Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/193

 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; yet even in his case there will be less need of haste than there has been in the past. This will become distinctly clearer in due course, when we distinguish between purely national and scholarly education.

138. Everything that Pestalozzi says about sound and word as means for the development of mental power is to be corrected and limited in accordance with this view. The scope of these addresses does not permit me to go into details. I make, however, just the following remark which profoundly affects the whole matter. His book for mothers contains the foundation of his development of all knowledge; for, among other things, he relies very much on home education. First of all, so far as this home education itself is concerned, we have certainly no desire to quarrel with him over the hopes that he forms of mothers. But, so far as our higher conception of a national education is concerned, we are firmly convinced that, especially among the working classes, it cannot be either begun, continued, or ended in the parents’ house, nor, indeed, without the complete separation of the children from them. The hardship, the daily anxiety about making ends meet, the petty meanness and avarice, which occur here, would inevitably infect the children, drag them down, and prevent them from making a free flight into the world of thought. This also is one of the absolute and indispensable conditions for the realization of our scheme. 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