f pedagogical despotism, which fancies that it can
command whatever culture it chooses for any one without regard to his
individuality.--

Sec. 49. (3) _The Absolute limit of Education_ is the time when the youth
has apprehended the problem which he has to solve, has learned to know
the means at his disposal, and has acquired a certain facility in using
them. The end and aim of Education is the emancipation of the youth. It
strives to make him self-dependent, and as soon as he has become so it
wishes to retire and to be able to leave him to the sole responsibility
of his actions. To treat the youth after he has passed this point of
time still as a youth, contradicts the very idea of Education, which
idea finds its fulfilment in the attainment of majority by the pupil.
Since the accomplishment of education cancels the original inequality
between the educator and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay,
revolting to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence
from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned.

--The opposite extreme of the protracting of Education beyond its proper
time is necessarily the undue hastening of the Emancipation.--The
question whether one is prepared for freedom has been often opened in
politics. When any people have gone so far as to ask this question
themselves, it is no longer a question whether that people are prepared
for it, for without the consciousness of freedom this question would
never have occurred to them.--

[Sidenote: _Arrival at the age of Majority._]

Sec. 50. Although educators must now leave the youth free, the necessity of
further culture for him is still imperative. But it will no longer come
directly through them. Their pre-arranged, pattern-making work is now
supplanted by self-education. Each sketches for himself an ideal to
which in his life he seeks to approximate every day.

--In the work of self-culture one friend can help another by advice and
example; but he cannot educate, for education presupposes
inequality.--The necessities of human nature produce societies in which
equals seek to influence each other in a pedagogical way, since they
establish by certain steps of culture different classes. They presuppose
Education in the ordinary sense. But they wish to bring about Education
in a higher sense, and therefore they veil the last form of their ideal
in the mystery of secrecy.--To one who lives on contented with himself
and without the im