§ 175. The definite actuality of Education originates in the fact that its general idea is individualized, according to its special elements, in a specific statement which we call a pedagogical principle. The number of these principles is not unlimited, but from the idea of Education contains only a certain number. If we derive them therefore, we derive at the same time the history of Pedagogics, which can from its very nature do nothing else than make actual in itself the possibilities involved in the idea of Education. Such a derivation may be called an _à priori_ construction of history, but it is different from what is generally denoted by this term in not pretending to deduce single events and characters. All empirical details are confirmation or illustration for it, but it does not attempt to seek this empirical element _à priori_. ——The history of Pedagogics is still in the stage of infancy. At one time it is taken up into the sphere of Politics; at another, into that of the history of Culture. The productions of some of the most distinguished writers on the subject are now antiquated. Cramer of Stralsund made, in 1832, an excellent beginning in a comprehensive and thorough history of Pedagogy; but in the beginning of his second part he dwelt too long upon the Greeks, and lost himself in too wide an exposition of practical Philosophy in general. Alexander Kapp has given us excellent treatises on the Pedagogics of Aristotle and Plato. But with regard to modern Pedagogics we have relatively very little. Karl v. Raumer, in 1843, began to publish a history of Pedagogics since the time of the revival of classical studies, and has accomplished much of value on the biographical side. But the idea of the general connection and dependence of the several manifestations has not received much attention, and since the time of Pestalozzi books have assumed the character of biographical confessions. Strümpell, in 1843, developed the Pedagogics of Kant, Fichte, and Herbart.—— [Sidenote: _Particular Systems of Education._]