Hegel's educational ideas

Contents

I. Preliminary View 15

II. Hegel's Personality and Environment 25

III. General Educational View Im-

Preface

The concept at the heart of the science current at the present day is expressed in the word ** Evolution." So far as it refers directly to the inorganic world, this concept takes shape in the expressions : " Conservation of Energy " and " Correlation of Forces." As applied to the organic kingdom, the same concept assumes the aspect indicated by the phrase '' Natural Selection."

Thus far the science of the day has to do chiefly with those processes — i. e., concrete relations — which are unfolded in and through forms occupying space. These forms, acting directly upon the sense-organs, appeal immediately to the sensuous consciousness. In the main, therefore, scientific works within this sphere consist of vivid and presumably precise descriptions of phenomena. Not infrequently apology is offered for adding to the de- 5 scription serious discussion of the '' abstract " principles involved in the phenomena.

Nevertheless, though the idea of evolution has so generally appeared in merely implicit rather than explicit or actually reasoned-out form, in treatises that have passed as '* scientific," this very fact has not been without its compensation. There has indeed been positive advantage in the pictorial and dogmatic form in which this central feature in the thought of the time has been so generally presented. As pic torial it has appealed directly to the imagination. As dogmatically expressed, it has appealed to the element of faith inherent in the human mind. Thus it has rapidly made its way into general recognition and acceptance.

The pedagogical intimations contained in all this are of the greatest value ; and we are now in full swing of the attempt to possess ourselves of that value. So eager have we been in this attempt, besides, that many of us are even now but just be-

Preface. J

ginning to suspect the gravity of the dangers it involves. The aspects of the world appealing to the sensuous consciousness have exercised such fascination upon us that for the time being the reflective consciousness has been held in abeyance — maintained in a state of comparative '' inhibition." We have thus unawares actually been delivering ourselves over to the relatively rudimentary phase of consciousness as to an infallible guide, and neglecting the cultivation of the more adequate phase consisting of the reflective consciousness. This, too, on the assumption that somehow the latter must inevitably land us in the limbo of hopeless contradictions. Yet the divine instinct of Reason in us is not wholly to be suppressed ; and its protest against the attempt to impale thought upon the microscropist's needle, and by the magic of some new X-ray power compel the non-extended to assume sensuously visible form, has at length taken the special direction of serious psychological research. From our exuberant contemplation of material forms we are turning with increasing evidence of anxiety to the consideration of mental modes.

But even this instinctive struggle illustrates in most impressive fashion the spell under which the mind of the time is still more or less completely bound. Ignoring the fact that mind can be known by mind alone, and be known alone to mind, we have been assured that a "new" psychology has taken the place of the " old ;" that the true psychology consists in a mass of " truths " attained through a study of the nervous system ; in short, we have been asked, with much show of seriousness, to accept a ** psychology without the psyche."

By degrees, however, we are beginning to recognize that only the workings of an actual psyche could give rise even to such '' psychology ;" and so, grateful for the numerous, and often helpful, clews the '* new psychology " affords us, we are beginning to brace ourselves to the really serious task of studying mind as Mind — mind in its essential, universal, typical nature.

Most helpful of all the clews of which modern science has emphasized the value, indeed, is this : that spiritual as well as physical ^Reality can be known only through its appearance — which in truth is not so far from saying with Spinoza, that "attributes are what constitute the essence of Substance." So that if we are really to know mind, we must observe mind itself.

But this throws us back upon the processes of mind as involved in the actual normal development of mind. In other words, it refers us to the whole process of education in its widest sense, as involving the essential facts to be co-ordinated and given accurate valuation in any really vital psychology. And the reciprocal of this is that if we would really comprehend the true significance of education, whether in respect of its aim or of its means or of its method, we must be guided

* And it may turn out that the latter is only an aspect of the former.

lo Preface.

in our study by the principles of a sound psychology.

Clearly then the study of Natural Science forces us forward to the study of psychology; while the study of psychology necessarily leads us on to thoroughly re-examine education as constituting in its total range the positive process in which the phenomena of mind may be traced, not only in their essential, vital relation to each other, but also in their actual concrete evolution. In other words, we are driven to consider the total, universal nature of mind, both in its inner and in its outer phases. And this again necessarily involves the study of all the essential aspects of relation into which the individual mind can enter with other things.

Finally, when this survey has been completed, it is discovered that Education is the process of developing the individual mind through bringing it into ever increasingly complex actual — and that means conscious — relation with the total World or Universe, as the expression of the one ultimate Reason or primal Cause of all, including the individual mind itself.

Throughout this whole research, as we may now observe, there is at every step increasingly imperative need of safe guidance. Such safe guidance, again, is to be found only in the organically unfolded thought of the world (universe), as expressed in the teachings of the great systematizers who have marked the great epochs in the evolution of human intelligence. Among these, Aristotle in ancient times, and Hegel in modern times, have presented the most comprehensive and consistent systematizations of human thought.

Like Aristotle, Hegel has been rejected by the impatient, and despised by the thoughtless. Nevertheless the truth remains, that whoever would set Aristotle or Hegel or any other great thinker aside as " antiquated," must first master such thinker's total thought, and show its imperfections. Otherwise he but exposes his own emptiness and conceit.

Thus the great and growing interest of the present day in mind, and in education as the process of the normal unfolding of mind, is inevitably referring us to the great thinkers for stimulus and guidance in our task of deepening and revising our knowledge of what mind essentially is, as well as of the true mode of its development. In this deeply significant and promising movement thoughtful minds are gravitating more and more definitely toward Hegel as the one who thus far has presented in clearest and most adequate form the true philosophic ground of all science and of all educational work, rightly so called. And if we are, as it were, predestined to go to school to him, it is because he obediently went to school to all the world, and learned from them the central clew to the actual evolution of the thought of the race as progressively reflecting the thought of the eternal Mind, which again constitutes the absolute law of the development of the individual human mind.

The following essay is an attempt to interpret Hegel's theory with direct reference to the educational needs of our own time. It is believed that this theory will be found to justify whatever is really good in the " New Education," and also to furnish adequate ground for the rejection of whatever it presents of the spurious and merely novel.

We may add, finally, that Hegel is not properly to be looked upon as a competitor with Pestalozzi and Froebel and Herbart for the honors of educational leadership. Rather he presents in his system of philosophy as a whole a universal scheme of education in which each of these great reformers finds his proper place and due relation. If this scheme is not found in the present essay, the fault must be credited to the present writer.

I am indebted to my son. Max Miiller Bryant, for valuable assistance in reading the proof.

HEGEL'S EDUCATIONAL IDEAS.

I. Preliminary View

It is a matter of frequent remark that Hegel was one of those fortunate individuals who come to be born " in the fullness of time." He lived at the culmination of a great epoch in the spiritual history of mankind.

In the sixteenth century Luther had given articulate expression to the universal sense of protest against the demand for unreasoning submission to mere authority in morals and religion. In the seventeenth century Descartes gave utterance to the same spirit of protest, though by him the protest was directed against unreasoning submission to mere authority 15

1 6 HegeVs Educatiojial Ideas.

within the realm of speculative science. In the eighteenth century the rising spirit of Individualism gradually assumed political form, and at length burst forth in the French Revolution.

In the mind of Locke this principle had developed, not so much in the form of a universal principle applicable to all men alike, as in the form of a staid, respectable self-assertion appropriate to a member of a cultivated English household.^ Rousseau, while borrowing from Locke, yet wrenched the idea of individualistic right and individual destiny completely free from the limitations of the mild form in which Locke had rendered it familiar to the English-speaking people, and with fierce energy proclaimed it as the central characteristic native in every man.

It was thus that Rousseau came at once to be recognized as the apostle of the revolutionary spirit, and that he proved to be the actual and specially appropriate

* Cf. Erdmann, Historv of PJnlosophy (Trans. Williston S. Hough), II., no.

Preiimi'nary View. 17

prophet of the Revolution. If, as he taught, individual man is already good when he comes from the hand of nature, and is only ruined by Society, then, as an individual, man has the right to turn upon and destroy Society.

Such reckless intellectualism has its offset in the devoutly ethical, but still essentially individualistic, spirit of Kant, who summed up the whole of philosophy in its practical import in the declaration that, in all the world there is nothing good ''except a good will."* But also, it is important to remember that, by a *' good will," he meant not the mere individual will, as it comes directly from the hand of nature (Rousseau's view), but rather the individual will, enlightened and disciplined through the practical unfolding of its normal social relations in the full range of all their normal aspects.

Let us note now that all these elements, revolutionary and restraining, were already

^ Kant's Theory of Ethics (Trans. Abbott), 4tb ed., p. 9. 2

HegeVs Edncatio7ial Ideas.

in full swing of seething ferment when, in 1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was ushered into individual existence in this world of ours. Such storm-brewing atmosphere he breathed from his infancy. As a youth he witnessed the bursting of the storm, and felt through his whole being the awakening force of the shock. In his maturer years he saw the full measure of destructiveness involved in the unrestrained fury of the mere crude natural individualism of Rousseau. It was thus that he was led to penetrate to the deepest secret of that transfigured individualism which never emerges into fullness of definition save in the character of a second birth. And this spiritual regeneration in turn is possible in no other way than through conscious and deliberate self-restraint within the limits of a rational social organization.

Naturally enough, the youthful Hegel, like the youthful Goethe, was dazzled by the splendor of the Titan, Napoleon. Even as late as 1806 he refers to him as

Preliminary View. 19

" this World-Soul."^ On the other hand the mature Hegel, like the mature Goethe, turned resolutely away from the Titan, and paid his deeper homage to the actual Divinity, which he more and more clearly saw to be struggling into ever richer degrees of self-realization in humanity as a whole, and also in each individual member of the race.

Such may serve as a hint in explanation of the fact that the writings of Hegel are everywhere so strikingly pervaded with the calmly reasoned assurance of the divine nature of man as genuine individual Person. Equally, too, does the inevitable inference, that because of this divine nature man as individual is immortal and weighted with an infinite destiny, appear as the fundamental tone in every line.

Thus Hegel may rightly be regarded as the representative of absolute Individualism, in which the individual human soul is seen as at once the vibrant focus of all divine influences, and as the infinitely pro-

*Thaulovv, HegeT s Ansichten, III., 165.

20 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas.

phetic germ of all divine qualities, and hence, as the central object of interest in all the universe, so far as the universe is viewed as a process of evolution from lower to higher forms.

Hence, also, the whole of the Hegelian system is the absolute denial of exclusive right on the part of any '' royal " personaee to declare of himself, " I am the state," because the whole of that system is the absolute declaration of right on the part of each and every member of the Jiuinan race to make and verify that declaration of and for himself.

And because Right and Duty are but obverse aspects of one and the same relation, it is equally the duty of each and every member of the race to practically assert the organic oneness of the State Avith himself. For true Royalty inheres in every human being ; a Royalty bearing within it the inalienable, because divine. Right to all the conditions, negative and positive, needful for his own complete self-unfolding.

Preliminary View. 21

Such, in brief, may be taken as a preliminary intimation of the central practical characteristic of the Hegelian philosophy. And because this in turn is but the summarizing and fusing into organic unity of all the vital results of the entire ferment of the spirit of Individualism in its deepest import, Hegel may be called in respect of this, as long ago he was called in respect of the whole field of speculative thought : " the Harvester " — the one who had only to gather, and arrange in bundles, and store, the ripened fruit of other men's labors.

*'Only!" His wisdom was nothing more than that of selection, and arrangement, and discovery of vital relations, and bringing to view of essential values, and showing, as had never been shown before, that the world is one infinite organic Whole, whose inner creative principle is absolute, eternal Mind, and whose outer form is but the manifestation of that Mind — such manifestation culminating in conscious units identical in nature with that Mind. That is all.

In fact, it is just this view that the world is the product of Mind and cuhninates in mind that constitutes the real clew to Hegel's educational principles ; and equally it is this that explains how it happens that throughout Hegel's writings are found everywhere references to educational needs and conditions and appliances ; so much so that one may very well conclude that every word Hegel deemed worth the trouble of recording was set down because to him it pointed the way to the education of man in the sense of the unfolding of the divine nature in each individual man.

It would even lead us to suspect that Hegel intended his whole system to find its practical culmination in the systematic exposition of the fundamental principles underlying the aims, the means and the methods of Education. And in fact, a letter from Hegel to Niethammer indicates his intention of writing out what he significantly calls a Staatspddogogik; that is, a science of Education in which education is viewed as on the one side, a function of

Preliminary Vieiu. 23

the social organism, and on the other, as the individual's own development through his reactions upon the whole round of the institutional life in which he is involved.*

Nor can we doubt that, as Thaulow confidently believes,f Hegel would have carried out this design but for the sudden termination of his life, while yet in the full vigor of his mental power.

In the following essay, I shall attempt to present, in as clear, connected and concise a form as possible, what I conceive to have been Hegel's educational ideas, as these appear by way of seemingly incidental remark and illustration scattered throughout his various works ; and I shall also endeavor to show how, when brought together, these occasional notes of his on the subject of education simply expand into detailed form the central idea of the human mind in the normal process of its own development — the idea which, as already indicated, constitutes the practical,

* Cf. Rosenkranz : HegeT s Leben, p. 254, f HegeVs Ansichten, III., 5.

24 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas.

living core of Hegel's whole system of philosophy. It need hardly be added that what I shall have to say must of course assume, in large measure, the character of interpretation. How far the interpretation is faithful to the original the critical reader will judge for himself.

Before entering upon this, however, it will be well to bring before our minds, though it be ever so briefly, Hegel's own personality.

Ht\^cl's Personality and Environment. 25

II. Hegel's Personality And Environ- Ment

Already in the sixteenth century the Protestant ferment forced upon the ancestors of Hegel the choice between conviction and comfort — between inward peace coupled with outward struggle on the one hand, and outward calm, with inward unrest, on the other. The choice was in favor of the deeper conviction of Right ; and this involved the breaking up of established associations and the entering into new relations, the emigration from Catholic Austria into Protestant Schwabia.

Lying in a valley, but commanding an extended view, is the capital city, Stuttgart. Here, on the 27th of August, 1770, was born the child who was to become the philosopher in whose educational ideas we are now centering our interest.

Everywhere man is more or less distinctly the child of Mother Earth; and the Schwabian character has a pecuHarity of texture due to the Schwabian land. So that Rosenkranz' reference to Hegel's '' ticfcn dcht Schwdbischen, Innigkcit,'''^ to his deep, genuine Schwabian Internality, or tendency to serious reflection, is by no means merely a figure of speech.

Similarly, on the other hand, there can be no doubt that the passing of his early life in the city which constituted, not only the focus of all the interests of Schwabia, but also one of the foci of the more general interests of Protestant Germany, served as an offset to the revery-inviting quiet of the beautiful mountain-bordered valley, and stimulated the mind of the gifted boy to inquire into the secrets of the currents of human interest that were ceaselessly mingling in the life of the town. And this the more as the employment of his father in the public service brought the family into direct and varied relation with many persons of high official rank — persons constituting the immediate

* HcgeVs Leben, p. 5.

Hegel's Personality and Environment. 27

embodiment of actual current public interests.

Under these circumstances it was but natural that there should develop in such a mind as that of the youthful Hegel an "all-sided attentiveness," amounting to a special alertness as toward every sort of aim and activity. Nor was it less natural that through his native " Schwabian internality " this all-sided attentiveness should deepen into a lively desire for systematized knowledge along every line of inquiry open to the human mind.

Neither can we doubt that the clerical precision and formal finish of the official life with which he was surrounded during his early years impressed him deeply ; and so much so as to account in part for the I pains-taking, methodical way in which throughout his whole life he pursued his studies. Especially would this seem to be the case in respect of his voluminous note-books. Nor does it seem unreasonable to suppose also that this entered as a subordinate but appreciable factor into his high estimate of formal finish and methodical completeness and consistency in the working out of the details of his System of Philosophy. However this may be, the fact is beyond dispute that Hegel is, above \ everything else, just the systematizer of human knowledge.

In this respect he is the man whose work, more than that of any other in the history of human thought, is rich in its suggestiveness for the teacher. For it is the teacher above all others, to whom, as such, Method is the very breath of life. And this because it is of the very essence of the daily life of the teacher to bring other minds to a consciousness of the true method of TJiinking as the process of the inner definition of life, and of Doings as the process of its outer definition.

Eager, yet methodical, enthusiastic, yet self-contained and logical, Hegel very early proved himself to be a representative at once of the spirit of the highly sophisticated eighteenth century *' Enlightenment " and of the buoyant spirit of

HegeVs Personality and Environment. 29

classical antiquity. Awake in the Present he was also awake to the Past. So that from the outset his instinct of methodical completeness, stimulated as we have seen, / forced him forward to read the Past in the light of the Present, and to interpret the Present as the normal fruit of the Past. The very conditions of his own mental evolution led him on by a logical necessity to the unfolding of his own famous '' historical method," and hence to the speedy transcending of the over-confident spirit of the Ajifkldriing,

Thus his school-days were occupied, not with mere mechanical conning and reciting of prescribed lessons. Rather the most significant picture presented to us in those days is that of Hegel, alone in his private room, working with quiet, unremitting intensity over books iiot assigned as text. These were by no means books of *' light literature." They were such books as the Psalms, the Iliad, Cicero's Letters, Euripides, Aristotle's Ethics, the CEdipus of Sophocles, Epictetus, Thucydides ; besides modern works in history, mathematics, science, art, criticism, philosophy and theology. From all of which he made careful and extended extracts.

Throughout all this, too, there was the gathering force of the prophetic instinct that was at length to unfold into such marvelously symmetrical and richly varied realization in the form of explicit and sustained thought.

For our present purpose, too, it is of especial moment to notice that even so early as his fourteenth year the central significance of education was already dawning upon him ; so that from that time forward he collected in his note-books significant sayings of various authors upon this theme, and more and more recorded his own ever-deepening reflections.

Thus, though we have no separate work upon education from the hand of Hegel, yet reflections upon the subject as gathered out of his works by Thaulow and published in 1853-54 cover some thousand closely printed pages !

HegeVs Pe7'S07iality and Ejivironment. 31

To all which we must add the further remark that the divided and helpless state of Germany, during the earlier part of Hegel's active life, could not but have the effect of throwing him back upon and intensifying his native reflectiveness or ** Schwabian internality," and in this indirect way could not but prove a really strong factor in his wonderfully thorough-going analysis of the possibilities and ultimate significance of the individual life in its subtler spiritual aspects. Such analysis, besides, could not fail to deepen and clarify his conviction as to the supreme significance of education. And as a matter of fact we do find him expressing himself upon this subject in that troublous period in the following positive terms: '^ The importance of a good education was never more manifest than under the conditions of our time. The inner treasure which parents give their children through a good education and through the use of institutions of learning are indestructible and retain their worth under all conditions."*

* From an Address of Hegel's.

HegeVs Educational Ideas.

III. General Educational View Implied In The Hegelian System

Of course no pretense can here be made to outline the system of philosophy developed by Hegel. At best we can do no more than indicate its central aim. The system itself is an organic whole, no part of which can really be comprehended save with reference to the whole.

The first draught of the system was struck out at a white heat in the " Phenomenology of Mind,'' a volume of about six hundred pages. After more fully elaborating the system, at a later period, Hegel undertook its condensation (while still preserving its now explicitly differentiated aspects) into a compass manageable by students. The result was the ^' E.ncyclopcEdia " in three volumes — {a) the Logic, {b) the Philosophy of Nature, (r) the Philosophy of Mind — amounting in all to fifteen hundred pages.

General Educational View. 33

{a) The Logic presents the system of thoitgJit as such. That is, it presents in systematic arrangement the fundamental categories of Reason, beginning with the simplest, and showing by the famous ''dialectical method" how, from its very nature, mind cannot rest in such simple, vacuous forms ; but by its own inherent energy necessarily unfolds into ever richer phases of consciousness until it reaches the idea of an eternally self-contained, self-conscious, self-active Energy, which, by that fact, is an eternally self-realizing, and therefore infinitely creative. Mind.

{p) The Philosophy of Nature is the interpretation of the phenomena of tJie 02iter IV or Id of nature, on the one hand, as constituting nothing else than the infinitely manifold forms in which that creative Energy forever manifests itself ; and on the other, as leading up to and culminating in that subtle complex of physical energy in which consists the human body — the medium in and through which the human soul emerges into conscious being. 3 y

(c) The PJiilosopJiy of Mind is the interpretation of the phenomena of the imier world of mind. It traces the evolution of the human mind through its merely natural qualities — that is, the qualities determined through external, natural influences — finds it emerging into individualized form as *' feeling soul," and again unfolding into the ** actual soul," which already begins to distinguish itself from its embodiment, and to command the latter, and thus already to give to it a significance properly described as ideal. Thus man stands erect, not because it is physiologically " natural " for him to do so, but only because he wills the upright attitude.

But this is only initial. The Philosophy of Mind traces further the fundamental forms of eo7iseiotisness, emphasizing especially the contrast between the merely sejtsiioiis consciousness, on the one hand, and on the other, ^^//'-consciousness, which, in its highest term, is the thinking consciousness, or Reason.

Following this a summary of Psychology

closes the treatment of the '' Subjective Mind;" i. e., Mind as self-related mdividiial.

But this necessarily implies an objective aspect of mind ; that is, it implies the outward manifestation of mind whose inner or subjective characteristics have thus far been considered. It is the consideration of mind in this phase which gives rise to the estimation of the practical relations into which the individual mind enters, and to the very brief summarizing of what Hegel presents more fully in his PJiilosopJiy of Right — that is, ethics from the objective or '' practical " point of view.

The last thirty pages indicate the various aspects of *' Absolute Mind," or Spirit. By which Hegel means the universal, ideal forms or degrees in which the human mind realizes its highest characteristics and finds its purest satisfaction. These forms are (i) Art, to which Hegel elsewhere devotes three volumes ; (2) Religion, to which he gives two volumes, and (3) Philosophy, to which he devoted his life, and to which the whole of his works, in eighteen volumes, are his amazingly rich contribution. Hegel's Logic is a search for the eternal forms of Reason. His Philosophy of Nature is an attempt to trace these abiding forms as in eternal process of manifestation in the eternally vanishing forms and phases of the outer world. His Philosophy of Mind indicates the way by which the human soul *' struggles upward out of nature into spirituality.""^

In the Hegelian system of Philosophy, then, there is presented a reasoned, articulated account of the total organic round of Evolution, f The Logic culminates in a glimpse of the Eternal Mind, whose absolute Internality is focused in God. In the Philosophy of Nature this same absolute, divine Internality is seen unfolding its creative energy into the form of that infinite Externality which we call Nature.

f It is Hegel, and not Darwin, nor yet Herbert Spencer who is the real author of the modern doctrine of evolution.

General Educational View. 37

In the Philosophy of Mind we see the same infinite creative Energy again gathering itself into foci, constituting human souls — units characterized by the same absolute Internality as that which constitutes the central, vital element of the Eternal creative Energy or Mind itself.