§ 8. With regard to the First Part, we remark that by Education, in its
general idea, we do not mean any mere history of Pedagogics, nor can any
history of Pedagogics be substituted for a systematic exposition of the
underlying idea.
§ 9. The second division considers Education under three heads——as
physical, intellectual, and moral——and forms, generally, the principal
part of all pedagogical treatises.
In this part lies the greatest difficulty as to exact limitation. The
ideas on these divisions are often undefined and apt to be confounded,
and the detail of which they are capable is almost unlimited, for we
might, under this head, speak of all kinds of special schools, such as
those for war, art, mining, etc.
§ 10. In the Third Part we consider the different realizations of the
one general idea of Pedagogics as it has developed itself under
different circumstances and in different ages of the world.
The general idea is forced into different phases by the varying
physical, intellectual, and moral conditions of men. The result is the
different systems, as shown in the analysis. The general idea is one.
The view of the end to be obtained determines in each case the
actualization of this idea. Hence the different systems of Education are
each determined by the stand-point from which the general ideal is
viewed. Proceeding in this manner, it might be possible to construct a
history of Pedagogics, _à priori_, without reference to actual history,
since all the possible systems might be inferred from the possible
definite number of points of view.
Each lower stand-point will lead to a higher, but it will not be lost in
it. Thus, where Education, for the sake of the nation,[7] merges into
the Education based on Christianity, the form is not thereby destroyed,
but, rather, in the transition first attains its full realization. The
systems of Education which were based on the idea of the nation had, in
the fullness of time, outgrown their own limits, and needed a new form
in order to contain their own true idea. The idea of the nation, as the
highest principle, gives way for that of Christianity. A new life came
to the old idea in what at first seemed to be its destruction. The idea
of the nation was born again, and not destroyed, in Christianity.
§ 11. The final system, so far, is that of the present time, which thus
is itself the fruit of all the past systems, as well as the seed of all
systems that are to be. The science of Pedagogics, in the consideration
of the system of the present, thus again finds embodied the general idea
of education, and thus returns upon itself to the point from whence it
set out. In the First and Second Parts there is already given the idea
which dominates the system found thus necessarily existing in the
present.
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