d to self-knowledge, the natural individuality becomes
free. Neither the passive nor the active system understands the free
self-distinction of the individual from the rest. In them, to be an
individuality is a betrayal of the very idea of their existence, and
even the suspicion of such a charge suffices utterly and mercilessly to
destroy the one to whom it refers. Even the solitary individuality of
the despot is not the one-ness of free individuality: he is only an
example of his kind; only in his kind is he singular. Nationality rises
to individuality through the free dialectic of its race, wherein it
dissolves its own presupposition.

Sec. 183. Nevertheless individuality must always proceed from naturalness.
Esthetically it seeks nature, but the nature of the activity itself, in
order, by penetrating it with mind, to make of it a work of art;
practically it seeks it, partly to disdain it in gloomy resignation,
partly to enjoy it in excessive sensual ecstasy, demoniacally to
heighten the extravagance of its own internal feeling in wild revels.

--The Germans were not savage in the common signification of this term.
They were men each one of whom constituted himself willingly a centre
for others, or, if this was not the case, renounced them in proud
self-sufficiency. All the glory and all the disgrace of our race lies in
the power of individualizing which is divinely breathed into our veins.
As a natural element, if this be not controlled, it degenerates easily
into intractableness, into violence. The Germans need therefore, in
order to be educated, severe service, the imposition of difficult tasks;
and for this reason they appropriate to themselves, now the Roman law,
now the Greek philology, now Gallic usages, &c., in order to work off
their superfluous strength in such opposition. The natural reserve of
the German found its solvent in Christianity. By itself, as the history
of the German race shows, it would have been destroyed in vain
distraction. First of all, the German race, in the confidence of its
immediate consciousness, ventured forth upon the sea, and managed the
ship upon its waves as if they rode a charger.--

FIRST GROUP.

THE SYSTEM OF PASSIVE EDUCATION.

Sec. 184. All education desires to free man from his finitude, to make him
ethical, to unite him with God. It begins therefore with a negative
relation to naturalness, but at once falls into a contradiction of its
aim, which is to convert the op