§ 234. The systems of national and theocratic education came to the
same result, though by different ways, and this result is the conception
of a human race in the unity of which the distinctions of different
nations find their Truth. But with them this result is only a
conception, being a thing external to their actuality. They arrive at
the painting of an ideal of the way in which the Messiah shall come. But
these ideals exist only in the mind, and the actual condition of the
people sometimes does not correspond to them at all, and sometimes only
very relatively. The idea of spirit had in these presuppositions the
possibility of its concrete actualization; one individual man must
become conscious of the universality and necessity of the will as being
the very essence of his own freedom, so that all heteronomy should be
cancelled in the autonomy of spirit. Natural individuality appearing as
national determinateness was still acknowledged, but was deprived of its
abstract isolation. The divine authority of the truth of the individual
will is to be recognized, but at the same time freed from its
estrangement towards itself. While Christ was a Jew and obedient to the
divine Law, he knew himself as the universal man who determines himself
to his own destiny; and while only distinguishing God, as subject, from
himself, yet holds fast to the unity of man and God. The system of
humanitarian education began to unfold from this principle, which no
longer accords the highest place to the natural unity of national
individuality, nor to the abstract obedience of the command of God, but
to that freedom of the soul which knows itself to be absolute necessity.
Christ is not a mere ideal of the thought, but is known as a living
member of actual history, whose life, sufferings and death for freedom
form the security as to its absolute justification and truth. The
æsthetic, philosophical, and political ideal are all found in the
universal nature of the Christian ideal, on which account no one of them
appears one-sided in the life of Christ. The principle of Human Freedom
excludes neither art, nor science, nor political feeling.
§ 235. In its conception of man the humanitarian education includes both
the national divisions and the subjection of all men to the divine law,
but it will no longer endure that one should grow into an isolating
exclusiveness, and another into a despotism which includes in it
somewhat of the accidental. But this principle of humanity and human
nature took root so slowly that its presuppositions were repeated within
itself and were really conquered in this reproduction. These stages of
culture were the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant churches, and
education was metamorphosed to suit the formation of each of these.
--For the sake of brevity we would wish to close with these general
definitions; the unfolding of their details is intimately bound up with
the history of politics and of civilization. We shall be contented if we
give correctly the general whole.--
§ 236. Within education we can distinguish three epochs: the monkish,
the chivalric, and that education which is to fit one for civil life.
Each of these endeavored to express all that belonged to humanity as
such; but it was only after the recognition of the moral nature of the
Family, of Labor, of Culture, and of the conscious equal title of all
men to their rights, that this became really possible.