Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ He can never know that he has not roused a powerful incentive to this study,—that he has not thrown into the soul some sparks of love and devotion to it which, though now unapparent, will blaze forth at the proper time. Even in the worst possible event,—that he has not accomplished even so much as this,—his activity has still another object; and if he has done something for it, his labour has not been utterly lost. If he has, at least, upheld, and in some breasts quickened or renewed, the faith that there is something worthy of the reverence of men ”

“ Let this love of his vocation and of Knowledge be the sole guide of his life, visible to all men;—let him be moved by nothing else, regarding no personal interest either of himself or of others. Here, as elsewhere, I shall say nothing of the common and vulgar desires which may not enter within the circle of him who has approached and handled the sacred things of Knowledge. ”

“ The vocation of the Academic Teacher requires him to communicate the Idea,—not as the Author does, abstractly, in the one perfect conception under which it presents itself to his own mind,—but he must mould, express, and clothe it in an infinite variety of forms, so that he may bring it home, under some one or other of those adventitious vestures, to those by whose present state of culture he must be guided in the exercise of his calling. ”

“ It is quite possible that a Scholar who has devoted his life to a particular department of knowledge may entertain a prepossession in favour of that department and be apt to esteem it above all others,—either because he has accustomed himself to it, or because he thinks that his more distinguished calling may reflect some of its lustre upon himself. ”

“ Besides those possessors of the Idea, whose business it is, by guiding and ordering the affairs of men, to introduce the Idea immediately into life, there is yet another class—those, namely, who are peculiarly and by preëminence called Scholars, who manifest the Idea directly in spiritual conceptions, and whose calling it is to maintain among men the conviction that there is, in truth, a Divine Idea accessible to human thought, to raise this Idea unceasingly to greater clearness and precision, and thus to transmit it from generation to generation fresh and radiant in ever-renewed youth. ”

“ If, at the conclusion of his university training it were found that even then the Student could not be made to comprehend the true nature of study, then study would altogether disappear from the world;—there would be study no longer, but the number of handicrafts would be increased. He who is not conscious of a living and clear comprehension of the Idea, and is at the same time an upright and honourable man, will forbear to assume the vocation of the Academic Teacher. ”

“ He who prosecutes his studies conscientiously, and so acquires a conviction of the importance of the vocation of the Scholar, but yet does not feel within himself a clear consciousness of the capacity to fulfil it, shows that he recognises its sacred character by not undertaking it;—he who does undertake it, manifests the same conviction by exercising it worthily. In the next lecture we shall speak of the true Author; to-day we shall discourse of the upright Teacher of future Scholars. ”

“ The Academic Teacher, of whom chiefly we have to speak, ought to train the Student who has been made acquainted with the nature and dignity of his calling, to the capacity of receiving the Idea, and to the power of developing it anew, and giving it a form peculiar to himself:—he should do all this if he can. ”

“ It will only thereby become evident that he has never conceived of Knowledge as one perfect whole,—that he does not think of his own department as a portion of this whole, hence that he does not love his own department as Knowledge, but only as a handicraft; which love for a handicraft may indeed be praiseworthy enough elsewhere, but in the domain of Knowledge excludes him entirely from any right to the name of a Scholar. ”

“ Only living and present thought can enter other minds and quicken other thought: a dead, worn-out form, let it have been ever so living at a former time, must be called back to life by the power of others as well as its own; the Author has a right to require this from his readers, but the Academic Teacher, who in this matter is not an Author, has no right to demand it.
The upright and conscientious man, as surely as he accepts this calling, and so long as he continues to practise it, gives himself up entirely to its fulfilment ”

“ At the University the Student first receives a clear idea of the nature and dignity of that vocation to which his life has been devoted beforehand. He must obtain that clear idea here: the Teacher in the lower Schools may look forward to another education for his pupils, and counts upon that; but the Academic Teacher has no higher instruction to calculate upon except that which the Progressive Scholar may bestow upon himself, to the capacity for which, however, the Teacher must train him so that he may have it in his power to become his own instructor ”

“ He can cultivate this capacity in men only by means of the Idea itself, by presenting it to them, and testing it for them, in all its varied forms and applications. In this the Idea differs wholly from all that is merely mechanical in knowledge;—only by its reception can man cultivate the power of receiving it. By the mechanical communication of knowledge man may become versed in such mechanism, but can never be raised to the Idea. It is an obligation from which the Academic Teacher cannot be released, that he shall have comprehended the Idea with perfect clearness as Idea ”

“ Above all, he must possess that which we have already described as the creative or artist-talent of the Scholar; namely, a perfect readiness and capacity to recognise, under any circumstances, the first germ of the Idea as it begins to unfold itself; in each individual case to discover the most suitable means of aiding it to the attainment of perfect life, and in every case to associate it with an appropriate form. ”

“ He who, although labouring in a limited province, has become a partaker of Knowledge as a whole, and accepts his own calling as but a part thereof, may perhaps have little even historical acquaintance with other provinces, but he has a general conception of the nature of all others, and will constantly exhibit an equal reverence for all. ”

“ The attainment by the Student of the first object of study is, to the Academic Teacher, a conditional duty,—conditioned by the possibility of its fulfilment. The attainment of the second he must ever look upon and acknowledge as his unconditional duty, which he must never deliberately relinquish. It may indeed happen that he cannot accomplish even this, but he must never admit a doubt of its ultimate attainment. ”

“ For this reason, the Teacher in these lower Schools should be a partaker of the Idea, because it is his task imperceptibly to familiarize the youth with the high and noble before he is able for himself to distinguish these from the vulgar, to accustom him to these, and to estrange him from the low and ignoble. Thus guarded in his early years, and thus prepared for higher progress, the youth enters the University. ”

“ But in every case, and unconditionally, he must fill the Student with respect and veneration for the proper calling of the Scholar. The first object of all study,—to lay hold of the Idea from a new and peculiar point of view, is by no means to be given up either by the Student himself, or by the Teacher on his behalf ”

“ Although it should not become directly visible and evident to him that he has attained his peculiar object,—of leading those who are entrusted to his care from mere passive dependence to spontaneous activity, from the dead letter to the living spirit;—yet will he not suppose that he has laboured in vain. To Academic Study must succeed that special study to which the first is but a preparative. ”

“ Whatever ability such an one may bring to the cultivation of his own department, he will never present to the unprejudiced spectator the picture of one who reveres Knowledge for its own sake, and will never persuade the acute observer that he does so while he shows less respect for other departments of knowledge which are as essential as his own. ”

“ A good Academic Teacher must be capable of being also an excellent Author if he choose; but it does not follow that, on the other hand, a good Author should also be a good Academic Teacher. Yet this skill and versatility exist in different degrees, and he is not to be entirely excluded from the Academic calling who does not possess them in the highest degree. ”

“ In a fundamental study of Language, pursued, as it must be, amid old modes of speech, far removed from our habits of thought, a deeper insight into ideas is gained; and from the works of the Ancients, by means of which this study is pursued, an excellent and ennobling spirit speaks to the youthful mind. ”

“ But the second object of study,—that he acquire a reverence for the Idea during his efforts to attain it,—that on account of this reverence he forbear from undertaking anything for which he does not know himself to be qualified,—that he consecrate himself to the service of the Idea, at least by permanently cherishing this reverence for what is unattainable by him, and contributing to the extent of his ability to maintain such a reverence among men;—this object is never to be relinquished ”

“ The second has for its immediate object the Idea itself, and the fashioning of the Idea into a distinct conception, and has no reference whatever to any subjective disposition or capacity of men; it has no one specially in view as peculiarly called to or fitted for the reception of the Idea in the form thus given to it; the work itself settles and determines who shall receive it, and it is addressed only to those who can receive it. The first object will be best and most fitly attained by the verbal discourses of the Teacher ”

“ Here, for the first time, can he be clearly taught, and led to comprehend and acknowledge that which I have endeavoured to utter to you in these lectures, that our whole race has its only true existence in the Divine Thought, that its only worth consists in its harmony with this Divine Thought, and that the class of Scholars has therein an existence only to the end that they may comprehend this Divine Thought and imprint it on the world. ”

“ The first calling has particular men for its primary and immediate objects;—in it the only use which is made of the Idea is as a means of training and cultivating these men so that they may become capable of comprehending the Idea by their own independent effort. It follows that, in this calling, regard must be had solely to the men who are to be cultivated, the degree of their cultivation, and their capacity of being cultivated ”

“ I shall not suppose it possible, for instance, that a Priest of Knowledge, who seeks to consecrate other Priests to her service, should refrain from saying to them something which they do not hear willingly, in order that they may continue to hear him willingly. ”

“ The Teachers and Educators of those who devote themselves to the occupation of the Scholar may be divided into two classes:—they are Teachers either in the lower Schools of learning, or in the higher or Universities. ”

“ He must first have cultivated this capacity in himself, and have a distinct and clear consciousness of possessing it; for it can be recognised only by him who truly possesses it, and the art of acquiring it can be understood only by him who has himself acquired it. ”

“ Both these callings belong to the vocation of the Scholar in its proper and highest sense, and not to the subordinate Scholar-occupations, which devolve upon a man only because he has not attained the proper end of his studies. ”

“ This latter Vocation again divides itself into two very different callings, according to the immediate purpose in view, and the mode of its attainment. Either the minds of men are to be trained and cultivated to a capacity for receiving the Idea ”