Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/56

 The first important point in the art of education is just to stimulate this personal activity of the pupil in something known to us. If we succeed in this, it is simply a question of starting from that and of maintaining the stimulated activity in ever new life. This is possible only where progress is regular, and where every mistake in education is discovered immediately through the failure of what was intended. We have, therefore, found also the link whereby the intended result is inseparably connected with the method planned, namely, the eternal, universal, and fundamental law of man’s mental nature, that he must directly engage in mental activity.

20. Should anyone, misled by our usual daily experience, doubt the very existence of such a fundamental law, we would remind him over and over again that man is indeed by nature merely material and self-seeking, so long as immediate necessity and present material need spur him on, and that he does not let any spiritual need or feeling of consideration prevent him from satisfying that material need. But when it is satisfied, he has little inclination to let his fancy dwell on the painful image of it, or to keep it in his mind. He is much more inclined to free his thoughts and turn them without restraint to the consideration of whatever attracts the attention of his senses. Nor, indeed, does he scorn a poetic flight to ideal worlds, for he has by nature but little interest in the temporal, in order that his taste for the eternal may have scope for development. This is proved by the history of all ancient peoples, and by the various observations and discoveries which have come down to us from them. It is proved in our day by the observation of races that are still savage, provided, of course, their climate does not treat them far too unkindly, and by the observation of our own children. It is proved even by