CONCLUSION
We may look upon the preceding chapters as a kind of general examination
to which we submitted our consciences, by reflecting on the way we have
always performed our duty as teachers, by considering our purposes, and
by scrutinising the internal logic of our task. And our investigation
has been eminently human, since indeed man's essence, we have now come
to understand, is to acquire self-consciousness.
The patriotic character of the event which was the immediate cause of
this work induced me to show that the common spirit which brought us
together was not a mere political sentiment, of which we should rid
ourselves in crossing the threshold of the school. For we could not but
bring into the classroom our own humanity and our living personality, in
which the content of our teaching and of all education must live. This
personality, however it may be considered, from whatever point of view
it may be regarded, has no particular substance which is not also at the
same time universal,--domestic as the case may be, or social, political,
or whatever may be the phase in which it is determined in its historical
development. And since, in this historical development of our universal
personality, there is Italy with her memories perpetuated by our
immanent sentiment, by our immanent consciousness and by our immanent
will, we could not possibly be ourselves were we not at the same time
Italian educators.
And looking attentively at this universal foundation on which our own
human value is supported--call it language, logic, law,--we were led to
study the relationship existing between individuality, which is the aim
of all forms of education, and this universal spirit which here
intervenes as it does in every moment of the human life. It intervenes
in education, as the science and the conscience and the entire
personality of the teacher. This personality seems to be violently
imposed upon the pupil in such a way as to check or hinder his
spontaneous development; but we saw that the immediate logical
opposition between teacher and learner gradually resolves itself into
the unity of the spiritual process in which education becomes actual.
Education therefore appeared to us, not as a fact which is empirically
observable, and which may be fixed and looked upon as subject to natural
laws, but rather as a mystical formation of a super-individual
spirituality, which is the only real, concrete personality actualised by
the individual. In order to understand it, we had to liberate it from
every kind of contact with culture in its materialistic acceptance; and
we therefore insisted on the speculative inquiry into what we called the
realistic point of view. We endeavoured to explain how and why culture
is the very process of education, and the very process of the
personality in which education takes place. This conception would have
lacked the necessary support, had we not carried our investigation
further, and shown that this culture in which the spirit unfolds itself
is not the attribute of a mind existing amidst other minds and face to
face with surrounding nature, but is instead the most genuine
signification of All. For it is the life of the spirit in which
everything gathers to find its support and become thinkable. Man, as he
is educated, is man rigorously considered as spirit,--spirit which is
free, because infinite and truly universal in every one of its moments
and attitudes. This the educator must intently consider if he wants to
conceive adequately his task and its enormous responsibilities, which
become evident when he reflects how in the monad of the individual, in
the simple soul of the child entrusted to his creative care, the
infinite vibrates, and a life is born at every instant, which thence
throbs over the boundless expanse of space, of time, and of all
reality.
This adequate conception need not be elaborated into a complete system
of philosophy. The educator must sense and grasp this infinite over
which every word of his is carried, every glance of his, every gesture.
As he enters the classroom, as he approaches the child, to whom not only
_magna reverentia_ is due, but the very cult which is shown to things
divine, he cannot but feel himself exalted; he cannot but be fully
conscious of the difficulties of his lofty station, and of the duty of
overcoming them. He must therefore dismiss from within himself all that
is petty in his particular personality, all his preoccupations and
passions, all his commonplace everyday thoughts. He must shake off the
depressing burden of the flesh, which pulls him downward; and he will
then open his soul to fortifying Faith, to the ruling and inspiring
Deity. The man who is not capable of feeling in the School the sanctity
of the place and of his work is not fit to be an educator.
The spirituality of education becomes however an empty formula, and a
motif for rhetorical variations, if on the one hand we do not possess
the concept of the essence or of the attributes of the spirit, and if on
the other we do not sharply expose those realistic prejudices of
pedagogy which have been maintained in the field of education by the
materialistic conception of man and by a tradition which is both
unreflecting and alien to all radical criticism. I tried to satisfy both
these exigencies rather by arousing the reflection and impelling it on
its way than by escorting it on a journey which must be undertaken with
due preparation.
And finally, in the effort to provide ourselves with a motto, so to
speak, and a rallying banner, I set forth the doctrine of educational
unity--of the education which is always at all moments education of the
spirit. For even physical culture is conceivable only as formation of
the mind, and more properly of character. Education, we saw, may be made
actual in a thousand different ways, only always on condition that we
observe the law which proceeds from its innermost essence and
constitutes its immanent ideal. Every education is good, provided it is
education--philosophical, human, mind-stirring education; provided it
does not bring atrophy to any necessary function of the spirit, does not
crush the spirit under the weight either of things or of the divinity,
nor excessively exalt it in the consciousness of its own personal power;
provided it neither hurls it into the free abstract world of dreams nor
fetters it in the iron chains of an inhuman reality; and provided it
does not shatter it and scatter its fragments by the multiple
investigations of things innumerable, the knowledge of which can never
bring satisfaction. For it is the function of education to enable the
centralising unity of the reflective spirit to become articulate and
varied through the multiplicity of life and of experience, which is the
actuality of the spirit itself. Opposition to all abstractions, in
behalf of the concrete spirit and of liberty--that is our educational
ideal.
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