This exact outward conformity to subjectivity is
the beginning of wisdom, the purification of the will from all
individual egotism.

--The rational substance of the Law is found always in the Decalogue.
Many of our modern much-admired authors exhibit a superficiality
bordering on shallowness when they comment alone on the absurdity of the
miracles, and abstract from the profound depth of the moral struggle,
and from the practical rationality of the ten commandments.--

Sec. 229. Education in this theocratical system is on one side patriarchal.
The Family is very prominent, because it is considered to be a great
happiness for the individual to belong from his very earliest life to
the company of those who believe in the true God. On its other side it
is hierarchical, as its ceremonial law develops a special office, which
is to see that obedience is paid to its multifarious regulations. And,
because these are often perfectly arbitrary, Education must, above all,
practise the memory in learning them all, so that they may always be
remembered. The Jewish monotheism shares this necessity with the
superstition of ethnicism.

Sec. 230. But the technique proper of the mechanism is not the most
important pedagogical element of the theocracy. We find this in its
historical significance, since its history throughout has a pedagogical
character. For the people of God show us always, in their changing
intercourse with their God, a progress from the external to the
internal, from the lower to the higher, from the past to the future. Its
history, therefore, abounds in situations very interesting in a
pedagogical point of view, and in characters which are eternal models.

Sec. 231. (1) The will of God as the absolute authority is at first to
them, as law, external. But soon God adds to the command to obedience,
on one hand, the inducement of a promise of material prosperity, and on
the other hand the threat of material punishment. The fulfilment of the
law is also encouraged by reflection on the profit which it brings. But,
since these motives are all external, they rise finally into the insight
that the law is to be fulfilled, not on their account, but because it is
the will of the Lord; not alone because it is conducive to our
happiness, but also because it is in itself holy, and written in our
hearts: in other words, man proceeds from the abstract legality, through
the reflection of eudaemonism, to the internality of moral senti