ertake it when the undertaking meant its own
destruction? "Nature" must then be the power to which the enterprise was
to be left. Even the extreme sensationalistic theory of knowledge which
was current derived itself from this conception. To insist that mind is
originally passive and empty was one way of glorifying the possibilities
of education. If the mind was a wax tablet to be written upon by
objects, there were no limits to the possibility of education by means
of the natural environment. And since the natural world of objects is
a scene of harmonious "truth," this education would infallibly produce
minds filled with the truth.

5. Education as National and as Social. As soon as the first enthusiasm
for freedom waned, the weakness of the theory upon the constructive side
became obvious. Merely to leave everything to nature was, after all, but
to negate the very idea of education; it was to trust to the accidents
of circumstance. Not only was some method required but also some
positive organ, some administrative agency for carrying on the process
of instruction. The "complete and harmonious development of all
powers," having as its social counterpart an enlightened and progressive
humanity, required definite organization for its realization. Private
individuals here and there could proclaim the gospel; they could
not execute the work. A Pestalozzi could try experiments and exhort
philanthropically inclined persons having wealth and power to follow his
example. But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective pursuit of the new
educational ideal required the support of the state. The realization
of the new education destined to produce a new society was, after all,
dependent upon the activities of existing states. The movement for the
democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and
administered schools.

So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the
movement for a state-supported education with the nationalistic movement
in political life--a fact of incalculable significance for subsequent
movements. Under the influence of German thought in particular,
education became a civic function and the civic function was identified
with the realization of the ideal of the national state. The "state" was
substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave way to nationalism. To
form the citizen, not the "man," became the aim of education. 1 The
historic situation to which reference is made