of self-seeking which developed in them spontaneously and without any assistance from education. This proves beyond dispute that the system may, indeed, have been able to fill the memory with some words and phrases and the cold and indifferent imagination with some faint and feeble pictures; but that it has never succeeded in making its picture of a moral world-order so vivid that the pupil was filled with passionate love and yearning for that order, and with such glowing emotion as to incite him j to realize it in his life — emotion before which self-seeking [falls to the ground like withered leaves. It also proves this education to have been far from reaching right down to the roots of real impulse and action in life, and from training them; for these roots, neglected by this blind j and impotent system, have everywhere developed wild, I as best they could, yielding good fruit in a few who I were inspired by God, but evil fruit in the majority. It is for the present, then, quite sufficient to describe this education by these its results, and for our purpose we can spare ourselves the wearisome task of analysing the inner sap and fibre of a tree whose fruit is now fully ripe and lies fallen before the eyes of all, proclaiming most clearly and distinctly the inner nature of its creator. Strictly speaking, according to this view, the present system has been by no means the art of educating men. /"This, indeed, it has not boasted of doing, but has very / often frankly acknowledged its impotence by demanding I to be given natural talent or genius as the condition of I its success. Rather does such an art remain to be dis covered, and this discovery should be the real task of the new education. What was lacking in the old system —, namely, an influence penetrating to the roots of vital I impulse and action — the new education must supply. I f Accordingly, as the old system was able at best to train INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 15 some part of man, so the new must train 'man himself, and must make the training given, not, as hitherto, the pupil's possession, but an integral part of himself. &* 9. Moreover, education, restricted in this way, has been brought to bear hitherto only on the very small minority of classes which are for this reason called educated, whereas the great majority on whom in very truth the commonwealth rests, the people, have been almost entirely neglected by this system and abandoned to blind chance. By means of the new education we want to _,, * — '.- _r __, mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall _ be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest. If by this means we wanted, indeed, to mark off an educated class, which might perhaps be animated by the newly developed motive of moral appro val, from an uneducated one, then the latter would desert us and be lost to us; because the motives of hope and fear, by which alone influence might be exercised over it, would work no longer with us but against us. _Sp_ there is nothing left for us but just to apply the new system to every German without exception, so that it is not the education, of a single class, but the education of the nation, simply as such and without excepting any of its individual mem- bers._ In this, that is to say in the training of man, to take real pleasure in what is right, all distinction of classes, which may in the future find a place in other branches of development, will be completely removed and vanish. In__this way there will grow up among us,. not popular education, but real German national education.
10. I shall prove to you that a system of education such as we desire has actually been discovered and is already being practised, so that we have nothing to do but to accept what is offered us. As I promised you con cerning the means of salvation that I should propose, 16 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION this demands undoubtedly no greater amount of energy than can reasonably be expected of our generation. To that promise I added another, namely, that so far as danger is concerned there is none at all in our proposal, because the self-interest of the power that rules over us demands that the carrying-out of such a proposal should be assisted rather than hindered. I consider it appro priate to speak my mind clearly on this point at, once in this first address.
It is true that in ancient as in modern times the arts of corrupting and of morally degrading the conquered have very frequently been used with success as a means of ruling. By lying fictions, and by skilful confusion of ideas and of language, princes have been libelled to the people, and peoples to princes, in order that the two parties, because of their dissension, might the more surely be controlled. All the impulses of vanity and of self- interest have been cunningly aroused and fostered, so as to make the conquered contemptible, and thus to crush them with something like a good conscience. But it would be a fatal error to propose this method with us Germans. Apart from the tie of fear and hope, the coherence of that part of the outside world with which we have now come into contact is founded on the motives of honour and of national glory. The clear vision of the German, however, has long since come to the unshakable i conviction that these are empty illusions, and that no injury or mutilation of the individual is healed by the glory of the whole nation, and we shall indeed, if a wider view of life be not brought before us, probably become dangerous preachers of this very natural and attractive doctrine. Without, therefore, taking to ourselves any new corruption, we are already in our natural condition a harmful prey; only by carrying out the proposal INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 17 that has been made can we become a wholesome one. Then the outside world, as certainly as it knows its own interests, will be guided by them, and prefer to have us in the latter state rather than in the former.
11. Now in making this proposal my address is directed especially towards the educated classes in Germany, for. I hope that it will be intelligible to them first. My pro posal is first and foremost that they become the authors of this new creation, thereby, on the one hand, reconciling the world to their former influence, and, on the other, deserving its continuance in the future. We shall see in the course of these addresses that up to the present all human progress in the German nation has sprung from the people, and that to it, in the first instance, great national affairs have always been brought, and by it have been cared for and furthered. Now, for the first time, therefore, it happens that the fundamental reconstruction of the nation is offered as a task to the educated classes, and if they were really to accept this offer, that, too, would happen ' for the first time. We shall find that these classes cannot, calculate how long it will still remain in their power to place themselves at the head of this movement, since it is now almost prepared and ripe for proposal to the people, and is being practised on individuals from among the people; and the people will soon be able to help themselves without any assistance from us. The result of this for us^i will simply be that the present educated classes and their 11 descendants will become the people; while from among W the present people another more highly educated class / will arise.
12. Finally, it is the general aim of these addresses to bring courage and hope to the suffering, to proclaim joy in the midst of deep sorrow, to lead us gently and softly through the hour of deep affliction. This age is to me as a 1 8 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION shade that stands weeping over its own corpse, from which it has been driven forth by a host of diseases, unable to tear its gaze from the form so beloved of old, and trying in despair every means to enter again the home of pestilence. Already, it is true, the quickening breezes of that other world, which the departed soul has entered, have taken it unto themselves and are surrounding it with the warm breath of love; the whispering voices of its sisters greet it with joy and bid it welcome; and already in its depths it stirs and grows in all directions towards the more glorious form into which it shall develop. But as yet the soul has no feeling for these breezes, no ear for these voices — or if it had them, they have disappeared in sorrow for the loss of mortal form; for with its form the soul thinks it has lost itself too. What is to be done with it? The dawn of the new world is already past its breaking; already it gilds the mountain tops, and shadows forth the coming day. I wish, so far as in me lies, to catch the rays of this dawn and weave them into a mirror, in which our grief-stricken age may see itself; so that it may believe in its own existence, may perceive its real self, and, as in prophetic vision, may see pass by its own develop ment, its coming forms. In the contemplation of this, the picture of its former life will doubtless sink and vanish; and the dead body may be borne to its resting-place without undue lamenting.
Cilllctll 3f the \ ristics, I i n CY r»T * SECOND ADDRESS THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE NEW EDUCATION 13. THESE addresses should lead you first of all, and with you the whole nation, to a clear perception of the remedy which I have proposed for the preservation of the German nation. Such a remedy follows from the nature of age as well as of the German national characteristics and must in turn influence the age and the moulding of those national characteristics. This remedy, therefore, does not become perfectly clear and intelligible until it is compared with the latter, and these with it, and both are represented in complete connection with each other. For these tasks time is needed; perfect clearness, there fore, is to be expected only at the end of our addresses. But, since we must begin at some point, it will be most convenient first of all to consider the inner nature of that remedy by itself, apart from its relations in time and space. Our address to-day, therefore, will be devoted to this task.
The remedy indicated was an absolutely new system of German national education, such as has never existed in any other nation. In the last address this new educa tion, as distinguished from the old, was described thus: the existing education has at most only exhorted to good order and morality, but these exhortations have been unfruitful in real life, which has been moulded on prin- 19 20 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION ciples that are quite different and completely beyond the influence of that education; in contrast to this, the new education must be able surely and infallibly to~ mould and determine according to rules the real vital impulses and actions of its pupils.
14. Now perchance someone might -say, as indeed those who administer the present system of education almost without exception actually do say: " What more should one expect of any education than that it should point out what is right to the pupil and exhort him earnestly to it; whether he wishes to follow such exhorta tions is his own affair and, if he does not, his own fault; he has free will, which no education can take from him." Then, in order to define more clearly the new education which I propose, I should reply that that very recognition pf, and reliance upon, free will in the pupil is the first listake of the old system and the clear confession of its itnpotence and futility. For, by confessing that after all its most powerful efforts the will still remains free, that is, hesitating undecided between good and evil, it confesses that it neither is able, nor wishes, nor longs to fashion the will and (since the latter is the very root of man) man himself, and that it considers this altogether impossible. On the other hand, the new education must ; f consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys / freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, \\ and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the I \ decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. \ Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty.
All education aims at producing a stable, settled, and steadfast character, which no longer is developing, but is, and cannot be other than it is. If it did not aim at such a character it would be, not education, but some GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 21 aimless game; if it did not produce such a character it would still be incomplete. He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any cir- cumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity. The past age had neither a true conception of education for manhood nor the power to realize that conception. It showed this by wanting to improve man kind by warning sermons, and by being angry and scolding when these sermons were of no avail. Yet how could they avail aught? Before the warning, and independent of it, the will of man has already its definite bent. If this agrees with your exhortation, the latter comes too late; without it he would have done what you exhort him to. If this bent and your exhortation are in opposi tion, you may at most bewilder him for a few moments; when the time comes, he forgets himself and your exhorta tion, and follows his natural inclination. If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will. It is idle to say: Fly — for he has no wings, and for all your exhortations will never rise two steps above the ground. But jievelop? if you can., fcis.
spiritual wings; let him exercise them and make them strong, and without any exhortation from you he will want, and will be able, to do nothing but fly.
15. The^new education must produce^this stable and unh^sitat ing -wil Itjnusljtself inevitably crea±£_.the necessity t which it aims. Those who in the past became good did so thanks 22 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to their natural disposition, which outweighed the in fluence of their bad environment, and not because of their education in any way, for otherwise all the pupils would have become good. Those who went to the bad did so just as little because of education, for otherwise all the pupils would have been corrupted; they went to the bad of themselves, thanks to their natural disposi tion. In this respect education was simply futile, and not pernicious at all; the real formative agency was spiritual nature. Henceforth education for manhood must be taken from the influence of this mysterious and incalculable force and put under the direction of a deliber ate art, which will surely and infallibly accomplish its purpose with everyone entrusted to it; or which, if somehow it does not accomplish it, will at least know that it has not done so, and that therefore the training is still incomplete. The education proposed by me, therefore, I is to be a reliable and deliberate art for fashioning in iman a stable and infallible good will. That is its 'first \characteristic.
1 6. Moreover, man can will only what he loves; his I love is the sole and at the same time the infallible motive \ of his will and of all his vital impulses and actions.
^Hitherto, in its education of the social man the art of the State assumed, as a sure and infallible principle, that everyone loves and wills h 1 1 nwn rn algrial welfare. To this natural love it ardfkjall^Jinked, by means of the motives of fear and hope, that good will which it desired, namely, interest in the-eom^Kii^weaL Anyone who has become outwardly a harmless or even useful citizen as a result of such a system of education remains, nevertheless, inwardly a bad man; for badness consists essentially in loving solely one's own material welfare and in being influenced only by the motives of fear or hope for that GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 23 welfare, whether in the present or in some future life. Apart from this fact, we have already seen that this method is no longer applicable to us, because the motives of fear and hope serve no longer with us but against us, and material love of self cannot be turned to our advantage in any.way. We are, therefore, compelled by necessity to wish to mould men who are inwardly and fundamen tally good, since it is through such men alone that the German nation can still continue to exist, whereas through bad men it will inevitably be absorbed in the outside world. Therefore, in place of that love of self, with which nothing for our good can be connected any longer, we must set up and establish in the hearts of all those whom we wish to reckon among our nation that other kind of love, which is concerned directly with the good, tor itsowjq.sake.
We have already seen that love of the good, simply as such and not for the sake of any advantage to our selves, takes the form of pleasure in it; a pleasure so intense that a man is thereby stimulated to realize the good in his life. It is this intense pleasure, therefore,?) which the new education should produce as its pupil's|| stable and constant character. Then this pleasure itself would inevitably be the foundation of the pupil's constant good will.
17. A pleasure that stimulates us to bring about a certain state of affairs which does not yet actually exist pre supposes an iniage of that state which, previous to its actual existence, hovers before the mind and attracts that pleasure which stimulates to realization. This pleasure, therefore, presupposes in the individual who is to be affected by it the power to create spontaneously such images, which are independent of reality and not copies of it, but rather its prototypes. I must now speak of this power, and I 24 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION beg you during the consideration of it not to forget that an image created by this power can please simply as an image, and as one in which we feel our creative energy, without being for that reason taken as a proto type of reality and without pleasing to such a degree that it stimulates to realization. The latter is quite a different and our own special goal, of which we shall not fail to speak later; but the former is simply the preliminary condition for the attainment of the true ultimate aim of education.
1 8. That power to create spontaneously images, which are not simply copies of reality, but can become its pro totypes, should be the starting-point for the moulding of the race by means of the new education. To create images spontaneously, I said, and in such a way that the pupil will produce them by his own power; but not in deed that he will merely be capable of receiving passively the image presented to him by education, of understanding it sufficiently, and of reproducing it just as it is presented to him, as if it were a question simply of the existence of such an image. The reason for demanding self- activity in regard to that image is this; only on that condition can the image created engage the active pleasure of the pupil. For it is one thing merely to allow oneself to be pleased at something and to have nothing against it; such passive pleasure can arise at best only from passive submission. But it is quite another thing to be so affected by pleasure at something that this pleasure becomes productive and stirs up all our energy to the act of creation. We speak not of the former, which happened no doubt even in the old education, but of the latter. Now, this pleasure will be kindled only by the pupil's self-activity being stimulated at the same time and becoming manifest to him in the given object, GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 25 so that this object pleases not only in itself, but also as an object of the manifestation of mental power. This pleases directly, inevitably, and invariably.
19. This creative mental activity which is to be \ developed in the pupil is undoubtedly an activity accord- j ing to rules, which become known to the active pupil 1 until he sees from his own direct experience that they / alone are possible — that is, this activity produces know- I / ledge, and that, too, of general and infallible laws. More- '* over, in the free development that begins at this point it is impossible to undertake anything contrary to the law, and no act results until the law is obeyed. Even if, therefore, this free development should begin at first with blind efforts, it must still end in more extensive knowledge of the law. This training, therefore, in its final result, is the training of the pupil's faculty of know ledge, and, of course, not historical training in the actual condition of things, but the higher and philosophical training in the laws which make that actual condition of things inevitable. The pupil learns.
I add: the pupil learns willingly and with pleasure, and there is nothing he would rather do than learn, so long as the effort lasts; for while he is learning his activity is spontaneous, and in this he has directly the greatest possible pleasure. Here we have found an outward\ sign of true education, at once obvious and infallible; A namely, that every pupil on whom this education is \ brought to bear, without exception and irrespective of differences in natural talent, learns with pleasure and love, / purely for the sake of learning and for no other reason. ' We have discovered the means of kindling this pure love of learning; it is to- stimulate directly the spontaneous activity of the pupil and to make this the basis of all knowledge, so that whatever is learnt is learnt through it..
26 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION The first important point in the art of education is just to stimulate this personal activity of the pupil in something known to us. If we succeed in this, it is simply a question of starting from that and of maintaining the stimulated activity in ever new life. This is possible only where progress is regular, and where every mistake in education is discovered immediately through the failure of what was intended. We have, therefore, found / also the link whereby the intended result is inseparably / connected with the method planned, namely, the eternal, universal, and fundamental law of man's mental nature, I that he must directly engage in mental activity.
20. Should anyone, misled by our usual daily experi ence, doubt the very existence of such a fundamental law, we would remind him over and over again that man is indeed by nature merely material and self-seeking, so long as immediate necessity and present material need spur him on, and that he does not let any spiritual need or feeling of consideration prevent him from satisfying / that material need. But when it is satisfied, he has little inclination to let his fancy dwell on the painful image of it, or to keep it in his mind. He is much more inclined to free his thoughts and turn them without restraint to the consideration of whatever attracts the attention of his senses. Nor, indeed, does he scorn a poetic flight to ideal worlds, for he has by nature but little interest in the temporal, in order that his taste for the eternal may have scope for development. This is proved by the history of all ancient peoples, and by the various observations and discoveries which have come down to us from them. It is proved in our day by the observation of races that are still savage, provided, of course, their climate does not treat them far too unkindly, and by the observation of our own children. It is proved even by GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 27