Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/214

 with the clod, they do not sink to the level of these, but remain within the sphere of the spiritual world.

160. Let it be the fundamental law of this little economic State that no article of food, clothing, etc., and, so far as this is possible, no tool is to be used, which is not produced and made there. If this housekeeping requires support from outside, natural objects should be supplied, but none of any other kind than those it possesses. This must be done without the pupils learning that their own products have been increased; or, if it is appropriate that they should be told, they should receive the supply simply as a loan and return it at a fixed time. Now, for this independence and self-sufficiency of the community every individual should work with all his might, without making a statement of account with it or claiming anything for his own property. Everyone should know that he is indebted absolutely to the community, and should eat or starve along with the community. Thereby the honourable independence of the State and of the family, which he is to enter some day, and the relationship of their individual members to them, is disclosed to his vivid observation and rooted ineradicably in his heart.

161. This training to mechanical work is the point at which the education of the scholar, which is a part of, and rests upon, the universal national education, diverges from the latter. The scholar’s education, which is now to be discussed, is, I said, part of the universal national education. I offer no opinion as to whether in the future everyone who believes he has sufficient ability to study or ranks himself for any reason with the higher classes of former days will not still be free to take the old path of scholarly education. If we should once get our national education, experience will show how the majority of those scholars will fare, with their purchased learning,