Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/66

 THIRD ADDRESS DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION (continued)

28. essential feature of the proposed new education, so far as it was described in the last address, consisted in this, that it is the sure and deliberate art of training the pupil to pure morality. To pure morality, I said; the morality to which it educates exists as an original, independent, and separate thing, which develops spontaneously its own life, but is not, like the legality hitherto often aimed at, linked with and implanted in some other non-moral impulse, for the satisfaction of which it serves. It is the sure and deliberate art of this moral education, I said. It does not proceed aimlessly and at random, but according to a fixed rule well known to it, and is certain of its success. Its pupil goes forth at the proper time as a fixed and unchangeable machine produced by this art, which indeed could not go otherwise than as it has been regulated by the art, and needs no help at all, but continues of itself according to its own law.

This education certainly does train also the pupil’s mind, and this mental training is indeed the first thing with which it commences its task. Yet this mental development is not the chief and original aim, but only the condition and means of applying moral training to the pupil. This mental training, however, though acquired but incidentally, remains an ineradicable