The Special Elements of Education.
§ 51. Education is the development of the theoretical and practical
Reason which is inborn in the human being. Its end is to be accomplished
by the labor which transforms a condition, existent at first only as an
ideal, into a fixed habit, and changes the natural individuality into a
glorified humanity. When the youth stands, so to speak, on his own feet,
he is emancipated from education, and education then finds its limit.
The special elements which may be said to make up education are the
life, the cognition, and the will of man. Without the first, the real
nature of the soul can never be made really to appear; without
cognition, he can have no genuine will--_i.e._, one of which he is
conscious; and without will, no self-assurance, either of life or of
cognition. It must not be forgotten that these three so-called elements
are not to be held apart in the active work of education; for they are
inseparable and continually interwoven the one with the other. But none
the less do they determine their respective consequences, and sometimes
one, sometimes another has the supremacy. In infancy, up to the fifth or
sixth year, the physical development, or mere living, is the main
consideration; the next period, that of childhood, is the time of
acquiring knowledge, in which the child takes possession of the theory
of the world as it is handed down--a tradition of the past, such as man
has made it through his experience and insight; and finally, the period
of youth must pave the way to a practical activity, the character of
which the self-determination of the will must decide.
§ 52. We may, then, divide the elements of Pedagogics into three
sections: (1) the physical, (2) the intellectual, (3) the practical.
(The words "orthobiotics," "didactics," and "pragmatics" might be used
to characterize them.)
Æsthetic training is only an element of the intellectual, as social,
moral, and religious training are elements of the practical. But because
these latter elements relate to external things (affairs of the world),
the name pragmatics, is appropriate. In so far as education touches on
the principles which underlie ethics, politics, and religion, it concurs
with those sciences, but it is distinguished from them in the capacity
which it imparts for solving the problems presented by the others.
The scientific order of topics must be established through the fact that
the earlier, as the more abstract, constitute the condition of their
presupposed end and aim, and the later because the more concrete
constitute the ground of the former, and consequently their final cause,
or the end for which they exist; just as in human beings, life in the
order of time comes before cognition, and cognition before will,
although life really presupposes cognition, and cognition will.