UIFORNIA 
 
LE V A N A; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 Cransflatrif from tije <rrman 
 
 JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 
 1848. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 SroTTiswoooE and SHAW, 
 N e w-street- Square. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 AT a time when the public mind is so fully awakened 
 to the importance of education, it appeared to the 
 Translator that the thoughts of one of the greatest 
 Germans on the subject were worthy of deep 
 consideration; and he offers them with the more 
 satisfaction because he believes it impossible either 
 for the advocates or for the opponents of the govern- 
 ment scheme of education to draw offensive weapons 
 from this arsenal. For LEVANA treats neither of 
 national nor congregational education: it elevates 
 neither state nor priest into educator ; but it devolves 
 that duty, where the interest ever ought to be, on the 
 parents, and particularly on the mother. 
 
 It is far from the Translator's object to disparage 
 the great efforts now making to improve the state of 
 popular education; but he believes that, in pro- 
 pounding general systems, it is too much forgotten 
 that real education is the work of individuals on 
 A 2 
 
 787 
 
IV 
 
 individuals. It may be necessary it is necessary 
 
 to provide instruction, and, as far as possible, 
 education, for the classes who are too ignorant to 
 seek it for themselves. But let us not, in the mania 
 for systems, forget how little these alone can effect. 
 And, farther, we would ask, is the education of the 
 upper classes so perfect that they may leave all care 
 for it, to watch only over that of the lower ? If 
 there be much of crime the acknowledged con- 
 sequence of ignorance among the masses, is there 
 less of vice the equally sure accompaniment of bad 
 education among the higher grades of society ? 
 
 In the belief that LEV ANA may tend much to 
 ameliorate that department of education which is 
 most neglected, and needs most care home training 
 
 the Translator makes no apology for clothing it 
 in an English dress. He is, indeed, surprised that it 
 has not previously been presented to the English 
 reader. But, like all Bichter's writings, LEVANA is 
 peculiarly characterised by that union of qualities 
 called in England "German." This feature, espe- 
 cially when displayed in a work on so serious a 
 subject as education, and being most strongly marked 
 in the introductory chapters, on which the reception 
 of a book so much depends, may have led to its being 
 considered unsuitable to English taste. The early 
 
part, indeed, may cause many to close the book, who 
 would find much both to interest and instruct in a 
 patient perusal of the whole work, combining as it 
 does, in a remarkable degree, sound practical sense 
 with fanciful and varied illustration. The acknow- 
 ledged difficulty of Richter's style has also, doubtless, 
 had a deterring effect. Those who are acquainted 
 with his writings will be able to appreciate the diffi- 
 culties which have beset the Translator, and will be 
 the least inclined to judge harshly the shortcomings 
 of the translation, as compared with its great original. 
 For who save Carlyle can hope to do justice to 
 the humorous, pathetic, poetic Eichter; to him whom 
 his countrymen call " Jean Paul, der Einzige" ? 
 
 The Translator thinks it right to add, that he has 
 occasionally omitted, or compressed, a few sentences, 
 where the general usefulness of the work was ob- 
 viously increased by so doing. This discretion has, 
 however, been very sparingly used, and in no case so 
 as to interfere with the scope of the original. 
 
 A 3 
 
Brttt'cateU 
 
 TO HER MAJESTY, 
 
 CAROLINE, QUEEN OF BAVAKIA, 
 
 WITH 
 
 THE PROFOUNDEST RESPECT OF 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 MOST GRACIOUS QUEEN! 
 
 THE author would consecrate LEVANA to mothers 
 by your royal name as the banners which a prin- 
 cess has worked receive fresh victorious power. 
 
 Your Majesty will graciously pardon the dedication 
 of a work which Germany, by the approbation ex- 
 pressed in the demand for a new, improved edition, 
 has already dedicated to a Princess, who, in its best 
 parts, will but find her own recollections. 
 
 If, even in the lowest ranks, a mother's heart 
 
 is woman's honour, the sun which gently warms 
 
 A 4 
 
viii DEDICATION. 
 
 and dries the dewdrops of early tears, this sun 
 delights the beholder most when it stands highest 
 and cherishes the distant future, and when a noble 
 mother multiplies her heart as well as her beauty, 
 and blesses distant ages and countries with her 
 image. 
 
 This delight becomes still greater if the mother 
 also is the mother of her country, and raises her 
 sceptre like a magic wand which converts tears of 
 sorrow into tears of joy ere it dries them. 
 
 Should the profound respect of a subject forbid 
 him to express this joy in a Dedication ? 
 
 With most profound respect, 
 
 Your Majesty's 
 Most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 JEAX PAUL FR. RICHTER. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 NOVERRE only required from a good director of the 
 ballet, besides the art of dancing, geometry, music, 
 poetry, painting, and anatomy. But to write upon 
 education, means to write upon almost every thing at 
 once ; for it has to care for, and watch over, the 
 development of an entire, though miniature, world 
 in little a microcosm of the microcosm. All the 
 energies with which nations have laboured and 
 signalised themselves once existed as germs in the 
 hand of the educator. If we carried the subject still 
 farther, every century, every nation, and even every 
 boy and every girl, would require a distinct system 
 of education, a different primer, and domestic 
 French governess, &c. 
 
 If, consequently, on a subject like this, only acta 
 sanctorum, or, more correctly, sanctificandorum (acts 
 less of saints than of those to be made saints), can be 
 written, and if a folio be nothing more than a frag- 
 ment, there cannot be, on such an inexhaustible sub- 
 ject, one book too much, even after the best, except 
 the worst ; and where fragments alone are possible, 
 all that are possible complete the whole. 
 A 5 
 
x AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The Author trusts thus to excuse his boldness as 
 well as his poverty; for both, as in the state, are 
 nearly connected. He has not read every thing 
 which has been written upon education, but here and 
 there something. First and last he names Rousseau's 
 EMILE. No preceding work can be compared to 
 his ; the succeeding imitators and transcribers seem to 
 resemble him more. Not Rousseau's individual rules, 
 many of which may be erroneous without injury to 
 the whole, but the spirit of education which fills and 
 animates the work, have shaken to their foundations 
 and purified all the school-rooms and even the nur- 
 series in Europe. In no previous work on education 
 was the ideal so richly and beautifully combined with 
 actual observation as in his. He was a man, could 
 therefore easily become a child, and so he manifested 
 and saved the nature of children. Basedow was his 
 intelligent translator and publisher in Germany 
 this land of pedagogopaedists (of education of chil- 
 dren's educators) and of love of children and 
 Pestalozzi is now confirming Rousseau among the 
 people. 
 
 Individual rules, without the spirit of education, 
 resemble a dictionary without a grammar of the 
 language. A book of rules is not merely incapable 
 of exhausting and distinguishing the infinite variety 
 of individual dispositions and circumstances; but, 
 even granting it were perfect itself, and able to make 
 others perfect, it yet would but be like a system of 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xi 
 
 remedies labouring to counteract some one symptom 
 of a disease ; recommending, for instance, something 
 of a reducing nature, to be taken before fainting, 
 and to prevent tingling in the ears, and unnatural 
 brilliancy of eye ; a tonic to cure paleness and cold- 
 ness of the face ; an aperient for nausea. But this 
 is worthless ! Do not, like common educators, water 
 the individual branches, but the roots, and they 
 will moisten and unfold the rest. Wisdom and mo- 
 rality are no ants' colonies of separate, co-operating 
 workmen, but organic parents of the mental future, 
 which only require animating nourishment. We 
 merely reverse the ignorance of the savages, who 
 sowed gunpowder instead of making it, when we 
 attempt to compound what can only be developed. 
 
 But although the spirit of education, always 
 watching over the whole, is nothing more than an 
 endeavour to liberate, by means of a free man, the 
 ideal human being which lies concealed in every 
 child ; and though, in the application of the divine 
 to the child's nature, it must scorn some useful 
 things, some seasonable, individual, or immediate 
 ends; yet it must incorporate itself in the most 
 definite applications, in order to be clearly mani- 
 fested. 
 
 Here the Author differs but to his philosophical 
 disadvantage from those transcendental superin- 
 tendents of the school-room slates, who write thereon 
 with so round a piece of chalk, that one may find in 
 
Xll 
 
 their broad strokes whatever he desires, and who 
 lay down a complete Brownian system of education 
 in the two words strong, weak ; though, indeed, 
 Brown's disciple, Schmidt, only uttered one word 
 strong. Dr. Tamponet declared that he would trace 
 heresies in the Lord's Prayer, if any one desired it ; 
 our age, on the contrary, knows how to find a Lord's 
 Prayer in every heresy. A mother who has a par- 
 ticular child to educate can certainly extract no 
 advantage from such philosophical indifferentisin ; al- 
 though that class of fine, high-sounding compilations 
 always bears witness to a certain amount of artistic 
 talent in their sonorousness and their theft ; hence, 
 Gall justly found for this sense a place between the 
 organs of music and purloining. 
 
 But this language does not belong to the Preface, 
 and the object of this work has forbidden it to find 
 a place in the book itself; wherefore, this may be 
 regarded in form as my most serious production, to 
 which only a short, occasional, comic Appendix shall 
 be added. 
 
 The reader will please to take it patiently if he 
 find what has been already printed again printed 
 here. What has been printed is necessary as the 
 bond and bast-matting of what has not been printed ; 
 but the bast-matting must not cover the whole gar- 
 den, instead of merely tying up the trees. But there 
 are two still better excuses. Known rules in educa- 
 tion gain new force if new experience verifies them. 
 
AUTHOR S PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 The Author has three times been in the position of 
 trying them upon different children of all ages and 
 talents ; and he now enjoys with his own the peda- 
 gogic jus trium liberorum (law of three children) ; 
 and every other person's experience, related in this 
 book, has been made his own. Secondly, printing 
 ink now is like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly 
 invisible as visible; wherefore it is good to repeat 
 old thoughts in the newest books, because the old 
 works in which they stand are not read. New trans- 
 lations of many truths, as of foreign standard works, 
 must be given forth every half century. And, in- 
 deed, I wish that even old German standard books 
 were turned into new German from time to time, and 
 so could find their way into the circulating libraries. 
 
 Why are there flower and weed gleanings of every 
 thing, but no wine or corn gleanings of the innu- 
 merable works on education ? Why should one 
 single good observation or rule be lost because it is 
 imprisoned in some monstrous folio, or blown away 
 in some single sheet ? For dwarfs and giants, even 
 in books, do not live long. Our age, this balloon, or 
 air-ship, which, by simultaneous lighting of new 
 lamps, and throwing out of old ballast, has constantly 
 mounted higher and higher, might now, I should 
 think, cease to throw out, and rather lovingly en- 
 deavour to collect than to disperse the old. 
 
 However little so disjointed a collection of thoughts 
 could teach rules, it would yet arouse and sharpen 
 
xiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 the educational sense, from which they originally 
 sprung. Therefore every mother still better every 
 bride ought to read the many-volumed and, in 
 another sense, many-sided revision of education, to 
 which no nation can oppose any thing similar; she 
 should read it, and cut and polish herself, like a 
 precious stone, by it on every side, so that her 
 individuality of character may all the more readily 
 discover, protect, revere, and cherish the dim mani- 
 festations of it in her child. 
 
 Something very different from such a progressive 
 cabinet of noble thoughts, or even from my weak 
 LEVANA, with her fragments in her arms, is the 
 usual kind of complete system of education which one 
 person after another has written, and will write. It 
 is difficult I mean the end, not the means. For it 
 is very easy to proceed with bookbinder's and book- 
 maker's paste, and fasten together a thousand selected 
 thoughts with five of your own, especially if you 
 conscientiously remark in the preface that you have 
 availed yourself of the labours of your predecessors, 
 yet make no mention of one in the work itself, but 
 sell such a miniature library in one volume to the 
 reader as a mental facsimile of yourself. How 
 much better in this case were a hole-maker than a 
 hole-hider ! How much better were it if associated 
 authors (I mean those friendly hundreds who move 
 along one path, uttering precisely the same sound) 
 entirely died out, as Humboldt tells us that in the 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xv 
 
 tropical regions there are none of those sociable plants 
 which make our forests monotonous, but next each 
 tree a perfectly different one grows. A diary about 
 an ordinary child would be much better than a book 
 upon children by an ordinary writer. Yes, every 
 man's opinions about education would be valuable if 
 he only wrote what he did not copy. The author, 
 unlike a partner, should always only say " I," and 
 no other word. 
 
 The first part of this work treats at large of the 
 budding the second and third of the blossoming 
 season of childhood. In the first, the three early 
 years, like the academic triennium, after which the 
 gate of the soul, language, is opened, are the object 
 of care and observation. Here, educators are the 
 Hours who open or close the gates of heaven. Here, 
 true education, the developing, is yet possible ; by 
 whose means the long second, the curative, may be 
 spared. For the child yet in native innocence, 
 before his parents have become his serpents on the 
 tree speechless, still unsusceptible of verbal em- 
 poisonment led by customs, not by words and 
 reasons, therefore all the more easily moved on the 
 narrow and small pinnacle of sensuous experience ; 
 for the child, I say, on this boundary line between 
 the monkey and the man, the most important era 
 of life is contained in the years which immediately 
 follow his non-existence, in which, for the first time, 
 he colours and moulds himself by companionship with 
 
xvi AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 others. The parent's hand may cover and shelter 
 the germinating seed, but not the luxuriant tree: 
 consequently, first faults are the greatest ; and mental 
 maladies, unlike the small-pox, are the more danger- 
 ous the earlier they are taken. Every new educator 
 effects less than his predecessor ; until at last, if we 
 regard all life as an educational institution, a circum- 
 navigator of the world is less influenced by all the 
 nations he has seen than by his nurse. 
 
 At least this book has been composed with warmest 
 love for the little beings, the delicate flower gods, of 
 a soon fading Eden. May Levana, the motherly 
 goddess, who was formerly entreated to give a father's 
 heart to fathers, hear the prayer which the title of 
 this book addresses to her, and, in doing so, justify 
 both it and this. The demands of the state or of learn- 
 ing, unfortunately, robs the child of half its father. 
 The education of most fathers is but a system of rules 
 to keep the child at a respectful distance from them, 
 and to form him more with regard to their quiet than 
 his powers ; or, at most, under a tornado of wrath, to 
 impart as much meal of instruction as he can scatter. 
 But I would ask men of business what education of 
 souls rewards more delightfully and more immediately 
 than that of the innocent, who resemble rosewood, 
 which imparts its odour even while being carved and 
 shaped? Or what now remains to the decaying 
 world among so many ruins of what is noblest 
 and ancientest except children, the pure beings 
 
XV11 
 
 yet unfalsified by the age and the world ? Only they, 
 with a higher object than that for which they were 
 formerly used, can behold futurity and truth in the 
 magic mirror, and with bandaged eyes draw the 
 precious lot from the wheel of chance. The words 
 that the father speaks to his children in the privacy 
 of home are not heard by the world; but, as in 
 whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the 
 end, and by posterity. 
 
 It would be my greatest reward if, at the end of 
 twenty years, some reader as many years old should 
 return thanks to me, that the book which he is then 
 reading was read by his parents. 
 
 JEAN PAUL FK. KICHTEK. 
 
 Baireuth, May 2. 1806. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page x. line 11. for "have" read " has." 
 
 xvi. line 11. omit the comma after " gods." 
 line 17. for " robs" read " rob." 
 
 111. line 11. from top, the word "bars" should not be in 
 italics. 
 
 201. line 8. from bottom, for "glowing-love service" read 
 "glowing love-service." 
 
 221. line 4. from bottom, for " Gach " read " Zach." 
 
 258. line 13. from bottom, for " uninspired " read " un- 
 injured." 
 
 N.B. The First Volume of the German original ends on p. 153. ; 
 and the Second on p. 336., where the First is erroneously stated to 
 end. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST FRAGMENT. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAP. I. Importance of Education - - -1 
 
 II. Inaugural Discourse at the Johanneum-Paul- 
 
 linum ; or, Proof that Education effects little 6 
 m. Importance of Education - - -24 
 
 SECOND FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Spirit and Principle of Education - - 35 
 II. To discover and to appreciate the Individuality 
 
 of the Ideal Man - - - - 43 
 
 III. On the Spirit of the Age - - - 51 
 
 IV. Religious Education - - - 64 
 
 THIRD FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. The Beginning of Education - - - 81 
 
 II. The Joyousness of Children - - - 92 
 
 III. Games of Children - - 99 
 
 IV. Children's Dances - - 115 
 V. Music - 119 
 
 VI. Commands, Prohibitions, Punishments, and 
 
 Crying - - 122 
 
 VII. Punishments - - 133 
 
 VIII. Screaming and Crying of Children - - 142 
 
 IX. On the Trustfulness of Children - 148 
 
 APPENDIX TO THE THIRD FRAGMENT. 
 
 On Physical Education - - 154 
 
 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 A dreamed Letter to the late Professor Gellert, 
 
 in which the Author begs for a Tutor - 180 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 FOURTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 Page 
 CHAP. I. ..... 196 
 
 H. On the Destination of the Female Sex - 204 
 
 III. Nature of Women - - -212 
 
 IV. Education of Girls - - 228 
 V. Private Instructions of a Prince to the Governess 
 
 of his Daughter - - 275 
 
 FIFTH FRAGMENT. 
 CHAP. I. On the Education of a Prince - - 293 
 
 SIXTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 ON THE MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 CHAP. I. - 337 
 
 H. Truthfulness - - 363 
 
 HI. Education of the Affections - - 377 
 
 IV. Supplementary Appendix to Moral Education 395 
 
 SEVENTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. On the Development of the Desire for Intel- 
 lectual Progress - - - - 416 
 II. Speech and Writing - - - - 420 
 IH. Attention, and the Power of Adaptive Combina- 
 tion - - 429 
 IV. Development of Wit - - 440 
 V. Development of Reflection, Abstraction, and 
 Self- Knowledge ; together with an extra Para- 
 graph on the Powers of Action and Business 447 
 VI. On the Education of the Recollection not of 
 
 the Memory .... 450 
 
 EIGHTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Development of the Sense of Beauty - - 459 
 
 n. Classical Education - - 467 
 
 NINTH FRAGMENT, or Conclusion - - 474 
 
LEVANA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION, 
 
 FIRST FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Importance of Education, 1 3. CHAP. II. Discourse 
 against its Influence, 4 15. CHAP. III. Discourse for the 
 same, 16 20. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 i. 
 
 WHEN Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages 
 from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, 
 a hundred men of distinction ; unlike ordinary edu- 
 cators, who precisely reverse the offering. The 
 Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world 
 of childhood all posterity stands before us, upon which 
 we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, 
 but not enter ; and at the same time it renews for us 
 the ages of the young world, behind which we must 
 
2 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 appear ; for the child of the most civilised capital is a 
 born Otaheitan, and the one-year-old Sansculotte a 
 first Christian, and the last children of the earth came 
 upon the world with the paradise of our first parents. 
 So, according to Bruyn, the children of the Samojeds 
 are beautiful, and only the parents ugly. If there 
 were a perfect and all-powerful system of education, 
 and a unity of educators with themselves and with 
 one another ; then, since each generation of children 
 begins the history of the world anew, the immediate, 
 and through it the distant future, into which we can 
 now gaze and grasp so little, would stand much more 
 fairly in our power. For deeds and books the means 
 by which we have hitherto been able to work upon 
 the world always find it already defined, and hard- 
 ened and full of people like ourselves ; only by edu- 
 cation can we sow upon a pure, soft soil the seeds of 
 poison or of honey-bearing flowers ; and as the gods 
 to the first men, so do we, physical and spiritual 
 giants to children, descend to these little ones, and 
 form them to be great or small. It is a touching and 
 a mighty thought that now before their educator, the 
 great spirits and teachers of our immediate posterity 
 creep, as the sucklings of his milk-store that he 
 guides future suns, like little wandering stars, in his 
 leading-strings. And it is all the more important be- 
 cause he can neither know whether he has before him, 
 to unfold to good or evil, a hell -god for humanity, or 
 a protecting and light-giving angel ; nor can foresee at 
 
EDUCATION. 3 
 
 what dangerous moment of futurity the magician, who, 
 transformed into a little child, now plays before him, 
 will rise up a giant. 
 
 2. 
 
 Our immediate future demands thought : our earth 
 is filled with gunpowder like the age of the mi- 
 gration of nations, ours prepares itself for spiritual 
 and political wanderings, and under all state buildings, 
 professorial chairs, and temples the earth quakes. Do 
 you know whether the little boy, who plucks flowers 
 at your side, may not one day, from his island Corsica, 
 descend as a war-god into a stormy universe, to play 
 with storms and to destroy, or to purify and to sow ? 
 Would it then be indifferent whether, in educating 
 him, you had been his Fenelon, his Cornelia, or his 
 Dubois? For although you might not be able to 
 break or bend the power of genius the deeper the 
 sea, the more precipitous the coast; yet in the most 
 important initiatory decade of life, in the first, at 
 the opening dawn of all feelings, you might surround 
 and overlay the slumbering lion energies with all 
 the tender habits of a gentle heart and all the bands 
 of love. Whether an angel or a devil educate that 
 great genius, is of far more importance, than whether 
 a learned doctor or a Charles the Simple teach 
 him. 
 
 Although a system of education must, in the first 
 instance, provide for the beings endowed with genius ; 
 
 B 2 
 
4 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 since these, though they seldom arise, yet alone rule 
 the world's history, either as leaders of souls, or of 
 bodies, or of both ; yet would such a system too 
 much resemble a practical exposition of how to con- 
 duct one's self in case of winning the great prize, if it 
 did not observe that the multitude of mediocre talents 
 on which a great one can act, are quite as important 
 in the mass as the man of genius is in the individual. 
 And therefore, since, on the one hand, you give to 
 posterity, as alms to a beggar, through children ; and, 
 on the other, must send these last, like unarmed men, 
 into a hidden period whose poisonous gales you know 
 not ; so there is nothing more important to posterity, 
 than whether you send forth your pupil as the seed- 
 corn of a harvest, or the powder train of a mine, 
 which destroys itself and every thing with it : and 
 nothing is more important to the child, than, whether 
 you have or have not given him a magic jewel which 
 may preserve and conduct him uninjured. 
 
 Let a child be more holy to you than the present, 
 which consists of things and matured men. By means 
 of the child although with difficulty by means of 
 the short lever arm of humanity, you set in motion the 
 long one, whose mighty arc you can scarcely define in 
 the height and depth of time. But there is something 
 else you certainly know, namely, that the moral 
 development which is education, as the intellectual 
 is instruction knows and fears no time nor futurity. 
 In this you give to the child a heaven with a pole star, 
 
EDUCATION. 5 
 
 which may ever guide him in whatever new countries 
 he may afterwards reach. 
 
 3. 
 
 A perfect child would be a heavenly aurora of 
 the soul; at least its appearance would not be so 
 variously restrained and so difficult as that -of a 
 perfect man. On him everything, from the state 
 down to himself, exercises a forming influence ; but 
 on the fresh child, parents repeat with full power the 
 lawgiving, moulding, character of Lycurgus and of 
 Moses ; they can separate their pupil from others, 
 and form him without interference, better than a 
 Spartan or Jewish state could do. Consequently 
 one ought to expect more from the unlimited mo- 
 narchy of parents. Children living in this kingdom, 
 without Salic law, and in such an overflow of laws 
 and lawgivers that the rulers are often more nume- 
 rous than the ruled, and the governing house larger 
 than the governed having everywhere before them 
 cabinet orders, and oflended majesties, and most rapid 
 mandata sine clausula, and behind the glass the 
 exalted sceptre of the rod possessing in their 
 sovereign their bread-master, as well as their pain 
 and pleasure master and protected against him by 
 no foreign power; for maltreatment of slaves is 
 punished in many countries, even of cattle in Eng- 
 land, but nowhere of children, children, then, thus 
 absolutely governed without opposition party, or 
 B 3 
 
PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 anti-ministerial gazette, and without representatives, 
 should issue, one would think, out of this smallest 
 state within the state, far better educated than grown- 
 up persons educated in the greatest of all educational 
 establishments, the state itself. 
 
 Nevertheless, both educational establishments and 
 states seem to work so uniformly, that it is worth 
 while, next to the necessity of education, to consider, 
 in the two following discourses, its possibility. 
 
 CHAP. H. 
 
 INAUGURAJL DISCOURSE AT THE JOHANNEUM-PAULLINUM ; 
 OR, PROOF THAT EDUCATION EFFECTS LITTLE. 
 
 4. 
 
 MOST honoured Inspector of Schools, Rector, Con- 
 and Sub-rector, master of the third class ! most 
 worthy teacher of the lower classes and fellow- 
 labourers ! I hope I shall, to the best of my abilities, 
 express my pleasure at being inducted as lowest 
 teacher into your educational establishment, by 
 entering on my post of honour with the proof that 
 school education, as well as home education, has 
 neither evil consequences, nor any other. If I 
 am so fortunate as to lead us all to a quiet con- 
 viction of this absence of consequences, I may also 
 possibly obtain that we shall all fill our laborious 
 
EDUCATION. 7 
 
 offices easily and cheerfully, without boasting, and 
 with a certain confidence that needs fear nothing; 
 every day we shall walk in and out among the pupils, 
 sit on our teaching-chair as on an easy chair, and let 
 every thing take its own course. 
 
 First, I believe, I must set forth who are the 
 educators and complete fashioners of children, for 
 fashioned, in one way or another, they are ; and in 
 which way, rests with and in us ; and afterwards 
 I will naturally touch upon ourselves, and point out 
 the easy change which may be effected. 
 
 5. 
 
 Whence comes it that hitherto no age has spoken, 
 counselled, and done so much about education as our 
 own ; and again, among nations, none so much as 
 Germany, into which Rousseau's winged seeds have 
 been blown out of France and ploughed in ? The 
 ancients wrote and did little for it; their schools 
 were rather for young men than children, and in the 
 philosophical schools of Athens, the learner frequently 
 was, or might be, older than the teacher. Sparta 
 was a Stoa, or garrison-school, at once for parents 
 and children. The Romans had Grecian slaves for 
 their schoolmasters, and yet their children became 
 neither Greeks nor slaves. In the ages when the 
 great and glorious deeds of Christendom, and knight- 
 hood, and freedom rose like stars on the dark horizon 
 of Europe, school buildings lay scattered around as 
 
 B 4 
 
PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 mere dull, little, dark, savage huts, or monks' cells. 
 And what have the political vowels of Europe the 
 English whose island is a school of citizens, and 
 whose election every seven years is a wandering 
 seven-day Sunday school ? what have they hitherto 
 better than mere establishments for mal-education ? 
 Where do the children more resemble the parents 
 and to any thing else than a mirror of himself, be it 
 a flat, a concave, or a convex one, the teacher cannot 
 wish to mould and polish his pupil than even in 
 those places where the educators are silent, among 
 savages, Greenlanders and quakers? 
 
 And the further one looks back through past ages, 
 to the hoary nations of antiquity, the fewer school 
 books and Cyropedias in fact, from want of all 
 books were there : all the more was the man lost 
 in the state ; all the less was the woman, who might 
 have educated, formed for it : nevertheless, every 
 child was the image of its parents, which is more than 
 the best ought to desire, since God can only behold 
 his own image in men as a caricature. And are not 
 our present improved educational institutions a proof 
 that men can raise themselves freely and without aid, 
 from bad to better, and, consequently, to all other 
 establishments of a similar kind ? 
 
 6. 
 
 But who then educates in nations and ages? 
 Both ! The living time, which, for twenty or 
 
EDUCATION. 9 
 
 thirty years struggles unceasingly with men through 
 actions and opinions, tossing them to and fro as with 
 a sea of waves, must soon wash away or cover the 
 precipitate of the short school years, in which only 
 one man, and only words taught. The century is 
 the spiritual climate of man, mere education the hot- 
 house and forcing-pit, out of which he is taken and 
 planted for ever in the other. By century is here 
 meant the real century, which may as often truly 
 consist of ten years, as of ten thousand, and which is 
 dated, like religious eras, only from great men. 
 
 What can insulated words do against living present 
 action? The present has for new deeds also new 
 words ; the teacher has only dead languages for the, 
 to all appearance, dead bodies of his examples. 
 
 The educator has himself been educated, and is 
 already possessed, even without his knowledge, by the 
 spirit of the age, which he assiduously labours to 
 banish out of the youth (as a whole city criticises the 
 spirit of the whole city). Only, alas! every one 
 believes himself to stand so precisely and accurately 
 in the zenith of the universe, that, according to his 
 calculation, all suns and nations must culminate over 
 his head ; and he himself, like the countries at the 
 equator, cast no shadow save into himself alone. For 
 were this not so, how could so many as I also here - 
 after propose to do speak of the spirit of the age, 
 when every word implies a rescue from, and elevation 
 above it ; just as we cannot perceive the ebb and flow 
 
 B 5 
 
10 PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 of the tide in the ocean, but only at its boundaries, 
 the coasts. In like manner a savage cannot depict a 
 savage so clearly as a civilised man can do. But in 
 truth, the painters of the spirit of the age have 
 for the most part represented the last one, nothing 
 more. The great man, the poet and thinker, has 
 never been so clearly known to himself, that the 
 crystal light-holder and the light have become one ; 
 much less then have other men. However easily 
 blooming every man may open towards the sky, he 
 is yet drawn down by a root into the dark, fast 
 earth. 
 
 7- 
 
 The spirit of the nation and of the age decides, 
 and is at once the schoolmaster and the school; 
 for it seizes on the pupil to form him with two 
 vigorous hands and powers ; with the living lesson of 
 action, and with its unalterable unity. If to begin 
 with unity education must be, like the Testament, 
 a continuous endeavour to withdraw the force of 
 interrupting mixtures, then nothing builds up so 
 strong as the present, which ceases not for a moment 
 and eternally repeats itself; and which, with joy and 
 sorrow, with towns and books, with friends and 
 enemies in short, with thousand-handed life, presses 
 and seizes on us. No teacher of the people continues 
 so uniformly one with himself as the teaching people. 
 Minds, molten into masses, lose something of their 
 free movements: which bodies, for instance that of 
 
EDUCATION. 11 
 
 the world, perhaps that of the universe, seem to gain 
 by their very massiveness, and, like a heavy colossus, 
 to move all the more easily along the old, iron-covered 
 track. For however much marriages, old age, deaths 
 and enmities, are in the individual case subject to the 
 law of freedom ; yet in a whole nation, lists of births 
 and deaths can be made, by which it may be shown 
 that in the Canton of Berne (according to Mad. de 
 Stael) the number of divorces, as in Italy that of 
 murders, is the same from year to year. Must not, 
 now, the little human being placed on such an eter- 
 nally and ever similarly acting world, be borne as 
 upon a flying earth, where the only directions that a 
 teacher can give avail nothing, because he has first 
 unconsciously received his line of movement upon it ? 
 Thence, in spite of all reformers and informers, 
 nations, like meadows, reach ever a similar verdure ; 
 thence, even in capital cities, where all schoolbooks 
 and schoolmasters, and even parents of every kind, 
 educate, the spirit maintains itself unalterably the 
 same. 
 
 Repetition is the mother not only of study, but 
 also of education. Like the fresco painter, the teacher 
 lays colours on the wet plaster which ever fade away, 
 and which he must ever renew until they remain and 
 brightly shine. Who then, at Naples for instance, 
 lays the colours most frequently on the spiritual 
 tablet of one individual, the one tutor, or the mul- 
 titude of 30,000 advocates, 30,000 lazaroni, and 
 
 B 6 
 
12 PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 30,000 monks ; a threefold company of fates, or 
 ninefold one of nine murderers, compared with which 
 Vesuvius is a quiet man who suffers himself to be 
 entreated by Saint Januarius* (although not in 
 January) ? 
 
 Certainly one might say that also in families there 
 educates, besides the popular masses, a pedagogic 
 crowd of people ; at least, for instance, aunts, grand- 
 fathers, grandmothers, father, mother, godparents, 
 friends of the family, the yearly domestics, and at 
 the end of all the instructor beckons with his fore- 
 finger, so that could this force continue as long as 
 it would gladly be maintained a child, under these 
 many masters, would resemble, much more than one 
 thinks, an Indian slave, who wanders about with the 
 inburnt stamps of his various masters. But how 
 does the multitude disappear compared with the 
 higher one, by which it was coloured ; just as all the 
 burnt marks of the slave yet cannot overcome the 
 hot black colouring of the sun, but receive it as a 
 coat of arms in a sable field ? 
 
 8. 
 
 The second mighty power by which the spirit of 
 the age and people teaches and conquers is the living 
 action. Not the cry, says a Chinese author, but the 
 rising, of a wild duck impels the flock to follow 
 
 * The protecting saint of the Neapolitans against Vesuvius. 
 
EDUCATION. 13 
 
 him in upward flight. One war fought against a 
 Xerxes inflames the heart quite differently, more 
 purely and more strongly than the perusal of it 
 three times in Cornelius, Plutarch, and Herodotus : 
 for this last, along with the whole teaching of school 
 phrases, is merely an intellectual imitation in cork (a 
 phelloplastic, according to Bottiger's retranslation into 
 the Greek) in order easily to represent ancient temples 
 and magnificent buildings in light cork forms. Yea, 
 the mere ancestral images of deeds in Plutarch's 
 Westminster Abbey cast the seeds of the divine word 
 more deeply into the heart than one or a few thousand 
 volumes of sermons full of true pulpit eloquence. 
 Heaven ! if words could be compressed to deeds, only 
 a thousand to one, could they yet arouse upon an 
 earth in which pulpits, professors' chairs, and libraries 
 of all ages snow down unceasingly their most pure 
 cold exhortations, one single passion to hurl forth 
 volcanic fire ? Would not history then be surrounded 
 with mere snow craters and icebergs ? Ah ! most 
 respected teachers, if even we, with our great college 
 libraries, that preach to us for tens of years, have 
 never once been brought so far as to become holy men 
 for a month, nay for a week, what dare we expect 
 from the few volumes of words which we let fall in 
 school hours ? Or what more should the parents at 
 home expect ? 
 
 The pedagogic powerlessness of words is unfor- 
 tunately confessed in a peculiar manner, which ia 
 
14 PKESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 daily renewed in each of us. Namely, every indivi- 
 dual being is divided into a teacher and his scholars ; 
 or is split up into the teacher's chair and the scholars' 
 form. Should you now believe that this perpetual 
 house-tutor in the four chambers of the brain who 
 daily gives private lessons to the sharer of his 
 apartment, philanthropist, and boarder who is a 
 morning, evening, and night preacher who never 
 ceases with his conversatorium and repetitorium 
 who accompanies the pupil, whom he loves as himself 
 and conversely, everywhere with notes of instruction 
 as tutor on his travels, in idle hours and wine- 
 drinkings, by seats on the throne, by the chair 
 of instruction and elsewhere who, as the most 
 unlimited head-master to be found under the skull, 
 ever sleeps with his scholar, as a serjeant with a 
 recruit, in the same bed, and from time to time 
 reminds him of much when a man has forgotten 
 himself, in short, could you believe that this so 
 extremely rare Mentor, who from the pineal-gland, 
 as the lodging place of the high light, eternally 
 teaches downward; nevertheless after fifty and more 
 judgments and years, has experienced nothing better 
 in his Telemachus, than what the pure Minerva, (the 
 well-known and anonymous Mentor in the Tele- 
 machus) with all her modesty, in the greatest head of 
 the world, in that of Jupiter, also had to experience, 
 namely, that she could not spare her pupil a single 
 one of his animal transformations? This, indeed, 
 
EDUCATION. 15 
 
 were scarcely to be believed if we did not daily see 
 the most lamentable instances of it in ourselves. 
 There is, for example, in the history of the learned 
 something very usual and very pitiful : that ex- 
 cellent men have resolved for many years to rise 
 earlier in a morning, without much coming of it 
 unless they may perhaps break through the habit at 
 
 the last day. 
 
 9. 
 
 Permit us to return : and since we have easily 
 asked whether a man may be more effectually moved 
 by a thousand outward foreign words, than by a 
 billion of his own inward ones, let us not be very 
 much astonished if the stream of words which is 
 given to the youth, in order that he may thereby 
 guide and bear himself up in the ocean, should be 
 dissipated by the winds and waves on every side. But 
 give us leave to remark, that we lay many things to 
 the account of school-rooms, that is, of words, which 
 have in fact had their sole origin on the common 
 teaching-ground of action ; just as, in former times, 
 general pestilences were ascribed to the poisoning of 
 particular wells by the Jews. The schoolhouse of the 
 young soul does not merely consist of lecture and lesson 
 rooms, but also of the school ground, the sleeping 
 room, the eating room, the play-ground, the staircase, 
 and of every place. Heaven ! what intermixture of 
 other influences, always either to the advantage or pre- 
 judice of education ! The physical growth of the pupil 
 
16 PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 nourishes and draws forth a mental one! Never- 
 theless, this is ascribed to the pedagogic tan-bed ; just 
 as if one must not necessarily grow cleverer and taller 
 at the same tune 1 One might quite as properly attri- 
 bute the service of the muscles to the leading-strings. 
 Parents very often in their own children regard that 
 as the effect of educational care and attention, which 
 in strangers they would merely consider the conse- 
 quence of human growth. There are so many illusions ! 
 If a great man have gone through any one educational 
 establishment, he is ever after explained by that: 
 either he did not resemble it, and then it is held to 
 have been a moulding counter-irritation ; or he did, 
 and then it acted as an incitement to life. In the 
 same way one might regard the blue library, whose 
 binding taught the librarian Duval his first lessons in 
 arithmetic, as an arithmetical book, and school for 
 arithmetic. If parents, or men in general, in all 
 their education seek nothing else than to make their 
 physical image into their more perfect mental one, 
 and consequently to varnish over this copy with the 
 departed brightness of the original, then must they 
 readily fall into the mistake of esteeming an in-born 
 resemblance an acquired one, and physical fathers 
 spiritual ones, and nature freedom. But in this and 
 the former consideration that holds true of children 
 which does of nations : there were found in the new 
 world ten customs of the old six Chinese in Peru, 
 
EDUCATION. 17 
 
 four Hottentotish in western America*, without 
 any other nearer descent to account for these re- 
 semblances than the general one from Adam, or 
 humanity. 
 
 10. 
 
 We may, excellent fellow-workers, especially flatter 
 ourselves with services to humanity, when the posi- 
 tion is proved true, that we effect little, or nothing, 
 by education. As in the mechanical world every 
 motion, if the opposition of friction were removed, 
 would be unceasingly continued, and every change 
 become eternal ; so, in the spiritual world, if the pupil 
 less bravely opposed and vanquished the teacher, a 
 more beggarly life would be eternally repeated than 
 we can at all picture to ourselves. I mean this : if all 
 the streets and times of this poor earth were to be 
 filled with dull stiff images from the pedagogic 
 princely mirrors, that is, with counterfeits of school- 
 men, so that every age might be impressed by the 
 other, manikin on manikin ; what else is wanted for 
 this tedious misery, but that education should 
 succeed beyond our expectations, and a tutor and 
 schoolmaster allow his head, like a crowned one, to 
 pass stamped in all hands and corners? And a 
 whole bench of knights might become an assembly of 
 candidates fit for the tournament, because they had 
 
 * Zimmermann's History of Man, b, 3. . 
 
18 PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 been previously clean and well copied after the quiet 
 burgher's pattern ? 
 
 But we will venture to hope the opposite : the 
 schoolmaster and tutor is ever afterwards connected 
 with the nobleman, as God with nature ; concerning 
 which Seneca justly writes semel jussit, semper 
 paret i. e. the tutor's study is very soon closed, 
 and the ante-chamber and audience-hall opened. 
 
 In order not to fall into the error of those who 
 introduce the bird Phrenix, and the man in the moon 
 unwived, I have here in my thoughts girls also, on 
 whom, as on doves and canary birds, false colours are 
 painted by governesses, as well as by tutors, which 
 the first rain or moulting removes. But, as has been 
 said, every woman becomes in time something pecu- 
 liar ; a beautiful Idioticon of her many provinces of 
 language. 
 
 n. 
 
 Through long teaching, to which no advance of the 
 pupil is sufficiently proportioned, schoolmasters of 
 understanding may arrive at the question: "how 
 will the poor scholar be able to walk in the right 
 path without our leading- strings, since even with 
 them he runs into error ? " and also at this wish : 
 " God ! that we could but wind him up, and fix him, 
 exactly like an astronomical hundred-yeared chrono- 
 meter, so that he might show the hours, and positions 
 of the planets and every thing quite accurately, long 
 after our death ! " and consequently at this opinion : 
 
EDUCATION. 19 
 
 "that they were in fact the soul of his inner man, 
 and had to raise his every limb, or were at least, his 
 supporting mould, in which he ought not merely to 
 carry his broken arm, as in a gentle bandage, but 
 also his leg, his head, and his entrails, so as to be 
 completely strengthened." If the tutor accompany 
 his young master to the university, the one goes into 
 much good society without the other : and if they 
 both at last set off on their travels, the young gentle- 
 man goes into much of a suspicious nature, and the 
 tutor ends his anxiety ; which resembles the anxiety 
 of a mother, as to how the poor naked foetus can exist* 
 when it comes into this cold blowing world, and is no 
 longer nourished by her blood. 
 
 Truly your singing bird of a pupil will continue to 
 whistle for you through the night; because, by a 
 night-light, that is, by an education out of season, 
 you delude him into the belief of an artificial day- 
 light ; but, when he once flies into the open air, he 
 will then only arrange his notes and sound them at 
 the general break of day. 
 
 If we place ourselves on another eminence to con- 
 template thence the directions, fears, and demands of 
 teachers, we almost feel tempted to drive them down, 
 especially because they, the educators, assume and 
 presume so much ; that is, they do not take and set 
 before them the great world-plan as their school-plan, 
 nor the all-educator as an example to the poor hedge- 
 schoolmaster man, but do so anxiously endeavour, 
 with their narrow views to assist the infinite Pedago- 
 
20 PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 giarch (Prince of teachers) who permits sun to re- 
 volve round sun, and child round father, and so the 
 child's and father's father are alike, as if humanity, 
 neglected for thousands of years, were laid before them, 
 hidden nook creators, like warm wax, on which they 
 had to impress their own individual induration, to pro- 
 duce future indurations ; so that they might as re- 
 creators agreeably surprise the creator with a living 
 seal and paste cabinet of their coats of arms and heads. 
 A long period, and here again a long period ! 
 
 12. 
 
 None of all my hearers, of whom I am the nearest, 
 can have forgotten that at the commencement I asked 
 why so much at present in Germany is written 
 about education, and grounded upon it, as I also 
 myself intend to lay some printed ideas on the sub- 
 ject before the public. I answer, for this reason ; 
 because by cultivation all humanity has become a 
 speaking machine, and the flesh a word. The more 
 education the more notions ; the less action the 
 more speech ; man is becoming a man by profession, 
 as there were formerly Christians by profession ; and 
 the ear his sensorium commune. The beggar, for 
 instance, passes by the great citizen unnoticed ; the 
 one has fled from the other, not merely in deed, but 
 beyond that, in word ; just as battles, pestilences and 
 such like, pass over us only as gentle sounds. Therefore 
 is poetry so beneficial as a counterbalance to civilisa- 
 tion, because it draws an artistic life round the thin 
 
EDUCATION. 21 
 
 shadows, and erects on the battle-field of mere sen- 
 suous views its own glorious visions. But as the 
 German spends no time so willingly as a time for 
 consideration to the most important step he made, 
 namely, that into life, he took an eternity of consi- 
 deration he prefers steady, slow writing, to quick 
 hither and thither roving speech ; unlike the Sou- 
 therns, he is less a speech-loving than a writing- 
 loving people, as his registries and book-shelves prove. 
 " A word, a man," * means now " black on white, 
 a man." Writing and fact, or clothing and body, are 
 now as distinct from one another as shoe and foot, 
 which, as a measure, mean with us the same thing. 
 It all depends on one little stroke, whether Christ 
 is God or not ; namely, on the well-known passage, 
 1 Tim. iii. 16. in the Alexandrine copy, where a little 
 stroke with the back of the pen changes OC into 
 0C (sos} 9 and upon an " Or " in Carolina, whether 
 a man shall be hanged or not. 
 
 But now if the inner being of the cultivated man 
 is merely composed, like some drawings, of letters 
 and words, then enough can never be said of and in 
 education, since the consciousness of having separated 
 the inner life into ideas, consequently into words, 
 secures the certainty of being able again to re-con- 
 struct it by means of the separated component parts, 
 that is, by means of words ; in short, to educate 
 
 * A common proverbial expression, signifying that no written 
 contract is necessary when a man has given his word. TB. 
 
22 PKESENT INEFFICIENCY OF 
 
 through the means of speech, by the pen and the 
 tongue. "Draw," said Donatello to the sculptors, 
 " and you will be able to do the rest." " Speak," 
 say we to teachers, " and you will show how to act." 
 As every kind of existence only propagates itself 
 by itself; for example, deeds only by deeds, words by 
 words, education by education ; we will, excellent 
 fellow-labourers, cheer and strengthen ourselves in 
 the hope that our teaching may spiritually reward 
 us by the elevation of our pupils into teachers, who 
 may hereafter speak more extendedly with others; and 
 that our Johanneum-Paullinum may serve as an 
 educational institution for many educational insti- 
 tutions, while we send forth from our school-gates 
 matured house-tutors, school-keepers and catechi- 
 zers, to produce their equals in good school-houses, 
 not Cyruses, but Cyropedias, and Cyropedago- 
 giarchs. 
 
 13. 
 
 I now turn to the most worshipful fathers of the 
 city, our supporters and school-archs, not only with 
 thanks, but also with entreaties. There remains, 
 namely, in the most unpractical men and speakers a 
 something harsh and real it is called, harshly 
 enough, stomach which, from selfishness, values in 
 the tongue only its imports, not its exports. Enough ; 
 every one possesses this member ; and it is this espe- 
 cially that makes us wish our school might be raised 
 into a finance or industrial school for all those who 
 received their incomes from it, so that every one who 
 
EDUCATION. 23 
 
 as scholar subscribed to it, may gladly again enter it 
 in order to be paid as teacher. Moreover our school 
 book-shop, less truly school-library, and our school- 
 purse, yea and our school widow's fund, might be well 
 supported ; and so of every thing else, for the only 
 school sickness which teachers have is hunger, an evil 
 for which the state should supply domestic means, or 
 so called housekeeper's provision. 
 
 But since all of us, especially as educators of youth, 
 wish to live for something fairer and more enduring 
 than our dinner of black soup, for which we must 
 first all day long distribute whipping-soup, I venture, 
 unabashed, to prefer the proud request, that the 
 desk from which the third master, and music teacher, 
 as well as myself, have to propound the needful 
 instruction, may be newly coloured, merely like a 
 book, or a Prussian post-house, black and white, and 
 that the Lyceum may receive, if not the name 
 gymnasium, yet the epithet royal, and that we may 
 all, as far as possible, be addressed by the title of 
 professors. Perhaps the school friendship, which 
 has hitherto confined itself to the scholars, might 
 then be extended to the teachers. Fiat ! Dixil 
 
 14. 
 
 Scarcely had the author delivered the inaugural 
 discourse he had before composed, than so much of 
 a resignation speech was found in it, that they 
 afforded him a fair opportunity to deliver this last, 
 
24 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 and to explain himself more at large, by removing and 
 dismissing him a few days afterwards. Thereby he 
 was placed in a position to take leave of his fellow- 
 teachers as publicly as he had received his dismissal, 
 and at the same time to choose as text for his short 
 farewell discourse the educational chair (which he 
 mounted for the second and last time), and to impress 
 upon them its importance. 
 
 CHAP. HI. 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 15. 
 
 MOST honoured brothers in office ! In laying down 
 my short-held office with a certain consoling con- 
 sciousness, that none of those intrusted to my 
 charge will ever stand forth to reproach me with 
 an erroneous plan of teaching, or with hours of 
 instruction gossiped away, I can find no theme for 
 a farewell, more connected with the subject, than the 
 consideration how deeply a good education pene- 
 trates into the heart of the age ; and I choose this 
 the more readily, because it will give me an op- 
 portunity to place in a new light, much that the 
 day before yesterday was laid down by my prede- 
 cessor in this desk, the deliverer of the inaugural 
 
EDUCATION. 25 
 
 discourse, for here I do not venture to speak of 
 myself in any other way since my dismissal. 
 
 It shall only be proved that he advanced mere 
 sophisms, which originally, according to Leibnitz, 
 signified only exercises in wisdom. 
 
 "For what other reason," he asks, "do men now 
 write so much about education, than because," he 
 answers, " our whole existence has passed into words, 
 and words so easily, by means of tongues and ears, 
 into the soul." But is this, pray, anything different 
 from what I myself maintain ? We shall see. 
 
 16. 
 
 No former age or people is to be compared with 
 any since the invention of printing ; for since that 
 time there have been no more isolated states, and 
 consequently no isolated influence of the state on its 
 component parts. Strangers and returned travellers, 
 whom Lycurgus excluded from his republic, like epi- 
 sodes and the intervention of gods from the dramatic 
 unities, now traverse every country under the name 
 of missals and waste paper. No one is any longer 
 alone, not even an island in the most distant sea ; 
 thence comes it that the political balance of power of 
 many states, collected under one arm of the balance, 
 is now first mooted. Europe is an interlaced, mis- 
 grown, banyan forest, round which the other quarters 
 of the world creep, like parasite plants, and nourish 
 themselves on its decayed parts. Books form a 
 
26 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 universal republic, a union of nations, or a society 
 of Jesus, in a nobler sense, or a humane society, 
 whereby a second or duplicate Europe arises ; which, 
 like London, lies in several counties and districts. 
 As now, on the one side, the book-pollen flying 
 everywhere, brings the disadvantage that no people 
 can any longer produce a bed of flowers true and 
 unspotted with foreign colours ; as now no state 
 can be any longer formed purely, slowly, and by 
 degrees from itself, but, like an Indian idol, com- 
 posed of different animals, must see the various 
 members of the neighbouring states mingled with its 
 growth ; so, on the other side, through the ecumenic 
 council of the book-world, the spirit of a provincial 
 assembly can no longer slavishly enchain its people, 
 and an invisible church frees it from the visible one. 
 And therefore we educate now with some hope 
 for the age, because we know that the spoken word 
 of the German teacher is re-echoed by the printed 
 page ; and that the citizen of the world, under the 
 supervision of the universal republic, will not sink 
 into the citizen of an injurious state, all the more 
 because, though books may be dead yet glorified 
 men, their pupils will ever hold themselves as their 
 living relatives. 
 
 That the age writes so much on education, shows 
 at once its absence and the feeling of its importance. 
 Only lost things are cried about the streets. The 
 German state itself no longer educates sufficiently ; 
 
EDUCATION. 27 
 
 consequently the teacher should do it in the nursery, 
 from the pulpit, and from the desk. The forcing- 
 houses in Home and Sparta are destroyed, in Sinai 
 and in the Arabian desert some few yet stand, the 
 old circle, that the state should plan and direct the 
 education, and this again act on that, has been very 
 much rectified, or indeed squared, by the art of 
 printing ; for now men, elevated above all states, 
 educate states ; dead men, for instance, like Plato ; 
 just as in the deep old morning-world, according 
 to the saga, angels with glories wandered about, 
 guided, like children, the new men who had sprung 
 out of the ruins, and, having ended their instruction, 
 vanished into heaven. The earth, according to 
 Zach's ingenious idea, has been formed from con- 
 gregated moons ; one moon striking on the American 
 side, drove the deluge over the old world ; the sharp- 
 pointed, wildly-up-piled Switzerland, is nothing 
 more than a visible moon, that once tumbled from 
 its pure ether down to the earth, and so there is 
 in intellectual Europe, far more than in any age or 
 quarter of the world, not addicted to printing, a 
 congregation of soul-worlds, or of world-souls, sent 
 or fallen from heaven. The great man has now a 
 higher throne, and his crown shines over a wider 
 plain ; for he works not only by action, but also by 
 writing, not only by his word, but also, like thunder 
 by an echo. So one mind influences its neighbouring 
 
 C 2 
 
28 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 minds, and through them the masses ; as many 
 little ships draw a large one into harbour, so inferior 
 minds bring the great one to shore that it may be 
 unladen. 
 
 17. 
 
 My predecessor, however, might grant or add much ; 
 namely, that if the great body of authors have gra- 
 dually assumed the educational position once held by 
 quacks and fortunetellers, the great advancing mass 
 of the people, which so easily overpowers, in its vast 
 ocean, the early teaching of childhood, has itself 
 changed and increased. " Libraries, and two yearly 
 book-fairs not including the one of reprints at 
 Frankfort surpass, I should think, a few school- 
 books and their expounders," the deliverer of the 
 address might, and probably does, say. But a prin- 
 cipal point here must not be overlooked. 
 
 It is indubitable that everything impresses man 
 either formingly or improvingly ; so that, I think, 
 not merely an assembly of people and of books, 
 and great electric effusions in his heaven's equator 
 discompose him, but also that damp weather unnerves 
 him, hence it is certain that no man can take a walk 
 without bringing home an influence on his eternity ; 
 every spur, every star of heaven and of knighthood, 
 every beetle, every trip or touch of the hand as cer- 
 tainly engraves itself upon us, as the gentle dewdrop, 
 or the hanging of a mist affects the granite mountains. 
 
EDUCATION. 29 
 
 But just as certainly, on the other hand, is this assertion 
 necessary ; " that the strength of every impression 
 depends on our condition yesterday, to-day, and to- 
 morrow." For the human being assimilates more 
 spiritual food, the less he has hitherto received ; as he 
 never grows more rapidly and disproportionately to 
 the given nourishment than as foetus : but, after he 
 has reached the point of satiety, he rejects so much 
 that it is well the brief youth of the individual is 
 compensated by the eternal youth of humanity, whose 
 point of satiety is marked on a scale which takes cen- 
 turies and nations for the fractions of its lines. 
 
 On this account education is always counselled to 
 do as much as possible during the first year of life ; 
 for it can then effect more with half the power than 
 it can in the eighth with double, when the sense 
 of freedom is aroused, and all the conditions of being 
 indefinitely multiplied. As farmers believe it most 
 advantageous to sow in mist, so the first seeds of 
 education should fall in the first and thickest mist of 
 life. 
 
 In the first place have regard to morality ! The 
 inner man is, like the negro, born white, and only 
 coloured black by life. If in mature years great 
 examples of moral worth pass by without influencing 
 our course of life more than a flying comet that of 
 the earth, yet in the deep heart of childhood the first 
 inner or outer object of love, injustice, &e., throws 
 a shadow or a light immeasurably far along its years ; 
 
 c 3 
 
30 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 and as, according to the elder theologians, we only 
 inherited Adam's first sin, not his other sins, since in 
 one fall we copied every fall ; so the first fall and the 
 first flight influence us our whole life long. For in 
 this early moment the Eternal works the second 
 miracle ; the gift of life was the first. It is then 
 that the god-man is conceived and born of human na- 
 ture ; that self-consciousness, whereby a responsible 
 being first appears, may be boldly called a conscience 
 and a god and unblessed is the hour in which this 
 growing human being finds no unspotted conception, 
 but in the moment of birth the Saviour and his Judas 
 meet. Too little attention has been paid to this one 
 invaluable moment, its environments and its fruits. 
 There are men who can remember far back to this 
 bounding hour of existence, in which their self-con- 
 sciousness suddenly burst through the clouds like a 
 sun, and wonderfully revealed a beaming universe. 
 Life, especially moral life, has a flight, then a leap, 
 then a step, then a halt ; each year renders a man less 
 easy to convert, and a missionary can effect less on a 
 wicked sexagenarian than an auto-da-fe. 
 
 18. 
 
 What is true of the heart of the inner man is true 
 also of his eye. If the former, like an ancient Chris- 
 tian church, must be turned towards the morning 
 of childhood ; the latter, like a Grecian temple, re- 
 ceives its greatest light from the entrance and from 
 
EDUCATION. 31 
 
 above. For in regard to intellectual education, the 
 .child walks hand in hand with a nature which never 
 returns ; this nature is hitherto a wintry desert full 
 of spring buds : wherever a sunbeam strikes it (for 
 all teaching is warming into life rather than sowing), 
 there the green leaves burst forth, and the whole 
 child's life consists of warm creation days. 
 
 Two forces are at work : first, childlike trust, that 
 imbibing power without which there could be no edu- 
 cation and no language, but the child would resemble 
 -a bird taken too late from the nest, which must starve 
 .because it will not open its bill to the hand which 
 brings it food. But this trust shows itself only in 
 the minority, and sleeps in the mass of men and years. 
 The second power is excitability. As in the phy- 
 sical, so in the spiritual child, it exists in the highest 
 degree in the physical and spiritual morning of life, 
 and decreases with age, until at last nothing in the 
 empty world excites the worn-out man except the 
 future. Then the whole universe may labour at, and 
 press its marks upon the man, but on the hardened 
 matter only weak impressions remain. The spirit of 
 his age and nation may work unceasingly on the 
 child : at first his only teachers are the age and nation. 
 Moravians, Quakers, and especially Jews, give an in- 
 fluence to education which predominates over the 
 surrounding dissimilar ages and people : and although 
 even they are influenced by the spirit of the age and 
 c 4 
 
32 IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 of the multitude, yet it impresses them much more 
 slightly than the masses who are differently educated. 
 And however the spirit of the age may move and 
 turn the heart, that little world, yet, like all balls re- 
 volving on themselves, it retains two innate, immove- 
 able poles the good and the bad. 
 
 19. 
 
 Moreover, the whole mass of people does not, as 
 my predecessor seems to assert, rush on the individual 
 human being. Only some few in later, as in early 
 life affect the formation of our characters ; the multi- 
 tude passes by like a distant army. One friend, one 
 teacher, one beloved, one club, one dining table, one 
 work table, one house, are, in our age, the nation 
 and national spirit influencing the individual, while 
 the rest of the crowd passes him without leaving a 
 trace behind. But when do individuals affect us so 
 powerfully as in childhood? or when so long for 
 in education, as in law*, long means ten years as in 
 the first decade ? The waves of the ocean, besides, 
 before reaching the child, break, against four walls, 
 which encompass the water of his education or crys- 
 talisation : father, mother, brothers and sisters, and 
 a few extra people, are his forming world and mould. 
 But all this deducted, we must remember in edu- 
 cation that its power, like that of the spirit of the age, 
 
 * Longum teaipus est decent annorum > Hoinm. : prompt. 
 
EDUCATION. 
 
 33 
 
 which must not be measured by individuals, but by 
 the concentrated mass or majority, must be judged 
 not by the present, but by the future : a nation or 
 century, educated by the same method, presses down 
 the balance quite differently from a casual individual. 
 But we, as ever, desire that fate, or the Time Spirit, 
 should answer our inquiries by return of post. 
 
 20. 
 
 I have in this manner, at least I hope so, laid my 
 own opinion, as well as his, before my opponent and 
 predecessor with a respect which is not so common 
 among the learned body, as many an opponent of an 
 opponent believes. For the little that he adds about 
 the absorption of the individual in the mass, merits 
 not contradiction but affirmation. The uniformity 
 of the masses permits many irregularities in the in- 
 dividual ; and although the tables of mortality are 
 correct, no one hopes and fears only by them. On 
 the globe itself mountains disappear, and from these 
 at a distance, the stony path ; but he who travels it 
 sees it clearly enough. And when the dear good 
 man, along with his complaints of the ineffectiveness 
 of good education, gives way to complaints of the in- 
 fluence of bad education, he then clearly proves by a 
 capability to be ill-educated, a capability to be well- 
 educated ; and so education is to be reproached with 
 no want, but the want of correct tables of the per- 
 
 c 5 
 
34 IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 turbations of a little wandering star caused by the 
 revolutions of other planets ; and will we not readily 
 concede this ? 
 
 And now, worthy schoolarchy, I should wish to 
 know what further I have to say from this honour- 
 able place ? 
 
SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 35 
 
 SECOND FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Spirit and Principle of Education, 2124. CHAP. II. The 
 Individuality of the Ideal Man, 25 30. CHAF. III. On the 
 Spirit of the Age, 31 35. CHAP. IV. Religious Education, 
 
 36 38. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 21. 
 
 THE end desired must be known before the way. 
 All means or arts of education will be, in the first in- 
 stance, determined by the ideal or archetype we enter- 
 tain of it. But there floats before common parents 
 instead of one archetype, a whole picture cabinet of 
 ideals, which they impart bit by bit, and tatoo into 
 their children. If the secret variances of a large 
 class of ordinary fathers, were brought to light, and 
 laid down as a plan of studies, and reading catalogue 
 for a moral education, they would run somewhat 
 after this fashion: In the first hour pure morality 
 must be read to the child, either by myself, or the 
 tutor : in the second mixed morality, or that which 
 may be applied to one's own advantage : in the third, 
 " do you not see that your father does so and so ? " 
 in the fourth, " you are little, and this is only fit for 
 grown up people : " in the fifth, " the chief matter is 
 
 c 6 
 
36 SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE 
 
 that you should succeed in the world, and become 
 something in the state" ; in the sixth, " not the tem- 
 porary but the eternal determines the worth of a 
 man" : in the seventh, " therefore rather suffer injus- 
 tice, and be kind : " in the eighth, " but defend your- 
 self bravely if any one attack you : " in the ninth " do 
 not make such a noise, dear child : " in the tenth, " a 
 boy must not sit so quiet : " in the eleventh, " you 
 must obey your parents better : " in the twelfth, 
 " and educate yourself." So by the hourly change of 
 his principles the father conceals their untenableness 
 and one-sidedness. As for his wife, she is neither 
 like him, nor yet like that harlequin who came on 
 to the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm, 
 and answered to the inquiry what he had under his 
 right arm, " orders," and to what he had under his left, 
 " counter-orders ; " but the mother might be much 
 better compared to a giant Briareus, who had a hun- 
 dred arms, and a bundle of papers under each. 
 
 This government of the demi-gods, so frequently 
 and so suddenly changed, proves clearly not only the 
 absence, but also the necessity and the right of a 
 superior god: for in the generality of souls the 
 ideal, without which men would sink down into four- 
 footed beasts, reveals itself rather by inner discord 
 than unison, rather by judgments on others, than on 
 itself. But with children, the result of this may 
 be, and often has been, various and half-coloured 
 pupils, whom (unless some rare peculiarity makes 
 
OF EDUCATION. 37 
 
 them hard and uninjurable) the spirit of the age, of 
 the accident of necessity and pleasure, can easily 
 break with its wheel, or even twine round it. The 
 majority of educated men are, therefore, at present 
 an illumination which burns off by fits and starts in 
 the rain, shining with interrupted forms, and depict- 
 ing broken characters. 
 
 But the bad and impure spirits of educational sys- 
 tems are yet to be reduced into other divisions. Many 
 parents educate their children only for themselves, 
 that is, to be pretty blocks, or soul-alarums, which are 
 not set to move or sound when stillness is required. 
 The child has merely to be that on which the teacher 
 can sleep most softly, or drum most loudly; who, 
 having something else to do and to enjoy, wishes 
 to be spared the trouble of education, duly but 
 most unreasonably expecting its fruits. Hence these 
 dull sluggards are so often angry because the child 
 is not at once cleverer, more consistent and gentler 
 than themselves. Even zealous children's friends, 
 like statesmen, often resemble inflammable air, 
 which, it is true, gives light itself, but in so doing 
 extinguishes every other : at least a child must often 
 be to them, what a favourite assistant must be to a 
 minister, sometimes only the hand which copies, 
 sometimes a head which can work by itself. 
 
 Related to those teachers who wished to be machine- 
 makers, are the educators for appearances and political 
 usefulness. Their maxims, thoroughly carried out, 
 
38 SPIKIT AND PRINCIPLE 
 
 would only produce pupils, or rather sucklings, pas- 
 sively obedient, boneless, well-trained, patient of all 
 things the thick, hard, human kernel would give 
 place to the soft, sweet fruit-pulp and the child's 
 clod of earth, into which growing life should breathe 
 a divine spirit, would be kept down and manured as 
 though it were but a corn field, the edifice of the 
 state would be inhabited by mere spinning machines, 
 calculating machines, printing and pumping appa- 
 ratus, oil mills, and models for mills, pumps, and 
 spinning machines, &c. Instead of every child, born 
 without past and without future, beginning in the 
 year one, and bringing with him a first new-year, 
 the state, forsooth, must step into and usurp the 
 place of a remote posterity, which alone could make 
 him spiritually, as well as physically, young again, 
 and substitute for him a system of teaching which 
 only stops his wheels and surrounds them like 
 hardened ice. 
 
 Nevertheless the man comes before the citizen, 
 and our future, beyond the world as well as in our 
 own minds, is greater than both: how then have 
 parents, who in the child clothe and bind up the 
 man into a servant, for instance, into custom-house 
 officers, kitchen-purveyors, jurists, &c. obtained the 
 right to multiply themselves otherwise than physi- 
 cally, instead of begetting spiritual embryos? Can 
 care of the body impart a right of spiritual starva- 
 tion, or of good-living, such as the devil would pre- 
 
OF EDUCATION. 39 
 
 scribe a soul, since no body can outbalance, nay, 
 not even balance, a soul ? The ancient German and 
 Spartan custom of killing weak-bodied children, is 
 not much crueller, than that of propagating weak- 
 minded ones. 
 
 22. 
 
 Usefulness to others is only separated from use- 
 fulness to one's self, as dishonesty is from uncharitable- 
 ness: both are united in self-love. Hedgerows and 
 Hercules-pillars, however perfect, are blameable as 
 soon as they diminish the free world of a future man. 
 If Mengs, by slavery of body and soul, made his 
 son, Raphael Mengs, into a painter according to 
 Winkelmann, the Grecian states only reached art 
 through and for freedom he did but adopt the old 
 Egyptian custom, that the son must follow the 
 trade of his father, only in its higher branches. 
 
 Much of this holds good with regard to domestic 
 orphan-house chaplains, who transform the whole 
 children's training into a church-training and bible 
 institution, and make free, happy children, into 
 bowed down cloister novices. For the human being 
 is not formed to grow altogether upwards, like plants 
 and deer's horns ; nor yet altogether downwards, like 
 feathers and teeth; but like muscles, at both ends 
 at once: so that Bacon's double motto for kings, 
 " remember that thou art a man, remember that thou 
 art a god, or vice-god," may serve also for children ! 
 
 Education can neither entirely consist of mere 
 
40 SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE 
 
 unfolding in general, or, as it is now better called, 
 excitement for every continued existence unfolds, 
 and every bad education excites, just as oxygen 
 positively irritates nor in the unfolding of all the 
 powers, because we can never act upon the whole 
 amount of them at once ; as little as in the body 
 susceptibility and spontaneity, or the muscular and 
 nervous system, can be strengthened at the same 
 
 time. 
 
 23. 
 
 A purely negative education, such as that of 
 Rousseau only seems to be, would at once contradict 
 itself and reality, as much as an organic living body 
 full of powers of growth without means of excite- 
 ment: even the few wild children who have been 
 captured, received a positive education from the 
 raging and flying animals around them. A child's 
 coffin only can represent a negative hedge-school, 
 prince's school, and school-door. The purely natural 
 man whom Rousseau sometimes, indeed very often, 
 confounds with the ideal man, because both are equally 
 pure and distinct from the mere worldly man 
 grows entirely by excitement. Rousseau, in the 
 first place, prefers arousing and influencing the child 
 by things rather than by men, by impressions rather 
 than by discourses ; and, in the second, recommends 
 a more healthy and useful series of excitements, 
 whilst his predecessors in teaching had hastened to 
 use upon the susceptible nature of children, the 
 
OF EDUCATION. 41 
 
 most powerful excitements, such as God, Hell, and 
 the Rod ! Only give the souls of children free 
 passage from the limbus patrum et infantum, and 
 nature, he seems to think, will unfold herself. This, 
 indeed, she does every where, and at all times, but 
 only in ages, countries, and souls, which possess a 
 
 marked individuality. 
 
 24. 
 
 Perhaps we may find the centre and focus of 
 these crossing lines and beams, from this point of 
 view : If a modern Greek, without any knowledge 
 of the mighty past, were depicting the present con- 
 dition of his enslaved race, he would find it approach- 
 ing the highest step of civilisation, morality, and 
 other excellencies, until a magic stroke revealed, 
 to his astonished eye, Greece in the Persian war, 
 or Athens in its glory, or fruitful Sparta, like an 
 empire of the dead, like Elysian fields. What a 
 difference in the same nation, vast as that between 
 gods and men ! Nevertheless, those gods are not 
 genii, nor in any way exceptions, but a people, con- 
 sequently the majority and average of talents. When 
 in history we look round on the heights and mountain 
 ranges, where glorified nations dwell, and then down 
 into the abysses where others lie enchained, we say 
 to ourselves, the heights that a multitude has 
 reached, thou also canst reach, if thou canst not 
 descend into the depths. The spiritual existence that 
 a nation, a majority of any people, has embodied and 
 
42 SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 
 
 showed forth in glory, must dwell and breathe in 
 every individual, else could he not recognise in it a 
 kindred being. 
 
 And so, indeed, it is. Every one of us has within 
 him an ideal man, which he strives, from his youth 
 upwards, to cherish or to subdue. This holy 
 soul-spirit every one beholds most clearly in the 
 blooming time of all his powers in the season of 
 youth. If only every one were distinctly conscious 
 of what he once wished to become, of how different 
 and much nobler a path and goal his opening eye, 
 compared with his fading one, beheld ! For so soon 
 as we believe in any cotemporaneous growth of the 
 physical and spiritual man, we must also let the 
 blooming season of both occur simultaneously. 
 Consequently, his own ideal being will appear most 
 clearly to the man (though it be only in vague 
 desires and dreams) in the full bloom of youth. 
 And does not this show itself in the meanest soul, 
 which, though sunk during its pilgrimage through 
 sensual and covetous affections, yet once attained a 
 higher hope, and stood within the gates of heaven ? 
 At a later period, in the multitude, the ideal being 
 fades day by day, and the man becomes, sinking and 
 overpowered, the mere present, a creature of necessity 
 and neighbourhood. But the universal complaint, 
 "what might I not have become ! " confesses the pre- 
 sent existence, or the past existence, of an older Adam 
 in paradise, along with and before the old Adam. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAN. 43 
 
 But the ideal man comes upon the earth as an 
 anthropolithe (a petrified man) : to break this stony 
 covering away from so many limbs that the rest can 
 liberate themselves ; this is, or should be, education. 
 
 The same normal being who, in every noble soul, 
 remains as house tutor, and silently teaches, should 
 be outwardly manifested in the child, and make 
 itself independent, free, and strong. But first of all 
 we must discover what it is. The ideal man of 
 Fenelon so full of love and full of strength the 
 ideal man of Cato the younger so full of strength 
 and full of love could never exchange, or meta- 
 morphose themselves into each other without spiritual 
 suicide. Consequently, education has in 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 TO DISCOVER AND TO APPRECIATE THE INDIVIDUALITY OF 
 THE IDEAL MAN. 
 
 25. 
 
 LET a needful breathing space be granted here ! In 
 most languages, like a symbol, the adjective and verb 
 'good 'and f be' are irregular. Physical power ex- 
 presses its superfluity in the variety of genera; 
 hence the temperate zone maintains only 130 dis- 
 tinct quadrupeds, but the torrid 220. The higher 
 kinds of life separate, according to Zimmermann, 
 into more species ; thus, beyond the five hundred 
 species of the mineral kingdom, lies the animal 
 world with seven million. It is so with minds. 
 
44 INDIVIDUALITY OF THE 
 
 Instead of the uniformity of savage nations in 
 different ages and countries, for instance, of the 
 American Indians and the ancient Germans, is seen 
 the many-branched, varied forms of civilised people in 
 the same climate and period : just as the art of gar- 
 dening multiplies sorts of flowers in different colours ; 
 or time separates a long strip of land in the ocean 
 into islands. In so far a meaning may be attached to 
 the saying of the schoolmen, that every angel is its 
 own species. 
 
 26. 
 
 Every educator, even the dullest, admits this, and 
 imprints on his pupils this reverence for peculiarities^ 
 that is, for his own; at the same time he labours 
 industriously to secure this point that each be no- 
 thing else than his own step-son or bastard self. He 
 allows himself as much individuality as is necessary to 
 eradicate that of others, and plant his own in its stead. 
 If, in general, every man is secretly his own copying 
 machine, which he applies to others, and if he willingly 
 draws all, into ghostly and spiritual relationship with 
 himself, as soul's cousins as for instance Homer, 
 gladly converted the four quarters of the world into 
 Homerides and Homerists, and Luther into Lutherans 
 much more will the teacher strive, in the defence- 
 less, unformed souls of children, to impress and repro- 
 duce himself ; and the father of the body endeavour to 
 be also the father of the spirit, God grant it may 
 
IDEAL MAN. 45 
 
 seldom succeed ! And most fortunately it does not 
 prosper ! It is only mediocrity which supplants that 
 of others by its own ; that is, one imperceptible in- 
 dividuality by another equally imperceptible : hence 
 the multitude of imitators. From a wood- cut some 
 thousand impressions may easily be taken ; but from 
 a copperplate only a tithe of that number. 
 
 It were indeed too pitiable for Europe if it were 
 altogether sown with Tituses, as every Titus secretly 
 wishes, or with Semproniuses, as the Semproniuses 
 desire ! What a thick, dead sea would be floating along 
 from the usuriously-increasing resemblance of teachers 
 and pupils ! 
 
 27. 
 
 As every teacher, even the rigidest, admits that 
 he highly values two strongly marked individualities 
 namely, that before the deluge which formed 
 his own, and that own itself and regards them 
 as the two mountain ranges which give birth 
 to the streams below and the vales of Tempe; 
 and as, moreover, every self-taught roan maintains 
 that every thing remarkable in the world has been 
 created by adding and subtracting, but not by trans- 
 planting, individualities, some other illusion than that 
 of mere selfishness must be at the foundation of this 
 disregard of the peculiarities of others. 
 
 28. 
 It is, in truth, the excusable error that confuses the 
 
46 INDIVIDUALITY OF THE 
 
 ideal with ideals; and which, had it lived during 
 the week of creation, would have created all angels, 
 all Eves, or all Adams. But although there is 
 only one Spirit of Poetry, there are many different 
 forms in which it can incorporate itself, comedies, 
 tragedies, odes, and the thin wasp's body of the epigram ; 
 so the same moral genius may become flesh here as 
 Socrates, there as Luther, here as Phocion, there as 
 John. As no finite can truly reflect the infinite 
 ideal, but only narrowly mirror it back in parts, such 
 parts must necessarily be infinitely various ; neither 
 the dew-drop, nor the mirror, nor the ocean reflect 
 the sun in all its greatness, but they each represent it 
 round and bright. 
 
 29. 
 
 I God excepted, who is at once the great original 
 / and Thou is the noblest as well as the most in- 
 comprehensible thing which language expresses, or 
 which we contemplate. It is there at once, like the 
 whole world of truth and conscience, which, without /, 
 is nothing. We must ascribe the same thing to God 
 as to unconscious matter when we think of the being 
 of the one, the existence of the other. A second /is, 
 in other respects, even more inconceivable to us than 
 a first. 
 
 Every / is a personal existence, consequently a 
 spiritual individuality for a bodily one is so extended 
 that a portion of the sky, earth, city must belong to it 
 
IDEAL MAN. 47 
 
 as a body ; this personal existence does not consist 
 in Fichte's theory of rendering the / objectively 
 subjective, that is, in the change of the reflection 
 of what was first mirrored, and which every where 
 returning cuts off all number and time, so that nothing 
 is explained by it, no reflection by its counter-re- 
 flection. Further, it does not consist in an accidental 
 weighing backwards and forwards of single powers ; 
 for, first, to every embodied army a governing, and 
 controlling master-spirit is indispensable; and, se- 
 condly, all distinct forces in organic connexion rise 
 and fall with the weather-glass, age, &c., alongside 
 the unchanging individuality. 
 
 But it is an inner sense of all senses ; as feeling is 
 the sense common to the four external senses. It is 
 that in others on which our reliance, friendship, or 
 enmity rests, and is either an enduring inaptitude, or 
 a capacity for the arts of poetry and thought. As 
 the same incomprehensible organic unity, subjecting 
 to itself disjointed matter, governs and acts differently 
 in plants, in animals, and in their every variety, and 
 multiplies itself in organic personal existence, so also 
 does the higher spiritual unity. The theological 
 question of the schools whether the God-man might 
 not have appeared as a woman, a brute animal, or a 
 gourd, is symbolically affirmed by the infinite variety 
 of individual existences in which the Divine Being 
 manifests himself. It is that which unites all aes- 
 thetical, moral, and intellectual powers into one soul, 
 
48 INDIVIDUALITY OF THE 
 
 and, like the material of light, itself invisible, gives 
 and determines the many-coloured visible universe, 
 whereby first that philosophical pole-word ' practical 
 reason, pure I ' ceases only to stand in the zenith of 
 heaven like a pole-star which marks no north, and 
 consequently no quarter of the world. 
 
 We should know better how to value and protect 
 this spirit of life, this individuality, if it always 
 stood forth as strongly as in the man of genius. 
 For we all perceive how great a defeat of spirits 
 would arise in a passive war of giants : if, for instance, 
 Kant, RafFaelle, Mozart, Cato, Frederick the Great, 
 Charles the Twelfth, Aristophanes, Swift, Tasso, 
 and so forth, were all forced into the same press, and 
 formed in the same mould. Even one man of genius, 
 by the exchange and compensation of individual 
 peculiarities, could only become another, in a manner 
 resembling the forcible union of two polypi. But if 
 the primary faculty of an ordinary nature be broken, 
 what can result from it but a perpetual confused 
 wandering about itself a half imitation arising in 
 spite not out of, itself, a parasitical worm living on 
 another being, the mimic of every new example, the 
 slave of every master at his elbow ? If a human 
 being is once thrown out of his own individuality 
 into a foreign one, the centre of gravity that held 
 together his whole inner world becomes moveable and 
 wanders from spot to spot, and one oscillation passes 
 into another. In the mean time the teacher has to 
 
IDEAL MAN. 49 
 
 separate from the individuality which he allows to 
 grow, another which he must either bend or guide ; 
 the one is that of the head, the other that of the 
 heart. Every intellectual peculiarity, be it mathe- 
 matical, artistic, philosophical, is a beating heart, 
 which all teaching and gifts only serve as conducting 
 veins to fill it with material for working and motion. 
 At this exact point more weight may be added to 
 the preponderating weight of natural disposition ; 
 and the teacher must not give, in the morning of life, 
 a sleeping draught say to peculiar talents for art. 
 The moral nature, however, must be quite differently 
 treated ; if that is melody, this is harmony : you 
 must not enfeeble an Euler by engrafting on him a 
 Petrarch, nor the latter by the former; for no 
 intellectual power can become too great, and no 
 painter too great a painter. But every moral faculty 
 needs to have its boundaries fixed in order to the 
 cultivation of its balancing powers ; and Frederick 
 the Great may take his flute, and Napoleon his 
 Ossian. Here education may, for instance, deliver 
 sermons on peace to the heroic character, and charge 
 with electric thunder the disposition of a Siegwart. 
 So one might since, with girls, head and heart are 
 reciprocal frequently put a cooking spoon into the 
 hand of the boy of genius, and into that of the little 
 cook by birth some romantic feather from a poet's 
 wing. For the rest, let it be a law that, as every 
 faculty is holy, none must be weakened in itself, but 
 
50 INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAX. 
 
 only have its opposing one aroused ; by which means 
 it is added harmoniously to the whole. So, for 
 instance, a weakly affectionate heart must not be 
 hardened, but its sense of honour and purity must be 
 strengthened : the daring spirit must not be rudely 
 checked and made timid, but only taught to be loving 
 and prudent. 
 
 The conditions may now be required of me, under 
 which is to be formed the character of the child, and 
 also that of the prize or ideal man into which he is 
 to be fashioned. But for that purpose one book 
 among the endless multitude of books would not 
 serve ; moreover the books must possess the rare gift 
 of being interpreters of the dreams and symbols of 
 the closely-folded child's character ; which, in a child, 
 who does not display everything matured as a grown- 
 up man, but only budding, would be as difficult to 
 discover as a butterfly in the chrysalis to all who are 
 not Swammerdams. But alas ! three things are very 
 difficult to discover and to impart to have a cha- 
 racter to draw one to guess one. To ordinary 
 teachers a naughty trick seems a wicked nature a 
 pimple or a pock-mark as parts of the countenance. 
 
 If one must translate the prize and ideal man into 
 words, one might perhaps say, that it is the harmonious 
 maximum of all individual qualities taken together, 
 which, without regard to the resemblance of the 
 harmony, is yet connected in all its different parts, as 
 one tone in music is to another. Whosoever now, out 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 51 
 
 of the musical abcdefg, should change, for instance, 
 a piece set in a to b, would injure the piece much, 
 but not so much as a teacher who would convert the 
 ail-variously arranged natures of children into one 
 uniform tone. 
 
 30. 
 
 To elevate above the spirit of the age must be 
 regarded as the end of education; and this must 
 stand clearly developed before us ere we mark out 
 the appointed road. The child is not to be educated 
 for the present for this is done without our aid 
 unceasingly and powerfully but for the remote 
 future, and often in opposition to the immediate 
 future. The spirit which is to be shunned must be 
 known. Permit me then a 
 
 THIRD CHAPTER, 
 
 ON THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 
 31. 
 
 You invoke the spirit of the age freely and boldly, 
 but let it truly appear before us in your discourse, and 
 do you answer ! Since time separates into ages, as 
 the rainbow into falling drops, indicate the greatness 
 of the age of whose indwelling spirit you speak. Has 
 it a century of duration ; and by what chronology is it 
 reckoned the Jewish, the Christian, the Turkish, or 
 the French ? Does not the expression " spirit of the 
 century," easily escape the lips of a man because he, 
 
 D 2 
 
52 SPIRIT OF 
 
 born in a century, and partly measuring one with his 
 life, really means nothing more by " age " than the 
 little day-span which the eternal sun describes from 
 the morning to the evening of his life ? Or does the 
 age extend from one great event (the Reformation, for 
 instance), to another, so that the spirit of the first 
 vanishes as soon as the second is born ? And what 
 revolution will be considered by you the animating 
 one of the age a philosophical, a moral, a poetical, 
 or a political one ? 
 
 Further : is not every spirit of the age less chang- 
 ing than flying, indeed, already flown; what might 
 be more properly called the spirit of that immediately 
 preceding? For its traces presuppose that it is 
 already gone, consequently gone further. And only 
 from lofty heights can the backward road be sur- 
 veyed, and the future estimated. 
 
 But since the same period unfolds at the present 
 time a totally different spirit in Saturn, in his 
 satellites, in his rings upon all the countless 
 worlds of the present ; and again in London, Paris, 
 Warsaw ; and since it follows that the present 
 moment of time must have a million different spirits of 
 the age, I would ask you where the invoked spirit 
 of the age is clearly manifested in Germany, 
 France, or where ? As, before, you found it difficult 
 to mark out its limits in time, so will you now to 
 determine them in space. 
 
 I partly spare you the great question w r hich con- 
 
THE AGE. 53 
 
 cerns every one, yourself among the number, how 
 you, how all encircled in the same age, can raise 
 yourselves so far above its waves, as to be able to 
 observe its course, not merely to feel its dark irre- 
 sistible march ? And does not the stream which bears 
 you lead into an ocean, whose movements you cannot 
 measure, because it has no shore ? 
 
 32. 
 
 What we call spirit of the age our ancestors called 
 the end of the world, the latest times, signs of the 
 last day, kingdom of the devil and of Antichrist. 
 Mere melancholy names ! No golden or innocent age 
 ever called itself golden, but only expected one ; and 
 an age of lead expected one of arsenic : only the 
 past glitters, as ships occasionally draw after them a 
 shining train. But the former interpretations of 
 dreams and gazings into the present would that 
 some one would collect such a dream book of de- 
 parted great spirits ! teach us mistrust of those now 
 made. If man, from the observation of the three 
 quarters of the globe, could not prophetically con- 
 struct the fourth from the combinations of matter, 
 far less can he divine a future from the more com- 
 plicated ones of spirit. For man is feeble and poor : 
 his star-reading of the future a mere strengthening 
 or weakening of the present sees only a crescent 
 moon in the sky, which waxes and wanes in unison 
 with him, but no sun. Every one regards his own 
 
 D 3 
 
54 SPIRIT OF 
 
 life as the new-year's eve of time, and also, like the 
 superstitious, his dreams, woven from memories, as 
 prophecies for the year. Thence there always comes 
 not the foretold good or evil, nor yet its opposite, 
 but something quite different, which receives the pro- 
 phecies and their objects as an ocean does the rivers, 
 and resolves them into the circle of its waves. For, in 
 the moment when you are prophesying in the desert, 
 the fine seed-pollen of an oak falls upon the earth, 
 and, in a century, grows up to be a forest. How, 
 indeed, could man accurately divine any approaching 
 age without at the same time knowing and depicting 
 all after times? He, for instance, who, from the 
 present course and position of the winds, clouds, and 
 planets during one academical half year could accu- 
 rately guess the weather of a second, might and 
 must be able, from the data he' had foretold, to 
 decipher the third season's weather, and from that 
 every succeeding one supposing no intervention ; 
 but there do always intervene comets, earthquakes, 
 the clearing of forests, or the growth of new ones, 
 and all the other power of the Almighty. In the 
 same way, before the eye of the seer, one century 
 after another must be produced in regular order, 
 consequently thousands of years, and finally, the 
 whole time which can dwell upon an earth; sup- 
 posing, as has been already said, nothing intervenes. 
 But, heavens ! What is there does not inter- 
 vene ! The prophet himself and the freedom of 
 
THE AGE. 55 
 
 the spiritual world and the Almighty, who here 
 withdraws and there sends forth spirits and suns. 
 Thus it is that every one lives so completely in a 
 spiritual twilight (a beautiful word for that dusky 
 time of day), that God himself decides which of the 
 two contending lights shall gain the victory by a 
 new one from the sun or the moon, which men so 
 frequently mistake the one for the other. 
 
 33. 
 
 How, indeed, were this foregoing two and thirtieth 
 paragraph to be written or to be comprehended, if 
 something more were not added about it; namely, 
 a three and thirtieth which follows after it ? The 
 older the world grows, the more complacently can 
 it, and will it, adopt the prophesying character of an 
 elder. From the fore-world a spirit speaks an ancient 
 language to us, which we should not understand if 
 it were not born with us. It is the spirit of eternity, 
 which judges and overlooks every spirit of time. 
 And what does it say of the present ? Very hard 
 words. It says that the age can now more easily 
 raise up a great people than a great man ; because 
 the powerful union springing from civilisation joins 
 together the men of one spirit like the vapour-drops 
 of a huge steam engine ; so that even war is now only 
 a war-game between two living creatures. Some- 
 thing, it says, must have decayed in our age, for 
 even the mighty earthquake of the Revolution before 
 
56 SPIRIT OF 
 
 which for centuries, as before a physical earthquake, 
 an infinite multitude of worms had crept out of the 
 ground and covered it, has produced and left behind 
 it nothing greater than pretty wings on these said 
 worms. The spirit of Eternity, which judges the 
 heart and the world, strongly declares what spirit is 
 wanting to the present men inspired by the senses, to 
 these 'fire-worshippers of the passions, the holy one 
 of Him who is above the earth. The ruins of His 
 temple sink lower and lower into the present earth. 
 Prayer is thought to draw along with it the false 
 lights of fanaticism. The apprehension and belief 
 in what is beyond the world, which formerly extended 
 its roots under the foulest ages, bears no fruits in 
 our pure thin air. If, formerly, religion was in war, 
 there is now no longer war in religion there has 
 grown for us out of the world a mighty edifice, out 
 of ether a cloud, out of God a mere power, out of 
 heaven a coffin ! 
 
 At last the spirit of Eternity holds up before us 
 our shamelessness, by which we, in our darkness, 
 have permitted to play, as a festive illlumination, the 
 flames of anger, love, and desire, from which all 
 religions, all ancient nations, all great men have held 
 themselves aloof, or regarded with shame: and it 
 says that we, living only in our hate and hunger, 
 like other decaying corpses, only retain our teeth 
 uninjured, the instruments both of revenge and en- 
 joyment. Passion belongs of right to the sickness 
 
THE AGE, 57 
 
 of the age : no where is found so much impatience, 
 carelessness, indulgence towards self, and unrelenting 
 selfishness towards others as on the sick-bed, Now this 
 century lies upon a sick bed. As among the Spartans 
 the men cut away a full prominent breast as something 
 womanish, so is the same thing done now in spiritual 
 matters under the same pretext ; and the heart must 
 be as hard as the cavity of the breast above it. 
 Finally, there are some very cultivated men who 
 split themselves in opposite directions towards heaven 
 and hell, as a salamander cut in two runs forward 
 with its front, backwards with its hind part. 
 
 34. 
 
 So speaks the severe spirit within us, the eternal 
 one ; but it becomes milder if we hear it to the end. 
 Every heartfelt lamentation and weeping over any 
 age points, like a spring on a mountain, to some 
 higher mountain or peak : only those nations remain 
 sunk in their lethargy, who go in the same dull path 
 from age to age, not lamenting over themselves but 
 over others : and those who suffer from the mental 
 falling-sickness of the French philosophy have, like 
 bodily epileptics, no consciousness of their malady, 
 but only pride in their strength. Sorrow of the 
 spirit (as Night, according to the Greeks,) is the 
 mother of gods ; though that of the body is a dark 
 mist, bringing poison and death. The bold and 
 soaring thought of the Talmudists that even God 
 
 D 5 
 
58 SPIRIT OF 
 
 prays, like that of the Greeks, that Jupiter was 
 subject to fate receives a meaning from the lofty, 
 though often conquered longings of the soul, which 
 the Infinite himself has planted within us. 
 
 One religion after another fades away, but the 
 religious sense, which created them all, can never 
 become dead to humanity : consequently, it will only 
 manifest and lead its future life in more purified 
 forms. The saying of Tyrteeus*, that God, in the 
 commencement, appeared to men in their own like- 
 ness, then as a voice, and afterwards only in dreams, 
 and by inspiration (or spiritual illumination), has a 
 beautiful signification for ours, and all future ages, if 
 by dream we understand poetry, and by illumination, 
 philosophy. So long as the word God endures in a 
 language, will it direct the eyes of men upwards. It 
 is with the Eternal as with the sun, which, if but its 
 smallest part can shine uneclipsed, prolongs the day, 
 and gives its rounded image in the dark chamber. 
 Even in France, which could for a short time observe 
 a total eclipse of the sun, arose a Chateaubriand, a 
 St. Martin and his admirers, and other kindred 
 spirits. Our present age is indeed a criticising and 
 a critical one, wavering between the desire and 
 the inability to believe, a chaos of times struggling 
 against one another : but even a chaotic world must 
 
 o 
 
 have a centre, revolution round that point, and an 
 * Tyrtaeus de Apparitione Dei, c. 17. 
 
THE AGE. 59 
 
 atmosphere; there is no such thing as mere disorder 
 and confusion, but even that presupposes its opposite 
 in order to begin. The present religious wars on 
 paper and in the brain very different from former 
 ones, which were tempests full of heat, rage, devas- 
 tation and fertilisation rather resemble the nor- 
 thern lights (thunder and lightning of the higher 
 and colder quarters of the sky), full of noisy lights 
 without blows, full of strange shapes and full of frost, 
 without rain and in the night. Does not, in fact, the 
 bold self-consciousness the life of this age extend 
 still further the original character of man and 
 mind ? And can the character of men, the mental 
 waking, ever be too much awake ? At present it is 
 only not sufficiently so ; for an object is necessary to 
 reflection, as its absence is to thoughtlessness ; and 
 the common minds of the age are too impoverished 
 to give a rich field to reflection. But there is one 
 strange, ever-returning spectacle ; that every age 
 has regarded the dawning of new light as the de- 
 stroying fire of morality ; while that very age itself, 
 with heart uninjured, finds itself raised one degree 
 of light above the preceding ! Is it, perhaps, that as 
 light travels faster than heat, and as it is more 
 easy to work upon the head than on the heart, the 
 burst of light, by its suddenness, always appears 
 inimical to the unprepared heart ? 
 
 To the present age is ascribed productiveness and 
 changeableness of opinions, and at the same time 
 
 D 6 
 
60 SPIRIT OF 
 
 indifference to opinions. But that cannot arise from 
 this : no man in all corrupted Europe can be indif- 
 ferent to truth as such ; for it, in the last resort, 
 decides upon his life ; but every one is at last become 
 cold and shy towards the erring teachers and preachers 
 of truth. Take the hardest heart and brain, which 
 withers away in any capital city, and only give him the 
 certainty that the spirit which approaches brings 
 down from eternity the key which opens and shuts 
 the so weighty gates of his life-prison, of death, and 
 of heaven, and the dried up worldly man, so long as 
 he has a care or a wish, must seek for a truth which 
 can reveal to him that spirit. 
 
 The present march of light indicates anything 
 rather than standing still ; and it is only this which 
 begets and immortalizes poison, as it is on stagnant 
 air that tempests and whirlwinds break. Certainly 
 we are very little able to determine in what manner 
 a brighter age than that we have experienced will be 
 educed from the present troublous fermentation. 
 Every varied age, and therefore our own, is only 
 a spiritual climate for an approaching spiritual seed ; 
 but we do not know what foreign seed heaven will 
 cast into it. 
 
 Every sin appears new and near, as in painting 
 black stands out most strongly ; man is readily 
 accustomed to the repetition of love, but not to the 
 repetition of injustice. Thence every one regards 
 his own age as morally worse, and intellectually 
 
THE AGE. 61 
 
 better than it really is ; for in science the new is an 
 advance ; but in morals the new, as a contradiction 
 to our inner ideals and our historic idols, is ever a re- 
 trogression. As in past ages the errors of nations, 
 unlike decorative paintings, seem very distorted and 
 shapeless, because distance hides from us their finer 
 and true completeness; so, on the other side, the 
 black sin-stains of the past, of the Eoman and Spar- 
 tan for example, show softened and rounded, and, as 
 on a moon, the high rugged shadow of the past falls 
 round and transparent on the present. For instance, 
 if men estimate the worth of the age after a war, 
 that most ancient barbarism of humanity, and espe- 
 cially after the bad innovations consequent upon it, 
 then the spirit of the age rises before this touch of 
 death, in frightful illumination and distortion. But 
 war, as the general storm in the moral world, and 
 the tongue and heart-confusing Babel of the physical 
 world, had in every age repeated injustices, which 
 only appeared new because each had heard from the 
 preceding age nothing save the number of the 
 vanquished armies and towns ; but experienced in 
 itself the sufferings. On the contrary, our age has, 
 before every other, besides a certain humanity of 
 war, in respect to life, also a growing insight into its 
 unlawfulness. 
 
 Among nations the head has at all times preceded 
 the heart by centuries, as in the slave trade ; yes, by 
 thousands of years, as will perhaps be the case in war. 
 
62 SPIRIT OF 
 
 35. 
 
 Since modes of life beget modes of thought, 
 and opinions actions, and head and heart, spiritually 
 as well as physically, mutually improve or injure 
 each other, so has fate, when both are to be healed 
 at once, only one cure, and that a long one ; the 
 harsh viper-like cure of affliction. If sorrow purifies 
 men, why not nations ? Certainly, and it is for this 
 reason that men perceive it less, if wounds and fast- 
 days improve the one, battle-fields and centuries of 
 penance do the other, and generations must sink 
 sadly and sorrowfully to destruction. Not by a 
 splendid martial funeral with firing of cannon, but 
 by a battle of the elements is the sky made blue and 
 the earth fruitful. At the same time in history, as 
 in the almanac, the thick dull St. Thomas's day is 
 shorter than the bright warm St. John's day, 
 although both conduct into new seasons of the year. 
 
 But until, and in order that, our children and 
 children's children may pass through the winter 
 centuries, this it is that nearly affects us and edu- 
 cation. We must meet the great entanglement by 
 partial unravelling^. The child must be armed 
 against the future ; yes, even against the close- 
 pressing present, with a counterbalancing weight of 
 three powers against the three weaknesses of the 
 will, of love, and of religion. Our age has only a 
 passionate power of desire, like animals, the mad, 
 
THE AGE. 63 
 
 the sick, and every weakling ; but not that energy 
 of will which was most nobly displayed in Sparta 
 and Rome in the Stoa, and in the early church. 
 And now the arts, as the state formerly did, must 
 harden the young spirit, and subdue the will. The 
 uniform colour of a stoic oneness must extinguish 
 the common praise of the various tiger-spots and 
 serpent brilliancy of passionate agitation ; the girl 
 and the boy must learn that there is something 
 in the ocean higher than its waves ; namely, a Christ 
 who calls upon them. 
 
 When the stoic energy of will is formed, there is then 
 a loving spirit made free. Fear is more egoistic than 
 courage, because it is more needy ; the exhausting 
 parasitical plants of selfishness only attach themselves 
 to decayed trunks. But power kills what is feeble, 
 as strong decoction of quassia kills flies. If man, 
 created more for love than for opposition, can only 
 attain a free clear space, he possesses love ; and that 
 is love of the strongest kind, which builds on rocks, 
 not on waves. Let the bodily heart be the pattern 
 of the spiritual ; easily injured, sensitive, lively, and 
 warm, but yet a tough free-beating muscle behind the 
 lattice work of bones, and its tender nerves are 
 difficult to find. 
 
 As there is no contest about the nature of power 
 and love, but only of the ways to attain them (these, 
 however, penetrate deep into the matter) ; but, as 
 about religion, on the contrary, the doubts of many 
 
64 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 must first be solved as to whether there be only one, 
 and whether different paths lead to it, so the third 
 point in which the child is to be educated against 
 the age, must endeavour to establish first, instead of 
 the means, the right to educate religiously. Power 
 and love are two opposing forces of the inner man ; 
 but religion is the equal union of both, the man 
 within the man. 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 36. 
 
 RELIGION is now no longer a national, but a 
 household goddess. Our little age is a magnifying 
 glass, through which, as is well known, the exalted 
 appears flat and level. Since we now send all our 
 children out into a townlike futurity, in which the 
 broken church bells only dully call the populous 
 market-place to the silent church, we must, more 
 anxiously than ever, seek to give them a house of 
 prayer in the heart, and folded hands, and humility 
 before the invisible world, if we believe in a religion 
 and distinguish it from morality. 
 
 The history of nations determines that there is 
 this separation. There have been many religions, 
 but there is only one code of morals ; in those a god 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 65 
 
 has always become a man, and, therefore, been con- 
 cealed under many folds ; in this a man has become 
 God, and been clearly manifested. The middle ages 
 had, along with moral churchyards full of dead 
 bodies and rank vegetation, full of cruelty and lust, 
 also churches and spires for the religious sentiment. 
 In our times, on the contrary, the sacred groves of 
 religion are cleared and trodden down, and the public 
 roads of morality made straighter and more sure. 
 Ah! a cotemporaneous decline of religion and 
 morality would be too sad ! The age will conceal 
 the departure of the sense for the heavenly by the 
 greater sharpness and severity of that for the moral ; 
 and at least by small, delicate, and therefore more 
 numerous, sides acquire a moral breadth. As men 
 in towns, where they cannot build in width build in 
 height, so we, reversing the matter, build in width in- 
 stead of in height ; more over the earth than into the 
 sky. We may truly say that France, in general, with 
 its chemical, physical, mathematical, and warlike noon- 
 day lights, can hardly behold in the starry heaven of 
 religion more than a last shadowy quarter of the 
 moon, resembling rather a cloud than a star ; whilst 
 in England and Germany religion is still at least 
 seen as a distant milky way, and on paper as a star 
 chart ; but one could not, without injustice, describe 
 the religious difference of these countries as a moral 
 one. And was and is stoicism, this noble son of 
 morality, as love is its daughter, in and by itself 
 
6o RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 religion? If the difference between religion and 
 morality were not founded on something true, it 
 were incomprehensible how so many fanatical sects 
 of the early and later centuries - for instance, the 
 Quietists could have arrived at the illusive belief 
 that in the inmost enthusiastic love of God enduring 
 sinfulness consumes itself, so that none remains as it 
 does in the worldly man. It is true, that religious- 
 ness, in its highest degree, is identical w T ith morality, 
 and this with that ; but that equally pertains to the 
 highest degree of every power; and every sun wanders 
 only through the heavenly ether. All that is divine 
 must as certainly meet and unite with morality, as 
 science and art, so that in every soul, rescued from 
 sin, there must as certainly be religious Tabors as 
 there are hills in the crater of Etna. 
 
 It must be understood that we do not here speak 
 of that beggar religion which only prays and sings 
 before the gates of heaven, until the Peter's pence are 
 bestowed upon it. 
 
 37. 
 
 "\Vliat then is religion ? Prayerfully pronounce 
 the answer. The belief in God ; for it is not only a 
 sense for the holy, and a belief in the invisible, but a 
 presentiment of it, without which no kingdom of the 
 incomprehensible were conceivable. Efface God 
 from the heart, and everything which lies above or 
 below the earth is only a recurring enlargement of 
 it ; that which is above the earth would become only 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 67 
 
 a higher grade of mechanism, and consequently, 
 earthly. 
 
 If the question is put, What do you mean by the 
 word God? I will let an old German, Sebastian 
 Frank, answer : " God is an unutterable sigh lying 
 in the depths of the soul." A beautiful, profound 
 saying ! But as the unutterable dwells in every soul, 
 it must be manifested to every stranger by words. 
 Let me give to the God-fearing spirit of every age, 
 the words of our times, and listen to what it says of 
 religion. 
 
 " Religion is, in the beginning, the learning of 
 God ; hence the great name divine, one learned 
 about God truly religion is the blessedness arising 
 from a knowledge of God. Without God we are lonely 
 throughout eternity ; but if we have God we are 
 more warmly, more intimately, more steadfastly 
 united than by friendship and love. I am then no 
 longer alone with my spirit. Its great first friend, the 
 Everlasting, whom it recognises, the inborn friend 
 of its innermost soul will abandon it as little as it can 
 do itself, and in the midst of the impure or empty 
 whirl of trifles and of sins, on the market-place, and 
 the battle-field, I stand with closed breast in which 
 the Almighty and All-holy speaks to me, and reposes 
 before me like a near sun, behind which the outer 
 world lies in darkness. I have entered into his church, 
 the temple of the universe, and remain therein bless- 
 ed, devout, pious, even if the temple should become 
 
68 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 dark, or cold, or undermined by graves. What I do, 
 or suffer, is as little a sacrifice to him as I can offer one 
 to myself; I love him whether I suffer or not. The 
 flame from heaven falls on the altar of sacrifice, and 
 consumes the beast, but the flame and the priest re- 
 main. If my great friend demand something from me 
 the heaven and the earth seem glorious to me, and I 
 am happy as he is ; if he deny me anything, it is a 
 storm on the ocean, but it is spanned by rainbows, 
 and I recognise above it the kindly sun which 
 has no tempestuous sides, but only sunshiny ones. 
 A code of morality only rules bad, unloving souls, in 
 order that they may first become better and after- 
 wards good. But the loving contemplation of the 
 soul's first friend, who abundantly animates those laws, 
 banishes not merely the bad thoughts which conquer, 
 but those also which tempt. As the eagle flies high 
 above the highest mountains, so does true love above 
 struggling duty. 
 
 ^> " Where religion is, there both men, and beasts, and 
 [ the whole world are loved. Every being is a moving 
 temple of the Infinite. Everything earthly purifies 
 and suns itself in the thought of him ; only one 
 earthly thing remains darkly existent, sin, the true 
 annihilation of the soul ; or the unceasing Tantalus, 
 Satan. 
 
 " One may with some right speak to others about 
 that of which one never speaks to oneself : for within 
 me he is so near me, that I can with difficulty sepa- 
 
EELIGIOES EDUCATION. 69 
 
 rate his word and mine ; for from the second self my 
 own is reflected, and I only find him who illumines 
 myself as well as the dew-drop. 
 
 " But if it be no error to believe all this, how wilt 
 thou, O God! appear to those who have overcome 
 the agitations of life in the one still hour of death ; 
 then when world after world, human being after 
 human being, has disappeared, and nothing but the 
 Eternal remains with the mortal immortal ? He who 
 brings God with him into the last darkest night can- 
 not know what it is to die ; for he beholds the eternal 
 star in the boundless distance." 
 
 If you do not believe that religion is the poetry of 
 morality, the lofty, nay, the loftiest, style of life, 
 think less of the mystic enthusiasts, who, as despisers 
 of the doctrine of happiness, were willing to be damned, 
 if but the love of God remained within them, than of 
 Fenelon : could you be purer, more steadfast, richer, 
 more self-sacrificing, or more blessed than he, at once 
 child, woman, man, and angel ? 
 
 38. 
 
 How then is the child to be led into the new world f 
 of religion? Not by arguments. Every step of ' 
 finite knowledge can be reached by learning and per- \ 
 severance ; but the Infinite, which supports the end 
 of those steps, can only be seen at a glance, not 
 reached by counting ; we arrive there by wings not by 
 steps. To prove, as to doubt, the existence of God, 
 is to prove or to doubt the existence of existence. 
 
70 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 The soul seeks its original not merely an original 
 world near the present one that freedom from which 
 finite existence received its laws : but it could not 
 seek if it did not know and did not possess. The 
 greatness of religion is not confined to one opinion, it 
 extends over the whole man ; as greatness, of what- 
 ever kind, resembles the rock-bound mountains, one 
 of which is never found alone in a level plain, but 
 rises up among neighbouring heights, and extends 
 into a mountain range. 
 
 As there is no corporeal world without a spiritual 
 soul (or no resurrection-ashes without a phoenix), so 
 there is no soul or spiritual world without God ; just 
 as in the same way there is no fate without a Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 The purest distinction of man from the lower 
 animals is neither reflection nor morality ; for sparks 
 at least of these stars shine in the ranks of the brute 
 creation ; but religion, which is neither merely opi- 
 nion nor disposition, but the heart of the inner man, 
 and therefore the ground-work of the rest. In the 
 middle ages, so dark for other knowledge, religion, 
 like the sky at night, hung nearer to the earth, and 
 extended brightly over it ; whereas, to us, God, like 
 the sun in the day-time, seems only like the key- 
 stone of the arch of heaven. The old chronicler in- 
 troduces bloody rain monsters fights of birds 
 children's games nights of locusts yes, even sud- 
 den deaths among the great events of the world, as 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 71 
 
 important signs, as the smoke clouds of an impending 
 war ; and war, a still more important sign, had, as a 
 judgment upon sin, its heavenly as well as its earthly 
 origin. At the same time this parallelism, or rather 
 predetermined harmony between earth and heaven, 
 was at least more consistent than the new physical 
 influence which allows not the day watch of one 
 man but the thousand-y eared watch of the history of 
 the world to be fixed by a God, resembling a theatri- 
 cal one, only that he is not a mock sun, but a real 
 sun ; as if the difference between the earthly and the 
 heavenly rested only on degrees of greatness ; and as 
 if the admission or exclusion of the Infinite did not 
 equally apply to the whole of the finite universe, and 
 to its smallest part. 
 
 He who possesses religion finds a providence not 
 more truly in the history of the world than in his own 
 family history : the rainbow, which hangs a glitter- 
 ing circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by 
 the same sun in the dew-drop of a lowly flower. 
 The diffident modesty of present individuals who 
 prefer leaving the care of themselves to blind fate, 
 rather than to watchful providence, testifies less to 
 unbelief and self- depreciation, than to the conscious- 
 ness of not believing and acting piously. 
 
 Herder proves that all nations have received writ- 
 ing and their earliest forms of civilisation from the 
 teachings of religion ; but does he not thereby prove 
 something further ? namely, this ; that in nations 
 
72 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 and consequently in men, the ideal is older than the 
 real ? that so the child is nearer the highest than the 
 lowest, for that lies in him ; and that we reckon time 
 by the stars and the sun earlier than by the town 
 clock ; and that the Godhead, as once in paradise, so 
 now in the desert, impresses his image on man before 
 he can discolour it, and so afterwards he can never lose 
 or be without it ? Every thing holy is before what 
 is unholy ; guilt presupposes innocence, not the re- 
 verse; angels, but not fallen ones, were created. 
 Hence man does not properly rise to the highest, but 
 first sinks gradually down from it, and then after- 
 wards rises again : a child can never be considered 
 too innocent and good. It is thus that the Infinite 
 being appears to nations and individuals earlier than 
 the finite, yea than infinite space : as the almighty 
 power of young nature produced, according to Schel- 
 ling, the fixed suns earlier than the worlds which roll 
 round them.|[ If^jwlio^systern of religious meta- 
 physics did not dreamingly sleep within the child, how 
 could the mental contemplation of infinity, God, eter- 
 nity, holiness, &c. be imparted to him, since we cannot 
 communicate it by outward means, and indeed have 
 nothing for that purpose but words, which have not the 
 power of creating, but only of arousing ? The dying and 
 the fainting hear inward music which no outward object 
 gives ; and ideas are such inward tones.* In gene- 
 
 * So the fear of ghosts, this unceasing dread, which without 
 any outward cause, by that only corporeal fear is produced, 
 obtains the mastery, and makes men stiff and cold. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 73 
 
 ral even the questions, that is, the objects of proper 
 metaphysics, are among children, as among the un- 
 educated classes, much more active and common than 
 one supposes, only under different names; and the 
 four-year old child will ask, what lies behind the cur- 
 tains of the hidden world, whence is the origin of 
 God ? &c. For instance, in children talking together, 
 the author heard his five-year old boy philosophise 
 and say, (f God has made every thing, so if one offers 
 him any thing he has made it ; " whereupon his four- 
 year old sister said, " He makes nothing ; " and he 
 answered, " He makes nothing, because he has made 
 it." Again ; the seven-year old sister maintained, if 
 the soul in the head had another set of arms, legs, and / 
 a head, another soul must dwell in that, and this again 
 would have a head, and so on for ever.* 
 
 If Rousseau gives up God, and consequently reli- 
 gion, as the late inheritance of a matured age, he 
 can, except in the case of great souls, expect no more 
 religious inspiration and love than a Parisian father, 
 who, after the fashion of some nations, never sees his 
 son till he no longer needs a father, can expect filial 
 affection.f When, indeed, could the most holy take 
 
 * While writing this, the above mentioned four, now six-year 
 old child said, number has a one and begins, and what begins 
 must also end. At last she showed me a stick, and asked, whe- 
 ther it did not end on all sides. 
 
 t At least, Mercier says, that the fashionable Parisians, even 
 the women, do not see their children, who are brought up in 
 the country until they are fully grown. 
 
 *E 
 
74 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 deeper root than in the most holy age of innocence, 
 or that which shall have eternal influence, than in the 
 age which never forgets ? Not the clouds of the fore 
 or afternoon, but the overcast or blue sky of the 
 morning, decides upon the fairness of the day. 
 
 But as the first rule to be observed by any one 
 who will give something is, that he must himself 
 have it ; so it is true, that no one can teach religion 
 who has it not : mature hypocrisy, or lip-religion, 
 can beget nothing but immature ; such a mock sun 
 can neither warm nor give light, and an acoustic de- 
 ception returns every optic one. He who has no God 
 in heaven, and in his own heart, can without immo- 
 rality believe himself bound by no morality (though 
 perhaps for the sake of utility) to implant in his chil- 
 dren a nothing, which he has already torn from him- 
 self, and which he afterwards intends to eradicate from 
 them. But, properly, neither belief in the morality 
 of a religious lie, nor in its political advantages, sows 
 deceit in the trusting open heart of childhood ; that 
 is only done by the selfish weakness which willingly 
 makes terms at once with God and the devil: that 
 argumentum a tuto (a keeping open of a back door 
 into heaven, worthy, but for its wounding of reason 
 and morality, of a very opposite name) does not rank, 
 thank God ! among the sins of our age. 
 
 The younger a child is, the less let him hear the 
 Unspeakable named, who only by a word becomes to 
 him the speakable : but let him behold his symbols. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 75 
 
 The sublime is the temple step of religion, as the 
 stars are of immeasurable space. When what is mighty 
 appears in nature a storm, thunder, the starry fir- 
 mament, death, then utter the word God before the 
 child. A great misfortune, a great blessing, a great 
 crime, a noble action, are building sites for a child's 
 church. 
 
 Show every where to the child, as well as on the 
 borders of the holy land of religion, devotional and 
 holy sentiments ; these pass over, and at last unveil 
 for him the object ; just as if you are alarmed he is 
 so too, without knowing why. Newton, who un- 
 covered his head when the greatest name was uttered, 
 would have been without saying a word, a teacher of 
 religion to children. Not with them, but only before 
 them, should you pray your own prayers, that is, 
 think aloud of God ; but their own you should pray 
 with them. A stated exaltation and emotion is a 
 desecrated one. The prayers of children are empty 
 and cold, and are in fact only remains of the Jewish- 
 Christian belief in sacrifices, which will reconcile and 
 win the favour of God by means of innocent beings, 
 not of innocence ; and the child secretly regards the 
 God, whom you give him by word of mouth, as the 
 Kamtschatkadale and every savage does his. A grace 
 before meat must make every child deceitful. As 
 he grows older, let a day of prayer, or of any reli- 
 gious observances become more rare, but on that 
 account more solemn ; what the first affecting Lord's 
 
 E 2 
 
76 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 Supper is to the child, that let every hour be in 
 which you consecrate his heart to religion. Let 
 children go to church but rarely, for you might 
 as well take them to hear an oratorio of Klop- 
 stock or of Handel, as that of the church ; but 
 when you do take them, impress on them the 
 value of a sympathy with the devotional senti- 
 ments of their parents. Indeed, I would rather 
 -since as yet there is no special public worship 
 of God, and no special preachers for children 
 you should lead them on the great days of the 
 seasons, or of human life, merely into the empty 
 temple, and show them the holy place of their elders. 
 If you add to that, twilight, night, the organ, 
 singing, a father's preaching, you will at least leave 
 behind on the young heart more religious con- 
 secration by that one church-going, than you could 
 on an old one by a whole year of church-attending. 
 After these considerations it makes one's heart ache 
 to think of that already nearly abandoned custom, 
 which some however kindly wish back, I mean that 
 of setting the children and young people to take 
 down the sermon, at least an outline of it, in church, 
 and afterwards to w r rite it out fully at home or at 
 school. Although this nearly borders on jest, we will 
 ask in earnest, whether this must not convert the 
 religious sincerity of fellow-feeling into a mere 
 anatomy and skeleton, and draw down the holy, and 
 the aim of the heart, into a means of exercising the 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 77 
 
 understanding, and hold every emotion at a distance, 
 because feeling might hinder writing ? It were, 
 perhaps, something about as good, if a young woman 
 made a short pragmatic abstract of her lover's de- 
 claration of love ; or a soldier, of the fiery speech of 
 his leader before battle; or an evangelist, a neat 
 exposition of Christ's sermon on the mount, with all 
 its subdivisions. When teachers thus convert all the 
 highest ends into new means and ways, that is to say 
 backways, do they not spiritually use spiritual 
 things, as the modern Romans really do triumphal 
 arches and temples of Jupiter, which they degrade 
 into wash-houses ? 
 
 For the poor children of the people, whose parents 
 are still pupils of the Sunday, and for whom, as a set- 
 off to the deep desert of the week, a raising hand must 
 not fail to lift them out of their low cloudy heaven, is 
 a public church service more necessary than for the 
 children of the upper classes. The church walls, the 
 pulpit, the organ, are to them symbols of the Divine ; 
 and as a symbol it is indifferent whether it be the 
 village church or the temple of nature. And do we 
 ourselves know where, or if ever the Unsearchable 
 can terminate the ascending scale of his symbols. 
 Does not the higher spirit require again a higher 
 symbol ? 
 
 Let the eye of the pupil, even where he only sees 
 outer walls and forms, yet every where gaze into the 
 Holy of Holies of religion, which the church-goer 
 
 E 3 
 
78 KELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 must bring with him into the church as the temple- 
 court of the heart. Let every foreign_exercise of 
 religion, and every outward preparation for it, be as 
 holy to him as his own. Let the Protestant child 
 hold the Catholic saints' images by the road-side, to 
 be as worthy of reverence as the ancient oak-forests 
 of his forefathers ; let him receive different religions 
 as lovingly as different languages, in which but one 
 spirit of humanity is expressed. Every genius is 
 all-powerful in his own language, every heart in its 
 own religion. 
 
 But let not fear create the God of childhood ; fear 
 was itself created by a wicked spirit ; shall the devil 
 become the grandfather of God ? 
 
 He who seeks something higher in its own nature, 
 not merely in degree, than what life can give or take 
 away, that man has religion, though he only believes 
 in infinity, not in the Infinite, only in eternity, with- 
 out an Eternal ; as if, in opposition to other artists, 
 he did not paint the sun with a human countenance, 
 but rounded off this to resemble the former. For he 
 who regards all life as holy and wonderful, whether 
 it dwell in animals, or, still lower, in plants; he 
 who, like Spinoza, by means of his noble soul, floats, 
 and rests less upon steps and heights than upon 
 wings, whence the surrounding universe the 
 stationary, and that moving by law changes into 
 one immense light, life, and being, and surrounds 
 him, so that he feels absorbed in the great light and 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 79 
 
 wishes to be nothing but a ray in the immeasurable 
 splendour; such a man has, and consequently im- 
 parts, religion; since the highest ever reflects and 
 paints the highest, even though formless, behind the 
 eye. 
 
 True unbelief relates to no individual propo- 
 sitions, or counter-propositions, but to blindness 
 towards the whole. Excite in the child the all- 
 powerful perception of the whole, in opposition to 
 the selfish perception of the parts, and then you raise 
 the man above the world, the eternal above the 
 transitory. Place in the child's hand our religious 
 book ; but do not give the explanation after, but 
 before the reading, so that the strange form may 
 enter the young soul as something entire. Why 
 should misunderstanding be the precursor of under- 
 standing ? Without wonder there is no faith ; and 
 the belief in the marvellous is itself an inward faith. 
 You must impart a sun-beam of its origin to every 
 thing great which comes before you, to genius, to 
 love, to every power ; only things weak and curved 
 consist of steps, stairs, and torture-ladders ; the true 
 ladder of heaven has no steps. At least two miracles 
 or revelations remain for you uncontested in this age, 
 which deadens sound with unreverberating ma- 
 terials ; they resemble an Old and a New Testament, 
 and are these the birth of finite being, and the 
 birth of life within the hard wood of matter. For 
 in one inexplicable thing every other is involved, 
 
 B 4 
 
80 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 and one miracle annihilates the whole philosophy. 
 Consequently, you do not act the part of a hypocrite, 
 when you permit the child to draw any thing out of 
 the book of religion, or the secret book of nature, 
 which you cannot explain. Living religion grows 
 not by the doctrines, but by the narratives, of the 
 Bible : the best Christian religious doctrine is the 
 life of Christ ; and after that, the sufferings and 
 deaths of his followers, even those not related in 
 Holy Writ. 
 
 In the fair spring time of the religious admission 
 of the child among his elders, an important one, since 
 then first he comes publicly before the altar, and acts 
 with all the rights of an independent being ; in this 
 never-recurring time when the dawn of life suddenly 
 breaks into the morning red, and thereby announces 
 the newness of love and of nature ; there is no better 
 priest to lead and accompany the young soul, with 
 dancing and great joy, to the high altar of religion, 
 than the poet, who annihilates a mortal world to 
 build on it an immortal ; so that our life on earth 
 may resemble those polar lands, which, so void of 
 animals and flowers, so cold and colourless, yet, after 
 sunless days, display rich nights, in which heaven 
 pours down its gifts upon the earth, and where the 
 northern or polar lights fill the whole blue with fire 
 colours, jewels, thunder, splendid tropical storms? 
 and remind the inhabitants of the cold earth of that 
 which lives above them. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 81 
 
 THIRD FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Digression upon the beginning of Man and of Education, 
 3942. CHAP. II. Joyousness of Children, 4345. CHAP. III. 
 Their Games, 46 54. CHAP. IV. Their Dances, 55 57. 
 CHAP. V. Music, 58 60. CHAP. VI. Commanding, Forbidding, 
 6163. CHAP. VII. Punishments, 64, 65. CHAP. VIII. Pas- 
 sionate Crying of Children, 6670. CHAP. IX. On the Trust- 
 fulness of Children, 71, 72. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 39. 
 
 WHEN does education begin its work? With the 
 first breath of the child. The light of the soul, 
 which we call life, issuing from I know' not what 
 sunny cloud, strikes upon the bodily world and moulds 
 the rough mass into its dwelling place, which glows 
 on until death, by the nearness of another world, 
 allures it still further on. In this first moment 
 for, if time be elsewhere, yet his pulse then beats 
 the first second is the invisible beam of individual 
 existence broken into the coloured spectrum of his 
 bodily appearance: the dispositions, the sex, yes, 
 even the resemblance to the father's and mother's 
 countenances, are distinguished by yet unseen lines. 
 For this distinct organization of a state within the 
 E 5 
 
82 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 
 social state, cannot form itself by degrees like the 
 individual parts which it governs ; thus, the forming 
 influence, which moulds the transparent child's face 
 like its father's or its grandfather's, cannot lie in the 
 imagination of the mother, but must exist in the 
 child itself. 
 
 The two life-chains of the parents are somewhat 
 different: especially the last link, from which the 
 spark of the new man issued in order to animate the 
 physical clod of earth into an Adam. When one 
 considers how little has yet been done for the races 
 of the coming world (except in the cases of horses, 
 sheep, and canary birds), not even observations, to say 
 nothing of institutions, merely for a cradle rather 
 than for the child in the cradle ; how the con- 
 nexions of the sexes, of years, of months, of hours, 
 are so lawlessly and carelessly forgotten and in- 
 jured, when the foundation stones of centuries are 
 laid; how here the giddy, sensual man requires 
 more laws than the unchanging beast which moves 
 straight on in the leading strings of instinct and 
 of health and how the world becomes continually 
 more clamorous in desire, more indifferent to wisdom ; 
 one must, from a carelessness for moral requisitions, 
 which contents itself only with the bare fulfilment 
 of the ten commandments for ruffians, finally come 
 to the conclusion, that men seek to settle with 
 morality as with a creditor. And may not a state, 
 like an elder, prescribe for all, with its cold ever- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 83 
 
 during hand, laws, which a loving individual would 
 never have thought of making, and yet is obliged to 
 obey; just as the law-book, not a pair of lovers, 
 contemplates divorce. 
 
 For the rest we may well venture to complain 
 that nature, during the " twelve holy nights," in 
 which, as creatress, she wanders alone with her 
 youngest creatures, makes it too difficult even for the 
 conscientious, not to steal and murder in the dark. 
 At every step down the deep gloomy ladder of 
 futurity up which men and ages ascend, conscience 
 calls " Here is a man, there perhaps a genius, the 
 heaven of his people ; " but we, like night wanderers, 
 must spare the known, and injure the unknown. 
 
 Since parents play so prominent a part in the 
 history of the creation of the child's body, one can 
 with difficulty refrain from the question, how much 
 they contribute to the theogony (divine generation) 
 of the child's spirit? If we must think of a dark 
 problem, it is also permitted, nay necessary, for us 
 to think of some solution. The mental dissimilarity 
 of dispositions is a mere product of bodily differences, 
 since both mutually presuppose each other. It is, 
 indeed, easier for us to apprehend difference in bodies 
 than in minds ; but, properly, there is only an ap- 
 parent difference of quantity visible in those, and only 
 a real one of quality in these ; so, it is only minds 
 which grow or inure themselves to anything. If it 
 will not be admitted that that spark of distinguishing 
 
 E 6 
 
84 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 
 individuality flies down from the stars in clouds 
 during conception, it must then either, precisely in 
 the moment of inducting its human covering, cast off 
 a previous covering spun from the father's or the 
 mother's life, or it was, like thought and motion, 
 born of soul. Creation of spirits is not more difficult 
 to comprehend than creation of thoughts by spirits, 
 or than any other change. In both cases, especially in 
 the second, not only does the bodily life of the parents 
 cradle the bodies of the future, but also their spiritual 
 life its spirits. But, then, with what trembling should 
 this balance be held! If thou knewest that every 
 black thought of thine, or every glorious independent 
 one, separated itself from thy soul, and took root 
 without thee, and for half a century pushed and bore 
 its poisonous flowers or healing roots, oh! how 
 piously wouldest thou choose and think! And dost 
 thou, then, so certainly know the reverse ? 
 
 40. 
 
 I come back to my own opinion that spiritual edu- 
 cation begins at birth ; for up to that period the 
 mother as often afterwards in a worse sense has 
 only a blood relationship, not a nerve relationship, 
 with the child sleeping at the gates of the world. So 
 that all that is false which has been said about an 
 electric charging chain to which the little invisible is 
 attached, and by which he is charged with the streams 
 and sparks of the maternal passions and feelings. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 85 
 
 Since, according to the best anatomists, the mother 
 does not nourish the child with her blood directly, 
 but through media, the maternal passions which are 
 to affect it through the blood can only work in two 
 ways, either by mechanical change, slow or quick, or 
 by chemical change, oxidized or unoxidized. The 
 embryo soul does not partake of the mechanical 
 change ; because the mother's blood can move as fast 
 in the ball-room of love as in the servant's hall of 
 anger ; or creep as slowly when sitting full of hope 
 before the embroidery frame, as of despair before a 
 bier. The chemical change of the blood by passion, 
 or other external excitement, is itself, in the first 
 instance, a product of the mind and of the nerves 
 which serve it either mediately or immediately. The 
 intoxication of the nerves gives the full beat of the 
 pulse, but not so the reverse ; else the excitement of 
 a race would have as complete an effect as a drink 
 has upon thirst. How the oxidized or unoxidized 
 blood of the mother can more affect the child's mind 
 than her own, must arise from the influence of the 
 blood as nourishment ; and as the blood, before it is 
 capable of affording nourishment, must be assimilated 
 by the little foreign body, it can possess no influence 
 different to that of every other nourishment : and, in 
 nourishing, as little propagates its differences as does 
 the blood of sheep or of lions. The objections made 
 by nurses go far in justification of this. 
 
 The clearest proof that mothers have no influence 
 
86 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 
 on the mental development of the ernbryotic human 
 being, is given in the varied characters of the children 
 in the same family ; and even more especially in the 
 cases of twins, where the prenatal conditions must 
 have been precisely the same. Xeither tell me, that 
 the beautiful Madonna faces seen in catholic countries 
 are to be regarded as copies of those painted in the 
 churches ; for I reply, that the paintings presuppose 
 lovely countenances, and not these the paintings. 
 
 At the same time, the disbelief that the mother 
 decides on the mental and physical form of her child, 
 leaves room for the true belief that her health or 
 sickness is repeated in the little second being : and it 
 is for this very reason that superstitious fancies about 
 marks, mis-births, and similar things ought to be so 
 much guarded against ; not because what is dreaded 
 brings its fulfilment, but because it, along with those 
 evils which are produced by alarm before a thing 
 occurs, and undue anxiety after it has happened, 
 weakens the body, and brings for the sufferer years 
 
 of trouble. 
 
 41. 
 
 At last the child can say to the father educate, 
 for I breathe. The first breath, like the last, closes 
 an old with a new world. The new is, in this case, 
 the world of light and colours ; the life on earth, like 
 a painter, begins with the eye. The ear, indeed, pre- 
 ceded it so that it is the first sense of the living as 
 it is the last of the dying but then it belonged to 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 87 
 
 the realm of feeling ; and it is on this account that 
 birds in the egg, and soft many-punctured silkworms 
 die from a loud report. The first sound falls with a 
 darker chaos on the closely covered soul than the first 
 beam of light. So the morning of life opens on the 
 freed prisoner with the two senses imparting know- 
 ledge of distance, like the morning of the day with 
 light and song or bustle. At the same time, light 
 continues to be the first enamel of the earth, the first 
 fair word of life. The cry which breaks upon the 
 slumbering ear may be strong, but it arouses none 
 but the mother, except the child ; and so the world of 
 sound begins with a discord, but the world of sight 
 with beauty and glory. 
 
 Every first thing continues for ever with the child ; 
 the first colour, the first music, the first flower paint 
 the foreground of his life ; yet we can prescribe no 
 other law than this, protect the child from all that is 
 impetuous and violent, and even from sweet im- 
 pressions. Nature, so soft, defenceless, and exci- 
 table, may be distorted by one error, and hardened 
 into a growing deformity. For this reason the crying 
 of children, if composed of a union of discord, hasti- 
 ness, imperiousness, and passion, ought to be guarded 
 against by all due means, but not by effeminacy, 
 which only increases it. 
 
 42. 
 If in the ocean of a human soul, sections may be 
 
88 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 
 made, and degrees of longitude and latitude ascribed 
 to it, we must, in the case of a child, make the first 
 section of the first three years, during which, from 
 the want of the power of speech, he still lives in the 
 animal cloister, and only approaches us through the 
 speech-grating of natural signs. In this speechless 
 period, of which we shall now treat, the pupils 
 are quite given up to feminine fluency ; but how 
 women ought now to educate can only be seen 
 later on, when we inquire how they themselves 
 ought to have been educated. In this period of 
 twilight, in this first moon's quarter, or eighth of life, 
 let the light only grow of itself, do not kindle it. 
 Here the sexes are unseparated, neither divided by 
 the Platonic Aristophanes, nor by the tailor. The 
 whole human being is as yet a closed bud, whose 
 blossom is concealed. Like the eggs of birds, 
 whether of song or of prey, and like the new-born 
 young of the dove or of the vulture, all at first 
 require warmth, not nourishment, which might have 
 a very different effect. 
 
 And what, then, is warmth for the human chicken ? 
 Happiness. One has but to give them play room, 
 by taking away what may be painful, and their 
 powers shoot up of themselves. The new world 
 which the suckling brings with him, and the ne\v 
 one which he finds around him, enfold him as learning, 
 or develope themselves as knowledge; and neither 
 worlds yet require the ploughing or sowing of 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 89 
 
 Stranger hands. Even the artificial gymnastics of 
 the senses, which will teach a year-old child to see 
 and hear and hold, are not much more necessary 
 than the leading strings which show him how to 
 walk ; and can the advantage of teaching some use 
 of the senses, say in three months, which would 
 have come of itself in four, be a recompense for 
 neglecting and wearying oneself in the first year and 
 with the first child, to the injury of after years and 
 the next children, about something which uncon- 
 strained life necessitates in savages and country 
 people. 
 
 The excellent Schwarz, in his Treatise on Edu- 
 cation, prompts, by his proposition of an early gym- 
 nasium for all the senses, to an appendix to this 
 paragraph. * As to the material advantage of these 
 school classes for the five senses, it is certain, that 
 rich varied life, by its unceasing influence, educates 
 and practises the senses with a power which does 
 not require the poverty of particular institutions 
 for practice, except you wish to convert the whole 
 child into one single sense into a painter's eye, or 
 a musician's ear. 
 
 On the other hand, these practices have a formal 
 utility in constraining the mind to perceive the finer 
 subdivisions of its sensations, and to measure the 
 world more accurately by lines than by yards. In 
 the mean time, the inner world offers itself to a finer 
 and higher school than the outward. Especially 
 
90 THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 
 
 leave out all exercises of the sense of taste, for 
 whose hairt gout the kitchen is the best school ; since 
 we do not need by its means to distinguish between 
 nourishment and poison, but rather teach by its 
 exercise at rich tables to confound the two, so that 
 we, unlike the beasts who, only when young, from 
 unpractised taste, crop injurious weeds, when old, 
 from refined taste, long for poison dishes, and poison 
 goblets. 
 
 Let there be here not so much a efc-gression as a 
 jore-gression concerning the order of development of 
 the senses. Schwarz, in his Treatise on Education, 
 assigns too late a birth-time, almost beyond the age 
 of childhood, for the senses of taste and smell. He 
 seems, however, to confound the refinement of these 
 senses, which, no doubt, takes place in mature age, 
 with their existence and power, which certainly 
 flourish in their greatest strength during childhood. 
 Every one may remember how, as a child, like the 
 animals (which remain stationary on this first step), 
 and like savages, he imbibed every thing tasty, fruits, 
 sugar, sweet wine, fat, with a delight and enjoyment 
 which weakened with every year of the subsequent 
 refinement of the sense ; hence the so much lamented 
 love of sweatmeats in all children ; hence the ex- 
 perience of so many grown-up people, who have had 
 the favourite dishes of their childhood cooked for them, 
 that they did not like them. Infants, no doubt, take 
 bitter medicines without resistance; but this is no 
 
THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 91 
 
 reproach to their taste; we, ourselves, in later life 
 seek a pure bitter as a higher excitement, in bitter 
 beer, water, and almonds. If a young animal eats 
 poisonous plants which an old one avoids, there is 
 proved by this less want of taste than superabundance 
 of appetite, that is hunger; which, in it, as easily 
 conquers instinct, as in us it unfortunately overcomes 
 reason. 
 
 Smell, the dulness of which sense speaks as little 
 in favour of mental delicacy, as that of the eye or 
 of the ear does against it, awakes with consciousness, 
 consequently, last in a child. We are less aware of 
 its advent, because it subserves few necessities ; and 
 because its continuance, either, for instance, in spice 
 islands, or in Augean stable-like streets, renders the 
 consciousness of it difficult. Children have little 
 scent-glands for the persons nearest them, for instance, 
 for their parents ; and thereby distinguish them from 
 individuals more rarely seen. And it is precisely 
 smell which dies away the first of all the senses; 
 although it, unlike the other senses, is seldom worn 
 out by too powerful stimulants. And who is there 
 who has not experienced in himself what I have done 
 that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to 
 us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has, in 
 after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by 
 its old perfume an indescribable transport back into 
 god-like childhood ; and how, like a flower goddess, 
 it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds 
 
92 JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 of our first dim feelings? But how could such a 
 remembrance so strongly affect us if our childish 
 sensibility to flowers had not been so strong and 
 heartfelt ? Ascribe, then, to after life nothing more 
 than the refinement of a deeply implanted feeling. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 43. 
 
 SHOULD they have any thing else ? I can endure 
 a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child ; the 
 former, in whatever slough he may sink, can yet 
 raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of 
 hope ; but the little child is entirely absorbed and 
 weighed down by one black poison drop of the 
 present. Think of a child led to a scaffold, think 
 of Cupid in a Dutch coffin ; or watch a butterly, after 
 its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a 
 worm, and you will feel what I mean. 
 
 But wherefore ? The first cause has been already 
 given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest 
 (though shortest) sorrow ; one which has no past and 
 no future ; one, such as the sick man receives from 
 without, the dreamer from himself into his asthenic 
 brain ; finally, one with the consciousness not of 
 guilt but of innocence. Certainly all the sorrows of 
 
JOTOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 93 
 
 children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but 
 hottest days ; and, indeed, both so much so that in 
 the later, often clouded and starless, time of life, the 
 matured man only longingly remembers his old 
 childhood's pleasures, while he seems altogether to 
 have forgotten his childhood's griefs. This weak 
 remembrance is strangely contrasted with the op- 
 posing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that 
 in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of 
 childhood which return : the dream, this mock sun of 
 childhood and the fever, its distorting glass, both 
 draw forth from dark corners the fears of defenceless 
 childhood, which press and cut with iron fangs into 
 the prostrate soul. The fair scenes of dreams mostly 
 play on an after stage ; whereas the frightful ones 
 choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery. More- 
 over, in fever the ice hands of the fear of ghosts, the 
 striking ones of teachers and parents, and every claw 
 with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch 
 themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents 
 consider, then, that every childhood's Rupert*, even 
 though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks 
 loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it 
 finds him on a sick bed. The first fright is the 
 more dangerous the sooner it happens ; as the man 
 grows older he is less and less easily frightened ; the 
 
 * The name given in Germany to the fictitious being em- 
 ployed to frighten children into obedience. 
 
94 JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 little cradle or bed canopy of the child is more easily 
 quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man. 
 
 44. 
 
 Cheerfulness, or joyousness, is the heaven under 
 which every thing but poison thrives. But let it not 
 be confounded with enjoyments. Every enjoyment, 
 even the refined one of a work of art, gives man a 
 selfish mien, and withdraws him from sympathy; 
 hence it is only a condition of necessity, not of virtue. 
 On the contrary, cheerfulness, the opposite of vexation 
 -and sadness, is at once the ground and flower of 
 virtue and its crown. Animals can enjoy, but only 
 men can be cheerful. The holy father is at the 
 same time called the blessed, and God is the all 
 blessed. A morose God is a contradiction, or the 
 devil. The stoic philosopher must unite scorn of 
 enjoyment with the preservation of cheerfulness. 
 The Christian heaven promises no pleasures, like 
 the Turkish, but the clear, pure, infinite ether of 
 heavenly joy, which flows from the contemplation of 
 the eternal. The foretaste of heaven Paradise, to 
 which the theologians denied pleasures, but not 
 cheerfulness sheltered innocence. The cheerful 
 man wins our eye and heart, as the morose man drives 
 both away : it is the contrary with pleasures, we 
 turn our back on the luxurious, and open our heart 
 to the starving. If pleasure be a self-consuming 
 rocket, cheerfulness is a returning light star, an 
 
JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 95 
 
 object which, unlike pleasure, is not worn away by 
 continuance, but receives from it new birth. 
 
 45. 
 
 Now let us return to the dear children. I do indeed 
 think, that they ought to inhabit their Paradise like 
 our first parents, those true first children. But 
 pleasures make no Paradise, they only help to laugh 
 it away. Play, that is activity, not pleasures, will 
 keep children cheerful. By pleasure I understand 
 every first agreeable impression, not only of the 
 taste, but also of the ear and the eye : a plaything 
 gives in the first place pleasure by looking at it, and 
 only afterwards cheerfulness by using it. Pleasure 
 is an irritating burning spot, not an all-embracing 
 warmth, on the excitable skin of the child. Further, 
 if refined, perpetual drunkards and epicures multiply 
 and extend their pleasures by the past and the future ; 
 so children, from want of both, can only have shortest 
 but, consequently, deepest, pleasures. Their point of 
 sight, like their eye, is less than ours ; the burning 
 glass of pleasure should not strike them at focal 
 distance, but far off and gently. In other words, 
 divide the great pleasure into little merry-makings, a 
 gingerbread cake into gingerbread nuts, a Christmas 
 eve into a church year. In one month of nine-and- 
 twenty days a child might be mentally destroyed, if 
 one could make out of every day a first Christmas 
 Day. Not even a grown up head could stand being 
 crowned every day by a new country ; the first in 
 
96 JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 Paris, the second in London, the third in Rome, the 
 fourth in Vienna. But little enjoyments work like 
 scent bottles on the young souls, and strengthen 
 them from action to action. 
 
 Nevertheless, this ramification of pleasures only 
 serves for the earliest years : afterwards, in a re- 
 versed way, will a Midsummer feast, a grape 
 gathering, a Shrove-tide, for which children have 
 long to wait, together with the gleanings of a lively 
 memory, shine all the more brightly in the dull in- 
 terval. 
 
 A word about children's love of sweetmeats, against 
 which Schwarz strives, perhaps too eagerly, may be 
 dropped here. I never yet knew a child to whom 
 sweet savory things and pastry, did not seem the most 
 inimitable cakes and altar paintings, and this merely 
 because a child, half animal, half savage, is all taste. 
 Bees have at the same time a honey and a wax 
 stomach ; but in men, children have the first, grown 
 people the second. If Schwarz has always found 
 love of eating and want of modesty united, he can 
 only declare this of the age of manhood, but even 
 then the love of eating was only the consequence 
 and companion of deeper sensual pleasures, not their 
 cause. Certainly, the unbridled sensualist will alter 
 in his meats, and also in his tastes, as the lover of 
 eating does on other grounds ; but, on the other hand, 
 how can the pleasures of taste, which grow weaker as 
 every year is further from childhood, end in still 
 lower sensualities, especially since the generality of 
 
JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 97 
 
 souls, in regard to love, resemble the Egyptians, 
 among whom the gods reigned earlier than mortal 
 men ? The fathers do not hop, but the children do ; 
 then leave them their other Egyptian flesh pots be- 
 fore their journeying forth into the desert. The 
 author has often made the sugar island of the tongue, 
 on which of itself no paphian wood grows, into a 
 kind of palaestra of self-denial : at the same time he 
 relates the matter with diffidence, only as a question, 
 not an answer. For instance, he gave to the two 
 and three-year old children candied marchpane (the 
 most wholesome thing), with the command only to 
 suck it at a certain place, and only for so long a time 
 as he permitted. The children learned to value and 
 to keep a promise. He also offered sugar or honey 
 prizes for the endurance of the most strokes on the 
 hand ; but he did it seldom. 
 
 Most royal children can shorten our inquiries by 
 their decision. For, as regards pleasures, they have 
 everything from toys and drinking and eating things, 
 to carriage seats and bed cushions ; but as far as 
 happiness is concerned, they are tormented from 
 their governors up through every member of the 
 court, so that the kingly crown is very early under- 
 lined with a crown of thorns, or, to speak differently, 
 the black round of sorrow is made broader in pro- 
 portion to their high rank. For, indeed, when we 
 consider how generally a prince, satiated with eating 
 and drinking, is educated, so that he cannot make a 
 
98 JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 step without tutors and lectures, nor a skip without 
 the dancing-master, nor take a breath of fresh 
 air without four horses, we must almost believe that 
 the ancient heretic Basilides is now again right as 
 regards princes, when he declared that the early 
 Christians would often have been martyrs for future 
 sins, if the after-pains were not added to the fore- 
 pains of the future. 
 
 Cheerfulness this feeling of an entirely free 
 nature and life, this self-enjoyment of the inner 
 world, not of an outward minute part of the world 
 opens the child to the penetrating all ; it receives 
 nature, not loveless and defenceless, but loving and 
 armed, and lets all the young powers rise like 
 morning beams, and play upon the world and upon 
 itself; and it imparts, as moroseness takes away, 
 strength. The early blossoms of gladness are not 
 corn-flowers among the seed, but are themselves 
 little young ears of corn. It is a beautiful tradition 
 that the Virgin Mary and the poet Tasso never wept 
 as children.* 
 
 But now the question is of the means and starry 
 influences which preserve this cheerfulness. If it 
 merely resulted from negative and physical conditions, 
 then, at least for the most instructive half-year of 
 life, that is the first, all would be obtained by a 
 child who was born in spring. Why do not men 
 
 * Pertschen's Church History. 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. 99 
 
 begin life, as Oriental nations do the year, with 
 spring? A child born at this season, might an 
 almanac say without lying, moves slowly on from 
 charm to charm, from leaves to flowers, from the 
 warmth of rooms to that of the sky : the wind is not 
 yet his enemy instead of storms, melodies breathe in 
 the branches born to a half year's festival of the 
 earth, he must believe that life remains so he sees 
 the rich earth only afterwards hidden by its covering 
 and the enjoyment of life which the suckling 
 mother imbibes flows warm through the little heart. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 46. 
 
 THAT which produces and maintains cheerfulness is 
 nothing but activity. The usual games of children, 
 unlike ours, are only the expressions of earnest 
 activity, clothed in lightest wings : children have also 
 a game (it is one to them), I mean that of joking, 
 of unmeaning speech, in order to have something to 
 say to themselves, and so forth. Now if a German 
 were to write a book about the games of children, 
 which would at least be more useful than one 
 about games of cards, he would, it seems to me, 
 distinctly and correctly divide them only into two 
 
 F 2 
 
100 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 classes: first, into games or exertions of the receiv- 
 ing, apprehending, learning faculties; and, secondly, 
 into games of the acting, forming powers. The first 
 class would embrace activity from without working 
 inwardly, like the nerves of sense ; the other activity 
 from within working outwardly, like the nerves of 
 motion. Consequently, if the author went deeply into 
 the first class, which he calls the theoretic, the 
 second, on the other hand, the practical, he would 
 adduce games which are properly only a child's ex- 
 perimental physics, optics, mechanics. Children have 
 great pleasure, for instance, in turning or raising 
 anything putting keys into locks, and, in general, 
 one thing into another opening and shutting doors, 
 to which is added, moreover, the dramatic fancy of 
 seeing the room now large now small, and themselves 
 alone one moment, in company the next ; watching 
 the employment of their parents is to them a game 
 of this kind, as is also listening to conversation. 
 
 In the second or practical division, the author must 
 put all those games in which the child seeks to re- 
 lieve himself of his mental superabundant activity by 
 dramatic fancies, and of his bodily, by movements. 
 The examples will come in the next paragraph. 
 
 But I think so very scientific a man would form 
 a third class, already hinted at; namely, that in 
 which the child only plays the game, does not really 
 act and feel it, that is, where he takes and gives 
 a comfortable form and tone ; for instance, looks out 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. 101 
 
 of the window, lies upon the grass, listens to the 
 nurse and other children. 
 
 47, 
 
 Flay is, in the first place, the working off at 
 once of the overflow of both mental and physical 
 powers : afterwards, when the school sceptre has 
 carried off the mental source of all fire, even till rain 
 comes, the limbs only throw off the fulness of life by 
 running, throwing, carrying. Play is the first poetry 
 of the human being. (Eating and drinking are his 
 prose, and striving to get the needful supplies his 
 first solid bread-study and labour of life.) Conse- 
 quently play forms all the powers, without imparting 
 an overweening influence to any one.* If a teacher 
 would be cruel enough to form a whole man into 
 one member, for instance, into a magnified ear, he 
 must during the first years so mix the playing cards, 
 by abstracting some, that nothing could ever be 
 obtained but games of sound. If he wished to be 
 anything better in the games than cruel, he would 
 perhaps endeavour to lead his pupil with gentle 
 hand, imitating chance which acts from all sides, and 
 develops all. But I dread that grown-up hairy hand 
 
 * Many children's games are imitations, but mental ; whereas 
 those of monkeys are physical that is to say, not from any 
 especial interest in the thing, but merely because imitation falls 
 in most readily with the mental impulses of life. Probably the 
 monkey, like Dr. Monro's nervous patient, only imitates strange 
 movements, compulsorily and from weakness. 
 
 F 3 
 
102 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 and fist which knocks on the tender fructifying dust 
 of childhood's blossoms, and shakes a colour off, first 
 here, then there, so that the proper many-marked 
 carnation may be formed. We often think to rule 
 the external but broad empire of chance by means 
 which some inner narrow accident has thrown to- 
 gether in ourselves. 
 
 48. 
 
 We will, however, step further into the play-place 
 of the little folks, if not to be lawgivers, yet to be 
 markers of their games. During the first months 
 of existence the child knows nothing of creative play 
 or efforts, only of the passive reception of im- 
 pressions. During that period of the most rapid 
 physical growth, and inpouring of the world of 
 sense, the overwhelmed soul does not direct itself 
 towards those active games in which afterwards its 
 superabundant powers find relief. It can only look, 
 listen, catch, touch: so laden, its little hands and 
 arms quite full, it can do and attempt little with 
 them. 
 
 It is only at a later period, when, by means of 
 the five acts of the five senses, the knowledge of the 
 outer world is attained, and one word after another 
 gradually liberates the mind, that greater freedom 
 produces active play, and that fancy begins to move, 
 whose unfledged wings language first plumes. Only 
 by words does the child obtain an inner world op- 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. 103 
 
 posed to the outer, by which he can set the external 
 universe in motion. He has two kinds of play, very 
 different both in direction and time first, that with 
 playthings, and second, that with and among play- 
 mates. 
 
 49. 
 
 In the first place the child plays with things, con- 
 sequently with himself. A doll is to him a nation, 
 or a company of players, and he is the theatrical 
 poet and director. Every bit of wood is a gilded 
 flower rod, on which fancy can bud hundred-leaved 
 roses. For not merely to grown-up people, but also 
 to children, the plaything itself becomes indifferent 
 if a happy imagination alone is permitted to decide ; 
 whether it be with regard to imperial or laurel 
 crowns, shepherds' crooks, or marshals' staves, the 
 flails of war or of agriculture. In the eyes of 
 wonder-working fancy every Aaron's rod blossoms. 
 As the Elysian fields of the ancients near Naples 
 were grounded (according to Maccard) on nothing 
 more than a bush in a cave, so, for children, is every 
 bush a forest ; and they possess that heaven which 
 Luther in his table-talk promises the saints, where 
 the bugs are sweet-scented, the serpents playful, the 
 dogs gold-skinned, and Luther a lamb. I mean to 
 say, that in the heaven of childhood the father is God 
 the Father, the mother the mother of God, the nurse 
 a Titaness, the old servant an angel of the com- 
 munion, the turkey a cherub of Eden, and Eden 
 
 F 4 
 
104 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 itself is restored. Do you not know that there is a 
 time when fancy is more actively creative than even 
 in youth, namely, in childhood, in which nations 
 create their gods, and only speak in poetry ? 
 
 Never forget that the games of children with in- 
 animate playthings are so important, because for 
 them there are only living things : a doll is as much 
 a human being to a child, as a baby is to a woman ; 
 and also because to them every word is a reality. 
 In beasts the body alone plays, in children the mind. 
 Life meets them on every side; they cannot com- 
 prehend death, or any thing dead ; and therefore the 
 happy beings, animating everything, surround them- 
 selves only with life, and hence it is they say, for 
 instance, " The lights have covered themselves up 
 and gone to bed the spring has dressed itself the 
 water runs down the glass his house lives there 
 the wind dances," or of a watch from which the 
 works are removed, " It is not alive." 
 
 But among richer realities fancy fades and grows 
 poor ; in the mean time every plaything and play- 
 world is only a distaff of flax from which the soul 
 spins a many-coloured coat. As the rook in chess was 
 among different people, now a camel, now an elephant, 
 a stork, a boat, a castle; so among children, one 
 plaything often acts many parts, and every time it 
 seems to them, as manna did to the Jews, the very 
 thing they desired. The author remembers a little 
 girl of two years old, who, after having long carried 
 
GAMES OF CHILDEEN. 105 
 
 about an old doll reduced to the bare wood, had at 
 last placed in her arms a very pretty and skilfully 
 dressed one a foster-sister of the most beautiful in 
 Bertuch's Journal des Modes, which it resembled as 
 much in optic beauty as it surpassed it in size. Soon 
 afterwards the child not only resumed her former 
 conduct towards the wooden sloven, but went so far 
 as to take into her arms, in the place of child or 
 doll, a shabby boot-jack of her father's, which she 
 nursed and rocked to sleep as lovingly as the above- 
 mentioned original of Bertuch's pictures. So much 
 more readily does fancy invest an invisible Adam's 
 rib with human limbs and fashionable costume, than 
 a doll which only differs in size from a lady, and 
 which, on its side, appears to the imagination at the 
 next tea-party so perfect that it can be improved in 
 nothing. Just so the same little lassie, sitting beside 
 the author, wrote for a long time with a pen dipped 
 only in air on an ever-white sheet of paper, until he 
 almost fancied it was a satire on himself. Conse- 
 quently do not surround your children, like princes' 
 children, with a little world of the turner's : do not 
 give them eggs coloured, and painted over with 
 figures, but white j they will soon from their own 
 minds hatch the coloured feathers. On the contrary, 
 the older a man grows the more rich a reality should 
 appear: the heath on which the youth gleaned at 
 least the morning dew of the light of love, grows 
 cold with the dark night dew to the half-blind old 
 
 F 5 
 
106 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 man, and at last man requires a whole world, I mean 
 the next, in order only to live. 
 
 50. 
 
 But by the same fancy which, like the sun, paints 
 the colours on the leaves, are they also again removed 
 from them. The same mistress of the robes dresses, 
 and also undresses ; consequently there is for children 
 no ever-enduring play or plaything. Therefore do 
 not leave a plaything which has lost its charm long 
 before the eye conscious of the change ; lay it by. 
 After a long time the dismissed favourite will be re- 
 ceived with honour. The same is to be said of pic- 
 ture-books ; for a poetic animation is as necessary to 
 the picture-book as to the play-drawer. A few words 
 about that. The proper picture-books for A B C 
 children do not consist of a sequence of unknown 
 plants and animals, whose differences only the in- 
 structed eye perceives, but of historical pieces which 
 present the actions of animals or men taken from the 
 child's circle. Then this living gallery, in whose 
 universal history the child can more clearly paint the 
 individual being than the reader or author can in the 
 all-embracing generality of poetry, may be exalted 
 into historic groups; for instance, into a Joseph 
 among his brethren, selling or recognising him, 
 into a Hector's farewell of wife and child, and such 
 like subjects. 
 
 Children those of one or two years old excepted, 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. 107 
 
 who still need the spur of colour only require 
 drawings, not paintings ; colours resemble the above- 
 mentioned luxuriousness of playthings, and, by 
 reality, weaken the creative faculty. Therefore give 
 no plaything whose end is only to be looked at ; but 
 let every one be such as to lead to work. For in- 
 stance, a little complete mine, after being a few 
 hours before the child's eyes, is altogether gone 
 over, and each tiny vein of ore exhausted ; but a 
 box of building materials, a collection of detached 
 houses, bridges, and trees, by their ever-varying 
 location, will make him as rich and happy as an heir 
 to the throne who makes his mental dispositions 
 known by rebuilding his father's palace in the park. 
 Moreover, small pictures are better than large ones. 
 What is to us almost invisible, is to children only 
 little ; they are physically short-sighted, consequently 
 suited to what is near ; and with their short yard, 
 that is, with their little body, they so easily find 
 giants everywhere, that to these little juveniles we 
 should present the world on a reduced scale. 
 
 51. 
 
 Before the new philosophers, who in education 
 more readily give everything than something, one 
 grows so very much ashamed of such a paragraph as 
 this, that one scarcely knows how to deck and sweeten 
 it. I must, however, say that for children in their 
 early years, I know no cheaper and more lasting play- 
 
 F 6 
 
108 GAMES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 thing, one that is also clean and suited for both sexes, 
 than what every one has in the pineal gland, some in 
 the bladder, and birds in the stomach sand. I have 
 seen children weary of play use it for hours as build- 
 ing material, as hurling machine, as a cascade, water 
 for washing, seed, flour, finger tickler, as inlaid work, 
 and raised work, as a ground for writing and painting. 
 It is to boys what water is to girls. Philosophers ! 
 strew sand less in than before the eyes in the bird- 
 cage of your children. Only one thing has to be 
 cared for with regard to it, that they do not eat their 
 
 plaything. 
 
 52. 
 
 The second kind of play is the playing of 
 children with children. If men are made for men, so 
 are children for children, only much more beautifully. 
 In their early years children are to one another only 
 the completion of their fancy about one plaything : 
 two fancies, like two flames, play near and in one 
 another, yet ununited. Moreover children alone are 
 sufficiently childlike for children. But in later years 
 the first little bond of society is woven of flower- 
 garlands ; playing children are little European savages 
 in social contract for the performance of one drama. 
 On the play-place they first issue from the speaking 
 and audience hall into the true sphere of action, and 
 begin their human praxis. For parents and teachers 
 are ever to them those strange heaven-descended 
 gods, who, according to the belief of many nations, 
 
GAMES OF CHILDKEN. 109 
 
 appeared teaching and helping the new men on the 
 new-born earth : at least they are to the child gigan- 
 tic Titans ; consequently in this theocracy and 
 monarchy free resistance is forbidden and injurious 
 to them, obedience and faith serviceable and salu- 
 tary. Where then can the child show and mature 
 his governing power, his resistance, his forgiveness, 
 his generosity, his gentleness, in short every root and 
 blossom of society, except in freedom among his 
 equals ? Teach children by children ! The entrance 
 into their play-room is for them an entrance into 
 the great world ; and their mental school of industry 
 is in the child's play-room and nursery. It is often 
 of more use to a boy himself to administer the cane 
 than to receive it from his tutor ; and still more to 
 have it inflicted by one of his equals than by one of his 
 superiors. If you wish to form a slave for life, fasten 
 a boy for fifteen years to the legs and arms of his 
 tutor, who is to be at once theatrical director, and 
 occasional member of the two-personed company. 
 Like all slaves, the child will probably keep his eye 
 and heart armed against his tyrant's individuality ; 
 but, accustomed to one climate, and sailing only with 
 one wind, he will be unable in future to withstand 
 the all-sidedness of individualities. 
 
 53. 
 
 The teaching and feeding master of the little one 
 always acts as if the proper life of the child, as a 
 
110 OAMES OF CHILDREN'. 
 
 human being, were not actually begun, but waited 
 until he himself had departed in order then to lay the 
 key-stone of the arch. Even the travelling tutor 
 believes that, so long as he walks beside and sows 
 seed in the furrow, the time of leaves and flowers has 
 not arrived. For man, needing an external whole, 
 when once an inner one animates him, fixes that outer 
 one, like the arch of the sky, and the approach of 
 heaven to earth, in the distance and on the horizon, 
 although from every hill which he successively mounts 
 that heaven flies away into the more distant blue; 
 and so man arrives at old age, and at last, on the 
 mound of the grave, heaven rests upon earth. The 
 whole of life is, then, nowhere or everywhere. 
 Heavens ! where a man is, there eternity, not time 
 begins. Consequently the plays and actions of children 
 are as serious and full of meaning in themselves and 
 in reference to their future, as ours are to ours. The 
 early game becomes the earnest of later years ; al^ 
 though children in play often repeat something as the 
 echo of an earlier reality, just as the Neapolitans play 
 cards during theatrical representations. Moser dic- 
 tated his works while playing ombre : perhaps his 
 have been secretly suggested to many an author by 
 his early childhood's games. As chess is said to serve 
 for instruction in war and government, so the future 
 laurels and tree of knowledge grow in the play-ground. 
 The bishop Alexander considered those children, on 
 whom Athanasius when a child playfully bestowed 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. Ill 
 
 baptism, to have been really baptized. If, as Ar- 
 chenholz relates, the boys of Winchester School once 
 rebelled against their masters, garrisoned the principal 
 entrance to the schoolhouse, and provided themselves 
 so well with arms and munition, that the high sheriff 
 of the county, although he marched against them 
 with 150 constables and 80 militia men, was yet 
 obliged to grant an honourable capitulation I see in 
 this angry play nothing further than the youth of that 
 present (even though it be unjust) manhood, which 
 bars rivers and harbours, and their own island, and 
 on the sea conquers countries : so much does the foam 
 of childish play subside into true wine ; and their fig 
 leaves conceal not nakedness but sweet figs. 
 
 54. 
 
 If one were to make propositions, that is, wishes, 
 one might express this ; that for every child a circle 
 of games and real actions should be provided, com- 
 posed of as many different individualities, conditions? 
 and years as can possibly be found, in order to pre- 
 pare him in the orbis pictus of a diminished play- 
 world, for the larger real one. But to give the social 
 account of these three play provinces would require a 
 book within the book. 
 
 Moreover, I would propose pleasure and play- 
 masters, as the precursors and leaders of the school- 
 master and also play-rooms, empty as those rooms 
 on whose plaster walls Raphael's immortal flowers 
 
GAMES OP CHILDREN. 
 
 bloom and also play gardens. And I am just 
 reading that Grabner, in his travelling description of 
 the Netherlands, gives an account of play-schools, to 
 which the Dutchman sends his children sooner than 
 to the schools of instruction. Certainly if one of the 
 two must fall, it were better the former should con- 
 tinue in existence. 
 
 Yet a few miscellaneous observations. Children 
 love no plays so much as those in which they have 
 something to expect, or to dread : so early does the 
 poet, with his knot making and loosing, play his part 
 in man. From time to tune they, like deep, unlucky 
 players, ask for new cards. But this changeableness 
 is not merely that of luxury, but also the consequence 
 of their rapid growth for the so quickly ripening 
 child seeks new fruits in new countries, as the aged 
 seek new ones in the old. Perhaps also it is the con- 
 sequence of that want of a future and a past, whereby 
 a child is so much more strongly affected and wearied 
 by the present, as though he were seated in a world 
 of sunbeams without morning and evening redness : 
 and, lastly, for the child, to whose littleness not only 
 space but time is magnified, play hours must grow 
 into play years ; and therefore we must indulge him, 
 the short-sighted being, in his desire of change and 
 new games. The one-houred constancy of a child 
 equals, nay surpasses, that of one month in his 
 parents. 
 
 The Jews forbad to celebrate two festivals on the 
 
GAMES OF CHILDREN. 113 
 
 same day, a marriage, for instance, on a feast day, or 
 two marriages at the same time. Should not children 
 be refused in a similar manner, if, after having taken 
 a walk on a summer evening, they beg leave to play in 
 the garden, and then, thirdly, to bring their play- 
 fellows into the parlour for a quarter of an hour 
 before supper? For herein are children antedated 
 grown-up persons; and, while at work, scarcely long 
 so much for pleasure, as for what comes after a 
 pleasure ; from one sugar island they would at once 
 sail over to another, and heap heaven upon heaven. 
 If t\us frequentativum of the enjoyment of even in- 
 nocent pleasures is allowed, the child, dearest mother, 
 becomes only fitted for a court, or royal residence, 
 and lays claim to pleasure as a right months of 
 thirty-two days, and feast-days of twenty-five hours, 
 each of which measures full sixty-one minutes. And 
 so the little being is already dipped in the honey of 
 present superabundant pleasure, whereby time clogs 
 the butterfly- wings of the Psyche for every flight. The 
 only good (if, indeed, it be any) that can come out of 
 a girl thus educated, is at most a woman who, on the 
 same day, after having received and paid some visits, 
 amuses herself at the theatre, and then afterwards 
 hopes for cards and dancing. 
 
 As nature by cool refreshing night breaks off the 
 culminating pleasures of our constitution, always re- 
 quiring stronger excitement ; so this healthy night- 
 coolness should be given, in a mental sense, to 
 
114 GAMES OF 
 
 children, in order not to expose them in future to 
 the sufferings of people of the world and of pleasure ; 
 who, like sea-farers in northern latitudes, wearied by 
 month-long unceasing day, pray and bless God for 
 a little night and candle light. 
 
 But let there ever be, if many games, yet few play- 
 things and not apparent and every evening put 
 away into one place and for twins let the same 
 piece be doubled, as for three children trebled, in 
 order to avoid quarrels. 
 
 The early games should assist the mental develop- 
 ment, for the physical advances gigantically without 
 help : later ones should draw the physical up along 
 with the mental, which, by schools and advancing 
 years, takes the precedence. Let the child toy, sing, 
 look, listen ; but let the boy and the girl run, climb, 
 throw, build, bear heat and cold. 
 
 The most delightful and inexhaustible play is 
 speaking ; first of the child with itself, and still more 
 of the parents with it. In play and for pleasure, you 
 cannot speak too much with children ; nor in punish- 
 ing, or teaching them, too little. 
 
 Immediately after waking, the child, owing to his 
 mental and physical excitability, requires almost 
 nothing, still less you ; shortly before going to sleep, 
 as at the burning out of a bonfire, a little weariness 
 is serviceable. For older children, whom labour 
 exercises and controls, its end (freedom), and then 
 the open air, is itself a play. The open air an 
 
CHILDREN'S DANCES. 115 
 
 expression which Europe, like (Jeath, must soon 
 exchange for the more correct one the opener 
 atmosphere. But let not the teacher after the work 
 also order and regulate the games ! It is decidedly 
 better not to recognise, or make any order in games 
 not even mine than to keep it up with difficulty 
 and send the zephyrets of pleasure through artistic 
 bellows and air-pumps, to the little flowers. Animals 
 and savages never experience tedium, neither would 
 children if we were not so very anxious to keep it 
 away. Let the child experience in play his future 
 life; and since from that the mountain and storm 
 pressure of tedium cannot be removed, let the child 
 sometimes feel it, in order afterwards not to perish 
 under its weight. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 CHILDKEN'S DANCES. 
 
 55. 
 
 I KNOW not whether I should most deprecate 
 children's balls, or most praise children's dances ! The 
 former before the dancing-master in the society 
 of lookers-on and fellow dancers in the hot tempe- 
 rature of the ball-room, and among its hot products 
 are, in the highest degree, the front ranks and 
 leading steps to the dance of death. On the con- 
 
116 CHILDREN'S DANCES. 
 
 trary, children's dances are what I will now commend 
 more at large. 
 
 As the first speech long precedes grammar, so 
 should dancing precede, and prepare the way, for the 
 art of dancing. A father who has an old piano, or 
 fiddle, or flute, or an improvising singing voice, should 
 call his own and neighbour's children together, and 
 let them every day for an hour hop and turn by his 
 orchestra, in pairs, in rows, in circles, very frequently 
 alone, accompanying themselves with singing, as 
 their own grinding organ ; and also in any way they 
 like. In the child happiness dances ; in the man, at 
 most, it only smiles or weeps. The mature man can 
 in dancing only express the beauty of the art, not 
 himself and his emotions : love would thereby comport 
 itself too rudely, joy too loudly and boldly, before the 
 stern Nemesis. In the child, body and soul still live 
 united in their honeymoon, and the active body dances 
 after the happy soul ; until afterwards both separate 
 from bed and board, and at last entirely leave one 
 another. In later times the light zephyr of content- 
 ment cannot turn the heavy metal standard to point 
 its course. 
 
 56. 
 
 Children are like Forrer's watches, which wind 
 themselves up if you walk about with them. As in 
 the old astronomy, eleven of their heavens are move- 
 able, and only one, that of sleep, stationary. It is 
 only dancing in a circle that is light enough for a 
 
CHILDREN'S DANCES. 117 
 
 child ; only for youth is a straight course not too 
 difficult. As to the heavenly bodies, so to children, do 
 the motion and music of the spheres belong ; whereas 
 the older body, like water, takes the straight path. 
 To speak more plainly : Women, it is well known, 
 cannot run, but only dance ; and every one would 
 more easily reach, by dancing than by walking, a post- 
 house, to which, instead of a straight poplar alley, a 
 lordly row of trees, planted in the English fashion, 
 conducted. Now children are diminutive women 
 at least boys are, although girls are often only dimi- 
 nutive boys. Dancing is the easiest of all movements, 
 because it needs the least space, and is the most 
 varied : hence joy is not a runner but a dancer : 
 hence the indolent savage dances, and the wearied 
 negro slave rouses himself, by dancing, to fresh exer- 
 tion: hence the runner all other circumstances 
 being the same has more frequently fallen down 
 dead than the dancer. Hence camels, and armies, and 
 Oriental labourers continue their laborious marches 
 for a longer time, and with more ease to the sound of 
 music; not principally because music produces 
 cheerfulness, that might easily be attained by other 
 pleasures, but because music rounds off the straight 
 movement into the circling dance and its still return- 
 ing rhythm ; for it is only in a circular, not in a 
 straight line, that every thing returns in thirds. As 
 an argumentative or a narrative sequence (science or 
 history) prepares us by every effort of attention for a 
 
118 CHILDREN'S DANCES. 
 
 still stronger, whereas the zigzag of the epigram 
 each moment compels us to a new beginning, and 
 fresh exertion; so physically the same is the case in 
 running and walking, in which, up-hill or down-hill, 
 no effort is cause of its successor, but the great 
 follows the little, or the strongest the strongest, as 
 the case may be : in dancing, on the contrary, with- 
 out aim or compulsion, one movement constantly 
 springs out of the other, and renders cessation, rather 
 than continuance, difficult. All running, but no 
 dancing, desires an end. What better movement, 
 then, can there be for children than this revolving 
 one ? The gymnastic of running, going on stilts, 
 climbing, &c., steels and hardens individual forces 
 and muscles, whereas dancing, on the contrary, like 
 a physical poetry, exercises and equalises all the 
 
 muscles. 
 
 57. 
 
 Further, the harmony connected with it imparts 
 to the affections and the mind that metrical order, 
 which reveals the highest, and regulates the beat of 
 the pulse, the step, and even the thoughts. Music 
 is the metre of this poetic movement, and is an 
 invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music. Finally 
 this also ranks among the advantages of this eye and 
 heel pleasure; that children with children, by no 
 harder canon than the musical, light as sound, may be 
 joined in a rosebud- feast, without thorns or strife. 
 
 In short, dancing cannot come soon enough, " but 
 
MUSIC. 119 
 
 the dancing-master may more easily come too soon 
 than too late." This last part appears in the first 
 edition. I should, perhaps, more correctly have 
 written singing than dancing-master, because those 
 skilled in the art declare that the early exercise of 
 the voice is injurious to it. The first edition is only 
 right in so far as it may to the utmost remove 
 children, brought up in genteel coquetry, from the 
 influence of the dancing-master, who would reduce 
 all bodily movements to rule and system. On the 
 other side, again, the second edition is right, if it add, 
 that better-educated children, who in their eighth and 
 ninth years, instead of vanity, know only the law of 
 the good and the beautiful, may join with less 
 danger to their higher self, the trivial regiment and 
 ruling fiddle of the dancing-master in their early 
 years, when they can learn to dance, as to walk and 
 to read, without coquetry. Then also the dancing- 
 hour may become an hour of freedom and play to those 
 poor persecuted children who are treated like goats, 
 whose sinews are cut to prevent them from jumping. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 MUSIC. 
 
 58. 
 
 Music, the only fine art in which man and all 
 classes of animals spiders, mice, elephants, fish, 
 
120 MUSIC. 
 
 amphibious creatures, birds have a community of 
 goods, must ceaselessly affect the child, who is the 
 spiritual man and the brute beast united. And so 
 one might break the heart of the little new possessor 
 of life with a trumpet, and its ear with shrieks and 
 discord. Therefore, it is probable that the first 
 music, perhaps, as an undying echo in the child, 
 forms the secret thorough-bass, the melodious theme 
 in the brain-chambers of a future master of sound, 
 which his after compositions only harmoniously vary. 
 Music, rather than poetry, should be called " the 
 happy art." She imparts to children nothing but 
 heaven, for as yet they have not lost it, and lay no 
 memories as mufflers on the clear sounds. Choose 
 melting melodies, and soft strains ; even with those 
 you only excite the child to frisk and dance about. 
 Savages, powerful and pleasure-loving people, such 
 as Greeks, Russians, and Neapolitans, have their 
 popular songs set entirely in minor keys. For some 
 years the child, like the father, can weep at certain 
 sounds ; but in him it arises from overflowing happi- 
 ness, for as yet the memory does not place beneath 
 those tuneful hopes the reckoning of its losses. 
 
 59. 
 
 Yet among all the instruments which sound in 
 Haydn's child's concerts, that best serves the pur- 
 poses of educational music which is born with the 
 performer the voice. In the childhood of nations 
 
MUSIC. 121 
 
 speaking was singing. Let this be repeated in the 
 childhood of the individual. In singing, the human 
 being, harmony and heart coalesce at the same 
 time in one breast whereas instruments seem 
 only to lend him a voice : with what arms can a 
 parent more closely and more gently draw the little 
 beings towards him, than with his spiritual ones, 
 with the tones of his own heart, with the same voice 
 which always speaks to them, but now transfigured 
 into a musical ascension ? 
 
 Thereby they have the advantage and the con- 
 sciousness that they can imitate it on the spot. 
 Singing takes the place of screaming, which the 
 doctors so much praise as a palaestra for the lungs, and 
 first military exercise of speech. Is there anything 
 more beautiful than a merry singing child? And 
 how unweariedly he repeats the same thing, which is 
 so repulsive to the little soul in all other games ! 
 As in maturer age, the Alpine shepherd, and the 
 chained labourer, sing away their vacancy, and long 
 hours of compulsory sitting ; so the child sings away 
 childhood, and sings on hearing only himself. For 
 harmony, like the innate poetry of the feelings, says 
 nothing but the same thing, unsatiated by repetition, 
 unwearied by sound. 
 
 Let the father, like the Frieslander, follow the 
 proverb Frisia non cantat and never or seldom 
 sing : I would wish him to do it for his children, and 
 the mother for him and them. 
 
122 MUSIC. 
 
 60. 
 
 As one drops asleep by inward listening to singing, 
 so one might, at least in a case where immediate 
 waking is necessary (always a most undesirable thing), 
 effect it by music, as Montaigne's father did. A 
 flute-playing clock would be a good awakener. And 
 why should not harmony be employed as a soul- 
 curative means against the maladies of children, 
 against vexation, obstinacy, anger ? 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 COMMANDS, PROHIBITIONS, PUNISHMENTS, AND CRYING. 
 61. 
 
 ROUSSEAU could not write these paragraphs ; for he 
 was of a different opinion. But I agree with Base- 
 dow, and do not believe, with the former, that the 
 parental will can, and ought to assume the appearance 
 of a mere accident. Rewarding and punishing merely 
 by physical consequences and regulations, and in fact 
 the whole of Rousseau's system of education, would 
 throw away a grown-up man for the sake of a growing 
 one : but life is not given to pass merely from edu- 
 cation again to education. Rousseau himself admits 
 that only an approach to his plan is possible: but 
 then One is just as far as ever from the goal ; since 
 
COMMANDS. 123 
 
 here it does not depend on the failure of a degree, 
 but of a species. Fortunately this erroneous course 
 is closed against the child's mind. 
 
 How, then, would the child attain the after-feeling 
 of necessity, without the fore-feeling of freedom, 
 which he must see as strong in others, or in his 
 equals, as in himself? Much more must the child 
 proceeding from himself regard all things, even 
 dead matter, as free, and be exasperated with every 
 opposition, as though it were intentional. The deeper 
 the chain of souls hangs down the broader does the 
 free ocean flow around. The dog bites the stone 
 the child strikes both the savage sees in the storm 
 a war kindled and led by spirits. It is only to the 
 clearer eye that that dark iron mass which we call 
 necessity stands in the midst of the universe like a 
 black sun. Even this it is that first draws the free 
 spirit, which begins and ends in freedom, out of un- 
 derstanding into reason, out of the finite into infini- 
 tude. The child, then, who makes every thing into an 
 independent being, consequently yourself in the first 
 place, finds in every occurrence a premeditated course 
 of action, and in every hinderance an enemy. Do not 
 we older ones experience, during our whole life, the 
 iron power of nature, yet without resigning ourselves 
 calmly and uncomplainingly to it, when, for instance, 
 it either closes It irremediably, as in death, or em- 
 bitters it, as in old age ? And whence do physical 
 consequences obtain their educational reputation, 
 
 G 2 
 
124 COMMANDS. 
 
 except from the unchangeableness of nature ? Now 
 free will may appear to the child just as consequential 
 and immovable! Then he beholds a higher than 
 blind necessity. Further, is there any necessity 
 which better teaches endurance than the mental one 
 of a foreign will ? Finally, how can trust in men 
 that noble bond of human and higher oneness come 
 to life in a child without some object, without a pa- 
 rent's word on which he may confide ? 
 
 62. 
 
 The modes, then, of commanding and forbidding 
 are all that come under consideration. And here we 
 must entreat pardon for the disorderly ranks of a 
 merely experimental system of education. 
 
 Take no pleasure in ordering to do or not to do, 
 but in the child's free action. In frequent orders the 
 parent's advantage is more considered than the 
 child's. 
 
 Let the child be irresistibly bound by your word, 
 but not you yourself: you need not give any edicta 
 perpetua, but your lawgiving power can each day 
 issue new decretals and pastoral letters. 
 
 Forbid seldomer by actions than by words : do not 
 snatch the knife out of the child's hands, but let him 
 lay it down himself at your desire ; in the first case 
 he obeys the pressure of a foreign power, in the 
 second its guidance. 
 
 Let your tables of the law be unbroken, and in 
 
PROHIBITIONS. 125 
 
 raised character. Rather forbid the whole, if it is 
 difficult for you to separate its parts: for instance 
 touching the table at all, though you may only wish 
 to protect some articles upon it. 
 
 Let the child learn in himself the right he demands 
 from others. Consequently let the respect for pro- 
 perty be decidedly and unsparingly exacted from him. 
 What belongs to the child? Father and mother, 
 nothing more : every thing else belongs to them. But 
 as every man desires a world, yea, a whole universe, 
 for his patrimony, mete out little to the little one, 
 and say " No more ! " 
 
 The child's ear readily distinguishes a decided from 
 an angry tone of voice : the mother easily falls into 
 the latter when she attempts to imitate the father in 
 the former. His commands are better obeyed than 
 hers for three reasons : the first, his decided, though 
 far removed from angry, voice, has been already men- 
 tioned. The second is, that the man, for the most 
 part, like the warrior, says only one, and consequently 
 the same, imperial No ; whereas women can scarcely 
 say to a child, Be quiet ! without colon and semicolon, 
 and most necessary notes of interrogation and excla- 
 mation. Was there ever in history an instance of a 
 woman training a dog ? Or could a generaless, in 
 commanding her marching army to halt, ever express 
 herself otherwise than thus : " All you people, as soon 
 as I have done speaking, I command you all to stand 
 Btill in your places ; halt, I tell you I " The third 
 
 G 3 
 
126 COMMANDS. 
 
 reason is, that the man more rarely withdraws his re- 
 fusal. 
 
 The best rule in politics is said to be " pas trop 
 gouverner : " it is also true in education. But some 
 teachers, in order to be always talking, and rather to 
 resemble ringing silver than dead-sounding gold, 
 preach as often against faults and in favour of virtues, 
 which come with years, as against faults, and for 
 virtues which increase with age ; why, for instance, 
 is there so much precipitate haste about learning to 
 walk, to knit, to read, as if these arts must not finally 
 come of themselves ? But quite different things are, 
 for example, pure enunciation, correct writing, and 
 holding the pen and person properly while so engaged, 
 a sense of order, and generally those capabilities which 
 only grow with years. Since unfortunately, inde- 
 pendently of these things, education and instruction 
 require so many words, spare using them against 
 fading faults, and direct them against growing ones. 
 Frugal speech cultivates and strains the powers of the 
 interpreting child, as riddles do. Grown people do 
 the same towards one another : for instance, a great 
 man of my acquaintance says at first, among a circle 
 of strangers, little more than hum, hum, and that 
 very low ; but just as (according to the Indian myth) 
 the silent godhead interrupted his eternity, and 
 creation began, only because he in a similar way said, 
 "oum;" so this said man, merely by his "hum," 
 gives every one much to think of. Yes, I know even 
 
PROHIBITIONS. 127 
 
 a greater and more useful one-syllableness than even 
 the Chinese : that is no-syllableness, or silence. 
 Young doctors, who do not wish to forget natural 
 philosophy in their usual medical sciences, very often 
 make use of it, in their examinations before the col- 
 legium medicum, in reply to very common questions ; 
 as Socrates was silent when angry, so they wish by 
 silence to express their indignation at questions about 
 miserable sciences to which they have always remained 
 strangers, 
 
 But to return from this digression, which can less 
 be ranked among the improvements than among the 
 additions to the second edition many of us teachers 
 accompany our commands and prohibitions with moral 
 reasons on their way to the heart, which are mere 
 superficiality, for the child's conscience itself affords 
 their strongest proof: but a sequence of reasons is 
 useful in connection with medicinal, gymnastic, and 
 other commands, which find in the child, instead of 
 an advocate, only curiosity and ignorance. 
 
 Further, we grown-up people all have and admit 
 (though without deriving any peculiar benefit from 
 it) the fault of considering every difference of a child 
 from ourselves as a failing, our scoldings as lessons, 
 childish errors as greater than our own ; and thence it 
 is we so thoughtlessly convert our educational rein 
 and leading-strings into a hanging rope, and would 
 willingly carve the child into a neat cork Swiss model 
 of our Alps (as Pfyffer does the lofty mountains) ; and 
 
 G 4 
 
128 COMMANDS. 
 
 thence it is also, since the like is not easily accom- 
 plished, that we talk on and on, like the shell sea- 
 trumpet which ceaselessly sounds, and with our 
 school-chalk draw and lengthen the broad stroke 
 before the beak of the poor hen, so that she may 
 always stare down on the same line without being 
 able to look upwards. 
 
 Even a grown-up man whom some one should 
 follow all day long with movable pulpit, and stool of 
 confession, from which to hurl sermons and anathemas, 
 could never attain any real activity and moral free- 
 dom ; how much less then a weak child, who, at every 
 step in life, must be entangled in a "stop run 
 be quiet do that!" It is the same fault as that 
 filling and cramming of the day with mere lessons ; 
 under which rain-spout of instruction princely children 
 especially stand, as if to make up by that flow of 
 teaching for the future ebb of learning. And what 
 else, in fact, is this but unceasingly to sow one field 
 full of seed upon seed ? A dead corn granary may 
 possibly come out of it, but no living harvest field. 
 Or, in another simile, your watch stops while you 
 wind it up, and you everlastingly wind up children 
 and never let them go. 
 
 The reason why children dread the fire, which 
 always burns, more than the knife, which does not 
 always cut, applies to their different kind of fear of 
 father and of mother : he is the fire, she the knife. 
 The difference does not lie in their severity, for an 
 
PROHIBITIONS. 129 
 
 angry mother is severity itself, but in' their un- 
 changeableness. The younger the child the more 
 necessary is one-syllableness ; yes, even that is not 
 necessary ; shake the head, and let that be enough. 
 At most say, Pst ! Later on, give the reasons in a 
 gentle voice, merely to render obedience easier by the 
 fair tokens of love. For vehement refusal produces 
 in the child vehement demand. 
 
 Forbid in a gentle voice, so that a whole gamut of 
 increased force may be open to you, and only once. 
 The last may cost labour. Even in the child that 
 human system of delay rules, which for every rapid 
 determination must have time for three words of 
 command and three summonses, together with some 
 hours of grace. Do not, then, be more angry than 
 is fitting, if a child, for instance, closes a forbidden 
 noise with a so finely graduated Allegro ma non troppo 
 and mancando, that you yourself at last cannot accu- 
 rately distinguish resistance from obedience. Here 
 there remains no choice but either punishment for 
 the most infinitely small disobedience, or, after the 
 first obedience, indifference to the rest : the latter 
 seems to me the best. But there is a more beautiful 
 lingering, the parental. The first and quickest word 
 which a father gives to a begging child, or wife, or 
 servant is, No ; thereupon he endeavours to grant the 
 request, and says Yes at the end instead of at the 
 beginning. The mother does still worse. Can you, 
 then, obtain from yourself no respite, no interval, 
 
 G 5 
 
130 COMMANDS* 
 
 before decision, for the child, or whoever it be, by 
 merely answering to every request, " Come again," or 
 " After this," or " In three Saxon minutes of rest ? " 
 "Women, I would only recommend you this law of 
 delay, in order to be less frequently in opposition to 
 others. Another parental delay, that of punishment, 
 is of use for children of the second five years (quin- 
 quennium.) Parents and teachers would more fre- 
 quently punish according to the line of exact justice, 
 if, after every fault in a child, they would only count 
 four and twenty, or their buttons, or their fingers. 
 They would thereby let the deceiving present round 
 themselves, as well as round the children, escape ; the 
 cold still empire of clearness would remain behind, 
 and the child, as well as the father, (granting, for 
 instance, that anger would else have been the object 
 as well as the mediator of the punishment, or the 
 correction, also the repetition of the fault,) would 
 learn, in the reflected mutual pain to regard that of 
 the other. Beccaria rightly attaches the punishment, 
 or hangman, close to the heels of the criminal, because 
 compassion and oblivion would else only act against, 
 not in favour of the executioner ; but the presupposed, 
 wide-extended despotism of the parental law admits 
 of the softening interval of time before the spectators, 
 as well as before the child, and in the rulers themselves. 
 Only with regard to your youngest children attach 
 the punishment to the very fault, like a physical effect 
 to its cause. 
 
PROHIBITIONS. 131 
 
 63. 
 
 After unchangeable biddings and forbiddings, one 
 might also recommend to the parents some wishes, 
 whose fulfilment would depend solely on the love and 
 free choice of the children, in order to exercise them 
 in freedom and love and merit. I will do so. 
 
 The obedience of children, in itself alone, without 
 consideration of its motive, can have no other value 
 than that thereby much is made easier to the parents. 
 Or would it be good for the soul's growth, suppose 
 your child always submitted, bent and broke his will 
 to that of others as to yours ? What a pliable, dis- 
 located human member, bound on the wheel of fortune, 
 would the child then be ! But what you desire is, 
 not his obedience, but his inclination to it, love, 
 trust, self-denial, the grateful reverence for the best 
 (namely his parents) ! And in so far you are right. 
 But therefore take care to command nothing, to which 
 the higher motive does not itself call and incline you 
 To forbid will irritate less and cause to err a child 
 who regards every thing as the independent property 
 of his parents, than to command; since the young 
 spirit already knows that he has at least one property, 
 himself and justice. Mothers willingly call to the 
 help of their biddings and forbiddings the dissipating 
 method, which by pleasurable by-ways conceals 
 from the child the goal of authoritative command. 
 But by this flattering mummery the child learns no 
 
 G 6 
 
132 COMMANDS. 
 
 rule and no discipline, but, before his short-sighted 
 eye, all right and steadiness is converted into a merry 
 game of chance, which hardens and accustoms him to 
 nothing. 
 
 Further, the children, always only the receivers of 
 their parents' gifts, are themselves sometimes gladly 
 the hosts of their hosts, and do the work of love more 
 cheerfully than that of necessity ; just as their parents 
 more willingly give than pay. Let, then, the request 
 be proffered in the gentlest tone of voice (but without 
 giving any reasons), and recompensed by gladness at 
 its fulfilment ; yet let not its refusal be punished. 
 Only the slave is lashed to over-service; even the 
 camel moves no swifter before the whip, only behind 
 the flute. Children, it has been remarked, have a 
 particular affection for the station of their grand- 
 parents ; and how comes this, but because they require 
 and order little, and consequently their grandchildren 
 receive it the more willingly from them? Finally, 
 can you more beautifully and soothingly extinguish 
 the memory of a punishment than, when it is over, 
 making the child happy by expressing a wish for a 
 little act of courtesy to some one ? More of this in 
 the chapter on the education of the affections. 
 
PUNISHMENTS. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 64. 
 
 THIS unchildlike word will scarcely issue from my 
 pen: I would rather write pain or after-smart. 
 Punishment should only apply to guilty conscience, 
 and in the beginning children, like animals, have only 
 an innocent one. They, as the fixed stars viewed from 
 mountains, should never tremble; and the earth 
 should seem to them, as it would do from a star, 
 glorious shining, not earthy black. Or if you ne- 
 cessitate them to sacrifice and pawn their irrecover- 
 able May-time, in order that they may thoroughly 
 enjoy its inmost kernel in some subsequent tem- 
 pestuous period of life, do you advise them any thing 
 different from what the Indian does, who buries his 
 gold in order to enjoy it in the next world, after he 
 himself is buried ? 
 
 Great rewards, says Montesquieu, betoken a falling 
 state ; the same is true of great punishments in the 
 schoolhouse ; yea, and in the state also. Not great 
 but unavoidable punishments are mighty, truly al- 
 mighty. Hence most police punishments are usury 
 punishing with pounds where pennies would suffice 
 so also are torturing cruelties, because no one dreads 
 the wheel who scorns the gallows. There exists in 
 men a fearful cruelty ; as compassion can grow into 
 
1 34 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 positive pain, so the infliction of pain for punishment 
 can grow into pleasure. It is strange, but to be 
 proved by schoolmasters, soldiers, rustics, hunters, 
 overseers of slaves and murderers, and by the French 
 revolution, that wrathful cruelty is easily fanned 
 into a pleasurable sensation, to which screams, tears, 
 and flowing wounds actually become a refreshing 
 spring to the thirst for blood. Among the people 
 the blows of fate on the parents usually beget, as in 
 a stormy sky, retaliating blows on the children. 
 Common mothers strike their own children the 
 harder because they see strangers do it or because 
 they cry too much or because they are too silent. 
 Is it more our subjection to jurist Rome which 
 considered children, as well as women, slaves, and 
 those who were not Romans as things, not men or 
 more our reverence for the domestic sanctuary, which 
 explains the indifference with which the state be- 
 holds the painful judgments of parents and teachers, 
 the tortures of defenceless innocence ? 
 
 65. 
 
 If the ancient Goths, Greenlanders, Quakers, and 
 even savages, form tranquil and brave children-souls, 
 without the cane, round which ours must twine 
 like tame snakes, we may perceive how ill we use 
 the twig which must afterwards be thickened 
 to a stick. The one ought to have rendered the 
 other unnecessary. Even the smallest rod should 
 
PUNISHMENTS. 135 
 
 only be used occasionally as paradigma and theme 
 of the future; afterwards the mere threatening 
 preaches and restrains. At the same time the re- 
 proach of Goths and savages, that blows destroy the 
 courage of a boy, proves rather too much, because 
 it would equally serve against every useful pre^ 
 ventive which teaches by pain ; for instance, burning 
 the finger, and, moreover, may be disproved, partly 
 by the example of the common German soldier, who 
 probably gives as many blows in war as he received 
 in time of peace, and also, partly, by that of the 
 officers, with whom sometimes the opposite is the case. 
 
 A child who strikes should be struck, and best by 
 the object itself, if he is old enough ; by the servants, 
 for instance. If a child is struck, say a girl, the 
 father may be her curator sexus (guardian of the 
 sex) ; on the contrary, if it be a boy who struck a 
 boy, he would not deserve the future man's hat if 
 he rather raised his voice than his hand, and took 
 refuge in his father's revenging stick. 
 
 Never let the contest of parental and childish 
 obstinacy take place; the one in punishing per- 
 sistency to obtain its object, the other in enduring 
 refractoriness. After a certain amount of exerted 
 authority, leave to the grieved child the victory of 
 No ; you may be certain he will the next time avoid 
 so painful a one. 
 
 Tremblingly I venture to propose suggestive 
 questions, presupposive of the matter such, it i& 
 
136 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 well known, are forbidden to judges, because they 
 would thereby attach to the prisoner's answer what 
 they had first derived from it ; and because, by this 
 blackening of forbidden wares, they would soon 
 arrive at the blackening of the accused, thus urged 
 to stumble. At the same time I would permit the 
 educator occasionally to make use of such questions. 
 If he knows with every likelihood of truth that the 
 child, for instance, has been on the ice, contrary to 
 his order, he may, by the first question, which only 
 concerns indifferent by-circumstances, as how long 
 he has been on the pond, and who was sliding with 
 him, take away from him at once the wish and the 
 attempt to pay the inquirer with the false silver of 
 a lie; a wish and an attempt to which the simple 
 question, whether he had remained in the house, 
 would have afforded room and temptation. It is 
 impossible that wickedness and presence of mind 
 can be so great in a child, that in this confusing 
 assault he will declare the seeming omniscience of 
 the parental inquiry to be a lie by himself giving a 
 bold lying denial of the fact. Children, like savages, 
 have a propensity to lie, which has chiefly reference 
 to the past, and behind which, as Rousseau's lie 
 about the ribbon proves, the truthfulness of riper 
 years is developed. Baser and more dangerous than 
 lies about what is past are prospective lies, or those 
 about the future, by which the child, else the echo 
 of the present, annihilating himself, declares, with 
 
PUNISHMENTS. 137 
 
 the consciousness of doing so, the design of a long 
 contrary course of bad action: the lie of the past 
 steals good money, the lie of the future coins false. 
 The carefully moral use of a similar leading question 
 at least renders difficult the so dangerous success of 
 the titular truth of a lie ; for one successful lie is the 
 mother of lies ; and out of every wind-egg the devil 
 hatches his basilisks. 
 
 One word about after-anger I A serious punish- 
 ment of a child is scarcely so important as the quarter 
 of an hour immediately succeeding, and the transition 
 to forgiveness. After the hour of storm every seed- 
 word finds a softened warm ground ; fear and hatred 
 of the punishment, which at first hardened and 
 struggled against what was said, are now past, and 
 gentle instruction falls in and heals, as honey re- 
 lieves a sting, and oil cures wounds. During this 
 hour one may speak much, if the gentlest possible 
 tone of voice be used, and soften the grief of 
 others by showing our own. But every long winter 
 of after- wrath is poisonous ; at most an after-grief, not 
 an after-punishment, is allowable. Mothers, viewing 
 every thing on the foot of love, and so treating their 
 children like their husbands, fall easily into this after- 
 punishment, chiefly because it better agrees with 
 their activity, gladly dividing itself into little parts, 
 and because they, unlike the man, who sets the stem 
 round with thorns, willingly cover the leaves with 
 prickles. I have, dearest lady-readers, met the 
 
138 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 gentlest, mildest " Blondinas " in public places, who, 
 nevertheless, in the nursery (and in the servants' hall 
 too), resembled beautiful white roses, which prick 
 as sharply as the fullest and reddest. Unfortunately 
 it is often the case that women, like so many authors 
 (myself, for example), do not know when to stop 
 and say, Halt ! A word which I have hitherto vainly 
 sought in every female dictionary, and in every 
 female street-quarrel. Now this after-anger, this 
 should-be-punishing appearance of loving less, either 
 passes over the child, living only in the present, and 
 resembling a beast which immediately after the 
 greatest pain and madness eats on peaceably, without 
 being understood and without having any effect ; or, 
 from the same sense of the present, the child reconciles 
 himself to the want of marks of affection, and 
 learns to do without love : or his little heart is em- 
 bittered by the continued punishment of a buried 
 fault; and so by this after-rancour the beautiful 
 affecting passage to forgiveness is lost, which by long 
 gradations is weakened. But afterwards this after- 
 tax of punishment, so dear to women, may do good 
 service, when the girl is about thirteen years old, 
 and the boy fourteen : this later, riper age counts so 
 much past in its present that the long regretful 
 seriousness of a father or a mother must move and 
 influence a youth or a maiden at the time when their 
 hearts thirst for love; in this case coldness ripens 
 and sweetens the fruit, whereas earlier, it only kills 
 
PUNISHMENTS. 139 
 
 the blossom. Is there any thing more beautiful than 
 a mother who, after a punishment, speaks to her 
 child with gentle earnestness and serious love ? And 
 yet there is something even more beautiful a father 
 who does the same. 
 
 What is to be followed as a rule of prudence, yea 
 of justice, towards grown-up people, should be much 
 more observed towards children ; namely, that one 
 should never judgingly declare, for instance, " You 
 are a liar," or even, " You are a bad boy," instead of 
 saying, " You have told an untruth," or " You have 
 done wrong." For since the power to command 
 yourself implies at the same time the power of obeying, 
 man feels, a minute after his fault, as free as So- 
 crates ; and the branding mark of his nature, not of the 
 deed, must seem to him a blameworthy punishment. 
 To this must be added that every individual's wrong 
 actions, owing to his inalienable sense of a moral 
 aim and hope, seem to him only short, usurped 
 interregnums of the devil, or comets in the uniform 
 solar system. The child, consequently, under such a 
 moral annihilation, feels the wrong-doing of others 
 more than his own ; and this all the more because in 
 him want of reflection, and the general warmth of 
 his feelings, represent the injustice of others in a more 
 ugly light than his own. 
 
 If it be permitted to the state only to declare 
 actions, not men, dishonourable except in cases 
 where it adjudges the loss of life with that of honour. 
 
140 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 because loss of honour is the extinction of humanity ; 
 and every heart, however degraded, still preserves 
 indestructible the life-germ that may grow up into 
 the restoration of the man: then is it still more 
 sinful, by the cruel frost of ignominious punishment, 
 to injure this life-seed in the child, which as yet 
 only bears unripe and growing members. You may 
 give him, as rewards, coats of arms, chains and stars 
 of orders, and doctors' hats or, as punishments, take 
 all these away; but do not let the punishments of 
 honour be greater ; that is to say, do not let them be 
 positive, as the dunces' caps, and wooden horses of 
 many schools are. Shame is the cold Orcus of the 
 inner man; a spiritual hell, without redemption, 
 wherein the damned can become nothing else but at 
 most one devil more. Therefore, even Gedicken's 
 advice, to oblige a child deserving punishment to 
 write a theme about his fault, is to be rejected 
 (except at a somewhat later period); for what else 
 can this raking up of the inner slough produce but 
 either foul, complete sinking and incrustation of the 
 fallen child, or poisonous stunning" of the better by 
 marsh exhalations ? And does not the tender being 
 thus harden and accustom himself to a contradiction 
 between words and feelings? Somewhat similar is 
 the punishment of kissing the hand which has in- 
 flicted chastisement. The state and education do 
 so mutually work after and imitate one another! 
 I only cite as an example the disgraceful re- 
 
PUNISHMENTS. 141 
 
 tractation of an injury. For as no civic power 
 can remove the opinion of the injurer, the com- 
 mand to revoke his words is only the command 
 for a lie, and every other punishment would be 
 juster, and more acceptable, than this dictated self- 
 profanation, whereby the man against other rules 
 of justice must show himself up as the house- 
 witness of his own shame. Only the judge, not one 
 of the parties, can justly (not morally) restore honour 
 to the other ; for else he could also take away what 
 he had again given. Still stranger is it that in the 
 more refined degrees of recantation the defendant 
 loses in his own honour what of another's he restores 
 to the plaintiff like a master of the mint who 
 becomes bankrupt. But back to our ill-treated 
 child ! Are not the wounds which an honoured 
 warrior scarcely feels made deep and burning by 
 dishonour? so the dishonoured and helpless being 
 struck by two blows hangs between heaven and 
 earth, scourged both in body and soul, and lan- 
 guishingly desolate. But, ye parents and teachers, 
 in a less degree, but in the same way, do you inflict 
 inward and outward torments on the weak hearts, 
 when as is so often you surround with thorns 
 the corporeal, or other punishments, by derision of 
 their appearance, or by ludicrous names. Never 
 let the least pain be inflicted scoffingly, but seriously, 
 oftener sadly. The sorrow of the parents purifies that 
 of the child. For example, if the royal pupil of 
 
142 SCREAMING AND CRYING 
 
 Fenelon gave way to ebullitions of passion, this 
 bishop of Cambray more properly of Patmos, for 
 he might have been the second disciple whom Jesus 
 loved commanded all the servants to wait on the 
 king's son seriously and silently, and so let stillness 
 preach. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 SCREAMING AND CRYING OF CHILDREN. 
 
 66. 
 
 THE best about this is already written, and the 
 gleanings, too, along with it. All that need be done 
 more is to do what is written; and this I expect 
 from the women for the first time, if they have 
 children in the second world, or at all events in the 
 third. But now their weak, five-sensed heart is 
 driven to and fro by the crying and screaming of 
 children, as by winds and waves; and, since they 
 themselves often perform miracles with the liquidising 
 blood of St. Januarius, that is, with tears, it is 
 natural that they should melt at the flowing tears of 
 others. Only to the man, for whom eye-water 
 frequently becomes a petrifying water, shall a few 
 mollifying considerations be here presented ; so that 
 every screaming of a child shall not make him a 
 savage, a beast, and worse than a beast. 
 
 As Rubens by one stroke converted a laughing 
 
OF CHILDREN. 143 
 
 into a crying child, so nature frequently makes this 
 stroke in the original: a child's eye, like the sun, 
 never draws water so readily as in the hot temper- 
 ature of pleasure ; for instance, after the return from 
 a playing party of children. Their mirth very 
 easily passes beyond the first extreme verge, which, 
 by exhaustion, leads to the second. Moreover, 
 consider that children have their hypochondriacal 
 sufferings days and hours of rain, just as much as 
 their parents ; that the four great seasonal wheels 
 on quarter days also affect young nerves, and that 
 the child's quicksilver easily falls and rises with that 
 in the glass, before storms and cold weather.* 
 
 You should not, however, consider it in order to 
 give more way to it, or more to ward it off, but just 
 to make nothing out of it, neither anxiety nor 
 sermons. 
 
 Since women so willingly translate their sensations 
 into words, and by their talkativeness distinguish 
 themselves, more than we do ourselves, from parrots, 
 
 * The parallel line, or rather parallel zig-zag, between our 
 corporeal world and the outer universe would have been cor- 
 rectly laid down long ago if the great changes produced by the 
 weather in our bodies had not appeared in the weaker part be- 
 fore their occurrence, in some along with it, and in stronger 
 natures afterwards, so that the same weather makes one person 
 ill, which seems to restore another, on whom, in fact, the future 
 is exerting its influence. From a similar reason the mother of 
 the ebb and flow of the tide, the moon, was so long unknown, 
 because they followed her after an interval of hours or even 
 days. 
 
144 SCREAMING AND CRYING 
 
 among which class of birds the females talk little 
 hence only the males are brought to Europe so 
 we must consider the prologue to speech in little 
 girls, that is, some crying and screaming, as the 
 overflow of the future stream. A boy must digest 
 his pain without water, a girl may have a few drops 
 after it. 
 
 Children have, in common with weak men, an 
 incapability of instantaneous cessation from what 
 they are doing. Often no threatening can stop their 
 laughter : remember the converse in their crying, in 
 order to treat their weakness as a physician rather 
 than as a judge. 
 
 67. 
 
 We may divide children's hurts, or crying at hurts, 
 into four, like the four feelers of a snail, with which 
 they touch the ground. First, screaming about 
 some outward hurt, a fall for instance. Here 
 nothing is more injurious than what is so desirable 
 in all requisitions to the child the soft, com- 
 passionate mother's voice : the compassion of another 
 joins in with what he feels for himself, and he cries 
 on for pleasure. Either say dryly, " Courage," " Be 
 quiet," " It doesn't signify ;" or, still better, repeat 
 some merry old Da-capo word, " Hoppa" for instance. 
 The strength or weakness of the child must decide 
 whether you should in the first case choke the pain by 
 an absolute forbiddal of its outbreak since victory 
 
OF CHILDREN. 145 
 
 over the sign by distraction and division becomes a 
 victory over the thing or, in the second, let nature 
 heal itself by those inner-home methods, which in 
 grown-up people are exclamations and curses, and 
 tears and noise. You need not answer me, " Yery 
 common advice," for I reply, "But of very rare 
 accomplishment." The unaltered course of old 
 counsellors ought to produce an improved one in the 
 hearers. 
 
 68. 
 
 In the second kind of crying, on the contrary, 
 that caused by illness, the gentle, soothing mother's 
 voice is in its right place namely, by the sick-bed. 
 And for what other reason than this, because the 
 little spiritual I or I-let, whose place it is to govern 
 and direct the physical, is itself attacked and 
 plundered, and the mind, lying in iron chains, knows 
 not how to bear " the order of the iron crown ? " 
 Here you must indulge complainings, yet without 
 paying more attention to them than at other times. 
 Maintain the spiritual regimen, even if you must 
 change the physical. Children in sickness are 
 morally distorted; the sick-bed improves the sick- 
 cradle injures. No sick child ever yet died of good 
 education. But why are we so serious on this point, 
 but because too frequently, in private, the whole 
 education of childish humanity is only made into 
 the nurse of physical progress ; as (if the expression 
 may be allowed) men use the holy breath of life to 
 
146 SCREAMING AND CRYING 
 
 turn the sails of windmills, and the next world as a 
 swimming bladder on our earth ? Bad enough ! 
 Every unholy thing sets before itself (and others) a 
 period from which it will first begin to contemplate 
 the eternity of the Holy ; as if humanity were 
 attached to some future year, the twentieth, thir- 
 tieth, sixtieth, instead of to every present moment. 
 Where, and in what age and place, will the fear of 
 hurting life by the strict consistency of education be 
 overcome ? Think always only of the best ; the good 
 will soon appear. 
 
 69. 
 
 The third kind of crying is that used to get some- 
 thing. Here hold fast Rousseau's advice, Never let 
 the child obtain an inch of ground by this war-cry ; 
 only the misfortune is, women are never to be moved 
 to this patient indifference towards screaming. But 
 they say to him, "No, you shall have nothing 
 while you are so naughty ; but, when you have done 
 crying, you shall see what I will give you." And 
 does the little despot want any thing more? The 
 greatest thing it might be permitted a mother to do 
 in her distress would be, if her little tributary king 
 were young enough, to bring down and offer him the 
 usual tribute and exchequer bills, instead of this 
 extraordinary war-tax ; i. e. to grant him a different, 
 instead of the required, gift. But, heavens ! has 
 one then never seen how happy a child is who 
 knows no orders, and consequently no foreign 
 
OF CHILDREN. 147 
 
 stubbornness who skips away as laughingly after 
 a no, as after a yes who by no changing arbi- 
 trariness between permission and restraint, between 
 yes and no, to which a victorious screaming fit 
 always leads in the end, has not yet made the first 
 bitter experience of injustice ; and who, consequently, 
 receives no other nor deeper wounds than those 
 which can strike the body ? Mothers, have you never 
 yet seen this happy child ? Try it, for an expe- 
 riment, in one point; for instance, strictly forbid 
 your child of about two years and three quarters 
 old ever to touch your watch (though rather a breast 
 than an ear pendant), even if the watch lie openly 
 every day on your work-table, and only act thus 
 three days together, so as never to contradict your- 
 self you will curse your former "forfeit monies." 
 
 70. 
 
 Against the fourth kind of crying about loss, 
 from fear, from vexation the imposition of some 
 occupation is useful. Or thus ; you earnestly 
 demand the child's attention, and begin a long 
 speech ; it is quite indifferent where it at last ends ; 
 it is sufficient that the child has exerted himself and 
 forgotten his misfortune. The thunder-spark of a 
 harsh word is very good " Quiet ! " for instance. 
 Never let the mind's green and yellow sickness ill- 
 temper spread over the whole being. Hence it ia 
 very important, especially with little children, never 
 
148 CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. 
 
 to wait for the full outbreak of ill-humour, but at 
 once to mark and repress its first smallest indication. 
 For the rest, never put to flight naughtinesses which 
 die away with years by those which grow with 
 years : the tears of childhood dry up before the sighs 
 of manhood commence. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE TRUSTFULNESS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 n. 
 
 LONG before the child can speak he understands 
 the speech of others, and that without gestures or 
 cadence in the voice : just as we understand a foreign 
 language without being able to speak it. It is for 
 this reason that this chapter is placed here. 
 
 One need but lend nearer objects to the child's 
 faith (fides implicita) of the elder theologians, and 
 the word becomes important and true. If the child 
 have in his own father a holy father, with all the 
 advantages of infallibility, and with the additional 
 protection of a holy mother if, retaining the 
 discourse of a stranger at once with belief and un- 
 belief, he bring it to his parents, and ask, Is it true? 
 if to him, according to the primary propositions of 
 the Wolfian philosophy, the father be the proposition 
 of the sure foundation, the mother the proposition of 
 
CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. 149 
 
 doubt, and the teacher the proposition of the un- 
 distinguishable ; if he, believing without proof, 
 set a pair of human beings against the whole outer 
 world, and equal to his own inner world ; if, when 
 threatened, he rely with no more confidence on the 
 bodily strength of the parental arms than on their 
 spiritual power ; if all this be so, it reveals a treasure 
 of humanity, which, to value according to its worth, 
 we need but to find and behold in older hearts. 
 What then rests on this yet unmeasured faith in 
 men ? In the intellectual world nearly every thing ; 
 and in the moral world at least as much. 
 
 The intellectual world, it is true, will be least 
 ready to grant this of itself. But what do we know 
 of any island whatever which a voyager discovers, 
 more than our faith in him gives? Or what of 
 whole continents? A rough seafarer by his testi- 
 mony governs a geographic continent in the learned 
 world. If you oppose to me the multitude of 
 witnesses although few distant countries have as 
 many witnesses as a testamentary document I 
 answer, Even out of the multitude of witnesses, no 
 weight of probability would ensue, if the great faith 
 in one individual were not strengthened by the 
 multiplication of individuals. Man believes man 
 more readily about the distant and the vast about 
 former centuries and quarters of the globe, than 
 about what is near and small ; and he does not 
 permit in a stranger the probability of a lie to 
 
 H 3 
 
150 CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. 
 
 increase with the facility and impunity of uttering it, 
 but with the very reverse. 
 
 Thus we glean our Roman and Grecian history 
 chiefly from their own testimony for we ourselves 
 contradict the Persians who contradict Herodotus 
 and we do not make half the difficulty about the 
 collateral testimony of a thousand other witnesses 
 (for no historian ever experienced all that he calls to 
 life and describes), concerning a succession of a 
 million actions, which lawyers do about one single 
 matter of fact for which they require two witnesses. 
 AVhat gives us this certainty ? Faith in humanity, 
 and so in men, and consequently in one individual. 
 
 So, further, the sciences of medicine, of astronomy, 
 natural history, chemistry, are built up sooner and 
 more extensively on others' experience than on our 
 own: consequently on faith. Even our convictions 
 from philosophical calculations call in trust in others, 
 to aid the probability that we have not miscal- 
 culated. And wherefore does an irresistible longing 
 impel us so strongly to the opinions of great men 
 about the foundations of our being, about God and 
 our own souls, but because we believe their assu- 
 rances more than the proofs of others and of our- 
 selves ? And how does not intoxicated youth hang 
 like bees on flowering lime-trees drinking in the 
 spirit of a celebrated teacher ! 
 
 But this faith reveals most richly its glorious form 
 when its object is moral. Here the heart is refreshed 
 
CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. 151 
 
 by true bliss-imparting faith. In the intellectual 
 world one trusts to what you say in the moral, to 
 what you are. As lovers trust each other, as the 
 friend trusts the friend, and the noble heart trusts 
 humanity, and the faithful trust God- this is the 
 Peter's rock, the fast foundation of human worth. 
 Alexander, who drank the suspicious medicine, was 
 greater than the physician who made it healing 
 instead of poisonous ; it is nobler to exercise a 
 dangerous confidence than to deserve it : but wherein 
 consists the divinity of this trustfulness? Not by 
 any means merely in this that you cannot presup- 
 pose any power of vital danger in another, without 
 knowing and possessing it actively in yourself for 
 you may both know and possess it, and yet not pre- 
 suppose it ; and then in dangers, as in the case of 
 Alexander, the trustful only is endangered not the 
 trusted. But herein consists the triumphal banner of 
 faith in humanity, and the civic crown of heaven; 
 that the trusting must forbear and remain quiet 
 which, as in war, so in every thing else, is more diffi- 
 cult than to do and struggle and that faith, although 
 the matter in hand be but a single case, yet beholds 
 and embraces all cases, a whole life. He who rightly 
 trusts shows that he has seen the moral deity face to 
 face ; and there is, perhaps, no higher moral gratifi- 
 cation on earth than this if sense and testimony 
 attack the friend in your heart to hurl him thence, 
 even then to stand by him with the God in you, to 
 
 ii 4 
 
152 
 
 preserve and to love him, not as formerly, but more 
 deeply. 
 
 Therefore, if this trustfulness be the holy spirit in 
 man, a lie is the sin against that spirit; since we 
 place another's word so high even above our own - 
 that, according to Pascal, a man to whom any sin was 
 ascribed would at last believe and realise it. Platner 
 maintains that the weaker the brain the more readily 
 it believes, as is seen in drunken persons, sickly 
 women, and children : but the question here becomes 
 whether this (merely physical) weakness, which af- 
 fords room for so many tender developments of the 
 heart for love, inspiration, religion, poetry does 
 not prepare, though at the cost of the other powers, 
 the true, pure loneliness of absolute dominion to the 
 holiest of the perceptions, the perception of the holi- 
 ness of others ? The English are more easy of belief 
 than any other nation, but neither weaker nor weak : 
 they hate a lie too much ever to presuppose it. 
 
 72. 
 
 I return to the trustfulness of children. Nature 
 has, as if figuratively, richly prepared them for re- 
 ception: the bones of the ear are, according to 
 Haller, the only ones which are as large in the child 
 as in the grown-up man ; or, to use another simile, 
 the veins of imbibition are, according to Darwin, the 
 fuller the younger they are. Holily preserve child- 
 like trust, without which there can be no education. 
 
CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. 153 
 
 Never forget that the little dark child looks up to 
 you as to a lofty genius, an apostle full of revelations, 
 whom he trusts altogether more absolutely than his 
 equals, and that the lie of an apostle destroys a 
 whole moral world. Wherefore never bury your in- 
 fallibility by useless proofs, nor by confessions of 
 error : the admission of your ignorance comports bet- 
 ter with you. Power and scepticism the child can 
 sufficiently early, and not at your charges, polemically 
 and protestantly exercise and strengthen on the de- 
 clared opinions of strangers. 
 
 Do not in the least degree support religion and 
 morality by reasons: even the multitude of pillars 
 darken and contract churches. Let the holy in your- 
 self be directed (without lock and turnkey) to the 
 holy in the child. Faith like the innate morality, 
 the patent of the nobility of humanity brought with 
 it from heaven opens the little heart to the great 
 old heart. To injure this faith is to resemble Calvin, 
 who banished music out of the churches : for faith is 
 the echo of the heavenly music of the spheres. 
 
 When in your last hour think well of it all in 
 the broken spirit fades and dies, poems, thoughts, 
 strivings, rejoicings : even then the night-flower of 
 faith still blooms on, and refreshes with its perfume 
 in the last darkness. 
 
 H 5 
 
154 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 APPENDIX TO THE THIRD FRAGMENT. 
 
 ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 THE expression is, properly, false ; for as the science 
 of care of the body it would equally apply to beasts, 
 strong men, and the aged ; the cook would be a La- 
 bonne, and the kitchen a magazine of school-books. 
 Permit me here to insert some observations on at- 
 tention to the bodies of children which I addressed to 
 a newly-married man shortly before his wife's con- 
 finement. (Some readers will not agree so theo- 
 retically with this letter as my three children, who, 
 during the printing and distribution of the first edition, 
 were educated in accordance with it, practically did, 
 by their flourishing condition.) 
 
 You may freely inform your dear wife why I write 
 now on this point instead of half a year later ; namely, 
 because she is now still trustful, but will, in time 
 to come, be as disobedient as possible. I have known 
 the most intelligent women who have really assisted 
 and followed up the wishes of their most intelligent 
 husbands in regard to the physical care of their child 
 until the second had not yet arrived ; but then, or at 
 most when the fourth came, the dietetic kitchen-Latin 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 155 
 
 and medicinal patois of the women assumed the 
 government, and nothing more could be effected than 
 one or two propositions without results. 
 
 A woman during her first pregnancy might easily 
 commit to memory Hufeland's " Good Advice to 
 Mothers," since in the new edition there would be 
 but three and a half pages to be learned monthly. 
 
 But Heaven preserve every one from that timid 
 over-carefulness which mistrusts nature, and has 
 every child's tooth extracted by the physician or 
 apothecary. If one ventures nothing upon children, 
 yet one ventures themselves ; their bodies probably, 
 their minds certainly. Only let a person observe the 
 rosy children in lonely villages, where the whole 
 Brownonian apothecary's shop has nothing in its 
 phials save brandy ; or the descendants of savages 
 compared with the fading Flora of noble houses, for 
 which e very-day draughts of every possible kind are 
 compounded. 
 
 However, no where is Hufeland's " Good Advice to 
 Mothers" less attended to than in the huts of pea- 
 sants and beggars. There one sees many little pale 
 creatures looking out of the narrow windows when 
 one goes out on sledging expeditions. But they 
 bloom again with the earth ; the open air makes them 
 rosy sooner than the sun does the apple. 
 
 Hunters, savages, mountaineers, soldiers all con- 
 tend with all their powers for the advantages of fresh 
 air; all those who have lived to be a century and a 
 
156 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 half old were beggars ; and in fact if a man wishes to 
 become nothing but old, and to continue nothing but 
 healthy, there is no more wholesome, fresh-air- 
 imbibing exercise than begging ; nevertheless mothers 
 believe that a child, placed for half an hour at an 
 open window inhales out of a town, which itself is 
 but a larger room, and merely contains street air 
 instead of house air, as much ethereal breath as is 
 necessary to purify and cleanse twenty-three hours 
 and a half of cavern air. Does no one remember, or 
 no one remind her, with all her dread of air, that 
 during the miserable autumn weather she travelled, 
 on account of the war, three days long, with her in- 
 fant baby in an open vehicle, through the pure fresh 
 air, without any other particular injury than that of 
 being brought here ? Could no chemist, by visible 
 representations of the different kinds of poisonous air, 
 impart to the mothers in towns a sense of the value 
 of heaven's free air, in order to break them of their 
 carelessness about the only invisible and ever active 
 element ? 
 
 Why do you write, u I fear nothing so much as 
 the procuring of a wet-nurse ? " Two of my children, 
 precisely the strongest, were brought up without the 
 breast. But if a nurse is commonly healthy, and has 
 not much less given her to do, nor much more to eat, 
 than during her necessitous solitude, she may any 
 day enter your service. Certainly I do not offer 
 myself as security against any mental poisoning by 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 157 
 
 her morals and care, any more than I do for all 
 women servants, from the midwife downwards; an 
 honest old, but good-tempered man-servant, your 
 John, for instance, would be much better for a child's 
 heart than any nurse and child's maid : just as at a 
 later period, for the same reason, children are more 
 spoiled and enervated in the friendly, praising, indul- 
 gent society of women, than in the cold, dry company 
 of men. As regards the physical empoisonment of 
 the milk by mental excitement, I should prefer the 
 nurse to the lady. One often sees a common mother, 
 as a bombarding ship, or bomb-shell, foster that kind 
 of conversation with another woman, which is the 
 only one in this world that has never grown wearisome, 
 and which men call wrangling and abusing ; but the 
 suckling has observed or cried little about it. On 
 the contrary, a lady, whom a false stitch of her maid, 
 like the sting of a tarantula, sets into an armed dance, 
 may poison it three or four times a day. What con- 
 cerns another mental poison-draught for the child I 
 utterly deny. If, as I believe I am able to prove, 
 no partial transmigration of soul from the mother 
 into the new-born child is possible, how much less 
 can mind influence mind by means of a nourishment 
 which first affects the stomach ! One might just as 
 well believe, with the Caribbees, that pork produces 
 small eyes; or with the Brazilians, that the flesh of 
 ducks imparts the lazy awkward pace of a duck. On 
 this principle, goat's milk, and perhaps most nurses' 
 
158 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 milk, would have the same effect as that of Jupiter's 
 nurse, which so completely transformed the god that 
 he may be employed as any thing rather than an ex- 
 ample of many of the ten commandments, Bechstein, 
 it is true, remarks that otters may be tamed by 
 human milk ; but one may find a much nearer, and 
 truer cause in the circumstances which such a milk- 
 diet presupposes. 
 
 Much contention may take place about the rektion 
 of the mother's milk to the child's body. If a healthy 
 stomach, like death, makes all alike, potatoes, bread, 
 venison steaks, ship biscuits, ale, insects (crabs), 
 worms (snails), and, finally, human flesh, into the same 
 chyle, will not the stomach of a child be able to 
 reduce its nurse's milk to the same substance ? And 
 does not the child's body, in all its organic peculiari- 
 ties, as frequently resemble its father as its mother? 
 Why, if the milk (instead of organisation) effects 
 so much, are not most of the nobility giants, since 
 peasants' milk is often added to aristocratic blood as 
 wine to water ? Indeed, on the ground of the influ- 
 ence of maternal relationship, there would be more to 
 determine for, than against, a nurse. The body 
 ceaselessly polarises itself; consequently the nitrogen, 
 for instance, of the nurse would counterbalance the 
 oxygen of the lady ; and, on the other side, a town 
 lady would be the best official nurse of a peasant 
 boy. A cosmopolite tutor, and diet master, might 
 go still farther, and in order all-sidedly to exercise 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 159 
 
 and train a swaddled child mummies are swaddled 
 corpses, and helmsmen swaddled men insist on its 
 having one day ass's milk, (the positive pole, thesis,) 
 the next, dog's milk, (the negative pole, antithesis,) 
 the day after human milk (indifference, synthesis). 
 
 As early as possible determine the hours of eating, 
 and consequently the times for sleep ; only observing 
 that in the first years the intervals must be more 
 frequent and shorter than afterwards. 
 
 The stomach is such a creature of habit, such a 
 time-keeper, that if, when hungry, we delay its usual 
 period of gratification for a few hours, it does nothing 
 but reject food. But if its hours of compulsory 
 service are appointed, it works beyond its powers. It 
 is only in later years when the sketch and colours of 
 the little man are more strongly marked that middle 
 tints and half shadows may be ventured on ; a child, 
 like a savage, is often freed, often made a slave, by 
 sleep and eating ; the physical nature is then either 
 exercised or vanquished, and the spiritual is crowned 
 in both cases. 
 
 Do not keep the tumult of daily life far distant 
 from the little infant, as though it were an aristocratic 
 patient. If you do not actually permit the fire bell 
 or the discharge of artillery to be heard by its cradle, 
 its long deep slumber in the world will so harden it 
 against every noise, that afterwards, when its ears 
 are quicker, it will yet be able to sleep in the midst 
 of noise ; and what is still better, and prevents in- 
 
160 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 jurious night-feeding, it will only sleep all the 
 sounder in the contrasting stillness of night. 1 
 earnestly contend against suckling in the night ; for 
 your wife ought to sleep; and it is quite suffi- 
 cient if she suckle her little darling shortly before 
 going to sleep, and then again immediately after 
 wakening. It is a trifle, but so is a line ; why may 
 I not give one to the other ? I mean, why do you 
 lay the head of a new-born child higher than its 
 body ? In the months preceding birth the body 
 actually stood on the head; I should think that a 
 horizontal direction after a perpendicular was quite 
 sufficient ; wherefore, then, create a new want, or 
 prevent the subsequent use of a medicine, which the 
 higher placing of the head is to children in case of 
 colds, by employing it before it is needed ? 
 
 With regard to animal food, most people say 
 Wait till there are teeth to bite it. Why ? toothless 
 children take, with advantageous effects, broths, and 
 the strongest honey-thick extract of meat that I know, 
 the yolk of eggs. Even flesh -meat is less to be ob- 
 jected to on account of its size, since it may be cut 
 quite as small as it can be chewed, than on account 
 of its being swallowed without chewing, that is, 
 without saliva. But children enjoy and digest milk 
 and broth almost entirely without previous gastric 
 juice, the saliva, as birds of prey do pieces of flesh. 
 Probably large pieces are chiefly injurious because 
 we take more of them, and quicker than little 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 161 
 
 ones in the same time ; for the stomach reckons 
 satiety in hunger as in thirst not according to 
 quantity (for a pint of water will frequently not 
 quench the thirst as well as a slice of lemon) but ac- 
 cording to organic assimilation : hence of no kind of 
 food does one more easily eat so much too much as 
 of what is indigestible ; because the difficult and more 
 tardy assimilation delays and conceals the feeling 
 of satiety. What digestion is, no physiologist has 
 hitherto been able to explain. The gastric juice 
 which is said to excite or produce hunger (is there 
 any thirst juice for thirst ?) with its few spoonfuls is 
 not sufficient when diluted and surrounded by a 
 bottle of wine and a plate of soup, as a grain of arse- 
 nic by oil to dissolve a Styrian cock's comb, not to 
 mention an early meal, or even a late one. The 
 gentle animal warmth which, as August is the wine- 
 cook, ought to be the cooking wine of food, is cooled 
 and deluged by cold liquids with less of disadvantage 
 than advantage to the digestion. If the stomach of 
 men, as their nature in general, works as an ellipse, 
 with two foci, and so not merely as a membranaceous 
 vulture stomach, but also as a fleshy poultry stomach, 
 and along with chemical, possesses also mechanical 
 force, I do not understand how a pressure that, for 
 instance, of meat-broth or of gruel assists it in di- 
 gestion. 
 
 But we are concerned with the thing itself, not 
 with its explanation. Flesh-meat seems especially 
 
162 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 useful to counteract the weakness of childhood and 
 the superabundance of sour food ; since even the 
 young of granivorous birds are fed advantageously 
 with eggs, worms, and insects. A slight and rare sur- 
 feit will exercise and strengthen the stomach's power 
 of endurance : only do not let the beast of burden be 
 overloaded with easily injurious substances, such as 
 eggs or meat, but with things of moderately long 
 duration, such as pulse or potatoes. 
 
 Why do not people give children, at times when 
 they will not take their food, sugar (as distinct from 
 confections as food from poison), on whose nourishing 
 substance the negro feeds himself and his horse during 
 journeys of days together ? 
 
 During the earliest years I was about to com- 
 mence so again, but without any reason, for the strict 
 ordering of life only comprehends a period sufficiently 
 long to raise and fasten the scaffolding of life. But 
 as the danger of death diminishes every day it is 
 well known to be greatest at first growing freedom 
 and powerful many-sidedness must arm the child 
 against all the two and thirty winds and storms of life. 
 
 Tea and coffee, as well as cakes and fruit, are 
 generally given much more willingly and abundantly 
 to children, than wholesome wine as a tonic, and 
 wholesome hopped beer as a drink ; whereas it were 
 much better not to give the two liquids at all, cakes 
 very seldom, and fruit abundantly only in hot seasons. 
 By all means give them wine, (but not any old, 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 163 
 
 Spanish or Hungarian,) not out of a punch ladle, but 
 out of a teaspoon, and more frequently than abun- 
 dantly, and every year less, and in the season of 
 manly strength and vigour none at all. Bitter beer, 
 at a proper distance from two meals, is at once ex- 
 citement and nourishment. Afterwards, in the eighth 
 and tenth years, water must be the drink, and beer 
 the tonic. I would not merely allow girls to drink 
 beer longer than boys but always ; unless the mothers, 
 like true Lycurguses, forbid growing fat. Thank 
 God, my friend, in the name of your posterity, that 
 you, like myself, do not live in Saxony, or in the 
 Saxon Yoigtland, but in Baireuth, near the best beer 
 the champagne-beer. 
 
 White beer without hops is a slimy poison for 
 children ; and unhopped brown beer not much better. 
 Those who are too fat should only take it in water, 
 as the Greeks did wine. In the early ages of Ger- 
 many, before tea, coffee and foreign wine ruled and 
 weakened, fourfold stronger beer was brewed ; then 
 people did not dig the bones of giants out of the 
 earth, but frequently consigned them to it ; where- 
 as for us, under the government of concentrated 
 tea and coffee poison, the only antidote, beer, is 
 weakened. 
 
 About one point, my friend (forgive my following 
 no other order than that of yourself and your wishes) 
 you will in future often grow hot or cold towards 
 your gentle wife, at least I expect so and that is, 
 
164 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 actually about heat and cold. It is a well-known 
 fact that more than one excellent author has much pro- 
 longed the continuance of the honey-moon, holding 
 it to resemble the year- weeks of Daniel, and has 
 only fixed its certain end after the birth of the first 
 child ; concerning this, however, there has been 
 much quarelling: partly on the man's side with 
 medical reasons, and partly on the woman's with 
 her own ; I mean this in case the child is healthy ; 
 if it be sickly perfect rage ensues. I once wrote a 
 paragraph on this subject in case I should ever 
 experience the happiness of forming myself on my 
 own principles of education. 
 
 Since women, like a born parlour race, or house- 
 hold divinity we are merely sea, land, and air 
 gods ; or, compared to those domesticated doves, 
 kindly-meaning but untamed w r ild pigeons love 
 warmth as they do coffee, and so, besides covering, 
 seek all manner of warm wraps, only far too many for 
 one body ; and would rather have nine accumulated 
 veils and shawls than one, though of the largest, and 
 for that reason lay aside furs, however warm and costly 
 they are ; therefore it is that these mentally tropical 
 beings willingly press their preferences and necessities 
 on the beings they love best their children. But 
 does not nature herself at birth make the most marked 
 change, when she casts it out of an organic bed, 
 which she herself warmed, through the air, into a 
 lifeless one for which the child must be the bed- 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 165 
 
 warmer ? To which is to be added the partial and, 
 moreover, injurious uncovering, that of the face and 
 head, after the previous uniform warmth of the 
 whole body. Hence the question might be mooted, 
 whether the head of the new-born infant so hairless, 
 so thin-skulled and unclosed does not need to be 
 protected by warm coverings more, or at least as 
 much as the other members, if many men, among 
 whom we, the whole congregated posterity of our 
 ancestors, are to be * reckoned, had not hitherto 
 withstood it and are still alive : so richly does nature 
 gush forth in new springs whether you close against 
 her one or one hundred. In the mean time she 
 receives the child after this transit from the hot zone 
 of the earth into the cold one, with two invigorating 
 provocatives ; with nourishment for the lungs and 
 nourishment for the stomach two hitherto un- 
 employed members. Well, then, let the mother 
 imitate therein the universal mother, and not let the 
 child fly from external cold, but conquer it by ex- 
 citements to inward warmth. The best fur-coat for 
 children grows on wine mountains. Joy is the 
 warm sunny side of the mind and of the body. 
 Exercise is the third non-conductor of frost. The 
 new eulogists of warmth are only in the right when 
 they are interrupted. In the cold air of a room a 
 child would shrivel up like a plant on the top of a 
 mountain ; but it would do the same in everlasting 
 heat : the strongest men are not produced either in 
 
166 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the immediate neighbourhood of the equator, or of 
 the poles, but in the temperate zones, which alternate 
 between frost and warmth, but with a preponderance 
 of the latter. Do not let any apartments for children 
 be cold, with the exception of the sleeping- room ; for 
 bed is of itself an external fur covering, and sleep an 
 internal one ; and what additional warmth is possible, 
 in case of illness, if you have already more than 
 reached the degree permitted ? If you allow your 
 future Paul (if I may venture to choose his god- 
 father before you) to go without shoes (which would 
 be to you but a saving of leather, but to him of a 
 whole funeral train of evils); or if you order your 
 future Paulina (to whom he will, probably, with 
 gentlemanly politeness permit the first entrance into 
 life, for most first children are females,) to go without 
 stockings, though soled or shoed, then, in every 
 illness where a warm foot-bath is advisable, you can 
 give one of the longest duration simply by a pair of 
 shoes and stockings. I had my reasons, friend, for 
 recommending shoes, as though they were bridal 
 shoes, to your Paulina, although, alas! along with 
 them all the corns, cold feet, thin tender soles and 
 heels, which a shoe includes. For I know from afar 
 off the despair, the womanly dread, lest feet without 
 shoes should really grow as large as nature intended, 
 and so quite beyond the conventional size of a foot. 
 Our Chinese Podolatry (foot-worship) more readily 
 suffers the nakedness of the higher parts, for instance, 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 167 
 
 of the bosom or of the back, than for a girl to go 
 barefoot. Luckily in this case a boy is not a 
 girl. So let him dance barefoot through his young 
 world, like the ancient heroes, who are always 
 represented with bare feet. If his foot grow into 
 a pedestal, what signifies it to us two men, since 
 we and even rational women, inquire so little about 
 it? 
 
 Why do mothers talk a hundred times about 
 taking cold, and scarcely once about becoming over- 
 heated, which, especially in winter, so readily passes 
 into fatal cold? I shall answer this in a very 
 unexpected way, when I say, It is because winter 
 lies nearest to their heart, and consequently most in 
 their eyes. Winter is, in fact, the bleacher and fair 
 colourer of their faces, and they approach the snow 
 as a new whitening material ; hence summer is 
 much too warm for them to uncover their necks and 
 shoulders as they do in winter, which does not 
 discolour them. Hence those tender chamber-covered 
 nurslings, lily-white and lily-fragile, come from the 
 north, and resemble those white blades of grass, 
 which may be found under stones in the midst of 
 green spring. Certainly this dazzling winter-snow 
 does not bear the fruits of the true blossom-snow, 
 for which, nevertheless, we often mistake it, as we do 
 beauty for strength. 
 
 A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian 
 garment-fashion of the present Gymnosophists, 
 
168 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 (naked female runners), which, it is true, injures the 
 mothers, but hardens the daughters ; for as age and 
 custom should avoid every fresh cold, so youth 
 exercises itself on it, as on every hardship, until it 
 can bear still greater. 
 
 The Unalasks, (hear it, ye enemies of every harden- 
 ing process !) dip a crying child into the sea until it 
 is quiet, it necessarily afterwards grows the stronger 
 for it.* So, simile- wise, the present naked manner 
 of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughters 
 are dipped, who usually grow cheerful in it. A 
 physician should always invent the fashions ; since 
 he cannot remove a new one except by something 
 still newer. 
 
 A system of physical hardening is, indeed, men- 
 tally necessary, because the body is the anchor- 
 ground of courage. Its aim and consequence is not 
 so much health and prolongation of life for weakly 
 and sensual persons often grow old, and nuns and 
 court ladies still oftener as a fortification against 
 weakness of character, and for cheerfulness and 
 activity. As it is not a woman's but only a man's 
 mind which becomes more womanish by effeminacy, 
 it may easily happen in the higher ranks in which 
 the men are, comparatively, more effeminate than 
 the women, that the weak will surpass the weakened 
 sex ; and men and women have the delightful 
 
 * See Kanfs Phys. Geog. von Vollmer, 3 B. 1st div. 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 169 
 
 prospect of resembling date-trees, of which the 
 female only produces fruit, the male nothing but 
 flowers. 
 
 The present fashion in dress, regarded as an air 
 bath establishment, might have its end more per- 
 fectly obtained among children, if the garments were 
 occasionally entirely laid aside. I mean, why do not 
 we give ourselves, but still more our children, the 
 pleasure of playing naked half a day in the warm air 
 and sunshine, like Adam in his paradise of innocence ? 
 
 In ancient Germany, where our ancestors tasted 
 the forbidden fruit later, and consequently hung the 
 fig leaves later round them, the children were per- 
 mitted, as in Egypt, to remain ten years longer in 
 nakedness : what spirits of physical power must not 
 have stepped from their cold forests, when eighteen 
 hundred years of warmth and luxury have not 
 sufficed to make their descendants weaker than 
 either of us two ! So the wood of stripped trees 
 can bear a greater weight than that of those which 
 retain their bark. 
 
 One need but see how light, active, and refreshed 
 an unclothed child feels, drinking and swimming 
 through the air, moving its muscles and limbs freely, 
 and ripening in the sun like a fruit from which the 
 leaves have been removed. So many children's 
 games are Olympic and gymnastic, let the children, 
 then, at least be Greeks, that is to say, unclothed. 
 The cold water bath may be best used immediately 
 
170 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 after the air bath ; if, in other respects, it may be 
 unconditionally recommended to children under four 
 years old. There is, however, one compensation for 
 the bath ; that of a daily dipping of the whole body 
 in cold water, though each limb be only wet in turns 
 and quickly rubbed dry. I permitted this Anabaptist 
 sin against Brown and his followers, to be perpe- 
 trated every day upon my own children : the con- 
 sequences were, not chilliness, colds, and weakness, 
 but the very reverse. Schwarz, in his treatise on 
 education, regards the dislike of a child to this 
 treatment as a hint from nature ; but then the same 
 reason would apply to many medicines, and also to 
 the warm bath, which children struggle against in 
 the first instance, because they feel all at once so 
 many unaccustomed delights. 
 
 If cold water have medicinal powers for the 
 stomach, which evaporate when warmed, so has it 
 also for the imbibing skin. After air, cold and 
 warm baths, sleep is beneficial. 
 
 There is still one kind of bath, hitherto unused, 
 which would be very advantageous, both to parents 
 and children, I mean a thunder-storm bath. Phy- 
 sicians employ in their experiments on nervous in- 
 valids, electric air, electric plates, electric baths ; but 
 thunder, or rather thunder water, they have not as 
 yet prescribed. Have they never experienced that a 
 person never feels so fresh, cheerful, and elastic as 
 after a warm or tepid rain has penetrated to the 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 171 
 
 skin ? Since human beings, when dry again after 
 a storm, feel so much invigorated, and the world 
 of flowers still more so, why will they not receive 
 this united fire and water baptism from above, and 
 suffer themselves to be raised and healed by the 
 wonder-working arm in the thunder cloud ? 
 
 One ought to have an especial rain or bathing suit 
 of clothes, as a frequenter of the spring cloud-baths ; 
 and then, when there is promise of wet weather, 
 make a rain party, and return home dripping. 
 
 The bath company must, alas! change their 
 clothes the only thing about it which does not 
 please me. The shepherd boy, even in the cold 
 rainy days of November, takes no chest of clothes 
 with him to the field; neither does any French 
 soldier who has inarched himself warm all day in the 
 rain, and lies down at night on the cold ground ; the 
 fisher stands with his feet in the water and his head 
 in the sun, precisely breaking and reversing the 
 physician's rule ; yet the only hundred and seventy 
 year old man in England was a fisher, and had pre- 
 viously been a soldier, and a beggar ! Heavens ! 
 with what a fair play-ground and free city of the body 
 is our mind originally surrounded ! and how long 
 must it have been the slave of sin and of opinion ere 
 it was condemned to be the chained helmsman or 
 ship-mover of the body ! 
 
 Mental all-sidedness, which means all-power- 
 fulness, is not granted us, but physical is ; now let 
 
 I 2 
 
172 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 childhood at least be formed for this, and the body, 
 which can inhabit all countries, be exercised in 
 accommodating itself to all ; as the Russian does, 
 who imitates his own empire, a miniature Europe in 
 climate, and endures by turns the hottest vapour, 
 and the coldest snow baths, the extremes of hunger 
 and of repletion. Is it not enough to be so pam- 
 pered as to make a pillow of a snow ball? and now 
 at last we use a cloak bag, or even a feather bed ! 
 
 I add to the above remarks, that parents in 
 physical matters alas! that it should happen in 
 morals ought to require more from their children 
 than from themselves : in accordance with this, let 
 the rain- wet clothes at appointed times dry on the 
 children. 
 
 "Would that every mother would consider that, as 
 she opposes innoculation to natural small-pox, so, on 
 the same grounds, she should oppose the blow of 
 accidental, unexpected, and therefore unprepared for, 
 danger, by the favourable hardening of versatile 
 childhood, when the choice of the battle-field is so easy ! 
 
 Our modern women might more readily imitate 
 the ancient Germans in every point than in this ; of 
 becoming ministers of the art of healing, and so the 
 midwives of the future world. If I were a physician, 
 or an important teacher in a girl's school, I should 
 consider it my most useful work to prepare a medical 
 " Theory of Doubts " for women ; I would therein 
 merely ask questions, give a hundred answers to 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 173 
 
 each, and then ask them to choose. I would, for 
 instance, lay quite undecided before them, the theory 
 of fever in all its infinite variety, yes, and even the 
 thousand causes of headache, the intermixture of 
 which so much increases it. Whosoever, even in the 
 cradle, gave attention to the science of medicine 
 a science in which, more than in any other, genius 
 and learning should form one indivisible compound 
 being would be astonished at the boldness with 
 which any no-doctor, and his wife into the bargain, 
 pronounces on the parentage, name, and progeny of 
 every illness. Good heavens ! my friend, women think 
 they understand something, we will say the very 
 smallest part, of the most difficult of all applied 
 sciences, that which is applied to the various mental 
 and physical nature, united undistinguishably in one 
 organisation ; whereas whole cities would thank God 
 if there were to be had in each of them but one 
 graduated man, universal doctor, medical counsellor, 
 and first physician, who would assist you, less to 
 heaven, than to your legs again ; and would not, as 
 if he were a pope, regard every pilgrim on this earth 
 as a pilgrim of the cross, whom he had to send forth 
 to win a consecrated grave (if he deserved one). The 
 best physician is a prize in the lottery, the best medi- 
 cine from him is a prize in the lottery. And yet 
 every woman considers herself to be both lotto and 
 lottery ; at once both the great prize, and that fifth 
 in order. 
 
 I 3 
 
174 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Whence comes this absurd pretension to the art 
 of healing among women and let us include our- 
 selves among other human beings, myself, for in- 
 stance (whose whole letter proves it), and among 
 men of former ages, as the old Latin proverb tes- 
 tifies*, and Eulenspiegel also, to whom every passer- 
 by prescribed a cure for his toothache ? This folly 
 proceeds from a hundred causes ; for instance, from 
 the confusion of the science of medicine, and the art 
 of surgery; from the differences among physicians; 
 from anxiety and affection, &c. &c. but, I chiefly 
 believe, from trust in the proposition of a sufficient 
 reason. Man, a cause-seeking animal as well as 
 one of mere habit, however modestly he may 
 listen to all scientific things, which end in history 
 or mere information, to all histories of the world or 
 of nature, to information about measurement, coining, 
 language, arms, antiquity, history, this man cannot 
 restrain his power and insight when any scientific 
 theory is presented to him, whether it be of the 
 subject in hand, of nature, of morals, of taste, of 
 sickness. The peasant gives his opinion about the 
 causes of the world, of a thunder storm, of sin, of a 
 performance on the organ, of bodily pain; for in all 
 these cases he draws his theory entirely out of him- 
 self. 
 
 If women particularly desire to cure something, 
 
 * Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Judseus, mona- 
 chus, histrio, rasor, anus. 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 175 
 
 I would propose to them besides souls, for which 
 they would be better soul-curesses than the soul- 
 curers are wounds; as, in some Spanish provinces 
 women remove the beard, so should they also legs 
 and arms : their hands, so gentle, tender, and apt, 
 their keener survey of what is actually before them, 
 and their compassionate hearts would certainly as 
 sweetly heal common wounds, as they make those 
 of the heart. Many a soldier, if the female surgeon 
 of his regiment were pretty, would boldly expose him- 
 self to wounds, were it only to have them bound by 
 her, or suffer his arm to be amputated by her in 
 order to give her his hand. The blood-fearing eye 
 of women would become sufficiently hardened, though 
 not so flinty, as that of men ; as the Parisian fish- 
 women prove by wounds and blows. Moreover, at 
 this present time the whole world is forming harden- 
 ing-schools for the feelings, I mean wars. 
 
 I will only add a page or two to my over-lengthy 
 epistle, and then break off. Although every mother 
 plays the doctor, she yet constantly requires one for 
 the child. Then she wants very many remedies, in 
 order to try each only once, and so, in consequence, 
 not at the wrong time. Then she requires many 
 doctors, in order to hear and to say much. And 
 many even think to instigate the doctor to a more 
 active campaign against the malady, by representing 
 it as worse than it is, and concealing the favourable 
 symptoms : as if a person should try to rescue him- 
 
 I 4 
 
176 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 self from the danger of drowning by screaming fire, 
 or from fire by the distress signals in use at sea. 
 
 Meanwhile, as no woman's mind will suffer itself 
 to be deprived of a physicking finger along with the 
 doctor's ring, nor of its brains as well as the doctor's 
 hat, a man might, myself for instance, remove the 
 chief danger of a domestic practice of a system of 
 medicine for the family circle, by a few general rules, 
 such, perhaps, as the following : Grant, in general, 
 for instance, that most illnesses are asthenic or weaken- 
 ing according to Brown, above eight-ninths, to 
 Schmidt the full nine-ninths ; now, the younger the 
 children are the more asthenic are they, and so more 
 likely to die from sudden loss of strength, than from 
 sudden over-stimulants; wherefore, in every case 
 you may prescribe strengthening domestic remedies, 
 that is to say nourishment, a tonic of the least in- 
 jurious kind. 
 
 The heat of fever can only be allayed by what 
 the child himself fancies; and still less must it be 
 strengthened by medicines instead of nourishment; 
 and least of all by food instead of drink. A few 
 words on this point may be allowed even to the 
 laity ; the superior excellence of a glass of wine to 
 all glasses of medicine in cases of weakness is seen 
 in grown up people, in whom, after all apothecary's 
 essences, the electric spark of life has frequently 
 been re-kindled by one strengthening bottle of wine, 
 of this I have experienced strangely decisive in- 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 177 
 
 stances. And many things might easily be added 
 to this ; wine has the advantage of a longer, slower, 
 and more constant influence; whereas the tonics of 
 the apothecary assume the name of aquavits, and 
 act like earthquakes, that is to say, by small doses 
 and long intervals. 
 
 I will give yet one other piece of good advice, 
 the very best, to women; that is, when a child is 
 really ill to do nothing whatever especially nothing 
 new not to change a moderate temperature to 
 give him what he wishes to eat or drink to say 
 nothing if he fast for a few days and to avoid 
 all domestic recipes. A mistake in a domestic re- 
 medy, giving wine, for instance, instead of vinegar ; 
 or, in an opposite case, fruit instead of eggs, may 
 just as easily be the cause of death as a mistake in 
 a prescription. The only thing I would further re- 
 commend to the mother is, Dr. Kilian's excellent 
 " Home and Travelling Physician," and that, not 
 that she may attempt to cure by it, but that, after 
 a physician has named the complaint, she may use 
 a treatment in accordance with it. For the hus- 
 band I should recommend Kilian's " Clinical Hand- 
 book," a new edition of the former work, enlarged 
 and enriched with receipts. Both books will be 
 sent for your perusal by the next carrier. 
 
 The gymnastic instruction of your Paul shall be 
 discussed another time, in some six or seven years, 
 when he shall be born and have attained that age. 
 
 i 5 
 
178 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Ill any case I would, at least, let my own children, 
 for weeks together, climb, leap, swim, run races, play 
 at ball and nine pins ; but I would also just as soon, 
 for weeks together, let them dig like a burrowing 
 mole, or be kept quiet like a person recovering from 
 scarlet fever; and this not that they become well, 
 but may continue well ; and in a century given more 
 to sitting than to speaking, may bring with them so 
 much sitting faculty that they may not suffer penance 
 on their bench every session. At least, I would 
 exercise the strong in sitting as much as the weak 
 in exercise. I would also rather set them to hard 
 bodily labour in the evening than in the morning, 
 and so cause physical exertion to follow, not precede, 
 mental. Sitting and thinking after violent exercise 
 is not nearly so healthy or agreeable as the reverse. 
 Active exercise in the morning, as an excitement to 
 the sluggish early pulse, along with the greater ex- 
 citability experienced at that time will frequently 
 exhaust for the whole day. The leaps which boys 
 practise on their way from school show the bent of 
 nature. In spite of all these reasons I would yet 
 do .the opposite not always, but yet occasionally, 
 in order to inure the body to it. 
 
 I will now close my letter, which consists almost 
 entirely of postscripts, because I constantly intended 
 to conclude, and always went on. Fare you well, 
 and your wife still better. J. P. F. R. 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCAT: 179 
 
 P. S. If you should have purchased Dr. Marshall's 
 (f Instructions for the care of Mothers, Children, &c. 
 &c. in their peculiar Illnesses," third edition, two 
 parts be somewhat mistrustful and disobedient with 
 regard to his instructions ; or at least, let them be 
 first filtered and refined, by some Brownian physi- 
 cian. When, for instance, he orders a lying-in 
 woman to have nothing during the first nine days, 
 but sour fruit, saltpetre, and other weakening diets, 
 he does just the same as if one were to lay a person 
 apparently frozen to death, who can only be re- 
 covered by very gradual application of warmth, be- 
 ginning at the lowest possible degree, in an ice-house 
 for a few days in order that he might recover gradu- 
 ally from the cold. Certainly he would do so slowly 
 enough ; as he would scarcely become warm before 
 the resurrection. 
 
 I 
 
180 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE TO THE 
 FIKST VOLUME. 
 
 A DREAMED LETTER TO THE LATE PROFESSOR GELLERT, 
 IN WHICH THE AUTHOR BEGS FOR A TUTOR. 
 
 SUFFER a dreamed letter to find its place here, for 
 the recreation both of reader and writer. Few men 
 have experienced so rational a kind of dreaming as I 
 have done ; whereof more shall be said at some 
 future time in a revision of my treatises : others 
 must treasure up their rational waking thoughts. I 
 was obliged, when awake, to help out this dream, 
 even with some changes in its order, so that it might 
 by the system of opposite ends and aims, as well 
 as of memory and oblivion really appear what it is. 
 For the rest, I hope I paid it sufficient heed ; for, as 
 soon as it was over, I employed the well-known art 
 of recalling dreams by shutting the eyes, and keeping 
 every limb motionless. Unfortunately all the fancies 
 or foundlings of a dream the enfans perdus of the 
 imagination, all the more truly because they usually 
 cany us back to- the days of our childhood, and so 
 form a limbus infantum have this great fault, that 
 they shine brilliantly until we awake, but then little 
 or nothing of them is to be found. At least, such is 
 my case ; and I hope the reader consents. 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 131 
 
 " Excellent departed Gellert ! I want a tutor for 
 my son Max ; for I am at present engaged in writing 
 on education, and consequently have not a spare 
 minute to devote to the practice of it; just as Mon- 
 tesquieu found himself obliged to resign the office of 
 president to devote himself to the 6 Spirit of Laws.' 
 Since, at every university there are pedagogic en- 
 grossers and purveyors, and fewer subjects of instruc- 
 tion than accomplished instructors ; and since, more- 
 over, you, before your decease, exercised the patron's 
 right of appointing tutors, I did not know why you 
 should not proceed in it still better now, not merely 
 because you have marched forward with time, but 
 also with eternity. In the extended acquaintance 
 your immortal part must have formed on many 
 planets (for as virtue in futurity is the reward of 
 virtue, so also heavenly authorship will be the reward 
 of earthly), you cannot fail to have ample choice 
 of people, and candidates in our system. Only you 
 must not propose to me any tricked out, spurred 
 dweller in Leipsig, of your time, clothed throughout 
 in beautifying cement ; no, not even the late Gellert 
 himself (except as far as regards his loving gentle- 
 ness, and naive cheerfulness), I want a very hard 
 material mind. There are, unavoidably, so many 
 born harlequins, shall we also make educated ones, 
 or both together ; stamped yellow pinchbeck pieces, 
 crawling, cringing, worms ? 
 
 " Heavens ! how is it that I always find something 
 
182 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 good in books on education, and so seldom any thing 
 of it in teachers ? What have I not seen of these 
 last, Gellert, and yet may see in any town I please ? 
 I do not (because I will not) think of those peevish 
 creatures full of child-hate, those living aversions to 
 little ones for manly justice makes even a false 
 system of education good ; and to give an instance, 
 nothing is so dangerous in icebergs as the clefts or 
 chasms but of those sickly sweet, honey-dewed, 
 sugar-of-lead perpetual teachers, who would conse- 
 crate every thing for the young, even the swaddling 
 clothes, as a pope does those actually used. Oh ! I 
 perfectly understand that tutor : after every step and 
 every leap of the young creature he will sow some- 
 thing; and, moreover, be most anxious to know 
 whether the mental cherry-stones which he has 
 brought him enveloped in their sweet covering, will 
 grow and take root in his stomach, as he hopes ; or 
 to use another different living metaphor of enjoyment, 
 whether the frogs' eggs he has given him in a draught 
 of pond water are developing themselves. In physi- 
 cal matters, says he, the same thing is commoner, 
 but injurious, and then he shortly alludes to the 
 lessons in which he also teaches it. 
 
 " The tutor stands up for the U without which the 
 child's Q cannot be pronounced. f Let my sermon 
 precede every action,' says he, * the man, forsooth, 
 must strengthen with many reasons every childish 
 action of the child, and shave it with a scythe.' 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 183 
 
 " He who has seen such a man frequently, though 
 not every where, has learned much. In China there 
 is a law-book, and interpreters of it too, to teach the 
 best method of drinking tea genteelly. But the 
 above-mentioned man would wish the thing to be 
 done improperly, and properly also ; because, indeed, 
 he finds a very great want of directions for children 
 how to take coffee, tea, tobacco, stones for throw- 
 ing ; hands for kissing ; and cakes for steal- 
 ing. It is the same man who chalks up the ten 
 commandments on the study door, as on a pillar of 
 remembrance, so that the young may always have 
 them before their eyes - which is precisely the best 
 means of never seeing them. Most parental and 
 tutoral commands resemble the inscription one sees 
 on some doors of 6 shut the door,' which cannot be 
 read if he have left the door open. 
 
 " Observe from above a tutor who chains himself to 
 his prisoners ; who permits himself to be adopted as 
 spiritual father; which the real father ought to be, 
 since we can indeed give instruction to a stranger's 
 child, but education only to our own, because the one 
 may know cessation, the other must proceed without 
 interruption : observe him and he must appear to you 
 (even without the bird's eye perspective of another 
 world) less in that serious light which is usual above, 
 than in a very different one ; when, for instance, you 
 see him take a walk with his auditory of slaves, en- 
 deavouring to turn every hill, and stream, and knot 
 
184 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 of people (in themselves nothing) into a medium of 
 imparting instruction to his slaves. For as long as 
 the child is awake he ceases not to develop him; 
 although, perhaps, his dreams develop him much 
 better. If every eastern pearl costs the life of a 
 slave, every western pupil costs a teacher, and some* 
 thing more. The teacher, who cannot live to him- 
 self, suffers his pupil as little life to himself; and so 
 they mutually impart to each other sins of weakness ; 
 somewhat as the new and the old world imparted to 
 each other a new disease, that of the double small- 
 pox. 
 
 " To speak in figures, departed friend, tutors and 
 beggars mutilate children in order to feed themselves ; 
 only the former expose the distortions as curved lines 
 of beauty, the latter as holes and chinks in their living 
 alms' boxes. 
 
 " Or by their long polishing of the child they rub off 
 its pure form ; like those glass dishes in which curious 
 specimens of glass are so laboriously piled that at 
 last their original depth is positively diminished. 
 
 " But should this be, excellent immortal ? Must my 
 good Max, whose eye and hand aim at power, fall 
 down so weakened and weary ? Must, in short, a 
 boy of the nineteenth century be blown out by his 
 tutor so thin, and tender, and brittle, that he like 
 the man recorded by Lusitanus, who thought his seat 
 was made of glass, and therefore always remained on 
 his legs must regard everything about him as moral 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 185 
 
 aesthetic, intellectual glass, and so not venture to sit, 
 to stand, or to lie nay, not even to be ? As was 
 said above, dear friend, I chose to say this in a some- 
 what figurative style, because I wished to tread in 
 your footsteps. But, like all imitators, I know that 
 too well I must retire with a longer nose and not 
 much shorter ears ; for your present figurative style 
 (since in heaven or Uranus you are near the greatest 
 objects and worlds Jupiter and Hell, and have 
 them to inspire you) must be totally different from 
 any other, even your own mortal style ; from 
 which doubtless it is distinguished by bold oriental 
 imagery ; and you will say, even Gellert, naturalised 
 in heaven, writes in some degree more wittily and 
 instructively, and no one there speaks dully. 
 For the rest I know perfectly well, even to your 
 very phrases, the objections you will make to me 
 against the influence of tutoral glazing. For you 
 will find an anecdote which you have read in Mar- 
 ville*, applicable to the point. As an instance how 
 accurately I can guess, I will myself relate it to you. 
 ' A young gentleman, a preacher, with fine action, 
 voice, and so forth, mounted the pulpit and began his 
 sermon ; but lo ! he had forgotten it, and knew, even 
 less than before, what he had to say. However he 
 composed himself, raised his voice (and himself too, 
 as he hoped, by the action), and proclaimed to his 
 
 * Melange d'histoire de Yigneul-Marville. 
 
186 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 audience, with rare energy, one conjunction after 
 another en/in, car, done, si, or and muttered with 
 falling voice all kind of inaudible matter between the 
 particles. The poorer parishioners were excited, and 
 in the highest degree attentive, yet without being 
 able to understand much ; and so they, naturally, and 
 reasonably, attributed their not hearing to the distance 
 of their sittings from the pulpit, which one part of the 
 congregation supposed too far off, and the other too 
 near. And so this soul-curer, with his connecting, 
 passionate, and apostrophizing words, preached about 
 three quarters of an hour, throwing himself and the 
 pew occupiers into a fever and perspiration ; then 
 pronounced the Amen, and descended from the pulpit 
 with the reputation of a true pulpit orator. The 
 whole body of hearers resolved next time to choose 
 their seats better ; some to sit nearer, some farther off, 
 so as not to lose a syllable.' 
 
 "Now what else do most teachers preach to children, 
 and philosophers to the sons of the muses and their 
 readers, than a few thousand sis, doncs, cars, without 
 any rational word attached ? 
 
 " What else are most lessons to children as most 
 men's conversations to women than customary 
 marks to pay no attention ? 
 
 " You now know what kind of a spiritual father, I 
 the physical father, wish to adopt for my child. Na- 
 turally I only speak of the tutor's soul. His body 
 may just as well be kneaded out of the earth of Ura- 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 187 
 
 nus, Saturn, the moon or the sun, as out of the earth 
 of this world. As to the soul, I wish that you would 
 select such from among the candidates out of the 
 present ten planets, as you did formerly from those 
 out of the ten German circles which circles, dear 
 Gellert, since your removal, have almost undergone 
 ten persecutions of the Christians, and metamorphoses 
 of Vishnu and then, out of this selection from the 
 planets, choose one for me. You will spare me a 
 subject out of the leaden, dull, and heavy, selfish Sa- 
 turn ; who, with all his breadth of rings and abun- 
 dance of moons, has wearisomely long years, and gives 
 a bad light ; as well as a spring beetle out of that 
 merry dancer round the sun, Mercury, the domestic 
 Frenchman of the solar system, who always intoxi- 
 cates himself in the sunshine, and yet, when he 
 really comes before the sun, only looks like a black 
 spot. Excellent professor, you now know everything, 
 and many things much earlier than we do ; of which 
 I only name to you Pallas, Ceres, Juno, and the 
 planets discoverable in future. I will have no in- 
 structor out of Pallas a morsel broken from the 
 earth, and, moreover, at such a distance, for light 
 and heat, from the sun Apollo ; I purposely mention 
 this dwarf planet, because your preference for Athens, 
 whose protecting deity Pallas was, might perhaps in- 
 fluence you. You must be partial to nothing but 
 the next world, and my first child. 
 
 " In one word, I do not know any distinguished 
 
188 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 star from which I would select my tutor, but the 
 morning and evening star ; and so let it be, Gellert ! 
 Much might be said about that star its double name 
 indeed, says two things moreover it is named after 
 the goddess of beauty; also after a certain light- 
 bearer (Lucifer) not light-destroyer especially the 
 star possesses this excellent quality (and many others) 
 that it occupies a very perfect position in the heaven, 
 neither too far from the sun, nor too near the earth ; 
 and that (for children) it does not so strikingly wax 
 and wane as the nearer moon. In short I consider 
 Venus to be the best nurse. And so, I beg my tutor 
 may come from Hesperus. 
 
 "For your son of Hesperus will certainly, I imagine, 
 deal excellently with my child. He will since liber- 
 ality is in every case inestimable, and why not then in 
 education, in the first place treat him with prac- 
 tical freedom and power, and not deprive him of his 
 own. He will find little fault with what is childish. 
 Quickly and perfectly apprehending what is outward, 
 what inward, he will in no case make many words 
 and vast preparations ; will draw him on to what is 
 great and universal, not to what is insignificant ; will 
 rather be the physician to his weakness, than the ex- 
 tinguisher of his strength. He will above all lend 
 his aid to the child of earth ; and shine before and 
 behind him as his starry dwelling, Hesperus, does for 
 the earth, and that only when the sun has not yet 
 risen, or is already set; it is certain that so wise a 
 
TO THE FIEST VOLUME. 189 
 
 Hesperid will not attempt to help the sun in the day 
 time ; I know him too well to suppose it possible. 
 
 "Even in physical matters he will not, with 
 womanish anxiety, be perpetually fearful lest the 
 child should break his leg against every twig 
 though, indeed, the breaking of a leg is better than 
 the dread of it ; and, on the other hand, children are 
 themselves careful, owing to the novelty of all their 
 experiments, and the natural magnifying of a place 
 where they may fall, caused by the shortness of their 
 own bodies or lest he should be poisoned by tin 
 soldiers and children's trumpets ; or hurt by a rocking 
 horse ; or spoiled by wearing trowsers. He who is 
 so fearful on account of others, may himself be sus- 
 pected of fear ; and a coward makes a coward, as a 
 hermit does a hermit. Our ancestors, old Gellert, 
 grew up sufficiently strong and modest with all their 
 trowsers, feather beds, saddles, and spices. 
 
 " It would on another account be particularly agree- 
 able to me that you choose my tutor out of Venus ; 
 because there, according to the best telescopes and 
 astronomers, may be found the loftiest mountains, 
 compared with which our Chimborazzo were but a 
 mole-hill and so the purest mountain air is near the 
 hottest sultriness of the valley ; (I can readily picture 
 to myself the heat of Lucifer or Venus). What a 
 powerful, manly Alpine breast, joined to an Italy in 
 the heart, must the inhabitant of Phosphorus bring 
 to me at Baireuth, in the capacity of a right carefully 
 
190 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 selected tutor ; who must resemble a general full of 
 contrasting powers, of irrevocable strictness and order, 
 sincere friendship, good fellowship, and persua- 
 siveness. 
 
 " I am convinced my tutor will understand me when 
 I say, that as the man can do without the scholar, 
 but not the scholar without the man, I pray you 
 above all things to ingraft the scholar upon the man, 
 but not reversed. Our nineteenth century, (I might 
 thus speak to him more distinctly in the evening 
 under the warm rain of punch) whatever century you 
 may reckon on your little planet, will not be the best, 
 at least not the strongest, although it may, like yours, 
 deserve the names of Phosphorus and Lucifer. What 
 we magnify ourselves about is the French Revolution ; 
 or the changes of something little. The stones which 
 the giants formerly hurled, became islands; now, 
 when islands are hurled, there come but stones, tomb- 
 stones, and grinding stones. The Revolution, like an 
 earthquake, put some motion into the skeletons of a 
 charnel house. Tutors, like the anatomist Walther 
 in Berlin, seek their glory in preparing skeletons by 
 removing the flesh, and then bleaching them. 
 Brother dwellers on Venus, or rather on this earth, 
 could you think so ? Then should I repent writing 
 to Gellert. To impart strength, and to leave strength 
 will, I hope, be your first and last words in education. 
 What is educated for the age will be worse than the 
 age. The Hesperid answers me: 'In the spring- 
 
TO THE FIKST VOLUME. 191 
 
 time of childhood, fathers often look in as far as the 
 distant snow-white mountain peaks, and point out the 
 winter to the spring. Far better the wind-fall of a 
 spring storm, than the snow-fall of age.' As true as 
 beautiful ! candidate, I reply. Lavoisier made an 
 instrument of ice into a calorimetre, or measurer of 
 heat ; thus fire is often measured by ice ; the boy by 
 the grey-headed man. 
 
 " The candidate will animadvert on much in the con- 
 versational style of his paymaster ; but I go on little 
 affected by his remarks ; ' Howsoever I may express 
 myself, it is certain that the artistic, compound-frac- 
 tured style, into which writing masters and tutors 
 would break the souls of their pupils, like letters, is 
 in nothing different from the compound fractures of 
 surgeons, except in the case of wit, which truly 
 requires variety in order to find without restraint 
 distant resemblances.' The candidate replies. f lf 
 only to the innate energy of a child the sap of life, 
 and room for its development be afforded, there will 
 be no need to graft on every branch, to cut the leaves 
 or paint the flowers ; one must, like a king, direct 
 the whole, but not interfere with the individual 
 parts.' 
 
 " I exclaim, ( You are the man for me, (if not, 
 indeed, more than a man !) If the tutor's situations 
 which I once filled were yet vacant, you should be 
 my vicar in them but you shall be so in the last, in 
 the one I overlook and present as father and patron. 
 
192 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 The easy conditions need scarcely be mentioned. 
 You are not to torment the child with a thousand 
 languages for merely to learn languages is to throw 
 away one's money in buying beautiful purses, or to 
 learn the Lord's Prayer in all languages without ever 
 praying it.' 
 
 " ' I agree, with all my heart ! ' said he boldly. 
 ' So you will only teach him French, English, 
 Spanish, Italian; Greek, Latin, and German, of 
 course but the last most thoroughly. As regards 
 the sciences, the child will be fed by you, as its young 
 are by the house swallow, only on the wing not 
 attached to any long appointment of the hours of 
 study.' 
 
 " 'You know the human heart, and show a most 
 beautiful one,' interrupted he, and drank. ' But 
 when your usual eight hours of study are over, and 
 the child, or you, testify any further desire of study, 
 you may, without hesitation, take as much from the 
 second, or from the last, third of the day as you 
 choose, and teach during the whole of it. Xow in 
 what appertains to science itself for the arts of 
 dancing, fencing, swimming, riding, leaping, singing, 
 playing on the violin, the horn, and the piano, will be 
 recreations for both of you ; it will satisfy me if the 
 poor child only learns history namely, as much of 
 the past as is already gone ; and also I would wish 
 that, along with the most recent, a little of the pi- 
 quante future should be insinuated, together with 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 193 
 
 other not less necessary histories : those of nature, of 
 books, of heretics, of gods, of church history, &c. 
 in the same way a few of the most necessary branches 
 of knowledge knowledge of the stars, of coins, of 
 antiquity, of heraldry, &c. ; and the doctrines of 
 natural science, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of no- 
 bility, of morality, &c. ; and the descriptions as 
 descriptions of the earth, &c. ; a few ics, as esthetics, 
 dietetics, phelloplastics, &c. ; for, say I, perpetually, 
 why the devil should a poor, unbearded, thin-skulled 
 child, be immeasurably laden with learned fat and 
 refuse ? Why should his life be interwoven, not with 
 fair white leaves, but with whole full books ? And 
 he himself become a pack and baggage-bearing Pega- 
 sus ? Wherefore this, say I ? " 
 
 " You have to do, and can do, much ; for you are a 
 few thousand tutors in one. Frequently I cannot at 
 all understand why a whole regiment of tutors and 
 governesses is not engaged at once ; especially when 
 I consider how many demigods and goddesses the 
 Romans ascribed to children and worshipped ; for 
 instance, Nascio, or Natio, presiding over the birth 
 Bumina over suckling Edusa over eating Potina 
 over drinking moreover, Levana Statilinus and 
 Statana over the standing of both sexes Fabulinus 
 over speaking I purposely omit, from detestation of 
 prolixity in others, many half divinities, such as Va- 
 gitans, Ossitago, Nundina, Paventia, Carnea. Could 
 one so arrange it, and pay, one should appoint a 
 
194 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE 
 
 distinct teacher for almost every faculty, who should 
 direct that only ; yea, and even teachers for the 
 various subdivisions of the same faculty were at least 
 pious wishes. I could like (but nothing will come of 
 it) if I possessed that army of various teachers, to 
 have a son exercised, say in aesthetics, according to 
 the different divisions of Krug ; one teacher in- 
 structing him in that author's Hypseology, another in 
 his Kalleology, a third in his Krirnatology ; and so 
 the child might at one time have his sublime tutor, at 
 another his feeble, at another his naive. I would 
 also wish, dear friend, that, in the virtues, you should 
 prescribe special private exercises and instructions in 
 each virtue, so that they might not all run into one 
 another, and the poor child stand there like a stupid 
 angel, who knows neither right nor left, but only 
 what is right. If Franklin schooled and exercised 
 himself each week in a different virtue, might not the 
 various Sundays and festivals, which as holydays can 
 be used for little real instruction, be applied to the 
 inculcation of many virtues? On every festival 
 might be taken a new one: on three holydays the 
 three parts of repentance; and on every Apostle's 
 day some fault might be eradicated. I can, indeed, 
 picture to myself a long feast of the Trinity, in which 
 one might, hour by hour, allow the child to go 
 through all the virtues, so that at the prayer-bell he 
 might be presented as a saint of a month, or holy 
 image. 
 
TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 195 
 
 " Moreover, so excellent a tutor for my child might 
 rest assured that, were the good Gellert still living, 
 I would with pleasure, at the end of his engagement 
 (when Max would no longer require him) 3 and with 
 all the influence which I, as an author, might possess 
 with Gellert, give him recommendations to him, in 
 order that he might further recommend the young 
 man ; and so provide for him according to his merits." 
 
 At this point I awoke ; wanted to know what I 
 had dreamed; and tried to recall it. But I soon 
 found that, out of my dreamed letter to Gellert 
 quite in accordance with the mad order of a dream 
 I had fallen into a new conversation with a teacher, 
 who was there sitting before me. Meanwhile such a 
 conclusion may be in so far good, as, should I print 
 it, it will serve to prove that I have not, as is, alas ! 
 very usual, dreamed in sport, and for the sake of 
 publishing, but in very deed and truth. 
 
196 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 FOURTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 CHAP. I. Jacquelina's Confession of her Education, 75 77, 
 CHAP. II. Destination of Women less for their Husbands than for 
 their Children, 7880. CHAP. III. Nature of Women, Proof of 
 their predominating Purity of Heart, 81 88. CHAP. IV. Edu- 
 cation of Girls in regard to Reasonableness, 89, 90. ; to Purity 
 of Heart and Love of their own Sex, 91.; to Gentleness, and 
 the Tendency to Female Passionateness, 92. ; to Economy of 
 Living, and Domestic Affairs, 93 95. ; to Knowledge and Skill, 
 96, 97. ; to Dress, Ornament, &c., 98. ; to Cheerfulness, 99. ; 
 Education of Girls endowed with Genius, 10O. CHAP. V. Private 
 Instructions of a Prince to the head Governess of his Daughter, 
 101. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 75. 
 
 UNDER female education I understand three things 
 at once, which are in themselves contradictory ; first, 
 the education which women generally give ; second, 
 their peculiar call to a right education as compared 
 with men ; third, the education of girls. 
 
 The first and second would have required an earlier 
 consideration, if the characteristics of the female sex, 
 according to which its education should be regulated, 
 were not united in them both ; and, especially, if in 
 this little experimental work, it were necessary to 
 arrange the position of its matter in very strict order. 
 
ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 197 
 
 A reader, to whom so many systems are presented, 
 must hold his way armed with a predetermined one, 
 unless each is to occupy his mind in turn. 
 
 76. 
 
 Ill-educated, and ill-educating states, as well as 
 fathers immersed in business, can only trust the 
 welfare of education to mothers, as the second chapter 
 shall show ; but the evil that mothers might obviate 
 can be easily stated in this paragraph. Were it in 
 other respects accordant with the tone of this work, 
 I willingly confess that I would offer to the world in 
 a merrier manner this little register of sins, or list of 
 losses in gaming, and debts of honour ; and the more 
 so because, in this very case, a certain, otherwise ex- 
 cellent, mother of five children, Madame Jacquelina, 
 luckily turning over the pages of my Levana, offered 
 to give me an airy embodiment of it. Ladies love 
 to dress, undress, and redress. For as I had known 
 my excellent friend a long time, much was pre- 
 pared and made easy ; and I could well imagine that 
 the fair Jacquelina, as sister-orator for her whole 
 sex though without any other commission to show 
 than her beauty would stand before my writing 
 desk, as though it were a confessional, and declare 
 she heartily desired to be absolved by me ; only, for 
 very shame's sake, it was impossible for her to make 
 an auricular confession, but she would take it very 
 kindly if I would regard her as a deaf person 
 
 K 3 
 
198 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 after the fashion of former confessors who pronounced 
 the confession of their fair deaf and dumb penitents 
 over them and so, as her representative, and spirit- 
 ual father, make the following confession for her : 
 
 77. 
 
 " Honourable and dear sir ! " (I was thus to put the 
 address to me into her own mouth lest the joke should 
 be continued) "I confess before God and yourself, 
 that I am a poor pedagogic sinner, and have broken 
 many commands of Rousseau and of Campe. I con- 
 fess that I never truly carried out any one principle 
 for a month, but only for an hour or two ; that I have 
 often, half with thought, and so half without thought, 
 forbidden my children to do something, without 
 afterwards observing whether they did it or not ; that 
 I never could deny them any thing, when both they 
 and I were floating in the midst of a sea of happiness, 
 which else from calm reason I should have at once 
 refused ; and that precisely at two seasons, the most 
 sunshiny and the most cloudy, whether of myself or 
 of the children, did I spoil them most. Have I not 
 even done still worse ? Have I not, when strangers 
 were present, said to my Bella, as well as to my pet 
 (I mean by that only my poodle), Faites la belle ? 
 
 " Have I not, at each of our great fairs, given holy- 
 days on account of strangers' visits, especially those 
 of eminent frequenters of the fair to my husband, and 
 thus valued a visitor more highly than five children ; 
 
ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 199 
 
 so that I very little resembled that German woman, of 
 whom my husband read in the twelfth volume of the 
 mental Fama, who had the courage to decline dancing 
 with two kings on the same evening, because she 
 considered it to be unchristian ? And during all last 
 year did I not see my two youngest children, 
 Josephine and Peter, only once a day, at breakfast, 
 and that merely because I wanted to finish a novel, 
 and a piece of worsted- work ; and, also, because my 
 noble friend, the princess, for whom I was working 
 it, had taken up her residence here ? Only this con- 
 sideration can tranquillise my conscience, that I took 
 the greatest trouble to procure a trustworthy nurse 
 for my little ones, who promised me to treat them as 
 a real mother ; and may Heaven punish her if she was 
 ever inattentive to so dear a trust, or ever let my 
 precious lambs go out of her sight for a moment, or 
 ever left them in the hands of strangers ! Ah, God ! 
 when I think of the possibility of such a thing ! 
 But, alas ! what do such creatures know of the anxi- 
 eties of a tender mother's heart ? 
 
 " At other times, I have indeed (and that consoles 
 me) always allowed all my children to come to me 
 twice a day, after breakfast and after dinner, and 
 have then often for hours fondled and taught them. 
 But I confess that my impetuosity would never let 
 me be satisfied to kiss them in moderation ; and so I 
 drew on me my husband's blame, who dislikes that 
 exceedingly, and says, 'Children (even if not my 
 
 K 4 
 
200 OX FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 own) may, with the Princess of Conde, lament that 
 their misfortune is to be loved by old people the 
 holy seal of the heart, a kiss, is to children an empty, 
 meaningless thing ; a very energetic one may even 
 be painful, and perhaps injurious, to the fifth pair of 
 nerves in the lips a gentle stroking of the head is 
 better, and a gentle loving word, a kiss which they 
 give, and a softer one which they receive.'' 
 
 " I confess that, as in the game of forfeits, when I 
 asked myself, What shall this forfeit (that of love) 
 which I hold in my hand do ? I always answered, 
 Love me immeasurably. Whereby, because I required 
 so many marks of love, I have made Josephine too 
 sensitive, Sophia hypocritical, and Peter ill-tempered. 
 After any severe punishment I inflicted, instead 
 of allowing the whole of my former love to glow 
 warmly on them, (a striking change, which my 
 husband says is the only means of correcting and 
 reconciling a child, during at least the first eight or 
 ten years,) I suffered the long cloud of after- wrath to 
 hang over them ; as if their young hearts could trace 
 hidden love, or suffer for it long, or, in the best case, 
 not learn to imitate that sulkiness. 
 
 " I confess that, though not in the least nervous at 
 whatever may happen out of the house, I yet never 
 could be tranquil with my dear children, although I 
 knew that the least impetuosity, were it even of a 
 hasty running to their assistance, is injurious, and has 
 a tendency to produce a similar disposition in them. 
 
ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 201 
 
 And I confess that I show anger too soon, even 
 towards my maid-servants, in spite of my knowing 
 perfectly what my husband so beautifully says, that 
 to give way to an angry expression of countenance, 
 or of voice, before even the youngest children, is in 
 fact to teach them anger. For as the whole soul is 
 imprisoned and moulded into the whole body, it 
 follows, that every mental is connected with some 
 physical part, and thus these mutually excite each 
 other the outward expression of passion produces 
 the mental emotion, and so of the reverse. 
 
 " My husband asserted, and, moreover, carried out, 
 the principle, that a husband can never so well esta- 
 blish a normal school for female teachers (like a 
 good wife, I use his very expressions) as during the 
 first year after marriage ; in this time, he thought, 
 a wife might be mentally enriched with every kind 
 of manly instruction, which, should she afterwards 
 neglect, she would yet seek and cherish for the love 
 of her first child, and of him who is even before the 
 first, her husband ; for at an after period, continued 
 he, somewhat of that glowing-love service towards 
 the husband, and somewhat, also, of that anxious 
 solicitude about the children, vanishes ; and so, still 
 continued he, the education of many children does 
 not proceed better, at least, not more carefully. But 
 I rejoice that I have confuted him in this, as in 
 many other things, and that I brought up my third 
 child, even while expecting the fourth, for several 
 
 K 5 
 
202 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 months precisely as my wedded lord and school- 
 master directed during the school-weeks of the 
 honeymoon. 
 
 " But, venerable father, you certainly do not 
 know by experience what whims husbands take some 
 nine or ten months after marriage. Did not mine 
 positively, seriously desire, that when I occasionally 
 washed the little thing, I would not rub its face, 
 and wipe it quickly up and down ; because, said he, 
 this kind of violence is disagreeable to them and 
 excites their passion ; but that I would softly glide 
 from above downwards, and then gently round? 
 What ridiculous pedantry! Surely a woman must 
 know how to wash ! So I go on just as usual, and 
 care not how loudly both little and big cry out 
 against it. 
 
 66 For the rest I confess, and would willingly do 
 penance for it, that I am never so soon angry as when 
 dressing, or engaged in any other important business : 
 the beautiful, perfect repose of my education then 
 vanishes. My husband wants to place, for penance 
 and the removal of my angry wrinkles, a magnifying 
 glass beside my toilet glass ; but, thank God ! I 
 do not yet need such a glass of detraction; and, 
 beside?, my features are less changed than my colour. 
 Perhaps I am excusable for admitting my three 
 eldest girls (and Lucy, too, often) to my toilet, 
 because, in the first place, they watch me so gladly, 
 and are so quiet (especially when I tell them that 
 
ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 203 
 
 they may perhaps go with me), and because, secondly, 
 a young girl's eye is best exercised in taste, with 
 regard to matters of dress, on the costume of a grown 
 up person. 
 
 " It consoles me, however, to reflect, that I never 
 purchased a handsome new article of dress, either for 
 myself or my daughters, without labouring to repress 
 the love of finery, by telling them how little a 
 woman's worth depends on dress, and that a rich 
 habit is only chosen because thereby alone can rank 
 be shown. At the same time I must confess, that 
 all my daughters are vain : however many sermons 
 I make to them during my toilet, I am not listened 
 to but only looked at. How often do I turn round 
 with reproaches when my really beautiful Maxi- 
 miliana stands behind me peeping into the glass, and 
 say, e There, again, a pretty, rosy, blue-eyed mask is 
 looking at herself, and can never be tired of peeping 
 and staring.' 
 
 " I farther confess, worthy sir, that I was cer- 
 tainly infinitely more displeased with Peter when he 
 lately threw Veritas (really a most exquisite ideal 
 figure from Bertuch's repository of arts) out of the 
 window, than if he had told ten lies ; on the other 
 hand, I hope I remain perfectly tranquil when my 
 husband sometimes makes such an uproar about some 
 little fibs or other the children may have been tell- 
 ing; or about their frequently quite justifiable 
 scoldings of the servants: then, says he, reflecting on 
 
 K 6 
 
204 WOMEN'S ADAPTATION 
 
 my anger, ' The Romans did wisely when they wrote 
 the initial letter of the word signifying man inverted 
 to mean woman.' 
 
 " If God will only forgive me the sins wherein I 
 meant well, I shall be satisfied to be punished for the 
 rest. I certainly have sinned much, and deserved 
 temporal punishments, and bad children. I will, 
 however, from this time forth amend my educational 
 life, and become better and better ; and I entreat you, 
 reverend, dear sir, to forgive me my sins in God's 
 stead." In which case I should certainly lay my 
 hand on Jacquelina's round white shoulder, and 
 readily absolve her past, though truly not her future, 
 sins. 
 
 78. 
 
 But the seriousness of the subject demands that a 
 SECOND CHAPTER, 
 
 ON THE DESTINATION OF THE FEMALE SEX, 
 
 SHOULD restore to it its due honour. A father, who 
 only sees and educates his children for an hour or 
 two, must be careful not to require his own hour's 
 strict attention and persistency from the mother who 
 wearies herself with them all day long. This longer 
 companionship excuses much maternal overflowing, 
 both of love and anger. In the same way, a stranger 
 always considers parental displeasure too severe, 
 because he sees the fault for the first tine, and iso- 
 
TO CHILDREN. 205 
 
 lated, which the parents behold for the thousandth 
 time, and in an ever-strengthening chain of habit. 
 Mothers readily acquire an over estimation of their 
 children, because, placed sufficiently near the develop- 
 ment of their minds to count every new leaf, they 
 regard each universal human growth as a particular 
 individual one, and thence infer some few miracles. 
 And then how much must the physical care of the 
 children which, in the middle classes, entirely devolves 
 on the mother, weary and deaden her as compared 
 with the independent father for their mental culture. 
 
 79. 
 
 The education of the first half of the first decade 
 of life is already placed in the hands of the mother, 
 owing to the necessities of the body. His avocations 
 in the state, in science, or art, only grant the father 
 intervals, and those rather for instruction than educa- 
 tion two happy classes of fathers alone excepted. 
 The first is a country gentleman, who reposes in 
 such a golden mean of all circumstances, that he con- 
 verts his mansion into a benevolent institution for 
 his children, if he love his successors better than 
 cards, and hares, and rents. The second is the man 
 whom he appoints a country clergyman. The six 
 days' leisure, the country's separation from the tur- 
 moil of towns, the open air, the office, which is itself 
 a higher educational institution, and, finally, the 
 seventh day, which presents their physical father to 
 
206 WOMEN'S ADAPTATION 
 
 his children, on a glorifying elevation, as a holy and 
 spiritual father, and impresses an official seal on the 
 lessons of the week all these things open to the 
 minister a sphere of education into which he may 
 attract other children ; since he may always better 
 convert his parsonage into a school-house than a 
 tutor's study into a parish. I would rather trust my 
 son to a clergyman than to a tutor ; because he is 
 freer, and stands on his legs, not upon crutches. 
 
 In the middle ranks the men educate best, because 
 the women are little cultivated : in the higher classes, 
 generally, the women, because there they are more 
 carefully brought up than the men. What, now, can 
 the man do? a philosopher, we will suppose, or a 
 minister of public affairs, a soldier, a president, poet, 
 or artist ? 
 
 In the very first instance he must love and recom- 
 pense his wife better, in order that she, by double 
 support, the love of her children, and the love of her 
 husband, may more easily carry out the most difficult 
 part of education the first. In this way the 
 husband may bestow care and attention on the first 
 and most important education, that given by the 
 mother, which no after tutors, schools, or paternal 
 praise and blame, can ever replace ; that is to say, he 
 will exercise the law-giving power of education, the 
 mother the administrative. Let the husband only 
 continue to be the lover of his wife, and she will 
 listen to what he says about education, at least of the 
 
TO CHILDREN. 207 
 
 mind. How readily will a noble-minded marriage- 
 able girl, or a bride, surveying from afar her future 
 work, listen to the educational rules which even a 
 youth gives ! And, when married, a woman wil- 
 lingly adopts many a good suggestion about the 
 education of her children which a stranger offers. 
 Only by the union of manly energy and decision 
 with womanly gentleness does the child rest and sail 
 as at the conflux of two streams ; or, in another 
 figure, the sun raises the tide, and so does the 
 moon, but he raises it only one foot, she three, and 
 both united four. The husband only marks full 
 stops in the child's life, the wife commas and semi- 
 colons, and both more frequently. One might ex- 
 claim, " Mothers, be fathers ! " and " Fathers, be 
 mothers ! " for the two sexes perfect the human 
 race, as Mars and Venus gave birth to harmony. 
 The man works by exciting powers ; the woman by 
 maintaining order and harmony among them. The 
 man, in whom the state, or his own genius, destroys 
 the balance of powers for the advantage of one, will 
 always bring this overlaying influence to education : 
 the soldier will educate warlikely ; the poet poeti- 
 cally ; the divine piously ; the mother only will edu- 
 cate humanly. For only the woman needs to develop 
 nothing in herself but the pure human being ; as in an 
 -ZEolian harp no string predominates over the rest, but 
 the melody of its tones proceeds from unison, and re- 
 turns to it. 
 
208 
 
 80. 
 
 But you mothers, and especially you in the higher 
 and less busy classes, whose fortune spares you the 
 heavy burden of careful housekeeping, and surrounds 
 you with a cheerful green garden for the education 
 of your children, how is it that you can prefer the 
 tedium of solitude and of society to the enduring 
 charms of your children's love to the drama of their 
 fair development to the sports of the best beloved 
 beings to the reward of the most delightful and 
 lasting influence? That woman is despicable who, 
 having children, ever feels ennui. Well formed 
 nations have been, according to Herder, the edu- 
 cators of the human race; so let your beauty be, not 
 merely the external garment, but the very instru- 
 ment of instruction and education. Towns and 
 countries have female names, and are represented as 
 females ; and, in truth, the mothers who educate for 
 the future the first five years of their children's life 
 do found cities and countries. Who can replace a 
 mother ? Not even a father. For she, attached to 
 the child by the daily and nightly bonds of care for 
 its physical wants, can and must weave and em- 
 broider mental instruction in glittering characters on 
 those tender ties. Will you, then, neglect the 
 fairest time for working purely and deeply on pos- 
 terity, since the stronger sex and the state will 
 soon step in, and bring pullies and grappling irons 
 
TO CHILDREN. 209 
 
 instead of your leading strings and gently raising 
 levers, and therewith move them harshly and roughly ? 
 Dost thou, royal mother, consider it nobler to guide 
 the intrigues of a cabinet, than the little future heir- 
 apparent ? Thou hast borne him within thee, when 
 a heavier burden, and hast suffered acutest pain 
 when he was taken from thee, and this only for his 
 physical life, and wilt thou shun to undertake some- 
 thing less than both these, whereby thou mayest 
 draw a holy spiritual glory around thy victory ? 
 How often are your night watches recompensed by a 
 child's coffin ; but your day watches over his mind 
 ever by rich daily rewards ! If you once believe that 
 every thing depends on education, what name do 
 you deserve, when, precisely as your position is high, 
 you intrust the education of your children to persons 
 of lower rank ; and while the children of the middle 
 classes have their parents, those of the higher classes 
 have only nurses and maids, as the directors of their 
 
 1 1 i P <~i 
 
 path in hie f 
 
 The whole ancient world elevates maternal above 
 paternal love; and the mother's must be great 
 indeed, for a loving father cannot even picture to 
 himself any love greater than his own ; why, then, 
 are you, compared with the fathers, who are so anxi- 
 ous about education, and who even write great books 
 upon the subject, so indifferent about its application? 
 For your lover you can freely give wealth and 
 health ; why not then spare a few hours for the little 
 
210 WOMEN'S ADAPTATION 
 
 helpless creature you love ? For the one you over- 
 come, opinions and inclinations ; why should you do 
 less for the other ? You, on whose physically and 
 spiritually nourishing bosom Nature has cast the 
 orphans of the earth, will you let them fade and die 
 on a cold hired breast ? You, who are provided by 
 nature with patience, grace, gentleness, eloquence, and 
 love for the beings who fly to you even from their 
 father, can you not watch over them ? I do not mean 
 during the night, but only during the day. See ! 
 they who once rested beneath your heart, and have 
 now no longer a place in it, stretch their little arms 
 towards her who is most related to them, and beg 
 again for nourishment. As in many ancient nations 
 no request was denied to a woman holding a child 
 in her arms, so now do children, lying in your arms, 
 or in their nurse's, offer up petitions for themselves. 
 
 It is true that the sacrifices you make for the world 
 will be little known by it men govern and earn the 
 glory ; and the thousand watchful nights and sacri- 
 fices, by which a mother purchases a hero, or a poet, 
 for the state, are forgotten, not once counted ; for the 
 mothers themselves do not count them ; and so, one 
 century after another, do mothers, unnamed and 
 unthanked, send forth the arrows, the suns, the 
 storm-birds, and the nightingales of time! But 
 seldom does a Cornelia find a Plutarch, who connects 
 her name with the Gracchi. But as those two sons 
 who bore their mother to the temple of Delphi were 
 
TO CHILDREN. 211 
 
 rewarded by death, so your guidance of your children 
 will only find its perfect recompense at the termination 
 of life. 
 
 Twice, however, you will not be forgotten. If 
 you believe in an invisible world in which the glad 
 tears of a thankful heart are more valued, and shine 
 more brightly, than worldly crowns set round with 
 the petrified tears of sorrow ; if you believe this, you 
 know your future ! And if you have educated 
 rightly, your child knows you. Never, never has 
 one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother. On 
 the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards 
 which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who 
 marked out to us from thence our life: the most 
 blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the 
 warmest heart. You wish, O women ! to be ardently 
 loved, and for ever, even till death. Be, then, the 
 mothers of your children. But you mothers who do 
 not educate your children, how should your thankless- 
 ness for an unmerited blessing cause you to hang 
 down your head in shame before every childless 
 mother, every childless wife, and blush because one 
 worthy woman sighs after that heaven which you have 
 abandoned like a fallen angel. Oh ! why does fate, 
 which often gives a million souls to the rack of some 
 barbarous century, deny to the most lovely, gentle 
 being the bliss of one child's heart ? Why must Love 
 long for an object, and Hate, not ? Ah ! Ernestina*, 
 
 * The excellent lady to whom the poet here pens so fine a 
 memorial was his wife's younger sister, Ernestina Augusta 
 
212 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 how wouldst thou have loved and made happy ! But 
 thou wast not permitted, the death-cloud carried 
 thee away with all the roses of thy youth, and thy 
 warm mother's heart was called, childless, into the 
 unknown world of spirits. Oh ! how wouldst thou 
 have loved and educated with thy clearness of percep- 
 tion, thy strength of character, thy ever-flowing 
 spring of love, thy self-sacrificing soul thou, who 
 wert adorned with all the virtues of an ancient 
 German woman ! 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 NATURE OP WO3IEN. 
 
 81. 
 
 THE education of daughters is the first, and most 
 important business of mothers; because it may be 
 uninterrupted, and continue till the daughter's hand 
 glides straight from the mother's into that which holds 
 the wedding ring. The boy is educated by a many- 
 toned world, school-classes, universities, travels, busi- 
 ness, and libraries ; the mother's mind educates the 
 
 Philippina Mahlmann, the daughter of Mr. Mayer of Berlin, 
 and wife of Augustus Mahlmann, of Leipsig. She died, Feb. 
 18. 1805, in the twenty-sixth year of her age. The desire to 
 press a child to her heart occupied the last moments before her 
 death. She was one of the noblest beings that ever lived. 
 
NATURE OF WOMEN. 213 
 
 daughter. For that very reason he is more indepen- 
 dent of the shocks of foreign influence than his 
 sister ; for outward contradiction compels him to an 
 inner balancing unity, whereas one little corner of 
 the world easily appears a whole quarter, nay, a whole 
 world, to the maiden. 
 
 Before we speak of the education of the sex, we 
 must first determine its character. According to 
 well-known principles the nature of men is more epic, 
 and formed for reflection ; that of women more lyrical, 
 and endowed with feeling. Campe truly remarks, 
 that the French have all the failings and perfections 
 of children hence, I believe, they gladly call them- 
 selves Athenians, whom the old Egyptian priest 
 found at once very childlike and very childish. I 
 have discussed more at large in other places the great 
 resemblance between the character of the French 
 nation and that of women. From these two asser- 
 tions, at least from the more flattering, a third would 
 follow, the resemblance between women and children. 
 The same unbroken unity of nature the same 
 clear perception and understanding of the present 
 the same sharpness of wit the keen spirit of observ- 
 ation ardour and quietness excitability and 
 easily raised emotions the ready, quick passage, 
 from the inward to the outward, and, conversely, from 
 gods to ribbons, from motes in the sunbeam to solar 
 systems the admiration of forms and colours, and 
 excitability, carry out, by a mental alliance, the phy- 
 
214 NATUKE OF WOMEN. 
 
 sical alliance of the two beings. Hence, to use an 
 appropriate simile, children are in the first instance 
 dressed in women's habits. 
 
 He who loves antitheses of the newest fashion might 
 call women antique, Grecian, or even Oriental beings ; 
 men, on the contrary, modern, northern, European ; 
 those poetical, these philosophical. A man possesses, 
 as it were, two selfs ; a woman but one, and needs 
 another to see her own. From this female deficiency 
 of holding dialogues with, and multiplying self, may 
 be explained most of the advantages and disadvantages 
 of woman's nature. And so, because their near echo 
 readily becomes a resonance, and, confused with the 
 original sound, they can neither poetically nor philo- 
 sophically separate and re-unite their component 
 parts, they are more truly poetry and philosophy 
 than poets and philosophers. Women show more 
 taste in dressing others than themselves; and, pre- 
 cisely because it is the same with their bodies as 
 with their hearts, they can read in those of others 
 better than in their own. 
 
 82. 
 
 We will in various ways pursue the unity and sin- 
 cerity of woman's nature. Because in her no power 
 predominates, and all her powers are rather receptive 
 than formative ; because she, true mirror of the ver- 
 satile present, accompanies every external by an in- 
 ternal change ; even because of these things does she 
 
NATURE OF WOMEN. 215 
 
 seem to us so enigmatic. To guess what her soul is, 
 means to guess her physical and other external rela- 
 tions ; hence, the man of the world loves her as well, 
 and names her after those long thin wine-glasses, 
 called impossibles, because they cannot be emptied 
 how high soever you raise them. 
 
 Like the piano-forte, we might call her pianissimo- 
 fortissimo, so accurately and strongly does she reflect 
 the extremes of accident ; at the same time, and for 
 this very reason, her natural position must be one of 
 repose and equal balance, like Yesta, whose holy fire 
 none but women tended, and which every where, in 
 town, temple, or private room, took, by law, the 
 middle place. 
 
 Passion drives the man, passions the woman ; him 
 a stream, her the winds : he declares some one power 
 to be monarchic, and suffers himself to be ruled by it ; 
 she, more democratic, lets the passing moment rule. 
 The man is more frequently serious ; the woman, for 
 the most part, either blessed or cursed, joyful or sor- 
 rowful ; which does not contradict our former praise 
 of her measured tranquil constitution ; for cheerful- 
 ness dwells all day with one woman, sadness with 
 another; it is only passion that hurls both head- 
 long. 
 
 83. 
 
 Love is the life-spirit of her spirit ; her spirit the 
 law, the motive-spring of her nerves. How deeply 
 she can love without cause, and without return, 
 
216 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 might be remarked, even if not shown in her love of 
 children, in her dislikes, which prey on her as strongly 
 and unreasonably as her love animates. Like the 
 Otaheitans, who are so gentle and childlike, and yet 
 eat their enemies alive, these delicate creatures have 
 a similar appetite, at least for their female foes. 
 They often yoke doves to a thunder car. The some- 
 what shrewish Juno demanded, and obtained, from 
 antiquity, gentle lambs as her favourite sacrifice. 
 Women love, and that infinitely and truly ; the most 
 enthusiastic mystics were women ; it was no man but 
 a nun, who died of longing love to Jesus. But it 
 was only a man, and no woman, who could de- 
 mand from the Stoic sage indifference to friendship. 
 Nature sent women into the world, with this bridal 
 dower of love, not, as men often think, that they 
 may altogether and entirely love them from the crown 
 of their head to the sole of their feet, but for this 
 reason that they might be, what their destination 
 is, mothers, and love children, to whom sacrifices 
 must ever be offered, and from whom none are to be 
 obtained. 
 
 Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, clear- 
 seeing nature, loses herself, and what she has of heart 
 and happiness, in the object she loves. The present 
 only exists to her ; and this present, again, is a de- 
 terminate one, it is one, and only one, human being. 
 As Swift loved not the human race, but only indivi- 
 duals belonging to it, so women, though they have 
 
NATUKE OF WOMEN. 217 
 
 the warmest hearts, are no citizens of the world, 
 scarcely citizens of a town or a village, but only of 
 their home ; no woman can at the same time love 
 the four quarters of the world and her own child, but 
 a man can. He loves the idea ; she the manifesta- 
 tion, that which alone is ; as God if this bold figure 
 be not too bold has only one loved object his uni- 
 verse. This peculiarity shows in many other ways. 
 Men love things best ; for instance, truths, posses- 
 sions, countries: women love persons best: the 
 former, it is true, readily personify what they love. 
 Just as what is the goddess of wisdom to a man, to a 
 woman easily becomes a man who has wisdom. 
 Even when a child, a woman loves a mock-human 
 being a doll, and works for it ; the boy gets hold of 
 a wooden horse and a troop of tin soldiers, and works 
 with them. It probably arises from this very fact, 
 that among boys and girls, sent at the same age to 
 school, though the latter mature sooner they yet re- 
 tain their play-persons longer than boys do their 
 play-things. When, however, grown-up women 
 of the lower classes look intensely after a beautiful 
 doll, carried by a child in the higher ranks of life, it 
 seems their love of dress may exceed their love of 
 children. Further, girls kiss one another more fre- 
 quently than boys ; those look at the rider, these 
 at the horse ; those inquire about appearances, these 
 about their causes ; those about children, these about 
 animals. 
 
 *L 
 
218 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 84. 
 
 The more corrupt a century, the more contempt is 
 there in it for women. The more slavery in the form, 
 or formlessness, of government, the more do they be- 
 come the handmaidens of servants. In old free 
 Germany, women were considered sacred, and, like 
 their images, the doves of Jupiter at Dodona, pro- 
 nounced oracles ; in Sparta and England, and in the 
 fair age of chivalry, women bore the order-jewels of 
 man's reverence. Now, since women rise and fall, 
 become noble or base, according to the form of 
 government and this is constantly created and main- 
 tained by men it is clear that women, after the 
 character of men is formed, imitate that model : that 
 there must first be seducing men before seduced 
 women; that every deterioration of the female 
 character is but the after-winter of a similar one in 
 men. Place moral heroes in the field, and heroines 
 follow them as brides : but the opposite does not hold 
 true ; no heroine can create a hero through love of 
 her, but she may give birth to one. Therefore, all the 
 more contemptible is the narrow-minded, squeamish 
 Parisian man, who makes tirades against the Parisian 
 women, and, consequently, against all women ; while 
 he only ingrafts on them his own old sins, and poisons 
 their womanhood by his own womanishness. How 
 would such a plaster-cast creature of the age stand 
 and tremble and wither away before a Spartan or an 
 ancient German woman ! 
 
NATUKE OF WOMEN. 219 
 
 Consequently, the present age, in complaining of 
 female sensuality, admits the previous existence of the 
 sin in men. Meanwhile let the devil's advocates stand 
 forth against women, and those of holiness for them, 
 and to the advantage of women. There are many 
 satirical creatures who get something printed, and are 
 viewed with wonder, and written up by German 
 critics as men deeply read in human nature ; for no 
 other reason than this, because, without any further 
 pretension to knowledge of the world, insight, heart, 
 or mind, they have converted every woman into 
 nothing more than a fifth or sixth sense, and all their 
 own desires into one overlaying one : and then, especi- 
 ally the critic (he's a school-teacher), thanks God and 
 the author, that now, for a few pence, which he does 
 not pay but receive as a reward for his favour, he at 
 last holds in his hand the key of the French and allied 
 female castle. 
 
 These denouncers of women are, at all events, only 
 half right, and certainly half wrong ; the former when 
 they speak of physiological, the latter when of moral, 
 sensuality. Of the former when without the con- 
 currence of a perfectly innocent heart no one is 
 guilty, but God the Father ; and just as well might 
 the greater beauty of a woman's bosom be attributed 
 to her as a sin and excess. But if Heaven created 
 her especially for children, it is manifest that this 
 physiological sensuality was ordained by the great 
 Father of all children for the advantage of the growing 
 
 L 2 
 
220 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 after-world. The first dwelling which man inhabits 
 is an organised one ; and can this be too rich, too 
 strong for his first original formation ? Can want of 
 power and life ever form an organic creature full of 
 power and life ? And which moment is the most im- 
 portant in the whole life ? Certainly not the last, as 
 theologians have often stated ; but probably the first, 
 as physicians show. 
 
 On the other hand, as a counterpoise there is allotted 
 to the senses of woman a purer heart than that of man, 
 which makes common cause with them ; and thus the 
 accusation of her physical conformation closes with an 
 eulogy on her spiritual nature. But these good beings 
 do not defend themselves save by proxy ; and it is 
 probable that, with their facility of belief, mistrustful 
 words may at last turn their watchfulness away from 
 their inward heart ; just as many lose their religion, 
 or their religious sentiments, without knowing how, 
 merely because they hear discussions, and nothing 
 else, about it. 
 
 85. 
 
 Nature has directly formed woman to be a mother, 
 only indirectly to be a wife ; man, on the contrary, is 
 rather made to be a husband than a father. It were, 
 indeed, somewhat strange if the stronger sex must 
 lean on the weaker, the flower support its stem, the 
 ivy the tree ; nevertheless he, just because he is the 
 stronger, does enforce something of that kind, makes 
 
NATURE OF WOMEN". 221 
 
 his wife into the bearer of his arms and burdens, his 
 marketer and provision cooker; and the husband 
 regards the wife as the barn and outer shed of his 
 household goods. He is far more created for her than 
 she for him : she is for physical, what he is for mental 
 posterity. Fleets and armies prove the dispensable- 
 ness of women ; on the contrary, societies of women, 
 convents for instance, do not arise without some male 
 directing lever as primum mobile. Nature, which 
 moves on kindly, yet cruelly, towards her vast ends in 
 the world, has, for this purpose, armed women the 
 colleges and training houses of posterity mentally 
 and physically, with power of giving and power of 
 denying : both their physical and mental charms and 
 weaknesses afford them protection. Hence arise re- 
 gard and attention to their persons, with which their 
 souls are more intimately united into one existence 
 than ours ; hence their dread of wounds, because these 
 affect a double life, and their indifference to sickness ; 
 whereas men fear wounds less than illnesses, because 
 those affect the body most, these the mind. Con- 
 nected with these are her temperance, her love of 
 cleanliness, and also her modesty and her inclination 
 to housewifery and quietness. The moral and ap- 
 prehensive nature of girls is more rapidly developed 
 than the mind of boys (as, according to Gach, satel- 
 lites move quicker than planets ; or, as flowers in 
 vallies bloom sooner than on mountains) ; because to 
 the physical, and, consequently, maternal, maturity of 
 
 L 3 
 
222 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 fifteen, nature has also added that of the mind. So soon 
 as the luxuriant flower has, with its pollen, provided for 
 another spring, nature harshly destroys its attractive 
 colours, and leaves it to its mental treasures and har- 
 vest. On the contrary, she preserves man's body, 
 which has to serve on a longer journey of action and 
 thought, active into the vale of years, and far beyond 
 the season of woman's bloom. 
 
 We may here subjoin this remark, drawn from the 
 animal kingdom, that the male shows his greatest 
 courage and power in the love-season, but the female 
 after having given birth to her offspring. 
 
 It is easy to draw out these assertions into the 
 lesser matters of detail ; for instance, female avarice, 
 which saves, not for self but for her children, love 
 of trifles, love of talking, the gentle voice, and many 
 things which we blame. 
 
 86. 
 
 We return to the former complaints about women. 
 But why do men use this word so often, about those 
 beings to whom they owe the first thanks for ex- 
 istence, and who are sacrificed by nature herself that 
 life may follow life ? Why are the treasure-houses of 
 humanity, its creators under God, not esteemed more 
 highly ; and why do they only receive the wreath of 
 corn ears to carry, because it is prickly ? Were there 
 only one father on the earth we should worship him ; 
 
NATURE OF WOMEN. 223 
 
 but were there only one mother we should reverence 
 and love her as well as worship. 
 
 The noblest and fairest quality with which nature 
 could and must furnish women for the benefit of pos- 
 terity was love, the most ardent, yet without return, 
 and for an object unlike itself. The child receives 
 love, and kisses, and night- watchings, but at first it 
 only answers with rebuffs ; and the weak creature, 
 which requires most, pays least. But the mother 
 gives unceasingly ; yea, her love only becomes greater 
 with the necessity and thanklessness of the recipient, 
 and she feels the greatest for the most feeble, as the 
 father for the strongest child. 
 
 " But," it may be objected to this view of woman's 
 destination, " women particularly seek after and 
 honour all mental or physical power; they love 
 their own sex little, and judge its weaknesses more 
 harshly than the roughness of men. However angry 
 a master may be with his servant, a mistress is far 
 more so with her slave, whether in the colonies or in 
 Germany ; and the Roman ladies chose to have their 
 toilets performed by maidens with bared bosoms, so 
 that they might, at the least mistake in dressing, stick 
 pins into them for punishment. Mothers as well as 
 courts, celebrate the birth of a princess with fewer 
 cannon shots than that of a prince. If a woman, in 
 any trick of cards, is asked to fix on some one card, 
 she always chooses the king or knave, at all events, 
 never a queen ; and actresses like to perform no parts 
 
 L 4 
 
224 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 better than those of disguised young men. But one 
 does not need to be very long in Paris, or in the 
 world, aye, or upon the world, to guess what they 
 want by it." 
 
 Nothing bad ; but a protector for their children. 
 As Herder has beautifully remarked, nature has im- 
 planted reverence for men in women's heart ; from 
 this reverence springs, in the first instance, love for 
 men, but afterwards it passes into love for children. 
 If even men, loving with the fancy, and after pre- 
 conceived notions, far more than with the heart, 
 follow actresses, because they have seen them play fine 
 romantic characters, queens, goddesses, heroines, 
 yes, heroines of virtue ; why should not women fall in 
 love from reverence when they see us play the greatest 
 parts, not as an actress does Lucretia, Desdemona, or 
 Iphigenia, for a short evening's amusement, but for 
 years of sober-seriousness on the theatre of the world 
 or of the state : one man is a hero, another a pre- 
 sident, a third a king, a fourth a world teacher, I 
 mean an author ! Children demand this love of the 
 mother for their father as their inheritance, or pledged 
 property, and she can only keep some interest ; until, 
 in old age, when the children themselves are parents, 
 she, a grey-headed woman, as silver-bride*, again 
 experiences a kind of love for her silver bridegroom. 
 
 * The twenty-fifth anniversary of a married couple's wed- 
 ding-day is called in Germany their silver wedding-day : the 
 fiftieth, their golden wedding-day. 
 
NATURE OF WOMEN. 225 
 
 In a childless marriage the wife regards the husband 
 as her first and only son, possessed of qualities which 
 constitute her true honour, and support her during 
 her whole life ; and she loves the young man un- 
 utterably. 
 
 87. 
 
 If a young woman cherish a love repressed into 
 the bud of esteem, she will do little less than all 
 for her lover, or what a mother does for her child. 
 She forgets herself in him, because only through him 
 does she remember herself; and her paradise is only 
 valued as a condition and fore- court of heaven to him : 
 and she would receive a hell at the same price. Her 
 heart is the citadel, every thing else is but the suburbs 
 and country round about it; and only with the former 
 is the latter vanquished. 
 
 If it be true that the lost, in their haunts of misery, 
 would gladly exchange the poisonous lures by which 
 they must maintain and deceive themselves, for the 
 sweet intoxication of sincere heart-felt love, will not 
 the fresh virgin heart resign all for the sunrise of life, 
 for the first unbounded love, which is ardent in ac- 
 cordance with its purity and its previous non-existence, 
 to the God man ; who, for a being hitherto bound to 
 a little corner of the world, suddenly reveals a whole 
 new world, which is for the maiden, this world joined 
 with the next. Who, then, shall restrain the gratitude 
 of love towards him who has opened happiness and 
 i, 5 
 
226 NATURE OF WOMEN. 
 
 freedom to a mind chained to the narrow present, 
 who has embodied all those dreams which formerly 
 the unoccupied soul personified in the stars, in spring- 
 time, in friends, and child-like duties ? I know him 
 well who shall place that restraint; even he who 
 requires the opposite, the lover. Certainly a wisely 
 and purely educated maiden is so poetic a flower of 
 this dull world, that the sight of this glorious blossom, 
 hanging, some years after the honey-moon, with yellow 
 faded leaves in un watered beds, must grieve any man 
 who beholds it with a poet's eye ; and who must, con- 
 sequently, in sorrow over the common usefulness and 
 servitude of the merely human life, over the difference 
 between the virgin and the matron, utter the deadliest 
 wishes : yes, I say, he would rather send the virgin 
 with her wreath of rose buds, her tenderness, her 
 ignorance of the sufferings of life, her dream-pictures 
 of a holy Eden, into the graveyard of earth, which 
 is God's field, than into the waste places of life. Yet, 
 do it not, poet: the virgin becomes a mother, and 
 again gives birth to the youth, and the Eden which 
 have fled from her ; and to the mother herself they 
 return, and fairer than before : and so let it be as 
 it is! 
 
 88. 
 How is it that in morally, as well as architecturally*, 
 
 * It is well known that Paris is built from the quarries be- 
 neath it. 
 
NATURE OP WOMEN. 227 
 
 undermined Paris, the women read the characters of 
 Heloise, Attila, Valeria, in which only the love of 
 the heart plays and burns with as great eagerness as 
 love letters ? "Women, even old women, and young 
 men devour such works ; whereas older men prefer 
 being devoured by works of a very different kind. 
 As in a well played game of chess, or in war, he wins 
 who makes the first move, so must women, as the 
 assaulted party succumb. But who attacks us, save 
 ourselves ? And which is more guilty, the serpent 
 on the tree, or Eve under the tree ? And how small 
 and transitory is often the price for which we bar- 
 gain away the whole happiness of a woman's life ! It 
 is like Xerxes who carried war into Greece because 
 he liked eating Attic figs. 
 
 Farther: a woman's imagination, not worn out 
 like a man's, by wine and excitement, must all the 
 more easily burst, on our account, into those flames 
 which consume happiness. 
 
 Hippel remarks, and with justice, that a man over- 
 taken in wrong-doing is ashamed and speechless, that 
 a woman becomes bold and passionately indignant. 
 And this is the cause of it : the man clearly beholds 
 himself, not so the woman; therefore, she the more 
 readily makes her innocence appear both to others 
 and herself. In short, our sins are more generally 
 intentional ; hers thoughtless, and therefore the more 
 excusable. 
 
 And finally: there are every where more chaste 
 L 6 
 
228 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 damsels than young men, more chaste women than 
 men, more old maids than old bachelors. Man, how- 
 ever, may glorify himself on two accounts. First : 
 his relations to life and the world, and his courage 
 lead him more frequently into temptations ; and 
 second : the man who preserves his chastity from 
 principle, possesses therein a praetorian band ; but the 
 woman who protects hers with her heart, and from 
 regard to social morality, has a guardian angel and 
 guard of honour. The cohort, however, is stronger 
 than the angel and the guard. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EDUCATION OP GIRLS. 
 
 89. 
 
 AFTER the last chapter this might be a short one, 
 because, according to it, girls are to be educated as 
 mothers, that is, as teachers. Our only duty would 
 consist in giving them printed and verbal lessons in 
 instruction : and for this purpose no more susceptible 
 period is offered to the parents, than the time of hope 
 and the six months of their daughter's engagement ; 
 nor to the husband, than the first year of wedded 
 life : and then, again, that the elder daughters should 
 be permitted to educate the younger. The last is 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 229 
 
 probably the most spiritual school for obtaining 
 clearness of ideas, patience, and circumspection, to 
 which parents can send their daughters: unfor- 
 tunately it is closed against the youngest child. 
 
 But before and after being a mother, a girl is a 
 human being ; and neither motherly nor wifely des- 
 tination can overbalance or substitute the human, 
 but must become its means, not end. As above the 
 poet, the painter, or the hero, so, above the mother, 
 does the human being rise pre-eminent : and as the 
 artist, while forming his work, does, at the same time, 
 form something higher himself, the creator of that 
 work ; so the mother forms, along with the child, her 
 own more holy self. Every divinely human thing 
 has attached to it by nature the condition of locality ; 
 the ideal dwells within the bodily manifestation, the 
 flower pollen within its cup : the costliest pearls, so 
 easily lost, are strung on common bands and threads, 
 and pierced in order to be preserved. 
 
 Since nature has ordained woman for maternity, it 
 has also ordered her development ; and we need but 
 not to oppose nor anticipate its determinations. But 
 as it always labours blindly and fixedly on, only for 
 its own one-sided amis, its end or ends, so education 
 must not attempt to vanquish it, for every natural 
 energy is holy, but to make the whole nature com- 
 plete by softening, purifying, and harmonizing the 
 preponderating power by means of the other balancing 
 powers. 
 
230 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 90. 
 
 A woman feels, but does not see, herself; she is 
 all heart ; her very ears are ears of the heart. To 
 observe herself and what appertains thereunto, viz. 
 reasons, is too disagreeable for her. Perhaps it 
 was on this account that our ancient jurisprudence 
 sooner relieved a man than a woman from an oath, 
 but applied the torture sooner to him than to her. 
 Reasons change and affect the firm man more easily 
 than the weak versatile woman : as lightning passes 
 better through solid bodies than through the thin air. 
 
 What then will happen ? Feelings come and go 
 like light troops following the victory of the present : 
 but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed 
 and stand fast. Shall we now by anatomising it rob 
 the heart of its fair fulness of inner life. It were 
 sad if one could do it; but Sommering, after the 
 thousand ears he has dissected, still experiences the 
 charms of harmony ; and the philosopher, even after 
 publishing his theory of morals and of taste, still feels 
 the power of conscience and of beauty. 
 
 Let a girl learn to prove, analyse, and explain, not 
 her feeling, but the object of that feeling ; and then, 
 having experienced the wrongness of the object, she 
 will be compelled during the whole continuance of 
 the sensation to follow only the insight she has gained. 
 Do not oppose the feelings, but the imagination. 
 
 This, in a picture of war, for instance, compresses 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 231 
 
 the miseries of a nation into one heart ; those of a 
 day or of a year into one moment ; the various possi- 
 bilities into one certainty : now, if by means of the 
 severing concave mirror of reason, we separate this 
 fancied focus into its various individual rays, the 
 feeling is not destroyed, but only deferred. But, 
 dear mother, cherish and protect every warm and 
 tender feeling which years themselves bring and 
 form, and do not revel in the sensibility of your 
 youngest daughter, and lose yourself in tears of love, 
 while relating some lamentable story, or imparting 
 such feelings in all their nakedness. For in future 
 years either these beings will succumb to their feel- 
 ings, or their feelings to them. Feelings, flowers, 
 and butterflies, live all the longer the later they are 
 developed. Any thing, whether mental or physical, 
 which will certainly some one time come into real 
 existence, may without injury arrive, somewhat late, 
 but not too soon ; and the Germans of Tacitus, pre- 
 ser^ed without disadvantage, that heart full of energy 
 which they gave for ever to one, even though it 
 might not be a young virginal one, which had beaten 
 for them in many battles. 
 
 Sin not against your daughters, nor blasphemously 
 offend the spirit of God, by showing and recommend- 
 ing, even indirectly, any excellence they may possess, 
 be it art, science, or the sanctuary of the heart, as a 
 lure to men, or bait for catching a husband : to do so 
 is truly to shoot wild fowl with diamonds, or to knock 
 
232 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 down fruit with a sceptre. Instead of making heaven 
 a means and handle for this earth, we should, in the 
 highest possible degree, elevate this as a means of 
 attaining that. Only an understanding of the general 
 regulation of a house, order, knowledge of house- 
 keeping, and similar matters, should be spoken of as 
 valuable for the future groundwork of the marriage 
 tie. The so called lady-like accomplishments are, at 
 most, but garlands of flowers by which Cupid may be 
 bound ; but Hymen, who breaks through these, and 
 garlands of fruit too, is best guided and held by the 
 golden official chain of domestic capability. 
 
 By means of eloquence impart clearness to prin- 
 ciples, and by means of repetition give the power of 
 comprehension, and, especially, permit as little as 
 possible the enjoyment of self-commiseration, which, 
 merely to retain excessive pain, flies from every cheer- 
 ful light. Hatred and punishment of every humour, 
 war against every objectless frame of mind, are 
 exercises. Even in the smallest matters, let nothing 
 wilful pass unpunished in your daughters. 
 
 For all this, some man is needed round whose firm 
 stem this weak wavering flower-stalk may be trained. 
 A lover before marriage generally prefers looking at 
 the rainbow of tearful sensibilities, of fickle whims, 
 and helpless weaknesses; but after marriage, when 
 the rainbow turns into wet weather, he requires 
 reasonableness and thoroughness, because he suffers 
 more from whims which are perpetually recurring, 
 
EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 233 
 
 than from graver faults ; and, if he does not find 
 these qualities, he awakes from his particular dreams 
 without finding them realised. His dreams are 
 these: he had, forsooth, when a lover, in various 
 pastoral Arcadian hours of the heart, led his love to 
 different resolutions, for which he had given his own 
 good reasons, hence he was led to expect a mar- 
 riage full of governing reasons ; " For," said he, " if 
 now, in the warmth of youth, she already follows 
 reasons, what will she do when cooler and older?" 
 Merely the very opposite. For she had only paid 
 attention to his wishes, not to his chain of reasoning, 
 and done every thing solely from love. Wherefore^ 
 ye husbands, retain the love of your wives, and you 
 are raised above the necessity of sermons on reason. 
 Should it be more difficult, or more unprofitable, to 
 live and act in company with your own wife and 
 household queen, than to enter into partnership with 
 the Virgin Mary, the queen of heaven, as a merchant 
 in Messina did, and honourably handed over to her 
 the share of his profits? 
 
 Preserve girls from fear and affectation, which, for 
 the most part, find place where reason is excluded. 
 Even at a very early age you may cover with a many- 
 coloured veil many imaginary fears : for instance, you 
 may tell a child that the first clap of thunder he 
 hears, is the rolling of the chariot on which the so 
 long expected spring arrives; or you may yourself 
 unconcernedly regard animals which alarm by the 
 
234 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 rapidity of their movements, as mice: or by their 
 size, as horses ; or by their unpleasing forms, as 
 spiders and toads. Then direct the child's eye from 
 the whole to the individual beautiful limbs, and 
 gradually, without compulsion, draw child and beast 
 together : for children, unlike animals governed by 
 instinct, have scarcely any other fear than that pro- 
 duced by strangeness. One scream of fear from a 
 mother may resound through the whole life of her 
 daughter; for no rational discourse can extinguish 
 the mother's scream. You may make any full stop, 
 colon, semicolon, or comma, of life before your 
 children, but not a note of exclamation ! 
 
 91. 
 
 The morality of girls is custom, not principle. 
 Boys might be improved by the bad example of 
 drunken Helots ; girls only by a good one. Even 
 boys return from the Augean stable of the world 
 with some of its smell adhering to them ; but girls 
 are frail, white Parisian apple-blossoms, parlour- 
 flowers, from which decay must be averted, not with 
 the hand, but with fine camel-hair brushes. They, 
 like the priestesses of antiquity, should be educated 
 only in holy places, and never hear, nor much less 
 see, what is rude, immoral, or violent. Magdalena 
 Pazzi said, on her death-bed, that she did not know 
 what a sin against modesty was: let education, at 
 least, try to imitate this example. Girls, like pearls 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 235 
 
 and peacocks, are valued for no other colour than 
 the most perfect whiteness. A corrupt youth may 
 lay down a noble book, walk up and down the room 
 in passionate tears, and exclaim, " I will amend ; "and 
 keep his word. At the end of forty years, Rousseau 
 accomplished his first transformation from the cater- 
 pillar state, and continued in it until death removed 
 him by a second change. I have hitherto read of 
 few women who have reformed themselves by other 
 means, even in the most favourable cases, than that 
 of a husband ; and what concerns some Magdalen 
 asylums, in great Magdalen cities, no man desirous 
 of marrying would accept from them, as from a wed- 
 ding office, his wedded half, properly but a kind of 
 broken fragment. Perhaps this consideration ex- 
 cuses the conduct of the world, which regards the 
 errors of men but as the chicken-pox, which leaves 
 few or no marks behind ; but those of women as the 
 small-pox, which imprints its traces on the recovered 
 patient, at least on the general remembrance. 
 
 The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it 
 bent : the higher worth of women is sooner lost than 
 that of men. According to the old German rural 
 custom, the sons walked to church behind the father, 
 but the daughters before the mother, apparently be- 
 cause the latter should not be much left out of sight. 
 
 Nature herself has surrounded these delicate souls 
 with an ever-present in-born guard, with modesty, 
 both in speaking and hearing. A woman requires 
 
236 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 no figure of eloquence herself excepted so often 
 as that of accismus.* Keep watch over this guard, 
 and pursue, by this indication of nature, the way to 
 education. On this account mothers, fathers, men, 
 and even youths, are their best companions ; on the 
 contrary, girls connected with other girls of a similar 
 age, as in schools, provoke one another to an ex- 
 change of foibles, rather than of excellencies, to a 
 love of dress, admiration, and gossip, even to the 
 forgetting of accismus. Even sisters of unequal age 
 injure one another, how much more, then, similar- 
 aged playfellows: one needs only to listen to the 
 mutual teazing among the members of a girl's school, 
 when perchance a young man has entered, or even 
 approached, the door. In the paternal dwelling little 
 would be made of such a circumstance, because it 
 would happen more frequently with perfect serious- 
 ness, and among fewer rivals. And what may still 
 be said about these despotic interim-convents ? Men 
 are made for society, but women for maternal soli- 
 tude. A boy's school is right, but not a girl's ; just 
 as a ship of war filled with women would be merely 
 a castle in the air, from its requiring so much 
 unity, quickness, punctuality, and obedience. Girls 
 depend upon one heart, boys on many heads. The 
 
 * So rhetoricians term the figure by which one speaks, with- 
 out all longing, of the very objects for which the strongest 
 desire is felt. 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 237 
 
 most that a girl could find in a school would be a 
 second mother ; but the father would be wanting. 
 
 Another thing which a mother should carefully 
 guard against can scarcely be avoided in a girl's 
 school. It is, that as a mistress rules and speaks ; for 
 a master would speak quite differently : and as rude, 
 violent, dull-minded girls, must be mingled with 
 gentle, delicate, and susceptible ones, the bad must 
 be cured by means of many punishments which 
 are poison to the best. I mean this: nothing so 
 roughly brushes the tender auricula dust, or flower- 
 pollen, off the minds of girls, as that old maidish cry 
 of alarm at our sex : that prudish abuse of a sex, 
 from which every one must make an exception in 
 favour of her father and her husband. There is a 
 kind of bad, unspiritual modesty, which resembles 
 the stone veil in a statue of modesty by A. Corra- 
 dini, which, according to Volkman, hangs down from 
 it clearly and separately as another body. There are 
 certain precipices along which women, like mules in 
 Switzerland, must not be led if they are not to fall. 
 Definite warnings against them serve as attractions 
 and lures. Let the parents shine before them as 
 pure examples, and they will not need to strengthen 
 modesty, the wing- covers of Psyche's wings, with 
 extra coverings. By instruction a child is robbed, in 
 the first instance, of her innocent want of shame, 
 afterwards of its silent presence. 
 
 What follows is true, though in a lesser degree, of 
 
238 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 other schools besides those for girls; namely, if, in 
 the parental dwelling, educational precept is lost in 
 practice, and the child, to the unspeakable advantage 
 of his feeling of freedom, and his quicker suscepti- 
 bility, receives all moral instruction only as the 
 natural unobtrusive accompaniment of his thread of 
 life ; in a school, on the contrary, the child feels as if 
 life only served for instruction, as if he himself lay 
 like a block of marble, chisels and hammers passing 
 over him in every direction, from which so much was 
 to be hewn away that a grown-up man should, at last, 
 rise from the block. The secret parental formation, 
 under which the child believed himself to be growing 
 of his own accord, stands here revealed in its naked 
 aim ; he feels his carnation buds opened with a pen- 
 knife, not gently disclosing themselves, after warm 
 rain, by their own native force. For this very reason 
 a young creature would scarcely wish to remain 
 longer than the appointed time in the school-house, 
 but would gladly live for ever in its parent's 
 home. 
 
 Somewhat better than girls' boarding-schools are 
 day schools, places where they merely receive in- 
 struction. It were to be wished that in both of these, 
 as well as in the girls' room at home, there could be 
 more womanly class-spirit inspired, more love and 
 reverence for their own sex, and woman's excellence 
 shown as well as the more brilliant advantages of 
 men. This leads me to a disinclination not suffi- 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 239 
 
 ciently struggled against in girl's schools, I mean 
 that of women towards women. 
 
 When Richardson had put every means of torture, 
 or passion, which such a preying shark hides under 
 his skull to use against womdfb. sufferers, into the 
 head of that devil towards women, Lovelace, against 
 the angel Clarissa ; and when he really permitted this 
 holy virgin to be crucified by him, he could naturally 
 only expect that women would take the part of the 
 sufferer, not of the beast of prey ; but, to his utter 
 astonishment, every day's post brought him letters 
 from women entreating the final happiness of the 
 good Lovelace, just as Klopstock received similar 
 ones for the reformation of his Abadonna. Much 
 the same befel a converter of the heathen in Green- 
 land ; who, after having employed, as he hoped, 
 every admitted power of eloquence to depict the 
 burning heat of hell, saw, to his astonishment, an 
 ever-increasing cheerfulness in the faces of the Green- 
 landers ; until at last, on descending from the pulpit, 
 he learned that, by his warm description of hell, 
 he had excited a special longing in the whole con- 
 gregation to go thither as to a milder climate. Such 
 a charming hell was Lovelace to women, although a 
 purgatory to Clarissa. 
 
 It almost sounds like satire to say, that women are 
 not particularly fond of each other, and that, with 
 all their friendly words to one another, they rather 
 imitate the nightingale, which, in Beckstein's opinion, 
 
240 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 aims by its luring tones to scare other nightingales ; 
 and so the assertion of the schoolman, that they would 
 rise up as men at the last day, may be in some 
 measure confirmed by the nature of heaven, in which, 
 as the abode of eternal love, women changed into men 
 would naturally and more readily feel a universal 
 love by the entire absence of their own sex. More- 
 over, we possess the facts that the ancient Roman 
 women (according to Bottiger's Sabina) manifested a 
 degree of cruelty towards their female slaves, and 
 European women in the Indies also towards theirs ; 
 and the most ancient governing sister on the island 
 of Lesbos towards her other sisters, and even towards 
 their mothers ; and, finally, modern mistresses towards 
 their maid servants; to which our conduct towards our 
 male domestics forms a noble contrast, so that we bear 
 away, to our astonishment (for we often flog servants), 
 the honourable name of the gentler sex. I only pass- 
 ingly mention calumniation, or the " doing to death 
 by evil tongues," whereby a parlour is converted into 
 a canvassing society of the heads and hearts of such 
 foredoomed women as are not there drinking tea. 
 
 Should we not then, seriously, exclaim, " oh ! 
 mother, above all other things implant and cherish in 
 your daughter a love and reverence for her own sex. 
 Is it possible that you cannot succeed in so doing if 
 you show her the crown of noble women shining 
 gloriously amid the darkness of past ages ; the ele- 
 vating examples of united female friends; and the 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 241 
 
 relationship of all their sex's sisters with them in 
 worth and in danger ; and the thought that in her 
 sex each honours or despises the sex of her mother ; 
 and the certainty that as hatred of humanity is 
 punished in misanthropes, so the half of that sin, 
 towards half the human race, will be punished in the 
 haters of women ?" Even the father may contribute 
 his share, and indeed the largest, towards this end, 
 by not merely preaching to his daughter but showing 
 her more regard towards her sisters, as the mother 
 also may show more love. And, since no precept 
 insures the practice of any virtue, it were well if the 
 daughter were accustomed to regard in maid servants 
 not merely their common humanity, but their fellow- 
 ship with her in sex. 
 
 92. 
 
 Some of the modern aesthetic lithologists would 
 gladly see female flowering plants converted into 
 petrifactions : they ought, say they, to repose more 
 fully on the rights of the stronger. First, however, 
 it were to be wished that more wood and kernel 
 were imparted to the present soft spongy character 
 of men : when that is effected the woman will 
 enclasp it like an ivy plant and form its second 
 crown. How strong in will women are, is a ques- 
 tion to be asked not of lovers, but of such husbands 
 as, on their wedded penitential stools, are summoned 
 to Socratic discourses with a female Socrates, or to 
 
 M 
 
242 EDUCATION OF GIELS. 
 
 such as Job's wife held. In the love before mar- 
 riage the girl appears too weakly, characterless, and 
 submissive ; but marriage, in accordance with her 
 destination for children, suddenly opens, like a 
 northern sun, all her blossoms, be they those of an 
 aloe, or of a thistle. Is it on this account that most 
 Slavonians* call their beloved, as the Poles, indeed, 
 do all women, the uncertain ? In short, the girl 
 matures into the mother; and the man, who wishes 
 to possess in his wife at once a slave and a goddess, 
 stands half discomfited by the change ; the little that 
 he can say on the matter consists in such ideas as 
 these rather than any thing else : " he had, trusting 
 in his own steadfastness, lovingly proposed to himself 
 to have been a prop to her ; but she had brought with 
 her and packed up for use so much of her own, that 
 subsequently, between man and wife, the sex was as 
 difficult to distinguish as in young birds ; which was 
 God, which goddess, was, in his own case, as hard to 
 guess as in the early Grecian statues of deities : 
 indeed, it were to be wished that the similarity were 
 less absolute." 
 
 Consequently the will of girls is less to be 
 strengthened than bent and polished. Like plastic 
 divinities, women should only gently and mildly 
 express their feelings. Every outward and inward 
 excess is a blemish in their charms, a poison to their 
 
 * See Anton's Essays on the Slavonians, vol. i. 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 243 
 
 children. Even a man chooses gentleness as the 
 first, though perhaps not the second, mode of ex- 
 pressing his will and determination. No mere 
 strength goes to war against feminine gentleness ; so 
 the tranquil moonshine is rarely broken by a storm, 
 though the glowing sunshine may be. From the 
 moment in which the bravest man shall speak in the 
 gentlest manner will sweetness and compliance arise 
 more and more in the strongest woman : she may 
 continue to be a pyramid, but in the pyramids is 
 found a soft echo. 
 
 Since the present warlike age, and present style of 
 German poetry send women less to the flute-school 
 of gentleness than to the fighting-school of war, a 
 few sentences added to this ninety-second section, 
 which, though not bringing cure, may yet possibly 
 avert the evil, will not be useless, at least to those 
 daughters who add their own character as a female 
 water pipe to our present tempestuous season. 
 
 Passionateness in a woman's soul is often found 
 united with all the overflowing fulness of a deep 
 noble heart, yes even with predominant gentleness 
 and affection ; and yet such a hard adjunct of nature 
 may draw the being herself, and all who love or are 
 loved by her into the most irremediable misfortunes. 
 
 The usually tranquil female character is naturally 
 
 so much inclined to whirlwinds of passion that even 
 
 the laws (those of Prussia for instance), dreading the 
 
 angels of destruction in these otherwise mild angels, 
 
 M 2 
 
244 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 forbid an apothecary to sell poison to any woman, 
 whereas they permit violent men to procure it. The 
 laws seem usually to consider them as snow-white, 
 snow-dazzling, and snow-cold Heclas full of fire. If, 
 now, this naturally overpowerful disposition of the sex 
 be increased by that of the individual, we behold a 
 thunder-goddess, who beats down with waterspouts 
 her little flower-children, not to mention her drenched 
 husband, flooded house, and drowned love. A storm- 
 ing mother is a contradiction in education, and re- 
 sembles those tropical storms which injuriously in- 
 crease the temperature of the atmosphere ; whereas 
 a storming father coolingly purifies the air. To the 
 child, yet standing on his pure, clear heights, passion 
 perhaps sounds as weak as does a crash to one ascend- 
 ing lofty mountains ; but in the valleys of future life 
 it becomes a thunder clap, and every fit of maternal 
 passion returns as a sevenfold echo in the married life 
 of her daughter. As I have above said, I do not 
 refer to conjugal love, in which, during these female 
 hurricanes, the thin axle of Aphrodite's fair car 
 breaks, or her yoked doves tear themselves loose and 
 fly away, because the readers do not here require the 
 poison to be shown them, but its antidote. 
 
 This, however, is not so close at hand, as our dis- 
 course is only of girls six or seven years old. But to 
 oppose violence to violence, to attack passion by 
 passion, is to try to put out fire with boiling oil : 
 punishments, especially on this account in youth, do 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 245 
 
 more injury than the stifling of the flames warrants ; 
 to which must be added that punishment, as, is 
 natural, only then affects the passion when it has 
 provided the match for a still greater future one. 
 Every repetition of the fault becomes, in this case, a 
 doubling of it, to which even the furrows of pain act 
 as inflammatory incitements. As a physical remedy 
 one might advise more vegetable than animal diet, 
 and that of a cooling nature, if afterwards advancing 
 years with their fiery blood would not again produce 
 heat. But the best means to use against it in early 
 life are the prevention of all, even the smallest, 
 occasions for it, or sparks for the match : and, on the 
 other hand, let every power of love, of patience, of 
 peacefulness be cherished and manifested and em- 
 ployed against that consuming fire. Commands 
 effect nothing ; but examples of gentleness, whether 
 given or related in tone and action, do all. The 
 children of Quakers are gentle without punishment ; 
 they see their parents ever shining, as tranquil white 
 stars through the stormy clouds of foreign environ- 
 ment. 
 
 On the contrary, in the later years of reflection, 
 and the blush of shame, this punishment may be 
 permitted, indeed ordained ; that such a female Boreas 
 of fifteen years old may, in the midst of her roaring 
 storm, openly and harshly receive the metaphorical 
 blow in the face on her burning swollen cheeks, 
 which, given previously, without its figurative mean- 
 
 M 3 
 
246 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 ing, would only, as I have already said, have in- 
 creased the whole swelling evil. 
 
 93. 
 
 The wife of a nobleman was formerly called house- 
 wife. The ancient Britons were often led to battle 
 by brave women. Many Scandinavian women, ac- 
 cording to Home, were pirates. A North American 
 on the land, and a Parisian woman in the shop, do 
 every thing that with us devolves on the man. 
 Should it, indeed, be sufficient if a girl can sew, and 
 knit, and net? When Sweden, under Charles the 
 Twelfth, had sent forth all her men at the call of 
 glory, the women became postmasters, cultivators of 
 the land, and overseers of the public offices. And 
 since it may possibly happen in time that all the 
 men may be engaged in a war and peace establish- 
 ment, it seems to me we should think more of 
 educating girls to be the conductors of our business, 
 and the managers of our estates ; for, subsequently, 
 if the men were killed, there might be another con- 
 scription and enlisting demanded from the women 
 than that under husbands. 
 
 The gymnastics of life and labour are, if the two 
 former sections be correct, the third commandment 
 in female education. But these do not consist of so 
 called ladylike occupations. Sewing, knitting, or 
 spinning, with a Parisian pocket spinning wheel, are 
 recreation and repose from labour, not labour and 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 247 
 
 exercise; for that spinning while walking, as the 
 Moldavians do *, at least must be ordered. Worsted 
 work, this female mosaic work, more suitable for the 
 higher classes who must refresh themselves from 
 doing nothing by doing little, easily converts the 
 pattern into a covering for indisposition or ill humour. 
 Xenophon tells us that Lycurgus sent the Spartan 
 women to the public places of exercise, and only the 
 slaves to the embroidery frame and the spinning wheel. 
 I do not reckon as greatest those physical disadvan- 
 tages, the slavish carriage of the person, for instance, 
 which need a dancing-school to correct what the 
 sewing school has done, for a watchful mother might 
 as easily enforce correct sitting during the sewing 
 lesson, as a writing master can do during the writing 
 lesson ; neither do I reckon the nerve-enfeebling, 
 finger-pricking irritation of knitting ; and the phy- 
 sical evils of a sedentary life shall be treated of here- 
 after. But most employments of the fingers by 
 which you attempt to fix the female quicksilver, 
 have this injurious effect, that the mind left to idle- 
 ness rusts away, or is entirely given up to the waves 
 of circle after circle spreading fancy. Sewing and 
 knitting needles, for instance, keep open the wounds 
 of an unhappy attachment far more than do all 
 romances: they are thorns which themselves pierce 
 the falling rose. If the young woman have, as the 
 
 * Sumarakoff's Travels in the Crimea. 
 M 4 
 
248 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 young man generally has, some occupation which 
 every moment demands new thought, the old one 
 cannot perpetually stand out in the most prominent 
 light. A change of occupation is especially adapted 
 to the female character, as the steady pursuit of one 
 is to that of the man. 
 
 Distraction, forgetfulness, want of consideration, 
 and presence of mind, are the first and worst conse- 
 quences of this sweet internal and external far niente ; 
 and a woman needs nothing more to poison the holy 
 trinity of wedlock, child, husband, and self. Heavens ! 
 how a young man must every day draw his thread of 
 life from a new fleece, or conduct his plans on their 
 long journey nearer to the goal, while a young 
 woman repeats yesterday in to-day as the image of 
 to-morrow ; he indeed walks, and she sits ; the one 
 is permitted to stand, the other only to sit. 
 
 The female sex has such a preference for every 
 anchoring manner of life, that it would gladly, as 
 Gerning says the Greek women actually did, carry a 
 camp stool with it, so as after every step to have a 
 seat ready at hand. Yet I should think women 
 might be satisfied to resemble the sun in its shining 
 and warming powers, and not also in its immoveable- 
 ness. They, in common with the sitting professions, 
 tailoring, and shoe-making, are the victims of spleen 
 and fanaticism. This sedentary life, full of noontide 
 rests, morning and afternoon rests, and vesper rests, 
 in which great ladies with full tables and stomachs 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 249 
 
 indulge, gives so much trouble to the doctors, run- 
 ning hither and thither, that finally a knowledge of 
 medicine will be as necessary as a knowledge of 
 French to every chevalier d'honneur and chamber- 
 lain. In such a circle one certainly need seek few 
 Swiss heroines, not to mention that Szekleress from 
 the district of Gyergyoer, who, in a battle with the 
 Moldavians, killed seven of them at one stroke, and 
 in the evening returned and was brought to bed of a 
 son. This circumstance happened on the seventh of 
 September, 1685. 
 
 A certain Quoddensvult, in the (yet unprinted) 
 twenty-third volume of the Flegeljahre, thinks to 
 excuse something, when, after having spoken of the 
 female love of sitting and dancing, until he hit upon 
 those hovering flies which hover unwaveringly, and 
 shoot down swift as arrows, he thus expresses him- 
 self concerning it : "I see why the female nature 
 loves rest better than men do, less in crabs of which 
 the female has much the fewer legs under its tail 
 than in the human ftetus itself, for the boy begins to 
 move in the third, the girl in the fourth month. 
 Also in the Culs de Paris is the sitting mode of life 
 sufficiently exemplified. But nature softens this as 
 much as she does other things, by giving a desire for 
 sour kraut and herrings as a curative diet to fever 
 patients ; so she implanted in the bed and sofa-lying 
 woman, as well as in the lazy savage, the love of 
 dancing. As in a concert, so in her, prestissimo 
 M 5 
 
250 EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 
 
 follows adagio. I know not what is more necessary 
 to the present Largo di molto sitting than the hop 
 furioso. A ball is a strengthening snail and oyster 
 cure of crawling snails and sitting oysters; a thee 
 dansant is the best cure for a tea drinking. The two 
 medical fingers tread on the foot as ten medical toes ; 
 and at * masked ball the uncovered kdy has her pes- 
 tilence preserver in her hand, as the plague doctors 
 formerly went about in wax masks. If you want 
 ladies to go faster than posts and couriers, arrange an 
 English country dance between Leipsig and Dessau, 
 and let the girls ' chassez,' then see who arrives 
 first, the post or the dancers," and so on. For how- 
 ever true some of it may be, it is yet better placed 
 where it is, in the twenty-third volume. 
 
 This love of sitting also attacks the lesser branches 
 of family and household affairs, in which women 
 often permit and neglect matters merely not to have 
 to rise from their seats, or unwillingly purchase the 
 exercise of their children with their own, or willingly 
 delay physical, and force mental, growth. In London 
 ringing twice summons the footman, thrice the cham- 
 bermaid, apparently to give time to the sex. 
 
 94. 
 
 Now how can this be obviated? Just as it is 
 obviated among the lower classes. Let a girl, instead 
 of her dreamy monotonous finger-work, manage the 
 business of the household, which every moment re- 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 251 
 
 strains dreaminess and absence of mind by new 
 duties, and calls on the attention ; in early years let 
 her be employed in every thing from cooking to 
 gardening ; when older, from the management of 
 the servants to keeping the accounts. What a 
 minister is in a small state, that a woman is in her 
 lesser state ; namely, the minister of all departments 
 at once, the husband managing the foreign affairs ; 
 more especially is she the minister of finance, who, 
 in the state, according to Goethe, in the last resort, 
 regulates peace, as well as, according to Archenholz, 
 the magazines of war. Even noble ladies would be 
 healthier and happier if they fulfilled the duties of 
 maitre d'hotel, and femme de charge, I mean for the 
 house : I know they frequently act in both capacities 
 for their husbands. Certainly, as a whole, the 
 females of the higher classes are rendered more deli- 
 cately beautiful by this absolute idleness ; but such 
 a Venus resembles that of Rome, who was also* the 
 goddess of corpses ; among these may be reckoned 
 her children, her husband, or herself. I do not 
 speak about the art of cookery, in order not to be 
 laughed at as Kant was, who wished that here (as in 
 Scotland) regular lessons should be given in 4t as 
 well as in dancing. Rather will Seneca's beautiful 
 words addressed to sacrificers " Pur as Deus, lion 
 plenas adspicit inanus " (God regards pure not full 
 hands), acquire a new meaning with noble ladies ; and 
 they will suppose their husbands value pure white 
 M 6 
 
252 EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 
 
 hands more than those which present them some good 
 dish they have cooked. 
 
 But how is it that in the order of female rank her 
 real title, housewife, is not esteemed higher ? Is it 
 not in that capacity that as once physically, so now 
 financially, she prepares a freer future for her chil- 
 dren ? And can a woman find that in detail beneath 
 her regard, in which, as a whole, the greatest of men, 
 a Cato of Utica, a Sully, and others, sought their 
 glory ? Once for all, the household must be managed 
 in some way ; and is it better that the husband should 
 add this extra weight to his out-of-door duties ? If 
 so, I should merely be lost in astonishment that the 
 women for the thing is practicable, as Humboldt 
 and others have seen examples of it among the men 
 in South America do not commit to our charge the 
 reasonable and easy duty of suckling the children. 
 After a little creative practice there might be, instead 
 of wet female, wet male nurses : the ministers, pre- 
 sidents, and other principals (the children carried 
 after them into court) would stand it better than the 
 women, &c. &c. 
 
 For the rest, let no more flighty than intellectual 
 woman declare that housekeeping, as a mechanical 
 affair, is beneath the dignity of her mind, and she 
 would rather be as mentally happy as a man. Is 
 there, then, any mental work without hand work ? 
 Do accountants' offices, secretaries' rooms, the mili- 
 tary parade, places of the state, set the hands less in 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 253 
 
 motion than the kitchen and household affairs, or is 
 it merely that they do so in a different way ? Can 
 the mind show itself earlier, or otherwise, than behind 
 the mask of the laborious body ? for instance, the 
 ideal of the sculptor otherwise than after millions of 
 blows and chisel-strokes on the marble ? Or can this 
 present Levana appear in the world and in print 
 unless I make pens, dip them in the ink, and draw 
 them up and down ? 
 
 Ye holy women of German antiquity ! ye knew 
 as little of an ideal heart as of the circulation of the 
 pure blood which flushed and warmed you when you 
 said, " I do it for my husband, for my children ;" 
 you, with your anxieties and cares, seeming only sub- 
 ordinate and prosaic ! But the holy ideal descended 
 through you, as heaven's fire through clouds, upon 
 the earth. The mystic Guyon, who in a hospital took 
 on himself, and fulfilled, the duties of a loathing maid 
 servant, has a higher throne among glorified souls 
 than the general who, with the arms of others, yea, 
 and with his own, make? wounds which he does not 
 heal. All strength lies within, not without ; and 
 whether a poet on his printed sheet, or a conqueror 
 on his missives and treaty-papers divide and unite 
 countries, the difference is only externally so great 
 as that between all and nothing : I mean to the 
 vulgar. 
 
254 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 95. 
 
 "Women are by nature intended for people of busi- 
 ness : they are called to it by the equal balance of 
 their powers and their keen sense of observation. 
 Children require an ever open eye, but not an ever- 
 open mouth : claude os, aperi oculos. But what circle 
 of talking, which always encloses only small and 
 trifling relations, could so well exercise that ever 
 present glance as the circle of domestic affairs? 
 Boys destined for certain occupations, to be artists, 
 professors, or mathematicians, may dispense with a 
 capacity for business, but never a girl who will 
 marry, especially one of the above mentioned boys. 
 Above all things must that wandering, or absence of 
 mind, be strictly combated, which is no fault of 
 nature, but solely of the individual, and is never the 
 determining condition of any superior power. Every 
 dissipation of mind is partial weakness. For instance, 
 were the poet or philosopher, who wanders about so 
 absently in the outer world, which is foreign to his 
 sphere of action, to work with equal want of re- 
 flection in his inner world, which alone he has to 
 observe and govern, he would certainly be either mad 
 or useless. The same thing is true in the opposite 
 case ; if a woman, indifferent to the outer, practical 
 world in which her business lies, neglects it for the 
 sake of the inner. If, now, a girl is intended to grow 
 up with a clear eye for every thing round her, if 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 255 
 
 she is not to waste her many eyes in company, as 
 Argus did his, by misplacing them as painted eyes 
 in a peacock's tail ; or if she is not, like that sea fish, 
 the turbot, to have two eyes on the right side, but, 
 in compensation, to be blind on the left, let her 
 be many-sidedly exercised in household affairs ; and 
 the parents must not be disturbed if some admirer 
 of an etherial bride should object to her, as Plato 
 reproached Eudoxus, with having profaned pure ma- 
 thematics by applying them to mechanics ; for to-day 
 or to-morrow the wedding comes, and the husband, 
 the honey-moon being past, kisses the mother's hand 
 for all that the daughter does contrary to his ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 96. 
 
 Let every thing be taught a girl which forms and 
 exercises the habit of attention, arid the power of 
 judging things by the eye. Consequently botany, 
 this inexhaustible, tranquil, ever interesting science, 
 attaching the mind to nature with bonds of flowers. 
 Then astronomy, not the properly mathematical, but 
 the Lichtenbergian and religious, which with the 
 expansion of the universe expands the mind, along 
 with which it does no harm if a girl experiences 
 why a longest night is advantageous to sleep, a full 
 moon to love. I should also even recommend mathe- 
 matics ; but here, unfortunately, women who have 
 a Fontenelle for astronomy have not one for mathe- 
 
256 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 matics ; for, with regard to girls, I only mean those 
 simplest principles of pure and mixed mathematics 
 which boys can understand. And geometry itself, 
 as a second eye, or dioptric line, which brings as 
 distinct separations into the world of matter as Kant 
 has done by his categories into the world of mind, 
 may also be commenced early ; for geometrical ob- 
 servations, unlike philosophical, strain the mind to 
 the injury of the body as little as the external sense 
 of sight. Sculptors and painters study mathematics 
 as the skeleton of visible beauty, without injury to 
 their sense of beauty : I know a little girl of two 
 years and a half old, who recognized, in the full 
 foliage of nature, the dry paper skeleton of the mathe- 
 matical figures which she had learned to draw in play. 
 In the same way these little beings have early de- 
 veloped powers of calculation, especially for the im- 
 portant part of mental arithmetic. Why are they 
 not also taught a multiplication table for the re- 
 duction of the various kinds of money and yard 
 measurements? 
 
 Philosophy is something quite different, indeed 
 diametrically opposite. Why should these lovers of 
 wisdom and of wise men learn it ? A lottery ticket 
 with a great premium has been occasionally drawn 
 from among this sex a true-born poetess ; but a 
 philosopheress would have broken up the lottery. 
 A woman of genius Madame Chatelet may un- 
 derstand Xewton in English, and render him into 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 257 
 
 French ; but none could do that in German for Kant 
 or Schelling. The most spiritual-minded and intel- 
 lectual women have a way of their own, a certainty 
 of understanding the most profound philosophers, 
 which even their very scholars despairingly aim at 
 namely, they find every thing easy, especially their 
 own thoughts, that is feelings. In the ever-changing 
 atmosphere of their fancy they meet with every most 
 finely-drawn skeleton of the philosophers ; just like 
 many poetical followers of the new schools of philo- 
 sophy who, instead of a clearly defined circle, give 
 us a fantastic circle of vapour. 
 
 Geography, as a mere registry of places, is utterly 
 worthless for mental developement, and of little 
 use to women in their vocations ; on the contrary, 
 that is indispensable which, teaching the enduring 
 living history of the earth in opposition to that 
 which is transitory and dead is at once the his- 
 tory of humanity, which divides itself into nations 
 as well as into contemporaneous historic periods, 
 and also that of the globe itself, which converts 
 the twelve months into twelve contemporaneous 
 spaces. The mind of a girl attached to her chair 
 and her birthplace, like an enchanted princess in 
 a castle, must be delivered and led forth to clearer 
 prospects by the descriptions of travellers. I wish 
 some one would give us a comprehensive selection 
 of the best travels and voyages round the world, 
 but shortened and adapted for the use of girls ; and, 
 
258 EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 
 
 if the editor were well furnished with Herder's 
 patience and insight into the most dissimilar nations, 
 I know of no more valuable present to the sex. 
 With regard to descriptions of places, every station 
 requires a different one, a merchant's daughter one 
 very unlike that provided for a princess. 
 
 Almost all this equally applies to petrified history, 
 which only conducts from one past age into another. 
 For a girl it can scarcely be too barren in dates and 
 names. How many emperors in the whole history 
 of German emperors are for a girl ? On the other 
 hand, it cannot be sufficiently rich in great men and 
 great events, which elevate the soul above the petty 
 histories of towns and suburbs. 
 
 Music, vocal and instrumental, is natural to the 
 female mind, and is the Orphean lute which leads her 
 uninspired past many siren sounds, and accompanies 
 her with its echo of youth far into the autumn of 
 wedded life. Drawing, on the contrary, if carried 
 beyond the first principles, which educate the eye 
 and taste in dress more perfectly, steals too much 
 time from the husband and children ; therefore it is 
 usually a lost art. 
 
 One foreign language is necessary, and at the same 
 time quite enough, for the scientific explanation of 
 her own. Unfortunately French pushes itself most 
 prominently forward, because a woman really must 
 learn it to comply with the necessities consequent on 
 the billeting of French soldiers. I would wish 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 259 
 
 why should one not wish, that is, do every day of the 
 year what one does on the first ? that a selection of 
 English, Italian, Latin words were placed before 
 every girl as an exercise in reading, so that she might 
 understand when she heard them. 
 
 The talking and writing world has sent into cir- 
 culation so large a foreign treasury of scientific words 
 that girls, who do not, like boys, learn the words 
 along with the sciences, should have weekly lessons 
 in them out of a scientific dictionary, or translate 
 into comprehensible phrases tales in which such anti- 
 Campean words are purposely employed. I wish 
 that for this end an octavo volume full of foreign 
 words, with an explanatory encyclopaedia to them, 
 were published. The best women read dreaming 
 (the rest truly sleeping) ; they pass gliding as easily 
 over the mountains of a metaphysical book as sailors 
 do over the mountainous waves of the ocean. None 
 of them ever thinks of asking the dictionary, nay, 
 not even her husband, what any word means ; but 
 this vow of silence, which regards asking questions 
 as a forbidden game, this contentment with dark 
 thoughts, which possibly learns in the twentieth book 
 the meaning of a scientific term used in the second, 
 ought to be prevented. Else they will read books as 
 they listen to men. 
 
 There is one charm which all girls might possess, 
 and which frequently not one in a provincial town 
 does possess ; which equally enchants him who has, 
 
260 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 and him who has it not ; which adorns the features 
 and every word, and which remains imperishable 
 (nothing can exist longer) while a woman speaks ; I 
 mean the pronunciation itself, the pure German 
 indicating no birthplace. I entreat you, mothers, 
 to take lessons in pure German enunciation and to 
 rehearse them constantly with your daughters. I 
 assure you to place the matter on a firmer founda- 
 tion that a vulgar pronunciation always rather 
 reminds one of a vulgar condition, because, in 
 general, the higher the rank the better is the pro- 
 nunciation, though not always the language. The 
 higher ranks, contrary to Adelung's change of words, 
 are not the best musical artists of language (com- 
 posers), but they are the best deliverers of it 
 (virtuosi). 
 
 Girls, unlike authoresses, cannot write too much. 
 It is as though on paper, this final metamorphosis of 
 their dear flax, they themselves experienced one, and, 
 in the backward viewing of the rough and smooth 
 external world, won space and rest for their own 
 inner world; so often in letters and diaries do we 
 find women, the most ordinary in conversation, reveal 
 an unexpected spiritual heaven. But the theme on 
 which and for which they write must not be one 
 drawn from a learned caprice, but from the observa- 
 tion of life for their sensations and thoughts depend 
 upon climate far more than those of boys ; of course 
 I speak of real letters, and their own diaries, not 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 261 
 
 mere exercises. From this cause that an appointed 
 goal marked and restrained their course the author 
 has received so many eloquent, profound, and brilliant 
 letters from feminine, nay masculine, minds, that he 
 has often exclaimed in vexation, "if only five 
 authoresses wrote as well as twenty lady-letter- 
 writers, or twenty authors as well as forty cor- 
 respondents, literature would be of some value ! " 
 
 97. 
 
 The greatest part of the above will help to form 
 female power in connection with female mind, 
 activity along with gentleness : not only in marriage, 
 but in the woman herself, ought there to be a reflec- 
 tion of that heavenly zodiac in which the lion shines 
 beside the virgin. Intellect acts democratically on 
 the mind; feeling, monarchically. Any circum- 
 stance, even dressing for a ball, seizes on a woman, 
 like the Romans on the Sabines, and tears her from 
 her inner world. One who before the toilet for 
 the ball can think of any thing better, loses many 
 more inches of mental elevation. The present 
 governs none more powerfully with one single idea 
 than minds which step dazzled out of their little 
 dream-cell into the clear daylight. 
 
 On this is grounded the well known experience 
 that they are never ready till it is too late, and have 
 always forgotten something. But how easy were it 
 to send a daughter every week into the struggling 
 
262 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 school of improvement ! Let the father say, " dear 
 Nanny, Fanny, or Annie, if you are ready dressed in 
 one hour you shall dance to-day." In a similar way 
 he might cure them of forgetfulness and want of 
 punctuality by pleasure parties, as stipulated rewards 
 for immediate cessation from their occupations and 
 quick packing up of all necessaries. 
 
 98. 
 
 There is just as much to be said against the vanity 
 of women as against the pride of men ; that is, just 
 as little. Charms, which like flowers, lie on the 
 surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; 
 hence women, wits, players, soldiers are vain, owing 
 to their presence, figure, and dress. On the con- 
 trary, other excellencies, which lie deep down like 
 gold, and are only discovered with difficulty, strength, 
 profoundness of intellect, morality, leave their pos- 
 sessors modest and proud. Nelson could become 
 just as vain by orders and the loss of his eye and 
 arm, as proud by his cool bravery. No man can with 
 sufficient liveliness place himself in the position of a 
 beautiful woman, who, carrying her nose, her eyes, 
 her figure, her complexion, as sparkling jewels through 
 the streets, blinds one eye after another with her 
 dazzling brilliance, and risks no capital in exchange 
 for her profits. On the other hand, like a man 
 chained and imprisoned, the very clever and learned 
 rector creeps behind her, covering his inner pearls 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 263 
 
 with two thick shells: aiid no one knows what he 
 knows, but the man himself alone must admire and 
 dazzle himself. 
 
 The desire to please with some good quality which 
 rules only in the visible or external kingdom, is so 
 innocent and right, that the opposite, to be indiffer- 
 ent, or disagreeable, to the eye or ear, would even 
 be wrong. Why should a painter dress to please 
 the eye, and not his wife? I grant you there is a 
 poisonous vanity and love of approbation ; that, 
 namely, which lowers the inner kingdom to an outer 
 one, spreads out sentiments as snaring nets for the 
 eye and ear, and degradingly buys and sells itself 
 with that which has real inherent value. Let a girl 
 try to please with her appearance and her dress, but 
 never with holy sentiments ; a so-called fair devotee, 
 who knew that she was so, and therefore knelt, would 
 worship nothing save herself, the devil, and her ad- 
 mirer. Every mother, and every friend of the family, 
 should keep a careful watch over their own wish to 
 praise often as dangerous as that to blame which 
 so easily names and praises an unconscious grace in 
 the expressions of the heart, in the mien, or in the 
 sentiments, and thereby converts it for ever into a 
 conscious one ; that is to say, kills it. The counting 
 of his subjects lost them to David. The gold pre- 
 sented by demon hands vanishes when spoken of. 
 While man finds a cothurnus on which to raise and 
 show himself to the world in the judge's seat, literary 
 
264 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 rank, the professor's chair or the car of victory, 
 woman has nothing save her outward appearance 
 whereon to raise and display her inner nature ; why 
 pull from under her this lowly foot-stool of Yenus ? 
 And as man stands in some college or corporate body, 
 as in an assurance office for the maintenance of his 
 honour, but woman only asserts the lonely worth of 
 her own individuality, she must attach herself to it 
 all the more strongly. Perhaps this is a second reason 
 why women cannot endure modified praise; for the 
 first is surely this, that from want of self-division, 
 and owing to their constant subjection to the present, 
 which always presents the bitter more powerfully 
 than the sweet, they are more sensitive to the limits 
 set to the praise than to the praise itself. 
 
 We will now pass to the clothes-devil, as the old 
 theologians formerly called the toilet. 
 
 What else does a woman's dressing-room signify 
 than the attiring room of a theatre ? And why, then, 
 are there so many sermons against it? 
 
 The preachers do not sufficiently bear in mind the 
 following considerations : to a woman her dress is the 
 third organ of the soul (the body is the second, and 
 the brain the first), and every upper garment is one 
 organ more. Why? Because the body, her true 
 wedding gift, is more completely one with her desti- 
 nation than ours is with ours : while ours is rather a 
 pilgrim's or miner's dress with its protecting apron, 
 her's is a coronation robe, a court suit. It is the holy 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 265 
 
 relic of an invisible saint, which cannot be sufficiently 
 worshipped and adorned ; and the touch of this holy 
 body works all kinds of miracles. To cut off a man's 
 hand was in early ages scarcely less dangerous than 
 to touch a woman's, on which pressure the Salic law 
 lays a fine of fifteen gold pieces ; a violent kiss 
 formed the ground for a criminal indictment ; and in 
 Hamburgh there is still a fine of twopence on every 
 kiss imprinted in a work-shop. Hence dress and 
 ornament must be as important to women as varnish 
 to paintings ; they must regard them as a multipli- 
 cation of their surfaces or facets. Hence for the 
 most part women visit a " lying in state " to see how 
 people look under the ground among the dead. 
 Perhaps the love of dress may be among the causes 
 of our having had great female painters, but no great 
 female musicians ; for a great space in women's pic- 
 tures is filled with dress, but in music they think 
 they cannot be sufficiently seen unless they sing. 
 Hence, also, light falls on the female art of putting 
 on a shawl of a Hamilton. Even in old age and on 
 the sick bed, of both which a man takes advantage to 
 make himself comfortable in night-cap and dressing- 
 gown, they still put on an ornamental costume, not 
 to please men, but to please themselves : in the most 
 secret coffin of the most lonely Carthusian convent 
 of La Trappe they will not be behind the exhumed 
 corpses of Pompeii, which advantageously display 
 themselves to posterity in ornaments and ear-rings. 
 
 N 
 
266 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 If there were a Miss Robinson Crusoe on a desolate 
 island, with no one to please but her own reflection 
 in the water, she would yet every day make and wear 
 the newest fashions. How little they make them- 
 selves into artificial work and three-cased watches 
 for the sake of men, may be seen in the fact that 
 they never dress more carefully than for ladies' 
 parties, where every one studies and vexes the rest. 
 
 Unembarrassed by witnesses, each one places her- 
 self before her ideal world the mirror, and dresses 
 the bridal pair. Formerly, in France, every woman 
 carried a glass on her person, apparently to be more 
 agreeable to her friends, and to indemnify them by 
 their own pictures for the bearer of them. In Ger- 
 many, in olden time, a mirror was bound up with 
 the hymn-books why is it not so now ? Pity that 
 this loss of the divine image should be caused by the 
 want of a looking-glass 1 
 
 On this same ground of natural destination, not 
 even the cleverest can pardon the censure of her per- 
 sonal appearance ; she even values its praise more 
 highly than that of her mind. From the time of 
 Louis the Fourteenth, the French kings have sworn 
 never to forgive two things, both perpetrable only 
 between man and man, the duel and something 
 worse. Women will willingly forgive all save one 
 thing ; not, indeed, the denying of their charms, but 
 the loud proclamation of some deformity or want of 
 personal attractions. And every man's tongue which 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 267 
 
 could affirm such a thing, is immorally cruel. 
 Woman, more subject to the sensuous present, to 
 appearance and opinion, than we are, must painfully 
 feel her affirmed unsightliness to have, as her beauty 
 has, a wide extending influence. I should even 
 consider this very speaking of it cruel, did I not 
 know from my own experience, as well as from that 
 of others, that a woman's lovely heart as completely 
 effaces all external blots, as an unlovely one does all 
 personal charms ; and that a fair soul has at most only 
 the first moment, but a foul one the whole future, to 
 dread. Woman's body is the pearl oyster ; whether 
 this be brilliant and many-coloured, or rough and 
 dark from the place of its birth, yet the pure white 
 pearl within alone gives it value. I mean by this 
 thy heart, thou good maiden, thou who expectest not 
 to be appreciated, but only to be misunderstood ! 
 
 From the destination of women may possibly be 
 derived the greater coldness and severity with which 
 women of rank treat their female domestics ; they 
 cannot conceal from themselves many resemblances 
 and many possibilities of exchanged circumstances ; in 
 which husbands, to whom more is attributed in the 
 proposition of indifference than in that of contradiction, 
 readily confirm them. Women, especially beauties, 
 regard very little the difference of mental cultivation ; 
 men that only, in regard to their servants ; and 
 Pompey, assured of his victory, did not ask whether 
 his cook looked as he did. 
 
 N 2 
 
268 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 Woman's love of dress has, along with cleanliness, 
 which dwells on the very borders between physical 
 nature and morality, a next-door neighbour in purity 
 of heart. Why are all girls who go out to meet 
 princes with addresses and flowers dressed in white? 
 The chief colour of the mentally and physically pure 
 English women is white. Hess found white linen 
 most used in free countries ; and I find states all the 
 more modest the freer they are. I will become no 
 surety for the inner purity of a woman who, as a 
 counterpart to the Dominicans who wear white in 
 the cloister but black when abroad, only puts on the 
 colour of purity when walking in the streets. 
 
 I might speak of the wardrobe the female library; 
 for our white cloth consists of black on white. I 
 might also ask whether girls do not love clothes more 
 on this account ; because they make many of them, 
 and consequently enjoy all the more heartily a gar- 
 ment they have made in their own little summer- 
 house. But the more immediate question is, how 
 the water-shoots of a flowering branch engrafted by 
 nature are to be repressed or cut off. 
 
 Animate the heart, and it no longer thirsts for 
 common air, but for ether. No one is less vain than 
 a bride. Mark out for your daughter any long 
 course to some important business and she will look 
 the seldomer about her. A true work takes pos- 
 session of the author as well as afterwards of the 
 reader neither thinks any more about himself. In 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 269 
 
 a sea-fight no Nelson is vain; in a land-fight, no 
 Alcibiades ; in a council of state, no Kaunitz. 
 
 Let a daughter learn and exemplify the artistic 
 charni of dress on other persons. 
 
 Treat her as an artistic mannikin, and lay the value 
 on the product itself; she may then regard herself as 
 an actress who does not become a queen by means of 
 her dress. Costly clothes make much vainer than 
 pretty ones. 
 
 Do not permit nurses, ladies' maids, and such-like 
 locusts, to praise and deify the dressed-up girl : yes, 
 even keep a sharp eye on her play-fellows, especially 
 those of lower rank ; because they readily lose their 
 astonishment at the fine dress in admiration of the 
 wearer. 
 
 Ascribe to cleanliness, symmetry, propriety of 
 dress, and all the aesthetic requisites of beauty, their 
 brilliant and true worth ; so a daughter, like a poet, 
 forgets herself in her art and in her ideal, and her own 
 beauty in what is beautiful. She will be a painter 
 who paints herself whom not the original, but the 
 copy, charms. Finally, if the mothers are not their 
 own incessant purveyors of fashionable dress, nor a 
 fruitless tulip-bed of modish colours, much, if not all, 
 is done for the daughters. 
 
 99. 
 
 I could write a whole paragraph merely in favour 
 of cheerfulness and merriment in girls, and dedicate 
 
 N 3 
 
270 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 it to mothers who so frequently forbid them. But 
 seriously to assure girls they may laugh on suitable 
 occasions would look very much like presenting them 
 an opportunity of doing so. Mothers have much a 
 habit of grumbling, even though they may smile 
 inwardly ; the daughters, on the contrary, generally 
 only laugh visibly. The former have passed out of 
 the triumphant church of virgins into the church 
 militant of matrons; their growing duties have in- 
 creased their seriousness ; the bridegroom is changed 
 from a honey-bird, who invited them to the sweets of 
 the honey-moon, into a resolute honey-hunting bear, 
 who will himself have the honey. 
 
 Then all the more, O mothers ! grant these dear 
 light-hearted beings their sports around the flowers ; 
 their minute's play before long years of serious duties. 
 Why may not with them, as with the Romans, 
 comedy precede tragedy ? If the boy may be a zephyr, 
 why may not the girl be a zephyrette ? Is there in 
 the whole range of life any thing so beautiful, so 
 poetical, as the laughing and joking of a maiden who, 
 still in the full harmony of all her powers, plays with 
 every thing in luxurious freedom, and neither mocks 
 nor hates when she jests? For girls, the antipodes 
 of fish, which, as is well known, are not only deaf 
 but also possess no diaphragm, have and impart the 
 true sportiveness of poetry, so difficult for authors to 
 imitate, so unlike satire and the humour of men. 
 Their seriousness is rarely so innocent as their fun ; 
 
EDUCATION OP GIRLS. 271 
 
 and still less innocent is that supercilious discontent 
 which converts the virginal Psyche into a heavy, stu- 
 pid, humming, wing-drooping moth; a death's head, 
 for instance. The melancholy night-flyer may possibly 
 please the lover; but the husband requires his day 
 Psyche, for marriage demands cheerfulness. In a 
 certain Libyan people the young man married that 
 girl among his guests who laughed at his jokes ; per- 
 haps my meaning is contained in that custom. 
 
 Laughing cheerfulness throws sunlight on all the 
 paths of life. Peevishness covers with its dark fog 
 even the most distant horizon. Sorrow causes more 
 absence of mind and confusion than so-called levity. 
 If a woman can perform this comedy impromptu in 
 married life, and occasionally enliven the serious epic 
 of the husband, or hero, by her amusing heroic ballads, 
 or get up, as the Romans did, a merry farce against 
 misfortunes, she will have bribed and won joy, and 
 her husband, and her children. 
 
 Never fear that feminine merriment precludes 
 depth of soul and feeling. Does it do so in men ? 
 And did not the lawgiver Lycurgus, and his Spartans 
 every where, build an altar in his house to Laughter ? 
 It is precisely under external cheerfulness that the 
 quiet powers of the heart increase and grow to their 
 full stature. How heavenly must it be, then, when, 
 for the first time, the smiling face weeps for love, and 
 the irrepressible tears mirror the whole gentle heart ! 
 
 Wherefore, ye mothers, do not merely suffer, but 
 
 N 4 
 
272 EDUCATION OP GIRLS. 
 
 assist, your daughters to become externally French 
 girls, internally German, and to convert life into a 
 comic poem, which surrounds its deep meaning with 
 merry forms. I know few books to recommend for 
 this purpose we men always think of these first 
 when advice is to be given besides the letters of the 
 incomparable Sevigne. But wit, mere wit, is in 
 opposition to aesthetics the comedy and humour of 
 women ; an epigram is to them a humorous chapter, 
 a Haug or a Martial, a Sterne or an Aristophanes. 
 They will laugh themselves ill, or rather well, about 
 the curious marriage of the great and little ; which 
 only seems no mis-alliance to man surveying the long 
 connected chain of being. But laugh away ! and may 
 your mothers read you many epigrams ! I wish much 
 there were a suitable selection of these for girls, and 
 a few comic works written expressly for them, which 
 would certainly sound very French ! Then let the 
 dear merry children laugh to their hearts' content 
 among one another, and especially at any grave 
 pompous man who comes among them, even were he 
 the author of this ninety-ninth paragraph. 
 
 100. 
 
 Inquiries might still be made concerning the 
 education of women of genius, and one of a peculiar 
 nature required for them. But I will only insist the 
 more strongly on the necessity of an ordinary one for 
 them, which may act as the balance and counterpoise 
 
EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 273 
 
 of their fancy. Genius which with wonderful works 
 as with holy festivals breaks into the common course 
 of the week cannot be learned, can be very little 
 taught, and not at all overcome ; and will boldly 
 raise its brow above time and sex and every diffi- 
 culty. Talent, not genius, can be repressed, that is, 
 annihilated ; just as a compound can be destroyed, 
 that is, decomposed, but not a simple power. And 
 truly, were the repression of genius by circumstances 
 possible, we should never once have experienced its 
 existence. For then genius, always appearing only 
 as the one intercalary day of many years, as one 
 single day contradicting and voting against a majority 
 of 1460 days, must have fallen a prey to the opposing 
 tendencies of its age that is, to tendencies which, 
 enslaving men from the earliest times, would bind 
 them down to the latest as a horse to the multi- 
 tudinous stings of bees. Nevertheless, genius has 
 existed, for we have the word. They whom it in- 
 spired, made, like other generals and monarchs of this 
 world, separate treaties of peace with their neigh- 
 bours, and only after death a general one with the 
 whole world. 
 
 But if a man of genius must also be a man and a 
 citizen, and, if possible, a father too, a woman must 
 not suppose herself elevated by her genius above her 
 appointed day-labour in life. If a Jean Jacques 
 write upon education, an intelligent Johanna Jac- 
 quelina need not be ashamed of the occupation of 
 N 5 
 
274 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 intelligent men ; on the contrary, the rare excess of 
 female talent should rather be an additional call to 
 education than a passport for neglecting it. 
 
 But, if women are ever ashamed of acting up to 
 the ideas on which they pride themselves, their des- 
 tiny avenges itself upon them justly and severely. 
 
 First, justly. For woman is appointed to be the 
 vesta, or vestal priestess, of home not the sea nymph 
 of the ocean. The fuller she is of an ideal perfection 
 the more must she endeavour to express it in reality ; 
 as the ideal of all ideals God has manifested 
 himself in the world ; she should educate a daughter 
 as He educates the whole human race. If a poet 
 can express his ideal as well in the narrow limits of 
 the Dutch school as in the far horizon of the Italian, 
 wherefore should she not be able to express hers in 
 the kitchen, store-room, and nursery ? 
 
 And, secondly, the punishment of the neglected 
 relations of life is severe. A. woman can never forget 
 to love, though she be a poet or a ruler. Then, in- 
 stead of children, women of genius seek the society 
 of men. By these they expect to be loved as women, 
 though they themselves only love as men. So they, 
 like flying-fish between the two elements, hover be- 
 tween manhood and womanhood, injured by both, 
 and persecuted in both kingdoms. They then be- 
 come the more unhappy the wider their intellectual 
 circle extends ; a poetess, for instance, becomes more 
 so than a painter. 
 
A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 275 
 
 But, if they unite their woman's destiny with 
 genius, a mighty and rare blessedness fills their 
 hearts ; the clouds which pour their floods in the 
 valleys, gently dissolve on their heights as on moun- 
 tain tops. 
 
 What is most to be desired for such heads is a 
 crown, a prince's or a ducal coronet ; and this brings 
 us to the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRIVATE INSTRUCTIONS OF A PRINCE TO THE GOVERNESS 
 OF HIS DAUGHTER. 
 
 101. 
 
 PERMIT me to embody in a dream the few thoughts 
 I have to offer on the education of princesses. The 
 dream of which I speak elevated me at once above 
 all middle grades into the rank of princes ; an 
 elevation you will please to ascribe less to secret 
 veneration than to excessive newspaper reading. It 
 seemed to me, then, that I was called Prince Justi- 
 nian, and my consort Theodosia, the mother of the 
 Princess Theoda, and our governess Pomponne, 
 apparently some French surname. The private in- 
 structions which I imparted, my princely hat upon 
 my head, to Madame de Pomponne, may sound 
 sufficiently dreamy in somewhat of the following 
 form : 
 
 N 6 
 
276 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 My dear Pomponne, I like going at once openly 
 to work. What my consort arranged with you 
 yesterday, about Theoda's education, I ratify with 
 pleasure, because she wishes it : but as soon as you 
 have read my wishes on this subject, I confidently 
 expect some private alterations in the list of rules 
 which has been laid before you. For truly I give 
 out my laws as readily as another, though I also 
 intentionally receive some ; one cannot always have 
 the crown close at hand in one's pocket, as the Ger- 
 man emperors formerly carried their imperial in- 
 signia along with them in every journey : but let 
 people beware of resembling my royal cousins, who, 
 as the ancient Persian kings dared refuse nothing to 
 their queens on their birthday, scarcely ever close 
 their birthday festivals. 
 
 I confess that shortly after my nuptials I hoped 
 my wife, like those in humbler stations, might pos- 
 sibly take upon herself the education of a future 
 princess, and that you would merely have borne the 
 title of governess. In fact, when I, who best know 
 what a longest day and a longest night combined in 
 one four-and-twenty hours signify, take into con- 
 sideration the tedium of a court, I should think that 
 ;i princess, who must feel it even more severely than 
 a prince, would for that very reason gladly expend 
 her time and her whims on the education of a daugh- 
 ter. Since one becomes so weary of courtiers, who, 
 like people in boots and stirrups, always think they 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 277 
 
 stand on the palace floor most securely with bended 
 knees, that one actually longs for dogs, and parrots, 
 and monkeys ; because they, indifferent to rank, are 
 always free, new, and interesting ; surely my child, 
 who in a court belongs to the small number of my 
 equals, and therefore ventures freely to say what she 
 thinks, must be even more interesting. And should 
 not an excellent royal mother, who can devote whole 
 years to a painting or a piece of embroidery, more 
 gladly sit to herself and paint herself in the living 
 copy of her daughter? And why do the simple 
 priests at the altar only pray that princesses may 
 become happy mothers, and not that they should 
 continue such by educating their children ? 
 
 But these are only questions. There are many 
 difficulties which my beloved Theodosia could not so 
 easily overcome as my paternal imagination fancied. 
 For the rest she is so loving and tender a mother, as 
 you will yourself experience, that she seldom or 
 never permits a week to pass without once sending 
 to call Theoda. 
 
 Nevertheless, dear Pomponne, much, indeed most, 
 depends upon your love and attention to the child. 
 I yesterday heard and subscribed the long chapter 
 on external propriety, royal female dignity and re- 
 serve ; so let that be ; and I will myself, at the right 
 time, procure the princess a dancing-master from 
 Paris, who shall instruct her in the art of raising or 
 letting fall her train. But, my good lady, I hope 
 
278 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 you will not carry too far that self-confining fence 
 round every step, that consideration of every verbal 
 expression, that squeezing mould, and that crooked 
 or straight bending of the body. Oh ! my good 
 Theoda! must it be so? Court is indeed a pays 
 coutumier, and only the country a pays du droit civil, 
 which the regal palace least of all is. Many atti- 
 tudes and impetuosities which, in my officers, I 
 should regard as improprieties and offences against 
 my majesty, are in me, the master, treated (perhaps 
 from flattery) as original traits, as piquant and 
 amiable peculiarities; and the earnest wish is ex- 
 pressed that they may be frequently repeated. 
 Acting on this method of interpretation, I pray you 
 to permit the princess always to run a little. After 
 my marriage I became acquainted with one of the 
 fairest and most amiable princesses excepting, of 
 course, your mistress who had the charming ill- 
 manners any thing else in her were not to be 
 supposed of never moving in a concert-room, or 
 other assembly, save at a running pace with full 
 sails. And what said the court, and foreign princes, 
 myself among the rest, to this ? We all praised her 
 animation. Xow, had she been twelve years old, and 
 her governess present, that celestial animation might 
 have excited a fire of a very different description. 
 
 Must, then, poor unhappy princesses be deprived 
 of all soul, and converted into mere machines of pro- 
 priety, and be placed in the court as in an ice-oven, 
 
TO HIS GOVEKNESS. 279 
 
 through which the little naphtha-flame cannot pass ? 
 Must a princess be indeed so closely imprisoned that 
 she may never venture to cross a bridge on foot, ex- 
 cept the fancy park-bridge? Are tears the best 
 princess's washing water f It is at least fortunate that 
 we princes have given our name to something harder 
 prince's metal. Must not the poor children, in 
 later years, be bound down in formality with golden 
 chains, pompously introduced into life's desert where 
 love is not, and banished under the polar sky of the 
 throne, which sends forth as much fog and frost as 
 does the actual pole? Even a ruling master lies 
 oppressed under it, who could be very different, and 
 thunder. By all means let every thing during public 
 exhibitions and festivals be measured and cold ; but 
 not so when she is alone with you. White gravel 
 may lie glittering and smooth on the garden walks, 
 but no one uses it in flower-beds. The Duke of 
 Lauzun said, To make princesses love you, treat them 
 harshly and scold them unceasingly. You will cer- 
 tainly not confound this ducal method of securing 
 love with that to be adopted by a teacher. You 
 admire, as I heard you say on Sunday, the Scandi- 
 navian mythology : tell me, now, would you wish 
 only to be Nossa* to my daughter and not also 
 Gefione ? Health is the true Gefione ; and may this 
 goddess lead Theoda by the left hand, as well as 
 Nossa by the right ! 
 
 * The goddess Nossa gave maidens beauty ; Gefione, protection. 
 
280 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 Certainly a beautiful princess has more subjects 
 than her prince, and certainly nowhere does female 
 beauty display its bloom so perfectly as on the 
 Alps of the throne ; but my offspring will not give 
 to posterity a perfectly bloomed flower. The prince's 
 hall, in which, as in a fortress, the German future 
 lays down its safety and its freedom, must indeed be 
 built by fair and tender, but also by strong hands. 
 If every mother is a being of importance, I should 
 think a royal mother is one of the greatest im- 
 portance. If I can only arrange it so, Theoda shall 
 accompany me next July, and I shall have the 
 pleasure of accompanying you. I will then effect 
 much. It is stated in the Indian travels of the old 
 Mandelsloh that only the kings among birds of 
 paradise have feet ; apparently we princes are only 
 birds of paradise, and every common person is our 
 king. But at that time my Queen Theoda shall go 
 on foot ; and, what is more, she shall ride on horse- 
 back, which no Roman Dictator ventured to do. 
 I really do not like to think how the health of royal 
 persons must be undermined by things which they 
 probably drink every day; had I an hereditary 
 prince royal, I should almost lose my senses with 
 anxiety. 
 
 I should wish you to allow my Theoda to read 
 more English than French books, and more German 
 than both. I know not what witty author* has 
 
 * This was I myself in the third volume of the ^Esthetics ; 
 but in dreams the best known things are forgotten. 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 281 
 
 shown the similarity of the courtly and worldly tone 
 of mind to that of the French literature ; at the 
 same time, the thought is striking. In a French 
 book we always live in the fashionable world and at 
 court; in a German book occasionally in villages, 
 and in the market-place. I must also have the 
 princess lose some of that awful ignorance about the 
 people, which makes her imagine them only a multi- 
 tudinous repetition of the fat servants who stand 
 behind her chair, to remove her plate and clear the 
 table. She must not fancy that a beggar cannot be 
 relieved with silver coin, because for convenience she 
 only carries with her gold. This, however, is but a 
 very small matter. In German books, as a whole, 
 there predominates a healthy force of affections, 
 boldness of language, love of morality and religion, 
 carefully balanced understanding, sound common 
 sense, unbiased all-sidedness of view, hearty love of 
 human happiness, and a pair of eyes which look 
 towards heaven. Now, if this German strength and 
 purity be ingrafted on a mind tenderly formed by 
 sex and rank, it must necessarily bear the loveliest 
 flowers and fruits. 
 
 A French library, on the contrary if I do not 
 judge unjustly, embittered by Gallic newspaper 
 writers, and by my old loyal tutors is nothing 
 better than a kind of anteroom or exchange. Theoda 
 would only read in it what she every day hears ; 
 the same softness of speech with hardness of thought 
 
282 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 (just as mineralogists append to their newly dis- 
 covered stones the soft Greek termination ite, as 
 Hyalite or Cyanite) ; the same flattery of diame- 
 trically opposed occurrences, because the man of the 
 world resembles the Epicurean who denied that a 
 proposition was either true or false; the same re- 
 semblance in other matters of the worldly man and 
 the Frenchman to the Epicurean school which, unlike 
 every school of philosophy, had no sects because the 
 whole school agreed about wine and meats, women 
 and God. No, no, let my Theoda read her Herder 
 and Klopstock and Goethe and Schiller ; she will 
 hear enough of Voltaire from her chamberlains. You, 
 dear friend of children and of French people, are a 
 quite sufficient French library. Formerly in German 
 courts not merely in mine your countrymen and 
 their works were equally welcome and effective ; as 
 if what the Romans found in real life, that Gallic 
 slaves made the best shepherds, were also true figura- 
 tively, and that your nation could furnish the best 
 shepherds of the shepherds of the people that is to 
 say, tutors of princes and also the best shepherds 
 of the people that is to say, princes. 
 
 Only do not forget Rousseau and Fenelon, nor 
 Madame de Necker and her Memoires. A book 
 more delicate, refined, elegant, religious, and, more- 
 over, interesting, is scarcely to be found for well edu- 
 cated women than this by Madame de Necker, whose 
 jewels possess as much medicinal virtue as colour and 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 283 
 
 brilliancy. But her daughter, Madame de Stael, may 
 postpone leaving her cards for my daughter until the 
 girl is old enough to receive so intellectual a visit. 
 
 German princesses now fill and unite almost all 
 European thrones; as if I dare speak so pedan- 
 tically Aurora's rosebuds do the mountain tops. 
 Formerly, as Thomas remarks, heathen princes were 
 converted to a better religion by their marriages with 
 Christian princesses. This achievement cannot now 
 be expected from any princess ; but it is well for her 
 if she have been brought up in a pure religion. He 
 who has no higher and firmer heaven above his head 
 than the canopy of the throne, composed of wood and 
 velvet, is very circumscribed, and has but a narrow 
 prospect. And he who, on the blooming heights of 
 humanity, attains no happiness, is, if he possess not 
 God in his heart, more helpless than the most lowly, 
 who, in lamenting over his own humble condition, 
 seeks the hope of improvement. Religion only can 
 reward and arm with energy, tranquillity, life and 
 peace, princesses who, like Narcissus, are too fre- 
 quently sacrificed to an infernal deity. By what 
 other aid could women in former ages, when there 
 was less refinement, endure and even forget to grieve 
 at the rudeness and cruelty of men, than by that of 
 religion, which transfigured many an hour of tears 
 into one of prayer ? A woman, to whom so much 
 perishes ere she herself dies, needs, more than a man 
 does, something which may accompany her as a 
 
284 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 glorious star from youth to age. And what is the 
 name of this star ? In the morning of life it is the 
 star of love, later, it is only called the evening star. 
 
 Henry the Eighth of England forbad women to 
 read the New Testament ; the age, alas ! does so 
 now. Happily for my wishes, I know you and your 
 sex. An unbelieving princess is almost as rare as a 
 believing prince. In earlier ages, it is true, we find 
 Gustavus, Bernard, Ernest, and some others, anchored 
 to religion as to a firm mountain. My position may 
 possibly lead me astray, but I confess that to every 
 ideal I form of female beauty a throne is the foot- 
 stool. My travels may form an excuse for this 
 but so it has always been with my ideals of woman's 
 mental beauty, and I have ever seen it crowned. 
 "With thorns?" you ask. " Probably," I answer, 
 " but also with gold." 
 
 In short, I believe that a certain ideal delicacy and 
 purity of the female soul can be developed nowhere 
 so beautifully as in the highest position on the 
 throne as the loveliest flowers bloom on mountains, 
 and the sweetest honey comes from hilly countries ; 
 t\vo resemblances which hold forth a promise of the 
 third. As female nature for her fairest flowers 
 requires forms and customs, which may be compared 
 to fine soil and elegant vases, whereas man's roots 
 can press through and burst open the hardest earth 
 and rocks ; so she finds what alone she needs at court, 
 which is, confessedly, all form and custom, and that 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 285 
 
 of the narrowest and most absolute description I 
 do not say this, self-laudatorily, of my own for 
 the mere fact of an education among the highest 
 ranks, as well as the contemplation of the most 
 refined politeness, these forms and reflections of 
 morality, will be there not only as the reversed 
 and dim counterpart, but as the original bright- 
 coloured rainbow. I might also adduce decency, 
 honour, propriety (of the men as well as of the women), 
 delicacy, forbearance, which are all required by 
 courts ; and not merely, as is falsely supposed, in the 
 public, but also in the private personal demeanour ; 
 I mean in every word by which the courtier ex- 
 presses, not himself, but something better a moral 
 seeming. 
 
 Woman's virtue is the music of string instruments, 
 which sounds best in a room; but man's that of 
 wind instruments, which sounds best in the open air. 
 As men always act most honourably in public the 
 act of cowardice which might be committed in a 
 closet or in a wood becomes impossible at the head 
 of an army or a nation, and as we royal martyrs in 
 our apartments too much resemble the Greek tragic 
 actors whom the chorus never left for a moment 
 alone on the stage, and, finally, as women, avoiding 
 the observation of many eyes, yet pay regard to them 
 by the fairest actions, my proposition is natural. 
 
 I can still add something. The princess, free from 
 distracting labour in the rough service of life, placed 
 
286 
 
 in the mild climate of physical repose, advantageous 
 to the heart as well as to the beauty, brought up 
 rather to observation than to action, at least unless 
 she absolutely will, without compulsion, enter that 
 black pit of statecraft, at whose mouth prince and 
 minister throw off the mantle of love, as they would 
 give their servants a woollen cloak to hold, I really 
 do not remember how or why I began ; but I do 
 know this, that the nobler class of women, even after 
 a long black funereal train of misanthropical expe~ 
 riences, still keep alive their loving heart and genuine 
 feeling ; whereas men in such cases, yes, even some- 
 times after one single grievous misfortune, bury their 
 desolate lost heart in the perpetual hatred of their 
 species. A woman could more easily close for ever 
 her mouth than her heart. 
 
 Why waste many words? I have seen excellent 
 princesses. Without the advantages of the throne 
 they would have lost much, and without its disad- 
 vantages, the rest. In fact, patience, a little suffering, 
 and that of the mind as when, for instance, years 
 convert the wedding-ring into a chain and other 
 things of a similar nature, form within the flower the 
 fruit, and within that the seed of a heavenly life. 
 
 To this head belongs the patience necessitated by 
 the courtly tedium of our rank. The Sabbath was 
 especially ordained by Moses as a rest day for slaves ; 
 but it is precisely this day of rest which at court is 
 converted into a day of unrest. As often as my 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 287 
 
 people envies me during these tumultuous festivals, I 
 seem to myself to resemble the Spartan helots who 
 were flogged to death to the sweet sound of flutes. 
 
 My dear Theodosia would gladly have her daughter 
 as highly gifted as herself, and therefore strongly 
 impressed upon you the desirability of cultivating 
 her imagination. It is, perhaps, because I myself 
 am of a dryer and harder nature, and prefer keeping 
 myself warm with my wings to flying far up into the 
 cold ether, that I lay so very much stress on my 
 daughter's possessing sound common sense. Indeed, 
 if I could, I should like to undermine this powerful- 
 ness of imagination. Fancy in a princess produces a 
 great many fancies in a prince, hence arise storms in 
 the royal atmosphere, and all kinds of volcanic pro- 
 ducts, burning of the treasure closets, maledictions on 
 the crown jewels, and much else that I could name. 
 If a fanciful woman could carry the whole verdure of 
 the country, in its meadows and its woods, compressed 
 and poetically sublimed into one ring, on her finger, 
 in the shape of the largest emerald by Heavens ! 
 Pomponne, she would do it! Therefore, I would 
 most gladly exchange it for a sound understanding, 
 if I had it not. I grant one can make but very little 
 show with it, but then one can judge all the more 
 correctly. And this I certainly know, that many a 
 princess, who, during her husband's reign, modestly 
 showed herself as nothing more than a sensible 
 affectionate mother and wife, could, after his death, 
 
288 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 (I pray you call to mind the widow of my dear old 
 friend in M g n,) replace the father by the mother 
 of her country, and with her clear eye, and ear open 
 to instruction, rightly guide the vessel of the state. 
 Fancy and fancies on the throne, round which, as 
 round other heights, more winds blow than behind 
 the low hull of the ship, are only full spread sails in 
 a storm, which the captain, or the understanding, 
 ought to take in. 
 
 I would wish Theoda to have as much cheerfulness 
 as possible, but wit only in moderation. The latter, 
 when united with good sense and a constant kindly 
 heart, may perhaps guide, or, at all events, drive, the 
 prince consort, as the weak sorceress formerly ruled 
 the devil ; but wit alone without heart, salt without 
 meat, transform a woman, like Lot's wife who became 
 a pillar of salt, from whom the old Lot parted and 
 went on his way. 
 
 But to return to the imagination. I should be 
 glad, Madam, if you could discover, or excite in my 
 daughter, a talent for either music or drawing. 
 Music, if only listened to and not scientifically culti- 
 vated, gives too much play to the feelings and fancy ; 
 the difficulties of the art draw forth the whole 
 energies of the soul. Hence a certain priest, Hermes, 
 in Berlin, recommended girls to be taught thorough 
 bass. Drawing also is good, although it has the dis- 
 advantage of giving too much preponderance to a 
 woman's naturally keen eye for forms. One thing 
 
TO HIS GOVEKNESS. 289 
 
 or the other; a painting, for instance, at which a 
 princess has laboured for about half a year, if it has 
 not been produced with the help of the court artist, 
 as private instructor and father of the piece, would 
 to her, a bee imprisoned in the variegated tulip-bed 
 of the court, smell sweetly as the flowers ; for thus 
 she possesses something which she sees daily grow 
 under her hands, in which consists the happiness of 
 life. The old Saxon princess, who, as I have read, 
 embroidered the banks of the Rhine on a robe, was 
 certainly as happy, yes, happier, while embroidering 
 it, than in the robe itself. At the present day half 
 her heaven would have been stolen from her, since, 
 as I hear, we no longer possess the left bank. 
 
 With regard to female vanity, you need do that 
 is, say nothing; for every word in your apartment 
 is useless if, in the evening at tea or in the concert 
 room, Theoda hear the very opposite from grave men 
 and women, who think to do honour at the same 
 time to both, rank and sex, and by this very con- 
 founding of both constantly intrude the latter on 
 the poor child. As she grows older, a very marked 
 admiration becomes the duty of every courtier, since, 
 unfortunately, the stupid printed genealogical tables 
 every year declare the age of a princess ; in London 
 they act in a still more foolish fashion, and actually 
 shoot the number of years into people's ears by 
 the discharge of cannon ; therefore, she need not - 
 like the modern Roman women, whose dislike of per- 
 o 
 
290 
 
 fumes keeps them at a distance from the altar with 
 its incense retreat from the admiration naturally 
 attendant on her rank and sex, but simply remain 
 standing. 
 
 And now I come to the most important point ; 
 namely, all of religion and human happiness which 
 I have hitherto desired at your hand for Theoda, 
 must assist and be subservient to her princely destiny, 
 and not by any means work against it. Consolation 
 and fortitude I would wish her to draw thence, but 
 no arms against her parents' will. This, between 
 ourselves, is what I mean. Since my last travels, I 
 do not feel by any means certain that, in eight or ten 
 years, my Theoda, regarded as a cement of severed 
 lands, or rivet of different crowns, may not be united 
 to a prince, whom, which Heaven forbid ! she may 
 from her heart detest. To this fear royal parents 
 must submit : in fact, I must regard the glory 
 of my house ; and I have always considered chil- 
 dren as royal pledges, whom I have only to place 
 as far from me as possible in order to win an 
 extension of territory. Wherefore, madam, on this 
 point my daughter must learn to give no other 
 answer than yes. Would that bridegrooms were 
 as easily selected by diplomacy as brides \ Still 
 some good may be made out of the worst case ; and 
 on the rocks of the throne, against which others make 
 shipwreck, we can only bleed. A woman, previously 
 so undetermined, and obedient to the whole compass 
 
TO HIS GOVERNESS. 291 
 
 of male zephyrs, becomes, under the influence of a 
 fixed husband, who determines her fate, a steady trade 
 wind. The most ugly often becomes, at the altar, or 
 shortly afterwards, the most beautiful ; and a similar 
 change often accompanies precisely opposite condi- 
 tions. The priest's words, like lightning on the 
 magnet, easily reverse the position of the positive 
 and negative poles. 
 
 But too much of this. I consider my little future 
 son-in-law to be honourable, and no one yet knows 
 what kind of a man may grow out of the merry boy. 
 But even supposing that the priestly blessing were 
 to the princess a priestly anathema, and that her 
 honeymoon were passed in courtly mourning, yet I 
 cannot help her, at all events before she gives her 
 hand. 
 
 It is true, that in Loango a princess, and only a 
 princess, can choose what husband she will; and in 
 Homer, Penelope had a hundred and eight wooers, 
 without reckoning the absent husband ; but that is of 
 no avail to our princesses, especially before marriage, 
 for those are neither our times nor countries. Diplo- 
 matic marriages must be like English soldier mar- 
 riages, provided not merely hands and hearts but 
 whole countries are to be united. Should it really 
 happen that a throne became a Gold Coast where a 
 daughter was sold into a slave ship, then you can 
 give her no fairer princess's dowry and marriage gift 
 than a mother's heart ; this will compensate her for 
 
 o 2 
 
292 A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 
 
 all her sacrifices : a child's love is more certain than 
 a husband's. 
 
 After such confidence I require from you no 
 other answer than the future, which the governess 
 of a princess holds more surely in her hand than 
 does the tutor of a prince ; for the latter is relieved 
 and removed, and his successors less resemble the 
 popes, each of whom continued the building of St. 
 Peter's church, than princes, who, for the most part, 
 leave the buildings of their predecessors unfinished. 
 You, on the contrary, may long lead Theoda by the 
 hand ; perhaps even till you resign it into that of her 
 husband. May you succeed well ! 
 
 JUSTINIAN. 
 
 My dream came to an end along with my letter, 
 and I arose. But as I laid aside the crown along 
 with my nightcap, and became as usual a private 
 person, a critic who should blame any thing in my 
 instructions would prove nothing more than that he 
 was ignorant of, or indifferent to, Kant's axiom, that 
 a deposed sovereign can never be punished for faults 
 committed by him on the throne. It is something 
 quite different when I am awake, and then fall into 
 errors. 
 
293 
 
 FIFTH FRAGMENT. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 
 102. 
 
 MANY readers, especially critical ones, will probably, 
 without my aid, make the remark and the reproach, 
 that in the former Chapters I have treated of the 
 particular before the general of the education of 
 women before that of men, which extends into a 
 wider sphere of moral, intellectual, and aesthetical 
 development; and that, again, in this Chapter the 
 particular education of kings is placed before the 
 general one of men. And, truly, in the fragment 
 about girls, readers will miss any systematic order, 
 and only find a systematic want of order for women. 
 Now, should any one forget to make these remarks 
 and reproaches, they are here set down ready for him. 
 Moreover, in treating of the education of a prince, 
 the author must again avail himself of the kind 
 reader's former permission to turn letter-writer ; but 
 in this instance he did not dream a letter in bed, but 
 really sent the subjoined one by post. 
 
 o 3 
 
294 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 LETTER 
 
 ON THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES ADDRESSED TO MR. ADELHARD, 
 PRINCE'S TUTOR AND PRIVY COUNCIULOR. 
 
 Baireuth, Oct. 1. 1805. 
 
 Your invitation, my dear friend, to visit you and 
 the prince at his country residence could not have 
 come more opportunely than just now when I am in 
 the very act of packing up and taking flight, because 
 the lava stream of war seems to take its course towards 
 our country. And, what is still better, I am at 
 present engaged on a doctrine of education in frag- 
 ments, one of which, at least, must contain a few 
 words about the education of royal children ; and I 
 am very much mistaken if I shall not find with you, 
 that Magna Charta and electoral franchise which is 
 the most important for a prince ; namely, that which 
 the tutor lays down and prescribes for the little 
 prince. In fact, I expect from you two patterns ; one 
 of a teacher, and one of a pupil. 
 
 If you will not regard it as a jest, dear Adelhard, 
 I will now write a long letter, divining and predict- 
 ing what you have begun and accomplished with your 
 pupil, merely that I may place the letter among my 
 fragments as a pocket-mirror for princes' tutors. It 
 seems to me that, when I prophesy, my predictions 
 at once become rules. 
 
 For I have a kind of dislike absolutely to lay down 
 rules. If one must place oneself in the soul of the 
 
OF A PRINCE. 295 
 
 pupil, in order thence to educate him, the task 
 becomes in the highest degree difficult for any fellow- 
 creature, especially for the tutor of a prince ; because 
 the external conditions of royalty differ from ours 
 not in degree but in kind. Kingly government 
 is totally different from any other ; we only experience 
 power over parts, not over the whole; we see ap- 
 proaches to ourselves both from above and from 
 below : the prince sees none ; but the highest and 
 the lowest servants of the state are to him equally 
 distant from the throne, equally incapable of holding 
 the sceptre. While common plants are contented 
 with the common earth and air, the prince, like a 
 plant of foreign growth, requires a peculiar soil, a 
 southern aspect, and a hothouse. 
 
 Therefore the choice of the royal gardener is all 
 the more important. Fortunately the kingdom of 
 education, at least, is an elective monarchy. Even 
 the court which formerly employed learned men, 
 as the fair Spaniards use glow-worms at night, only 
 as glittering gems, but not as the Indians do fire-flies, 
 as lights regards the choice of a prince's tutor as a 
 matter of sufficient importance to break it up into 
 sects. Do you not remember the Schismatics and 
 Separatists in the court of Flachsenfingen about the 
 choice of the prince's tutor ? I once related them to 
 you on the very best authority, in the presence of 
 the principal governess of the royal children. You, 
 dear Adelhard, were only selected by the father and 
 o 4 
 
296 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 mother for their child, so that no one should be able 
 to say which of the four human beings was the most 
 fortunate. But in Flachsenfingen the queen-mother 
 and her party declared in favour of the flat dull-gold 
 court preacher the king and his adherents con- 
 curred in desiring to secure my services; the third 
 party, that of the lord high chamberlain and his 
 worn-out favourite, the chief governess, all my 
 declared enemies, unanimously voted for that genteel 
 nice young man, whom we all pretty well know, that 
 wretched powder without report which every one pre- 
 viously avoided. So very wisely does a court know 
 how to unite the happiness of the country with the 
 good fortune of its own relatives, by seeking the former 
 through the latter ! This is the reason why courtiers 
 do not appear by any means so unselfish and honour- 
 able as they are. Just as the banker at a great gaming- 
 table fastens to his hat the card (let us suppose it 
 the ace of hearts) upon or against which he will not 
 bet; so the marshal by a golden star, and the governess 
 by a golden heart, as symbols of light and love, showed 
 which were the two cards on which they would never 
 lose or win any thing. This is what many people 
 call intriguing for the choice of the prince's tutor. 
 
 Charles the Great, owing to his physical strength, 
 was called an army: every prince, owing to his 
 political power, may be regarded as a moral army ; 
 and this army at first has no other generalissimo 
 than the tutor. He alone may freely instruct and 
 
OF A PRINCE. 297 
 
 touch the mind, which, in after years, will neither 
 experience nor suffer contradiction. This task is 
 more easy and varied than that of any future favourite ; 
 for he has only wax, not marble, to shape. He may 
 be bold enough to oppose and punish the passions 
 of the little prince, which his subsequent attendants 
 will only use and misdirect. Yes, he may carry his 
 influence so far which never minister or favourite 
 yet did as to gain such a victory as Fenelon, who 
 transformed an ill-disposed duke of Burgundy into 
 a pure noble-minded man, whose premature death 
 probably opened the entrance into the great catacomb 
 of the last century. The knowledge, the habits, the 
 principles, the tastes, which he may give or leave 
 to his pupil, work either for or against all future 
 influences. He may, in a spiritual light, imitate the 
 men who carried torches before the Roman emperors 
 even in the day time. In short, he may if he 
 possess the power within himself combine in one 
 office both the characters of that Dionysius, who was 
 a king in Sicily, a schoolmaster in Corinth. Let him 
 at least strive to do so ! For to the perfect form- 
 ation of a political prince a man of moral power is 
 necessary ; he may be called tutor to the prince, but 
 he, in fact, as a spiritual father, first gives permission 
 to wear the crown; as the pope, in his character 
 of holy father, gave a similar permission to the 
 Jesuit, John the Third, to assume that of Portugal. 
 Is there, then, my friend, for the whole human 
 o 5 
 
298 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 race, not merely for the royal parents, a higher moral 
 and intellectual sphere of action than that of tutor 
 to a prince ; who, perhaps, in the royal child holds in 
 his power the future of half a century a something 
 which may either be the fructifying germ of an oak 
 forest, or the powder train of a mine for his country ? 
 If it be granted that the first circumstances of a man's 
 education, as the deepest and richest, bear all the 
 rest which time heaps on him, I cannot consider the 
 wish too bold, but only natural, that, as there are 
 normal schools for teachers, so there should be at least 
 one of that kind for the tutors of princes. 
 
 But I will now so as to have something to put 
 in my book cast the nativity of the past and pre- 
 sent, and predict what you have done and are now 
 doing. 
 
 I suppose, from your residence in the country, 
 that you will as frequently as possible forbid the 
 court to your Friedanot (a fine-sounding and signifi- 
 cant name ! ), and persuade his parents to see him, for 
 the most part, without lookers on. If the cloud of 
 flattery may be, to a prince, a falling mist, it is to a 
 royal child a rising jmst, which is followed by dark, 
 bad weather. How else than by distance can you 
 protect .your Friedanot from the ladies of the court, 
 who must press around him, allured by his three 
 graces, of being a prince, a child, and a boy. Than 
 this union there can be nothing greater in a woman's 
 eyes. As the emperor of Morocco, so Agrell tells 
 
OF A PRINCE. 299 
 
 us, is drawn by a team of twelve state-horses when 
 he takes a drive ; so our little heir to the crown can 
 command, when he will, twelve children's carriages, 
 each with a dozen lady-drawers. And when at last 
 he becomes twelve years old, he will be absolutely 
 worshipped beforehand, so as to secure his adoration 
 afterwards. Character and childhood are both at 
 once destroyed by early gallantries which incite to 
 gallantries. 
 
 The men of the world reserve their influence for 
 this age. If any thing, like poison on the nerves, de- 
 structively opposes the earnestness of a royal tutor's 
 labours or, indeed, of any teacher it is the worldly 
 views of worldly people, even when honourable and 
 impartial. Like the founder of their order, Helve- 
 tius, these modern Helvetians, in whom no Caesar 
 finds an enemy, can be good natured, lovers of the 
 arts, farmer-generals and every thing good, but not 
 martyrs to their faith, nor keepers of their word. In 
 other respects these Helvetians are good enough ; 
 like their geographical namesakes they are lovers of 
 cold, herdsmen on the heights for which their home- 
 sick hearts long; no gold, no Swiss united by 
 confederacy upright in deeds, if not in words 
 without much money ; mere door-keepers of palaces, 
 in short, men who willingly stand and suffer 
 themselves to be ordered about, as guards and 
 hirelings in the court of a Louis the Fourteenth. 
 But such, Adelhard, are not fit companions for an 
 o 6 
 
300 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 heir apparent. If you have to conduct your pupil 
 through two totally different worlds, out of the one 
 into the other out of that really great world in which 
 only nobility of soul, character, great principles, and 
 comprehensive views are valued where only the 
 despisers of pleasure and the passing hour, the men 
 of eternity stand where an Epaminondas, a Socrates, 
 a Cato, still speak from their tombs and deliver oracles 
 as from an everlasting Delphic cavern where earn- 
 estness of purpose, and man and God bring all things 
 into life; out of this into that world of sham- 
 greatness, in which all that is great and departed is 
 little esteemed, and what is trifling and present is 
 alone held important where every thing is custom, 
 and nothing duty, not to mention kingly duty 
 where the whole country is looked upon as an estate, 
 all offices as appendages of the crown ; where in- 
 spiration seems a passing love affair, or a mere artistic 
 talent if you have to do this, must not all these 
 glittering influences destroy that of the tutor ? Must 
 not the child become at least a kind of double crea- 
 ture, a double stone, half diamond and half common 
 court crystal, which needs but the application of 
 heat to sever the scholastic addition from the courtly 
 mass, just as other double stones are tried and 
 burst asunder by heat. 
 
 You are, then, right in regarding the easy attain- 
 ment of a glitteringly-cut outside as a small recom- 
 pense for the damage done by people of the world. 
 
OF A PRINCE. 301 
 
 Must he not, without your help, pass his whole life 
 among decorators and manufacturers of cosmetics, 
 as under curling machines for royal heads? And 
 will easiness of demeanour ever become difficult to 
 him who, from the freedom of an upright posture, 
 has but to return bows ? Nevertheless it will do 
 so ; every thing, crime excepted, becomes princes ; 
 they, like great artists, are permitted many external 
 peculiarities ; nay, are imitated in them : and what 
 in lower stations is considered want of good man- 
 ners, in the highest is held to denote their super- 
 abundance, or at all events, to be a veil of Moses 
 drawn over the splendour of the crown. Stiff citizen 
 manners occupy only the middle place, the extremi- 
 ties approach one another so closely that in the 
 highest ranks the freedom of the savage is renewed. 
 
 But you will reply to me in your next letter, 
 and complainingly say, I can take my Friedanot no 
 where but a court will follow him : where a prince 
 stamps his foot, a courtly circle rises as an army 
 did at the approach of Pompey, and the altars of 
 incense smoke around him ; for truly the middle and 
 lower ranks natter their prince more injuriously, that 
 is, more grossly and slavishly, than the nobility. It 
 is probably on this account that many novel writers 
 think they present us with the most beautifully sculp- 
 tured heads of princes on their coin, by merely per- 
 mitting the little dauphin, prince of Calabria, prince 
 of Brazil, protector of England, to be educated and 
 
302 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 kept in perfect ignorance of his future rank. In 
 this case the dauphin apparently imitates the Mame- 
 lukes, by the laws of whose empire, only he may 
 ascend the throne who was not born upon it. 
 The opponents of these few novel writers are 
 merely the whole class of historians. For although 
 Macchiavelli remarks, that the best among the Ro- 
 man emperors were those who had been adopt- 
 ed, yet besides the exception of Augustus, who 
 adopted himself to the government, and also be- 
 sides that of many emperors chosen by the senate 
 and the praetorian band other histories are op- 
 posed to that of Rome ; take, for instance, that of 
 the East, which never depicts viziers, beys, and sul- 
 tans, brought up in slave ships, and promoted to the 
 ranks of pilot and captain, as better princes than 
 others. Further ; have the popes made better rulers 
 because they were not born to be popes? And 
 when, as on the extremity of the opponent's chess- 
 board, a pawn may become a queen a peasant, 
 Massaniello, for instance, become a king is his go- 
 vernment, therefore, so very markedly different from 
 that of those who had expected it for twenty years ? 
 And, moreover, in the olden time was not every 
 usurper and poisoner of freedom a man who, in his 
 childhood, had possessed no prince's tutor, no court, 
 no royal father ? 
 
 A prince, on the contrary, can never contemplate 
 soon enough the Tabor of the throne, so that in after 
 
OF A PRINCE. 303 
 
 years he may be gloriously transfigured on it, and 
 not hang as a cloud on the mountain. It is the 
 Sinai on which he, praying, shall receive the laws, 
 which, in their reflected brightness, he is to carry 
 down to the desert. I could recommend no other 
 refuge from anticipated courts for an heir apparent 
 than a foreign country, where the native prince 
 would draw away all flatterers from the stranger. 
 But the evils consequent on the necessary contem- 
 plation of his future high rank may be guarded 
 against in many ways. A child's views of life must 
 necessarily be confused if his master is at the same 
 time his servant, or, like a bad royal tutor, a com- 
 pound of tyrant and slave. There may be inequality, 
 but let it be upwards. With us lower people every 
 father is at times the fellow-labourer and fellow- 
 teacher of the schoolmaster ; should not the father of 
 his country also occasionally be the father of his son 
 and successor ? Antiquity holds out the example of 
 princes who were the play-fellows of their children ; 
 how much more praise would they merit as their 
 teachers ! I can imagine no more honourable group 
 than a royal father among his sons, earnestly instil- 
 ling into them the high laws of the kingly office, 
 which he himself religiously observed. 
 
 But if the affairs of government occupy too much of 
 the father's time, or if this recreation would abstract 
 him too much from business, the queenly mother is 
 still there with the powerful influence of her heart 
 
304 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 and of her leisure. Baron, the actor, said, that a tra- 
 gedian should be nursed in the lap of queens. It 
 seems to me that the dauphin, whom he represents 
 and imitates, claims the first place there ; and such a 
 mother will be more usefully employed teaching her 
 son, than her husband how to govern. " Crowned 
 mother, do for your son what the uncrowned 
 mother of the Gracchi did for hers, so that he may 
 be as noble as either of them, and more fortunate 
 than both." So, my dear Adelhard, would I speak 
 almost in public, in the hope of perhaps cheering 
 some princess who has thus acted. 
 
 It were also desirable if kings' children could asso- 
 ciate with their equals in the school-room : I mean 
 if there were a school for princes in a higher sense 
 than that near Naurnburg, ^\Ye, linked together in 
 a community of children, were all educated under 
 the mutual influence of equals ; the heir to the 
 throne sits in the room alone with his tutor. Princes 
 learn the art of war only with an army of fellow- 
 students ; perhaps that is an additional reason why 
 they understand and like it best. 
 
 I am not without the expectation that you attempt 
 to preserve Friedanot, although he is now more 
 than eleven years old, from poison to a childlike 
 mind, by obliging him to pay deference to age and 
 merit. As yet he is merely a subject like his tutor, 
 and even his mother. This is a matter of great im- 
 portance ; for the child who does not respect grown 
 
OF A PKINCE. 305 
 
 up people as such, readily enters the path of con- 
 tempt for his fellow-men, a vice very prevalent on 
 the throne. If rank, especially a prospective one, 
 outweighs the man, to whom properly alone he ought 
 to bow ; in after years the masses of citizens will, in 
 his princely eye, resemble those stags' heads in Fon- 
 tainebleau under which was inscribed " such or 
 such a Louis did me the honour of shooting me ; " 
 and the smaller select number will be like certain 
 royal stag hounds in the same country, which a 
 courtier addressed as "Yous, Monsieur Chien," 
 though in former times the term " monsieur " was 
 only applied to the saints, and afterwards was re- 
 fused even to the five directors of Paris. Since in 
 the eye of princes, as in that of the law, or still 
 better in the union of both, individual peculiarities 
 are lost in one living mass of souls, it is an easy 
 change for a crowned despiser of humanity to regard 
 those souls as the mere mechanism of peace and war, 
 till one man only seems to exist himself. 
 
 Therefore, let a prince, as long as he is a child, 
 always measure merit by inches ; for inches are to 
 him yet as though they were long years, and years as 
 munificent gifts. It is certainly a trifle that you, 
 as I venture to guess, contrary to custom, do not 
 permit the servants to help the prince first when 
 older guests are at table ; but the opposite method 
 would not be a trifle. A Louis the Fifteenth (how 
 great a love of children that monarch had in the days 
 
306 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 of his innocence ! ) may always give his playfellows 
 an order of blue and white ribbon, and a medal with 
 the picture of the pavilion in which they played ; but 
 the child should not receive the ribbon of an order 
 appropriate to mature years as a leading-string ; still 
 less should he, as the monarch I have just named, 
 and his predecessor, Louis the Fourteenth, hold a lit 
 de justice almost in his cradle, or, like other royal 
 children, grasp the staff of a commander in the hands 
 which yet feel the rod. Why might not as well little 
 ministers and presidents surround the throne of the 
 royal child, and little ambassadors of the highest 
 rank accompany him in his carriage ? This degrada- 
 tion of the state, and of human 'nature, works like a 
 destructive poison on the excitable mind of the child. 
 To this cause may be traced that premature, worn- 
 out, shallow-cunning, cool expression, on the faces of 
 so many royal children, an expression compounded 
 of the presumption of rank and youth, and the weak- 
 ness of age. 
 
 Strange that, while writing this, your last letter 
 but one, to which you referred in your last epistle, 
 has just come to hand. I now understand much. 
 Your recent Friedanot's festival might really be 
 celebrated as the alliance between my prophecies 
 and your rules; or as the passage from what has 
 preceded to what is about to follow, from negative 
 to positive education. 
 
 To proceed, then : only princes and women can be 
 
OF A PKINCE. 307 
 
 educated for a determinate future ; but all other men 
 for one which is uncertain, for the empire of chance 
 in their aims and ranks. Now this is the living spirit 
 of your life and of that entrusted to you. The edu- 
 cation of a prince, like his position in the state, is 
 the only one of the kind. As your pupil can never 
 think too modestly of himself, so can he never think 
 too proudly of his dignity ; the reverse of this pro- 
 duces misery everywhere. His office, a high office 
 at the altar of the state, demands from a fallible 
 human form the powerful agency of a god. He is 
 not merely the first servant of the state, but its very 
 heart, which alternately receives and sends out its life 
 blood ; he is its centre of gravity, which gives form 
 to its varied powers. Then let German philosophy 
 show him in his high station something different from 
 what the persiflage of French philosophy, and that 
 of worldliness, exhibits; which endeavours to re- 
 present the throne as the highest heritable place at 
 court, or as a regency with a handsome income, and 
 the country as a vast regiment at once ridiculous 
 and useful. Ah! verily the ancient error of re- 
 garding princes as the sent and anointed of God 
 (which in fact every man is, only in different 
 degrees the man of genius, for instance, or every 
 rational creature as compared with the beasts) is 
 much nobler, and more efficacious for good, than 
 the modern error of declaring them only to be the 
 ambassadors of selfish extortions, that is, of the devil. 
 
308 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 But let German earnestness of heart show the young 
 eagle-prince his wings, his mountains,, and his sun. 
 When some warm, benevolent, but too rash, genius 
 of the earth saw the erring efforts of humanity to 
 shape its course, and how, broken up among indivi- 
 duals, it, like the sea, only raised waves, but gave 
 them no direction, he longed to give the ocean a 
 boundary and a rapid current ; then he called up the 
 first great king to collect the scattered forces, and 
 guide them to one end. Moreover, this genius would 
 have experienced the bliss of seeing nations linked 
 together round our globe like the glittering girdle 
 of Venus, had he not forgotten something, which 
 another and better genius, who always permits more 
 men of genius than spiritual monarchs to appear at 
 the same time, remembered. I mean, if he had taken 
 care that a. continued succession of good kings had 
 drawn a holy family circle round the globe, and 
 described a ruling line of beauty, happiness, and 
 honour, through all time. Oh ! what might not poor 
 humanity have become if, like the thirty popes who, 
 one after another, continued building the great 
 cathedral at Rome, a cotemporaneous and successive 
 band of princes had, joining temple to temple, so 
 urged on the great temple building of humanity ? 
 Can humanity blame fate for opening to it, through 
 one individual, the way to the highest elevation or 
 the lowest degredation, when one reckons the number 
 of princes with free power to be the leaders of their 
 
OF A PRINCE. 309 
 
 age and country, and, like many flat glasses placed 
 at once before the sun, fancies them united into one 
 celestial luminary ? It is not Heaven's fault, but 
 man's, if they have more easily converted themselves 
 into the war-gods and scourges of states, than into 
 their protecting deities. 
 
 I would, therefore, imitate you, and teach the 
 prince his dignity ; because only he adorns the station 
 who believes himself to be adorned by it. Princes 
 are apt to think meanly of princes, as mountains look 
 little when viewed from mountains. 
 
 I would indeed, as your fellow-labourer, prepare 
 yearly, say, on his birth-day, a feast of dedication 
 for the young heir apparent, a rehearsal of his corona- 
 tion, in which the holiness of his future, the inviolable- 
 ness of his soul, should be gloriously and intimately 
 presented to the young eye, longing after virtue, 
 under the triumphal arch of great and free nations, 
 in sight of the arms and banners of his ancestors and 
 of all past ages. On such a day, he might also look 
 down into the abyss of fallen nations. Let him learn 
 by heart Plutarch's histories of the great, more useful 
 to him than the more recent ; and let him every day 
 pray out of the meditations of Antoninus. Let that 
 noble order, the name, Father of his country, which 
 the great Camillus first bore, as founder of the order, 
 and subsequently Cicero, the enemy of Catiline, as a 
 member, until it lost its glory and sank down upon 
 a Caesar, an Augustus, and such-like men, burn 
 
310 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 before him, like an illumination on the seven hills of 
 freedom. He must not consider himself as a com- 
 mander-in- chief of all the forces, nor as a minister of 
 foreign affairs, nor as president of the council, nor as 
 chief justice, nor as a rector magnificus of all the 
 sciences, but as the protector of his country, in the 
 highest sense of -that word ; as one who has his eye 
 on every department in the state, like the true judge 
 of works of art who has taste for every beauty. He 
 should be a Jupiter who bears his satellites, and his 
 courtly ring, at once round himself and round their 
 common sun. 
 
 " According to the usual requirements of learned 
 men," you write, "a prince who would govern well, 
 ought to unite in his own person the knowledge of 
 all his ministers, so as to be able to judge of all their 
 affairs. But the knowledge of things, which cannot 
 all be embraced by one individual, is less necessary 
 and less possible, than the knowledge of men by whom 
 they must be proposed and executed. Consequently, 
 if the prince have only character, and if that have 
 matured steadily and purely under the eye of his 
 teacher, he will be able both to penetrate into 
 matters and to use vigorous measures." You might 
 have copied this out of my own soul. If men have 
 been easily able to blind us, yet, in a hundred cases, 
 some weakness in our heart, rather than any weak- 
 ness in our eyes, has been first to blame. Among 
 princes a pure and firm character is especially needed 
 
OF A PEINCE. 311 
 
 for seeing and acting ; for on the throne the nerve 
 of sight is easily transformed into the motive-nerve 
 of the muscles. Mere goodness without character 
 will, or may, be governed and used by all the enemies 
 of a people ; whereas character without goodness can 
 only be acted on by one enemy of the people itself. 
 
 The whole present time is a regicide of character, 
 especially of all healthiness of character ; for over it 
 poisonous victims are passed to bodies and souls, and 
 for the sacrifice of a god a man is offered up. Hence 
 so many marrowless but sceptre-griping arms ; hence 
 the life of so many princes is but a passive " council 
 of five hundred ; " and even good may only be done 
 and published by permission of the subjects. 
 
 So much the better, dear Adelhard, that you en- 
 deavour to giveVour pupil a strong body ; only watch 
 over him till he has passed through the usual powder 
 mines of royal youth, the capitals, for instance, of 
 the grand tour, a few middle aged- women, and his 
 majority. 
 
 From your letter I can perceive the truth of the 
 supposition I cherish, that you do not recommend or 
 cultivate in Friedanot any active love of the arts of 
 painting, music or architecture, lest, as you say, " he 
 should convert government into a subservient art." 
 Nero, truly, had a genius for art, as Frederick the 
 Great had a genius for government, his \vhole life, 
 from the time of his subjection to the laws of art, 
 even in the midst of his cruelties, and down to his 
 
312 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 last sigh, testifies as much feeling for art as absence 
 of feeling for humanity. If, for instance, a prince 
 devotes himself, not to adduce more ancient, still 
 less modern, examples, like the Macedonian king 
 Europus, to making candles (in a metaphorical sense, 
 that would be good) ; or, like the Parthian kings, 
 to sharpening swords, (that were good in a different 
 way) ; or, like Attalus Philomator, to the cultivation 
 of poisonous plants, (this only admits of no good 
 metaphorical sense), the whole court, suppose that 
 of Attalus, would be converted into a garden, and 
 every one would seize the royal gardener by his weak 
 side, his botanical mania. All courtiers wish their 
 king to love something besides government and his 
 country. Every great lord, according to the law, 
 must practise some handicraft ; but only in the same 
 way that every Mussulman, and every Rabbin among 
 the Jews, must understand some art, and not, as 
 Montesquieu and some others suppose, in order that 
 he may not torture people for pastime. 
 
 Am I not, then, agreed in opinion with you, when 
 I say that princes need no subordinate pursuit, any 
 more than ancient statues needed the adornment of 
 colours ? How much useless knowledge about his- 
 tory, languages, and art, might and ought to be spared 
 them ! 
 
 A general love of science, like an alternation be- 
 tween two heights, enriches and refreshes royalty, as 
 was exemplified in Frederick the Great. There is a 
 
OE A PRINCE. 313 
 
 wider prospect from Parnassus than from the throne. 
 I wish that even there, as in the high schools, read- 
 ing and learning were called government. And what 
 greater ground for alarm would there be, if the king 
 were president of the great academy of all the sciences, 
 than that favourites and courtiers would become 
 members of it, and understand a great deal ? And is 
 it not very much better that he, like Louis XIV., 
 should expend sixty-six thousand three hundred 
 livres in pensions to learned men, than that, like the 
 same king, he should waste thirty-three millions of 
 livres in the mere lead of the palace at Versailles, and 
 its water-works ? Openly tell your Friedanot that, 
 in every country, where the press is free as well as 
 where it is submitted to censorship, there is no one 
 to whom so many books are forbidden as to the king 
 himself; the censors will scarcely allow him a news- 
 paper. Although the king need not know so much 
 of law as his lord chancellor, nor so much political 
 economy as his prime minister, he yet must know 
 as much or more of the art of war than his first 
 general. This union of sceptre and sword is unmis- 
 takeable. The royal infant even is consecrated to 
 no other inaugural post of honour than that of war. 
 A helmeted preface (pr&fatio yaleata) precedes his 
 life ; he passes his mornings in the arsenal. No prince 
 scruples to serve in war among the soldiers of a 
 greater foreign prince than himself, and to fight and 
 
 p 
 
314 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 bleed for him as unconditionally as his meanest sub- 
 ject ; but he would consider it beneath his dignity to 
 be the same monarch's prime minister, president of 
 his council, or even general-in-chief of his forces. 
 
 Whence arises, and why is there, this equality of 
 royal and warlike honour in this and other points, 
 as if the prince were only the first servant of the 
 state by being its foremost fighter ? 
 
 Voltaire's saying, " The first king was a successful 
 soldier " and the corollary to be drawn thence, 
 that " A successful king is the first soldier," does not 
 sufficiently explain his position in a state, by his 
 position before there was a state. Moreover, war 
 is now only the exception, and peace the rule ; and 
 however much the country be turned into an arsenal, 
 and the throne into a fortress, yet preparations for 
 peace must be carried on as long and as industriously 
 as preparations for war. But the preponderance of 
 the arts of war over those of peace, in all persons 
 destined for the throne, may be explained and 
 justified by two totally different reasons and senti- 
 ments. In the first instance, the mutual defence of 
 individuals formed the state ; and afterwards, as each 
 nation experienced the necessity of defending itself 
 against the aggressions of other nations, the king 
 seemed to perform his duty to the state best by 
 watching over its frontiers, not by becoming chief 
 architect, food provider, farmer, coiner, and regu- 
 lator of its domestic affairs; he had rather to act 
 
OF A PRINCE. 315 
 
 externally by the law of the stronger, than internally 
 by the power of the affections. 
 
 One evil was a necessary consequence of this 
 state of things, that nations, which, in the last 
 resort, only consist of individuals, owing to this 
 love of war in their governors, fell into that very 
 condition out of which the individuals had endea- 
 voured to extricate themselves by combining to form 
 a state. So little yet does man regard the interests 
 of man. Confined to his clod of earth, like the 
 insect to its leaf, he does not perceive that every 
 war on the face of the globe is, in fact, a civil war ; 
 and a dark sea, in a spiritual sense as truly as in 
 physical fact, gives, by its concealing cloak, the 
 appearance of separate enchanting islands to the 
 girdle of mountains which surrounds the world. 
 
 But the monarch has a yet weightier ground for 
 his love of war ; the sentiment that all dignity arises 
 from moral worth, and that the chief basis of manly 
 dignity consists only in courage or honour. The brave 
 prince covers his head and his inner man with a 
 crown different from that which rests on his outward 
 form. Courage or honour is expected in every man, 
 but not talent. The prince, like the first nobleman 
 in the highest rank of nobility, must oppose his 
 enemy with the courageous point of honour, as 
 though it were a bright focus of burning rays. 
 Courage is a virtue of no doubtful seeming ; there 
 can be no contradiction, no diversity of opinion, 
 p 2 
 
316 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 about it. A prince who exposes his body, carefully 
 protected and consecrated by the state, as though it 
 were a common one, to the rank-scorning bullet, 
 against which, in a foreign land, his crown is no 
 helmet, but only a mark, gathers laurels with his 
 own hand in the eyes of thousands. But the honour 
 of peaceful talents is not so uncontestedly ascribed 
 to him, because many a prince has been a sun which 
 the minister must surround with his clouds ere it 
 emitted beams. 
 
 I grant that war is accompanied with certain by- 
 charms. It is well minutely to dissect them before 
 him to whom you would fain render them hateful. 
 A king likes to govern, especially when he can do so 
 easily and absolutely ; on the drum he finds a move- 
 able throne ; and the art of war is surrounded with a 
 poetical halo ; it is more definite and more obvious 
 than the art of government, and the movements of 
 the general's baton are more clearly marked by the 
 eyes of men than are those of the sceptre. 
 
 The powder-mill of war moves on the wheels of 
 fortune. As the southern promontory of Africa, so 
 here the headland of storms is called the Cape of 
 Good Hope. And to what lottery could a ruler 
 more cheerfully subscribe than to that of war espe- 
 cially because he only ventures foreign possessions, 
 and wins no part of his home inheritance, because he 
 wins the whole ? Further, nothing irritates a youth 
 so much as to be obliged to mount the throne when 
 
or A PRINCE. 317 
 
 of mature age, and then find his whole life, even 
 down to the horizon, marked out and enclosed. The 
 royal youth longs, in the first place, to do something 
 in life ; and, in the second, to render himself im- 
 mortal by it. Now, for the accomplishment of the 
 first wish, what means lie so near him, or seem so 
 glorious to his fancy, as war, which opens to him a 
 career in foreign countries ? or what can gratify the 
 second desire more easily than the field of battle, 
 which matures in one day the precious flower of im- 
 mortality, which would require a whole life to blos- 
 som on the throne ? The noble Henry IV. of France 
 said, " I would rather gird on my armour than make 
 laws." It is on the same principle that novices in 
 poetry, and novices on the dramatic stage, make their 
 first essays in the horrible, the glory arising from 
 which is easily and quickly gained. 
 
 I think you say in one of your letters that the 
 satiety princes experience of the praise and emulation 
 of inferiors, is apt to engender a warlike longing for 
 a contest with kings and enemies before the eyes of 
 all Europe. Very true ! The poisonous air of courts 
 readily communicates that yawning fever of which so 
 many died in Italy during the seventh century. Men 
 seek to clear the air with gunpowder. 
 
 But how can a young prince ever behold the dark 
 side of the glittering form of war, that hellish stream 
 which surrounds the living earth and is peopled with 
 the dead ? For it is in truth necessary, especially for 
 
 p 3 
 
318 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 Germany, which is becoming more and more the Hyde 
 Park and Bois de Boulogne to which Europe resorts 
 when it resolves to fight. Will you let him hear the 
 chorus of all w r ise men and poets cursing war, the last 
 ghost and savage army of barbarism? Will you, 
 before war, preach such a sermon as this on peace to 
 the king who is about to hurl his torch-like missive 
 to kindle the fire of war ? " Consider well : one step 
 beyond your frontiers changes the whole face of two 
 empires ; thine own is consumed behind thee, thine 
 enemy's before thee. That moment an earthquake 
 takes possession of both, and labours to the destruction 
 of both; all ancient law courts, all judgment-seats, 
 are overturned; heights and depths are confounded 
 together. It is a last day, full of rising sinners and 
 falling stars; it is the tribunal at which the devil 
 judges the world, where bodies condemn spirits, 
 physical force the power of love. Consider it, O 
 prince ! Every soldier in this empire of lawlessness 
 becomes thy crowned brother in a foreign land, bear- 
 ing the sword of justice without her balance, and 
 governing more despotically than thyself. Every 
 meanest drudge in the enemy's ranks is thy king and 
 judge, carrying in his hand an axe and a halter for 
 thee. The arbitrary powers of force and chance only 
 sit upon the double throne of conscience and of 
 knowledge. Two nations are converted, half into 
 slave dealers, half into slaves, mingled without order 
 among one another. In the eyes of higher beings, 
 
OF A PKIXCE. 319 
 
 the human race has become an assemblage of lawless, 
 conscienceless, stone blind beasts and machines, which 
 robs, devours, strikes, bleeds, and dies. Even grant- 
 ing that justice is on thy side, yet by the first line of 
 a manifesto, as by an earthquake, thou lettest loose the 
 chained devils of injustice out of their prison-house ! 
 The dread despotism thus enthroned is so great that 
 little misdeeds never reach thy ears, and great crimes 
 only by their frequent repetition. For the permission 
 to slay and take possession, includes in itself all lesser 
 crimes. Even the unarmed citizen's voice is heard 
 amidst the screams and discord ; exchanging all his 
 plans of life for a few moments' indulgence and law- 
 less freedom, treated by the allied soldiers as partly, 
 and by their opponents as altogether an enemy. 
 Think of all this, O prince, ere thou hidest thy light 
 amid the locust-clouds of war, and ere thou makest 
 the warriors of a stranger the judges and executioners 
 in thy hitherto justly governed land, or givest thine 
 own soldiers such power in the conquered country ! " 
 At all events, much might be done. We should 
 endeavour to verify the expressions of a history or a 
 newspaper, so short and so lightly passed over," Battle- 
 field, distress of the besieged, a hundred waggons of 
 wounded ; " which by their perpetual repetition have 
 passed from living figures to paintings, and lastly, to 
 mere sounds; we should picture them in all their 
 terrible details, in the. suffering which one waggon 
 bears and fearfully increases, in the one agonizing 
 p 4 
 
320 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 day of a single fainting and dying soldier. Not only 
 history, in which all ages and nations bleed, but our 
 common newspapers and way of speaking, and the 
 scientific appearance of warlike preparations for sur- 
 gical assistance, change wounds into words, and the 
 monstrous amount of suffering into letters. Hence, 
 the same minister who tranquilly observes the hy- 
 grometer of war's bloody rain, and cheerfully orders 
 a bath of blood for two nations, is overcome by the 
 wounds and tears of a stage play, merely because the 
 poet's art transforms the words back to their living 
 meaning. A prince whose tendencies you feared, 
 might be conducted over a bloody battle-field with 
 the same warning advantage as accrues to children 
 of a different class who are led through an hospital. 
 But God grant that humanity may ever fail to offer 
 such schools and such remedies ! 
 
 Properly and this might be instructively said to 
 a prince the people only should decide upon war 
 with another nation, that is, upon a return to the 
 first state of nature ; especially as they only gather its 
 bitter, not its sweet, fruits; and should determine 
 whether they are willing to give themselves up as a 
 sacrifice to the storms and tempests of war. It is 
 a crying sin against Heaven, that one king, for an 
 offensive expression from another king, should involve 
 two nations in mortal strife. In reading modern 
 history, one shudders to see how the merest trifles 
 have kindled the fires of war ; how a woman's pin, 
 
OF A PJ1IXCE. 321 
 
 or an ambassador's finger, has been the conductor 
 of a thunder- storm, ravaging whole countries. The 
 wars of modern times ought certainly to strike sol- 
 diers only, not the ranks of unarmed citizens. When 
 the more active part of the latter disturb the 
 operations of the former, as in shooting from houses, 
 they at once appeal to the right of distinction, and 
 proceed to attack and punish them ; but why should 
 the unarmed classes, without the advantages, yet par- 
 ticipate in all the sufferings, plunder, imprisonment, 
 c., of those who are armed ? One or all of these 
 three remedies must be applied to this terrible coil, 
 in order that the future may atone for the past : either 
 that naval conflicts may be carried on without letters 
 of marque, and that in land fights the soldiers may be 
 placed in some desert, as the scene of their many- 
 voiced and many -handed duel ; or that, as in republics 
 which " have fallen to destruction or risen to an un- 
 earthly life, every citizen should be a soldier, and 
 consequently every soldier a citizen ; or, finally, that 
 the eternal banner of peace should hang down from 
 heaven, and flutter in the pure ether above the earth. 
 I have an idea that either you, or one of your 
 friends, once declared that history the long war 
 report and bulletin of humanity imparted the 
 infection of war to young princes. But I would 
 almost trust to it as the remedy for the love of war. 
 Charles the XII. of Sweden could scarcely have 
 imbibed his passion for glory and conquest from the 
 p 5 
 
322 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 mere perusal of Curtius's Life of Alexander, since 
 Alexander had the same passion without having read 
 his biography ; and Crcsar, also, without knowing 
 more of Curtius than his hero. In history may be 
 found the test of the anchors and swords of sea and 
 land fights. It alone shows to the monarch, thirsting 
 for glory, how little mere bravery appertains to glory ; 
 for a cowardly nation is more rare upon the earth 
 than a brave man. What nation, in ancient or mo- 
 dern times, is not brave ? At present, for instance, 
 all Europe is so; Russians, Danes, Swedes, Austrians, 
 English, Hessians, French, Bavarians, and Prussians, 
 all are brave. The lower Rome's free spirit sank, the 
 more wildly and vehemently rose the merely brave 
 spirit ; Catiline, Ca3sar, Augustus, had conquerors for 
 their servants. The frequent arming of the ancient 
 slaves, as of the modern beggars, testifies against the 
 value of the common bravery of fists and wounds. 
 Iphicrates, the Athenian, said that the best soldiers 
 were those who loved plunder and violence; and 
 General Fischer has added to these, vagabonds. 
 Cannot a monarch wish to shine upon posterity with 
 something else than the fair tiger-spots of a con- 
 queror, in which the Tiniurs, Attilas, Dessalines, and 
 other scourges of God, or knouts of the devil, outdo 
 him ? How coldly does one walk in history over the 
 countless battle-fields which fill the earth with beds 
 of death ! And with what curses does one hasten past 
 the crown which, like the ajutaye, or leaden head of 
 a pipe, raised by the upward gushing of a fountain, 
 
OF A PRINCE. 323 
 
 is only kept up by starting streams of blood I But 
 where an eternal glory hovers round some heroes, 
 as those of Marathon's plain and Thermopylae's pass, 
 there other spirits fought and fell, heavenly visions 
 of the courage of freedom. And whatever individual 
 stands greatly forth in history and fills its spaces, 
 does it not from any pyramid of skulls erected on 
 battle-fields ; but a great soul hovers there, like the 
 form of an unearthly world glorified in the night, 
 and touches the stars and the earth. 
 
 For there is a nobler courage, which once, though 
 not long, Sparta, Athens, and Borne possessed ; the 
 courage of peace and of freedom, the bravery which 
 showed itself at home. Many a nation, a cowardly 
 slave in its own country, but a bold hero out of it, 
 resembles the falcon (though become tame, unlike it, 
 rather by sleeping than by sleeplessness), which is 
 carried hooded on the wrist of the falconer, until 
 left to its ancient freedom, a momentary wooer of 
 the air, it boldly and bravely vanquishes some new 
 bird and then returns with it to the slavish earth. 
 But the truly, because freely, brave people carries on 
 its war of freedom at home, against every hand 
 which would stay its flight or blind its eye ; this, 
 indeed, is the longest and bravest war, and the only 
 one which admits no truce. Just so brave, and in a 
 higher sense, may a monarch be. Let the great 
 ideal of art, to unite dignity with repose, be the ideal 
 of the throne. To extinguish the flames of war is 
 p 6 
 
324 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 more worthy of a king, as it is more difficult than to 
 kindle them. If this bravery of peace be already 
 secured, whereby alone a monarch can distinguish 
 himself in history then that of war, if necessary, 
 becomes easy, and every wound glorious. Hence, the 
 great men of antiquity are rather distinguished by 
 their character than by their deeds, rather by the 
 trophies of peace than those of war: the plough- 
 heroes of battle-fields by an intensity of love, which, 
 as in Phocion, sowed the steep cliffs which bound 
 the mighty ocean with balmy spice plants ; which in 
 Cato the younger loved and bewailed his brother with 
 all a woman's tenderness, and caused Epaminondas to 
 remember the duties of a host even on the scaffold ; 
 which made Brutus a tender husband, Alexander a 
 trustful friend, and Gustavus a Christian. 
 
 It seems to me that a young prince should view 
 the future which he helps to form, from this side and 
 through this opening in history ; in this manner he 
 must learn to subject the inferior to the nobler kind 
 of courage. Certainly a king who avoided war from 
 cowardice would be more dangerous especially in 
 the present position of Germany than one who 
 sought it from fool-hardiness ; and, moreover, he 
 would be less easily cured. The sceptre resembles 
 Saturn's scythe, which is at once the emblem of 
 harvest time and of death. 
 
 The thing that grieves me when I consider the 
 excellence of the education you, dear Adelhard, 
 
OF A PRINCE. 325 
 
 impart, is that it will be of little or no use, unless 
 you are ennobled, or unless the prince might remain 
 at home. I mean this : I cannot but lament that he 
 must grasp the pilgrim's staff before the sceptre, and 
 must pass through the three kingdoms of nature, or 
 three courts of the grand tour, Italy, England, and 
 France, in order to return different from what he 
 started ! Enough cannot be said in favour of travel, 
 but not of early travel. Let the man, not the boy, 
 travel ; let his travelling-cap be the crown. If he go 
 uncrowned, sent as a travelling fortune to the fair of 
 Paris, we know by the example of his noble com- 
 panions what, not to speak of ruined health, he 
 will bring back ; namely, a mind full of contempt 
 for his little inland patrimony, full of plans for 
 miniature imitations, and of acquired notions whose 
 importation the Prussian Lycurgus and the Spartan 
 Frederick the Second prevented, the one into the 
 nobility, the other into the people, by forbidding 
 travelling. If we wish, by imitation, to give 
 the dominion over our domestic affairs to foreign 
 
 o 
 
 countries, which by treaties of peace those of 
 Westphalia and Luneville, for instance have 
 already quite sufficiently ruled and changed the 
 constitution of the Germanic empire, I really think 
 we burden ourselves with too great a weight of gra- 
 titude, especially when we consider the rareness of 
 the opportunities for requital. If foreign travel is 
 indispensable to mental growth, why do we see so 
 
326 ON THE EDUCATION 
 
 few dauphins, so few princes of Wales, of Asturia, 
 or of Brazil, in our hotels ? If the coat of worldly 
 varnish given by strangers cannot be done without, 
 fortunately his court will be so frequently visited 
 by so many who will gladly linger there a long time, 
 that he may easily remain at home. For the same 
 reason, among the artizans of Berlin, Konigsberg, 
 and other large towns, the sons of master workmen 
 are not required to travel like other journeymen. 
 
 But there is one country which an heir apparent 
 may minutely survey in his travels it is his own; 
 and the deeper he penetrates into the lower classes, 
 the more productive of benefit will his journey be. 
 Like an -ZEneas or a Dante, he will return a wiser 
 man out of this lower world into the upper regions 
 of the throne. A prince cannot picture to himself 
 hunger as any thing other than a rare gift of God and 
 of the stomach ; or labour, than as a hawking-match 
 to procure it ; or the people, which experiences 
 enough of both, as any thing different from the pam- 
 pered crowd of his court servants. If in Corea the 
 people must shut their doors and windows when the 
 king is passing by, we may be sure that he will also 
 close his from the eyes of his people: and so one 
 invisibility produces the other. 
 
 If he be crowned and married, and about as old, 
 or even older, than Joseph II., or Peter the Great, 
 or popes on their travels, or the ancient Romans 
 whose proconsulships were also journeys, he will 
 
OF A PRINCE. 327 
 
 receive greater advantage from his travels than he 
 would even as his own ambassador; for he will see 
 every thing more accurately, more quickly, and be 
 less taxed for doing so. Bolingbroke tells us that if 
 at forty we read again some of our childhood's books 
 we shall find every thing new: even so, if at the 
 same age we revisit the land of our youth, we shall 
 find a new world, previously overlooked. A young 
 prince, perhaps, brings home with him out of some 
 foreign country a faded garland, as a memento of rare 
 flowers of happiness ; a prince of mature age brings 
 also the seeds of those flowers. When the warm- 
 hearted, manly, true German duke of Meiningen 
 travelled, the year before his death, to one of the 
 southern cities of Germany, he did not visit courts, 
 balls, princes, and women ; but machines, manufac- 
 tories, soup-kitchens, mines, artists and their works, 
 financiers and their tables ah ! why was he doomed 
 so shortly afterwards to make the longest journey 
 to the most distant country? A noble prince who 
 loves his people can never tread that path too late. 
 But, if your Friedanot must go on his travels before 
 he ascends the throne, I would wish you to be en- 
 nobled and to accompany him. Every royal tutor 
 should receive nobility from his connection with a 
 prince, just as iron becomes magnetic by contact with 
 a magnet, in order that he may afterwards be em- 
 ployed at the dinner or card-table, when, otherwise, 
 his place must be occupied by some one whose rank 
 
328 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 admits him to the royal table. How happy is a 
 princess whose Orbilia and La plus Bonne is, from 
 the commencement, of such high rank that she may 
 ever remain near her ! " Turba medicoruni perdidit 
 Cresarem : " * this epitaph on Adrian is also true of 
 the multitude of " soul curers." 
 
 Many of your regulations for princes may be readily 
 guessed, because they must also have a place in the 
 education of every child ; only that qualities which 
 the latter must use as small coin in every-day life, 
 are required from princes as gold for the mint, and 
 for the adornment of the palace. In the first place I 
 rank keeping his word. Princes rarely break their 
 word, except to whole countries; their own, and 
 foreign lands. The word given to one man, them- 
 selves perhaps except ed, they always keep. Cham- 
 fort remarks, that, up to the ministry of the Car- 
 dinal de Lomenie, fifty-six public breaches of 
 faith were reckoned in Henry IY. These may 
 readily be explained by the rarefying power of 
 space, which, far more than time, immediately de- 
 composes the strongest powers ; as, for instance, 
 electricity, attraction, philanthropy, freedom, and a 
 promise. Distance, for instance, inconceivably dimi- 
 nishes British freedom, even in Ireland, as it for- 
 merly did in North America ; but at sea, and in the 
 colonies, it is, by distance, rarefied to such a degree, 
 that only the quick eye of a captain or a nabob can 
 
 * " The multitude of doctors killed Caesar." 
 
OF A PRINCE.- 329 
 
 distinguish it from absolute slavery. ID. the same 
 way a promise is so weakened by distance, that even 
 a peace concluded a century or so before, by the naval 
 powers of Europe, could not avert war from India. 
 Physics, as already said, show the cause of this pheno- 
 menon. This fact, perhaps, renders a lecture-room 
 and teacher for speaking truth more necessary to 
 an heir apparent. Indeed, this speech is quite as im- 
 portant as the Lusatian or Italian, which, according 
 to a golden bull, every future elector, king of Bohe- 
 mia, and pfalz-graf of the Rhine, had to learn in his 
 seventh year; or even as the French, though no 
 bull has declared that essential. 
 
 Royal truthfulness towards his own and other na- 
 tions, is not only, as others have said, a monarch's 
 highest policy, but also, and for that very reason, the 
 most difficult. Upright minds are like straight roads, 
 which seem to the eye scarce half so long as those 
 which wind artfully about ; but their true length is 
 found by a nearer examination. Only a prince who 
 cherishes noble and well considered desires, will 
 choose to reveal them ; as it is only cut diamonds of 
 the purest water which can be set so that the light 
 may shine through. 
 
 Under all treaties of war and peace there lies a 
 higher bond of union than power because without 
 it they could not even be formed it is reliance on 
 a given word, on the power of character, not on land 
 and sea forces. But in history, which else accurately 
 
330 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 lays before us from month to month the cost of the 
 new triumphal arches for fresh victors, there is 
 nothing more rare than an honourable niche devoted 
 to a king who speaks truly for the present, and pro- 
 phesies truly for the future. Royal truthfulness 
 presupposes force of character, resolute courage, and 
 just strength of will. Finally, where this oak forest 
 stands and grows around a throne, there is the 
 ancient German sanctuary; the throne within its 
 shadow works miracles, and the people round its 
 base pray to heaven for protection. You and I hear 
 such a forest rustling so near our study that we 
 could count its leaves. 
 
 Baireuth, January 1806. 
 
 I have again unpacked my goods, because peace 
 continues ; so that our meeting, as well as the review 
 and ratification of my predictions, must be postponed 
 to a more favourable season. In conclusion, and in 
 jest, I append a few aphorisms on education, suitable 
 for insertion in albums ; which I prepare from time 
 to time for the various royal and noble tutors who 
 visit my study, so as to have a few useful impromptu 
 thoughts ready to be written down when they hand 
 me their albums. The following thoughts have not 
 yet been inserted in such books : 
 
 To form a brave man, educate boldly ! Brave 
 painters alone, says Lavater, can hit a brave face. 
 
OF A PRINCE. 331 
 
 Not without reason do the rarest flowers borrow 
 their names from princes. Power cannot have too 
 gentle an expression. The look of a king is itself 
 a deed. Consequently a king can choose whether 
 he will all day kill or make alive. The sceptre 
 should not be a rod of authority ; but, like a mag- 
 netic needle, should assume the form of a lily. It is 
 easier, like the tragic Crebillon, to obtain the surname 
 of the terrible, than, like Virgil, to merit the epithet 
 of the maidenly. A flute lay side by side with 
 Frederick the Great's baton of command. Let every 
 prince regard this as an allegory. 
 
 He who mistrusts humanity is quite as often 
 deceived as he who trusts men. The wicked and de- 
 spotic favourite always advises a king to rule himself, 
 not to let others govern for him ; to see and hear for 
 himself (at least to see and hear the favourite), and not 
 to be a mere repeater on which an external hammer 
 strikes the time, but to be a church bell, which sounds 
 with its own tongue, and which the favourite rings 
 whether for funerals or weddings. 
 
 Tutor ! Have at heart no work of your pupil so 
 much as love of work ; it is this he should learn by 
 that. And, unless he learn to be a lover of work, he 
 will in after years (as Vopiscus tells us the Emperor 
 Carinus did) keep a servant to write his signature ; 
 or, if he write it himself, he will do so like that 
 
332 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 self-made slave of his own servants, Philip the Fifth 
 of Spain. 
 
 On the throne everything, even time as in 
 Basle is wanted to bs an hour earlier than it 
 really is ; thought, consequently, long before reflec- 
 tion. Royal impromptus, as the winged seeds of 
 action, are always dangerous ; they often make long 
 diets and long judgment-days necessary, and have 
 to count forced imposts instead of freely granted 
 tributes. How many subjects has a bon mot killed ! 
 How many suggestions of the wicked one have been 
 acted on by haste ! He who needs proofs has but to 
 inquire of the chief justice in history. What more 
 excellent object, I ask, can a teacher set before him- 
 self than to accustom his pupil never to say an 
 important yes or no, never to express a like or a 
 dislike, without taking an hour's respite to consider 
 the question, request, or sin ? With such a letter of 
 grace (moratorium) he might write himself a brevet 
 of infallibility. But why speak I of princes ? Every 
 one is in this position ; only that the high rank of 
 monarchs fearfully increases the rolling, avalanche- 
 like, consequences of every sound. And it is pre- 
 cisely in the higher ranks that men perversely attend 
 more to deeds expressed in words bon mots, im- 
 promptus, &c., than to words expressed in deeds 
 decretals, resolutions, &c. ; and take time to con- 
 sider a jest, though not a serious mat f er. Let the 
 
OF A PHIXCE. 333 
 
 teacher invert this inversion. . . . Dear Adelhard, I 
 am myself this moment guilty of improvising; so 
 difficult is it to be avoided. For this last article for 
 the album I really made for the letter ; the former 
 would require it to be much more compressed. So 
 powerful is the influence of the present moment ; one 
 confounds letter, album, and book all together. Fare 
 you well, dear Adelhard ; and, in this respect, fare 
 better than I. 
 
 I wished to add this apophthegm also : " Above all 
 things inspire a prince with the taste for reading 
 not merely the inscriptions on triumphal arches and 
 in illuminations but books and acts ; " but, if I am 
 not mistaken, it is already written in your album. 
 Cabinet secrets, like the light of the fixed stars, 
 reach us for the first time many years after their 
 emanation ; but the secrets of the study, like the 
 light of the planets, never reach so far as the fixed 
 stars. Yours, 
 
 J. P. F. R. 
 
 Postscript. As there was no post, this letter to 
 you, excellent prince's tutor, has lain in my desk 
 during the sale of the whole first edition of Le- 
 vana ; it was printed, but not despatched : luckily, 
 while preparing the second, a young tutor, dis- 
 missed from a certain court, visited me and pro- 
 mised to deliver you my letter. For the rest he 
 curses the whole matter for hours every day, and 
 
334 OX THE EDUCATION 
 
 declares he would almost rather be a prince than a 
 prince's tutor; for the one only spoils himself, whereas 
 the tutor spoils others too. He openly derides my 
 whole letter to you, as a mere waste of paper and 
 ink, and says I have only forgotten the principal 
 thing, the so-called governor both of prince and tutor. 
 He asked me to teach him " what use it was to be 
 the very best of tutors, as a man must become the 
 very worst if the prince's governor so choose ; who 
 is regarded as the upper house to the tutor's lower 
 house, or college rector to his inferior school." But, 
 instead of waiting my instructions, he continued 
 angrily : " The governors, who never permitted him 
 even to be vice-governor to the prince, were as old 
 in rank as in age, and consequently took precedence 
 in every thing of him, who was only perfectly capable 
 of all his duties ; so that the young prince regarded 
 him merely as a subordinate, as a kind of school-fox 
 whose master Reynard was the governor. The word 
 of a man who sat at the same dinner table with the 
 prince, was more esteemed by him and by the whole 
 court, than the sermons of one who might only sit 
 near him at the study table." 
 
 I replied, that on this matter I would take the 
 part of the men of the world. The schoolman has 
 about as much relation to the nobleman as the Abbot 
 Fowler, for instance, has to a fowl. As, according 
 to Kant's observations, we soon grow weary of the 
 most excellent human singing, but never of the per- 
 
OF A PRINCE. 335 
 
 petual singing of birds, because it is subject to no 
 rule, and its variations are quite undetermined ; so, 
 the scholar, by the monotonous unity of his thoughts 
 and discourses, always aiming at one end, soon drives 
 to sleep ; whereas the courtier, flitting from one sub- 
 ject to another, engages the attention, just because 
 he says nothing very definite, and because variety of 
 mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity 
 of something. 
 
 " A governor," continued he, " who only thinks of 
 king, court, and nobility, and orders the prince to be 
 educated only for these, will bar with the collars of 
 his multitudinous orders all the havens into which a 
 tutor would conduct his pupil to the sound of silver 
 tintes. He will throw in his teeth the accurate 
 ( revision' of his plan of education (none so good as 
 that which is printed) ; and, if the tutored tutor 
 think differently, he has only the choice of being 
 frightened, or being angry." 
 
 " Truly, not bad ! " said I, " for by this means the 
 tutor will be educated to be tender and better than 
 he can educate the prince. In the same way, cooks 
 make poultry tender and tasty by putting them into 
 a pond, or a turkey by throwing it from a consider- 
 able height before killing it this has the effect of 
 fright on them; or they irritate them by whistling 
 and shaking red cloths at them which has the 
 effect of rage." 
 
 " We must then experience," concluded the tutor, 
 
336 EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 
 
 " what is the consequence if the governor can use the 
 sceptre as a good school cane to the citizen teacher ; 
 I do not mean what the governor becomes (for he 
 goes away like myself), but what the innocent prince 
 becomes, in whom, placed as a young master between 
 a flattering upper servant and a kneeling slave, no 
 manly character can possibly be developed, no 
 bones grow." 
 
 " But," said I, " I do not see the evil of that. I 
 myself know many people of rank, whose whole 
 inner man does not contain one whole bone, but who 
 precisely resemble people struck by a thunder-bolt, 
 in whom the lightning generally only breaks the 
 bones, without in the smallest degree burning or 
 injuring the external form. And so it is, my friend!" 
 
 As, however, we could neither of us quite agree, 
 and I could not become perfectly serious, I think 
 I have adopted a very sensible plan in sending him 
 to you with this postscript, so that you may either 
 alter or confirm his opinion. You must certainly 
 know whether there is any difference among govern- 
 ors, and whether the course of the little prince may 
 not occasionally describe an accurate ellipse round 
 the two foci. Heaven grant that, and many other 
 things too ! 
 
 [The Tirst Volume of the original German work ends here.] 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 337 
 
 SIXTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 ON THE MORAL EDUCATION OP BOYS. 
 
 CHAP. I. Moral Strength. Physical Strength Games of Hurting. 
 
 Injuriousness of Fear and of Fright. Love of Life. In- 
 sufficiency of the mere Passions. Necessity of a youthful Ideal, 
 103 110. CHAP. II. Truthfulness, Charades, and Children's 
 Plays, 111 115. CHAP. III. Education of the Affections. 
 Means of arousing them. Love of Animals, 116 121. 
 CHAP. IV. Supplemental Appendix on Moral Education. 
 Various Consolatory Rules. Stories of Parents for their own 
 Children. Children's Journeys. Danger of a premature Feel- 
 ing of Shame, and on the Modesty of Children, 122 129. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 103. 
 
 HONOUR, honesty, steadfast will, truthfulness, in- 
 difference towards threatening wounds and endurance 
 of those inflicted, openness, self-respect, just self- 
 appreciation, contempt for the opinion of the world, 
 justice and perseverance all these and similar words, 
 indicate only one half of the moral nature, viz. 
 moral strength, and elevation of character. The 
 other half embraces all our connections with others ; 
 the realm of love, gentleness, benevolence in short, 
 what may be called moral beauty. 
 
 Q 
 
338 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOT5. 
 
 If the one seems to turn inwards, towards itself, 
 the other outwards, towards others ; the one to be a 
 repelling, the other an attracting pole; if the one 
 regards an idea as holy, and the other rather esteems 
 life to be so, yet both are equally elevated above self, 
 which is only the object of the animal propensities, 
 and of the sins against the twin stars of the heart ; 
 for honour, as well as love, sacrifices selfishness. 
 Moreover love does not seek and contemplate in an- 
 other what it avoids in itself; but it beholds and 
 embraces therein the image of the divinity. We find 
 God twice ; once within, once without us : within us 
 as an eye, without us as light. Yet is it everywhere 
 the same etherial fire, indifferent whether it spring 
 up from without Or within ; and, indeed, the one pre- 
 supposes the other, and consequently a third which 
 produces and unites both. Call it the Holy. In the 
 spiritual world there is properly no out and no in. 
 Love is naturally the companion of true moral 
 strength, as we ever find sweet fruits on strong 
 branches ; weakness trembles like a Vesuvius only 
 to destroy. Even so, pure love can not merely do 
 all, but is all. 
 
 104. 
 
 But here we are only concerned with the differ- 
 ence of appearances, not with their foundations. The 
 former show us man born and fitted out more for 
 moral strength, or honour, and woman for moral 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 339 
 
 beauty, or love. From our former position, " that 
 woman does not divide and contemplate herself as 
 man does," we might deduce the division of the two 
 moral poles, with varying balance between both 
 sexes, ascribing love to the female, and strength to 
 the male, because the former is more occupied with 
 what is external to herself, but the latter in examin- 
 ing what passes within himself. But why reason 
 about facts? This moral difference between the 
 sexes is repeated, although in miniature, in every 
 individual ; but more of this hereafter. We will 
 now view the educational means of adapting the boy 
 to his destination by developing moral strength of 
 character. 
 
 105. 
 
 One age requires men in order to exist, another in 
 order to subsist ; ours needs both ; and yet education 
 dreads nothing more than making boys manly, and, 
 where possible, strives to unman them. Nurseries 
 and schoolrooms are like altars in the temples which 
 the Romans dedicated to Pavor and Pallor (pale 
 fear). As though the world were now too full of 
 courage, teachers ordinarily engraft fear by punish- 
 ments and actions, but only recommend courage by 
 words. Not undertaking, but letting alone, receives 
 the victor's crown. 
 
 In Nestor's order of battle the timid occupied the 
 middle ranks ; it is so also in our states ; and more 
 Q 2 
 
340 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 physical courage is found in the highest and lowest 
 ranks than the scholar or the schoolmaster usually 
 possesses. Hence the latter expects his boys to re- 
 semble the Iroquois, who think a hare is a deity; 
 and even endeavours to raise them to a place among 
 these gods. The ancients, in their veneration for 
 strength, forgot benevolence ; we err in the contrary 
 direction. The effeminate teaching class may, how- 
 ever, excuse itself by this disappointment ; namely, 
 that the courage of children, owing to their deficiency 
 in the counterbalance of prudence, readily turns to 
 rashness, and attacks teacher and fate. But let us 
 remember that years do indeed increase light but not 
 force, and that it is easier to provide a pilgrim on 
 life's journey with a guide, than to restore to him, 
 like a statue, the legs and wings which have been re- 
 moved lest he should run or fly away. We will, like 
 warriors, begin with common courage, and proceed 
 upwards to honour. 
 
 106. 
 
 The body is the coat of mail and breastplate of 
 the soul ; so let this in the first place be hardened 
 into steel by heat and cold. Let every father pro- 
 vide, as well as he can, a little gymnastic school round 
 his house; the very street in which the boy plays, 
 runs, falls, climbs, and bids defiance, is something. 
 Wounds got in the street are sooner healed, and more 
 wholesome, than wounds got at school, and they teach 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 341 
 
 better how to bear pain. Out of the wild English 
 youth there grows a thoughtful member of parliament ; 
 as out of the early Roman robbers a virtuous self- 
 sacrificing senate rose. The Romans bled the rashly 
 brave ; the schoolmaster's rod also lets blood ; and 
 the starving method, solitary confinement, &c., pales 
 the remainder. No power should ever be weakened, 
 one cannot repeat this too often but only its 
 counterbalancing power strengthened : in squirrels, 
 the upper row of teeth often grows painfully long, 
 but only when the lower one is lost. A rash twelve- 
 year-old Dreadnought might soon enough be made 
 thoughtful; you need but read through with him 
 some anatomical or surgical book ; but this remedy, 
 like arsenic, is only to be used in the most desperate 
 cases, and in the smallest possible doses. Bodily 
 weakness makes mental weakness ; and mental weak- 
 ness leaves deeper, ay, perpetual, traces behind it : 
 the broken arm is much sooner cured than the broken 
 heart of a child. And, lastly, children are spoiled in 
 two different ways in the young sick-room ; the 
 healthy by severity, the sick by weak indulgence. 
 Now the sick would be much better served by the 
 mental excitement of pictures, little games on the 
 pillow, and tales, than by physical indulgences. 
 If health be the first step to courage, bodily exercise 
 is the second against pain. This in modern times is 
 not only abandoned, but actually contradicted ; and 
 with us the boy is fastened up, not that he may learn, 
 Q 3 
 
342 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 but that he may not learn to bear it, and that he 
 may at once begin to confess. Detestable method ! 
 
 How can the change of the torturing system, 
 formerly adopted by the judicial courts, so far con- 
 fuse you with regard to education, that you do not 
 value the power of the mentally strong, opposed to 
 the physically strong, but consider firmness a repeti- 
 tion of the denounced fault ? This is as egregious a 
 mistake as Locke's advice to disgust children with 
 card-playing, by compelling them to practise it ; for 
 this official change, produced by disgust at the com- 
 pulsory repetition of the game, would be a worse 
 disease than that it cured. Must we not, in this 
 place, severely attack another error in education, a 
 most repulsive one, though concealed by the showy 
 paint of custom, it is that of harshly punishing 
 children before other children, in order to make them 
 a so-called example ? For either the child as a cold 
 observer shares the sentiments of the passionate 
 punisher, and feels no compassion for the torture- 
 wrung cries of his equal, no disgust at the repulsive 
 sight of the cruelly used victory of the strong over 
 the weak, and then, indeed, I know not what 
 more his heart can lose, or else the child expe- 
 riences all the pain which the judgment-seat raised in 
 the nursery inflicts, and so, as is the case with grown- 
 up people at executions, thinks the punishment 
 greater than the fault, and then any advantage to 
 be derived from the painful sight is lost ; or, lastly, 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 343 
 
 he at once pities and comprehends the punishment, 
 and feels the greatest dread of such terrible pain, 
 and then you certainly do secure obedience, but you 
 increase fear. In short, do not inflict severe punish- 
 ments in the presence of children ; be satisfied that 
 their invisibility, coupled with what is related of 
 them, will secure the advantages without the dis- 
 advantages. 
 
 It would be much more desirable to establish 
 exercises in bearing pain, schools of the cross in a 
 stoic sense ; and indeed boys themselves have games 
 of a similar nature. Formerly in Mexico one child 
 bound his arm to that of another child, and placed 
 a live coal between; both contended who should 
 longest bear the burning pain. In Montaigne's 
 childhood, the nobility considered fencing-schools 
 mean, because, by their aid, victory no longer de- 
 pended solely on courage. The ancient Danes did 
 not even wink the eye at wounds in the face. What 
 was formerly attained by whole nations, and, conse- 
 quently, was not the gift of birth but of education, 
 this surely must be sufficiently easy to repeat in 
 individuals. 
 
 Never make lamentation over a child's hurt, but 
 pass it off with a joke. If a little child runs to you 
 to show its hurt, let him wait a little before he 
 engages your eye or ear, and in the mean time say 
 quietly to him, " I must first finish my writing," or 
 " knit off this needle." Or tell him to go and fetch 
 Q 4 
 
344 3IOKAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 you something ; nothing draws the thorn from the 
 wound so soon as action; soldiers do not feel their 
 wounds in the heat of battle. " My nose is bleeding," 
 says the youngest child in a doleful tone. " Oh ! 
 look at the pretty red blood, how it drops : where 
 does it come from ? There was none in your little 
 nose just now," you say; and the pain is forgotten in 
 the inquiry what is internal in what is external. 
 Further: protect a child's ear even more carefully 
 than his eye. The ear is especially the sense of fear ; 
 hence those animals which hear quickly are timid. 
 As harmony holds the heart entranced in delight, 
 BO does the scream of fear in horror. An inex- 
 plicable sound is the true night for fear. The eye 
 becomes at last reconciled to every monstrous form, 
 if it only remain sufficiently long before it ; but the 
 abyss of sound does not become clearer, but more 
 dreadful, by continuance. A little girl, to whom the 
 colour of the chimney-sweeper had only seemed 
 curious, received the first fright in her life from 
 hearing the uninterrupted noise of his sweeping. 
 Give therefore to every strange noise, such as that 
 of the wind, some merry name. Our age is the first 
 that has made it a duty to devise rules against that fear 
 which disarms and fetters mankind. In every child 
 there lies, side by side with the romantic hope of an 
 infinite heaven, the equally romantic dread of an 
 infinite Orcus. But you hold this Orcus dreadfully 
 open before the child, if you give this ideal fear an 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 345 
 
 object by naming such a thing. The author com- 
 mitted this error by saying to his children, in order 
 to prevent their hating and fearing soldiers or other 
 people, " Only bad men are to be feared." Hereby 
 their fear, previously scattered over various visible 
 objects, was concentrated in the unchanging focus of a 
 single invisible object ; and they carried this fancied 
 bug-bear with them every where, and saw it in every 
 thing. In no emotion of the soul not even in love 
 does fancy push its creative and ruling power so 
 far as in fear. Children, else religiously believing 
 all their parents say, anxiously desire the word 
 which is to arm them against ghosts, and yet, with 
 that very dictum on their lips, succumb to imagina- 
 tion in their hearts. Further : children who have 
 long since examined, and even themselves made, the 
 object of their alarm, a cloak, for instance, and a hat 
 hung upon a stick, will yet run away from it with 
 terror. So they fear less what has already hurt them 
 than what their parents, either by looks or words, 
 have mentioned with fear ; a mouse, for instance. 
 Therefore, especially avoid and guard against all 
 suddenness of speech, such as exclaiming in the 
 night, " Look ! " or even " Listen ! " which alarms 
 yet more and of appearance or action ; for in that 
 case the senses do not restrain, but only inflame, 
 the fancy, and the reality is wildly confused by the 
 hasty explanation. Thus, alarm during thunder- 
 storms principally arises from the rapidity with 
 Q 5 
 
346 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 which the lightning momentarily reveals the dark 
 sky to the straining sight. If the whole firmament 
 remained one long flash, we should fear it less. 
 
 Do not merely spare children reading any painful 
 histories, but also every verbal description of any 
 unknown physical suffering; for in children of a 
 lively imagination mental fear easily springs out of 
 bodily fear, and this which is never considered 
 even through dreams. These gigantic chaotic painters 
 in the mind form, out of the little terrors of the day, 
 those monstrous masks of the Furies which wake and 
 nourish the fear of ghosts which slumbers in every 
 human being. We should attend far more to the dreams 
 of children than to those of mature persons, especially 
 on account of this difference, that in ours resound 
 the echoes of our childhood; what then in theirs? 
 Who has not experienced sudden presentiments, an 
 inexplicable and perfectly unexpected fore-taste of 
 approaching good or ill fortune, wafted upon him 
 like air from some mountain precipice ? Or who in 
 new countries, occurrences, or men, has not sometimes 
 found, deep within him, a mirror whereon, from old 
 time, these very things were darkly pictured and 
 beheld ? And to whom, in subsequent dreams and 
 fevers, has not the same serpent form, the same 
 mis-shapen tortuous monster, continually re-appeared, 
 of which, in his whole remembered life, he had 
 beheld no archetype? Might not these shapes be 
 buried remnants of old childhood's dreams, which 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 347 
 
 rise from the deep, like sea-monsters, in the 
 night ? 
 
 Be careful to conceal your own grief about others' 
 necessities or your own. Nothing is more infectious 
 than fear and courage ; but the parent's fear is 
 doubled in the child ; for where the giant trembles 
 the dwarf must surely fall. 
 
 The father especially should never come before his 
 children with a melancholy, penitential face, or the 
 appearance of much suffering, as if there were so 
 much to lose in life that he could even lose himself: 
 at most let him only point out a gloomy future, but 
 not anxiety concerning it ; and at least let him have no 
 other copies of his lamentations and " liber tristium " 
 than one for his wife and friend. Yet the very op- 
 posite of this is most generally the case. It is in the 
 house (as though every barricade and city wall must 
 make people cowardly), in some hole in the shore, 
 that the externally armed lobster casts his shell ; and 
 it is in the nest with its poor little ones that the bold 
 eagle moults, thus permitting them only to see its 
 domestic cowardice, not its public courage. Rather 
 let every one resemble the pastor Seider, who, in 
 reading the newspapers, lamented that of all the 
 printed accounts of his sufferings not one was true. 
 
 107. 
 
 Since indifference to actual blows, and disregard 
 of anticipated ones, mutually strengthen each other, 
 Q 6 
 
348 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 I hope I may continue to confound them without 
 reproach. Courage does not consist in blindly over- 
 looking danger, but in meeting it with the eyes open. 
 Therefore do not attempt to make boys brave by 
 saying " It will not hurt you," for in that case 
 the sheep would fight as bravely as the lion ; but 
 by saying more truly, " What is it ? Only a hurt." 
 For you may safely reckon on a something in the 
 human breast which no wounds can reach, on a 
 steadfast celestial axle among the mutable earthly 
 axles ; insomuch as man, unlike the beasts, has some- 
 thing more than pain to dread. 
 
 There is a courage manifested against the future 
 and the imagination, and also a courage manifested 
 against the present and the imagination : the one is 
 opposed to fear, the other to terror. If there must 
 be the one or the other, fear is, for children, prefer- 
 able to terror, but not so for men ! If fear, as the 
 Cardinal de Eetz said, enfeebles and distorts the un- 
 derstanding more than all the other emotions of the 
 mind, terror entirely destroys it, and puts madness 
 in its place. Fear may be imparted so slowly and 
 in so carefully measured doses, that it will rather act 
 as an incitement than as a poison to thought and 
 resolution. Whereas terror whether inspired by 
 sight or sound is a flash of lightning shivering the 
 whole man, unarming and slaughtering him at one 
 stroke. Chiarugi * shows, on the authority of 
 
 * See lus work on Insanity, b. i. 282. 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 349 
 
 Giasone, that children who have been brought up 
 harshly and kept in order by images of terror fre- 
 quently fall victims to insanity. 
 
 One shock of terror may produce long-lasting fear; 
 but fear cannot give birth to terror, for its imagina- 
 tion, dwelling on the future, finds even its present 
 there. 
 
 With the exception of good health, there is no 
 preservative from terror save acquaintance with its 
 object ; it is produced only by what is new. The 
 bravest may be terrified, as the Romans were by 
 elephants, or as the bravest modern European might 
 be by some strange gigantic beast-like form dropped 
 out of Jupiter, let us suppose whose poisonous 
 qualities and modes of attack he knew not. 
 
 Then arm the young mind against the thunder- 
 storms of accident by a lightning conductor which 
 you yourself make. The present assembly hall for 
 the sittings of colleges and societies of learned men, 
 unfortunately helps them to pass through their 
 sitting mode of life and death, without becoming re- 
 markably brave. It is a significant fact, that all 
 important offices are marked by the appendage of a 
 seat, the bench of judges and of bishops, the chair 
 of divinity, the stool of prayer, the seat of instruc- 
 tion, and their reward is rest in Abraham's bosom, 
 or on the thrones of the twelve apostles. He who 
 sits when attacked by an enemy loses his courage, as 
 is shown by every regiment awaiting an attack : and 
 
350 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 we run away with our heels, where alone the Homeric 
 Achilles was vulnerable. But even in modern times 
 the runner would be brave if no inimical runner 
 pursued him. No Napoleon could spend sufficient 
 money in building golden bridges for a flying enemy. 
 As a person can be really terrified only once by 
 the same, thing, I think it possible to spare children 
 the reality by sportive representations of alarming 
 circumstances. For instance : I go with my little 
 nine-year-old Paul to walk in a thick wood. Sud- 
 denly three blackened and armed ruffians rush out 
 and fall upon us, because I had hired them for the 
 adventure with a small thieves' premium the day 
 before. We two are only provided with sticks, but 
 the band of robbers are armed with swords and i 
 pistol without bullets. Here nothing is of use but 
 presence of mind and resolution. One is opposed to 
 three (for Paul must be reckoned as nothing, 
 though I call upon him to fight) ; but because I turn 
 away the pistol, so that it may miss me, and strike the 
 dagger out of one of the thieves' hand with my stick, 
 and seize upon it to attack the third, I hope that 
 the ruffianly troop may be vanquished, and put to 
 flight by one honest man with his son's help. We 
 pursue the routed army for a little distance, but 
 soon desist as many stray shots are fired ; and I main- 
 tain a constant derision of the enemy's line, which, 
 like an orderly book-shelf, only shows the backs 
 so that even my little ally can conclude for him* 
 
MOEAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 351 
 
 self how much courage alone is superior to numbers, 
 especially of villains, who, according to all experience, 
 are seldom brave. But (I add in this second edition) 
 all such games are of doubtful advantage, because of 
 their falsity; and only by repetition can they al- 
 together lose the evils attendant even on a fright 
 which ends in nothing. A great many tales of 
 victorious courage are, perhaps, better means of 
 arousing and strengthening that virtue. 
 
 Other "cloak and dagger pieces," as Bouterwek 
 tells us the Spaniards call their intriguing comedies, 
 might be tried advantageously in the night, in order 
 to bring the fancies, inspired by a belief in ghosts, 
 to common every-day light ; at the same time I 
 admit that there is always a deep-seated fear of 
 this kind, which only God, or the next world, can 
 thoroughly remove. Even the fear of storms cannot 
 be altogether eradicated, at least by reasoning ; the 
 tranquillity, or, still better, the cheerfulness of grown- 
 up persons during them is the best cure. Since what 
 is uncommon is most dreaded it may perhaps be 
 numbered among the few advantages of a town- 
 education, that in it the eye and ear of a child 
 become indifferent to more objects than they can 
 do in a village. In nothing, fear itself scarcely 
 excepted, does a man make such rapid advances as 
 in courage. Night marches, the alliance of many 
 boys for company increases courage as well as fear 
 and finally the histories of true heroes, such as 
 
352 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 Charles XII. of Sweden, rivet the shield of courage 
 more and more firmly on the breast. 
 
 108. 
 
 Permit me still to add a few ingredients to the 
 tonic medicines of manliness, ere I pass to the mental 
 means of strengthening it. The following reflections 
 may stand in the same relation as branches to the 
 top of a tree. 
 
 What, from the Fakeer to the martyrs of Chris- 
 tianity, of love, of duty, and to those who sacrificed 
 their lives for liberty, has vanquished pain, opinion, 
 desire, torture ? one ruling idea in the heart. Im- 
 plant, then, in the boy some such living idea, were 
 it but that of honour, and he is fit to become a man. 
 Every fear may be overcome by placing it clearly 
 before him. 
 
 Every child pictures to himself some position, 
 some trade, as the workhouse and sorrow of life ; and 
 some other (usually his father's) as the belvidere of 
 hope. Take from him these erroneous charts of 
 heaven and hell, which, like warrants of arrest, dis- 
 arm and render him the prisoner of fear and of 
 desire. Bring him not by dead listening, but by 
 living observation to a knowledge of the happiness 
 of the most various conditions, so that he may look 
 upon life as on the level ground of a pleasure en- 
 campment, where even the slave has pitched his tent. 
 It is much more important that a child should not 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 353 
 
 causelessly dread and avoid any condition, however 
 gloomy, than that he should not hopefully desire and 
 labour after any, even the most brilliant ; for hope 
 leaves us more understanding and more happiness 
 than fear. In order to extract from the tear-press 
 of compassion some feeling and pence for a beggar, 
 you choose to crush a power which could sustain 
 itself on the beggar's pallet. What else do you do 
 than cause the little shocked creature to prefer 
 making a hundred beggars, in after life, to being one 
 himself, and perhaps giving something to some 
 other ? Always let oneness of purpose rule over a 
 boy : he wanted, perhaps, to have, or to do, some 
 certain thing ; oblige him, then, to take or to do it. 
 And never command any thing twice. 
 
 Raise up in him by every possible means the con- 
 ception of a higher tribunal than that of feeling. If 
 he desire any forbidden thing, do not move it further 
 from but rather nearer to him, so that he may over- 
 come that desire by the sense of duty. Place your 
 command simply before him, without any attractive 
 concomitants which may make it seem lighter than it 
 is ; for, by this delicate concealment of the rule, 
 chance, which accustoms to nothing, is made master. 
 The manner in which the command is obeyed is of 
 infinitely more importance than the mere fulfilment 
 of it. Neither veil a refusal, as mothers are too apt 
 to do ; perpetual concealments are impossible. Why 
 will you not spare yourself by a plain No, and 
 
354 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 accustom your boy to cheerful resignation ? Quiet 
 submission to arbitrary despotism weakens the cha- 
 racter, but to necessity strengthens it; be then a 
 fate to your child ! A child's obedience, without 
 other consideration, can be of no advantage to him- 
 self, for how if he obeyed all the world ? But it is 
 the motive to it, as reverential loving trust, and the 
 perception of necessity, which ennobles him. Those 
 who are obedient only from fear become mechanical 
 automata, hypocrites, flatterers, and are totally un- 
 governable when behind the back of their drivers. 
 
 You bend (or break) the young mind if, before the 
 age of insight into political inequalities, you teach it 
 to pay other respect than what is due to every 
 human being and to age ; unfettered by order- ribbons, 
 blind to stars and gold, let the child regard both the 
 servant and the master of his father with equal 
 respect. A child is by nature a Diogenes to every 
 Alexander, and a gentle Alexander to every Diogenes ; 
 let him continue so ; never let that enervating humi- 
 lity towards rank approach him. 
 
 Only great objects can worthily occupy a boy's 
 heart ; and what, except knowledge, can fill it better 
 than the love of his country, even though broken in 
 the diamond- mortar of the present age ? This holy 
 flame should be fanned in all schools, but certainly 
 not after the method of Tyrta3us, that is, by enthu- 
 siasm for a decrepid and justly fallen state, but by 
 inspiration of the Hermann's Battle Odes of Klop- 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 355 
 
 stock. However, I scarcely expect this from the old 
 humanists, who, in great works of art, take most 
 pleasure in that which is most palatable in the ele- 
 phant, the feet. 
 
 No science has so many teachers as the science of 
 happiness, or pleasure; as if this had not already 
 planted its throne in the hearts of cats, vultures, and, 
 in short, of all other beasts. Will you then teach 
 what the beasts know ? Shall the human mind, like 
 a Centaur, enter the world of mind with a body bear- 
 ing the marks of the spur ? For what reason save 
 a bad one are the selfish excesses of children more 
 indulged than those which display obstinacy, the love 
 of eating more than the love of quarrelling, as if the 
 teeth for tearing and those for chewing were not 
 equally important ? If you seek to inspire reverence 
 for pure worth, justice and religion by any other 
 means than the simple forms of these children of 
 God, were it merely by showing as an appendage 
 some advantage thence derivable to the animal pro- 
 pensities, instead of teaching that they are due sacri- 
 fices to those goddesses, then have you sullied the 
 pure spirit, and made it little and hypocritical. You, 
 like the cold north, have suffered the lions of the 
 south to shrivel up into cats, its crocodiles into 
 lizards. 
 
 If life is a battle, let the teacher be a poet, who 
 may animate the boy to meet it with needful songs. 
 Accustom him to regard his future, not as a path from 
 
356 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 pleasures (though innocent) to other pleasures ; nor 
 even as a gleaning, from spring time to harvest, of 
 flowers and fruits ; but as a time in which he must 
 execute some long plan : in short, let him aim at a 
 long course of activity, not of pleasure. Enjoyment 
 soon wearies both itself and us ; effort, never. That 
 man is happy, for instance, who devotes his life to 
 the cultivation of an island, to the discovery of one 
 that is lost, or of the extent of the ocean. In London 
 it is he who was born rich, not he who has made 
 himself rich, that commits suicide ; and, on the other 
 side of the picture, it is not the poor man, but he 
 who has become poor, that kills himself. The miser 
 grows old enjoying rather than wearied of life ; but 
 the heir who comes into possession of his active gains 
 sinks into ennui. So I would rather be the court 
 gardener who watches and protects an aloe for fifteen 
 years, until at last it opens to him the heaven of its 
 blossom, than the prince who is hastily called to look 
 at the opened heaven. The writer of a dictionary 
 rises every morning like the sun to move past some 
 little star in his zodiac ; a new letter is to him a new 
 year's festival, the conclusion of the old one a harvest- 
 home ; and, since after each capital letter the whole 
 alphabet follows successively, the author on his paper 
 may perhaps frequently celebrate on one and the same 
 day a Sunday, a Lady-day, and a Crispin's holiday. 
 
 Do not fear the rise of the sentiment of honour, 
 which is nothing worse than the rough husk of self- 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 357 
 
 esteem, or the expanded covers of the tender wings 
 which elevate above the earth and its flowers. But, 
 to raise and ennoble that honour of the individual 
 into honour of the race, and that again into honour 
 for the worth of mind, never praise him who has 
 gained a prize, but those who rank below him ; give 
 the honourable title, not as a distinction for the steps 
 which have been mounted, but as a notification of 
 neighbourhood to what is higher; and, lastly, let 
 your praise afford more pleasure because you are 
 pleased than the enjoyment of the distinction gives. 
 
 109. 
 
 If man resembles iron in his strength, he also, by 
 the inflammability of his passions, resembles that 
 metal in connection with sulphur, at whose touch 
 the hot bar of iron dissolves in drops. Does mere 
 passion give strength? As certainly as a Parisian 
 revolution gives freedom, or a comet bright comet- 
 lighted nights; only they pass away again. The 
 most powerful men of antiquity, the rulers or judges 
 of their age, and the examples of all other ages, ever 
 sprung from the Stoic school ; passions served them 
 only as supports during storms, not as the beam of a 
 balance ! 
 
 As with the strength, so is it with the light which 
 passions, according to the declaration of Helvetius, 
 ought to throw upon their objects; it is, forsooth, 
 just as Chateaubriand says, that in storms rocks shine 
 
358 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 with the foam of the waves, and so warn off ships : 
 very dear, and very changeful, light-houses ! 
 
 Admit your boy, then, as much as possible into the 
 Stoic school; and that less by instruction than by 
 the example of true Stoics of all ages. But that he 
 may not mistake the Stoic for a Hollander, or even 
 a stupid savage, let him see that the true inner fire 
 of the breast glows most intensely in those men who 
 manifest through life a steadfast will, and not, like 
 the slaves of passion, various isolated ebullitions and 
 desires : and name to him such men as Socrates and 
 Cato, who were animated by a constant, but therefore 
 tranquil, inspiration. 
 
 no. 
 
 This steadfast volition, which tranquillises every 
 mental tumult, does not presuppose any mere single 
 object, but the grand final aim of life a high ideal 
 which is the central sun of all its revolutions. It 
 can, therefore, only produce a brave or great life; 
 but not a great or brave individual action : of this, 
 indeed, every weakling is capable. And so it never 
 presents the spectacle of a lonely mountain, though 
 there are such upon the earth, but it resembles those 
 continuous chains of mountain-like clouds we see in 
 the sky. 
 
 An unchanging will can only aim at what is 
 universal, at what is divine, be it freedom, or religion, 
 or science, or art. The more divided the will is, the 
 
MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 359 
 
 more is it liable to be disturbed by the outer world. 
 As man in opposition to the beasts, which only 
 apprehend the single individuals presented to their 
 senses extends and resolves the known world into 
 various species, and his thoughts into categories, so 
 does the ideal concentrate the desires in one general 
 all-embracing effort. 
 
 This ideal can be imparted by no education for 
 it is our very inmost self but it must be presup- 
 posed, and so may be animated by all. Life is kindled 
 only by life ; and the highest life can only be called 
 into existence in a child by example, whether present 
 or historical, or, which unites both, by poetry. 
 
 The present living time cannot so easily purchase, 
 or find, great men as little tin figures for children. 
 But the distant history of the universe can furnish 
 them to us: we need but call to mind the soul- 
 stirring contempt of life displayed in wars for freedom 
 which would have immortalised Plutarch, had he 
 been its historian, as certainly as his ancient heroes; 
 but it has found no Plutarch. Greatness, if not 
 misrepresented, is yet forgotten ; and so, in the midst 
 of the best present time, we yet need the mighty 
 past, as birds of passage do the moonshine, to fly into 
 warm countries. Parents and teachers and a few 
 acquaintances are, unfortunately, placed before the 
 growing boy instead of the saints' images of the 
 ideal bad and useless ! A lawgiver, or any man, 
 who daily in the child's presence changes from dress- 
 
360 MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 
 
 ing gown to dress coat, can never arouse that purest 
 sentiment (which Chateaubriand considers wonder) 
 in whose heights all the stars of the child's ideal move 
 and shine. If children must pass behind the light 
 of fair examples, why, O why, should you give them 
 gloomy instead of glorious ones ? 
 
 But Clio, the muse of the past, stands by you, 
 and calls her father Apollo to her assistance. Only 
 fill the boy's mind with the glorified world of heroes, 
 w r ith lovingly painted pictures of great men of every 
 kind, and his in-born ideal will not first be called 
 to life in the midst of that work-a-day ideal which 
 also sleeps in every one. 
 
 So let every poetic ideal shine free and bright 
 before him ; his eye will not thereby be blinded to 
 two greater ideals, to that which his own conscience 
 commands him to be, and to the idea of God. 
 
 The educator, Campe, rightly recommends the il- 
 lumined hemisphere of the present human race to be 
 turned towards children : but certainly not that they 
 may thereby learn patience towards the mediocre 
 impatience were better but that the glory 
 of the world, supposing it to come from dew-drops 
 rather than jewels, may shine through their morning. 
 What I consider dangerous even more dangerous 
 than the representation of man-devils, as every child 
 daily hears of their hellish master without injury 
 is, laying mixed characters before them from which 
 to select those worthy of imitation ; you might as 
 
YOUTHFUL IDEAL. 361 
 
 well set a child to imitate his own similarly mixed 
 nature. What else does a boy learn from that many- 
 godded confederation-morality, but to apply the easy 
 balance between victory and defeat to himself? You 
 might also apply much more closely the Gospel doc- 
 trine of forbearance towards human infirmities 
 namely, towards his own, 
 
 Much that is very plausible, and very prolix, will 
 be urged against this idealisation of youth by peda- 
 gogic elephant hunters, who hunt down what is great 
 in order to have it tame, serviceable, and toothless in 
 their stables. " All this is very fine, but only fit 
 for the world of romance. What can come out of 
 such excessive straining of the young mind, but a vain 
 contemplation and useless opposition to the real world, 
 by which, nevertheless, he must live, and which could 
 scarcely be directed by the dreams of a visionary, or of 
 a beardless boy ? There are, to use the language of 
 novel writers, neither Phoanixes nor basilisks, but there 
 are common land and water birds. In short, the young 
 man must go forth into the world, as the old man has 
 done, and learn to forget his empty giant images. Here 
 again the middle is the right course ; that is to say, 
 the youth may be told that men may possibly become 
 so and so ; however, one must not be too critical if 
 they do not, but live for the state in which one lives : 
 and again, that those ideal notions are only of value 
 and use in so far as they manifest those qualities in 
 connection with the available reality ; so, in a really 
 
362 NECESSITY OF A YOUTHFUL IDEAL. 
 
 allegorical sense, every scholar in Zurich, be he pro- 
 fessor of divinity, law, or pedagogy, must yet be en- 
 rolled member of some guild, that of the shoemakers, 
 weavers, or some other trade. And only thus, and 
 not otherwise, can citizens be given to their country 
 worthy of their parents and teachers." 
 
 That last I admit. But, good heavens! would 
 you, then, help to weaken what the age and the 
 world weaken without your aid? You really act 
 as if from after years, from the valley of life, 
 gradual elevation, instead of depression, were to be 
 expected, and men had not to issue forth and hasten 
 over. Should you not treat the eyes of the mind at 
 least as carefully as those of the body, before which 
 at first you place the concave glasses which diminish 
 in the smallest possible degree, because afterwards 
 their use necessitates such as are more concave and 
 diminish more ? The worst that you labour to avoid 
 is only that the youth should exalt some reality 
 into his ideal ; but the still worse thing that you 
 endeavour to effect is, that he should darken and in- 
 corporate his ideal with reality. Oh ! there is enough 
 of that without you. The ripe sunflower no longer 
 turns its heavy seed-laden head towards the sun. 
 The Rhine soon finds its plain, through which it 
 creeps with no glittering waterfalls, and bears its 
 burdens to Holland. What is all the gain the 
 young soul can obtain from the avoidance of a few 
 false steps, compared with the tremendous loss of the 
 holy fire of youth, of its high-soaring wings, its great 
 
TRUTHFULNESS. 363 
 
 plans, without which it creeps as nakedly into cold 
 narrow life as most men creep out of it ? How can life 
 ripen without the ideal glow of youth, or wine with- 
 out its August ? The best that men have done, if it 
 have come in the late season of life, has been but a 
 late-growing seed which the tree of life in their child- 
 hood's paradise has borne ; it is like the realised dreams 
 of their youth. Have you never seen how a man 
 has been governed and conducted throughout life by 
 the one god-like image of his spring time ? With 
 what else than the bread-cart of clever selfishness 
 would you replace this guiding pole star ? Finally : 
 what is the one thing needful to men ? Certainly 
 not the strength of the sacrifices to what is best ; 
 for let a God but once appear in reality, or, as in 
 France, a goddess (liberty), and man willingly frees 
 himself of every thing human which the divinity does 
 not require: but man needs something other than 
 strength ; faith in, and contemplation of, a Deity who 
 merits human sacrifices of a nobler kind. But if you 
 expel that ideal from the heart, there vanish with it 
 temple, altar, and every thing. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 111. 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS I mean the fact of speaking truth 
 
 intentionally, and even to the injury of self is less 
 
 R 2 
 
364 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 a branch than a blossom of man's moral strength of 
 character. Weaklings must lie, hate it as much as 
 they may. One threatening look drives them into the 
 midst of sin's net. The difference between the pre- 
 sent and the middle age consists less in the existence 
 of injustice, cruelty, and lust for these, especially 
 the last, were abundant enough before the discovery 
 of America than in the want of truthfulness. The 
 first sin on the earth happily the devil was guilty of 
 it, on the tree of knowledge was a lie ; and the last 
 will surely be a lie too. The world is punished for 
 the increase of truths by the decrease of truth- 
 fulness, 
 
 112. 
 
 Lying, that devouring cancer of the inner man, 
 is more severely judged and denned by the feeling of 
 nations, than by philosophers. The Greeks, who 
 suffered their gods to commit as many crimes with im- 
 punity as their present representatives, the gods of the 
 earth, do, yet condemn them for perjury, that root 
 and quintessence of a lie, to pass a year of lifeless- 
 ness under the ground in Tartarus, and then to endure 
 nine years of torments. The ancient Persian taught 
 his child nothing in the whole circle of morality but 
 truthfulness. The grammatic resemblance of his lan- 
 guage to the German beautifully shows also the moral 
 resemblance of the people. Anton * tells us that lying 
 
 * This is more evident in the English than in the German, 
 where the words are liigen derived from liegen. 
 
TRUTHFULNESS. 365 
 
 is originally derived from to lie, i. e. to be prostrate, 
 probably in reference to the abject slave who dare 
 raise neither body nor mind. Lying and stealing, 
 (which, as an acted lie, deprives of honour, though 
 murder does not,) and a box in the ear, which the 
 ancient German dreaded more than a wound, are 
 brought into close connection by our language in its 
 proverbs : and our near relatives, the English, know 
 of no more abusive epithet than liar. The German 
 tournaments were closed to the liar as well as to the 
 murderer. I grant, however, that in the greatest of 
 all tournaments, war, the greatest lying opened the 
 lists of knightly exercise in war to a prince, with 
 whom no true treaty or peace could be made. 
 
 Can this abhorrence of false words be merely 
 grounded on the violation of mutual rights and con- 
 fidence, and the injury arising from broken contracts? 
 It is contradicted by the fact that we more readily 
 pardon lying actions than lying words. Action, 
 mimicry, and silence lie far oftener than the tongue, 
 which men endeavour as long as possible to preserve 
 pure from the hateful perpetration- of a lie, the 
 plague-spot of the inner man. Heavens ! are we not 
 already accustomed, without knowing it, to innu- 
 merable fiction* of law and of poetry to political 
 secret articles, mesne tenures, vice-men, masters of 
 ceremonies, comedians, and rehearsals of comedies, 
 false hair, false teeth, false calves, and many other 
 things of a similar kind ; and yet are we thereby in 
 B 3 
 
366 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 the smallest degree less shocked when a man utters 
 a deliberate lie ? What deceptions there are every- 
 where, from the otherwise lie-hating London, where 
 three-fourths of the current money is false*, to Pekin, 
 where wooden hams are sold wrapped up in pig's skin ! 
 Since an honourable soldier and gentleman is less 
 ashamed of a fraud and a bankruptcy than of a lie, at 
 the bare reproach of which he will shoot himself and 
 since men of the world, and even moralists, permit 
 themselves ambiguity of action rather than an actual 
 lie and since, finally, no blush is caused by any sin 
 so burning as that produced by a lie can words be 
 something higher than deeds, the tongue than the hand? 
 These questions cannot be perfectly answered by the 
 mimic ambiguity of actions, compared with the sim- 
 plicity of speech ; for actions are not always ambiguous, 
 and men will often consider before speaking decidedly, 
 when they would not before acting. Men are not 
 ashamed to undermine and bear ill-will towards other 
 men, but they are ashamed openly to tell a lie. 
 
 113. 
 
 What is it that makes it so unholy ? It is this : 
 two individual beings are stationed with regard to 
 each other as upon different islands, and locked up 
 within prison-bars of the bones, and behind the 
 curtain of the skin. Mere motion shows me only 
 life, but not its internal cause. The animated eye 
 of a Raffaelle's Madonna often speaks to us from 
 * Colquhoim. 
 
TRUTHFULNESS. 367 
 
 the canvas, which yet houses no mind ; wax figures 
 are hollow; and the ape, our mocking image, is 
 dumb. In what glorified form, then, does the 
 human soul reveal itself? In speech only; in 
 reason, thus made man; in this audible freedom. 
 I speak of universal innate language, without which 
 all its peculiarities, such as modes of verbal expres- 
 sion, were neither comprehensible nor possible. Since 
 instinct and mechanism can imitate all other signs 
 of life, it is by speech only that the freedom of the 
 creative thinker in a free world of thought is re- 
 vealed to another; and this herald and ambassador 
 of freedom lays the foundations of morality by 
 announcing individuals, like kings, to one another. 
 The fetters of the tongue are the fetters of the soul ; 
 and there are no customs, save the customs of lan- 
 guage. The testament of the soul is opened by the 
 mouth, and its last will made known. It is by 
 the present conversion of mobile speech into quiet 
 writing and painting, by this strict imprisonment of 
 the breath of the soul, that both the power of lan- 
 guage and the blackness of a lie are visibly diminished. 
 For, since every thing is but a sign, it follows that 
 every sign can be again signified even to infinity. 
 
 But now if a fellow-being, another living soul, 
 comes to me and utters a deliberate lie, how an- 
 nihilating ! His soul has fled away from me, and left 
 but its fleshly house behind ; what he then says, since 
 it is not the soul which speaks, is as meaningless as 
 
 R 4 
 
368 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 the wind, which, with all its howling, announces no 
 pain. A word often effaces or explains an action ; 
 but the reverse scarcely ever occurs. It must be a 
 long course of action which will remove the thorn 
 from one word, or restore the trusted use of the 
 tongue. The whole enchanted palace of a man's 
 thoughts is rendered invisible by the single blast of 
 a lie, for one lie is the mother of all lies. What can 
 I say to him who is, or carries about with him, his 
 own talking machine, and may have thoughts quite 
 different to those he sounds on his machine ? More- 
 over, he gives me, what is no partial but a universal 
 injury instead of my soul, a machine instead of 
 my truths, falsehoods ; and breaks down the bridge of 
 mind, or at least converts it into a bridge which he 
 can let down for himselfj but draw up against others. 
 
 114. 
 
 And now back to our dear children ! During the 
 first five years they say neither what is true, nor 
 what is false they merely talk. Their talking is 
 thinking aloud ; and since the one half of thought is 
 frequently a yes, and the other a no, and both escape 
 them (though not us), they seem to lie when they 
 are merely talking to themselves. Further : at first 
 they find great pleasure in exercising their new art 
 of speech, and so they often talk nonsense, only for 
 the sake of hearing their acquisitions in language. 
 They frequently do not understand some word that 
 
TRUTHFULNESS, 369 
 
 you have said little children, for instance, often 
 confuse to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, as well as 
 numbers and degrees of comparison, and so give 
 rather a mistaken than a false reply. Again, they 
 use their tongues more in sport than earnest, as may 
 be seen in the long discourses they hold with their 
 puppets, as a minister or an author does with his ; 
 and they easily apply this sportive talking to living 
 people. Children always fly to the warm sunny side 
 of hope ; if the bird or the dog has gone away, they 
 will say, without any further reason, it will come 
 back again. And, since they cannot altogether 
 separate their hopes, that is, their fancies, from copies 
 or truths, their own self-deception assumes the ap- 
 pearance of a lie. For instance, a truth- speaking 
 little girl related to me frequent appearances of the 
 infant Christ *, and what he had said, done, &c. It 
 is worthy of consideration whether children, when 
 they poetise a lie, do not often relate remembered 
 dreams, which must necessarily be confounded by 
 them with real occurrences. To this class belongs 
 that talkative teazing and joking f often seen in 
 eight or ten years old boys, which arises from super- 
 abundance of animal spirits. 
 
 * The infant Christ is, in Germany, feigned to be the sender 
 of the presents which adorn the Christmas tree. 
 
 f For the true liar does not joke, and the true wit does not 
 lie, from the sharp open Swift back to Erasmus, who even ex- 
 perienced a physical antipathy to a liar, as also to fish. PARA- 
 VICINI, Singularia de Viris Claris. 
 
 B 5 
 
370 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 In all these cases, when the form of a lie is not to 
 be shown in any dark glass, say merely, " Don't 
 make nonsense, speak seriously." 
 
 Finally, an untruth about what is to come, is 
 often confounded with an untruth about what has 
 happened. Now if, in the case of grown-up men, we 
 do not consider the breach of an official oath, having 
 reference to the future only, equally culpable with 
 the black perjury which relates to the past, we 
 should in a still greater degree in the case of children, 
 before whose little ken time and space are magnified, 
 and to whom a day is as inscrutable as a year to 
 us, clearly distinguish between the un truthfulness 
 of promises and the untruthfulness of statements. 
 Something very different, and much worse, is the 
 narrative-lie, which seeks to gain some future thing 
 by lying. 
 
 Truthfulness, which would offer even a bloody 
 sacrifice to its word as its word, is a godlike blossom 
 on an earthly plant ; therefore, it is not the first, but 
 the last virtue in order of tune. The simple savage 
 is full of deceit, both in words and actions; the 
 peasant, under the influence of some trifling danger, 
 will tell a lie about what is past ; but he considers it 
 dishonourable to tell a prospective lie, and keeps his 
 word. And yet you can require in a child, whom 
 you have yet to educate, the last and noblest fruits of 
 truth ? How much you err is proved by the fact, 
 that lying children all other circumstances being 
 
TKUTHFULNESS. 371 
 
 e q lia l have grown up into truthful men: I appeal 
 to the Rousseau's ribbon-lie of every conscience. 
 There are, however, two decided lies with regard 
 to the two times ; no other lies are possible than 
 either those which look forward to the future or 
 back to the past. The first is seen when the child 
 endeavours to secure itself some booty by lying 
 words or deeds ; the second, when he denies, through 
 fear, his own actions. 
 
 What is to be done in both these circumstances ? 
 
 H5. 
 
 What is to be done before they occur ? That is 
 the question. 
 
 The child, blinded, and, as it were, imprisoned, by 
 his own existence, acquires his first knowledge of 
 morality by observing others ; and only perceives 
 the hatefulness of a heard lie, not of one spoken by 
 himself, Show him, then, the lofty throne of truth- 
 fulness in others, compared with the abyss of their 
 falsehood ; be what you desire him to be ; and fre- 
 quently repeat that you do even the most indifferent 
 things, because you had previously said you would. 
 It has a powerful effect on the little heart if he 
 occasionally hears his father, who seems to him a 
 kind of free universal monarch, complain ; but 
 mark, it must only be in true cases, for truthfulness 
 in the child cannot grow at the expense of truth- 
 fulness in the parents : that, for instance, he would 
 R 6 
 
372 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 rather not go out with him, but having promised to 
 do so, he must now unwillingly keep his word. 
 
 If the child have promised something, remind him 
 frequently of it as the time approaches, but without 
 using other words than " you said so, " and at last 
 compel him to the performance. But if he have 
 done something, you cannot be too sparing in your 
 inquiries, which may easily become so painful. The 
 younger the child is the fewer questions you ought 
 to ask, the more ought you to seem all-knowing or 
 remain ignorant. Do you not consider that you 
 apply a fiery trial, such as Huss and other martyrs 
 have endured, to children to whom a threatening 
 father is a penal judge, a prince and a fate, his rod 
 a Jove's thunderbolt, and the next questioning mo- 
 ment an eternity of hellish torments when, by 
 your concealed anger, and the prospect of punish- 
 ment after confession, you place them in the danger- 
 ous position of choosing whether they shall obey 
 instinct or an idea ? To truth belongs freedom ; the 
 criminal stands without fetters during trial; and 
 man, the reverse of Proteus, speaks the truth when 
 free. The more free the education, the more truth- 
 ful is the child. All truth-loving ages and nations, 
 from the German to the British, have been free : 
 lying China is a prison, and romanizare (romancing) 
 meant lying when the Romans were slaves. 
 
 At the same time do not let the remission of 
 punishment be the incitement and reward of truth ; 
 
TRUTHFULNESS. 373 
 
 an act of indemnity, which can as little make the 
 child good and true, as escaped suffering the un- 
 punished thief. If you must inquire, use affectionate 
 words, and apply to the lie the pain you would spare 
 the child. 
 
 But if a lie be proved against the child, solemnly 
 utter the judgment " guilty of lying," with a shocked 
 tone and look, with all the horror due to this sin 
 against nature and the Holy Ghost, and inflict the 
 punishment. The only punishments I would permit 
 for lying, are such as affect the honour, and can be 
 removed as solemnly, suddenly, and completely, as 
 inflicted, so as not to lose their effect by gradual 
 diminution. The Iroquois blacken the faces of 
 those who celebrate their heroes with lying songs. 
 The Siamese sew up the lips of lying women, as if 
 they were wounds. I have nothing to say against 
 the blackening ; on the contrary, I have myself 
 occasionally punished a lie severely by marking a 
 spot of ink on the brow, which was not to be washed 
 off without permission, and which eat deeply into the 
 conscience. But I am more in favour of the Siamese 
 plan of closing the lips, I mean of forbidding speak- 
 ing to those who have spoken wickedly. The same 
 principle which led the ancient Germans to cut out 
 the tongues of the Roman advocates, sends the mis- 
 used member, which serves the mind worse than the 
 stomach, into the convent of La Trappe. I think 
 this punishment which petrifies the tongue, as Paul 
 
374 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 did the serpent at Malta, is juster, lighter, and more 
 definite, than that which Rousseau and Kant would 
 inflict on a lying child ; namely, not to believe him 
 for a time, which only means to seem not to believe 
 him. For in this case the judge himself lies during 
 the punishment for lying ; and will not the little culprit 
 arrive at the knowledge of this pretence by his con- 
 sciousness of speaking the truth? Moreover, how 
 and when will you make the necessary return from 
 disbelief to confidence ? At the same time, Kant's 
 punishment may occasionally have a beneficial ten- 
 dency in the case of grown up-daughters. 
 
 Never tell any child under six years old to conceal 
 any thing, even though it were a pleasure you were 
 planning for some one you love. The clear sky of 
 child-like open-heartedness must not be covered even 
 by the morning glow of shame ; and your instructions 
 will soon teach him to add secrets of his own to 
 yours. The heroic virtue of silence requires for its 
 practice the powers of ripening reason. Reason 
 teaches us to be silent ; the heart teaches us to 
 
 For this and other reasons I consider it wrong, at 
 least for the first five years, to forbid a child to ask 
 for any thing ; especially if the mother append the 
 poisonous sugar of a promise to give it afterwards. 
 For, are wishes sins ? or is the confession of a wish a 
 shi? During the silence attached to the gift, will 
 not a longing for enjoyment and reward, and the 
 
TEUTHFULNESS. 375 
 
 power of dissimulation, be maintained and fostered ? 
 And is it not much easier to give an entire refusal 
 after the short question, than after the long waiting ? 
 This mistaken command arises from the maternal in- 
 ability to utter an immediate and decisive " no." 
 
 Do not despise all kinds of little helps. For in- 
 stance, do not press the child for an immediate 
 answer ; a lie easily escapes from haste, and must 
 then be supported by another. Give him a little 
 time for reflection before he speak. Further, remem- 
 ber in your most indifferent promises and declara- 
 tions and all the more because they are indifferent 
 to you that children have a better memory than 
 you about all things, but especially for and against 
 you, and that you must protect them from the dan- 
 gerous appearance of your own innocent over-hasty 
 untruthfulness. 
 
 The author has occasionally asked himself whether 
 children's sense of truth may not be injured by the 
 acting of charades and little comedies. Besides the 
 necessary excitement of instant creation, children's 
 charades have also this advantage over children's 
 comedies, that mere charades are only a higher 
 imitation of the puppet games which children, even 
 at an earlier age, played extempore with their dolls 
 and their companions, without any injury to truthful- 
 ness ; as if, even then, they would take refuge from 
 the cold winds of real life behind the shelter of 
 imaginary life. In charades the child lives, at once 
 
376 TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 poet and player ; in a strange character, it is true, but 
 still not in a borrowed one, and uttering the words 
 prompted by the eager moment. In plays he coldly 
 learns by heart the representation (simulatio) of a cha- 
 racter, and certain words, in order afterwards to give a 
 lively representation of both. Truth has also this 
 advantage in charades ; that the child must at all events 
 reply from his own mind to the changing questions 
 of the time ; whereas, in a learnt comedy, he brings 
 with him every answer prepared for weeks. And 
 since even great actors do not consider the advantage 
 to be gained by pure universal human nature, without 
 regard to artistic effect, as the matter of chief im- 
 portance, we should exempt children from an exercise 
 in which the advantage is more doubtful than the 
 injury. 
 
 Our ancestors magnified every lie into perjury, 
 by always pointing out to children the universal 
 presence of God : and why should not this warning, 
 which converts every promise into an oath, and 
 doubles the sin while rendering it more difficult of 
 commission to a conscience alive to the Divinity, 
 be still held up to children ? 
 
 Finally, since truthfulness, as a conscious virtue 
 and sacrifice, is the blossom, nay, the pollen, of 
 the whole moral growth, it can only grow with 
 its growth, and open when it has reached its height. 
 You have only to keep away weeds while you give 
 it freedom, save it from overpowering temptations, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 377 
 
 and forbid all soul-bending customs (such as obliging 
 a child to return thanks for a whipping, and to make 
 compliments to strangers). 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 116. 
 
 I SAID, in the hundred and third section, that love 
 is the second hemisphere of the moral world, that it 
 turns to what is external, as honour does to what is 
 internal, and so forth. The holy essence of love 
 has been fathomed neither by the fraternity of novel- 
 ists who, like selfish women, mingle regard to self 
 with the beloved object, nor by merely intellectual 
 philosophers, who view its depth partly as an instinct 
 utterly without and below their categorical imperative 
 (law of morals), partly as mere justice, a kind of 
 rational regard ; to such men love and poetry seem 
 a pair of superfluous wings, disfiguring the useful 
 arms behind which they are placed. Only Plato, 
 Hemsterhuis, Jacobi, Herder, and a few like them, 
 have brought to the love of wisdom (philosophy) 
 the wisdom of love. He who called love the posi- 
 tive law of morality, will at least not be con- 
 demned by one great man by Jesus Christ, the 
 founder of the first religion of love in the midst; 
 
378 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 of a Judaism inimical to all other nations, and an age 
 inimical to philanthropy. But the essence of love 
 this all-sustaining deity, the true divine unity of all, 
 in which the individual soul feels more than it com- 
 prehends demands another place for examination. 
 
 iiv. 
 
 Love is an innate, but variously apportioned, 
 power and warmth of the heart ; there are cold and 
 warm blooded souls as well as bodies. Many are 
 born knights of the Love of their neighbour *, as 
 Montaigne ; many are armed neutrals against hu- 
 manity. Whether this power be a holy burning 
 bush, or only a single kindling spark, education must 
 care for it in two ways, by protecting and by de- 
 veloping it. 
 
 By protecting it I mean this. The child begins 
 with selfishness, which affects us as little as that of 
 animals ; because the soul, darkly hidden under its 
 various wants, cannot yet feel its way to another, but 
 incorporates others, so to speak, with itself. In so 
 far the child finds nothing lifeless without, any more 
 than within, itself; it spreads its soul as a universal 
 soul over every thing. A little girl of two years 
 old and all children do the same personified 
 other things than those I mentioned in the earlier 
 part of this work : she said, for instance, of the door 
 
 * The order of knighthood to which I allude, was founded 
 by the Queen of Charles III. of Spain. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 379 
 
 which was opened, " It wants to go out." "I will 
 kiss my hand to the spring." " Is the moon good ? 
 and does it never cry ? " This animation of all life- 
 less things, which is peculiar to children, is another 
 reason why we should restrain them from ever 
 harshly alluding to an inanimate object. 
 
 H8. 
 
 Love in the child, as in the animal, exists as an 
 instinct; and this central fire frequently, but not 
 always, breaks through its outer crust in the form of 
 compassion. A child is often indifferent, not merely 
 to the sufferings of animals, and to those of persons 
 unconnected with himself (except when the cry of 
 pain finds an echo in his own heart), but even to 
 those of relatives. Innocent children will frequently 
 find pleasure in standing on the place where another 
 is to be punished. A second observation, founded 
 on experience, is, that boys, when approaching near 
 to manhood, show the least affection, the most love 
 of teazing, the greatest destructiveness, the most 
 selfishness and cold-heartedness ; just as the coldness 
 of the night increases twofold shortly before the 
 rising of the sun. 
 
 But the sun comes, and warms the world; the 
 superabundance of power becomes love: the strong 
 stem encloses and protects the pith ; the teazing lad 
 becomes the affectionate young man. The other 
 observation of childish heartlessness, recorded above, 
 
380 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 vanishes in the very opposite quality of tenderness, 
 so soon as the visible pain of the culprit, by its 
 increase, affects the child ; every fresh wound makes 
 a tearful eye. 
 
 Consequently, there is not so much need to ingraft 
 the buds of affection, as to remove the moss and 
 briars of selfishness which hide them from the sun. 
 Every body would gladly show affection, might he or 
 dared he but do it. Wherever a pulse beats, a heart 
 reposes in the back ground; if there be but some 
 little impulse towards love, the whole essence of love 
 lies behind it. 
 
 But you plant the selfish weed, instead of eradi- 
 cating it, if, in the presence of children, you pass 
 contemptuous, though just, judgments on your 
 neighbours, or even your town. How else can the 
 child learn to love the world, than by learning to 
 love what is daily around him ? And can we love 
 what we despise ? Or will your sermons warm him 
 into love for the objects you have taught him to 
 scorn? Since every distinction of your children 
 above their neighbours, whether it consists in posi- 
 tion, behaviour, or even more brilliant instruction, 
 reminds them of themselves at the expense of others, 
 this distinction very soon and very easily passes into 
 hatred. Never say to your children that other 
 children are ill brought-up. I have frequently seen 
 whole families converted, by similar thoughtless 
 and perverse actions, into watchful and blockading 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 381 
 
 troops of hatred ; whole houses built full of pouting 
 corners, where every child, full of itself, regarded its 
 own demands as the weights, those of others as the 
 goods to be weighed, and expected universal love 
 and admiration. If a large town have the injurious 
 effect on children's hearts of compelling them to 
 assume the neutrality of great people, because so 
 many of whom they are ignorant, and to whom 
 they are indifferent, constantly pass before them, 
 much more must a village harm them, if they hate 
 and despise as many people as they know, that is to 
 say, every body. 
 
 The simple command, "Forgive the sinner," means 
 with children, Do not regard him as one : you will 
 succeed better if you teach them to distinguish the 
 guilty accomplice self, from its stains ; to judge the 
 deed, not the doer; in order, especially, by the com- 
 parison of things and rights, to prevent, or to exalt, 
 the comparison of persons. Praise the action, not 
 the child. Parents mention their children too often 
 by name. Do not say, "Ah, the good little Louisa!" 
 but say, " That is good," or, at most, " You are 
 as good as Mary." 
 
 H9. 
 
 But while setting forth the repression of selfish- 
 ness as the one thing needful for exciting kindliness 
 to others, we must observe as is just that love 
 requires nothing, save not to be obstructed. This 
 
382 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 leads us to the second means of maintaining and 
 exciting love : it is this place another being in 
 sufficiently close and living contact with your child, 
 and he will love it ; because man is so good, that the 
 devil, so to speak, has only carved and placed a black 
 frame round the divine image. The stem of the 
 individual heart nourishes with the same sap its own 
 branches and those which are ingrafted on it. 
 
 The means of exciting love consist in identifying 
 the child, as it were, with the life of others and in 
 reverence for life under every form. 
 
 Concerning this transposition into extraneous life, 
 by which alone the goodness of our nature can un- 
 fold all its love, little needs here be printed, because 
 I have already printed much about it.* Individuals, 
 yea, whole nations, have often died without having 
 once even thought of themselves in any other posi- 
 tion than their own ; how difficult, then, must it be 
 for the child to place himself in the position of 
 others ! Man usually opens himself to the reception 
 of another's nature only, when, in the contest between 
 two other persons, he must transpose himself from 
 the one into the other ; but not, when he is a party 
 concerned in the contest, by placing himself in the 
 position of his opponent. Moreover, this represen- 
 tative method of viewing our neighbour is a kind of 
 intuition, and, consequently, not always in our own 
 power. I do not attempt to decide whether possibly 
 
 * In the Life of Siebenkas, book 1. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 383 
 
 older children may not be led to attain this intuitive 
 perception at an earlier period than they else would 
 by certain games; where one child, for instance, 
 assumed the name, and imitated the actions, of 
 another; or, by coloured pictures, calling to mind 
 similar situations. But there is something else which 
 may be done to attain this end, with better hope of 
 success. 
 
 120. 
 
 It is this : teach a child to consider all animal life 
 sacred in short, give him the heart of a Hindoo, 
 not the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. 
 
 I here speak of something higher than compassion 
 for animals, though of that also. Why has it been 
 long remarked that children's cruelty to animals 
 predicts cruelty to men, as the Old Testament sacri- 
 fices of beasts foreshadowed the New Testament 
 sacrifice of a man ? It is certain that, unless asso- 
 ciated with other things, the little human being can 
 only sympathise with those sufferings which speak in 
 tones similar to his own. Consequently, the unusual 
 cry of a tortured animal sounds to him only like the 
 strange and amusing howl of the inanimate wind ; 
 but, as he sees life and voluntary motion, and even 
 attributes them to inanimate forms, he sins against 
 life when he separates them as though they were but 
 machinery. Life itself should be sacred ; every life, 
 irrational as well as any other. And does the child, 
 
384 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 in fact, know of different kinds of life ? Or is the 
 heart, beating under bristles, feathers, or hard wing- 
 covers, therefore any the less a heart ? 
 
 Permit me a few words about the love of animals, 
 and universal reverence for life ! 
 
 Once, when man, a new and fresh creature, lived 
 in the full world where one stream flows into an- 
 other, he recognised in every thing the universal 
 life of the Godhead, resembling an infinite tree of 
 life, which spreads the lowest insects, like roots, into 
 the earth and sea, stands firm and strong with a 
 trunk of huge powerful beasts, shoots into the air 
 with boughs full of waving leaves, and finally puts 
 forth men, its tender blossoms, towards the sky. 
 Then had not arisen that stupid human egotism which 
 thinks that the whole animal kingdom, the peopled 
 seas and deserts full of all their various happy living 
 creatures, were given by God to men as tributary 
 beasts, Michaelmas geese and tithe hens for their 
 stomachs. The earth, Kepler's animal, had not 
 yet become the metallic cow and the Balaam's ass of 
 little man. But the old vanished world some 
 remnants of which are yet visible in eastern India > 
 finding more life and more divinity in the flower, 
 fast chained by its roots, than we now do in the free- 
 moving beast, worshipped, in animal arabesques, in 
 the living, moving, distorted images of the human 
 form, the infinite Kaffaelle who perfected man. The 
 forms of animals, repulsive to us, revealed to them 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 385 
 
 the veil of Isis, or the Moses' covering of a deity. 
 Hence the lower, but wonderful, beast* was wor- 
 shipped much sooner than the human being ; hence 
 the Egyptians crowned human bodies with the heads 
 of animals. The more childlike, simple and pious 
 a nation, the greater its love of animals. In Surat 
 there is an hospital for animals. The hero who had 
 taken Nineveh, saved it from destruction, because 
 of the multitude of its animals. The mercifulness 
 of the Jewsf towards animals was rewarded with 
 long life. Even the punishment of animals, if 
 they had participated with men in any crime, the 
 thunders of excommunication hurled against them, 
 and the weighing of their designs J, in inflicting 
 punishment, show the early regard felt for these 
 eighth parts, and likenesses, of man. The Indian 
 adoration of vegetable life passed into Greece, under 
 the form of Hamadryads and other deities dwelling in 
 trees, and into the north under the form of punish- 
 ment to all who injured trees. 
 
 I have often pictured to myself situations which 
 would remove the common daily view of animals, 
 which, like mis-shapen human bodies, have fallen on 
 to our globe from other worlds producing different 
 
 * Vide Meiners. f Michaelis, Mosaic law, v. iii. 
 
 J An ox which, among the Jews (according to the Gemara), 
 was put to death for killing a Jew, but left unhurt after killing 
 three heathens, was equally unpunished if he aimed at goring a 
 heathen but killed a Jew. Mischna, 6. Bafa kama, c. 4. 
 
 S 
 
336 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 forms. For instance ; I have fancied an uninhabited 
 island, on which one man, nourished only by the 
 bread fruit tree, had seen no living thing, nothing 
 but waves and sky and his own reflection in the 
 water, and from which he was suddenly transported 
 to a country peopled with animated beings. 
 
 "What an enchanted island full of embodied sprites 
 and fairies ! To the islander, who knows no other 
 form than his own, a hairy monkey grinning at him 
 from a bough would seem a wicked spirit, or a mis- 
 shapen man. The elephant approaches, a shapeless, 
 living mass, a whole family compressed into one huge 
 two-eyed body, a walking island of flesh : the 
 lion comes like anger : the horse flies like victorious 
 pride : little mad sprites, red, green, yellow, and six- 
 footed, flutter about the island. A glorious wonder 
 drops from the clouds, in which the two strong 
 useful human arms are changed into burnished gold 
 hair or feathers, and its lips drawn out into a horn. 
 Grey shapeless substances, with scarce formed limbs, 
 swim in the waters : yellow creatures, like the 
 masks of the furies, crawl about in the marshes : a 
 single long smooth limb creeps up and pricks the 
 wicked spirit on the bough, and he falls down : and 
 then, when these strange dream-like figures began 
 to speak each the language of an unknown world 
 as we might suppose the various nations of its planets 
 assembled in the market-place of their sun hum- 
 ming, screaming, howling, laughing there, on the 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 387 
 
 bough of a tree, sweet sounds from heaven, at its root 
 wrathful hissings from Erebus : and then the bat- 
 tles and struggles of these animals, the injuries in- 
 flicted on them by each other, and yet their continued 
 existence : and, finally, this mingled, fluttering, 
 hurting, killing, caressing, reproducing life becomes 
 an infinite breath of life, wherein the individual life 
 flies like a tiny zephyrette .... The one human soul 
 forgets in itself the human race of the past, the 
 present, and the future, and places itself as the first 
 figure before all others. How much more does it 
 forget the inferior race of animals, the mouchcs 
 volantes before an angel's eyes ! 
 
 The so-called instinct of animals this ass which 
 perceives the angel's presence sooner than the prophet 
 ought to be regarded as the greatest miracle of 
 creation, and also as the key and index to all other 
 miracles ; in so much as the riddle of the universe 
 resembles those riddles which both describe the 
 riddle and signify it. Animals should be rendered 
 familiar to children in every possible way ; for in- 
 stance, by representing them as an anagram of a 
 human being : thus the poor dog may be regarded as 
 an old hairy man, whose mouth has become blackened 
 and elongated, his ears pulled out, long nails ap- 
 pended to his shaggy paws, and so forth. Little 
 animals must be brought nearer to the eye and heart 
 by means of a magnifying glass. Thus we may 
 become the friends of the denizens of a leaf. The 
 
 s 2 
 
388 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 prejudice which values life by the yard why, then, 
 are not elephants and whales ranked higher than 
 ourselves? disappears by the contemplation of the 
 infinity which is the same in every living creature, 
 and, like an infinite series in numbers, is increased by 
 no finite additions ; which is not affected, for instance, 
 by the two million joints of a centipede, or the many 
 thousand muscles of the willow-caterpillar. " How 
 you would take care of a butterfly as big as an eagle, 
 or of a grasshopper as large as a horse ! And are not 
 you little too ?" Speak thus to the child ! 
 
 Leibnitz replaced a little insect which he had 
 examined for a long time uninjured on its leaf: be 
 this a command for a child. The Stoic school de- 
 clared, that a man who killed a fowl without any 
 reason would just as readily kill his father : and the 
 Egyptian priest considered it impious to destroy 
 any animal except for sacrifice. These embody all 
 the commandments of regard for life. Let animals 
 be put to death only from necessity, as sacrifices, 
 accidentally, hastily, involuntarily, defensively. If 
 the long observation of some animal say a frog 
 of its breathing, jumping, mode of life, and agonies 
 have converted this little animal, previously indiffer- 
 ent to the child, into a really living thing, he would, 
 by killing it, destroy with its life his reverence for 
 all life. Hence no domestic animal, a sheep, a cow, 
 should ever be killed in a child's presence ; at all 
 events, if his rising love of animals is to be encouraged, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 389 
 
 instead of repressed (as some nations have been led 
 to eat men from eating monkeys); the hard neces- 
 sity of the case, the careful tending previously, and 
 the sudden easy death, must be cast as a veil of dark- 
 ness over the slaughtering hand. Even a hunter 
 should never punish his hounds with true hunters' 
 cruelty before a child, especially, because their cries 
 express their pain so clearly. Cooks say you should 
 show no pity in killing an animal, for else it dies 
 harder: this superstition at once reveals and hides 
 the true woman's sympathy, which it forbids. 
 
 To the child's eye, admit all living things into the 
 human family ; so the greater reveals to him the less. 
 Breathe a living soul into every thing; and even 
 describe the lily, which he wantonly tears from its 
 organic existence, as the daughter of a fair mother 
 who stands in the bed and nourishes her little white 
 child with sap and dew. 
 
 I do not refer to any mere empty exercise of com- 
 passion in the school of others' sufferings, but to an 
 exercise of religion in the consecration of life, of the 
 deity ever present in the trees and in the human 
 brain. The love of animals, like maternal love, 
 arises from no expectation of reciprocated advantage, 
 still less from selfishness, and has the further advantage 
 of always finding an object on which to manifest itself. 
 
 Oh ! the beautiful time will, must come, when the 
 beast-loving Brahmins shall dwell in the cold north 
 and make it warm ; when the heart, having rejected 
 
 s 3 
 
390 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 * 
 
 its worst and cruellest sins, shall also lay aside those 
 which slowly poison it ; when man, who now honours 
 the multiform part of humanity, shall also begin to 
 spare, and finally to protect, in the present, the ani- 
 mated ascending and descending scale of living 
 creatures, so as no more to offer to the Great First 
 Cause the hateful sight of, it is true, thickly veiled, 
 but wide-extended, animal suffering. And wherefore 
 must such times come ? Because worse times have 
 passed away : time carries away the national debts 
 (mostly bloody debts) of humanity : strand-right is 
 now strand-wrong ; the traffic in negroes is gradually 
 becoming unlawful. Only the toughest, harshest 
 barbarism of past ages war remains yet to be 
 vanquished by our innate anti-barbarism. 
 
 121, 
 
 The third love-potion, like the third degree of 
 comparison which admits of no more, is love for 
 love. If love be the highest, what further can 
 it seek than itself, the highest ? A heart can only 
 be held by a heart, the fairest setting of the love- 
 liest jewel. Only the tumult and confusion in the 
 nest of self can so darken us that we value pure love 
 for another less than that for ourselves. 
 
 But do not attempt to found this love in children 
 by caresses, the thirsty springs of love. These soon 
 both grow cold and make cold. I have often seen 
 children, especially young ones, suddenly start away 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 391 
 
 from the caresses of love to the quietest observation 
 of some mere trifle, just like the old epic poets of early- 
 nations in their descriptions. In grown-up persons, 
 that would betray a withered heart which in children 
 only shows that its buds are still closed. 
 
 You reveal the form of love to a child less by 
 self-sacrificing actions for these he, as yet un- 
 reasoning and selfish, does not regard than by the 
 mother tongue of love, affectionate words and looks. 
 Love, to appear untroubled, must be embodied in 
 nothing save the tender mimicry taught by nature 
 herself: a look, a word, expresses it directly, a gift 
 only indirectly, by translation. And just so in 
 marriage : love is not preserved by gifts, pleasures and 
 sacrifices, whose influence soon disappears, but by 
 words and looks of love. Moreover, children mani- 
 fest more love towards present-giving strangers than 
 to present-giving parents ; but, on the contrary, not 
 so much to caressing strangers as to caressing parents. 
 
 Let the child occasionally see the fiery pillar of 
 love move before strangers. Contemplation of the 
 mutual love of others sanctifies the beholder, because 
 it cannot be accompanied by selfish desires. But 
 there is one evil attending this; namely, that the 
 undeveloped hearts of children either behold the 
 altar flame of others' love with indifference, or 
 frequently, if their parents kindle it, even with 
 jealousy. But this only teaches us that in education, 
 as well as in art, every violent expression, even of 
 
 s 4 
 
392 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 what is most excellent, must be shunned (because 
 the injudicious excess makes a durable impression, 
 but the beautiful fugitive idea is lost), and that 
 quietness and gentleness reflect the affectionate heart 
 most clearly. And I can assure brides, and still 
 more certainly bridegrooms, that they will only find 
 the children of affectionate parents affectionate ; and 
 especially that a kind or an unkind father propagates 
 love or hatred in his children. 
 
 If love were not natural to us we could never 
 hate. It is true that in us, as in other animals, hate 
 manifests itself earlier, and at first more powerfully 
 than love. This may in part be thus accounted for : 
 in attraction or resemblance some portion of another's 
 excellence is lost to sight by its mixture with our 
 own, whereas the repulsion of what is dissimilar at 
 once markedly separates our good from others' evil 
 qualities ; the heart, full of ideal light, feels the cold 
 shadow of another's worthlessness more sensibly than 
 the light which is lost in the blaze of his own. But 
 if love is innate, and if the heart is, as Descartes calls 
 the earth, an encrusted sun (soleil encroute), you have 
 but to break away the crust and the glowing warmth 
 is there. In other words, let the child learn to know 
 love by his own actions, as, reversedly, to understand 
 your actions by love ; that is to say, let him do some- 
 thing for you so that he may love something ; for in 
 children action awakens desire, though the opposite 
 is the case with men. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 393 
 
 You may teach a higher than Ovid's Art of Love, 
 by requesting your child to do something without 
 commanding, or rewarding performance, or punish- 
 ing neglect ; only depict beforehand, if it is for 
 another, or afterwards if for yourself, the pleasure 
 which the little actor's attention to your wish affords. 
 You excite the benevolence of children less by pic- 
 tures of people's necessities than of the joy produced 
 by relieving them. For the little heart conceals so 
 great a treasure of love, that he is less deficient in 
 willingness to make sacrifices than in the certainty that 
 they would give pleasure. Hence, when children have 
 once begun to make presents they would never cease 
 giving. The parents may give them the reward of 
 certain happiness by a gladly praising approval ; an 
 educational lever whose power has not been sufficiently 
 estimated. For children, accustomed only to parental 
 bidding and forbidding, are made happy by permission 
 to do some extra service, and by the recognition of their 
 having done it. This affectionate acknowledgment 
 of pleasure renders them neither vain nor empty, but 
 full ; not proud, but warm. 
 
 " It does the poor man, or dog, or whatever it may 
 be, good, or harm ! " These few words, said in a pro- 
 per tone of voice, are worth a whole sermon : and 
 fie ! said to a girl, will abundantly fill the place of 
 half a volume of Ehrenberg's Lectures to the female 
 sex. 
 
 Moreover, the author does not attempt to hide from 
 a 5 
 
394 EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 the police, that, in the presence of his children, he 
 has frequently given to beggars ; first, because the 
 appearance of cruelty cannot be removed by any 
 political reasons, nor is attempted to be ; and, secondly, 
 because a child's heart, excited by compassion for 
 suffering, should not be chilled. 
 
 Yet a few fragments within the fragment ! Do 
 not apprehend too great danger to the affections from 
 children's quarrels. The circumscribed heart of chil- 
 dren, their incapacity to place themselves in another's 
 position, and their Adam-like innocence of belief that 
 the whole world is made for them, not they for the 
 world ; all these things combine to raise the inflated 
 bubbles which soon break of themselves. They may 
 speak harshly, or even fly into a passion, with one 
 another, but must not continue it ! You must do many 
 more things to be hated than to be loved by children: 
 hated parents must themselves have hated for a long 
 time. Advancing years rarely awaken a repressed 
 or dormant love ; the individual's own selfishness 
 doubles that of others, and this again redoubles that ; 
 and so layer upon layer of ice is frozen. You falsify 
 love by commanding its outward expression ; kissing 
 the hand, for instance. Such things, unlike kind 
 actions, are not the causes, but only the effects, of 
 love. Do not in any instance require love : among 
 grown-up persons would a declaration of affection, 
 if commanded and prescribed by the highest authori- 
 ties, be well received ? It may be again repeated 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 395 
 
 without deserving blame, that the quickest alternation 
 between punishment or refusal and previous love is 
 the true, though (to the fair sex) a difficult art of 
 educating the affections. No love is sweeter than that 
 which follows severity ; so from the bitter olive is 
 sweet, soft oil expressed. 
 
 And, finally, ye parents, teach to love, and you 
 will need no ten commandments ; teach to love, and 
 a rich, winning life is opened to your child: for 
 man (if this simile be permitted) resembles Austria, 
 which increases its territory by marriage, but loses 
 its acquisitions by war : teach to love, in this age, 
 which is the winter of time, and which can more 
 easily conquer every thing than a heart by a heart ; 
 teach to love, so that when your eyes are old, and 
 their sense almost extinguished, you may yet find 
 round your sick couch and dying bed no greedy, 
 covetous looks, but anxious weeping eyes, which 
 strive to warm your freezing life, and lighten the 
 darkness of your last hour by thanks for their first : 
 teach to love, I repeat ; that means do you love ! 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY APPENDIX TO MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 122. 
 
 WHAT is the third which unites love and honour, 
 which does not suffer love weakly to sacrifice the 
 
 s 6 
 
396 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 sacred rights of the individual soul, nor honour to 
 disregard that of others in the cold contemplation of 
 its own ? Religion. 
 
 Since every distinguishing quality is again sub- 
 divided, we find that the natural distinctions of the 
 sexes, the one inclining more to honour, the other to 
 love, are repeated in the same sex. This is a very 
 important point in female education. One girl is all 
 quickness of perception and action, full of truthful- 
 ness and impatience, her personal and her public 
 honour is ever before her eyes forgiving only her 
 own severity, not that of others, but even that, more 
 readily than any unworthy attack on her honour 
 reflecting on her ovrn worth rather than duly weigh- 
 ing it, placing justice higher than love, and so forth. 
 Another girl is full of affection, often even to the 
 prejudice of her honour, desirous of approbation, not 
 proud, less obedient to the dictates of propriety than 
 to inclination, sacrificing external form to internal 
 sentiment, eager to lend assistance and sympathy, 
 less truthful than patient, and so forth. A perfect 
 soul is to be formed from the union of these two. 
 Hardness of character in a woman is more easily 
 corrected than want of honour in a man : a woman's 
 want of honour is as difficult to correct as a man's 
 harshness. A boy utterly without honour, and a girl 
 without love, deserve nothing else at the end of ten 
 years than to be married to each other. The female 
 sex, however, resembles the ocean, or water in general, 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL. EDUCATION. 397 
 
 which contains both greater and smaller beasts than 
 the firm land. 
 
 Since a theory of education is a moral science 
 of food (dietetics), but not a science of healing, 
 receipts against anger, selfishness, &c., find no place 
 in my treatise, though they are, indeed, implied in 
 what has gone before. And, truly, what a work of 
 giant folios must be written to embrace a description 
 of all the diseases, and all the remedies for the million 
 shades of disease, which the combinations of different 
 characters and years, various degrees of activity, and 
 external circumstances can produce ! 
 
 The technical part of morality, such as order, 
 cleanliness, politeness, has already found teachers in 
 larger books than this. 
 
 It is well that a treatise on education be occa- 
 sionally written in pamphlet-form, and completed in 
 three little volumes. Long talking begets short 
 hearing, for people go away. An educational library 
 unless, indeed, a pocket library be invented 
 would soon cause men to attend to the first plan 
 which offered itself, rather than be at the trouble of 
 reading a whole host of books. 
 
 123. 
 
 But a few more paragraphs may be added without 
 too much endangering the smallness of the book, or 
 the facility of reading it. 
 
 Would you devote hours to moral instruction? 
 
398 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 I would rather recommend years, and a never-ending 
 course of that study. No lesson here avails but that 
 founded on living facts, and even it is but as one 
 incident in a fable. Advancing life is a perpetual 
 preacher, home a domestic chaplain, and, instead of 
 morning and evening prayers, life-long prayers must 
 exert their influence. Sciences can be taught ; so in 
 them you may give lessons: genius can only be 
 aroused ; provide it, then, with motives and oppor- 
 tunities. Can the heart of a corpse send forth living 
 blood? The heart is the genius of virtue; morality 
 its theory of aesthetics. If you wish any thing to be 
 forgotten, write it on the inner side of the study door ; 
 if you want to desecrate the holy, hang a table of com- 
 mandments perpetually before the eyes. Lavater 
 said, "Every man has his devil's moments." Con- 
 sequently be not lost in surprise if the child also have 
 his Satan's seconds as well as angel's minutes. Rather 
 despair of grown men than of children. For these 
 confuse you so much by the beautiful revelation of 
 all their feelings and desires, and by their unpre- 
 meditated echo of all sounds, that the key-note 
 remains unknown to you. With the former, on the 
 contrary, one treble-discord presupposes an instrument 
 thoroughly out of tune. And yet again : if a man be 
 so unfathomable to a man, how much more so must 
 his unequal, a child, be, which not merely conceals 
 its fruit in its leaves, but those in their buds, and 
 within them the flowers. Hence when new and 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 399 
 
 necessary developments take place, even though they 
 be for the worse, do not blame previous innocent 
 mistakes in the plan of education. For instance; 
 however much you endeavour to conceal and repress 
 the long dormant sexual instinct, it will yet finally 
 start up armed where you least expect it, like Minerva 
 from the head of Jupiter. 
 
 I think that we parents, especially we modern 
 parents, separate our children too anxiously from 
 other children; as gardeners do flowers to preserve 
 the pollen unmixed. Can we very highly value any 
 good or lovely thing which withers at the slightest 
 touch? If we have educated truly and implanted 
 right principles in a child until his sixth year, a few 
 bad examples will not so much drive away what is 
 good as fan it into new life : if the water in the tea- 
 urn be really boiling, a little spirit flame will keep it 
 so all tea-time. Not the badness, but the long con- 
 tinuance, of examples injures children. And, again, 
 the examples of strange children and indifferent 
 people have less effect than those of the persons they 
 most respect, their parents and teachers; because 
 the latter, like the external conscience of children, so 
 break or darken their internal conscience, that the 
 devil finds it prepared for his residence. 
 
 Yes, I go still further, and declare the preponder- 
 ating influence of a good example over a bad one 
 or the victory of the angel Michael over the devil 
 to be so great, that I believe the poor children of a 
 
400 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 thoroughly unmarriage-like union, where one pa- 
 rent is the ally of the devil, and the other of the 
 angel, will be gathered hardly, and at great cost, but 
 all the more certainly under the white flag. 
 
 The younger the children are, the more rapidly 
 may we pass before them from jest to earnest; for 
 they do so themselves. All their modes of going 
 from one thing to another are leaps. How quickly 
 they forget and forgive ! Then do so to them, espe- 
 cially in cases of punishment ; and always inflict short 
 punishments, so that they may never be thought un- 
 founded and unjust. God be thanked for the 
 memory of children, which is less retentive of sorrows 
 than of joys ! Else what a prickly chain, formed by 
 the uninterrupted series of punishments, would sur- 
 round these little beings ! But children are capable of 
 being delighted twenty times even on the worst of days. 
 It is as difficult to arouse them from their sweet god- 
 like slumber, by domestic or European wars, as to 
 awaken flowers out of their sleep by noise and motion. 
 God grant the dear little ones may awake, like the 
 flowers, to feel the sunshine and behold the day ! 
 
 There are confused, obstinate hours, in which the 
 child positively cannot pronounce certain words, nor 
 obey certain commands : but he will do so the next 
 hour. Do not consider this as stubbornness. I know 
 men who have laboured for years to get rid of some 
 expression of the face, mode of writing, or odd 
 word, to which they have become habituated, without 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 401 
 
 any particular result. Apply this to children, who 
 are often commanded to abandon some thousand 
 habits at once, and do not exclaim so bitterly 
 against their disobedience, which is often nothing 
 but the impossibility of an over-burdened attention. 
 
 The fruits of the right education of the first 
 three years (a higher triennium than the academic) 
 cannot be reaped during the sowing ; and you will 
 often be unable to understand why, after doing so 
 much, so much still remains to be done ; but in a 
 few years the growing harvest will surprise and reward 
 you ; for the numerous earthy crusts which covered 
 the flower-shoots, but did not crush them, have at last 
 burst before them. 
 
 124. 
 
 Physical nature makes many little steps before 
 taking a leap, and then begins the same process over 
 again : the law of continuity is animated by the law 
 of advancing and retreating efforts. The truth of this 
 assertion is shown in almost every instance of phy- 
 sical development. 
 
 But the mind must always be the companion of 
 the body ; it is the strophe, the other the antistrophe, 
 though occasionally their positions are reversed. 
 The heavy clouds of the body must break in thunder 
 showers ; the growth of the physical powers must 
 produce growth in the mental powers also ; and they, 
 
402 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 again, necessitate the former. But then the teacher 
 stands petrified, to behold a new inimical really 
 friendly division in the child's nature, and believes 
 the former world to have vanished, because a new 
 world has sprung into existence. Accustomed to the 
 old, he would rather see the child's growth a mere 
 growing old ; in short, he would wish it to be always 
 the same, or, at most, to exhibit no greater change 
 than that from the print to the coloured painting : 
 the child must not drop his first seed-leaves in the 
 beams of the sharp-cutting world, but yet must push 
 forth new growing leaves. But since this can never 
 be ; since every application of the flute to the lips 
 produces a new incorporeal sound, the teacher ought 
 to be of good courage, and only say, " The parts 
 developed last must grow upon the first, and why 
 need I fear for these, if there is nothing I would wish 
 to recall in the others ? " 
 
 125. 
 
 Parents possess a very easy and excellent means 
 of preaching, and at the same time interesting and 
 improving their children, by relating to them how 
 they passed their own childhood with their parents. 
 Independent of all other considerations, whatever is 
 little is, on that very account, most pleasing to a 
 child, himself a little thing ; the author's children have 
 sometimes begged him for a little sea, nay, even for 
 a little God. Now if the father or mother will de- 
 
APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 403 
 
 scend from their lofty height, and speak of them- 
 selves, the parents, as having once been children, the 
 little people can scarcely comprehend it, and look, 
 with the anxious desire of learning, into the diminish- 
 ing glass in which their present giant-parents move 
 about as little children. There they see grand- 
 parents now command little parents, and the very 
 people obey whom now the child has to obey. In 
 this relation he will only discover the continuation of a 
 previously acquired right, not of a mere accident ; 
 here he finds that his father commands now what 
 formerly, when a child, he obeyed ; that he dearly 
 loved, and was dearly loved by his parents, in whose 
 breast the little grandchild now nestles all the more 
 closely and warmly from the recollection of former 
 love. Since the history of his parents' childhood 
 must have so fresh and unceasing interest for the 
 child, how great a weight and charm may there not 
 be given by means of this interest to every word, 
 every instruction, and, in short, to every thing em- 
 braced in that relation ? If it chance that parents, 
 thus describing their own life, were brought up as 
 children in other circumstances, in other dwelling- 
 places, the seed-field of instruction is vastly extended. 
 In short, parents in relating the incidents of their own 
 childhood simply and truly, may lay seeds, which 
 in the warm soil of their children's childhood will 
 grow and bear fruit. Even the little faults of their 
 parents, and the consequent punishments of the grand- 
 
404 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 parents, will not in relation lessen the children's 
 reverence for their parents, unless its foundation be 
 grievously hollow, and the superstructure most 
 poorly built. 
 
 We have here approached so very near the ques- 
 tion, "What are the best kind of stories for children ? 
 that we may as well reply to it forthwith. Oriental 
 and romantic tales seem the most suitable ; such as 
 many of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, Herder's 
 Palm Leaves, and Krummacher's Parables. Children 
 are little Orientals. Dazzle them with the wide plains 
 of the east, with brilliant dew-drops, and bright-tinted 
 flowers. Give them, at least in stories, the impulse 
 which shall carry them over our cold northern rocks 
 and Xorth Capes, into the warm gardens of the 
 south. Let your first miracle be, like Christ's, a 
 turning of water into wine, of fact into poetry. 
 Therefore do not shut up every thing you permit to 
 approach your child in a pulpit, with a sermon before 
 it, nor suffer that morbid seeking after " the moral," 
 which deforms most printed children's tales, and by 
 which, precisely when they are on the way to the 
 highest, they lose the path; just as Charles XII. 
 of Sweden generally lost at chess, because he moved 
 out his king. Every good tale, like every good poem, 
 is necessarily surrounded with instruction. But the 
 important thing is to paint a romantic morning- 
 glow on the earth-kissing sky which, as age advances, 
 may deepen into a pure evening-red. Tell of terrible 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 405 
 
 wild beasts, but let them be always at last overcome 
 (still let children be the most frequent actors on 
 your stage) also of long caverns, which lead to 
 heavenly gardens of being happy, and of making 
 happy of great dangers, and still more wonderful 
 deliverances and even the strange adventures of 
 mischievous children ; but always remember in your 
 tales that tears are sooner drawn from children than 
 smiles. For instance, the author has frequently car- 
 ried this so far as to represent the infant Christ* (he 
 never even mentioned a Rupert*) seated on the moon, 
 surrounded with none but good children; and the 
 evening glow in the December sky, he could only 
 account for by supposing it the reflection of the car- 
 riages full of Christmas gifts. In after years, when 
 the children gaze upon the moon, and the redness of 
 the evening sky, a wonderful delight will gently fill 
 their souls, and they will not know what strange 
 etherial air they breathe : the morning breeze of 
 your childhood fans you, my children ! 
 
 These fictions, when translated into reality, lead 
 to no accusations of parental un truthfulness, as our 
 own examples f, and those of our forefathers, else 
 grounded fast in truth, abundantly prove. 
 
 * Vide previous notes. 
 
 f The rosy pictures yet bloom in the author's heart which 
 his father once painted there, on coming out of the study into 
 the December twilight, with the insignificant words, he had 
 seen the infant Christ with golden beams pass through the dark 
 night clouds. Who now could replace for him this rosy blessed 
 beam, this heavenly treasure still shining in the clouds ? 
 
406 APPENDIX OX MOEAL EDUCATION. 
 
 And after all this, shall not the freedom which 
 makes children citizens of the divine-city of romance, 
 not open for them the theatre : I do not mean that 
 where comedies and tragedies are played, which only 
 stun, excite, or deceive them, nor yet the little stage 
 where they are themselves the actors but the opera- 
 house ? Does not the opera reveal romantic fairy- 
 land to their eyes, and yet, by the impossibility of 
 understanding the singing, which throws a wholesome 
 darkness over the intrigue, preserve their ears from 
 every moral taint ? And does not what is glaringly 
 low in close connection with what is noble (as, for 
 instance, in the Zauberflote), like the union of a 
 monkey and a nun, strengthen the love for excellence, 
 and the detestation of depravity ? It seems to me 
 that the opera, this acting living fairy-tale, which the 
 music makes metrical, and the brilliant scenery 
 romantic, might change the heavy plough-like motion 
 and creaking of the present into smooth flying, and 
 is all the more necessary, because prose may be 
 taught but not poetry, and wings can more easily 
 find feet, than feet wings. At the same time, these 
 suggestions are offered rather interrogatively than 
 affirmatively; since you may venture every thing, 
 and replace every thing more easily than a child's 
 innocence. 
 
 126. 
 
 I would wish to say a few words about long 
 journeys for children. Short ones of a few weeks 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 407 
 
 are with justice considered to be physically and 
 mentally improving transplantations of these young 
 trees ; because the exchange of their old dull corner 
 for the wide airy landscape full of different people 
 and new customs must necessarily enliven and 
 improve them. But something very different are 
 children's travels with town-dwellers and land- 
 scourers, who make the grand tour of half Europe 
 (an expedition through his native town is one to a 
 child) during which the daily transplanted tree is 
 merely exhausted. If even grown-up people bring 
 back from their journeys round the world full heads 
 and empty hearts ; because daily walks through 
 streets full of men only presenting the gauntlet, or, 
 at all events, never offering a brother's kiss, must at 
 last make the heart as cold as life at court does, 
 where, as in a country dance, the dancer goes down 
 the middle, and up again, giving his hand indif- 
 ferently to all ; how much must early long journeys 
 bringing only the ripeness of autumn to matured 
 men destroy a child by producing such ripeness in 
 spring. Living long in close connection with the 
 same people cherishes in children the warmth of the 
 affections. The uniform sameness of people, dwellings, 
 play-grounds, and even domestic furniture, hangs 
 lovingly on a child, and strengthens that magnetic 
 attraction, as a weight does suspended from a mag- 
 net : and thus in the spring time of life is prepared 
 the rich magnetic burst of the future affections, be- 
 
408 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 cause the child naturally learns to love what he 
 daily sees an easy matter in a village the hewer 
 of wood for the family, the woman carrier, old Peter, 
 who comes every Saturday to beg for Sunday ; yes, 
 even the more distinguished persons of his acquain- 
 tance who live far away. With a childhood full of 
 affection we may endure half a life in the cold world. 
 If, now, instead of such environments, a child be taken 
 on long journeys say half over Europe and 
 must, since it is impossible to pack up market-places 
 with their inhabitants in the carriage, or to crowd 
 them into the hotels of large cities, every day fall 
 upon new people, new rooms, new servants, new 
 guests, towards whom it is impossible, from mere 
 lack of time, for the young heart to experience any 
 burst of sympathy : what, then, can grow out of 
 this little creature ? A courtier without a court, 
 cool, polite, elegant, languid, ennuye, sweet and 
 pretty. 
 
 127. 
 
 Since in appendices, as in prefaces, things may 
 be repeated which are contained in the book, I 
 say, again, let there be rules for children ; it is 
 immaterial what, but only as the centre of innu- 
 merable rays ! Law is unity, unity is deity. The 
 devil only is changeable. Unity of rule at once 
 strengthens and controls both the too delicately 
 sensitive girl and the rough active boy ; for 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 409 
 
 the very same reason that we patiently endure the 
 discomfort of frost and the unbroken desolateness of 
 the earth in winter, whereas a few snow-flakes in 
 spring make us angry and gloomy : only because 
 in winter the white enamel of snow is the rule, but 
 in spring the various tinted flowers. No command 
 seems harsher than the new one ; no necessity, than 
 that which is freshly imposed. If you would picture 
 to yourself the most unhappy and most unfortu- 
 nately circumstanced child, think of one who has 
 been brought up by chance merely, without rule, 
 irritated and appeased without reason destitute of 
 confidence in the future finding in every minute 
 a driving storm wishing nothing else than the 
 fulfilment of his momentary desires a ball thrown 
 sportively from love to hate with sorrows that 
 bring no strength, and joys which produce no love. 
 Happily I see no such being near me ! Have not 
 even unjust rules a beneficial tendency in producing 
 obedience to rule ? When punishments were attached 
 to the unintentional dropping of the hat, or even 
 falling in riding through the streets of a town, both 
 happened much more rarely : and in brotherhoods 
 or sisterhoods where every snorer is awakened, no 
 one snores : and where punishment is threatened 
 even for the accidental breaking of china, less is 
 broken. But the threatening must be a year older 
 than the fault or the punishment, else the rule 
 fails. 
 
410 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 128. 
 
 Give reasons for your requests more readily, and 
 even at an earlier period, than reasons for your 
 assertions: in the first place, it is easier to teach 
 obedience than understanding; in the second, a 
 child's trust must never be weakened by reasons 
 which only lead to doubt ; in the third, action re- 
 quires external quickness, belief demands time ; and, 
 in the fourth, the former is usually more opposed to 
 previous wishes than the latter (for children are sel- 
 dom orthodox): at the same time that you smooth 
 the way for your commands, as the French kings 
 did, by gentle reasons, insist, like them, on obedience, 
 if the reasons do not induce it. In a second edition 
 of these rules, even as to giving reasons for com- 
 mands, we find that the line must be drawn still 
 tighter. Mothers, partly from kindness, partly from 
 an inherent love of the healthy movement of the 
 tongue, give as many reasons for their orders as may 
 overcome the opposing arguments of the child ; and, 
 if at last they should be unable to produce more, 
 finish by asserting their authority. It were better 
 to have begun with it. And certainly, after com- 
 pliance, the reasons will find readier admittance into 
 the open impartial ears. This is most markedly the 
 case in the earliest years; each advancing year 
 requires an additional reason. The united care, 
 both for a child's obedience and freedom, is one of 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 411 
 
 the most difficult requirements of education. The 
 parental breath must only move the branch towards 
 the fructifying pollen, but not bend or break the 
 trunk. 
 
 129. 
 
 Teachers generally desire an appendix to the chap- 
 ter on moral education, containing a treatise on the 
 prevention of sensual faults. Why do we find no 
 such lamentations and remedies among the ancients 
 or in the middle ages ? Must we suppose that the 
 youth of those periods was better than the present ? 
 Scarcely so. The reason why so much more is said 
 and taught about such matters now always remem- 
 bering also that books are now made, and a book- 
 trade established, about every action can only lie 
 in this, that in the healthful past, as now among the 
 vigorous commonalty, or unrestrained animals, many 
 ill-regulated actions passed unpunished, because the 
 fortifications of these unpolished times were not so 
 easily demolished. But, at all events, the morbid, 
 sickly imagination attendant on civilisation is quite 
 as much cause as effect ; to which must be added 
 the temptations to these errors necessarily presented 
 by large towns. 
 
 Luther says, Contemptus frangit diabolum, obser- 
 vatio inflat ; which means, that to combat sin you 
 must know it, and that is in itself a kind of defeat. 
 A feeling of shame artificially taught before dulj 
 
 T 2 
 
412 APPENDIX OX MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 awakened by nature, is a sewing together of the fig- 
 leaves conducting to the fall, which in Eden they 
 only covered. The modesty which naturally arises 
 at a later period is like the fig-tree itself, which only 
 hides under its leaves the unripe fruit which contains 
 no poison. 
 
 Many persons even say that a child should learn 
 to be ashamed of seeing himself. Himself ! Gracious 
 heaven ! how much must the young mind have been 
 poisoned before it woulcl blush at the form it cannot 
 change and did not choose ? before, in fact, it would 
 blush at its Creator ? To insure modesty I would 
 advise the educating of the sexes together ; for two 
 boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girls twelve 
 boys, innocent amidst winks, jokes, and improprieties, 
 merely by that instinctive sense which is the fore- 
 runner of matured modesty. But I will guarantee 
 nothing in a school where girls are alone together, 
 and still less where boys are. Boys do harm to boys 
 far more than girls to girls; for they are bolder, 
 opener, rougher, more sociable, more curious about 
 matters, as girls are about persons. 
 
 The glass screens which teachers put before the 
 mental eyes of children are part of the mistaken in- 
 struction in modesty ; a kind of incomprehensible 
 covering of a cover, the sheep's clothing of a sheep. 
 He who admits that he has a secret to keep, has, by 
 doing so, revealed one half of it, and the other will 
 speedily follow. Children's questions about where a 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 413 
 
 little baby comes from show nothing whatever more 
 than a blameless desire of knowing and asking about 
 strange things. A child's questions about his mother's 
 confinement have no more sinister meaning than his 
 asking why the sun, which goes to bed in the west, 
 rises in the east. But if those about him attach a 
 foolish mystification to the event, instinct, which 
 lies in the back ground, united with accidental ex- 
 pressions, which he will treasure up, will prematurely 
 clear away the darkness. To this really injurious 
 secrecy belong such expressions as, " This is only 
 for grown-up people," or, " When you are older, you 
 will know all about it," &c. Secret articles always 
 give rise to war ; and secret alliance with sin is not 
 very far from secret instructions of this kind. 
 
 But how is the questioning child to be answered ? 
 With as much truth as he wants : " As the little grub 
 grows inside the nut, so the little infant grows within 
 its mother, and is nourished by her flesh and blood ; 
 hence she is ill," &c. Since children understand ten 
 times less of what is said than we suppose, and, like 
 grown-up people, ask a thousand times less about 
 the final when they know the secondary cause, 
 it will probably be several years before the child 
 again asks whence the little creature comes. Then 
 give him this answer : " From the great God, who 
 sends these little babies to married people." We 
 grown-up philosophers know nothing more about it ; 
 and you say with perfect truth to the child, "A human 
 
 T 3 
 
414 APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 being can carve a statue, or embroider a flower, but 
 he can make no living thing that grows." How easily 
 a child's curiosity may be restrained and yet satisfied 
 is very clearly shown in the fact, that during the 
 last three centuries millions of Christians have died 
 who have regularly every Sunday heard that baptism 
 took the place of the ancient Jewish rite of circum- 
 cision, and yet have never thought, far less asked, 
 what circumcision is. Children learn and ask in the 
 same way. The author received his first instruction 
 in this article of Christian faith after eighteen years' 
 study of Jewish works. 
 
 One other remark may perhaps afford consolation 
 to some parents : children at a certain age seem to 
 have a particular inclination to do and to say im- 
 proper things. This is sometimes very strangely 
 manifested. I once heard some really pure-minded 
 good children beg their father to repeat some ugly 
 words (referring to rudeness of speech more than 
 any thing else) which he had forbidden them to use, 
 because, they said, they liked to hear such words. 
 Be not afraid, if you educate your children carefully, 
 of evil results. In the case of healthy children, 
 especially, you need have no fear ; but physical in- 
 disposition too easily induces a morbid sickliness of 
 the mind. 
 
 In short, if there be any time when one person's 
 aid is needed in the development of another, it is 
 when the ripening youth (or maiden) first discovers 
 
APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 415 
 
 his new world of sex, when the fresh blooming man 
 bursts away from the fading child. Happily nature 
 herself has provided a counterpoise to these seasonable 
 spring-storms, by giving at the same time the hours 
 of fairest dreams, of ideal excellence, and love for all 
 that is greatest and best. The watchful teacher also 
 may add a balancing weight to the heart, namely, 
 the head; that is, let him reserve for that season 
 some new science, some new object of engrossing 
 interest, some new path in life. It is true this will 
 not extinguish the volcano ; but the lava pouring into 
 this sea will merely harden into a rock, and less evil 
 will be done than was dreaded. For, out of all the 
 yawning precipices of this age, does not a majority 
 of healthy living voices arise, which have not been 
 silenced, and which do not utter complaints ? It is 
 but a very small number which is silent, without 
 throat and without lungs, without either mind or 
 body mere unburied corpses of hovering ghosts 
 May Heaven present them with a grave ! 
 
 T 4 
 
416 
 
 SEVENTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. More accurate definition of the desire for intellectual 
 progress, 130. CHAP. II. Speech and writing, 131, 132. 
 CHAP. III. Attention, and the power of adaptive combination; 
 Pestalozzi; difference between mathematics and philosophy, 133 
 135. CHAP. IV. Development of wit, 136138. CHAP. V. 
 Development of reflection, abstraction, and self-knowledge; together 
 with an extra paragraph on the powers of action and business, 
 139, 140. CHAP. VI. On the education of the recollection, 
 not of the memory, 141 144. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OX THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DESIRE FOR INTELLECTUAL 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 130. 
 
 OTHER writers on education call the desire of 
 intellectual progression the faculty of obtaining 
 knowledge that is to say, they call painting 
 seeing or the intellectual powers, and think of the 
 senses and the memory as also exerting an educa- 
 tional influence ; or they speak of the development 
 of spontaneous activity, as if the will itself were not 
 such a developing power. The majority (before 
 Pestalozzi) only attempted to pour into the mind a 
 vast amount of knowledge of every kind, and 
 thought an intelligent man must be the necessary 
 result. Learned fools, with mind neither for the 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 417 
 
 present nor the future, who (like finite beings in 
 another sense) are continuously created, but never 
 able to create ; heirs of all ideas, but originators of 
 none, they are indeed samples of their education, but 
 no proofs of its excellence. 
 
 We will take the straight path which leads to the 
 centre, instead of wandering round and round the 
 circle. 
 
 The will reproduces itself only, and acts only 
 within, not without, itself; for the external action is 
 as little the new act of the particular volition, as are 
 the words signifying it of the particular thought. 
 The desire of mental progress, on the contrary, 
 enlarges its world for the reception of new creatures, 
 and is as dependent on objects, as the pure will is 
 independent of them. The will could reach its ideal, 
 but finds a strange opposition to it Kant's radical- 
 evil whereas no power stands opposed to thought, 
 as sin does to virtue but only the difference 
 between its steps, and the impossibility of seeing 
 whither they reach. To know nothing is not so bad 
 as to do nothing ; and error is less the opponent than 
 the accompaniment of truth ; for to miscalculate 
 means merely to obtain something different from 
 what it should be, but still to calculate ; whereas 
 immorality stands directly opposed to morality. 
 
 The mental desire of advancement which, in a 
 higher sense than the physical, works by means of 
 and in accordance with the will, that is to say, creates 
 T 5 
 
418 OX THE DESIRE OF 
 
 new ideas out of old ideas, is the distinguishing 
 characteristic of man. No will restrains the order of 
 a beast's actions. In our waking moments we are 
 actually conscious that we think ; in our dreams we 
 receive, if I may so express it, that consciousness. 
 In the man of genius the formation of ideas appears 
 actually creative ; in ordinary men, merely ^collec- 
 tive and necessary : the precise shades of difference 
 are, however, difficult to define. The developments 
 of this formative power are, first, language; and 
 secondly, observation ; both of which by defining and 
 marking an idea bring it more accurately before the 
 mind : thirdly, imagination, which is capable of re- 
 taining a whole series of ideas, so as to obtain from it 
 the unknown, but sought for, and, consequently, 
 anticipated greatness, either as part, consequence, 
 foundation, symbol, or image : fourthly, wit : fifthly, 
 reflection : sixthly, remembrance. 
 
 From this almost genealogical gradation it is readily 
 perceived that all instruction naturally falls into two 
 distinct classes, one of which mathematics, for 
 example provides organic material for the intellec- 
 tual energies ; the other such as natural history 
 only inanimate objects. For all cumulative prelimi- 
 nary instruction, be it in natural history, geography, 
 history, antiquities, only provides the intellect with 
 materials, not with incitements to labour and power. 
 The old division into knowledge of words and know- 
 led-e of things is certainly correct ; but the inventory 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 419 
 
 of what belongs to one class, and what to the other, 
 is about as erroneous as that of diseases before the 
 time of Brown, which, as by him, were divided into 
 sthenic and asthenic, diarrhoea and plague being 
 placed in the former, and the truly sthenic complaints 
 of coughs, catarrhs, &c. in the latter class. Language, 
 for instance, was ranked as a knowledge of words ; 
 the history of nature and of nations, as a knowledge 
 of things : it ought to be reversed. 
 
 One word in this place on the abuse, or too great 
 use, of natural history. This seems to be the 
 wishing-cap of those teachers who have little of that 
 on which the hat is usually placed ; or the purveyor 
 of those who are deficient in scientific knowledge. 
 The author was gratified by finding, in Goethe's 
 Elective Affinities, accordance with a thought which 
 he had noted down in his children's diary in January, 
 1808 ; namely, what advantage can children obtain 
 from the description of an unknown foreign animal 
 which would not equally result from that of any 
 casual monster ? At most this unverified account 
 can but serve as honey on wholesome bread, or as 
 the bill of sale of some animal to be seen ; and is 
 altogether a mere home-reading by the light of the 
 embers. But, on the contrary, the most minute 
 family history, with representations the size of life, 
 should be given about all domestic and native animals. 
 Yea, how very much would botany and mineralogy, 
 not only as exercising the observation, but also as 
 
 T 6 
 
420 SPEECH. 
 
 enriching the present, exceed the small advantages of 
 foreign zoology ! Just in the same way might the 
 modern expensively painted worlds (orbis pictus) be 
 advantageously replaced by workshops, in which one 
 artificer after another could actually show and ex- 
 plain his trade to his children guests. 
 
 CHAP. IL 
 
 SPEECH AND WRITING. 
 131. 
 
 To learn to speak is something higher than to learn 
 to speak languages ; and all the advantages which are 
 ascribed to the ancient languages, as educational 
 media, apply with double force to the mother-tongue. 
 Every new language is only understood by connect- 
 ing and balancing it with the first : the original pri- 
 mary sign merely acquires another sign ; and so the 
 new language is not formed on the one last learned, 
 nor is one dependent on another, but all on the first 
 native tongue. 
 
 Xame to the child every object, every sensation, 
 every action, in case of exigency, even by a foreign 
 word (for to the child, as yet, there is none) ; and 
 always, where it is possible, arouse his attention, and 
 give accuracy to his perceptions, by naming all the 
 individual parts of whatever you may have in hand. 
 
SPEECH. 421 
 
 A child has invariably so great a love of hearing, that 
 he will constantly ask questions about matters which 
 he knows, merely in order to hear you speak, or will 
 even tell you some little story, so as to have the pleasure 
 of hearing you afterwards relate it to him. By the 
 fact of naming, external objects, like islands, are taken 
 possession of, and animals are tamed by accustom- 
 ing them to answer to a name. Without a defining 
 word the mental index-finger unlimited nature 
 stands before a child like a column of quicksilver 
 without a barometric scale (to the beast it is even 
 without the ball of quicksilver), and by it no move- 
 ment can be observed. Speech is the finest line- 
 drawer of infinity, the dividing water of chaos : the 
 importance of its minute subdivisions is shown in 
 savages, with whom frequently a single word signifies 
 a whole sentence. A village child is inferior to a 
 town child merely by his poverty of speech. To 
 the dumb beast the whole world gives but one im- 
 pression, and so from want of two he does not even 
 count one. 
 
 Let every material substance be both mentally and 
 physically divided and analysed before the child, 
 during the first ten years of his life; but suffer 
 nothing spiritual to undergo the same process, for 
 this, which exists only once, and that within the 
 child, soon dies, without the chance of resurrection, 
 under the severing-knife ; bodies, on the contrary, 
 return new-born every day. 
 
422 SPEECH. 
 
 The mother-tongue affords the most innocent 
 philosophy, and exercise of reflection for children. 
 Speak very much and very clearly ; and oblige them 
 to be definite in the affairs of every-day life. Why 
 do you leave mental development by means of lan- 
 guage to a foreign tongue ? 
 
 Occasionally attempt longer sentences than the 
 short childish ones of many teachers, or the hackneyed 
 ones of most French writers : an unintelligibleness 
 which brings its own solution by mere unaltered re- 
 petition, exercises and strengthens the mind. Some- 
 times exercise even little children with riddles of 
 contradictory words : such as, I heard this with my 
 eyes ; this is very prettily ugly. 
 
 Do not fear the unintelligibleness even of whole 
 sentences ; your mien, your accent, and the ardent 
 desire of understanding, explain one half, and, with 
 the assistance of time, the other. With children, as 
 with the Chinese and men of the world, accent is 
 half the language. Remember that they learn to 
 understand your language much sooner than to speak 
 it, just as we do Greek or any foreign tongue. Trust 
 to the deciphering aid of time, and of the context. 
 A child of five years old understands the words 
 " but, indeed, now, on the contrary, certainly ;" but, 
 if you desire an explanation of them, ask the father, 
 not the child. The word indeed alone would puzzle 
 a little philosopher. If the child of eight years old 
 finds his improved language understood by a child 
 
SPEECH. 423 
 
 of three, why should you contract yours to his vo- 
 cabulary ? Always employ a language some years in 
 advance of the child (men of genius in their books 
 speak to us from the vantage ground of centuries) : 
 speak to the one-year-old child as though he were 
 two, and to him as though he were six ; for the dif- 
 ference of progress diminishes in the inverse propor- 
 tion of years. Let the teacher, especially he who is 
 too much in the habit of attributing all learning to 
 teaching, consider that the child already carries half 
 his world, that of mind the objects, for instance, 
 of moral and metaphysical contemplation ready 
 formed within him ; and hence that language, being 
 provided only with physical images, cannot give, but 
 merely illumine, his mental conceptions. 
 
 Cheerfulness, like distinctness in conversation with 
 children, should be imparted to us by their cheerful- 
 ness and distinctness. We may learn to speak from 
 them, as well as teach them by speaking ; for in- 
 stance, such bold and yet correctly formed words as 
 I have heard from three and four year old children : 
 " the beer-casker, the stringer, the bottler," instead 
 of the maker of casks, strings, and bottles " the 
 flying mouse," certainly much better than our word 
 bat "the music plays " "I am the see-er-through," 
 when standing behind a telescope " Ah ! look ! 
 one (on the clock) is already come," &c. 
 
 In later years it becomes part of instruction in 
 language to show the living foundation of the colour- 
 
424 SPEECH. 
 
 less images of every-day speech. A young man uses 
 the expressions, " ail made on the same last," or 
 " fishing in troubled waters ; " and when he finds 
 that the shoemaker really uses such a last, and that 
 fishing in troubled water is practised, he is astonished 
 to discover that a real fact is the foundation of the 
 transparent image. 
 
 Pestalozzi commences the division of the universe 
 into parts by that of the body into limbs ; because it 
 is in closest and most important connection with 
 the child, and is every where composed of similar 
 parts, which is not the case with plants or utensils. 
 A still more important advantage is, that there are 
 always two examples of it in the study ; and that 
 the child, between / and thou, between the larger 
 visible limbs of his teacher, and his own smaller ones, 
 sensible only to the touch, can always pass from one 
 object to another and compare them together. At 
 the same time, Pestalozzi will not only divide and 
 illumine the waste ether with clearly marked names, 
 as with stars; but, while he teaches the child to 
 collect the subdivisions under their division, the lesser 
 under the greater whole, he developes the capacity of 
 retaining whole series, or the power of adaptive com- 
 bination of which hereafter. 
 
 Fichte, in his Discourses to the German nation, 
 attaches too little value to the naming, and, as it 
 were, A B C, of external objects and observations, 
 requiring them merely for what is internal, for 
 
SPEECH. 425 
 
 sensations ; because he thinks that the naming of the 
 former class only serves the child for communication, 
 not for the better understanding of it. But it seems 
 to me that, as the speechless animal floats about in 
 the external world as in a dark bewildering ocean, so 
 man would be equally lost in the starry firmament of 
 external perceptions, did he not, by means of lan- 
 guage, divide the confused stars into constellations, 
 and thus reveal the whole in parts to the compre- 
 hension. Language alone illumines the vast mono- 
 tonously coloured chart of the universe. 
 
 Our forefathers, from pedantic and economic 
 reasons, but with advantageous results, as a mental 
 gymnastic and excitement, ranked a foreign language, 
 such as Latin, among the great powers of education. 
 Certainly the dictionary of foreign words developes 
 little, except by teaching the fine shades of difference 
 among our own : but the grammar, as the logic of 
 the tongue the first philosophy of reflection does 
 much ; for it carries the signs of things back to the 
 things themselves, and compels the mind, turned 
 upon itself, to observe the method of its observations, 
 that is, to reflect, or at least to take firmer possession 
 of the sign, and not to confuse it, as a mere expres- 
 sion, with the sensation itself. During immaturity 
 this kind of knowledge is better obtained through 
 the grammar of a foreign language than through that 
 of our own, which is more indissolubly blended with 
 the sensation ; hence logically-cultivated people first 
 
426 WRITING. 
 
 learned to construct their own language by a foreign 
 one, and Cicero went to a Greek, sooner than to a 
 Latin school; and hence, in those centuries when 
 the Greek and Latin languages formed the whole 
 subject of learning, the intellect became more formal, 
 and unsubstantial logic filled the mind, as the whole 
 scholastic philosophy proves. When Huart asserts 
 that a good head learns grammar with the most diffi- 
 culty, he can only mean, unless he confuses diction- 
 ary with grammar, a head formed for business or art 
 rather than for thought. Every good grammarian, 
 the Hebrew Tacitus Danz for instance, is partly 
 a philosopher ; and he must be a philosopher who 
 writes the best grammar. The grammatic analysis 
 of the old schools only differs in its object from Pes- 
 talozzi's visible series. Consequently a foreign lan- 
 guage, particularly the Latin, is among the healthiest 
 early exercises of the power of thinking. 
 
 132. 
 
 Since writing signifies but the sign of things, and 
 brings us through it to the things themselves, it is a 
 stricter isolator and clearer collector of the ideas 
 than even speech itself. Sound teaches quickly and 
 generally ; waiting, uninterruptedly and with more 
 accuracy. Writing, from that which the writing- 
 master teaches to that which approaches the pro- 
 vince of the author, gives clearness to the ideas. 
 We will not here lay too great stress on the fact 
 
WRITING. 427 
 
 that the letters which Sevigne wrote are much more 
 elegant than those she dictated ; or that Montes- 
 quieu, who could not himself write, frequently passed 
 three hours before any thing worthy of preservation 
 occurred to him, whence many deduce the curt 
 style of his writings ; but it is certain that our repre- 
 sentation is much more a mental seeing than hearing, 
 and that our metaphors play far more on an instru- 
 ment of colour than of sound, and therefore writing 
 which lingers under the eyes must assist the forma- 
 tion of ideas to a much greater extent than the 
 rapid flight of sound. The scholar, indeed, carries 
 it so far that, when he reflects, he really seems to 
 read a printed page ; and when he speaks, to give a 
 little declamation out of a quickly and well written 
 pamphlet. 
 
 Let boys write out their own thoughts sooner 
 than copy yours, so that they may learn to exchange 
 the heavy-ringing coin of sound into more convenient 
 paper money. And let them be spared the writing- 
 texts of schoolmasters, containing the praises of 
 industry, of writing, of their master, or of some 
 old prince ; in short, subjects about which the teacher 
 can produce nothing better than his pupils. Every 
 representation without some actual object or motive 
 is poison. Since some real occurrence always sug- 
 gested to men of genius, such as Lessing, Rousseau, 
 and others, the subject of their fictions, thus occasional, 
 in the highest sense of that word; how can you 
 
423 WRITING. 
 
 require a boy to dip his pencil in the airy blue of 
 indefiniteness, and therewith so paint the vault of hea- 
 ven that the invisible tint shall produce the colour of 
 Prussian blue ? I cannot understand schoolmasters ! 
 Must the man, even in childhood, preach from the 
 appointed Sunday text, and never choose one for 
 himself in nature's bible ? Something similar may be 
 said about the writing of open letters (an unsealed 
 one is almost inevitably half untrue) which the 
 teachers of girls' schools require, in order, say they, 
 to exercise their pupils in epistolary style. A no- 
 thing writes to a nothing : the whole affair, undertaken 
 by the desire of the teacher not of the heart, is a 
 certificate of the death of thoughts, an announcement 
 of the burning of the materials. Happy is it if the 
 commanded volubility of the child, arising from 
 coldness and addressed to emptiness, do not accustom 
 her to insincerity. If letters must be forthcoming, 
 let them be written to some fixed person, about some 
 definite thing. But what need of "so much ado 
 about nothing," since not even excepting political 
 or literary newspapers nothing can be written so 
 easily as letters on any subject when there is a motive 
 for them, and the mind is fully informed of the 
 matter ? 
 
 The writing of one page excites the desire of 
 learning more strongly than the reading of a whole 
 book. Many readers of select school libraries are 
 scarcely able to write a clear and good account of a 
 
ATTENTION. 429 
 
 fatal accident, and a request for charitable assistance, 
 for a weekly newspaper. And it is equally true that 
 many writers are just as indifferent speakers : they 
 resemble many great merchants in Amsterdam, who 
 have no warehouse, but only a writing-room ; give 
 them time, however, and they will procure the goods 
 by writing. Corneille spoke badly, but he made his 
 heroes declaim excellently. Regard every pupil for 
 examination as a stammering dumb Corneille, and 
 provide him a room, time, and a pen ; he will speak 
 by these, and so pass a very good examination. I 
 close this chapter as a certain Indian begins his book 
 Blessed be the man who invented writing ! 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 ATTENTION, AND THE POWER OF ADAPTIVE COMBINATION. 
 133. 
 
 Bonnet calls attention the mother of genius, but 
 she is in fact her daughter ; for whence does she 
 derive her origin, save from the marriage contracted 
 in heaven between the object and the desire for it ? 
 Hence attention can really be as little preached or 
 flogged into a person as ability. Swift in a musical 
 academy Mozart in a philosophical lecture-room 
 Raffaelle in a political club Frederick the Great 
 
430 ATTENTION. 
 
 in a cour d'amour could you give an attentive 
 ear to these different men, all of whom possess genius, 
 are of mature years, and have thoughts about the 
 important matters of art, science, love, and politics ? 
 And do you expect and desire it in children, in per- 
 sons of unripe age and inferior capacity for much 
 more trifling objects ? But, in fact, you desire that 
 your individual attention, which exhibits as much 
 caprice with regard to its objects as that of a man of 
 genius, should be acquired by the child, and that 
 your narrowness of view should be shared by him. 
 
 If you attach reward or punishment to the child's 
 attention to any object, you have put another, that of 
 self-interest, in its place, rather than strengthened 
 the mental power or excited the desire of improve- 
 ment ; at most you have but laboured for the memory. 
 Xo sensuous pleasure lines the path into the empire 
 of mind ; hence studying for a livelihood resembles 
 the stone by whose aid the diver sinks more rapidly to 
 seek pearls for his master, and which the aeronaut 
 takes with him for the very different purpose of 
 rising higher towards heaven when he casts it over- 
 board. 
 
 But what is to be done ? So teachers always ask 
 instead of first asking, what is to be avoided ? The 
 laws of their order forbid the Jesuits to study longer 
 than two hours ; but your school laws command 
 little children to study, that is to be attentive, as 
 long as older people can teach : it is quite too much ; 
 
ATTENTION. 431 
 
 especially when one considers the child's senses open 
 to every influence, the cheerful sounds of the busy 
 market-place, the blossoming boughs waving round 
 the school-room windows, the narrow strip of sun- 
 shine on the dull school-room floor, and the delicious 
 certainty on Saturday, that there will be no lessons 
 in the afternoon. 
 
 There have been many cases in which the author 
 of Levana himself has resolved to lend an attentive 
 ear to some story, not more than a quarter of an 
 hour long, so as to be able to relate it afterwards : he 
 did inwardly what he could, and laboured to main- 
 tain the closest attention ; but this very labour gave 
 rise to incidental thoughts ; he was compelled to re- 
 quest a repetition in order to catch the thread of 
 the story ; and then, at last, after all this resolute 
 anxiety, determination, and design, he had obtained 
 nothing more than a table of contents of the story, 
 which he could enlarge upon in the proper place. Do 
 you think it easier for a child to command his atten- 
 tion, and repress weariness, than for a grown-up man 
 who addresses him? It is possible for a child to 
 take the greatest interest in your instruction, but not 
 just to-day, nor at this particular window ; or, per- 
 haps, because he has seen or tasted some novelty ; or, 
 perhaps, because his father has announced either a 
 country ramble or a confinement; or because his 
 former inattention has met its punishment, and the 
 child now thinks far more of the punishment than of 
 
432 ATTENTIOX. 
 
 the means of avoiding it. Human beings, in fact, 
 are incapable of uninterrupted attention (eternal 
 longing may be much more truly promised than 
 eternal loving), and the child's attention is not always 
 identical with that of his parents. 
 
 If novelty be confessedly the keenest sharpener of 
 the inner ear, the forcing-house of every plant, why 
 do teachers, after constant repetitions, require the 
 first eagerness of attention from the young souls 
 every where surrounded by new worlds ? Do you 
 suppose their pillow is a gilded cushion on which the 
 glass is rubbed to obtain electricity ? 
 
 If it be difficult to place ourselves in the position 
 of persons similarly circumstanced, how much more 
 difficult must it be to do so with regard to persons 
 unlike ourselves ! How many instances are there of 
 teachers having warmed themselves for years by the 
 school-room stove, without remarking or remember- 
 ing any thing about the raised figures, by which the 
 manufacturer endeavoured to display his taste and 
 skill. Let every reader after the perusal of these 
 lines examine his apartment, and observe whether he 
 does not become conscious of twenty new objects, 
 among which he has constantly lived without hithert* 
 being aware of their presence ! Were we inclined to 
 enter into more minute particulars, it would, among 
 other examples, be easy to show the different effects 
 of mere writing-copies on a child's attention. If he 
 have the same words to copy throughout the whole 
 
ATTENTION. 433 
 
 page, each line will be worse written than its pre- 
 decessor ; but if the copy change frequently, he will 
 have a new source of interest and attention from line 
 to line ; still, even in this case, novelty will exert its 
 power over the attention, and the first word, like the 
 first line, will be the best written. Repetition, else 
 the main-spring of instruction, is the chief destroyer 
 of attention ; because, in order to give attention to 
 what is repeated, you must first have found it worthy 
 of a still greater exertion of that faculty. 
 
 A very important distinction must be drawn be- 
 tween the power of attention diffused among the 
 generality of men, and that appertaining solely to 
 men of genius. 
 
 The latter can only be recognised, protected, and 
 cherished, but not created. Pay attention, oh 
 teachers ! to the attention manifested by your chil- 
 dren, so that you may not, to the injury of his whole 
 future life, demand from the genius who astonishes 
 you with his power and his brilliancy the very 
 opposite qualities to those he possesses : do not ex- 
 pect a painter's eye in a Haydn, nor a poem from an 
 Aristoteles. Pay attention to this, and you will not 
 offer to immortal love an ape instead of a Psyche. 
 
 This instinct -like attention, waiting till its proper 
 object is manifested, explains some apparent anoma- 
 lies, such as that the deep thinking Thomas Aquinas 
 in his youth was called a cow, and that the mathemati- 
 cian Schmidt, from incapacity for study, or business, 
 
 u 
 
434 ATTENTION. 
 
 continued a mere labourer for thirty-eight years. 
 Good trees at first produce only wood, not fruit. Pure 
 silver when broken seems black. Afterwards, the 
 work advances all the easier and the quicker ; and 
 while information and talent have to raise their gifts 
 laboriously, like gold out of deep mines, genius pre- 
 sents his like jewels gathered out of loose sand. 
 
 On the other hand, common every-day attention 
 needs not so much to be aroused, as to be distributed 
 and condensed ; even careless, inattentive children 
 possess the faculty, but it is dissipated upon all pass- 
 ing objects. The child in his new world resembles 
 a German in Rome, a pilgrim in the Holy Land. 
 Attention to every thing is impossible : the whole of 
 no ball can be seen. You elevate the passive being, 
 before whom the- world moves unnoticed, into an 
 active one, by placing some one object in a promi- 
 nent position : by displaying its wonders you excite 
 his interest. Perpetually ask children Why ? The 
 questions of the teacher find more open ears than his 
 answers. You can elevate him, also, as Pestalozzi 
 recommends, by the magnifying glass of separation ; 
 and then again by restoring it as before. As God, 
 according to the schoolmen, knows every thing because 
 he made it, teach the child his power of mental 
 creation ; readiness of attention in recognising things 
 will then follow naturally. And this brings me to 
 the succeeding paragraphs on the power of adaptive 
 combination. 
 
ATTENTION. 435 
 
 134. 
 
 The old notion, that mathematics exercises and 
 requires philosophical accuracy and depth of thought, 
 and that mathematics and philosophy are sisters, has, 
 I hope, disappeared. With the exception of the all- 
 powerful Leibnitz, great mathematicians, such as 
 Euler, D'Alembert, and even Newton, have been poor 
 philosophers. The French have obtained more and 
 greater mathematical than philosophical prizes : great 
 masters of numbers and great mechanicians have been 
 frequently found among the people, but equally great 
 philosophers never ; and, on the other hand, powerful 
 and profound philosophers, after the most arduous 
 endeavours, have frequently still remained but in- 
 different mathematicians. Among children we find 
 some open to philosophical instruction, some only to 
 mathematical. This judgment of experience is ex- 
 plained and verified by Kant's Critique. The mathe- 
 matician contemplates quantities, the philosopher 
 reflects upon and abstracts from them. The certainty 
 of the former is, like that of the external world, a 
 present reality, brought about by no logical conclu- 
 sion : it cannot prove any thing, but merely show 
 that it is so ; and if the quantities exceed the power 
 of instantaneous apprehension (as is generally the 
 case even in the simplest arithmetic), they are proved 
 in a merely mechanical manner by the method.* In 
 
 * I at once perceive that 2x2 = 4; but confidence in the 
 rule makes me believe that 319 X 5011 = 598509. 
 u 2 
 
436 ATTENTION. 
 
 philosophy there is no such conviction by the truth 
 of the method, but only by perceiving the truth of 
 the idea. Malebranche said rightly, the geometrician 
 does not love truth, but the discernment of it (1. i. 
 ch. 2.), or, to express it more clearly, not its existence, 
 but its proportions. Philosophy, on the contrary, 
 will search into existence; it places itself and the 
 mathematician which is what he is incapable of 
 doing the whole world within, around, and above, 
 before its gaze. Hence religion and poetry, but not 
 dead mathematics, spread living fibres far and deep 
 into philosophy ; hence the great Kant admitted the 
 possibility that the sciences of number and measure- 
 ment, as exponents of earthly time and observation, 
 might have no more truth beyond this life, whereas 
 he never supposed this to be possible with regard 
 to the ideas of reason and morality. 
 
 135. 
 
 The former paragraph, with its distinction of mathe- 
 matics from philosophy, is meant to introduce nothing 
 but the praise of Pestalozzi's method of teaching, 
 which leads the child's mind straight between the 
 parallels of numbers and lines. For in what other 
 manner can you arouse the innate desire of mental 
 progress ? The impulses of the senses excite and then 
 stupify, but help not to produce it. To overwhelm 
 the mind with lessons, that is, with mere summaries 
 of accounts, resembles the Siberian custom of giving 
 
ATTENTION. 437 
 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to infants : to 
 teach reflection and abstraction is, in fact, to tear the 
 body to pieces, and lay open the springs of love and 
 faith, in order to anatomize the child's heart and 
 blood. Moreover, philosophy begins with what is 
 highest and most difficult; mathematics with what 
 is nearest and easiest. What then remains? The 
 metaphysics of the eye ; the knowledge forming the 
 boundary between experience and abstraction ; that 
 cool, tranquil calculation which does not yet inquire 
 about the three giant rulers of knowledge God, the 
 Universe, and our own Soul ; which rewards every 
 momentary sowing with a harvest; which neither 
 excites nor represses desires and wishes, and yet finds 
 on every spot of earth, as in a copy book, examples 
 and exercises; which, unlike thought and poetry, 
 needs fear no difference of result from differences in 
 heart and mind ; and for which no child is too young, 
 for it, like him, grows up from the smallest beginning. 
 Therefore Pestalozzi's gradual and luminous ac- 
 cumulation of arithmetical and geometrical propor- 
 tions is right : it is teaching to carry an increasing 
 weight, like Milo's calf*, which may at last serve 
 for the thank-offering of an Archimedes. What Pope 
 Sixtus Y. roughly said, " that, after all, asses might 
 be taught arithmetic," and the well-known remark in 
 the French Encyclopaedia, that some imbecile persons 
 
 * The athlete Milo, by daily carrying a growing calf, became 
 at last strong enough to carry the full-grown ox. 
 
 u 3 
 
438 ATTENTION. 
 
 have learnt to play chess well for chess is a mathe- 
 matical combination, and the chess-board may serve 
 as a test of mathematical power all this commends 
 the wisdom by which Pestalozzi wrote over life, as 
 Plato over his study, " The geometrician alone may 
 enter here." 
 
 Consequently, the reproaches cast against the 
 Swiss, " that his school is no school of the prophets, 
 nor even of philosophers," are, in fact, eulogies ; and 
 it were to be regretted if he could show the falsity 
 of the reproaches. Our hazy and inconstant age, 
 fuller of dreams than of poems, of phantasms than of 
 imagination, has great need of the clear, accurate 
 eye of mathematics, and of firm hold upon reality. 
 
 And what, then, has it done towards the develop- 
 ment of the mental faculties? A great thing in 
 childhood: it has unfolded the power of adaptive 
 combination. Since the simple beam of mental acti- 
 vity has been already broken into the colours of many 
 intellectual powers, it may be permitted me to name 
 one more. I mean that power which is as different 
 from imagination, which only partially embraces a sub- 
 ject, as from fancy, which creates ; that power which 
 assists the philosopher in his chains of reasoning, the 
 mathematician in his calculations, and every inventor 
 in his efforts, by retaining in connection, and pre- 
 senting in order, the daily increasing masses of ideas, 
 numbers, lines, and images. The pupil of Pestalozzi 
 exercises no creative power in his long numerical 
 
ATTENTION. 439 
 
 equations (that belongs only to the discoverer of 
 the method), but he calls into play his faculties of 
 examining and surveying. These are capable of 
 unlimited growth : but what would Newton, the 
 mathematical pole-star, have become in an ocean 
 of books ? Probably as incomprehensible to others, 
 in their best years, as he was to himself in his 
 old age! If many measure the course of ideas by 
 seconds; Bonnet required half a second for a clear 
 idea, Chladen only three thirds to recall an old one, 
 according to Haller's Physiology ; they seem only 
 to reckon in that the mental perusal of previously 
 impressed thoughts; for is it possible to mark 
 thought, to divide the soft breath of heaven into 
 waves ? And is not the vastest idea God, or 
 the Universe as truly an instantaneous flash of 
 light, as the poorest idea, even nothing ? 
 
 The strengthening of the power in question might 
 afterwards be renewed with advantage to many 
 sciences. In some cases, for instance, what great 
 advantage would be gained from having thoroughly 
 understood, and being able to recall, the various 
 parts of a watch from such as were the playthings 
 of our childhood to the accurate repeater of half- 
 quarters the masterly echo of time. This power 
 may be prepared for the most opposite efforts by 
 means of two very different sciences ; by astronomy, 
 for the comprehension of vast masses ; by anatomy, 
 for that of the smallest portions of matter: the 
 u 4 
 
440 WIT. 
 
 latter requires an unexpectedly great effort, for it- 
 is physically as difficult either for the finger or the 
 eye to embrace the smallest as the largest object. 
 
 The power we are speaking of may also be strength- 
 ened by gradually compressing a long historical or phi- 
 losophical paragraph into an epigram. For instance, 
 suppose this to be the sentence : " Popular authors do 
 not make a selection among their thoughts, but write 
 them down as they arise, just as, in most states, 
 the monarchs are not elected, but rule in order of 
 birth." You might compress it thus : " Popular 
 authors do not permit their ideas to rule according 
 to the choice of reason, but according to the natural 
 succession of birth." And you might conclude it 
 proverbially thus : " In the popular brain the empire 
 of ideas is hereditary, not elective." Of course, this 
 only applies in the education of children ; for to 
 educated readers such brevity would be wearisome. 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF WIT. 
 
 136. 
 
 " Until the human body is developed, every arti- 
 ficial development of the mind is injurious. Philo- 
 sophical strainings of the understanding, poetical 
 
WIT. 44 1 
 
 ones of the fancy, destroy those very faculties in the 
 young mind, and others along with them. But the 
 development of wit, which is scarcely ever thought 
 of for children, is the least hurtful, because its efforts 
 are easy and momentary; the most useful, because 
 it compels the new machinery of ideas to quicker 
 motion; because, by the pleasure of discovery, it 
 gives increased power of command over those ideas ; 
 and because, in early years, this quality, either in 
 ourselves or others, particularly delights by its bril- 
 liancy. Why are there so few inventors, and so 
 many learned men, whose heads contain nothing but 
 immoveable furniture, in which the ideas, peculiar to 
 each science, lie separately as in monks' cells, so that 
 when their possessor writes about one science, he 
 remembers nothing that he knows about the rest? 
 Why ? Solely because children are taught more ideas 
 than command over those ideas, and because in school 
 they are expected to have their thoughts as immove- 
 ably fixed as their persons. 
 
 " Schlozer's historical style should be imitated in 
 other sciences. I have accustomed my Gustavus to 
 hear and to understand, and so himself to discover, 
 the resemblances among dissimilar sciences. For 
 instance, all great or heavy things move slowly; 
 hence Oriental monarchs, the Dalai-Lama, the sun, 
 do not move at all. Winkelmann tells us that the 
 wise Greeks walked slowly ; also the hour finger of a 
 clock, the ocean and the clouds in fine weather, 
 u 5 
 
442 WIT. 
 
 move slowly. Again, men, the earth, and pendu- 
 lums, go quicker in winter. Or, again, the name of 
 Jehovah, of eastern princes, and of Rome's guardian 
 deity, as well as the Sybilline books, the most 
 ancient Christian and the Catholic Bible, and the 
 Veda, were concealed. It is indescribable what 
 great readiness and pliability of thought children 
 thus attain. Of course the information which you 
 wish to combine must first be in the head. But 
 enough ! the pedant understands and does not ap- 
 prove ; and the less prejudiced reader also says, 
 Enough ! " 
 
 This paragraph follows some introductory argu- 
 ments in the Invisible Lodge, book i. p. 260. 
 
 137. 
 
 After the severe rule and lesson-time of mathe- 
 matics the sans-culottish freedom and play-time of 
 wit best follows ; and if the former, like the Nep- 
 tunist, forms all things coldly and slowly, the latter, 
 like the Vulcanist, ascribes to them a rapid and fiery 
 origin. The glance of wit passes over long and dark 
 series of ideas, acquired by the power of preliminary 
 education, in order afterwards to create. The first 
 efforts of intellectual growth are witty. And the 
 passage from geometry to the electric art of wit, as 
 Lichtenberg, Kastner, D'Alembert, and the French 
 in general, prove, is a natural and an easy, rather 
 than a forced march. The Spartans, Cato, Seneca, 
 
WIT. 443 
 
 Tacitus, Bacon, Young, Lessing, Lichtenberg, are 
 examples how the full, heavy, thunder-clouds of 
 knowledge break out in the lightning of wit. Every 
 discovery is at first an incidence ; and from this 
 moving point is developed a progressive living form. 
 The intellectual effort doubles and trebles itself; 
 one witty idea produces another, as the new-born 
 Diana assisted at the birth of her twin brother 
 Apollo. 
 
 138. 
 
 It is easier to perceive that wit precedes reflection 
 and imagination, in the nursery and the school room, 
 than to see how to produce it. The great majority 
 of teachers will object that they do not themselves 
 possess it, and that it is very difficult to imitate the 
 French language-master who helped out his German 
 pupils with their German and yet knew nothing of it. 
 Memeyer recommends for this purpose charades and 
 anagrams but these only serve for reflection upon 
 language ; and riddles which, though better, are 
 yet but witty definitions ; and games in company, 
 the majority of which, however, tend to excite a 
 spirit of rational talking rather than wit. But can 
 no witty poems, no witty anecdotes, no play upon 
 words, be discovered ? And is it not at first an easy 
 matter to let children seek moral resemblances in 
 physical substances, until their pinions have grown 
 sufficiently strong to reach from mental to bodily 
 u 6 
 
444 WIT. 
 
 resemblances? (Vide my Introduction to ^Esthe- 
 tics, ii.) 
 
 The author once presided for three years over a 
 small school comprising ten children of his friends ; 
 the best head among his pupils, of different ages and 
 sexes, had only mastered Cornelius Xepos. So, 
 along with the Latin language, German, French, and 
 English had to be begun, as well as the so-called prac- 
 tical sciences. The diaries of this eccentric school 
 during whose holyday hours the Invisible Lodge and 
 Hesperus were composed along with the confession 
 of all his mistaken views, belong to the account of 
 the author's life hereafter to be published. But 
 what follows will find its right place here. After 
 half a year's daily instruction for five hours, in the 
 repetitions of which such witty resemblances as 
 accident offered were sought, and during which the 
 children had the Spartan permission to attack one 
 another, by which means when out of school they 
 were preserved from the German fault of over- 
 sensitiveness, the author, to encourage the children 
 and confirm the habit, made a manuscript book, 
 entitled "Anthology of my Pupils' Bon-mots," in 
 which he wrote in their presence every idea of a not 
 merely local character. A few examples may serve 
 
 to show his method. " A boy, G , twelve years 
 
 old, the cleverest of the children, endowed with 
 mathematical and satirical talents, said as follows : 
 " Man is imitated by four things, an echo, a shadow, 
 
WIT. 445 
 
 an ape, and a mirror ; the windpipe, the bigoted 
 Spaniards, and ants, suffer no foreign substance within 
 their limits, but drive it out ; the air-bag of the 
 whale, out of which it breathes when under water, is 
 the water stomach of the camel, whence it drinks 
 when there is no other water ; the concealment of 
 the Greeks in the Trojan horse was a living transmi- 
 gration of souls ; when calculations become longer, 
 logarithms must be made of logarithms; mercury 
 is poison, and the mythological Mercury conducted 
 souls both into heaven and hell," &c. &c. The 
 same boy's younger brother, ten and a half years old, 
 said, " God is the only perpetuum mobile ; the 
 Hungarians preserve both their wine and their bee- 
 hives in the earth ; Constantinople looks beautiful 
 from a distance, but ugly when near, and it stands 
 upon seven hills ; so the planet Venus shines glo- 
 riously from a distance, but on approaching nearer 
 you find it uneven and full of steep mountains," 
 &c. &c. His sister, seven years old, said, "Every 
 night we are seized with apoplexy, but in the morning 
 we are well again; the world is the body of God ; 
 when the pulse beats quickly we are ill ; when slowly, 
 well : so when the clouds move fast, they betoken 
 foul weather; when slowly, fair weather; when the 
 Spartans were in battle, they wore red cloaks, so that 
 the blood might not be seen ; and certain Italians 
 wear black ones, so that you may not see the fleas ; 
 my school is a Quaker's meeting-house where every 
 
446 WIT. 
 
 one may speak ; the stupidest people dress them- 
 selves the most showily; so the stupidest animals, 
 insects, are the gaudiest," &c. Sometimes there were 
 several fathers and mothers to the same idea ; one 
 spark drew out the rest too quickly, and then they 
 all justly insisted on a community of honour in the 
 "Anthology of Bon-mots." 
 
 Slavishness darkens and hides all the salt-springs 
 of wit ; hence those teachers who, like weak princes, 
 can only maintain their position by the censorship of 
 the press will probably do wisely to choose walks, and 
 leave the children at liberty in order to make them 
 witty. The writer of the "Anthology of Bon-mots " 
 permitted his scholars to exercise their wit upon, but 
 not against, himself. 
 
 A learned gentleman * fears danger to the sense 
 of truth from these exercises of the wit, though 
 he has no fault to find with the things themselves ; 
 but if so, he must also dread that something better 
 sentiment which takes the place of truth in our 
 dark age, will be falsified by the forms of speech 
 which teach and analyse its expression and its cause. 
 And for what reason shall witty similes be held 
 incompatible with truth, as if they also did not 
 really, though not so obviously, illustrate it ? We 
 do not recommend children any Olympic games of 
 
 * A reviewer of Levana in the "Gottinger Gelehrte- 
 Anzeige," a literary journal so-called, and still published at 
 Gottingen. 
 
REFLECTION, ABSTRACTION, ETC. 447 
 
 wit but such as are German ; and the northern nature 
 itself is so excellent a check to all over-excitement, 
 that even a German university could redress the ba- 
 lance of the strong and pungent wit of two such men 
 as Kastner and Lichtenberg, and learnedly held out 
 against them in the learned journal of Gottingen. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTION, ABSTRACTION, AND SELF- 
 KNOWLEDGE ; TOGETHER WITH AN EXTRA PARAGRAPH 
 ON THE POWERS OF ACTION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 139. 
 
 I may be most brief about what is most impor- 
 tant; for time and libraries are sufficiently prolix 
 about it. The reflective contemplation of self which 
 conceals and annihilates the external and superterrene 
 universe, by guiding and lowering man into his own 
 inner world, now finds its mining ladders in every 
 book shop. Moreover our modern life, broken up 
 into particles by the search after pleasure, and desti- 
 tute of any great, active aims to unite mind and 
 matter, is enough, without further cause, to make 
 every one live within himself, and forget the universe 
 until some shock to his nerves of feeling painfully 
 reminds him of existence. If any men of the present 
 age are of a poetical nature life quickly becomes a 
 desert to them, in whose undulating air, as in that of 
 
448 REFLECTION, ABSTRACTION, ETC. 
 
 other deserts, objects appear both wavering and 
 gigantic. If they are of a philosophical disposition 
 they fancy the ideal garden-ladder, against which 
 they lean, to be a fruit tree, its dead steps living 
 branches, and mounting them to be gathering fruit. 
 Hence self-destruction soon follows the philosophical 
 destruction of the world. Hence there are more 
 lunatics and fewer poets than formerly : the phi- 
 losopher and the madman ceaselessly point with the 
 left-hand index finger to the right hand, and cry out 
 "Object Subject!" 
 
 Consequently, in philosophical and poetical natures, 
 always endeavour to postpone the reflecting observa- 
 tion of self until the glowing season of the passions, 
 so that the child may garner and preserve a fresh, 
 steadfast, and earnest life. 
 
 Children of common and merely active disposi- 
 tions, who do not so readily lose sight of the outer 
 works of the world, may be advanced five years 
 earlier, by the wheels of logic, physiology, and 
 transcendental philosophy, into the citadel of the 
 soul, so that they may learn thence to contemplate 
 their course of life. The inner world is the remedy 
 or antidote for the man of business ; as the external 
 universe is for the philosopher. Poetry, as the happy 
 union of both worlds, promotes the higher welfare of 
 both ; as, by it, that healthful reflection and abstrac- 
 tion are attained which raise man above want and 
 time to a nobler view of life. 
 
ACTIVE POWERS BUSINESS. 449 
 
 140. 
 
 This is a suitable place to speak of the development 
 of the faculties for business, the sense of the man of 
 the world, which, in contradistinction to reflection, is a 
 mediator between matter and mind ; but it serves to 
 mix rather than to combine them indissolubly. This 
 sense for the objects of sense, this presence of mind 
 for what is externally present, a quality so gloriously 
 perfect in heroes, creates or annihilates things by the 
 quickest combinations of such dissimilar materials as 
 external and internal observations, or sensations and 
 ideas, by a simultaneous exercise of comprehension, 
 foresight, and physical power. Like the two-headed 
 eagle in the fable, which watched with one head 
 while it took nourishment with the other, the man 
 of the world must look at once within and without, 
 unblinded by what is within, unalarmed by what is 
 without; and he must stand upon a point which, 
 though he himself move, yet never alters the circle 
 nor changes its position. 
 
 But it is difficult to provide a palestra for the 
 development of this power suited to boys ; they must ' 
 contend with the only world they have about them 
 that of education. It is not a fighting school they 
 must pass through for as yet they should have no 
 enemies but they may run a practising gauntlet 
 against what lies in their way, and war upon things, 
 not men. It is to be hoped that the teacher may 
 find them the needful opportunities. 
 
450 RECOLLECTION. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 OX THE EDUCATION OF THE RECOLLECTION NOT OF 
 THE MEMORY. 
 
 141. 
 
 The difference between recollection and memory is 
 insisted upon by moralists more than by writers on 
 education. Memory, a receptive, not a creative 
 faculty, is subjected to physical conditions more than 
 all other mental powers ; for every kind of weakness 
 (direct and indirect, as well bleeding as intoxication) 
 impairs it, and dreams interrupt it ; it is not subject 
 to the will, is possessed by us in common with the 
 beasts ; and can be most effectually strengthened by 
 the physician : a bitter stomachic will increase it 
 more than a whole dictionary learnt by heart. For 
 if it gained strength by what it receives, it would 
 grow with increasing years, that is, in proportion to 
 its wealth in hoarded names; but it can carry the 
 heaviest burdens most easily in unpractised youth, 
 and it holds those so firmly that they appear above 
 the grey hairs of age as the evergreens of childhood. 
 
 142. 
 
 On the contrary, recollection, the creative power, 
 as free to call forth or to discover a consequence from 
 the given ideas of memory, as wit or imagination are 
 from their own stores ; this exercise of the will denied 
 
RECOLLECTION. 45 1 
 
 to beasts, which belongs chiefly to the mind, and 
 therefore grows with its growth ; this faculty comes 
 within the sphere of the educator. Hence, memory 
 can be iron, recollection only quicksilver, and the 
 graving-tool acts corrosively only on the former. 
 The division of this power into memory for words 
 and memory for things, is, therefore, erroneous, at 
 least in expression. He who can retain in his head 
 a page of Hottentot words will certainly much more 
 easily retain a volume of Kant ; for either he under- 
 stands it and then every idea calls up an associated 
 idea more readily than a word can a perfectly dis- 
 similar word or he does not understand it ; and 
 then he merely retains a philosophical vocabulary, 
 and uses it as well in every disputation, or for every 
 combination, as many renowned students of the 
 Critique already prove. But memory for things does 
 not presuppose memory for names ; but only because, 
 instead of being called memory for things, it ought 
 to be called recollection. 
 
 Recollection, like every other mental power, can 
 only work according to the laws of association ; not 
 sounds, but things, that is to say, thoughts, educate. 
 Read a volume of history to a boy, and compare the 
 copious abstract he can furnish of that, with the 
 miserable remnant he could collect from a page of 
 Humboldt's Mexican words which you had read 
 aloud to him. Plattner remarks in his Anthropology, 
 that things merely in juxtaposition are retained with 
 
452 RECOLLECTIOX. 
 
 more difficulty than things coming in sequence : an 
 animal, as it seems to me, would experience the very 
 reverse ; and for this reason : memory applies to jux- 
 taposition, recollection to sequence, because it, and 
 not the former, excites to mental activity by causa- 
 tion, or some other association of ideas. Pythagoras 
 recommended his pupils each evening to recall the 
 events of the day, not solely as an act of self-morti- 
 fication, but also as a means of strengthening the 
 recollection. Kalov knew the whole Bible by heart ; 
 Barthius, when but in his ninth year, Terence ; 
 Sallust, Demosthenes ; and Scaliger learned Homer 
 in twenty-one days: but then these are books full 
 of intimately associated words, not mere dictionaries ; 
 a whole library with all its volumes is easier to retain 
 for the connection assists the recollection than 
 a short list of them. When D'Alembert makes 
 the easy retention of a poem a proof of its excel- 
 lence, his position loses something of novelty, but 
 gains in truth by the versus memorials, mnemonic 
 verses, and the laws of the ancient lawgivers pro- 
 mulgated in verse. He, in other words, observes, that 
 the recollection is assisted by the close connection of 
 the parts, a quality peculiarly possessed by good 
 poems. Hence the Abbe Delille rightly regards his 
 poems as better than, for instance, his translated 
 originals ; not only because he has them in his mind 
 before he transcribes them, and so can sell the pub- 
 lisher his manuscript full of the final rhymes, to 
 
RECOLLECTION. 453 
 
 which he afterwards attaches the rest of the verse, 
 but also because he cannot remember much of Milton 
 or Virgil, although he has read both several times. 
 
 To strengthen the combining power of the recol- 
 lection, accustom your children from their earliest 
 years to relate to you some passage in history, or a 
 tale; and for this purpose the most diffusely told 
 story is the best. Further, if you wish your child 
 to advance rapidly, both in a foreign language and in 
 power of recollection, do not set him to learn words, 
 but a chapter which he has translated a few times : here 
 recollection assists the memory ; words are remarked 
 in their verbal connection, and the best dictionary is 
 a favourite book. 
 
 It is more difficult to remember a single thing 
 than many joined together. The example of Lessing, 
 who always devoted himself exclusively for a time to 
 one particular branch of knowledge, proves the truth 
 of Locke's remark, that the way to become learned 
 is to pursue one subject only for a considerable 
 period. The reason lies in the systematic nature of 
 the recollection; it is certain that a science will 
 adhere more closely which has had time to spread its 
 roots in the soil. Hence nothing so much enfeebles 
 the recollection as leaps from one branch of the tree 
 of knowledge to another; as men become forgetful 
 who have the management of several dissimilar 
 offices. Let your child pursue one and the same 
 branch of knowledge uninterruptedly for a month; 
 
454 EECOLLECTIOX. 
 
 what a probability of growth in twelve branches 
 during the year ! The dislike of the sameness will 
 soon be lost in the pleasure of progress ; and the 
 science thus grounded and daily increasing its limits 
 will in time present a variety of flowers. Certainly 
 the foundations of every science should be laid and 
 worked upon for some time without the intermixture 
 of any other; then a new one may be commenced, 
 and the other repeated for a change ; and thus we 
 may proceed, until, after the careful erection of the 
 scaffolding, we may begin the building, and not till 
 many of these are completed can a street be formed. 
 For a contemporaneous multiplicity of sciences is 
 not adapted to early youth, which is only capable 
 of embracing an individual subject, but to maturer 
 age, which can compare them together. 
 
 Recollection by association of place falsely called 
 memoria localis this play-room of the so-called 
 arts of memory shows the necessity of connection. 
 For this reason travelling enfeebles local recollection. 
 A prison, said a Frenchman, is a memoria localis ; 
 and many, Bassompierre for example, have therein 
 written their memoirs solely on the walls of the 
 skull. 
 
 143. 
 
 But there is one mental talisman even for the 
 memory I mean the charm of the object. A woman 
 retains the titles of books with as much difficulty as 
 
RECOLLECTION. 455 
 
 her learned husband does the names of fashionable 
 dresses ; an old philologist, oblivious of other things, 
 does not suffer an unknown word to escape his 
 verbal treasure-house. 
 
 No one has a memory for every thing, because no 
 one feels an interest in every thing. And the physical 
 powers set bounds even to the strengthening influ- 
 ence of desire on the memory think of that when 
 with children for instance, if a Hebrew bill of 
 exchange for a thousand pounds were promised, on 
 condition of demanding its payment in the very 
 words of the document, as once read aloud, everybody 
 would try to remember them, but, unless he were a 
 Jew, the words and the form would fail him. 
 
 If grown-up people find italics and German-text 
 useful to mark their memoranda, I should think it 
 possible that little children also might require some 
 such assistance. But teachers instigate them to 
 make uninterrupted marks, and then, when they 
 have printed whole books (or lessons) in italic or 
 German-text, ask, with wonder, " whether it is pos- 
 sible a thing can be overlooked, written in different 
 or large text ? " Permit something to be forgotten, 
 when you desire them to remember so much. 
 
 Resemblance, the rudder of recollection, is the 
 dangerous rock of memory. Among related objects, 
 only one can exert the charm of novelty or priority. 
 Thus, the correct spelling of very similar words, such 
 as contemn condemn, were where, of off, is more 
 
456 RECOLLECTION. 
 
 difficult than that of totally different ones. There 
 are few aged men who remain at home, and are able 
 to remember or relate the little circumstances of their 
 monotonous life for a fortnight: by the constant 
 recurrence of the daily echo, the history of their lives 
 is as much shortened as life itself is prolonged. The 
 history of the fourth or fifth ten years of life shrivels 
 up into a note, compared with the chapter on the 
 fourth or fifth year. An eternity might, at last, 
 become shorter than a moment. 
 
 It is incomprehensible to me, how people fancy 
 they can teach children to read or write the letters 
 easily by pointing out their resemblances, and laying 
 before them at once i y, c e, or, in writing, i r, h, 
 k, &c. The very opposite plan ought to be pursued ; 
 i should be placed next g, v next z, o next r; the 
 contrast, like light and shadow, make both promi- 
 nent ; until reflected lights and half shades can sepa- 
 rate them anew from each other. The fast-rooted 
 dissimilarities serve at last to hold fast the resemblance 
 that exists among them. So the old plan of teaching 
 spelling by lists of words alphabetically arranged 
 is bad, on account of the difficulty of distinguishing 
 similar sounds ; whereas that of classing together 
 derivatives from the same Latin or Greek word 
 assists the remembrance, because the radical word 
 does not alter. If instruction in arts of memory had 
 a place in the Levana, I might suggest the following 
 sportive methods : daily drawing tickets in a spelling 
 
RECOLLECTION. 457 
 
 lottery, where each child would not only observe his 
 own, but his companions' words ; every pupil might 
 each day receive a foreign word of parole, wherewith 
 to greet his teacher : or the scholar might be set 
 to print a short Latin sentence, with its translation ; 
 or he might be told to write the same word in 
 various styles of penmanship : in dates, for which 
 these methods are much more necessary than for 
 words, the teacher might give the years written 
 merely with consonants, because the addition of the 
 necessary vowels would impress the w^hole line on 
 the memory ; and he might cut worthless maps into 
 sections, allow his pupils to take them home, and 
 expect them to be brought back joined together in 
 the fashion of architectural games ; and so forth : 
 it were, indeed, a miserable prospect if hundreds of 
 such arts did not occur to the teacher. I myself, 
 however, would not choose any of these proposed 
 methods of catching and yoking attention, but would 
 adopt that of steady industry. I do believe that a 
 rod would help a creeping child to walk better than 
 crutches under his arms, which at first carry, but 
 afterwards are carried by, him. Yea yea, nay nay, 
 are the best double watchwords for children. 
 
 144. 
 
 Artemidorus, the grammarian, forgot every thing 
 when he was terrified. Fear cripples the memory, 
 both by producing physical weakness, and mental 
 
 x 
 
458 RECOLLECTION. 
 
 irritation ; the frost of cold fear chains every living 
 power which it approaches. The bonds are removed 
 even from the criminal, when he is to speak and be 
 judged ! And yet many teachers put fresh fetters on 
 their pupils before they hear, and threaten before 
 they teach them. Do they suppose the terrified soul 
 can observe or remember any thing better than the 
 pain of fear, and the blows of the stick ? Can the 
 free glance of the mental eye co-exist with the abject 
 slavery of the heart ? Will the poor sinner on the 
 scaffold embrace the beauties of the surrounding 
 landscape, and, in contemplating them, forget the 
 impending axe ? 
 
459 
 
 EIGHTH FRAGMENT. 
 
 CHAP. I. Beauty limited to the outward Sense, 145, 146. ; to 
 the inner Sense, 147, 148. CHAP. II. Classical Education, 
 H9,150. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 145. 
 
 I USE the expression sense of beauty instead of 
 taste ; taste for the sublime, sounds as badly as smell 
 for the sublime. The French publish one of the 
 best instructions on taste under the title Almanach 
 des Gourmands. Further; the sense of beauty is 
 not the same as the instinctive desire to express 
 beauty ; the development and improvement of this 
 latter faculty belongs properly to schools of art. If 
 your boy, even in the school-room, is taught to pro- 
 duce instead of only to feel and see beautiful forms 
 and beautiful thoughts, he is as much spoiled as if he 
 were a father before being a lover. Nothing is more 
 dangerous, either for art or heart, than the premature 
 expression of feeling ; many a poetic genius has been 
 fatally chilled by delicious draughts of Hippocrene 
 x 2 
 
460 SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 in the warm season of youth. The feelings of the 
 poet, especially, should be closely and coolly covered, 
 and the hardest and driest sciences should retard 
 the bursting blossoms till the due spring-time. Pope, 
 when a boy, wrote poems of sentiment ; when a man, 
 epigrams. It is said that every clever man, such as 
 Leibnitz and Kant, for instance, must have written 
 verses in his youth : this may be very true of him 
 who writes none in maturer life ; the philosopher, the 
 mathematician, the statesman, may begin where the 
 poet ends, and vice versa ! The poet is the only one 
 who reveals the most secret, the holiest, and the 
 tenderest aspirations of humanity ; let him then at- 
 tain the full stature of his model before he copies it. 
 Let him, like the beautiful white butterfly, first live 
 on the leaves of the schools, and unfold his wings 
 when the flowers hold honey. 
 
 146. 
 
 Children, like women, always kindly disposed 
 towards pedants, would not think it utterly ridiculous 
 if one attempted, for instance, to instil into a boy 
 admiration for a girl's beautiful features by displaying 
 drawings of hideous noses, lips, and necks, and along 
 with them beautiful paintings of the same parts, so 
 that when the young man left the school of design he 
 might at once fall in love with a beautiful woman, 
 as judiciously as a simpleton who had never been 
 to school. 
 
SENSE OF BEAUTY. 461 
 
 Something very similar is done by those teachers 
 who try to educate the sense of the sublime ; which, 
 however, is not increased, but diminished, by the 
 given examples of sublimity. The circumnavigator 
 of the world does not think the sea so sublime as 
 does his wife, who views it only from the coast; the 
 stars come at last to look smaller in the naked eye 
 of an astronomer than in ours. 
 
 In fact, men want to educate every thing (them- 
 selves excepted) which will certainly educate itself ; 
 and they do this the more earnestly because the 
 result is certain and irresistible, as in walking, seeing, 
 tasting, &c. : but for the sense of artistic beauty, 
 which peculiarly needs education, schools are rarely 
 built. 
 
 A child may be conducted into the artistic realm of 
 beauties appreciable by the outward senses, such as 
 painting, music, architecture, earlier than into that 
 of beauties appreciable only by the mind, such as 
 poetry. Above all things educate the German eye, 
 which is so far behind the German ear. Conceal 
 from him every distortion of shape or drawing one 
 might add of the streets, if it were possible to hide 
 the grotesque appearance of our houses, dresses, and 
 ornaments, or rather disfigurements and surround 
 his beauteous age with beauty. The example of the 
 critically correct Italians proves that an artist's hand 
 is not the necessary accompaniment of an artist's 
 eye. Open a child's eye, more than his heart, to the 
 x 3 
 
462 SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 beauties of nature ; the latter opens naturally in its' 
 proper season, and sees farther and more beauties 
 than those you place before it. Unfortunately little 
 can be accomplished in this direction by your unaided 
 efforts; only the state which, however, loves better 
 to carve its wood into parade-beds than cradles of 
 art can provide true education for the eye, which is 
 best taught by streets, temples, and gardens. Must 
 royalty and art be every where as far distant from 
 each other as the Sun and Yenus a space which 
 a cannon ball would require seventeen years to tra- 
 verse ? The former paragraph clearly excludes poets 
 from the proposed school of art. A great poetic 
 gallery, filled with novices, gathered together for the 
 express purpose of poetising, could at most but fur- 
 nish poems upon poetry and poets, in short, but mock- 
 heroic imitations ; an evil which the acquirement of 
 technical facility, the great advantage of a school for 
 art, does not compensate. A true poet must, like 
 Shakspeare and Cervantes, have struggled with life 
 and all its conditions ; then he may take the pencil, 
 not merely to lay colour by colour, but to paint his 
 soul upon the canvass. If an intimate acquaintance 
 with poems led to writing poems, actors ought to 
 have written the best plays. 
 
 An artistic school for the ear is less required from 
 deficiency of teachers, patterns, and energy, than from 
 a superfluity of them, for sometimes the teachers 
 will drown one another, though at the risk of being 
 
SENSE OF BEAUTY. 463 
 
 themselves out of tune. Fortunately it is more 
 difficult to change or destroy the simple taste of the 
 hearing, than of the seeing or reading, public. Behind 
 the most sensitive ear the heart always remains open 
 to the simplest melodies : the virtuoso alone is his 
 own empoisoner. 
 
 147. 
 
 If the art of poetry have been pronounced, and 
 with justice, to embrace all human nature, to be the 
 Venus girdle which enchantingly combines the most 
 opposite powers, the most graceful alternate trans- 
 formation of form into subject, and this again into 
 that, like the candle whose flame assumes a shape, 
 and yet through which the wick is visible ; if this be 
 so, we must indeed wonder that the study of this 
 unity in plurality should be appointed for that time 
 of life in which variety is small, and the power of 
 combining it weak or even erring. Must not children 
 resemble nations on whom the sun of beauty first 
 shone after the tempest of their wants was stilled ? 
 And does not poetry, the bridal ornament of Psyche, 
 require her to be full-grown and a bride ? Before 
 the thirteenth or fourteenth year, before the time 
 of opening manhood, which throws a romantic splen- 
 dour round sun, and moon, and spring, and sex, and 
 poetry, the child regards poetical flowers as so many 
 dried medicinal herbs. The error of prematurely 
 introducing a child to the treasures of poetry can 
 
 x 4 
 
464 SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 only arise from the aesthetic mistake of believing the 
 spirit of poetry to consist less in the whole, than in 
 its variously-scattered, dazzling charms of sound, 
 pictures, events, and feelings ; for these, a child has 
 naturally a ready ear. Rhymers and verse writers 
 may, indeed, play a useful part at an early age. 
 Rhyme delights both the most uncultivated and the 
 youngest ear; and the harmony of full-sounding 
 prose will soon melt the little soul. Instructive 
 poetry, resembling circular light-holders, also is good. 
 Songs, too, are passable. Tales, particularly Oriental 
 tales, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, (those 
 romantic summer nights, so short whether to men or 
 children ! ) will arouse the dreaming poetic heart with 
 gentle charms until it is afterwards strong enough 
 to comprehend the lofty lyric ode, the wide-extended 
 level epic, the thronging passions of tragedy. 
 
 When manhood and womanhood have kindled the 
 transitory joy-fires of life, and all their powers seek 
 unity and the future, then let the poet approach, 
 and be the Orpheus who animates dead bodies, as 
 well as tames wild beasts. But what poets shall the 
 teacher bring ? 
 
 148. 
 
 Our own ! Neither Greek, nor Roman, nor He- 
 brew, nor Indian, nor French, but German. Let 
 the Englishman select English poets, and every nation 
 its own- Only when we call to mind the poverty 
 
SENSE OF BEAUTY. 465 
 
 of the dark ages, whose seeming corpse the miracles 
 of Greece and Home re-animated, can we comprehend 
 the existing absurdity of not educating and preparing 
 the mind by means of native, related, and young- 
 beauties, for those of foreign and distant ages ; but 
 of precisely reversing the matter, and placing him 
 among strangers, instead of those who speak his 
 mother-tongue. The quickest comprehension and 
 perception of all the secondary tints in a poet's work, 
 the intensest feeling for its subject, the widest em- 
 brace of its aim, and of its humour all this is only 
 possible to the reader of his own countryman, not of 
 any foreign wonderful being ; if the actual conditions 
 of his native country help the poet to colour, they 
 also help the reader to see : she was a Roman who 
 at once inspired Raffaelle the Roman as a mis- 
 tress and a Madonna. Must we in the North dig all 
 our beauties and hopes, like vases and urns, out of 
 sepulchres ? 
 
 We may do so rightly if we speak only of vases 
 and similar objects ; that is to say, of the artistic 
 education of the eye. The most beautiful forms 
 should be first presented to the eye a Grecian 
 Yenus to a Chinese. But if the education of the 
 inner sense is the object, offer the nearest first. The 
 outer sense accustoms itself, by degrees, to the most 
 preposterous forms, as all journals of fashion show, 
 and becomes attached to them by length of time; 
 the inner sense is formed by the contemplation of 
 x 5 
 
466 SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 childish beauties to the comprehension of mental 
 beauty. Begin with Baffaelle and Gluck, but not 
 with Sophocles. 
 
 At home and at school let the native poets be 
 first placed on the altar as gods of the household 
 and the country; let the little child rise from the 
 lesser to the greater gods. What love of country 
 must not that hanging on the lips of native poets 
 inspire ! And to what beautiful slow reading should 
 we not be accustomed, (for the German reads every 
 thing quickly that is not very far removed in dis- 
 tance, age, and language,) if one of Klopstock's odes, 
 for instance, were as critically dissected as one of 
 Horace's ! What power should we not obtain over 
 our own language, if, at the age when schoolmasters 
 usually discourse about Pindar and Aristophanes, we 
 were introduced to the sonorous odes of Klopstock 
 and Voss, into the antique temple of Goethe, the 
 lofty dome of Schiller ! For even our own language 
 must speak to us according to a model, if it is to 
 produce any effect. Hence the old humanists (and 
 some modern ones too) wrote Latin best, and both 
 old and new worldlings write French best, and both 
 parties often wrote miserable German : Leibnitz and 
 the Rectors on the one side, and Frederick the Great 
 on the other, confirm my observation. 
 
467 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 149. 
 
 For the sake of brevity I begin this chapter with 
 the request that the reader will first peruse, in the 
 Invisible Lodge, Book First, the supplement headed 
 " Why I give my Gustavus witty and bad authors, 
 but forbid the classical, I mean Greek and Latin 
 writers ; " thereby I shall be spared both copying and 
 printing it over again ; and also the bad attempt to 
 clothe the same thoughts, or soul, with another body. 
 I have not yet met with any refutation of that 
 paragraph ; nor, during the twenty years which have 
 elapsed since its publication, have I been able to 
 refute myself. 
 
 What follows might be appended to a second or 
 third edition. 
 
 I ask whether those men who have given us Wie- 
 land's explanation of the satires of Horace, Voss's 
 translation of Homer, Schleiermacher's introduc- 
 tory translations of Plato's discourses, have sprung 
 from that Latin town which Maupertuis recom- 
 mended to be founded? Only men of mind, of 
 power, and of education, completed by more and 
 higher studies than mere philology, only children 
 born on fortunate days, such as Goethe and Herder, 
 x 6 
 
468 CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 have ever seen the spirit of antiquity ; the rest have 
 only beheld, instead, treasures of words, and glean- 
 ings of flowers. Is it not madness to think it even 
 possible that a boy of fourteen or sixteen, however 
 great his abilities, can comprehend the harmony of 
 poetry and deep thought contained in one of Plato's 
 discourses, or the worldly persiflage of Horace's 
 satires, when the genius itself has not conducted 
 the men I name to the pure cold heights of antiquity 
 until long after the fiery season of youth? Why 
 do teachers demand what they can so seldom do 
 themselves ? I entreat them to think partly of the 
 indifference with which they and the Italian savans 
 await the unrolling of the eight hundred manu- 
 scripts in Herculaneum ; partly of the stupidity with 
 which they first mistook, and afterwards criticised, 
 the new Greek spirit of Goethe in his elegies on 
 the antique at Weimar ; partly of the numberless 
 mistakes they have made in attributing a Grecian 
 resemblance to many a flat production, merely on 
 account of its German dulness and French form, and 
 denying it to such pure, powerful works as those 
 of Herder. And does not the preference which the 
 youth of our universities manifests towards every 
 new hairy comet really show what is effected by the 
 ancient astronomy in our youthful training places ? 
 And is it possible, even if all other things were 
 different, that the tender, indivisible form of beauty 
 can be appreciated if grammatic divisions break it, 
 
CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 469 
 
 like the Medicean Venus, into thirteen fragments, 
 and thirty smaller pieces? What, in this case, the 
 youth may gladly confound with the enjoyment of 
 the whole, and with the goddess of flowers, is the 
 pleasure derived from some way-side flower in the 
 sandy desert of philological exercises ; and the ordi- 
 nary teacher mistakes his sand bath for the floral 
 deity. This perversity causes the study of the 
 ancients, which must present its casket of phrases at 
 every boy's toilet, to give his concetti to the Italian, 
 his host of synonymes to the English, and to the 
 German every taste which he can find. And thus 
 the new age is lost to us by the wounds of beauty. 
 
 150. 
 
 Let antiquity be the Yenus and morning star 
 which rises over the evening of our North. It de- 
 pends on our position, with regard to the star of 
 beauty, whether it shall shine upon us with a full 
 or only a partial light. The language of the ancients 
 is a very different thing. So, again, is the spirit of 
 their history, or subject ; and, thirdly, the spirit 
 of their form, or poetry. 
 
 The learning of the ancient languages, and their 
 harmonic beauty, has no prematurity to dread ; 
 but why are these canonical writings of the spirit 
 desecrated into books for teaching the alphabet and 
 reading? Do not people understand that no mind, 
 
470 CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 least of all a child's, can turn at once in such oppo- 
 site directions as language and subject, even though 
 it be a poet's subject, require ? 
 
 Especial care should be taken never to reduce a 
 reality to a mere arrangement of words, particularly 
 because the recollection rejects as indigestible all 
 single, isolated matters. If the fact stands promi- 
 nently forth, the word or name is often lost sight of. 
 Thus it has frequently been remarked that those 
 boys find it most difficult to remember the names of 
 the heroes in ancient Greek or Roman story, who 
 have their deeds impressed most vividly on their 
 minds. So, in novels, the interest of the story, and 
 of the hero, will sometimes make a young lady read 
 the whole without knowing the names of the hero 
 or heroine, which yet stand upon every page, and 
 cause her to forget them in their lives as completely 
 as the Greeks, who, according to Lessing, named 
 their tragedies after persons who did not appear in 
 them. 
 
 What Greek or Latin books are the most suitable 
 for teaching those languages? Partly imitations, 
 which may be made in order not to lead a deaf and 
 dumb spirit to the divine oracles of the ancients: 
 partly also those ancient books which possess most 
 interest for the youthful mind : for instance, the 
 younger Pliny (as a forerunner of the French letter 
 writers), and even the elder Pliny ; at least he is 
 much more suitable than Tacitus, so full of poison, 
 
CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 471 
 
 the world, and life; also Lucan, Seneca, Ovid, 
 Martial, Quinctilian, Cicero's youthful orations, &c. 
 
 In Greek the romantic Odyssey, in spite of its 
 importance, might occupy an early place, then Plu- 
 tarch, ^Elian, and even the Plutarch of philosophers, 
 Diogenes Laertius. The ages of iron and brass, like 
 the metals after which they are named, should be 
 laid at once on the surface, and the nobler metals 
 raised afterwards upon them. In short, to obtain 
 strength, observe the Grecian law, which forbade 
 athletes even to look upon beauties. 
 
 The fortifications round the city of God have 
 been laid by the ancients for every age in the history 
 of their own. The present ranks of humanity would 
 sink irrecoverably if the youth did not take its way 
 through the silent temple of the mighty past into 
 the market-place of after-life. The names of So- 
 crates, Cato, Epaminondas, and others, are pyramids 
 of the power of will. Rome, Athens, Sparta, are 
 the three crowning cities of the giant Geryon ; and 
 after- ages fix their eyes on the youth as on the 
 primitive mountains of humanity. Not to know the 
 ancients is to be an ephemeron, which neither sees 
 the sun rise nor set. But do not expose this antique 
 temple as though it were a receptacle for cast-off 
 customs and phrases, and as though its holy relics, 
 instead of being worshipped, might, like warriors' 
 bones, be converted into knife-handles, and the like. 
 The man can draw the history of the ancients from 
 
472 CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 their own springs; the child may draw them from 
 the man: one ancient alone I would except, Plu- 
 tarch, from whose hand the young may receive the 
 animating palm wine of the mighty past. But 
 schoolmasters willingly sacrifice the purification of 
 the soul by ancient history to a pure Grecian. So 
 Demosthenes, destitute of ornament, poor in flowery 
 garlands, rich in chains of argument, and rich in 
 ands, is sacrificed to sounding, flowery Cicero. 
 
 It were surely well to consult the age and ad- 
 vancement of the pupils in schools, and begin with 
 the easier classical authors, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, 
 Herodotus, Anacreon, Tyrtaeus, Euripides; after- 
 wards advancing to the more difficult, Horace, Caesar, 
 Lucretius, Sophocles, Plato, Aristophanes. Here, as 
 is natural, that orderly disorder is scorned, by which 
 masters place the difficulty of understanding an 
 author in the phrases, rather than in the higher 
 spirit ; just similarly in a French school Goethe 
 would be read by the lower classes, Schiller by the 
 second, Haller by the first, and I by nobody. I call 
 Virgil an easy classical author; Caesar a difficult 
 one ; the odes of Horace are easy, his satires diffi- 
 cult; Klopstock is oftener easy than Goethe, because 
 merely verbal difficulties may be overcome by teach- 
 ing and industry, but mental difficulties only by the 
 maturity of thought, which comes with years. 
 
 If it be asked where time is to be found for the so- 
 called knowledge of things, and the studies whereby 
 
CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 473 
 
 a livelihood is to be obtained, since their subjects 
 constantly increase, and we resemble an army, the 
 last ranks of which must march quickest I tran- 
 quilly answer, Give natural philosophy and natural 
 history, astronomy and geometry, and abundant sup- 
 plies of "bread studies," in the school-rooms and 
 lecture-rooms of your gymnasiums ; and in so doing 
 you will give the boys ten times more pleasure than 
 they receive from the unfolding of the mummy 
 bandages of the ancient graces ; thus, too, you im- 
 part the common nourishment needed by both the 
 future divisions of your pupils into sons of the 
 muses and sons of labour. Then the higher schools 
 are reserved for the instructions of the greatest 
 teachers, the ancients. 
 
474 
 
 NINTH FRAGMENT, 
 
 OE 
 
 CONCLUSION.] 
 
 151. 
 
 A TREATISE on education does not include the theory 
 of instruction, whose wide realm embraces the mis- 
 takes of all sciences and arts; nor the theory of 
 remedies, which would require libraries instead of 
 volumes for the complication of mistakes, years, 
 positions, and relations. At the same time no 
 science is entirely disconnected from the rest ; the 
 feet cannot move without the hands. 
 
 152. 
 
 Lavater, in a painted series of four-and-twenty 
 faces, converted a frog's head into an Apollo's : I 
 would that a poem could, in a similar way, depict the 
 restoration of some naturally gifted but ruined child 
 to the pure features of humanity, instead of taking 
 a sun-god to school as Xenophon and Rousseau 
 
CONCLUSION. 475 
 
 did. Yes, one might exhibit an educational history 
 of many false cures effected on the same human 
 limb ; and it would be nothing else than useful and 
 difficult. How often has not the ill-set arm of 
 humanity to be broken afresh so as to be rightly 
 healed ! 
 
 153. 
 
 The best and most complete education cannot 
 exhibit its true power upon one child, but upon a 
 number of united children ; romantic Cyropeda- 
 gogues of one individual should think of this : a 
 lawgiver influences multitudes by multitudes; one 
 Jew alone could not produce a Moses. But this 
 very Mosaic people which has spread unaltered 
 through the ocean of all time, as sea- plants in all the 
 zones of the ocean, and has retained its Mosaic 
 colouring even when burning Africa has changed its 
 bodily hue is the strongest witness to the power 
 of education, for, during its dispersion, the Mosaic 
 education of the people can only be maintained by 
 private education. Let this fact inspire all parents 
 with courage to disregard all that is malignant in 
 the future into which they must send their children. 
 
 154. 
 
 For the same reason this courage should not be 
 lessened by a well-known contradictory appearance ; 
 
476 CONCLUSION. 
 
 namely, that children, like plants acclimatised to the 
 nursery and school-room, can scarcely be recognised 
 in a strange apartment, in a carnage, in the country, 
 or at midnight. " It was all forced fruit," says then 
 the good, vexed father, " and I have lost my labour 
 and my hope." But if the angry man will then sit 
 down and consider that he, a plant equally acclima- 
 tised to bis position, has frequently been made unlike 
 himself by strangeness of place or circumstances, 
 yet with very transitory injury to his powers, he 
 may cool his wrath, by applying the same observa- 
 tion, though in a stronger degree, to his children, 
 who, being more excitable, feeble, and inexperienced, 
 must naturally obey and succumb to every new 
 presence. 
 
 155. 
 
 In some circumstances we cannot be sufficiently 
 diffuse with children, in others not sufficiently short. 
 Speak at greatest length in tales, and when you 
 wish to give the passions time to cool, as a kind of 
 rhetorical signal that something important is to come. 
 The utmost brevity should be used in confronting 
 logical sentences for exercise in forbidding and 
 further, in necessary punishments ; then, after the 
 billows are laid, loquacity may be advantageously 
 resumed. 
 
CONCLUSION. 477 
 
 156. 
 
 If a father is boldly obedient to the right rule of 
 letting a boy, especially one destined to a learned 
 profession, lie fallow during the first five years of 
 life, only learning what he teaches himself, so that 
 his body may become strong enough to bear its 
 future mental treasures, let him be prepared when 
 the child first goes to school for a difficulty which 
 may, perhaps, last some months ; it is this, that 
 the boy, hitherto accustomed only to his own mental 
 teaching, cannot immediately apply with ease to 
 instruction from without, but receives the foreign 
 rays at first as in a dispersing concave glass. But by 
 and by they will be collected and combined by a 
 convex mirror. 
 
 Since I have again fallen on the subject of in- 
 struction, which, especially in later years, becomes 
 continually more and more closely combined with 
 education, I know not how better to make amends 
 for my digression than by pursuing it, and saying 
 that a boy of five years old can be sent to no better 
 preparatory school for a learned education, though 
 but for a few hours daily, than to one of only three 
 classes, Latin, mathematics, and history. In fact, 
 these three kinds of knowledge attune the mind to 
 the threefold harmony of education. First, the Latin 
 language, by its brevity and great dissimilarity to 
 
478 CONCLUSION. 
 
 our own, exercises the child's mind in logic, and is, 
 therefore, a preparatory school of philosophy. Bre- 
 vity of speech gives comprehensiveness of thought. 
 Secondly, mathematics, as a mediator between the 
 intuitions of the senses and of the mind, excites and 
 forms a power distinct from philosophy, and not 
 sufficiently esteemed in its connection with the ma- 
 terial universe ; which, by the analysing of space 
 from, without, and time from within, brings the 
 ultimate conclusions of numbers within the power of 
 thought. Thirdly, history, like religion, unites all 
 learning and power ; especially ancient history, that 
 is, the history of the nations of the youthful world, 
 Grecian and Roman, Jewish and early Christian. 
 As the epic poem and the romance may be made 
 to contain the floating materials of all knowledge, 
 their mother, history, may still more easily be made 
 into the firm pulpit of every moral and religious 
 opinion ; and every department of morality, moral 
 theology, moral philosophy and casuistry, finds its 
 leader in ancient history. The young heart lives in 
 the mighty youthful past, and, by this active art of 
 poetry, buried centuries are raised from the dead in 
 a few school-hours. The devils removed into historic 
 distance grieve less, and tempt far less, than when 
 standing in our presence ; the angels, on the contrary, 
 cleared by distance from neighbouring mists, shine 
 and sparkle more brilliantly than ever ; and they tell 
 us what there is yet to do in the future which may 
 
CONCLUSION. 479 
 
 be worthy of the past. History if you are not 
 determined to make it into the biography of the 
 devil is the third Bible ; for the book of nature is 
 the second ; and ancient history alone can convert 
 and improve modern history. 
 
 The father of the Levana although in the case 
 of a goddess this name would be more humbly and 
 appropriately changed into worshipper has (he 
 ventures now to recall to himself) kept the promise 
 of the preface to jest but little. He has wanted 
 room but that another book will furnish rather 
 than occasion for two satires, both directed against 
 one evil the affliction of children teaching. A 
 short serious epitome must be permitted. 
 
 Certainly, as regards children's sufferings, we must 
 admit that nature, which makes them cry sooner than 
 laugh, has the precedence of us. Not the human 
 egg, but the bee's, is laid upon honey. Among all 
 entrances into new circumstances none is so important 
 as that into life, and there also the new apprentice 
 must pay his footing ; or, as a novice in life's mys- 
 teries, he, like the ancient Greek, must be severely 
 scourged ; or he must receive that which in prisons 
 and such Plato esteemed the earth to be is 
 called a welcome, which does not consist in the old 
 German sparkling goblet (that his mother's breast 
 offers him), but in what most would think a flogging. 
 According to the Catholic church, children, those of 
 Bethlehem under Herod, were the first martyrs; it 
 
480 CONCLUSION. 
 
 is the emblem of what still exists. According to the 
 same church, the unbaptized passed either into hell 
 or into purgatory ; but they pass between the two 
 fires upon earth, if they pursue the way from the first 
 to the second sacrament. If baptism be necessary to 
 salvation, so also is the sacrament of the Eucharist ; 
 therefore before the Lord's Supper, the feast of love, 
 you justly repress whatever seems rather to resemble 
 hate. And so the tears which Garrick could draw 
 by the mere repetition of the alphabet, the child soon 
 learns to shed by itself. But among all the school- 
 masters who have flogged either the author or his 
 readers, and endeavoured to enlighten their minds 
 with the cane as with a pedagogic lamp-post, or who 
 have understood how to use their fists like players on 
 the French horn, who apply theirs to the wide mouth 
 of the horn and draw forth its delicate semi-tones ; 
 yet among all schoolmasters, I say, it is a rare and 
 difficult thing to find a John Jacob Hauberle. Which 
 of us can boast, like Hauberle, of having administered, 
 during his schoolmastership of fifty-one years and 
 seven months, 911,527 * strokes of the cane and 
 124,000 of the rod; also 20,989 blows with the ruler; 
 not only 10,235 boxes on the ear, but also 7905 tugs 
 at the same member; and a sum total of 1,115,800 
 blows with the knuckles on the head ? Who besides 
 
 * These numbers are to be found in the twelfth quarterly 
 number of the Pedagogic Entertainment for Teachers. 
 
CONCLUSION. 481 
 
 Jacob Hauberle has given 22,763 impositions, partly 
 in the Bible, partly in the catechism, partly in the 
 Psalm book, partly in the grammar, as with four 
 syllogistic logical figures, or a sonate a quatre mains ? 
 And did he not threaten the rod to 1707 children who 
 did not receive it, and make 777 kneel upon round 
 hard peas, and 631 upon a sharp-edged piece of wood, 
 to which are to be added a corps of 5001 riders on 
 the wooden horse ? For if any one had done this, 
 why did he not keep an account of his blows, like 
 Hauberle, from whom alone we have to learn this 
 interesting intelligence as from a Flogging Diary, 
 or Martyrologium, or Imperial School Flogging 
 Journal ? But I fear most teachers only deserve the 
 contemptuous surname of Ca3sarius, who was called 
 "the Mild" because he suffered no nun to receive 
 more than six-and-thirty lashes. 
 
 If the benefit to be derived from thus converting 
 life into a hell be any thing more than seeming, good 
 infernal machines in which we always succeed 
 better than in celestial machines ought to be made 
 for the purpose, and people attached to them expressly 
 to torment. No one torments better than one who 
 has himself been tormented monks, for instance. 
 If you wish me to weep, says Horace, you must first 
 weep yourself. And the schoolmaster can do the 
 last; no one could have better sat to an Albert 
 Durer, who loved to paint crucifixions, than the 
 united body of German schoolmasters; and if the 
 
 Y 
 
482 CONCLUSION. 
 
 crucifixion came at the conclusion of Christ's minis- 
 try, with us they accompany each other. England, 
 which gives a sub-rector a yearly salary of a thou- 
 sand pounds, will apparently attain this end less 
 quickly although in all its schools it will exalt the 
 rod to the post of educational honour than coun- 
 tries where, as in Prussia, the whole average salaries 
 of schoolmasters amount only to 250 thalers ; so 
 we may fairly reckon that 184 masters may be 
 pointed out, who only receive from five to ten 
 thalers.* Five thalers ! Certainly it might be 
 less, and in Baireuth it is so; for there a village 
 schoolmaster receives from every pupil, for the 
 months of November, December, January, February, 
 March, and April, twenty-fourkreuzers, or a monthly 
 stipend of four kreuzers. But the schoolmaster 
 which pjerhaps would not be expected grows fat in 
 the summer holydays, because he goes out to pasture 
 with the cattle (it is only in winter that he is a 
 shepherd of souls). The evil effects of this system 
 soon break out in him, for he drives the cattle away 
 from wrong roads with much fewer blows than the 
 children. The receipt of four kreuzers repaid by 
 pain! 
 
 Isocrates wept from shame to receive college fees, 
 amounting to three thousand pounds, from his hun- 
 dred pupils : might not shame and weeping find a 
 more appropriate place here ? Happily the state, 
 
 * Alg. Lit. Zeitnng. No. 267. 1805. 
 
CONCLUSION. 483 
 
 which converts schools into industrial schools, for the 
 pupils rather than the masters, declares that none 
 but clergymen shall be schoolmasters, and students of 
 divinity house tutors for the higher classes of pupils 
 (as the Dalai Lama may only be attended by priests). 
 Theologians are active Theopaschists, and every Bible 
 comes into their hands sooner than the Biblia in 
 nummis ; for it has ever been a Protestant principle, 
 in order not to separate them too far from the 
 Catholic clergy, to compel the Lutheran ministers 
 strictly to keep the vows of poverty. In short, they 
 have little ; therefore, all the more is to be taken 
 from them by giving them the office of school- 
 masters. 
 
 If we ascend to the higher scholastic positions, we 
 find that where the young men, having attained the 
 honour of the gymnasium, need fewer mortifications, 
 there also the teachers require fewer ; thus, a head 
 master always receives a trifle more pay than his 
 subordinate. To which is to be added a second rea- 
 son ; that the latter has more work, and, consequently, 
 requires more spurring, more oil in the joints and 
 wheels, to accomplish his heavier movements that 
 is to say, more unemployed gastric juice. For, ac- 
 cording to an ancient political law, the labour and 
 trouble of an office increase in reverse proportion 
 to its remuneration ; and, where the former are 
 altogether wanting, there that law of the artisans 
 is acted upon, according to which, every travelling 
 
 Y 2 
 
484 CONCLUSION. 
 
 journeyman who cannot find ivork in a place receives 
 a present. 
 
 It is, however, so ordered, that even in the highest 
 school offices, as in fruitful Hindostan, where there 
 are yearly three harvests and a famine, the four quar- 
 terly harvests shall not always exclude a famine. As 
 regards drink, we know, from Langen's clerical law, 
 that Karpzov bestowed on all school teachers the 
 privilege of exemption from tax on all liquors. In 
 this, the state has not had so much regard, as at first 
 appears, to the wants and thirst of the profession, 
 but has followed the old custom of giving still greater 
 privileges to schoolmasters ; such as, exemption from 
 the taxes on Tokay wine and pheasants, and license 
 for all their pearls and jewels to enjoy the immunities 
 of students' goods. 
 
 157. 
 
 But enough of this ! I spoke above of a hostile 
 future for our children : every father holds out this 
 prospect, which he has inherited from his own. 
 AVho, indeed, has been so blessed, when finally clos- 
 ing his eyes, as to contemplate two fair worlds, his 
 own yet hidden, and one left behind for his children ? 
 The whole of humanity always seems to us a salt sea, 
 which the sweet showers and streams of individuals 
 do not sweeten ; yet the pure water on the earth is 
 as little dried up as the salt sea ; nay, it even rises 
 
CONCLUSION. 485 
 
 from it. Therefore, O father, the higher thou 
 thinkest thyself, whether truly or not, exalted above 
 thy age, (consequently above its daughters, whom 
 yet thou must, however unwillingly, see thy children 
 marry,) all the more thank-offerings hast thou to lay 
 on the altar of the past, which has made thee so 
 noble; and how canst thou better present them to 
 thy parents than by the hands of thy children ? 
 
 What, then, are children really? Their constant 
 presence, and their often disturbing wants, conceal 
 from us the charms of these angelic forms, which we 
 know not how to name with sufficient beauty and 
 tenderness blossoms, dew-drops, stars, butterflies. 
 But when you kiss and love them, you give and feel 
 all their names ! A single child upon the earth 
 would seem to us a wonderful angel, come from 
 some distant home, who, unaccustomed to our strange 
 language, manners, and air, looked at us speechless 
 and inquisitive, but pure as a Raffaelle's infant Jesus ; 
 and hence, we can always adopt every new child into 
 the child's place, but not every new friend into the 
 friend's place. And daily from the unknown world 
 these pure beings are sent upon the wild earth ; and 
 sometimes they alight on slave-coasts, or battle-fields, 
 or in prison for execution ; and sometimes in flowery 
 valleys, and on lofty mountains ; sometimes in a 
 most baleful, sometimes in a most holy age ; and 
 after the loss of their only father they seek an 
 adopted one here below. 
 
486 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I once composed a poem on the Last Day, and the 
 two last children : its latter part will serve for a 
 conclusion. 
 
 " So go down to the earth," said the angel to two 
 little naked souls, " and be born as brother and sis- 
 ter ! " It will be very pretty down there, said they 
 both, and flew hand in hand to the earth, which was 
 already enveloped in the flames of the last day, and 
 from which the dead were rising. " Look there ! " 
 said the brother, " these are very big, tall children ; 
 the flowers, compared to them, are quite little ; they 
 will certainly carry us about every where, and tell us 
 about every thing ; they are very large angels, sister ! " 
 "But see," answered she, "that great angel, and 
 every one has clothing round him ; and the morn- 
 ing red glows over the whole earth." " But look," 
 said he, " the sun has fallen upon the earth, and it 
 burns every where ; and there a gigantic dew-drop 
 makes fiery waves, and look how the great angels 
 plunge into it." " They stretch their hands up- 
 wards," said she, "and kiss them to us." "And 
 hark!" he said, "how the thunder sings, and the 
 stars dance about among those great children." 
 " Which are the great children," asked she, " who are 
 to be our two parents ? " " Dost thou not see," 
 replied he, "how these angels sleep under the earth, 
 and then rise up from it ? Let us fly quickly ! " 
 And the children approached nearer to the flaming 
 earth, and said, " Look kindly upon us, ye parents, 
 
CONCLUSION. 487 
 
 and do not hurt us, and play with us a long, long 
 time, and tell us many tales, and kiss us ! " 
 
 They were born just as the world, full of sins, 
 vanished, and they remained alone ; their little hands 
 played with the flames, and at last they also, like 
 Adam and Eve, were driven away, and the world 
 closed with the Paradise of Children. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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