§ 196. That education which would emancipate a nation from the passivity
of abstraction must throw it into the midst of an historical activity. A
nation finds not its actual limits in its locality: it can forsake this
and wander far away from it. Its true limit is made by another nation.
The nation which knows itself to be actual, turns itself therefore
against other nations in order to subject them and to reduce them to the
condition of mere accidents of itself. It begins a system of conquest
which has in itself no limitations, but goes from one nation to another,
and extends its evil course indefinitely. The final result of this
attack is that it finds itself attacked and conquered.
--The early history of the Persian is twofold: the patriarchal in the
high valleys of Iran, and the religio-hierarchical among the Medes. We
find under these circumstances a repetition of the principal
characteristics of the Chinese, Indian, and Buddhist educations. In
ancient Zend there were also castes. Among the Persians themselves, as
they descended from their mountains to the conquest of other nations,
there was properly only a military nobility. The priesthood was
subjected to the royal power which represented the absolute power of
actuality. Of the Persian kings, Cyrus attacked Western Asia; Cambyses,
Africa; Darius and Xerxes, Europe; until the reaction of the spiritually
higher nationality did not content itself with self-preservation, but
under the Macedonian Alexander made the attack on Persia itself.--
§ 197. Education enjoined upon the Persians (1) to speak the truth; (2)
to learn to ride and to use the bow and arrow. There is implied in the
first command a recognition of actuality, the negation of all dreamy
absorption, of all fantastical indetermination; and in this light the
Persian, in distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and
reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike practice, but not
that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights on horseback, and thus
appears in distinction from the Indian hermit seclusion and the quietism
of the Lamas as restless and in constant motion.
--The Family increases in value as it rears a large number of warriors.
Many children were a blessing. The king of Persia gave a premium for all
children over a certain number. Nations were drawn in as nations by war;
hence the immense multitude of a Persian army. Everything--family,
business, possessions--must be regardlessly sacrificed to the one aim of
war. Education, therefore, cultivated an unconditional, all-embracing
obedience to the king, and the slightest inclination to assert an
individual independence was high treason and was punished with death. In
China, on the contrary, duty to the family is paramount to duty to the
state, or rather is itself duty to the state. The civil officer who
mourns the loss of one of his family is released during the period of
mourning from the duties of his function.--
§ 198. The theoretical education, which was limited to reading, writing,
and to instruction, was, in the usages of culture, in the hands of the
Magians, the number of whom was estimated at eighty thousand, and who
themselves had enjoyed the advantages of a careful education, as is
shown by their gradation into Herbeds, Moheds, and Destur-Moheds; i.e.
into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. The very fundamental idea of
their religion was military; it demanded of men to fight on the side of
the king of light, and guard against the prince of darkness and evil. It
gave to him thus the honor of a free position between the world-moving
powers and the possibility of a self-creative destiny, by which means
vigor and chivalrous feeling were developed. Religion trained the
activity of man into actualization on this planet, increasing by its
means the dominion of the good, by purifying the water, by planting
trees, by extirpating troublesome wild beasts. Thus it increased bodily
comfort, and no longer, like the monk, treated this as a mere negative.