12. Herbert Spencer. A Symposium by Harris, Cook, Sutton, Winship, Rose. Proceedings of National Education Association, 1904. pp. 214-231. CHAPTER XI. GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831) Hegel never actually wrote or lectured on education as such, although, according to Rosenkranz, he intended to write what he significantly called “_Staatspädagogik_.” This slowly matured genius, whose interest was speculative more than practical, died too young to fulfill this design. He had no pedagogic impulse such as is seen in Fichte or Herbart. He was to the end essentially a learner rather than a teacher, notwithstanding the fact that his whole life was spent in educational work of various kinds. Nevertheless, he could not help but be touched by the intense pedagogical spirit of his age. The collection of his ideas on the problem of education, drawn from scattered sources, was published in 1853 by one of his disciples, G. Thaulow. The collaboration of them into a system on the basis of his philosophy was made by his most faithful follower, K. Rosenkranz, whose work, “Pedagogy as a System,” has had until recently a considerable influence in the educational world. Hegel was born the son of a government official and brought up in a home which was in “direct and varied relation with many persons of high official rank.” He did not, like Pestalozzi, share the lot of the common herd. Nor did he taste such hardships of fate as did Fichte. He lived, as a child, as a university student, as a family tutor, as a school man, as a university professor, ever in the air of officialdom and aristocracy. Moreover, we are told that youth had but a short duration for him. In his student days at Tübingen he gained the nickname of “the old man.” Rousseau had once charmed the young Hegel, as he did every youth of his time; Schelling had fascinated him; Fichte had inspired him with enthusiasm; but Hegel outgrew quickly and abandoned all these romantic tendencies. Heinrich Hotho, one of his pupils, writes in his recollections: “He was bitter against the demagogues who were ever seeking ‘new things’ in statecraft. Against the caprice of personal opinion, subjective fancy, arbitrary passion, he set himself, seeking to do away with these from youth up, and to put in their place--to do away by putting in their place--a just appreciation of the real, the lawful, the substantial. The senses, sentiments, impulses, wishes, and will were to be brought into free harmony with the necessary and rational, and their accord made habitual” (3: p. 98). Most geniuses are “youth, intensified, and prolonged,” but Hegel shows his genius in maturity of insight and judgment. Not the fire of prophetic spirit, not the flashes of poetic intuitions, but a proportioned completeness of catholicism and classicism constituted the type of his mental greatness.