The human share and endeavor in the universal “becoming,” or the evolution of the _Logos_ in mankind, constitutes the history of the race. Human history is, in general, the process of the liberation of spirit or reason from its bondage--from all external and debasing powers. By these not only political, social, and family despotism are meant, but also one’s own passions, natural desires, inclinations, willfulness, arbitrariness, etc. For freedom does not consist in licentiousness; it is the unbounded self-activity of the Spirit according to its own law. This law is given by reason. Thus freedom can be regarded as lawful action according to rational insight. Therefore the universal realization of self-conscious reason and freedom of the spiritual nature is the teleology of human history. Education from this standpoint means the progressive perfection of humanity from a naïve, unconscious, primitive state of spirit or reason through the hard discipline of slavery and bondage to the consciousness and exercise of its freedom. To share in this progressive perfection of the race and contribute to its promotion is the destiny of individuals. The connection between the culture of the race and the development of the individual is very close. The latter can only grow in the breast of the former. And the culmination of this close relationship between the whole and its part is the state. It is the most highly developed and compact form of society. History is the objectified, realized humanity, and its attainments are embodied in the institutional life of the state. The individual must take part in this life of the state and “live in the spirit of the nation.” This is the free relation of give and take. But the child cannot by himself enter into the free mutual relation of give and take with society. He is not only incapable of giving his part to society, but also of taking his share from it. Some one else must do this for him. To do this is the duty of parents and teachers, and the art of fulfilling this duty is education in its narrow sense. For Hegel the child is no angelic being. Innocence as such has no moral value, so far as it is ignorance of the bad and rests on the lack of desire by which the bad can take place. Nor does he recognize the morality of instincts and impulses. Moral freedom is won “through the stern strife against the naïve subjectivity of life, against the immediateness of arbitrary desire and passion” (3: p. 109). Childhood in itself has no value for Hegel. It is not as it was for Rousseau and Froebel, a state to be lived out, but a state to be outgrown. “The child has a right to be educated,” only because it has the destiny to become a man, and yet it is not and does not become so by mere natural development.