Chapter XIII: Introduction (2)

§ 40. As to punishment, as with all other work in education, it can never be abstractly determined beforehand, but it must be regulated with a view to the individual pupil and his peculiar circumstances. What it shall be, and how and when administered, are problems which call for great ingenuity and tact on the part of the educator. It must never be forgotten that punishments vary in intensity at the will of the educator. He fixes the standard by which they are measured in the child's mind. Whipping is actual physical pain, and an evil in itself to the child. But there are many other punishments which involve no physical pain, and the intensity of which, as felt by the child, varies according to an artificial standard in different schools. "To sit under the clock" was a great punishment in one of our public schools--not that the seat was not perfectly comfortable, but that one was never sent there to sit unless for some grave misdemeanor. The teacher has the matter in his own hands, and it is well to remember this and to grade his punishments with much caution, so as to make all pass for their full value. In some schools even suspension is so common that it does not seem to the pupil a very terrible thing. "Familiarity breeds contempt," and frequency implies familiarity. A punishment seldom resorted to will always seem to the pupil to be severe. As we weaken, and in fact bankrupt, language by an inordinate use of superlatives, so, also, do we weaken any punishment by its frequent repetition. Economy of resources should be always practiced.

§ 41. In general, we might say that, for very young children, corporal punishment is most appropriate; for boys and girls, isolation; and for older youth, something which appeals to the sense of honor.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment implies physical pain. Generally it consists of a whipping, and this is perfectly justifiable in case of persistent defiance of authority, of obstinate carelessness, or of malicious evil-doing, so long or so often as the higher perceptions of the offender are closed against appeal. But it must not be administered too often, or with undue severity. To resort to deprivation of food is cruel. But, while we condemn the false view of seeing in the rod the only panacea for all embarrassing questions of discipline on the teacher's part, we can have no sympathy for the sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child. It is wrong thus to confound self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, for to the average child himself a blow is the most natural form of retribution, and that in which all other efforts at influence at last end. The fully grown man ought, certainly, not to be flogged, for this kind of punishment places him on a level with the child; or, where it is barbarously inflicted, reduces him to the level of the brute, and thus absolutely does degrade him. In English schools the rod is said to be often used; if a pupil of the first class, who is never flogged, is put back into the second, he becomes again subject to flogging. But, even if this be necessary in the schools, it certainly has no proper place in the army and navy.

§ 43. (2) To punish a pupil by isolation is to remove him temporarily from the society of his fellows. The boy or girl thus cut off from companionship, and forced to think only of himself, begins to understand how helpless he is in such a position. Time passes wearily, and he is soon eager to return to the companionship of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow-students.

But to leave a child entirely by himself without any supervision, and perhaps in a dark room, is as wrong as to leave two or three together without supervision. It often happens when they are kept after school by themselves that they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness, and commit the wildest pranks.

§ 44. (3) Shutting children up in this way does not touch their sense of honor, and the punishment is soon forgotten, because it relates only to certain particular phases of their behavior. But it is quite different when the pupil is isolated from his fellows on the ground that by his conduct he has violated the very principles which make civilized society possible, and is, therefore, no longer a proper member of it. This is a punishment which touches his sense of honor, for honor is the recognition of the individual by others as their equal, and by his error, or by his crime, he had forfeited his right to be their equal, their peer, and has thus severed himself from them.

The separation from them is thus only the external form of the real separation which he himself has brought to pass within his soul, and which his wrong-doing has only made clearly visible. This kind of punishment, thus touching the whole character of the youth and not easily forgotten, should be administered with the greatest caution lest a permanent loss of self-respect follow. When we think our wrong-doing to be eternal in its effects, we lose all power of effort for our own improvement.

This sense of honor cannot be developed so well in family life, because in the family the ties of blood make all in a certain sense equal, no matter what may be their conduct. He who has by wrong-doing severed himself from society is still a member of the family, and within its sacred circle is still beloved, though it may be with bitter tears. No matter how wrong he may have been, he still can find there the deepest sympathy, for he is still father, brother, etc. It is in the contact of one family with another that the feeling of honor is first developed, and still more in the contact of the individual with an institution which is not bound to him by any natural ties, but is an organism entirely external to him. Thus, to the child, the school and the school-classes offer a means of development which can never be found in the family.

This fact is often overlooked by those who have the charge of the education of children. No home education, no private tutorship, can take the place of the school as an educational influence. For the first time in his life the child, on being sent to school, finds himself in a community where he is responsible for his own deeds, and where he has no one to shield him. The rights of others for whom he has no special affection are to be respected by him, and his own are to be defended. The knowledge gained at the school is by no means the most valuable acquisition there obtained. It must never be forgotten by the teacher that the school is an institution on an entirely different basis from the family, and that personal attachment is not the principle on which its rule can be rightly based.

§ 45. This gradation of punishment from physical pain, up through occasional isolation, to the touching of the innermost sense of honor is very carefully to be considered, both with regard to the different ages at which they are severally appropriate and to the different discipline which they necessarily produce. Every punishment must, however, be always looked at as a means to some end, and is thus transitory in its nature. The pupil should always be conscious that it is painful to the teacher to punish him. Nothing can be more effectual as a means of cure for the wrong-doer than to perceive in the manner and tone of the voice, in the very delay with which the necessary punishment is administered, that he who punishes also suffers in order that the wrong-doer may be cured of his fault. The principle of vicarious suffering lies at the root of all spiritual healing.

_III.--The Limits of Education._

§ 46. As far as the external form of education is concerned, its limit is reached in the instrumentality of punishment in which we seek to turn the activity which has been employed in a wrong direction into its proper channel, to make the deed positive instead of negative, to substitute for the destructive deed one which shall be in harmony with the constructive forces of society. But education implies its real limits in its definition, which is to build up the individual into theoretical and practical Reason. When this work goes properly on, the authority of the educator, as authority, necessarily loses, every day, some of its force, as the guiding principles come to form a part of the pupil's own character, instead of being super-imposed on him from without through the mediation of the educator. What was authority becomes now advice and example; unreasoning and implicit obedience passes into gratitude and affection. The pupil wears off the rough edges of his crude individuality, which is transfigured, so to speak, into the universality and necessity of Reason, but without losing his identity in the process. Work becomes enjoyment, and Play is found only in a change of activity. The youth takes possession of himself, and may now be left to himself. There are two widely differing views with regard to the limits of education; one lays great stress on the powerlessness of the pupil and the great power of the teacher, and asserts that the teacher must create something out of the pupil.

This view is often seen to have undesirable results, where large numbers are to be educated together. It assumes that each pupil is only "a sample of the lot" on whom the teacher is to affix his stamp, as if they were different pieces of goods from some factory. Thus individuality is destroyed, and all reduced to one level, as in cloisters, barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems to exist. Sometimes it takes the form of a theory which holds that one can at will flog anything into or out of a pupil. This may be called a superstitious belief in the power of education. The opposite extreme may be found in that system which advocates a "severe letting alone," asserting that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the most careful and circumspect education fails of reaching its aim because the inherent nature of the youth has fought against it with such force as to render abortive all opposing efforts. This idea of Pedagogy produces a sort of indifference about means and ends which would leave each individuality to grow as its own instinct and the chance influences of the world might direct. The latter view would, of course, preclude the possibility of any science of education, and make the youth only the sport of blind fate. The comparative power of inherited tendencies and of educational appliances is, however, one which every educator should carefully study. Much careless generalization has been made on this topic, and opinion is too often based upon some one instance where accurate observation of methods and influences have been wanting.

§ 47. Education has necessarily a definite _subjective limit_ in the individuality of the youth, for it can develop in him only that which exists in him as a possibility. It can lead and assist, but it has no power to create. What nature has denied to a man education cannot give him, any more than it can on the other hand annihilate his original gifts, though it may suppress, distort, and measurably destroy them. And yet it is impossible to decide what is the real essence of a man's individuality until he has left behind him the years of growth, because it is not till then that he fully attains conscious possession of himself. Moreover, at this critical time many traits which were supposed to be characteristic may prove themselves not to be so by disappearing, while long-slumbering and unsuspected talents may crop out. Whatever has been forced upon a child, though not in harmony with his individuality, whatever has been driven into him without having been actively accepted by him, or having had a definite relation to his culture--will remain perhaps, but only as an external foreign ornament, only as a parasitic growth which weakens the force of his real nature. But we must distinguish from these little affectations which arise from a misconception of the limits of individuality that effort of imitation which children and young people often exhibit in trying to copy in their own actions those peculiarities which they observe and admire in perfectly-developed persons with whom they may come in contact. They see a reality which corresponds to their own possibility, and the presentiment of a like or a similar attainment stirs them to imitation, although this external imitation may be sometimes disagreeable or ridiculous to the lookers-on. We ought not to censure it too severely, remembering that it springs from a positive striving towards true culture, and needs only to be properly directed, and never to be roughly put down.

§ 48. _The objective limit_ of education consists in the means which can be applied for it. That the capacity for culture should exist is the first condition of success, but it is none the less necessary that it be cultivated. But how much cultivation shall be given to it must depend in very great degree on the means which are practicable, and this will undoubtedly again depend on the worldly possessions and character of the family to which the pupil belongs. If he comes of a cultivated and refined family, he will have a great advantage at the start over his less favored comrades; and, with regard to many of the arts and sciences, this limitation of education is of great significance. But the means alone will not answer. Without natural capacity, all the educational apparatus possible is of no avail. On the other hand, real talent often accomplishes incredible feats with very limited means; and, if the way is only once open, makes of itself a center of attraction which draws to itself as with magnetic power the necessary means. Moral culture is, however, from its very nature, raised above such dependence.

If we fix our thought on the subjective limit--that of individuality (§ 47)--we detect the ground for that indifference which lays little stress on education (§ 46, end). If, on the other hand, we concentrate our attention on the means of culture, we shall perceive the reason of the other extreme spoken of--of that pedagogical despotism (§ 46) which fancies that it is able to prescribe and enforce at will upon the pupil any culture whatever, without regard to his special characteristics.

§ 49. Education comes to its _absolute limit_ when the pupil has apprehended the problem which he is to solve, has comprehended the means which are at his disposal, and has acquired the necessary skill in using them. The true educator seeks to render himself unnecessary by the complete emancipation of the youth. He works always towards the independence of the pupil, and always with the design of withdrawing so soon as he shall have reached this stand-point, and of leaving him to the full responsibility for his own deeds. To endeavor to hold him in the position of a pupil after this time has been reached would be to contradict the very essence of education, which must find its result in the independent maturity of the youth. The inequality which formerly existed between pupil and teacher is now removed, and nothing becomes more oppressive to the former than any endeavor to force upon him the authority from which, in reality, his own efforts have freed him. But the undue hastening of this emancipation is as bad an error as an effort after delay. The question as to whether a person is really ready for independent action--as to whether his education is finished--may be settled in much the same way in education as in politics. When any people has progressed so far as to put the question whether they are ready for freedom, it ceases to be a question; for, without the inner consciousness of freedom itself, the question would never have occurred to them.

§ 50. But, although the pupil may rightly now be freed from the hands of instructors, and no longer obtain his culture through them, it is by no means to be understood that he is not to go on with the work himself. He is now to educate himself. Each must plan out for himself the ideal toward which he must daily strive. In this process of self-transformation a friend may aid by advice and example, but he cannot educate, for the act of educating necessarily implies inequality between teacher and pupil. The human necessity for companionship gives rise to societies of different kinds, in which we may, perhaps, say that there is some approach to educating their members, the necessary inequality being supplied by various grades and orders. They presuppose education in the usual sense of the word, but they wish to bring about an education in a higher sense, and, therefore, they veil the last form of their ideal in mystery and secrecy.

By the term _Philister_ the Germans indicate the man of a civilized state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that any active life, any new progress, is to them impossible?

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY.

§ 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It borrows the results of other sciences [_e.g._, it presupposes the science of Rights, treating of the institutions of the family and civil society, as well as of the State; it presupposes the science of anthropology, in which is treated the relations of the human mind to nature. Nature conditions the development of the individual human being. But the history of the individual and the history of the race presents a continual emancipation from nature, and a continual growth into freedom, _i.e._, into ability to know himself and to realize himself in the world by making the matter and forces of the world his instruments and tools. Anthropology shows us how man as a natural being--_i.e._, as having a body--is limited. There is climate, involving heat and cold and moisture, the seasons of the year, etc.; there is organic growth, involving birth, growth, reproduction, and decay; there is race, involving the limitations of heredity; there is the telluric life of the planet and the circulation of the forces of the solar system, whence arise the processes of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and kindred phenomena; there is the emotional nature of man, involving his feelings, passions, instincts, and desires; then there are the five senses, and their conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and sense-perception to that of self-consciousness, _i.e._, to a recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of the mind, _e.g._, attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception, understanding, judgment, reason, and the like. Psychology is generally made (by English writers) to include, also, what is here called anthropology and phenomenology. After psychology, there is the science of ethics, or of morals and customs; then, the Science of Rights, already mentioned; then, Theology, or the Science of Religion, and, after all these, there is Philosophy, or the Science of Science. Now, it is clear that the Science of Education treats of the process of development, by and through which man, as a merely natural being, becomes spirit, or self-conscious mind; hence, it presupposes all the sciences named, and will be defective if it ignores nature, or mind, or any stage or process of either, especially Anthropology, Phenomenology, Psychology, Ethics, Rights, Æsthetics, or Science of Art and Literature, Religion, or Philosophy].

§ 2. The scope of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as a whole.

§ 3. Moreover, education furnishes a special vocation, that of teaching. (All vocations are specializing--being cut off, as it were, from the total life of man. The "division of labor" requires that each individual shall concentrate his endeavors and be a _part_ of the whole).

§ 4. Pedagogics, as a special science, belongs to the collection of sciences (already described, in commenting on § 1) included under the philosophy of Spirit or Mind, and more particularly to that part of it which relates to the will (ethics and science of rights, rather than to the part relating to the intellect and feeling, as anthropology, phenomenology, psychology, æsthetics, and religion. "Theoretical" relates to the _intellect_, "practical" relates to the _will_, in this philosophy). The province of practical philosophy is the investigation of the nature of freedom, and the process of securing it by self-emancipation from nature. Pedagogics involves the conscious exertion of influence on the part of the will of the teacher upon the will of the pupil, with a purpose in view--that of inducing the pupil to form certain prescribed habits, and adopt prescribed views and inclinations. The entire science of mind (as above shown), is presupposed by the science of education, and must be kept constantly in view as a guiding light. The institution of the _family_ (treated in practical philosophy) is the starting-point of education, and without this institution properly realized, education would find no solid foundation. The right to be educated on the part of children, and the duty to educate on the part of parents, are reciprocal; and there is no family life so poor and rudimentary that it does not furnish the most important elements of education--no matter what the subsequent influence of the school, the vocation, and the state.

§ 5. Pedagogics as science, distinguished from the same as an art: the former containing the abstract general treatment, and the latter taking into consideration all the conditions of concrete individuality, _e.g._, the peculiarities of the teacher and the pupil, and all the local circumstances, and the power of adaptation known as "tact."

§ 6. The special conditions and peculiarities, considered in education as an art, may be formulated and reduced to system, but they should not be introduced as a part of the _science_ of education.

§ 7. Pedagogics has three parts: first, it considers the idea and nature of education, and arrives at its true definition; second, it presents and describes the special provinces into which the entire field of education is divided; third, it considers the historical evolution of education by the human race, and the individual systems of education that have arisen, flourished, and decayed, and their special functions in the life of man.

§ 8. The scope of the first part is easy to define. The history of pedagogics, of course, contains all the ideas or definitions of the nature of education; but it must not for that reason be substituted for the scientific investigation of the nature of education, which alone should constitute this first part (and the history of education be reserved for the third part).

§ 9. The second part includes a discussion of the threefold nature of man as body, intellect, and will. The difficulty in this part of the science is very great, because of its dependence upon other sciences (_e.g._, upon physiology, anthropology, etc.), and because of the temptation to go into details (_e.g._, in the practical department, to consider the endless varieties of schools for arts and trades).

§ 10. The third part contains the exposition of the various national standpoints furnished (in the history of the world) for the bases of particular systems of education. In each of these systems will be found the general idea underlying all education, but it will be found existing under special modifications, which have arisen through its application to the physical, intellectual, and ethical conditions of the people. But we can deduce the essential features of the different systems that may appear in history, for there are only a limited number of systems possible. Each lower form finds itself complemented in some higher form, and its function and purpose then become manifest. The systems of "national" education (_i.e._, Asiatic systems, in which the individuality of each person is swallowed up in the substantiality of the national idea--just as the individual waves get lost in the ocean on whose surface they arise) find their complete explanation in the systems of education that arise in Christianity (the preservation of human life being the object of the nation, it follows that when realized abstractly or exclusively, it absorbs and annuls the mental independence of its subjects, and thus contradicts itself by destroying the essence of what it undertakes to preserve, _i.e._, life (soul, mind); but within Christianity the principle of the state is found so modified that it is consistent with the infinite, untrammelled development of the individual, intellectually and morally, and thus not only life is saved, but spiritual, free life is attainable for each and for all).

§ 11. The history of pedagogy ends with the present system as the latest one. As science sees the future ideally contained in the present, it is bound to comprehend the latest system as a realization (though imperfect) of the ideal system of education. Hence, the system, as scientifically treated in the first part of our work, is the system with which the third part of our work ends.

§ 12. The nature of education, its form, its limits, are now to be investigated. (§§ 13-50.)

§ 13. The nature of education determined by the nature of Mind or Spirit, whose activity is always devoted to realizing for itself what it is potentially--to becoming conscious of its possibilities, and to getting them under the control of its will. Mind is potentially free. Education is the means by which man seeks to realize in man his possibilities (to develop the possibilities of the race in each individual). Hence, education has freedom for its object.

§ 14. Man is the only being capable of education, in the sense above defined, because the only conscious being. He must know himself ideally, and then realize his ideal self, in order to become actually free. The animals not the plants may be _trained_, or _cultivated_, but, as devoid of self-consciousness (even the highest animals not getting above impressions, not reaching ideas, not seizing general or abstract thoughts), they are not realized for _themselves_, but only for us. (That is, they do not know their ideal as we do.)

§ 15. Education, taken in its widest compass, is the education of the human race by Divine Providence.

§ 16. In a narrower sense, education is applied to the shaping of the individual, so that his caprice and arbitrariness shall give place to rational habits and views, in harmony with nature and ethical customs. He must not abuse nature, nor slight the ethical code of his people, nor despise the gifts of Providence (whether for weal or woe), unless he is willing to be crushed in the collision with these more substantial elements.

§ 17. In the narrowest, but most usual application of the term, we understand by "education" the influence of the individual upon the individual, exerted with the object of developing his powers in a conscious and methodical manner, either generally or in special directions, the educator being relatively mature, and exercising authority over the relatively immature pupil. Without authority on the one hand and obedience on the other, education would lack its ethical basis--a neglect of the will-training could not be compensated for by any amount of knowledge or smartness.

§ 18. The general province of education includes the development of the individual into the theoretical and practical reason immanent in him. The definition which limits education to the development of the individual into ethical customs (obedience to morality, social conventionalities, and the laws of the state--Hegel's definition is here referred to: "The object of education is to make men ethical") is not comprehensive enough, because it ignores the side of the _intellect_, and takes note only of the _will_. The individual should not only be man in general (as he is through the adoption of moral and ethical forms--which are _general_ forms, customs, or laws, and thus the forms imposed by the _will_ of the _race_), but he should also be a self-conscious subject, a particular individual (man, through his intellect, exists for himself as an individual, while through his general habits and customs he loses his individuality and spontaneity).

§ 19. Education has a definite object in view and it proceeds by grades of progress toward it. The systematic tendency is essential to all education, properly so called.

§ 20. Division of labor has become requisite in the higher spheres of teaching. The growing multiplicity of branches of knowledge creates the necessity for the specialist as teacher. With this tendency to specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so essential to the pupil--his rounded human culture and symmetry of development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man.

§ 21. From this necessity of the division of labor in modern times there arises the demand for two kinds of educational institutions--those devoted to general education (common schools, colleges, etc.), and special schools (for agriculture, medicine, mechanic arts, etc).

§ 22. The infinite possibility of culture for the individual leaves, of course, his actual accomplishment a mere approximation to a complete education. Born idiots are excluded from the possibility of education, because the lack of universal ideas in their consciousness precludes to that class of unfortunates anything beyond a mere mechanical training.

§ 23. Spirit, or mind, makes its own nature; it _is_ what it produces--a self-result. From this follows the _form_ of education. It commences with (1) undeveloped mind--that of the infant--wherein nearly all is potential, and but little is actualized; (2) its first stage of development is self-estrangement--it is absorbed in the observation of objects around it; (3) but it discovers laws and principles (universality) in external nature, and finally identifies them with reason--it comes to recognize itself in nature--to recognize conscious mind as the creator and preserver of the external world--and thus becomes at home in nature. Education does not create, but it emancipates.

§ 24. This process of self-estrangement and its removal belongs to all culture. The mind must fix its attention upon what is foreign to it, and penetrate its disguise. It will discover its own substance under the seeming alien being. Wonder is the accompaniment of this stage of estrangement. The love of travel and adventure arises from this basis.

§ 25. Labor is distinguished from play: The former concentrates its energies on some object, with the purpose of making it conform to its will and purpose; play occupies itself with its object according to its caprice and arbitrariness, and has no care for the results or products of its activity; work is prescribed by authority, while play is necessarily spontaneous.

§ 26. Work and Play: the distinction between them. In play the child feels that he has entire control over the object with which he is dealing, both in respect to its existence and the object for which it exists. His arbitrary will may change both with perfect impunity, since all depends upon his caprice; he exercises his powers in play according to his natural proclivities, and therein finds scope to develope his own individuality. In work, on the contrary, he must have respect for the object with which he deals. It must be held sacred against his caprice, must not be destroyed nor injured in any way, and its object must likewise be respected. His own personal inclinations must be entirely subordinated, and the business that he is at work upon must be carried forward in accordance with its own ends and aims, and without reference to his own feelings in the matter.

Thus work teaches the pupil the lesson of self-sacrifice (the right of superiority which the general interest possesses over the particular), while play develops his personal idiosyncrasy.

§ 27. Without play, the child would become more and more a machine, and lose all freshness and spontaneity--all originality. Without work, he would develop into a monster of caprice and arbitrariness.

From the fact that man must learn to combine with man, in order that the individual may avail himself of the experience and labors of his fellow-men, self-sacrifice for the sake of combination is the great lesson of life. But as this should be _voluntary_ self-sacrifice, education must train the child equally in the two directions of spontaneity and obedience. The educated man finds recreation in change of work.

§ 28. Education seeks to assimilate its object--to make what was alien and strange to the pupil into something familiar and habitual to him. [The pupil is to attack, one after the other, the foreign realms in the world of nature and man, and conquer them for his own, so that he can be "at home" in them. It is the necessary condition of all growth, all culture, that one widens his own individuality by this conquest of new provinces alien to him. By this the individual transcends the narrow limits of particularity and becomes generic--the individual becomes the species. A good definition of education is this: it is the process by which the individual man elevates himself to the species.]

§ 29. (1) Therefore, the first requirement in education is that the pupil shall acquire the habit of subordinating his likes and dislikes to the attainment of a rational object.

It is necessary that he shall acquire this indifference to his own pleasure, even by employing his powers on that which does not appeal to his interest in the remotest degree.

§ 30. Habit soon makes us familiar with those subjects which seemed so remote from our personal interest, and they become agreeable to us. The objects, too, assume a new interest upon nearer approach, as being useful or injurious to us. That is useful which serves us as a means for the realization of a rational purpose; injurious, if it hinders such realization. It happens that objects are useful in one sense and injurious in another, and _vice versa_. Education must make the pupil capable of deciding on the usefulness of an object, by reference to its effect on his permanent vocation in life.

§ 31. But _good and evil_ are the ethical distinctions which furnish the absolute standard to which to refer the question of the usefulness of objects and actions.

§ 32. (2) Habit is (a) _passive_, or (b) _active_. The passive habit is that which gives us the power to retain our equipoise of mind in the midst of a world of changes (pleasure and pain, grief and joy, etc). The active habit gives us skill, presence of mind, tact in emergencies, etc.

§ 33. (3) Education deals altogether with the formation of habits. For it aims to make some condition or form of activity into a second nature for the pupil. But this involves, also, the breaking up of previous habits. This power to break up habits, as well as to form them, is necessary to the freedom of the individual.

§ 34. Education deals with these complementary relations (antitheses): (a) authority and obedience; (b) rationality (_general_ forms) and individuality; (c) work and play; (d) habit (general custom) and spontaneity. The development and reconciliation of these opposite sides in the pupil's character, so that they become his second nature, removes the phase of constraint which at first accompanies the formal inculcation of rules, and the performance of prescribed tasks. The freedom of the pupil is the ultimate object to be kept in view, but a too early use of freedom may work injury to the pupil. To remove a pupil from all temptation would be to remove possibilities of growth in strength to resist it; on the other hand, to expose him needlessly to temptation is fiendish.

§ 35. Deformities of character in the pupil should be carefully traced back to their origin, so that they may be explained by their history. Only by comprehending the historic growth of an organic defect are we able to prescribe the best remedies.

§ 36. If the negative behavior of the pupil (his bad behavior) results from ignorance due to his own neglect, or to his wilfulness, it should be met directly by an act of authority on the part of the teacher (and without an appeal to reason). An appeal should be made to the understanding of the pupil only when he is somewhat mature, or shows by his repetition of the offence that his proclivity is deep-seated, and requires an array of all good influences to reinforce his feeble resolutions to amend.

§ 37. Reproof, accompanied by threats of punishment, is apt to degenerate into scolding.

§ 38. After the failure of other means, punishment should be resorted to. Inasmuch as the punishment should be for the purpose of making the pupil realize that it is the consequence of his deed returning on himself, it should always be administered for some particular act of his, and this should be specified. The "overt act" is the only thing which a man can be held accountable for in a court of justice; although it is true that the harboring of evil thoughts or intentions is a sin, yet it is not a crime until realized in an overt act.

§ 40. Punishment should be regulated, not by abstract rules, but in view of the particular case and its attending circumstances.

§ 41. Sex and age of pupil should be regarded in prescribing the mode and degree of punishment. Corporal punishment is best for pupils who are very immature in mind; when they are more developed they may be punished by any imposed restraint upon their free wills which will isolate them from the ordinary routine followed by their fellow-pupils. (Deprivation of the right to do as others do is a wholesome species of punishment for those old or mature enough to feel its effects, for it tends to secure respect for the regular tasks by elevating them to the rank of rights and privileges.) For young men and women, the punishment should be of a kind that is based on a sense of honor.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment should be properly administered by means of the rod, subduing wilful defiance by the application of force.

§ 48. (2) Isolation makes the pupil realize a sense of his dependence upon human society, and upon the expression of this dependence by coöperation in the common tasks. Pupils should not be shut up in a dark room, nor removed from the personal supervision of the teacher. (To shut up two or more in a room without supervision is not isolation, but association; only it is association for mischief, and not for study.)

§ 44. (3) Punishment based on the sense of honor may or may not be based on isolation. It implies a state of maturity on the part of the pupil. Through his offence the pupil has destroyed his equality with his fellows, and has in reality, in his inmost nature, isolated himself from them. Corporal punishment is external, but it may be accompanied with a keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and have no external discomfort attached to it.

§ 45. The necessity of carefully adapting the punishment to the age and maturity of the pupil, renders it the most difficult part of the teacher's duties. It is essential that the air and manner of the teacher who punishes should be that of one who acts from a sense of painful duty, and not from any delight in being the cause of suffering. Not personal likes and dislikes, but the rational necessity which is over teacher and pupil alike, causes the infliction of pain on the pupil.

§ 46. Punishment is the final topic to be considered under the head of "Form of Education."

In the act of punishment the teacher abandons the legitimate province of education, which seeks to make the pupil rational or obedient to what is reasonable, as a habit, and from his own free will. The pupil is punished in order that he may be _made_ to conform to the rational, by the application of constraint. Another will is substituted for the pupil's, and good behavior is produced, but not by the pupil's free act. While education finds a negative limit in punishment, it finds a positive limit in the accomplishment of its legitimate object, which is the emancipation of the pupil from the state of imbecility, as regards mental and moral self-control, into the ability to direct himself rationally. When the pupil has acquired the discipline which enables him to direct his studies properly, and to control his inclinations in such a manner as to pursue his work regularly, the teacher is no longer needed for him--he becomes his own teacher.

There may be two extreme views on this subject--the one tending towards the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil, even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the prosecution of further study.

§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to be found in the individuality of the pupil--the limit to his natural capacity.

§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.

§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see § 46), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a necessary instrumentality for further culture.

§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done, but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute" limit--_i.e._, has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of the experience of his fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience--this common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a great measure impossible.

ERRATA.

§ 26. Last two paragraphs should be within quotation marks, being from an English author.

§ 29. The second and third paragraphs belong to § 30.--the numbering being omitted.

§ 33. Line four--"instructive" should be "intuitive."

SECOND PART.

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.

FIRST DIVISION.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION, OR ORTHOBIOTICS.

§ 53. Only when we rightly comprehend the process of life may we know how to live aright. Life, the "circle of eternal change," is constantly transforming the inorganic into the organic, and after using it, returning it again to the realm of the inorganic. Whatever it does not assimilate of that which it has taken in simply as a stimulant, and whatever has become dead, it separates from itself and rejects. The organism is in perfect health when it accomplishes this double task of organizing and disorganizing. On the comprehension of this single fact all laws of physical health or of hygiene are based. This idea of the essence of life is expressed by Goethe in his Faust, where he sees the golden buckets perpetually rising and sinking.[13] When the equilibrium of the upward and downward motion is disturbed, we have disease. When the motion ceases we have death, in which the whole organism becomes inorganic, and the "dust returns to dust."

§ 54. It follows from this that not only in the organism as a whole, but in every organ, and every part of every organ, this restless change of the inorganic to the organic is going on. Every cell has its own history, and this history is only the same as that of the whole of which it forms a part. Activity is then not inimical to the organism, but is the appointed means by which the progressive and retrogressive metamorphoses must be carried out. In order that the process may go on harmoniously, or, in other words, that the body may be healthy, the whole organism, and every part of it in its own way, must have its period of productive activity and then also its period of rest in which it finds renewal of strength for another period of activity. Thus we have waking and sleep, inspiration and expiration of air. Periodicity is the law of life. When we understand the relative antagonism (their stage of tension) of the different organs, and their cycles of activity, we shall hold the secret of the constant self-renewal of life. This thought finds expression in the old fairy stories of "The Search after the Fountain of Youth." And the figure of the fountain, with its rising and falling waters, doubtless finds its origin in the dim comprehension of the endless double movement, or periodicity of life.

§ 55. When to any organ, or to the whole organism, not sufficient time is allowed for it to withdraw into itself and to repair waste, we are conscious of fatigue. While the other organs all rest, however, one special organ may, as if separated from them, sustain a long-continued effort of activity even to the point of fatigue, without injury--as, _e.g._, the lungs in talking while all the other members are at rest. But, on the other hand, it is not well to talk and run at the same time.

The idea that the body may be preserved in a healthy state longer by sparing it--_i.e._, by inactivity--is an error which springs from a false and mechanical conception of life. It is just as foolish to imagine that health depends on the abundance and excellence of food, for without the power of assimilating the food taken, nourishment of whatever kind does more harm than good; all real strength develops from activity alone.

§ 56. Physical education, according as it relates to the repairing, the muscular, or the emotional activities, is divided into (1) diatetics, (2) gymnastics, (3) sexual education. In the direct activity of life these all interact with each other, but for our purposes we are obliged to speak of them as if they worked independently. Moreover, in the development of the human being, they come into maturity of development in a certain order: nutrition, muscular growth, sexual maturity. But Pedagogics can treat of these only as they are found in the infant, the child, and the youth; for with the arrival of mature life, education is over.

FIRST CHAPTER.

_Diatetics._

§ 57. By diatetics we mean the art of repairing the constant waste of the system, and, in childhood, of also building it up to its full form and size. Since in reality each organism has its own way of doing this, the diatetical practice must vary somewhat with sex, age, temperament, occupation, and circumstances. The science of Pedagogics has then, in this department, only to enunciate general principles. If we go into details, we fall into triviality. Nothing can be of more importance for the whole life than the way in which the physical education is managed in the very first stages of development. So generally is this fact accepted, that almost every nation has its own distinct system, which has been carefully elaborated. Many of these systems, no doubt, are characterized by gross errors, and widely differ as to time, place, and character, and yet they all have a justification for their peculiar form.

§ 58. The best food for the infant in the first months of its life is its mother's milk. The employment of another nurse, if a general custom, as in France, is highly objectionable, since with the milk the child is likely to imbibe to some extent his physical and ethical nature. The milk of an animal can never supply the place to a child of that of its own mother. In Walter Scott's story of _The Fair Maid of Perth_, Eachim is represented as timorous by nature, having been nourished by a white doe after the death of his mother.

§ 59. When the teeth make their appearance, it is a sign that the child is ready for solid food; and yet, till the second teeth appear, light, half-solid food and vegetables should constitute the principal part of the diet.

§ 60. When the second teeth have come, then the organism demands both vegetable and animal food. Too much meat is, doubtless, harmful. But it is an error to suppose that man was intended to eat vegetables alone, and that, as some have said, the adoption of animal food is a sign of his degeneracy.

The Hindoos, who live principally on a vegetable diet, are not at all, as has been asserted, a mild and gentle race. A glance into their stories, especially their erotic poetry, proves them to be quite as passionate as any other people.

§ 61. Man is an omnivorous being. Children have, therefore, a natural desire to taste of every thing. With them, eating and drinking have still a poetic side, and there is a pleasure in them which is not wholly the mere pleasure of taste. Their proclivity to taste of every thing should not, therefore, be harshly censured, unless it is associated with disobedience, or pursued in a clandestine manner, or when it betrays cunning and greediness.

§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are growing and changing so fast. In later years, waking and sleeping must be regulated, and yet not too exactly.