§ 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)
Passive, (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 substitutes 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 Passive
system. In opposition to this, the Active system seeks the positive
vanquishing 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 God of Light places as the motto on his
temple the command to self-knowledge, the natural individuality becomes
free. Neither the passive 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 constituted 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
ship upon its waves as if they rode a charger.--