Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/213

 to us to arise from the paltriness of the original aim. In my opinion, instruction must be represented as so sacred and honourable that it requires the whole attention and concentration, and cannot be received along with something else. If such manual work as knitting, spinning, etc., is to be carried on during working hours in seasons which in any case keep the pupils indoors, it will be very useful to combine with it collective mental exercises under supervision, in order that the mind may remain active. But in this case the work is the important thing, and these exercises are to be regarded, not as instruction, but merely as recreation.

159. In general, all manual work of this inferior kind must be put forward only as incidental, and not as essential. The essential manual work is the practice of agriculture, gardening, cattle rearing, and those trades which they need in their little State. Of course, the participation in these that is expected of anyone is to be proportional to the physical strength of his age; the rest of the energy is to be supplied by machines and tools that will be invented. Here the chief consideration is that, so far as possible, the pupils must understand the principles of what they do, and that they have already received the information necessary for their occupations concerning the growing of plants, the characteristics and needs of the animal body, and the laws of mechanics. In this way their education becomes a kind of course of instruction in the occupations which they have to follow in the future, and the thoughtful and intelligent farmer is trained by direct perception. Further, their mechanical work is even at this stage ennobled and made intellectual; it is just as much a verification from direct perception of what they have grasped in their minds, as it is work for a living. Even though associated with the animal and