f motive powers of sense.
a. The child. Still quite animal; or, rather more and at the same time
less than animal--human animal (for that being which at some time shall
be called man can at no time have been only animal). More wretched than
an animal, because he has not even instinct--the animal-mother may with
less danger leave her young than the mother abandon her child. Pain may
force from him a cry, but will never direct him to the source from which
it comes. The milk may give him pleasure, but he does not seek it. He
is altogether passive.
His thinking rises only to sensation.
His knowledge is but pain, hunger--and what binds these together.
b. The boy. Here we have already reflection, but only in so far as it
bears upon the satisfaction of the animal impulse. "He learns to value,"
says Garve [Observations on Ferguson's "Moral Philosophy," p. 319], "the
things of others, and his actions in respect of others, first of all
through the fact of their affording him [sensuous] pleasure."
A love of work, the love to his parents, to friends, yea even love to
God, must go along the pathway of physical sense [Sinnlichkeit] to reach
his soul. "That only is the sun," as Garve elsewhere observes, "which in
itself enlightens and warms: all other objects are dark and cold; but
they too can be warmed and illumined when they enter into such a
connection with the same as to become partakers of its rays."
[Observations on Ferguson's "Moral Philosophy," p. 393.] The good things
of the spirit possess a value with the boy only by transferrence--they
are the spiritual means to an animal end.
c. Youth and man. The frequent repetition of this process of induction
at last brings about a readiness, and the transferrence begins to
discover a beauty in what at first was regarded simply as a means. The
youth begins to linger in the process without knowing why. Without
observing it, he is often attracted to think about this means. Now is
the time when the beams of spiritual beauty in itself begin to fall upon
his open soul; the feeling of exercising his powers delights him, and
infuses an inclination to the object which, up to this time, was a means
only: the first end is forgotten. His enlightened mind and the richer
store of his ideas at last reveal to him the whole worth of spiritual
pleasures--the means has become the highest end.
Such is the teaching more or less of the history of each individual man--
whose means of educa
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