_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.--
§ 150. (_c_) The result of the practice in virtue, or, as it is
commonly expressed, of the individual actualization of freedom, is the
methodical determinateness of the individual will as Character. This
conception of character is formal, for it contains only the identity
which is implied in the ruling of a will on its external side as
constant. As there are good, strong and beautiful characters, so there
are also bad, weak, and detestable ones. When in Pedagogics, therefore,
we speak so much of the building up of a character, we mean the making
permanent of a direction of the individual will towards the
actualization of the Good. Freedom ought to be the character of
character. Education must therefore observe closely the inter-action of
the factors which go to form character, viz., ([Greek: a]) the
temperament, as the natural character of the man; ([Greek: b]) external
events, the historical element; ([Greek: g]) the energy of the Will, by
which, in its limits of nature and history, it realizes the idea of the
Good in and for itself as the proper ethical character. Temperament
determines the Rhythm of our external manifestation of ourselves; the
events in which we live assign to us the ethical problem, but the Will
in its sovereignty stamps its seal on the form given by these
potentialities. Pedagogics aims at accustoming the youth to freedom, so
that he shall always measure his deed by the idea of the Good. It does
not desire a formal independence, which may also be called character,
but a real independence resting upon the conception of freedom as that
which is absolutely necessary. The pedagogical maxim is then: Be
independent, but be so through doing Good.
--According to preconceived opinion, stubbornness and obstinacy claim
that they are the foundation of character. But they may spring from
weakness and indeterminateness, on which account one needs to be well on
his guard. A gentle disposition, through enthusiasm for the Good, may
attain to quite as great a firmness of will. Coarseness and meanness are
on no account to be tolerated.--
§ 151. (3) We pass from the consideration of the culture of character
to that of conscience. This is the relation which the moral agent makes
between himself as manifestation and himself as idea. It compares
itself, in its past or future, with its nature, and judges itself
accordingly as good or bad. This independence of the ethical judgment is
the soul proper of all morality, the negation of all self-deception and
of all deception through another. The pedagogical maxim is: Be
conscientious. Be in the last instance dependent only upon the
conception which thou thyself hast of the idea of the Good!
--The self-criticism prompted by conscience hovers over all our
historical actuality, and is the ground of all our rational progress.
Fichte's stern words remain, therefore, eternally true: "He who has a
bad character, must absolutely create for himself a better one."--