§ 189. The members of the Family are certainly immediately
distinguished among each other as to sex and age, but this difference is
entirely immaterial as far as the nature of their employment goes. In
China, therefore, every man can attain any position; he who is of
humblest birth in the great state-family can climb to the highest honor.
But the progress of spirit now becomes so mediated that the division of
labor shall be made the principle on which a new distinction shall arise
in the family: each one shall perfect himself only in that labor which
was allotted to him as his own through his birth into a particular
family. This fatalism (caste-distinction) breaks up the life, but
increases its tension, for spirit works on the one hand towards the
deepening of its distinctions; on the other, towards leading them back
into the unity which the natural determining directly opposes.
§ 190. The chief work of education thus consists in teaching each one
the rights and duties of his caste so that he shall act only exactly
within their limits, and not pollute himself by passing beyond them. As
the family-state concerns itself with fortifying the natural distinction
by a far-reaching and vigorous ceremonial, so the caste-state must do
the same with the distinction of class. A painful etiquette becomes more
and more endless in its requisitions the higher the caste, in order to
make the isolation more sharply defined and more perceptible.
--This feature penetrates all exclusively caste-education. The
aristocracy exiles itself on this account from its native country,
speaks a foreign language, loves its literature, adopts foreign customs,
lives in foreign countries--in Italy, Paris, &c. In this way man becomes
distinguished from others. But that man should strive thus to
distinguish himself has its justification in the mystery of his birth,
and this is assuredly always the principle of the caste-state in which
it exists. The castes lead to genealogical records, which are of the
greatest importance in determining the destiny of the individual. The
Brahmin may strike down one of a lower caste who has defiled him by
contact, without becoming thereby liable to punishment; rather would he
be to blame if he did not commit the murder. Thus formerly was it with
the officer who did not immediately kill the citizen or the common
soldier who struck him a blow, &c.--
§ 191. The East Indian culture is far deeper and richer than the
Chinese. The theoretical culture includes Reading, Writing, and
Arithmetic; but these are subordinate, as mere means for the higher
activities of Poetry, Speculation, Science, and Art. The practical
education limits itself strictly by the lines of caste, and since the
caste system constitutes a whole in itself, and each for its permanence
needs the others, it cannot forbear giving utterance suggestively to
what is universally human in the free soul, in a multitude of fables
(Hitopadesa) and apothegms (sentences of Bartrihari). Especially for the
education of princes is a minor of the world sketched out.
--Xenophon's Cyropedia is of Greek origin, but it is Indian in its
thought.--