uman beings.
Caspar Hauser in his subterranean prison is an illustration of what man
would be by himself. The first cry of the child expresses in its appeals
to others this helplessness of spirituality on the side of nature.--

Sec. 14. Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. We often
speak, it is true, of the education of plants and animals; but even when
we do so, we apply, unconsciously perhaps, other expressions, as
"raising" and "training," in order to distinguish these. "Breaking"
consists in producing in an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the
senses, an activity of which, it is true, he is capable, but which he
never would have developed if left to himself. On the other hand, it is
the nature of Education only to assist in the producing of that which
the subject would strive most earnestly to develop for himself if he had
a clear idea of himself. We speak of raising trees and animals, but not
of raising men; and it is only a planter who looks to his slaves only
for an increase in their number.

--The education of men is quite often enough, unfortunately, only a
"breaking," and here and there still may be found examples where one
tries to teach mechanically, not through the understanding power of the
creative WORD, but through the powerless and fruitless appeal to
physical pain.--

Sec. 15. The idea of Education may be more or less comprehensive. We use it
in the widest sense when we speak of the Education of the race, for we
understand by this expression the connection which the acts and
situations of different nations have to each other, as different steps
towards self-conscious freedom. In this the world-spirit is the teacher.

Sec. 16. In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the shaping of
the individual life by the forces of nature, the rhythmical movement of
national customs, and the might of destiny in which each one finds
limits set to his arbitrary will. These often mould him into a man
without his knowledge. For he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor
offend the ethical sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise
the leading of destiny without discovering through experience that
before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his subjective power
can dash itself only to be shattered. If he perversely and persistently
rejects all our admonitions, we leave him, as a last resort, to destiny,
whose iron rule must educate him, and reveal to him the God whom he has