——It is a beautiful testimony to the disposition of the Greeks, that Plato and others assign as a cause of the low state of Arithmetic and Mathematics among the Phœnicians and Egyptians the want of a free and disinterested seizing of them.—— THIRD GROUP. THE SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION. § 203. One-sided passivity as well as one-sided activity is subsumed under Individuality, which makes itself into its own end and aim. The Phœnician made gain his aim; his activity was of a utilistic character. Individuality as a pedagogical principle is indeed egotistic in so far as it endeavors to achieve its own peculiarity, but it is at the same time noble. It desires not to _have_ but to _be_. Individuality also begins as natural, but it elevates nature by means of art to ideality. The solution of beauty is found in culture, since this renounces the charm of appearance for the knowledge of the True. The æsthetic individuality is followed by the practical, which has indeed no natural basis, but proceeds from an artificial basis as a state formed for a place of refuge. In order internally to create a unity in this, is framed a definite code of laws; in order externally to assure it, the invincible warrior is demanded. Education is therefore, more exactly speaking, juristic and military practice. The morality of the state is loosened as it reduces into its mechanism one nation after another, until the individuality, become dæmonic, makes its war-hardened legions tremble with weakness. We characterize this individuality as dæmonic because it desires recognition simply for its own sake. Not for its beauty and culture, not for its knowledge of business and its bravery, only for its peculiarity as such does it claim value, and in the effort to secure this it is ready to hazard life itself. In its naturally-growing existence this individuality is deep, but at the same time without self-limit. The nations educate themselves to this individuality when they destroy the world of Roman world——that of self-limit and balance——which they find. I. _Æsthetic Education._ § 204. The system of individual education begins with the transfiguration of the immediate individuality into beauty. On the side of nature this system is passion, for individuality is given through nature; but on the side of spirit it is active, for spirit must determine itself to restrain its measure as the essence of beauty. § 205. Here the individual is of value only in so far as he is beautiful. At first beauty is apprehended as natural, but then it is carried over into the realm of spirit, and the Good is posited as identical with the Beautiful. The ideal of æsthetic education remains always that there shall be also an external unity of the Good with the Beautiful, of Spirit with Nature.