Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/61

 quality and form of the moral will. This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral; it completely destroys the root of immorality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all. If the moral motive had to be developed afterwards, it came too late and found the heart already occupied by, and filled with, another love. On the other hand, in the new education the training of a pure will is to be the first aim, so that if, later, selfishness should awake within, or be stimulated from without, it may come too late, and find no room for itself in a heart which is already occupied by something else.

23. It is essential both for this first aim and also for the second, which will be mentioned soon, that from the very beginning the pupil should be continuously and completely under the influence of this education, and should be separated altogether from the community, and kept from all contact with it. He must not even hear that our vital impulses and actions can be directed towards our maintenance and welfare, nor that we may learn for that reason, nor that learning may be of some use for that purpose. It follows that mental development should be produced in him only in the manner described above, that he should be occupied with it unceasingly, and that this method of instruction should on no account be exchanged for that which requires the opposite material motive.

24. But, although this mental development does not let self-seeking come to life and provides indeed the form of a moral will, it is not yet, however, the moral will itself. If the new education which we propose did not go further, it would at best train excellent men of