liEGEiis Educational Ide4s 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap. Copyright No... 
 
 Shelt-ti-l-3g 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
HEGEL'S 
 
 Educational Ideas 
 
 ^, 
 
 WILLIAM M. BRYANT, M. A., LL.D. 
 
 Instructor in Psychology and Ethics, St. Louis Normal and High 
 School. Author of " The World-Energy and Its Self-Conserva ° 
 tion;" " Ihe Philosophy of I andscape Painting ; " "Syl- 
 labus of Psychology ; " Syllabus of Ethics," Etc., Etc. 
 
 , AUG '^01896 
 
 WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 
 
u^ 
 
 (^\ 
 
 Copyright, 1896, 
 By William M. Bryant. 
 
 Educational Ideas. 
 
 "Mo... 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Preliminary View 15 
 
 II. Hegel's Personality and Envi- 
 ronment 25 
 
 III. General Educational View Im- 
 
 plied IN THE Hegelian System 32 
 
 IV. "From the Simple to the Com- 
 
 plex " 44 
 
 V. " The Ages OF Man" 52 
 
 VI. General Notion of Education . 'j-j 
 
 VII. Instruction— Its Character . 89 
 
 VIII. Instruction— Its Process ... 93 
 IX. Instruction — Its Means— A. 
 
 Language no 
 
 X. Instruction— Its Means— B. 
 
 Form 157 
 
 XI. Instruction— Its Means— C. 
 
 The Study of Process ... 171 
 
 XII. Instruction— Its Method . . 183 
 
 XIII. Discipline 187 
 
 XIV. Refinement 200 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The concept at the heart of the science 
 current at the present day is expressed in 
 the word ** Evolution." So far as it refers 
 directly to the inorganic world, this con- 
 cept takes shape in the expressions : " Con- 
 servation of Energy " and " Correlation of 
 Forces." As applied to the organic king- 
 dom, the same concept assumes the aspect 
 indicated by the phrase '' Natural Selec- 
 tion." 
 
 Thus far the science of the day has to 
 do chiefly with those processes — i. e., con- 
 crete relations — which are unfolded in and 
 through forms occupying space. These 
 forms, acting directly upon the sense-or- 
 gans, appeal immediately to the sensuous 
 consciousness. In the main, therefore, 
 scientific works within this sphere consist 
 of vivid and presumably precise descrip- 
 tions of phenomena. Not infrequently 
 apology is offered for adding to the de- 
 5 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 scription serious discussion of the '' ab- 
 stract " principles involved in the phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the idea of evolu- 
 tion has so generally appeared in merely 
 implicit rather than explicit or actually 
 reasoned-out form, in treatises that have 
 passed as '* scientific," this very fact has 
 not been without its compensation. There 
 has indeed been positive advantage in the 
 pictorial and dogmatic form in which this 
 central feature in the thought of the time 
 has been so generally presented. As pic 
 torial it has appealed directly to the im- 
 agination. As dogmatically expressed, it 
 has appealed to the element of faith inhe- 
 rent in the human mind. Thus it has 
 rapidly made its way into general recogni- 
 tion and acceptance. 
 
 The pedagogical intimations contained 
 in all this are of the greatest value ; and 
 we are now in full swing of the attempt to 
 possess ourselves of that value. So eager 
 have we been in this attempt, besides, 
 that many of us are even now but just be- 
 
Preface. J 
 
 ginning to suspect the gravity of the dan- 
 gers it involves. The aspects of the world 
 appealing to the sensuous consciousness 
 have exercised such fascination upon us 
 that for the time being the reflective con- 
 sciousness has been held in abeyance — 
 maintained in a state of comparative '' in- 
 hibition." We have thus unawares actu- 
 ally been delivering ourselves over to the 
 relatively rudimentary phase of conscious- 
 ness as to an infallible guide, and neglect- 
 ing the cultivation of the more adequate 
 phase consisting of the reflective conscious- 
 ness. This, too, on the assumption that 
 somehow the latter must inevitably land 
 us in the limbo of hopeless contradictions. 
 Yet the divine instinct of Reason in us 
 is not wholly to be suppressed ; and its 
 protest against the attempt to impale 
 thought upon the microscropist's needle, 
 and by the magic of some new X-ray 
 power compel the non-extended to as- 
 sume sensuously visible form, has at 
 length taken the special direction of seri- 
 ous psychological research. From our 
 
8 Preface. 
 
 exuberant contemplation of material forms 
 we are turning with increasing evidence 
 of anxiety to the consideration of mental 
 modes. 
 
 But even this instinctive struggle illus- 
 trates in most impressive fashion the spell 
 under which the mind of the time is still 
 more or less completely bound. Ignoring 
 the fact that mind can be known by mind 
 alone, and be known alone to mind, we 
 have been assured that a "new" psychol- 
 ogy has taken the place of the " old ;" 
 that the true psychology consists in a 
 mass of " truths " attained through a study 
 of the nervous system ; in short, we have 
 been asked, with much show of serious- 
 ness, to accept a ** psychology without 
 the psyche." 
 
 By degrees, however, we are beginning 
 to recognize that only the workings of an 
 actual psyche could give rise even to such 
 '' psychology ;" and so, grateful for the nu- 
 merous, and often helpful, clews the '* new 
 psychology " affords us, we are beginning 
 to brace ourselves to the really serious 
 
Preface. 9 
 
 task of studying mind as Mind — mind in 
 its essential, universal, typical nature. 
 
 Most helpful of all the clews of which 
 modern science has emphasized the value, 
 indeed, is this : that spiritual as well as phy- 
 sical ^Reality can be known only through 
 its appearance — which in truth is not so 
 far from saying with Spinoza, that "at- 
 tributes are what constitute the essence 
 of Substance." So that if we are really to 
 know mind, we must observe mind itself. 
 
 But this throws us back upon the pro- 
 cesses of mind as involved in the ac- 
 tual normal development of mind. In 
 other words, it refers us to the whole pro- 
 cess of education in its widest sense, as 
 involving the essential facts to be co-ordi- 
 nated and given accurate valuation in any 
 really vital psychology. And the recipro- 
 cal of this is that if we would really com- 
 prehend the true significance of education, 
 whether in respect of its aim or of its 
 means or of its method, we must be guided 
 
 * And it may turn out that the latter is only an 
 aspect of the former. 
 
lo Preface. 
 
 in our study by the principles of a sound 
 psychology. 
 
 Clearly then the study of Natural Sci- 
 ence forces us forward to the study of 
 psychology; while the study of psychol- 
 ogy necessarily leads us on to thoroughly 
 re-examine education as constituting in its 
 total range the positive process in which 
 the phenomena of mind may be traced, 
 not only in their essential, vital relation to 
 each other, but also in their actual con- 
 crete evolution. In other words, we are 
 driven to consider the total, universal na- 
 ture of mind, both in its inner and in its 
 outer phases. And this again necessarily 
 involves the study of all the essential as- 
 pects of relation into which the individual 
 mind can enter with other things. 
 
 Finally, when this survey has been com- 
 pleted, it is discovered that Education is 
 the process of developing the individual 
 mind through bringing it into ever increas- 
 ingly complex actual — and that means 
 conscious — relation with the total World 
 or Universe, as the expression of the one 
 
Preface. 1 1 
 
 ultimate Reason or primal Cause of all, 
 including the individual mind itself. 
 
 Throughout this whole research, as we 
 may now observe, there is at every step 
 increasingly imperative need of safe guid- 
 ance. Such safe guidance, again, is to be 
 found only in the organically unfolded 
 thought of the world (universe), as ex- 
 pressed in the teachings of the great sys- 
 tematizers who have marked the great 
 epochs in the evolution of human intelli- 
 gence. Among these, Aristotle in ancient 
 times, and Hegel in modern times, have 
 presented the most comprehensive and 
 consistent systematizations of human 
 thought. 
 
 Like Aristotle, Hegel has been rejected 
 by the impatient, and despised by the 
 thoughtless. Nevertheless the truth re- 
 mains, that whoever would set Aristotle 
 or Hegel or any other great thinker aside 
 as " antiquated," must first master such 
 thinker's total thought, and show its im- 
 perfections. Otherwise he but exposes 
 his own emptiness and conceit. 
 
1 2 Preface > 
 
 Thus the great and growing interest of 
 the present day in mind, and in education 
 as the process of the normal unfolding of 
 mind, is inevitably referring us to the great 
 thinkers for stimulus and guidance in our 
 task of deepening and revising our knowl- 
 edge of what mind essentially is, as well 
 as of the true mode of its development. 
 In this deeply significant and promising 
 movement thoughtful minds are gravitat- 
 ing more and more definitely toward He- 
 gel as the one who thus far has presented 
 in clearest and most adequate form the 
 true philosophic ground of all science and 
 of all educational work, rightly so called. 
 And if we are, as it were, predestined to 
 go to school to him, it is because he obe- 
 diently went to school to all the world, 
 and learned from them the central clew to 
 the actual evolution of the thought of the 
 race as progressively reflecting the thought 
 of the eternal Mind, which again consti- 
 tutes the absolute law of the development 
 of the individual human mind. 
 
 The following essay is an attempt to in- 
 
Preface. 1 3 
 
 terpret Hegel's theory with direct refer- 
 ence to the educational needs of our own 
 time. It is believed that this theory will 
 be found to justify whatever is really good 
 in the " New Education," and also to fur- 
 nish adequate ground for the rejection of 
 whatever it presents of the spurious and 
 merely novel. 
 
 We may add, finally, that Hegel is not 
 properly to be looked upon as a competi- 
 tor with Pestalozzi and Froebel and Her- 
 bart for the honors of educational leader- 
 ship. Rather he presents in his system of 
 philosophy as a whole a universal scheme 
 of education in which each of these great 
 reformers finds his proper place and due 
 relation. If this scheme is not found in 
 the present essay, the fault must be cred- 
 ited to the present writer. 
 
 I am indebted to my son. Max Miiller 
 Bryant, for valuable assistance in reading 
 the proof. 
 
HEGEL'S 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS. 
 
 I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY VIEW 
 
 It is a matter of frequent remark that 
 Hegel was one of those fortunate indi- 
 viduals who come to be born " in the full- 
 ness of time." He lived at the culmi- 
 nation of a great epoch in the spiritual 
 history of mankind. 
 
 In the sixteenth century Luther had 
 given articulate expression to the univer- 
 sal sense of protest against the demand 
 for unreasoning submission to mere au- 
 thority in morals and religion. In the 
 seventeenth century Descartes gave utter- 
 ance to the same spirit of protest, though 
 by him the protest was directed against 
 unreasoning submission to mere authority 
 15 
 
1 6 HegeVs Educatiojial Ideas. 
 
 within the realm of speculative science. 
 In the eighteenth century the rising spirit 
 of Individualism gradually assumed politi- 
 cal form, and at length burst forth in the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 In the mind of Locke this principle had 
 developed, not so much in the form of a 
 universal principle applicable to all men 
 alike, as in the form of a staid, respectable 
 self-assertion appropriate to a member of 
 a cultivated English household.^ Rous- 
 seau, while borrowing from Locke, yet 
 wrenched the idea of individualistic right 
 and individual destiny completely free 
 from the limitations of the mild form in 
 which Locke had rendered it familiar to 
 the English-speaking people, and with 
 fierce energy proclaimed it as the central 
 characteristic native in every man. 
 
 It was thus that Rousseau came at once 
 to be recognized as the apostle of the rev- 
 olutionary spirit, and that he proved to 
 be the actual and specially appropriate 
 
 * Cf. Erdmann, Historv of PJnlosophy (Trans. Wil- 
 liston S. Hough), II., no. 
 
Preiimi'nary View. 17 
 
 prophet of the Revolution. If, as he 
 taught, individual man is already good 
 when he comes from the hand of nature, 
 and is only ruined by Society, then, as an 
 individual, man has the right to turn upon 
 and destroy Society. 
 
 Such reckless intellectualism has its off- 
 set in the devoutly ethical, but still essen- 
 tially individualistic, spirit of Kant, who 
 summed up the whole of philosophy in its 
 practical import in the declaration that, 
 in all the world there is nothing good 
 ''except a good will."* But also, it is im- 
 portant to remember that, by a *' good 
 will," he meant not the mere individual 
 will, as it comes directly from the hand of 
 nature (Rousseau's view), but rather the 
 individual will, enlightened and discip- 
 lined through the practical unfolding of 
 its normal social relations in the full range 
 of all their normal aspects. 
 
 Let us note now that all these elements, 
 revolutionary and restraining, were already 
 
 ^ Kant's Theory of Ethics (Trans. Abbott), 4tb 
 ed., p. 9. 
 2 
 
HegeVs Edncatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 in full swing of seething ferment when, in 
 1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 
 was ushered into individual existence in 
 this world of ours. Such storm-brewing 
 atmosphere he breathed from his infancy. 
 As a youth he witnessed the bursting of 
 the storm, and felt through his whole be- 
 ing the awakening force of the shock. In 
 his maturer years he saw the full measure 
 of destructiveness involved in the unre- 
 strained fury of the mere crude natural 
 individualism of Rousseau. It was thus 
 that he was led to penetrate to the deep- 
 est secret of that transfigured individual- 
 ism which never emerges into fullness of 
 definition save in the character of a sec- 
 ond birth. And this spiritual regenera- 
 tion in turn is possible in no other way 
 than through conscious and deliberate 
 self-restraint within the limits of a rational 
 social organization. 
 
 Naturally enough, the youthful Hegel, 
 like the youthful Goethe, was dazzled by 
 the splendor of the Titan, Napoleon. 
 Even as late as 1806 he refers to him as 
 
Preliminary View. 19 
 
 " this World-Soul."^ On the other hand 
 the mature Hegel, like the mature Goethe, 
 turned resolutely away from the Titan, 
 and paid his deeper homage to the actual 
 Divinity, which he more and more clearly 
 saw to be struggling into ever richer de- 
 grees of self-realization in humanity as a 
 whole, and also in each individual member 
 of the race. 
 
 Such may serve as a hint in explanation 
 of the fact that the writings of Hegel 
 are everywhere so strikingly pervaded with 
 the calmly reasoned assurance of the di- 
 vine nature of man as genuine individual 
 Person. Equally, too, does the inevita- 
 ble inference, that because of this divine 
 nature man as individual is immortal and 
 weighted with an infinite destiny, appear 
 as the fundamental tone in every line. 
 
 Thus Hegel may rightly be regarded as 
 the representative of absolute Individual- 
 ism, in which the individual human soul 
 is seen as at once the vibrant focus of all 
 divine influences, and as the infinitely pro- 
 
 *Thaulovv, HegeT s Ansichten, III., 165. 
 
20 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 phetic germ of all divine qualities, and 
 hence, as the central object of interest in 
 all the universe, so far as the universe is 
 viewed as a process of evolution from 
 lower to higher forms. 
 
 Hence, also, the whole of the Hegelian 
 system is the absolute denial of exclusive 
 right on the part of any '' royal " person- 
 aee to declare of himself, " I am the state," 
 because the whole of that system is the 
 absolute declaration of right on the part 
 of each and every member of the Jiuinan 
 race to make and verify that declaration 
 of and for himself. 
 
 And because Right and Duty are but 
 obverse aspects of one and the same rela- 
 tion, it is equally the duty of each and 
 every member of the race to practically 
 assert the organic oneness of the State 
 Avith himself. For true Royalty inheres 
 in every human being ; a Royalty bearing 
 within it the inalienable, because divine. 
 Right to all the conditions, negative and 
 positive, needful for his own complete 
 self-unfolding. 
 
Preliminary View. 21 
 
 Such, in brief, may be taken as a pre- 
 liminary intimation of the central practi- 
 cal characteristic of the Hegelian philoso- 
 phy. And because this in turn is but the 
 summarizing and fusing into organic unity 
 of all the vital results of the entire ferment 
 of the spirit of Individualism in its deep- 
 est import, Hegel may be called in respect 
 of this, as long ago he was called in respect 
 of the whole field of speculative thought : 
 " the Harvester " — the one who had only to 
 gather, and arrange in bundles, and store, 
 the ripened fruit of other men's labors. 
 
 *'Only!" His wisdom was nothing 
 more than that of selection, and arrange- 
 ment, and discovery of vital relations, and 
 bringing to view of essential values, and 
 showing, as had never been shown before, 
 that the world is one infinite organic 
 Whole, whose inner creative principle is 
 absolute, eternal Mind, and whose outer 
 form is but the manifestation of that Mind 
 — such manifestation culminating in con- 
 scious units identical in nature with that 
 Mind. That is all. 
 
22 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 In fact, it is just this view that the world 
 is the product of Mind and cuhninates 
 in mind that constitutes the real clew to 
 Hegel's educational principles ; and equal- 
 ly it is this that explains how it happens 
 that throughout Hegel's writings are found 
 everywhere references to educational needs 
 and conditions and appliances ; so much so 
 that one may very well conclude that 
 every word Hegel deemed worth the 
 trouble of recording was set down because 
 to him it pointed the way to the education 
 of man in the sense of the unfolding of 
 the divine nature in each individual man. 
 
 It would even lead us to suspect that 
 Hegel intended his whole system to find 
 its practical culmination in the systematic 
 exposition of the fundamental principles 
 underlying the aims, the means and the 
 methods of Education. And in fact, a 
 letter from Hegel to Niethammer indicates 
 his intention of writing out what he sig- 
 nificantly calls a Staatspddogogik; that is, 
 a science of Education in which education 
 is viewed as on the one side, a function of 
 
Preliminary Vieiu. 23 
 
 the social organism, and on the other, as 
 the individual's own development through 
 his reactions upon the whole round of the 
 institutional life in which he is involved.* 
 
 Nor can we doubt that, as Thaulow 
 confidently believes,f Hegel would have 
 carried out this design but for the sudden 
 termination of his life, while yet in the 
 full vigor of his mental power. 
 
 In the following essay, I shall attempt 
 to present, in as clear, connected and con- 
 cise a form as possible, what I conceive to 
 have been Hegel's educational ideas, as 
 these appear by way of seemingly inci- 
 dental remark and illustration scattered 
 throughout his various works ; and I shall 
 also endeavor to show how, when brought 
 together, these occasional notes of his on 
 the subject of education simply expand 
 into detailed form the central idea of the 
 human mind in the normal process of its 
 own development — the idea which, as al- 
 ready indicated, constitutes the practical, 
 
 * Cf. Rosenkranz : HegeT s Leben, p. 254, 
 f HegeVs Ansichten, III., 5. 
 
24 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 living core of Hegel's whole system of 
 philosophy. It need hardly be added that 
 what I shall have to say must of course 
 assume, in large measure, the character of 
 interpretation. How far the interpreta- 
 tion is faithful to the original the critical 
 reader will judge for himself. 
 
 Before entering upon this, however, it 
 will be well to bring before our minds, 
 though it be ever so briefly, Hegel's own 
 personality. 
 
Ht\^cl's Personality and Environment. 25 
 
 II. 
 
 HEGEL'S PERSONALITY AND ENVIRON- 
 MENT. 
 
 Already in the sixteenth century the 
 Protestant ferment forced upon the ances- 
 tors of Hegel the choice between convic- 
 tion and comfort — between inward peace 
 coupled with outward struggle on the one 
 hand, and outward calm, with inward un- 
 rest, on the other. The choice was in 
 favor of the deeper conviction of Right ; 
 and this involved the breaking up of es- 
 tablished associations and the entering 
 into new relations, the emigration from 
 Catholic Austria into Protestant Schwabia. 
 
 Lying in a valley, but commanding an 
 extended view, is the capital city, Stutt- 
 gart. Here, on the 27th of August, 1770, 
 was born the child who was to become the 
 philosopher in whose educational ideas we 
 are now centering our interest. 
 
 Everywhere man is more or less dis- 
 tinctly the child of Mother Earth; and 
 
26 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 the Schwabian character has a pecuHarity 
 of texture due to the Schwabian land. So 
 that Rosenkranz' reference to Hegel's 
 '' ticfcn dcht Schwdbischen, Innigkcit,'''^ to 
 his deep, genuine Schwabian Internality, 
 or tendency to serious reflection, is by no 
 means merely a figure of speech. 
 
 Similarly, on the other hand, there can 
 be no doubt that the passing of his early 
 life in the city which constituted, not only 
 the focus of all the interests of Schwabia, 
 but also one of the foci of the more gen- 
 eral interests of Protestant Germany, 
 served as an offset to the revery-inviting 
 quiet of the beautiful mountain-bordered 
 valley, and stimulated the mind of the 
 gifted boy to inquire into the secrets of 
 the currents of human interest that were 
 ceaselessly mingling in the life of the 
 town. And this the more as the employ- 
 ment of his father in the public service 
 brought the family into direct and varied 
 relation with many persons of high official 
 rank — persons constituting the immediate 
 
 * HcgeVs Leben, p. 5. 
 
Hegel's Personality and Environment. 27 
 
 embodiment of actual current public in- 
 terests. 
 
 Under these circumstances it was but 
 natural that there should develop in such 
 a mind as that of the youthful Hegel an 
 "all-sided attentiveness," amounting to a 
 special alertness as toward every sort of 
 aim and activity. Nor was it less natural 
 that through his native " Schwabian inter- 
 nality " this all-sided attentiveness should 
 deepen into a lively desire for systema- 
 tized knowledge along every line of in- 
 quiry open to the human mind. 
 
 Neither can we doubt that the clerical 
 precision and formal finish of the official 
 life with which he was surrounded during 
 his early years impressed him deeply ; and 
 so much so as to account in part for the I 
 pains-taking, methodical way in which 
 throughout his whole life he pursued his 
 studies. Especially would this seem to be 
 the case in respect of his voluminous note- 
 books. Nor does it seem unreasonable to 
 suppose also that this entered as a subor- 
 dinate but appreciable factor into his high 
 
28 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 estimate of formal finish and methodical 
 completeness and consistency in the work- 
 ing out of the details of his System of 
 Philosophy. However this may be, the 
 fact is beyond dispute that Hegel is, above 
 \ everything else, just the systematizer of 
 human knowledge. 
 
 In this respect he is the man whose 
 work, more than that of any other in the 
 history of human thought, is rich in its 
 suggestiveness for the teacher. For it is 
 the teacher above all others, to whom, as 
 such, Method is the very breath of life. 
 And this because it is of the very essence 
 of the daily life of the teacher to bring 
 other minds to a consciousness of the true 
 method of TJiinking as the process of the 
 inner definition of life, and of Doings as 
 the process of its outer definition. 
 
 Eager, yet methodical, enthusiastic, yet 
 self-contained and logical, Hegel very 
 early proved himself to be a representa- 
 tive at once of the spirit of the highly 
 sophisticated eighteenth century *' En- 
 lightenment " and of the buoyant spirit of 
 
HegeVs Personality and Environment. 29 
 
 classical antiquity. Awake in the Present 
 he was also awake to the Past. So that 
 from the outset his instinct of methodical 
 completeness, stimulated as we have seen, / 
 forced him forward to read the Past in the 
 light of the Present, and to interpret the 
 Present as the normal fruit of the Past. 
 The very conditions of his own mental 
 evolution led him on by a logical necessity 
 to the unfolding of his own famous '' his- 
 torical method," and hence to the speedy 
 transcending of the over-confident spirit 
 of the Ajifkldriing, 
 
 Thus his school-days were occupied, not 
 with mere mechanical conning and recit- 
 ing of prescribed lessons. Rather the 
 most significant picture presented to us in 
 those days is that of Hegel, alone in his 
 private room, working with quiet, unre- 
 mitting intensity over books iiot assigned 
 as text. These were by no means books 
 of *' light literature." They were such 
 books as the Psalms, the Iliad, Cicero's 
 Letters, Euripides, Aristotle's Ethics, the 
 CEdipus of Sophocles, Epictetus, Thucy- 
 
30 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 dides ; besides modern works in history, 
 mathematics, science, art, criticism, phil- 
 osophy and theology. From all of which 
 he made careful and extended extracts. 
 
 Throughout all this, too, there was the 
 gathering force of the prophetic instinct 
 that was at length to unfold into such 
 marvelously symmetrical and richly varied 
 realization in the form of explicit and sus- 
 tained thought. 
 
 For our present purpose, too, it is of es- 
 pecial moment to notice that even so early 
 as his fourteenth year the central signifi- 
 cance of education was already dawning 
 upon him ; so that from that time forward 
 he collected in his note-books significant 
 sayings of various authors upon this theme, 
 and more and more recorded his own 
 ever-deepening reflections. 
 
 Thus, though we have no separate work 
 upon education from the hand of Hegel, 
 yet reflections upon the subject as gath- 
 ered out of his works by Thaulow and pub- 
 lished in 1853-54 cover some thousand 
 closely printed pages ! 
 
HegeVs Pe7'S07iality and Ejivironment. 31 
 
 To all which we must add the further 
 remark that the divided and helpless state 
 of Germany, during the earlier part of 
 Hegel's active life, could not but have the 
 effect of throwing him back upon and in- 
 tensifying his native reflectiveness or 
 ** Schwabian internality," and in this indi- 
 rect way could not but prove a really strong 
 factor in his wonderfully thorough-going 
 analysis of the possibilities and ultimate 
 significance of the individual life in its 
 subtler spiritual aspects. Such analysis, 
 besides, could not fail to deepen and clar- 
 ify his conviction as to the supreme signifi- 
 cance of education. And as a matter of 
 fact we do find him expressing himself upon 
 this subject in that troublous period in the 
 following positive terms: '^ The importance 
 of a good education was never more mani- 
 fest than under the conditions of our time. 
 The inner treasure which parents give 
 their children through a good education 
 and through the use of institutions of 
 learning are indestructible and retain their 
 worth under all conditions."* 
 
 * From an Address of Hegel's. 
 
HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 III. 
 
 GENERAL EDUCATIONAL VIEW IMPLIED 
 IN THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 Of course no pretense can here be made 
 to outline the system of philosophy devel- 
 oped by Hegel. At best we can do no 
 more than indicate its central aim. The 
 system itself is an organic whole, no part 
 of which can really be comprehended save 
 with reference to the whole. 
 
 The first draught of the system was 
 struck out at a white heat in the " Phen- 
 omenology of Mind,'' a volume of about 
 six hundred pages. After more fully elab- 
 orating the system, at a later period, Hegel 
 undertook its condensation (while still pre- 
 serving its now explicitly differentiated as- 
 pects) into a compass manageable by stu- 
 dents. The result was the ^' E.ncyclopcEdia " 
 in three volumes — {a) the Logic, {b) the 
 Philosophy of Nature, (r) the Philosophy 
 of Mind — amounting in all to fifteen hun- 
 dred pages. 
 
General Educational View. 33 
 
 {a) The Logic presents the system of 
 thoitgJit as such. That is, it presents in 
 systematic arrangement the fundamental 
 categories of Reason, beginning with the 
 simplest, and showing by the famous 
 ''dialectical method" how, from its very 
 nature, mind cannot rest in such simple, 
 vacuous forms ; but by its own inherent 
 energy necessarily unfolds into ever richer 
 phases of consciousness until it reaches the 
 idea of an eternally self-contained, self- 
 conscious, self-active Energy, which, by 
 that fact, is an eternally self-realizing, and 
 therefore infinitely creative. Mind. 
 
 {p) The Philosophy of Nature is the in- 
 terpretation of the phenomena of tJie 02iter 
 IV or Id of nature, on the one hand, as con- 
 stituting nothing else than the infinitely 
 manifold forms in which that creative En- 
 ergy forever manifests itself ; and on the 
 other, as leading up to and culminating in 
 that subtle complex of physical energy in 
 which consists the human body — the 
 medium in and through which the human 
 soul emerges into conscious being. 
 3 
 
 y 
 
34 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 (c) The PJiilosopJiy of Mind is the inter- 
 pretation of the phenomena of the imier 
 world of mind. It traces the evolution of 
 the human mind through its merely natural 
 qualities — that is, the qualities determined 
 through external, natural influences — finds 
 it emerging into individualized form as 
 *' feeling soul," and again unfolding into 
 the ** actual soul," which already begins to 
 distinguish itself from its embodiment, 
 and to command the latter, and thus al- 
 ready to give to it a significance properly 
 described as ideal. Thus man stands erect, 
 not because it is physiologically " natural " 
 for him to do so, but only because he wills 
 the upright attitude. 
 
 But this is only initial. The Philosophy 
 of Mind traces further the fundamental 
 forms of eo7iseiotisness, emphasizing espec- 
 ially the contrast between the merely sejt- 
 siioiis consciousness, on the one hand, and 
 on the other, ^^//'-consciousness, which, in 
 its highest term, is the thinking conscious- 
 ness, or Reason. 
 
 Following this a summary of Psychology 
 
Ge)ie?'al Educational View. 35 
 
 closes the treatment of the '' Subjective 
 Mind;" i. e., Mind as self-related mdi- 
 vidiial. 
 
 But this necessarily implies an objective 
 aspect of mind ; that is, it implies the out- 
 ward manifestation of mind whose inner 
 or subjective characteristics have thus far 
 been considered. It is the consideration 
 of mind in this phase which gives rise to 
 the estimation of the practical relations 
 into which the individual mind enters, and 
 to the very brief summarizing of what 
 Hegel presents more fully in his PJiilo- 
 sopJiy of Right — that is, ethics from the 
 objective or '' practical " point of view. 
 
 The last thirty pages indicate the vari- 
 ous aspects of *' Absolute Mind," or Spirit. 
 By which Hegel means the universal, ideal 
 forms or degrees in which the human mind 
 realizes its highest characteristics and finds 
 its purest satisfaction. These forms are 
 (i) Art, to which Hegel elsewhere devotes 
 three volumes ; (2) Religion, to which he 
 gives two volumes, and (3) Philosophy, to 
 which he devoted his life, and to which 
 
36 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 the whole of his works, in eighteen vol- 
 umes, are his amazingly rich contribution. 
 Hegel's Logic is a search for the eternal 
 forms of Reason. His Philosophy of Na- 
 ture is an attempt to trace these abiding 
 forms as in eternal process of manifesta- 
 tion in the eternally vanishing forms and 
 phases of the outer world. His Philo- 
 sophy of Mind indicates the way by which 
 the human soul *' struggles upward out of 
 nature into spirituality.""^ 
 
 In the Hegelian system of Philosophy, 
 then, there is presented a reasoned, articu- 
 lated account of the total organic round 
 of Evolution, f The Logic culminates in 
 a glimpse of the Eternal Mind, whose ab- 
 solute Internality is focused in God. In 
 the Philosophy of Nature this same ab- 
 solute, divine Internality is seen unfolding 
 its creative energy into the form of that 
 infinite Externality which we call Nature. 
 
 * Werke, X2., 120. 
 
 f It is Hegel, and not Darwin, nor yet Herbert 
 Spencer who is the real author of the modern doc- 
 trine of evolution. 
 
General Educational View. 37 
 
 In the Philosophy of Mind we see the same 
 infinite creative Energy again gathering 
 itself into foci, constituting human souls — 
 units characterized by the same absolute 
 Internality as that which constitutes the 
 central, vital element of the Eternal crea- 
 tive Energy or Mind itself. 
 
 Nature is the outer form of the divine 
 Thought, and apart from that Thought it 
 is nothing. The return of this Thought to 
 its own native Internality in the form of 
 a self-conscious unit is the process of the 
 creation of a human soul. Man is madei 
 in the image and likeness of Divinity, for \ 
 he is Divinity awaking out of the sleep of 
 infinitely self-expanded being. And as the 
 expansion is infinite, so the concentration 
 of Return is infinite, assuring to the indi- 
 vidual soul an infinite destiny, consisting 
 of endless progress in self-realization, one 
 essential phase of which must be an ever- 
 deepening consciousness of its own God- 
 likeness. If nature is God's omnipresence, 
 in the sense of his infinitely diffused being, 
 the human soul is God's omnipresence, in 
 
38 Hegel's Ediicatio)ial Ideas. 
 
 the sense of his infinitely concentered 
 being. 
 
 To aid the individual soul in fulfilling 
 this destiny — to aid it in freeing itself from 
 its own capricious tendencies, and in con- 
 forming to the divine Type or Ideal Na- 
 ture common to all spiritual beings — such 
 is the central aim of all true educational 
 effort. Indeed, Hegel expressly says :"" 
 '' With the school begins the life of uni- 
 versal regulation, according to a rule ap- 
 plicable to all alike. For the individual 
 spirit or mind must be brought to the put- 
 ting away of its own peculiarities, must be 
 brought to the knowing and willing of 
 what is universal, must be brought to the 
 acceptance of that general culture which 
 is immediately at hand " — at hand, that is, 
 in the organized social life around him. 
 
 Evidently, then, in the Hegelian view, 
 man is in truth the inicrocosin,\ and it is in 
 
 ^Werke, VI 1 2., 82. 
 
 fit is to be wished, in this connection, that every 
 thoughtful teacher might be induced to read Lotze's 
 great work, the Microcostmis. It has been translated 
 by Elizabeth Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones. 
 
General Educational View. 39 
 
 this manner that we are henceforth to re- 
 gard him. He is the Cosmos in miniature. 
 As such he is in vital relation alike to Na- 
 ture, to Society, and to God. And because 
 of these phases of relationship involved in 
 the life of each individual human being, it 
 is evident that his education can rightly be 
 developed only on condition that in the 
 process of his education all these conditions 
 determining his life shall betaken into con- 
 sideration, and freely allowed full measure 
 of efificiency, each in its own specific way. 
 But it is also important to keep clearly 
 in view the fact that Nature is only the 
 infinitely extended outer form of the in- 
 finitely concentered inner mind of the Cre- 
 ator. As such, Nature is not merely 
 something opposed to Mind, it is also and 
 especially only one aspect of Mind. It is 
 Mind reduced to its lowest terms. And 
 the condensation of Nebulae into stars and 
 suns, and their attendant spheres, and the 
 further gathering of Energy into crystal- 
 line forms, and again into microscopic 
 spheres, palpitating with the first pre- 
 
40 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 monitions of individualized life — all this 
 constitutes the way of return from infi- 
 nitely expanded unconscious being to con- 
 centered conscious existence, the highest 
 term of which is that self-directed activity 
 which specially characterizes Man, and 
 proves him to be the actual, endlessly as- 
 cending descendant of the primal, eternal 
 Mind. It is on this ground that each in- 
 dividual human being has infinite and in- 
 alienable Rights. "■ Man is by nature ra- 
 tional ; therein lies the possibility of 
 equality of the rights of all men."* 
 
 But thus all men are identical in nature 
 — are of the one self-same divine Type. 
 And because the type is divine, and there- 
 fore infinite, and because the type can be 
 completely fulfilled only in the individual, 
 then each individual has an infinite des- 
 tiny, and hence a destiny which ultimately 
 is one and the same with that of every 
 other. The Brotherhood of Man has its 
 absolute assurance of unquestionable truth 
 in the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 * Werke, VIl2.,65. 
 
General Educational Viciu. 41 
 
 Hence, each can aid every other, and be 
 aided by every other. Humanity consti- 
 tutes a divine Family, the ideal of which 
 is that each shall work for the good of all, 
 and precisely in so doing shall secure to 
 himself the greatest good. And as the 
 greatest good is continuous and normal 
 inner growth, or growth of mind, and as 
 it is just this growth which constitutes the 
 essence of all true education, it is evident 
 that the education of the individual in- 
 cludes in the full round of its indispensa- 
 ble appliances the whole range of those 
 human relations which constitute the or- 
 ganic determining substance of the social 
 or institutional world. 
 
 Association, then, is a primal law of the 
 very nature of Man. As Aristotle insisted, 
 '* Man is by nature a social being." And 
 to Hegel this truth is of still deeper im- 
 port than appears in the form in which it 
 presented itself to the great Greek. 
 
 But thus the social factor in the educa- 
 tion of Man is of still more vital import- 
 ance than is the factor consisting of his 
 
42 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 relation to Nature. In fact, the realiza- 
 tion of man's destiny — the actual develop- 
 ment of his education — is impossible, save 
 through mutual helpfulness. Hence, all 
 the forms of social life, all human insti- 
 tutions, have each its specific educational 
 value. And when we remind ourselves 
 that education is but the process of un- 
 folding the divine Type into realized form 
 in the individual human being, and that 
 that Type has for its central characteristic 
 self-activity or Freedom, we can see how 
 all-comprehending is the statement of He- 
 gel, that *' History is nothing else than 
 progress in the consciousness of Free- 
 dom,"* and why Rosenkranz should say 
 explicitly that '' Hegel represents History 
 as the education of Man through God."f 
 
 And further, since Freedom or Self-ac- 
 tivity is the supreme quality in and through 
 which we recognize the oneness in nature 
 of Man with Divinity, it would appear 
 
 * Wcrke, IX., 24 {Philosophy of History, Bohn lib. 
 Trans. Sibree, p. 19.) 
 \ Hegel s Leben, p. 9. 
 
General Educational View. 43 
 
 that the consciousness of Freedom cannot 
 be rightly unfolded save in so far as the 
 educational processes intended to secure 
 this result include explicit and systematic 
 reference to the fundamental relation sus- 
 tained by man to God. 
 
 Thus the education of the individual 
 human being can be really complete in 
 any given degree only by being at once 
 physical, social and religious. 
 
44 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 IV. 
 
 *' FROM THE SIMPLE TO THE COMPLEX." 
 
 The first word in the most thoroughly 
 orthodox articles of modern educational 
 faith is this of the necessary law of ad- 
 vance " from the simple to the complex." 
 It will be worth our while to see what in- 
 terpretation Hegel's philosophic theory 
 suggests for this assumed law. 
 
 Even so meagre an intimation as that 
 already given will serve to show how abso- 
 lutely the three-fold idea of Unity in Sub- 
 stance, Completeness of Energy, and Con- 
 sistency of Process dominates in Hegel's 
 view of the world. And this again is only 
 a deepening of Aristotle's conception of 
 Cause as {a) Material Cause (Substance), 
 {b) Formal Cause (Self-defining Energy) 
 and {c) Efficient Cause (actual concrete 
 Process). And further; Cause cannot be 
 real, save as the completly fused unity of 
 these three aspects. And being this it is 
 
''From the Simple to the Co)?ip/ex." 45 
 
 also Final Cause — that is, the perfect and 
 perpetual fulfilment of the absolute de- 
 mands of Reason. 
 
 Herein, too, is the one thoroughly ad- 
 equate ground of the doctrine of Evolu- 
 tion. Self-active Energy or Mind appears 
 as the primal, self-differentiating Sub- 
 stance. Such primal Mind cannot be con- 
 ceived save {a) as Energy or Will ; {b) as 
 self - directing Energy or Intelligence ; 
 {c) as self-sufficing Intelligence or Sub- 
 stance ; {d) as self-satisfying Energy, or 
 absolute repose in absolute activity. To 
 which we must add that absolute activity 
 cannot have less than absolute result. A 
 perfect Creator necessarily implies a per- 
 fect Creation — and vice versa. 
 
 The infinite exercise or forth-putting of 
 this Energy is in the first place the crea- 
 tion of the extended or material world. 
 But this infinite forth-putting or self-ex- 
 pansion of the primal Energy is at the 
 same time its infinite self-concentration or 
 coming together with itself. As infinite 
 Energy its act is infinite. Looked at 
 
4-6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 from one side the result of this act must 
 be infinite self-differentiation, or infinite 
 self-analysis. But this is only one aspect 
 of the process, the complementary aspect 
 of which can be nothing less than infinite 
 self-integration or self-synthesis. 
 
 In fact we cannot guard ourselves too 
 carefully against supposing that differenti- 
 ation and integration are ever found or 
 findable in actual separation. In the heart- 
 beat of the Universe systole and diastole 
 are coincident. Both the outflow into the 
 form of the extended world of Matter and 
 the inflow into the non-extended world of 
 Mind are incessant, and the *' heart- 
 period " is the eternal Now of divine Per- 
 fection. 
 
 But also either aspect of the process 
 looked at separately — i. e., abstractly — pre- 
 sents a definite order of succession ; and 
 thus gives rise to time, which is but the 
 form of succession. As we come to com- 
 prehend the process and recognize it as 
 working toward a definite end we call it 
 '' history" or ''evolution," and proceed to 
 
"Fro7n the Simple to the Complex." 47 
 
 record our observations of and reflections 
 upon the process. 
 
 The records thus far made constitute 
 what is called " Science " — the cumula- \ 
 tive results of the knowing process of hu- 
 manity. Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, 
 Chemistry — these are the divisions of the 
 one total " Universal History " within that 
 elementary stage which has to do with the 
 forms and processes of the outer material 
 world as such. At the same time Chemis- 
 try involves " organic compounds," and 
 thus introduces us to the secondary stage 
 of our *' Universal History " which leads 
 through Biology to Human Physiology; 
 and this in turn proves to be the transition 
 form in which we are already introduced 
 to the final or Human stage. 
 
 And all this is not merely important, it 
 is altogether essential to the right under- 
 standing of the end, the means and the 
 method of education. If man would com- 
 prehend his actual destiny, and the true 
 mode of fulfilling that destiny, he must 
 know what he is in his own essential na- 
 
48 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 ture. And this he can rightly know only 
 through discovering the way in which he 
 has come to be what he is. Man studies 
 
 I Nature only because he sees himself re- 
 flected in Nature. He seeks to know the 
 World only because from the dawn of his 
 existence he has been prompted by the in- 
 extinguishable premonition that the world 
 is only his own larger self. The '' Know 
 Thyself" of the Delphic Apollo is no out- 
 wardly given command. " It is nothing 
 
 I else than the inborn, absolute Law of 
 Mind. All activity of Mind is, therefore, 
 only a seizure of one's own self ; and the 
 end of all true science is only this : that the 
 spirit of man shall recognize itself in all 
 things, whether in the Heavens or upon 
 the Earth."^ 
 
 First of all, indeed, education consists in a 
 ^ theoretical process — viz: the process of dis- 
 covery that the World is a world of Reason. 
 But it is also, and equally, the practical pro- 
 cess of progressive self-adjustment to that 
 World. And this self-adjustment, let us 
 * Hegel's Werkc, VII2., 4. 
 
''From the Simple to the Complex.'' 49 
 
 repeat, has a three-fold significance. It is 
 the process of self-adaptation {a) to Natjire 
 as the necessary condition of man's phys- 
 ical life ; (^) to human Institutions as the 
 necessary condition of realizing man's eth- 
 ical life ; and {c) to the Eternal Mind as 
 the primal condition of the whole life of 
 man, and especially of his religious life. 
 
 Evidently, then, in Hegel's view, the 
 process from the simple to the complex is 
 meaningless, save as the complement of 
 the process from the complex to the sim- 
 ple. Accepting which it is easy to see 
 that in educational discussions the phrase, 
 '' from the simple to the complex " is only 
 too often used in merely one-sided fash- 
 ion, and thus, at best, with only superficial 
 meaning. 
 
 Meanwhile the educator, as such, is un- 
 der absolute obligation to know the ulti- 
 mate, infinitely complex typical nature to 
 the realization of which, by virtue of his 
 ofifice, he pledges himself to guide the 
 child. It is, in fact, only in comparison 
 with this ultimate, infinitely complex typi- 
 4 
 
50 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 cal nature that he can hope to judge cor- 
 rectly of " simphcity " in all, or even in 
 any, of its endlessly varying degrees, 
 whether in ends, or in means, or in methods, 
 in his work. 
 
 In this connection we may quote He- 
 gel's express declaration that •* The con- 
 sideration of mind is only then, in truth, 
 philosophical or rational, when it recog- 
 nizes the idea or notion {Bcgriff) of the 
 same in its living development and actual- 
 ization ; in other words, when it compre- 
 hends the [human] mind as an image of 
 the eternal Idea [or divine Mind]."* And 
 it is further worth our while to remind 
 ourselves that Hegel elsewhere defines 
 philosophy as ''the thinking consideration 
 of things, "f in which sense every teacher 
 
 * Werke, VI 1 2.. 3. 
 
 f Werke, VI., 4. Of course Hegel uses the word 
 thinking {denkende) in its really serious sense of the 
 most careful tracing out of relations, and this per- 
 sisted in until a reasoned whole is reached. The mere 
 idle reflection, so often called thinking, Hegel would 
 rather regard as a sort of traiimerei, or aimless, va- 
 pory dreaming. 
 
''From the Simple to the Complex." 51 
 
 ought assuredly to be an ever-growing 
 ^' philosopher," And the more thought- 
 fully the interests of education are consid- 
 ered, the more unquestionable it appears 
 that the formula, " from the simple to the 
 complex," only suggests an infinite pro- 
 gressive series, each term of which, from 
 one point of view, may and must be re- 
 garded as '' simple," and from the oppo- , 
 site point of view, must equally be looked 
 upon as '' complex." And this complexity 
 of simplicity and sirjiplicity of complexity 
 must be kept constantly in view by every 
 teacher who would prove himself worthy 
 of his high calling. For only on this con- 
 dition can he judge rightly of the adapta- 
 tion of means to ends, and of the relative 
 values of ends in his work. 
 
 And now let us note the significance of 
 this evolutional clew with reference to the 
 development of each individual mind. 
 
52 Head's Educational Ideas. 
 
 V. 
 
 ''THE AGES OF MAN." 
 
 With Hegel the existence of the race 
 is presupposed in the existence of the in- 
 dividual Man, just as the existence of Na- 
 ture is presupposed in the existence of the 
 race, as again the existence of God is pre- 
 supposed in all, as the primal cause of all. 
 Not only is it true that man inherits his 
 spiritual nature from Divinity ; he also 
 derives \\\s physical nature, his organism, 
 wot from the material world, but through 
 the material world, from God ; always re- 
 membering that the material world itself 
 is nothing else than a mode of the divine 
 Energy. In the fact that man possesses 
 an outward form as the expression of his 
 inward being, he is rightly said to be made 
 in the image of God, whose outer being 
 fills infinite space. And in the fact that, 
 as man, his inner being is mind, he is made 
 
" The Ages of Man:' 53 
 
 in the likeness of God, whose inner being 
 is also Mind. God is perfect Mind. Man 
 is Mind strugghng toward perfection. 
 
 Nature is thus the outward form of the 
 Revelation of Divinity to Man, as Man 
 himself is the inner form of that revela- 
 tion. So that Nature proves to be of 
 two-fold significance in education. On 
 the one hand it is of significance for the 
 reason that it constitutes the immediate 
 determining condition of the outer physi- 
 cal life of Man. It is this that constitutes 
 the so-called practical import of Nature. 
 On the other hand, the manifold aspects 
 of Reason involved in Nature, and con- 
 stituting the simpler modes of the eternal 
 Mind, have always appealed to the deeper 
 reason of Man ; and, accordingly, the in- 
 terpretation of Nature in terms of Mind 
 has from the beginning been one of the 
 most significant of all the factors in the 
 gradual education of the race. The be- 
 ginnings of this interpretation were made 
 through the phantasy in the form of myth ; 
 the revised and matured forms are un- 
 
54 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 folded through reflection and speculative 
 reason, and constitute what is called sci- 
 ence. 
 
 In respect of this two-fold significance 
 of Nature, few treatises can be found 
 equal to Hegel's AiitJiropology'^ in direct, 
 and in the deeper sense, practical sugges- 
 tiveness, for the teacher. Not only does 
 he show there in terse form and with fairly 
 unerring precision the great, fundamental 
 determining influences due to distribution 
 of land and water, and to the conforma- 
 tion of the land, and how these have pre- 
 determined the destinies of primitive races 
 and nations ; but with a marvelous keen- 
 ness of vision which nothing seemed to es- 
 cape, he indicates the progress made by 
 men of different races in the power to read 
 aright the Sybiline books of nature. f 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, it will be impossible 
 to enter much into details. We can only 
 note that the clew to the explanation and 
 
 * Werke, VII2., 46-249. 
 
 f This latter phase is developed more extendedly 
 in the Philosophie der Religion. 
 
" The Ages of Man." 55 
 
 correction of superstition in all its forms 
 is indicated, following which clew one can 
 trace the stages through which mankind 
 have advanced fromi the various forms of 
 superstitious interpretation of Nature to a 
 right understanding and more or less ade- 
 quate comprehension of its various aspects 
 — i. e., from the mythical to the scientific 
 view. 
 
 So long and so far as the things of the 
 outer world were impenetrable to his vis- 
 ion, man bowed in fear before them. As 
 nature became transparent to his view, he 
 beheld God the Spirit as its substance and 
 soul ; and his worship became a worship 
 of joy and love. The breath of God's 
 spirit is the creation of Worlds ; the breath 
 of the spirit of man is the creation of 
 words ; as man saw and understood the 
 coming and going of worlds, his own 
 breath came and went with quickened in- 
 tensity and firmer coherence, and his soul 
 breathed thoughts and his thoughts con- 
 densed into words and the words blended 
 into song. It is such rythmic outbreathing 
 
56 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 of the soul that constitutes Literature and 
 Art of every form and every degree. 
 
 The lower animals have voices also ; 
 but the symbolism of the voice, as also that 
 
 \ of color, all this belongs to mind articu- 
 late^ and this exists for man alone. And 
 the spontaneous symbolizing process in- 
 volved in sensuous perception on the part 
 of man, constitutes the intellectual root of 
 that wonder, with which, as already no- 
 ticed, all human knowing begins, and 
 which, therefore, all real success in educa- 
 tion necessarily implies. 
 
 Evidently, then, it is the business of the 
 
 I teacher, not to suppress curiosity or won- 
 der — that is, interest — nor yet merely to 
 indulge it, but rather to guide it and di- 
 rect it upon worthy objects. And in or- 
 der to do this, the teacher must know the 
 limitations of the child. And to really 
 knoiv these limitations, he must know them 
 first of all with reference to the universal 
 Type of Mind, and also as being absolute- 
 ly protean in character. So far from be- 
 ing fixed once for all, they are infinitely 
 
" The Ages of Maji" 57 
 
 variable, to-day vanishing and to-morrow 
 reappearing in other and subtler forms. 
 The task which yesterday taxed his strength 
 to the utmost, so that the sense of contra- 
 diction between what was demanded and 
 what could be accomplished amounted to 
 nothing less than poignant suffering, is to- 
 day performed with exuberance and even 
 with scorn that any one should count it 
 difficult. The problem with which he 
 struggles desparingly to-day he will play 
 with to-morrow, and smile a rainbow of 
 triumph through the vapor of vanishing 
 tears. The ''impossible" means only the 
 " deferred." 
 
 Endlessly elusive as all this must ever 
 be for the teacher, there must nevertheless 
 be no illusion in his mind concerning the 
 nature of what, in any given instance, con- 
 stitutes the actual difficulty in which the 
 individual child-mind is involved. Rather 
 it is for the teacher to know the whole 
 process through which the child must 
 pass — to knov^' that process in its general 
 character, and to know it also in its de- 
 
58 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 tails and so be able to render real service 
 to the child at every crisis in his progress. 
 
 Thus education, as Hegel explicitly de- 
 scribes it, is essentially a process of " me- 
 diation,"^ of the reconciliation of what at 
 first appear as opposing or even contradic- 
 tory elements in the child's mind ; and 
 thus, at every step, it is the process of 
 raising the consciousness of the child to a 
 higher power, to a richer, more positive 
 unity. Whence we may note the neces- 
 sary inference that the office of the teach- 
 er is essentially mediatorial. If the priest 
 is ex officio a teacher, so also the teacher 
 is ex officio a priest. And it is high time 
 that this fundamental character of the 
 function of the teacher were better under- 
 stood and appreciated. 
 
 But this brings us to notice, in the next 
 place, that the first (and least concrete) 
 specific formula of the evolutional process 
 through which the child must pass — mainly 
 under the guidance of the teacher— in its 
 attainment of maturity, is that of the so- 
 * ^t-ry^^, VI.,135. 
 
" The Ages of Man.'' 59 
 
 called '' ages of man ; " that is, the several 
 periods of childhood, youth, maturity and 
 old age in the life of the individual. In 
 which connection it is extremely interest- 
 ing to see how Hegel traces the forms and 
 relations of the inorganic world over into 
 the realm of the organic ; and how again 
 he shows the relation between the individ- 
 ual and the species within the limits of the 
 simple sphere of the organic — the individ- 
 ual organism completing serially the round 
 of characteristics pertaining to the species 
 only to die at length and thus to leave the 
 species as a mere abstraction. But also, 
 in its failure ever to express at one and 
 the same moment within itself more than 
 a single phase of the significance of the 
 species of which it is the '' realization," the 
 individual is itself also fated never to es- 
 cape wholly from the ghostly realm of ab- 
 straction. The individual never wholly 
 includes the species, nor does the species 
 ever wholly include the individual. Each 
 excludes even while it includes the other. 
 Such the contradictory character of the 
 
6o Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 merely organic world. On the other hand 
 it is in the realm of mind, properly speak- 
 ing, that the species finds itself fully real- 
 ized. For in this realm the individual, 
 through self-consciousness, comes to in- 
 clude the species in itself ; and thus death 
 is subordinated to life in the individual 
 and hence proves to be only the form of 
 transition to a more adequate degree of 
 individual existence. 
 
 But here, also, the initial point of viciv is 
 simply" anthropological ; " that is, it takes 
 account of man chiefly as a *' natural " be- 
 ing, or as a mere product of nature. Thus 
 regarded, he is subject to natural changes, 
 and therefore still falls within the limits of 
 Time as the form of change. Hence arises 
 a series of distinct states through which 
 the individual as such passes — states which, 
 so far from being fixed, prove their fluid 
 nature by merging the one into the other ; 
 a fact which shows the life of the individ- 
 ual to have a wider and subtler signifi- 
 cance than pertains to the life of a race or 
 of a nation as such. It is this series of 
 
The Ages of Man.'' 6i 
 
 clearly marked states or conditions that 
 constitutes what has already been indicated 
 as the course of the *' ages of man." 
 
 Even from the merely anthropological 
 point of view, this succession of periods is 
 of deep practical interest to the teacher; 
 for on the one hand the child is not merely 
 a soul, but an embodied soul ; and on the 
 other hand the body of the child is not 
 merely an animal, but also the organ of a 
 developing mind. So that the study of 
 man as animal can never be adequately 
 pursued, save in so far as it is pursued 
 with reference to the mental functions 
 which the body, as organ, is fitted to serve. 
 
 In fact, the complete separation of the 
 anthropological from the psychological 
 and the ethical point of view is quite im- 
 possible, and the consideration of the char- 
 acteristics of the later are inevitably more 
 or less anticipated in the analysis of the 
 earlier. For what, in the living or organic 
 being as such, constitutes nothing more 
 than the simple quality of the species, 
 shows itself in the spiritual being as noth- 
 
62 HegeVs Edticat zonal Ideas. 
 
 ing less than the characteristic of rational- 
 ity. 
 
 It is this rationality that constitutes the 
 central point of interest even in the initial 
 anthropological stage. *' The age of in- 
 
 I fancy is the period of natural harmony, of 
 simple contentedness on the part of the 
 * subject' [or individual mind] with itself 
 and with the world. It is thus the begin- 
 ning in which contradiction has not yet 
 
 j arisen ; as the period of old age is the end 
 from which opposition has ceased." What- 
 ever oppositions appear in infantile life 
 are without interest, since they are super- 
 ficial and fail to penetrate to the inner be- 
 ing of the individual. '' The child lives in 
 innocence, without lasting grief, in love 
 for his parents and in the feeling of being 
 loved by them." And yet the germ is 
 here of all that is to follow. 
 
 For this reason '' this immediate, and 
 hence non-spiritual, merely natural unity 
 of the individual with his species and with 
 the world in general must be broken np^ 
 The individual must progress to the point 
 
" The Ages of Man." 63 
 
 of putting himself in direct opposition to 
 the actually existing world about him. 
 For thus alone can he take the first step in 
 the attainment of his own independence. 
 It is this that specially characterizes j^?////. 
 
 True, this opposition is altogether one- 
 sided, and in turn must also be overcome. 
 The individual must recognize that the 
 actually existing order of the world is it- 
 self the immediate, practically unfolded 
 form of Reason, to which he must con- 
 form, if he would realize his own indi- 
 vidual existence. 
 
 Arrived at this point the youth has 
 become a man. 
 
 Old age, finally, is the simple return to a 
 state of indifference to affairs, and presents 
 no point of positive interest in an educa- 
 tional sense. 
 
 {a) But upon this important aspect of the 
 subject we must enter a little more into 
 detail. 
 
 And here the first thing we have to 
 notice is that the age of infancy is charac- 
 terized especially as the period of bodily 
 
64 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 grozvtJi ; and above all, as we may add, of 
 the growth of the brain as the more imme- 
 diate organ of individualized life. Such 
 individualized life begins with breathing — 
 that special rhythmic practical relation, 
 positive and negative, to the outer world, 
 consisting in inspiration and expiration of 
 the enveloping medium. Immediately con- 
 nected with this is vocalization — a cry, 
 which, regulated and articulated, at length 
 becomes speech. 
 
 It is worth noting, too, that talking and 
 walking begin simultaneously, which serves 
 to remind us that the brain is the organ 
 of mind as zuill, no less than of mind as 
 intelligence. For, as already noticed, man 
 stands erect, not because it is ''natural" 
 for him to do so, but because he zvills to 
 stand. To which we may add that though 
 a cry may be "involuntary," the utterance 
 of a word is no less a deliberate expression 
 of will than is standing or taking a step; just 
 as standing and walking are definite forms 
 of activity, and hence are expressions of 
 intelligence no less than expressions of will. 
 
" The Ages of Man.'' 65 
 
 But with the beginning of definite, de- 
 hberate act and speech the definite formal 
 education of the child has begun. The 
 c\{\\(\ feels his independence ; is ceaselessly 
 surprised and delighted with the discovery 
 and exercise of his own powers. Through 
 language he learns to apprehend things in 
 their universal character, and also attains 
 to the consciousness of his own universal- 
 ity in the use of the pronoun '' I." 
 
 At the same time the feeling of inde- 
 pendence on the part of the child is shown 
 in Jianeiling things in play. To which 
 Hegel adds that the most rational use 
 to which children can put playthings is 
 to break them to pieces. And he would 
 certainly have emphasized this judgment 
 still further had he lived to see the greed 
 of the manufacturer invading the sacred 
 world of childhood, and, by anticipating 
 all the wants of children in respect of the 
 means of play, rob them of the inalienable 
 right to growth in intelligence and in will 
 and in healthful pleasure through the in- 
 vention and practical creation of their own 
 5 
 
66 HegeVs Ediicaiioiial Ideas. 
 
 toys. Happily Froebel and an army of 
 Froebelians have come to the rescue, and 
 children are being trained in the spirit of 
 play joyfully to exercise their intelligence 
 in invention and their will in creation. 
 Happily, too, the normal child can never 
 be altogether satisfied with the toy that 
 has been given him ready made until he 
 has analyzed it, that so at least he may see 
 how its synthesis has taken place. 
 
 Thus even infancy reveals a seriousness 
 of purpose, and the play of childhood is 
 already the premonitional form of the crea- 
 tive activity of zvork — of the self-regulated 
 exercise of power through which the indi- 
 vidual attains maturity. The theoretical 
 phase of this is inqiiisitiveness, which is the 
 mainspring of intellectual acquisitiveness. 
 The awaking, prophetic sense of what he 
 ought to be — the stirring of the deepest 
 instinct of his being consisting of the 
 divine element of Reason in his heredity 
 — this involves the disquieting recognition 
 that what he is does not conform to what 
 he ought to be. And of this the inevit- 
 
" The Ages of Man." 67 
 
 able outcome is the lively desire to become 
 as mature people are, and to this end to 
 live in association with them. 
 
 Herein, too, is the secret of the deeply 
 significant disposition towards Imitation^ 
 which is so like a frenzy in children. 
 Hence, too, that eager questioning spirit 
 which heeds no bounds, and which so often 
 appears as impertinence in the child. 
 'This characteristic striving of children 
 after self-definition {ErzicJuing) is the in- 
 ner moving element in all education 
 {Erziehimg).'' 
 
 But the ideal of which the child is con- 
 scious and to which he would elevate him- 
 self does not appear to him in abstract 
 general form. Rather it appears to him, 
 as Hegel specifically notes, in the form of 
 a given individual person who is to him an 
 authority. Only in this concrete fashion 
 as embodied in another and relatively ma- 
 ture human beinc^ does the child recoe- 
 nize that essential being which he still re- 
 gards as his own and to realize which in his 
 own person constitutes his chief aspiration. 
 
68 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 This feeling of reverence for author- 
 ity — for an example in the concrete of 
 what the child himself desires to becom^e — 
 ought, Hegel insists, to be preserved and 
 fostered with special care. 
 
 According to Hegel, then, it is evident 
 that in the theoretical aspect of the child's 
 education the teacher is an authority 
 whom he must follow, and that in the eth- 
 / ical aspect of his education the teacher is 
 a model whom the child must imitate. 
 And, indeed, in the nature of the case 
 this can scarcely be otherwise, let the ca- 
 pability and the character of the teacher 
 be what they may — a point upon which 
 boards of education may very well reflect 
 with even more than ordinary seriousness. 
 We may note in the next place that 
 with such penetrating view of the signifi- 
 cance of child-life Hegel could hardly be 
 expected to treat with any great degree of 
 consideration the trifling pedagogics 
 (Spielcndc Pddagogik) which would strip ed- 
 ucational work of all earnestness of pur- 
 pose and definiteness of means and con- 
 
" The Ages of Man.'' 69 
 
 tinuity of method and reduce it to the 
 mere aimless form of childish play— which 
 would demand of the educator that he let 
 himself down to the level of the pupil in- 
 stead of elevating the latter to the serious- 
 ness of a purpose in itself essential. Such 
 mere pass-time "' education " may easily 
 result, and in fact could not fail to result, 
 in the child coming to regard everything 
 in a merely superficial manner and to act 
 from mere caprice. 
 
 In this connection we may easily gather 
 that much of the so-called child-study of 
 the present day could hardly have failed 
 to awake the scorn of Hegel, who would 
 indeed have the child thoroughly studied 
 by the educator ; but studied with explicit 
 reference to its essential nature on the one 
 hand and to its inevitable limitations on 
 the other ; )iot with reference to its ca- 
 prices and mere trifling fancies and observa- 
 tions — these, too, set down at random and 
 altogether indiscriminately by wholly un- 
 trained and even immature minds. No 
 doubt the peculiarities of the individual 
 
/O HegeVs EdiicatioJiai Ideas. 
 
 child ought to be noted by the teacher ; 
 but only in order that they may be cor- 
 rected — not with a view to recording them 
 as if they were of profound and universal 
 significance ! We ought still to go to 
 school to Aristotle if we have not yet 
 learned that, as he says, '' there can be no 
 science of the accidental." 
 
 On the other hand not less seriously det- 
 rimental results may easily follow from a 
 different method sometimes followed by 
 injudicious teachers. That method con- 
 sists in never-ending commendatory incit- 
 ing of children to *' reasoning ; " whence 
 mere glibness and flippancy is likely to be 
 the only result. No doubt the thought of 
 the child must be awakened, but the 
 teacher ought to remember the limitations 
 of the child's mind in this respect, and not 
 attempt to present the ultimate values of 
 things to the unripe, empty understanding 
 of children. 
 
 {b) We have next to observe that just 
 as the most conspicuous transition occur- 
 ring within the period of childhood is that 
 
" The Ages of Man.'' 71 
 
 out of infancy into the articulately speak- 
 ing std,^^ ; so the transition from childhood 
 to youth occurs in and through puberty 
 which, in Hegel's phrase, is the life of the 
 species rising to consciousness in the indi- 
 vidual and beginning to seek satisfaction. 
 And of course by the '' species " coming 
 into explicit form in the individual con- 
 sciousness Hegel here means, not so much 
 the animal species as manifested in the 
 form of mere physiological tension, as 
 species in the sense of what he calls the 
 " Substantial Universal ; " that is, species 
 in the sense of an internal vital principle 
 constituting the essential ideal or type 
 struggling, in the form of vague premoni- 
 tion, to be realized in and for and by the 
 individual himself. 
 
 Thus instead of seeing his ideal already 
 realized in the person of a given human 
 being of relatively mature age and serving 
 as an authority and a model, as happens 
 with the child, the youth conceives his 
 ideal as something too exalted to have yet 
 attained realization, and in comparison 
 
72 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 with which the things and persons and in- 
 stitutions of the actually existing world 
 are insignificant and worthy only of com- 
 miseration or contempt. Hence, that the 
 world of present reality should be regarded 
 as itself the form in which the actual evo- 
 lution of that Ideal has already taken 
 place and is now taking place can only ex- 
 cite the scorn of the clear-sighted and im- 
 patient youth. On the contrary the pres- 
 ent world of fact in its whole range is for 
 him a mere perversion and caricature of 
 the genuine Ideal. Hence the youth feels 
 himself called to revolutionize the world 
 and bring it into conformity with the 
 Ideal — /. c, his ideal. 
 
 It is thus, as Hegel puts it, that the 
 peace in which the child lives with the 
 world is broken by the youth. And pre- 
 cisely on account of this persistent appeal 
 to the Ideal the youth bears the appear- 
 ance of having a more exalted aim and a 
 greater generosity of soul than has the 
 man engrossed in mere transitory inter- 
 ests. On the other hand it is for the 
 
" The Ages of Man.'' 73 
 
 youth to discover that it is precisely the 
 man of affairs who in freeing himself from 
 his own subjective or merely individual 
 fancies and visions of far-off unattainable 
 '' Ideals," has merged himself in the con- 
 crete Reason of the actual world and has 
 come to put forth his energies for that 
 world. 
 
 To this self-same end, indeed, the youth 
 himself must come at last. Meanwhile his 
 immediate aim, in his own estimation, is 
 precisely this — to formulate himself, to 
 prepare himself for the carrying out of 
 the ultimate aim of bringing his splendid 
 Ideal into perfect realization. And it is 
 precisely in the carrying out of this, his 
 ininicdiatc aim, that the youth becomes a 
 man, and discovers at last the futility of 
 his projects for revolutionizing the world. 
 
 But also this discovery constitutes a se- 
 rious crisis in the experience of youth, and 
 is likely to assume a more or less tragic 
 form. The descent from his ideal life into 
 the monotonies of actual communal life is 
 apt to appear to him as a hopeless descent 
 
74 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 into the inferno of Philistinism. In which 
 case the utter irreconcilabihty of the pres- 
 ent Reahty with the fondly cherished 
 Ideal plunges the youth into a sort of 
 hypochondriac state — a state from which 
 one of weak nature may prove unable ever 
 to recover. 
 
 At this critical period there devolves 
 upon parent and teacher the difficult and 
 delicate task of bringing the youth to re- 
 cognize that the necessity in which he finds 
 himself involved — the necessity of enter- 
 ing into a world that seems to him an al- 
 together alien world — is, after all, by no 
 means a necessity of violence, but rather 
 that it is nothing else than the necessity of 
 Reason ; that, therefore, considered as ex- 
 ternal to the life of the individual, it is 
 just the Rational and Divine which as such 
 possesses the absolute Might to bring 
 about its own perfect realization ; and 
 that, also, considered as pertaining to the 
 individual, it is nothing else than the very 
 law of his own inner being demanding 
 that precisely for the purpose of his own 
 
" The Ages of Ma7i" 75 
 
 self-realization — which is but the realiza- 
 tion of his tj'uc Ideal — he shall willingly 
 and unreservedly take his part in the total 
 round of activity of this seemingly foreign 
 world ; but which, nevertheless, is a world 
 to which he is actually altogether native, 
 and in which it is his destiny to be alto- 
 gether at home. 
 
 In short, we may say that youth is the 
 period of the home-sickness of the soul. 
 And the gravity of the disease is in the 
 delirium by which the youth fancies that 
 his true home is in a far-off cloudland, and 
 that he is at present an exile in a world 
 which can neither understand him nor 
 sympathize with him. 
 
 In this critical period, we repeat, parent 
 and teacher are joint physicians. Happy 
 the youth whose case his physicians rightly 
 understand ! The true remedy is nothing 
 else than right education. 
 
 From the study of the child, and of the 
 youth, as thus indicated, we may securely 
 infer the general character of education, 
 and the course it must take, to be wor- 
 
'j6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 thy the name of education.'^ And first 
 we will attempt to show in what educa- 
 tion essentially consists. 
 
 * I omit any reference to the age of maturity, 
 though this, too, is of importance, as the period of 
 prolonged self-culture, and of mutual helpfulness to 
 this end in the form of culture-clubs, university ex- 
 tension, etc., etc. 
 
General Amotion of Education . yj 
 
 VI. 
 
 GENERAL NOTION OF EDUCATION. 
 
 We have now to remind ourselves of 
 what is in itself a self-evident proposition : 
 that the very idea of education presup- 
 poses a state of imperfection from which 
 the individual is to be raised to a state 
 of relative perfection. At the same time 
 this self-evident fact has only too gen- 
 erally been interpreted as if it were of 
 significance solely or mainly in respect of 
 the intellectual aspect of human life. 
 Whereas, on the other hand, education 
 can really — /. e. rationally — mean nothing 
 else than the regulated process of matur- 
 ing the whole being of the individual. 
 And while Hegel steadily and rightly kept 
 his eye upon the central idea of education 
 as consisting essentially in the process of 
 developing into realized form the spiritual » 
 and abiding nature of the individual ; yet 
 the careful consideration he gives, espe- 
 
78 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 cially in his Philosophy of History, to the 
 influence of cHmatic conditions, to the con- 
 figuration of the land-masses, and to the 
 proximity to tiie sea, as influencing the 
 development of races, of nations, and of 
 individuals, shows how well aware he was 
 of the significance of the physiological life 
 of man — not in itself, but as organic to his 
 spiritual lift' — and also how consistent 
 with his whole view of education is the 
 central idea of the so-called '' New Edu- 
 cation " to the effect that the child's own 
 activity is the all-important factor involved 
 in determining his own development, 
 whether considered as physical, as intel- 
 lectual, as moral, or as religious. 
 
 How to direct that self-activity is the 
 real problem of all education, and Hegel 
 could not, without self-contradiction, have 
 done otherwise than heartily approve, not 
 only of the kindergarten, as putting in 
 consistent and effective practical form for 
 children his own educational ideas, but he 
 must also have recognized in *' manual 
 training" means admirably adapted to 
 
General Notion of Ediicaiioii. 79 
 
 disciplining the will in the critical and 
 puzzling period of youth. 
 
 Were there any doubt upon this point 
 it must be dissipated by reference to his 
 explicit statements as to the deep-reach- 
 ing significance of imitation as leading to 
 habit, and of habit as the established form 
 of character. Indeed, Hegel leaves no 
 ground for question that with him the true 
 aim of all education is just character ration- 
 ally forninlated and practically fulfilled — 
 the development of rational habit as a 
 transfigured second nature. He does not 
 hesitate to expressly declare* that " Ped- 
 agogics is the art of making men morale 
 And to this he adds that, theoretically, 
 " it regards man as natural, and shows the 
 way of bringing about his regeneration, 
 the way of transforming his first nature 
 into a second spiritual nature, so that the 
 latter shall attain the form of Jiabit within 
 him." 
 
 In accordance with the view thus inti- 
 mated, Hegel points out that at the begin- 
 
 * Werke, VIII., 212. 
 
8o Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 ning of his existence each individual is 
 merely rudimentary, merely germinal ; that 
 is, wanting in the practical development of 
 all the characteristics that go to constitute 
 manhood, properly speaking. It is this 
 that Hegel expresses when he says that 
 man is at first a merely *' natural " being ; 
 which amounts to saying that, initially, 
 man simply appears as a product of Na- 
 ture — as a being whose explicit character- 
 istics are essentially animal. 
 
 But this contradicts the ultimate ideal 
 or typical nature of man as man, which is 
 that of a being characterized by spiritual 
 life ; that is, by a life of self-consciousness 
 and self-activity. Whence it is evident 
 that in each individual there inheres at 
 the outset a radical contradiction, which 
 contradiction is that between his elemental 
 or animal nature on the one hand, and 
 his ultimate or spiritual nature on the 
 other. In infancy the consciousness of 
 the individual is merged in the former. 
 Nevertheless, he is predestined to awake 
 out of this into consciousness of his spir- 
 
General Notw7i of Ediccaiion. 
 
 itual nature. And this transition, devel- 
 oped into active, transforming degree, 
 Hegel regards as just the "second birth " 
 of the individual. 
 
 The conception, then, that man is '' by 
 nature evil," is true, but true only in re- 
 spect of his elemental nature. And even 
 this is true only in a restricted sense ; only i 
 in so far as this lower " nature " is brought 
 into conflict with, instead of being made 
 instrumental to, the higher or spiritual 
 '' nature," which latter is the ground of all 
 possible goodness in him, and to satisfy the 
 demands of which the elemental nature 
 must be subordinated, or even sacrificed. 
 
 But this, of course, the child does not 
 know, and, as a child, cannot comprehend ; 
 though, by the divine instinct of his higher 
 nature, he has premonitions of it, and 
 more or less deep yearnings toward it. 
 And further, he must awake to this 
 through experience, and must be guided 
 to a rigJit awaking by his intellectual 
 and m.oral elders. In other words, it is 
 only through a slow process of training 
 6 
 
HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 and culture that man first becomes what 
 as man he ought to be. Which forcibly 
 reminds us of Kant's positive declaration 
 in his Pcidagogik,"^ that "• Man can become 
 man only through education ;" that in fact 
 *' he is nothing else than what education 
 makes him." To which he adds, by way 
 of emphasis, that, '' Whoever is not cul- 
 tivated is crude {ro/i) ; whoever is not dis- 
 ciplined is lawless {zuild),'' i. c, has not 
 advanced beyond the stage of primitive or 
 ''savage" life. It is the unenlightened 
 and undisciplined yearning toward a larger 
 and higher life that, left in such crude and 
 rude state, becomes dwarfed, and also per- 
 verted into greed of unworthy things, and 
 thus prompts the individual to violence 
 and evil of every kind. 
 
 It is just these dwarfed and perverted 
 yearnings that constitute what Hegel calls 
 '' negative or subjective " — i. c, capricious 
 and selfish — aims. Hence follows the con- 
 clusion that the individual, as a spiritual 
 being, '' must bring the two sides of his 
 * Werke, Ed. Hartenstein, X., 386. 
 
Gefteral Not wit of Edticaii07t. 83 
 
 double nature into unison and correspond- 
 ence ; " which really means that he must 
 wholly subordinate his merely animal or 
 '' natural " being to his spiritual or rational 
 being ; and this to such extent that the 
 latter shall have full mastery over the 
 former. 
 
 And to this let us add that Hegel never 
 wearies of declaring that " education " is 
 the descriptive term applicable to the total 
 process by which this complete self-mas- 
 tery on the part of the individual is to be 
 accomplished. And this, to repeat, al- 
 ready implies that education is at once 
 both theoretical and practical. On the 
 one hand, there is the inner fundamental 
 Type, the universal, all-comprehensive 
 form or Ideal of Mind inherent in each in- 
 dividual mind as mind, to unfold which 
 into ever-increasing reality in and for its 
 own positive, individual, and personal ex- 
 istence is the true destiny of each and 
 every mind. On the other hand, so re- 
 garded, the individual mind is a '* subject " 
 — /. c, a self-conscious, self-active unit of 
 
84 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 energy — which finds itself in the midst of 
 endlessly manifold '' objects " with which 
 it is ceaselessly and vitally related by the 
 very necessities of its own being. Mind, 
 and, above all, a merely rudimental mind, 
 cannot exist in mere isolation. But neither 
 can things utterly unlike be related. And 
 this already suggests that the ultimate 
 basis or essential ground of these very 
 '* objects " to which the individual finds it- 
 self related, must be identical with the Sub- 
 stance whose Form is the universal, all- 
 comprehending Ideal of Mind. Whence 
 it would seem that the Type which is in 
 process of unfolding in the individual mind 
 is forever unfolded in and through the 
 universal, self-active, self-realizing Energy, 
 which is the Soul of the Universe, and 
 which may thus be named the one per- 
 fectly realized and hence eternal Mind. It 
 is in this sense that Hegel declares that 
 *' even external Nature, like mind, is ration- 
 al, is divine, is a forth-putting of the Idea " "^ 
 — the word '' Idea " being here used by 
 
 * Werke, VI 1 2., 15. 
 
General Notion of Education. 85 
 
 Hegel to indicate the eternal Mind in its 
 absolutely concrete character. 
 
 Hence, what is germinal in the individ- 
 ual mind or " subject " is immanent in the 
 things or ''objects" to which such mind 
 finds itself related. From which it is evi- 
 dent that the education of the individual 
 mind must include the progressive devel- 
 opment of insight into that universal, all- 
 comprehensive Form or Ideal of Mind 
 which is at once germinal in each mind 
 and also immanent in things. 
 
 And this, which constitutes education in 
 its theoretical aspect, manifestly implies 
 careful, regulated, ceaseless, and compre- 
 hensive study of Mind, on the one hand, 
 and of nature, on the other. Not without 
 such study can the germinal mind become 
 realized as mind. 
 
 But mere theoretical insight, so far from 
 being the whole of education, is itself im- 
 possible in any adequate sense save as in- 
 cluding the practical phase. For while in 
 its immediate form it consists in positive 
 inner conformity on the part of the indi- 
 
86 Hegel's Educatiojial Ideas. 
 
 vidual mind to the fundamental law or Type 
 germinal in its own being as mind, it has its 
 outer, complementary form in progressive 
 self-adjustment on the part of the individ- 
 ual mind to the actual " objective " world. 
 
 At the same time we must also keep 
 clearly in view that to Hegel the '' objective 
 world " includes ultimately not merely the 
 world of Nature, but also the world of 
 human institutions. Though here again 
 it must be noted that while Nature as 
 such constitutes the immediate '' objec- 
 tive " form of the eternal Mind, institu- 
 tions are rather the mediate ** objective " 
 form of the human mind ; and this not in 
 its merely individual, but also and above 
 all in its social character. 
 
 And still again, for the individual mind 
 the subtlest aspect of the *' objective " 
 world consists in the universal forms in 
 which man progressively apprehends the 
 rhythm of the self-unfolding of the eternal 
 Mind. One of these forms is that of 
 Beauty. Striving to give utterance to his 
 deepest experiences within this sphere, 
 
General Notion of Education. 87 
 
 man creates the world of Art. A sec- 
 ond form is that of Goodness ; and 
 man's effort to illustrate what that is to 
 him in its highest character unfolds the 
 ceremonial forms that breathe the spirit of 
 Religion. A third form of this highest 
 phase of the objective world is that of 
 Truth ; and of this man formulates in lan- 
 guage his own interpretation, and to such 
 interpretation he gives the name Philoso- 
 phy. 
 
 We are now prepared to say that in its 
 widest range education begins in the regu- 
 lated adjustment of the individual's organ- 
 ism to the right sensuous apprehension of 
 the world of Nature, and culminates in 
 the regulated adjustment of his reason to 
 the right apprehension of the eternal Mind 
 as immanent in Nature and germinal in 
 the individual mind. 
 
 But also the wJloIc mind is germinal in 
 each from the first, and hence, in strict 
 truth, education can add nothing to the 
 mind, but can only stimulate the indivi- 
 dual mind to and guide it in its own self- 
 
HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 activity as the one possible mode of its 
 own actual unfolding. 
 
 And now we have to add that so far as 
 this process consists in self -definition on 
 the part of the pupil, the outer and cor- 
 responding process is properly named In- 
 struction ; so far as it consists in develop- 
 ment of regulated self-activity on the part 
 of the pupil, the outer and corresponding 
 process is that of Discipline. So far as it 
 consists in selfharnionization on the part 
 of the pupil, the outer and corresponding 
 process is the unfolding of the universal 
 forms of Refinement. 
 
 The remaining portion of the present 
 essay will be given to indicating what the 
 present writer conceives to be Hegel's 
 point of view with respect to thes^e several 
 essential aspects of education. 
 
Instruct 10)1 — Its CJiaracter. 
 
 VII. 
 
 INSTRUCTION — ITS CHARACTER. 
 
 And here we must again remind our- 
 selves of what with Hegel is a fundamental 
 point, namely, that the mind of the child 
 as being mind in its merely initial state is 
 not yet true as mind. That is, it is only 
 the rudiment and abstract prophecy of 
 mind. To become " true " as mind it must 
 unfold this prophecy into fulfilment, must 
 develop this rudiment into the full meas- 
 ure of its typical nature, so that its present 
 reality shall coincide with its rational Ideal. 
 But also because this Ideal is infinite it is 
 but inevitable that the present reality of 
 the individual mind can never at any 
 given moment actually be brought to a 
 degree of perfection such that, then and 
 there, it will prove to be the adequate ful- 
 filment of the ultimate rational Ideal of 
 Mind. And the highest //m5£' — not degree 
 ■ — of excellence attainable by the individual 
 
go HegeVs Educatiojial Ideas. 
 
 mind is this : That it shall become fully 
 conscious of its own ultimate or Typical 
 Nature. To go on deepening and enrich- 
 ing this phase of consciousness to infinity 
 — this is the true destiny of the individual 
 mind as a genuinely rational and hence 
 immortal soul. And education cannot be 
 conceived as ultimately including less than 
 the whole of this process ; though, of 
 course, we are here directly concerned 
 only with so much of this total process as 
 takes place during the formative period of 
 childhood and youth. 
 
 In this sense, then, education is to be 
 looked at objectively as the system of aids 
 by which the individual mind is enabled 
 to rise from the helplessness of infancy to 
 the independence characterizing true self- 
 conscious existence. On the other hand, 
 from the subjective point of view, it is to 
 be regarded as just the process itself 
 through which the individual mind ad- 
 vances from infancy to maturity as mind. 
 
 Thus Hegel expressly declares that it is 
 only when we consider mind in the actual 
 
Instricction — Its Character. 91 
 
 process of its rational development that 
 we can be said to really know mind in its 
 truth; adding that by ''truth" he means 
 precisely the coincidence between the 
 present reality and the rational Ideal. 
 
 Keeping this in view, it is easy to un- 
 derstand the further highly characteristic 
 and significant statement that '' the whole 
 development of mind is nothing else than 
 its own self-elevation to its truth ; and the 
 so-called powers or faculties of the soul 
 have no other meaning than this ; that 
 they are merely the stadia of this develop- 
 ment. Through this self-differentiation, 
 through this self-transformation, and 
 through this reference of its specialized 
 phases to the unity of its Bcgriff, i.e., the 
 unity of its ultimate typical nature — the 
 mind is not merely a [theoretically] true 
 but also a [practically unfolded and hence] 
 living, organic, systematic unit."* But 
 again, this universal typical nature (to a 
 consciousness of which as his own nature 
 the individual attains through education) 
 
 *Werke, VI 1 2., 11. 
 
92 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 is also just that which constitutes the cen- 
 tral characteristic of the species. Hence 
 the propriety of Dr. Wm. T. Harris's defi- 
 nition of Education as ''the process by 
 which the individual man elevates himself 
 to the species."^ 
 
 Let us consider this process a little more 
 closely. Just here, too, it must be re- 
 membered that we are now considering it 
 in its intellectual aspect, and thus as tak- 
 ing place under those special conditions 
 summed up under the name of Instruction. 
 
 We shall first indicate the inner process 
 of Instruction. Following this, considera- 
 tion will be given to the outward means of 
 Instruction ; to which, thirdly, will be 
 added a brief consideration of MetJwds of 
 Instruction. As to the central aim of ed- 
 ucation, it will scarcely be necessary to 
 remind the reader that that has already 
 been indicated in what precedes. 
 
 *Rosenkranz Pedagogics, p. 31. (Note.) 
 
histruction — Its Process. 93 
 
 VIII. 
 
 INSTRUCTION — ITS PROCESS. 
 
 The process of Instruction in its most 
 general character, may be described as a 
 subtle, progressive interaction between two 
 minds, one of which, as relatively mature, 
 initiates and guides the process, while the 
 other as relatively immature, voluntarily 
 submits itself to such stimulation and 
 guidance. The general psychological pro- 
 cess is the same in both minds. But in 
 the mind of the teacher the given exer- 
 cise has been repeated many times. And 
 not only so, but what is presupposed in 
 the given exercise, is clearly seen, as also 
 is that to which it logically leads. It is 
 thus that the assumed relative intellectual 
 superiority has been attained and is now 
 manifested. 
 
 On the other hand, in the mind of the 
 pupil, the process as a consciously pursued 
 process, is now for the first time taking 
 
94 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 place. The pupil is by that fact unable 
 to trace for himself with clearness and ad- 
 equacy, the rational necessity — z>., the es- 
 sential logical relations — of the matter im- 
 mediately under consideration. For this 
 reason he feels himself to be relatively 
 powerless and dependent. Hence all his 
 power assumes the form of intent atten- 
 tion. And this is as much as to say that 
 for the time being he merges all his inter- 
 est in the indications given him of what is 
 going on in the mind of the teacher. 
 Without being aware of it, he becomes an 
 intent psychological observer. And the 
 direct aim which actuates him in this is to 
 develop in his own mind what he discovers 
 as taking place in the mind of the teacher. 
 That is, he concentrates his whole energy 
 in a determined efTort to bring into full 
 development on his own part the same 
 mode of intellectual activity as that which 
 presents itself as already clearly defined 
 and realized in the mind of the teacher. 
 
 But this, clearly, is nothing else than 
 Imitation — a characteristic which Hegel 
 
Ijistriicfion — Its Process. 95 
 
 holds, and may very well hold, in high es- 
 timation. Especially for the young child, 
 as we have already seen, the teacher is re- 
 garded by Hegel as both an authority to 
 be implicitly obeyed and a model to be 
 constantly imitated. It may be said, there- 
 fore, that from this point of view the part 
 played by the child in the interaction be- 
 tween himself and his teacher consists es- 
 sentially in this: that in his character of a 
 self-active unit of energy, he exerts himself 
 to the utmost, that so he may unfold from 
 within himself, the aspects of intellectual 
 maturity which he recognizes as already 
 realized in his model. 
 
 And to this we may add that even the 
 transition from this first unquestioning ac- 
 ceptance of the model to the critical ques- 
 tioning of its validity, is still in essence an 
 imitation of the model. The pupil is 
 raised to the level of a critic through the 
 criticism he has himself undergone. From 
 which it is but a natural corollary that the 
 character and method of the criticism in- 
 dulged in by the pupil will reflect those 
 
96 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 qualities as exhibited in the criticism of 
 the teacher. Here, as elsewhere, Kant's 
 remark — trite perhaps in itself — holds 
 good ; that '' one generation educates an- 
 other." 
 
 But again, from the fact that the teacher 
 has already many times traversed the 
 course which the pupil must pursue, it is 
 open to him to regard that course either 
 from the point of view of the result in 
 which it culminates, or from the point of 
 view of the initial stage with which the 
 course sets out. In the former case the 
 attitude of mind, as need hardly be said, 
 is predominantly analytical, while in the 
 latter it is predominantly synthetic. And 
 we may add by way of a glance forward, 
 that we have here the clew to all true 
 vtethod. 
 
 The choice of method — whether analy- 
 tical or synthetic — must depend upon a va- 
 riety of conditions. But above all, the 
 fundamental condition is that of the pres- 
 ent degree of advancement on the part of 
 those whose education is in progress. 
 
Instruction — Its Process. 97 
 
 Strictly speaking, indeed, there is no 
 such thing as a method that is either ex- 
 clusively analytic or exclusively synthetic. 
 These are but complementary phases of 
 every actual method.^ Meanwhile, ini- 
 tially, the individual mind seizes or appre- 
 hends everything first of all in its totality. 
 Not by any means that for such mind the 
 given totality is anything more at the out- 
 set than a whole of qualities which as yet 
 are undistinguished from one another. 
 But just because of this inability to actively 
 distinguish between the qualities or char- 
 acteristics of a given whole, the undevel- 
 oped mind vuist at first seize objects as 
 wholes. Whence it is evident that the 
 better understanding of such objects is 
 possible for such minds, only through a 
 process that is primarily that of analysis. 
 
 Nevertheless, this very analysis of the 
 *' object " is the process of unfolding into 
 richer form within the mind of the pupil, 
 just the consciousness of this self-same ob- 
 
 * Compare with this what has already been said 
 ow the subject of simplicity and complexity. 
 7 
 
HejeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 ject. So that while in its objective as- 
 pect, the process appears as predominantly 
 analytic, yet equally in its subjective phase 
 it is no less unquestionably of a predomi- 
 nantly synthetic or constructive character. 
 
 And indeed it is precisely this synthetic 
 or constructive aspect of the process which 
 takes place in the mind of the pupil that 
 constitutes the positive, vital factor in all 
 education. It is here that, if not the 
 most *' interesting," at least the most fruit- 
 ful field for child-study presents itself. And 
 here too, let us repeat, it is not the mere 
 particular limitations constituting the pe- 
 culiarities of individual children, the study 
 and recording of which is of real signifi- 
 cance. On the contrary what is required 
 is the study of the limitations of the child- 
 mind as such. 
 
 No doubt such study can be actually 
 carried on only through observation of 
 the minds of individual children. But 
 there is infinite difference between the ob- 
 servations made by the mere untrained 
 curiosity-seeker and those made by the 
 
Instruct io)i — Its Process. 99 
 
 disciplined psychologist, who will note ab- 
 normalities as such, and as something 
 merely by the way ; but whose attention 
 will be unswervingly directed to the fun- 
 damental Ideal of Mind as this is found 
 in actual process of development in chil- 
 dren ; so that with this fundamental Ideal 
 as his guide he may note the positive 
 forms under which that Ideal presents it- 
 self in childhood, and also discover the 
 degree and quality of concrete develop- 
 ment it may reasonably be expected to 
 assume at any given stage. 
 
 Nor can the teacher too often remind 
 himself that all modes of mind are of ne- 
 cessity present from the outset in each in- 
 dividual mind ; that, as Hegel never 
 wearies of repeating in one or another 
 form, the whole purpose and plan of edu- 
 cation is simply this : To unfold into 
 ever-increasingly explicit degree what is 
 already implicit in the individual mind 
 from the first moment of its existence as 
 an individual mind. This and no other is 
 the genuine Ariadne-thread that will guide 
 
100 Heget^s Educational Ideas. 
 
 the teacher securely through all the laby- 
 rinthine perplexities of course of study, 
 of text-books and of methods. 
 
 And indeed the education of the race 
 has not progressed so far without substan- 
 tial investigation of the limitations of the 
 child-mind being actually made. In truth, 
 these limitations in their essential practical 
 significance are not so subtle and hidden 
 as to render their discovery specially dif- 
 ficult. They have been known substan- 
 tially for many centuries and the choice 
 of means and methods has been deter- 
 mined accordingly. Mistakes have been 
 made ; " scientific " fads as well as caste 
 interests have from time to time drawn 
 attention more or less widely from the 
 central aim of education ; but in the main 
 the process of education has always been 
 substantially one and self-consistent, be- 
 cause on the one hand the fundamental 
 nature of mind is invariable, and because 
 on the other hand the limitations of the 
 child-mind are so far beyond the reach of 
 individual control that wherever educa- 
 
htstruction — Its Process. 
 
 tion takes place at all it must be along the 
 lines already fixed in the very nature of 
 the case. 
 
 On the intellectual side these limitations 
 are substantially as follows : 
 
 {a) Even in respect of Perception it is, 
 or ought to be, a matter of daily observa- 
 tion on the part of every thoughtful teacher 
 that the av^erage child-mind is able to 
 form only very inadequate and for the 
 most part very inaccurate images of ob- 
 jects. Upon which point we must content 
 ourselves with simply calling attention to 
 the fact that children's descriptions of 
 what they have seen prove that what they 
 saw was far enough from corresponding to 
 what was there to be seen. And this is 
 still further complicated by another fact, 
 as follows : 
 
 [b) The Imagination of children is still 
 so plastic that the images formed in their 
 minds yield to the pressure of feeling — 
 whether of fear or of desire, whether of 
 disappointment or of elation — so that the 
 image often becomes completely trans- 
 
Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 formed. And not infrequently this occurs 
 without the child being in the least aware 
 of the fact that any such change has act- 
 ually taken place in his mind. He will 
 therefore tell, with perfect assurance and 
 in wholly good faith, of things to which he 
 has been eye-witness, though his elders 
 know that what he says represents what is 
 '' simply impossible." The reader will 
 doubtless recall Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
 humorous-pathetic account of his own expe- 
 rience as a child in this respect. And the 
 case becomes further complicated by the 
 fact that the crude images already existing 
 in the child's imagination tend to fuse 
 with and thus more or less to confuse the 
 image in process of formation in any given 
 act of perception — this result being the 
 more pronounced in proportion as excite- 
 ment is involved. 
 
 From which, as we may remark by the 
 way, it is evident that what are called 
 *' children's lies " are often no more than 
 the crude phantasies of children, and that 
 irreparable moral injury is done the child 
 
Instruction— Its Process. 103 
 
 by those who, ignorant of his psycholog- 
 ical hmitations and difficulties, assume all 
 inaccuracies of statement on his part to be 
 evidences of moral perversity and apply 
 punishment where the true remedy is care- 
 ful, kindly explanation leading to closer 
 observation by the child. 
 
 {c) And besides these limitations there 
 is the still subtler one in respect of thought 
 and language. We are so much in the 
 habit of saying that perception develops 
 first, imagination later, and thought last, 
 that one is liable to accept this formula as 
 literally representing the fact, and thus to 
 forget that all three modes of intelligence 
 are present from the first and develop, not 
 merely simultaneously, but also in com- 
 plete interfusion ; the appearance of serial 
 order being due to the relative complexity 
 of these modes ; so that thought is— not 
 last to develop — but last to attain maturity 
 of development. 
 
 Meanwhile, as a moment's reflection 
 proves, the assumption so commonly made 
 that the senses are completely developed 
 
I04 HeT-el's Educational Ideas. 
 
 by the time the child enters school is 
 clearly in utter contradiction of the fact. 
 The senses, especially those of sight and 
 hearing as the specifically intellectual 
 senses, ought therefore to receive careful 
 education and training, including, of 
 course, the testing of the sense-organs. 
 
 But the still more vital point in respect 
 of education is this : That sensation and 
 perception are to be definitely and delib- 
 erately brought into subordination to 
 thought, and thus elevated to the rank of a 
 fundamental factor in all true observation. 
 It is here, indeed, that the significance of 
 sense-perception finds its highest term. 
 The end and aim of education is, let us 
 repeat, to bring the mind to maturity — to 
 maturity, we may now add, as one whole 
 mind in each and all its modes. It is pe- 
 culiarly important in the educational sense, 
 however, to bring to as high a state of ma- 
 turity — /. r., of clearness and precision and 
 adequacy — as possible, the power of per- 
 ceiving color and form and relative size ; 
 as well as the power of perceiving tone in 
 
Instruction — Its Process. 105 
 
 its three phases of pitch, loudness and 
 quahty. 
 
 The justification of this last statement 
 is in brief as follows : 
 
 (i) Judgment — in fact thought in gen- 
 eral — is involved in the very process of 
 perception ; (2) Visual perceptions are in- 
 dispensable to all scientific work, espec- 
 ially in respect of measurement and class- 
 ification ; (3) precise perceptions through 
 the sense of hearing are indispensable to 
 exactness both in the utterance and in the 
 understanding of spoken language ; (4) to 
 which we must add that exactness in per- 
 ception of form through the sense of vision 
 is indispensable to precision of expression 
 and to precision of understanding in re- 
 spect of written language. 
 
 Similiarly the imagination must be 
 trained into full subordination to thought. 
 In which connection teachers would do 
 well to read Tyndall's very suggestive es- 
 say on "The Scientific Uses of the Imag- 
 ination." Though also every teacher 
 ought always to distinguish with perfect 
 
lo6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 clearness, and as rapidly as possible to 
 bring his pupils as they advance in grade, 
 to distinguish (with greater clearness and 
 exactness than was done by Tyndall) as 
 between thinking and imagining. Each is 
 involved in the other, but neither is the 
 other. To imagine is to develop an im- 
 age in the mind. To think is to recog- 
 nize a relation. One may think space as 
 infinite, though he could never imagine it. 
 One may imagine a dragon of the sky, 
 though he could never really think it. 
 
 On the other hand, as already indicated, 
 Hegel would here remind us, and does 
 betimes forcibly remind us, that such dis- 
 tinctions as that between imagining and 
 thinking — to develop which distinction is 
 itself an example of deliberate and some- 
 what complex thinking — ought not to be 
 expected of pupils who are still ** chil- 
 dren." Rather this has its explicit begin- 
 ning in the period of yoiitJi when the in- 
 dividual mind is already more or less def- 
 initely awakened to that stage of con- 
 sciousness which, as we have previously 
 
Instruction — Its Process. 107 
 
 noticed, Hegel described as '' including the 
 life of the species " — the period namely, 
 in which the individual begins positively 
 to recognize abstract universal forms, i.e., 
 begins really to thmk, and also to unfold 
 universal, ideal images, i.e., to exercise the 
 higher degrees of creative imagination. 
 
 In fact the particular instance just re- 
 ferred to is a good example of Instruction 
 that pertains rather to secondary than to 
 primary education. 
 
 To which we may add, that since the 
 progress of the child is continuous as well 
 as gradual, the gradations in the progress 
 are practically beyond number. To note 
 these gradations and to be able with ease 
 to modify the '' instruction " accordingly, 
 this is the proof of genuine power of divin- 
 ation on the part of the teacher. It is a 
 secret which no *' normal " school can com- 
 municate. It can only be grown into — 
 more rapidly by some, less rapidly by 
 others. It is the subtlest element in the 
 '' personality " of the teacher. The indis- 
 pensable conditions of its development 
 
io8 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 are : Sincerity of purpose, rich and ever- 
 increasingly varied culture, sympathetic 
 enthusiasm in school-room work. 
 
 Nor must we turn from this topic with- 
 out specially noting the intellectual value 
 of the energy of will as expressed in con- 
 scious effort to work out a definitely ap- 
 prehended plan. Not only does knowl- 
 edge lead to self-activity ; knowledge is 
 gained through self-activity. Ultimately, 
 indeed, no knowledge whatever can be 
 gained in any other way. For knowing 
 is itself a form of self-activity. But what 
 especially is intended here is that the very 
 hands are of extremely subtle significance 
 as organs of intelligence, which yet must 
 be brought into use by the intelligent will 
 or the willing intelligence exercised not 
 merely directly through the hands them- 
 selves, but also indirectly upon the hands 
 through the eye. 
 
 It is this, as need hardly be remarked, 
 that constitutes the justification, on the 
 intellectual side, of that aspect of the 
 '* new education " represented by the kin- 
 
Instruction — Its Process. 109 
 
 dergarten, and the manual training school, 
 as well as by the growing demand for ac- 
 tual performance of experiments and the 
 direct examination of specimens by the 
 individual pupils. 
 
 But we must turn to the consideration 
 of the second phase of Instruction. 
 
no HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 IX. 
 
 INSTRUCTION— ITS MEANS— A. LANGUAGE. 
 
 As to the means of Instruction in gen- 
 eral, these may be said to consist of sub- 
 ject-matter properly arranged (course of 
 study) and of the appliances for rendering 
 this effective (text-book and apparatus). 
 It is the former alone, that we shall here 
 especially consider. 
 
 Under this head the first thing to notice 
 is that such subject matter really consti- 
 tutes just the immediate objective aspect 
 of Education. As such it presents three 
 distinct phases. The_^;'^/ of these phases 
 is Language as expressive of Thought-re- 
 lations. The second phase is that of Form 
 as expressing Space-relations. The third is 
 Proeess as expressing relations of Energy. 
 Of course these are by no means mutu- 
 ally exclusive '^nh']Q.Q.\.-niatters of Educa- 
 tion, but only distinguishable phases of 
 the one total subject-;;/^//^;' which is to be 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language, iii 
 
 made the object of study in the one 
 whole educational process. 
 
 These phases we have next to consider 
 a little more in detail. 
 
 {a). Language Universal. Language is the 
 most universal and adequate form in which 
 the thought-aspect of consciousness finds 
 expression. We have already noticed in 
 this connection that Hegel regards the 
 beginning of articulate thinking, that is, 
 thinking in words, as marking the first 
 great epoch in the education of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Indeed, when it is remembered that in 
 the nature of the case an image as such 
 can represent only a particular and isolated 
 fact or object ; and that, on the other 
 hand, relations, totalities, multiplicities, 
 exist in truth only for the thought-aspect 
 of consciousness, while thought, properly 
 speaking, can unfold into concrete realiza- 
 tion only in and through language — when 
 this is remembered, it can scarcely be 
 questioned that the actual relation be- 
 tween thought and language is one and 
 
112 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 the same with the relation which may 
 otherwise be described as that between 
 inner substance and outer form, and again 
 as that between vital function and its or- 
 ganic expression. And this to such de- 
 gree that there is really no extravagance 
 in Max Miiller's formula: ''No Reason 
 without Language — no Language without 
 Reason " — a truth which he regards as of 
 sufficiently vital significance to justify his 
 placing it as the motto on the title pa-ge 
 of his Science of Thought — the work in 
 which he sums up the results of the studies 
 of his whole life in his chosen field of 
 Linguistics. 
 
 Nor does this in any way conflict with 
 Steinthal's positive statement that " the 
 animal thinks without speaking.""^ In- 
 deed, Steinthal makes this remark directly 
 after quoting with approval the conviction 
 expressed by Herbart to the effect that 
 silent thinking is for the most part only a 
 suppressed speaking ; and this to the ex- 
 
 * Einleitwig in die Psychologie tend Spracfnvissen- 
 schaft, 2d Ed., p. 48. 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 113 
 
 tent of involving the whole nervous pro- 
 cess controlling the organs of speech, 
 though not with such force as to bring 
 the muscles into actual movement.* 
 
 Steinthal, in fact, is only insisting that 
 articulate thinking is not the zvhole of 
 thinking — that thought pervades the whole 
 field of consciousness, and that though in 
 its rudimentary degree it is inarticulate, 
 it is still the mode of mind through which 
 the universal aspects of things — types, 
 qualities as such, tendencies (including 
 consciousness of before and after i.e., 
 time) etc., — are apprehended. 
 
 Indeed it is only in so far as thought is 
 conceived to be already necessarily in- 
 volved in inarticulate, but germinal form, 
 even in the rudimental mind, that the ac- 
 tual development of explicit, articulate 
 thinking as unfolded in actual speech can 
 be accounted for at all upon any really 
 scientific basis. And this is but to say in 
 particular form, that if we are to have a 
 
 * It has even been said , however, that mere silent 
 reading can produce hoarseness. 
 8 
 
114 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas, 
 
 science of mind, and of Education as the 
 process of unfolding mind, it must be upon 
 the express presupposition of the absolute 
 unity and wholeness of mind in its primal 
 nature. That is, mind as Type must be 
 conceived as unfolding into realized form 
 in individual minds, each of which, from and 
 in the first moment of its existence as an 
 individual Mind, is already in germ all 
 that the type implies, and hence all that 
 the individual mind itself ever can be- 
 come. In which case it is evident that 
 we can never too strongly emphasize in its 
 literal significance, the proposition that 
 education is just the evolution of mind — 
 the process of unfolding into explicit form 
 the characteristics which are implicit in each 
 mind from its birth as mind. Man inarticu- 
 late, as Hegel insists, is not essentially dis- 
 tinguishable from other objects of nature. 
 It is only as articulately tJ nuking \x\d.w that he 
 proves himself to have emerged out of mere 
 nature into a sphere distinctively above 
 animalhood and to be realized as vian.'^ 
 
 * Cf. Werke, VI 1 2., 24. 
 
Instruction — Its Meaiis—A. Language. 115 
 
 And now we have to remind ourselves 
 that it is precisely in language that the 
 universal characteristics of mind find their 
 subtlest, most exact and most adequate 
 formulation. It is precisely for this rea- 
 son that language constitutes not only the 
 earliest subject-matter, but also at every 
 stage, the predominating medium of edu- 
 cation. From the kindergarten on through 
 every stage of education, language is not 
 only the most direct, it is the one abso- 
 lutely indispensable medium. All other 
 appliances find their highest values in this : 
 that the knowledge of them is raised to 
 its highest term through description of 
 them in words, through command of them 
 rendered exact by explanation of the re- 
 lation of part to part in words, through 
 appreciation of their uses — such appreci- 
 ation becoming really matured only 
 through tracing out by means of words 
 the actual purposes which such appliances 
 are intended to fulfil. 
 
 But not only is this true from the point 
 of view of the teacher, who must consider 
 
ii6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 the appliances appropriate to the work of 
 education. It is no less true in the actual 
 development of the mind of the individual 
 pupil. And because rational education 
 consists in the unfolding of the individual 
 mind in accordance with the universal 
 type of mind, it may well be presumed 
 that in the teaching of language, the pro- 
 cess is essentially one of leading the in- 
 dividual pupil to recognize with ever-in- 
 creasing clearness the universal character 
 of language, and of thought as embodied 
 in language. And this is only so much 
 the more evident when we remember that 
 it is in and through language that the 
 typical or universal characteristics of mind 
 find their subtlest, most exact, most ade- 
 quate formulation. 
 
 In this respect the special phases which 
 are of direct practical interest to teachers 
 are : (i) Voice, (2) Reading, (3) Writing, 
 and (4) Grammar. 
 
 (i) Of Voice it may be said that the tone 
 merely as tone expresses the least differ- 
 entiated phase of consciousness. Through 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 117 
 
 tone as such, only feeling becomes explic- 
 it. Whatever thought is involved remains 
 merely implicit. Properly speaking, the 
 human voice gives utterance to what is 
 innermost in the individual consciousness. 
 According to Hegel's peculiar formula, 
 What the individual is, he infuses into his 
 voice {was er ist das legt er in seine 
 Stimine).^ 
 
 But also — and to this we feel sure Heg. 
 el would offer no objection — the comple- 
 mentary aspect of this view is, that what- 
 ever the tone of voice to which the indi- 
 vidual habituates himself, to that com- 
 plexion will his inmost being come at last. 
 For this habituation is itself essentially 
 nothing else than an inner spiritual pro- 
 cess. Feeling and tone are but inner and 
 outer aspects of the one concrete fact of 
 the individual's own spontaneous exis- 
 tence. And there is truth even in the 
 paradox of the extreme evolutionists, that 
 we are pleased because we smile and sing, 
 and angry because we frown and mutter. 
 
 * Werkc, VII2., 131. 
 
HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 Laughter and cursing alike may pass be- 
 yond control and grow hysterical. And 
 it is not to be forgotten that it is precisely 
 through this outer form that the inner 
 substance of mind is really to be ap- 
 proached and influenced. 
 
 Even here, then, there is a world of prac- 
 tical suggestion for the teacher, and that 
 charmed word of the Greeks : Moderation, 
 ought to be the motto in every school- 
 room. Tone is the subtlest gesture of the 
 soul. By example, as well as by precept, 
 therefore, a normal tone of voice ought to 
 be cultivated, all affectations avoided, and 
 voice-culture so conducted as to insure 
 increased refinement of mind through 
 growth in purity and strength along with 
 gentleness of tone. 
 
 But long before the child is sent to 
 school he has passed beyond the limits of 
 that inner existence which utters itself in 
 mere inarticulate cries. His thought has 
 become explicit to a degree that must as- 
 tonish one who has come for the first time 
 to think of it deliberately. Indeed, the 
 
Instruction —Its Me a ns — A . Language. 1 1 9 
 
 extent to which the ordinary child, even 
 of three years, has already mastered the 
 thought and language of everyday life 
 must go far to confirm in every thought- 
 ful mind the belief in the original creative 
 activity of mind on the one hand, and in 
 the subtlety and extent to which the indi- 
 vidual mind is already endowed at birth 
 through the evolutional process of the race. 
 
 And so much the more significant does 
 this transition from the inarticulate to the 
 articulate in vocalization appear when we 
 reflect that as a spiritual process the trans- 
 ition is from the stage of mere general 
 consciousness to that of definite sclf-zoxv- 
 sciousness — to what Kant called the 
 '' transcendental unity of self-conscious- 
 ness," and to what Hegel calls the *' inde- 
 pendently existing (/)/r sicJi scycndc) unity 
 of self-consciousness." 
 
 Language is, in fact, just the explicit 
 form {Dascyii) of the self, pure and simple, 
 and in which that matured form of self- 
 related unity, known as self - conscious- 
 ness, enters into positive existence ; and 
 
I20 Hegel's Educatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 this in such wise that its existence is at 
 the same time manifest to another self.* 
 For example, in saying *' I " I realize for 
 myself my own existence — bring my con- 
 sciousness to the focus of explicit sclf- 
 consciousness. But in saying *' I " I also 
 address myself to another unit, which I 
 recognize as self-conscious likewise, and 
 capable in turn of recognizing me in the 
 same capacity. So that the expression " I " 
 is intended by me, indeed, to indicate my 
 own individual self, while, in fact, it proves 
 applicable to all other selves, is recognized 
 by others as having that value, and hence 
 proves to be, not a mere individual, but 
 rather a universal sign ; that is, a sign ap- 
 plicable alike, and without exception, to 
 all minds. 
 
 But also, it is a sign which derives its 
 universal nature from the fact that it is 
 used by a self-conscious being, as a sign 
 of a self-conscious being, and is addressed 
 to a self-conscious being, and is under- 
 stood by each because every such self- 
 
 * Cf. Wcrkc, II.. 370. 
 
Instruction— Its MciDis — A. IcDiguage. 121 
 
 conscious being possesses a nature univer- 
 sal and common to all alike. Language, 
 in short, is universal, because it is the im- 
 mediate expression of the inward universal 
 nature of Mind. 
 
 In learning language, therefore, the 
 child is learning the universal form in and 
 through which Mind expresses its own 
 universal nature. And it is because of 
 this subtle significance of language, as ex- 
 pressing the self-conscious universality of 
 Mind in the form of specific self-definition 
 or thought, that Hegel calls it ^^ the ethe- 
 rial element, the sensuously supersensu- 
 ous, through which the expanding knowl- 
 edge of the mind of the child is elevated 
 in ever increasing degree above merely 
 sensuous and particular forms to universal 
 types, principles and relations, to thought 
 properly speaking."^ 
 
 We may note, now, that from this point 
 of view language can really exist as lan- 
 guage only in so far as it is the outer, 
 organic form in which thought is actually 
 
 * Wcrke, VI 1 2., 97. 
 
Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 expressed. Otherwise it is a mere flatus 
 vocisy no more than '* sounding brass or a 
 tinkhng cymbal." Hence, we may well 
 imagine what Hegel would have thought 
 of designating language as a mere formal 
 study in contrast with, say, physics or chem- 
 istry, as a study having a content ! As if 
 language could be '' form " at all, save in 
 so far as it is the form of thought ! As if 
 thought were not the very essence or ''con- 
 tent " of every '' study." 
 
 Above all, in respect of elementary in- 
 struction in language, form and substance, 
 are one and inseparable. For there the 
 child is as yet wholly unable to distinguish 
 between a " form " and a " content." 
 Rather, he can only grasp the two in 
 their concrete unity. He can no more 
 know language apart from thought than 
 he can know thought apart from language. 
 For him the description of things is at 
 the same time the direct embodiment of 
 thought. 
 
 Now, by the time he is sent to school, 
 the child has not only taken his first step, 
 
Ijistruction—Its Means— A. Language. 123 
 
 but has advanced far beyond his first 
 step in this process of expHcit, articulate 
 thinking. So that the teacher, even of the 
 most elementary grade, may and does as- 
 sume, with perfectly good reason, that this 
 work has already been brought far on the 
 way. Of course there are wide differences ; 
 but the minimum is still an accomplished 
 fact of relatively great extent, and of ab- 
 solutely vital import. The child has al- 
 ready attained substantial self-conscious- 
 ness. He already feels the universal sig- 
 nificance of things. He already possesses 
 a vocabulary serving the modes of self- 
 comprehension, and of communication with 
 others, in respect of all ordinary interests. 
 Nevertheless, he has developed this vo- 
 cabulary spontaneously. True, his spon- 
 taneity in this process has developed in re- 
 ponse to external stimuli, including the 
 spoken language of those with whom he 
 has been associated. Hence, from this 
 side it may also be said that he has at- 
 tained to the stage of articulate utterance 
 throu":h imitation. But even so, the imita- 
 
124 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 tion has been unreflecting, and, in this vital 
 sense, spontaneous. 
 
 On entering school, therefore, the child's 
 vocabulary consists of words as wholes. 
 Nay, to him each sentence is a whole, the 
 construction of which is hot even a mys- 
 tery to him ; for as yet he has raised no 
 question about it, and is not aware that 
 any question could be raised. As Stein- 
 thal and others have intimated, the child 
 comes to speak, much as he comes to see 
 and to hear — by the spontaneous exercise 
 of a power native to him, through an or- 
 gan already formed, and only needing the 
 spontaneous inner activity of the mind in 
 answer to appropriate outer stimuli to 
 bring it into effective use. Or, as Stein- 
 thal elsewhere suggests, the child cannot, 
 properly speaking, be said to have learned 
 language, seeing that no one has actually 
 taught him. Rather, " what the gardener 
 does with the seed, from which he expects 
 to obtain plants, just that we do with our 
 children, in order to bring them to speak : 
 we bring them into the necessary condi- 
 
Instruction— Its Means— A. Language. 125 
 
 tions of mental growth, that is, into human 
 
 association.""^ 
 
 Such in brief are the conditions of the 
 actual development of the fact of language 
 on the part of the individual child. From 
 which it will be seen that the first great 
 epoch in the development of individual 
 self-consciousness, consisting in the spon- 
 taneous unfolding of a vocabulary to meet 
 the ordinary needs of human association, 
 still involves a subtle synthetic process 
 and corresponding product, of the nature 
 of which the child is still unconscious. 
 
 Of the process, indeed, he must remain 
 unconscious until he has attained the de- 
 gree of reflective self-consciousness, where 
 he can enter upon the investigation of ulti- 
 mate questions, including the nature of 
 the mind itself. 
 
 Of t\\Q product, he begins the analysis as 
 soon as he enters upon school-life, prop- 
 erly speaking. And in order to do this, 
 he must be brought into direct relation 
 with language in a new form. 
 *Op. cit. , p. 83. 
 
126 He^eVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 (2) Reading constitutes this new form, 
 and involves the first stage in the analyti- 
 cal examination of language as the outer, 
 organic form of thought. As we have 
 seen, the vocabulary he already possesses 
 is the product of the spontaneous synthetic 
 activity of the child's own mind. The first 
 stage of his reflective activity in school will 
 consist normally of the formal analysis of 
 the elements of this vocabulary under the 
 guidance of the teacher. What took place 
 before by instinct is now to find its com- 
 plement in regulated — i. c, more or less 
 prescribed — reflection. The first step is 
 to be taken in the systematic^ reduction 
 of the sensuous consciousness to subordi- 
 nation to the reflective consciousness. 
 
 On the other hand, this conscious analy- 
 sis is only the transition between the un- 
 conscious synthesis by which it was pre- 
 ceded, and the conscious synthesis by which 
 it is immediately followed, and which con- 
 stitutes its true complement. 
 
 In its primitive, unanalyzed form lan- 
 guage may not only be compared with, it 
 
Instricction—Its Means — A. Langitage. 127 
 
 may rather be regarded as, an art-work.^ 
 With the analysis of the forms thus spon- 
 taneously produced, defects are discov- 
 ered and corrected, and the work not 
 merely restored to its primal unity, but 
 also raised to a higher term of perfection, 
 both in use and in beauty, for the con- 
 sciousness of the child. 
 
 It is the bringing into its full significance 
 this restored form of language after its an- 
 alysis that in its firstdegree constitutes read- 
 ings the proper sense of the term. And 
 here, evidently, two aspects present them- 
 selves. The one is the inner aspect. This 
 consists in the careful endeavor on the part 
 of the pupil to reproduce in his own mind 
 the exact thought symbolized in the writ- 
 ten signs. The other is the outer aspect, 
 consisting in the attempt to give proper 
 vocal expression to the thought thus in- 
 wardly reproduced. Both are in truth 
 
 * Curtius {History of Greece, Trans. Ward, I. 32), 
 declares that the first historic deed of the Greeks was 
 the development of their language, " and this first 
 deed an artistic one." 
 
128 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 exceedingly subtle processes, requiring a 
 high degree of mental cultivation and of 
 vocal skill on the part of the teacher. 
 And so much the more when the distorted 
 forms of speech so often developed by 
 children through defective or vicious in- 
 tellectual associations are taken into the 
 account. Should the teacher also prove 
 defective in culture and refinement, the 
 case must indeed be hopeless. 
 
 It should be added that the teaching of 
 reading presents two aspects correspond- 
 ing to those just indicated as involved in 
 the process of reading. The first consists 
 in showing the child how to study the les- 
 son, so as to find out exactly the thought 
 it conveys, and along with this, and as a 
 means to it, to bring him clearly to recog- 
 nize the precise form of the given words 
 and sentences. The second consists in 
 leading him to find and bring into exer- 
 cise the vocalization through which alone 
 the thought can be rendered precisely and 
 fully comprehensible to the hearer.^ 
 
 * The reader will find in Prof. Hiram Corson's 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 129 
 
 Of SO great importance did the proper 
 instruction of the pupil in reading appear 
 to Hegel that he expressed the wish and 
 the hope that it might be made one of the 
 chief means of culture in the schools. 
 And, of course, this could be only through 
 the careful exercise of reading, in the 
 sense of proper vocalization, in direct, 
 ceaseless combination with reflection, both 
 as to the form of the language and as to 
 the thought which the language conv^eys.^ 
 
 (3) But though reading involves so much 
 of reflection aud analysis, it still is pre- 
 dominantly '' receptive " in character. That 
 is, it depends upon an immediate, actual- 
 ly given external object — the book to 
 be read. And this, of course, necessarily 
 implies the complementary constructive 
 process through which the book was pro- 
 duced. In other words, reading involves 
 writing. 
 
 little book on " The Aims of Literary Study," ad- 
 mirable suggestions as to right method and true 
 values of voice-culture in reading. 
 * Thaulow, HegeF s Ansichten, I., 90. 
 9 
 
130 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 Writing is production. Reading is in- 
 terpretation and reproduction. For this 
 reason, as we may remark by the way, 
 reading and writing ought, at the outset, 
 to be taught simultaneously and as com- 
 plementary phases of the same exercise. 
 Spoken word, written word, printed word 
 — these are so many forms of one and the 
 same concept in the mind. And such gen- 
 uine examples of unity in variety and 
 variety in unity ought to be made the 
 most of. 
 
 Here, too, as elsewhere, neatness and 
 precision of form are but the outward 
 means through which are developed ex- 
 actness and finish of inward power ; and 
 it is not so much the visible, passing, 
 more or less marketable product as the 
 invisible, permanent, priceless mental 
 habit that is of chief moment in edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Such brief intimation will suffice with 
 respect to the elementary and so-called 
 formal work of instruction in writing. 
 From the first, as the pupil advances 
 
Instritctio7i — Its Means — A. Latt^iiage. 131 
 
 in power to produce at will the writ- 
 ten form of language, it cannot be 
 doubted that he should be led to exercise 
 that power in giving written as well as oral 
 expression to his own thought. By so 
 doing he not only gives to his own thought 
 visible and more or less lasting objective 
 form, but he also becomes accustomed to 
 examining it at his leisure in that form, 
 and hence, to carefully noting and correct- 
 ing its defects. Properly conducted, such 
 exercises cannot fail to react upon the 
 thinking of the pupil, rendering it more 
 exact, concise, and forcible. 
 
 (4) Nevertheless all language-work, as 
 thus far indicated, is still relatively sponta- 
 neous. Analysis appears, indeed, but only 
 as a matter of judgment in the form of 
 taste. It is still literally the art of lan- 
 guage with which the pupil is occupied ; 
 and that precisely this phase of language- 
 training may be brought to its highest 
 degree of perfection it is indispensable 
 that it should be supplemented by the 
 science of language. 
 
132 Hegel's Educational 'Ideas. 
 
 Thus Grammar, as the science of lan- 
 guage, constitutes the instrument of rea- 
 soned criticism, of judgment in the form 
 of reflection. In this connection Hegel de- 
 clares that " The value of grammatical 
 study cannot be too much emphasized 
 since it constitutes the beginning of logical 
 culture " — an aspect which, in our day as 
 well as in that of Hegel, ''appears to have 
 fallen almost wholly into oblivion. In 
 fact. Grammar has for its content the cate- 
 gories [or universal terms of thought] which 
 are the peculiar products and determina- 
 tions or characteristic forms of the under- 
 standing. In it [/. ^., in Grammar], there- 
 fore, the understanding itself begins to be 
 learned [or technically exact]. 
 
 " These most spiritual essentialities \inz. 
 the categories] with which Grammar first 
 makes us acquainted are something spe- 
 cially comprehensible to youth, and, in- 
 deed, there is nothing of a spiritual [or 
 mental] nature more easily comprehensible 
 than just these. For the as yet imper- 
 fectly developed power of comprehension 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Latiguage. 133 
 
 peculiar to this age is still unable to grasp 
 the realm [of thought] in its manifold- 
 ness ; while, on the other hand, those 
 very abstractions are something altogether 
 simple [and hence, easy of comprehen- 
 sion]." "^ 
 
 Elsewhere, f in speaking of the logical 
 determinations or characteristic forms of 
 thought, Hegel expresses himself more di- 
 rectly to the effect that " such determina- 
 tions are laid down [or presented in definite, 
 concrete form] especially in language. 
 Hence is it that the instruction in gram- 
 mar which is imparted to children has this 
 phase of utility : that they are brought to 
 attend unawares to the distinctions of 
 thought." 
 
 All which may be restated somewhat as 
 follows : The mind, in its very nature as 
 mind, is a self-centered unit of energy, 
 which unfolds itself into consciously real- 
 ized form through its relation to its en- 
 vironment. In its sensuous modes of ?iZ- 
 t\v\ty\tapp?'c /tends particular things. That 
 
 * Loc. cit. f Werke, VI., 50. 
 
134 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 is, in its responses to external stimuli it 
 develops within itself sensuous representa- 
 tions of things. But also in its reflective 
 modes of activity it comprehends things. 
 That is, in the very fact of developing sen- 
 suous representations of things, it neces- 
 sarily, and with more or less definiteness, 
 recognizes these representations as modes 
 of its own being, and, in that fact, also 
 necessarily seizes them together in vital re- 
 lation as modes of its own individual and 
 indivisible consciousness.* 
 
 But this process of the comprehension 
 of things under the form of the interrela- 
 tion of the mind's own modes is just what 
 constitutes thinking ; and thinking assumes 
 actual outer form in and attains positive 
 reality through language and nothing else 
 than language. 
 
 Further, by as far as the mind attains 
 to .fr //"-consciousness it recognizes the 
 modes of its own activity — makes these 
 
 * We will see later on how the psychological prin- 
 ciple here indicated becomes manifest in the devel- 
 opment of number. 
 
Instruction — Its Mea7is — A. La7iguage. 135 
 
 the object of its own reflection. And this 
 process of the examination of thought by 
 thought finds its first positive form in the 
 direct apprehension of the simple natural 
 categories under which all thought-forms 
 are primarily to be classified, and through 
 the application of which all thought-pro- 
 cesses are to be clarified, corrected, and 
 matured. 
 
 It is precisely this process which in its 
 elementary form constitutes the essence 
 of grammar, and the application of which 
 constitutes grammatical analysis. Once 
 clearly understood, it appears as self-evi- 
 dent that this is one of the most valid and 
 valuable of all educational media, and that 
 its neglect is one of the gravest educa- 
 tional errors of our time. 
 
 So much is especially applicable to ele- 
 mentary work. For more advanced pupils 
 Hegel is in accord with thoughtful edu- 
 cators generally as to the superiority of 
 ancient languages over modern, and espe- 
 cially over one's mother tongue, for pur- 
 poses of intellectual discipline. In the clas- 
 
He Joel's Educati07ial Ideas. 
 
 sic languages, not only is it that the forms 
 are unfamiliar, and hence attract special 
 attention, but also every phase of thought 
 has its peculiar and appropriate gram- 
 matical form. And because it is through 
 such concrete forms that the immature 
 mind most easily seizes the universal as- 
 pects of thought, it is evident that Hegel 
 does not exaggerate when he declares that 
 the thoroughgoing study of grammatical 
 forms presents itself as one of the most 
 universal and noblest of all the means of 
 cultivating the mind. 
 
 To which we may add that this must be 
 true, above all, of that language which 
 served to embody the thought of the first 
 people in the world who devoted their 
 highest genius to art production, on the 
 one hand, and to scientific research, on the 
 other, and who in just this process devel- 
 oped their language to a degree of preci- 
 sion and subtlety of expression nowhere 
 else equaled, precisely in and through this 
 freely creative activity within the realm of 
 the Ideal. From which it is but a natural 
 
Instruct icn — Its Means— A. Language. 137 
 
 corollary that the Greek language is a means 
 of mental discipline for which there is no 
 adequate substitute ; and the claim that its 
 place in the course of study ought to be 
 given up to some modern language is based 
 upon a total misconception of the educa- 
 tional values to be derived from the study 
 of language. 
 
 ib) Language of Quantity.'^ Our discus- 
 sion of the educational aspects of language 
 would be radically incomplete were we 
 not to consider the language of abstract 
 quantity. What has already been said 
 refers entirely to language in its most uni- 
 
 * I cannot pretend that Hegel has anywhere ex- 
 plicitly included number under language. But. of 
 course, practically, Hegel, along with everybody else, 
 does so include it. Even if it be admitted that, as 
 President Eliot of Harvard has declared (Regents' 
 Bulletin, No. 32. 1895, University of the State of 
 New York, p. 955), " the reasoning of mathematics 
 is peculiar to itself," yet it is still to be classed as a 
 special aspect, and must therefore be regarded as 
 realized and to be realized only in some form of 
 language. That number is nothing else than a special 
 aspect of language in general, has not, as it seems to 
 me, been sufficiently appreciated hitherto. 
 
138 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 versal form. The forms of expression 
 peculiar to the reahn of abstract quantity 
 may be said to be a dialect of this univer- 
 sal language. Hence, all that precedes 
 and all that could be said concerning lan- 
 guage in the wider sense must be applic- 
 able in a measure to the language of quan- 
 tity. Some things remain to be said, how- 
 ever, concerning the peculiarities of this 
 dialectic form. 
 
 And first we may note that Arithmetic, 
 which is commonly defined as the science 
 of number, might, for that reason, very 
 well be described as the elementary gram- 
 mar of the special dialect in which the 
 numerical aspect of thought finds appro- 
 priate expression. And here we are com- 
 pelled by the limits of the present essay 
 to confine ourselves to the single central 
 characteristic of numerical synthesis. 
 
 Students of Kant know that ''74-5=12" 
 is one of his examples of a '' synthetic 
 judgment a priori ;'' that is, of a judg- 
 ment in which (i) the predicate contains 
 something not directly given in the sub- 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 139 
 
 ject ; and (2) the truth of which, as soon 
 as discovered, is recognized as being uni- 
 versal in its appHcation, and also " neces- 
 sary " in the sense that from the very 
 nature of thought the judgment cannot 
 but be accepted as absolutely valid so soon 
 as its real meaning is clearly apprehended. 
 
 In referring to this Hegel declares that 
 in his doctrine of Synthetic Judgments 
 a priori Kant has emphasized a concept 
 {Begriff) which belongs to whatever is great 
 and undying in his philosophy — '* the con- 
 cept, namely, of a distinct aspect or char- 
 acteristic which at the same time is insep- 
 arable from the given whole ; something 
 identical which at the same time is undi- 
 vided difference.""^ 
 
 But he adds, directly after, that though 
 this concept is present even in perception, 
 yet the proposition '* 7 + 5=12," does not 
 really serve as an illustration of that con- 
 cept. ''Much rather is number a mere 
 identity, and numbering or reckoning is 
 the producing an identity which is utterly 
 * Werke, III., 232. 
 
I40 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 and wholly an external, superficial synthe- 
 sis ; a unity of ones of such nature that, so 
 far from being posited, or definitely rep- 
 resented as identical with one another, are 
 really set forth as external and positively 
 separated." 
 
 Kant himself, in fact, notifies the reader 
 that the given example has^a certain analy- 
 tical look, and that primarily the discovery 
 that 1 2 is the sum of 7 and 5 is really arrived 
 at by bringing to our aid, say, the five fin- 
 gers which are one by one added to the 7. 
 
 The real problem in Kant's example of 
 a numerical synthesis, as we may remark 
 by the way, is in truth the very old one of 
 the possibility of performing any addition 
 at all, and hence the problem of the pos- 
 sibility of number in general. In The 
 Sophist, and especially in The Parmenides, 
 Plato treats seriously and at length of the 
 problem of ''the one and the many." 
 Elsewhere, in a lighter mood, he allows 
 Socrates to express himself as always 
 wondering why it is that an object here 
 and another there should, when brought 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 141 
 
 together, become Hvo^ and whether it is the 
 mere juxtaposition of things that is the 
 cause of multipHcity ! 
 
 Of course it is impossible within the 
 present Hmits to enter into the more ab- 
 stract speculative aspect of the subject. 
 Besides, for the practical purposes of edu- 
 cational work, the more immediate psy- 
 chological aspect of the question is of 
 greater value. Of this I shall present a 
 brief intimation of what seems to me the 
 correct view, only premising that Kant's 
 doctrine of the '' transcendental Jinity of 
 self-consciousness," and Hegel's doctrine 
 of the original unity and self-activity of 
 mind as such, constitute, when taken to- 
 gether, the necessary presupposition of 
 all really fruitful psychological research. 
 
 To this presupposition no other psycho- 
 logical problem refers us more directly 
 than that of number. The very idea of 
 self-consciousness necessarily implies the 
 unity of the mind. But also such idea is 
 possible only through a reference of self 
 to self This very reference of self to self, 
 
142 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 however, is at the same time equally a dis- 
 tinguishing of self from self. Self-knowing 
 is possible only in so far as the self is made 
 the object of knowing. But it is the self alone 
 that is capable of knowing. As knowing, 
 however, the self is subject. Further, in 
 the very fact of applying to itself the 
 name " subject " the knowing self has 
 transformed itself into an object to which 
 at the same time it gives the name subject. 
 
 Thus the subject is its own object, and 
 the object is itself the subject by which it is 
 known as object. They are one and indivis- 
 ible : yet also this one has already disting- 
 uished itself as two. And as there is no limit 
 to the possibility of such self-distinguishing, 
 the mind has thus already entered upon 
 that phase of consciousness constituting the 
 thought of multiplicity with its infinite pos- 
 sibility of number. The ivJiole mind, besides, 
 is involved in each of its many phases. Con- 
 versely each phase involves the whole mind. 
 
 From this point of view it is evident 
 that one and one do not make two or become 
 two at all. Rather, in the very nature of 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. La7iguage. 143 
 
 the case they are from the beginning nec- 
 essarily in such relation to each other that 
 they just arc two— a two, however, which 
 is only a more complex one. When we 
 consider the one as one it appears to us as 
 continuous, intensive quantity ; when we 
 consider it as multiple it appears to us as 
 discrete, extensive quantity. Every " one " 
 may be considered as an indefinitely com- 
 plex sum of '* fractional parts ; " though 
 again each of these parts may be properly re- 
 garded as a " one." Similarly, every sum as 
 such is equally a '' one," though composed 
 of many '* ones." And we are to remem- 
 ber also that ** reciprocal quantities" are 
 any tivo quantities whose product is unity. 
 But thus, evidently, number is just a nec- 
 essary aspect of thought, and can be said 
 to inhere in things only in so far as things 
 are themselves regarded as externalized 
 thought. It is not the juxtaposition of things 
 in space, but their organic interrelation in 
 consciotisncss that constitutes the basis of 
 number. When I know things they are by 
 that fact proven to be in my thought. And 
 
144 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 I can know them only in so far as they are 
 in my thought. Whence it is evident that 
 even the outward formal synthesis of num- 
 ber is dependent absolutely upon the inner 
 synthesis of mind. Or, to return to Hegel's 
 explicit utterance : '' Number is the pure 
 thought of the externalization of thought."* 
 
 In short we can know anything of one 
 and of many only because the mind it- 
 self is a one which in its very nature is 
 a self-differentiating one — a one which is 
 forever specializing itself into many. 
 At the same time the ''many" thus pro- 
 duced are nothing else than modes of 
 the mind itself — differences unfolded by, 
 from and within the mind ; which differ- 
 ences, nevertheless, are absolutely in- 
 separable from the mind. Nay, each 
 mode, as we have already noticed, in- 
 volves the whole mind — is just a mode 
 of the one whole mind. 
 
 Numbering, to repeat, then, is just one 
 phase of thinking ; and number, as out- 
 ward form, is nothing else than just the 
 
 * Op. cit., 237. 
 
histruction — Its Means — A. Language. 145 
 
 special aspect of language expressive of 
 this peculiar phase of thinking.^ 
 
 But also this phase of thinking, as we 
 must add, is limited to the simple, abstract 
 characteristic of quantity. It is a mere 
 question of vwi'c or less, and wholly ignores 
 all qualitative aspects. In itself, therefore, 
 number is altogether one-sided and wholly 
 inadequate as an expression of thought in 
 general, and all attempts in that direction 
 must inevitably fail. Indeed the very 
 " exactness " of number is due precisely 
 to this inadequacy. It admits no ques- 
 tion as to its results only because it omits 
 from its processes all " disturbing ele- 
 ments " — i. c, all the elements which give 
 reality to things. 
 
 We have next to note on the one hand 
 that this very simplicity or abstractness of 
 number along with its generality explains 
 
 * On referring to Sigvvart {Logic, Trans. Helen 
 Dendy, II., 33) I find this statement : " Thus num- 
 ber shows itself to be the simple consequence of the 
 fundamental functions of thought itself," and "has 
 its root in self-consciousness," (p. 34), The whole 
 section (266) will well repay careful study. 
 10 
 
146 HegeVs Educatio)ial Ideas. 
 
 why it is so easy of apprehension, and 
 why it is so much a matter of course 
 to begin the definite work of instruction 
 in number at the very outset even of ele- 
 mentary education. It is precisely the 
 phase of thinking that is most abstract 
 and which yet finds its application in im- 
 mediately given sensuous forms. Indeed, 
 just as the child comes to school already 
 considerably advanced in language in its 
 more general character, so he brings with 
 him a rudimentary numerical vocabulary 
 together with actually germinating habits 
 of calculation developed through the spon- 
 taneous processes of his own mind awak- 
 ened to activity through his daily ex- 
 perience. 
 
 On the other hand it is important also 
 to emphasize a point already indicated, 
 and which HegeP shows to have been fa- 
 miliar even to the thinkers of antiquity — 
 the point, viz., that the very limitations of 
 numerical expression renders it hopelessly 
 inadequate to the expression of the richer, 
 * Op. cit., 238. 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 147 
 
 more concrete phases of thought. The 
 vocabulary of number, we repeat, is but 
 one aspect of the whole vocabulary of 
 thought, and it is no less absurd to assume 
 that the former is superior to the latter on 
 the ground of its greater *' exactness " 
 than it would be to insist that the less 
 includes and is superior to the greater 
 because it is more easily apprehended.^ 
 The very ** exactness" of number is the 
 unmistakable mark of its hopeless fin- 
 itude. For every actual number is exact 
 only in expressing a positive limit ; and 
 any actual number can of course be mul- 
 tiplied by any other number or by itself on 
 ad infinitiini. No number can by any pos- 
 sibility be infinite ; and just this thought, 
 for example, — a thought which transcends 
 number — is not a whit less ** exact" than 
 any that can be expressed in actual number. 
 
 * I do not say " comprehended," because to really 
 coftiprehend the less one must know it in its relations 
 — /. e. , must know the greater also — to know the one 
 you must know the many ; to know the many you 
 must know the one. 
 
148 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 We have next to remark that because of 
 the extreme simpHcity of its processes, in 
 which, as Hegel says, the ''same thing is 
 always repeated," in which, as Sigwart 
 puts it, '' all consists finally in reducing 
 manifold combinations of numbers to 
 simple counting " — because of this we are 
 bound to admit that, while within its 
 sphere the study of number is not only 
 valid but also indispensable, yet in point 
 of educational value its sphere is very lim- 
 ited and its value within this sphere is by 
 no means to be confounded with its '' prac- 
 tical " or commercial value. 
 
 It cannot be doubted, in fact, that Hegel 
 is entirely justified in saying* that " Arith- 
 metic considers numbers and their corre- 
 sponding figures ; or rather, does not con- 
 sider them but only operates with them. 
 For numbers constitute no more than a 
 neutral characteristic, something alto- 
 gether inert ; they have to be made effect- 
 ive through outward means and thus 
 brought into actual relation." In fact the 
 * Op. cit., 227. 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 149 
 
 whole of arithmetic consists of the various 
 modes of reckoning ; and these are noth- 
 ing else than the simple, special ways of 
 bringing numbers into relation one with 
 another. And we may add that when the 
 '' examples " are set aside and the actual 
 description and explanation of the pro- 
 cesses are given by themselves, the small- 
 ness of the compass of this remainder 
 practically demonstrates the extreme sim- 
 plicity of the theme, while the number of 
 the examples shows how literally true it is 
 that in this study there is for the most part 
 only prolonged repetition of one and the 
 same thing. 
 
 We are bound to repeat, therefore, that 
 it is the commercial rather than the edu- 
 cational value of arithmetic that gives it 
 so prominent a place in the course of 
 study. This once clearly recognized, it is 
 evident that the movement toward restrict- 
 ing this study to narrower limits in the 
 schools has full pedagogical justification. 
 
 And as for Algebra, we need only re- 
 mark for our present purpose that it is, as 
 
150 HegeFs Educational Ideas. 
 
 Newton named it, only a Universal Arith- 
 metic, and hence, only a higher, subtler 
 form of the grammar of the language of 
 abstract numerical quantity. 
 
 (c) Form aiid Substance in Language . 
 Before taking final leave of the subject of 
 Language, we must notice that, as here 
 considered, it includes the whole range of 
 what has generally been regarded as the 
 substance of elementary education. In 
 other words, we have passed under review 
 the familiar '' three R's " — Reading, Writ- 
 ing, and Arithmetic, as the universal as- 
 pects of language considered as the 
 organic form of thought. 
 
 We have, besides, noticed that these are 
 to be considered from two complementary 
 points of view — the one being that of inner 
 substance, the other being that of outer 
 form. And we have now further to em- 
 phasize the fact that precisely for the pur- 
 poses of elementary education these two 
 aspects are altogether inseparable. It 
 ought never to be forgotten that until 
 Grammar, as the science of Language, is 
 
Instruction — Its Meajis — A. Language. 151 
 
 formally entered upon, the exercises in 
 language are predominantly of a sponta- 
 neous, creative character, and the products, 
 however crude they may be, are still es- 
 sentially of the nature of art products. 
 
 All education, as we cannot too often 
 repeat, consists in the self-definition, or 
 self-formulation, of the mind ; and the 
 most direct, and subtle, and exact form 
 which mind assumes in this process of self- 
 formulation, is just Language. This is 
 the real reason for the fact that among all 
 peoples in all ages elementary education 
 has ever consisted chiefly in language ex- 
 ercises — in speaking, in reading, in writ- 
 ing, in numbering. 
 
 True, these have always been exercises 
 in fonn, and from this point of view they 
 might very properly be described as *' for- 
 mal " studies. But, also, they are quite 
 as much exercises in differentiating the 
 substance of thought itself ; and hence 
 may just as properly be described as ''sub- 
 stantial " studies. What, indeed, can be 
 more substantial for the mind than just 
 
152 HegeVs Educatiotial Ideas. 
 
 the mind itself — the mind, manifesting it- 
 self in its own subtlest modes, which are 
 just the modes of thought realized in and 
 through language ? Add to this, that the 
 child-mind is wholly unable to separate, or 
 even clearly to distinguish, between form 
 and substance, and it will be evident that, 
 in elementary education especially, these 
 studies are far enough from being merely 
 formal in their value. 
 
 But yet another point ought to be men- 
 tioned. It is that, in all the exercises 
 tending toward the education or self-form- 
 ulation of the individual mind, such mind 
 is itself the substance formulated, the form- 
 ulating principle, and the formative en- 
 ergy — the ultimate aim being the fulfill- 
 ment in the individual mind itself of the 
 universal type to which it belongs. In 
 other words, to repeat once more, the 
 mind is nothing else, or less, than a sub- 
 stantial, self-differentiating unit of energy, 
 which bears within itself all the funda- 
 mental aspects of cause, as these were 
 traced out by Aristotle. For the mind as 
 
Instruction — Its Means — A. language. 153 
 
 spontaneous energy is nothing else than 
 efficient cause, giving form to its own 
 substance ; and this to the final end of 
 realizing within and for itself, just its own 
 true nature. 
 
 On the other hand, we have also to no- 
 tice that, causal though it be in its very- 
 nature, the individual mind still needs to 
 be awakened to its own native, self-defin- 
 ing activity, and depends for its awaken- 
 ing upon its relations to the world of its 
 '' environment." So that while in the pro- 
 cess of education the chief place is rightly 
 given to the various phases of language 
 as constituting the most immediate aspects 
 of the mind's own self-differentiation, yet 
 that process must be altogether incom- 
 plete, and hopelessly one-sided, were it not 
 to include the careful study of the various 
 aspects of the environment through which 
 the mind is awakened to its own native, 
 self-formulating activity. 
 
 And here, too, the same principle of 
 causation is manifest. For Matter (mate- 
 rial cause), cannot really be conceived as 
 
154 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 something apart from definition (formal 
 cause), nor as something apart from en- 
 ergy (efficient cause). On the contrary, 
 energy can really be conceived — i. e., ra- 
 tionally thought — only as being in its ulti- 
 mate nature self-active substance, which, 
 precisely through its own self-activity, de- 
 fines itself, or gives itself specific form. 
 But such substantial, self-formative en- 
 ergy cannot but be self-conscious energy, 
 or Mind. 
 
 Thus, in its ultimate nature, the world 
 or the environment by which the individ- 
 ual mind is awakened to its own self-de- 
 fining activity, is itself nothing else than 
 the outer form in and through which the 
 eternal Mind is forever expressing itself 
 as Mind. And this is the reason why the 
 individual mind finds itself so much at 
 home in its contact with its environment. 
 For in this contact it has always had at 
 least some dim premonition of the truth 
 that somehow Nature is nothing else than 
 the outer form in which the eternal Mind 
 is forever revealing itself to the human 
 
histruction — Its Means — A. Language. 155 
 
 mind, and that thus, in its interpretations 
 of Nature, the human mind is only at- 
 tempting to spell out that revelation, and 
 in so doing is only going to school to the 
 eternal Mind. And thus the whole range 
 of what in current fashion are called " sub- 
 stantial " studies, proves to be nothing else 
 than the wider range of Language Lessons 
 through which the individual mind is led 
 up to still more adequate knowledge of 
 Mind in its eternal, substantial, causal 
 character. Nor should we forget that in 
 this its highest character Mind finds by far 
 its subtlest, most adequate expression in 
 and through the human mind itself, partly 
 as unfolded in institutions on the one hand 
 and in language and literature on the 
 other, but most of all as realized progres- 
 sively in individual human lives. 
 
 Hence, while Nature, and Institutions, 
 and Literature are highly important as 
 media of the child's development, the liv- 
 ing teacher is of still greater importance 
 — so much so that there is no exaggera- 
 tion in Emerson's saying to the effect that 
 
156 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 *' it matters less what you learn than of 
 whom you learn." 
 
 It is upon this presupposition on the 
 part of the teacher, the presupposition, 
 viz.y that the whole world of nature and 
 of humanity constitutes one continuous, 
 progressive, divinely constituted subject- 
 matter or " course of study " — that all true 
 educational work must proceed, and tow- 
 ard the development of this convicton in 
 reasoned form, on the part of the pupil, 
 that all true educational work must tend. 
 
 Thus far Hegel is fairly explicit as to 
 the Matter, the Method, and the End of 
 education considered on the intellectual 
 side or the side of '' Instruction." What 
 he would have said of the further phases 
 which we have called Form and Process 
 in the same sphere, is still more a matter 
 of inference, and can here be indicated 
 only in the briefest way. 
 
Instricction — lis Means — B. For??i. 157 
 
 X. 
 
 INSTRUCTION— ITS MEANS— B. FORM. 
 
 Form, in the sense of the general and 
 more or less abstract space-relations, serv- 
 ing as means to education, appears in the 
 received course of study under three as- 
 pects : {a) Geography — the study of given 
 concrete real forms ; iU) Geometry — the 
 study of abstract ideal forms ; {c) Drawing 
 — the study of concrete ideal forms. 
 
 Geography is, first of all, the more or 
 less detailed study of the actually existing 
 concrete form of the earth as the habita- 
 tion of man. It is thus of immediate /r^^- 
 tical significance. 
 
 Of this we have the direct antithesis in 
 Geometry, which is the study of the uni- 
 versal abstract relations true of all space 
 in as far as space is simply a form of con- 
 sciousness — relations, i. e., which are no- 
 where realized as such, save in conscious- 
 ness ; and this, primarily, in the eternal 
 
158 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 consciousness; secondarily in the human 
 consciousness. In its immediate charac- 
 ter, therefore, Geometry possesses no more 
 than a purely " theoretical " significance. 
 
 These two antithetical aspects of the 
 study of form may be said to find their 
 unity in Drawing, which takes into consid- 
 eration, and accepts as valid, the universal 
 laws of form revealed in Geometry, and 
 applies these laws in the idealization and 
 representation of the forms concretely 
 presented in Nature. It is through such 
 application of the (consciously or uncon- 
 sciously recognized) laws of form in the 
 deliberate idealization and representation 
 of actually given forms that what are 
 known as Ideals of Beauty become exphcit 
 in consciousness. 
 
 Geography gives us actual forms ; Ge- 
 ometry reveals to us the laws of form ; 
 Drawing develops ideal forms. 
 
 Even in such brief summary — and partly 
 because of its brevity — the educational 
 value of each of these aspects of Form is 
 already fairly apparent. To this, how- 
 
Instriictioii — Its Means — B. Form. 159 
 
 ever, we must add a few further intima- 
 tions: 
 
 {a) Geography, it is true, is of immediate 
 practical significance. But that is not its 
 educational significance. The latter, as 
 we must never forget, is to be sought, in 
 any study, in the value which that study 
 has ^j a means to the development of mind. 
 The so-called " practical " significance can 
 at most but lend an extrinsic interest, 
 which serves to intensify — though also it 
 is only too likely to confuse — whatever 
 mental exercise is involved in the given 
 study and which tend to the development 
 of the mind of the pupil. 
 
 What, then, is the actual educational 
 significance of the study of Geography ? 
 Our answer is, that here, as in language, 
 the immediate given concrete form is to 
 be studied as the form of a definite sub- 
 stantial thought. Thus, evidently, this study 
 necessarily involves in its actual develop- 
 ment the recognition of certain universal 
 aspects of space-relation (Mathematical 
 Geography), implying and therefore lead- 
 
i6o HegeVs Ediicatiojial Ideas. 
 
 ing over to Geometry, which may be called 
 the Universal Grammar of Form ; and 
 also implying and leading over (through 
 maps and pictorial representations of nat- 
 ural types, inorganic and organic), to 
 Drawing, which is the elementary aspect 
 of the Art Form. 
 
 Not only so, but the study of geography 
 necessarily involves the recognition of cer- 
 tain universal aspects of Process, inorganic 
 (Physics and Chemistry), organic (Botany 
 and Zoology), and spiritual (Human His- 
 tory) ; though, as we ought carefully to 
 note, while geography involves these ref- 
 erences, it does not and cannot include 
 these sciences, but only presupposes them. 
 
 But what is the central thought involved 
 in the facts with which Geography deals, 
 and hence to be evolved in the mind of 
 the pupil through his study of Geography ? 
 This thought is nothing else than what is 
 often indicated by means of the term 
 "■ orientation," and by this, again, is meant 
 nothing else than the process of conscious 
 self-adjustment to the actual present outer 
 
Instruction — Its Means — B. Form. i6r 
 
 world as thus far the concrete expression 
 of Reason. 
 
 In Geography, strictly speaking, indeed, 
 this process of orientation does not extend 
 beyond its external aspect. But even this 
 is by no means insignificant. Within this 
 limit the pupil is brought to note the re- 
 lative position and extent of land and 
 water, the outlines of land-masses, the po- 
 sition and elevation of mountain systems, 
 the extent of plains, the conditions and 
 extent of rain-fall on the one hand and 
 of drainage on the other — the last two 
 necessarily implying the relations sever- 
 ally of given areas of land and water to 
 the sun, together with the atmospheric 
 currents due in part to this relation. 
 
 All this observation of relation of part 
 to part of the earth's surface, together 
 with the relation of the whole with its 
 parts to the sun, constitutes the outer 
 form of an inner process, consisting of the 
 development and orderly arrangement of 
 a vast array of imagery in the mind of the 
 pupil. And we may remark that while 
 II 
 
1 62 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 the development of the imagery is the 
 work of the mind as imagination, which is 
 the highest aspect of the sensuous con- 
 sciousness, the orderly arrangement of 
 the imagery is the work of the mind as 
 understanding, which is one of the more 
 elementary phases of the reflective con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 It is through the study of Geography, 
 then, that the child definitely enters upon 
 the process of his own intellectual self-ad- 
 justment to the thought of the world in as 
 far as that thought is expressed in outer 
 physical /<?r;/i? / though even here, let us 
 repeat, through every fact he is brought 
 face to face with relations which can be 
 explained only through a study of the 
 world as Process. 
 
 But this is only the beginning. For, as 
 already noticed, the study of Geography, 
 strictly speaking, is only a preparatory 
 step to the study of Man. Man, as we 
 cannot too often remind ourselves, is, in- 
 deed, ultimately the child of Divinity ; but 
 he is so in such wise as to appear and be. 
 
Instruct ton — Its Means — B. Form. 163 
 
 immediately, the child of Nature. Fur- 
 ther, the child, as the growing man, can 
 orient himself spiritually only through the 
 regulated study of the human race ; for 
 only in the race can he come to the clear 
 apprehension of his own larger Self. Only 
 through knowing Humanity can he come 
 to adequately know himself as a human 
 being. 
 
 As the child of Nature, however, man 
 can be comprehended only in relation to \ 
 his natural environment ; so that while the 
 study of man in the more elementary 
 sense of the term — i. i\, from the point of 
 view of anthropology — may be said to 
 emerge out of physical geography, it at- 
 tains its more positive educational signi- 
 ficance in political geography. And this so 
 much the more as the actually existing races 
 of the world present in rough logical out- 
 line the whole series of chronological stages 
 through which the most advanced races 
 must have passed in the attainment of their 
 present superior degree of self-realization. 
 
 Thus, Geography, as the elementary 
 
164 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 study of the concrete forms of Nature, is 
 found to culminate in History, as the 
 subtlest and most concrete Process of 
 the world. Hence the impossibility of 
 comprehending the history of any given 
 people without careful and continuous ref- 
 erence to the geographical conditions in 
 the midst of which such people developed 
 and expended their energies. 
 
 But, as we have already noticed, while 
 geography implies all the other sciences, 
 and may even be said to be the premoni- 
 tion of them, it still does not and cannot 
 include them. True, as descriptive of the 
 concrete outer world in which the pupil 
 lives, geography serves as the means to 
 the immediate or primary synthesis which 
 he forms in his own mind of the world as 
 a whole. On the other hand, the medi- 
 ated, matured synthesis of the world, he 
 can arrive at only through the analytical 
 processes involved in the study of the va- 
 rious sciences, held in sharp distinction 
 one from another. 
 
 These various aspects of the outer and 
 
Instruction — Its Means — B. Form. 165 
 
 the inner world must therefore be taken 
 up separately, and considered each within 
 its own specific limits, if we would avoid 
 endless confusions in our educational work. 
 
 {b) Geometry, as the study of the uni- 
 versal abstract laws of space-relations, has 
 the special pedagogical value of accustom- 
 ing the mind to insistance upon absolute 
 precision of results in each and every case, 
 whether in one's own work or in the work 
 of others. Such habit of mind is, of course, 
 of inestimable value in all studies. 
 
 Meanwhile it is not to be overlooked 
 that the exactness demanded is exclusively 
 quantitative, and that to the qualitative 
 aspects of concrete forms Geometry is 
 wholly indifferent. This is the limitation 
 which constitutes at once its defect and its 
 perfection. — Its defect, because unless the 
 complementary aspect of quality is other- 
 wise emphasized in the education of the 
 pupil, the habit of demanding absolute 
 quantitative precision must grow into a 
 rigid formalism, tending to the final arrest 
 of all further development. — Its perfec- 
 
1 66 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 tion, because only by abstracting from 
 quality and attending to quantity alone is 
 such absolute precision possible at all. 
 
 And yet, even here the germ of qualita- 
 tive difference is not altogether wanting, 
 the *' properties " of the triangle being dif- 
 ferent from those of the circle, those of a 
 circle being different from those of a 
 square, etc., etc. 
 
 It may be added that the very aspect of 
 precision presented in Geometry, together 
 with the simplicity of its more elementary 
 degrees, renders this special phase of the 
 study of Form peculiarly well adapted to 
 the requirements of elementary education. 
 On the one hand, the simplicity of the 
 figures of plane Geometry must tend to 
 put a wholesome check upon the wild ex- 
 uberance of childish imagination ; while 
 the precision of such forms and of the re- 
 lations involved in them must tend to ren- 
 der judgment more exact. 
 
 At the same time, as has been noticed 
 in what precedes. Geometry is already im- 
 plied in that aspect of Geography known 
 
Instruct ion —Its Means — B. Form, 167 
 
 as " mathemathical ; " though for the child 
 this appears only in germinal form, in the 
 simple names and descriptions of the cir- 
 cle, sphere, diameter, etc., and involves no 
 actual instruction upon the properties of any 
 geometrical figure. And if ** triangulation " 
 appears in map-drawing, this again, as need 
 hardly be mentioned, involves no actual in- 
 struction in Geometry, properly speaking. 
 if) As noticed above, Drawing accepts 
 as valid the universal laws of form as re- 
 vealed in Geometry, or the Grammar of 
 Form, and so applies these laws in the 
 idealization and representation of the 
 actual forms in Nature as to develop 
 Ideals of Beauty. We have now to add 
 that in the history of the race Drawing 
 (including modeling) has developed a world 
 of idealized forms, which for the purposes of 
 education are forms already at hand to be 
 imitated by the pupil — models upon which 
 his taste may be developed into ever 
 higher degrees of realization, with the as- 
 surance that it will thus be enriched with 
 those elements that constitute whatever is 
 
1 68 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 essential in the best products of the race. 
 Thus, as Geography consists in the study 
 of the concrete forms produced by nature, 
 and serving as the immediate outward 
 conditions of the hfe of man, so Drawing 
 consists in the study of and the attempt to 
 reproduce the ideal forms produced by 
 man himself, and expressing thus one es- 
 sential phase of the inner life of the human 
 spirit. Such study, again, cannot but re- 
 sult in the development and orderly ar- 
 rangement of a vast array of imagery be- 
 longing to the Ideal World, and preparing 
 the pupil for productive work of higher or 
 lower degree on his own part. 
 
 And here, too, as in Geography, the 
 production of the imagery is the work of 
 the imagination, while the orderly arrange- 
 ment of the imagery is the work of the 
 understanding. But there is this differ- 
 ence : that the imagery in the realm of 
 Geography is limited to the sphere of Na- 
 ture, the forms in which are more or less 
 accidental, so far as the element of beauty 
 is concerned ; while in the field of art the 
 
Instruct ion — Its Means — B. Form. 169 
 
 forms are the conscious products of the 
 human spirit stirred to utmost eagerness 
 of effort for the purpose of satisfying its 
 own inherent, irrepressible demand for 
 perfection in Beauty. 
 
 It is these latter products, therefore, 
 which serve best of all as the models upon 
 which to form the taste of the developing 
 individual mind. But also it is important 
 to remember that the really worthy ideals 
 of Beauty have always had a religious core. 
 In which case we may well accept as sub- 
 stantial truth the statement that '' Out of 
 the perfection of Beauty God hath or- 
 dained the world."* And because on the 
 human side religion is essentially ethical, it 
 may very well be said that really good taste is 
 nothing else than Morality bccovie bcaiitiftil. 
 
 Hence the teaching of Drawing, includ- 
 ing, as it ought to include, the study of the 
 vital historical elements in the great art- 
 products of the world, involves pedagogi- 
 
 * Such thought is at least suggested by Psalms 
 L. , 2; " Out of Zion the perfection of Beauty, God 
 hath shined forth." 
 
I70 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 cal values, not merely of a formal, intellec- 
 tual character, but also of a character 
 which is essentially ethical. 
 
 Rightly estimated and conducted, there- 
 fore, this study, which deals in the ideal ele- 
 ments having their roots in the ethical and 
 the religious world, cannot but point for- 
 ward to the study of these more concrete 
 spheres of human development as an actual 
 Process. 
 
Instruction — C. TJie Study of Process. 171 
 
 XL 
 
 INSTRUCTION — ITS MEANS — C. THE 
 STUDY OF PROCESS. 
 
 We have next to notice the educational 
 significance of the study of Process as ex- 
 pressive of the essential relations of the 
 Energy unfolding itself in the actual 
 world. This presents itself under the gen- 
 eral forms: {a) Inorganic Processes; {b) 
 Organic Processes, and {c) the Process of 
 Human History. And here our limits 
 render still more hopeless any attempt to 
 do more than barely intimate the educa- 
 tional significance of the themes named. 
 
 (a) It must be frankly admitted that 
 Hegel was less happy in dealing with the 
 world of Nature than in dealing with the 
 world of man. So that while it may be 
 said without exaggeration that his Logic 
 is the most compact aud rigidly consistent 
 statement ever given of the essential prin- 
 ciples of Evolution, yet his attempt to ap- 
 ply those principles in the realm of Nature 
 proved a conspicuous failure. 
 
172 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 At the same time his work in this field 
 is not without valuable suggestions ; and 
 if in details his Philosophy of Nature must 
 be rejected as arbitrary, yet the general 
 conception of nature as the precondition 
 of human history, and as an orderly devel- 
 opment leading up to and culminating in 
 human life, is the fundamental thread of 
 the whole, and must, therefore, be taken 
 as indicating his real view of the proper 
 significance of the natural sciences in a 
 course of study. 
 
 Of the soundness of such pedagogi- 
 cal clew no one to-day is likely to entertain 
 a doubt. And, in fact, Hegel's general 
 philosophical theory, rightly understood 
 and applied, may be said to furnish the 
 one clew to a thoroughly consistent and 
 completely satisfactory interpretation of 
 the results to which modern science has 
 attained."^ Nor can there be a reasonable 
 
 *The present writer has attempted an interpreta- 
 tion of these results from this point of view in a vol- 
 ume entitled : The World-Energy and its Self -Con- 
 servation, published by S. C. Griggs &Co., Chicago. 
 
Instruction — C. T/ie Study of Process. 173 
 
 question that such interpretation is in- 
 dispensable, above all, to the teacher of 
 science, of whatever department or grade. 
 For upon this largely must depend whether 
 the pupil shall be satisfied with a crude 
 materialistic view of the world, or whether 
 he shall be led to comprehend ''matter" 
 as nothing else than a mode of the univer- 
 sal Energy which in its highest term is the 
 absolute creative Spirit or divine Mind. 
 
 The latter, as Hegel would unquestion- 
 ably urge, is the one legitimate conclusion 
 to which the study of inorganic processes 
 should lead. 
 
 {b) Similarly, the teacher of science 
 within the realm of the organic, ought to 
 be able to bring the pupil to recognize in 
 the whole process of Nature, the endlessly 
 manifold evidences of one all-comprehen- 
 sive Method leading up from the inorgan- 
 ic, through the organic, to Man. And 
 further he ought to be able to bring the 
 pupil to see in this Method the proof that 
 Mind is the source and substance of the 
 world, and that, as the primal Life, the 
 
174 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 eternal Mind in its self-unfolding, cease- 
 lessly gives birth to every form of life. 
 
 To which it must be added that the di- 
 rect pedagogical value of the natural sci- 
 ence studies consists in the first place in 
 the development of what is commonly 
 known as the power of observation. This 
 power, more closely examined, is found to 
 have for its immediate factors. Perception 
 on the one hand and Judgment (as the 
 critical aspect of the understanding) on 
 the other. And it is to be carefully noted 
 that observation for the purposes of Sci- 
 ence is different from observation for the 
 purposes of Art. In both it is demanded 
 that the observation shall be as exact as 
 possible — /. e., that the percepts* formed 
 shall be accurate in the highest attainable 
 degree. 
 
 But in observation for scientific ends, 
 the actual process of perception is brought 
 into definite and strict subordination to 
 the deliberate exercise of judgment con- 
 
 * In its outer or objective aspect a percept is a 
 " mental image." 
 
Instruction — C The Study of Process. 175 
 
 cerning the essential inner relations deter- 
 mining the given outer form ; while in 
 observations for the purposes of art, 
 though the power of perception is also 
 exercised under the direct control of judg- 
 ment, it is nevertheless judgment in that 
 spontaneous aspect known as Taste. And 
 in this peculiar character its exercise has 
 for direct end to create a form of the same 
 type as that of the given observed form, 
 but with the difference that it shall be 
 raised to the degree of ideal perfection as 
 form. 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten that in sci- 
 ence the ultimate aim is to satisfy the de. 
 mand of the mind for perfection in utility, 
 while in art the aim is to satisfy the de- 
 mand of the mind for perfection in Beauty. 
 
 Such psychological distinctions cannot 
 be too vividly present in the mind of the 
 teacher, since they must have a control- 
 ling influence in his pedagogical methods 
 and must thus radically influence the de- 
 velopment of the mind of the pupil. 
 
 But again in the second place, natural 
 
176 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 science studies have this pedagogical val- 
 ue : that in deaHng directly with modes of 
 energy as manifested through inorganic 
 forms, the pupil is brought to positively 
 exercise and to definitely measure his own 
 powers, and thus to further his own self- 
 development as Will. And this is true in 
 a still subtler way in dealing with organic 
 forms, such as putting seeds in the earth 
 and watching the growth of plants, and 
 noting the effect of his own work upon 
 their development. 
 
 Here, indeed, is a specially fruitful field 
 for practical self-definition on the part of 
 the individual pupil, through his own reg- 
 ulated and hence increasingly conscious 
 self-adjustment to the actual modes of the 
 creative Mind as manifest in Nature. It 
 is in this stern school of Nature, as it is 
 well worth while to notice, that the agri- 
 culturist develops that keen shrewdness 
 and subtle ^' common sense " which so 
 often has the appearance of prophetic in- 
 stinct. 
 
 {c) But without further remark upon 
 
Instruct wn — C. TJie Study of Process. 177 
 
 this special theme, tempting as it is, we 
 must turn to the third phase of Process, 
 viz., to that specially complex and subtle 
 mode of energy manifest in human his- 
 tory. Here Hegel is at his best. Not 
 only does he conceive Nature to be the 
 simple divine process culminating in man ; 
 to him the history of the human world is 
 itself also, as we have seen, nothing else 
 than " progress in the consciousjiess of Free- 
 dom." That is, the central, vital element 
 in the history of mankind is essentially and 
 solely of an educational character. 
 
 At the same time, it is of the highest 
 importance to notice, that in the definition 
 of history just quoted, everything centres 
 in the idea of Freedom, So that one 
 might infer from this alone that for Hegel 
 the educational value of the study of his- 
 tory is essentially ethical in its character, 
 while in comparison with this its value as 
 an intellectual discipline is only second- 
 ary. 
 
 But here again human history is by no 
 means to be considered merely as a rec- 
 
178 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 ord. On the contrary, it is to be consid- 
 ered, above all, as an actual Process. The 
 study of history is not the study of a 
 book ; it is the study of a process by 
 means of a book. The book is merely a 
 compound lens through which the events 
 of the world are brought into focus for 
 the individual pupil so that he may view 
 them in their true perspective. 
 
 In such wise, the indvidual, even una- 
 wares, develops an ideal or universal 
 standard of judgment by which to esti- 
 mate the events of his own time as well as 
 his own conduct and that of others. 
 
 Deeper than this, however, is the edu- 
 cational significance of the various institu- 
 tions in and through which the universal 
 spirit of humanity has unfolded itself. It 
 is only through these institutions, in fact, 
 that genuine Freedom can be attained at 
 all on the part of the individual. For 
 Freedom is a universal quality inhering in 
 man as man. That is, it pertains to the 
 universal or divine nature of man as a 
 spiritual or personal being. It is Freedom 
 
Instri(ction—C. The Study of Process. 179 
 
 in this universal, positive, concrete sense, 
 which Hegel describes as Freedom of the 
 one in the other, and which, as he says, 
 unites men in a manner which is essen- 
 tially internal or spiritual ; whereas, mere 
 distress, or momentary need, only brings 
 men together in a fashion that is wholly 
 external and accidental, the groups dis- 
 solving as soon as the danger is ended, or 
 the need satisfied.^ 
 
 It is just this ethical aspect of institu- 
 tional life that above everything else needs 
 to be brought vividly home to the con- 
 sciousness and conscience of the youth of 
 our time. And where else will one find 
 such searching analysis of the various 
 forms of associated human life, or such 
 adequate application of their central, posi- 
 tive elements as in Hegel's PJiilosopJiie 
 des Rechts\ to say nothing of his Phil- 
 osophy of History f 
 
 We can here give no more than the 
 
 * Cf Werke, VII2., 276. 
 
 f Abridged Trans, by J. McBride Sterrett, under 
 the title : The Ethics of Hegel. 
 
l8o HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 barest intimations, the central idea being 
 that all institutions educate through the 
 subtle means of custom, which is nothing 
 else than the Reason of the race become 
 organic, and thus far actual, without hav- 
 ing yet emerged from its instinctive or 
 unreflecting form. 
 
 (i) In the Family the child learns lan- 
 guage and begins the formation of his 
 habits upon the model of custom as rep- 
 resented in the manners and requirements 
 of the given household. These are deter- 
 mined in detail by the class and essen- 
 tially by the race to which the family 
 group pertains. 
 
 (2) In the State these customs begin to 
 assume a reflective form in Laws; which, 
 however, are still given out by authority 
 and without further reason than that of 
 custom, of which they are the more ex- 
 plicit formulation. So that the individual 
 who adjusts himself to custom is by that 
 fact already a '' law-abiding citizen." 
 
 At the same time, the state restrains 
 the individual who assumes to disregard 
 
Instruction — C. The Study of Process. i8i 
 
 its laws ; and this secures to the docile 
 (teachable) individual, the negative free. 
 dom which consists in absence of external 
 hindrance in his self-adjustment to custom 
 as the actual, present, and presumably 
 rational, world-order ; such order never 
 ceasing to bring to bear upon him its 
 pressure or stimulus, yielding to which he 
 attains to consistent and at least approxi- 
 mately rational, self-definition. 
 
 (3) In addition to these institutions, the 
 Church is also ceaselessly as well as more 
 explicitly, and upon still higher grounds, 
 urging upon the individual the necessity 
 of willingly adjusting himself to the actual, 
 explicit form, which the Reason of the 
 race has assumed. 
 
 (4) But the School is the institution 
 which has for its essential and specific 
 function, to bring the individual to explic- 
 it consciousness of the Laws of the world, 
 both physical and spiritual, so that he may 
 conform to these no longer as a mere 
 matter of habit, but also as a matter of 
 reflection ; being thus able to give not 
 
HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 merely a reason but a good reason for the 
 faith that is in him. 
 
 On the other hand, the school receives 
 the child at an age when custom and au- 
 thority are the only standards he can ap- 
 preciate ; so that here the problem of the 
 transition of the individual from the mere- 
 ly instinctive and habitual, to the reflec- 
 tive stage of his own adjustment to the 
 rational order of the world as expressed 
 in nature on the one hand and in human 
 institutions on the other, attains its most 
 explicit and complex degree. 
 
 But just for this reason, the school pre- 
 sents itself as the highest means to instruc- 
 tion ; for it has deliberately reduced the 
 whole process of education to a system. 
 To this phase of the subject, therefore, we 
 have next to turn. 
 
Instruction — Its Method. 183 
 
 XII. 
 
 INSTRUCTION — ITS METHOD. 
 
 Upon this theme we need add but Httle 
 to what has already been said in connec- 
 tion with the Process of Instruction. And 
 the first thing we have to say is that no- 
 where else is the wholeness of Personality 
 of such vital moment as in the teacher. 
 Substantial natural gift, exact and ade- 
 quate culture, positive force of refined 
 character — these are the concrete aspects 
 severally of "material, formal and efficient 
 cause " which are the indispensable pre- 
 requisites of the really good teacher. 
 
 And it is the exact and adequate 
 culture, constituting, as we have intimated, 
 the phase of " formal cause," in which con- 
 sists the essence of genuine vital MetJiod 
 in teaching. Hence true and truly effec- 
 tive methods of teaching are not to be 
 prescribed and applied from without, but 
 
184 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 to be developed as vital, spontaneous 
 modes from within. 
 
 To this it should be added on the other 
 hand that true methods are by no means 
 ** original " in the sense of being merely 
 expressive of the notions peculiar to the 
 individual teacher. On the contrary to be 
 true, a method, like anything else, must be 
 rational. It is not the individuality of the 
 teacher that is to be insisted upon, but his 
 personality. His methods, if they are to 
 be valid, must be based, not in his individ- 
 ual whims, but in universal Reason. 
 Hence the supreme necessity of sound and 
 well-rounded education on the part of the 
 teacher. 
 
 Meanwhile supervision can accomplish 
 well-nigh the impossible through sugges- 
 tion in respect of method. And the most 
 vital aspect of this consists in the discov- 
 ery, on the part of the supervisor, of latent 
 gifts on the part of the individual teacher 
 and the bringing the teacher to a conscious- 
 ness of such gifts. The power of the 
 teacher is thus increased not merely by 
 
Instruction — Its Method. 185 
 
 explicit knowledge of the value of the 
 method already unconsciously made use 
 of, but also by the increased confidence, 
 vigor and definiteness of work which such 
 knowledge brings. 
 
 In short the highest function of the su- 
 pervisor is, not to '' originate" methods 
 and prescribe them for others to follow 
 unquestioningly. It is rather to discover 
 the central element of true method already 
 spontaneously unfolding in the mind of 
 each individual teacher under his super- 
 vision and to encourage and guide the 
 teacher in the maturing of such inherent 
 gift into its richest values. 
 
 The complement of this is to be found 
 in the use of the imitative instinct through 
 the observation of the work of specially 
 successful teachers by those less experi- 
 enced and still in the plastic stage. 
 
 Next to an autocratic, despotic negative 
 criticism, which generally is made use of 
 to conceal a barren intellect, nothing could 
 be more deadly to educational interests 
 than ready-made and elaborately worked 
 
1 86 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 out '' methods " prescribed for the sake 
 and to the extent of actual uniformity. 
 For this could only result in arrest of per- 
 sonal development on the part of the 
 teachers affected, and this again could 
 mean nothing else than the suspension of 
 all vitality and the reduction of the whole 
 educational process to the dead level of 
 mere monotonous mechanism — the utter 
 cancellation of the consciousness of Free- 
 dom through the annulment of Freedom 
 itself in and for the individual. 
 
 And now we must remind ourselves 
 once more that Freedom is to be realized 
 only through the ethical process of volun- 
 tary action, the direct consideration of 
 which constitutes the next subdivision of 
 our theme. 
 
Discipline. 187 
 
 XIII. 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 Respecting Discipline much has inevit- 
 ably been anticipated. We have already 
 noticed Hegel's dictum that just as the 
 will begins in obedience, so also does 
 thought ; that in fact obedience is the 
 beginning of wisdom. 
 
 Of course by such obedience Hegel 
 means conscious conformity to Reason as 
 such ; not mere blind submission, with 
 which, indeed, he strongly contrasts obe- 
 dience properly speaking. And yet the 
 child must at first simply submit to exter- 
 nal guidance — happy if the actual author- 
 ity to which he submits prove rational 
 in character ! 
 
 It is not to be forgotten, either, that 
 Hegel is in full accord with what in one or 
 another form is the world-old doctrine 
 that, as the child of nature, man is evil ; 
 that is, that his immediate inclinations 
 
1 88 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 pertain to his animal nature, and that only 
 through training and discipline can he be 
 brought into the state of positive moral 
 life. In this, indeed, he simply reproduces 
 Kant's affirmation that '' Discipline or 
 training transforms animality into human- 
 ity* ; " an aphorism which Kant empha- 
 sized by the further statement that '' Dis- 
 cipline preserves man from falling away 
 from his manhood through his animal ten- 
 dencies." 
 
 From this point of view it is but a mat- 
 ter of course that Hegel should have little 
 patience with the sentimental sympathy 
 for mere childhood as such and which 
 would at all cost please the child — elimin- 
 ating law by substituting the child's caprice 
 in place of law, and thus encouraging a 
 mere self-seeking interest on the part of 
 the child, which interest Hegel pronounces 
 '' the root of all evil." On the contrary 
 the child '' must learn to obey precisely 
 because his will is not yet rational " or 
 matured as will. 
 
 * Werke.Y.., 383. 
 
Discipline. 
 
 The purpose of the teacher, then, should 
 not be merely to find out what the child hap- 
 pens to be most easily interested in and be 
 governed accordingly ; but to find out how 
 the child can be brought to take interest in 
 whatever pertains to his own normal ad- 
 vancement. Thus the child, instead of be- 
 ing humored and excused in respect of his 
 irregularities, must be brought to prize 
 order and punctuality. And this is to be 
 done quietly and by a strict requirement 
 which assumes the instinctive approval of 
 the child's higher nature, and above all 
 with not too much or too obtrusive com- 
 manding and moralizing. For '* men who 
 are early plunged into the dead sea of moral 
 platitudes come out, indeed, like Achilles, 
 invulnerable, but also with the addition 
 that all manly vigor is drowned therein."* 
 
 Along with this Hegel emphasizes the 
 importance of silence as a form of self-re- 
 straint and hence as an aspect of discip- 
 line. It is an antidote to the disease of 
 
 * Rosenkranz ; Hegcts Leben, p. 467. (Quoted 
 from one of Hegel's addresses). 
 
190 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 volubility and mere egotistic argumenta- 
 tion. At the same time this ought not to 
 be applied too rigidly to very young chil- 
 dren. For, as Richter says : " The heroic 
 virtue of silence requires for its practice 
 the power of ripening reason. Reason 
 teaches us to be silent ; the heart teaches 
 us to speak."* 
 
 Closely connected with what has just 
 been said is the fact that attention is quite 
 as much a matter of will as of intellect. 
 " I am really attentive only then when I 
 will so to be." Though it by no means 
 follows from this that attention is an easy 
 thing. On the contrary it requires special 
 effort to fix the attention upon some one, 
 to the exclusion of all other, representa- 
 tions which otherwise are equally present 
 in consciousness. 
 
 Perfect attention, in fact, is one of the 
 phases of complete self-mastery ; and it is, 
 for example, because of the value of mili- 
 tary exercises in developing ready and 
 full command over one's own powers, 
 
 * Levana (Bohn Lib.), p. 336. 
 
Discipline. 191 
 
 quite as much as from their significance in 
 respect of patriotism, that Hegel would 
 have all boys trained in such exercises. 
 We are, he says, *' too much prone to con- 
 sider every art and every science as some- 
 thing specific ; " i. e., as something out 
 of relation to other aspects of life. On 
 the contrary all such exercises have their 
 organic significance in the total round of 
 media for the full development of the in- 
 dividual, and this with respect both to his 
 physical and to his spiritual nature. 
 
 Thus obedience and attention are ne- 
 cessary subjective modes which express 
 themselves outwardly through definite, 
 vigorous, sustained and purposeful action ; 
 and the two aspects, outer and inner, are 
 the complementary aspects of the devel- 
 opment of actual Freedom, or self-deter- 
 mination, on the part of the individual. 
 
 Along with this, Hegel points out two 
 aspects of discipline — outward training 
 {Zuchf), and culture {Bildiing), or inward 
 formative process. As an aspect of edu- 
 cation, the former is to be taken in the 
 
192 HegeVs Edicc at tonal Ideas. 
 
 sense of subduing the will of the child in 
 so far as this appears in the form of mere 
 wilfulness. And this is to be accomplished 
 through the steady pressure of a wise, 
 consistent, albeit kindly, aittJiority. To 
 endeavor always to persuade the child that 
 the thing required of him is something 
 that will prove pleasing to him, is to per- 
 vert his mind and confirm him in the be- 
 lief that he ought to do nothing except 
 what will give him pleasure in the doing.* 
 On the contrary, as we have already 
 noticed, Hegel explicitly calls attention 
 to the fact that the parent, and next to 
 the parent the teacher, constitutes for the 
 child the present living embodiment of all 
 that is universal and essential ; and for 
 this reason the child cannot emerge out of 
 childhood save by the more or less forbid- 
 ding path of obedience ; that is, by being 
 brought to subordinate his own will, as 
 in itself crude and capricious, to the will 
 of parent or teacher, as relatively matured 
 and rational. 
 
 *Cf. Werke, VIII., 231. 
 
Discipline. 193 
 
 We might even say, then, that child- 
 hood is the inferno of infinite lack and 
 longing, out of which the individual can 
 escape into the paradise of enriched and 
 blessed existence only through the purga- 
 torial pains and strains of Discipli)u\ \v\\\ch. 
 for the child consist first of all in training. 
 
 But while this phase of simple, unques- 
 tioning obedience to authority is appro- 
 priate to the rudimentary consciousness 
 of cJiildhoodj the complementary phase, 
 consisting of Bildung, or inner formative 
 process, through which the individual ap- 
 proximates maturity as a self-conscious, 
 self-active being, is no less indispensable 
 to the growing personality of the youth. 
 In this connection Hegel has repeatedly 
 called attention to the fact that the orien- 
 tal mind never attains to the full sense of 
 personality, and the dignity pertaining 
 thereto, while the occidental mind is spe- 
 cially characterized by self-consciousness, 
 to which the individual very early attains 
 in explicit form, and in ever-increasingly 
 positive degree. 
 13 
 
194 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 Hence, while in Asia discipline may 
 very well consist chiefly in mere training, 
 it is evident that in Europe and America 
 this must early and rapidly give way to 
 the far subtler form of discipline, consist- 
 ing in the process of culture through which 
 the sense of personal worth may be — not 
 so much stimulated indeed, for here this 
 develops spontaneously — but regulated and 
 du'ectcd into rational chamieh. 
 
 Besides, with the general progress of 
 culture in these countries a great change 
 has taken place in the general estimate of 
 what precisely it is in which training, and 
 especially school training, ought really to 
 consist. " In proportion as education 
 comes to be judged of from the right 
 point of view — that is, in proportion as it 
 comes to be understood, that in essence 
 education is rather the confirmation than 
 the repression of the awakened sense of 
 selfhood ; that it is rather the positive, 
 regulated unfolding of the spirit of inde- 
 pendence — in like degree, both in the 
 family and in the school, the whole mode 
 
D iscipline, 195 
 
 of dealing with youth has undergone pro- 
 gressive change."* 
 
 This change consists essentially in em- 
 phasizing less and less the importance of 
 keeping up the feeling of subjection and 
 dependence, even in respect of things 
 which are in themselves indifferent. So, 
 also, it is no longer assumed that there is 
 special virtue in such instruction as has 
 no other aim than that of cultivating the 
 habit of obedience, nor that results which 
 may be attained through the feeling of 
 love, and through direct attention to, and 
 serious interest in, the end the child or 
 youth is seeking, would be in the least en- 
 hanced in value by being reached through 
 harsh measures and forbidding means. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hegel does not forget, nor 
 allow his readers to forget, that the social 
 aspect is quite as real, and quite as valid, 
 as is the individual aspect in the growth 
 of human character. It is, in fact, just 
 this social aspect that first begins to be 
 emphasized for the youth precisely in the 
 * Thaulow : Hegel s Ansic/iten, I., 100. 
 
196 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas. 
 
 school. It is there that he begins to feel 
 on the one hand the force of universal in- 
 terests, and on the other the necessity of 
 subordinating his own merely particular 
 interests to the general welfare. By de- 
 grees, also, he learns that this seeming 
 sacrifice on his part, for what at first ap- 
 pears to be merely the good of others, 
 really proves to be nothing else than the 
 putting away of whatever is unworthy of 
 himself — his whims and childish fancies — 
 and that, hence, it is but one aspect of 
 the process of attaining that true freedom 
 which is the central characteristic of ma- 
 tured and maturing Personality. 
 
 Nor is this all ; for since the rule of sac- 
 rifice for the general good is universally 
 applied, it turns out that each necessarily 
 receives the benefit of the sacrifice of all. 
 Each sacrifices what in truth is only harm- 
 ful to himself. Each finds himself free to 
 pursue his own highest purpose of self- 
 development, because of like sacrifices on 
 the part of all the others. 
 
 In such fine form does the school pre- 
 
Discipline. 197 
 
 sent, each day, each hour, that lesson, im- 
 measurable in its significance, that every 
 reasonable sacrifice the individual can be 
 called upon to make for others must un- 
 failingly result in his own good, as well as 
 in the good of others. 
 
 Clearly, then, punishment, either at 
 home or in school, whether by depriving 
 of what is desired, or inflicting what is 
 dreaded, has no real ground of justifica- 
 tion save that of bringing the child to a 
 sense of the universal Right, in conflict 
 with which his own deed is wrongs in the 
 very fact that through such deed his own 
 personality becomes distorted, or w?'iifig, 
 out of its due form of moral comeliness. 
 Punishment in anger, as mere vengeance, 
 is simply monstrous. 
 
 All this, again, suggest's Kant's sum- 
 mary of the fundamental aspects of edu- 
 cation, to the following effect : *' (i) Man 
 must be disciplined. (2) He must be cul- 
 tivated. (3) Care must be taken that in 
 his development the individual shall attain 
 to prudence, that he shall be led to take 
 
198 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 his place in the social organism, that he 
 shall come to be esteemed, and to have an 
 influence [that is, to count for something 
 in the world]. To this aspect there be- 
 longs a special sort of culture which has 
 come to be called civilizing. (4) Regard 
 must be had to the end and mode of ren- 
 dering the individual inoral^^ 
 
 To this it is important to add, that the 
 individual becomes truly moral, in the 
 Kantian, in the Hegelian, in any really 
 philosophic sense, only through clear com- 
 prehension of, and direct personal adjust- 
 ment to fundamental principles. The 
 actual development of virtue, as Hegel 
 expressly insists,f is not to be secured 
 through some particular ethicality, or set 
 of formulas, retailed by this or that indi- 
 vidual, and warranted to apply without 
 further trouble to all and sundry situa- 
 tions. Such striving after the moral is 
 spurious and profitless. 
 
 On the other hand, Hegel never ceases 
 
 * Werke, X., 390. 
 
 f Cf. Werke, I., 399 and fol. 
 
Discipline. 199 
 
 to insist that in its fullest meaning the ac- 
 tual school of morality for the individual 
 is nothing else than just the social world 
 in its organic character of existing human 
 institutions. On this point he quotes as a 
 word of the wisest in antiquity, and as 
 expressing the central truth of the matter : 
 " ' Be moral,' means to live in accordance 
 with the customs of one's own country " 
 — /. <f., of course, the publicly recognized 
 customs of the zuho/c country, 7iot the more 
 or less disguised customs of this or that 
 perverted neighborhood, or class, within 
 that country. 
 
 But we must turn abruptly from this as- 
 pect of our theme — so deserving of ex- 
 tended discussion — and hasten to the close. 
 
200 Herei's Educational Ideas. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 REFINEMENT. 
 
 Under this heading we have first to re- 
 mind the reader of the fact already no- 
 ticed, that in his EncyclopcBdia of the Phil- 
 osophic Sciences Hegel presents an outline 
 of his whole system, intended directly for 
 educational purposes. The Logic, as we 
 may note again, indicates the fundamental 
 principles of the system in universal, ab- 
 stract form. The Philosophy of Nature 
 represents his view of the outer evolutional 
 process, which gives reality to the forms 
 and forces and types of the outer world of 
 space, and which thus leads up to the in- 
 ner world of Mind. In the Philosophy of 
 Mind he offers a sketch of the actual 
 stages in the evolution of Mind, as at once 
 Individual and Social. 
 
 This latter again presents three funda- 
 mental aspects : 
 
 {a) Subjective Spirit (or Mind), This 
 
Refinement. 201 
 
 again appears in three essential phases, 
 (i) Anthropology, (2) Phenomenology, 
 (3) Psychology. And we may here re- 
 mark that it is to this simplest sphere 
 of Mind that educational discussions are 
 commonly confined ; in which fact may 
 be seen the real reason why such dis- 
 cussions bear so one-sidedly individual- 
 istic an appearance, as far as concerns the 
 explicit form of the theories developed. 
 Hence the practically exclusive attention 
 given to mere histriiction, and this as given 
 in the School. 
 
 {h) The second part of the Philosophy 
 of Mind is devoted to what, in Hegel's 
 phrase, is Objective Spirit (or Mind). 
 Here Hegel deals with man in his social 
 relations, (i) in Property. (2) Individ- 
 ual Morality. (3) Social Morality. It is 
 here, in fact, that we find the one substan- 
 tial basis for rightly estimating the nature, 
 the means, and the methods of Discipline 
 in its full significance as a phase of edu- 
 cation essential in itself and coordinate 
 with Instruction. Coordinate, for if char- 
 
HezeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 acter without intelligence is crude, intelli- 
 gence without character is demonic. 
 
 (r) The third subdivision of the Philoso- 
 phy of Mind has for its special theme : 
 Absolute Spij'it (or Mind). This final sub- 
 division presents again in ascending series 
 the three subtlest aspects of spiritual evo- 
 lution, viz., (i) Art, (2) Religion, and (3) 
 Philosophy ; the latter finding its highest 
 concrete interest in Theology. 
 
 To which we have now to add that we 
 have in this sphere the basis and demand 
 for a third aspect of education, to which 
 we have already given the name Refine- 
 ment. 
 
 And here we must restrict ourselves to 
 barely indicating the general character of 
 the theme in its three essential aspects. 
 
 (i) Art is the highest sphere in the 
 realm of the Beautiful. It is so because 
 art-works are developed as the direct ex- 
 pression of the inherent demand of the 
 human mind for perfection in Beauty as ex- 
 pressed in outer form. Nature is the search 
 for rhythm. Man is discovered rhythm. 
 
Rejinement. 203 
 
 Nature is Divinity going forth from him- 
 self. Man is Divinity returning to him- 
 seh". The Beauty of Nature is inarticulate. 
 The Beauty of Art is articulate. The 
 Beauty of Nature is limited to the work- 
 ings of simple mechanical laws. Ths 
 Beauty of Art is the rhythm of the divine 
 Consciousness concretely unfolded in and 
 through the human consciousness, as itself 
 a divinely constituted nature, and hence 
 the highest medium through which the 
 eternal creative Mind gives expression to 
 itself. Art is the finished product of the 
 most perfectly matured taste ; and we 
 have already noticed that true Taste is 
 nothing else than Morality become beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 But thus Art, as the direct product of 
 mind as mind, is but the expression of a 
 universal demand of mind. It is but one 
 aspect of the demand of the mind for 
 Perfection. And Perfection is nothing else 
 than this : Conformity of the Real zvit/i the 
 Ideal. Not the individual's chance, capri- 
 cious ''ideal," or mere momentary fancy; 
 
204 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 but the universal, rational Ideal as in itself 
 the abiding Type in any given sphere. 
 
 Art thus constitutes one essential aspect 
 in the education of the human mind. The 
 developing individual mind has the abso- 
 lute right to be brought face to face with 
 each and every specific Type of the Beau- 
 tiful which has charmed the growing divin- 
 ity in man through all the ages. And this 
 introduction can be accomplished only 
 through the media of the finest products 
 of human genius within this realm. 
 
 But also this aspect of the education of 
 the individual requires that he should test 
 his own powers in the direction of produc- 
 ing rhythmic forms. He must not be per- 
 mitted to assume in any sphere the atti- 
 tude of mere speetator. He must be accus- 
 tomed also to regard himself as partici- 
 pator in the actual process of the world. 
 Hence is he given endless exercises in 
 every department of his school-life. 
 
 It is this deeper educational value as 
 exercises of the pupil's inner spiritual 
 powers that constitutes the ultimate justi- 
 
Refaie7}ient . 205 
 
 fication for the time devoted to Drawing, 
 to Music, and to the study of Literature 
 in the schools. They are, first of all, 
 media of Refinement, of the cultivation of 
 Judgment in the subtle form of Taste 
 which, in proportion as it becomes ma- 
 tured, will spontaneously and unerringly 
 select and rejoice in whatever is truly and 
 nobly beautiful, whether in tone, or word, 
 or deed, in all the world — and this is but 
 one form of loving the truth and scorning 
 a lie.* 
 
 (2) But thus we are brought to notice 
 that true art-products are but the imme- 
 diate, formal and outward creations of an 
 inward spiritual principle, of which again 
 the vital essence is Religion. It is, in fact, 
 one of the cardinal principles of Hegel 
 that all art, properly speaking, has a relig- 
 ious content. And this amounts to saying 
 
 * For further information (in English) as to the 
 Hegelian view of Art the reader is referred ioHegel's 
 Philosophy of Art, translated by the present writer, 
 who has also printed a volume on the Philosophy of 
 Landscape Painting. 
 
2o6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 that every attempt to separate between 
 art and religious sentiment is nothing else 
 than an attempt to separate between the 
 outer Form of Beauty and its inner Sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Clearly, then, the cry of '■' art for art's 
 sake," with which v/e have become so fa- 
 miliar in our times, is merely a cry of 
 '' form for form's sake." It is this cry that 
 led the divinely beautiful Helen to forget 
 that the soul of Beauty is actual ethical 
 and religious life — forgetting which, as one 
 specially significant version of the story 
 tells us, she became herself the merest 
 phantom. And this, indeed, is the story 
 of the whole Greek world. For in pro- 
 portion as their religious consciousness be- 
 came reduced in vitality, their art lost 
 poise, and became phantasmal. 
 
 Religion is the essence of art because it 
 is the essence of Life. But can religion 
 be taught ? Upon this point Hegel de- 
 clares that those who deny the practica- 
 bility of making religion the object of in- 
 struction, really fail to understand what it 
 
Refinejnent. 207 
 
 is with which such instruction ought to 
 begin. One has only to recognize that re- 
 hgion has a positive inner content or sub- 
 stantial significance, which not only can, 
 but must be set forth, in actual outer or 
 " objective " fashion — whether in art-forms 
 or in the more definite forms of language 
 to be convinced that thus far religion can 
 be taught. 
 
 On the other hand, stirring the heart, 
 excitation of religious feeling — this is quite 
 another thing. So far from being a form 
 of instruction, this pertains to the elo- 
 quence and pathos of preaching and can 
 attain to nothing more than awaking the 
 hearer to an interest in a given theme. 
 All this is valid and of the highest value 
 in itself, but it is not teaching. Besides, 
 whatever the degree in which feeling may 
 be excited, it is yet vague, and hence 
 needs to pass through the differentiating 
 process of definite cultivation and clarifi- 
 cation through the media of teaching in 
 the proper sense of the term. Sentiment 
 must be raised to the higher power of 
 
2o8 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 clearly defined positive doctrine. And so 
 much the more, since, were religion to ex- 
 ist merely as feeling, it must die away in- 
 to a vague, dreamy, inner state that must 
 become more and more incapable of out- 
 ward manifestation either in any specific 
 form or in any actual deed."^ 
 
 Meanwhile, here as elsewhere, Hegel 
 shows his alertness and self-poise in avoid- 
 ing the temptation of the professional 
 thinker to belittle feeling as if that were a 
 less worthy phase of the life of mind. 
 And especially does he note the pedagog- 
 ical limitations involved in the question of 
 the possibility of including Religion in a 
 practical scheme of elementary instruc- 
 tion. The child, he reminds us specifical- 
 ly,f attains only to vorstellenden Denken; 
 that is, to thinking that is still wholly in- 
 volved in imagery. In fact, so far as his 
 consciousness can be said to be explicit, 
 the world exists only for his Vorstellung, 
 for his power of representing the world 
 
 * I Cf. Werke, XL, 130-160, and elsewhere, 
 t Werke, VI I2., 97. 
 
Refinement. 209 
 
 about him in forms derived from and ap- 
 pealing diiectly to, the Imagination. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that while Heg- 
 el regards religion as a proper object of 
 instruction, and this to the full extent of 
 the whole system of theology, he would 
 restrict such instruction for children rather 
 to the ethical aspects that can be repre- 
 sented to the imagination through imagery 
 and to such simple formulas as those in 
 which the catechism consists. And we 
 may add that because the noblest relig- 
 ious ideas and sentiments have found 
 their worthiest and sublimest sensuous ex- 
 pression in the various books of the He- 
 brew and Christian Bible, it is an absolute, 
 inalienable right of every child to be made 
 familiar with these forms, which only grow 
 richer in content for the individual con- 
 sciousness with each added year of his ex- 
 perience in actual life. 
 
 It was the world in its penny-wisdom 
 that knew not God ; and so gave proof of 
 its pound-foolishness. If Art is the out- 
 ward form of Refinement, Religion is its 
 14 
 
2IO Hegel's Educational Ideas. 
 
 inner soul and vital substance. And edu- 
 cation which fails to take this fact serious- 
 ly into the account must itself become 
 phantasmal. 
 
 (3) Respecting Philosophy, we can add 
 but a single word. Whether we regard it 
 as the '' unification of knowledge " (Spen- 
 cer), or as the ''thinking consideration of 
 things" (Hegel) we are still discovering it 
 to be the supreme effort made by the hu- 
 man intelligence to grasp together all ob- 
 jects of the Real World as constituting at 
 the same time the objects of the Rational 
 World. And this means that Philosophy 
 is the name we give to the effort of the 
 human mind to behold and account for 
 all things in their actual, true relations, 
 one to another. 
 
 Evidently, then, all teaching presup- 
 poses Philosophy, as all learning should 
 lead up to it. For teaching consists 
 essentially in the pointing out of relations, 
 as learning consists in the tracing out of 
 relations. And this includes the tracing 
 out of relations between relations — that is. 
 
Rt'fDiemcnt. 
 
 the progressive recognition of the relative 
 significance of relations as involved in the 
 whole scheme of the world, through which 
 alone the relative (educational) values of 
 things can be ascertained. 
 
 From which this corollary is inevitable 
 — that a course in sound philosophy ought 
 to constitute an essential factor in the 
 training of every teacher, and especially of 
 every teacher who has to do with the in- 
 struction of advanced pupils, or with the 
 supervision of work in any grade. 
 
 Such course ought to begin in rational 
 Psychology as giving an account of the 
 whole mind, including, by way of prelude, 
 a summary view of anthropology, together 
 with an account of the central character- 
 istics of the brain and nervous system as 
 the immediate organ of mind, and espec- 
 ially of mind within the range of the sen- 
 suous consciousness. 
 
 The next stage in the course should 
 consist of Logic in the sense of a careful 
 study of the Laws, the Forms and the 
 Method of Thought. 
 
212 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 The third stage would present the prac- 
 tical aspect — Ethics, in its individual, in 
 its social and in its historical aspects. 
 
 The fourth stage ought to render the 
 student familiar with the general outlines 
 of the History of Philosophy ; that is, a 
 critical history of the successive phases in 
 the evolutional process through which the 
 human mind has passed in the interpreta- 
 tion of the world as a whole. 
 
 The fifth and culminating stage ought to 
 consist in a thorough-going analysis which 
 should also be a careful sympathetic study 
 of one great ivork constituting the central 
 ganglion of one of the great constructive 
 Systems of Philosophy, and which would 
 put the student in definite possession of 
 an adequate and consistent organon or 
 method for all his future work. 
 
 And if this is true of all teachers in gen- 
 eral, only so much the more must it be 
 true of those teachers who have the infin- 
 itely responsible task of teaching actual or 
 prospective teachers. 
 
 To which we may add that (to quote 
 
Refinement . 2 1 3 
 
 another of Hegel's happy definitions) 
 Philosophy seriously pursued is just ''a 
 perpetual service of God ; " for first of all 
 it raises to the highest degree attainable 
 for the individual the self-defining process 
 of the mind and thus assures the highest 
 measure of precision in the self-realizing 
 process of mind, the unfailing outcome of 
 which must be the unfolding of that rich 
 rhythm of Refinement that constitutes the 
 central charm in a truly worthy Life. 
 
 Yet one thing is lacking in the enumera- 
 tion of the requirements which Hegel 
 would make of the Teacher. It is that he 
 should not depend upon his own mere per- 
 sonal gifts as these chance to develop into 
 more or less one-sided method ; nor yet 
 upon imitation of this or that favorite 
 teacher ; but that he should become famil- 
 iar with the whole course of the History 
 of Education as such. It is thus alone 
 that he can hope to escape falling into 
 errors of greater or less gravity. Nor 
 can he otherwise avail himself of the dis- 
 
214 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 
 
 coveries and achievements of the race in 
 the process of guiding and stimulating in- 
 dividual human minds in that struggle 
 towards maturity that ends only in God. 
 
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