se, as they
appear in the translation, be easily located.--_Tr._]

INTRODUCTION.

Sec. 1. The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a simple principle
with such exactness as Logic and Ethics. It is rather a mixed science
which has its presuppositions in many others. In this respect it
resembles Medicine, with which it has this also in common, that it must
make a distinction between a sound and an unhealthy system of education,
and must devise means to prevent or to cure the latter. It may therefore
have, like Medicine, the three departments of Physiology, Pathology, and
Therapeutics.

Sec. 2. Since Pedagogics is capable of no such exact definitions of its
principle and no such logical deduction as other sciences, the treatises
written upon it abound more in shallowness than any other literature.
Short-sightedness and arrogance find in it a most congenial atmosphere,
and criticism and declamatory bombast flourish in perfection as nowhere
else. The literature of religious tracts might be considered to rival
that of Pedagogics in its superficiality and assurance, if it did not
for the most part seem itself to belong, through its ascetic nature, to
Pedagogics. But teachers as persons should be treated in their
weaknesses and failures with the utmost consideration, because they are
most of them sincere in contributing their mite for the improvement of
education, and all their pedagogic practice inclines them towards
administering reproof and giving advice.

Sec. 3. The charlatanism of educational literature is also fostered by the
fact that teaching has become one of the most profitable employments,
and the competition in it tends to increase self-glorification.

--When "Boz" in his "Nicholas Nickleby" exposed the horrible mysteries
of an English boarding-school, many teachers of such schools were, as he
assures us, so accurately described that they openly complained he had
aimed his caricatures directly at them.--

Sec. 4. In the system of the sciences, Pedagogics belongs to the Philosophy
of Spirit,--and in this, to the department of Practical Philosophy, the
problem of which is the comprehension of the necessity of freedom; for
education is the conscious working of one will on another so as to
produce itself in it according to a determinate aim. The idea of
subjective spirit, as well as that of Art, Science, and Religion, forms
the essential condition for Pedagogics, but does not contain its
princi