w it is
kept. To one it may be a curse, to another a blessing. Fichte, Goethe,
Byron, and others, have kept journals and have been assisted thereby;
while others, as Lavater, have been thwarted by them. Vain people will
every evening record with pen and ink their admiration of the correct
course of life which they have led in the day devoted to their
pleasure.--

Sec. 150. (_c_) The result of the practice in virtue, or, as it is
commonly expressed, of the individual actualization of freedom, is the
methodical determinateness of the individual will as Character. This
conception of character is formal, for it contains only the identity
which is implied in the ruling of a will on its external side as
constant. As there are good, strong and beautiful characters, so there
are also bad, weak, and detestable ones. When in Pedagogics, therefore,
we speak so much of the building up of a character, we mean the making
permanent of a direction of the individual will towards the
actualization of the Good. Freedom ought to be the character of
character. Education must therefore observe closely the inter-action of
the factors which go to form character, viz., ([Greek: a]) the
temperament, as the natural character of the man; ([Greek: b]) external
events, the historical element; ([Greek: g]) the energy of the Will, by
which, in its limits of nature and history, it realizes the idea of the
Good in and for itself as the proper ethical character. Temperament
determines the Rhythm of our external manifestation of ourselves; the
events in which we live assign to us the ethical problem, but the Will
in its sovereignty stamps its seal on the form given by these
potentialities. Pedagogics aims at accustoming the youth to freedom, so
that he shall always measure his deed by the idea of the Good. It does
not desire a formal independence, which may also be called character,
but a real independence resting upon the conception of freedom as that
which is absolutely necessary. The pedagogical maxim is then: Be
independent, but be so through doing Good.

--According to preconceived opinion, stubbornness and obstinacy claim
that they are the foundation of character. But they may spring from
weakness and indeterminateness, on which account one needs to be well on
his guard. A gentle disposition, through enthusiasm for the Good, may
attain to quite as great a firmness of will. Coarseness and meanness are
on no account to be tolerated.--

Sec. 151. (