our whole former disposition and spirit for a new one? In contact with us they must become corrupt; that is unavoidable. If we have a spark of love for them, we must remove them from our tainted atmosphere and erect a purer abode for them. We must bring them into the society of men who, whatever they may be in other respects, have at least, by continuous practice, become accustomed, and gained the ability, to remember that children are watching them, the power of restraining themselves at least for so long, and the knowledge of how one must appear before children. We must not let them out of this society into ours again, until they have learnt to detest thoroughly all our corruption, and are thereby completely safe from all infection.
These are the points that we have considered it neces sary to bring forward here concerning moral education in general.
155. That the children ought to live together in com plete isolation from adults, with only their teachers and masters, has been mentioned several times. It is under stood, without special note from us, that this education must be given to both sexes in the same way. A separa tion of the sexes into special institutions for boys and girls would not suit our purpose, and would break several important principles of the education for perfect manhood. The subjects of instruction are the same for both sexes; NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 181 the difference in the manual tasks can easily be maintained, even while the rest of the education is common. Like the larger society which they are to enter some day as perfect human beings, the smaller society in which they are trained for manhood must consist of a combination of both sexes. Both must first of all recognize and learn to love in one another their common humanity, and must have male and female friends, before their attention is directed to sex distinction and they become husbands and wives. Also, the general relationship of the two sexes to each other, stout-hearted protection on the one side and loving help on the other, must appear in the educational institution and be fostered in the pupils.
156. If our proposal should come to be realized, the first business would be to frame a law for the internal organization of these educational institutions. If the fundamental principle we have put forward once becomes thoroughly established, this is a very easy task, and we do not intend to lose time over it here.
157. It is a principal requirement of this new national education that in it learning and working shall be com bined, that the institution shall appear, to the pupils at least, to be self-supporting, and that everyone shall be reminded to contribute to this aim with all his strength. This is in any case directly required by the problem of education as such, quite apart from the purpose of outward practicability and of economy, which will undoubtedly be expected of our proposal. One reason is that all who get through only the universal national education are intended for the working classes, and training them to be good workmen is undoubtedly part of their education. The special reason, however, is that a man's well-founded confidence that he will always be able to get on in the world by his own strength, and that he requires for maintenance 1 82 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION no charity from others, is part of man's personal independ ence, and conditions moral independence much more than seems to be believed at present. This training would supply another part of education, which one might call education in the proper management of one's resources, which hitherto has also usually been left to blind chance. This part of education must be considered, not from the paltry and narrow point of view of saving for the sake of saving, which some ridicule with the name of economy, but from the higher moral standpoint. Our age often lays down as a principle beyond all contradiction that one must flatter, cringe, and be everyone's lackey, if one wishes to live, and that no other way will do. Our age does not reflect that, even if one should wish to spare it the counter-proposition (which may sound heroic, but is absolutely true), namely that, if such is the case, it ought not to go on living but ought to die, there yet remains the remark that our age ought to have learnt to live with honour. Let anyone fully inquire who are the persons conspicuous for dishonourable behaviour; he will always find that they have not learnt to work, or that they are afraid of work, and, moreover, manage things badly.
The pupil of our education ought, therefore, to be made accustomed to work, in order that he may be raised above the temptation to dishonesty in his struggle for a living. It ought to be impressed deeply on his mind as the very first principle of honour, that it is shameful to be willing to owe his means of existence to anything but his own work.
158. Pestalozzi wishes all kinds of manual work to be carried on together with learning. We do not wish to deny the possibility of this combination under the con dition mentioned by him, that the child is already thoroughly skilled in manual work; yet this proposal seems NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 183 to us to arise from the paltriness of the original aim. In my opinion, instruction must be represented as so sacred and honourable that it requires the whole attention and concentration, and cannot be received along with some thing else. If such manual work as knitting, spinning, etc., is to be carried on during working hours in seasons which in any case keep the pupils indoors, it will be very useful to combine with it collective mental exercises under supervision, in order that the mind may remain active. But in this case the work is the important thing, and these exercises are to be regarded, not as instruction, but merely as recreation.
159. In general, all manual work of this inferior kind must be put forward only as incidental, and not as essen tial. The essential manual work is the practice of agri culture, gardening, cattle rearing, and those, trades which they need in their little State. Of course, the partici pation in these that is expected of anyone is to be pro portional to the physical strength of his age; the rest of the energy is to be supplied by machines and tools that will be invented. Here the chief consideration is that, so far as possible, the pupils must understand the prin ciples of what they do, and that they have already received the information necessary for their occupations concern ing the growing of plants, the characteristics and needs of the animal body, and the laws of mechanics. In this way their education becomes a kind of course of instruc tion in the occupations which they have to follow in the future, and the thoughtful and intelligent farmer is trained by direct perception. Further, their mechanical work is even at this stage ennobled and made intellectual; it is just as much a verification from direct perception of what they have grasped in their minds, as it is work for a living. Even though associated with the animal and 1 84 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION with the clod, they do not sink to the level of these, but remain within the sphere of the spiritual world.
1 60. Let it be the fundamental law of this little economic State that no article of food, clothing, etc., and, so far as this is possible, no tool is to be used, which is not produced and made there. If this housekeeping requires support from outside, natural objects should be supplied, but none of any other kind than those it possesses. This must be done without the pupils learning that their own products have been increased; or, if it is appropriate that they should be told, they should receive the supply simply as a loan and return it at a fixed time. Now, for this independence and self-sufficiency of the community every individual should work with all his might, without making a statement of account with it or claiming anything for his own property. Everyone should know that he is indebted absolutely to the community, and should eat or starve along with the community. Thereby the hon ourable independence of the State and of the family, which he is to enter some day, and the relationship of their individual members to them, is disclosed to his vivid observation and rooted ineradicably in his heart.
161. This training to mechanical work is the point at which the education of the scholar, which is a part of, and rests upon, the universal national education, diverges from the latter. The scholar's education, which is now to be discussed, is, I said, part of the universal national education. I offer no opinion as to whether in the future everyone who believes he has sufficient ability to study or ranks himself for any reason with the higher- classes of former days will not still be free to take the old path of scholarly education. If we should once get our national education, experience will show how the majority of those scholars will fare, with their purchased learning, NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 185 against, I will not say the scholar trained in the new school, but even against the ordinary man produced by it. However, I want to speak now, not of that, but of the scholar's education according to the new method.
According to its principles, the future scholar, too, must have gone through the universal national education and have received completely and clearly its first part, the development of knowledge by sensation, perception, and whatever is connected with the latter. Permission to take up this profession can be granted by the new national education only to the boy who shows an excellent gift for learning and a conspicuous inclination for the world of ideas. It must, however, grant this permission to every boy who shows these qualities, without exception and without regard to so-called difference of birth. For a man is not a scholar for his own convenience; every^_talent of that kind is a preciou^_£ossession of the nation, and may not be taken from it.
162. The^person who is not a scholar is destined to maintain the human race at the stage of culture it has reached, the scholar to advance it further according to a clear conception and with deliberate art. The scholar with his conception must always be in advance of the present age, must understand the future, and be able to implant it in the present for its future development. For this purpose he needs a clear survey of the previous condition of the world, unlimited skill in pure thought independent of phenomena, and, in order that he may be able to communicate his thoughts, control of language down to its living and creative root. All this necessitates mental self-activity, without guidance from others, and solitary reflection, in which, therefore, the future scholar must be exercised from the moment his profession is decided; it does not mean, as in the case of the person 1 86 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION who is not a scholar, merely thinking under the eye of an ever-present teacher; it necessitates a great amount of subsidiary knowledge, which is quite useless in his voca tion to the person who is* not a scholar. This solitary reflection will be the scholar's work, the daily occupation of his life. He is to be trained at once for this work, but in return he is to be exempted from the other mechani cal toil. The education of the future scholar for manhood will, therefore, as formerly, proceed in general simultan eously with the universal national education, and along with all the others he will attend the instruction it supplies. Only those hours which the others spend in manual work will be devoted to the study of whatever his future profession specifically demands; this will be the only difference. The general knowledge of agriculture, of other mechanical arts, and of their particular methods, which is to be expected of every man, the scholar will undoubtedly have learnt already while passing through the first class; if he has not, he will have to acquire that knowledge afterwards. It is obvious that he is the last pupil of all to be exempted from the physical exercises that are prescribed. To give an account of the particular subjects which a scholar's education would include, or the course to be followed in them, is, however, beyond the scope of these addresses.
ELEVENTH ADDRESS ON WHOM WILL THE CARRYING-OUT OF THIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION DEVOLVE?
163. THE scheme for the new German national education has been stated sufficiently for our purpose. The next question, which is now urgent, is this: who ought to place himself at the head to carry out this scheme, who is to be relied on, and on whom have we relied?
We have represented this ^ducation as the highest and, at present, the only urggn^_^°j^gern of German love of fatherland, and wish to make it first and foremost the means of bringing into the world the improvement and regeneration of the whole human race. But that love of fatherland ought above all to inspire the German State, wherever Germans are governed, and take the-lead, and be the motive power in all its decisions. It is the State, therefore, to which we shall first of all have to turn our expectant gaze.
Will it realize our hopes? After what has already been said, what can we expect of it, looking, as is always understood, at no particular State, but at Germany as a whole?
164. In modern Europe educatior! actually originated, not with the State, but with that power from which States, too, for the most part obtained their power — from the heavenly spiritual kingdom of the Church.
187 1 88 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION The Church considered itself not so much a part of the earthly community as a colony from heaven quite foreign to the earthly community and sent out to enrol citizens for that foreign State, wherever it could take root. Its education aimed at nothing else but that men should not be damned in the other world but saved. The Refor mation merely united this ecclesiastical power, which otherwise continued to regard itself as before, to the temporal power, with which formerly it had very often been actually in conflict. In that connection, this was ^ the only difference that resulted from that event; there / also remained, therefore, the old view of educational matters. Even in recent times, and until the present day, the education of the richer classes has been looked upon as the private concern of the parents, who might arrange it to their own satisfaction; and their children were usually put to school simply because some day it would be useful to them. The sole public education, that of the people, however, was simply education for salvation in heaven; the essential feature was a little Christianity and reading, with writing if it could be managed — all for the sake of Christianity. All other development of man was left to the blind and casual influence of the society in which they grew up, and to actual life. Even the institutions for scholarly education were intended mainly for the training of ecclesiastics. Theology was the important faculty; the others were merely supplementary to it, and usually received only its leavings.
165. So long as those who stood at the head of the Government remairfed in the dark concerning its true aim and were filled with that anxiety of conscience about the salvation of themselves and others, one could rely with certainty on their zeal for this kind of public educa- THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 189 tion and on their earnest efforts in its behalf. But, as soon as they were clear about the true aim of government and understood that the sphere of the State's action lies within the visible world, it must have been evident to them that anxiety about the eternal salvation of their subjects could be no concern of theirs, and that anyone who wanted to be saved there should see to it himself. From that time onwards they considered they were doing enough, if for the future they left to their original destiny the foundations and institutions that had origi nated in more pious ages. However unsuitable and insufficient they might be for totally changed times, they considered they were neither obliged to contribute to them by saving on their other aims, nor justified in interfering actively and setting useful innovations in the place of antiquated and useless things. To all pro posals of this kind the ever-ready answer was: the State has no money for that. If an exception were ever made, it was to the advantage of the institutions for higher education, which shed splendour far and wide, and pro cured fame for their patrons. But the education of that class which is the real foundation of the human race, by which the higher culture is ever restored, and on which that culture must continually react — the education of the people remained neglected and, from the Reforma- ' tion down to the present day, has been in a state of increasing decay.
1 66. Now, if for the future, and from this very hour, we are to be able to hope better things in this matter from the State, it wijil have jto exchange what seems to have been up to the present its fundamental conception \ of th.e aim of education for an entirely different one.! It must see that it was quite right before to refuse to be anxious about the eternal salvation of its citizens, because i9o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION no s^ecia^ training is required for such salvation, and that a nursery for heaven, like the Church, whose power has at last been handed over to the State, should not be permitted, for it only obstructs all good education, and must be dispensed with. On the other hand,_the State / must see that education for; Jife__on earth is very greatly