Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Nothing prevents me, as I now speak, from being in the given case that one person who asserts that he knows from immediate experience that there is such a thing as German love of fatherland, that he knows the infinite value of its object, that this love alone has driven him, in spite of every danger, to say what he has said and will still say, since nothing else is left to us now but speech, and even it is checked and restrained in every way. Whoever feels this within him will be convinced; whoever does not feel it cannot be convinced, for my proof rests entirely on that supposition ”

“ The new education exactly reverses this order. For it the world that is comprehended by thought is the only true and really existing world, and into this it wishes to introduce the pupil from the very beginning. It is only to this world of the spirit that it wishes to link his whole love and his whole pleasure, so that with him there will inevitably begin and develop a life in it alone. Formerly there lived in the majority naught but flesh, matter, and nature; through the new education spirit alone shall live in the majority, yea, very soon in all, and spur them on ”

“ That spirit which is to be produced includes the higher love of fatherland, the conception of its earthly life as eternal and of the fatherland as the support of that eternity. If it is produced in the Germans, it will include love of the German fatherland as one of its essential elements, and from that love there spring of themselves the courageous defender of his country and the peaceful and honest citizen. Such an education, indeed, achieves even more than that immediate object; that is always the case when thoroughgoing measures are willed for a great purpose ”

“ In the field of objective knowledge, which is concerned with external objects, acquaintance with the word-sign adds absolutely nothing to the clearness and definiteness of the inner knowledge for the knower himself, but simply brings it within the sphere of what can be communicated to others, which is an altogether different sphere. The clearness of that knowledge depends entirely on perception, and whatever man’s imagination can create again at will in all its parts, just as it really is, is fully known, whether one has a word for it or not. ”

“ Indeed, we are convinced that this perfection of the perception should precede acquaintance with the word-symbol. The opposite process leads straight to that world of shadow and mist, and to premature loquacity, both of which are rightly so hateful to Pestalozzi. He who wants to know the word as soon as possible, and considers his knowledge increased as soon as he knows it, lives in that very world of mist and is anxious merely to extend it. ”

“ When the child first awakes to consciousness, all the impressions of surrounding nature immediately crowd upon him and are mingled to a vague chaos, in which no single thing stands out from among the general confusion. ”

“ Then, if the unity of government which we are presupposing had itself borne, not the republican, but the monarchical form, under which it would have been possible for the autocrat to nip in the bud for his lifetime any new branch of original culture throughout the whole German soil—if my supposition is true, I say, it would certainly have been a great disaster for the cause of German love of fatherland, if that plan had succeeded, and every man of noble mind throughout the whole length and breadth of the common soil would have been bound to resist it. ”

“ Under the guidance of those distinctions he is compelled to reflect and to collect his thoughts, to notice what he actually feels, to compare it with, and differentiate it from, something else which he already knows but does not at present feel. Thus a conscious and free ego begins to be separated off in him. Now, education ought with deliberate and free art to continue the course which necessity and nature begin with us. ”

“ Now, presupposing this development of the knowing subject by means of sensation and setting it as the first foundation of the national education we have in view, Pestalozzi’s A B C of sense-perception, the theory of the relations of number and measure, is the entirely appropriate and excellent consequence. With this perception any part of the world of sense can be connected; it can be introduced into the domain of mathematics, until the pupil is sufficiently trained by these preliminary exercises to be led on to the planning of a social order of mankind and to love of that order. ”

“ Spiritual nature has inseparably connected our complete cure from all the evils that oppress us with our recovery as a nation and fatherland.
132. We have nothing more to do here with the stupid surprise of some, when we assert such a world of pure thought, and assert it, indeed, as the only possible world, and reject the world of sense; nor have we anything more to do with those who deny the former world altogether, or deny only the possibility that the majority of the people at large can be brought into it. ”

“ In this regard his censure of the previous system of instruction, that it has only plunged the pupil in mist and shadow and has never let him reach actual truth and reality, agrees with ours, that this system has never been able to influence life, nor to form the root of life. Pestalozzi’s proposed remedy for this, to lead the pupil to direct perception, is synonymous with ours, to stimulate his mental activity to the creation of images and to let him learn everything just by this free formation; for perception of what has been freely created is the only possible perception. ”

“ So much for the purely universal national education. It is a different matter with the future scholar. Some day he shall not only express his feelings about what is universally valid, but also by solitary reflection lift up into the light of language the hidden and real depths of his heart, of which he is unconscious. He must, therefore, get into his hands sooner, in the form of writing, the instrument of this solitary yet audible thought, and learn to create ”

“ By this means the child first obtains an ego, which he abstracts in free and conscious conception, and which he scrutinizes by its aid; as soon as it awakes to life, a mental eye is set in life, and from that time onward never leaves it. Thus, also, measure and number, in themselves empty forms, obtain for the succeeding exercises of perception their clearly recognized inner content which, according to Pestalozzi’s method, can be given them only by obscure tendency and compulsion. ”

“ In other words, the majority of the citizens must be educated to this sense of fatherland, and, in order that one may be sure of the majority, this education must be tried on all. So with this it is now plainly and clearly proved, as was likewise formerly promised, that education is the only possible means of saving German independence. Undoubtedly it will not be our fault if anyone has not even yet been able to grasp the true content and the purpose of these addresses, and the sense in which all our statements are to be taken. ”

“ But it can, indeed, be very harmful; because, as it has hitherto so often done, it may easily lead the pupil astray from direct perception to mere signs, and from attention, which knows that it grasps nothing if it does not grasp it now and here, to distraction, which consoles itself by writing things down and wants to learn some day from paper what it will probably never learn, and, in general, to the dreaming which so often accompanies dealings with the letters of the alphabet. ”

“ If only we keep in mind the distinction that has been drawn between State and nation, it is clear that even in the past it was not possible for their interests ever to come into conflict. Besides, the higher love of fatherland, love for the whole people of the German nation, had to reign supreme, and rightly so, in each particular German State. ”

“ According to our supposition, those who need protection are deprived of the guardianship of their parents and relatives, whose place has been taken by masters. If they are not to become absolute slaves, they must be released from guardianship, and the first step in this direction is to educate them to manhood. German love of fatherland has lost its place ”

“ The application may often fall short of the intention, but from that conception the conception of the application and of the inevitable result follows without any experiment, and, equipped with this alone, one can truly understand the application and judge it correctly. If, as some believe, even this system of instruction has already degenerated here and there into blind, empirical groping and into empty play and show, for that the author’s fundamental conception, at least, is in my opinion quite blameless. ”

“ When the child begins to understand, and imperfectly to make, speech sounds, he should be led to make himself quite clear, whether he is hungry or sleepy, whether he sees or hears the actual sensation denoted by this or that expression, or, indeed, simply imagines it. ”

“ A German nation would always have remained in existence and have ruled itself, and would not have sunk into an existence of a lower order. Here the essential point in our calculation is always that German national love itself either is at the helm of the German State or can reach it with its influence. But if, according to our previous supposition, the control of the German State—whether now that State appear as one or as several does not matter ”

“ One is saved from all error and obtains a completely consistent conception by dropping the former and everything that results from its consideration, and keeping only to the latter and carrying it out consistently. ”

“ That same desire of his is undoubtedly the source of several other proposals that are in contradiction to his principle of direct perception, and especially his utterly false notion of language as a means of raising our race from dim perception to clear ideas. For our part, we have not spoken of the education of the people in opposition to that of the higher classes, because we no longer want to have the word “people” used in the sense of vulgar common populace, nor can German national interests tolerate this sense of the word any longer; but we have spoken of national education. ”

“ If it shall ever come to this, the miserable wish that education shall be finished very soon and the child again set to work must not be breathed any longer, but given up right at the beginning of the consideration of this matter. In my opinion, indeed, this education will not be expensive, the institutions will be able to maintain themselves to a great extent, and work will not suffer. ”

“ Such a man will be capable of discovering in all-round perfection that machine which the human body is designed to be, and of showing how this machine may gradually be developed out of every healthy human body, so that every advance occurs in the only possible correct sequence, thus preparing for and facilitating those that follow. ”

“ We have seen enough of what will happen if mankind as a whole repeats itself in each successive generation as it was in the previous one. If its complete reformation is intended, it must once for all be entirely separated from itself and cut off altogether from its old life. Not until a generation has passed through the new education can the question be considered, as to what part of the national education shall be entrusted to the home.
139. Setting that aside, and considering Pestalozzi’s book for mothers simply as the first foundation of instruction ”

“ Not until the very end of education, and as its last gift for the journey, should these arts be imparted and the pupil led by analysis of the language, of which he has been completely master for a long time, to discover and use the letters. ”

“ In a case like this, though millions may say that it does not exist, that can never mean more than that it does not exist in them; by no means, however, that it does not exist at all; and if a single person rises against these millions and declares that it does exist, he carries his point against them all. ”

“ Now, if it is not to be completely destroyed from off the earth, another place of refuge must be prepared for it, and that in what alone remains, with the governed, among the citizens. If it already existed in the majority of them, we should not have got into the plight which we are now considering ”

“ Now, in regard to this restoration foreigners, and also those among us who have petty and narrow minds and despairing hearts, need not be alarmed; one can console them with the assurance that not one of them will live to see it, and that the age which will live to see it will think otherwise than they. ”