Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/69

 supersensuous world-order the pupil has really acted spontaneously, and whether the image created is absolutely correct and thoroughly clear and intelligible, education can easily judge in the same way as in the case of other objects of knowledge, for that, too, is in the domain of knowledge.

30. But here, too, the more important question is: How can education estimate and guarantee that this knowledge of religion will not remain dead and cold, but will be expressed in the actual life of the pupil? The premise of this question is the answer to another: How, and in what manner, is religion shown in life?

In everyday life, and in a well-ordered community, there is no need whatever of religion to regulate life. True morality suffices wholly for that purpose. In this respect, therefore, religion is not practical, and cannot and shall not become practical. Religion is simply knowledge; it makes man quite clear and intelligible to himself, answers the highest question which he can raise, solves for him the last contradiction, and so brings into his understanding complete unity with itself and perfect clearness. It is his complete salvation and deliverance from every foreign bond. Education, therefore, owes him this religion as his due absolutely, and without ulterior purpose. Religion, as a motive, has its only sphere of action in a very immoral and corrupt society, or where man’s field of activity lies not within the social order but beyond it, and rather has continually to create it anew and to maintain it; as in the case of the ruler, who often could not, without religion, perform the duties of his office with a good conscience. Such a case is not the concern of an education intended for everyone and for the whole nation. When, as in the former case, work is continued unceasingly, although man’s understanding