ment--the
course of all education.

--This last stand-point is especially represented in the excellent
Gnomic of Jesus Sirach--a book so rich in pedagogical insight, which
paints with master-strokes the relations of husband and wife, parents
and children, master and servants, friend and friend, enemy and enemy,
and the dignity of labor as well as the necessity of its division. This
priceless book forms a side-piece from the theocratic stand-point to the
_Republic_ of Plato and his laws on ethical government.--

Sec. 232. (2) The progress from the lower to the higher appeared in the
conquering of the natural individuality. Man, as the servant of Jehovah,
must have no will of his own; but selfish naturalness arrayed itself so
much the more vigorously against the abstract "Thou shalt," allowed
itself to descend into an abstraction from the Law, and often reached
the most unbridled extravagance. But since the Law in inexorable might
always remained the same, always persistent, in distinction from the
inequalities of the deed of man, it forced him to come back to it, and
to conform himself to its demands. Thus he learned criticism, thus he
rose from naturalness into spirit. This progress is at the same time a
progress from necessity to freedom, because criticism always gradually
opens a way for man into insight, so that he finds the will of God to be
the truth of his own self-determination. Because God is one and
absolute, there arises the expectation that His Will will become the
basis for the will of all nations and men. The criticism of the
understanding must recognize a contradiction in the fact that the will
of the true God is the law of only one nation; feared by other nations,
moreover, by reason of their very worship of God as a gloomy mystery,
and detested as _odium generis humani_. And thus is developed the
thought that the isolation of the believers will come to an end as soon
as the other nations recognize their faith as the true one, and are
received into it. Thus here, out of the deepest penetration of the soul
into itself, as among the Romans out of the fusion of nations, we see
appear the idea of the human race.

Sec. 233. (3) The progress from the past to the future unfolded the ideal
servant of God who fulfils all the Law, and so blots out the empirical
contradiction that the "Thou shalt" of the Law attains no adequate
actuality. This Prince of Peace, who shall gather all nations under his
banner, can th