§ 179. National Education is divided into three special systems: (1) Passive, (2) Active, (3) Individual. It begins with the humility of an abstract subjection to nature, and ends with the arrogance of an abstract rejection of nature. § 180. Man yields at first to the natural authority of the family; he obeys unconditionally its behests. Then he substitutes for the family, as he goes on his culture, the artificial family of his caste, to whose rules he again unconditionally yields. To dispense with this artificialty and this tyranny, at last he abstracts himself from the family and from culture. He flees from both, and becoming a monk he again subjects himself to the tyranny of his order. The monks presents to us the mere type of his species. § 181. This absolute abstraction from nature and from culture, this quietism of spiritual isolation, is the ultimate result of the Passive system. In opposition to this, the Active system seeks the positive vanquishing of naturalness. Its people are courageous. They attack other nations in order to rule over them as conquerors. They live for the continuation of their life after death, and build for themselves on this account tombs of granite. They brave the dangers of the sea. The abstract prose of the patriarchal-state, the fantastic chimeras of the caste-state, the ascetic self-renunciation of the cloister-state, yield gradually to the recognition of actuality; and the fundamental principle of Persian education consisted in the inculcation of veracity. § 182. But the nationality which is occupied with simple, natural elements——other nations, death, the mystery of the ocean——may revert to the abstractions of the previous stage, which in education often take on cruel forms——nay, often truly horrible. First, when the spirit begins not only to suspect its true nature, but rather to recognize itself as the true essence; and when the God of Light places as the motto on his temple the command to self-knowledge, the natural individuality becomes free. Neither the passive nor the active system understands the free self-distinction of the individual from the rest. In them, to be an individuality is a betrayal of the very idea of their existence, and even the suspicion of such a charge suffices utterly and mercilessly to destroy the one to whom it refers. Even the solitary individuality of the despot is not the one-ness of free individuality: he is only an example of his kind; only in his kind is he singular. Nationality rises to individuality through the free dialectic of its race, wherein it dissolves its own presupposition.