To endeavor to hold him in
the position of a pupil after this time has been reached would be to
contradict the very essence of education, which must find its result in
the independent maturity of the youth. The inequality which formerly
existed between pupil and teacher is now removed, and nothing becomes
more oppressive to the former than any endeavor to force upon him the
authority from which, in reality, his own efforts have freed him. But
the undue hastening of this emancipation is as bad an error as an effort
after delay. The question as to whether a person is really ready for
independent action--as to whether his education is finished--may be
settled in much the same way in education as in politics. When any
people has progressed so far as to put the question whether they are
ready for freedom, it ceases to be a question; for, without the inner
consciousness of freedom itself, the question would never have occurred
to them.

Sec. 50. But, although the pupil may rightly now be freed from the hands of
instructors, and no longer obtain his culture through them, it is by no
means to be understood that he is not to go on with the work himself. He
is now to educate himself. Each must plan out for himself the ideal
toward which he must daily strive. In this process of
self-transformation a friend may aid by advice and example, but he
cannot educate, for the act of educating necessarily implies inequality
between teacher and pupil. The human necessity for companionship gives
rise to societies of different kinds, in which we may, perhaps, say that
there is some approach to educating their members, the necessary
inequality being supplied by various grades and orders. They presuppose
education in the usual sense of the word, but they wish to bring about
an education in a higher sense, and, therefore, they veil the last form
of their ideal in mystery and secrecy.

By the term _Philister_ the Germans indicate the man of a civilized
state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse
towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an
Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do
not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that
any active life, any new progress, is to them impossible?

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY.

Sec. 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It
borrows the results of other sciences [_e.g._, it presuppose