Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/204

 to him. Therefore, where punishment is not accompanied by shame, there is an end of education, and the punishment appears as an act of violence, which the pupil proudly disregards and ridicules.

150. The bond, therefore, which makes men of one mind, and the development of which is a chief part of education for manhood, is not sensuous love, but the instinct for mutual respect. That instinct appears in two forms; in the child it begins as unconditional respect for adults and becomes the desire to be respected by them, and to measure by means of their actual respect how far he also should respect himself. This confidence, not in one’s own but in an external standard of self-respect, is also the special characteristic of childhood and youth. On its existence alone is based the possibility of all instruction and of all education of growing youths to perfect men. The adult has in himself his standard of self-esteem, and wishes to be respected by others only in so far as they have first of all made themselves worthy of his respect. With him that instinct assumes the form of demanding that he shall be able to respect others, and that he shall himself produce something worthy of respect. If there is no such fundamental instinct in man, whence then arises the phenomenon, that even the tolerably good man grieves to find men worse than he thought they were, and is deeply hurt at having to despise them; for selfishness, on the contrary, is necessarily pleased at being able to exalt itself haughtily above others? Now, the educator must exhibit this latter characteristic of adult manhood, just as, in the case of the pupil, the former characteristic is to be relied on with certainty. In this respect, the aim of education is just to produce adult manhood in the sense that we have mentioned. Only when that aim is attained is education really completed and ended. Hitherto many