pure motives, and,
through the granting of such freedom to religious individuality, to help
forward the unity of a rational insight into religion which is distinct
from the religious feeling only in its form, not in its content. Not a
philosopher, but Jesus of Nazareth freed the world from all selfishness
and all bondage.

Sec. 174. With this highest theoretical and practical emancipation, the
general work of education ends. It remains now to be shown how the
general idea of Education shapes its special elements into their
appropriate forms. From the nature of Pedagogics, which concerns itself
with man in his entirety, this exposition belongs partly to the history
of culture in general, partly to the history of religion, partly to the
philosophy of history. The pedagogical element in it always lies in the
ideal which the spirit of a nation or of an age creates out of itself,
and which it seeks to realize in its youth.

THIRD PART.

Particular Systems of Education.

Sec. 175. The definite actuality of Education originates in the fact that
its general idea is individualized, according to its special elements,
in a specific statement which we call a pedagogical principle. The
number of these principles is not unlimited, but from the idea of
Education contains only a certain number. If we derive them therefore,
we derive at the same time the history of Pedagogics, which can from its
very nature do nothing else than make actual in itself the possibilities
involved in the idea of Education. Such a derivation may be called an _a
priori_ construction of history, but it is different from what is
generally denoted by this term in not pretending to deduce single events
and characters. All empirical details are confirmation or illustration
for it, but it does not attempt to seek this empirical element _a
priori_.

--The history of Pedagogics is still in the stage of infancy. At one
time it is taken up into the sphere of Politics; at another, into that
of the history of Culture. The productions of some of the most
distinguished writers on the subject are now antiquated. Cramer of
Stralsund made, in 1832, an excellent beginning in a comprehensive and
thorough history of Pedagogy; but in the beginning of his second part he
dwelt too long upon the Greeks, and lost himself in too wide an
exposition of practical Philosophy in general. Alexander Kapp has given
us excellent treatises on the Pedagogics of Aristotle and Plato.