« L E V A N A; OR, THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF . JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH'EICHTEE, AUTHOR OF "flower, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES," " TITAN," ETC., ETC. BOSTON; TICK NOR ANeTfIELDS 1863. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, and Company, Cambridge. BetFicatetr To Her Majesty, CAROLINE, QUEEN OF BAVARIA, WITH THE PROFOUNDEST RESPECT OF the author. Most Gracious Queen ! — THE author would consecrate Levana to mothers by your royal name, as the banners which a princess has worked receive fresh victorious power. Your Majesty will graciously pardon the dedication of a work which Germany, by the approbation expressed in the demand for a new, improved edition, has already dedicated to a Princess, who, in its best parts, will but find her own recollections. If, even in the lowest ranks, a mother's heart is woman's honor, — the sun which gently warms and dries the dew-drops of early tears, — this sun delights the beholder most when it stands highest and cherishes the distant future, and when a noble mother multi- plies her heart as well as her beauty, and blesses distant ages and countries with her image. This delight becomes still greater if the mother also is the mother of her country, and raises her sceptre like a magic wand which converts tears of sorrow into tears of joy ere it dries them. Should the profound respect of a subject forbid him to express this joy in a Dedication ? With most profound respect, Your Majesty's Most obedient, humble servant, JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE, T a time when the public mind is so fully awakened to the importance of educa- tion, it appeared to the Translator that the thoughts of one of the greatest Germans on the subject were worthy of deep consideration ; and he offers them with the more satisfaction, because he believes it impossible either for the advocates or for the opponents for the government scheme of education to draw offensive weapons from this arsenal. For Levana treats neither of national nor congregational education : it elevates neither state nor priest into educator ; but it devolves that duty, where the interest ever ought to be, on the parents, and particularly on the mother. It is far from the Translator's object to dispar- age the great efforts now making to improve the state of popular education ; but he believes that, in propounding general systems, it is too much for- VI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. gotten that real education is the work of individu- als on individuals. It may be necessary — it is necessary — to provide instruction, and, as far as possible, education, for the classes who are too ignorant to seek it for themselves. But let us not, in ihQ mania for systems, forget how little these alone can effect. And, further, we would ask, is the education of the upper classes so perfect that they may leave all care for it, to watch only over that of the lower ? If there be much of cri7ne — the acknowledged consequence of ignorance — among the masses, is there less of vice — the equally sure accompaniment of bad education — among the higher grades of society ? In the belief that Lev ana may tend much to ameliorate that department of education which is most neglected, and needs most care, — home training, — the Translator makes no apology for clothing it in an English dress. He is, indeed, surprised that it has not previously been presented to the English reader. But, like all Richter's writ- ings, Lev ANA is peculiarly characterized by that union of quali-ties called in England " German." This feature, especially when displayed in a work on so serious a subject as education, and being most strongly marked in the introductory chapters, TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii on which the reception of a book so much depends, may have led to its being considered unsuitable to English taste. The early part, indeed, may cause many to close the book, who would find much both to interest and instruct in a patient perusal of the whole work, combining as it does, in a remarkable degree, sound practical sense with fanciful and varied illustration. The acknowledged difficulty of Richter 's style has also, doubtless, had a deter- ring effect. Those who are acquainted with his writings w^ill be able to appreciate the difficulties which have beset the Translator, and will be the least inclined to judge harshly the shortcomings of the translation, as compared with its great origi- nal. For who — save Carlyle — can hope to do justice to the humorous, pathetic, poetic Richter ; to him whom his countrymen call " Jean Paul, der Einzige " ? The Translator thinks it right to add, that he has occasionally omitted, or compressed, a few sen- tences, where the general usefulness of the work was obviously increased by so doing. This discre- tion has, however, been very sparingly used, and in no case so as to interfere with the scope of the original. AUTHOR'S PREFACE, \ ^ k ^ 1 OYERRE only required from a good di- rector of the ballet — besides the art of dancing — geometry, music, poetry, painting, and anatomy. But to write upon education, means to write upon almost every- thing at once ; for it has to care for, and watch over, the development of an entire, though minia- ture, world in little, — a microcosm of the micro- cosm. All the energies with which nations have labored and signalized themselves once existed as germs in the hand of the educator. If we carried the subject still further, every century, every na- tion, and even every boy and every girl, would require a distinct system of education, a different primer, and domestic French governess, &c. If, consequently, on a subject like this, only acta sanctorum^ or, more correctly, sanctificandorum (acts less of saints than of those to be made saints), can be written, and if a folio be nothing more than a fragment, there cannot be, on such an inexhaustible subject, one book too much, even after the best, except the worst ; and where frag- X AUTHOR'S PREFACE. merits alone are possible, all that are possible com- plete the whole. The Author trusts thus to excuse his boldness as well as his poverty ; for both, as in the state, are nearly connected. He has not read everything which has been written upon education, but here and there something. First and last he names Rousseau's Emile. No preceding work can be compared to his ; the succeeding imitators and transcribers seem to resemble him more. Not Rousseau's individual rules, many of which may be erroneous without injury to the whole, but the spirit of education which fills and animates the work, has shaken to their foundations and purified all the school-rooms and even the nurseries in Europe. In no previous work on education was the ideal so richly and beautifully combined with actual observation as in his. He was a man, could therefore easily become a child, and so he mani- fested and saved the nature of children. Basedow was his intelligent translator and publisher in Germany, — this land of pedagogopaedists (of edu- cation of children's educators) and of love of children, — and Pestalozzi is now confirming Rousseau among the people. Individual rules, without the spirit of education, resemble a dictionary without a grammar of the language. A book of rules is not merely incapable of exhausting and distinguishing the infinite vari- ety of individual dispositions and circumstances ; but, even granting it were perfect itself, and able AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xi to make others perfect, it yet would but be like a system of remedies laboring to counteract some one symptom of a disease ; recommending, for in- stance, something of a reducing nature, to be taken before fainting, and to prevent tingling in the ears, and unnatural brilliancy of eye ; a tonic to cure paleness and coldness of the face ; an aperient for nausea. But this is worthless ! Do not, like com- mon educators, water the individual branches, but the roots, and they will moisten and unfold the rest. Wisdom and morality are no ants' colonies of separate, co-operating workmen, but organic parents of the mental future, which only require animating nourishment. We merely reverse the ignorance of the savages, who sowed gunpowder instead of making it, when we attempt to com- pound what can only be developed. But although the spirit of education, always watching ov^er the whole, is nothing more than an endeavor to liberate, by means of a freeman, the ideal human being which lies concealed in every child ; and though, in the application of the divine to the child's nature, it must scorn some useful things, some seasonable, individual, or immediate ends ; yet it must incorporate itself in the most definite applications, in order to be clearly mani- fested. Here tlie Author differs — but to his philosoph- ical disadvantage — from those transcendental su- perintendents of the school-room slates, who write thereon with so round a piece of chalk, that one XU AUTHOR'S PREFACE. may find in tlieir broad strokes whatever he de- sires, and who lay down a complete Brownian system of education in the two words, — strong, weak ; though, indeed. Brown's disciple, Schmidt, only uttered one word, — strong. Dr. Tamponet declared that he would trace heresies in the Lord's Prayer, if any one desired it ; our age, on the con- trary, knows how to find a Lord's Prayer in every heresy. A mother who has a particular child to educate can certainly extract no advantage from such philosophical indifferentism ; although that class of fine, high-sounding compilations always bears witness to a certain amount of artistic talent in their sonorousness and their theft ; hence. Gall justly found for this sense a place between the organs of music and purloining. But this language does not belong to the Pref- ace, and the object of this work has forbidden it to find a place in the book itself; wherefore, this may be regarded in form as my most serious produc- tion, to which only a short, occasional, comic Appendix shall be added. The reader will please to take it patiently if he find what has been already printed again printed here. What has been printed is necessary as the bond and bast-matting of what has not been printed ; but the bast-matting must not cover the whole garden, instead of merely tying up the trees. But there are two still better excuses. Known rules in education gain new force if new expe- rience verifies them. The Author has three times AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xiii been in the position of trying them upon different children of all ages and talents ; and he now en- joys with his own the pedagogic jus triiim libero- rum (law of three children) ; and every other person's experience related in this book has been made his own. Secondly, printing-ink now is like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly invisible as visible ; wherefore it is good to repeat old thoughts in the newest books, because the old works in which they stand are not read. New translations of many truths, as of foreign standard works, must be given forth every half-century. And, indeed, I wish that even old German standard books were turned into new German from time to time, and so could find their way into the circulating libra- ries. Why are there flower and weed gleanings of everything, but no wine or corn gleanings of the innumerable works on education ? Why should one single good observation or rule be lost because it is imprisoned in some monstrous folio, or blown away in some single sheet ? For dwarfs and giants, even in books, do not live long. Our age, this balloon, or air-ship, which, by simultaneous lighting of new lamps, and throwing out of old ballast, has constantly mounted higher and higher, might now, I should think, cease to throw out, and rather lovingly endeavor to collect than to disperse the old. However little so disjointed a collection of thoughts could teach rules, it would yet arouse XIV AUTHOR'S PREFACE. and sharpen the educational sense, from which they originally sprung. Therefore every mother — still better every bride — ought to read the many-volumed and, in another sense, many-sided revision of education, to which no nation can op- pose anything similar ; she sliould read it, and cut and polish herself, like a precious stone, by it on every side, so that her individuality of character may all tlie more readily discover, protect, revere, and cherish the dim manifestations of it in her child. Something very different from such a progres- sive cabinet of noble thoughts, or even from my weak Levana, with her fragments in her arms, is the usual kind of complete system of education which one person after another has written, and will write. It is difficult, — I mean the end, not the means. For it is very easy to proceed with bookbinder's and bookmaker's paste, and fasten together a thousand selected thoughts with five of your own, especially if you conscientiously remark in the Preface that you have availed yourself of the labors of your predecessors, yet make no men- tion of one in the work itself, but sell such a min iature library in one volume to the .reader as a mental facsimile of yourself. How much better in this case were a hole-maker than a liole-hider ! How much better were it if associated authors (I mean those friendly hundreds who move along one path, uttering precisely the same sound) entirely died out, — as Humboldt tells us that in the tropi- AUTHOR'S PREFACE. XV cal regions there are none of those sociable plants which make our forests monotonous, but next each tree a perfectly different one grows. A diary about an ordinary child would be much better than a book upon children by an ordinary writer. Yes, every man's opinions about education would be valuable if he only wrote what he did not copy. The author, unlike a partner, should always only say " I," and no other word. The first part of this work treats at large of the budding — the second and third of the blossoming — season of childhood. In the first, the three early years, like the academic triennium, after which the gate of the soul, language, is opened, are the object of care and observation. Here, edu- cators are the Hours who open or close the gates of heaven. Here, true education, the developing^ is yet possible ; by whose means the long second, the curative^ may be spared. For the child, — yet in native innocence, before his parents have become his serpents on the tree, — speechless, still unsus- ceptible of verbal empoisonment, — led by customs, not by words and reasons, therefore all the more easily moved on the narrow and small pinnacle of sensuous experience ; — for the child, I say, on this boundary-line between the monkey and the man, the most important era of life is contained in the years which immediately follow his non-exist- ence, in which, for the first time, he colors and moulds himself by companionship with others. The parent's hand may cover and shelter the ger- xvi AUTHOR'S PREFACE.. minating seed, but not the luxuriant tree : conse- quently, first faults are the greatest ; and mental maladies, unlike the small-pox, are the more dan- gerous the earlier they are taken. Every new educator effects less than his predecessor ; until at last, if we regard all life as an educational institu- tion, a circumnavigator of the world is less in- fluenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse. At least this book has been composed with warm- est love for the little beings, the delicate flower- gods of a soon fading Eden. May Levana, the motherly goddess, who was formerly entreated to give a father's heart to fathers, hear the prayer which the title of this book addresses to her, and, in doing so, justify both it and this. The demands of the state or of learning, unfortunately, rob the child of half its father. The education of most fathers is but a system of rules to keep the child at a respectful distance from them, and to form him more with regard to their quiet than his powers ; or, at most, under a tornado of wrath, to impart as much meal of instruction as he can scatter. But I would ask men of business what education of souls rewards more delightfully and more immediately than that of the innocent, who resemble rosewood, which imparts its odor even while being carved and shaped ? Or what now remains to the decaying world — among so many ruins of what is noblest and ancientest — except children, the pure beings yet unfalsified by the age and the world ? Only AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xvii they, with a higher object than that for which they were formerly used, can behold futurity and truth in the magic mirror, and with bandaged eyes draw the precious lot from the wheel of chance. The words that the father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world ; but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity. It would be my greatest reward if, at the end of twenty years, some reader as many years old should return thanks to me, that the book which he is then reading was read by his parents. JEAN PAUL FK EICHTER. Baireuth, May 2, 1806. Contents. Page 1 FIRST FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Importance of Education II. Inaugural Discourse at the Johanneum-Paullinum ; OR, Proof that Education effects little . . 5 III. Importance of Education 20 SECOND FRAGMENT. I. Spirit and Principle of Education .... 29 II., To Discover and to Appreciate the Individuality of the Ideal Man 36 ni. On the Spirit of the Age 42 IV. Religious Education 53 THIRD FRAGMENT. I. The Beginning of Education 67 II. The Joyousness of Children 76 III. Games of Children 82 IV. Children's Dances 95 V. Music 98 VI. Commands, Prohibitions, Punishments, and Crying 100 VII. Punishments 109 XX CONTENTS. VIII. Screaming and Crying of Children ... 117 IX. On the Trustfulness of Children .... 122 APPENDIX TO THE THIRD FRAGMENT. On Physical Education . . • 127 COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE TO THE FIRST VOLUME. A DREAMED LeTTER TO THE LATE PROFESSOR GeLLERT, IN \YHicH THE Author begs for a Tutor .... 148 FOURTH FRAGMENT. ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 1 161 II. On the Destination of the Female Sex . . 168 III. Nature of Women 175 IV. Education of Girls 188 V. Private Instructions of a Prince to the Gov- erness OF his Daughter 226 FIFTH FRAGMENT. I. On the Education of a Prince 241 SIXTH FRAGMENT. ON THE MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. .1 277 II. Truthfulness 299 III. Education of the Affections 310 IV. Supplementary Appendix to Moral Education . 325 CONTENTS. xxi SEVENTH FRAGMENT. I. On the Development of the Desire for Intellec- tual Progress 342 II. Speech and Writin^ 345 III. Attention, and the Power of Adaptive Combina- tion 853 IV. Development of Wit 362 V. Development of Reflection, Abstraction, and Self-Knowledge ; together with an extra Para- graph on the Powers of Action and Business . 368 VI. On the Education of the Recollection, — not of the Memory 370 EIGHTH FRAGMENT. I. Development of the Sense of Beauty . . . 378 II. Classical Education 384 NINTH FRAGMENT, or Conclusion . . . .390 LEVANA; OR, THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. FIRST FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Importance of Education, §§ 1-3. — Chap. IT. Discourse against its Influence, §§ 4 - 15. — Chap. III. Discourse for the same, §§ 16-20. CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. § 1. HEN Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction ; unhke ordinary educators, who precisely re- verse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands be- fore us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, but not enter ; and at the same time it renews for us the ages of the young world, behind which we must appear ; for the child of the most civil- ized capital is a born Otaheitan, and the one-year-old Sans-culotte a first Christian, and the last children of the earth came upon the world with the paradise of our first parents. So, according to Bruyn, the children of the 1 A 2 LEVANA. Samojeds are beautiful, and only the parents ugly. If there were a perfect and all-powerful system of education, and a unity of educators with themselves and with one another ; then, since each generation of children begins the history of the world anew, the immediate, and through it the distant future, into which we can now gaze and grasp so little, would stand much more fairly in our power. For deeds and books — the means by which we have hitherto been able to work upon the world — al- ways find it already defined, and hardened and full of people like ourselves ; only by education can we sow upon a pure, soft soil the seeds of poison or of honey- beai'ing flowers ; and as the gods to the first men, so do we, physical and spiritual giants to children, descend to these little ones, and form them to be great or small. It is a touching and a mighty thought that now, before their educator, the great spirits and teachers of our immediate posterity creep, as the sucklings of his milk-store, — that he guides future suns, like little wandering stars, in his leading-strings. And it is all the more important because he can neither know whether he has before him, to un- fold to good or evil, a hell-god for humanity, or a pro- tecting and light-giving angel ; nor can foresee at what dangerous moment of futurity the magician, who, trans- formed into a little child, now plays before him, will rise up a giant. §2. Our immediate future demands thought : our earth is filled with gunpowder, — like the age of the migration of nations, ours prepares itself for spiritual and political wanderings, and under all state buildings, professorial chairs, and temples the earth quakes. Do you know IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 3 whether the little boy who plucks flowers at your side may not one day, from his island Corsica, descend as a war-god, into a stormy universe, to play with storms and to destroy, or to purify and to sow ? Would it then be indifferent whether, in educating him, you had been his Fenelon, his Cornelia, or his Dubois ? For, although you might not be able to break or bend the power of genius, — the deeper the sea, the more precipitous the coast, — yet in the most important initiatory decade of life, in the first, at the opening dawn of all feelings, you might surround and overlay the slumbering lion energies with all the tender habits of a gentle heart and all the bands of love. Whether an angel or a devil educate that great genius is of far more importance than whether a learned doctor or a Charles the Simple teach liim. Although a system of education must, in the first in- stance, provide for the beings endowed with genius ; since these, though they seldom arise, yet alone rule the world's history, either as leaders of souls, or of bodies, or of both ; yet would such a system too much resemble a practical exposition of how to conduct one's self in case of winning the great prize, if it did not observe that the multitude of mediocre talents on which a great one can act are quite as important in the mass as the man of genius is in the individual. And therefore, since, on the one hand, you give to posterity, as alms to a beggar, through children ; and, on the other, must send these last, like unarmed men, into a hidden period whose poisonous gales you know not ; so there is nothing more important to pos- terity, than whether you send forth your pupil as the seed-corn of a harvest, or the powder-train of a mine, which destroys itself and everything with it : and nothing is more important to the child, than whether you have or 4 LEVANA. have not given him a magic jewel which may preserve and conduct him uninjured. Let a child be more holy to you than the present, which consists of things and matured men. By means of the child, — although with difficulty, — by means of the short lever-arm of humanity, you set in motion the long one, whose mighty arc you can scarcely define in the height and depth of time. But there is something else you certainly know, — namely, that the moral develop- ment — which is education, as the intellectual is instruc- tion — knows and fears no time nor futurity. In this you give to the child a heaven with a pole star, which may ever guide him in whatever new countries he may after- wards reach. §3. A perfect child would be a heavenly aurora of the soul ; at least its appearance would not be so variously restrained and so difficult as that of a perfect man. On him everything, from the state down to himself, exercises a forming influence ; but on the fresh child, parents repeat with full power the lawgiving, moulding, character of Lycurgus and of Moses ; they can separate their pupil from others, and form him without interference, better than a Spartan or Jewish state could do. Consequently one ought to expect more from the unlimited monarchy of parents. Children living in this kingdom, without Salic law, and in such an overflow of laws and lawgivers that the rulers are often more numerous than the ruled, and the governing house larger than the governed, — hav- ing everywhere before them cabinet orders, and offended majesties, and most rapid mandata sine clausula, and be- hind the glass the exalted sceptre of the rod, — possessing PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. 5 in their sovereign their bread-master, as well as their pain and pleasure master, and protected against him bj no foreign power ; for maltreatment of slaves is pun- ished in many countries, even of cattle in England, but nowhere of children, — children, then, thus absolutely governed without opposition party, or anti-ministerial gazette, and without representatives, should issue, one would think, out of this smallest state within the state, far better educated than grown-up persons educated in the greatest of all educational establishments, the state itself Nevertheless, both educational establishments and states seem to work so uniformly, that it is worth while, next to the necessity of education, to consider, in the two fol- lowing discourses, its possibility. CHAPTER II. INAUGURAL DISCOURSE AT THE JOHANNEUM-PAULLINÜM ; OR, PROOF THAT EDUCATION EFFECTS LITTLE. §4. MOST honored Inspector of Schools, Rector, Con- and Sub-rector, master of the third class ! most worthy teacher of the lower classes and fellow-laborers ! I hope I sliall, to the best of my abilities, express my pleasure at being inducted as lowest teacher into your educational establishment, by entering on my post of honor with the proof that school education, as well as home education, has neither evil consequences, nor any 6 LEVANA. other. If I am so fortunate as to lead us all to a quiet conviction of this absence of consequences, I may also possibly obtain that we shall all fill our laborious offices easily and cheerfully, without boasting, and with a cer- tain confidence that needs fear nothing ; every day we shall walk in and out among the pupils, sit on our teach- ing-chair as on an easy-chair, and let everything take its own course. First, I believe, I must set forth who are the educators and complete fashioners of children, — for fashioned, in one way or another, they are ; and in which way, rests with and in us ; — and afterwards I will naturally touch upon ourselves, and point out the easy change which may be effected. §5. "Whence comes it that hitherto no age has spoken, coun- selled, and done so much about education as our own ; and again, among nations, none so much as Germany, into which Rousseau's winged seeds have been blown out of France and ploughed in ? The ancients wrote and did little for it ; their schools were rather for young men than children, and in the philosophical schools of Athens, the learner frequently was, or might be, older than the teacher. Sparta was a Stoa, or garrison-school, at once for parents and children. The Romans had Grecian slaves for their schoolmasters, and yet their children be- came neither Greeks nor slaves. In the ages when the great and glorious deeds of Christendom, and knighthood, and freedom rose like stars on the dark horizon of Europe, school buildings lay scattered around as mere dull, little, dark, savage huts, or monks' cells. And what have the political vowels of Europe, the English, whose island PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. 7 is a school of citizens, and whose election every seven years is a wandering seven-day Sunday school ? — what have they hitherto better than mere establishments for mal-education ? Where do the children more resemble the parents — and to anything else than a mirror of him- self, be it a flat, a concave, or a convex one, the teacher cannot wish to mould and polish his pupil — than even in those places where the educators are silent, among sav- ages, Greenlanders, and Quakers ? And the further one looks back through past ages, to the hoary nations of antiquity, the fewer school-books and Cyropedias — in fact, from want of all books — were there : all the more was the man lost in the state ; all the less was the woman, who might have educated, formed for it : nevertheless, every child was the image of its par- ents, which is more than the best ought to desire, since God can only behold his own image in men as a carica- ture. And are not our present improved educational in- stitutions a proof that men can raise themselves freely and without aid from bad to better, and, consequently, to all other establishments of a similar kind ? §6. But who then educates in nations and ages ? — Both ! — The living time, which, for twenty or thirty years struggles unceasingly with men through actions and opin- ions, tossing them to and fro as with a sea of waves, must soon wash away or cover the precipitate of the short school years, in which only one man, and only words taught. The century is the spiritual climate of man, mere education the hot-house and forcing-pit, out of which he is taken and planted forever in the other. By century is here meant the real century, which may as often truly 8 LEVANA. consist of ten years, as of ten thousand, and which is dated, hke religious eras, only from great men. What can insulated words do against living present action ? The present has for new deeds also new words ; the teacher has only dead languages for the, to all appear- ance, dead bodies of his examples. The educator has himself been educated, and is already possessed, even without his knowledge, by the spirit of the age, which he assiduously labors to banish out of the youth (as a whole city criticises the spirit of the whole city). Only, alas! every one believes himself to stand so precisely and accurately in the zenith of the universe, that, according to his calculation, all suns and nations must culminate over his head ; and he himself, like the countries at the equator, cast no shadow save into himself alone. For were this not so, how could so many — as I also hereafter propose to do — speak of the spirit of the age, when every word implies a rescue from, and eleva- tion above it; just as we cannot perceive the ebb and flow of the tide in the ocean, but only at its boundaries, the coasts. In like manner, a savage cannot depict a sav- age so clearly as a civilized man can do. But in truth, the painters of the spirit of the age have for the most part represented the last one, nothing more. The great man, the poet and thinker, has never been so clearly known to himself, that the crystal light-holder and the hght have become one ; much less then have other men. However easily blooming every man may open towards the sky, he is yet drawn down by a root into the dark, fast earth. §7. The spirit of the nation and of the age decides, and is at once the schoolmaster and the school ; for it seizes on PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. 9 the pupil to form him with two vigorous hands and pow- ers ; with the living lesson of action, and with its unalter- able unity. If — to begin with unity — education must be, like the Testament, a continuous endeavor to withdraw the force of interrupting mixtures, then nothing builds up so strong as the present, which ceases not for a moment, and eternally repeats itself; and which, with joy and sor- row, with towns and books, with friends and enemies, in short, with thousand-handed life, presses and seizes on us. No teacher of the people continues so uniformly one with himself as the teaching people. Minds molten into masses lose something of their free movements: which bodies, for instance, that of the world, perhaps that of the universe, seem to gain by their very massiveness, and, like a heavy colossus, to move all the more easily along the old, iron-covered track. For however much mar- riages, old age, deaths and enmities, are in the individual case subject to the law of freedom, yet in a whole nation, lists of births and deaths can be made, by which it may be shown that in the Canton of Berne (according to Mad. de Sta^l) the number of divorces, as in Italy that of mur- ders, is the same from year to year. Must not, now, the little human being placed on such an eternally and ever similarly acting world, be borne as upon a flying earth, where the only directions that a teacher can give avail nothing, because he has first unconsciously received his line of movement upon it ? Thence, in spite of all re- formers and informers, nations, hke meadows, reach ever a similar verdure ; thence, even in capital cities, where all school-books and schoolmasters, and even parents of every kind, educate, the spirit maintains itself unalterably the same. Repetition is the mother not only of study, but also of 1* lO LEVANA. education. Like the fresco-painter, the teacher lays col- ors on the wet plaster which ever fade away, and which he must ever renew until they remain and brightly shine. Who then, at Naples for instance, lays the colors most frequently on the spiritual tablet of one individual, the one tutor, or the multitude of 30,000 advocates, 30,000 lazzaroni, and 30,000 monks; a threefold company of fates, or ninefold one of nine murderers, compared with which Vesuvius is a quiet man who suffers himself to be entreated by Saint Januarius * (although not in January) ? Certainly one might say that also in families there educates, besides the popular masses, a pedagogic crowd of people; at least, for instance, aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers, father, mother, godparents, friends of the family, the yearly domestics, and at the end of all the in- structor beckons with his forefinger, so that — could this force continue as long as it would gladly be maintained — a child, under these many masters, would resemble, much more than one thinks, an Indian slave, who wanders about with the inburnt stamps of his various masters. But how does the multitude disappear compared with the higher one, by which it was colored ; just as all the burnt marks of the slave yet cannot overcome the hot black coloring of the sun, but receive it as a coat of arms in a sable field? §8. The second mighty power by which the spirit of the age and people teaches and conquers is the living action. Not the cry, says a Chinese author, but the rising, of a wild duck impels the flock to follow^ him in upward flight. One war fought against a Xerxes inflames the heart quite differently, more purely and more strongly, than the pe- * The protecting saint of the Neapolitans against Vesuvius. PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. II rusal of it three times in Cornelius, Flutarch, and Herodo- tus : for this last, along with the whole teaching of school phrases, is merely an intellectual imitation in cork (a phelloplastic, according to Böttiger's retranslation into the Greek) in order easily to represent ancient temples and magnificent buildings in light cork forms. Yea, the mere ancestral images of deeds in Plutarch's Westminster Ab- bey cast the seeds of the divine word more deeply into the heart than one or a few thousand volumes of sermons full of true pulpit eloquence. Heaven ! if words could be compressed to deeds, only a thousand to one, could they yet arouse upon an earth in which j^ulpits, profes- sors' chairs, and libraries of all ages snow do^Ti unceas- ingly their most pure cold exhortations, one single passion to hurl forth volcanic fire ? Would not history then be surrounded with mere snow craters and icebergs ? Ah ! most respected teachers, if even we, with our great col- lege libraries, that preach to us for tens of years, have never once been brought so far as to become holy men for a month, nay for a week, what dare we expect from the few volumes of words which we let fall in school- hours? Or what more should the parents at home ex- pect? The pedagogic powerlessness of words is unfortunately confessed in a peculiar manner, which is daily renewed in each of us. Namely, every individual being is divided into a teacher and his scholars ; or is split up into the teacher's chah' and the scholars' form. Should you now believe that this perpetual house-tutor in the four cham- bers of the brain, — who daily gives private lessons to the sharer of his apartment, philanthropist, and boarder, — who is a morning, evening, and night preacher, — who never ceases with his conversatorium and repetitorium, — 12 LEVANA. who accompanies the pupil, whom he loves as himself and conversely, everywhere with notes of instruction as tutor on his travels, in idle hours and wine-drinkings, by seats on the throne, by the chair of instruction and else- where, — who, as the most unlimited head-master to be found under the skull, ever sleeps with his scholar, as a sergeant with a recruit, in the same bed, and from time to time reminds him of much when a man has forgotten himself, — in short, could you believe that this so ex- tremely rare Mentor, who «from the pineal-gland, as the lodging-place of the high light, eternally teaches down- ward ; nevertheless, after fifty and more judgments and years, has experienced nothing better in his Telema- chus, than what the pure Minerva (the well-known and anonymous Mentor in the Telemachus), with all her modesty, in the greatest head of the «world, in that of Jupiter, also had to experience, namely, that she could not spare her pupil a single one of his animal transfor- mations ? This, indeed, were scarcely to be believed, if we did not daily see the most lamentable instances of it in ourselves. There is, for example, in the history of the learned something very usual and very pitiful : — that excellent men have resotved for many years to rise earlier in a morning, without much coming of it, — unless they may perhaps break through the habit at the last day. §9. Permit us to return : and since we have easily asked whether a man may be more effectually moved by a thousand outward foreign words, than by a billion of his own inward ones, let us not be very much astonished if the stream of words which is given to the youth, in order that he may thereby guide and bear himself up in the PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. 13 ocean, should be dissipated by the winds and waves on every side. But give us leave to remark, that we lay many things to the account of school-rooms, that is, of words, which have in fact had their sole origin on the common teaching-ground of action ; just as, in former times, general pestilences were ascribed to the poisoning of particular wells by the Jews. The school-house of the young soul does not merely consist of lecture and lesson rooms, but also of the school-ground, the sleeping-room, the eating-room, the play-ground, the staircase, and of every place. Heaven ! what intermixture of other influ- ences, always either to the advantage or prejudice of education ! The physical growth of the pupil nourishes and draws forth a mental one ! Nevertheless, this is ascribed to the pedagogic tan-bed ; just as if one must not necessarily grow cleverer and taller at the same time ! One might quite as properly attribute the service of the muscles to the leading-strings. Parents very often in their own children regard that as the effect of educational care and attention which in strangers they would merely consider the consequence of human growth. There are so many illusions ! If a great man have gone through any one educational establishment, he is ever after ex- plained by that : either he did not resemble it, and then it is held to have been a moulding counter-irritation ; or he did, and then it acted as an incitement to life. In the same way one might regard the blue library, whose bind- ing taught the librarian Duval his first lessons in ai'ith- metic, as an arithmetical book, and school for arithmetic. If parents, or men in general, in all their education seek nothing else than to make their physical image into their more perfect mental one, and consequently to varnish over this copy with the departed brightness of the origi- 14 LEVANA. nal, then must thej readily fall into the mistake of esteeming an inborn resemblance an acquired one, and physical fathers spiritual ones, and nature freedom. But in this and the former consideration, that holds true of children which does of nations : there were found in the new world ten customs of the old, — six Chinese in Peru, four Hotten totish in Western America,* — without any other nearer descent to account for these resemblances than the general one from Adam, or humanity. §10. We may, excellent fellow-workers, especially flatter ourselves with services to humanity, when the position is proved true, that we effect little, or nothing, by education. As in the mechanical world every motion, if the oppo- sition of friction were removed, would be unceasingly continued, and every change become eternal ; so, in the spiritual world, if the pupil less bravely opposed and vanquished the teacher, a more beggarly life would be eternally repeated than we can at all picture to ourselves. I mean this : if all the streets and times of this poor earth were to be filled with dull, stiff images from the pedagogic princely mirrors, that is, with counterfeits of school-men, so that every age might be impressed by the other, manikin on manikin ; what else is wanted for this tedious misery, but that education should succeed beyond our expectations, and a tutor and schoolmaster allow his head, like a crowned one, to pass stamped in all hands and corners ? And a whole bench of knights might become an assembly of candidates fit for the tournament, because they had been previously clean and well copied after the quiet burgher's pattern ? * Zimmermann's History of Man, b. 3. PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDaCATION. 15 But we will venture to hope the opposite ; the school- master and tutor is ever afterwards connected with the nobleman, as God with nature ; concerning which Sen- eca justly writes, Semel Jussit, semper paret, — i. e. the tutor's study is very soon closed, and the antechamber and audience-hall opened. In order not to fall into the error of those who intro- duce the bird Phoenix, and the man in the moon unwived, I have here in my thoughts girls also, on whom, as on doves and canary-birds, false colors are painted by gov- ernesses, as well as by tutors, which the first rain or moulting removes. But, as has been said, every woman becomes in time something peculiar ; a beautiful Idioticon of her many provinces of language. §11. Through long teaching, to which no advance of the pupil is sufficiently proportioned, schoolmasters of under- standing may arrive at the question : " How will the poor scholar be able to walk in the right path without our leading-strings, since even with them he runs into error ? " — and also at this wish : " God ! that we could but wind him up, and fix him, exactly like an astronomical hun- dred-yeared chronometer, so that he might show the hours, and positions of the planets and everything quite accurately, long after our death ! " — and consequently at this opinion : " that they were in fact the soul of his inner man, and had to raise his every limb, or were at least, his supporting mould, in which he ought not merely to carry his broken arm, as in a gentle bandage, but also his leg, his head, and his entrails, so as to be completely strengthened." If the tutor accompany his young master to the university, the one goes into much good society l6 LEVANA. without the other : and if they both at last set off on their travels, the young gentleman goes into much of a suspicious nature, and the tutor ends his anxiety, — which resembles the anxiety of a mother, as to how the poor naked foetus can exist, when it comes into this cold blowing world, and is no longer nourished by her blood. Truly your singing-bird of a pupil will continue to whistle for you through the night ; because, by a night- light, that is, by an education out of season, you delude him into the belief of an artificial daylight ; but when he once flies into the open air, he will then only arrange his notes and sound them at the general break of day. If we place ourselves on another eminence, to contem- plate thence the directions, fears, and demands of teachers, we almost feel tempted to drive them down, especially because they, the educators, assume and presume so much ; that is, they do not take and set before them the great world-plan as their school-plan, nor the all-educator as an example to the poor hedge-schoolmaster man, — but do so anxiously endeavor, with their narrow views, to assist the infinite Pedagogiarch (Prince of teachers), — M'ho per- mits sun to revolve round sun, and child round father, and so the child's and father's father are alike, — as if human- ity, neglected for thousands of years, were laid before them, hidden nook creators, like warm wax, on which they had to impress their own individual induration, to produce future indurations ; so that they might as re-cre- ators agreeably surprise the creator with a living seal and paste cabinet of their coats of arms and heads. A long period, and here again a long period. §12. None of all my hearers, of whom I am the nearest, can PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. 17 have forgotten that at the commencement I asked why so much at present in Germany is written about education, and grounded upon it, as I also myself intend to lay some printed ideas on the subject before the public. I answer, for this reason ; because by cultivation all humanity has become a speaking machine, and the flesh a word. The more education, the more notions ; the less action, the more speech ; man is becoming a man by profession, as there were formerly Christians by profession ; and the ear his sensorium commune. The beggar, for instance, passes by the great citizen unnoticed ; the one has fled from the other, not merely in deed, \mi beyond that, in word ; just as battles, pestilences, and such like, pass over us only as gentle sounds. Therefore is poetry so beneficial as a counterbalance to civilization, because it draws an artistic life round the thin shadows, and erects on the battle-field of mere sensuous views its own glorious visions. But as the German spends no time so willingly as a time for con- sideration, — to the most important step he made, namely, that into life, he took an eternity of consideration, — he prefei'S steady, slow writing, to quick hither and thither roving speech ; unlike the Southerns, he is less a speech- loving than a writing-loving people, as his registries and book-shelves prove. " A word, a man," * means now " black on white, a man." Writing and fact, or clothing and body, are now as distinct from one another as shoe and foot, which, as a measure, mean with us the same thing. It all depends on one little stroke, whether Christ is God or not ; namely, on the well-known passage, 1 Tim. iii. 16, in the Alexandrine copy, where a little stroke with the back of the pen changes OC into eC * A common proverbial expi-ession, signifying that no written con- tract is necessary when a man has given his word. — Tk. £ l8 LEVANA. (Gfos), and upon an "Or" in Carolina, whether a man shall be hanged or not. But now if the inner being of the cultivated man is merely composed, like some drawings, of letters and words, then enough can never be said of and in education, since the consciousness of having separated the inner life into ideas, consequently into words, secures the certainty of being able again to reconstruct it by means of the separated component parts, that is, by means of words ; in short, to educate through the means of speech, by the pen and the tongue. " Draw," said Donatello to the sculptors, " and you will be able to do the rest." " Speak," say we to teachers, " and you will show how to act." As every kind of existence only propagates itself by itself ; for example, deeds only by deeds, words by words, education by education ; we will, excellent fellow-labor- ers, cheer and strengthen ourselves in the hope that our teaching may spiritually reward us by the elevation of our pupils into teachers, who may hereafter speak more extendedly with others ; and that our Johanneum-Paulli- num may serve as an educational institution for many educational institutions, while we send forth from^ our school-gates matured house-tutors, school-keepers, and cate- chisers, to produce their equals in good school-houses, — not Cyruses, but Cyropedias, and Cyropedagogiarchs. § 13. I now turn to the most worshipful fathers of the city, our supporters and school-archs, not only with thanks, but also with entreaties. There remains, namely, in the most unpractical men and speakers a something harsh and real, — it is called, harshly enough, stomach, — which, from selfishness, values in the tongue only its imports, PRESENT INEFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION. I9 not its exports. Enough ; every one possesses this mem- ber ; and it is this especially that makes us wish our school might be raised into a finance or industrial school for all those who received their incomes from it, so that every one who as scholar subscribed to it, may gladly again enter it in order to be paid as teacher. Moreover our school book-shop, less truly school-library, and our school-purse, yea, and our school widow's fund, might be well supported ; and so of everything else, for the only school sickness which teachers have is hunger, an evil for which the state should supply domestic means, or so called housekeeper's provision. But since all of us, especially as educators of youth, wish to live for something fairer and more enduring than our dinner of black soup, for which we must first, all day long distribute whipping-soup, I venture, unabashed, to prefer the proud request, that the desk from which the third master, and music-teacher, as well as myself, have to propound the needful instruction, may be newly colored, merely like a book, or a Prussian post-house, black and white, and that the Lyceum may receive, if not the name gymnasium, yet the epithet royal, and that we may all, as far as is possible, be addressed by the title of professors. Perhaps the school friendship, which has hitherto con- fined itself to the scholars, might then be extended to the teachers. Fiat ! — Dixi ! §14. Scarcely had the author delivered the inaugural dis- course he had before composed, than so much of a resig- nation speech was found in it, that they afforded him a fair opportunity to deliver this last, and to explain him- self more at large, by removing and dismissing him a few 20 LEVANA. days afterwards. Thereby he was placed in a position to take leave of his fellow-teachers as publicly as he had received his dismissal, and at the same time to choose as text for his short farewell discourse — the educational chair (which he mounted for the second and last time), and to impress upon them its importance. CHAPTER III. IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. § 15. MOST honored brothers in office ! In laying down my short-held office with a certain consoling con- sciousness that none of those intrusted to my charge will ever stand forth to reproach me with an erroneous plan of teaching, or with hours of instruction gossiped away, I can find no theme for a farewell, more connected with the subject, than the consideration how deeply a good educa- tion penetrates into the heart of the age ; and I choose this the more readily, because it will give me an oppor- tunity to place in a new light much that the day before yesterday was laid down by my predecessor in this desk, the deliverer of the inaugural discourse, — for here I do not venture to speak of myself in any other way since my dismissal. It shall only be proved that he advanced mere soph- isms, which originally, according to Leibnitz, signified only exercises in wisdom. " For what other reason," he asks, " do men now write IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 21 SO much about education, than because," he answers, " our whole existence has passed into words, and words so easily, by means of tongues and ears, into the soul." But is this, pray, anything different from what I myself main- tain ? We shall see. §16. No former age or people is to be compared with any since the invention of printing ; for since that time there have been no more isolated states, and consequently no isolated influence of the state on its component parts. Strangers and returned travellers, whom Lycurgus ex- cluded from his republic, like episodes and the interven- tion of gods from the dramatic unities, now traverse every country under the name of missals and waste paper. No one is any longer alone, not even an island in the most distant sea ; thence comes it that the political balance of power of many states, collected under one arm of the balance, is now first mooted. Europe is an interlaced, misgrown, banyan forest, round which the other quarters of the world creep, like parasite plants, and nourish themselves on its decayed parts. Books form a universal republic, a union of nations, or a society of Jesus, in a nobler sense, or a humane society, whereby a second or duplicate Europe arises ; which, like London, lies in sev- eral counties and districts. As now, on the one side, the book-pollen flying everywhere, brings the disadvantage that no people can any longer produce a bed of flowers true and unspotted with foreign colors ; — as now no state can be any longer formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself, but, like an Indian idol, composed of different animals, must see the various members of the neighbor- ing states mingled with its growth; — so, on the other 22 LEVANA. side, through the ecumenic council of the book-world, the spirit of a provincial assembly can no longer slavishly enchain its people, and an invisible church frees it from the visible one. And therefore we educate now with some hope for the age, because we know that the spoken word of the German teacher is re-echoed by the printed page ; and that the citizen of the world, under the super- vision of the universal republic, will not sink into the citizen of an injurious state, all the more because, though books may be dead yet glorified men, their pupils will ever hold themselves as their living relatives. That the age writes so much on education, shows at once its absence and the feeling of its importance. Only lost things are cried about the streets. The German state itself no longer educates sufficiently ; consequently the teacher should do it in the nursery, from the pulpit, and from the desk. The forcing -houses in Rome and Sparta are destroyed, — in Sinai and in the Arabian desert some few yet stand, — the old circle, that the state should plan and direct the education, and this again act on that, has been very much rectified, or indeed squared, by the art of printing ■; for now men, elevated above all states, educate states ; dead men, for instance, like Plato ; just ai3 in the deep old morning-world, according to the saga, angels with glories wandered about, guided, like children, the new men who had sprung out of the ruins, and, having ended their instruction, vanished into heaven. The earth, according to Zach's ingenious idea, has been formed from congregated moons ; one moon striking on the American side, drove the deluge over the old world ; the sharp-pointed, wildly-up-piled Switzerland is nothing more than a visible moon, that once tumbled from its pure ether down to the earth, — and so there is in intel- IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 23 lectual Europe, far more than in any age or quarter of the world not addicted to printing, a congregation of soul- worlds, or of world-souls, sent or fallen from heaven. The great man has now a higher throne, and his crown shines over a wider plain ; for he works not only by action, but also by writing, — not only by his word, but also, like thunder, by an echo. So one mind influences its neighboring minds, and through them the masses ;• as many little ships draw a large one into harbor, so infe- rior minds bring the great one to shore, that it may be unladen. §17. My predecessor, however, might grant or add much ; namely, that if the great body of authors have gradually assumed the educational position once held by quacks and fortune-tellers, the great advancing mass of the people, which so easily overpowers, in its vast ocean, the early teaching of childhood, has itself changed and increased. " Libraries, and two yearly book-fairs — not including the one of reprints at Frankfort — surpass, I should think, a few school-books and their expounders," the deliverer of the address might, and probably does, say. But a principal point here must not be overlooked. It is indubitable that everything impresses man either formingly or improvingly ; — so that, I think, not merely an assembly of people and of books, and great electric effusions in his heaven's equator discompose him, but also that damp weather unnerves him, — hence it is certain that no man can take a walk without bringino; home an influ- ence on his eternity ; every spur, every star of heaven and of knighthood, every beetle, every trip or touch of the hand, as certainly engraves itself upon us, as the gentle 24 LEVANA. dew-drop, or the hanging of a mist, affects the granite mountains. But just as certainly, on the other hand, is this assertion necessary ; that the strength of every impression depends on our condition yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow." For the human being assimilates more spiritual food, the less he has hitherto received ; as he never grows more rapidly and disproportionately to the giv^n nourishment than as foetus : but, after he has reached the point of satiety, he rejects so much that it is well the brief youth of the individual is compensated by the eternal youth of humanity, whose point of satiety is marked on a scale which takes centuries and nations for the fractions of its lines. On this account education is always counselled to do as much as possible during the first year of life ; for it can then effect more with half the power than it can in the eighth with double, when the sense of freedom is aroused, and all the conditions of being indefinitely multiplied. As farmers beheve it most advantageous to sow in mist, so the first seeds of education should fall in the first and thickest mist of life. In the first place have regard to morality ! The inner man is, like the negro, born white, and only colored black by life. If in mature years great examples of moral worth pass by without influencing our course of life more than a flying comet that of the earth, yet in the deep heart of childhood the first inner or outer object of love, injustice, &c., throws a shadow or a light immeasurably far along its years ; and as, according to the elder theolo- gians, we only inherited Adam's first sin, not his other sins, since in one fall we copied every fall ; so the first fall and the first flight influence us our whole life long. For in this early moment the Eternal works the second IMPOETANCE OF EDUCATION. 25 miracle : the gift of life was the first. It is then that the god-man is conceived and born of human nature ; that self-consciousness, whereby a responsible being first ap- pears, may be boldly called a conscience and a god, — and unblessed is the hour in which this growing human being finds no unspotted conception, but in the moment of birth the Saviour and his Judas meet. Too Httle attention has been paid to this one invaluable moment, its environments and its fruits. There are men who can remember far back to this bounding hour of existence, in which their self-consciousness suddenly burst through the clouds hke a sun, and wonderfully revealed a beaming universe. Life, especially moral life, has a flight, then a leap, then a step, then a halt ; each year renders a man less easy to convert, and a missionary can effect less on a wicked sexagenarian than an auto-da-fe. § 18. What is true of the heart of the inner man is true also of his eye. If the former, like an ancient Christian church, must be turned towards the morning of child- hood ; the latter, like a Grecian temple, receives its greatest light from the entrance and from above. For, in regard to intellectual education, the child walks hand in hand with a nature which never returns ; this nature is hitherto a wintry desert full of spring buds : wherever a sunbeam strikes it (for all teaching is warming into life rather than sowing), there the green leaves burst forth, and the whole child's life consists of warm creation days. Two forces are at work : first, childlike trust, that im- bibing power without which there could be no education and no language, but the child would resemble a bird taken too late from the nest, which must starve because it 2 26 LEVANA. will not open its bill to the hand which brings it food. But this trust shows itself only in the minority, and sleeps in the mass of men and years. The second power is ex- citability. As in the physical, so in the spiritual child, it exists in the highest degree in the physical and spiritual morning of life, and decreases with age, until at last noth- ing in the empty world excites the worn-out man except the future. Then the whole universe may labor at, and press its marks upon the man, but on the hardened matter only weak impressions remain. The spirit of his age and nation may work unceasingly on the child ; at first his only teachers are the age and nation. Moravians, Qua- kers, and especially Jews, give an influence to education which predominates over the surrounding dissimilar ages and people : and although even they are influenced by the spirit of the age and of the multitude, yet it impresses them much more slightly than the masses who are differ- ently educated. And however the spirit of the age may move and turn the heart, that little world, yet, like all balls revolving on themselves, it retains two innate im- movable poles, — the good and the bad. § 19. Moreover, the whole mass of people does not, as my predecessor seems to assert, rush on the individual human being. Only some few in later, as in early life affect the formation of our characters ; the multitude passes by like a distant army. One friend, one teacher, one beloved, one club, one dining-table, one work-table, one house, are, in our age, the nation and national spirit influencing the individual, while the rest of the crowd passes him without leaving a trace behind. But when do individuals affect us so powerfully as in childhood ? or when so long — for IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. 27 in education, as in law,* long means ten years, — as in the first decade ? The waves of the ocean, besides, be- fore reaching the child, break, against four walls, which encompass the water of his education or crystallization : father, mother, brothers and sisters, and a few extra peo- ple, are his forming world and mould. But all this de- ducted, we must remember in education that its power, like that of the spirit of the age, which must not be meas- ured by individuals, but by the concentrated mass or ma- jority, — must be judged, not by the present, but by the future : a nation or century, educated by the same method, presses down the balance quite diflferently from a casual individual. But we, as ever, desire that fate, or the Time Spirit, should answer our inquiries by return of post. §20. I have in this manner, at least I hope so, laid my own opinion, as well as his, before my opponent and predeces- sor with a respect which is not so common among the learned body, as many an opponent of an opponent be- lieves. For the little that he adds about the absorption of the individual in the mass merits not contradiction, but affirmation. The uniformity of the masses permits many irregularities in the individual; and although the tables of mortality are correct, no one hopes and fears only by them. On the globe itself mountains disappear, and from these at a distance, the stony path ; but he who travels it sees it clearly enough. And when the dear good man, along with his complaints of the ineffectiveness of good education, gives way to complaints of the influence of bad education, he then clearly proves by a capability to be ill-educated, a capability to be well-educated ; and so * Longum tempus est decern annorum, Homin : prompt. 28 LEVANA. education is to be reproached with no want, but the want of correct tables of the perturbations of a httle wandering star, caused by the revolutions of other planets ; and will we not readily concede this ? And now, worthy schoolarchy, I should wish to know what further I have to say from this honorable place ? SECOND FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Spirit and Principle of Education, §§ 21-24. — Chap. II. The Individuality of the Ideal INIan, §§ 25 - 30. — Chap. III. Oa the Spirit of the Age, §§ 31-35. — Chap. IV. Keligious Educa- tion, §§ 36-38. CHAPTER I. SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. §21. HE end desired must be known before the way. All means or arts of education will be, in the first instance, determined by the ideal or ar- chetype we entertain of it. But there floats before common parents, instead of one archetype, a whole picture cabinet of ideals, which they impart bit by bit, and tattoo into their children. If the secret variances of a large class of ordinary fathers were brought to light, and laid down as a plan of studies, and reading catalogue for a moral education, they would run some- what after this fashion : — In the first hour pure mo- rality must be read to the child, either by myself, or the tutor ; in the second, mixed morality, or that which may be applied to one's own advantage ; in the third, " Do you not see that your father does so and so ? " in the fourth, " You are little, and this is only fit for grown-up people " ; in the fifth, " The chief matter is that you should succeed 30 LEVANA. in the world, and become something in the state " ; in the sixth, " Not the temporary, but the eternal, determines the worth of a man " ; in the seventh, " Therefore rather suffer injustice, and be kind " ; in the eighth, " but defend your- self bravely if any one attack you" ; in the ninth, " Do not make such a noise, dear child " ; in the tenth, " A boy must not sit so quiet " ; in the eleventh, " You must obey your parents better " ; in the twelfth, " and educate your- self." So by the hourly change of his principles the father conceals their untenableness and one-sidedness. As for his wife, she is neither like him, nor yet like that harlequin who came on to the stage with a bundle of pa- pers under each arm, and answered to the inquiry what he had under his right arm, " orders," and to what he had under his left, "counter-orders"; but the mother might be much better compared to a giant Briareus, who had a hundred arms, and a bundle of papers under each. This government of the demigods, so frequently and so suddenly changed, proves clearly not only the absence, but also the necessity and the right of a superior god : for in the generality of souls the ideal, without which men would sink down into four-footed beasts, reveals itself rather by inner discord than unison, rather by judgments on others than on itself. But with children, the result of this may be, and often has been, various and half-col- ored pupils, whom (unless some rare peculiarity makes them hard and uninjurable) the spirit of the age, or the accident of necessity and pleasure, can easily break with its wheel, or even twine round it. The majority of edu- cated men are, therefore, at present an illumination which burns off by fits and starts in the rain, shining with inter- rupted forms, and depicting broken characters. But the bad and impure spirits of educational systems SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 31 are yet to be reduced into other divisions. Many parents educate their children only for themselves, — that is, to be pretty blocks, or soul-alarums, which are not set to move or sound when stillness is required. The child has merely to be that on which the teacher can sleep most softly or drum most loudly ; who, having something else to do and to enjoy, wishes to be spared the trouble of education, duly but most unreasonably expecting its fruits. Hence these dull sluggards are so often angry because the child is not at once cleverer, more consistent, and gentler than themselves. Even zealous children's friends, like statesmen, often resemble inflammable air, which, it is true, gives light itself, but in so doing extinguishes every other : at least a child must often be to them, what a favorite assistant must be to a minister, sometimes only the hand which copies, sometimes a head which can work by itself. Related to those teachers who wished to be machine- makers are the educators for appearances and political usefulness. Their maxims, thoroughly carried out, would only produce pupils, or rather sucklings, passively obedi- ent, boneless, well-trained, patient of all things, — the thick, hard, human kernel would give place to the soft, sweet fruit-pulp, — and the child's clod of earth, into which growing life should breathe a divine spirit, would be kept down and manured as though it were but a corn- field, — the edifice of the state would be inhabited by mere spinning-machines, calculating-machines, printing and pumping apparatus, oil-mills, and models for mills, pumps, and spinning-machines, &c. Instead of every child, born without past and without future, beginning in the year one, and bringing with him a first new-year, the state, forsooth, must etep into and usurp the place of a 32 LEVANA. remote posterity, which alone could make him spiritually, as well as physically, young again, and substitute for him a system of teaching which only stops his wheels and surrounds them like hardened ice. Nevertheless the man comes before the citizen, and our future, beyond the world as well as in our own minds, is greater than both : how then have parents, who in the child clothe and bind up the man into a servant, — for instance, into custom-house officers, kitchen-purveyors, jurists, &c., — obtained the right to multiply themselves otherwise than physically, instead of begetting spiritual embryos ? Can care of the body impart a right of spirit- ual starvation, or of good-living, such as the Devil would prescribe a soul, since nobody can outbalance, nay, not even balance, a soul ? The ancient German and Spartan custom of kilhng weak-bodied children is not much cru- eller than that of propagating weak-minded ones. §22. Usefulness to others is only separated from usefulness to one's self, as dishonesty is from uncharitableness : both are united in self-love. Hedgerows and Hercules-pillars, however perfect, are blamable as soon as they diminish the free world of a future man. If Mengs, by slavery of body and soul, made his son, Raphael Mengs, into a painter, — according to Winkelmann, the Grecian states only reached art through and for freedom, — he did but adopt the old Egyptian custom, that the son must follow the trade of his father, only in its higher branches. Much of this holds good with regard to domestic orphan-house chaplains, who transform the whole chil- dren's training into a Church-training and Bible-institution, and make free, happy children into bowed-down cloister SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 33 novices. For the human being is not formed to grow altogether upwards, Hke plants and deer's horns ; nor yet altogether downwards, like feathers and teeth ; but, like muscles, at both ends at once : so that Bacon's double motto for kings, " Remember that thou art a man, remem- ber that thou art a god,' or vice-god," may serve also for children ! Education can neither entirely consist of mere unfold- ing in general, or, as it is now better called, excitement, — for every continued existence unfolds, and every bad education excites, just as oxygen positively irritates, — nor in the unfolding of all the powers, because we can never act upon the whole amount of them at once ; as little as in the body susceptibility and spontaneity, or the muscular and nervous system, can be strengthened at the same time. §23. A purely negative education, such as that of Rousseau only seems to be, would at once contradict itself and reality, as much as an organic living body full of powers of growth without means of excitement : even the few wild children who have been captured received a positive education from the raging and flying animals around them. A child's coffin only can represent a negative hedge-school, prince's school, and school-door. The pure- ly natural man — whom Rousseau sometimes, indeed very often, confounds with the ideal man, because both are equally pure and distinct from the mere worldly man — grows entirely by excitement. Rousseau, in the first place, prefers arousing and influencing the child by things rather than by men, by impressions rather than by dis- courses ; and, in the second, recommends a more healthy and useful series of excitements, whilst his predecessors 2* C 34 LEVANA. in teaching had hastened to use upon the susceptible nature of children the most powerful excitements, such as God, Hell, and the Rod ! Only give the souls of children free passage from the lirribus patrum et infantum, and Nature, he seems to think, will unfold herself. This, indeed, she does everywhere, and at all times, but only in ages, countries, and souls which possess a marked individuality. §24. Perhaps we may find the centre and focus of these crossing lines and beams from this point of view : — If a modern Greek, without any knowledge of the mighty past, were depicting the present condition of his enslaved race, he would find it approaching the highest step of civiliza- tion, morality, and other excellences, until a magic stroke revealed to his astonished eye Greece in the Persian war, or Athens in its glory, or fruitful Sparta, like an empire of the dead, like Elysian fields. What a differ- ence in the same nation, vast as that between gods and men ! Nevertheless, those gods are not genii, nor in any way exceptions, but a people, consequently the majority and average of talents. When hi history we look round on the heights and mountain ranges where glorified nations dwell, and then down into the abysses where others lie enchained, we say to ourselves. The heights that a multitude has reached thou also canst reach, if thou canst not descend into the depths. The spiritual existence that a nation, a majority of any people, has embodied and showed forth in glory must dwell and breathe in every individual, else could he not recognize in it a kindred being. And so, indeed, it is. Every one of us has within him an ideal man, which he strives, from his youth upwards. SPIRIT AND PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 35 to cherish or to subdue. This holy soul-spirit every one beholds most clearly in the blooming time of all his pow- ers, — in the season of youth. If only every one were distinctly conscious of what he once wished to become, of how different and much nobler a path and goal his open- ing eye, compared with his fading one, beheld ! For so soon as we believe in any contemporaneous growth of the physical and spiritual man, we must also let the blooming season of both occur simultaneously. Consequently, his own ideal being will appear most clearly to the man (though it be only in vague desires and dreams) in the full bloom of youth. And does not this show itself in the meanest soul, which, though sunk during its pilgrim- age through sensual and covetous affections, yet once attained a higher hope, and stood within the gates of heaven ? At a later period, in the multitude, the ideal being fades day by day, and the man becomes, sinking and overpowered, the mere present, a creature of neces- sity and neighborhood. But the universal complaint, " What might I not have become ! " confesses the present existence, or the past existence, of an older Adam in paradise, along with and before the old Adam. But the ideal man comes upon the earth as an antJiro- pohthe (a petrified man) ; to break this stony covering away from so many limbs, that the rest can liberate them- selves, — this is, or should be, education. The same normal being who, in every noble soul, re- mains as house-tutor, and silently teaches, should be outwardly manifested in the child, and make itself inde- pendent, free, and strong. But first of all we must discover what it is. The ideal man of Fenelon, — so full of love and full of strength, — the ideal man of Cato the younger, — so full of strength and full of love, — could 36 LEVANA. never exchange or metamorphose themselves into each, other without spiritual suicide. Consequently, education has in CHAPTER II. TO DISCOVER AND TO APPRECIATE THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAN. §25. LET a needful breathing-space be granted here ! In most languages, like a symbol, the adjective and verb " good " and " be " are irregular. Physical power expresses its superfluity in the variety of genera ; hence the temperate zone maintains only 130 distinct quadru- peds, but the torrid 220. The higher kinds of life sepa- rate, according to Zimmermann, into more species ; thus, beyond the five hundred species of the mineral kingdom, hes the animal world with seven million. It is so with minds. Instead of the uniformity of savage nations in different ages and countries, for instance, of the American Indians and the ancient Germans, is seen the many- branched, varied forms of civilized people in the same chmate and period : just as the art of gardening multi- plies sorts of flowers in different colors, or time separates a long strip of land in the ocean into islands. In so far a meaning may be attached to the saying of the school- men, that every angel is its own species. §26. Every educator, even the dullest, admits this, and imprints on his pupils this reverence for pecuharities, that is, for his own ; at the same time he labors industri- INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAN. 37 ously to secure this point, — that each be nothing else than his own step-son or bastard self. He allows himself as much individuality as is necessary to eradicate that of others, and plant his own in its stead. If, in general, every man is secretly his own copying-machine, which he applies to others, and if he wiUingly draws all into ghostly and spiritual relationship with himself as soul's cousins, — as, for instance^ Homer gladly converted the four quarters of the world into Homerides and Homerists, and Luther into Lutherans, — much more will the teacher strive in the defenceless, unformed souls of children to impress and reproduce himself, and the father of the body en- deavor to be also the father of the spirit. God grant it may seldom succeed ! And most fortunately it does not prosper ! It is only mediocrity which supplants that of others by its own ; that is, one imperceptible individu- ality by another equally imperceptible : hence the multi- tude of imitators. From a wood-cut some thousand impressions may easily be taken ; but from a copper-plate only a tithe of that number. It w^ere indeed too pitiable for Europe if it were alto- gether sown with Tituses, as every Titus secretly wishes, or with Semproniuses, as the Semproniuses desire ! What a thick, dead sea would be floating along from the usuri- ously-increasing resemblance of teachers and pupils ! § 27. As every* teacher, even the rigidest, admits that he highly values two strongly marked individualities, — namely, that before the deluge which formed his own, and that own itself, — and regards them as the two mountain ranges which give birth to the streams below and the vales of Tempe ; and as, moreover, every self- 38 LEVANA. taught man maintains that everything remarkable in the world has been created by adding and subtracting, but not by transplanting, individualities, some other illusion than that of mere selfishness must be at the foundation of this disregard of the peculiarities of others. §28. It is, in truth, the excusable error that confuses the ideal with ideals ; and which, had it lived during the week of creation, would have created all angels, all Eves, or all Adams. But although there is only one Spirit of Poetry, there are many different forms in which it can incorporate itself, — comedies, tragedies, odes, and the thin wasp's body of the epigram ; so the same moral genius may become flesh, — here as Socrates, there as Luther, here as Phocion, there as John. As no finite can truly reflect the infinite ideal, but only narrowly mirror it back in parts, such parts must necessarily be infinitely various ; neither the dew-drop nor the mirror nor the ocean reflects the sun in all its greatness, but they each represent it round and bright. §29. / — God excepted, who is at once the great original / and Thou — is the noblest as well as the most incompre- hensible thing which language expresses or which we contemplate. It is there at once, like the whole world of truth and conscience, which, without I^ is nothing. We must ascribe the same thing to God as to* unconscious matter when we think of the being of the one, the exist- ence of the other. A second 7 is, in other respects, even more inconceivable to us than a first. Every / is a personal existence, consequently a spirit- ual individuality, — for a bodily one is so extended that INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAN. 39 a portion of the sky, earth, city, must belong to it as a body ; — this personal existence does not consist in Fichte's theory of rendering the / objectively subjective, that is, in the change of the reflection of what was first mirrored, and which everywhere returning cuts oflT all number and time, so that nothing is explained by it, no reflection by its counter-reflection. Further, it does not consist in an accidental weighing backwards and forwards of single powers ; for, first, to every embodied army a governing and controlling master-spirit is indispensa- ble ; and, secondly, all distinct forces in organic con- nection rise and fall with the weather-glass, age, &c., alongside the unchanging individuality. But it is an inner sense of all senses ; as feeling is the sense common to the four external senses. It is that in others on which our reliance, friendship, or enmity rests, and is either an enduring inaptitude, or a capacity for the arts of poetry and thought. As the same incomprehen- sible organic unity, subjecting to itself disjointed matter, governs and acts differently in plants, in animals, and in their every variety, and multiplies itself in organic per- sonal existence, so also does the higher spiritual unity. The theological question of the schools, whether the God- man might not have appeared as a woman, a brute ani- mal, or a gourd, is symbolically affirmed by the infinite variety of individual existences in which the Divine Being manifests himself. It is that which unites all aesthetical, moral, and intellectual powers into one soul, and, like the material of light, itself invisible, gives and determines the many-colored visible universe, whereby first that philosophical pole-word ' practical reason, pure I ' ceases only to stand in the zenith of heaven like a pole-star which marks no north, and consequently no quarter of the world. 40 LEVANA. We should know better how to value and protect this spirit of life, this individuality, if it always stood forth as strongly as in the man of genius. For we all perceive how great a defeat of spirits would arise in a passive war of giants : if, for instance, Kant, Raffaelle, Mozart, Cato, Frederick the Great, Charles the Twelfth, Aristophanes, Swift, Tasso, and so forth, were all forced into the same press, and formed in the same mould. Even one man of genius, by the exchange and compensation of individual peculiarities, could only become another, in a manner resembling the forcible union of two polypi. But if the primary faculty of an ordinary nature be broken, what can result from it but a perpetual confused wandering about itself, — a half imitation arising in spite, not out of, itself, — a parasitical worm living on another being, the mimic of every new example, the slave of every master at his elbow ? If a human being is once thrown out of his own individuality into a foreign one, the centre of gravity that held together his whole inner world becomes movable and wanders from spot to spot, and one oscilla- tion passes into another. In the mean time the teacher has to separate from the individuality which he allows to grow, another which he must either bend or guide ; the one is that of the head, the other that of the heart. V Every intellectual peculiarity, be it mathematical, artistic, philosophical, is a beating heart, which all teaching and gifts only serve as conducting veins to fill it with material for working and motion. At this exact point more weight may be added to the preponderating weight of natural disposition ; and the teacher must not give, in the morn- ing of life, a sleeping draught — say to peculiar talents for art. The moral nature, however, must be quite differ- ently treated; if that is melody, this is harmony: you- INDIVIDUALITY OF THE IDEAL MAN. 41 must not enfeeble an Euler by ingrafting on him a Petrarch, nor the latter by the former ; for no intellectual power can become too great, and no painter too great a painter. But every moral faculty needs to have its boundaries fixed in order to the cultivation of its balan- cing powers : and Frederick the Great may take his flute, and Napoleon his Ossian. Here education may, for in- stance, deliver sermons on peace to the heroic character, and charge with electric thunder the disposition of a Siegwart^ So one might — since, with girls, head and heart are reciprocal — frequently put a cooking-spoon into the hand of the boy of genius, and into that of the little cook by birth some romantic feather from a poet's wing. For the rest, let it be a law that, as every faculty is holy, none must be weakened in itself, but only have its op- posing one aroused; by which means it is added har- moniously to the whole. So, for instance, a weakly affectionate heart must not be hardened, but its sense of honor and purity must be strengthened : the daring spirit must not be rudely checked and made timid, but only taught to be loving and prudent. The conditions may now be required of me, under which is to be formed the character of the child, and also that of the prize or ideal man into which he is to be fashioned. But for that purpose one book among the endless multitude of books would not serve ; moreover, the books must possess the rare gift of being interpreters of the dreams and symbols of the closely-folded child's character ; which, in a child, who does not display every- thing matured as a grown-up man, but only budding, would be as dithcult to discover as a butterfly in the ohrysahs to all who are not Swammerdams. But, alas ! three things are very difficult to discover and to impart, — 42 LEVANA. to have a character, — to draw one, — to guess one. To ordinary teachers a naughty trick seems a wicked nature, — a pimple or a pock-mark as parts of the countenance. If one must translate the prize and ideal man into words, one might perhaps say, that it is the harmonious maximum of all individual qualities taken together, which, without regard to the resemblance of the harmony, is yet connected in all its different parts, as one tone in music is to another. Whosoever now, out of the musical abode f ff, should change, for instance, a piece set ih a to 5, would injure the piece much, but not so much as a teacher who would convert the ail-variously arranged natures of children into one uniform tone. §30. To elevate above the spirit of the age must be regarded as the end of education ; and this must stand clearly de- veloped before us ere we mark out the appointed road. The child is not to be educated for the present, — for this is done without our aid unceasingly and powerfully, — but for the remote future, and often in opposition to the immediate future. The spirit which is to be shunned must be known. Permit me, then, a THIKD CHAPTEK, ON THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. §31. OU invoke the spirit of the age freely and boldly. Y but let it truly appear before us in your discourse, and do you answer ! Since time separates into ages, as SPIKIT OF THE AGE. 43 the rainbow into falling drops, indicate the greatness of the age of whose indwelling spirit you speak. Has it a century of duration ; and by what chronology is it reck- oned, — the Jewish, the Christian, the Turkish, or the French? Does not the expression " spirit of the century " easily escape the lips of a man because he, born in a cen- tury, and partly measuring one with his life, really means nothing more by " age " than the little day-span which the eternal sun describes from the morning to the even- ing of his life ? Or does the age extend from one great event (the Reformation, for instance) to another, so that the spirit of the first vanishes as soon as the second is born ? And what revolution will be considered by you the animating one of the age, — a philosophical, a moral, a poetical, or a political one ? Further : is not every spirit of the age less changing than flying, — indeed, already flown ; what might be more properly called the spirit of that immediately pre- ceding ? For its traces presuppose that it is already gone, consequently gone further. And only from lofty heights can the backward road be surveyed, and the future estimated. But since the same period unfolds at the present time a totally different spirit in Saturn, — in his satellites, in his rings, — upon all the countless worlds of the pres- ent ; and again in London, Paris, Warsaw ; and since it follows that the present moment of time must have a million different spirits of the age, I would ask you where the invoked spirit of the age is clearly manifested, — in Germany, France, or where ? As before you found it difficult to mark out its limits in time, so will you now to determine them in space. I partly spare you the great question which concerns 44 LEVANA. every one, yourself among the number, — how you, how all encircled in the same age, can raise yourselves so far above its waves as to be able to observe its course, not merely to feel its dark, irresistible march ? And does not the stream which bears you lead into an ocean, whose movements you cannot measure, because it has no shore ? § 32. What we call spirit of the age our ancestors called the end of the world, the latest times, signs of the last day, kingdom of the Devil and of Antichrist. Mere melancholy names ! No golden or innocent age ever called itself golden, but only expected one ; and an age of lead ex- pected one of arsenic : — only the past gUtters, as ships occasionally draw after them a shining train. But the former interpretations of dreams and gazings into the present — would that some one would collect such a dream- book of departed great spirits ! — teach us mistrust of those now made. If man, from the observation of the three quarters of the globe, could not prophetically con- struct the fourth from the combinations of matter, far less can he divine a future from the more comj)licated ones of spirit. For man is feeble and poor : his star-reading of the future — a mere strengthening or weakening of the present — sees only a crescent moon in the sky, which waxes and wanes in unison with him, but no sun. Every one regards his own life as the new-year's eve of time, and also, like the superstitious, his dreams, woven from memories, as prophecies for the year. Thence there al- ways comes, not the foretold good or evil, nor yet its opposite, but something quite different, which receives the prophecies and their objects as an ocean does the rivers, and resolves them into the circle of its waves. For, in SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 45 the moment when you are prophesying in the desert, the fine seed-pollen of an oak falls upon the earth, and, in a century, grows up to be a forest. How, indeed, could man accurately divine any approaching age without at the same time knowing and depicting all after times? He, for instance, who, from the present course and position of the winds, clouds, and planets during one academical half- year could accurately guess the weather of a second, might and must be able, from the data he had foretold, to decipher the third season's weather, and from that every Succeeding one, — supposing no intervention ; — but there do always intervene comets, earthquakes, the clearing of forests, or the growth of new ones, and all the other power of the Almighty. In the same way, before the eye of the seer, one century after another must be produced in regu- lar order, consequently thousands of years, and finally, the whole time which can dwell upon an earth; supposing, as has been already said, nothing intervenes. But, heav- ens ! what is there does not intervene ! The prophet himself — and the freedom of the spiritual world — and the Almighty, who here withdraws and there sends forth spirits and suns. Thus it is that every one lives so com- pletely in a spiritual twilight (a beautiful word for that dusky time of day), that God himself decides which of the two contending lights shall gain the victory by a new one from the sun or the moon, which men so frequently mistake the one for the other. §33. How, indeed, were this foregoing two-and-thirtieth paragraph to be written or to be comprehended, if some- thing more were not added about it ; namely, a three-and- thirtieth which follows after it? The older the world 46 LEVANA. grows, the more complacently can it, and will it, adopt the prophesying character of an elder. From the fore- world a spirit speaks an ancient language to us, which we should not understand if it were not born with us. It is the spirit of eternity, which judges and overlooks every spirit of time. And what does it say of the present ? Very hard words. — It says that the age can now more easily raise up a great people than a great man ; because the powerful union springing from civilization joins to- gether the men of one spirit, like the vapor-drops of a huge steam-engine ; so that even war is now only a war- game between two living creatures. Something, it says, must have decayed in our age, for even the mighty earth- quake of the Revolution, before which for centuries, as before a physical earthquake, an infinite multitude of worms had crept out of the ground and covered it, has produced and left behind it nothing greater than pretty wings on these said worms. The spirit of Eternity, which judges the heart and the world, strongly declares what spirit is wanting to the present men inspired by the senses, to these fire-worshippers of the passions, — the holy one of Him who is above the earth. The ruins of his temple sink lower and lower into the present earth. Prayer is thought to draw along with it the false lights of fanaticism. The apprehension and belief in what is be- yond the world, which formerly extended its roots under the foulest ages, bears no fruits in our pure thin air. If, formerly, religion was in w^ar, there is now no longer war in religion, — there has grown for us out of the world a mighty edifice, out of ether a cloud, out of God a mere power, out of heaven a coffin ! At last the spirit of Eternity holds up before us our shamelessness, by which we, in our darkness, have per- SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 47 mitted to play, as a festive illumination, the flames of an- ger, love, and desire, from which all religions, all ancient nations, all great men, have held themselves aloof, or re- garded with shame : and it says that we, living only in our hate and hunger, like other decaying corpses, only retain our teeth uninjured, the instruments both of re- venge and enjoyment. Passion belongs of right to the sickness of the age: nowhere is found so much impa- tience, carelessness, indulgence towards self, and unrelent- ing selfishness towards others, as on the sick-bed. Now this century lies upon a sick-bed. As among the Spartans the men cut away a full prominent breast as something womanish, so is the same thing done now in spiritual mat- ters, under the same pretext ; and the heart must be as hard as the cavity of the breast above it. Finally, there are some very cultivated men who split themselves in opposite directions towards heaven and hell, as a salaman- der cut in two runs forward with its front, backwards with its hind part. §34. So speaks the severe spirit within us, the eternal one ; but it becomes milder if we hear it to the end. Every heartfelt lamentation and weeping over any age points, like a spring on a mountain, to some higher mountain or peak ; only those nations remain sunk in their lethargy who go in the same dull path from age to age, not lament- ing over themselves, but over others : and those who suffer from the mental falling-sickness of the French philosophy have, like bodily epileptics, no consciousness of their mal- ady, but only pride in their strength. Sorrow of the spirit (as Night, according to the Greeks) is the mother of gods ; though that of the body is a dark mist, bringing poison and death. The bold and soaring thought of the 4« LEVANA. Talmudists — that even God prays, like that of the Greeks, that Jupiter was subject to fate — receives a meaning from the lofty, though often conquered longings of the soul, which the Infinite himself has planted within us. One religion after another fades away, but the religious sense, which created them all, can never become dead to humanity: consequently, it will only manifest and lead its future life in more purified forms. The saying of Tyrtaeus,* that God, in the commencement, appeared to men in their own likeness, then as a voice, and afterwards only in dreams, and by inspiration (or spiritual illumina- tion), has a beautiful signification for ours, and all future ages, if by dream we understand poetry, and by illumina- tion, philosophy. So long as the word God endures in a language, will it direct the eyes of men upwards. It is with the Eternal as with the sun, which, if but its small- est part can shine uneclipsed, prolongs the day, and gives its rounded image in the dark chamber. Even in France, which could for a short time observe a total eclipse of the sun, arose a Chateaubriand, a St. Martin and his admir- ers, and other kindred spirits. Our present age is indeed a criticising and a critical one, wavering between the de- sire and the inability to believe, — a chaos of times strug- gling against one another : but even a chaotic world must have a centre, revolution round that point, and an atmos- phere ; there is no such thing as mere disorder and con- fusion, but even that presupposes its opposite in order to begin. The present religious wars on paper and in the brain — very different from former ones, which were tempests full of heat, rage, devastation, and fertilization — rather resemble the northern lights^ (thunder and light- ning of the higher and colder quarters of the sky), full of * Tyrtaeus de Apparitione Dei, c. 17. SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 49 noisy lights without blows, full of strange shapes and full of frost, without rain and in the night. Does not, in fact, the bold self-consciousness — the life of this age — extend still further the original character of man and mind? And can the character of men, the mental waking, ever be too much awake ? At present it is only not sufficiently so ; for an object is necessary to reflection, as its absence is to thoughtlessness ; and the common minds of the age are too impoverished to give a rich field to reflection. But there is one strange, ever-returning spectacle : that every age has regarded the dawning of new light as the destroying fire of morality ; while that very age itself, with heart uninjured, finds itself raised one degree of light above the preceding ! Is it, perhaps, that as light travels faster than heat, and as it is more easy to work upon the head than on the heart, the burst of light, by its sud- denness, always appears inimical to the unprepared heart? To the present age is ascribed productiveness and changeableness of opinions, and at the same time indif- ference to opinions. But that cannot arise from this : no man in all corrupted Europe can be indifferent to truth as such ; for it, in the last resort, decides upon his life ; but every one is at last become cold and shy towards the erring teachers and preachers of truth. Take the hardest heart and brain which withers away in any capital city, and only give him the certainty that the spirit which approaches brings down from eternity the key which opens and shuts the so weighty gates of his life-prison, of death, and of heaven, — and the dried-up worldly man, so long as he has a care or a wish, must seek for a truth which can reveal to him that spirit. The present march of light indicates anything rather than standing still ; and it is only this which begets and 3 D 50 LEVANA. immortalizes poison, as it is on stagnant air that tempests and whirlwinds break. Certainly we are very little able to determine in what manner a brighter age than that we have experienced will be educed from the present troub- lous fermentation. Every varied age — and therefore our own — is only a spiritual climate for an approaching spiritual seed; but we do not know what foreign seed heaven will cast into it. Every sin appears new and near, as in painting black stands out most strongly ; man is readily accustomed to the repetition of love, but not to the repetition of injustice. Thence every one regards his own age as morally worse, and intellectually better than it really is ; for in science the new is an advance : but in morals the new, as a con- tradiction to our inner ideals and our historic idols, is ever a retrogression. As in past ages the errors of nations, unlike decorative paintings, seem x^ery distorted and shapeless, because distance hides from us their finer and true completeness ; so, on the other side, the black sin- stains of the past, of the Roman and Spartan, for example, show softened and rounded, and, as on a moon, the high rugged shadow of the past falls round and transparent on the present. For instance, if men estimate the worth of the age after a wai', that most ancient barbarism of human- ity, and especially after the bad innovations consequent upon it, then the spirit of the age rises before this touch of death, in frightful illumination and distortion. But war, as the general storm in the moral world, and the tongue and heart-confusing Babel of the physical world, had in every age repeated injustices, which only appeared new because each had heard from the preceding age nothing save the number of the vanquished armies and towns ; but experienced in itself the sufferings. On the contrary. SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 51 our age has, before every other, besides a certain human- ity of war, in respect to life, also a growing insight into its unlawfulness. Among nations the head has at all times preceded the heart by centuries, as in the slave-trade ; yes, by thou- sands of years, as will perhaps be the case in war. §35. Since modes of life beget modes of thought, and opin- ions actions, and head and heart, spiritually as well as physically, mutually improve or injure each other, so has fate, when both are to be healed at once, only one cure, and that a long one; the harsh viper-like cure of affliction. If sorrow purines men, why not nations ? Certainly, and it is for this reason that men perceive it less, if wounds and fast-days improve the one, battle-fields and centuries of penance do the other, and generations must sink sadly and sorrowfully to destruction. Not by a splendid martial funeral with firing of cannon, but by a battle of the ele- ments, is the sky made blue and the earth fruitful. At the same time in history, as in the almanac, the thick, dull St. Thomas's day is shorter than the bright, warm St. John's day, although both conduct into new seasons of the year. But until, and in ord^r that, our children and children's children may pass through the winter centuries, this it is that nearly affects us and education. "We must meet the great entanglement by partial unravellings. The child must be armed against the future ; yes, even against the close-pressing present, with a counterbalancing weight of three powers against the three weaknesses of the will, of love, and of religion. Our age has only a passionate power of desire, like animals, the mad, the sick, and 52 LEVANA. every weakling ; but not that energy of will which was most nobly displayed in Sparta and Rome, — in the Stoa, and in the early Church. And now the arts, as the state formerly did, must harden the young spirit, and subdue the will. The uniform color of a stoic oneness must extinguish the common praise of the various tiger-spots and serpent brilliancy of passionate agitation ; the girl and the boy must learn that there is something in the ocean higher than its waves ; namely, a Christ who calls upon them. When the stoic energy of will is formed, there is then a loving spirit made free. Fear is more egoistic than cour- age, because it is more needy ; the exhausting parasitical plants of selfishness only attach themselves to decayed trunks. But power kills what is feeble, as strong decoc- tion of quassia kills flies. If man, created more for love than for opposition, can only attain a free, clear space, he possesses love ; and that is love of the strongest kind, which builds on rocks, not on waves. Let the bodily heart be the pattern of the spiritual ; easily injured, sen- sitive, lively, and warm, but yet a tough, free-beating muscle, behind the lattice-work of bones, and its tender nerves are difficult to find. As there is no contest about the nature of power and love, but only of the ways to attain them (these, however, penetrate deep into the matter) ; but, as about religion, on the contrary, the doubts of many must first be solved as to whether there be only one, and whether diflferent paths lead to it, so the third point in which the child is to be educated against the age, must endeavor to establish first, instead of the means, the right to educate religiously. Power and love are two opposing forces of the inner man ; but religion is the equal union of both, the man within the man. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 53 CHAPTER IV. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. §36. RELIGION is now no longer a national, but a house- hold goddess. Our little age is a magnifying-glass, through which, as is weU known, the exalted appears fiat and level. Since we now send all our children out into a townlike futurity, in which the broken church-bells only dully call the populous market-place to the silent church, we must, more anxiously than ever, seek to give them a house of prayer in the heart, and folded hands, and humil- ity before the invisible world, if we believe in a religion and distinguish it from morality. The history of nations determines that there is this separation. There have been many rehgions, but there is only one code of morals ; in those a god has always become a man, and therefore been concealed under many folds ; in this a man has become God, and been clearly manifested. The middle ages had, along with moral churchyards full of dead bodies and rank vegetation, full of cruelty and lust, also churches and spires for the relig- ious sentiment. In our times, on the contrary, the sacred groves of religion are cleared and trodden down, and the l^ublic roads of morality made straighter and more sure. Ah ! a contemporaneous decline of religion and morality would be too sad ! The age will conceal the departure of the sense for the heavenly by the greater sharpness and severity of that for the moral ; and at least by small, delicate, and therefore more numerous, sides acquire a moral breadth. As men in towns, where they cannot 54 LEVANA. build in width build in height, so we, reversing the mat- ter, build in width instead of in height ; more over the earth than into the sky. We may truly say that France, in .general, "with its chemical, physical, mathematical, and warlike noonday lights, can hardly behold in the starry heaven of religion more than a last shadowy quarter of the moon, resembling rather a cloud than a star ; whilst in England and Germany religion is still at least seen as a distant milky-way, and on paper as a star-chart ; but one could not, without injustice, describe the religious dif- ference of these countries as a moral one. And was and is stoicism, this noble son of morality, as love is its daugh- ter, in and by itself religion ? If the difference between religion and morality were not founded on something true, it were incomprehensible how so many fanatical sects of the early and later centuries — for instance, the Quietists — could have arrived at the illusive belief that in the inmost enthusiastic love of God enduring sinfulness con- sumes itself, so that none remains as it does in the worldly man. It is true, that religiousness, in its highest degree, is identical with morality, and this with that ; but that equally pertains to the highest degree of every power ; and every sun wanders only through the heavenly ether. All that is divine must as certainly meet and unite with morality, as science and art, so that in every soul rescued from sin there must as certainly be religious Tabors as there are hills in the crater of ^tna. It must be understood that we do not here speak of that beggar religion which only prays and sings before the gates of heaven, until the Peter's pence are bestowed upon it. §37. What, then, is religion? Prayerfully pronounce the RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 55 answer. The belief in God ; for it is not only a sense for the holy, and a belief in the invisible, but a presenti- ment of it, without which no kingdom of the incompre- hensible were conceivable. Effiice God from the heart, and everything which lies above or below the earth is only a recurring enlargement of it ; that which is above the earth would become only a higher grade of mechan- ism, and consequently, earthly. If the question is put, What do you mean by the word God? I will let an old German, Sebastian Frank, answer: " God is an unutterable sigh lying in the depths of the soul." A beautiful, profound saying ! But as the unut- terable dwells in every soul, it must be manifested to every stranger by words. Let me give to the God-fear- ing spirit of every age, the words of our times, and listen to what it says of religion. " Religion is, in the beginning, the learning of God ; — hence the great name divine, one learned about God, — truly religion is the blessedness arising from a knowledge of God. Without God we are lonely throughout eternity; but if we have God we are more warmly, more intimately, more steadfastly united than by friendship and love. I am then no longer alone with my spirit. Its great fii'st friend, the Everlasting, whom it recognizes, the inborn friend of its innermost soul, will abandon it as little as it can do itself, and in the midst of the impure or empty whirl of trifles and of sins, on the market-place, and the battle-field, I stand with closed breast in which the Al- mighty and All-holy speaks to me, and reposes before me like a near sun, behind which the outer world lies in darkness. I have entered into his church, the temple of the universe, and remain therein blessed, devout, pious, even if the temple should become dark, or cold, or under- 56 LEVANA. mined by graves. What I do, or suffer, is as little a sacrifice to him as I can offer one to myself; I love him whether I suffer or not. The flame from heaven falls on the altar of sacrifice, and consumes the beast, but the flame and the priest remain. If my great friend demand something from me, the heaven and the earth seem glori- ous to me, and I am happy as he is ; if he deny me any- thing, it is a storm on the ocean, but it is spanned by rainbows, and I recognize above it the kindly sun which has no tempestuous sides, but only sunshiny ones. A code of morality only rules bad, unloving souls, in order that they may first become better and afterwards good. But the loving contemplation of the soul's first friend, who abundantly animates those laws, banishes not merely the bad thoughts which conquer, but those also which tempt. As the eagle flies high above the highest moun- tains, so does true love above struggling duty. " Where religion is, there both men, and beasts, and the whole world are loved. Every being is a moving temple of the Infinite. Everything earthly purifies and suns itself in the thought of him ; only one earthly thing remains darkly existent, sin, the true annihilation of the soul ; or the unceasing Tantalus, Satan. " One may with some right speak to others about that of which one never speaks to one's self: for within me he is so near me, that I can with difficulty separate his word and mine ; for from the second self my own is reflected, and I only find him who illumines myself as well as the dew-drop. "■ But if it be no error to believe all this, how wilt thou, O God! appear to those who have overcome the agitations of life in the one still hour of death ; then when world after world, human being after human being, has disap- RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 57 peared, and nothing but the Eternal remains with the mortal immortal? He who brings God with him into the last darkest night cannot know what it is to die ; for he beholds the eternal star in the boundless distance." If you do not believe that religion is the poetry of morality, the lofty, nay, the loftiest, style of life, think less of the mystic enthusiasts, who, as despisers of the doctrine of happiness, were willing to be damned, if but the love of God remained within them, than of Fenelon : could you be purer, more steadfast, richer, more self-sacrificing, or more blessed than he, at once child, woman, man, and angel ? §38. How, then, is the child to be led into the new world of religion? Not by arguments. Every step of finite knowledge can be reached by learning and perseverance ; but the Infinite, which supports the end of those steps, can only be seen at a glance, not reached by counting ; we arrive there by wings, not by steps. To prove, as to doubt, the existence of God, is to prove or to doubt the existence of existence. The soul seeks its original, — not merely an original world near the present one, — that freedom from which finite existence received its laws ; but it could not seek if it did not know and did not possess. The greatness of religion is not confined to one opinion, it ex- tends over the whole man ; as greatness, of whatever kind, resembles the rock-bound mountains, one of which is never found alone in a level plain, but rises up among neighboring heights, and extends into a mountain range. As there is no corporeal world without a spiritual soul (or no resurrection-ashes without a phoenix), so there ia no soul or spu^itual world without God; just as in the same way there is no fate without a Providence. 58 LEVANA. The purest distinction of man from the lower animals is neither reflection nor morality ; for sparks at least of these stars shine in the ranks of the brute creation ; but religion, which is neither merely opinion nor disposition, but the heart of the inner man, and therefore the ground- work of the rest. In the middle ages, so dark for other knowledge, religion, like the sky at night, hung nearer to the earth, and extended brightly over it; whereas, to us, God, hke the sun in the daytime, seems only like the keystone of the arch of heaven. The old chronicler introduces bloody rain, — monsters, — fights of birds, — children's games, — flights of locusts, — yes, even sudden deaths, — among the great events of the world, as impor- tant signs, as the smoke-clouds of an impending war; and war, a still more important sign, had, as a judgment upon sin, its heavenly as well as its earthly origin. At the same time this parallelism, or rather predetermined harmony between earth and heaven, was at least more consistent than the new physical influence which allows not the day-watch of one man, but the thousand-yeared watch of the history of the world to be fixed by a God, resembling a theatrical one, only that he is not a mock sun, but a real sun ; as if the difference between the earthly and the heavenly rested only on degrees of great- ness ; and as if the admission or exclusion of the Infinite did not equally apply to the whole of the finite universe, and to its smallest part. He who possesses religion finds a providence not more truly in the history of the world than in his own family history : the rainbow, which hangs a glittering circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by the same sun in the dew-drop of a lowly flower. The difiident modesty of present individuals who prefer leaving the care of RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 59 themselves to blind fate, rather than to watchful prov- idence, testifies less to unbelief and self-depreciation, than to the consciousness of not believing and acting piously. Herder proves that all nations have received writing and their earliest forms of civilization from the teachings of rehgion ; but does he not thereby prove something further ? — namely, this : that in nations, and conse- quently in men, the ideal is older than the real ? — that so the child is nearer the highest than the lowest, for that lies in him ; and that we reckon time by the stars and the sun earlier than by the town-clock ; and that the Godhead, as once in paradise, so now in the desert, im- presses his image on man before he can discolor it, and so afterwards he can never lose or be without it ? Every- thing holy is before what is unholy ; guilt presupposes innocence, not the reverse ; angels, but not fallen ones, were created. Hence man does not properly rise to the highest, but first sinks gradually down from it, and then afterwards rises again : a child can never be considered too innocent and good. It is thus that the Infinite Being appears to nations and individuals earlier than the finite, yea, than infinite space ; as the almighty power of young nature produced, according to Schelling, the fixed suns earlier than the worlds which roll round them. If a whole system of religious metaphysics did not dreamingly sleep within the child, how could the mental contempla- tion of infinity, God, eternity, holiness, &e., be imparted to him, since we cannot communicate it by outward means, and indeed have nothing for that purpose but words, which have not the power of creating, but only of arousing? The dying and the fainting hear inward music which no outward object gives ; and ideas are 6o LEVANA. such inward tones.* In general even the questions, that is, the objects of propter metaphysics, are among children, as among the uneducated classes, much more active and common than one supposes, only under different names ; and the four-year-old child will ask what lies behind the curtains of the hidden world, whence is the origin of God, &c. For instance, in children talking together, the author heard his five-year-old boy philosophize and say, " God has made everything, so if one offers him anything he has made it " ; whereupon his four-year-old sister said, " He makes nothing " ; and he answered, " He makes nothing, because he has made it." Again ; the seven-year-old sister maintained, if the soul in the head had another set of arms, legs, and a head, another soul must dwell in that, and this again would have a head, and so on forever-t If Rousseau gives up God, and consequently religion, as the late inheritance of a matured age, he can, except in the case of great souls, expect no more religious inspi- ration and love than a Parisian father, who, after the fashion of some nations, never sees his son till he no longer needs a father, can expect filial affection. J When, indeed, could the most holy take deeper root than in the most holy age of innocence, or that which shall have eternal influence, than in the age which never forgets ? * So the fear of ghosts, this unceasing dread, which Avithout any outward cause — by that only corporeal fear is produced — obtains the mastery, and makes men stiff and cold. t While writing this, the above-mentioned four, now six-year-old child said, number has a one and begins, and what begins must also end. At last she showed me a stick, and asked, whether it did not end on all sides. I At least, Mercier says, that the fashionable Parisians, even the women, do not see their children, who are brought up in the country, until thev are fullv grown. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 6l Not the clouds of the fore or afternoon, but the overcast or blue sky of the morning, decides upon the fairness of the day. But as the first rule to be observed by any one who will give something is, that he must himself have it ; so it is true, that no one can teach religion who has it not : mature hypocrisy, or lip-religion, can beget nothing but immature ; such a mock sun can neither warm nor give light, and an acoustic deception returns every optic one. He who has no God in heaven, and in his own heart, can without immorality believe himself bound by no morality (though perhaps for the sake of utility) to implant in his children a nothing, which he has already torn from him- self, and which he afterwards intends to eradicate from them. But, properly, neither belief in the morality of a rehgious lie, nor in its political advantages, sows deceit in the trusting open heart of childhood ; that is only done by the selfish weakness which willingly makes terms at once with God and the Devil : that argumentum a tuto (a keeping open of a back-door into heaven, worthy, but for its wounding of reason and morality, of a very oppo- site name) does not rank, thank God ! among the sins of our age. The younger a child is, the less let him hear the Unspeakable named, who only by a word becomes to him the speakable : but let him behold his symbols. The sublime is the temple-step of religion, as the stars are of immeasurable space. When what is mighty appears in nature, — a storm, thunder, the starry firma- ment, death, — then utter the word God before the child. A great misfortune, a great blessing, a great crime, a noble action, are building-sites for a child's church. 62 LEVANA. Show everywhere to the child, as well as on the bor- ders of the holy land of religion, devotional and holy sentiments ; these pass over, and at last unveil for him the object ; just as if you are alarmed he is so too, with- out knowing why. Newton, who uncovered his head when the greatest name was uttered, would have been without saying a word, a teacher of religion to children. Not with them, but only before them, should you pray your own prayers, that is, think aloud of God ; but their own you should pray with them. A stated exaltation and emotion is a desecrated one. The prayers of children are empty and cold, and are in fact only remains of the Jewish- Christian belief in sacrifices, which will reconcile and win the favor of God by means of innocent beings, not of innocence ; and the child secretly regards the God, whom you give him by word of mouth, as the Kamt- schatkadale and every savage does his. A grace before meat must make every child deceitful. As he grows older, let a day of prayer, or of any religious observances become more rare, but on that account more solemn ; what the first aflfecting Lord's Supper is to the child, that let every hour be in which you consecrate his heart to religion. Let children go to church but rarely, for you might as well take them to hear an oratorio of Klopstock or of Handel, as that of the church ; but when you do take them, impress on them the value of a sympathy with the devotional sentiments of their parents. Indeed, I would rather — since as yet there is no special public worship of God, and no special preachers for children — you should lead them on the great days of the seasons, or of human life, merely into the empty temple, and show them the holy place of their elders. If you add to that twilight, night, the organ, singing, a father's preaching, RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 63 you will at least leave behind on the young heart more religions consecration by that one church-going, than you could on an old one by a whole year of church-attending. After these considerations it makes one's heart ache to think of that already nearly abandoned custom, which some, however, kindly wish back, I mean that of setting the children and young people to take down the sermon, at least an outline of it, in church, and afterwards to write it out fully at home or at school. Although this nearly borders on jest, we will ask in earnest, whether this must not convert the religious sincerity of fellow- feeling into a mere anatomy and skeleton, and draw down the holy, and the aim of the heart, into a means of exer- cising the understanding, and hold every emotion at a distance, because feeling might hinder writing ? It were, perhaps, something about as good, if a young woman made a short pragmatic abstract of her lover's declaration of love ; or a soldier, of the fiery speech of his leader before battle ; or an evangelist, a neat exposition of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, with all its subdivisions. When teachers thus convert all the highest ends into new means and ways, that is to say back ways, do they not spiritually use spiritual things, as the modern Romans really do triumphal arches and temples of Jupiter, which they degrade into wash-houses ? For the poor children of the people, whose parents are still pupils of the Sunday, and for whom, as a set-off to the deep desert of the week, a raising hand must not fail to lift them out of their low cloudy heaven, is a public church service more necessary than for the children of the upper classes. The church walls, the pulpit, the or- gan, are to them symbols of the Divine ; and as a symbol it is indifferent whether it be the village church or the 64 LEVANA. temple of nature. And do we ourselves know where, or if ever, the Unsearchable can terminate the ascending scale of his symbols ? Does not the higher spirit require again a higher symbol ? Let the eye of the pupil, even where he only sees outer walls and forms, yet everywhere gaze into the Holy of Holies of religion, which the church-goer must bring with him into the Church as the temple-court of the heart. Let every foreign exercise of religion, and every outward preparation for it, be as holy to him as his own. Let the Protestant child hold the Catholic saints' images by the roadside to be as worthy of reverence as the ancient oak-forests of his forefathers ; let him receive different religions as lovingly as different languages, in which but one spirit of humanity is expressed. Every genius is all-powerful in his own language, every heart in its own rehgion. But let not fear create the God of childhood ; fear was itself created by a wicked spirit ; shall the Devil become the grandfather of God ? He who seeks something higher in its own nature, not merely in degree, than what life can give or take away, that man has religion, though he only believes in infinity, not in the Infinite, only in eternity, without an Eternal ; as if, in opposition to other artists, he did not paint the sun with a human countenance, but rounded off this to resem- ble the former. For he who regards all life as holy and wonderful, whether it dwell in animals, or, still lower, in plants, — he who, like Spinoza, by means of his noble soul, floats, and rests less upon steps and heights than upon wings, whence the surrounding universe — the stationary, and that moving by law — changes into one immense light, life, and being, and surrounds him, so that he feels RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 65 absorbed in the great light, and wishes to be nothing but a raj in the immeasurable splendor, — such a man has, and consequently imparts, religion ; since the highest ever reflects and paints the highest, even though formless, behind the eye. True unbelief relates to no individual propositions, or counter-propositions, but to blindness towards the whole. Excite in the child the all-powerful perception of the whole, in opposition to the selfish perception of the parts, and then you raise the man above the world, the eternal above the transitory. Place in the child's hand our religious book ; but do not give the explanation after, but before the reading, so that the strange form may enter the young soul as something entire. Why should misunder- standing be the precursor of understanding ? Without wonder there is no faith ; and the belief in the marvellous is itself an inward faith. You must impart a sunbeam of its origin to everything great which comes before you, — to genius, to love, to every poAver ; only things weak and curved consist of steps, stairs, and torture-ladders ; the true ladder of heaven has no steps. At least two miracles or revelations remain for you uncontested in this age, which deadens sound with unreverberating materials ; they resemble an Old and a New Testament, and are these, — the birth of finite being, and the birth of life within the hard wood of matter. For in one inexplicable thing every other is involved, and one miracle annihilates the whole philosophy. Consequently, you do not act the part of a hypocrite when you permit the child to draw anything out of the book of religion, or the secret book of nature, which you cannot explain. Living religion grows not by the doctrines, but by the narratives, of the Bible : the best Christian religious doctrine is the life of Christ ; 66 LEVANA. and after that, the sufferings and deaths of his followers, even those not related in Holy Writ. In the fair spring-time of the religious admission of the child among his elders, — an important one, since then first he comes publicly before the altar, and acts with all the rights of an independent being, — in this never-recur- ring time, when the dawn of life suddenly breaks into the morning red, and thereby announces the newness of love and of nature, — there is no better priest to lead and accompany the young soul, with dancing and great joy, to the high altar of religion, than the poet, who annihilates a mortal world to build on it an immortal ; so that our life on earth may resemble those polar lands, which, so void of animals and flowers, so cold and colorless, yet, after sunless days, display rich nights, in which heaven pours down its gifts upon the earth, and where the northern or polar lights fill the whole blue with fire colors, jewels, thunder, splendid tropical storms, and remind the inhab- itants of the cold earth of that which lives above them. THIRD FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Digression upon the beginning of Man and of Education, §§ 39-42. — Chap. II. Joyousness of Children, §§ 43 - 45. — Chap. III. Their Games, §§ 46 - 64. — Chap. IV. Their Dances, §§ 55 - 67. — Chap. V. Music, §§ 68 - 60. — Chap. VI. Commanding, For- bidding, §§ 61 -63.^ Chap. VII. Punishments, §§ 64, 65. — Chap. VIII. Passionate Crying of Children, §§ 66-70. — Chap. IX. On the Trustfulness of Children, §§71, 72. CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. §39. HEN does education begin its work ? With the first breath of the child. The hght of the soul, which we call life, issuing from I know not what sunny cloud, strikes upon the bodily world, and moulds the rough mass into its dwelling-place, which glows on until death, by the nearness of another world, allures it still further on. In this first moment — for, if time be elsewhere, yet his pulse then beats the first second — is the invisible beam of individual existence broken into the colored spectrum of his bodily appearance -. the dispositions, the sex, yes, even the resemblance to the father's and mother's countenances, are distinguished by yet unseen lines. For this distinct organization of a state within the social state cannot form itself by degrees like 68 LEVANA. the individual parts which it governs ; thus, the forming influence, which moulds the transparent child's face like its father's or its grandfather's, cannot lie in the imagina- tion of the mother, but must exist in the child itself. The two life-chains of the parents are somewhat differ- ent, especially the last link, from which the spark of the new man issued in order to animate the physical clod of earth into an Adam. When one considers how little has yet been done for the races of the coming world (except in the cases of horses, sheep, and canary-birds), not even observations, to say nothing of institutions, merely for a cradle rather than for the child in the cradle ; — how the connections of the sexes, of years, of months, of hours, are so lawlessly and carelessly forgotten and injured, Avhen the foundation-stones of centuries are laid ; — how here the giddy, sensual man requires more laws than the un- changing beast which moves straight on in the leading- strings of instinct and of health, — and how the world be- comes continually more clamorous in desire, more indif- ferent to wisdom ; one must, from a carelessness for moral requisitions, which contents itself only with the bare fulfilment of the ten commandments for ruffians, finally come to the conclusion, that men seek to settle with morality as with a creditor. And may not a state, like an elder, prescribe for all, with its cold, ever-during hand, laws which a loving individual would never have thought of making, and yet is obliged to obey ; just as the law-book, not a pair of lovers, contemplates divorce ? For the rest, we may well venture to complain that Nature, during the "twelve holy nights" in which, as creatress, she wanders alone with her youngest creatures, makes it too difficult even for the conscientious not to steal and murder in the dark. At every step down the THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 69 deep, gloomy ladder of futurity up which men and ages ascend, conscience calls, " Here is a man, there perhaps a genius, the heaven of his people " ; but we, like night- wanderers, must spare the known, and injure the un- known. Since parents play so prominent a part in the history of the creation of the child's body, one can with difficulty refrain from the question, how much they contribute to the theogony (divine generation) of the child's spirit ? If we must think of a dark problem, it is also permitted, nay necessary, for us to think of some solution. The mental dissimilarity of dispositions is a mere product of bodily differences, since both mutually presuppose each other. It is, indeed, easier for us to apprehend difference in bodies than in minds ; but, properly, there is only an apparent difference of quantity visible in those, and only a real one of quality in these ; so it is only minds which grow or inure themselves to anything. If it will not be admitted that that spark of distinguishing individuahty flies down from the stars in clouds during conception, it must then either, precisely in the moment of inducting its human covering, cast off a previous covering spun from the father's or the mother's life, or it was, like thought and motion, born of soul. Creation of spirits is not more diffi- cult to comprehend than creation of thoughts by spirits, or than any other change. In both cases, especially in the second, not only does the bodily life of the parents cradle the bodies of the future, but also their spiritual life its spirits. But, then, with what trembling should this bal- ance be held ! If thou knewest that every black thought of thine, or every glorious, independent one, separated itself from thy soul, and took root without thee, and for half a century pushed and bore its poisonous flowers or yo LEVANA. healing roots, how piously wouldest thou choose and thhik ! — And dost thou, then, so certainly know the reverse ? §40. I come back to my own opinion, that spiritual education begins at birth ; for up to that period the mother — as often afterwards in a worse sense — has only a blood rela- tionship, not a nerve relationship, with the child sleeping at the gates of the world. So that all that is false which has been said about an electric charging chain to which the little invisible is attached, and by which he is charged with the streams and sparks of the maternal passions and feelings. Since, according to the best anatomists, the mother does not nourish the child with her blood directly, but through media, the maternal passions which are to affect it through the blood can only work in two ways, either by mechanical change, slow or quick, or by chemi- cal change, oxidized or unoxidized. The embryo soul does not partake of the mechanical change ; because the mother's blood can move as fast in the ball-room of love as in the servants'-hall of anger ; or creep as slowly when sitting full of hope before the embroidery-frame, as of despair before a bier. The chemical change of the blood by passion, or other external excitement, is itself, in the first instance, a product of the mind and of the nerves which serve it either mediately or immediately. The intoxication of the nerves gives the full beat of the pulse, but not so the reverse ; else the excitement of a race would have as complete an effect as a drink has upon thirst. How the oxidized or unoxidized blood of the mother can more affect the child's mind than her own, must arise from the influence of the blood as nourishment ; and as the blood, before it is capable of affording nourishment, THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 71 must be assimilated by the little foreign body, it can pos- sess no influence different to that of every other nourish- ment: and, in nourishing, as little propagates its differences as does the blood of sheep or of lions. The objections made by nurses go far in justification of this. The clearest proof that mothers have no influence on the mental development of the embryotic human being is given in the varied characters of the children in the same family ; and even more especially in the cases of twins, where the prenatal conditions must have been precisely the same. Neither tell me, that the beautiful Madonna faces seen in Catholic countries are to be regarded as copies of those painted in the churches ; for I reply, that the paintings presuppose lovely countenances, and not these the paintings. At the same time, the disbelief that the mother decides on the mental and physical form of her child leaves room for the true belief that her health or sickness is repeated in the little second being : and it is for this very reason that superstitious fancies about marks, misbirths, and similar things ought to be so much guarded against ; not because what is dreaded brings its fulfilment, but because it, along with those evils which are produced by alarm before a thing occurs, and undue anxiety after it has hap- pened, weakens the body, and brings for the sufferer years of trouble. §41. At last the child can say to the father, Educate, for I breathe. The first breath, like the last, closes an old wdth a new world. The new is, in this case, the world of light and colors ; the life on earth, like a painter, begins w^ith the eye. The ear, indeed, preceded it, — so that it is the first sense of the living as it is the last of the dying, — but 72 LEVANA. then it belonged to the reahn of f'eehng ; and it is on this account that birds in the egg, and soft, many -punctured silk-worms, die from a loud report. The first sound falls with a darker chaos on the closely covered soul than the first beam of light. So the morning of life opens on the freed prisoner with the two senses imparting knowledge of distance, like the morning of the day with light and song or bustle. At the same time, light continues to be the first enamel of the earth, the first fair word of life. The cry which breaks upon the slumbering ear may be strong, but it arouses none but the mother, except the child; and so the world of sound begins with a discord, but the world of sight with beauty and glory. Every first thing continues forever with the child : the first color, the first music, the first flower, paint the fore- ground of his life; yet we can prescribe no other law than this, protect the child from all that is impetuous and vio- lent, and even from sweet impressions. Nature, so soft, defenceless, and excitable, may be distorted by one error, and hardened into a growing deformity. For this reason the crying of children, if composed of a union of discord, hastiness, imperiousness, and passion, ought to be guarded against by all due means, but not by effeminacy, which only increases it. §42. If in the ocean of a human soul, sections may be made, and degrees of longitude and latitude ascribed to it, we must, in the case of a child, make the first section of the first three years, during which, from the want of the power of speech, he still lives in the animal cloister, and only approaches us through the speech-grating of natural signs. In this speechless period, of which we shall now treat, the THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 73 pupils are quite given up to feminine fluency ; but how women ought now to educate can only be seen later on, when we inquire how they themselves ought to have been educated. In this period of twilight, in this first moon's quarter, or eighth of life, let the light only grow of itself, do not kindle it. Here the sexes are unseparated, neither divided by the Platonic Aristophanes, nor by the tailor. The whole human being is as yet a closed bud, whose blossom is concealed. Like the eggs of birds, whether of song or of prey, and like the new-born young of the dove or of the vulture, all at first require warmth, not nourish- ment, which might have a very different effect. And what, then, is warmth for the human chicken ? — Happiness. One has but to give them play-room, by taking away what may be painful, and their powers shoot up of themselves. The new world which the suckling brings with him, and the new one which he finds around him, enfold him as learning, or develop themselves as knowledge ; and neither worlds yet require the ploughing or sowing of stranger hands. Even the artificial gymnas- tics of the senses, which will teach a year-old child to see and hear and hold, are not much more necessary than the leading-strings which show him how to walk ; and can the advantage of teaching some use of the senses, say in three months, which would have come of itself in four, be a rec- ompense for neglecting and wearying one's self in the first year and with the first child, to the injury of after years and the next children, about something which uncon- strained life necessitates in savages and country people ? The excellent Schwarz, in his Treatise on Education, prompts, by his proposition of an early gymnasium for all the senses, to an appendix to this paragraph. As to the material advantage of these school classes for the five 4 74 LEVANA. senses, it is certain that rich, varied life, by its unceasing influence, educates and practises the senses with a power which does not require the poverty of particular institu- tions for practice, except you wish to convert the whole child into one single sense, — into a painter's eye or a musician's ear. On the other hand, these practices have a formal utility in constraining the mind to perceive the finer subdivisions of its sensations, and to measure the world more accu- rately by lines than by yards. In the mean time, the inner world offers itself to a finer and higher school than the outward. Especially leave out all exercises of the sense of taste, for whose haut gout the kitchen is the best school ; since we do not need by its means to distinguish between nourishment and poison, but rather teach by its exercise at rich tables to confound the two, so that we, unhke the beasts, who only when young, from unpractised taste, crop injurious weeds, when old, from refined taste, long for poison dishes and poison goblets. Let there be here not so much a c?e-gression as a pre- gression concerning the order of development of the senses. Schwarz, in his Treatise on Education, assigns too late a birthtime, almost beyond the age of childhood, for the senses of taste and smell. He seems, however, to confound the refinement of these senses, which no doubt takes place in mature age, with their existence and power, which certainly flourish in their greatest strength during childhood. Every one may remember how, as a child, like the animals (which remain stationary on this first step), and like savages, he imbibed everything tasty, fruits, sugar, sweet wine, fat, with a delight and enjoy- ment which weakened with every year of the subsequent refinement of the sense; hence the so much lamented THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. 75 love of sweetmeats in all children ; hence the experience of so many grown-up people, who have had the favorite dishes of their childhood cooked for them, that they did not like them. Infants no doubt take bitter medicines without resistance ; but this is no reproach to their taste ; we ourselves in later life seek a pure bitter as a higher excitement, in bitter beer, water, and almonds. If a young animal eats poisonous plants which an old one avoids, there is proved by this less want of taste than su- perabundance of appetite, that is, hunger ; which in it as easily conquers instinct as in us it unfortunately over- comes reason. Smell, the dulness of which sense speaks as little in favor of mental delicacy as that of the eye or of the ear does against it, awakes with consciousness, consequently, last in a child. We are less aware of its advent, because it subserves few necessities, and because its continuance, either, for instance, in spice islands, or in Augean sta- ble-like streets, renders the consciousness of it difiicult. Children have little scent-glands for the per^^ons nearest them, for instance, for their parents, and thereby dis- tinguish them from individuals more rarely seen. And it is precisely smell which dies away the first of all the senses ; although it, unlike the other senses, is seldom worn out by too powerful stimulants. And who is there who has not experienced in himself — what I have done — that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has, in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood ; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds of our first dim feelings? But how could such a remembrance so strongly 76 LEVANA. affect us if our childish sensibility to flowers had not been so strong and heartfelt ? Ascribe, then, to after life nothing more than the refinement of a deeply implanted feeling. CHAPTER II. THE JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. §43. SHOULD they have anything else ? I can endure a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child ; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can yet raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope ; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present. Think of a child led to a scaffold,, think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin, or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creep- ing like a worm, and you will feel what I mean. But wherefore? The first cause has been already given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest (though shortest) sorrow; one which has no past and no future ; one such as the sick man receives from without, the dreamer from himself into his asthenic brain ; finally, one with the consciousness not of guilt, but of innocence. Certainly all the sorrows of children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but hottest days ; and, indeed, both so much so that in the later, often clouded and starless, time of life, the matured man only longingly re- members his old childhood's pleasures, while he seems JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDEEN. •]-] altogether to have forgotten his childhood's griefs. This weak remembrance is strangely contrasted with the op- posing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of childhood which return: the dream, this mock sun of childhood, and the fever, its distorting-glass, both draw forth from dark corners the fears of defenceless childhood, which press and cut v/ith iron fangs into the prostrate soul. The fair scenes of dreams mostly play on an after stage ; whereas the frightful ones choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery. Moreover, in fever the ice hands of the fear of ghosts, the striking ones of teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents consider, then, that every childhood's Rupert,* even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it finds him on a sick-bed. The first fright is the more dangerous the sooner it happens ; as the man grows older he is less and less easily frightened ; the little cradle or bed canopy of the child is more easily quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man. §44. Cheerfulness, or joyousness, is the heaven under which everything but poison thrives. But let it not be con- founded with enjoyments. Every enjoyment, even the refined one of a work of art, gives man a selfish mien, and withdraws him from sympathy ; hence it is only a condition of necessity, not of virtue. On the contrary, cheerfulness, the opposite of vexation and sadness, is at * The name given in Germany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into obedience. 78 LEVANA. once the ground and flower of virtue and its crown. Ani- mals can enjoy, but only men can be cheerful. The holy father is at the same time called the blessed, and God is the All-blessed. A morose God is a contradiction, or the Devil. The stoic philosopher must unite scorn of enjoy- ment with the preservation of cheerfulness. The Chris- tian heaven promises no pleasures, like the Turkish, but the clear, pure, infinite ether of heavenly joy, which flows from the contemplation of the eternal. The foretaste of heaven — Paradise, to which the theologians denied pleas- ures, but not cheerfulness — sheltered innocence. The cheerful man wins our eye and heart, as the morose man drives both away : it is the contrary with pleasures ; we turn our back on the luxurious, and open our heart to the starving. If pleasure be a self-consuming rocket, cheerfulness is a returning light star, an object which, unlike pleasure, is not worn away by continuance, but receives from it new birth. §45. Now let us return to the dear children. I do indeed think that they ought to inhabit their Paradise like our first parents, those true first children. But pleasures make no Paradise, they only help to laugh it away. Play, that is, activity, not pleasures, will keep children cheerful. By pleasure I understand every first agreeable impression, not only of the taste, but also of the ear and the eye : a plaything gives in the first place pleasure by looking at it, and only afterwards cheerfulness by using it. Pleasure is an irritating burning spot, not an all-embra- cing warmth, on the excitable skin of the child. Fur- ther, if refined, perpetual drunkards and epicures multiply and extend their pleasures by the past and the future, so - i JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDEEN. 79 children, from want of both, can only have shortest, but, consequently, deepest pleasures. Their point of sight, like their eye, is less than ours ; the burning-glass of pleasure should not strike them at focal distance, but far off and gently. In other words, divide the great pleasure into little merry-makings, a gingerbread cake into ginger- bread nuts, a Christmas eve into a Church year. In one month of nine and twenty days a child might be mentally destroyed, if one could make out of every day a first Christmas day. Not even a grown-up head could stand being crowned every day by a new country ; the first in Paris, the second in London, the third in Rome, the fourth in Vienna. But little enjoyments work like scent- bottles on the young souls, and strengthen them from action to action. Nevertheless, this ramification of pleasures only serves for the earliest years : afterwards, in a reversed way, will a Midsummer feast, a grape-gathering, a Shrove-tide, for which children have long to wait, together with the glean- ings of a lively memory, shine all the more brightly in the dull interval. A word about children's love of sweetmeats, against which Schwarz strives, perhaps too eagerly, may be dropped here. I never yet knew a child to whom sweet, savory things and pastry did not seem the most inimitable cakes and altar paintings, and this merely because a child, halt' animal, half savage, is all taste. Bees have at the same time a honey and a wax stomach ; but in men, children have the first, grown people the second. If Schwarz has always found love of eating and want of modesty united, he can only declare this of the age of manhood, but even then the love of eating was only the consequence and companion of deeper sensual pleasures, 8o LEVANA. not their cause. Certainly, the unbridled sensualist will alter in his meats, and also in his tastes, as the lover of eating does on other grounds ; but, on the other hand, how- can the pleasures of taste, which grow weaker as every year is further from childhood, end in still lower sensu- alities, especially since the generality of souls, in regard to love, resemble the Egyptians, among whom the gods reigned earlier than mortal men ? The fathers do not hop, but the children do ; then leave them their other Egyptian flesh-pots before their journeying forth into the desert. The author has often made the sugar island of the tongue, on which of itself no Paphian wood grows, into a kind of palaestra of self-denial : at the same time he relates the matter with diffidence, only as a question, not an answer. For instance, he gave to the two and three year old children candied marchpane (the most whole- some thing), with the command only to suck it at a certain place, and only for so long a time as he permitted. The children learned to value and to keep a promise. He also offered sugar or honey prizes for the endurance of the most strokes on the hand ; but he did it seldom. Most royal children can shorten our inquiries by their decision. For, as regards pleasures, they have every- thing, from toys and drinking and eating things, to car- riage-seats and bed-cushions ; but as far as happiness is concerned, they are tormented from their governors up through eveiy member of the court, so that the kingly crown is very early underlined with a crown of thorns, or, to speak differently, the black round of sorrow is made broader in proportion to their high rank. For, indeed, when we consider how generally a prince, satiated with eating and drinking, is educated, so that he cannot make a step without tutors and lectures, nor a skip without the dancing-master, nor take a breath of fre?h air without four JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. 8l horses, we must almost believe that the ancient heretic Basilides is now again right as regards princes, when he declared that the early Christians would often have been martyrs for future sins, if the after-pains were not added to the fore-pains of the future. Cheerfulness — this feeling of an entirely free nature and life, this self-enjoyment of the inner world, not of an outward minute part of the world — opens the child to the penetrating all ; it receives nature, not loveless and defenceless, but loving and armed, and lets all the young powers rise like morning beams, and play upon the world and upon itself; and it imparts, as moroseness takes away, strength. The early blossoms of gladness are not corn-flowers among the seed, but are themselves little young ears of corn. It is a beautiful tradition that the Vii'gin Mary and the poet Tasso never wept as children.* But now the question is of the means and starry in- fluences which preserve this cheerfulness. If it merely resulted from negative and physical conditions, then, at least for the most instructive half-year of life, that is, the first, all would be obtained by a child who was born in spring. Why do not men begin life, as Oriental nations do the year, with spring ? A child born at this season, might an almanac say without lying, moves slowly on from charm to charm, from leaves to flowers, from the warmth of rooms to that of the sky : the wind i« not yet his enemy, — instead of storms, melodies breathe in the bi'anches, — born to a half-year's festival of the earth, he must believe that life remains so, — he sees the rich earth only afterwards hidden by its covering, — and the enjoy- ment of life which the suckling mother imbibes flows warm through the little heart. * Pertschen's Church History. 4* F 82 LEVANA. CHAPTER III. GAMES OF CHILDREN. §46. THAT which produces and maintains cheerfulness is nothing but activity. The usual games of children, unlike ours, are only the expressions of earnest activity, clothed in lightest wings : children have also a game (it is one to them), I mean that of joking, of unmeaning fcpeech, in order to have something to say to themselves, and so forth. Now if a German were to write a book about the games of children, which would at least be more useful than one about games of cards, he would, it seems to me, distinctly and correctly divide them only into two classes : ßrst, into games or exertions of the receiving, ap- prehending, learning faculties ; and, secondly, into games of the acting, forming powers. The first class would em- brace activity from without working inwardly, like the nerves of sense ; the other activity from within working outwardly, like the nerves of motion. Consequently, if the authör went deeply into the first class, which he calls the theoretic, — the second, on the other hand, the prac- tical, — he would adduce games which are properly only a child's experimental physics, optics, mechanics. Chil- dren have great pleasure, for instance, in turning or rais- ing anything, — putting keys into locks, and, in general, one thing into another, — opening and shutting doors, to which is added, moreover, the dramatic fancy of seeing the room now large now small, and themselves alone one moment, in company the next ; — watching the employ- ment of their parents is to them a game of this kind, as is also listeninfi:: to conversation. GAMES OF CHILDREN. 83 In the second or practical division, the author must put all those games in which the child seeks to relieve him- self of his mental superabundant activity by dramatic fancies, and of his bodily, by movements. The examples will come in the next paragraph. But I think so very scientific a man would form a third class, already hinted at ; namely, that in which the child only plays the game, does not really act and feel it, that is, where he takes and gives a comfortable form and tone ; for instance, looks out of the window, lies upon the grass, listens to the nurse and other children. §47. Play is, in the first place, the working off at once of the overflow of both mental and physical powers : after- wards, when the school sceptre has carried off the mental source of all fire, even till rain comes, the limbs only throw off the fulness of life by running, throwing, carrying. Play is the first poetry of the human being. (Eating and drinking are his prose, and striving to get the needful supplies his first solid bread-study and labor of life.) Consequently play forms all the powers, without impart- ing an overweening influence to any one.* If a teacher would be cruel enough to form a whole man into one member, for instance, into a magnified ear, he must dur- ing the first years so mix the playing cards, by abstracting some, that nothing could ever be obtained but games of sound. If he wished to be anything better in the games * Many children's games are imitations, but mental; wliereas those of monkeys are physical, — that is to say, not from any especial inter- est in the thing, but merely because imitation falls in most readily with the mental impulses of life. Probably the monkey, like Dr. Monro's nervous patient, only imitates strange movements compul- sorilv and from weakness. 84 LEVANA. than cruel, he would perhaps endeavor to lead his pupil with gentle hand, imitating chance which acts from all sides, and develops all. But I dread that grown-up, hairy hand and fist which knocks on the tender, fructifying dust of childhood's blossoms, and shakes a color off, first here, then there, so that the proper many-marked carnation may be formed. We often think to rule the external but broad empire of chance by means which some inner narrow acci- dent has thrown together in ourselves. §48. We will, however, step further into the play-place of the little folks, if not to be lawgivers, yet to be markers of their games. During the first months of existence the child knows nothing of creative play or efforts, only of the passive reception of impressions. During that period of the most rapid physical growth, and inpouring of the world of sense, the overwhelmed soul does not direct itself towards those active games in which afterwards its superabundant powers find relief It can only look, listen, catch, touch : so laden, its little hands and arms quite full, it can do and attempt little with them. It is only at a later period, when, by means of the five acts of the five senses, the knowledge of the outer world is attained, and one word after another gradually liberates the mind, that greater freedom produces active play, and that fancy begins to move, whose unfledged wings lan- -guage first plumes. Only by words does the child obtain an inner world opposed to the outer, by which he can set the external universe in motion. He has two kinds of play, very different both in direction and time, — first, that with playthings, and second, that with and among play- mates. GAMES OF CHILDREN. 85 §49. In the first place the child plays with things, conse- quently with himself. A doll is to him a nation, or a company of players, and he is the theatrical poet and director. Every bit of wood is a gilded flower-rod, on which fancy can bud hundred-leaved roses. For not merely to grown-up people, but also to children, the plaything itself becomes indifferent if a happy imagina- tion alone is permitted to decide ; whether it be with re- gard to imperial or laurel crowns, shepherds' crooks, or marshals' staves, the flails of war or of agriculture. In the eyes of wonder-working fancy every Aaron's rod blossoms. As the Elysian fields of the ancients near Naples were grounded (according to Maccard) on nothing more than a bush in a cave, so, for children, is every bush a forest ; and they possess that heaven which Luther in his table-talk promises the saints, where the bugs are sweet-scented, the serpents playful, the dogs gold-skinned, and Luther a lamb. I mean to say, that in the heaven of childhood the father is God the Father, the mother the mother of God, the nurse a Titaness, the old servant an angel of the communion, the turkey a cherub of Eden, and Eden itself is restored. Do you not know that there is a time when fancy is more actively creative than even in youth, namely, in childhood, in which nations create their gods, and only speak in poetry ? Never forget that the games of children with inanimate playthings are so important, because for them there are only living things : a doll is as much a human being to a child as a baby is to a woman ; and also because to them every word is a reality. In beasts the body alone plays, in children the mind. Life meets them on every side ; they cannot comprehend death, or anything dead ; and 86 LEVANA. therefore the happy beings, animating everything, sur- round themselves only with life, and hence it is they say, for instance, " The lights have covered themselves up and gone to bed," " The spring has dressed itself," " The water runs down the glass," "His house lives there," "The wind dances," — or of a watch from which the works are re- moved, " It is not alive." But among richer realities fancy fades and grows poor ; in the mean time every plaything and play -world is only a distaff of flax from which the soul spins a many-colored coat. As the rook in chess was, among different people, now a camel, now an elephant, a stork, a boat, a castle ; so among children, one plaything often acts many parts, and every time it seems to them, as manna did to the Jews, the very thing they desired. The author remem- bers a little girl of two years old, who, after having long carried about an old doll reduced to the bare wood, had at last placed in her arms a very pretty and skilfully dressed one, — a foster-sister of the most beautiful in Bertuch's Journal des Modes, which it resembled as much in optic beauty as it surpassed it in size. Soon afterwards the child not only resumed her former conduct towards the wooden sloven, but went so far as to take into her arms, in the place of child or doll, a shabby boot-jack of her father's, which she nursed and rocked to sleep as lovingly as the above-mentioned original of Bertuch's pictures. So much more readily does fancy invest an invisible Adam's rib with human limbs and fashionable costume, than a doll which only differs in size from a lady, and which, on its side, appears to the imagination at the next tea-party so perfect that it can be improved in nothing. Just so the same little lassie, sitting beside the author, wrote for a long time with a pen dipped only in air on an ever-white GAMES OF CHILDREN. 87 sheet of paper, until he ahiiost fancied it was a satire on himself. Consequently do not surround your children, like princes' children, with a little world of the turner's : do not give them eggs colored, and painted over with figures, but white ; they will soon from their own minds hatch the colored feathers. On the contrary, the older a man grows the more rich a reality should appear : the heath on which the youth gleaned at least the morning dew of the light of love grows cold with the dark night dcAv to the half-blind old man, and at last man requires a whole world, I mean the next, in order only to live. §50. But by the same fancy which, like the sun, paints the colors on the leaves, are they also again removed from them. The same mistress of the robes dresses, and also undresses; consequently there is for children no ever- enduring play or plaything. Therefore do not leave a plaything which has lost its charm long before the eye conscious of the change ; lay it by. After a long time the dismissed favorite will be received with honor. The same is to be said of picture-books ; for a poetic animation is as necessary to the picture-book as to the play-di-awer. A few words about that. The proper picture-books for A B^C children do not consist of a sequence of unknown plants and animals, whose differences only the insti'ucted eye perceives, but of historical pieces which present the actions of animals or men taken from the child's circle. Then this living gallery, in whose universal history the child can more clearly paint the individual being than the reader or author can in the all-embracing generality of poetry, may be exalted into historic groups ; for instance, into a Joseph among his brethren, selling or recognizing 88 LEVANA. him, — into a Hector's farewell of wife and child, and such like subjects. Children — those of one or two years old excepted, who still need the spur of color — only require drawings, not paintings ; colors resemble the above-mentioned luxuri- ousness of playthings, and, by reahty, weaken the cre- ative faculty. Therefore give no plaything whose end is only to be looked at ; but let every one be such as to lead to work. For instance, a little complete mine, after being a few hours before the child's eyes, is altogether gone over, and each tiny vein of ore exhausted ; but a box of build- ing materials, a collection of detached houses, bridges, and trees, by their ever-varying location, will make him as rich and happy as an heir to the throne who makes his mental dispositions known by rebuilding his father's palace in the park. Moreover, small pictures are better than large ones. What is to us almost invisible, is to children only little ; they are physically short-sighted, consequently suited to what is near ; and with their short yard, that is, with their little body, they so easily find giants everywhere, that to these little juveniles we should present the world on a re- duced scale. §51. Before the new philosophers, who in education more readily give everything than something, one grows so very much ashamed of such a paragraph as this, that one scarcely knows how to deck and sweeten it. I must, how- ever, say that, for children in their early years, I know no cheaper and more lasting plaything — one that is also clean and suited for both sexes — than what every one has in the pineal gland, some in the bladder, and birds in the stomach, — sand. I have seen children weary of play use it for hours as building material, as hurling machine, GAMES OF CHILDREN. 89 as a cascade, water for washing, seed, flour, finger tickler, as inlaid work, and raised work, as a ground for writing and painting. It is to boys what water is to girls. Phi- losophers ! strew sand less in than before the eyes in the bird-cage of your children. Only one thing has to be cared for with regard to it, that they do not eat their plaything. §52. The second kind of play is the playing of children with children. If men are made for men, so are children for children, only much more beautifully. In their early years children are to one another only the completion of their fancy about one plaything : two fancies, like two flames, play near and in one another, yet ununited. Moreover, children alone are sufficiently childlike for children. But in later years the first little bond of soci- ety is woven of flower-garlands ; playing children are little European savages in social contract for the perform- ance of one drama. On the play-place they first issue from the speaking and audience hall into the true sphere of action, and begin their human praxis. For parents and teachers are ever to them those strange heaven- descended gods, who, according to the belief of many nations, appeared teaching and helping the new men on the new-born earth: at least they are to the child gigantic Titans ; — consequently in this theocracy and monarchy free resistance is forbidden and injurious to them, obedi- ence and faith serviceable and salutary. Wliere, then, can the child show and mature his governing power, his resist- ance, his forgiveness, his generosity, his gentleness, in short, every root and blossom of society, except in freedom among his equals ? Teach children by children ! The 90 LEVANA. entrance Into their play-room is for them an entrance into the great world ; and their mental school of industry is in the child's play-room and nursery. It is often of more use to a boy himself to administer the cane than to receive it from his tutor ; and still more to have it inflicted by one of his equals than by one of his superiors. If you wish to form a slave for life, fasten a boy for fifteen years to the legs and arms of his tutor, who is to be at once theatrical director, and occasional member of the two-per- soned company. Like all slaves, the child will probably keep his eye and heart armed against his tyrant's individ- uality ; but, accustomed to one climate, and sailing only with one wind, he will be unable in future to withstand the all-sidedness of individualities. §53. The teaching and feeding master of the little one always acts as if the proper life of the child, as a human being, were not actually begun, but waited until he himself had departed in order then to lay the keystone of the arch. Even the travelling tutor believes that, so long as he walks beside and sows seed in the furrow, the time of leaves and flowers has not arrived. For man, needing an external whole, when once an inner one animates him, fixes that outer one, like the arch of the sky, and the ap- proach of heaven to earth, in the distance and on the hori- zon, although from every hill which he successively mounts that heaven flies away into the more distant blue ; and so man arrives at old age, and at last, on the mound of the grave, heaven rests upon earth. The whole of life is, then, nowhere or everywhere. Heavens ! where a man is, there eternity, not time, begins. Consequently the plays and actions of children are as serious and full of GAMES OF CHILDREN. 91 meaning in themselves, and in reference to their future, as ours are to ours. The early game becomes the earnest of later years ; although children in play often repeat something as the echo of an earlier reality, just as the Neapolitans play cards during theatrical representations. Moser dictated his works while playing ombre : perhaps his have been secretly suggested to many an author by his early childhood's games. As chess is said to serve for instruction in war and government, so the future lau- rels and tree of knowledge grow in the play -ground. The bishop Alexander considered those children on whom Athanasius when a child playfully bestowed baptism to have been really baptized. If, as Archenholz relates, the boys of Winchester School once rebelled against their masters, garrisoned the principal entrance to the school- house, and provided themselves so well with arms and munition, that the high sheriff of the county, although he marched against them with 150 constables and 80 militia men, was yet obliged to grant an honorable capitulation, — I see in this angry play nothing further than the youth of that present (even though it be unjust) manhood, which bars rivers and harbors, and their own island, and on the sea conquers countries: so much does the foam of childish play subside into true wine ; and their fig-leaves conceal not nakedness, but sweet figs. §54. If one were to make propositions, that is, wishes, one might express this : that for every child a circle of games and real actions should be provided, composed of as many different individualities, conditions, and years as can pos- sibly be found, in order to prepare him in the orbis pictus of a diminished play-world, for the larger real one. But 92 LEVANA. to give the social account of these three play provinces would require a book within the book. Moreover, I would propose pleasure and play-masters, as the precursors and leaders of the schoolmaster, — and also play-rooms, empty as those rooms on whose plaster walls Raphael's immortal flowers bloom, — and also play- gardens. And I am just reading that Grabner, in liis travelling description of the Netherlands, gives an account of play-schools, to which the Dutchman sends his children sooner than to the schools of instruction. Certainly if one of the two must fall, it were better the former should continue in existence. Yet a few miscellaneous observations. Children love no plays so much as those in which they have something to expect, or to dread ; so early does the poet, with his knot making and loosing, play his part in man. From time to time they, like deep, unlucky players, ask for new cards. But this changeableness is not merely that of luxury, but also the consequence of their rapid growth, for the so quickly ripening child seeks new fruits in new countries, as the aged seek new ones in the old. Perhaps also it is the consequence of that want of a future and a past, whereby a child is so much more strongly affected and wearied by the present, as though he were seated in a world of sunbeams without morning and even- ing redness : and, lastly, for the child, to whose littleness not only space but time is magnified, play-hours must grow into play-years ; and therefore we must indulge him, the short-sighted being, in his desire of change and new games. The one-houred constancy of a child equals, nay, surpasses, that of one month in his parents. The Jews forbade to celebrate two festivals on the same day, — a marriage, for instance, on a feast-day, or two mar- GAMES OF CHILDREN. 93 riages at the same time. Should not children be refused in a similar manner, if, after having taken a walk on a summer evening, they beg leave to play in the garden, and then, thirdly, to bring their play-fellows into the par- lor for a quarter of an hour before supper ? For herein are children antedated grown-up persons ; and, while at work, scarcely long so much for pleasure, as for what comes after a pleasure ; from one sugar island they would at once sail over to another, and heap heaven upon heaven. If this frequentativum of the enjoyment of even innocent pleasures is allowed, the child, dearest mother, becomes only fitted for a court, or royal residence, and lays claim to pleasure as a right, — months of thirty-two days, and feast-days of twenty-five hours, each of which measures full sixty-one minutes. And so the little being is already dipped in the honey of present superabundant pleasure, whereby time clogs the butterfly-wings of the Psyche for every flight. The only good (if, indeed, it be any) that can come out of a girl thus educated, is at most a woman who, on the same day, after having received and paid some visits, amuses herself at the theatre, and then afterwards hopes for cards and dancing. As nature by cool, refreshing night breaks off the cul- minating pleasures of our constitution, always requiring stronger excitement; so this healthy night-coolness should be given, in a mental sense, to children, in order not to expose them in future to the sufferings of people of the W'Orld and of pleasure ; who, like sea-farers in northern latitudes, wearied by month-long unceasing day, pray and bless God for a little night and candle-light. But let there ever be, if many games, yet few play- things, and not apparent, and every evening put away into one place, and for twins let the same piece be 94 LEVANA. doubled, as for three children trebled in order to avoid quarrels. The early games should assist the mental development, for the physical advances gigantically without help : later ones should draw the physical up along with the mental, which, by schools and advancing years, takes the prece- dence. Let the child toy, sing, look, listen ; but let the boy and the girl run, climb, throw, build, bear heat and cold. The most delightful and inexhaustible play is speaking ; first of the child with itself, and still more of the parents with it. In play and for pleasure, you cannot speak too much with children ; nor in punishing, or teaching them, too little. Immediately after waking, the child, owing to his men- tal and physical excitability, requires almost nothing, still less you ; shortly before going to sleep, as at the burning out of a bonfire, a little weariness is serviceable. For older children, whom labor exercises and controls, its end (freedom), and then the open air, is itself a play. The open air, — an expression which Europe, like death, must soon exchange for the more correct one, the opener at- mosphere. But let not the teacher after the work also order and regulate the games ! It is decidedly better not to recognize, or make any order in games — not even mine — than to keep it up with difficulty and send the zephyrets of pleasure through artistic bellows and air- pumps to the little flowers. Animals and savages never experience tedium, neither would children if we were not so very anxious to keep it away. Let the child experi- ence in play his future life ; and since from that the mountain and storm pressure of tedium cannot be removed, let the child sometimes feel it, in order afterwards not to perish under its weight. CHILDREN'S DANCES. 95 CHAPTER IV. CHILDREN S DANCES. §55. I KNOW not whether I should most deprecate chil- dren's balls, or most praise children's dances ! The former — before the dancing-master, in the society of lookers-on and fellow-dancers, in the hot temperature of the ball-room, and among its hot products — are, in the highest degree, the front ranks and leading-steps to the dance of death. On the contrary, children's dances are what I will now commend more at large. As the first speech long precedes grammar, so should dancing precede, and prepare the way for, the art of dancing. A father who has an old piano, or fiddle, or flute, or an improvising singing voice, should call his own and neighbor's children together, and let them every day for an hour hop and turn by his orchestra, in pairs, in rows, in circles, very frequently alone, accompanying themselves with singing, as their own grinding organ; and also in any way they like. In the child happiness dances ; in the man, at most, it only smiles or weeps. The mature man can in dancing only express the beauty of the art, not himself and his emotions : love would thereby comport itself too rudely, joy too loudly and boldly, before the stern Nemesis. In the child, body and soul still live united in their honeymoon, and the active body dances after the happy soul ; until afterwards both sepa- rate from bed and board, and at last entirely leave one another. In later times the light zephyr of contentment cannot turn the heavy metal standard to point its course. 96 LEVANA. Children are like Forrer's watches, which wind them- selves up if you walk about with them. As in the old astronomy, eleven -of their heavens are movable, and only one, that of sleep, stationary. It is only dancing in a circle that is light enough for a child ; only for youth is a straight course not too difficult. As to the heavenly bodies, so to children, do the motion and music of the spheres belong ; whereas the older body, like water, takes the straight path. To speak more plainly : Women, it is well known, cannot run, but only dance ; and every one would more easily reach, by dancing than by walking, a post-house, to which, instead of a straight poplar alley, a lordly row of trees, planted in the English fashion, con- ducted. Now children are diminutive women, — at least boys are, although girls are often only diminutive boys. Dancing is the easiest of all movements, because it needs the least space, and is the most varied : hence joy is not a runner, but a dancer : hence the indolent savage dances, and the wearied negro slave rouses himself, by dancing, to fresh exertion : hence the runner — all other circum- stances being the same — has more frequently fallen down dead than the dancer. Hence camels and armies and Oriental laborers continue their laborious marches for a longer time, and with more ease, to the sound of music ; not principally because music produces cheerfulness, — that might easily be attained by other pleasures, — but because music rounds off the straight movement into the circling dance and its still returning rhythm ; for it is only in a circular, not in a straight line, that everything returns in thirds. As an argumentative or a narrative sequence (science or history) prepares us by every effort of atten- tion for a still stronger, whereas the zigzag of the epigram CHILDREN'S DANCES. 97 each moment compels us to a new beginning, and fresh exertion ; so physically the same is the case in running and walking, in which, up hill or down hill, no effort is cause of its successor, but the great follows the little, or the strongest the strongest, as the case may be : in dan- cing, on the contrary, without aim or compulsion, one movement constantly springs out of the other, and renders cessation, rather than continuance, difficult. All running, but no dancing, desires an end. What better movement, then, can there be for children, than this revolving one ? The gymnastic of running, going on stilts, climbing, &c., steels and hardens individual forces and muscles, whereas dancing, on the contrary, like a physical poetry, exercises and equalizes all the muscles. § 57. Further, the harmony connected with it imparts to the affections and the mind that metrical order which reveals the highest, and regulates the beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thoughts. Music is the metre of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music. Finally this also ranks among the advantages of this eye and heel pleasure ; that children with children, by no harder canon than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud-feast, without thorns or strife. In short, dancing cannot come soon enough, " but the dancing-master may more easily come too soon than too late." This last part appears in the first edition. I should, perhaps, more correctly have written singing than dancing master, because those skilled in the art declare that the early exercise of the voice is injurious to it. The first edition is only right in so far as it may to the utmost remove children, brought up in genteel coquetry, from the 5 G 98 LEVANA. influence of the dancing-master, who would reduce all bodily movements to rule and system. On the other side, again, the second edition is right, if it add, that better- educated children, who in their eighth and ninth years, instead of vanity, know only the law of the good and the beautiful, may join with less danger to their higher self the trivial regiment and ruling fiddle of the dancing-mas- ter in their early years, when they can learn to dance, as to walk and to read, without coquetry. Then also the dancing-hour may become an hour of freedom and play to those poor persecuted children who are treated like goats, whose sinews are cut to prevent them from jumping. CHAPTER V. M MUSIC. §58. USIC, the only fine art in which man and all classes of animals — spiders, mice, elephants, fish, amphibious creatures, birds — have a community of goods, must ceaselessly affect the child, who is the spir- itual man and the brute beast united. And so one might break the heart of the little new possessor of life with a trumpet, and its ear with shrieks and discord. There- fore, it is probable that the first music, perhaps, as an un- dying echo in the child, forms the secret thorough-bass, the melodious theme in the brain-chambers of a future master of sound, which his after compositions only harmo- niously vary. MUSIC, 99 Music, rather than poetry, should be called " the happy- art." She imparts to children nothing but heaven, for as yet they have not lost it, and lay no memories as mufflers on the clear sounds. Choose melting melodies, and soft strains ; even with those you only excite the child to frisk and dance about. Savages, powerful and pleasure-loving people, such as Greeks, Russians, and Neapolitans, have their popular songs set entirely in minor keys. For some years the child, like the father, can weep at certain sounds ; but in him it arises from overflowing happiness, for as yet the memory does not place beneath those tune- ful hopes the reckoning of its losses. §59. Yet among all the instruments which sound in Haydn's child's concerts, that best serves the purposes of educa- tional music which is born with the performer, — the voice. In the childhood of nations speaking was singing. Let this be repeated in the childhood of the individual. In singing, the human being, harmony and heart coalesce at the same time in one breast, whereas instruments seem only to lend him a voice : with what arms can a parent more closely and more gently draw the little beings to- wards him, than with his spiritual ones, with the tones of his own heart, with the same voice which always speaks to them, but now transfigured into a musical ascension ? Thereby they have the advantage and the conscious- ness that they can imitate it on the spot. Singing takes the place of screaming, which the doctors so much praise as a palaBstra for the lungs, and first military exercise of speech. Is there anything more beautiful than a merry singing child? And how unweariedly he repeats the same thing, which is so repulsive to the little soul in all lOO LEVANA. other games ! As in maturer age, the Alpine shepherd and the chained laborer sing away their vacancy, and long hours of compulsory sitting, so the child sings away childhood, and sings on, hearing only himself. For har- mony, like the innate poetry of the feelings, says nothing but the same thing, unsatiated by repetition, unwearied by sound. Let the father, like the Frieslander, follow the proverb, — Frisia non cantat, — and never or seldom sing : I would wish him to do it for his children, and the mother for him and them. § 60. As one drops asleep by inward listening to singing, so one might, at least in a case where immediate waking is necessary (always a most undesirable thing), effect it by music, as Montaigne's father did. A flute-playing clock would be a good awakener. And why should not har- mony be employed as a soul-curative means against the maladies of children, against vexation, obstinacy, anger ? CHAPTER VI. COMMANDS, PROHIBITIONS, PUNISHMENTS, AND CRYING. § 61. ROUSSEAU could not write these paragraphs ; for he was of a different opinion. But I agree with Basedow, and do not believe, with the former, that the parental will can and ought to assume the appearance of COMMANDS, PROHIBITIONS. loi a mere accident. Rewarding and punishing merely by physical consequences and regulations, and in flict the whole of Rousseau's system of education, would throw away a grown-up man for the sake of a growing one : but life is not given to pass merely from education again to education. Rousseau himself admits that only an ap- proach to his plan is possible : but then one is just as far as ever from the goal ; since here it does not depend on the failure of a degree, but of a species. Fortunately this erroneous course is closed against the child's mind. How, then, would the child attain the after-feeling of necessity, without the fore-feeling of freedom, which he must see as strong in others, or in his equals, as in him- self? Much more must the child — proceeding from himself — regard all things, even dead matter, as free, and be exasperated with every opposition, as though it were intentional. The deeper the chain of souls hangs down, the broader does the free ocean flow around. The dog bites the stone, — the child strikes both, — the savage sees in the storm a war kindled and led by spirits. It is only to the clearer eye that that dark iron mass which we call necessity stands in the midst of the universe like a black sun. Even this it is that first draws the free spirit, which begins and ends in freedom, out of understanding into reason, out of the finite into infinitude. The child, then, who makes everything into an independent being, consequently yourself in the first place, finds in every occurrence a premeditated course of action, and in every hinderance an enemy. Do not w^e older ones experience, during our whole life, the iron power of nature, yet with- out resigning ourselves calmly and uncomplainingly to it, when, for instance, it either closes it irremediably, as in death, or imbitters it, as in old age ? And whence do I02 LEVANA. physical consequences obtain their educational reputation, except from the unchangeableness of nature ? Now free- will may appear to the child just as consequential and immovable ! Then he beholds a higher than bhnd ne- cessity. Further, is there any necessity which better teaches endurance than the mental one of a foreign will ? Finally, how can trust in men — that noble bond of hu- man and higher oneness — come to life in a child without some object, without a parent's word on which he may confide ? §62. The modes, then, of commanding and forbidding are all that come under consideration. And here we must entreat pardon for the disorderly ranks of a merely ex- perimental system of education. Take no pleasure in ordering to do or not to do, but in the child's free action. In frequent orders the parent's advantage is more considered than the child's. Let the child be irresistibly bound by your word, but not you yourself : you need not give any edicta perpetua^ but your lawgiving power can each day issue new decre- tals and pastoral letters. Forbid seldoraer by actions than by words : do not snatch the knife out of the child's hands, but let him lay it down himself at your desire ; in the first case he obeys the pressure of a foreign power, in the second its guidance. Let your tables of the law be unbroken, and in raised character. Rather forbid the whole, if it is difficult for you to separate its parts; for instance, touching the table at all, though you may only wish to protect some articles upon it. Let the cliild learn in himself the right he demands COMMANDS, PROHIBITIONS. I03 from others. Consequently let the respect for property be decidedly and unsparingly exacted from him. What belongs to the child ? Father and mother, nothing more : everything else belongs to them. But as every man de- sires a world, yea, a whole universe, for his patrimony, mete out little to the little one, and say, — " No more ! " The child's ear readily distinguishes a decided from an angry tone of voice : the mother easily falls into the lat- ter when she attempts to imitate the father in the former. His commands are better obeyed than herSj for three rea- sons : the first, his decided, though far removed from angry voice, has been already mentioned. The second is, that the man, for the most part, like the warrior, says only one, and consequently the same, imperial No ; whereas women can scarcely say to a child. Be quiet ! without colon and semicolon, and most necessary notes of interrogation and exclamation. Was there ever in his- tory an instance of a woman training a dog ? Or could a generaless, in commanding her marching army to halt, ever express herself otherwise than thus : " All you people, as soon as I have done speaking, I command you all to stand still in your places ; halt, I tell you ! " The third reason is, that the man more rarely withdraws his refusal. The best rule in politics is said to be " pas trop gou- verner " : it is also true in education. But some teachers, in order to be always talking, and rather to resemble ringing silver than dead-sounding gold, preach as often against faults and in favor of virtues which come with years, as against faults and for virtues which increase with age ; why, for instance, is there so much precipitate haste about learning to walk, to knit, to read, as if these arts must not finally come of themselves ? But quite dif- ro4 LEVANA. ferent things are, for example, pure enunciation, correct writing, and holding the pen and person properly while so engaged, a sense of order, and generally those capabil- ities which only grow with years. Since, unfortunately, independently of these things, education and instruction require so many words, spare using them against fading faults, and direct them against growing ones. Frugal speech cultivates and strains the powers of the interpret- ing child, as riddles do. Grown people do the same towards one another : for instance, a great man of my acquaintance says at first, among a circle of strangers, little more than hum, hum, and that very low ; but just as (according to the Indian myth) the silent godhead in- terrupted his eternity, and creation began, only because he in a similar way said, "oum"; so this said man, merely by his " hum," gives every one much to think of. Yes, I know even a greater and more useful one-syllableness than even the Chinese : that is no-syllableness, or silence. Young doctors, who do not wish to forget natural philoso- phy in their usual medical sciences, very often make use of it, in their examinations before the collegium medicum, in reply to very common questions ; as Socrates was silent when angry, so they wish by silence to express their indignation at questions about miserable sciences to which they have always remained strangers. But to return from this digression, — which can less be ranked among the improvements than among the addi- tions to the second edition, — many of us teachers accom- pany our commands and prohibitions with moral reasons on their way to the heart, which are mere superficiality, for the child's conscience itself affords their strongest proof : but a sequence of reasons' is useful in connection with medicinal, gymnastic, and other commands, which COMMANDS, PEOHIBITIONS. 105 find in tlie child, instead of an advocate, only curiosity and ignorance. Further, we grown-up people all have and admit (though without deriving any peculiar benefit from it) the fault of considering every difference of a child from our- selves as a failing, our scoldings as lessons, childish errors as greater than our own ; and thence it is we so thought- lessly convert our educational rein and leading-strings into a hanging rope, and would willingly carve the child into a neat cork Swiss model of our Alps (as Pfyffer does the lofty mountains) ; and thence it is also, since the like is not easily accomplished, that we talk on and on, like the shell sea-trumpet which ceaselessly sounds, and with our school-chalk draw and lengthen the broad stroke be- fore the beak of the poor hen, so that she may always stare down on the same line without being able to look upwards. Even a grown-up man whom some one should follow all day long witli movable pulpit and stool of confession, from which to hurl sermons and anathemas, could never attain any real activity and moral freedom ; how much less, then, a weak child, who at every step in life must be entangled in a "stop — run — be quiet — do that!" It is the same fault as that filling and cramming of the day with mere lessons ; under which rain-spout of instruction princely children especially stand, as if to make up by that flow of teaching for the future ebb of learning. And what else, in fact, is this but unceasingly to sow one field full of seed upon seed ? A dead corn-granary may pos- sibly come out of it, but no living harvest-field. Or, in another simile, your watch stops while you wind it up, and you everlastingly wind up children and never let them go. 5* lo6 LEVANA. The reason why children dread the fire, which always burns, more than the knife, which does not always cut, applies to their different kind of fear of father and of mother: he is the fire, she the knife. The difference does not lie in their severity, for an angry mother is se- verity itself, but in their unchangeableness. The younger the child the more necessary is one-syllableness ; yes, even that is not necessary ; shake the head, and let that be enough. At most say, Pst ! Later on, give the rea- sons in a gentle voice, merely to render obedience easier by the fair tokens of love. For vehement refusal pro- duces in the child vehement demand. Forbid in a gentle voice, so that a whole gamut of in- creased force may be open to you, and only once. The last may cost labor. Even in the child that human sys- tem of delay rules, which for every rapid determination must have time for three words of command and three summonses, together with some hours of grace. Do not, then, be more angry than is fitting, if a child, for instance, closes a forbidden noise with a so finely graduated Alle- gro ma noil troppo and mancando, that you yourself at last cannot accurately distinguish resistance from obedi- ence. Here there remains no choice but either punish- ment for the most infinitely small disobedience, or, after the first obedience, indifference to the rest: the latter seems to me the best. But there is a more beautiful lin- gering, the parental. The first and quickest word which a father gives to a begging child, or wife, or servant is. No ; thereupon he endeavors to grant the request, and says Yes at the end instead of at the beginning. The mother does still worse. Can you, then, obtain from yourself no respite, no interval, before decision, for the child, or whoever it be, by merely answering to every re- COMMANDS, PROHIBITIONS. 107 quest, " Come again," or "After this," or "In three Saxon minutes of rest"? Women, I would only recommend you this law of delay, in order to be less frequently in opposition to others. Another parental delay, that of punishment, is of use for children of the second five years (quinquennium). Parents and teachers would more fre- quently punish according to the line of exact justice, if, after every fault in a child, they would only count four and twenty, or their buttons, or their fingers. They would thereby let the deceiving present round themselves, as well as round the children, escape ; the cold, still em- pire of clearness would remain behind, and the child, as well as the father, (granting, for instance, that anger would else have been the object as well as the mediator of the punishment, or the correction also the repetition of the fiiult,) would learn, in the reflected mutual pain to regard that of the other. Beccaria rightly attaches the punishment, or hangman, close to the heels of the crim- inal, because compassion and oblivion would else only act against, not in favor of, the executioner ; but the presup- posed wide-extended despotism of the parental law ad- mits of the softening interval of time before the spectators, as well as before the child, and in the rulers themselves. Only with regard to your youngest children attach the punishment to the very fault, like a pjiysical effect to its cause. § 63. After unchangeable biddings and forbiddings, one might also recommend to the parents some wishes, whose fulfil- ment would depend solely on the love and free choice of the children, in order to exercise them in freedom and love and merit. I will do so. •The obedience of children, in itself alone, without con- Io8 LEVANA. sideration of its motive, can have no other value than that thereby much is made easier to the parents. Or would it be good for the soul's growth, suppose your child al- ways submitted, bent and broke his will to that of others as to yours ? What a pliable, dislocated human member, bound on the wheel of fortune, would the child then be ! But what you desire is, not his obedience, but his inclina- tion to it, love, trust, self-denial, the grateful reverence for the best (namely, his parents) ! And in so far you are right. But therefore take care to command nothing to which the higher motive does not itself call and incline you. To forbid will irritate less and cause to err a child who regards everything as the independent property of his parents, than to command; since the young spirit already knows that he has at least one property, himself and justice. Mothers willingly call to the help of their biddings and forbiddings the dissipating method, which by pleasurable by-ways conceals from the child the goal of authoritative command. But by this flattering mummery the child learns no rule and no discipline, but, before his short-sighted eye, all right and steadiness is converted into a merry game of chance, which hardens and accus- toms him to nothing. Further, the children, always only the receivers of their parents' gifts, are themselves sometimes gladly the hosts of their hosts, and do the work of love more cheerfully than that of necessity ; just as their parents more willing- ly give than pay. Let, then, the request be proffered in the gentlest tone of voice (but without giving any rea- sons), and recompensed by gladness at its fulfilment ; yet let not its refusal be punished. Only the slave is lashed to over-service ; even the camel moves no swifter before the whip, only behind the flute. Children, it has been PUNISHMENTS. 109 remarked, have a particular affection for the station of their grandparents ; and how comes this, but because they require and order httle, and consequently then- gi'andchildren receive it the more willingly from them ? Finally, can you more beautifully and soothingly extin- guish the memory of a punishment than, when it is over, making the child happy by expressing a wish for a little act of courtesy to some one ? More of this in the chapter on the education of the affections. CHAPTER VII. PUNISHMENTS. §64. THIS uncliildlike word will scarcely issue from my pen : I would rather write pain or after-smart. Punishment should only apply to guilty conscience, and in the beginning children, like animals, have only an inno- cent one. They, as the fixed stars viewed from moun- tains, should never tremble ; and the earth should seem to them, as it would do from a star, glorious, shining, not earthy black. Or if you necessitate them to sacrifice and pawn their irrecoverable May-time, in order that they may thoroughly enjoy its inmost kernel in some subse- quent tempestuous period of life, do you advise them anything diflPerent from what the Indian does, who buries his gold in order to enjoy it in the next world, after he himself is buried ? Great rewards, says Montesquieu, betoken a falling no LEVANA. state ; the same is true of great punishments in the school-house ; yea, and in the state also. Not great but unavoidable punishments are mighty, truly almighty. Hence most police punishments are usury, — punishing with pounds where pennies would suffice, — so also are torturing cruelties, because no one dreads the wheel who scorns the gallows. There exists in men a fearful cruelty; as compassion can grow into positive pain, so the inflic- tion of pain for punishment can grow into pleasure. It is strange, but to be proved by schoolmasters, soldiers, rus- tics, hunters, overseers of slaves, and murderers, and by the French revolution, that wrathful cruelty is easily fanned into a pleasurable sensation, to which screams, tears, and flowing wounds actually become a refreshing spring to the thirst for blood. Among the people the blows of fate on the parents usually beget, as in a stormy sky, retaliating blows on the children. Common mothers strike their own children the harder because they see strangers do it, or because they cry too much, or be- cause they are too silent. Is it more our subjection to jurist Rome, — which considered children, as well as women, slaves, and those who were not Romans as things, not men, — or more our reverence for the domes- tic sanctuary, which explains the indifference with which the state beholds the painful judgments of parents and teachers, the tortures of defenceless innocence ? §65. If the ancient Goths, Greenlanders, Quakers, and even savages, form tranquil and brave children-souls, without the cane, round which ours must twine like tame snakes, we may perceive how ill we use the twig which must afterwards be thickened to a stick. The one ought to PUNISHMENTS. Ill have rendered the other unnecessary. Even the smallest rod should only be used occasionally as paradigma and theme of the future ; afterwards the mere threatening preaches and restrains. At the same time the reproach of Goths and savages, that blows destroy the courage of a boy, proves rather too much, because it would equally serve against every useful preventive which teaches by pain ; for instance, burning the finger, and, moreover, may be disproved, partly by the example of the common Ger- man soldier, who probably gives as many blows in war as he received in time of peace, and also, partly, by that of the officers, with whom sometimes the opposite is the case. A child who strikes should be struck, and best by the object itself, if he is old enough ; by the servants, for in- stance. If a child is struck, say a girl, the father may be lier curator sexus (guardian of the sex) ; on the contrary, if it be a boy who struck a boy, he would not deserve the future man's hat if he rather raised his voice than his hand, and took refuge in his father's revenging stick. Never let the contest of parental and childish obstinacy take place ; the one in punishing persistency to obtain its object, the other in enduring refractoriness. After a cer- tain amount of exerted authority, leave to the grieved child the victory of No ; you may be certain he will the next time avoid so painful a one. TrembHngly I venture to propose suggestive questions, presupposive of the matter, — such, it is well known, are forbidden to judges, because they would thereby attach to the prisoner's answer what they had first derived from it ; and because, by this blackening of forbidden wares, they would soon arrive at the blackening of the accused, thus urged to stumble. At the same time I would permit the educator occasionally to make use of such questions. If 112 LEVANA. he knows, with every hkehhood of truth, that the child, for instance, has been on the ice, contrary to his order, he may, by the first question, which only concerns indifferent by-circumstances, as how long he has been on the pond, and who was sliding with him, take away from him at once the wish and the attempt to pay the inquirer with the false silver of a lie, — a wish and an attempt to which the simple question, whether he had remained in the house, would have afforded room and temptation. It is impossible that wickedness and presence of mind can be so great in a child, that in this confusing assault he will declare the seeming omniscience of the parental inquiry to be a lie' by himself giving a bold lying denial of the fact. Children, like savages, have a propensity to lie, which has chiefly reference to the past, and behind which, as Rousseau's lie about the ribbon proves, the truthfulness of riper years is developed. Baser and more dangerous than lies about what is past are prospective lies, or those about the future, by which the child, else the echo of the present, annihilating himself, declares, with the conscious- ness of doing so, the design of a long contrary course of bad action : the lie of the past steals good money, the lie of the future coins false. The carefully moral use of a similar leading question at least renders difficult the so dangerous success of the titular truth of a lie ; for one successful lie is the mother of lies ; and out of every wind- ego- the Devil hatches his basilisks. One word about after-anger ! A serious punishment of a child is scarcely so important as the quarter of an hour immediately succeeding, and the transition to for- giveness. After the hour of storm every seed-word finds a softened warm ground ; fear and hatred of the punish- ment, which at first hardened and struggled against wliat PUNISHMENTS. II3 was said, are now past, and gentle instruction falls in and heals, as honey relieves a sting, and oil cures wounds. During this hour one may speak much, if the gentlest possible tone of voice be used, and soften the grief of others by showing our own. But every long winter of after-wrath is poisonous ; at most an after-grief, not an after-punishment, is allowable. Mothers, viewing every- thing on the foot of love, and so treating their children like their husbands, fäll easily into this after-punishment, chiefly because it better agrees with their activity, gladly dividing itself into little parts, and because they, unhke the man, who sets the stem round with thorns, willingly cover the leaves with prickles. I have, dearest lady- readers, met the gentlest, mildest " Blondinas " in public places, who, nevertheless, in the nursery (and in the ser- vants' hall too), resembled beautiful white roses, which prick as sharply as the fullest and reddest. Unfortunately it is often the case that women, like so many authors (my- self, for example), > do not know when to stop and say. Halt ! A word which I have hitherto vainly sought in every female dictionary, and in every female street-quar- rel. Now this after-anger, this should-be-punishing ap- pearance of loving less, either passes over the child, living only in the present, and resembling a beast which imme- diately after the greatest pain and madness eats on peace- ably, without being understood and without having any effect ; or, from the same sense of the present, the child reconciles himself to the want of marks of affection, and learns to do without love : or his little heart is imbittered by the continued punishment of a buried fault ; and so by this after-rancor the beautiful affecting passage to forgive- ness is lost, which by long gradations is weakened. But afterwards this after-tax of punishment, so dear to women. 114 LEVANA. may do good service, when the girl is about thirteen years old, and the boy fourteen : this later, riper age counts so much past in its present, that the long, regretful seriousness of a father or a mother must move and influence a youth or a maiden at the time when their hearts thirst for love ; in this case coldness ripens and sweetens the fruit, whereas earlier it only kills the blossom. Is there anything more beautiful than a mother who, after a punishment, speaks to her child with gentle earnestness and serious love ? And yet there is something even more beautiful, — a father who does the same. What is to be followed as a rule of prudence, yea, of justice, towards grown-up people, should be much more observed towards children ; namely, that one should never judgingly declare, for instance, " You are a liar," or even, " You are a bad boy," instead of saying, " You have told an untruth," or " You have done wrong." For since the power to command yourself implies at the same time the power of obeying, man feels, a minute, after his fault, as free as Socrates ; and the branding mark of his nature, not of the deed, must seem to him a blameworthy punish- ment. To this must be added, that every individual's wrong actions, owing to his inalienable sense of a moral aim and hope, seem to him only short, usurped interreg- nums of the Devil, or comets in the uniform solar system. The child, consequently, under such a moral annihilation, feels the wrong-doing of others more than his own ; and this all the more because in him want of reflection, and the general warmth of his feelings, represent the injustice of others in a more ugly light than his own. If it be permitted to the state only to declare actions, not men, dishonorable, — except in cases where it ad- judges the loss of life with that of honor, because loss of PUNISHMENTS. II5 honor is the extinction of humanity ; and every heart, however degraded, still preserves indestructible the life- germ that may grow up into the restoration of the man : — then is it still more sinful, by the cruel frost of igno- minious punishment, to injure this life-seed in the child, which as yet only bears unripe and growing members. You may give him, as rewards, coats of arms, chains and stars of orders, and doctors' hats, — or, as punishments, take all these away ; but do not let the punishments of honor be greater ; that is to say, do not let them be posi- tive, as the dunces' caps, and wooden horses of many schools are. Shame is the cold Orcus of the inner man ; a spiritual hell, without redemption, wherein the damned can become nothing else but at most one devil more. Therefore, even Gedicken's advice, to oblige a child deserv- ing punishment to write a theme about his fault, is to be rejected (except at a somewhat later period) ; for what else can this raking up of the inner slough produce but either foul, complete sinking and incrustation o^ ih.Q fallen child, or poisonous stunning of the better by marsh exhalations ? And does not the tender being thus harden and accustom himself to a contradiction between words and feelings ? Somewhat similar is the punishment of kissing the hand which has inflicted chastisement. The state and educa- tion do so mutually work after and imitate one another ! I only cite as an example the disgraceful retractation of an injury. For as no civic power can remove the opinion of the injurer, the command to revoke his words is only the command for a he, and every other punishment would be juster, and more acceptable, than this dictated self- profanation, whereby the man — against other rules of justice — must show himself up as the house-witness of his own shame. Only the judge, not one of the parties, Il6 LEVANA. can justly (not morally) restore honor to the other ; for else he could also take away what he had again given. Still stranger is it that in the more refined degrees of recantation the defendant loses in his own honor what of another's he restores to the plaintiff, — like a master of the mint who becomes bankrupt. But back to our ill- treated child ! Are not the wounds which an honored warrior scarcely feels made deep and burning by dis- honor ? so the dishonored and helpless being struck by two blows hangs between heaven and earth, scourged both in body and soul, and languishingly desolate. But, ye parents and teachers, in a less degree, but in the same way, do you inflict inward and outward torments on the weak hearts when, — as is so often, — you surround with thorns the corporeal, or other punishments, by derision of their appearance, or by ludicrous names. Never let the least pain be inflicted scoffingly, but seriously, oftener sadly. The sorrow of the parents purifies that of the child. For example, if the royal pupil of Fenelon gave way to ebullitions of passion, this bishop of Cambray — more properly of Patmos, for he might have been the second disciple whom Jesus loved — commanded all the servants to wait on the king's son seriously and silently, and so let stillness preach. SCREAMING AND CRYING OF CHILDREN. II7 CHAPTER VIII. SCREAMING AND CRYING OF CHILDREN. §66. THE best about this is already written, and the glean- ings, too, along with it. All that need be done more is, — to do what is written ; and this I expect from the women for the first time, if they have children in the second w^orld, or at all events in the third. But now their weak, five-sensed heart is driven to and fro by the crying and screaming of children, as by w4nds and weaves ; and, since they themselves often perform miracles with the liquidizing blood of St. Januarius, that is, with tears, it is natural that they should melt at the flowing tears of others. Only to the man, for whom eye-water frequently becomes a petrifying water, shall a few molHfying con- siderations be here presented ; so that every screaming of a child shall not make him a savage, a beast, and worse than a beast. As Rubens by one stroke converted a laughing into a crying child, so nature frequently makes this stroke in the original : a child's eye, hke the sun, never draws water so readily as in the hot temperature of pleasure; for in- stance, after the return from a playing party of children. Their mirth very easily passes beyond the first extreme verge, which, by exhaustion, leads to the second. More- over, consider that children have their hypochondriacal sufferings, days and hours of rain, just as much as their parents ; that the four great seasonal wheels on quarter- days also affect young nerves, and that the child's quick- li8 LEVANA. silver easily falls and rises with that in the glass, before storms and cold weather.* You should not, however, consider it in order to give more way to it, or more to ward it off, but just to make nothing out of it, neither anxiety nor sermons. Since women so willingly translate their sensations into words, and by their talkativeness distinguish them- selves, more than we do ourselves, from parrots, among which class of birds the females talk little, — hence only the males are brought to Europe, — so we must consider the prologue to speech in little girls, that is, some crying and screaming, as the overflow of the future stream. A boy must digest his pain without water, a girl may have a few drops after it. Children have, in common with weak men, an incapa- bihty of instantaneous cessation from what they are doing. Often no threatening can stop their laughter : remember the converse in their crying, in order to treat their weak- ness as a physician rather than as a judge. §67. We may divide children's hurts, or crying at hurts, into four, like the four feelers of a snail, with which they touch the ground. First, screaming about some outward hurt, a fall, for instance. Here nothing is more injurious * The parallel line, or rather parallel zigzag, between our corpo- real world and the outer universe would have been correctly laid down long ago if the great changes produced by the weather in our bodies had not appeared in the weaker part before their occurrence, in some along with it, and in stronger natures afterwards, so that the same weather makes one person ill, which seems to restore another, on whom, in fact, the future is exerting its influence. From a similar reason the mother of the ebb and flow of the tide, the moon, was so long unknown, because they followed her after an interval of hours or even days. SCREAMING AND CRYING OF CHILDREN. II9 than — what is so desu-able in all requisitions to the child — the soft, compassionate mother's voice : the com- passion of another joins in with what he feels for himself, and he cries on for pleasure. Either say, dryly, " Cour- age," " Be quiet," " It does n't signify " ; or, still better, repeat some merry old Da-capo word, " Hoppa," for in- stance. The strength or weakness of the child must decide whether you should in the first case choke the pain by an absolute forbiddal of its outbreak, — since victory over the sign by distraction and division becomes a victory over the thing, — or, in the second, let nature heal itself by those inner-home methods, which in grown- up people are exclamations and curses, and tears and noise. Yoi^ need not answer me, " Very common ad- vice," for I reply, " But of very rare accomplishment." The unaltered course of old counsellors ought to produce an improved one in the hearers. §68. In the second kind of crying, on the contrary, that caused by illness, the gentle, soothing mother's voice is in its right place, — namely, by the sick-bed. And for what other reason than this, because the little spiritual I or I-let, whose place it is to govern and direct the physical, is itself attacked and plundered, and the mind, lying in iron chains, knows not how to bear " the order of the iron crown"? Here you must indulge complainings, yet without paying more attention to them than at other times. Maintain the spiritual regimen, even if you must change the physical. Children in sickness are morally distorted ; the sick-bed improves, the sick-cradle injures. No sick child ever yet died of good education. But why are we so serious on this point, but because too I20 LEVANA. frequently, in private, the whole education of childish ' humanity is only made into the nurse of physical pro- gress ; as (if the expression may be allowed) men use the holy breath of life to turn the sails of windmills, and the next world as a swimming bladder on our earth ? Bad enough ! Every unholy thing sets before itself (and others) a period from which it will first begin to contem- plate the eternity of the Holy; as if humanity were attached to some future year, the twentieth, thirtieth, sixtieth, instead of to every present moment. Where, and in what age and place, will the fear of hurting life by the strict consistency of education be overcome ? Think always only of the best ; the good will soon ap- pear. § 69. The third kind of crying is that used to get something. Here hold fast Rousseau's advice, — Never let the child obtain an inch of ground by this war-cry ; only the mis- fortune is, women are never to be moved to this patient indifference towards screaming. But they say to him, " No, you shall have nothing while you are so naughty ; but, when you have done crying, you shall see what I will give you." And does the little despot want anything more ? The greatest thing it might be permitted a mother to do in her distress would be, if her little tribu- tury king were young enough, to bring down and offer him the usual tribute and exchequer bills, instead of this extraordinary war-tax ; i. e. to grant him a different, in- stead of the required gift. But, heavens ! has one then never seen how happy a child is who knows no orders, and consequently no foreign stubbornness, — who skips away as laughingly after a no as after a yes, — who by no changing arbitrariness between permission and re- SCREAMING AND CRYING OF CHILDREN. 121 strain t, between yes and no, to which a victorious screaming fit always leads m the end, has not yet made the first bitter experience of injustice ; and who conse- quently receives no other nor deeper wounds than those which can strike the body ? Mothers, have you never yet seen this happy child ? Try it, for an experiment, in one point ; for instance, strictly forbid your child of about two years and three quarters old ever to touch your watch (though rather a breast than an ear pendant), even if the watch lie openly every day on your work- table, and only act thus three days together, so as never to contradict yourself, — you will curse your former " for- feit-moneys." §70. Against the fourth kind of crying, — about loss, from fear, from vexation, — the imposition of some occupation is useful. Or thus ; you earnestly demand the child's at- tention, and begin a long speech; it is quite indifferent where it at last ends ; it is sufficient that the child has exerted himself and forgotten his misfortune. The thun- der-spark of a harsh word is very good, — " Quiet ! " for instance. Never let the mind's green and yellow sick- ness, — ill-temper, — spread over the whole being. Hence it is very important, especially with little children, never to wait for the full outbreak of ill-humor, but at once to mark and repress its first smallest indication. For the rest, never put to flight naughtinesses which die away with years by those which grow with years: the tears of childhood dry up before the sighs of manhood com- mence. 122 LEVANA. CHAPTER IX. ON THE TRUSTFULNESS OF CHILDREN. §71. LONG before the child can speak he understands the speech of others, and that without gestures or cadence in the voice: just as we understand a foreign language without being able to speak it. It is for this reason that this chapter is placed here. One need but lend nearer objects to the child's faith (Jides impUcita) of the elder theologians, and the word becomes important and true. If the cliild have in his own father a holy father, with all the advantages of infal- libility, and with the additional protection of a holy mother, — if, retaining the discourse of a stranger at once with behef and unbelief, he bring it to his parents, and ask. Is it true? — if to him, according to the primary propositions of the Wolfian philosophy, the father be the proposition of the sure foundation, the mother the propo- sition of doubt, and the teacher the proposition of the un- distinguishable ; — if he, believing without proof, set a pair of human beings against the whole outer world, and equal to his own inner world ; if, when threatened, he rely with no more confidence on the bodily strength of the parental arms than on their spiritual power ; — if all this be so, it reveals a treasure of humanity, which, to value according to its worth, we need but to find and behold in older hearts. What, then, rests on this yet un- measured faith in men ? In the intellectual world, nearly everything ; and in the moral world, at least as much. The intellectual world, it is true, will be least ready to CHILDREN'S TEUSTFULNESS. I23 grant this of itself. But what do we know of any island whatever which a voyager discovers, more than our faith in him gives ? Or what of whole continents ? A rough seafarer by his testimony governs a geographic continent in the learned world. If you oppose to me the multitude of witnesses, — although few distant countries have as many witnesses as a testamentary document, — I answer. Even out of the multitude of witnesses, no weight of probabihty would ensue, if the great faith in one indi- vidual were not strengthened by the multiplication of in- dividuals. Man believes man more readily about the distant and the vast — about former centuries and quar- ters of the globe — than about what is near and small ; and he does not permit in a stranger the probability of a lie to increase with the facihty and impunity of uttering it, but with the very reverse. Thus we glean our Roman and Grecian history chiefly from their own testimony, — for we ourselves contradict the Persians who contradict Herodotus, — and we do not make half the difficulty about the collateral testimony of a thousand other witnesses (for no historian ever experi- enced all that he calls to life and describes), concerning a succession of a million actions, which lawyers do about one single matter of fact for which they require two wit- nesses. What gives us this certainty ? Faith in human- ity, and so in men, and consequently in one individual. So, further, the sciences of medicine, of astronomy, natural history, chemistry, are built up sooner and more extensively on others' experience than on our own : con- sequently on faith. Even our convictions from philo- sophical calculations call in trust in others, to aid the probability that we have not miscalculated. And where- fore does an irresistible longing impel us so strongly to 124 LEVANA. the opinions of great men about the foundations of our being, about God and our own souls, but because we be- lieve their assurances more than the proofs of others and of ourselves ? And how does not intoxicated youth hang, — like bees on flowering hme-trees, — drinking in the spirit of a celebrated teacher! But this faith reveals most richly its glorious form when its object is moral. Here the heart is refreshed by true bliss-imparting faith. In the intellectual world one trusts to what you say, — in the moral, to what you are. As lovers trust each other, as the friend trusts the friend, and the noble heart trusts humanity, and the faithful trust God, — this is the Peter's rock, the fast foundation of human worth. Alexander, who drank the suspicious medicine, was greater than the physician who made it healing instead of poisonous ; it is nobler to exercise a dangerous confidence than to deserve it: but wherein consists the divinity of this trustfulness? Not by any means merely in this, — that you cannot presuppose any power of vital danger in another, without knowing and possessing it actively in yourself, — for you may both know and possess it, and yet not presuppose it ; and then in dangers, as in the case of Alexander, the trustful only is endangered, not the trusted. But herein consists the triumphal banner of faith in humanity, and the civic crown of heaven ; that the trusting must forbear and re- main quiet, — which, as in war, so in everything else, is more difficult than to do and struggle, — and that faith, although the matter in hand be but a single case, yet beholds and embraces all cases, a whole life. He who rightly trusts shows that he has seen the moral deity face to face ; and there is, perhaps, no higher moral gratifica- tion on earth than this, — if sense and testimony attack CHILDREN'S TRUSTFULNESS. I25 the friend in your heart to hurl him thence, even then to stand by him with the God in you, to preserve and to love him, not as formerly, but more deeply. Therefore, if this trustfulness be the holy spirit in man, a lie is the sin against that spirit ; since we place another's word so high — even above our own — that, according to Pascal, a man to whom any sin was ascribed would at last believe and realize it. Platner maintains that the weaker the brain, the more readily it believes, as is seen in drunken persons, sickly women, and children : but the question here becomes whether this (merely physical) weakness, which affords room for so many tender developments of the heart, — for love, inspiration, religion, poetry, — does not prepare, though at the cost of the other powers, the true, pure loneliness of absolute dominion to the holiest of the perceptions, the perception of the holiness of others ? The English are more easy of belief than any other nation, but neither weaker nor weak : they hate a lie too. much ever to presuppose it. §72. I return to the trustfulness of children. Nature has, as if figuratively, richly prepared them for reception : the bones of the ear are, according to Haller, the only ones which are as large in the child as in the grown-up man ; or, to use another simile, the veins of imbibition are, ac- cording to Darwin, the fuller the younger they are. Holily pre.-erve childlike trust, without which there can be no edu- cation. Never forget that the little dark child looks up to you as to a lofty genius, an apostle full of revelations, whom he trusts altogether more absolutely than his equals, and that the lie of an apostle destroys a whole moral world. Wherefore never bury your infalHbility by useless proofs, 126 LEVANA. nor by confessions of error : the admission of your igno- rance comports better with you. Power and scepticism the child can sufficiently early, and not at your charges, polemically and protestantly exercise and strengthen on the declared opinions of strangers. Do not in the least degree support religion and morality by reasons : even the multitude of pillars darken and con- tract churches. Let the holy in yourself be directed (with- out lock and turnkey) to the holy in the child. Faith — like the innate morality, the patent of the nobility of humanity brought with it from heaven — opens the little heart to the great old heart. To injure this faith is to resemble Calvin, who banished music out of the churches : for faith is the echo of the heavenly music of the spheres. When, in your last hour, — think well of it, — all in the broken spirit fades and dies, poems, thoughts, strivings, rejoicings, even then the night-flower of faith still blooms on, and refreshes with its perfume in the last darkness.* * The first volume of the original German work ends here. APPENDIX TO THE THIRD FRAGMENT. ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION. HE expression is, properly, false; for as the science of care of the body it would equally apply to beasts, strong men, and the aged ; the cook would be a Labonne, and the kitchen a magazine of school-books. Permit me here to insert some observations on attention to the bodies of children which I addressed to a newly-married man shortly be- fore his wife's confinement. (Some readers will not agree so theoretically with this letter as my three children, who, during the printing and distribution of the first edi- tion, were educated in accordance with it, practically did, by their flourishing condition.) You may freely inform your dear wife why I write now on this point instead of half a year later ; namely, because she is now still trustful, but will in time to come be as disobedient as possible. I have known the most intelli- gent women who have really assisted and followed up the wishes of their most intelligent husbands in regard to the physical care of their child until the second had not yet arrived ; but then, or at most when the fourth came, the dietetic kitchen-Latin and medicinal patois of the women assumed the government, and nothing more could be effected than one or two propositions without results. 128 LEVANA. A woman during her first pregnancy might easily com- mit to memory Hufeland's " Good Advice to Mothers," since in the new edition there would be but three and a half pages to be learned monthly. But Heaven preserve every one from that timid over- carefulness which mistrusts nature, and has every child's tooth extracted by the physician or apothecary. If one ventures nothing upon children, yet one ventures them- selves ; their bodies probably, their minds certainly. Only let a person observe the rosy children in lonely villages, where the whole Brownonian apothecary's-shop has noth- ing in its phials save brandy ; or the descendants of sav- ages compared with the fading Flora of noble houses, for which every -day draughts of every possible kind are com- pounded. However, nowhere is Hufeland's " Good Advice to Mothers" less attended to than in the huts of peasants and beggars. There one sees many little pale creatures looking out of the narrow windows when one goes out on sledging expeditions. But they bloom again with the earth ; the open air makes them rosy sooner than the sun does the apple. Hunters, savages, mountaineers, soldiers, all contend with all their powers for the advantages of fresh air ; all those who have lived to be a century and a half old were beggars ; and, in fact, if a man wishes to become nothing but old, and to continue nothing but healthy, there is no more wholesome, fresh-air-imbibing exercise than beg- ging ; nevertheless, mothers believe that a child, placed for half an hour at an open window, inhales out of a town which itself is but a larger room, and merely contains street air instead of house air, as much ethereal breath as is necessary to purify and cleanse twenty-three hours and PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 1 29 a half of cavern air. Does no one remember, or no one remind her, with all her dread of air, that during the mis- erable autumn weather she travelled, on account of the war, three days long, with her infant baby in an open ve- hicle, through the pure, fresh air, without any other par- ticular injury than that of being brought here ? Could no chemist, by visible representations of the different kinds of poisonous air, impart to the mothers in towns a sense of the value of heaven's free air, in order to break them of their carelessness about the only invisible and ever- active element? Why do you write, " I fear nothing so much as the procuring of a wet-nurse ? " Two of my children, pre- cisely the strongest, were brought up without the breast. But if a nurse is commonly healthy, and has not much less given her to do, nor much more to eat, than during her necessitous solitude, she may any day enter your ser- vice. Certainly I do not offer myself as security against any mental poisoning by her morals and care, any more than I do for all women servants, from the midwife down- wards ; an honest old, but good-tempered man-servant, your John, for instance, would be much better for a child's heart than any nurse and child's maid : just as at a later period, for the same reason, children are more spoiled and enervated in the friendly, praising, indulgent society of women, than in the cold, dry company of men. As re- gards the physical empoisonment of the milk by mental excitement, I should prefer the nurse to the lady. One often sees a common mother, as a bombarding ship, or bomb-shell, foster that kind of conversation with another woman, which is the only one in this world that has never grown wearisome, and which men call wrangling and abus- ing; but the suckling has observed or cried little about it. 6* I 130 LEVANA. On the contrary, a lady, whom a false stitch of her maid, like the sting of a tarantula, sets into an armed dance, may poison it three or four times a day. What concerns another mental poison-draught for the child I utterly deny. If, as I believe I am able to prove, no partial transmigra- tion of soul from the mother into the new-born child is possible, how much less can mind influence mind by means of a nourishment which first affects the stomach ! One might just as well believe, with the Caribbees, that pork produces small eyes ; or with the Brazilians, that the flesh of ducks imparts the lazy, awkward pace of a duck. On this principle, goat's milk, and perhaps most nurses' milk, would have the same effect as that of Jupiter's nurse, which so completely transformed the god that he may be employed as anything rather than an example of many of the ten commandments. Bechstein, it is true, remarks that otters may be tamed by human milk ; but one may find a much nearer, and truer cause in the circumstances which such a milk diet presupposes. Much contention may take place about the relation of the mother's milk to the child's body. If a healthy stomach, like death, makes all ahke, potatoes, bread, venison steaks, ship-biscuits, ale, insects (crabs), worms (snails), and, finally, human flesh, into the same chyle, will not the stomach of a child be able to reduce its nurse's milk to the same substance ? And does not the child's body, in all its organic peculiarities, as frequently resemble its father as its mother ? Why, if the milk (in- stead of organization) effects so much, are not most of the nobility giants, since peasants' milk is often added to aris- tocratic blood as wine to water ? Indeed, on the ground of the influence of maternal relationship, there would be more to determine for than against, a nurse. The body PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 131 ceaselessly polarizes itself; consequently the nitrogen, for instance, of the nurse would counterbalance the oxygen of the lady ; and, on the other side, a town lady would be the best official nurse of a peasant boy. A cosmopolite tutor, and diet master, might go still further, and, in order all- sidedly to exercise and train a swaddled child, — mummies are swaddled corpses, and helmsmen swaddled men, — insist on its having one day ass's milk (the positive pole, thesis), the next, dog's milk (the negative pole, antithesis), the day after human milk (indifference, synthesis). As early as possible determine the hours of eating, and consequently the times for sleep ; only observing, that in the first years the intervals must be more frequent and shorter than afterwards. The stomach is such a creature of habit, such a time- keeper, that if, when hungry, we delay its usual period of gratification for a few hours, it does nothing but reject food. But if its hours of compulsory service are appointed, it works beyond its powere. It is only in later years, when the sketch and colors of the little man are more strongly marked, that middle tints and half shadows may be ventured on ; a child, like a savage, is often freed, often made a slave, by sleep and eating ; the physical nature is then either exercised or vanquished, and the spiritual is crowned in both cases. Do not keep the tumult of daily life far distant from the little infant, as though it were an aristocratic patient. If you do not actually permit the fire-bell or the discharge of artillery to be heard by its cradle, its long, deep slum- ber in the world will so harden it against every noise, that afterwards, when its ears are quicker, it will yet be able to sleep in the midst of noise ; and what is still better, and prevents injurious night-feeding, it will only 132 LEVANA. sleep all the sounder in the contrasting stillness of night. I earnestly contend against suckling in the night ; for your wife ought to sleep ; and it is quite sufficient if she suckle her little darling shortly before going to sleep, and then again immediately after wakening. It is a trifle, but so is a line ; why may I not give one to the other ? I mean, why do you lay the head of a new-bora child higher than its body ? In the months preceding birth the body actually stood on the head ; I should think that a horizontal direction after a perpendicular was quite suf- ficient ; wherefore, then, create a new want, or prevent the subsequent use of a medicine, which the higher placing of the head is to children in case of colds, by employing it before it is needed? With regard to animal food, most people say. Wait till there are teeth to bite it. Why ? toothless children take, with advantageous effects, broths, and the strongest honey- thick extract of meat that I know, the yolk of eggs. Even flesh-meat is less to be objected to on account of its size, since it may be cut quite as small as it can be chewed, than on account of its being swallowed without chewing, that is, without saliva. But children enjoy and digest milk and broth almost entirely without previous gas- tric juice, the saliva, as birds of prey do pieces of flesh. Probably large pieces are chiefly injurious because we take more of them, and quicker, than little ones, in the same time ; for the stomach reckons satiety — in hunger as in thirst — not according to quantity (for a pint of water will frequently not quench the thirst as well as a slice of lemon) but according to organic assimilation : hence of no kind of food does one more easily eat so much too much as of what is indigestible ; because the difficult and more tardy assimilation delays and conceals PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 133 the feeling of satiety. What digestion is, no physiologist has hitherto been able to explain. The gastric juice, which is said to excite or produce hunger, (is there any thirst-juice, for thirst ?) with its few spoonfuls, is not sufficient — when diluted and surrounded by a bottle of wine and a plate of soup, as a grain of arsenic by oil — to dissolve a Styrian cock's comb, not to mention an early meal, or even a late one. The gentle animal warmth which, as August is the wine-cook, ought to be the cooking-wine of food, is cooled and deluged by cold liquids with less of disadvantage than advantage to the digestion. If the stomach of men, as their nature in general, works as an ellipse, with two foci, and so not merely as a membranaceous vulture-stomach, but also as a fleshy poultry-stomach, and, along with chemical, pos- sesses also mechanical force, I do not understand how a pressure — that, for instance, of meat-broth or of gruel — assists it in digestion. But we are concerned with the thing itself, not with its explanation. Flesh-meat seems especially useful to coun- teract the weakness of childhood and the superabundance of sour food ; since even the young of granivorous birds are fed advantageously with eggs, worms, and insects. A slight and rare surfeit will exercise and strengthen the stomach's power of endurance : only do not let the beast of burden be overloaded with easily injurious substances, such as eggs or meat, but with things of moderately long duration, such as pulse or potatoes. Why do not people give children, at times when they will not take their food, sugar, (as distinct from confec- tions as food from poison,) on whose nourishing substance the negro feeds himself and his horse during journeys of days together? 134 LEVANA. During the earliest years, — I was about to commence so again, but without any reason, — for the strict ordering of hfe only comprehends a period sufficiently long to raise and fasten the scaffolding of life. But as the dan- ger of death diminishes every day, — it is well known to be greatest at first, — growing freedom and powerful many-sidedness must arm the child against all the two and thirty winds and storms of life. Tea and coffee, as well as cakes and fruit, are generally given much more willingly and abundantly to children than wholesome wine as a tonic, and wholesome hopped beer as a drink ; whereas it were much better not to give the two liquids at all, cakes very seldom, and fruit abundantly only in hot seasons. By all means give them wine (but not any old, Spanish, or Hungarian), not out of a punch-ladle, but out of a teaspoon, and more fre- quently than abundantly, and every year less, and in the season of manly strength and vigor none at all. Bitter beer, at a proper distance from two meals, is at once excitement and nourishment. Afterwards, in the eighth and tenth years, water must be the drink, and beer the tonic. I would not merely allow girls to drink beer longer than boys, but always ; unless the mothers, like true Lycurguses, forbid growing fat. Thank God, my friend, in the name of your posterity, that you, like myself, do not live in Saxony, or in the Saxon Voigt- land, but in Baireuth, near the best beer, — the cham- pagne-beer. White beer, without hops, is a slimy poison for chil- dren ; and unhopped brown beer not much better. Those who are too fat should only take it in water, as the Greeks did wine. In the early ages of Germany, before tea, coffee, and foreign wine ruled and weakened, fourfold PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 135 stronger beer was brewed ; then people did not dig the bones of giants out of the earth, but frequently consigned them to it ; whereas for us, under the government of concentrated tea and coffee poison, the only antidote, beer, is weakened. About one point, my friend, (forgive my following no other order than that of yourself and your wishes,) you will in future often grow hot or cold towards your gentle wife, at least I expect so, — and that is, actually about heat and cold. It is a well-known fact that more than one excellent author has much prolonged the continuance of the honeymoon, holding it to resemble the year-weeks of Daniel, and has only fixed its certain end after the birth of the first child ; concerning this, however, there has been much quarrelling : partly on the man's side with medical reasons, and partly on the woman's, with her own ; I mean this in case the child is healthy ; if it be sickly, perfect rage ensues. I once wrote a para- graph on this subject, in case I should ever experience the happiness of forming myself on my own principles of education. Since women, like a born parlor race, or household divinity, — we are merely sea, land, and air gods ; or, compared to those domesticated doves, kindly-meaning, but untamed wild pigeons, — love warmth as they do coffee, and so, besides covering, seek all manner of warm wraps, only far too many for one body ; and would rather have nine accumulated veils and shawls than one, though of the largest, and for that reason lay aside furs, how- ever warm and costly they are ; therefore it is that these mentally tropical beings willingly press their preferences and necessities on the beings they love best, — their children. But does not Nature herself, at birth, make the 136 LEVANA. most marked change, when she casts it out of an organic bed, which she herself warmed, through the air, into a lifeless one, for which the child must be the bed- warmer? To which is to be added the partial, and, moreover, injurious uncovering, that of the face and head, after the previous uniform warmth of the whole body. Hence the question might be mooted, whether the head of the new-born infant — so hairless, so thin-skulled, and unclosed — does not need to be protected by warm cover- ings more, or at least as much, as the other members, if many men, among whom we, the whole congregated pos- terity of our ancestors, are to be reckoned, had not hitherto withstood it and are still alive : so richly does Nature gush forth in new springs, whether you close against her one or one hundred. In the mean time she receives the child after this transit from the hot zone of the earth into the cold one, with two invigorating pro- vocatives : with nourishment for the lungs and nourish- ment for the stomach, — two hitherto unemployed members. Well, then, let the mother imitate therein the universal mother, and not let the child fly from external cold, but conquer it by excitements to inward warmth. The best fur-coat for children grows on wine mountains. Joy is the warm, sunny side of the mind and of the body. Exercise is the third non-conductor of frost. The new eulogists of warmth are only in the right when they are interrupted. In the cold air of a room a child would shrivel up like a plant on the top of a mountain ; but it would do the same in everlasting heat : the strongest men are not produced either in the immediate neighborhood of the equator or of the poles, but in the temperate zones, which alternate between frost and warmth, but with a preponderance of the latter. Do not let any PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 137 apartments for children be cold, with the exception of the sleeping-room ; for bed is of itself an external fur cov- ering, and sleep an internal, one ; and what additional warmth is possible, in case of illness, if you have already more than reached the degree permitted ? If you allow your future Paul (if I may venture to choose his god- father before you) to go without shoes (which would be to you but a saving of leather, but to him of a whole funeral train of evils), or if you order your future Pau- Hna (to whom he will, probably, with gentlemanly polite- ness, permit the first entrance into life, for most first children are females) to go without stockings, .though soled or shoed, then, in every illness where a warm foot- bath is advisable, you can give one of the longest duration siniply by a pair of shoes and stockings. I had my reasons, friend, for recommending shoes, as though they were bridal shoes, to your Paulina, although, alas ! along with them all the corns, cold feet, thin, tender soles and heels, which a shoe includes. For I know from afar off the despair, the womanly dread, lest feet without shoes should really grow as large as nature intended, and so quite beyond the conventional size of a foot. Our Chi- nese Podolatry (foot-worship) more readily suffers the nakedness of the higher parts, for instance, of the bosom or of the back, than for a girl to go barefoot. Luckily — in this case — a boy is not a girl. So let him dance barefoot through this young world, like the ancient heroes, who are always represented with bare feet. If his foot grow into a pedestal, what signifies it to us two men, since we, and even rational women, inquire so httle about it ? Why do mothers talk a hundred times about taking cold, and scarcely once about becoming overheated, which, 138 LEVANA. especially in winter, so readily passes into fatal cold ? I shall answer this in a very unexpected way, when I say, It is because winter lies nearest to their heart, and conse- quently most in their eyes. Winter is, in fact, the bleacher and fair colorer of their faces, and they approach the snow as a new whitening material ; hence summer is much too warm for them to uncover their necks and shoulders as they do in winter, which does not discolor them. Hence those tender chamber-covered nurshngs, lily-white and lily-fragile, come from the north, and re- semble those white blades of grass, which may be found under stones in the midst of green spring. Certainly this dazzlino; winter-snow does not bear the fruits of the true blossom-snow, for which, nevertheless, we often mistake it, as we do beauty for strength. A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian gar- ment-fashion of the present Gymnosophists (naked fe- male runners), which, it is true, injures the mothers, but hardens the daughters ; for as age and custom should avoid every fresh cold, so youth exercises itself on it, as on every hardship, until it can bear still greater. The Unalasks (hear it, ye enemies of every hardening process !) dip a crying child into the sea until it is quiet, it necessarily afterwards grows the stronger for it.* So, simile-wise, the present naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughtei-s are dipped, who usually grow cheerful in it. A physician should always invent the fashions ; since he cannot remove a new one except by something still newer. A system of physical hardening is, indeed, mentally necessary, because the body is the anchor-ground of courage. Its aim and consequence is not so much health * See KanVs Phys. Geog. von Vollmer, 3 B. 1st div. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 139 and prolongation of life, — for weakly and sensual per- sons often grow old, and nuns and court ladies still of- tener, — as a fortification against weakness of character, and for cheerfulness and activity. As it is not a woman's, but only a man's, mind which becomes more womanish by effeminacy, it may easily happen in the higher ranks in which the men are, comparatively, more effeminate than the women, that the weak will surpass the weakened sex ; and men and women have the delightful prospect of resembling date-trees, of which the female only produces fruit, the male nothing but flowers. The present fashion in dress, regarded as an air-bath establishment, might have its end more perfectly obtained among children, if the garments were occasionally entirely laid aside. I mean, why do not we give ourselves, but still more our children, the pleasure of playing naked half a day in the warm air and sunshine, like Adam in his paradise of innocence ? In ancient Germany, where our ancestors tasted the forbidden fruit later, and consequently hung the fig- leaves later round them, the children were permitted, as in Egypt, to remain ten years longer in nakedness : what spirits of physical power must not have stepped from their cold forests, when eighteen hundred years of warmth and luxury have not sufficed to make their descendants weaker than either of us two ! So the wood of stripped trees can bear a greater weight than that of those which retain their bark. One need but see how light, active, and refreshed an unclothed child feels, drinking and swimming through the air, moving its muscles and limbs freely, and ripening in the sun like a fruit from which the leaves have been removed. So many children's games are Olympic and 140 LEVANA. gymnastic, let the chilclren, then, at least be Greeks, that is to say, unclothed. The cold water bath may be best used immediately after the air bath ; if, in other respects, it may be uncon- ditionally recommended to children under four yeai's old. There is, however, one compensation for the bath ; that of a daily dipping of the whole body in cold water, though each Umb be only wet in turns and quickly rubbed dry. I permitted this Anabaptist sin against Brown and his followers to be perpetrated every day upon my own children : the consequences were, not chilliness, colds, and weakness, but the very reverse. Schwarz, in his treatise on education, regards the dislike of a child to this treatment as a hint from Nature ; but then the same rea- son would apply to many medicines, and also to the warm bath, which children struggle against in the first instance, because they feel all at once so many unaccustomed dehghts. If cold water have medicinal powers for the stomach, which evaporate when warmed, so has it also for the im- bibing skin. After air, cold and warm baths, sleep is beneficial. There is still one kind of bath, hitherto unused, which would be very advantageous, both to parents and chil- dren, — I mean a thunder-storm bath. Physicians employ in their experiments on nervous invalids, electric air, electric plates, electric baths ; but thunder, or rather thunder-water, they have not as yet prescribed. Have they never experienced that a person never feels so fresh, cheerful, and elastic as after a warm or tepid rain has penetrated to the skin ? Since human beings, when dry again after a storm, feel so much invigorated, and the world of flowers still more so, why will they not receive PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 141 this united fire and water baptism from above, and suffer themselves to be raised and healed by the wonder-working arm in the thunder-cloud ? One ought to have an especial rain or bathing suit of clothes, as a frequenter of the spring cloud-baths ; and then, when there is promise of wet weather, make a ra,iii party, and return home dripping. The bath company must, alas ! change their clothes, — the only thing about it which does not please me. The shepherd-boy, even in the cold rainy days of November, takes no chest of clothes with him to the field ; neither does any French soldier who has marched himself warm all day in the rain, and lies down at night on the cold ground ; the fisher stands with his feet in the water and his head in the sun, precisely breaking and reversing the physician's rule ; — yet the only hundred-and-seventy year-old man in England was a fisher, and had previously been a soldier and a beggar ! Heavens ! with what a fair play-ground and free city of the body is our mind originally surrounded ! and how long must it have been the slave of sin and of opinion ere it was condemned to be the chained helmsman or ship-mover of the body ! Mental all-sidedness, which means all-powerfulness, is not granted us, but physical is ; now let childhood at least be formed for this, and the body, which can inhabit all countries, be exercised in accommodating itself to all ; as the Russian does, who imitates his own empire, a minia- ture Europe in climate, and endures by turns the hottest vapor, and the coldest snow baths, the extremes of hunger and of repletion. Is it not enough to be so pampered as to make a pillow of a snow-ball ? — and now at last we use a cloak -bag, or even a feather-bed ! I add to the above remarks, that parents in physical 142 . LEVANA matters — alas that it should happen in morals ! — ought to require more from their children than from themselves : in accordance with this, let the rain-wet clothes at ap- pointed times dry on the children. Would that every mother would consider that, as she opposes inoculation to natural small-pox, so, on the same grounds, she should oppose the blow of accidental, un- expected, and therefore unprepared-for danger, by the favorable hardening of versatile childhood, when the choice of the battle-field is so easy ! Our modern women might more readily imitate the ancient Germans in every point than in this ; of becom- ing ministers of the art of healing, and so the midwives of the future world. If I were a physician, or an impor- tant teacher in a girls' school, I should consider it my most useful work to prepare a medical " Theory of Doubts " for women ; I would therein merely ask ques- tions, give a hundred answers to each, and then ask them to choose. I would, for instance, lay quite undecided be- fore them the theory of fever in all its infinite variety, yes, and even the thousand causes of headache, the inter- mixture of which so much increases it. Whosoever, even in the cradle, gave attention to the science of medicine, — a science in which, more than in any other, genius and learning should form one indivisible compound being, — would be astonished at the boldness with which any no- doctor, and his wife into the bargain, pronounces on the parentage, name, and progeny of every illness. Good heavens ! my friend, women think they understand some- thing, we will say the very smallest part, of the most difficult of all applied sciences, that which is applied to the various mental and physical nature, united undistin- guishably in one organization ; whereas whole cities PHYSICAL EDUCATION. I43 would thank God if there were to be had in each of tliem but one graduated man, universal doctor, medical coun- sellor, and first physician, who would assist you, less to heaven, than to your legs again ; and would not, as if he were a pope, regard every pilgrim on this earth as a pil- grim of the cross, whom he had to send forth to win a consecrated grave (if he deserved one). The best physi- cian is a prize in the lottery, the best medicine from him is a prize in the lottery. And yet every woman considers herself to be both lotto and lottery ; at once both the great prize, and that fifth in order. Whence comes this absurd petension to the art of heal- ing among women, — and let us include ourselves, — among other human beings, myself, for instance (whose whole letter proves it), and among men of former ages, as the old Latin proverb testifies,* and Eulenspiegel also, to whom every passer-by prescribed a cure for his tooth- ache ? This folly proceeds from a hundred causes ; for instance, from the confusion of the science of medicine, and the art of surgery ; from the differences among physicians ; from anxiety and affection, &c., &c., — but I chiefly believe, from trust in the proposition of a sufficient reason. Man, a cause-seeking animal as well as one of mere habit, — however modestly he may listen to all sci- entific things, which end in history or mere information, to all histories of the worM or of nature, to information about measurement, coining, language, arms, antiquity, history, — this man cannot restrain his power and insight when any scientific theory is presented to him, whether it be of the subject in hand, of nature, of morals, of taste, of sickness. The peasant gives his opinion about the causes * Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Juda3us, mouachus, histrio, rasor, anus. 144 LEVANA. of the world, of a thunder-storm, of sin, of a performance on the organ, of bodily pain ; for in all these cases he draws his theory entirely out of himself. If women particularly desire to cure something, I would propose to them besides souls, — for which they would be better soul-curesses than the soul-curers are, — wounds ; as in some Spanish provinces women remove the beard, so should they also legs and arms : their hands, so gentle, tender, and apt, their keener survey of what is actually before them, and their compassionate hearts would certainly as sweetly heal common wounds as they make those of the heart. Many a soldier, if the female surgeon of his regiment were pretty, would boldly expose himself to wounds, were it only to have them bound by her, or suffer his arm to be amputated by her in order to give her his hand. The blood-fearing eye of women would become sufficiently hardened, though not so flinty, as that of men ; as the Parisian fish-women prove by wounds and blows. Moreover, at this present time the whole world is forming hardening-schools for the feelings, — I mean wars. I will only add a page or two to my over-lengthy epis- tle, and then break off. Although every mother plays the doctor, she yet constantly requires one for the child. Then she wants very many remedies, in order to try each only once, and so, in consequ^ce, not at the wrong time. Then she requires many doctors, in order to hear and to say much. And many even think to instigate the doctor to a more active campaign against the malady, by repre- senting it as worse than it is, and concealing the favorable symptoms: as if a person should try to rescue himself from the danger of drowning by screaming fire, or from fire by the distress signals in use at sea. niYSICAL EDUCATION. I45 Meanwhile, as no woman's mind will suffer itself to be deprived of a physicking finger along with the doctor's ring, nor of its brains as well as the doctor's hat, a man might, myself for instance, remove the chief danger of a domestic practice of a system of medicine for the family circle, by a few general rules, such, perhaps, as the follow- ing : — Grant, in general, for instance, that most illnesses are asthenic or weakening, — according to Brown, above eight ninths, to Schmidt the full nine ninths; — now, the younger the children are the more asthenic are they, and so more likely to die from sudden loss of strength, than from sudden over-stimulants ; wiierefore, in every case you may prescribe strengthening domestic remedies, that is to say, nourishment, a tonic of the least injurious kind. The heat of fever can only be allayed by what the child himself fancies ; and still less must it be strength- ened by medicines instead of nourishment ; and least of all by food instead of drink. A few words on this point may be allowed even to the laity ; the superior excellence of a glass of wine to all glasses of medicine in cases of weakness is seen in grown-up people, in whom, after all apothecary's essences, the electric spark of life has fre- quently been rekindled by one strengthening bottle of wine, — of this I have experienced strangely decisive in- stances. And many things might easily be added to this ; wine has the advantage of a longer, slower, and more constant influence ; whereas the tonics of the apothecary assume the name of aqua-vitae, and act like earthquakes, that is to say, by small doses and long intervals. I will give yet one other piece of good advice, the very best, to women ; that is, when a child is really ill, to do nothing whatever, — especially nothing new, — not to change a moderate temperature, — to give him what he 7 J 146 LEVANA. wishes to eat or drink, — to say nothing if he fast for a few days, — and to avoid all domestic recipes. A mis- take in a domestic remedy, giving wine, for instance, instead of vinegar, or, in an opposite case, fruit instead of eggs, may just as easily be the cause of death as a mistake in a prescription. The only thing I would further recommend to the mother is, Dr. Kilian's excel- lent " Home and Travelling Physician," — and that, not that she may attempt to cure by it, but that, after a physician has named the complaint, she may use a treat- ment in accordance with it. For the husband I should recommend Kilian's " Clinical Handbook," a new edition of the former work, enlarged and enriched with receipts. Both books will be sent for your perusal by the next carrier. The gymnastic instruction of your Paul shall be dis- cussed another time, in some six or seven years, when he shall be born and have attained that age. In any case I would, at least, let my own children, for weeks together, climb, leap, swim, run races, play at ball and nine-pins ; but I would also just as soon, for weeks together, let them dig like a burrowing mole, or be kept quiet like a person recovering from scarlet-fever ; and this, not that they become well, but may continue well ; and in a cen- tury given more to sitting than to speaking, may bring with them so much sitting faculty that they may not suf- fer penance on their bench every session. At least, I would exercise the strong in sitting as much as the weak in exercise. I would also rather set them to hard bodily labor in the evening than in the morning, and so cause physical exertion to follow, not precede, mental. Sitting and thinking after violent exercise is not nearly so healthy or aOTceable as the reverse. Active exercise in the PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 147 morning, as an excitement to the sluggish early pulse, along with the greater excitability experienced at that time, will frequently exhaust for the whole day. The leaps which boys practise on their way from school show the bent of nature. In spite of all these reasons I would yet do the opposite, — not always, but yet occasionally, — in order to inure the body to it. I will now close my letter, which consists almost en- tirely of postscripts, because I constantly intended to con- clude, and always went on. Fare you well, and your wife still better. J. P. F. R. P. S. If you should have purchased Dr. Marschall's " Instructions for the Care of Mothers, Children, &c., &c., in their pecuHar Illnesses," third edition, two parts, — be somewhat mistrustful and disobedient with regard to his instructions ; or at least, let them be first filtered and re- fined by some Brownian physician. When, for instance, he orders a lying-in woman to have nothing during the first nine days but sour fruit, saltpetre, and other weak- ening diets, he does just the same as if one were to lay a person apparently frozen to death, who can only be re- covered by very gradual application of warmth, beginning at the lowest possible degree, in an ice-house for a few days in order that he might recover gradually from the cold. Certainly he would do so slowly enough ; as he would scarcely become warm before the resurrection. COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE TO THE FIRST VOLUME. A DREAMED LETTER TO THE LATE PROFESSOR GELLERT, IN WHICH THE AUTHOR BEGS FOR A TUTOR. UFFER a dreamed letter to find its place here, for the recreation both of reader and writer. Few men have experienced so rational a kind of dreaming as I have done ; — whereof more shall be said at some future time in a revision of mj treatises : others must treasure up their rational waking thoughts.' I was obliged, when awake, to help out this dream, even with some changes in its order, so that it might — by the system of opposite ends and aims, as well as of memory and oblivion — really appear what it is. For the rest, I hope I paid it sufficient heed ; for, as soon as it was over, I employed the well-known art of recall- ing dreams by shutting the eyes, and keeping every limb motionless. Unfortunately all the fancies or foundlings of a dream — the enfans perdus of the imagination, all the more truly because they usually carry us back to the days of our childhood, and so form a Umhus infantum — have this great fault, that they shine brilliantly until we awake, but then little or nothing of them is to be found. At least such is my case ; and I hope the reader con- sents. COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 149 " Excellent departed Geliert ! I want a tutor for my son Max ; for I am at present engaged in writing on education, and consequently have not a spare minute to devote to the practice of it ; just as Montesquieu found himself obliged to resign the office of president to devote himself to the ' Spirit of Laws.' Since, at every univer- sity there are pedagogic engrossers and purveyors, and fewer subjects of instruction than accomplished instruct- ors ; and since, moreover, you, before your decease, exer- cised the patron's right of appointing tutors, I did not know why you should not proceed in it still better now, not merely because you have marched forward with tune, but also with eternity. In the extended acquaint- ance your immortal part must have formed on many planets, — (for as virtue in futurity is the reward of vir- tue, so also heavenly authorship will be the reward of earthly,) — you cannot fail to have ample choice of people, and candidates in our system. Only you must not pro- pose to me any tricked-out, spurred dweller in Leipsic, of your time, clothed throughout in beautifying cement ; no, not even the late Geliert himself (except as far as re- gards his loving gentleness and naive cheerfulness), 1 want a very hard material, — mind. There are, unavoid- ably, so many born harlequins, shall we also make edu- cated ones, or both together ; stamped yellow pinchbeck pieces, crawling, cringing, worms ? " Heavens ! how is it that I always find something good in books on education, and so seldom anything of it in teachers ? What have I not seen of these last, Gellei't, and yet may see in any town I please ? I do not (be- cause I will not) think of those peevish creatures full of child-hate, those living aversions to little ones, — for manly justice makes even a false system of education 150 LEVANA. good ; and, to give an instance, nothing is so dangerous in icebergs as the clefts or chasms, — but of those sickly sweet, honey-dewed, sugar-of-lead perpetual teachers, who would consecrate everything for the young, even the swaddling-clothes, as a pope does those actually used. Oh ! I perfectly understand that tutor : after every step and every leap of the young creature he will sow some- thing ; and, moreover, be most anxious to know whether the mental cherry-stones which he has brought him en- veloped in their sweet covering, will grow and take root in his stomach, as he hopes ; or, to use another different living metaphor of enjoyment, whether the frogs' eggs he has given him in a draught of pond water are developing themselves. In physical matters, says he, the same thing is commoner, but injurious, and then he shortly alludes to the lessons in which he also teaches it. "The tutor stands up for the U without which the child's Q cannot be pronounced. ' Let my sermon pre- cede every action,' says he ; ' the man, forsooth, must strengthen with many reasons every childish action of the child, and shave it with a scythe.' " He who has seen such a man frequently, though not everywhere, has learned much. In China there is a law- book, and interpreters of it too, to teach the best method of drinking tea genteelly. But the above-mentioned man would wish the thing to be done improperly, and properly also ; because, indeed, he finds a very great want of direc- tions for children how to take coffee, tea, tobacco, stones — for throwing ; hands — for kissing ; and cakes — for stealing. It is the same man who chalks up the ten com- mandments on the study door, as on a pillar of remem- brance, so that the young may always have them before their eyes, — which is precisely the best means of never COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 151 seeing them. Most parental and tutoral commands re- semble the inscription one sees on some doors, — of ' Shut the door/ which cannot be read if he have left the door open. " Observe from above a tutor who chains himself to his prisoners ; who permits himself to be adopted as spiritual father ; which the real father ought to be, since we can indeed give instruction to a stranger's child, but education only to our own, because the one may know cessation, the other must proceed without interruption : observe him and he must appear to you (even without the bird's-eye per- spective of another world) less in that serious light which is usual above, than in a very different one ; when, for instance, you see him take a w'alk with his auditory of slaves, endeavoring to turn every hill and stream and knot of people (in themselves nothing) into a medium of imparting instruction to his slaves. For as long as the child is awake he ceases not to develop him ; although, perhaps, his dreams develop him much better. If every Eastern pearl costs the life of a slave, every Western pupil costs a teacher, and something more. The teacher, who cannot live to himself, suffers his pupil as little life to himself; and so they mutually impart to each other sins of weakness ; somewhat as the New and the Old World imparted to each other a new disease, — that of the double small-pox. " To speak in figures, departed friend, tutors and beg- gars mutilate children in order to feed themselves ; only the former expose the distortions as curved lines of beauty, the latter as holes and chinks in their living alms'-boxes. " Or by their long polishing of the child they rub off its pure form ; like those glass dishes in which curious speci- mens of glass are so laboriously piled that at last their original depth is positively diminished. 152 LEVANA. " But should this be, excellent immortal ? Must my good Max, whose eye and hand aim at power, fall down so weakened and weary ? Must, in short, a boy of the nineteenth century be blown out by his tutor so thin and tender and brittle, that he — like the man recorded by Lusitanus, who thought his seat was made of glass, and therefore always remained on his legs — must regard everything about him as moral assthetic, intellectual glass, and so not venture to sit, to stand, or to lie, — nay, not even to be ? As was said above, dear friend, I chose to say this in a somewhat figurative style, because I wished to tread in your footsteps. But, like all imitators, (I know that too well,) I must retire with a longer nose and not much shorter ears ; for your present figurative style (since in heaven or Uranus you are near the greatest objects and worlds, Jupiter and Hell, and have them to inspire you) must be totally different from any other, even your own mortal style ; from which doubtless it is distinguished by bold Oriental imagery ; and you will say, even Geliert, naturalized in heaven, writes in some degree more wittily and instructively, and no one there speaks dully. For the rest, I know perfectly well, even to your very phrases, the objections you will make to me against the influence of tutoral glazing. For you will find an anecdote which you have read in Marville,* applicable to the point. As an instance how accurately I can guess, I will myself relate it to you. ' A young gentleman, a preacher, with fine action, voice, and so forth, mounted the pulpit and began his sermon ; but lo ! he had forgotten it, and knew even less than before what he had to say. However, he com- posed himself, raised his voice, (and himself too, as he hoped, by the action,) and proclaimed to his audience, * Melange d'Histoire de Vigneul-Mai-ville. COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 153 with rare energy, one conjunction after another, — enfin, car, done, si, or, — and muttered with falhng voice all kind of inaudible matter between the particles. The poorer parishioners were excited, and in the highest degree atten- tive, yet without being able to understand much ; and so they, naturally and reasonably, attributed their not hear- ing to the distance of their sittings from the pulpit, which one part of the congregation supposed too far off, and the other too near. And so this soul-curer, with his connect- ing, passionate, and apostrophizing words, preached about three quarters of an hour, throwing himself and the pew- occupiers into a fever and perspiration ; then pronounced the Amen, and descended from the pulpit with the repu- tation of a true pulpit orator. The whole body of hearers resolved next time to choose their seats better ; some to sit nearer, some farther off, so as not to lose a syllable.' " Now what else do most teachers preach to children, and philosophers to the sons of the muses and their readers, than a few thousand sis, doncs, cars, without any rational word attached ? " What else are most lessons to children — as most men's conversations to women — than customary marks to pay no attention ? " You now know what kind of a spiritual father I, the physical father, wish to adopt for my child. Naturally I only speak of the tutor's soul. His body may just as well be kneaded out of the earth of Uranus, Saturn, the moon or the sun, as out of the earth of this world. As to the soul, I wish that you would select such from among the candidates out of the present ten planets, as you did for- merly from those out of the ten German circles, — which circles, dear Geliert, since your removal, have almost un- dergone ten persecutions of the Christians, and metamor- 154 LEVANA. piloses of Vishnu, — and then, out of this selection from the planets, choose one for me. You will spare me a sub- ject out of the leaden, dull, and heavy, selfish Saturn ; who, with all his breadth of rings and abundance of moons, has wearisomely long years, and gives a bad light ; as well as a spring beetle out of that merry dancer round the sun, Mercury, the domestic Frenchman of the solar system, who always intoxicates himself in the sunshine, and yet, when he really comes before the sun, only looks like a black spot. Excellent professor, you now know everything, and many things much earlier than we do ; of which I only name to you Pallas, Ceres, Jimo, and the planets discoverable in future. I will have no instructor out of Pallas, — a morsel broken from the earth, and, moreover, at such a distance, for light and heat, from the sun Apollo ; I purposely mention this dwarf planet, be- cause your preference for Athens, whose protecting deity Pallas was, might perhaps influence you. You must be partial to nothing but the next world, and my first child. " In one word, I do not know any distinguished star from which I would select my tutor, but the morning and evening star ; and so let it be. Geliert ! Much might be said about that star, — its double name indeed, says two things, — moreover it is named after the goddess of beauty ; also after a certain light-bearer (Lucifer) not light-destroyer, — especially the star possesses this excel- lent quality (and many others) that it occupies a very perfect position in the heaven, neither too far from the sun, nor too near the earth ; and that (for children) it does not so strikingly wax and wane as the nearer moon. In short, I consider Venus to be the best nurse. And so, I beg my tutor may come from Hesperus. " For your son of Hesperus will certainly, I imagine, COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 155 deal excellently with my child. He will — since liber- ality is in every case inestimable, and why not, then, in education, in the first place? — treat him with practical freedom and power, and not deprive him of his own. He will find little fault with what is childish. Quickly and perfectly apprehending what is outward, what inward, he will in no case make many words and vast preparations ; will draw him on to what is great and universal, not to what is insignificant ; will rather be the physician to his weakness, than the extinguisher of his strength. He will above all lend his aid to the child of earth ; and shine before and behind him as his starry dwelling, Hesperus, does for the earth, and that only when the sun has not yet risen, or is already set ; it is certain that so wise a Hesperid will not attempt to help the sun in the day- time ; I know him too well to suppose it possible. " Even in physical matters, he will not, with womanish anxiety, be perpetually fearful lest the child should break his leg against every twig, — though, indeed, the break- ing of a leg is better than the dread of it ; and, on the other hand, children are themselves careful, owing to the novelty of all their experiments, and the natural magni- fying of a place where they may fall, caused by the shortness of their own bodies, — or lest he should be poisoned by tin soldiers and children's trumpets, or hurt by a rocking-horse, or spoiled by wearing trousers. He who is so fearful on account of others, may himself be suspected of fear ; and a coward makes a coward, as a hermit does a hermit. Our ancestors, old Geliert, grew up sufficiently strong and modest with all their trousers, feather-beds, saddles, and spices. It would on another account be particularly agreeable to me that you choose my tutor out of Venus ; because 156 LEVANA. there, according to the best telescopes and astronomers, may be found the loftiest momitains, compared with which our Chimborazo were but a mole-hill, — and so the purest mountain air is near the hottest sultriness of the valley (I can readily picture to myself the heat of Lucifer or Venus). What a powerful, manly Alpine breast, joined to an Italy in the heart, must the inhabitant of Phosphorus bring to me at Baireuth, in the capacity of a right carefully selected tutor ; who must resemble a general full of contrasting powers, of irrevocable strictness and order, sincere friendship, good-fellowship, and per- suasiveness. " I am convinced my tutor will understand me when I say, that as the man can do without the scholar, but not the scholar without the man, I pray you above all things to ingraft the scholar upon the man, but not reversed. Our nineteenth century, (I might thus speak to him more distinctly in the evening under the warm rain of punch,) whatever century you may reckon on your little planet, will not be the best, at least not the strongest, although it may, Hke yours, deserve the names of Phosphorus and Lucifer. What we magnify ourselves about is the French Revolution, or the changes of something little. The stones which the giants formerly hurled became islands ; now, when islands are hurled, there come but stones, tombstones and grinding-stones. The Revolution, hke an earthquake, put some motion into the skeletons of a charnel-house. Tutors, like the anatomist Walther in Berlin, seek their glory in preparing skeletons by remov- ing the flesh, and then bleaching them. Brother dwellers on Venus, or rather on this earth, could you think so? Then should I repent writing to Geliert. To impart strength, and to leave strength will, I hope, be your first COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 157 and last words in education. What is educated for the age will be worse than the age. The Hesperid answers me : ' In the spring-time of childhood, fathers often look in as far as the distant snow-white mountain-peaks, and point out the winter to the spring. Far better the wind- fall of a spring storm, than the snow-fall of age.' As true as beautiful ! candidate, I reply. Lavoisier made an in- strument of ice into a calorimetre, or measurer of heat ; thus tire is often measured by ice ; the boy by the gray- headed man. " The candidate will animadvert on much in the con- versational style of his paymaster ; but I go on, little affected by his remarks, — ' Howsoever I may express myself, it is certain that the artistic, compound-fractured style, into which writing-masters and tutors would break the souls of their pupils, like letters, is in nothing differ- ent from the compound fractures of surgeons, except in the case of wit, which truly requires variety in order to find without restraint distant resemblances.' The candi- date replies. ' If only to the innate energy of a child the sap of life, and room for its development be afforded, there will be no need to graft on every branch, to cut the leaves, or paint the flowers ; one must, like a king, direct the whole, but not interfere with the individual parts.' " I exclaim, ' You are the man for me, (if not, indeed, more than a man !) If the tutor's situations which I once filled were yet vacant, you should be my vicar in them, — but you shall be so in the last, in the one I overlook and present as father and patron. The easy conditions need scarcely be mentioned. You are not to torment the child with a thousand languages, — for merely to learn languages is to throw away one':; money in buy- 158 LEVANA. ing beautiful purses, or to learn the Lord's Prayer in all languages without ever praying it.' '' ' I agree, with all my heart ! ' said he boldly. ' So you will only teach him French, English, Spanish, Italian ; — Greek, Latin, and German, of course, — but the last most thoroughly. As regards the sciences, the child will be fed by you, as its young are by the house-swallow, only on the wing, — not attached to any long appoint- ment of the hours of study.' " ' You know the human heart, and show a most beau- tiful one,' interrupted he, and drank. ' But when your usual eight hours of study are over, and the child, or you, testify any further desire of study, you may, without hesitation, take as much from the second, or from the last, third of the day, as you choose, and teach during the whole of it. Now in what appertains to science itself, — for the arts of dancing, fencing, swimming, riding, leap- ing, singing, playing on the violin, the horn, and the piano, will be recreations for both of you ; it will satisfy me if the poor child only learns history, — namely, as much of the past as is already gone ; and also I would wish that, along with the most recent, a httle of the piquante future should be insinuated, together with other not less necessary histories ; those of nature, of books, of heretics, of gods, of church history, &c., — in the same way a few of the most necessary branches of knowledge, — knowledge of the stars, of coins, of antiquity, of her- aldry, &c. ; and the doctrines of natural science, of juris- prudence, of medicine, of nobiUty, of morality, &c. ; and the descriptions, — as descriptions of the earth, &c. ; a few ics, as aesthetics, dietetics, phelloplastics, &c. ; for, say I, perpetually, why the Devil should a poor, unbearded, thin-skulled cliild be immeasurably laden with learned COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE. 159 fat and refuse ? Why should his life be interwoven, not with fair white leaves, but with whole full books ? And he himself become a pack and baggage-bearing Pegasus ? Wherefore this, say I ? ' " You have to do, and can do, much ; for you are a few thousand tutors in one. Frequently I cannot at all understand why a whole regiment of tutors and govern- esses is not engaged at once ; especially when I consider how many demigods and goddesses the Romans ascribed to children, and worshipped ; for instance, Nascio, or Na- tio, presiding over the birth, — Rumina, over suckling, — Edusa, over eating, — Potina, over drinking, — moreover, Levana, — Statilinus and Statana, over the standing of both sexes, — Fabulinus, over speaking. I purposely omit, from detestation of prolixity in others, many half di- vinities, such as Vagitans, Ossitago, Nundina, Paventia, Carnea. Could one so arrange it, and pay, one should appoint a distinct teacher for almost every faculty, who should direct that only ; yea, and even teachers for the various subdivisions of the same faculty were at least pious wishes. I could like, (but nothing will come of it,) if I possessed that army of various teachers, to have a son exercised, say in gesthetics, according to the different divisions of Krug ; one teacher instructing him in that author's Hypseology, another in his Kalleology, a third in his Krimatology ; and so the child might at one time have his subhme tutor, at another his feeble, at another his naive. I would also wish, dear friend, that, in the virtues, you should prescribe special private exercises and instructions in each virtue, so that they might not all run into one another, and the poor child stand there like a stupid angel, who knows neither right nor left, but only what is right. If Frankhn schooled and exercised him- l6o LEVANA. self each week in a different virtue, might not the various Sundays and festivals, which as holidays can be used for little real instruction, be applied to the inculcation of many virtues ? On every festival might be taken a new one : on three holidays the three parts of repentance ; and on every Apostle's day some fault might be eradi- cated. I can, indeed, picture to myself a long feast of the Trinity, in which one might, hour by hour, allow the child to go through all the virtues, so that at the prayer- bell he might be presented as a saint of a month, or holy image. " Moreover, so excellent a tutor for my child might rest assured that, were the good Geliert still living, I would with pleasure, at the end of his engagement (when Max would no longer require him), and with all the influence which I, as an author, might possess with Gel- iert, give him recommendations to him, in order that he might further recommend the young man ; and so provide for him according to his merits." At this point I awoke ; wanted to know what I had dreamed ; and tried to recall it. But I soon found that, out of my dreamed letter to Geliert, — quite in accord- ance with the mad order of a dream, — I had fallen into a new conversation with a teacher, who was there sitting before me. Meanwhile, such a conclusion may be in so far good, as, should I print it, it will serve to prove that I have not, as is, alas ! very usual, dreamed in sport, and for the sake of publishing, but in very deed and truth. FOURTH FRAGMENT, ON FEMALE EDUCATION. Chap. I. Jacquelina's Confession of her Education, §§ 75-77. — Chap. II. Destination of Women less for their Husbands than for their Children, §§ 78 - 80. — Chap. III. Nature of Women, Proof of their Predominating Purity of Heart, §§ 81 - 88. — Chap. IV. Edu- cation of Girls in Regard to Reasonableness, §§ 89, 90; to Purity of Heart and Love of their own Sex, § 91 ; to Gentleness, and the Tendency to Female Passionateness, § 92; to Economy of Living and Domestic Affairs, §§ 93-95; to Knowledge and Skill, §§ 96, 97; to Dress, Ornament, &c., § 98; to Cheerfulness, § 99; Education of Girls endowed with Genius, § 100. — Chap. V. Private Instructions of a Prince to the head Governess of his Daughter, § 101. CHAPTER I. §75. UNDERSTAND under female education three things at once, which are in themselves contradictory : first, the education which wo- men generally give ; second, their peculiar call to a right education as compared with men ; third, the education of girls. The first and second would have required an earlier consideration, if the characteristics of the female sex, according to which its education should be regulated, were not unite-d in them both ; and, especially, if in this K 102 LEVANA. little experimental work, it were necessary to arrange the position of its matter in very strict order. A reader, to whom so many systems are presented, must hold his way armed with a predetermined one, unless each is to occupy his mind in turn. §76. Ill-educated, and ill-educating states, as well as fathers immersed in business, can only trust the welfare of edu- cation to mothers, as the second chapter shall show ; but the evil that mothers might obviate can be easily stated in this paragraph. Were it in other respects accordant with the tone of this work, I willingly confess that I w^ould offer to the world in a merrier manner this little register of sins, or list of losses in gaming, and debts of honor ; and the more so because, in this very case, a cer- tain, otherwise excellent, mother of five children, Mad- ame Jacquelina, luckily turning over the pages of my Levana, offered to give me an airy embodiment of it. Ladies love to dress, undress, and redress. For as I had known my excellent friend a long time, much was pre- pared and made easy ; and I could well imagine that the fair Jacquelina, as sister-orator for her whole sex, — though without any other commission to show than her beauty, — would stand before my writing-desk, as though it were a confessional, and declare she heartily desired to be absolved by me ; only, for very shame's sake, it was impossible for her to make an auricular confession, but she would take it very kindly if I w^ould regard her as a deaf person, — after the fashion of former confes- sors who pronounced the confession of their fair deaf and dumb penitents over them, — and so, as her repre- sentative, and spiritual father, make the following con- fet^ion for her : — ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 163 §77. " Honorable and dear Sir ! " (I was thus to put the address to me into her own mouth, lest the joke should be continued,) " I confess before God and yourself, that I am a poor pedagogic sinner, and have broken many com- mands of Rousseau and of Campe. I confess that I never truly carried out any one principle for a month, but only for an hour or two ; that I have often, half with thought, and so half without thought, forbidden my children to do something, without afterwards observing whether they did it or not ; that I never could deny them anything, when both they and I were floating in the midst of a sea of happiness, which else, from calm reason, I should have at once refused ; and that precisely at two seasons, the most sunshiny and the most cloudy, whether of myself or of the children, did I spoil them most. Have I not even done still worse ? Have I not, when strangers were present, said to my Bella, as well as to my pet, (I mean by that only my poodle,) Faites la helled " Have I not, at each of our great fairs, given holi- days on account of strangers' visits, especially those of eminent frequenters of the fair, to my husband, and thus valued a visitor more highly than five children ; so that I very little resembled that German woman, of whom my husband read in the twelfth volume of the mental Fama, who had the courage to decline dancing with two kings on the same evening, because she considered it to be unchristian ? And during all last year did I not see my two youngest children, Josephine and Peter, only once a day, at breakfast, and that merely because I wanted to finish a novel and a piece of worsted-work ; and, also, because my noble friend, the princess, for 164 LEVANA. whom I was working it, had taken up her residence here ? Only this consideration can tranquilHze my con- science, that I took the greatest trouble to procure a trustworthy nurse for my little ones, who promised me to treat them as a real mother ; and may Heaven punish her if she was ever inattentive to so dear a trust, or ever let my precious lambs go out of her sight for a moment, or ever left them in the hands of strangers ! Ah, God ! when I think of the possibility of such a thing ! But, alas ! what do such creatures know of the anxieties of a tender mother's heart? " At other times I have indeed (and that consoles me) always allowed all my children to come to me twice a day, after breakfast and after dinner, and have then often for hours fondled and taught them. But I confess that my impetuosity would never let me be satisfied to kiss them in moderation, and so I drew on me my husband's blame, who dislikes that exceedingly, and says, ' Children (even if not my own) may, with the Princess of Conde, lament that their misfortune is to be loved by old people, — the holy seal of the heart, a kiss, is to children an empty, meaningless thing ; a very energetic one may even be painful, and perhaps injurious, to the fifth pair of nerves in the lips, — a gentle stroking of the head is better, and a gentle loving word, a kiss which they give, and a softer one which they receive.' " I confess that, as in the game of forfeits, when I asked myself. What shall this forfeit (that of love) which I hold in my hand do ? I always answered, Love me immeasurably. Whereby, because I required so many marks of love, I have made Josephine too sensitive, Sophia hypocritical, and Peter ill-tempered. After any severe punishment I inflicted, instead of allowing the ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 165 whole of my former love to glow warmly on them, (a strikmg change, which my husband says is the only means of correcting and reconciling a child, during at least the first eight or ten years,) I suffered the long cloud of after-wrath to hang over them ; as if their young hearts could trace hidden love, or suffer for it long, or, in the best case, not learn to imitate that sulkiness. " I confess that, though not in the least nervous at whatever may happen out of the house, I yet never could be tranquil with my dear children, although I knew that the least impetuosity, were it even of a hasty running to their assistance, is injurious, and has a tendency to pro- duce a similar disposition in them. And I confess that I show anger too soon, even towards my maid-servants, in spite of my knowing perfectly what my husband so beautifully says, that to give way to an angry expression of countenance or of voice, before even the youngest children, is in fact to teach them anger. For as the whole soul is imprisoned and moulded into the whole body, it follows that every mental is connected with some physical part, and thus these mutually excite each other, — the outward expression of passion produces the mental emotion, and so of the reverse. " My husband asserted, and, moreover, carried out, the principle, that a husband can never so well establish a normal school for female teachers (like a good wife, I use his very expressions) as during the first year after mar- riage ; in this time, he thought, a wife might be mentally enriched with every kind of manly instruction, which, should she afterwards neglect, she would yet seek and cherish for the love of her first child, and of him who is even before the first, her husband ; for at an after period, continued he, somewhat of that glowing love-service l66 LEVANA. towards the husband, and somewhat, also, of that anxious sohcitude about the children, vanishes ; and so, still con- tinued he, the education of many children does not pro- ceed better, at least, not more carefully. But I rejoice that I have confuted him in this, as in many other things, and that I brought up my third child, even while expect- ing the fourth, for several months precisely as my wedded lord and schoolmaster directed during the school-weeks of the honeymoon. " But, venerable father, you certainly do not know by experience what whims husbands take some nine or ten months after marriage. Did not mine positively, seriously desire, that when I occasionally washed the little thing I would not rub its face, and wipe it quickly up and down ; because, said he, this kind of violence is disagreeable to them and excites their passion; but that I would softly glide from above downwards, and then gently round? What ridiculous pedantry ! Surely a woman must know how to wash ! So I go on just as usual, and care not how loudly both little and big cry out against it. " For the rest, I confess, and would willingly do penance for it, that I am never so soon angry as when dressing, or engaged in any other important business : the beauti- ful, perfect repose of my education then vanishes. My husband wants to place, for penance and the removal of my angry wrinkles, a magnifying-glass beside my toilet- glass ; but, thank God ! I do not yet need such a glass of detraction ; and besides my features are less changed than my color. Perhaps I am excusable for admitting my three eldest girls (and Lucy, too, often) to my toilet, because, in the first place, they watch me so gladly and are so quiet (especially when I tell them that they may perliaps go with me), and because, secondly, a yonnsj ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 167 girl's eye is best exercised in taste, with regard to matters of dress, on the costume of a grown-up person. " It consoles me, however, to reflect, that I never pur- chased a handsome new article of dress, either for myself or my daughters, without laboring to repress the love of finery, by telling them how little a woman's worth depends on dress, and that a rich habit is only chosen because thereby alone can rank be shown. At the same time I must confess, that all my daughters are vain : however many sermons I make to them during my toilet, I am not listened to, but only looked at. How often do I turn round with reproaches when my really beautiful Maximiliana stands behind me peeping into the glass, and say, ' There, again, a pretty, rosy, blue-eyed mask is looking at herself, and can never be tired of peeping and staring.' " I further confess, worthy Sir, that I was certainly in- finitely more displeased with Peter when he lately threw Veritas (really a most exquisite ideal figure from Ber- tuch's repository of arts) out of the window, than if he had told ten lies ; on the other hand, I hope I remain per- fectly tranquil when my husband sometimes makes such an uproar about some little fibs or other the children may have been telling ; or about their frequently quite justi- fiable scoldings of the servants : then, says he, reflecting on my anger, ' The Romans did wisely when they wrote the initial letter of the word signifying man inverted to mean woman.' " If God will only forgive me the sins wherein I meant well, I shall be satisfied to be punished for the rest. I certainly have sinned much, and deserved temporal pun- ishments, and bad children. I will, however, from this time forth amend my educational life, and be(;ome better l68 LEV AN A. and better ; and I entreat you, reverend, dear Sir, to for- give me my sins in God's stead." In which case I should certainly lay my hand on Jacquelina's round, white shoulder, and readily absolve her past, though truly not her future sins. §78. But the seriousness of the subject demands that a SECOND CHAPTER, ON THE DESTINATION OF THE FEMALE SEX, SHOULD restore to it its due honor. A father, who only sees and educates his children for an hour or two, must be careful not to require his own hour's strict attention and persistency from the mother, who wearies herself with them all day long. This longer companion- ship excuses much maternal overflowing, both of love and anger. In the same way, a stranger always considers parental displeasure too severe, because he sees the fault for the first time, and isolated, which the parents behold for the thousandth time, and in an ever-strengthening chain of habit. Mothers readily acquire an over-estima- tion of their children, because, placed sufficiently near the development of their minds to count every new leaf, they regard each universal human growth as a particular indi- vidual one, and thence infer some few miracles. And then how much must the physical care of the children which, in the middle classes, ' entirely devolves on the mother, weary and deaden her — as compared with the independent father — for their mental culture. WOMEN'S ADAPTATION TO CHILDREN. 169 §79. The education of the first half of the first decade of life is already placed in the hands of the mother, owing to the necessities of the body. His avocations in the state, in science, or art, only grant the father intervals, and those rather for instruction than education, — two happy classes of fathers alone excepted. The first is a country gentle- man, who reposes in such a golden mean of all circum- stances, that he converts his mansion into a benevolent institution for his children, if he love his successors better than cards and hares and rents. The second is the man whom he appoints, — a country clergyman. The six days' leisure, the country's separation from the turmoil of towns, the open air, the office, which is itself a higher educational institution, and, finally, the seventh day, which presents their physical father to his children, on a glorifying elevation, as a holy and spiritual father, and impresses an ofiicial seal on the lessons of the week, — all these things open to the minister a sphere of education into which he may attract other children ; since he may always better convert his parsonage into a school-house than a tutor's study into a parish. I would rather trust my son to a clergyman than to a tutor ; because he is freer, and stands on his legs, not upon crutches. In the middle ranks the men educate best, because the women are little cultivated : in the higher classes, gen- erally, the women, because there they are more carefully brought up than the men. What, now, can the man do ? a philosopher, we will suppose, or a minister of public affairs, a soldier, a president, poet, or artist ? In the very first instance, he must love and recompense his wife better, in order that she, by double support, the love of her children and the love of her husband, may 8 lyo LEVANA. more easily carry out the most difficult part of education, the first In this way the husband may bestow care and attention on the first and most important education, that given by the mother, which no after tutors, schools, or paternal praise and blame, can ever replace ; that is to say, he will exercise the law-giving power of education, the mother the administrative. Let the husband only continue to be the lover of his wife, and she will listen to what he says about education, at least of the mind. How readily will a noble-minded marriageable girl, or a bride, surveying from afar her future work, listen to the educa- tional rules which even a youth gives ! And, when mar- ried, a woman willingly adopts many a good suggestion about the education of her children which a stranger offers. Only by the union of manly energy and decision with womanly gentleness does the child rest and sail as at the conflux of two streams ; or, in another figure, the sun raises the tide, and so does the moon, but he raises it only one foot, she three, and both united four. The hus- band only marks füll stops in the child's life, the wife commas and semicolons, and both more frequently. One might exclaim, " Mothers, be fathers ! " and " Fathers, be mothers ! " for the two sexes perfect the human race, as Mars and Venus gave birth to harmony. The man works by exciting powers ; the woman by maintaining order and harmony among them. The man, in whom the state, or his own genius, destroys the balance of powers for the advantage of one, will always bring this overlaying influ- ence to education ; the soldier will educate warlikely ; the poet, poetically ; the divine, piously ; the mother only will educate humanly. For only the woman needs to develop nothing in herself but the pure human being ; as in an JEolian harp no string predominates over the WOMEN'S ADAPTATION TO CHILDREN. 171 rest, but the melody of its tones proceeds from unison, and returns to it. §80. But you mothers, and especially you in the higher and less busy classes, whose fortune spares you the heavy burden of careful housekeeping, and surrounds you with a cheerful green garden for the education of your chil- dren, how is it that you can prefer the tedium of solitude and of society to the enduring charms of your children's love, — to the drama of their fair development, — to the sports of the best-beloved beings, — to the reward of the most delightful and lasting influence ? That woman is despicable who, having children, ever feels ennui. Well- formed nations have been, according to Herder, the edu- cators of the human race ; so let your beauty be, not merely the external garment, but the very instrument of instruction and education. Towns and countries have female names, and are represented as females ; and, in truth, the mothers who educate for the future the first five years of their children's life do found cities and countries. Who can replace a mother ? Not even a father. For she, attached to the child by the daily and nightly bonds of care for its physical wants, can and must weave and embroider mental instruction in glittering char- acters on those tender ties. Will you, then, neglect the fairest time for working purely and deeply on posterity, since the stronger sex and the state will soon step in, and bring pullies and grappling-irons instead of your leading- strings and gently raising levers, and therewith move them harshly and roughly ? Dost thou, royal mother, consider it nobler to guide the intrigues of a cabinet, than the little future heir-apparent? Thou hast borne him 172 LEVANA. within thee, when a heavier burden, and hast suffered acutest pain when he was taken from thee, and this only for his physical hfe ; and wilt thou shun to undertake something less than both these, whereby thou mayest draw a holy spiritual glory around thy victory ? How often are your night-watches recompensed by a child's coffin ; but your day-watches over his mind ever by rich daily rewards ! If you once believe that everything de- pends on education, what name do you deserve, when, precisely as your position is high, you intrust the educa- tion of your children to persons of lower rank ; and while the children of the middle classes have their parents, those of the higher classes have only nurses and maids, as the directors of their path in life ? The whole ancient world elevates maternal above pa- ternal love ; and the mother's must be great indeed, for a loving father cannot even picture to himself any love greater than his own ; why, then, are you, compared with the fathers, who are so anxious about education, and who even write great books upon the subject, so indifferent about its application ? For your lover you can freely give wealth and health ; why not then spare a few hours for the little helpless creature you love ? For the one you overcome opinions and inclinations ; why should you do less for the other? You, on whose physically and spiritually nourishing bosom Nature has cast the orphans of the eai'th, will you let them fade and die on a cold, hired breast? You, who are provided by nature with patience, grace, gentleness, eloquence, and love for the beings who fly to you even from their father, can you not watch ovsr them ? I do not mean during the night, but only during the day. See ! they who once rested be- neath youT heart and have now no longer a place in it, WOMEN'S ADAPTATION TO CHILDREN. I73 Stretch their httle arms towards her who is most related to them, and beg again for nourishment. As in many ancient nations no request was denied to a woman hold- ing a child in her arms, so now do children, lying in your arms, or in their nurse's, offer up petitions for them- selves. It is true that the sacrifices you make for the world will be little known by it ; — men govern and earn the glory ; and the thousand watchful nights and sacrifices by which a mother purchases a hero or a poet for the state are forgotten, not once counted ; for the moth- ers themselves do not count them ; and so, one cen- tury after another, do mothers, unnamed and unthanked, send forth the arrows, the suns, the storm-birds, and the nightingales of time ! But seldom does a Cornelia find a Plutarch, who connects her name with the Gracchi. But as those two sons who bore their mother to the temple of Delphi were rewai'ded by death, so your guidance of your children will only find its perfect recompense at the ter- mination of life. Twice, however, you Mnll not be forgotten. If you believe in an invisible world in which the glad tears of a thankful heart are more valued, and shine more brightly, than worldly crowns set round with the petrified tears of sorrow ; if you believe this, you know your future ! And if you have educated rightly, your child knows you. Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother. On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the moth- ers who marked out to us from thence our life : the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O women ! to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the moth- 174 LEVANA. ers of your children. But you mothers who do not educate your children, how should your thanklessness for an unmerited blessing cause you to hang down your head in shame before every childless mother, every childless wife, and blush because one worthy woman sighs after that heaven which you have abandoned like a fallen an- gel. Oh ! why does fate, which often gives a million souls to the rack of some barbarous century, deny to the most lovely, gentle being the bliss of one child's heart ? Why must Love long for an object, and Hate, not ? Ah ! Er- nestina,* how wouldst thou have loved and made happy ! But thou wast not permitted ; the death-cloud carried thee away with all the roses of thy youth, and thy warm mother's heart was called, childless, into the unknown world of spirits. Oh ! how wouldst thou have loved and educated with thy clearness of perception, thy strength of character, thy ever-flowing spring of love, thy self-sac- rificing soul, — thou, who wert adorned with all the vir- tues of an ancient German woman ! * The excellent lady to whom the poet here pens so fine a memo- rial, was his wife's younger sister, Ernestina Augusta Philippina Mahl- mann, the daughter of Mr. Mayer of Berlin, and wife of Augustus Mahlmann, of Leipsic. She died, February 18, 1805, in the twenty- sixth year of her age. The desire to press a child to her heart occu- pied the last moments before her death. She was one of the noblest beings that ever lived. NATURE OF WOMEN. 175 CHAPTER III NATURE OF WOMEN. §81. THE education of daughters is the first, and most im- portant business of mothers ; because it may be un- interrupted, and continue till the daughter's hand glides straight from the mother's into that which holds the wed- ding-ring. The boy is educated by a many-toned world, school-classes, universities, travels, business, and libraries ; the mother's mind educates the daughter. For that very reason he is more .independent of the shocks of foreign influence than his sister ; for outward contradiction com- pels him to an inner balancing unity, whereas one little corner of the world easily appears a whole quarter, nay, a whole world, to the maiden. Before we speak of the education of the sex, we must first determine its character. According to well-known principles the nature of men is more epic, and formed for reflection ; that of women more lyrical, and endowed with feeling. Campe truly remarks, that the French have all the failings and perfections of children ; hence, I believe, they gladly call themselves Athenians, whom the old Egyptian priest found at once very childlike and very childish. I have discussed more at large in other places the great resemblance between the character of the French nation and that of women. From these two as- sertions, at least from the more flattering, a third would follow, the resemblance between women and children. The same unbroken unity of nature, the same clear perception and understanding of the present, the same 176 LEVANA. sharpness of wit, the keen spirit of observation, ardor and quietness, excitabihty and easily raised emotions, the ready, quick passage from the inward to the out- ward, and, conversely, from gods to ribbons, from motes in the sunbeam to solar systems, the admiration of forms and colors, and excitability, carry out, by a men- tal alliance, the physical alliance of the two beings. Hence, to use an appropriate simile, children are in the first instance dressed in women's habits. He who loves antitheses of the newest fashion might call women antique, Grecian, or even Oriental beings ; men, on the contrary, modern, northern, European ; those poetical, these philosophical. A man possesses, as it were, two selfs ; a woman but one, and needs another to see her own. From this female deficiency of holding dialogues with, and multiplying self, may be explained most of the advantages and disadvantages of woman's nature. And so, because their near echo readily becomes a resonance, and, confused with the original sound, they can neither poetically nor philosophically separate and reunite their component parts, they are more truly poetry and philosophy than poets and philosophers. Women show more taste in dressing others than themselves ; and, precisely because it is the same with their bodies as with their hearts, they can read in those of others better than in their own. §82. We will in various ways pursue the unity and sincer- ity of woman's nature. Because in her no power pre- dominates, and all her powers are rather receptive than formative ; because she, true mirror of the versatile present, accompanies every external by an internal NATURE OF WOMEN. 177 change ; even because of these thmgs does she seem to us so enigmatic. To guess what her soul is, means to guess her physical and other external relations ; hence, the man of the world loves her as well, and names her after those long thin wine-glasses, called impossibles, be- cause they cannot be emptied how high soever you raise them. Like the piano-forte, we might call her pianissimo-fortis- simo, so accurately and strongly does she reflect the ex- tremes of accident ; at the same time, and for this very reason, her natural position must be one of repose and equal balance, like Vesta, whose holy fire none but women tended, and which everywhere, in town, temple, or pri- vate room, took, by law, the middle place. Passion drives the man, passions the w^oman ; him a stream, her the winds : he declares some one power to be monai'chic, and suffers himself to be ruled by it; she, more democratic, lets the passing moment rule. The man is more frequently serious ; the woman, for the most part, either blessed or cursed, joyful or sorrowful ; which does not contradict our former praise of her measured tranquil constitution ; for cheerfulness dwells all day with one woman, sadness with another; it is only passion that hurls both headlong. Love is the life-spirit of her spirit ; her spirit the law, the motive-spring of her nerves. How deeply she can love without cause, and without return, might be remarked, even if not shown in her love of children, in her dislikes, which prey on her as strongly and unreasonably as her love animates. Like the Otaheitans, who are so gentle and childlike, and yefe ««,t their enemies alive, these delicate 8* L 178 LEVANA. creatures have a similar appetite, at least for tlieir female foes. They often yoke doves to a thunder-car. The somewhat shrewish Juno demanded, and obtained, from antiquity, gentle lambs as her favorite sacrifice. Women love, and that infinitely and truly ; the most enthusiastic mystics were women ; it was no man, but a nun, who died of longing love to Jesus. But it was only a man, and no woman, who could demand from the Stoic sage indiffer- ence to friendship. Nature sent women into the world, with this bridal dower of love, not, as men often think, that they may altogether and entirely love them from the crown of their head to the sole of their feet, but for this reason, — that they might be, what their destination is, mothers, and love children, to whom sacrifices must ever be offered, and from whom none are to be obtained. Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, clear-seeing nature, loses herself, and what she has of heart and hap- piness, in the object she loves. The present only exists to her ; and this present, again, is a determinate one, it is one, and only one, human being. As Swift loved not the human race, but only individuals belonging to it, so wo- men, though they have the warmest hearts, ai-e no citizens of the world, scarcely citizens of a town or a village, but only of their home ; no woman can at the same time love the four quarters of the world and her own child, but a man can. He loves the idea ; she the manifestation, that which alone is; as God — if this bold figure be not too bold — has only one loved object, — his universe. This peculiarity shows in many other ways. Men love things best ; for instance, truths, possessions, countries : women love persons best : the former, it is true, readily personify what they love. Just as what is the goddess of wisdom to a man, to a woman easily becomes a man who has wis- NATURE OF WOMEN. 179 dorn. Even when a child, a woman loves a mock-human being, a doll, and works for it ; the boy gets hold of a wooden horse and a troop of tin soldiers, and works with them. It probably arises from this very fact, that among boys and girls, sent at the same age to school, though the latter mature sooner, they yet retain their play-persons longer than boys do their playthings. When, however, grown-up women of the lower classes look intensely after a beautiful doll, carried by a child in the higher ranks of life, it seems their love of dress may exceed their love of children. Further, girls kiss one another more frequently than boys; those look at the rider, these at the horse; those inquire about appearances, these about their causes ; those about children, these about animals. §84. The more corrupt a century, the more contempt is there in it for women. The more slavery in the form, or formlessness, of government, the more do they become the handmaidens of servants. In old free Germany, women were considered sacred, and, hke their images, the doves of Jupiter at Dodona, pronounced oracles ; in Sparta and England, and in the fair age of chivalry, women bore the order-jewels of man's reverence. Now, since women rise and fall, become noble or base, according to the form of government, — and this is constantly created and main- tained by men, — it is clear that women, after the charac- ter of men is formed, imitate that model : that there must first be seducing men before seduced women ; that every deterioration of the female character is but the after-win- ter of a similar one in men. Place moral heroes in the field, and heroines follow them as brides : but the opposite does not hold true ; no heroine can create a hero through l8o LEVANA. love of her, but she may give birth to one. Therefore, all the more contemptible is the narrow-minded, squeam- ish Parisian man, who makes tirades against the Parisian women, and, consequently, against all women ; while he only ingrafts on them his own old sins, and poisons their womanhood by his own womanishness. How would such a plaster-cast creature of the age stand and tremble and wither away before a Spartan or an ancient German woman ! Consequently, the present age, in complaining of female sensuality, admits the previous existence of the sin in men. Meanwhile, let the Devil's advocates stand forth against women, and those of holiness for them, and to the advantage of women. There are many satirical creatures who get something printed, and are viewed with wonder, and written up by German critics as men deeply read in human nature; for no other reason than this, because, without any further pretension to knowledge of the world, insight, heart, or mind, they have converted every woman into nothing more than a fifth or sixth sense, and all their own desires into one overlaying one : and then, especially the critic (he's a school-teacher), thanks God and the au- thor, that now, for a few pence, which he does not pay, but receives as a reward for his favor, he at last holds in his hand the key of the French and allied female castle. These denouncers of women are, at all events, only half right, and certainly half wrong; the former when they speak of physiological, the latter when of moral sen- suality. Of the former — when without the concurrence of a perfectly innocent heart — no one is guilty, but God the Father ; and just as well might the greater beauty of a woman's bosom be attributed to her as a sin and excess. But if Heaven created her especially for children, it is NATURE OF WOMEN. l8l manifest that this physiological sensuality was ordained by the great Father of all children for the advantage of the growing after-world. The first dwelling which man in- habits is an organized one ; and can this be too rich, too strong for his first original formation ? Can want of power and life ever form an organic creature full of power and life ? And w^hich moment is the most important in the whole life ? Certainly not the last, as theologians have often stated ; but probably the first, as physicians show. On the other hand, as a counterpoise, there is allotted to the senses of woman a purer heart than that of man, which makes common cause with them ; and thus the accusation of her physical conformation closes with an eulogy on her spiritual nature. But these good beings do not defend themselves save by proxy ; and it is probable that, with their facility of belief, mistrustful words may at last turn their watchfulness away from their inward heart ; just as many lose their religion, or their religious sen- timents, without knowing how, merely because they hear discussions, and nothing else, about it. §85. Nature has directly formed woman to be a mother, only indirectly to be a wife ; man, on the contrary, is rather made to be a husband than a father. It were, in- deed, somewhat strange if the stronger sex must lean on the weaker, the flower support its stem, the ivy the tree ; nevertheless he, just because he is the stronger, does enforce something of that kind, makes his wife into the bearer of his arms and burdens, his marketer and pro- vision cooker ; and the husband regards the wife as the barn and outer shed of his household goods. He is far more created for her than she for him ; yhe is for physical, l82 LEVANA. what he is for mental posterity. Fleets and armies prove the dispensableness of women ; on the contrary, societies of women — convents, for instance — do not arise without some male directing lever as primuyn mobile. Nature, which moves on kindly, yet cruelly, towards her vast ends in the world, has, for this purpose, armed women, — the colleges and training-houses of posterity, — men- tally and physically, with power of giving and power of denying: both their physical and mental charms and weaknesses afford them protection. Hence arise regard and attention to their persons, with which their souls are more intimately united into one existence than ours; hence their dread of wounds, because these affect a double life, and their indifference to sickness ; whereas men fear wounds less than illnesses, because those affect the body most, these the mind. Connected with these are her temperance, her love of cleanliness, and also her modesty and her inclination to housewifery and quietness. The moral and apprehensive nature of girls is more rapidly developed than the mind of boys (as, according to Zach, satellites move quicker than planets; or, as flowers in valleys bloom sooner than on mountains) ; because to the physical, and consequently maternal, maturity of fifteen Nature has also added that of the mind. So soon as the luxuriant flower has, with its pollen, provided for another spring, Nature harshly destroys its attractive colors, and leaves it to its mental treasures and harvest. On the contrary, she preserves man's body, which has to serve on a longer journey of action and thought, active into the vale of years, and far beyond the season of woman's bloom. We may here subjoin this remark, drawn from the animal kingdom, that the male shows his greatest cour- age and power in the love-season, but the female after having given birth to her offspring. NATURE OF WOMEN. 183 It is easy to draw out these assertions into the lesser matters of detail ; for instance, female avarice, which saves, not for self, but for her children, love of trifles, love of talking, the gentle voice, and many things which we blame. § 86. We return to the former complaints about women. But why do men use this word so often, about those beings to whom they owe the first thanks for existence, and who are sacrificed by Nature herself that life may follow life ? Why are the treasure-houses of humanity, its creators under God, not esteemed more highly ? and why do they only receive the wreath of corn-ears to carry, because it is prickly ? Were there only one father on the earth, we should worship him ; but were there only one mother, we should reverence and love her as well as worship. The noblest and fairest quality with which Nature could and must furnish women, for the benefit of pos- terity, was love, the most ardent, yet without return, and for an object unlike itself. The child receives love, and kisses, and night-watchings, but at first it only answers with rebuffs ; and the weak creature, which requires most, pays least. But the mother gives un- ceasingly ; yea, her love only becomes greater with the necessity and thanklessness of the recipient, and she feels the greatest for the most feeble, as the father for the strongest child. " But," it may be objected to this view of woman's destination, " women particularly seek after and honor all mental or physical power ; they love their own sex little, and judge its weaknesses more harshly than the roughness of men. However angry a master may be 184 LEVANA. with his servant, a mistress is far more so with her slave, whether in the colonies or in Germany ; and the Roman ladies cliose to have their toilets performed by maidens with bared bosoms, so that they might, at the least mis- take in dressing, stick pins into them for punishment. Mothers, as well as courts, celebrate the birth of a prin- cess with fewer cannon-shots than that of a prince. If a woman, in any trick of cards, is asked to fix on some one card, she always chooses the king or knave, at all events, never a queen ; and actresses like to perform no parts better than those of disguised young men. But one does not need to be very long in Paris, or in the world, ay, or upon the world, to guess what they want by it." Nothing bad ; but a protector for their children. As Herder has beautifully remarked. Nature has implanted reverence for men in women's heart ; from this rever- ence springs, in the first instance, love for men, but afterwards it passes into love for children. If even men, loving with the fancy, and after preconceived notions, far more than with the heart, follow actresses, because they have seen them play fine romantic char- acters, — queens, goddesses, heroines, yes, heroines of virtue, — why should not women fall in love from rev- erence, when they see us play the greatest parts, not as an actress does Lucretia, Desdemona, or Iphigenia, for a short evening's amusement, but for years of sober- seriousness on the theatre of the world or of the state : one man is a hero, another a president, a third a king, a fourth a world teacher I mean an author. Children demand this love of the mother for their father as their inheritance, or pledged property, and she can only keep some interest ; until, in old age, when the children them- NATURE OF WOMEN. 185 selves are parents, she, a gray-headed woman, as silver- bride,* again experiences a kind of love for her silver- bridegroom. In a childless marriage the wife regards the husband as her first and only son, possessed of qualities which constitute her true honor, and support her during her whole life ; and she loves the young man unutterably. §87. If a young woman cherish a love repressed into the bud of esteem, she will do little less than all for her lover, or what a mother does for her child. She forgets herself in him, because only through him does she re- member herself; and her paradise is only valued as a condition and fore-court of heaven to him : and she would receive a hell at the same price. Her heart is the citadel, everything else is but the suburbs and country round about it ; and only with the former is the latter vanquished. If it be true that the lost, in their haunts of misery, would gladly exchange the poisonous lures by which they must maintain and deceive themselves, for the sweet intoxication of sincere, heart-felt love, will not the fresh virgin heart resign all for the sunrise of life, for the first unbounded love, which is ardent in accordance with its purity and its previous non-existence, to the God-man ; who, for a being hitherto bound to a little corner of the world, suddenly reveals a whole new world, which is, for the maiden, this world joined with the next. Who, then, shall restrain the gratitude of love towards him * The twenty-fifth anniversary of a married couple's wedding-dny is called in Germany their silver wedding-day: the fiftieth, their golden wedding-day. l86 LEVANA. who has opened happiness and freedom to a mind chained to the narrow present, who has embodied all those dreams which formerly the unoccupied soul per- sonified in the stars, in spring-time, in friends, and child- like duties ? I know him well who shall place that restraint ; even he who requires the opposite, — the lover. Certainly a wisely and purely educated maiden is so poetic a flower of this dull world, that the sight of this glorious blossom, hanging, some years after the honeymoon, with yellow, faded leaves in unwatered beds, must grieve any man who beholds it with a poet's eye ; and who must, consequently, in sorrow over the common usefulness and servitude of the merely human life, over the difference between the virgin and the matron, utter the deadliest wishes ; yes, I say, he would rather send the virgin, with her wreath of rose-buds, her tenderness, her ignorance of the sufferings of life, her dream-pictures of a holy Eden, into the graveyard of earth, which is God's field, than into the waste places of life. Yet, do it not, poet : the virgin becomes a mother, and again gives birth to the youth and the Eden which have fled from her ; and to the mother herself they return, and fairer than before : and so let it be as it is ! How is it that in morally, as well as architecturally,* undermined Paris, the women read the characters of Hcloise, Attila, Valeria, in which only the love of the heart plays and burns with as great eagerness as love- letters ? Women, even old women, and young men devour such works ; whereas older men prefer being devoured by works of a very different kind. As in * It is well known that Paris is built from the quarries beneath it. NATURE OF WOMEN. 187 a well-played game of chess, or in war, he wins who makes the first move, so must women, as the assaulted party, succumb. But who attacks us, save ourselves ? And which is more guilty, the serpent on the ti'ee, or Eve under the tree ? And how small and transitory is often the price for which we bargain away the whole happiness of a woman's life ! It is like Xerxes who carried war into Greece because he liked eating Attic figs. Further : a woman's imagination, not worn-out like a man's, by wane and excitement, must all the more easily burst, on our account, into those flames which consume happmess. Hippel remarks, and with justice, that a man overtaken in wrong-doing is ashamed and speechless, that a woman becomes bold and passionately indignant. And this is the cause of it : the man clearly beholds himself, not so the woman ; therefore she the more readily makes her inno- cence appear both to others and herself. In short, our sins are more generally intentional ; hers thoughtless, and tlierefore the more excusable. And finally : there are everywhere more chaste dam- sels than young men, more chaste women than men, more old maids than old bachelors. Man, however, may glorify himself on two accounts. First, his relations to Hfe and the world and his courage lead him more frequently into temptations ; — and second, the man who preserves his chastity from principle, possesses therein a pra3torian band ; but the woman who protects hers with her heart, and from regard to social morality, has a guardian angel and guard of honor. The cohort, however, is stronger than llie an!jc4 and the 2;uard. LEVANA. CHAPTER IV EDUCATION OF GIRLS. §89. AFTER the last chapter this might be a short one, because, according to it, girls are to be educated as mothers, that is, as teachers. Our only duty would con- sist in giving them printed and verbal lessons in instruc- tion : and for this purpose no more susceptible period is offered to the parents than the time of hope and the six months of their daughter's engagement ; nor to the hus- band, than the first year of wedded life : and then, again, that the elder daughters should be permitted to educate the younger. The last is probably the most spiritual school for obtaining clearness of ideas, patience, and cir- cumspection to which pai'ents can send their daughters ; unfortunately it is closed against the youngest child. But before and after being a mother, a girl is a human being ; and neither motherly nor wifely destination can overbalance or substitute the human, but must become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so, above the mother, does the human being rise pre-eminent : and as the artist, while forming his work, does at the same time form something higher, — himself, the creator of that work ; so the mother forms, along with the child, her own more holy self. Every divinely human thing has attached to it by nature the condition of locality ; the ideal dwells within the bodily manifesta- tion, the flower pollen within its cup : the costliest pearls, so easily lost, are strung on common bands and threads, and pierced in order to be preserved. EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 189 Since Nature has ordained woman for maternity, it has also ordered her development ; and we need but not to oppose nor anticipate its determinations. But as it always labors blindly and fixedly on, only for its own one-sided aims, its end or ends, so education must not attempt to vanquish it, — for every natural energy is holy, — but to make the whole nature complete by soften- ing, purifying, and harmonizing the preponderating power by means of the other balancing powers. §90. A woman feels, but does not see, herself; she is all heart ; her very ears are ears of the heart. To observe herself and what appertains thereunto, viz. reasons, is too disagreeable for her. Perhaps it was on this account that our ancient jurisprudence sooner relieved a man than a woman from an oath, but applied the torture sooner to him than to her. Reasons change and affect the firm man more easily than the weak, versatile woman, as light- ning passes better through solid bodies than through the thin air. What then will happen ? Feelings come and go like light troops following the victory of the present : but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed and stand fast. Shall we now, by anatomizing it, rob the heart of its fair fulness of inner life. It w^ere sad if one could do it ; but Sömmering, after the thousand ears he has dissected, still experiences the charms of harmony ; and the philosopher, even after publishing his theory of morals and of taste, still feels the power of conscience and of beauty. Let a girl learn to prove, analyze, and explain, not her feeling, but the object of that feeling ; and then, having 190 LEVANA. experienced the wrongness of the object, she will be com- pelled during the whole continuance of the sensation to follow only the insight she has gained. Do not oppose the feelings, but the imagination. ThivS, in a picture of war, for instance, compresses the miseries of a nation into one heart ; those of a day or of a year into one moment ; the various possibilities into one certainty ; now, if by means of the severing concave mirror of reason, we separate this fancied focus into its various individual rays, the feeling is not destroyed, but only deferred. But, dear mother, cherish and protect every warm and tender feehng which years themselves bring and form, and do not revel in the sensibility of your youngest daughter, and lose yourself in tears of love while relating some lamentable story, or imparting such feelings in all their nakedness. For in future years either these beings will succumb to their feelings, or their feelings to them. Feelings, flowers, and butterflies live all the longer the later they are developed. Anything, whether mental or physical, which will certainly some one time come into real existence, may without injury arrive, somewhat late, but not too soon ; and the Germans of Tacitus preserved without disadvantage that heart full of energy which they gave forever to one, even though it might not be a young virginal one, which had beaten for them in many battles. Sin not against your daughters, nor blasphemously offend the spirit of God, by showing and recommending, even indirectly, any excellence they may possess, be it art, science, or the sanctuary of the heart, as a lure to men, or bait for catching a husband : to do so is truly to shoot wild fowl with diamonds, or to knock down fruit with a sceptre. Instead of making heaven a means and EDUCATION OF GIRLS. I9I handle for this earth, we should, in the highest possible degree, elevate this as a means of attaining that. Only an understanding of the general regulation of a house — order, knowledge of housekeeping, and similar matters — should be spoken of as valuable for the future groundwork of the marriage tie. The so-ealled lady-like accomplish- ments are, at most, but garlands of flowers by which Cupid may be bound ; but Hymen, who breaks through these, and garlands of fruit too, is best guided and held by the golden official chain of domestic capability. By means of eloquence impart clearness to principles, and by means of repetition give the power of comprehen- sion, — and, especially, permit as little as possible the enjoyment of self-commiseration, which, merely to retain excessive pain, flies from every cheerful light. Hatred and punishment of every humor, war against every ob- jectless frame of mind, are exercises. Even in the smallest matters, let nothing wilful pass unpunished in your daughters. For all this, some man is needed, round whose fii-m stem this weak, wavering flower-stalk may be trained. A lover before marriage generally prefers looking at the rainbow of tearful sensibilities, of fickle whims, and help- less weaknesses ; but after marriage, when the rainbow turns into wet weather, he requires reasonableness and thoroughness, because he suffers more from whims which are perpetually recurring, than from graver faults ; and, if he does not find these qualities, he awakes from his particular dreams without finding them realized. His di-eams are these : he had, forsooth, when a lover, in va- rious pastoral Arcadian hours of the heart, led his love to different resolutions, — for which he had given his own good reasons, — hence he was led to expect a marriage 192 LEVANA. full of governing reasons. " For," said he, " if now, in the warmth of youth, she already follows reasons, what will she do when cooler and older?" Merely the very * , posite. For she had only paid attention to his wishes, not to his chain of reasoning, and done everything solely from love. Wherefore, ye husbands, retain the love of your wives, and you are raised above the necessity of sermons on rea- son. Should it be more difficult, or more unprofitable, to live and act in company with your own wife and household queen, than to enter into partnership with the Virgin Mary, the queen of heaven, as a merchant in Mes- sina did, and honorably handed over to her the share of his profits ? Preserve girls from fear and affectation, which, for the most part, find place where reason is excluded. Even at a very early age you may cover with a many-colored veil many imaginary fears : for instance, you may tell a child that the first clap of thunder he hears is the rolling of the chariot on which the so long expected spring ar- rives ; or you may yourself unconcernedly regard animals which alarm by the rapidity of their movements, as mice ; or by their size, as horses ; or by their unpleasing forms, as spiders and toads. Then direct the child's eye from the whole to the individual beautiful limbs, and gradually, without compulsion, draw child and beast together : for children, unlike animals governed by instinct, have scarce- ly any other fear than that produced by strangeness. One scream of fear from a mother may resound through the whole life of her daughter ; for no rational discourse can extinguish the mother's scream. You may make any full stop, colon, semicolon, or comma of life before your children, but not a note of exclamation ! EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 193 §91. The morality of girls is custom, not principle. Boys might be improved by the bad example of drunken Hel- ots ; girls only by a good one. Even boys return from the Augean stiible of the world with some of its smell adhering to them ; but girls are frail, white Parisian ap- ple-blossoms, parlor-flowers, from which decay must be averted, not with the hand, but with fine camel-hair brush- es. They, like the priestesses of antiquity, should be educated only in holy places, and never hear, nor much less see, what is rude, immoral, or violent. Magdalena Pazzi said, on her death-bed, that she did not know what a sin against modesty was : let education at least try to imitate this example. Girls, hke pearls and peacocks, are valued for no other color than the most perfect whiteness. A corrupt youth may lay down a noble book, walk up and down the room in passionate tears, and ex- claim, " I will amend " ; and keep his word. At the end of forty years, Rousseau accomplished his first transfor- mation from the caterpillar state, and continued in it until death removed him by a second change. I have hitherto read of few women who have reformed themselves by other means, even in the most favorable cases, than that of a husband ; and what concerns some Magdalen asy- lums, in great Magdalen cities, no man desirous of mar- rying would accept from them, as from a wedding-office, his wedded half, properly but a kind of broken fragment. Perhaps this consideration excuses the conduct of the world, which regards the errors of men but as the chick- en-pox, which leaves few or no marks behind ; but those of women as the small-pox, which imprints its traces on tlie recovered patient, at least on the general remem- brance. 9 M 194 LEVANA. The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it bent : the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men. According to the old German rural custom, the sons walked to church behind the father, but the daugh- ters before the mother, apparently because the latter should not be much left out of sight. Nature herself has surrounded these delicate souls with an ever-present, inborn guard, with modesty, both in speaking and hearing. A woman requires no figure of eloquence — herself excepted — so often as that of accis- mus.* Keep watch over this guard, and pursue by this indication of nature the way to education. On this ac- count, mothers, fathers, men, and even youths, are their best companions ; on the contrary, girls connected with other girls of a similai- age, as in schools, provoke one another to an exchange of foibles, rather than of excel- lences, to a love of dress, admiration, and gossip, even to the forgetting of accismus. Even sisters of unequal age injure one another ; how much more, then, similar-aged playfellows : one needs only to listen to the mutual teas- ing among the members of a girls' school, when per- chance a young man has entered, or even approached, the door. In the paternal dwelling little would be made of such a circumstance, because it would happen more frequently with perfect seriousness, and among fewer rivals. And what may still be said about these despotic interim-convents ? Men are made for society, but women for maternal solitude. A boys' school is right, but not a girls' ; just as a ship of war filled with women would be merely a castle in the air, from its requiring so much unity, quickness, punctuality, and obedience. Girls de- * So rhetoricians term the figure by which one speaks, without all longing, of the very objects for which the strongest desire is felt. EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 195 pend upon one heart, boys on many heads. The most that a girl could find in a school would be a second mother ; but the father would be wanting. Another thing which a mother should carefully guard against can scarcely be avoided in a girls' school. It is, that as a mistress rules and speaks ; for a master would speak quite differently : and as rude, violent, dull-minded girls, must be mingled with gentle, delicate, and suscep- tible ones, the bad must be cured by means of many punishments which are poison to the best. I mean this : nothing so roughly brushes the tender auricula dust, or flower-pollen, off the minds of girls, as that old-maidish cry of alarm at our sex : that prudish abuse of a sex from which every one must make an exception in favor of her father and her husband. There is a kind of bad, unspirit- ual modesty, which resembles the stone veil in a statue of modesty by A. Corradini, which, according to Yolk- man, hangs down from it clearly and separately as another body. There are certain precipices along which women, like mules in Switzerland, must not be led if they are not to fall. Definite warnings against them serve as attractions and lures. Let the parents shine before them as pure examples, and they will not need to strengthen modesty, the wing-covers of Psyche's wings, with extra coverings. By instruction a child is robbed, in the first instance, of her innocent want of shame, after- wards of its silent presence. What follows is true, though in a lesser degree, of other schools besides those for girls; namely, if, in the parental dwelling, educational precept is lost in practice, and the child, to the unspeakable advantage of his feeling of freedom, and his quicker susceptibility, receives all moral instruction only as the natural, unobtrusive accom- 196 LEVANA. paniment of his thread of life ; in a school, on the con- trary, the child feels as if life only served for instruction, as if he himself lay like a block of marble, chisels and hammers passing over hun in every direction, from which so much was to be hewn away that a grown-up man should, at last, rise from the block. The secret parental formation, under which the child believed himself to be growing of his own accord, stands here revealed in its naked aim; he feels his carnation buds opened with a penknife, not gently disclosing themselves, after warm rain, by their own native force. For this very reason a young creature w^ould scarcely wish to remain longer than the appointed time in the school-house, but w^ould gladly live forever in its parent's home. Somewhat better than girls' boarding-schools are day- schools, places where they merely receive instruction. It were to be wished that in both of these, as well as in the girls' room at home, there could be more womanly class- spirit inspired, more love and reverence for their own sex, and woman's excellence shown as w^ell as the more bril- liant advantages of men. This leads me to a disinclina- tion not sufficiently struggled against in girls' schools, — I mean that of women towards women. When Richardson had put every means of torture, or passion, which such a preying shark hides under his skull to use against women sufferers, into the head of that devil towards women, Lovelace, against the angel Clarissa; and when he really permitted this holy virgin to be cruci- fied by him, he could naturally only expect that women would take the part of the siifferer, not of the beast of prey; but, to his utter astonishment, every day's post brought him letters from women entreating the final hap- piness of the good Lovelace, just as Klopstock received EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 197 similar ones for the reformation of his Abadonna. Much the same befell a converter of the heathen in Greenland ; who, after having employed, as he hoped, every admitted power of elonuence to depict the burning heat of hell, saw, to his astonishment, an ever-increasing cheerfulness in the faces of the Greenlanders ; until at last, on de- scending from the pulpit, he learned that, by his warm description of hell, he had excited a special longing in the whole congregation to go thither as to a milder climate. Such a charming hell was Lovelace to women, although a purgatory to Clarissa. It almost sounds like satire to say that women are not particularly fond of each other, and that, with all their friendly words to one another, they rather imitate the nightingale, which, in Beckstein's opinion, aims by its luring tones to scare other nightingales ; and so the asser- tion of the schoolman, that they would rise up as men at the last day, may be in some measure confirmed by the nature of heaven, in which, as the abode of eternal love, women changed into men would naturally and more readily feel a universal love by the entire absence of their own sex. Moreover, we possess the facts that the an- cient Roman women (according to Bottiger's Sabina) manifested a degree of cruelty towards their female slaves, and European women in the Indies also towards theirs ; and the most ancient governing sister on the island of Lesbos towards her other sisters, and even towards their mothers ; and, finally, modern mistresses towards their maid-servants ; to which our conduct to- wards our male domestics forms a noble contrast, so that we bear away, to our astonishment, (for we often flog ser- vants,) the honorable name of the gentler sex. I only passingly mention calumniation, or the "doing to death 19S LEVANA. by evil tongues," whereby a parlor is converted into a canvassing society of the heads and hearts of such fore- doomed women as are not there drinking tea. Should we not, then, seriously exclaim, ^" O mother ! above all other things, implant and cherish in your daugh- ter a love and reverence for her own sex. Is it possible that you cannot succeed in so doing, if you show her the crown of noble women shining gloriously amid the dark- ness of past ages ; the elevating examples of united female friends ; and the relationship of all their sex's sis- ters wdth them in worth and in danger ; and the thought that in her sex each honors or despises the sex of her mother ; and the certainty that, as hatred of humanity is punished in misanthropes, so the half of that sin, towards half the human race, will be punished in the haters of women?" Even the father may contribute his share, and indeed the largest, towards this end, by not merely preaching to his daughter, but showing her more regard towards her sisters, as the mother also may show more love. And, since no precept insures the practice of any virtue, it were well if the daughter were accustomed to regard in maid-servants not merely their common human- ity, but their fellowship with her in sex. §92. Some of the modern aesthetic lithologists would gladly see female flowering plants converted into petrifactions : they ought, say they, to repose more fully on the rights of the stronger. First, however, it were to be wished that more wood and kernel were imparted to the present soft, spongy character of men ; when that is effected, the woman will enclasp it like an ivy plant and form its second crown. How strong in will women are is a ques- EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 199 tion to be asked, not of loversj but of such husbands as, on their wedded penitentiaf stools, are summoned to So- cratic discourses with a female Socrates, or to such as Job's wife held. In the love before marriage the girl appears too weakly, characterless, and submissive ; but marriage, in accordance with her destination for children, suddenly opens, like a northern sun, all her blossoms, be they those of an aloe or of a thistle. Is it on this ac- count that most Slavonians * call their beloved, as the Poles, indeed, do all women, the uncertain ? In short, the girl matures into the mother; and the man who wishes to possess in his wife at once a slave and a goddess stands half discomfited by the change ; the little that he can say on the matter consists in such ideas as these rather than anything else : " He had, trusting in his own steadfast- ness, lovingly proposed to himself to have been a prop to her ; but she had brought with her and packed up for use so much of her own, that subsequently, between man and wife, the sex was as difficult to distinguish as in young birds ; which was god, which goddess, was, in his own case, as hard to guess as in the early Grecian statues of deities : indeed, it were to be wished that the similarity were less absolute." Consequently the will of girls is less to be strengthened than bent and polished. Like plastic divinities, women should only gently and mildly express their feelings. Every outward and inward excess is a blemish in their charms, a poison to their children. Even a man chooses gentleness as the first, though perhaps not the second, mode of expressing his will and determination. No mere strength goes to war against feminine gentleness ; so the tranquil moonshine is rarely broken by a storm, though * See Anton's Essays on the Slavonians, Vol. I. 200 LEVANA. the glowing sunshine may be. From the moment in which the bravest man shall speak in the gentlest manner will sweetness and compliance arise more and more in the strongest woman : she may continue to be a pyramid, but in the pyramids is found a soft echo. Since the present warlike age and present style of German poetry send women less to the flute-school of gentleness than to the fighting-school of war, a few sen- tences added to this ninety-second section, which, though not bringing cure, may yet possibly avert the evil, will not be useless, at least to those daughters who add their own character as a female water-pipe to our present tempest- uous season. Passionateness in a woman's soul is often found united wath all the overflowing fulness of a deep, noble heart, yes, even with predominant gentleness and affection; — and yet such a hard adjunct of nature may draw the being herself, and all who love or are loved by her, into the most irremediable misfortunes. The usually tranquil female character is naturally so much inchned to whirlwinds of passion, that even the laws (those of Prussia, for instance), dreading the angels of destruction in these otherwise mild angels, forbid an apothecary to sell poison to any woman, whereas they permit violent men to procure it. The laws seem usually to consider them as snow-white, snow-dazzling, and' snow- cold Heclas full of fire. If, now, this naturally over- powerful disposition of the sex be increased by that of the individual, we behold a thunder-goddess, who beats down with waterspouts her little flower-children, not to mention her drenched husband, flooded house, and drowned love. A storming mother is a contradiction in education, and re- sembles those tropical storms which injuriously increase EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 201 the temperature of the atmosphere ; whereas a storming father coohngly purifies the air. To the child, yet stand- ing on his pure, clear heights, passion perhaps sounds as weak as does a crash to one ascending lofty mountains ; but in the valleys of future life it becomes a thunder-clap, and every fit of maternal passion returns as a sevenfold echo in the married life of her daughter. As I have above said, I do not refer to conjugal love, in which, dur- ing these female hurricanes, the thin axle of Aphrodite's fair car breaks, or her yoked doves tear themselves loose and fly away, because the readers do not here require the poison to be shown them, but its antidote. This, however, is not so close at hand, as our discourse is only of girls six or seven years old. But to oppose violence to violence, to attack passion by passion, is to try to put out fire with boiling oil : punishments, especially on this account in youth, do more injury than the stifling of the flames warrants ; to which must be added that punishment, as is natural, only then atfects the passion when it has provided the match for a still greater future one. Every repetition of the fault becomes, in this case, a doubling of it, to which even the furrows of pain act as inflammatory incitements. As a physical remedy, one might advise more vegetable than animal diet, and that of a cooling nature, if afterwards advancing years with their fiery blood would not again produce heat. But the best means to use against it in early life are the preven- tion of all, even the smallest, occasions for it, or sparks for the match : and, on the other hand, let every power of love, of patience, of peacefulness, be cherished and manifested and employed against that consuming fire. Commands effect nothing ; but examples of gentleness, whether given or related in tone and action, do all. The children of 9* 202 LEVANA. Quakers are gentle without punishment ; they see their parents ever shining, as tranquil white stars, through the stormy clouds of foreign environment. On the contrary, in the later years of refle-ction, and the blush of shame, this punishment may be permitted, in- deed ordained ; that such a female Boreas of fifteen years old may, in the midst of her roaring storm, openly and harshly receive the metaphorical blow in the face on her burning, swollen cheeks, which, given previously, without its figurative meaning, would only, as I have already said, have increased the whole swelling evil. §93. The wife of a nobleman was formerly called housewife. The ancient Britons were often led to battle by brave women. Many Scandinavian women, according to Home, were pirates. A North American on the land, and a Parisian woman in the shop, do everything that with us devolves on the man. Should it, indeed, be sufficient if a girl can sew, and knit, and net ? When Sweden, under Charles the Twelfth, had sent forth all her men at the call of glory, the women became postmasters, cultivators of the land, and overseers of the public oflices. And since it may possibly happen in time that all the men may be engaged in a war and peace establishment, it seems to me we should think more of educating girls to be the conduc- tors of our business, and the managers of our estates ; for, subsequently, if the men were killed, there might be another conscription and enlisting demanded from the women than that under husbands. The gymnastics of life and labor are, if the two former sections be correct, the third commandment in female education. But these do not consist of so-called lady-like EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 203 occupations. Sewing, knitting, or spinning with a Paris- ian pocket spinning-wheel are recreation and repose from labor, not labor and exercise.; for that spinning while walking, as the Moldavians do,* at least must be ordered. Worsted work, this female mosaic-work, more suitable for the higher classes, who must refresh them- selves from doing nothing by doing little, easily converts the pattern into a covering for indisposition or ill-humor. Xenophon tells us that Lycurgus sent the Spartan women to the public places of exercise, and only the slaves to the embroidery-frame and the spinning-wheel. I do not reckon as greatest those physical disadvantages, the slav- ish carriage of the person, for instance, which need a dancing-school to correct what the sewing-school has done, for a watchful mother might as easily enforce cor- rect sitting during the sewing-lesson, as a writing-master can do during the writing-lesson ; neither do I reckon the nerve- enfeebling, finger-pricking irritation of knitting ; and the physical evils of a sedentary life shall be treated of hereafter. But most employments of the fingers by which you attempt to fix the female quicksilver have this injurious effect, that the mind, left to idleness, rusts away, or is entirely given up to the waves of circle after circle spreading fancy. Sewing and knitting needles, for in- stance, keep open the w^ounds of an unhappy attachment far more than do all romances : they are thorns which themselves pierce the falling rose. If the young woman have, as the young man generally has, some occupation which every moment demands new thought, the old one cannot perpetually stand out in the most prominent light. A change of occupation is especially adapted to the female character, as the steady pursuit of one is to that of the man. * Sumarakoff 's Travels in the Crimea. 204 LEVANA. Distraction, forgetfulness, want of consideration, and presence of mind, are the first and worst consequences of this sweet internal and external /ar niente ; and a woman needs nothing more to poison the holy trinity of wedlock, child, husband, and self. Heavens ! how a young man must every day draw his thread of life from a new fleece, or conduct his plans on their long journey nearer to the goal, while a young woman repeats yesterday in to-day as the image of to-morrow ; he indeed walks, and she sits ; the one is permitted to stand, the other only to sit. The female sex has such a preference for every an- choring manner of life, that it would gladly, as Gerning says the Greek women actually did, carry a camp-stool with it, so as after every step to have a seat ready at hand. Yet I should think women might be satisfied to resemble the sun in its shining and warming powers, and not also in its immovableness. They, in common with the sitting professions, tailoring and shoemaking, are the victims of spleen and fanaticism. This sedentary life, full of noontide rests, morning and afternoon rests, and vesper rests, in which great ladies with full tables and stomachs indulge, gives so much trouble to the doctors, running hither and thither, that finally a knowledge of medicine will be as necessary as a knowledge of French to every chevalier cVhonneur^ and chamberlain. In such a circle one certainly need seek few Swiss heroines, not to mention that Szekleress from the district of Gyergyoer, who, in a battle with the Moldavians, killed seven of them at one stroke, and in the evening returned and was brought to bed of a son. This circumstance happened on the seventh of September, 1685. A certain Quoddensvult, in the (yet unprinted) twenty- thu'd volume of the Flegeljahre, thinks to excuse some- EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 205 thing, when, after having spoken of the female love of sitting and dancing, until he hit upon those hovering flies which hover unwaveringly, and shoot down swift as ar- rows, he thus expresses himself concerning it : "I see why the female nature loves rest better than men do, less in crabs — of which the female has much the fewer legs under its tail — than in the human foetus itself, for the boy begins to move in the third, the girl in the fourtli month. Also in the Culs de Paris is the sitting mode of hfe sufficiently exemplified. But Nature softens this as much as she does other things, by giving a desire for sour kraut and herrings as a curative diet to fever patients; so she implanted in the bed and sofa lying woman, as well as in the lazy savage, the love of dancing. As in a concert, so in her, prestissimo follows adagio. I know not what is more necessary to the present Largo di molto sitting than the hop furioso. A ball is a strengthening snail and oyster cure of crawling snails and sitting oysters ; a thee dansant is the best cure for a tea-drinking. The two medical fin- gers tread on the foot as ten medical toes ; and at a masked ball the uncovered lady has her pestilence preserver in her hand, as the plague doctors formerly went about in wax masks. If you want ladies to go faster than posts and couriers, arrange an English country dance between Leipsic and Dessau, and let the girls ' chassez,' then see who arrives first, the post or the dancers," — and so on. For, however true some of it may be, it is yet better placed where it is, in the twenty-third volume. This love of sitting also attacks the lesser branches of iamily and household affairs, in which women often permit and neglect matters merely not to have to rise from their seats, or unwillingly purchase the exercise of their chil- dren with their own, or willingly delay physical and force 2o6 LEVANA. mental growth. In London ringing twice summons the footman, thrice the chambermaid, apparently to give time to the sex. §94. Now how can this be obviated ? Just as it is obviated among the lower classes. Let a girl, instead of her dreamy, monotonous finger-work, manage the business of the house- hold, which every moment restrains dreaminess and ab- sence of mind by new duties, and calls on the attention ; in early years let her be employed in everything, from cooking to gardening ; when older, from the management of the servants to keeping the accounts. What a minister is in a small state, that a woman is in her lesser state ; namely, the minister of all departments at once, the hus- band managing the foreign affairs ; more especially is she the minister of finance, who, in the state, according to Goethe, in the last resort, regulates peace, as well as, according to Archenholz, the magazines of war. Even noble ladies would be healthier and happier if they fulfilled the duties of maitre d'hotel, and femme de charge, I mean for the house : I know they frequently act in both capa- cities for their husbands. Certainly, as a whole, the females of the higher classes are rendered more delicately beautiful by this absolute idleness ; but such a Venus resembles that of Rome, who was also the goddess of corpses ; among these may be reckoned her children, her husband, or her- self. I do not speak about the art of cookery, in order not to be laughed at as Kant was, who wished that here (as in Scotland) regular lessons should be given in it as well as in dancing. Rather will Seneca's beautiful words addressed to sacrificers — " Puras Deus, non plenas ad- spicit manus" (God regards pure, not full hands) — ac- quire a new meaning with noble ladies ; and they will EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 207 suppose their husbands value pure white hands more than those which present them some good dish they have cooked. But how is it that in the order of female rank her real title, housewife, is not esteemed higher ? Is it not in that capacity that as once physically, so now financially, she prepares a freer future for her children ? And can a woman find that in detail beneath her regard, in which, as a whole, the greatest of men, a Cato of Utica, a Sully, and others, sought their glory ? Once for all, the household must be managed in some way ; and is it better that the husband should add this extra weight to his out-of-door duties ? If so, I should merely be lost in astonishment that the women — for the thing is practicable, as Hum- boldt and others have seen examples of it among the men in South America — do not commit to our charge the reasonable and easy duty of suckling the children. After a little creative practice there might be, instead of wet female, wet male nufses : the ministers, presidents, and other principals (the children carried after them into court) would stand it better than the women, &c., &c. For the rest, let no more flighty than intellectual woman declare that housekeeping, as a mechanical affair, is be- neath the dignity of her mind, and she would rather be as mentally happy as a man. Is there, then, any mental work without hand work? Do accountants' offices, secre- taries' rooms, the military parade, places of the state, set the hands less in motion than the kitchen and household affairs, or is it merely that they do so in a different way ? Can the mind show itself earlier, or otherwise, than behind the mask of the laborious body ? for instance, the ideal of the sculptor otherwise than after millions of blows and chisel-strokes on the marble? Or can this present Levana 2o8 LEVANA. appear in the world and in print, unless I make pens, dip them in the ink, and draw them up and down ? Ye holy women of German antiquity ! ye knew as little of an ideal heart as of the circulation of the pure blood which flushed and warmed you when you said, '' I do it for my husband, for my children " ; you, with your anxie- ties and cares, seeming only subordinate and prosaic! But the holy ideal descended through you, as heaven's fire through clouds, upon the earth. The mystic Guyon, who in a hospital took on himself, and fulfilled, the duties of a loathing maid-servant, has a higher throne among glorified souls than the general who, with the arms of others, yea, and with his own, makes wounds which he does not heal. All strength lies within, not without ; and whether a poet on his printed sheet, or a conqueror on his missives and treaty-papers, divide and unite countries, the diflPerence is only externally so great as that between all and nothing : I mean to the vulgar. §95. Women are by nature intended for people of business : they are called to it by the equal balance of their powers and their keen sense of observation. Children require an ever-open eye, but not an ever-open mouth : claude os, aperi oculos. But what circle of talking, which always encloses only small and trifling relations, could so well exercise that ever-present glance as the circle of domestic affairs ? Boys destined for certain occupations, to be ar- tists, professors, or mathematicians, may dispense with a capacity for business, but never a girl who will marry, — especially one of the above-mentioned boys. Above all things, must that wandering, or absence of mind, be strictly combated, which is no fault of nature, but solely EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 209 of the individual, and is never the determining condition of any superior power. Every dissipation of mind is partial weakness. For instance, were the poet or philoso- pher, who wanders about so absently in the outer world, which is foreign to his sphere of action, to work with equal want of reflection in his inner world, which alone he has to observe and govern, he would certainly be either mad or useless. The same thing is true in the op- posite case ; if a woman, indifferent to the outer, practical world in which her business lies, neglects it for the sake of the inner. If, now, a girl is intended to grow up wdth a clear eye for everything round her, — if she is not to waste her many eyes in company, as Argus did his, by misplacing them as painted eyes in a peacock's tail ; or if she is not, like that sea fish, the turbot, to have two eyes on the right side, but, in compensation, to be blind on the left, — let her be many-sidedly exercised in house- hold affairs; and the parents must not be disturbed if some admirer of an ethereal bride should object to her, as Plato reproached Eudoxus, with having profaned pure mathematics by applying them to mechanics ; for to-day or to-morrow the wedding comes, and the husband, the honeymoon being past, kisses the mother's hand for all that the daughter does contrary to his expectation. §96. Let everything be taught a girl which forms and ex- ercises the habit of attention, and the powder of judging things by the eye. Consequently, botany, — this inex- haustible, tranquil, ever-interesting science, attaching the mind to nature with bonds of flowers. Then astronomy, not the properly mathematical, but the Lichtenbergian and religious, which with the expansion of the universe N 2IO LEVANA. expands the mind, along with which it does no harm if a girl experiences why a longest night is advantageous to sleep, a full moon to love. I should also even recommend mathematics ; but here, unfortunately, women who have a Fontenelle for astronomy, have not one for mathemat- ics ; for, with regard to girls, I only mean those simplest principles of pure and mixed mathematics which boys can understand. And geometry itself, as a second eye, or dioptric line, which brings as distinct separations into the world of matter as Kant has done by his categories into the world of mind, may also be commenced early ; for geometrical observations, unhke philosophical, strain the mind to the injury of the body as little as the external sense of sight. Sculptors and painters study mathematics as the skeleton of visible beauty, without injury to their sense of beauty : I know a little girl of two years and a half old, who recognized in the full foliage of nature the dry paper skeleton of the mathematical figures which she had learned to draw in play. In the same way these little beings have early developed powers of calculation, especially for the important part of mental arithmetic. Why are they not also taught a multiplication-table for the reduction of the various kinds of money and yard measurements ? Philosophy is something quite different, indeed, diamet- rically opposite. Why should these lovers of wisdom and of wise men learn it ? A lottery-ticket with a great pre- mium has been occasionally drawn from among this sex, — a true-bom poetess ; but a philosopheress would have broken up the lottery. A woman of genius — Madame Chatelet — may understand Newton in English, and ren- der him into French ; but none could do that in German for Kant or Schelling. The most spiritual-minded and EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 211 intellectual women have a way of their own, a certainty of understanding the most profound philosophers, which even their very scholars despairingly aim at, — namely, they find everything easy, especially their own thoughts, that is, feelings. In the ever-changing atmosphere of their fancy they meet with every most finely-drawn skel- eton of the philosophers ; just like many poetical follow- ers of the new schools of philosophy, who, instead of a clearly defined circle, give us a fantastic circle of vapor. Geography, as a mere registry of places, is utterly worthless for mental development, and of little use to women in their vocations ; on the contrary, that is indis- pensable which, teaching the enduring living history of the earth, — in opposition to that which is transitory and dead, — is at once the history of humanity, which divides itself into nations as well as into contemporaneous historic periods, and also that of the globe itself, which converts the twelve months into twelve contemporaneous spaces. The mind of a girl attached to her chair and her birth- place, like an enchanted princess in a castle, must be delivered and led forth to clearer prospects by the de- scriptions of travellers. I wish some one would give us a comprehensive selection of the best travels and voyages round the world, but shortened and adapted for the use of girls ; and, if the editor were well furnished with Her- der's patience and insight into the most dissimilar nations, I know of no more valuable present to the sex. With regard to descriptions of places, every station requires a different one, — a merchant's daughter one very unlike that provided for a princess. Almost all this equally applies to petrified history, which only conducts from one past age into another. For a girl it can scarcely be too barren in dates and 212 LEVANA. names. How many emperors in the whole history of German emperors are for a girl ? On the other hand, it cannot be sufficiently rich in great men and great events, which elevate the soul above the petty histories of towns and suburbs. Music, vocal and instrumental, is natural to the female mind, and is the Orphean lute which leads her uninjured past many siren sounds, and accompanies her with its echo of youth far into the autumn of wedded life. Drawing, on the contrary, if carried beyond the first principles, which educate the eye and taste in dress more perfectly, steals too much time from the husband and children ; therefore it is usually a lost art. One foreign language is necessary, and at the same time quite enough for the scientific explanation of her own. Unfortunately French pushes itself most prominently for- ward, because a woman really must learn it to comply with the necessities consequent on the billeting of French soldiers. I would wish — why should one not wish, that is, do every day of the year what one does on the first ? — that a selection of English, Italian, Latin words were placed before every girl as an exercise in reading, so that she might understand when she heard them. The talking and writing world has sent into circula- tion so large a foreign treasury of scientific words, that girls, who do not, like boys, learn the words along with the sciences, should have weekly lessons in them out of a scientific dictionary, or translate into comprehensible phrases tales in which sucli anti-Campean words are pur- posely employed. I wish that for this end an octavo volume full of foreign words, with an explanatory ency- clopaedia to them, were published. The best women read dreaming (the rest truly sleeping) ; they pass gliding as EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 213 easily over the mountains of a metaphysical book, as sailors do over the mountainous waves of the ocean. None of them ever thinks of asking the dictionary, nay, not even her husband, what any word means ; but this vow of silence, which regards asking questions as a for- bidden game, this contentment with dark thoughts, which possibly learns in the twentieth book the meaning of a scientific term used in the second, ought to be prevented. Else they will read books as they listen to men. ^ --'-- sUI*aÄ There is one charm which all girls might possess, and which frequently not one in a provincial town does pos- sess ; which equally enchants him who has, and him who has it not ; which adorns the features and every word, and which remains imperishable (nothing can exist longer) while a woman speaks ; — I mean the pronunciation itself, the pure German indicating no birthplace. I entreat you, mothers, to take lessons in pure German enunciation and to rehearse them constantly with your daughters. I assure you — to place the matter on a firmer foundation — that a vulgar pronunciation always rather reminds one of a vulgar condition, because, in general, the higher the rank the better is the pronunciation, though not always the language. The higher ranks, contrary to Adelung's change of words, are not the best musical artists of lan- guage (composers), but they are the best deliverers of it (virtuosi). Girls, unhke authoresses, cannot write too much. It is as though on paper, this final metamorphosis of their dear flax, they themselves experienced one, and, in the back- ward viewing of the rough and smooth external world, won space and rest for their own inner world ; so often in letters and diaries do we find women, the most ordinary in conversation, reveal an unexpected spiritual heaven. 214 LEVANA. But the theme on which and for which they write must not be one drawn from a learned caprice, but from the observation of life, — for their sensations and thoughts depend upon climate far more than those of boys ; of course I speak of real letters, and their own diaries, not mere exercises. From this cause — that an appointed goal marked and restrained their course — the author has received so many eloquent, profound, and brilliant letters from feminine, nay, masculine minds, that he has often exclaimed in vexation, " If only five authoresses wrote as well as twenty lady letter-writers, or twenty authors as well as forty correspondents, literature would be of some value!" §97. The greatest part of the above will help to form female power in connection with female mind, activity along with gentleness : not only in marriage, but in the woman herself, ought there to be a reflection of that heavenly zodiac in which the lion shines beside the virgin. Intellect acts democratically on the mind ; feel- ing, monarchically. Any circumstance, even dressing for a ball, seizes on a woman, like the Romans on the Sabines, and tears her from her inner world. One who before the toilet for the ball can think of anything better, loses many more inches of mental elevation. The pres- ent governs none more powerfully with one single idea than minds which step dazzled out of their little dream- cell into the clear daylight. On this is grounded the well-known experience, that they are never ready till it is too late, and have always forgotten something. But how easy were it to send a daughter every week into the struggling school of im- provement ! Let the father say, " Dear Nanny, Fanny, EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 215 or Annie, if you are ready dressed in one hour, you shall dance to-day." In a similar way he might cure them of forgetfulness and want of punctuality by pleas- ure parties, as stipulated rewards for immediate ces- sation from their occupations and quick packing up of all necessaries. §98. There is just as much to be said against the vanity of women as against the pride of men ; that is, just as little. Charms, which like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity ; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure, and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie deep down like gold, and are only discovered with difficulty, strength, profoundness of intellect, mo- rality, leave their possessors modest and proud. Nelson could become just as vain by orders and the loss of his eye and arm, as proud by his cool bravery. No man can with sufficient liveliness place himself in the position of a beautiful woman, who, carrying her nose, her eyes, her figure, her complexion, as sparkling jewels through the streets, blinds one eye after another with her daz- zling brilliance, and risks no capital in exchange for her profits. On the other hand, like a man chained and imprisoned, the very clever and learned rector creeps behind her, covering his inner pearls with two thick shells : and no one knows what he knows, but the man himself alone must admire and dazzle himself. The desire to please with some good quality, which rules only in the visible or external kingdom, is so inno- cent and right, that the opposite, to be indifferent or disagreeable to the eye or ear, would even be wrong. 2l6 LEVANA. Why should a painter dress to please the eye, and not his wife ? — I grant you there is a poisonous vanity and love of approbation ; that, namely, which lowers the inner kingdom to an outer one, spreads out sentiments as snaring nets for the eye and ear, and degradingly buys and sells itself with that which has real inherent value. Let a girl try to please with her appearance and her dress, but never with holy sentiments ; a so- called fair devotee, who knew that she was so, and therefore knelt, would worship nothing save herself, the Devil, and her admirer. Every mother, and every friend of the family, should keep a careful watch over their own wish to praise, — often as dangerous as that to blame, — which so easily names and praises an uncon- scious grace in the expressions of the heart, in the mien, or in the sentiments, and thereby converts it forever into a conscious one ; that is to say, kills it. The counting of his subjects lost them to David. The gold presented by demon hands vanishes when spoken of. While man finds a cothurnus on which to raise and show himself to the world in the judge's seat, literary rank, the profes- sor's chair, or the car of victory, woman has nothing save her outward appearance whereon to raise and dis- play her inner nature : why pull from under her this lowly footstool of Venus ? And as man stands in some college or corporate body, as in an assurance office for the maintenance of his honor, but woman only asserts the lonely worth of her own individuality, she must attach herself to it all the more strongly. Perhaps this is a second reason why women cannot endure modi- fied praise ; for the first is surely this, that from want of self-division, and owing to their constant subjection to the present, which always presents the bitter more power- EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 217 fully than the sweet, they are more sensitive to the limits set to the praise than to the praise itself. We will now pass to the clothes-devil, as the old theo- logians formerly called the toilet. What else does a woman's dressing-room signify than the attiring-room of a theatre ? And why, then, are there so many sermons against it ? The preachers do not sufficiently bear in mind the following considerations : to a woman her dress is the third organ of the soul (the body is the second, and the brain the first), and every upper garment is one organ more. Why? Because the body, her true wedding- gift, is more completely one with her destination than ours is with ours : while ours is rather a pilgrim's or miner's dress with its protecting apron, hers is a coro- nation robe, a court suit. It is the holy relic of an invisible saint, which cannot be sufficiently worshipped and adorned ; and the touch of this holy body works all kinds of miracles. To cut off a man's hand was in early ages scarcely less dangerous than to touch a wo- man's, on which pressure the Salic law lays a fine of fifteen gold pieces ; a violent kiss formed the ground for a criminal indictment ; and in Hamburgh there is still a fine of twopence on every kiss imprinted in a work- shop. Hence dress and ornament must be as important to women as varnish to paintings ; they must regard them as a multiplication of their surfaces or facets. Hence for the most part women visit a " lying in state " to see how people look under the ground among the dead. Perhaps the love of dress may be among the causes of our having had great female painters, but no great female musicians ; for a great space in women's pictures is filled with dress, but in music they think they 10 2l8 LEVANA. cannot be sufficiently seen unless they sing, tience, also, light falls on the female art of putting on a shawl of a Hamilton. Even in old age and on the sick-bed, of both which a man takes advantage to make himself comfort- able in night-cap and dressing-gown, they still put on an ornamental costume, not to please men, but to please themselves : in the most secret coffin of the most lonely Carthusian convent of La Trappe they will not be behind the exhumed corpses of Pompeii, which advantageously display themselves to posterity in ornaments and ear- rings. If there were a Miss Robinson Crusoe on a deso- late island, with no one to please but her own reflection in the water, she would yet every day make and wear the newest fashions. How little they make themselves into artificial work and three-cased watches for the sake of men, may be seen in the fact that they never dress more carefully than for ladies' parties, where every one studies and vexes the rest. Unembarrassed by witnesses, each one places herself before her ideal world, — the mirror, — and dresses the bridal pair. Formerly, in France, every woman carried a glass on her person, apparently to be more agreeable to her friends, and to indemnify them by their own pic- tures for the bearer of them. In Germany, in olden time, a mirror was bound up with the hymn-books, — why is it not so now ? Pity that this loss of the divine image should be caused by the want of a looking-glass! On this same ground of natural destination, not even the cleverest can pardon the censure of her personal ap- pearance ; she even values its praise more highly than that of her mind. From the time of Louis the Four- teenth, the French kings have sworn never to forgive two things, both perpetrable only between man and man, — EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 219 the duel and something worse. Women will willingly for- give all save one thing ; not, indeed, the denying of their charms, but the loud proclamation of some deformity or want of personal attractions. And every man's tongue which could affirm such a thing is immorally cruel. Woman, more subject to the sensuous present, to ap- pearance and opinion, than we are, must painfully feel her affirmed unsightliness to have, as her beauty has, a wide-extending influence. I should even consider this very speaking of it cruel, did I not know from my own experience, as well as from that of others, that a woman's lovely heart as completely effaces all external blots, as an unlovely one does all personal charms ; and that a fair soul has at most only the first moment, but a foul one the whole future, to dread. Woman's body is the pearl oys- ter ; whether this be brilliant and many-colored, or rough and dark from the place of its birth, yet the pure white pearl within alone gives it value. I mean by this thy heart, tliou good maiden, thou who expectest not to be appreciated, but only to be misunderstood ! From the destination of women may possibly be de- rived the greater coldness and severity with wliich women of rank treat their female domestics ; they cannot conceal from themselves many resemblances and many possibili- ties of exchanged circumstances ; in which husbands, to whom more is attributed in the proposition of indiffer- ence than in that of contradiction, readily confirm them. Women, especially beauties, regard very little the differ- ence of mental cultivation ; men that only, in regard to their servants ; and Pompey, assured of his victory, did not ask whether his cook looked as he did. Woman's love of dress has, along with cleanliness, which dwells on the very borders between physical na- 220 LEVANA. ture and morality, a next-door neighbor in purity of heart. Why are all girls who go out to meet princes with addresses and flowers dressed in white ? The chief color of the mentally and physically pure Englishwomen is white. Hess found white linen most used in free countries ; and I find states all the more modest the freer they are. I will become no surety for the inner purity of a woman who, as a counterpai-t to the Dominicans, who wear white in the cloister, but black when abroad, only puts on the color of purity when walking in the streets. I might speak of the wardrobe, — the female library ; for our white cloth consists of black on white. I might also ask whether girls do not love clothes more on this account ; because they make many of them, and conse- quently enjoy all the more heartily a garment they have made in their own little summer-house. But the more immediate question is, how the water-shoots of a flower- ing branch ingrafted by nature are to be repressed or cut off. Animate the heart, and it no longer thirsts for common air, but for ether. No one is less vain than a bride. Mark out for your daughter any long course to some im- portant business, and she will look the seldomer about her. A true A ork takes possession of the author as well as af- terwards of the reader, — neither thinks any more about himself. In a sea-fight, no Nelson is vain; in a land- fight, no Alcibiades; in a council of state, no Kaunitz. Let a daughter learn and exemplify the artistic charm of dress on other persons. Treat her as an artistic manikin, and lay the value on the product itself; she may then regard herself as an actress who does not become a queen by means of her dress. Costly clothes make much vainer than pretty ones. EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 221 Do not permit nurses, ladies'-maids, and such-like locusts, to praise and deify the dressed-up girl : yes, even keep a sharp eye on her playfellows, especially those of lower rank ; because they readily lose their astonishment at the fine dress in admiration of the wearer. Ascribe to cleanliness, symmetry, propriety of dress, and all the sesthetic requisites of beauty, their brilliant and true worth ; so a daughter, like a poet, forgets her- self in her art and in her ideal, and her own beauty in what is beautiful. She will be a painter who paints lier- self, — whom not the original, but the copy, charms. Finally, if the mothers are not their own incessant pur- veyors of flishionable dress, nor a fruitless tulip-bed of modish colors, much, if not all, is done for the daughters. §99. I could write a whole paragraph merely in favor of cheerfulness and merriment in girls, and dedicate it to mothers, who so frequently forbid them. But seriously to assure girls they may laugh on suitable occasions would look very much like presenting them an opportunity of doing so. Mothers have much a habit of grumbling, even though they may smile inwardly; the daughters, on the contrary, generally only laugh visibly. The for- mer have passed out of the triumphant church of virgins into the church militant of matrons ; their growing duties have increased their seriousness ; the bridegroom is changed from a honey-bird, wdio invited them to the sweets of the honeymoon, into a resolute honey-hunting bear, who will himself have the honey. Then all the more, O mothers, grant these dear light- hearted beings their sports around the flowers; their minute's play before long years of serious duties. Why 222 LEVANA. may not with them, as with the Romans, comedy precede tragedy ? If the boy may be a zephyr, why may not the girl be a zepyhrette ? Is there in the whole range of life anything so beautiful, so poetical, as the laughing and joking of a maiden who, still in the full harmony of all her powers, plays with everything in luxurious freedom, and neither mocks nor hates when she jests ? For girls, the antipodes of fish, which, as is well known, are not only deaf, but also possess no diaphragm, have and impart the true sportiveness of poetry, so difficult for authors to imitate, so unhke satire and the humor of men. Their seriousness is rarely so innocent as their fun ; and still less innocent is that supercilious discontent which con- verts the virginal Psyche into a heavy, stupid, humming, wing-drooping moth, a death's-head, for instance. The melancholy night-flier may possibly please the lover ; but the husband requires his day Psyche, for marriage de- mands cheerfulness. In a certain Libyan people the young man married that girl among his guests who laughed at his jokes ; perhaps my meaning is contained in that custom. Laughing cheerfulness throws sunlight on all the paths of life. Peevishness covers with its dark fog even the most distant horizon. Sorrow causes more absence of mind and confusion than so-called levity. If a woman can perform this comedy impromptu in married life, and occasionally enliven the serious epic of the husband, or hero, by her amusing heroic ballads, or get up, as the Romans did, a merry farce against misfortunes, she will have bribed and won joy, and her husband, and her children. Never fear that feminine merriment precludes depth of soul and feeling. Does it do so in men? And did EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 223 not the lawgiver Lycurgus, and his Spartans everywhere, build an altar in his house to Laughter ? It is precisely under external cheerfulness that the quiet powers of the heart increase and grow to their full stature. How heav- enly must it be, then, wdien for the first time the smihng face weeps for love, and the irrepressible tears mirror the whole gentle heart ! Wherefore, ye mothers, do not merely suffer, but assist, your daughters to become externally French girls, inter- nally German, and to convert life into a comic poem, which surrounds its deep meaning with merry forms. I know few books to recommend for this purpose — we men always think of these first when advice is to be given — besides the letters of the incomparable Sevigne. But wit, mere wit, is — in opposition to sesthetics — the comedy and humor of women ; an epigram is to them, a humorous chapter, a Haug or a Martial, a Sterne or an Aristophanes. They will laugh themselves ill, or rather well, about the curious marriage of the great and little ; which only seems no mis-alliance to man surveying the long-connected chain of being. But laugh away ! and may your mothers read you many epigrams ! I wish much there were a suitable selection of these for girls, and a few comic works written expressly for them, which would certainly sound very French ! Then let the dear, merry children laugh to their hearts' content among one another, and especially at any grave, pompous man who comes among them, even were he the author of this ninety-ninth paragraph. § 100. Inquiries might still be made concerning the education of women of genius, and one of a peculiar nature required 224 LEVANA. for them. But I will only insist the more strongly on the necessity of an ordinary one for them, which may act as the balance and counterpoise of their fancy. Genius — which with wonderful works as with holy festivals breaks into the common course of the week — cannot be learned, can be very little taught, and not at all overcome ; and will boldly raise its brow above time and sex and every difficulty. Talent, not genius, can be repressed, that is, annihilated ; just as a compound can be destroyed, that is, decomposed, but not a simple power. And truly, were the repression of genius by circumstances possible, we should never once have experienced its existence. For then genius, always appearing only as the one intercalaiy day of many years, as one single day contradicting and voting against a majority of 1460 days, must have fallen a prey to the opposing tendencies of its age, — that is, to tendencies which, enslaving men from the earliest times, would bind them down to the latest, — as a horse to the multitudinous stings of bees. Nevertheless, genius has existed, for we have the word. They whom it inspired made, like other generals and monarchs of this world, separate treaties of peace with their neighbors, and only after death a general one with the whole world. But if a man of genius must also be a man and a citi- zen, and, if possible, a father too, a woman must not sup- pose herself elevated by her genius above her appointed day-labor in life. If a Jean Jacques write upon educa- tion, an intelligent Johanna Jacquelina need not be ashamed of the occupation of intelligent men ; on the contrary, the rare excess of female talent should nither be an additional call to education, than a passport for neglecting it. But if women are ever ashamed of acting up to the EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 225 ideas on which they pride themselves, their destiny- avenges itself upon them justly and severely. First, Justli/. For woman is appointed to be the Vesta, or vestal priestess, of home, — not the sea-nymph of the ocean. The fuller she is of an ideal perfection, the more must she endeavor to express it in reality ; as the ideal of all ideals — God — has manifested himself in the world ; she should educate a daughter as he educates the whole human race. If a poet can express his ideal as well in the narrow limits of the Dutch school as in the far horizon of the Italian, wherefore should she not be able to express hers in the kitchen, store-room, and nursery ? And, secondly, the punishment of the neglected rela- tions of life is severe. A woman can never forget to love, though she be a poet or a ruler. Then, instead of children, women of genius seek the society of men. By these they expect to be loved as women, though they themselves only love as men. So they, like flying-fish between the two elements, hover between manhood and womanhood, injured by both, and persecuted in both king- doms. They then become the more unhappy the wider their intellectual circle extends ; a poetess, for instance, becomes more so than a painter. But, if they unite their woman's destiny with genius, a mighty and rare blessedness fills their hearts ; the clouds which pour their floods in the valleys, gently dissolve on their heights as on mountain-tops. What is most to be desired for such heads is a crown, a prince's or a ducal coronet ; and this brings us to the next chapter. lu* o 226 LEVANA, CHAPTEß V. PRIVATE INSTRUCTIONS OF A PRINCE TO THE GOVERNESS OP HIS DAUGHTER. §101. PERMIT me to embody in a dream the few thoughts I have to offer on the education of princesses. The dream of which I speak elevated me at once above all middle grades into the rank of princes ; an elevation you will please to ascribe less to secret vener- ation than to excessive newspaper reading. It seemed to me, then, that I was called Prince Justinian, and my consort Theodosia, the mother of the Princess Thcoda, and our governess Pomponne, apparently some French surname. The private instructions which I imparted, my princely hat upon my head, to Madame de Pomponne, may.- sound sufficiently dreamy in somewhat of the follow- ing form : — My deiir Pomponne, I like going at once openly to work. What my consort arranged with you yesterday, about Theoda's education, I ratify with pleasure, because she wishes it : but as soon as you have read my wishes on this subject, I confidently expect some private alter- ations in the list of rules which has been laid before you. For truly I give out my laws as readily as another, though I also intentionally receive some ; one cannot always have the crown close at hand in one's pocket, as the German emperors formerly carried their imperial insignia along with them in every journey : but let people beware of resembling my royal cousins, who, as the an- cient Persian kings dared refuse notliing to their queens A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 227 on their birthday, scarcely ever close their birthday festi- vals. I confess that shortly after my nuptials, I hoped my wife, hke those in humbler stations, might possibly take upon herself the education of a future princess, and that you would merely have borne the title of governess. In fact, when I, who best know what a longest day and a longest night combined in one four-and-twenty hours sig- nify, take into consideration the tedium of a court, I should think that a princess, who must feel it even more severely than a prince, would for that very reason gladly expend her time and her whims on the education of a daughter. Since one becomes so weary of courtiers, who, hke people m boots and stirrups, always think they stand on the pal- ace floor most securely with bended knees, that one actually lonirs for dogs and parrots and monkeys, because they, indifferent to rank, are always free, new, and interesting ; surely my chUd, who in a court belongs to the small num- ber of my equals, and therefore ventures freely to say what she thinks, must be even more interesting. And should not an excellent royal mother, who can devote whole years to a painting or a piece of embroidery, more gladly sit to herself and paint herself in the living copy of her daughter ? And why do the simple priests at the altar only pray that princesses may become happy moth- ers, and not that they should continue such by educating their children ? But these are only questions. There are many diffi- culties which my beloved Theodosia could not so easily overcome as my paternal imagination fancied. For the rest, she is so loving and tender a mother, as you will yourself experience, that she seldom or never permits a week to pass without once sending to call Theoda. 228 LEVANA. Nevertheless, dear Pomponne, much, indeed most, de- pends upon your love and attention to the child. I yes- terday heard and subscribed the long chapter on external propriety, royal female dignity and reserve ; so let that be ; and I will myself, at the right time, procure the prin- cess a dancing-master from Paris, who shall instruct her in the art of raising or letting fall her train. But, my good lady, I hope you will not carry too far that self-con- fining fence round every step, that consideration of every verbal expression, that squeezing mould, and that crooked or straight bending of the body. O, my good Theoda ! must it be so ? Court is indeed a pays coutumier, and only the country a pays du droit civil, which the regal palace least of all is. Many attitudes and impetuosities which in my officers I should regard as improprieties and offences against my majesty, are in me, the master, treated (perhaps from flattery) as original traits, as pi- quant and amiable peculiarities ; and the earnest wish is expressed that they may be frequently repeated. Acting on this method of interpretation, I pray you to permit the princess always to run a little. After my marriage I be- came acquainted with one of the fairest and most amiable princesses, — excepting, of course, your mistress, — who had the charming ill-manners — anything else in her were not to be supposed — of never moving in a concert- room, or other assembly, save at a running pace with full sails. And what said the court and foreign princes, my- self among the rest, to this } We all praised her animar tion. Now, had she been twelve years old, and her governess present, that celestial animation might have excited a fire of a very different description. Must, then, poor, unhappy princesses be deprived of all soul, and converted into mere machines of propriety, and A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 229 be placed in the court as in an ice-oven, through which the Httle naphtha-flame cannot pass ? Must a princess be indeed so closely imprisoned that she may never venture to cross a bridge on foot, except the fancy park-bridge ? Are tears the best princess's washing-water'^ It is at least fortunate that we princes have given our name to something harder, — prince's metal. Must not the poor children, in later years, be bound down in formality with golden chains, pompously introduced into life's desert Avhere love is not, and banished under the polar sky of the throne, which sends forth as much fog and frost as does the actual pole ? Even a ruling master lies op- pressed under it, who could be very diflferent, and thunder. By all means, let everything during public exhibitions and festivals be measured and cold ; but not so when she is alone with you. White gravel may lie glittering and smooth on the garden-walks, but no one uses it in flower- beds. The Duke of Lauzun said. To make princesses love you, treat them harshly and scold them unceasingly. You will certainly not confound this ducal method of se- curing love with that to be adopted by a teacher. You admire, as I heard you say on Sunday, the Scandinavian mythology : tell me, now, would you wish only to be Nossa * to my daughter and not also Gefione ? Health is the true Gefione ; and may this goddess lead Theoda by tlie left hand, as well as Nossa by the right ! Certainly a beautiful princess has more subjects than her prince, and certainly nowhere does female beauty dis- play its bloom so perfectly as on the Alps of the throne ; but my offspring will not give to posterity a perfectly bloomed flower. The prince's hall, in which, as in a for- tress, the German future lays down its safety and its free- * The goddess Nossa gave maidens beauty; Gefione, protection. 230 LEVANA. dorn, must indeed be built by fair and tender, but also by strong hands. If every mother is a being of importance, I should think a royal mother is one of the greatest im- portance. If I can only arrange it so, Theoda shall ac- company me next July, and I shall have the pleasure of accompanying you. I will then effect much. It is stated in the Indian travels of the old Mandelsloh, that only the kings among birds of paradise have feet ; apparently we princes are only birds of paradise, and every common person is our king. But at that time my Queen Theoda shall go on foot ; and, what is more, she shall ride on horseback, which no Roman Dictator ventured to do. I really do not like to think how the health of royal per- sons must be undermined by things Avliich they probably drink every day ; had I an hereditary prince royal, I should almost lose my senses with anxiety. I should wish you to allow my Theoda to read more English than French books, and more German than both. I know not what witty author* has shown the similarity of the courtly and worldly tone of mind to that of the French literature ; at the same time, the thought is strik- ing. In a French book we always live in the fashion- able world, and at court ; in a German book, occasionally in villages, and in the market-place. I must also have the princess lose some of that awful ignorance about the people, which makes her imaghie them only a multitudi- nous repetition of the fat servants who stand behind her chair, to remove her plate and clear the table. She must not fancy that a beggar cannot be relieved with silver coin, because for convenience she only carries with her gold. This, however, is but a very small matter. In * This was I myself in the third volume of the Esthetics ; but in dreams the best-known things are forgotten. A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 231 German books, as a whole, there predominates a healthy force of affections, boldness of language, love of moral- ity and religion, carefully balanced understanding, sound common sense, unbiassed all-sidedness of view, hearty love of human happiness, and a pair of eyes which look to- wards heaven. Now, if this German strength and purity be ingrafted on a mind tenderly formed by sex and rank, it must necessarily bear the loveliest flowers and fruits. A French library, on the contrary, — if I do not judge unjustly, imbittered by Gallic newspaper-writers, and by my old loyal tutors, — is nothing better than a kind of an- te-room or exchange. Theoda would only read in it what she every day hears ; — the same softness of speech with hardness of thought (just as mineralogists append to their newly discovered stones the soft Greek termination ite, as Hyalite or Cyanite ; — the same flattery of diametrically opposed occurrences, because the man of the world re- sembles the Epicurean who denied that a proposition was either true or false ; — the same resemblance in other matters of the worldly man and the Frenchman to the Epicurean school which, unlike every school of philoso- phy, had no sects because the whole school agreed about wine and meats, women and God. No, no, let my The- oda read her Herder and Klopstock and Goethe and Schiller ; she will hear enough of Voltaire from her chamberlains. You, dear friend of children and of French people, are a quite sufficient French library. Formerly in German courts — not merely in mine — your countrymen and their works were equally welcome and effective ; as if what the Romans found in real life, that Gallic slaves made the best shepherds, were also true figuratively, and that your nation could furnish the best shepherds of the shepherds of the people, — that is to 232 LEVANA. say, tutors of princes, — and also the best shepherds of the people, — that is to say, princes. Only do not forget Rousseau and Fenelon, nor Ma- dame de Necker and her Memoires. A book more deli- cate, refined, elegant, religious, and, moreover, interesting, is scarcely to be found for well-educated women than this by Madame de Necker, whose jewels possess as much medicinal virtue as color and brilliancy. But her daughter, Madame de Stael, may postpone leaving her cards for my daughter until the girl is old enough to receive so intellectual a visit. German princesses now fill and unite almost all Euro- pean thrones ; as — if I dare speak so pedantically — Aurora's rosebuds do the mountain-tops. Formerly, as Thomas remarks, heathen princes were converted to a better religion by their marriages with Christian prin- cesses. This achievement cannot now be expected from any princess ; but it is well for her if she have been brought up in a pure religion. He who has no higher and firmer heaven above his head than the canopy of the throne, com- posed of wood and velvet, is very circumscribed, and has but a narrow prospect. And he who, on the blooming heights of humanity, attains no happiness, is, if he pos- sess not God in his heart, more helpless than the most lowly, who, in lamenting over his own humble condition, seeks the hope of improvement. Religion only can re- ward and arm with energy, tranquillity, life, and peace princesses who, like Narcissus, are too frequently sacri- ficed to an infernal deity. By what other aid could women in former ages, when there was less refinement, endure and even forget to grieve at the rudeness and cru- elty of men, than by that of religion, which transfigured many an hour of tears into one of prayer ? A woman, to A PEINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 233 whom so much perishes ere she herself dies, needs, more than a man does, something which may accompany her as a glorious star from youth to age. And what is the name of this star ? In the morning of life, it is the star of love, later, it is only called the evening star. Henry the Eighth of England forbade women to read the New Testament ; the age, alas ! does so now. Hap- pily for my wishes, I know you and your sex. An unbe- lieving princess is almost as rare as a believing prince. In earlier ages, it is true, we find Gustavus, Bernard, Ernest, and some others, anchored to religion as to a firm mountain. My position may possibly lead me astray, but I confess that, to every ideal I form of female beauty, a throne is the footstool. — My travels may form an excuse for this, — but so it has always been with my ideals of woman's mental beauty, and I have ever seen it crowned. " With thorns ? " you ask. " Probably," I answer, " but also with gold." In short, I believe that a certain ideal delicacy and purity of the female soul can be developed nowhere so beautifully as in the highest position, — on the throne, — as the loveliest flowers bloom on mountains, and the sweet- est honey comes from hilly countries ; two resemblances which hold forth a promise of the third. As female na- ture for her fairest flowers requires forms and customs, which may be compared to fine soil and elegant vases, whereas man's roots can press through and burst open the hardest earth and rocks ; so she finds what alone she needs at court, which is, confessedly, all form and custom, and that of the narrowest and most absolute description, — I do not say this, self-laudatorily, of my own, — for the mere fact of an education among the highest ranks, as well as the contemplation of the most refined politeness, 234 LEVANA. — these forms and reflections of morality, — will be there not only as the reversed and dim counterpart, but as the original bright-colored rainbow. I might also adduce de- cency, honor, propriety (of the men as well as of the women), delicacy, forbearance, which are all required by courts ; and not merely, as is falsely supposed, in the public, but also in the private personal demeanor ; I mean in every word by which the courtier expresses, not him- self, but something better, — a moral seeming. Woman's virtue is the music of string instruments, which sounds best in a room ; but man's that of wind instruments, which sounds best in the open air. As men always act most honorably in public, — the act of cow- ardice which might be committed in a closet or in a wood becomes impossible at the head of an army or a nation, and as we royal martyrs in our apartments too much resemble the Greek tragic actors whom the Chorus never left for a moment alone on the stage, and, finally, as women, avoiding the observation of many eyes, yet pay regard to them by the fairest actions, my proposition is natural. I can still add something. The princess, free from dis- tracting labor in the rough service of life, placed in the mild climate of physical repose, advantageous to the heart as well as to the beauty, brought up rather to observation than to action, at least unless she absolutely will, without compulsion, enter that black pit of statecraft, at whose mouth prince and minister throw off the mantle of love, as they would give their servants a woollen cloak to hold, I really do not remember how or why I began ; but I do know this, that the nobler class of women, even after a long, black, funereal train of misanthropical experiences, still keep alive their loving heart and genuine feeling ; A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 235 whereas men in such cases, yes, even sometimes after one single grievous misfortune, bury their desolate lost heart in the perpetual hatred of their species. A wo- man could more easily close forever her mouth than her heart. Why waste many words ? I have seen excellent prin- cesses. Without the advantages of the throne they would have lost much, and without its disadvantages, the rest. In fact, patience, a little suffering, and that of the mind, — as when, for instance, years convert the wedding-ring into a chain, — and other things of a similar nature, form within the flower the fruit, and within that the seed of a heavenly life. To this head belongs the patience necessitated by the courtly tedium of our rank. The Sabbath was especially ordained by Moses as a rest-day for slaves ; but it is pre- cisely this day of rest which at court is converted into a day of unrest. As often as my people envies me during these tumultuous festivals, I seem to myself to resemble the Spartan helots who were flogged to death to the sweet sound of flutes. My dear Theodosia would gladly have her daughter as highly gifted as herself, and tiierefore strongly impressed upon you the desirability of cultivating her imagination. It is, perhaps, because I myself am of a drier and harder nature, and prefer keeping myself warm with my wings to flying far up into the cold ether, that I lay so very much stress on my daughter's possessing sound common sense. Indeed, if I could, I should like to undermine this powerfulness of imagination. Fancy in a princess pro- duces a great many fancies in a prince, hence arise storms in the royal atmosphere, and all kinds of volcanic products, burning of the treasure-closets, maledictions on the crown 236 LEVANA. jewels, and mucli else that I could name. If a fanciful woman could carry the whole verdure of the country, in its meadows and its woods, compressed and poetically sub- limed into one ring, on her finger, in the shape of the largest emerald — by Heavens ! Pomponne, she would do it ! Therefore, I would most gladly exchange it for a sound understanding, if I had it not. I grant one can make but very little show with it, but then one can judge all the more correctly. And this I certainly know, that many a princess, who, during her husband's reign, mod- estly showed herself as nothing more than a sensible, affec- tionate mother and wife, could, after his death, (I pray you call to mind the widow of my dear old friend in M — g — n,) replace the father by the mother of her country, and with her clear eye, and ear open to instruc- tion, rightly guide the vessel of the state. Fancy and fancies on the throne, round which, as round other heights, more winds blow than behind the low hull of the ship, are only full-spread sails in a storm, which the captain, or the understanding, ought to take in. I would wish Theoda to have as much cheerfulness as possible, but wit only in moderation. The latter, when united with good sense and a constant kindly heart, may perhaps guide, or, at all events, drive, the prince consort, as the weak sorceress formerly ruled the Devil ; but wit alone, without heart, salt without meat, transform a woman, like Lot's wife, who became a pillar of salt, from whom the old Lot parted and went on his way. But to return to the imagination. I should be glad. Madam, if you could discover or excite in my daughter a talent for either music or drawing. Music, if only lis- tened to and not scientifically cultivated, gives too much play to the feelings and fancy ; the difficulties of the art A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 237 draw forth the whole energies of the soul. Hence a cer- tain priest, Hermes, in Berlin, recommended girls to be taught thorough-bass. Drawing also is good, although it has the disadvantage of giving too much preponderance to a woman's naturally keen eye for forms. One thing oi* the other ; a painting, for instance, at which a princess has labored for about half a year, if it has not been produced with the help of the court artist, as private instructor and father of the piece, would to her — a bee imprisoned in the variegated tulip-bed of the court — smell sweetly as the flowers ; for thus she possesses something which she sees daily grow under her hands, in which consists the happiness of life. The old Saxon princess, who, as I have read, embroidered the banks of the Rhine on a robe, was certainly as happy, yes, happier, while embroidering it, than in the robe itself. At the present day half her heaven would have been stolen from her, since, as I hear, we no longer possess the left bank. With regard to female vanity, you need do — that is, say — nothing ; for every word in your apartment is use- less if, in the evening at tea or in the concert-room, Theoda hear the very opposite from grave men and women, who think to do honor at the same time to both rank and sex, and by this very confounding of both constantly intrude the latter on the poor child. As she grows older, a very marked admiration becomes the duty of every courtier, since, unfortunately, the stupid printed genealogical tables every year declare the age of a princess ; in London they act in a still more foolish fashion, and actually shoot the number of years into people's ears by the discharge of cannon; therefore, she need not — like the modern Roman women, whose dislike of perfumes keeps them at a distance from the altar with its incense — retreat from the adrai- 238 LEVANA. ration naturally attendant on her rank and sex, but simply remain standing. And now I come to the most important point ; namely. — all of religion and human happiness which I have hith- erto desired at your hand for Theoda must assist and be subservient to her princely destiny, and not by any means work against it. Consolation and fortitude I would wish her to draw thence, but no arms against her parents' will. This, between ourselves, is what I mean. Since my last travels, I do not feel by any means certain that, in eight or ten years, my Theoda, regarded as a cement of severed lands, or rivet of different crowns, may not be united to a prince, whom, which Heaven forbid ! she may from her heart detest. To this fear royal parents must submit : in fact, I must regard the glory of my house ; and I have always considered children as royal pledges, whom I have only to place as far from me as possible in order to win an extension of territory. Wherefore, Madam, on this point my daughter must learn to give no other answer than yes. Would that bridegrooms were as easily selected by diplo- macy as brides ! Still some good may be made out of the worst case ; and on the rocks of the throne, against which others make shipwreck, we can only bleed. A woman, previously so undetermined, and obedient to the whole compass of male zephyrs, becomes, under the influence of a fixed husband, who determines her fate, a steady trade- wind. The most ugly often becomes, at the altar, or shortly afterwards, the most beautiful ; and a similar change often accompanies precisely opposite conditions. The priest's words, like lightning on the magnet, easily reverse the position of the positive and negative poles. But too much of this. I consider my little future son- in-law to be honorable, and no one yet knows what kind A PRINCE'S INSTRUCTIONS. 239 of a man may grow out of tlie merry boy. But even supposing that the priestly blessing were to the princess a priestly anathema, and that her honeymoon were passed in courtly mourning, yet I cannot help her, at all events before she gives her hand. It is true, that in Loango a princess, and only a prin- cess, can choose what husband she will ; and in Homer Penelope had a hundred and eight wooers, without reck- oning the absent husband ; but that is of no avail to our princesses, especially before marriage, for those are neither our times nor countries. Diplomatic marriages must be like Enghsh soldier marriages, provided not merely hands and hearts, but whole countries are to be united. Should it really happen that a throne became a Gold-Coast where a daughter was sold into a slave-ship, then you can give her no fairer princess's dowry and marriage-gift than a mother's heart ; this will compensate her for all her sacrifices : a child's love is more certain than a husband's. After such confidence, I require from you no other answer than the future, which the governess of a princess holds more surely in her hand than does the tutor of a prince ; for the latter is relieved and removed, and his successors less resemble the popes, each of whom con- tinued the building of St. Peter's church, than princes, who, for the most part, leave the buildings of their pre- decessors unfinished. You, on the contrary, may long lead Theoda by the hand ; perhaps even till you resign it into that of her husband. May you succeed well ! Justinian. My dream came to an end along with my letter, and I arose. But as I laid aside the crown along with my 240 LEVANA. nightcap, and became as usual a private person, a critic who should blame anything in my instructions would prove nothing more than that he was ignorant of, or in- different to, Kant's axiom, that a deposed sovereign can never be punished for faults committed by him on the throne. It is something quite different when I am awake, and then fall into errors. FIFTH FRAGMENT, CHAPTER I. ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. § 102. ANY readers, especially critical ones, will probably, without my aid, make the remark and the reproach, that in the former Chapters ^ I have treated of the particular before the general, — of the education of women before that of men, which extends into a wider sphere of moral, intellectual, and ajsthetical development ; and that, again, in this Chap- ter the particular education of kings is placed before the general one of men. And, truly, in the fragment about girls, readers will miss any systematic order, and only find a systematic want of order for women. Now, should any one forget to make these remarks and reproaches, they are here set down ready for him. Moreover, in treating of the education of a prince, the author must again avail himself of the kind reader's for- mer permission to turn letter-writer ; but in this instance he did not dream a letter in bed, but really sent the sub- joined one by post. 11 p 242 LEVANA. LETTER ON THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES, ADDRESSED TO MR. ADEL- HARD, prince's TUTOR AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. Baip.euth, October 1, 1805. Your invitation, my dear friend, to visit you and the prince at his country residence could not have come more opportunely than just now, when I am in the very act of packing up and taking flight, because the lava stream of war seems to take its course towards our country. And, what is still better, I am at present engaged on a doctrine of education in fragments, one of which, at least, must contain a few words about the education of royal children ; and I am very much mistaken if I shall not find with you that Magna Charta and electoral franchise which is the most important for a prince ; namely, that which the tutor lays down and j)i'escribes for the little prince. In fact, I expect from you two patterns : one of a teacher, and one of a pupil. If you will not regard it as a jest, dear Adelhard, I will now write a long letter, divining and predicting what you have begun and accomplished with your pupil, merely that I may place the letter among my frag- ments as a pocket-mirror for princes' tutors. It seems to me that, when I prophesy, my predictions at once become rules. For I have a kind of dislike absolutely to lay down rules. If one must place one's self in the soul of the pupil, in order thence to educate him, the task becomes in the highest degree difficult for any fellow-creature, es- pecially for the tutor of a prince ; because the external conditions of royalty diffi^r from ours, not in degree, but in kind. Kingly government is totally different from any ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 243 other : we only experience power over parts, not over the whole ; we see approaches to ourselves both from above and from below : the prince sees none ; but the highest and the lowest servants of the state are to him equally distant from the throne, equally incapable of holding the sceptre. While common plants are contented with the common earth and air, the prince, like a plant of foreign growth, requires a peculiar soil, a southern aspect, and a hothouse. Therefore the choice of the royal gardener is all the more important. Fortunately, the kingdom of education, at least, is an elective monarchy. Even the court — which formerly employed learned men, as the fair Span- iards use glowworms at night, only as glittering gems, but not as the Indians do fireflies, as lights — regards the choice of a prince's tutor as a matter of sufficient im- portance to break it up into sects. Do you not remember the Schismatics and Separatists in the court of Flachsen- fingen about the choice of the prince's tutor? I once related them to you on the very best authority, in the presence of the principal governess of the royal children. You, dear Adelhard, were only selected by the father and mother for their child, so that no one should be able to say which of the four human beings was the most for- tunate. But in Flachsenfingen the queen-mother and her party declared in favor of the flat dull-gold court preacher, — the king and his adherents concurred in desiring to secure my services ; the third party, that of the lord high chamberlain and his worn-out favorite, the chief govern- ess, all my declared enemies, unanimously voted for that genteel, nice young man, whom we all pretty well know, that wretched powder without report, which every one previously avoided. So very wisely does a court know 244 LEVANA. how to unite the happiness of the country with the good fortune of its own relatives, by seeking the former through the latter ! This is the reason why courtiers do not ap- pear by any means so unselfish and honorable as they are. Just as the banker at a great gaming-table fastens to his hat the card (let us suppose it the ace of hearts) upon or against which he will not bet ; so the marshal by a golden star, and the governess by a golden heart, as symbols of light and love, showed which were the two cards on which they w^ould never lose or win anything. This is what many people call intriguing for the choice of the prince's tutor. Charles the Great, owing to his physical strength, was called an army : every prince, owing to his political power, may be regarded as a moral army ; and this army at first has no other generalissimo than the tutor. He alone may fre-ely instruct and touch the mind, which, in after years, will neither experience nor suffer contradic- tion. This task is more easy and varied than that of any future favorite ; for he has only wax, not marble, to shape. He may be bold enough to oppose and punish the pas- sions of the little prince, which his subsequent attendants will only use and misdirect. Yes, he may carry his in- fluence so far — which never minister or favorite yet did — as to gain such a victory as Fenelon, who trans- formed an ill-disposed Duke of Burgundy into a pure, noble-minded man, whose premature death probably opened the entrance into the great catacomb of the last century. The knowledge, the habits, the principles, the tastes, which he may give or leave to his pupil, work either for or against all future influences. He may, in a spiritual light, imitate the men who carried torches before the Roman emperors, even in the daytime. In short, he ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 245 may — if he possess the power within himself — combine in one office both the characters of that Dionysius, who was a king in Sicily, a schoolmaster in Corinth. Let him at least strive to do so ! For to the perfect formation of a political prince a man of moral power is necessary ; he may be called tutor to the prince, but he, in fact, as a spiritual father, first gives permission to wear the crown ; — as the pope, in his character of holy father, gave a similar permission to the Jesuit, John the Third, to assume that of Portugal. Is there, then, my friend, for the whole human race, not merely for the royal parents, a higher moral and in- tellectual sphere of action than that of tutor to a prince, who, perhaps, in the royal child holds in his power the future of half a century, — a something which may either be the fructifying germ of an oak forest or the powder- train of a mine for his country ? If it be granted that the first circumstances of a man's education, as the deep- est and richest, bear all the rest which time heaps on him, I cannot consider the wish too bold, but only natural, that, as there are normal schools for teachers, so there should be at least one of that kind for the tutors of princes. But I will now — so as to have something to put in my book — cast the nativity of the past and present, and predict what you have done and are now doing. I suppose, from your residence in the country, that you will as frequently as possible forbid the court to your Friedanot (a fine-sounding and significant name!), and persuade his parents to see him, for the most part, with- out lookers-on. If the cloud of flattery may be to a prince a falling mist, it is to a royal child a rising mist, which is followed by dark, bad weather. How else than by distance can you protect your Friedanot from the 246 LEVANA. ladies of the court, who must press around him, al- lured by his three graces, of being a prince, a child, and a boy. Than this union there can be nothing greater in a woman's eyes. As the Emperor of Morocco, so Agrell tells us, is drawn by a team of twelve state-horses when he takes a drive ; so our little heir to the crown can com- mand, when he will, twelve children's carriages, each with a dozen lady-drawers. And when at last he becomes twelve years old, he will be absolutely worshipped before- hand, so as to secure his adoration afterwards. Character and childhood are both at once destroyed by early gal- lantries which incite to gallantries. The men of the world reserve their influence for this age. If anything, like poison on the nerves, destruc- tively opposes the earnestness of a royal tutor's labors, — or, indeed, of any teacher, — it is the worldly views of worldly people, even when honorable and impartial. Like the founder of their order, Helvetius, these modern Helve- tians, in whom no Caesar finds an enemy, can be good- natured, lovers of the arts, farmer-generals and every- thing good, but not martyrs to their faith nor keepers of their word. In other respects these Helvetians are good enough ; like their geographical namesakes, they are lovers of cold, — herdsmen on the heights for which their homesick hearts long ; no gold, no Swiss, — united by confederacy, — upright in deeds, if not in words, — with- out much money ; mere door-keepers of palaces, — in short, men who willingly stand and suffer themselves to be ordered about, as guards and hirelings in the court of a Louis the Fourteenth. But such, Adelhard, are not fit companions for an heir ai^i^arent. If you have to conduct your pupil through two totally different worlds, out of the one into the other, — out of that really great world in ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 247 which only nobility of soul, character, great principles, and comprehensive views are valued, — where only the de- spisers of pleasure and the passing hour, the men of eter- nity stand, — where an Epaminondas, a vSocrates, a Cato, still speak from their tombs, and deliver oracles as from an everlasting Delphic cavern, — where earnestness of pur- pose and man and God bring all things into life ; out of this into that world of sham greatness, in which all that is great and departed is little esteemed, and what is trifling and present is alone held important, — where everything is custom, and nothing duty, not to mention kingly duty, — where the whole country is looked upon as an estate, all offices as appendages of the crown ; where inspii*ation seems a passing love-affair, or a mere artistic talent, — if you have to do this, must not all these glittering influences destroy that of the tutor ? Must not the child become at least a kind of double creature, a double stone, half dia- mond and half common court crystal, which needs but the application of heat to sever the scholastic addition from the courtly mass, — just as other double stones are tried and burst asunder by heat. You are, then, right in regarding the easy attainment of 41 glitteringly-cut outside as a small recompense for the damage done by people of the world. Must he not, with- out your help, pass his whole life among decorators and manufacturers of cosmetics, as under curling-machines for royal heads? And will easiness of demeanor ever become difficult to him who, from the freedom of an upright pos- ture, has but to return bows ? Nevertheless it will do so; everything, crime excepted, becomes princes ; they, like great artists, are permitted many external peculiarities ; nay, are imitated in them : and what in lower stations is considered want of good maimers, in the highest is held to 248 LEVANA. denote their superabundance, or at all events, to be a veil of Moses drawn over the splendor of the crown. Stiff citizen manners occupy only the middle place, the extrem- ities approach one another so closely that in the highest ranks the freedom of the savage is renewed. But you will reply to me in your next letter, and com- plainingly say, I can take my Friedanot nowhere but a court will follow him : where a prince stamps his foot, a courtly circle rises, — as an army did at the approach of Pompey, — and the altars of incense smoke around him ; for truly the middle and lower ranks flatter their prince more injuriously, that is, more grossly and slavishly, than the nobility. It is probably on this account that many novel-writers think they present us with the most beauti- fully sculptured heads of princes on their coin, by merely permitting the little dauphin, prince of Calabria, prince of Brazil, protector of England, to be educated and kept in perfect ignorance of his future rank. In this case the dauphin apparently imitates the Mamelukes, by the laws of whose empire only he may ascend the throne who was not born upon it. The opponents of these few novel- writers are merely the whole class of historians. For although Machiavelli remarks, that the best among the Roman emperors were those who had been adopted, yet — besides the exception of Augustus, who adopted him- self to the government, and also besides that of many emperors chosen by the senate and the prjstorian band — other histories are opposed to that of Rome ; take, for in- stance, that of the East, which never depicts viziers, beys, and sultans, brought up in slave-ships, and promoted to the ranks of pilot and captain, as better princes than others. Further ; have the popes made better rulers because they were not born to be popes ? And when, as ON THE EDUCATION OF A PKINCE. 249 on the extremity of the opponent's chess-board, a pawn may become a queen, — a peasant, Massaniello, for in- stance, become a king, — is his government, therefore, so very markedly different from that of those who had ex- pected it for twenty years ? And, moreover, in the olden time was not every usurper and poisoner of freedom a man who in his childhood had possessed no prince's tutor, no court, no royal father ? A prince, on the contrary, can never contemplate soon enough the Tabor of the throne, so that in after years he may be gloriously transfigured on it, and not hang as a cloud on the mountain. It is the Sinai on which he, pray- ing, shall receive the laws, which, in their reflected bright- ness, he is to carry down to the desert. I could recom- mend no other refuge from anticipated courts for an heir apparent than a foreign country, where the native prince would draw away all flatterers from the stranger. But the evils consequent on the necessary contemplation of his future high rank may be guarded against in many ways. A child's views of life must necessarily be confused if his master is at the same time his servant, or, like a bad royal tutor, a compound of tyrant and slave. There may be inequality, but let it be upwards. With us lower people every father is at times the fellow-laborer and fellow- teacher of the schoolmaster ; should not the father of his country also occasionally be the father of his son and successor ? Antiquity holds out the example of princes who were the playfellows of their children ; how much more praise would they merit as their teachers ! I can imagine no more honorable group than a royal father among his sons, earnestly instilling into them the high laws of the kingly office, which he himself religiously observed. 11* 250 LEVANA. But if the affairs of government occupy too much of the father's time, or if this recreation would abstract him too much from business, the queenly mother is still there with the powerful influence of her heart and of her leisure. Baron, the actor, said, that a tragedian should be nursed in the lap of queens. It seems to me that the dauphin, whom he represents and imitates, claims the first place there ; and such a mother will be more usefully em- ployed teaching her son, than her husband how to govern. " Crowned mother, do for your son what the uncrowned mother of the Gracchi did for hers, so that he may be as noble as either of them, and more fortunate than both." So, my dear Adelhard, would I speak almost in public, in the hope of perhaps cheering some princess who has thus acted. It were also desirable if kings' children could associate with their equals in the school-room ; — I mean if there were a school for princes in a higher sense than that near Naumburg. We, linked together in a community of chil- dren, were all educated under tlie mutual influence of equals ; the heir to the throne sits in the room alone with his tutor. Princes learn the art of war only with an army of fellow-students ; perhaps that is an additional reason why they understand and like it best. I am not without the expectation that you attempt to preserve Friedanot, although he is now more than eleven years old, from poison to a childlike mind, by obliging him to pay deference to age and merit. As yet he is merely a subject like his tutor, and even his mother. This is a matter of great importance ; for the child who does not respect grown-up people as such readily enters the path of contempt for his fellow-men, — a vice very prevalent on the throne. If rank, especially a prospective one, out- ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 251 weighs the man, to whom properly aloiie he ought to bow ; ill after years the masses of citizens will, in his princely eye, resemble those stags' heads in Fontainebleau under which was inscribed, — "Such or such a Louis did me the honor of shooting me " ; and the smaller select number will be like certain royal stag-hounds in the same country, which a courtier addressed as " Vous, Monsieur Chien," though in former times the term " monsieur " was only applied to the saints, and afterwards was refused even to the five directors of Paris. Since in the eye of princes, as in that of the law, or still better in the union of both, individual peculiarities are lost in one living mass of souls, it is an easy change for a crowned despiser of humanity to regard those souls as the mere mechanism of peace and war, till one man only seems to exist, — himself. Therefore, let a prince, as long as he is a child, always measure merit by inches ; for inches are to him yet as though they were long years, and years as munificent gifts. It is certainly a trifle that you, as I venture to guess, contrary to custom, do not permit the servants to help the prince first when older guests are at table ; but the opposite method would not be a trifle. A Louis the Fifteenth (how great a love of children that monarch had in the days of his innocence !) may always give his play- fellows an order of blue and white ribbon, and a medal with the picture of the pavilion in which tliey played ; but the child should not receive the ribbon of an order appropriate to mature years as a leading-string ; still less should he, as the monarch I have just named, and his predecessor, Louis the Fourteenth, hold a lit de justice almost in his cradle, or, like other royal children, grasp the staff of a commander in the hands which yet feel the rod. Why might not as well little ministers and presi- 252 LEVANA. dents surround the throne of the royal child, and little ambassadors of the highest rank accompany him in his carriage ? This degradation of the state, and of human nature, works hke a destructive poison on the excitable mind of the child. To this cause may be traced that premature, worn-out, shallow-cimning, cool expression on the faces of so many royal children, — an expression com- pounded of the presumption of rank and youth and the weakness of age. Strange that, while writing this, your last letter but one, to which you referred in your last epistle, has just come to hand. I now understand much. Your recent Friedanot's festival might really be celebrated as the alliance between my prophecies and your rules ; or as the passage from what has preceded to what is about to follow, from negative to positive education. To proceed, then : only princes and women can be ed- ucated for a determinate future ; but all other men for one which is uncertain, for the empire of chance in their aims and ranks. Now this is the living spirit of your life and of that intrusted to you. The education of a prince, like his position in the state, is the only one of the kind. As your pupil can never think too modestly of himself, so can he never think too proudly of his dignity ; the re- verse of this produces misery everywhere. His office, a high office at the altar of the state, demands from a falli- ble human form the powerful agency of a god. He is not merely the first servant of the state, but its very heart, which alternately receives and sends out its life-blood ; he is its centre of gravity, which gives form to its varied powers. Then let German philosophy show him in his high station something different from what the persiflage of French philosophy, and that of worldliness, exhibits ; ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 253 which endeavors to represent the throne as the highest heritable place at court, or as a regency with a handsome income, and the country as a vast regiment at once ridic- ulous and useful. Ah ! verily the ancient error of re- garding princes as the sent and anointed of God (which in fact every man is, only in different degrees, — the man of genius, for instance, or every rational creature as com- pared with the beasts) is much nobler, and more effica- cious for good, than the modern error of declaring them only to be the ambassadors of selfish extortions, that is, of the Devil. But let German earnestness of heart show the young eagle-prince his wings, his mountains, and his sun When some warm, benevolent, but too rash, genius of the earth saw the erring effi^rts of humanity to shape its course, and how, broken up among individuals, it, like the sea, only raised waves, but gave them no direction, he longed to give the ocean a boundary and a rapid current ; then he called up the first great king to collect the scat- tered forces, and guide them to one end. Moreover, this genius would have experienced the bliss of seeing nations linked together round our globe like the glittering girdle of Venus, had he not forgotten something, which another and better genius, who always permits more men of gen- ius than spiritual monarchs to appear at the same time, remembered. I mean, if he had taken care that a con- tinued succession of good kings had drawn a holy family circle round the globe, and described a ruling line of beauty, happiness, and honor, through all time. Oh ! what might not poor humanity have become if, like the thirty popes who, one after another, continued building the great cathedral at Rome, a contemporaneous and successive band of princes had, joining temple to temple, so urged on the great temple building of humanity ? Can 254 LEVANA. humanity blame fate for opening to it, through one indi- vidual, the way to the highest elevation or the lowest deg- radation, when one reckons the number of princes with free power to be the leaders of their age and country, and, like many flat glasses placed at once before the sun, fancies them united into one celestial luminary ? It is not Heav- en's fault, but man's, if they have more easily converted themselves into the war-gods and scourges of states than into their protecting deities. I would, therefore, imitate you, and teach the prince his dignity ; because only he adorns the station who be- lieves himself to be adorned by it. Princes are apt to think meanly of princes, as mountains look little when viewed from mountains. I would indeed, as your fellow-laborer, prepare yearly — say, on his birthday — a feast of dedication for the young heir apparent, a rehearsal of his coronation, in which the holiness of his future, the inviolableness of his soul, should be gloriously and intimately presented to the young eye, longing after virtue, under the triumphal arch of great and free nations, in sight of the arms and banners of his ancestors and of all past ages. On such a day, he might also look down into the abyss of fallen nations. Let him learn by heart Plutarch's histories of the great, more useful to him than the more recent ; and let him every day pray out of the meditations of Antoninus. Let that noble order — the name, Father of his country, which the great Camillus first bore, as founder of the order, and subsequently Cicero, the enemy of Catiline, as a member, until it lost its glory and sank down upon a Caesar, an Augustus, and such-like men — burn before him, like an illumination on the seven hills of freedom. He must not consider himself as a commander-in-chief of ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 255 all the forces, nor as a minister of foreign affairs, nor as president of the council, nor as chief justice, nor as a rec- tor magnificus of all the sciences, but as the protector of his country, in the higliest sense of that word ; as one who has his eye on every department in the state, like the true judge of works of art who has taste for every beauty. He should be a Jupiter who bears his satellites and his courtly ring, at once round himself and round their common sun. " According to the usual requirements of learned men," you write, "a prince who would govern well, ought to unite in his own person the knowledge of all his minis- ters, so as to be able to judge of all their affairs. But the knowledge of things, which cannot all be embraced by one individual, is less necessary and less possible than the knowledge of men by whom they must be proposed and executed. Consequently, if the prince have only charac- ter, and if that have matured steadily and purely under the eye of his teacher, he will be able both to penetrate into matters and to use vigorous measures." You might have copied this out of my own soul. If men have been easily able to blind us, yet, in a hundred cases, some weakness in our heart, rather than any weakness in our eyes, has been first to blame. Among princes a pure and firm character is especially needed for seeing and acting ; for on the throne the nerve of sight is easily transformed into the motive-n,erve of the muscles. Mere goodness without character will, or may, be governed and used by all the enemies of a people ; whereas character without goodness can only be acted on by one enemy of the peo- ple, — - itself. The whole present time is a regicide of character, especially of all healthiness of character ; for over it 256 LEVANA. poisonous victims are passed to bodies and souls, and for the sacrifice of a god a man is offered up. Hence so many marrowless but sceptre-griping arms; hence the life of so many princes is but a passive " council of five hun- dred " ; and even good may only be done and published by permission of the subjects. So much the better, dear Adelhard, that you endeavor to give your pupil a strong body ; only watch over him till he has passed through the usual powder-mines of royal youth, — the capitals, for instance, of the grand tour, a few middle-aged women, and his majority. From your letter I can perceive the truth of the sup- position I cherish, that you do not recommend or cultivate in Friedanot any active love of the arts of painting, music, or architecture, lest, as you say, " he should convert gov- ernment into a subservient art." Nero, truly, had a genius for art, — as Frederick the Great had a genius for govern- ment, — his whole life, from the time of his subjection to the laws of art, even in the midst of his cruelties, and down to his last sigh, testifies as much feeling for art as absence of feeling for humanity. If, for instance, a prince devotes himself, not to adduce more ancient, still less modern examples, — like the Macedonian king Europus, to making candles (in a metaphorical sense, that would be good) ; or, like the Parthian kings, to sharpening swords, (that were good in a different way) ; or, like Attains Philomator, to the cultivation of poisonous plants (this only admits of no good metaphorical sense), the whole court, suppose that of Attains, would be converted into a garden, and every one would seize the royal gardener by bis weak side, — his botanical mania. All courtiers wish their king to love something besides government and his country. Every great lord, according to the law, must ON THE EDUCATION OB^ A PRINCE. 257 practise some handicraft ; but only in the same way that every Mussulman, and every Rabbin among the Jews, must understand some art, and not, as Montesquieu and some othere suppose, in order that he may not torture people for pastime. Am I not, then, agreed in opinion with you, when I say that princes need no subordinate pursuit, any more than ancient statues needed the adornment of colors ? How much useless knowdedge about history, languages, and art might and ought to be spared them ! A general love of science, like an alternation between two heights, enriches and refreshes royalty, as was exem- plified in Frederick the Great. There is a wider pros- pect from Parnassus than from the throne. I wish that even there, as in the high schools, reading and learning were called government. And what greater ground for alarm would there be, if the king were president of the great academy of all the sciences, than that favorites and courtiers would become members of it, and understand a great deal ? And is it not very much better that he, like Louis XIV., should expend sixty-six thousand three hun- dred livres in pensions to learned men, than that, like the same king, he should waste thirty-three millions of livres in the mere lead of the palace at Versailles, and its water- works? Openly tell your Friedanot that, in every coun- try, where the press is free as well as where it is submit- ted to censorship, there is no one to whom so many books are forbidden as to the king himself; the censors will scarcely allow him a newspaper. Although the king need not know so much of law as his lord chancellor, nor so much political economy as his prime minister, he yet must know as much or more of the art of war than his first general. This union of sceptre and sword is unmis- Q 258 LEVANA. takable. The royal infant even is consecrated to no other inaugural post of honor than that of war. A helmeted preface {prcefatio galeata) precedes his life ; he passes his mornings in the arsenal. No prince scruples to serve in war among the soldiers of a greater foreign prince than himself, and to fight and bleed for him as unconditionally as his meanest subject ; but he would consider it beneath his dignity to be the same monarch's prime minister, presi- dent of his council, or even general-in-chief of his forces. Whence arises, and why is there, this equality of royal and warlike honor in this and other points, as if the prince were only the first servant of the state by being its fore- most fighter ? Voltaire's saying, " The first king was a successful sol- dier," — and the corollary to be drawn thence, that " A successful king is the first soldier," — does not sufficiently explain his position in a state, by his position before there was a state. Moreover, war is now only the exception, and peace the rule ; and however much the country be turned into an arsenal, and the throne into a fortress, yet preparations for peace must be carried on as long and as industriously as preparations for war. But the prepon- derance of the arts of war over those of peace, in all per- sons destined for the throne, may be explained and justified by two totally different reasons and sentiments. In the first instance, the mutual defence of individuals formed the state ; and afterwards, as each nation experienced the necessity of defending itself against the aggressions of other nations, the king seemed to perform his duty to the state best by watching over its frontiers, not by becoming chief architect, food-provider, farmer, coiner, and regulator of its domestic affairs ; he had rather to act externally by the law of the stronger, than internally by the power of the affections. ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 259 One evil was a necessary consequence of this state of things, that nations, — which, in the last resort, only con- sist of individuals, — owing to this love of war in their governors, fell into that very condition out of which the individuals had endeavored to extricate themselves by combming to form a state. So little yet does man regard the interests of man. Confined to his clod of earth, like the insect to its leaf, he does not perceive that every war on the face of the globe is, in fact, a civil war ; and a dark sea, in a spiritual sense as truly as in physical fact, gives, by its concealing cloak, the appearance of separate enchanting islands to the girdle of mountains which sur- rounds the world. But the monarch has a yet weightier ground for his love of war ; the sentiment that all dignity arises from moral worth, and that the chief basis of manly dignity consists only in courage or honor. The brave prince covers his head and his inner man with a crown different from that which rests on his outward form. Courage or honor is expected in every man, but not talent. The prince, like the first nobleman in the highest rank of nobility, must oppose his enemy with the courageous point of honor, as though it were a bright focus of burning rays. Courage is a virtue of no doubtful seem- ing ; there can be no contradiction, no diversity of opinion, about it. A prince who exposes his body, carefully protected and consecrated by the state, as though it were a common one, to the rank-scorning bul- let, against which, in a foreign land, his crown is no hel- met, but only a mark, gathers laurels with his own hand in the eyes of thousands. But the honor of peaceful talents is not so uncontestedly ascribed to him, because many a prince has been a sun which the minister must suiTOund with his clouds ere it emitted beams. 26o LEVANA. I grant that war is accompanied with certain by-charms. It is well minutely to dissect them before him to whom you would fain render them hateful. A king likes to govern, especially when he can do so easily and abso- lutely ; on the drum he finds a movable throne ; and the art of war is surrounded with a poetical halo ; it is more definite and more obvious than the art of government, and the movements of the general's baton are more clearly marked by the eyes of men than are those of the sceptre. The powder-mill of war moves on the wheels of fortune. As the southern promontory of Africa, so here the head- land of storms, is called the Cape of Good Hope. And to what lottery could a ruler more cheerfully subscribe than to that of war, — especially because he only ventures foreign possessions, and wins no part of his home inher- itance, because he wins the whole ? Further, nothing irritates a youth so much as to be obhged to mount the throne when of mature age, and then find his whole life, even down to the horizon, marked out and enclosed. The royal youth longs, in the first place, to do something in life ; and, in the second, to render himself immortal by it. Now, for the accomplishment of the first wish, what means lie so near him, or seem so glorious to his fancy, as war, which opens to him a career in foreign countries? or what can gratify the second desire more easily than the field of battle, which matures in one day the precious flower of immortality, which would require a whole life to blossom on the throne ? The noble Henry IV. of France said, " I would rather gird on my armor than make laws." It is on the same principle that novices in poetry, and novices on the dramatic stage, make their first essays in the horrible, the glory arising from which is easily and quickly gained. ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 261 I think you say in one of your letters that the satiety princes experience of the praise and emulation of infe- riors, is apt to engender a warlike longing for a contest with kings and enemies before the eyes of all Europe. Very true ! The poisonous air of courts readily commu- nicates that yawning fever of which so many died in Italy during the seventh century. Men seek to clear the air with gunpowder. But how can a young prince ever behold the dark side of the glittering form of war, that hellish stream which surrounds the living earth and is peopled with the dead ? For it is in truth necessary, especially for Germany, which is becoming more and more the Hyde Park and Bois de Boulogne to which Europe resorts when it re- solves to fight. Will you let him hear the chorus of all wise men and poets cursing war, the last ghost and sav- age army of barbarism ? Will you, before war, preach such a sermon as this on peace to the king who is about to hurl his torch-like missive to kindle the fire of war ? " Consider well : one step beyond your frontiers changes the whole face of two empires ; thine own is consumed behind thee, thine enemy's before thee. That moment an earthquake takes possession of both, and labors to the destruction of both ; all ancient law-courts, all judgment- seats, are overturned ; heights and depths are confounded together. It is a last day, full of rising sinners and fall- ing stars ; it is the tribunal at which the Devil judges the world, where bodies condemn spirits, physical force the power of love. Consider it, O prince ! Every soldier in this empire of lawlessness becomes thy crowned brother in a foreign land, bearing the sword of Justice without her balance, and governing more despotically than thy- self Every meanest drudge in the enemy's ranks is thy 202 LEVANA. king and judge, carrying in his hand an axe and a haUer for thee. The arbitrary powers of force and chance only sit upon the double throne of conscience and of knowl- edge. Two nations are converted, half into slave-dealers, half into slaves, mingled without order among one an- other. In the eyes of higher beings, the human race has become an assemblage of lawless, conscienceless, stone- blind beasts and machines, which robs, devours, strikes, bleeds, and dies. Even granting that justice is on thy side, yet by the first line of a manifesto, as by an earth- quake, thou lettest loose the chained devils of injustice out of their prison-house ! The dread despotism thus en- throned is so great that little misdeeds never reach thy ears, and great crimes only by their frequent repetition. For the permission to slay and take possession, includes in itself all lesser crimes. Even the unarmed citizen's voice is heard amidst the screams and discord ; exchang- ing all his plans of life for a few moments' indulgence and lawless freedom, treated by the allied soldiers as partly, and by their opponents as altogether, an ' enemy. Think of all this, O prince, ere thou hidest thy light amid the locust-clouds of war, and ere thou makest the warriors of a stranger the judges and executioners in thy hitherto justly governed land, or givest thine own soldiers such power in the conquered country ! " At all events, much might be done. We should en- deavor to verify the expressions of a history or a news- paper, so short and so lightly passed over, " Battle-field, distress of the besieged, a hundred wagons of wounded " ; which by their perpetual repetition have passed from living figures to paintings, and lastly, to mere sounds; we should picture them in all their terrible details, in the suffering which one wagon bears and fearfully increases, ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 263 111 the one agonizing day of a single fainting and dying soldier. Not only history, in which all ages and nations bleed, but our common newspapers and way of speaking, and the scientific appearance of warlike preparations for surgical assistance, change wounds into words, and the monstrous amount of suffering into letters. Hence, the same minister who tranquilly observes the hygrometer of war's bloody rain, and cheerfully orders a bath of blood for two nations, is overcome by the wounds and tears of a stage-play, merely because the poet's art transforms the words back to their living meaning. A prince whose tendencies you feared might be conducted over a bloody battle-field with the same warning advantage as accrues to children of a different class who are led through an hospital. But God grant that humanity may ever fail to offer such schools and such remedies ! Properly, — and this might be instructively said to a prince, — the people only should decide upon war with another nation, that is, upon a return to the first state of nature ; especially as they only gather its bitter, not its sweet fruits ; and should determine whether they are willing to give themselves up as a sacrifice to the storms and tempests of war. It is a crying sin against Heaven, that one king, for an offensive expression from another king, should involve two nations in mortal strife. In reading modern history, one shudders to see how the merest trifles have kindled the fires of war ; how a woman's pin, or an ambassador's finger, has been the conductor of a thunder-storm, ravaging whole countries. The wars of modern times ought certainly to strike sol- diers only, not the ranks of unarmed citizens. When the more active part of the latter disturb the operations of the former, as in shooting from houses, they at once 264 LEVANA. appeal to the right of distinction, and proceed to attack and punish them ; but why should the unarmed classes, without the advantages, yet participate in all the suf- ferings, plunder, imprisonment, &c., of those who are armed ? One or all of these three remedies must be ap- plied to this terrible coil, in order that the future may atone for the past : either that naval conflicts may be carried on without letters of marque, and that in land fights the soldiers may be placed in some desert, as the scene of their many -voiced and many-handed duel ; or that, as in republics which have fallen to destruction or risen to an unearthly life, every citizen should be a soldier, and con- sequently every soldier a citizen ; or, finally, that the eternal banner of peace should hang down from heaven, and flutter in the pure ether above the earth. I have an idea that either you, or one of your friends, once declared that history — the long w^ar-report and bulletin of humanity — imparted the infection of war to young princes. But I would almost trust to it as the remedy for the love of war. Charles XII. of Sweden could scarcely have imbibed his passion for glory and conquest from the mere perusal of Curtius's Life of Alex- ander, since Alexander had the same passion without having read his biography ; and Oiesar, also, without knowing more of Curtius than his hero. In history may be found the test of the anchors and swords of sea and land fights. It alone shows to the monarch, thirsting for glory, how little mere bravery appertains to glory ; for a cowardly nation is more rare upon the earth than a brave man. What nation, in ancient or modern times, is not brave ? At present, for instance, all Europe is so ; Rus- sians, Danes, Swedes, Austrians, English, Hessians, French, Bavarians, and Prussians, all are brave. The ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 265 lower Rome's free spirit sank, the more wildly and vehe- mently rose the merely brave spirit; Catiline, Caesar, Augustus, had conquerors for their servants. The fre- quent arming of the ancient slaves, as of the modern beggars, testifies against the value of the common bravery of fists and wounds. Iphicrates, the Athenian, said that the best soldiers were those who loved plunder and vio- lence ; and General Fischer has added to these, vaga- bonds. Cannot a monarch wish to shine upon posterity with something else than the fair tiger-spots of a con- queror, in which the Timurs, .\ttilas, Dessalines, and other scourges of God, or knouts of the Devil, outdo him ? How coldly does one w^alk in history over the countless battle-fields which fill the earth with beds of death! And with what curses does one hasten past the crown which, like the ajutage, or leaden head of a pipe, liaised by the upward gushing of a fountain, is only kept up by starting streams of blood ! But where an eternal glory hovers round some heroes, as those of Marathon's plain and Thermopylie's pass, there other spirits fought and fell, — heavenly visions of the courage of freedom. And whatever individual stands greatly forth in history and fills its spaces, does it not from any pyramid of skulls erected on battle-fields ; but a great soul hovers there, like the form of an unearthly world glorified in the night, and touches the stars and the earth. For there is a nobler courage, which once, though not long, Sparta, Athens, and Rome possessed, — the courage of peace and of freedom, the bravery which showed itself at home. Many a nation, a cowardly slave in its own country, but a bold hero out of it, resembles the falcon (though become tame, unlike it, rather by sleeping than by sleeplessness), which is carried hooded on the wrist of 12 266 LEVANA. the falconer, until left to its ancient freedom, a momenta- ry wooer of the air, it boldly and bravely vanquishes some new bird, and then returns with it to the slavish earth. But the truly, because freely, brave people carries on its war of freedom at home, against every hand which would stay its flight or blind its eye ; this, indeed, is the longest and bravest war, and the only one which admits no truce. Just so brave, and in a higher sense, may a monarch be. Let the great ideal of art, to unite dignity with repose, be the ideal of the throne. To extinguish the flames of war is more worthy of a king, as it is more difficult, than to kindle them. If this bravery of peace be already secured, whereby alone a monarch can distinguish himself in his- tory, — then that of war, if necessary, becomes easy, and every wound glorious. Hence the great men of antiqui- ty are rather distinguished by their character than by their deeds, rather by the trophies of peace than those of war ; the plough-heroes of battle-fields by an intensity of love, which, as in Phocion, sowed the steep cliffs which bound the mighty ocean with balmy spice-plants ; which in Cato the younger loved and bewailed his brother with all a woman's tenderness, and caused Epaminondas to re- member the duties of a host even on the scaffold ; which made Brutus a tender husband, Alexander a trustful friend, and Gustavus a Christian. It seems to me that a young prince should view the future which he helps to form from this side and through this opening in history ; in this manner he must learn to subject the inferior to the nobler kind of courage. Cer- tainly a king who avoided war from cowardice would be more dangerous — especially in the present position of Germany — than one who sought it from foolhardiness ; and, moreover, he would be less easily cured. The seep- ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 267 tre resembles Saturn's scythe, which is at once the emblem of harvest-time and of death. The thing that grieves me, when I consider the excel- lence of the education you, dear Adelhard, impart, is that it will be of little or no use, unless you are ennobled, or unless the prince might remain at home. I mean this : I cannot but lament that he must grasp the pilgrim's staff before the sceptre, and must pass through the three king- doms of nature, or three courts of the grand tour, Italy, England, and France, in order to return different from what he started ! Enough cannot be said in favor of travel, but not of early travel. Let the man, not the boy, travel ; let his travelling-cap be the crown. If he go un- crowned, sent as a travelling fortune to the fair of Paris, we know — by the example of his noble companions — what, not to speak of ruined health, he will bring back ; namely, a mind full of contempt for his little inland pat- rimony, full of plans for miniature imitations, and of acquired notions whose importation the Prussian Lycur- gus and the Spartan Frederick the Second prevented, the one into the nobility, the other into the people, by forbid- ding travelling. If we wish, by imitation, to give the dominion over our domestic affairs to foreign countries, which by treaties of peace — those of Westphaha and Luneville, for instance — have already quite sufficiently ruled and changed the constitution of the Germanic em- pire, I really think we burden ourselves with too great a weight of gratitude, especially when we consider the rare- ness of the opportunities for requital. If foreign travel is indispensable to mental growth, why do we see so few dauphins, so few princes of Wales, of Austria, or of Bra- zil, in our hotels ? If the coat of worldly varnish given by strangers cannot be done without, fortunately his court 268 LEVANA. will be so frequently visited by so many who will gladly linger there a long time, that he may easily remain at home. For the same reason, among the artisans of Ber- lin, Königsberg, and other large towns, the sons of master- workmen are not required to travel like other journey- men. But there is one country which an heir apparent may minutely survey in his travels, — it is his own ; and the deeper he penetrates into the lower classes, the more pro- ductive of benefit will his journey be. Like an ^neas or a Dante, he will return a wiser man out of this lower world into the upper regions of the throne. A prince cannot picture to himself hunger as anything other than a rai'e gift of God and of the stomach ; or labor, than as a hawking-match to procure it ; or the people, which ex- periences enough of both, as anything different from the pampered crowd of his court servants. If in Coi'ea the people must shut their doors and windows when the king is passing by, we may be sure that he will also close his from the eyes of his people : and so one invisibility pro- duces the other. If he be crowned and married, and about as old, or even older, than Joseph II., or Peter the Great, or popes on their travels, or the ancient Romans whose proconsul- ships were also journeys, he will receive greater advan- tage from his travels than he would even as his own ambassador ; for he will see everything more accurately, more quickly, and be less taxed for doing so. Boling- broke tells us, that if at forty we read again some of our childhood's books we shall find everything new : even so, if at the same age we revisit the land of our youth, we shall find a new world, previously overlooked. A young prince, perhaps, brings home with him out of some for- ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 269 eign country a faded garland, as a memento of rare flowers of happiness ; a prince of mature age brings also the seeds of those flowers. When the warm-hearted, manly, true German Duke of Meiningen travelled, the year before his death, to one of the southern cities of Ger- many, he did not visit courts, balls, princes, and women ; but machines, manufactories, soup-kitchens, mines, artists and their w^orks, financiers and their tables, — ah ! why was he doomed so shortly afterwards to make the longest journey to the most distant country ? A noble prince who loves his people can never tread that path too late. But if your Friedanot must go on his travels before he ascends the throne, I would wish you to be ennobled and to accompany him. Every royal tutor should receive nobility from his connection with a prince, just as iron be- comes magnetic by contact with a magnet, in order that he may afterwards be employed at the dinner or card table, when, otherwise, his place must be occupied by some one whose rank admits hira to the royal table. How happy is a princess whose Orbilia and La plus Bonne is, from the commencement, of such high rank that she may ever remain near her ! " Turba medicorum per- didit Csesarem " : * this epitaph on Adrian is also true of the multitude of " soul curers." Many of your regulations for princes may be readily guessed, because they must also have a place in the edu- cation of every child ; only that qualities which the latter must use as small coin in every-day life are required from princes as gold for the mint, and for the adornment of the palace. In the first place I rank keeping his word. Princes rarely break their word, except to whole coun- tries, — their own, and foreign lands. The word given to * " The multitude of doctors killed Caesar." 270 LEVANA. one man, themselves perhaps excepted, they always keep. Chamfort remarks, that, up to the ministry of the Cardi- nal de Lomenie, fifty-six public breaches of faith were reckoned in Henry lY. These may readily be explained by the rarefying power of space, which, far more than time, immediately decomposes the strongest powers ; as, for instance, electricity, attraction, philanthropy, freedom, and a promise. Distance, for instance, inconceivably diminishes British freedom, even in Ireland, as it formerly did in North America ; but at sea, and in the colonies, it is, by distance, rarefied to such a degree, that only the quick eye of a captain or a nabob can distinguish it from absolute slavery. In the same way a promise is so weak- ened by distance, that even a peace concluded a century or so before, by the naval powers of Europe, could not avert war from India. Physics, as already said, show the cause of this phenomenon. This fact, perhaps, ren- ders a lecture-room and teacher for speaking truth more necessary to an heir apparent. Indeed, this speech is quite as important as the Lusatian or Italian, which, ac- cording to a golden bull, every future elector, king of Bohemia, and pfalz-graf of the Rhine, had to learn in his seventh year ; or even as the French, though no bull has declared that essential. Royal truthfulness towards his own and other nations is not only, as others have said, a monarch's highest pol- icy, but also, and for that very reason, the most difficult. Upright minds are like straight roads, which seem to the eye scarce half so long as those which wind artfully about; but their true length is found by a nearer examination. Only a prince who cherishes noble and well-considered desires will choose to reveal them ; as it is only cut dia- monds of the purest water which can be set so that the light may shme through. ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 271 Under all treaties of war and peace there lies a higher bond of union than power, — because without it they could not even be formed, — it is reliance on a given word, on the power of character, not on land and sea forces. But in history, which else accurately lays before us from month to month the cost of the new triumphal-arches for fresh victors, there is nothing more rare than an hon- orable niche devoted to a king who speaks truly for the present, and prophesies truly for the future. Royal truth- fulness presupposes force of character, resolute courage, and just strength of will. Finally, where this oak forest stands and grows around a throne, there is the ancient German sanctuary ; the throne within its shadow works miracles, and the people round its base pray to Heaven for protection. You and I hear such a forest rustling so near our study that we could count its leaves. Baireuth, January, 1806. I have again unpacked my goods, because peace con- tinues ; so that our meeting, as well as the review and ratification of my predictions, must be postponed to a more favorable season. In conclusion, and in jest, I ap- pend a few aphorisms on education, suitable for insertion in albums ; which I prepare from time to time for the various royal and noble tutors who visit my study, so as to have a few useful impromptu thoughts ready to be written down when they hand me their albums. The following thoughts have not yet been inserted in such books : — To form a brave man, educate boldly ! Brave painters alone, says Lavater, can hit a brave face. 272 LEVANA. Not without reason do the rarest flowers borrow their names from princes. Power cannot have too gentle an expression. The look of a king is itself a deed. Conse- quently a king can choose whether he will all day kill or make alive. The sceptre should not be a rod of authority; but, like a magnetic needle, should assume the form of a lily. It is easier, like the tragic Crebillon, to obtain the surname of the terrible, than, like Virgil, to merit the epithet of the maidenly. A flute lay side by side with Frederick the Great's baton of command. Let every prince regard this as an allegory. He who mistrusts humanity is quite as often deceived as he who trusts men. The wicked and despotic favorite always advises a king to rule himself, not to let others govern for him ; to see and hear for himself (at least to see and hear the favorite), and not to be a mere repeater on which an external hammer strikes the time, but to be a church-bell, which sounds with its own tongue, and which the favorite rings whether for funerals or wed- dings. Tutor ! Have at heart no work of your pupil so much as love of work ; it is this he should learn by that. And, unless he learn to be a lover of work, he will in after years (as Vopiscus tells us the Emperor Carinus did) keep a servant to write his signature ; or, if he write it himself, he will do so like that self-made slave of his own servants, Philip the Fifth of Spain. On the throne everything, even time, — as in Basle, — is wanted to be an hour earlier than it really is ; thought, consequently, long before reflection. Royal impromptus, ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 273 as the winged seeds of action, are always dangerous ; they often make long diets and long judgment-days necessary, and have to count forced imposts instead of freely granted tributes. How many subjects has a hon-mot killed! How many suggestions of the wicked one have been acted on by haste ! He who needs proofs has but to inquire of the chief justice in history. What more excellent object, I ask, can a teacher set before himself than to accustom his pupil never to say an important yes or no, never to express a like or a dislike, without taking an hour's respite to con- sider the question, request, or sin ? With such a letter of grace (moratorium) he might write himself a brevet of infallibility. But why speak I of princes ? Every one is in this position ; only that the high rank of monarchs fear- fully increases the rolling, avalanche-like consequences of every sound. And it is precisely in the higher ranks that men perversely attend more to deeds expressed in words, — hon-mots, impromptus, &c., than to words expressed in deeds, — decretals, resolutions, &c. ; and take time to con- sider a jest, though not a serious matter. Let the teacher invert this inversion Dear Adelhard, I am myself this moment guilty of improvising ; so difficult is it to be avoided. For this last article for the album I really made for the letter ; the former would require it to be much more compressed. So powerful is the influence of the present moment ; one confounds letter, album, and book all together. Fare you well, dear Adelhard ; and, in this respect, fare better than I. I wished to add this apothegm also: "Above all things, inspire a prince with the taste for reading, — not merely the inscriptions on triumphal arches and in illu- minations, but books and acts " ; but, if I am not mis- taken, it is already written in your album. Cabinet 12* R 274 LEVANA. secrets, like the light of the fixed stars, reach us for the first time many years after their emanation ; but the secrets of the study, like the light of the planets, never reach so far as the fixed stars. Yours J. P. F. R. Postscript. — As there was no post, this letter to you, excellent prince's tutor, has lain in my desk during the sale of the whole first edition of Levana ; it was printed, but not despatched : luckily, while preparing the second, a young tutor, dismissed from a certain court, visited me, and promised to deliver you my letter. For the rest he curses the whole matter for hours every day, and declares he would almost rather be a prince than a prince's tutor ; for the one only spoils himself, whereas the tutor spoils others too. He openly derides my whole letter to you, as a mere waste of paper and ink, and says I have only forgotten the principal thing, the so-called governor both of prince and tutor. He asked me to teach him " what use it was to be the very best of tutors, as a man must become the very worst if the prince's governor so choose ; who is regarded as the upper house to the tutor's lower house, or college rector to his inferior school." But, instead of waiting my instructions, he continued angrily: " The governors, who never permitted him even to be vice-governor to the prince, were as old in rank as in age, and consequently took precedence in everything of him, who was only perfectly capable of all his duties ; so that the young prince regarded him merely as a subordinate, as a kind of school-fox whose master Reynard was the governor. The word of a man who sat at the same din- ner table with the prince was more esteemed by him and ON THE EDUCATION OF A PRINCE. 275 by the whole court than the sermons of one who might only sit near him at the study-table." I replied, that on this matter I would take the part of the men of the world. The schoolman has about as much relation to the nobleman as the Abbot Fowler, for instance, has to a fowl. As, according to Kant's observations, we soon grow weary of the most excellent human singing, but never of the perpetual singing of birds, because it is subject to no rule, and its variations are quite undeter- mined ; so the scholar, by the monotonous unity of his thoughts and discourses, always aiming at one end, soon drives to sleep ; whereas the courtier, flitting from one subject to another, engages the attention, just because he says nothing very definite, and because variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of some- thing. " A governor," continued he, " who only thinks of king, court, and nobility, and orders the prince to be educated only for these, will bar with the collars of his multitudi- nous orders all the havens into which a tutor would con- duct his pupil to the sound of silver flutes. He will throw in his teeth the accurate 'revision' of his plan of education (none so good as that which is printed) ; and if the tutored tutor think differently, he has only the choice of being frightened or being angry." " Truly, not bad ! " said I, " for by this means the tutor will be educated to be tender and better than he can edu- cate the prince. In the same way, cooks make poultry tender and tasty by putting them into a pond, or a turkey by throwing it from a considerable height before killing it, — this has the effect of fright on them ; or they irritate them by whistling and shaking red cloths at them, — which has the effect of rage." 276 LEVANA. "We must then experience," concluded the tutor, "what is the consequence if the governor can use the sceptre as a good school-cane to the citizen teacher ; I do not mean what the governor becomes (for he goes away like myself), but what the innocent prince becomes, in whom, placed as a young master between a flattering upper serv ant and a kneeling slave, no manly character can possibly be devel- oped, — no bones grow." " But," said I, " I do not see the evil of that. I myself know many people of rank, whose whole inner man does not contain one whole bone, but who precisely resemble people struck by a thunder-bolt, in whom the lightning generally only breaks the bones, without in the smallest degree burning or injuring the external form. And so it. is, my friend ! " As, however, we could neither of us quite agree, and I could not become perfectly serious, I think I have adopted a very sensible plan in sending him to you with this post- script, so that you may either alter or confirm his opinion. You must certainly know whether there is any difference among governors, and whether the course of the little prince may not occasionally describe an accurate ellipse round the two foci. Heaven grant that, and many other things too ! SIXTH FRAGMENT. ON THE MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. Chap. I. Moral Strength; Physical Strength; Games of Hurting; Injuriousness of Fear and of Fright; Love of Life; Lisufficiency of the mere Passions; Necessity of a Youthful Ideal, §§ 103-110. — Chap. IL Truthfulness, Charades, and Children's Plays, §§ 111 -115. — Chap. III. Education of the Affections; Means of arous- ing them; Love of Animals, §§ 116-121. — Chap. IV. Supple- mental Appendix on Moral Education; Various Consolatory Rules; Stories of Parents for their own Children; Childi-en's Journeys; Danger of a Premature Feeling of Shame, and on the Modesty of Children, §§ 122 - 129. CHAPTER I. § 103. ONOR, honesty, steadfast will, truthfulness, in- difference towards threatening wounds and endurance of those inflicted, openness, self- respect, just self-appreciation, contempt for the opinion of the world, justice and perseverance, — all these and similar words indicate only one half of the moral nature, viz. moral strength and elevation of char- acter. The other half embraces all our connections with others ; the realm of love, gentleness, benevolence, — in short, what may be called moral beauty. If the one seems to turn inwards, towards itself, the other outwards, towards others ; the one to be a repelling, 278 LEVANA. the other an attracting pole ; if the one regards an idea as holy, and the other rather esteems life to be so, yet both are equally elevated above self, which is only the object of the animal propensities, and of the sins against the twin stars of the heart ; for honor, as well as love, sacrifices selfishness. Moreover love does not seek and contemplate in another what it avoids in itself; but it beholds and embraces therein the image of the divinity. "We find God twice : once within, once without us ; within us as an eye, without us as light. Yet is it every- where the same ethereal fire, indifferent whether it spring up from without or within ; and, indeed, the one presup- poses the other, and consequently a third which produces and unites both. Call it the Holy. In the spiritual world there is properly no out and no in. Love is natu- rally the companion of true moral strength, as we ever find sweet fruits on strong branches ; weakness trembles like a Vesuvius only to destroy. Even so, pure love can- not merely do all, but is all. § 104 But here we are only concerned with the difference of appearances, not with their foundations. The former show us man born and fitted out more for moral strength, or honor, and woman for moral beauty, or love. From our former position, "that woman does not divide and contemplate herself as man does," we might deduce the division of the two moral poles, with varying balance between both sexes, ascribing love to the female, and strength to the male, because the former is more occupied with what is external to herself, but the latter in examin- ing what passes within himself. But why reason about facts? This moral difference between the sexes is re- MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 279 peatecl, although in miniature, in every individual ; but more of this hereafter. We will now view the educa- tional means of adapting the boy to his destination by developing moral strength of character. § 105. One age requires men in order to exist, another in order to subsist ; ours needs both ; and yet education dreads nothing more than making boys manly, and, where possible, strives to unman them. Nurseries and school-rooms are like altars in the temples which the Romans dedicated to Pavor and Pallor (pale fear). As though the world w^ere now too full of courage, teachers ordinarily ingraft fear by punishments and actions, but only recommend courage by words. Not undertaking, but letting alone, receives the victor's crown. In Nestor's order of battle the timid occupied the mid- dle ranks ; it is so also in our states ; and more physical courage is found in the highest and lowest ranks than the scholar or the schoolmaster usually possesses. Hence the latter expects his boys to resemble the L'oquois, who think a hare is a deity ; and even endeavors to raise them to a place among these gods. The ancients, in their veneration for strength, forgot benevolence ; we err in the contrary direction. The effeminate teaching class may, however, excuse itself by this disappointment ; namely, that the courage of children, owing to their deficiency in the counterbalance of prudence, readily turns to rashness, and attacks teacher and fate. But let us remember that years do indeed increase light, but not force, and that it is easier to provide a pilgrim on life's journey with a guide, than to restore to him, like a statue, the legs and wings which have been removed lest 28o LEVANA. he should run or fly away. We will, like warriors, begin with common courage, and proceed upwards to honor. § 106. The body is the coat of mail and breastplate of the soul ; so let this in the first place be hardened into steel by heat and cold. Let every father provide, as well as he can, a little gymnastic school round his house ; the very street in which the boy plays, runs, falls, climbs, and bids defiance is something. Wounds got in the street are sooner healed, and more wholesome, than wounds got at school, and they teach better how to bear pain. Out of the wild English youth there grows a thoughtful member of parliament ; as out of the early Roman robbers a virtuous self-sacrificing senate rose. The Romans bled the rashly brave ; the schoolmaster's rod also lets blood ; and the starving method, solitary con- finement, &c., pales the remainder. No power should ever be weakened, — one cannot repeat this too often, -^ but only its counterbalancing power strengthened: in squirrels, the upper row of teeth often grows painfully long, but only when the lower one is lost. A rash twelve-year-old Dreadnought might soon enough be made thoughtful ; you need but read through with him some anatomical or surgical book ; but this remedy, like arse- nic, is only to be used in the most desperate cases, and in the smallest possible doses. Bodily weakness makes mental weakness; and mental weakness leaves deeper, ay, perpetual traces behind it : the broken arm is much sooner cured than the broken heart of a child. And, lastly, children are spoiled in two different ways in the young sick-room ; the healthy by severity, the sick by weak indulgence. Now the sick would be much better MOKAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 281 served by the mental excitement of pictures, little games on the pillow, and tales, than by physical indulgences. If health be the first step to courage, bodily exercise is the second against pain. This in modern times is not only abandoned, but actually contradicted ; and with us the boy is fastened up, not that he may learn, but that he may not learn to bear it, and that he may at once begin to confess. Detestable method ! How can the change of the torturing system, formerly adopted by the judicial courts, so far confuse you with regard to education, that you do not value the power of the mentally strong, opposed to the physically strong, but consider firmness a repetition of the denounced fault? This is as egregious a mistake as Locke's advice to dis- gust children with card-playing, by compelling them to practise it ; for this official change, produced by disgust at the compulsory repetition of the game, would be a worse disease than that it cured. Must we not, in this place, severely attack another error in education, — a most repulsive one, though concealed by the showy paint of custom, — it is that of harshly punishing children before other children, in order to make them a so-called example ? For either the child as a cold observer shares the sentiments of the passionate punisher, and feels no compassion for the torture-wrung cries of his equal, no disgust at the repulsive sight of the cruelly used victory of the strong over the weak, — and then, indeed, I know not what more his heart can lose, — or else the child ex- periences all the pain which the judgment-seat raised in the nursery inflicts, and so, as is the case with grown-up pepple at executions, thinks the punishment greater than the fault, — and then any advantage to be derived from the painful sight is lost ; or, lastly, he at once pities and 282 LEVANA. comprehends the punishment, and feels the greatest dread of such terrible pain, — and then you certainly do secure obedience, but you increase fear. In short, do not inflict severe punishments in the presence of children ; be satis- fied that their invisibility, coupled with what is related of them, will secure the advantages without the disadvan- tages. It would be much more desirable to establish exercises in bearing pain, schools of the cross in a stoic sense ; and indeed boys themselves have games of a similar nature. Formerly in Mexico one child bound his arm to that of another child, and placed a live coal between ; both con- tended who should longest bear the burning pain. In Montaigne's childhood, the nobility considered fencing- schools mean, because, by their aid, victory no longer depended solely on courage. The ancient Danes did not even wink the eye at wounds in the face. What was formerly attained by whole nations, and, consequently, was not the gift of birth, but of education, — this surely must be sufficiently easy to repeat in individuals. Never make lamentation^ over a child's hurt, but pass it off with a joke. If a Httle child runs to you to show its hurt, let him wait a little before he engages your eye or ear, and in the mean time say quietly to him, " I must first finish my writing," or " knit off this needle." Or tell him to go and fetch you something ; nothing draws the thorn from the wound so soon as action ; soldiers do not feel their wounds in the heat of battle. "My nose is bleeding," says the youngest child, in a doleful tone. "O, look at the pretty red blood, how it drops; where does it come from ? There was none in your little nose just now," you say ; and the pain is forgotten in the inquiry, — what is internal in what is external. Further: pro- MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 283 tect a child's ear even more carefully than his eye. The ear is especially the sense of fear ; hence those animals which hear quickly are timid. As harmony holds the heart entranced in delight, so does the scream of fear in horror. An inexplicable sound is the true night for fear. The eye becomes at last reconciled to every monstrous form, if it only remain sufficiently long before it ; but the abyss of sound does not become clearer, but more dread- ful, by continuance. A little girl, to whom the color of the chimney-sweeper had only seemed curious, received the first fright in her life from hearing the uninterrupted noise of his sweeping. Give, therefore, to every strange noise, such as that of the wind, some merry name. Our age is the first that has made it a duty to devise rules against that fear which disarms and fetters mankind. In every child there lies, side by side with the romantic hope of an infinite heaven, the equally romantic dread of an infinite Orcus. But you hold this Orcus dreadfully open before the child, if you give this ideal fear an object by naming such a thing. The author committed this error by saying to his children, in order to prevent their hating and fearing soldiers or other people, " Only bad men are to be feai-ed." Hereby their fear, previously scattered over various visible objects, was concentrated in the un- changing focus of a single invisible object ; and they car- ried this fancied bugbear with them everywhere, and saw it in everything. In no emotion of the soul — not even in love — does fancy push its creative and ruling power so far as in fear. Children, else religiously believ- ing all their parents say, anxiously desire the word which is to arm them against ghosts, and yet, with that very dictum on their lips, succumb to imagination in their hearts. Further: children who have long since exam- 284 LEVANA. ined, and even themselves made, the object of their alarm, — a cloak, for instance, and a hat hung upon a stick, — will yet run away from it with terror. So they fear less what has already hurt them than what their parents, either by looks or words, have mentioned with fear ; a mouse, for instance. Therefore, especially avoid and guard against all suddenness of speech, — such as exclaiming in the night, " Look ! " or even " Listen ! " which alarms yet more, — and of appearance or action ; for in that case the senses do not restrain, but only in- flame, the fancy, and the reality is wildly confused by the hasty explanation. Thus, alarm during thunder-storms principally arises from the rapidity with which the light- ning momentarily reveals the dark sky to the straining sight. If the whole firmament remained one long flash, we should fear it less. Do not merely spare children reading any painful his- tories, but also every verbal description of any unknown physical suffering ; for in children of a lively imagination mental fear easily springs out of bodily fear, and this — which is never considered — even through dreams. These gigantic chaotic painters in the mind form, out of the little terrors of the day, those monstrous masks of the Furies which wake and nourish the fear of ghosts which slumbers in every human being. We should attend far more to the dreams of children than to those of mature persons, especially on account of this difference, — that in ours resound the echoes of our childhood ; what then in theirs ? — Who has not experienced sudden presentiments, an inexplicable and perfectly unexpected foretaste of approaching good or ill fortune, wafted upon him hke air from some mountain precipice ? Or who in new coun- tries, occurrences, or men has not sometimes found, deep MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 285 within him, a mirror whereon, from old time, these very tilings were darkly pictured and beheld ? And to whom, in subsequent dreams and fevers, has not the same ser- pent form, the same misshapen, tortuous monster, con- tinually reappeared, of which, in his whole remembered life, he had beheld no archetype ? Might not these shapes be buried remnants of old childhood's dreams, which rise from the deep, like sea-monsters, in the night ? Be careful to conceal your own grief about others' necessities or your own. Nothing is more infectious than fear and courage ; but the parent's fear is doubled in the child ; for where the giant trembles the dwarf must surely fall. The father especially should never come before his children with a melancholy, penitential face, or the ap- pearance of much suffering, as if there were so much to lose in life that he could even lose himself: at most let him only point out a gloomy future, but not anxiety con- cerning it ; and at least let him have no other copies of his lamentations and "liber tristium " than one for his wife and friend. Yet the very opposite of this is most generally the case. It is in the house (as though every barricade and city wall must make people cowardly), in some hole in the shore, that the externally armed lobster casts his shell ; and it is in the nest with its poor little ones that the bold eagle moults, thus permitting them only to see its domestic cowardice, not its public courage. Rather let every one resemble the pastor Seider, who, in reading the newspapers, lamented that of all the printed accounts of his sufferings not one was true. § 107. Since indifference to actual blows and disregard of anticipated ones mutually strengthen each other, I hope 286 LEVANA. I ma}' continue to confound them without reproach. Courage does not consist in blindly overlooking danger, but in meeting it with the eyes open. Therefore do not attempt to make boys brave by saying, " It will not hurt you," — for in that case the sheep would fight as bravely as the lion, — but by saying more truly, " What is it ? Only a hurt." For you may safely reckon on a some- thing in the human breast which no wounds- can reach, on a steadfast celestial axle among the mutable earthly axles ; insomuch as man, unlike the beasts, has some- thing more than pain to dread. There is a courage manifested against the future and the imagination, and also a courage manifested against the present and the imagination : the one is opposed to fear, the other to terror. If there must be the one or the other, fear is, for children, preferable to terror, but not so for men ! If fear, as the Cardinal de Retz said, enfeebles and distorts the understanding more than all the other emotions of the mind, terror entirely destroys it, and puts madness in its place. Fear may be imparted so slowly and in so carefully measured doses, that it will rather act as an incitement than as a poison to thought and resolution. Whereas terror — whether ins}Dired by sight or sound — is a flash of lightning shivering the whole man, unarming and slaughtering him at one stroke. Chiarugi * shows, on the authority of Giasone, that children who have been brought up harshly, and kept in order by images of terror, frequently fall vic- tims to insanity. One shock of terror may produce long-lasting fear; but fear cannot give birth to terror, for its imagination, dwell- ing on the future, finds even its present there. * See his work on Insanity, b. i. § 282. MOKAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 287 With the exception of good health, there is no jDreserv- ative from terror save acquaintance with its object : it is produced only by what is new. The bravest may be territied, as the Romans were by elephants, or as the bravest modern European might be by some strange, gigantic beast-like form, — dropped out of Jupiter, let us suppose, — whose poisonous qualities and modes of attack he knew net. Then arm the young mind against the thunder-storms of accident by a lightning-conductor which you yourself make. The present assembly-hall for the sittings of col- leges and societies of learned men unfortunately helps them to pass through their sitting mode of life and death without becoming remarkably brave. It is a significant fact, that all important oflSces are marked by the appen- dage of a seat, — the bench of judges and of bishops, the chair of divinity, the stool of prayer, the seat of instruc- tion, — and their reward is rest in Abraham's bosom, or on the thrones of the twelve Apostles. He who sits when attacked by an enemy loses his courage, as is shown by every regiment awaiting an attack: and we run away with our heels, where alone the Homeric Achilles .was vulnerable. But even in modern times the runner would be brave if no inimical runner pursued him. No Napo- leon could spend sufficient money in building golden bridges for a flying enemy. As a person can be really terrified only once by the same thing, I think it possible to spare children the real- ity by sportive representations of alarming circumstances. For instance : I go with my little nine-year-old Paul to walk in a thick wood. Suddenly three blackened and armed ruffians rush out and fall upon us, because I had hii-ed them for the adventure with a small thieves' pre- 288 LEVANA. mium tile day before. We two are only provided with sticks, but the band of robbers are armed with swords and a [)istol without bullets. Here nothing is of use but pres- ence of mind and resolution. One is opposed to three (for Paul must be reckoned as nothing, though I call upon him to fight) ; but because I turn away the pistol, so that it may miss me, and strike the dagger out of one of the thieves' hand with my stick, and seize upon it to attack the third, I hope that the ruffianly troop may be vanquished, and put to flight by one honest man with his son's help. We pursue the routed army for a little dis- tance, but soon desist as many stray shots are fired ; and I maintain a constant derision of the enemy's line, — which, like an orderly book-shelf, only shows the backs, — so that even my little ally can conclude for himself how much courage alone is superior to numbers, espe- cially of villains, who, according to all experience, are seldom brave. But (I add in this second edition) all such games are of doubtful advantage, because of their falsity ; and only by repetition can they altogether lose the evils attendant even on a fright which ends in noth- ing. A great many tales of victorious courage are, per- haps, better means of arousing and strengthening that virtue. Other " cloak and dagger pieces," as Bouterwek tells us the Spaniards call their intriguing comedies, might be tried advantageously in the night, in order to bring the fancies, inspired by a belief in ghosts, to common every- day light ; at the same time I admit that there is always a deep-seated fear of this kind, which only God, or the next world, can thoroughly remove. Even the fear of storms cannot be altogether eradicated, at least by rea- soning ; the tranquillity, or, still better, the cheerfulness, MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 289 oi' grown-up persons during them is the best cure. Since what is uncommon is most dreaded, it may perhaps be numbered among the few advantages of a town-educa- tion, that in it tlie eye and ear of a child become indiffer- ent to more objects than they can do in a village. In nothing, fear itself scarcely excepted, does a man make such rapid advances as in courage. Night marches, the alliance of many boys, — for company increases courage as well as fear, — and finally the histories of true heroes, such as Charles XII. of Sweden, rivet the shield of courage more and more firmly on the breast. § 108. Permit me still to add a few ingredients to the tonic medicines of manliness, ere I pass to the mental means of strengthening it. The following reflections may stand in the same relation as branches to the top of a tree. What, from the Fakeer to the martyrs of Christianity, of love, of duty, and to those who sacrificed their lives for liberty, has vanquished pain, opinion, desire, torture ? one ruling idea in the heart. Implant, then, in the boy some such living idea, were it but that of honor, and he is fit to become a man. Every fear may be overcome by placing it clearly before him. Every child pictures to himself some position, some trade, as the workhouse and sorrow of life ; and some other (usually his father's) as the belvidere of hope. Take from him these erroneous charts of heaven and hell, wliich, like warrants of arrest, disarm and render him the prisoner of fear and of desire. Bring him — not by dead listening, but by living observation — to a knowledge of the happiness of the most various conditions, so that he may look upon life as on the level ground of a pleasure 13 s 290 LEV AN A. encampment, where even the slave has pitched his tent. It is much more important that a child should not cause- lessly dread and avoid any condition, however gloomy, than that he should not hopefully desire and labor after any, even the most brilliant ; for hope leaves us more un- derstanding and more happiness than fear. In order to extract from the tear-press of compassion some feeling and pence for a beggar, you choose to crush a power which could sustain itself on the beggar's pallet. What else do you do than cause the little shocked creature to prefer making a hundred beggars, in after life, to being one himself, and perhaps giving something to some other ? Always let oneness of purpose rule over a boy : he wanted, perhaps, to have, or to do, some certain thing ; oblige him, then, to take or to do it. And never com mand anything twice. Raise up in him by every possible means the conception of a higher tribunal than that of feeling. If he desire any forbidden thing, do not move it further from, but rather nearer to him, so that he may overcome that desire by the sense of duty. Place your command simply before him, without any attractive concomitants which may make it seem lighter than it is ; for, by this delicate conceal- ment of the rule, chance, which accustoms to nothing, is made master. The manner in which the command is obeyed is of inlinitely more importance thtm the mere ful- filment of it. Neither veil a refusal, as mothers are too apt to do ; perpetual concealnK.'nts are impossible. Why will you not spare yourself by a plain No, and accustom your boy to cheerful resignation ? Quiet submission to arbitrary despotism weakens the character, but to neces- sity strengthens it ; be then a fate to your child ! A child's obedience, without other consideration, can be of MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 291 no advantage to himself; for how if he obeyed all the world ? But it is the motive to it, as reverential, loving trust, and the perception of necessity, which ennobles liiin. Those who are obedient only from fear become mechanical automata, hypocrites, flatterers, and are totally ungoverna- ble when behind the back of their drivers. You bend (or break) the young mind if, before the age of insight into political inequalities, you teach it to pay other respect tlian what is due to every human being and to age ; unfettered by order-ribbons, blind to stars and gold, let the child regard both the servant and the master of his father with equal respect. A child is by nature a Diogenes to every Alexander, and a gentle Alexander to every Diogenes ; let him continue so ; never let tliat enervating humility towards rank approach him. Only great objects can worthily occupy a boy's heart ; and what, except knowledge, can fill it better than the love of his country, even though broken in the diamond- mortar of the present age ? This holy flame should be fanned in all schools, but certainly not after the method of Tyrtaeus, that is, by enthusiasm for a decrepit and justly fallen state, but by inspiration of the Hermann's Battle Odes of Klopstock. However, I scarcely expect this from the old humanists, who, in great works of art, take most pleasure in that which is most palatable in the elephant, the feet. No science has so many teachers as the science of hap- piness, or pleasure ; as if this had not already planted its throne in the hearts of cats, vultures, and, in short, of all other beasts. Will you then teach what the beasts know ? Shall the human mind, like a Centaur, enter the world of mind with a body bearing the marks of the spur ? For what reason — save a bad one — are the selfish excesses 292 LEVANA. of children more indulged than those which display obsti- nacy, the love of eating more than the love of quarrelling, as if the teeth for tearing and those for chewing were not equally important ? If you seek to inspire reverence for pure worth, justice, and religion by any other means than the simple forms of these children of God, — were it merely by showing as an appendage some advantage thence derivable to the animal propensities, instead of teaching that they are due sacrifices to those goddesses, — then have you sullied the pure spirit, and made it little and hypocritical. You, like the cold north, have suffered the lions of the south to shrivel up into cats, its crocodiles into lizards. If life is a battle, let the teacher be a poet, who may animate the boy to meet it with needful songs. Accustom him to regard his future, not as a path from pleasures (though innocent) to other pleasures ; nor even as a gleaning, from spring-time to harvest, of flowers and fruits ; but as a time in which he must execute some long plan : in short, let him aim at a long course of activity, not of pleasure. Enjoyment soon wearies both itself and us ; effort, never. That man is happy, for instance, w^ho devotes his life to the cultivation of an island, to the dis- covery of one that is lost, or of the extent of the ocean. In London it is he who was born rich, not he wdio has made himself rich, that commits suicide ; and, on the other side of the picture, it is not the poor man, but he who has become poor, that kills himself. The miser grows old enjoying rather than wearied of life ; but the heir who comes into possession of his active gains sinks into ennui. So I would rather be the court gardener who watches and protects an aloe for fifteen years, until at last it opens to him the heaven of its blossom, than the prince who is MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 293 hastily called to look at the opened heaven. The writer of a dictionary rises every morning like the sun to move past some little star in his zodiac ; a new letter is to him a new year's festival, the conclusion of the old one a har- vest-home ; and, since after each capital letter the whole alphabet follows successively, the author on his paper may perhaps frequently celebrate on one and the same day a Sunday, a Lady-day, and a Crispin's holiday. Do not fear the rise of the sentiment of honor, which is nothing worse than the rough husk of self-esteem, or the expanded covers of the tender wings which elevate above the earth and its flowers. But, to raise and ennoble that honor of the individual into honor of the race, and that again into honor for the worth of mind, never praise him who has gained a prize, bat those who rank below him ; give the honorable title, not as a distinction for the steps which have been mounted, but as a notification of neigh- borhood to what is higher ; and, lastly, let your praise afford more pleasure because you are pleased than the enjoyment of the distinction gives. §109. If man resembles iron in his strength, he also, by the inflammability of his passions, resembles that metal in connection with sulphur, at whose touch the hot bar of iron dissolves in drops. Does mere passion give strength ? As certainly as a Parisian revolution gives freedom, or a comet bright comet-lighted nights ; only they pass away again. The most powerful men of antiquity, the rulers or judges of their age, and the examples of all other ages, ever sprung from the Stoic school ; passions served them only as supports during storms, not as the beam of a balance ! 294 LEVANA. As with the strength, so is it with the hght which pas- sions, according to the declaration of Helvetius, ought to throw upon their objects ; it is, forsooth, just as Chateau- briand says, that in storms rocks shine with the foam of the waves, and so warn oflf ships : — very dear, and very changeful, light-houses ! Admit your boy, then, as much as possible into the Stoic school ; and that less by instruction than by the ex- ample of true Stoics of all ages. But that he may not mistake the Stoic for a Hollander, or even a stupid savage, let him see that the true inner fire of the breast glows most intensely in those men who manifest through life a steadfast will, and not, like the slaves of passion, various isolated ebullitions and desires : and name to him such men as Socrates and Cato, who were animated by a constant, but therefore tranquil inspiration. §110. This steadfast volition, which tranquillizes every mental tumult, does not presuppose any mere single object, but the grand final aim of life, — a high ideal, — which is the central sun of all its revolutions. It can, therefore, only produce a brave or great life ; but not a great or brave individual action : of this, indeed, every weakling is capa- ble. And so it never presents the spectacle of a lonely mountain, though there are such upon the earth, but it resembles those continuous chains of mountain-like clouds we see in the sky. An unchanging will can only aim at what is universal, at what is divine, be it freedom, or religion, or science, or art. The more divided the will is, the more is it liable to be disturbed by the outer world. As man — in opposition to the beasts, which only apprehend the single individuals MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 295 presented to their senses — extends and resolves the known world into various species, and his thoughts into categories, so does the ideal concentrate the desires in one general all-embracing effort. This ideal can be imparted by no education, — for it is our very inmost self, — but it must be presupposed, and so may be animated by all. Life is kindled only by life ; and the highest life can only be called into existence in a child by example, whether present or historical, or, which unites both, by poetry. The present living time cannot so easily purchase or find great men as little tin figures for children. But the distant history of the universe can furnish them to us : — we need but call to mind the soul-stirring contempt of life displayed in wars for freedom which would have immor- talized Plutarch, had he been its historian, as certainly as his ancient heroes ; — but it has found no Plutarch. Greatness, if not misrepresented, is yet forgotten ; and so, in the midst of the best present time, we yet need the mighty past, as birds of passage do the moonshine, to fly into warm countries. Parents and teachers and a few acquaintances are, unfortunately, placed before the grow- ing boy instead of the saints' images of the ideal, — bad and useless ! A lawgiver, or any man, who daily in the child's presence changes from dressing-gown to dress-coat, can never arouse that purest sentiment (which Chateau- briand considers wonder) in whose heights all the stars of the child's ideal move and shine. If children must pass behind the light of fair examples, why, O why should you give them gloomy instead of glorious ones ? But Clio, the Muse of the past, stands by you, and calls her father Apollo to her assistance. Only fill the boy's mind with the glorified world of heroes, with lovingly 296 LEVANA. painted pictures of great men of every kind, and his in- born ideal will not first be called to life in the midst of that work-a-day ideal which also sleeps in every one. So let every poetic ideal shine free and bright before him ; his eye will not thereby be blinded to two greater ideals, — to that which his own conscience commands him to be, and to the idea of God. The educator, Campe, rightly recommends the illu- mined hemisphere of the present human race to be turned towards children : but certainly not that they may thereby learn patience towards the mediocre, — impatience were better, — but that the glory of the world, supposing it to come from dew-drops rather than jewels, may shine through their morning. What I consider dangerous, — even more dangerous than the representation of man- devils, as every child daily hears of their hellish master without injury, — is, laying mixed characters before them from which to select those worthy of imitation ; you miglit as well set a child to imitate his own similarly mixed nature. What else does a boy learn from that many- godded confederation-morality, but to apply the easy balance between victory and defeat to himself? You might also apply much more closely the Gospel doc- trine of forbearance towards human infirmities, — namely, towards his own. Much that is very plausible and very prolix will be urged against this idealization of youth by pedagogic elephant-hunters, who hunt down what is great in order to have it tame, serviceable, and toothless in their stables. " All this is very fine, but only fit for the world of ro- mance. What can come out of such excessive straining of the young mind, but a vain contemplation and useless opposition to the real world, by which, nevertheless, MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. 297 he must live, and which could scarcely be directed by the dreams of a visionary, or of a beardless boy ? There are, to use the language of novel-writers, neither phcenixes nor basilisks, but there are common land and water birds. In short, the young man must go forth into the world, as the old man has done, and learn to forget his empty giant images. Here again the middle is the right course ; that is to say, the youth may be told that men may possibly become so and so ; however, one must not be too critical if they do not, but live for the state in which one lives ; and again, that those ideal notions are only of value and use in so far as they manifest those qualities in connection with the available reality ; so, in a really allegorical sense, every scholar in Zurich, be he professor of divinity, law, or pedagogy, must yet be en- rolled member of some guild, that of the shoemakers, weavers, or some other trade. And only thus, and not otherwise, can citizens be given to their country worthy of their parents and teachers." That last I admit. But, good heavens ! would you, then, help to weaken what the age and the world weaken without your aid ? You really act as if from after years, from the valley of life, gradual elevation, instead of de- pression, were to be expected, and men had not to issue forth and hasten over. Should you not treat the eyes of the mind at least as carefully as those of the body, before which at first you place the concave glasses which dimin- ish in the smallest possible degree, because afterwards their use necessitates such as are more concave and di- minish more ? The worst that you labor to avoid is only that the youth lould exalt some reality into his ideal ; but the still worse thing that you endeavor to effect is, that he should darken and incorporate his ideal with 13* 298 LEVANA. reality. Oh ! there is enough of that without you. The ripe sunflower no longer turns its heavy seed-laden head towards the sun. The Rhine soon finds its plain, through which it creeps with no glittering waterfalls, and bears its burdens to Holland. What is all the gain the young soul can obtain from the avoidance of a few false steps, compared with the tremendous loss of the holy fire of youth, of its high-soaring wings, its great plans, without which it creeps as nakedly into cold, narrow life as most men creep out of it ? How can life ripen without the ideal glow of youth, or wine without its August? The best that men have done, if it have come in the late sea- son of life, has been but a late-growing seed which the tree of life in their childhood's paradise has borne : it is like the realized dreams of their youth. Have you never seen how a man has been governed and conducted throughout life by the one godlike image of his spring- time? With what else than the bread-cart of clever selfishness would you replace this guiding pole-star? Finally, what is the one thing needful to men ? Certainly not the strength of the sacrifices to what is best ; for let a god but once appear in reality, or, as in France, a goddess (liberty), and man willingly frees himself of everything human which the divinity does not require: but man needs something other than strength ; faith in, and contemplation of, a Deity who merits human sacri- fices of a nobler kind. But if you expel that ideal from the heart, there vanish with it temple, altar, and every- thing. TRUTHFULNESS. 299 CHAPTER II. TRUTHFULNESS. § 111. TRUTHFULNESS, — I mean the fact of speaking truth intentionally, and even to the injury of self, — is less a branch than a blossom of man's moral strength of character. Weaklings must lie, hate it as much as they may. One threatening look drives them into the midst of sin's net. The difference between the present and the middle age consists less in the existence of injus- tice, cruelty, and lust, — for these, especially the last, were abundant enough before the discovery of America, — than in the want of truthfulness. The first sin on the earth — happily the Devil was guilty of it, on the tree of knowledge — was a lie ; and the last will surely be a lie too. The world is punished for the increase of truths by the decrease of truthfulness. § 112. Lying, that devouring cancer of the inner man, is more severely judged and defined by the feeling of nations than by philosophers. The Greeks, who suffered their gods to commit as many crimes with impunity as their present representatives, the gods of the earth, do, yet condemn them for perjury — that root and quintessence of a lie — to pass a year of hfelessness under the ground in Tartarus, and then to endure nine years of torments. The ancient Persian taught his child nothing in the whole circle of morality but truthfulness. The gram- 300 LEVANA. matic resemblance of his language to the German beauti- fully shows also the moral resemblance of the people. Anton * tells us that lying is originally derived from to lie, i. e. to be prostrate, probably in reference to the ab- ject slave who dare raise neither body nor mind. Lying and stealing, (which, as an acted lie, deprives of honor, though murder does not,) and a box in the ear, which the ancient German dreaded more than a wound, are brought into close connection by our language in its proverbs : and our near relatives, the English, know of no more abusive epithet than liar. The German tourna- ments were closed to the liar as well as to the murderer. I grant, however, that in the greatest of all tournaments, war, the greatest lying opened the lists of knightly exer- cise in war to a prince, with whom no true treaty or peace could be made. Can this abhorrence of false words be merely grounded on the violation of mutual rights and confidence, and the injury arising from broken contracts ? It is contradicted by the fact that we more readily pardon lying actions than lying words. Action, mimicry, and silence lie far oftener than the tongue, which men endeavor as long as possible to preserve pure from the hateful perpetration of a lie, the plague-spot of the inner man. Heavens ! are we not already accustomed, without knowing it, to innumerable fictions of law and of poetry, — to political secret articles, mesne tenures, vice-men, masters of ceremonies, comedians, and rehearsals of comedies, false hair, false teeth, false calves, and many other things of a similar kind ; and yet are we thereby in the smallest degree less shocked when a man utters a deliberate lie ? What deceptions there are * This is more evident in the English than in the German, where the words are liigeii derived from liegen. TRUTHFULNESS. 30I everywhere, from the otherwise lie-hating London, where three fourths of the current money is false,* to Pekin, where wooden hams are sold wrapped up in pig's-skin ! Since an honorable soldier and gentleman is less ashamed of a fraud and a bankruptcy than of a lie, at the bare re proach of which he will shoot liimself, — and since men of the world, and even moralists, permit themselves ambiguity of action rather than an actual lie, — and since, finally, no blusli is caused by any sin so burning as that produced by a lie, — can words be something higher than deeds, the tongue than the hand ? These questions cannot be per- fectly answered by the mimic ambiguity of actions, com- pared with the simplicity of speech ; for actions are not always ambiguous, and men will often consider before speaking decidedly, when they would not before acting. Men are not ashamed to undermine and bear ill-will towards other men, but they are ashamed openly to tell a he. §113. What is it that makes it so unholy ? It is this : two individual beings are stationed with regard to each other as upon different islands, and locked up within prison-bars of the bones, and behind the curtain of the skin. Mere motion shows me only life, but not its internal cause. The animated eye of a Raffaelle's Madonna often speaks to us from the canvas, which yet houses no mind ; wax figures are hollow ; and the ape, our mocking image, is dumb. In what glorified form, then, does the human soul reveal itself? In speech only; in reason, thus made man; in this audible freedom. I speak of universal innate lan- guage, without which all its peculiarities, such as modes of verbal expression, were neither comprehensible noi * Colquhoun. 302 LEVANA. possible. Since instinct and mechanism can imitate all other signs of life, it is by speech only that the freedom of the creative thinker in a free world of thought is re- vealed to another ; and this herald and ambassador of freedom lays the foundations of morahty by announcing individuals, like kings, to one another. The fetters of the tongue are the fetters of the soul ; and there are no cus- toms, save the customs of language. The testament of the soul is opened by the mouth, and its last will made known. It is by the present conversion of mobile speech into quiet writing and painting, by this strict imprison- ment of the breath of the soul, that both the power of language and the blackness of a lie are visibly diminished. For, since everything is but a sign, it follows that every sign can be again signified even to infinity. But now if a fellow-being, another living soul, comes to me and utters a deliberate lie, how annihilating ! His soul has fled away from me, and left but its fleshly house behind ; what he then says, since it is not the soul which speaks, is as meaningless as the wind, which, with all its howling, announces no pain. A word often effaces or explains an action ; but the reverse scarcely ever occurs. It must be a long course of action which will remove the thorn from one word, or restore the trusted use of the tongue. The whole enchanted palace of a man's thoughts is rendered invisible by the single blast of a lie, for one lie is the mother of all lies. What can I say to him who is, or carries about with him, his own talking-machine, and may have thoughts quite different to those he sounds on his machine ? Moreover, he gives me, what is no partial, but a universal injury, — instead of my soul, a machine, — instead of my truths, falsehoods ; and breaks down the bridge of mind, or at least converts it into a TEUTHFULNESS. 303 bridge which he can let down for himself, but draw up against others. § 114 And now back to our dear children ! During the first five years they say neither what is true nor what is false, — they merely talk. Their talking is thinking aloud ; and since the one half of thought is frequently a yes, and the other a no, and both escape them (though not us), they seem to lie when they are merely talking to themselves. Further : at first they find great pleasure in exercising their new art of speech, and so they often talk nonsense, only for the sake of hearing their acquisitions in language. They frequently do not understand some word that you have said, — little children, for instance, often confuse to- day, to-morrow, yesterday, as well as numbers and degrees of comparison, and so give rather a mistaken than a false reply. Again, they use their tongues more in sport than earnest, as may be seen in the long discourses they hold with their puppets, as a minister or an author does with his ; and they easily apply this sportive talking to living people. Children always fly to the warm, sunny side of hope ; if the bird or the dog has gone away, they will say, without any further reason, it will come back again. And, since they cannot altogether separate their hopes, that is, their fancies, from copies of truths, their own self-decep- tion assumes the appearance of a lie. For instance, a truth-speaking little girl related to me frequent appear- ances of the infant Christ,* and what he had said, done, &c. It is worthy of consideration whether children, when they poetize a lie, do not often relate reraem- * The infant Christ is, in Germany, feigned to be the sender of the presents which adorn the Christmas-tree. 304 LEVANA. bered dreams, which must necessarily be confounded by them witli real occurrences. To this class belongs that talkative teasing and joking* often seen in eight or ten years old boys, which arises from superabundance of animal spirits. In all these cases, when the form of a lie is not to be shown in any dark glass, say merely, — " Don't make nonsense, speak seriously." Finally, an untruth about what is to come is often con- founded with an untruth about what has happened. Now if, in the case of grown-up men, we do not consider the breach of an official oath, having reference to the future only, equally culpable with the black perjury which re- lates to the past, we should in a still greater degree in the case of children, before whose little ken time and space are magnified, and to whom a day is as inscrutable as a year to us, clearly distinguish between the untruthfulness of promises and the untruthfulness of statements. Some- thing very different, and much worse, is the narrative-he, which seeks to gain some future thing by lying. Truthfulness, which would offer even a bloody sacrifice to its word, as its word, is a godlike blossom on an earthly plant ; therefore, it is not the first, but the last virtue in order of time. The simple savage is full of deceit, both in words and actions ; the peasant, under the influence of some trifling danger, will tell a lie about what is past ; but he considers it dishonorable to tell a prospective lie, and keeps his word. And yet you can require in a child, whom you have yet to educate, the last and noblest fruits * For the true liar does not joke, and the true wit does not He, from the sharp open Swift back to Erasmus, who even experienced a phys- ical antipathy to a liar, as also to fish. — Paravicini, Singularia de Viris Claris. TRUTHFULNESS. 305 of truth ? How much you err is proved by the fact, that lying children — all other circumstances being equal — have grown up into truthful men : I appeal to the Rous- seau's ribbon-lie of every conscience. There are, however, two decided lies with regard to the two times ; — no other lies are possible than either those which look forward to the future or back to the past. The first is seen when the child endeavors to secure itself some booty by lying words or deeds ; the second, when he denies, through fear, his own actions. What is to be done in both these circumstances ? § 115. What is to be done before they occur? That is the question. The child, blinded, and, as it were, imprisoned, by his own existence, acquires his first knowledge of moi'ality by observing others ; and only perceives the hatefulness of a heard lie, not of one spoken by himself. Show him, then, the lofty throne of truthfulness in others, compared with the abyss of their falsehood ; be what you desire him to be ; and frequently repeat that you do even the most indifferent things, because you had previously said you would. It has a powerful effect on the little heart if he occasionally hears his father, who seems to him a kind of free universal monarch, complain; — but mark, it must only be in true cases, for truthfulness in the child cannot grow at the expense of truthfulness in the parents : that, for instance, he would rather not go out with him, but having promised to do so, he must now unwillingly keep his word. If the child have promised something, remind him fre- quently of it as the time approaches, but without using 3o6 LEVANA. Other words than " you said so," and at last compel him to the performance. But if he have done something, you cannot be too sparing in your inquiries, which may easily become so painful. The younger the child is the fewer questions you ought to ask, the more ought you to seem all-knowing or remain ignorant. Do you not consider that you apply a fiery trial, such as Huss and other martyrs have endured, to children, — to whom a threat- ening father is a penal judge, a prince, and a fate, his rod a Jove's thunderbolt, and the next questioning moment an eternity of hellish torments, — when, by your concealed anger, and the prospect of punishment after confession, you place them in the dangerous position of choosing whether they shall obey instinct or an idea ? To truth belongs freedom ; the criminal stands without fetters dur- ing trial ; and man, the reverse of Proteus, speaks the truth when free. The more free the education, the more truthful is the child. All truth-loving ages and nations, from the German to the British, have been free : lying China is a prison, and romanizare (romancing) meant lying when the Romans were slaves. At the same time do not let the remission of punish- ment be the incitement and reward of truth ; an act of indemnity, which can as little make the child good and true, as escaped suffering the unpunished thief. If you must inquire, use affectionate words, and apply to the lie the pain you would spare the child. But if a lie be proved against the child, solemnly utter the judgment " guilty of lying," with a shocked tone and look, with all the horror due to this sin against nature and the Holy Ghost, and inflict the punishment. The only punishments I would permit for lying are such as aflfect the honor, and can be removed as solemnly, suddenly, and TRUTHFULNESS. 307 completely as inflicted, so as not to lose their effect by gradual diminution. The Iroquois blacken the faces of those who celebrate their heroes with lying songs. The Siamese sew up the lips of lying women, as if they were wounds. I have nothing to say against the blackening ; on the contrary, I have myself occasionally punished a lie severely by marking a spot of ink on the brow, which was not to be washed off without permission, and which eat deeply into the conscience. But I am more in favor of the Siamese plan of closing the lips, — I mean of forbid- ding speaking to those who have spoken wickedly. The same principle which led the ancient Germans to cut out the tongues of the Roman advocates, sends the misused member, which serves the mind worse than the stomach, into the convent of La Trappe. I think this punishment which petrifies the tongue, as Paul did the serpent at Malta, is juster, lighter, and more definite than that which Rousseau and Kant would inflict on a lying child ; namely, not to believe him for a time, which only means to seem not to believe him. For in this case the judge himself lies during the punishment for lying ; and will not the little culprit arrive at the knowledge of this pre- tence by his consciousness of speaking the truth ? More- over, how and when will you make the necessary return from disbelief to confidence ? At the same time, Kant's punishment may occasionally have a beneficial tendency in the ciise of grown-up daughters. Never tell any child under six years old to conceal anything, even though it were a pleasure you were plan- ning for some one you love. The clear sky of childlike open-hear tedn ess must not be covered even by the morn- ing glow of shame ; and your instructions will soon teach him to add secrets of, his own to yours. The heroic 3o8 LEVANA. virtue of silence requires for its practice the powers of ripening reason. Eeason teaches us to be silent ; the heart teaches us to speak. For this and other reasons I consider it wrong, at least for the first five years, to forbid a child to ask for anything ; especially if the mother append the poison- ous sugar of a promise to give it afterwards. For, are wishes sins ? or is the confession of a wish a sin ? During the silence attached to the gift, will not a long- ing for enjoyment and reward, and the power of dis- simulation, be maintained and fostered ? And is it not much easier to give an entire refusal after the short question, than after the long waiting ? This mistaken command arises from the maternal inability to utter an immediate and decisive " no." Do not despise all kinds of little helps. For instance, do not press the child for an immediate answer ; a he easily escapes from haste, and must then be supported by another. Give him a little time for reflection before he speak. Further, remember in your most indifferent promises and declarations — and all the more because they are indifferent to you — that children have a bet- ter memory than you about all things, but especially for and against you, and that you must protect them from the dangerous appearance of your own innocent, over-hasty untruthfulness. The author has occasionally asked himself whether children's sense of truth may not be injured by the acting of charades and little comedies. Besides the necessary excitement of instant creation, children's charades have also this advantage over children's comedies, — that mere charades are only a higher imitation of the puppet games which children, even at an earlier age, played TRUTHFULNESS. 309 extempore with their dolls and their companions, with- out any injury to truthfulness ; as if, even then, they would take refuge from the cold winds of real life behind the shelter of imaginary life. In charades the child lives, — at once poet and player ; in a strange character, it is true, but still not in a borrowed one, and uttering the words prompted by the eager moment. In plays he coldly learns by heart the representation {simulatio) of a character, and certain words, in order afterwards to give a lively representation of both. Truth has also this advantage in charades ; that the child must, at all events, reply from his own mind to the changing questions of the time ; whereas, in a learnt comedy, he brings with him every answer, prepared for weeks. And since even great actors do not consider the advantage to be gained by pure, universal human nature, without regard to artistic effect, as the matter of chief importance, we should exempt children from an exercise in which the advantage is more doubtful than the injury. Our ancestors magnified every lie into perjury, by always pointing out to children the universal presence of God : and why should not this warning, which converts every promise into an oath, and doubles the sin while rendering it more difficult of commission to a conscience alive to the Divinity, be still held up to children ? Finally, since truthfulness, as a conscious virtue and sacrifice, is the blossom, nay, the pollen, of the whole moral growth, it can only grow with its growth, and open when it has reached its height. You have only to keep away weeds while you give it freedom, save it from overpowering temptations, and forbid all soul-bend- ing customs (such as obliging a child to return thanks for a whipping, and to make compliments to strangers). 3IO LEVANA. CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. §116. I SAID, in the hundred and third section, that love is the second hemisphere of the moral world, that it turns to what is external, as honor does to what is internal, and so forth. The holy essence of love has been fathomed neither by the fraternity of novelists, who, like selfish women, mingle regard to self with the beloved object, nor by merely intellectual philosophers, who view its depth partly as an instinct utterly without and below their categorical imperative, (law of morals,) partly as mere justice, a kind of rational regard ; to such men love and poetry seem a pair of superfluous wings, disfiguring the useful arms behind which they are placed. Only Plato, Hemsterhuis, Jacobi, Herder, and a few like them, have brought to the love of wisdom (philosophy) the wisdom of love. He who called love the positive law of morality will, at least, not be con- demned by one great man, — by Jesus Christ, the founder of the first religion of love, in the midst of a Judaism inimical to all other nations, and an age inimical to phi- lanthropy. But the essence of love — this all-sustaining deity, the true divine unity of all, in which the individual soul feels more than it comprehends — demands another place for examination. § 117. Love is an innate, but variously apportioned, power and warmth of the heart ; there are cold and warm- EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 311 blooded souls as well as bodies. Many are born knights of the Love of their Neighbor,* as Montaigne ; many- are armed neutrals against humanity. Whether this power be a holy, burning bush, or only a single kindling spark, education must care for it in two ways, — by pro- tecting and by developing it. By protecting it I mean this. The child begins with selfishness, which affects us as little as that of animals ; because the soul, darkly hidden under its various wants, cannot yet feel its way to another, but incorporates others, so to speak, with itself. In so far the child finds nothing lifeless without, any more than within, itself; it spreaas its soul as a universal soul over everything. A little girl of two years old — and all children do the same — personified other things than those I mentioned in the earlier part of this work : she said, for instance, of the door which was opened, " It wants to go out." — " I will kiss my hand to the spring." — " Is the moon good ? and does it never cry ? " This animation of all lifeless things, which is peculiar to children, is another reason why we should restrain them from ever harshly alluding to an inanimate object. § 118. Love in the child, as in the animal, exists as an instinct ; and this central fire frequently, but not always, breaks through its outer crust in the form of compassion. A child is often indifferent, not merely to the sufferings of animals, and to those of persons unconnected with himself, (except when the cry of pain finds an echo in his own heart,) but even to those of relatives. Inno- * The order of knighthood to which I allude was founded by the Queen of Charles III. of Spain. 312 LEVANA. I cent children will frequently find pleasure in standing on the place where another is to be punished. A sec- ond observation, founded on experience, is, that boys, when approaching near to manhood, show the least af- fection, the most love of teasing, the greatest destructive- ness, the most selfishness and cold-heartedness ; just as the coldness of the night increases twofold shortly before the rising of the sun. But the sun comes, and warms the world ; the super- abundance of power becomes love ; the strong stem encloses and protects the pith ; the teasing lad becomes the affectionate young man. The other observation of childish heartlessness, recorded above, vanishes in the very opposite quality of -tenderness, so soon as the visi- ble pain of the culprit, by its increase, affects the child ; every fresh wound makes a tearful eye. Consequently, there is not so much need to ingraft the buds of affection, as to remove the moss and briers of selfishness which hide them from the sun. Every- body would gladly show affection, might he, or dared lie, but do it. Wherever a pulse beats, a heart reposes in the background ; if there be but some little impulse towards love, the whole essence of love lies behind it. But you plant the selfish weed, instead of eradicating it, if, in the presence of children, you pass contemptuous, though just, judgments on your neighbors, or even your town. How else can the child learn to love the world, than by learning to love what is daily around him ? And can we love what we despise ? Or will your sermons warm him into love for the objects you have taught him to scorn ? Since every distinction of your children above their neighbors, whether it consists in position, behavior, or even more brilliant instruction, reminds EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 313 them of themselves at the expense of others, this dis- tinction very soon and very easily passes into hatred. Never say to your children that other children are ill brought up. I have frequently seen whole famihes con- verted, by similar thoughtless and perverse actions, into watchful and blockading troops of hatred ; whole houses built full of pouting-corners, where every child, full of itself, regarded its own demands as the weights, those of others as the goods to be weighed, and expected uni- versal love and admiration. If a large town have the injurious effect on children's hearts of compelling them to assume the neutrality of great people, because so many of whom they are ignorant, and to whom they are indif- ferent, constantly pass before them, much more must a village harm them, if they hate and despise as many people as they know, that is to say, everybody. The simple command, " Forgive the sinner," means, with children. Do not regard him as one : you will suc- ceed better if you teach them to distinguish the guilty accomplice, — self, from its stains ; to judge the deed, not the doer ; in order, especially, by the comparison of things and rights, to prevent, or to exalt, the comparison of persons. Praise the action, not the child. Parents mention their children too often by name. Do not say, <' Ah, the good little Louisa ! " but gay, " That is good," — or, at most, " You are as good as Mary." §119. But while setting forth the repression of selfishness as the one thing needful for exciting kindliness to others, w^e must observe — as is just — that love requires nothing, save not to be obstructed. This leads us to the second means of maintaining and exciting love : it is this, — 14 ip.j I.KVANA. pIlUT uiiollirt' Ix'itii' ill tiHii-K-iitly cIomc mikI li\iii<^ «■oti- ilU^t will) your cliiM, iiiitl In- will lo\ r i|. ; hrcniiMt' intin Im HO fJi;o(>(l, liuil IIk^ Drvil, mo I«> Mpnik, luiM «»lily ('Mrv«^! mikI pliu'c«! M. Miivk iVimir i-onnd (lu^ divinr iinuj^o. Tlir sltiii of llio iiitliv idiiitl lirMil iKMiriilMVM wtlli llio umiim' mm|» its own lunnclirM Mini (Iiomo wliicli ur(* iiii-Mnllcd on i(. 'I'lii' iiiniuM ol rvriliii«.'; lovr roiiHiMt in idciiliryin«'; IIh' «'slrjuirous lil'r, liy which MIon(^ Ihc i^oodiMMM ol' our niiliitr can nnrold nil ilH lo\o, lilllc nmlM hrrr Ix- |)i-intrd, hrrtniMr 1 h.'iM- nlrcMUiy piinlrd nnith nltonl il.* Indivitlnals, v«'M. wln>l(> imtioiiM, hM\(^ oi'liMi died w ilhoni Iima in^ onci« (^vcn Ihon^lil, of (luiniu'ivrM in nny ollirr poiilion thiin lh(r lor lli<- child lo pliu'c hiiiiMcH' in the poMition ol oilier.« ! IMttn iiMinlly opciiM hiinscH' lo th«> nMM>pli(»ii of MiH»lhcf'n nnlnro only, when, in (he con {{"M h(>lwc»n (woollier per, «»ii.i, he iuiimI (iMnMpost> him- M(di' iVoin lh(> one in(o (he olher ; htH nol, when ho iM M pMtMy concerned in (he coiiIcmI, hy plucin}^ hliusrir in (h<> pONi(ion of lii.^ opponen(. INhut'ON or, (Ins r(>preNen( nllvo n»e(h(»d of yicwin,", oiir nei IimI (o nllnin linn in(ni(iy«^ pcr(M'p(ion m( an cMilier period ihnn llwy els«^ would, hy c«M(Min ji^Mnu>H : w lien> on(> child, hu' iiiMlMtice, MSMinned (ho nninOi tout in»i(n(od Ihi^ nctitniM, ol' nnother ; (»r, by ooloro«! pi<"- tiiros, (ns. Hut tluM-o Ik H(»nn>(hinj.'; (dso which may h«^ dono to altain this «Mid, with Judder hope of stunn^ss. * It) (lio IMhoi' SU.l.onlv.lH. lioolv I. !^ 120. It i.H thin: Uuch a ciiiM t/» /■orr.i'hT ji.ll ;ifnfnfil Wi'r. HUC.rcA, — in »hort, j^ivo him I.Ik-. Ik-'uI, of n. Hindoo, not ihf-, \u'nri tfi' n (InrtcAUiu \>\t'i\i>'U>]t\\<:r. f \inn', npi'fiU of «ofrM'.t.hin^ hij/li'-.r fhan '•ofnpn.'.-.ion for nriirnfilt, tiio«;/li of tfiat uIho. Why han if< \kuh lonjr n-.- rriark anifrial.H pr<;dif'J„«i r.nu'M.y lo rrx-.n, a- fli»- < )\i\ 'I'c-Xunti-.nl HfU'.niicA'M nc-: nifnilar fo hi?, own. ('on'.^.rjtjf-nfly, f.h»; unn.nnal cry of a l(,v\nn-A animal «onnfln fo him only lik<; i\u: Htmnjr*! and anirj^inj/ howl of th**. inanimate', wind; huf, ft« hf; «<;^.« life; and voluntary motion, anrl cvt^i aM.rif)- nU'A U) th(',m jnnnimati'. form.««, Iif; p,\ui'M thfj (ihild, in ffutf, know of dJflWr- r hard winj^w'/>v*jr?t, the.re.fon-, any fh*-- h;SH a l;»-.arf, ? rf;rmit m<; « fi-.w wordn fif>ont, ilic lov<-, of animal;, and riniv*'THal n.vcrciwc ihr life:! ()ft(.(:, w\i(:ti man, a n*-,w and fr^.^h crcsiUirc, lived in the, full worl the, earth and v.e.;i, ftf;ind,H Uiiu \ fifwl ntrtfti^ with a trunk of hujfe, jx/we.rful f>*;a4t.j<, .a«hr>.*'.u that, ntupid hnman e.^oti.^'.m whie.h 3l6 LEVANA. thinks that the whole animal kingdom, the peopled seas and deserts full of all their various happy living creatures, were given by God to men as tributary beasts, Michael- mas geese and tithe hens for their stomachs. The earth, Kepler's animal, had not yet become the metallic cow and the Balaam's ass of little man. But the old van- ished world, — some remnants of which are yet visible in Eastern India, — finding more life and more divinity in the flower, fast chained by its roots, than we now do in the free-moving beast, worshipped, in animal arabesques, in the living, moving, distorted images of the human form, the infinite Raffaelle who perfected man. The forms of animals repulsive to us revealed to them the veil of Isis, or the Moses' covering of a deity. Hence the lower, but wonderful, beast * was worshipped much sooner than the human being; hence the Egyptians crowned human bodies with the heads of animals. The more childlike, simple, and pious a nation, the greater its love of animals. In Surat there is an hospital for animals. The hero who had taken Nineveh, saved it from destruction, because of the multitude of its animals. The mercifulness of the Jews t towards animals w^as rewarded with long life. Even the punishment of animals, if they had participated with men in any crime, the thunders of excommunication hurled against them, and the weighing of their designs J in inflicting punishment, show the early regard felt for these eighth parts and likenesses of man. The Indian adoration of vegetable life passed into Greece, under * Vide Meiners. t Michaalis, Mosaic law, v, iii. I An ox which, among the Jews (according to the Gemara), was put to death for killing a Jew, but left unhurt after killing three heathens, was equally unpunished if he aimed at goring a heathen, but killed a Jew. — Mischna, 6. Bafa kama, c. 4. EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 317 the form of Hamadryads and other deities dwelhng in trees, and into the north under the form of punishment to all who injured trees. I have often pictured to myself situations which would remove the common daily view of animals, which, like misshapen human bodies, have fallen on to our globe from other worlds producing different forms. For in- stance ; I have fancied an uninhabited island, on which one man, nourished only by the bread-fruit-tree, had seen no living thing, nothing but waves and sky and his own reflection in the water, and from which he was suddenly transported to a country peopled with animated beings. What an enchanted island full of embodied sprites and fairies ! To the islander, who knows no other form than his own, a hairy monkey grinning at him from a bough would seem a wicked spirit, or a misshapen man. The elephant approaches, — a shapeless living mass, a whole family compressed into one huge two-eyed body, — a Avalking island of flesh : the lion comes like anger : the horse flies like victorious pride : little mad sprites, red, green, yellow, and six-footed, flutter about the island. A glorious wonder drops from the clouds, in which the two strong useful human arms are changed into burnished gold hair or feathers, and its lips drawn out into a horn. Gray, shapeless substances, with scarce formed limbs, swim in the waters : yellow creatures, like the masks of the furies, crawl about in the marshes : a single long, smooth limb creeps up and pricks the wicked spirit on the bough, and he falls down : and then, when these strange dream-like figures began to speak each the lan- guage of an unknown world, — as we might suppose the various nations of its planets assembled in the market- 3l8 LEVANA. place of their sun, — humming, screaming, howling, laughing, — there, on the bough of a tree, sweet sounds, froii\ heaven, at its root wrathful hissings from Erebus : and then the battles and struggles of these animals, the injuries inflicted on them by each other, and yet their continued existence : and, finally, this mingled, fluttering, hurting, killing, caressing, reproducing life becomes an infinite breath of life, wherein the individual life flies like a tiny zephyrette .... The one human soul forgets in itself the human race of the past, the present, and the future, and places itself as the first figure before all others. How much more does it forget the inferior race of animals, the mouches volanles before an angel's eyes ! The so-called instinct of animals — this ass which per- ceives the angel's presence sooner than the prophet — ought to be regarded as the greatest miracle of creation, and also as the key and index to all other miracles ; in so much as the riddle of the universe resembles those riddles which both describe the riddle and signify it. Animals should be rendered familiar to children in every possible way ; for instance, by representing them as an anagram of a human being : thus the poor dog may be regarded as an old hairy man, whose mouth has become blackened and elongated, his ears pulled out, long nails appended to his shaggy paws, and so forth. Little animals must be brought nearer to the eye and heart by means of a mag- fying-glass. Thus we may become the friends of the denizens of a leaf. The prejudice which values life by the yard — why, then, are not elephants and whales ranked higher than ourselves ? — disappears by the con- templation of the infinity which is the same in every living creature, and, like an infinite series in numbers, is increased by no finite additions; which is not affected, EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 319 for instance, by the two million joints of a centipede, or the many thousand muscles of the willow-caterpillar. " How you would take care of a butterfly as big as an eagle, or of a grasshopper as large as a horse ! And are not you little too ? " Speak thus to the child ! Leibnitz replaced a little insect which he had exam- ined for a long time uninjured on its leaf: be this a com- mand for a child. The Stoic school declared, that a man who killed a fowl without any reason would just as readily kill his father: and the Egyptian priest considered it impious to destroy any animal except for sacrifice. These embody all the commandments of regard for life. Let animals be put to death only from necessity, as sacri- fices, accidentally, hastily, involuntarily, defensively. If the long observation of some animal, — say a frog, — of its breathing, jumping, mode of life, and agonies, have converted this little animal, previously indifferent to the child, into a really living thing, he would by kilhng it destroy with its life his reverence for all life. Hence no domestic animal, a sheep, a cow, should ever be killed in a child's presence ; at all events, if his rising love of ani- mals is to be encouraged, instead of repressed (as some nations have been led to eat men from eating monkeys) ; the hard necessity of the case, the careful tending pre- viously, and the sudden, easy death, must be cast as a veil of darkness over the slaughtering hand. Even a hunter should never punish his hounds with true hunter's cruelty before a child, especially, because their cries express their pain so clearly. Cooks say you should show no pity in killing an animal, for else it dies harder : this superstition at once reveals and hides the true woman's sympathy, which it forbids. To the child's eye, admit all living things into the 320 LEVANA. human family; so the greater reveals to him the less. Breathe a living soul into everything ; and even describe the lily, which he wantonly tears from its organic exist- ence, as the daughter of a fair mother who stands in the bed and nourishes her little white child with sap and dew. I do not refer to any mere empty exercise of compas- sion in the school of others' sufferings, but to an exercise of religion in the consecration of life, of the deity ever present in the trees and in the human brain. The love of animals, like maternal love, arises from no expectation of reciprocated advantage, still less from selfishness, and has the further advantage of always finding an object on which to manifest itself. Oh! the beautiful time will, must come, when the beast-loving Brahmins shall dwell in the cold north and make it warm ; when the heart, having rejected its worst and cruellest sins, shall also lay aside those which slowly poison it ; when man, who now honors the multiform part of humanity, shall also begin to spare, and finally to pro- tect, in the present, the animated ascending and descend- ing scale of living creatures, so as no more to offer to the Great First Cause the hateful sight of, it is true, thickly veiled, but wide-extended, animal suffering. And where- fore must such times come ? Because worse times have passed away : time carries away the national debts (mostly bloody debts) of humanity : strand-right is now strand-wrong ; the trafiic in negroes is gradually becom- ing unlawful. Only the toughest, harshest barbarism of past ages — war — remains yet to be vanquished by our innate anti-barbarism. § 121. The third love-potion, like the third degree of com- EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 321 parison which admits of no more, is love for love. If love be the highest, what further can it seek than itself, the highest ? A heart can only be held by a heart, the fairest setting of the loveliest jewel. Only the tumult and confusion in the nest of self can so darken us that we value pure love for another less than that for ourselves. But do not attempt to found this love in children by caresses, the thirsty springs of love. These soon both grow cold and make cold. I have often seen children, especially young ones, suddenly start away from the caresses of love to the quietest observation of some mere trifle, just like the old epic poets of early nations in their descriptions. In grown-up persons, that would betray a withered heart which in children only shows that its buds are still closed. You reveal the form of love to a child less by self- sacrificing actions — for these he, as yet unreasoning and selfish, does not regard — than by the mother tongue of love, affectionate words and looks. Love, to appear un- troubled, must be embodied in nothing save the tender mimicry taught by Nature herself; a look, a word, ex- presses it directly, a gift only indirectly, by translation. And just so in marriage : love is not preserved by gifts, pleasures, and sacrifices, whose influence soon disappears, but by words and looks of love. Moreover, children manifest more love towards present-giving strangers than to present-giving parents ; but, on the contrary, not so much to caressing strangers as to caressing parents. Let the child occasionally see the fiery pillar of love move before strangers. Contemplation of the mutual love of others sanctifies the beholder, because it cannot be accompanied by selfish desires. But there is one evil 14 v u 322 LEVANA. attending this ; namely, that the undeveloped hearts of children either behold the altar-flame of others' love with indifference, or frequently, if their parents kindle it, even with jealousy. But this only teaches us that in educa- tion, as well as in art, every violent expression, even of what is most excellent, must be shunned (because the injudicious excess makes a durable impression, but the beautiful fugitive idea is lost), and that quietness and gentleness reflect the affectionate , heart most clearly. And I can assure brides, and still more certainly bride- grooms, that they will only find the children of affectionate parents affectionate ; and especially that a kind or an unkind father propagates love or hatred in his children. If love were not natural to us we could never hate. It is true that in us, as in other animals, hate manifests itself earlier, and at first more powerfully than love. This may in part be thus accounted for : in attraction or resemblance some portion of another's excellence is lost to sight by its mixture with our own, whereas the repul- sion of what is dissimilar at once markedly separates our good from others' evil qualities ; the heart, full of ideal light, feels the cold shadow of another's worthlessness more sensibly than the light which is lost in the blaze of his own. But if love is innate, and if the heart is, as Descartes calls the earth, an incrusted sun {soleil encroute), you have but to break away the crust, and the glowing warmth is there. In other words, let the child learn to know love by his own actions, as reversedly, to understand your actions by love ; that is to say, let him do something for you so that he may love something ; for in children action awakens desire, though the opposite is the case with men. You may teach a higher than Ovid's Art of Love, by EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. 323 requesting your child to do something without command- ing, or rewarding performance, or punishing neglect ; only depict beforehand, if it is for another, or afterwards if for yourself, the pleasure which the little actor's atten- tion to your wish affords. You excite the benevolence of children less by pictures of people's necessities than of the joy produced by relieving them. For the little heart conceals so great a treasure of love, that he is less defi- cient in willingness to make sacrifices than in the cer- tainty that they would give pleasure. Hence, when children have once begun to make presents they would never cease giving. The parents may give them the reward of certain happiness by a gladly praising ap- proval ; an educational lever whose powder has not been sufficiently estimated. For children, accustomed only to parental bidding and forbidding, are made happy by per- mission to do some extra service, and by the recognition of their having done it. This affectionate acknowledg- ment of pleasure renders them neither vain nor empty, but full ; not proud, but w^arm. " It does the poor man, or dog, or whatever it may be, good, or harm." These few words, said in a proper tone of voice, are worth a whole sermon : and fie ! said to a girl, will abundantly fill the place of half a volume of Ehrenberg's Lectures to the female sex. Moreover, the author does not attempt to hide from the police, that, in the presence of his children, he has frequently given to beggars ; first, because the appear- ance of cruelty cannot be removed by any political rea- sons, nor is attempted to be ; and, secondly, because a child's heart, excited by compassion for suffering, should not be chilled. Yet a few frasrments within the frasrment ! Do not 324 LEVANA. apprehend too great clanger to the affections from cliil- dren's quarrels. The circumscribed heart of children, their incapacity to place themselves in another's position, and their Adam-like innocence of belief that the whole world is made for them, not they for the world ; all these things combine to raise the inflated bubbles which soon break of themselves. They may speak harshly, or even fly into a passion, with one another, but must not continue it ! You must do many more things to be hated than to be loved by children : hated parents must themselves have hated for a long time. Advancing years rarely awaken a repressed or dormant love ; the individual's own selfishness doubles that of others, and this again redoubles that ; and so layer upon layer of ice is frozen. You falsify love by commanding its outward expression ; — kissing the hand, for instance. Such things, unlike kind actions, are not the causes, but only the effects, of love. Do not in any instance require love : among grown-up persons would a declaration of affection, if commanded and prescribed by the highest authorities, be well received ? It may be again repeated, without de- serving blame, that the quickest alternation between pun- ishment or refusal and previous love is the true, though (to the fair sex) a difficult art of educating the affections. No love is sweeter than that which follows severity ; so from the bitter olive is sweet, soft oil expressed. And, finally, ye parents, teach to love, and you will need no ten commandments ; teach to love, and a rich, winning life is opened to your child : for man (if this simile be permitted) resembles Austria, which increases its territory by marriage, but loses its acquisitions by war: teach to love, in this age, which is the winter of time, and which can more easily conquer everything than a heart APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 325 by a heart ; teach to love, so that when your eyes are old, and their sense almost extinguished, you may yet find round your sick-couch and dying-bed no greedy, covetous looks, but anxious weeping eyes, which strive to warm your freezing hfe, and lighten the darkness of your last hour by thanks for their first : teach to love, I repeat j that means, — do you love ! CHAPTER IV. SUPPLEMENTARY APPENDIX TO MORAL EDUCATION. § 122. WHAT is the third which unites love and honor, which does not suffer love weakly to sacrifice the sacred rights of the individual soul, nor honor to disre- gard that of others in the cold contemplation of its own ? — Religion. Since every distinguishing quality is again subdivided, we find that the natural distinctions of the sexes, the one inclining more to honor, the other to love, are repeated in the same sex. This is a very important point in female education. One girl is all quickness of perception and action, full of truthfulness and impatience, her personal and her public honor is ever before her eyes, — forgiving only her own severity, not that of others, but even that, more readily than any unworthy attack on her honor, — reflecting on her own worth rather than duly weighing it, placing justice higher than love, and so forth. Another girl is full of affection, often even to the prejudice of her 326 LEVANA. honor, desirous of approbation, not proud, less obedient to the dictates of propriety than to inclination, sacrificing external form to internal sentiment, eager to lend assist- ance and sympathy, less truthful than patient, and so forth. A perfect soul is to be formed from the union of these two. Hardness of character in a woman is more easily corrected than want of honor in a man : a woman's want of honor is as difficult to correct as a man's harshness. A boy utterly without honor and a girl without love deserve nothing else at the end of ten years than to be married to each other. The female sex, however, re- sembles the ocean, or water in general, which contains both greater and smaller beasts than the firm land. Since a theory of education is a moral science of food (dietetics), but not a science of healing, receipts against anger, selfishness, &c. find no place in my treatise, though they are, indeed, implied in what has gone be- fore. And, truly, what a work of giant folios must be written to embrace a description of all the diseases, and all the remedies for the million shades of disease, which the combinations of different characters and years, va- rious degrees of activity, and external circumstances can produce ! The technical part of morality, such as order, clean- liness, politeness, has already found teachers in larger books than this. It is well that a treatise on education be occasionally written in pamphlet-form, and completed in three little volumes. Long talking begets short hearing, for people go away. An educational library — unless, indeed, a pocket library be invented — would soon cause men to attend to the first plan which offered itself, rather than be at the trouble of readinj]^ a whole host of books. APPENDIX ON MOEAL EDUCATION. 327 §123. But a few more paragraphs may be added without too much endangering the smallness of the book, or the facility of reading it. "Would you devote hours to moral instruction ? I would rather recommend years, and a never-ending course of that study. No lesson here avails but that founded on living facts, and even it is but as one incident in a fable. Advancing life is a perpetual preacher, home a domestic chaplain, and, instead of morning and evening prayers, life-long prayers must exert their influence. Sciences can be taught ; so in them you may give lessons : genius can only be aroused ; provide it, then, with motives and opportunities. Can the heart of a corpse send forth living blood ? — The heart is the genius of virtue ; mo- rality its theory of sestheties. If you wish anything to be forgotten, write it on the inner side of the study door ; if you want to desecrate the holy, hang a table of com- mandments perpetually before the eyes. Lavater said, " Every man has his Devil's moments." Consequently be not lost in surprise if the child also have his Satan's seconds as well as angel's minutes. Rather despair of grown men than of children. For these confuse you so much by the beautiful revelation of all their feelings and desires, and by their unpremeditated echo of all sounds, that the key-note remains unknown to you. With the former, on the contrary, one treble-discord presupposes an instrument thoroughly out of tune. And yet again : if a man be so unfathomable to a man, how much more so must his unequal, a child, be, which not merely conceals its fruit in its leaves, but those in their buds, and within them the flowers. Hence when new and necessary de- velopments take place, even though they be for the worse, 328 LEVANA. do not blame previous innocent mistakes in the plan of education. For instance ; however much you endeavor to conceal and repress the long-dormant sexual instinct, it will yet finally start up armed where you least expect it, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. I think that we parents, especially we modern parents, separate our children too anxiously from other children ; as gardeners do flowers to preserve the pollen unmixed. Can we very highly value any good or lovely thing which withers at the slightest touch ? If we have educated truly and implanted right principles in a child until his sixth year, a few bad examples will not so much drive away what is good as fan it into new life : if the water in the tea-urn be really boiling, a little spirit flame will keep it 80 all tea-time. Not the badness, but the long continuance, of examples injures children. And, again, the examples of strange children and indifferent people have less effect than those of the persons they most respect, — their parents and teachers; because the latter, like the exter- nal conscience of children, so break or darken their internal conscience, that the Devil finds it prepared for his residence. Yes, I go still further, and declare the preponderating influence of a good example over a bad one — or the vic- tory of the angel Michael over the Devil — to be so great, that I believe the poor children of a thoroughly unmar- riage-like union, where one parent is the ally of the Devil, and the other of the angel, will be gathered hardly, and at great cost, but all the more certainly under the white flag. The younger the children are, the more rapidly may we pass before them from jest to earnest ; for they do so themselves. All their modes of going from one thing to APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 329 another are leaps. How quickly they forget and forgive ! Then do so to them, especially in cases of punishment, and always inflict short punishments, so that they may never be thought unfounded and unjust. God be thanked for the memory of children, which is less retentive of sorrows than of joys ! Else what a prickly chain, formed by the uninterrupted series of punishments, would surround these little beings ! But children are capable of being delighted twenty times even on the worst of days. It is as difficult to arouse them from their sweet, godlike slumber by do- mestic or European wars as to awaken flowers out of their sleep by noise and motion. God grant the dear little ones may awake, like the flowers, to feel the sunshine and behold the day ! There are confused, obstinate hours, in which the child positively cannot pronounce certain words, nor obey cer- tain commands ; but he will do so the next hour. Do not consider this as stubbornness. I know men who have labored for years to get rid of some expression of the face, mode of writing, or odd word, to which they have become habituated, without any particular result. Apply this to children, who are often commanded to abandon some thousand habits at once, and do not exclaim so bit- terly against their disobedience, which is often nothing but the impossibility of an overburdened attention. The fruits of the right education of the first three years (a higher triennium than the academic) cannot be reaped during the sowing ; — and you will often be unable to understand why, after doing so nuicli, so much still re- mains to be done ; — but in a few years the growing har- vest will surprise and reward you ; for the numerous earthy crusts which covered the flower-shoots, but did not crush them, have at last burst before them. 330 LEVANA. §124. Physical nature makes many little steps before taking a leap, and then begins the same process over again : the law of continuity is animated by the law of advancing and retreating efforts. The truth of this assertion is shown in almost every instance of physical development. But the mind must always be the companion of the body ; it is the strophe, the other the antistrophe, though occasionally their positions are reversed. The heavy clouds of the body must break in thunder-showers ; the growth of the physical powers must produce growth in the mental powers also ; and they, again, necessitate the former. But then the teacher stands petrified, to behold a new inimical — really friendly — division in the child's nature, and believes the former world to have vanished, because a new world has sprung into existence. Accus- tomed to the old, he would rather see the child's growth a mere growing old ; in short, he would wish it to be always the same, or, at most, to exhibit no greater change than that from the print to the colored painting : — the child must not drop his first seed-leaves in the beams of the sharp-cutting world, but yet must push forth new growing leaves. But since this can never be ; since every appli- cation of the flute to the lips produces a new incorporeal sound, the teacher ought to be of good courage, and only say, " The parts developed last must grow upon the first, and why need I fear for these, if there is nothing I would wish to recall in the others ? " § 125. Parents possess a very easy and excellent means of preaching, and at the same time interesting and improv- ing their children, by relating to them how they passed APPENDIX ON MOPvAL EDUCATION. 331 their own childhood with their parents. Independent of all other considerations, whatever is little is, on that very account, most pleasing to a child, himself a little thing ; tlie author's children have sometimes begged him for a little sea, nay, even for a little God. Now if the father or mother will descend from their lofty height, and speak of themselves, the parents, as having once been children, the little people can scarcely comprehend it, and look, with the anxious desire of learning, into the diminishing glass in which their present giant-parents move about as little children. There they see grandparents now com- mand little parents, and the very people obey whom now the child has to obey. In this relation he will only dis- cover the continuation of a previously acquired right, not of a mere accident ; — here he finds that his father com- mands now what formerly, when a child, he obeyed ; that he dearly loved, and Avas dearly loved by his parents, in whose breast the little grandchild now nestles all the more closely and warmly from the recollection of former love. Since the history of his parents' childhood must have so fresh and unceasing interest for the child, how great a weight and charm may there not be given by means of this interest to every word, every instruction, and, in short, to everything embraced in that relation ? If it chance that parents, thus describing their own life, were brought up as children in other circumstances, in other dwelling-places, the seed-field of instruction is vastly ex- tended. In short, parents in relating the incidents of their own childhood simply and truly may lay seeds, which in the warm soil of their children's childhood will grow and bear fruit. Even the little faults of their parents, and the consequent punishments of the grandparents, will not in relation lessen the children's reverence for their parents, 332 LEVANA. unless its foundation be grievously hollow, and the super- structure most poorly built. We have here approached so very near the question, What are the best kind of stories for children ? that we may as well reply to it forthwith. Oriental and romantic tales seem the most suitable ; such as many of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, Herder's Palm-Leaves, and Krum- macher's Parables. Children are little Orientals. Dazzle them with the wide plains of the East, with brilliant dew- drops, and bright-tinted flowers. Give them, at least in stories, the impulse which shall carry them over our cold northern rocks and North Capes, into the warm gardens of the south. Let your first miracle be, like Christ's, a turning of water into wine, of fact into poetry. Therefore do not shut up everything you permit to approach your child in a pulpit, with a sermon before it, nor suffer that morbid seeking after " the moral," which deforms most printed children's tales, and by which, precisely when they are on the way to the highest, they lose the path ; just as Charles XII. of Sweden generally lost at chess, because he moved out his king. Every good tale, like every good poem, is necessarily surrounded with instruc- tion. But the important thing is, — to paint a romantic morning-glow on the earth-kissing sky which, as age ad- vances, may deepen into a pure evening-red. Tell of ter- rible wild beasts, but let them be always at last overcome — (still let children be the most frequent actors on your stage) — also of long caverns, which lead to heavenly gardens, — of being happy, and of making happy, — of great dangers, and still more wonderful deliverances, — and even the strange adventures of mischievous children ; but always remember in your tales that tears are sooner drawn from children than smiles. For instance, the APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 333 author has frequently carried this so far as to represent tlie infant Christ* (he never even mentioned a Rupert*) seated on the moon, surrounded with none but good chil- dren ; and the evening glow in the December sky he could only account for by supposing it the reflection of the carriages full of Christmas gifts. In after years, when the children gaze upon the moon, and the redness of the evening sky, a wonderful dehght will gently fill their souls, and they will not know what strange ethereal air they breathe : the morning breeze of your childhood fans you, my children ! These fictions, when translated into reality, lead to no accusations of parental untruthfulness, as our own exam- ples,! and those of our forefathers, else grounded fast in truth, abundantly prove. And after all this, shall not the freedom which makes children citizens of the divine city of romance, not open for them the theatre : I do not mean that where comedies and tragedies are played, which only stun, excite, or de- ceive them, nor yet the little stage where they are them- selves the actors, — but the opera-house ? Does not the opera reveal romantic fairy-land to their eyes, and yet, by the impossibility of understanding the singing, which throws a wholesome darkness over the intrigue, preserve their ears from every moral taint ? And does not what is glaringly low in close connection with what is noble (as, for instance, in the Zauberflöte), like the union of a mon- * Vide previous notes. t The rosy pictures yet bloom in the author's heart, which his father once painted there, on coming out of the study into the De- cember twilight, with the insignificant words, he had seen the infant Christ with golden beams pass through the dark night clouds. Who now covild replace for him this rosy blessed beam, this heavenly treas- ure still shining in the clouds V 334 LEVANA. key and a nun, strengthen the love for excellence, and the detestation of depravity ? It seems to me that the opera, this acting, living fairy-tale, which the music makes metri- cal, and the brilHant scenery romantic, might change the heavy plough-like motion and creaking of the present into smooth flying, and is all the more necessary, because prose may be taught, but not poetry, and wings can more easily find feet than feet wings. At the same time, these sug gestions are offered rather interrogatively than affirma- tively ; since you may venture everything, and replace everything more easily than a child's innocence. § 126. I would wish to say a few words about long journeys for children. Short ones of a few weeks are with justice considered to be physically and mentally improving trans- plantations of these young trees ; because the exchange of their old dull corner for the wide, airy landscape full of different people and new customs must necessarily en- liven and improve them. But something very different are children's travels with town-dwellers and land-scourers, who make the grand tour of half Europe, — (an expedition through his native town is one to a child,) — during which the daily transplanted tree is merely exhausted. If even grown-up people bring back from their journeys round the world full heads and empty hearts ; because daily walks through streets full of men only presenting the gauntlet, or, at all events, never offering a brother's kiss, must at last make the heart as cold as life at court does, where, as in a country-dance, the dancer goes down the middle, and up again, giving his hand indifferently to all ; how much must early long journeys — bringing only the ripe- ness of autumn to matured men — destroy a child by pro- APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 335 ducing such ripeness in spring. Living long in close con- nection with the same people cherishes in children the warmth of the affections. The uniform sameness of people, dwellings, play-grounds, and even domestic fur- niture, hangs lovingly on a child, and strengthens that magnetic attraction, as a weight does suspended from a magnet : and thus in the spring-time of life is prepared the rich magnetic burst of the future affections, because the child naturally learns to love what he daily sees, — an easy matter in a village, — the hewer of wood for the family, the woman carrier, old Peter, who comes every Saturday to beg for Sunday ; yes, even the more distin- guished persons of his acquaintance w4io live far away. With a childhood full of affection we may endure half a life in the cold world. If, now, instead of such environ- ments, a child be taken on long journeys, — say half over Europe, — and must, since it is impossible to pack up market-places with their inhabitants in the carriage, or to crowd them into the hotels of large cities, every day fall upon new people, new rooms, new servants, new guests, towards whom it is impossible, from mere lack of time, for the young heart to experience any burst of sympathy : — what, then, can grow out of this little creature ? A courtier without a court, cool, polite, elegant, languid, ennuye, sweet and pretty. §127. Since in appendices, as in prefaces, things may be repeated which are contained in the book, I say, again, let there be rules for children ; it is immaterial what, but only as the centre of innumerable rays ! Law is unity, miity is deity. The Devil only is changeable. Unity of rule at once strengthens and controls both the too deli- 336 LEVANA. cately sensitive girl and the rough, active boy ; for tlie very same reason that we patiently endure the discomfort of frost, and the unbroken desolateness of the earth in winter, whereas a few snow-flakes in spring make us angry and gloomy : only because in winter the white enamel of snow is the rule, but in spring the various tinted flowers. No command seems harsher than the new one ; no necessity, than that which is freshly im- posed. If you would picture to yourself the most unhappy and most unfortunately circumstanced child, think of one who has been brought up by chance merely, without rule, irritated and appeased without reason, — destitute of confidence in the future, — finding in every minute a driving storm, — wishing nothing else than the fulfilment of his momentary desires, — a ball thrown sportively from love to hate, — with sorrows that bring no strength, and joys which produce no love. Happily I see no such being near me ! Have not even unjust rules a beneficial tendency in producing obedience to rule ? When punishments were attached to the unin- tentional dropping of the hat, or even faUing in riding through the streets of a town, both happened much more rarely : and in brotherhoods or sisterhoods where every snorer is awakened, no one snores : and where punish- ment is threatened even for the accidental breaking of china, less is broken. But the threatening must be a year older than the fault or the punishment, else the rule fails. §128. Give reasons for your requests more readily, and even at an earlier period, than reasons for your assertions : in the first place, it is easier to teach obedience than under- APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 337 Standing ; in the second, a child's trust must never be weakened by reasons which only lead to doubt ; in the third, action requires external quickness, belief demands time ; and, in the fourth, the former is usually more opposed to previous wishes than the latter (for children are seldom orthodox) : at the same time that you smooth the way for your commands, as the French kings did, by gentle reasons, insist, like them, on obedience, if the reasons do not induce it. In a second edition of these rules, even as to giving reasons for commands, we find that the line must be drawn still tighter. Mothers, partly from kindness, partly from an inherent love of the healthy movement of the tongue, give as many rea- sons for their orders as may overcome the opposing arguments of the child ; and, if at last they should be unable to produce more, finish by asserting then* author- ity. It were better to have begun with it. And cer- tainly, after compliance, the reasons will find readier admittance into the open, impartial ears. This is most markedly the case in the earliest years ; each advancing year requires an additional reason. The united care, both for a child's obedience and freedom, is one of the most difiicult requirements of education. The parental breath must only move the branch towards the fructifying pollen, but not bend or break the trunk. § 129. Teachers generally desire an appendix to the chapter on moral education, containing a treatise on the preven- tion of sensual faults. Why do we find no such lamen- tations and remedies among the ancients or in the middle ages ? Must we suppose that the youth of those periods was better than the present ? Scarcely so. The reason 15 V 338 LEVANA. why so much more is said and taught about such matters now — always remembering, also, that books are now made, and a book-trade established, about every action — can only lie in this, that in the healthful past, as now among the vigorous commonalty, or unrestrained animals, many ill-regulated actions passed unpunished, because the fortifications of these unpolished times were not so easily demoHshed. But, at all events, the morbid, sickly imagination attendant on civilization is quite as much cause as effect ; to which must be added the temptations to these errors necessarily presented by large towns. Luther says, Conte^nptus frangit diaholum, ohservatio inflat ; which means, that to combat sin you must know it, and that is in itself a kind of defeat. A feeling of shame artificially taught before duly awakened by nature is a sewing together of the fig-leaves conducting to the fall, which in Eden they only covered. The modesty which naturally arises at a later period, is like the fig- tree itself, which only hides under its leaves the unripe fruit, which contains no j^oison. Many persons even say that a child sl^puld learn to be ashamed of seeing himself. Himself! Gracious heaven ! how much must the young mind have been poisoned before it would blush at the form it cannot change and did not choose ? before, in fact, it would blush at its Creator? To insure modesty I would advise the edu- cating of the sexes together ; for two boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girls twelve boys, innocent amidst wdnks, jokes, and improprieties, merely by that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of matured modesty. But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alone together, and still less where boys are. Boys do harm to boys far more than girls to girls ; for they are bolder. APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 339 opener, rougher, more sociable, more curious about mat- ters, as girls are about persons. The glass screens which teachers put before the mental eyes of children are part of the mistaken instruction in modesty ; a kind of incomprehensible covering of a cov- er, the sheep's clothing of a sheep. He who admits that he has a secret to keep has, by doing so, revealed one half of it, and the other will speedily follow. Children's questions about where a little baby comes from, show nothing whatever more than a blameless desire of know- ing and asking about strange things. A child's questions about his mother's confinement have no more sinister meaning than his asking why the sun, which goes to bed in the west, rises in the east. But if those about him attach a foolish mystification to the event, instinct, which lies in the background, united with accidental expressions, which he will treasure up, will prematurely clear away the darkness. To this really injurious secrecy belong such expressions as, " This is only for grown-up people," or, " When you are older, you will know all about it," &c. Secret articles always give rise to war ; and secret alliance with sin is not very far from secret instructions of this kind. But how is the questioning child to be answered ? "With as much truth as he wants : " As the little grub grows inside the nut, so the little infant grows within its mother, and is nourished by her flesh and blood ; hence she is ill," &c. Since children understand ten times less of what is said than we suppose, and, like grown-up people, ask a thousand times less about the final when they know the secondary cause, it will prob- ably be several years before the child again asks whence the little creature comes. Then give him this answer : 34° LEVANA. " From the great God, who sends these little babies to married people." We grown-up philosophers know nothing more about it ; and you say with perfect truth to the child, " A human being can carve a statue, or embroider a flower, but he can make no living thing that grows." How easily a child's curiosity may be restrained, and yet satisfied, is very clearly shown in the fact, that during the last three centuries millions of Christians have died who have regularly every Sunday heard that baptism took the place of the ancient Jewish rite of circumcision, and yet have never thought, far less asked, what circumcision is. Children learn and ask in the same way. The author received his first instruction in this article of Christian faith after eighteen years' study of Jewish works. One other remark may perhaps afford consolation to some parents : children at a certain age seem to have a particular inclination to do and to say improper things. This is sometimes very strangely manifested. I once heard some really pure-minded, good children beg their father to repeat some ugly words (referring to rudeness of speech more than anything else) which he had for- bidden them to use, because, they said, they liked to hear such words. Be not afraid, if you educate your children carefully, of evil results. In the case of healthy children, especially, you need have no fear ; but physical indisposition too easily induces a morbid sickli- ness of the mind. In short, if there be any time when one person's aid is needed in the development of another, it is when the ripening youth (or maiden) first discovers his new world of sex, when -the fresh-blooming man bursts away from the fading child. Happily Nature herself has provided APPENDIX ON MORAL EDUCATION. 341 a counterpoise to these seasonable spring-storms, by giving at the same time the hours of fairest dreams, of ideal excellence, and love for all that is greatest and best. The watchful teacher, also, may add a balancing weight to the heart, namely, the head ; that is, let him reserve for that season some new science, some new object of engrossing interest, some new path in life. It is true this will not extinguish the volcano ; but the lava pour- ing into this sea will merely harden into a rock, and less evil will be done than was dreaded. For, out of all the yawning precipices of this age, does not a majority of healthy living voices arise, which have not been silenced, and which do not utter complaints ? It is but a very lungs, without either mind or body, — mere unburied corpses of hovering ghosts. — May Heaven present them with a grave ! SEVENTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. More accurate Definition of the Desire for Intellectual Pro- gress, § 130. — Chap. II. Speech and Writing, H 131, 132. — Chap. III. Attention, and the Power of Adaptive Combination; Pestalozzi; Difference between Mathematics and Philosophy, §§ 133-135. — Chap. IV. Development of Wit, §§ 136-138. — Chap. V. Devel- opment of Eeflection, Abstraction, and Self-Knowledge ; together with an extra Paragraph on the Powers of Action and Business, §§ 139, 140. — Chap. VI. On the Education of the Recollection, not of the Memory, §§ 141 - 144. CHAPTER I. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DESIRE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. § 130. THER writers on education call the desire of intellectual progression the faculty of obtain- ing knowledge, — that is to say, they call painting seeing, — or the intellectual powers, and think of the senses and the memory as also exerting an educational influence ; or they speak of the develop- ment of spontaneous activity, as if the will itself were not such a developing power. The majority (before Pesta- lozzi) only attempted to pour into the mind a vast amount of knowledge of every kind, and thought an intelligent man must be the necessary result. Learned fools, with INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 343 mind neither for the present nor the future, who (Hke finite beings in another sense) are continuously created, but never able to create ; heirs of all ideas, but origina- tors of none, they are indeed samples of their education, but no proofs of its excellence. We will take the straight path which leads to the cen- tre, instead of wandering round and round the circle. The will reproduces itself only, and acts only within, not without, itself; for the external action is as little the new act of the particular volition, as are the words signi- fying it of the particular thought. The desire of mental progress, on the contrary, enlarges its world for the recep- tion of new creatures, and is as dependent on objects as the pure will is independent of them. The will could reach its ideal, but finds a strange opposition to it, — Kant's radical evil, — whereas no power stands opposed to thought, — as sin does to virtue, — but only the differ- ence between its steps, and the impossibility of seeing whither they reach. To know nothing is not so bad as to do nothing ; and error is less the opponent than the accompaniment of truth ; for to miscalculate means merely to obtain something different from what it should be, but still to calculate ; whereas immorality stands di- rectly opposed to morality. The mental desire of advancement which, in a higher sense than the physical, works by means of, and in ac- cordance with, the will, that is to say, creates new ideas out of old ideas, is the distinguishing characteristic of man. No will restrains the order of a beast's actions. In our waking moments we are actually conscious that we think ; in our dreams we receive, if I may so express it, that consciousness. In the man of genius the forma- tion of ideas appears actually creative ; in ordinary men. 344 LEVANA. merely recoUective and necessary : the precise shades of difference are, however, difficult to define. The develop- ments of this formative power are, first, language ; and, secondly, observation; both of which, by defining and marking an idea, bring it more accurately before the mind ; thirdly, imagination, which is capable of retaining a whole series of ideas, so as to obtain from it the un- known, but sought for, and, consequently, anticipated greatness, either as part, consequence, foundation, symbol, or image; fourthly, wit; fifthly, reflection; sixthly, re- membrance. From this almost genealogical gradation it is readily perceived that all instruction naturally falls into two dis- tinct classes, one of which — mathematics, for example — provides organic material for the intellectual energies ; the other, — such as natural history, — only inanimate objects. For all cumulative preliminary instruction, be it in natural history, geography, history, antiquities, only provides the intellect with materials, not with incitements to labor and power. The old division into knowledge of words and knowledge of things is certainly correct ; but the inventory of what belongs to one class, and what to the other, is about as erroneous as that of diseases before the time of Brown, which, as by him, were divided into sthenic and asthenic, diarrhoea and plague being placed in the former, and the truly sthenic complaints of coughs, catarrhs, &c., in the latter class. Language, for instance, was ranked as a knowledge of words ; the history of na- ture and of nations, as a knowledge of things: it ought to be reversed. One word in this place on the abuse, or too great use, of natural history. This seems to be the wishing-cap of those teachers who have little of that on which the hat is SPEECH. 345 usually placed ; or tne purveyor of those who are defi- cient in scientific knowledge. The author was gratified by finding, in Goethe's Elective Affinities, accordance with a thought which he had noted down in his children's diary in January, 1808 ; namely, what advantage can children obtain from the description of an unknown for- eign animal which would not equally result from that of any casual monster? At most this unverified account can but serve as honey on wholesome bread, or as the bill of sale of some animal to be seen ; and is altogether a mere home-reading by the light of the embers. But, on the contrary, the most minute family history, with representations the size of life, should be given about all domestic and native animals. Yea, how very much would botany and mineralogy, not only as exercising the observation, but also as enriching the present, exceed the small advantages of foreign zoology ! Just in the same way might the modern expensively painted worlds {orhis pictus) be advantageously replaced by workshops, in which one artificer after another could actually show and explain his trade to his children guests. CHAPTER II. SPEECH AND WRITING. § 131. TO learn to sj^eak is something higher than to learn to speak languages ; and all the advantages which are ascribed to the ancient languages, as educational media, 15* 346 LEVANA. apply with double force to the mother-tongue. Every new language is only understood by connecting and bal- ancing it with the first : the original primary sign merely acquires another sign ; and so the new language is not formed on the one last learned, nor is one dependent on another, but all on the first native tongue. Name to the child every object, every sensation, every action, in case of exigency, even by a foreign word (for to the child, as yet, there is none) ; and always, where it is possible, arouse his attention, and give accuracy to his perceptions, by naming all the individual parts of whatever you may have in hand. A child has invari- ably so great a love of hearing, that he will constantly ask questions about matters which he knows, merely in order to hear you speak, or will even tell you some little story, so as to have the pleasure of hearing you after- wards relate it to him. By the fact of naming, external objects, like islands, are taken possession of, and animals are tamed by accustoming them to answer to a name. Without a defining word, — the mental index-finger, — unlimited nature stands before a child like a column of quicksilver without a barometric scale (to the beast it is even without the ball of quicksilver), and by it no move- ment can be observed. Speech is the finest line-drawer of infinity, the dividing water of chaos : the importance of its minute subdivisions is shown in savages, with whom frequently a single word signifies a whole sentence. A village child is inferior to a town child merely by his poverty of speech. To the dumb beast the whole world gives but one impression, and so from want of two he does not even count one. Let every material substance be both mentally and physically divided and analyzed before the child, during SPEECH. 347 the first ten years of his life ; but suffer nothing spiritual to undergo the same process, for this, which exists only once, and that within the child, soon dies, without the chance of resurrection, under the severing-knife ; bodies, on the contrary, return new-born every day. The mother tongue affords the most innocent philoso- phy and exercise of reflection for children. Speak very much and very clearly ; and oblige them to be definite in the affairs of every-day life. Why do you leave mental development by means of language to a foreign tongue ? Occasionally attempt longer sentences than the short childish ones of many teachers, or the hackneyed ones of most French writers : an unintelligibleness which brings its own solution by mere unaltered repetition exercises and strengthens the mind. Sometimes exercise even little children with riddles of contradictory words : such as, I heard this with my eyes ; this is very prettily ugly. Do not fear the unintelligibleness even of whole sen- tences ; your mien, your accent, and the ardent desire of understanding, explain one half, and, with the assistance of time, the other. With children, as with the Chinese and men of the world, accent is half the language. Re- member that they learn to understand your language much sooner than to speak it, just as we do Greek or any foreign tongue. Trust to the deciphering aid of time, and of the context. A child of five years old understands the. words "but, indeed, now, on the contrary, certainly"; but, if you desire an explanation of them, ask the father, not the child. The word indeed alone would puzzle a lit- tle philosopher. If the child of eight years old finds his improved language understood by a child of three, why should you contract yours to his vocabulary? Always employ a language some years in advance of the child 348 LEVANA. (men of genius in their books speak to us from the van- tage-ground of centuries) : speak to the one-year-old child as though he were two, and to him as though he were six ; for the difference of progress diminishes in the inverse proportion of years. Let the teacher, especially he who is too much in the habit of attributing all learning to teaching, consider that the child already carries half his world, that of mind, — the objects, for instance, of moral and metaphysical contemplation, — ready formed within him; and hence that language, being provided only with physical images, cannot give, but merely illu- mine, his mental conceptions. Cheerfulness, like distinctness in conversation with chil- dren, should be imparted to us by their cheerfulness and distinctness. We may learn to speak from them, as well as teach them by speaking ; for instance, such bold and yet correctly formed words as I have heard from three and four year old children: "the beer-casker, the stringer, the bottler," instead of the maker of casks, strings, and bottles, — " the flying mouse," certainly much better than our word bat, — " the music plays," — "I am the see-er- through," when standing behind a telescope, — " Ah ! look ! one (on the clock) is already come," &c. In later years it becomes part of instruction in lan- guage to show the living foundation of the colorless images of every-day speech. A young man uses the expressions, " all made on the same last," or " fishing in troubled waters " ; and when he finds that the shoemaker really uses such a last, and that fishing in troubled water is practised, he is astonished to discover that a real fact is the foundation of the transparent image. Pestalozzi commences the division of the universe into parts by that of the body into limbs ; because it is in SPEECH. 349 closest and most important connection with the child, and is everywhere composed of similar parts, which is not the case with plants or utensils. A still more important ad- vantage is, that there are always two examples of it in the study ; and that the child, between / and thou, be- tween the larger visible limbs of his teacher, and his own smaller ones, sensible only to the touch, can always pass from one object to another and compare them together. At the same time, Pestalozzi will not only divide and illumine the waste ether with clearly marked names, as with stars ; but, while he teaches the child to collect the subdivisions under their division, the lesser under the greater whole, he develops the capacity of retaining whole series, or the power of adaptive combination, — of which hereafter. Fichte, in his Discourses to the German nation, attaches too little value to the naming, and, as it were, A B C, of external objects and observations, requiring them merely for what is internal, for sensations ; because he thinks that the naming of the former class only serves the child for communication, not for the better understanding of it. But it seems to me that, as the speechless animal floats about in the external world as in a dark, bewildering ocean, so man would be equally lost in the starry firma- ment of external perceptions, did he not, by means of language, divide the confused stars into constellations, and thus reveal the whole in parts to the comprehension. Language alone illumines the vast monotonously colored chart of the universe. Our forefathers, from pedantic and economic reasons, but with advantageous results, as a mental gymnastic and excitement, ranked a foreign language, such as Latin, among the great powers of education. Certainly the die- 350 LEVANA. tionary of foreign words develops little, except by teach- ing the fine shades of difference among our own : but the grammar, as the logic of the tongue, — the first philoso- phy of reflection, — does much; for it carries the signs of things back to the things themselves, and compels the mind, turned upon itself, to observe the method of its observations, that is, to reflect, or at least to take firmer possession of the sign, and not to confuse it, as a mere expression, with the sensation itself. During immaturity this kind of knowledge is better obtained through the grammar of a foreign language than through that of our own, which is more indissolubly blended with the sensa- tion ; hence logically-cultivated people first learned to construct their own language by a foreign one, and Cicero went to a Greek, sooner than to a Latin school ; and hence, in those centuries when the Greek and Latin languages formed the whole subject of learning, the intel- lect became more formal, and unsubstantial logic filled the mind, as the whole scholastic philosophy proves. When Huart asserts that a good head learns grammar with the most difiiculty, he can only mean, unless he con- fuses dictionary with grammar, a head formed for busi- ness or art rather than for thought. Every good gram- marian, the Hebrew Tacitus Danz, for instance, is partly a philosopher, and he must be a philosopher who writes the best grammar. The grammatic analysis of the old schools only differs in its object from Pestalozzi's visible series. Consequently a foreign language, particularly the Latin, is among the healthiest early exercises of the power of thinking. § 132. Since writing signifies but the sign of things, and brings us through it to the things themselve.^. it is a stricter iso- WRITING. 351 lator and clearer collector of the ideas than even speech itself. Sound teaches quickly and generally ; writing^ uninterruptedly and with more accuracy. Writing, from that which the writing-master teaches to that which ap- proaches the province of the author, gives clearness to the ideas. We wijl not here lay too great stress on the fact that the letters which Sevigne wrote are much more ele- gant than those she dictated ; or that Montesquieu, who could not himself write, frequently passed three hours before anything worthy of preservation occurred to him, whence many deduce the curt style of his writings ; but it is certain that our representation is much more a mental seeing than hearing, and that our metaphors play far more on an instrument of color than of sound, and therefore writing which lingers under the eyes must assist the for- mation of ideas to a much greater extent than the rapid flight of sound. The scholar, indeed, carries it so far that, when he reflects, he really seems to read a printed page ; and when he speaks, to give a Httle declamation out of a quickly and well-written pamphlet. Let boys write out their own thoughts sooner than copy yours, so that they may learn to exchange the heavy- ringing coin of sound into more convenient paper money. And let them be spared the writing-texts of schoolmasters, containing the praises of industry, of writing, of their mas- ter, or of some old prince ; in short, subjects about which the teacher can produce nothing better than his pupils. Every representation without some actual object or motive is poison. Since some real occurrence always suggested to men of genius, such as Lessing, Rousseau, and others, the subject of their fictions, thus occasional, in the highest sense of that word ; how can you require a boy to dip his pencil in the airy blue of indefiniteness, and therewith so 352 LEVANA. paint the vault of heaven that the invisible tint shall pro- duce the color of Prussian blue ? I cannot understand schoolmasters ! Must the man, even in childhood, preach from the appointed Sunday text, and never choose one for himself in Nature's Bible? Something similar may be said about the writing of open letters (an unsealed one is almost inevitably half untrue) which the teachers of girls' schools require, in order, say they, to exercise their pupils in epis- tolary style. A nothing writes to a nothing : the whole affair, undertaken by the desire of the teacher, not of the heart, is a certificate of the death of thoughts, an amiounce- raent of the burning of the materials. Happy is it if the commanded volubility of the child, arising from coldness and addressed to emptiness, do not accustom her to insin- cerity. If letters must be forthcoming, let them be written to some fixed person, about some definite thing. But what need of " so much ado about nothing," since — not even excepting political or literaiy newspapers — nothing can be written so easily as letters on any subject when there is a motive for them, and the mind is fully informed of the matter? The writing of one page excites the desire of learning more strongly than the reading of a whole book. Many readers of select school libraries are scarcely able to write a clear and good account of a fatal accident, and a request for charitable assistance, for a weekly newspaper. And it is equally true that many writers are just as indifferent speakers : they resemble many great merchants in Am- sterdam, who have no warehouse, but only a writing-room ; give them time, however, and they will procure the goods by writing. Corneille spoke badly, but he made his heroes declaim excellently. Regard every pupil for examination as a stammering dumb Corneille, and provide him a room, ATTENTION. 353 time, and a pen ; he will speak by these, and so pass a very good examination. I close this chapter as a certain Indian begins his book, — Blessed be the man who in- vented writing ! CHAPTER III. ATTENTION, AND THE POWER OF ADAPTIVE COMBINATION. §133. BONNET calls attention the mother of genius, but she is in fact her daughter ; for whence does she derive her origin, save from the marriage contracted in heaven between the object and the desire for it ? Hence attention can really be as little preached or flogged into a person as ability. Swift in a musical academy, Mozart in a philosophical lecture-room, Raffaelle in a political club, Frederick the Great in a cour d' amour, — could you give an attentive ear to these different men, all of whom possess genius, are of mature years, and have thoughts about the important matters of art, science, love, and poli- tics ? And do you expect and desire it in children, in per- sons of unripe age and inferior capacity for much more tri- fling objects? But, in fact, you desire that your individual attention, which exhibits as much caprice with regard to its objects as that of a man of genius, should be acquired by the child, and that your narrowness of view should be shared by him. If you attach reward or punishment to the child's atten- tion to any object, you have put another, that of self-inter- 354 LEVANA. est, in its place, rather than strengthened the mental power or excited the desire of improvement ; at most, you have but labored for the memory. No sensuous pleasure lines the path into the empire of mind ; hence studying for a livelihood resembles the stone by whose aid the diver sinks more rapidly to seek pearls for his master, and which the aeronaut takes with him for the very differ- ent purpose of rising higher towards heaven when he casts it overboard. But what is to be done ? So teachers always ask, in- stead of first asking, What is to be avoided ? The laws of their order forbid the Jesuits to study longer than two hours ; but your school laws command little children to study, that is, to be attentive, as long as older people can teach : it is quite too much ; especially when one con- siders the child's senses open to every influence, the cheerful sounds of the busy market-place, the blossoming boughs waving round the school-room windows, the nar- row strip of sunshine on the dull school-room floor, and the delicious certainty on Saturday that there will be no lessons in the afternoon. There have been many cases in which the author of Levana himself has resolved to lend an attentive ear to some story, not more than a quarter of an hour long, so as to be able to relate it afterwards : he did inwardly what he could, and labored to maintain the closest atten- tion ; but this very labor gave rise to incidental thoughts ; he was compelled to request a repetition in order to catch the thread of the story ; and then, at last, after all this resolute anxiety, determination, and design, he had ob- tained nothing more than a table of contents of the story, which he could enlarge upon in the proper place. Do you think it easier for a child to command his attention, ATTENTION. 355 and repress weariness, than for a grown-up man who addresses him ? It is possible for a child to take the greatest interest in your instruction, but not just to-day, nor at this particular window ; or, perhaps, because he has seen or tasted some novelty ; or, perhaps, because his father has announced either a country ramble or a con- finement ; or, because his former inattention has met its punishment, and the child now thinks far more of the punishment than of the means of avoiding it. Human beings, in fact, are incapable of uninterrupted attention (eternal longing may be much more truly promised than eternal loving), and the child's attention is not always identical with that of his parents. If novelty be confessedly the keenest sharpener of the inner ear, the forcing-house of every plant, why do teach- ers, after constant repetitions, require the first eagerness of attention from the young souls everywhere surrounded by new worlds ? Do you suppose their pillow is a gilded cushion on which the glass is rubbed to obtain electricity ? If it be difficult to place ourselves in the position of persons similarly circumstanced, how much more difficult must it be to do so with regard to persons unlike our- selves ! How many instances are there of teachers hav- ing warmed themselves for years by the school-room stove, without remarking or remembering anything about the raised figures by which the manufacturer endeavored to display his taste and skill. Let every reader after the perusal of these lines examine his apartment, and observe whether he does not become conscious of twenty new objects, among which he has constantly lived without hitherto being aware of their presence ! Were we in- clined to enter into more minute particulars, it would, 356 LEVANA. among other examples, be easy to show the different effects of mere writing-copies on a child's attention. If he have the same words to copy throughout the whole page, each line will be worse written than its predeces- sor ; but if the copy change frequently, he will have a new source of interest and attention from line to hne : still, even in this case, novelty will exert its power over the attention, and the first word, like the first hne, will be the best written. Repetition, else the mainspring of instruction, is the chief destroyer of attention ; because, in order to give attention to what is repeated, you must first have found it worthy of a still greater exertion of that faculty. A very important distinction must be drawn between the power of attention diffused among the generality of men, and that appertaining solely to men of genius. The latter can only be recognized, protected, and cher- ished, but not created. Pay attention, teachers ! to the attention manifested by your children, so that you may not, to the injury of his whole future life, demand from the genius who astonishes you with his power and his brilliancy the very opposite qualities to those he possesses : do not expect a painter's eye in a Haydn, nor a poem from an Aristoteles. Pay attention to this, and you will not offer to immortal love an ape instead of a Psyche. This instinct-hke attention, waiting till its proper object is manifested, explains some apparent anomahes, such as that the deep thinking Thomas Aquinas in his youth was called a cow, and that the mathematician, Schmidt, from incapacity for study, or business, continued a mere la- borer for thirty-eight years. Good trees at first produce only wood, not fruit. Pure silver when broken seems ATTENTION. 357 black. Afterwards, the work advances all the easier and the quicker ; and while information and talent have to raise their gifts laboriously, hke gold out of deep mines, genius presents his like jewels gathered out of loose sand. On the other hand, common every-day attention needs not so much to be aroused, as to be distributed and con- densed ; even careless, inattentive children possess the faculty, but it is dissipated upon all passing objects. The child in his new world resembles a German in Rome, a pilgrim in the Holy Land. Attention to everything is impossible : the whole of no ball can be seen. You ele- vate the passive being, before whom the world moves unnoticed, into an active one, by placing some one object in a prominent position : by displaying its wonders you excite his interest. Perpetually ask children Why ? The questions of the teacher find more open ears than his answers. You can elevate him, also, as Pestalozzi rec- ommends, by the magnifying-glass of separation; and then again by restoring it as before. As God, according to the schoolmen, knows everything because he made it, teach the child his power of mental creation ; readiness of attention in recognizing things will then follow natu- rally. And this brings me to the succeeding paragraphs on the power of adaptive combination. §134. The old notion, that mathematics exercises and requires philosophical accuracy and depth of thought, and that mathematics and philosophy are sisters, has, I- hope, dis- appeared. With the exception of the all-powerful Leib- nitz, great mathematicians, such as Euler, D'Alembert, and even Newton, have been poor philosophers. The French have obtained more and greater mathematical 358 LEVANA. than philosophical prizes : great masters of numbers and great mechanicians have been frequently found among the people, but equally great philosophers never ; and, on the other hand, powerful and profound philosophers, after the most arduous endeavors, have frequently still remained but indifferent mathematicians. Among chil- dren we find some open to philosophical instruction, some only to mathematical. This judgment of experience is explained and verified by Kant's Critique. The mathe- matician contemplates quantities, the philosopher reflects upon and abstracts from them. The certainty of the former is, like that of the external world, a present real- ity, brought about by no logical conclusion : it cannot prove anything, but merely show that it is so ; and if the quantities exceed the power of instantaneous apprehen- sion (as is generally the case even in the simplest arith- metic), they are proved in a merely mechanical manner by the method.* In philosophy there is no such con- viction by the truth of the method, but only by perceiving the truth of the idea. Malebranche said rightly, the geometrician does not love truth, but the discernment of it (1. i. ch. 2.), or, to express it more clearly, not its exist- ence, but its proportions. Philosophy, on the contrary, will search into existence ; it places itself and the mathe- matician, — which is what he is incapable of doing, — the whole world within, around, and above, before its gaze. Hence religion and poetry, but not dead mathematics, spread living fibres far and deep into philosophy ; hence the great Kant admitted the possibility that the sciences of number and measurement, as exponents of earthly time and observation, might have no more truth beyond this * I at once perceive that 2X2 = 4; but confidence in the rule makes me beUeve that 319 X 5011 = 598509. ATTENTION. 359 life, whereas lie never supposed this to be possible with regard to the ideas of reason and morality. §135. The former paragraph, with its distinction of mathe- matics from philosophy, is meant to introduce nothing but the praise of Pestalozzi's method of teaching, which leads the child's mind straight between the parallels of num- bers and lines. For in what other manner can you arouse the innate desire of mental progress ? The im- pulses of the senses excite and then stupefy, but help not to produce it. To overwhelm the mind with lessons, that is, with mere summaries of accounts, resembles the Siberian custom of giving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to infants : to teach reflection and abstraction is, in fact, to tear the body to pieces, and lay open the springs of love and faith, in order to anatomize the child's heart and blood. Moreover, philosophy begins with what is highest and most difiicult ; mathematics, with what is nearest and easiest. What, then, remains ? The meta- physics of the eye ; the knowledge forming the boundary between experience and abstraction ; that cool, tranquil calculation which does not yet inquire about the three giant rulers of knowledge, — God, the Universe, and our own Soul ; which rewards every momentary sowing with a harvest; which neither excites nor represses desires and wishes, and yet finds on every spot of earth, as in a copy-book, examples and exercises ; which, unlike thought and poetry, needs fear no difference of result from differences in heart and mind ; and for which no child is too young, for it, like him, grows up from the smallest beginning. Therefore Pestalozzi's gradual and luminous accumu- 360 LEVANA. lation of arithmetical and geometrical proportions is right ; it is teaching to carry an increasing weight, like Milo's calf,* which may at last serve for the thank-offer- ing of an Archimedes. What Pope Sixtus V. roughly said, " that, after all, asses might be taught arithmetic," and the well-known remark in the French Encyclopaedia, that some imbecile persons have learnt to play chess well, — for chess is a mathematical combination, and the chess-board may serve as a test of mathematical power, — all this commends the wisdom by which Pestalozzi wrote over life, as Plato over his study, " The geometrician alone may enter here." Consequently, the reproaches cast against the Sv/iss, " that his school is no school of the prophets, nor even of philosophers," are, in fact, eulogies ; and it were to be regretted if he could show the falsity of the reproaches. Our hazy and inconstant age, fuller of dreams than of poems, of phantasms than of imagination, has great need of the clear, accurate eye of mathematics, and of firm hold upon reahty. And what, then, has it done towards the development of the mental faculties ? A great thing in childhood : it has unfolded the power of adaptive combination. Since the simple beam of mental activity has been already broken into the colors of many intellectual powers, it may be permitted me to name one more. I mean that power which is as different from imagination, which only par- tially embraces a subject, as from fancy, which creates ; that power which assists the philosopher in his chains of reasoning, the mathematician in his calculations, and every inventor in his efforts, by retaining in connection, * The athlete Milo, by daily carrying a growing calf, became at last strong enough to carry the full-grown ox. ATTENTION. 361 and presenting in order, the daily increasing masses of ideas, numbers, lines, and images. The pupil of Pes- talozzi exercises no creative power in his long numerical equations, {that belongs only to the discoverer of the method,) but he calls into play his faculties of examining and surveying. These are capable of unlimited growth : but what would Newton, the mathematical pole-star, have become in an ocean of books ? Probably as incompre- hensible to others, in their best years, as he was to him self in his old age ! If many measure the course of ideas by seconds ; — Bonnet required half a second for a clear idea, Chladen only three thirds to recall an old one, according to Haller's Physiology ; — they seem only to reckon in that the mental perusal of previously impressed thoughts ; for is it possible to mark thought, to divide the soft breath of heaven into waves ? And is not the vastest idea — God, or the Universe — as truly an instantaneous flash of light, as the poorest idea, even nothing ? The strengthening of the power in question might afterwards be renewed with advantage to many sciences. In some cases, for instance, what great advantage would be gained from having thoroughly understood, and being able to recall, the various parts of a watch, — from such as were the playthings of our childhood to the accurate repeater of half-quarters, — the masterly echo of time. This power may be prepared for the most opposite efforts by means of two very different sciences ; by astronomy, for the comprehension of vast masses ; by anatomy, for that of the smallest portions of matter : the latter re- quires an unexpectedly great effort, for it is physically as difficult either for the finger or the eye to embrace the smallest as the largest object. 16 362 LEVANA. The power we are speaking of may also be strength- ened by gradually compressing a long historical or phi- losophical paragraph into an epigram. For instance, suppose this to be the sentence : " Popular authors do not make a selection among their thoughts, but write them down as they arise, just as, in most states, the monarchs are not elected, but rule in order of birth." You might compress it thus : " Popular authors do not permit their ideas to rule according to the choice of reason, but according to the natural succession of birth." And you might conclude it proverbially thus : " In the popular brain the empire of ideas is hereditary, not elective." Of course, this only applies in the education of children ; for to educated readers such brevity would be wearisome. CHAPTER IV. DEVELOPMENT OF WIT. §136. " TTNTIL the human body is developed, every arti- \^ ficial development of the mind is injurious. Philosophical strainings of the understanding, poetical ones of the fancy, destroy those very faculties in the young mind, and others along with them. But the de- velopment of wit, which is scarcely ever thought of for children, is the least hurtful, because its efforts are easy and momentary ; the most useful, because it compels the new machinery of ideas to quicker motion ; because, by the pleasure of discovery, it gives increased power of WIT. 363 command over those ideas ; and because, in early years, this quahty, either in ourselves or others, particularly delights by its brilliancy. Why are there so few invent- ors, and so many learned men, whose heads contain nothing but immovable furniture, in which the ideas peculiar to each science lie separately as in monks' cells, so that when their possessor writes about one science, he remembers nothing that he knows about the rest ? Why ? Solely because children are taught more ideas than command over those ideas, and because in school they are expected to have their thoughts as immovably fixed as their persons. " Schlözer's historical style should be imitated in other sciences. I have accustomed my Gustavus to hear and to understand, and so, himself, to discover the resem- blances among dissimilar sciences. For instance, all great or heavy things move slowly ; hence Oriental monarchs, the Dalai-Lama, the sun, do not move at all. Winkelmann tells us that the wise Greeks walked slow- ly ; also the hour-finger of a clock, the ocean and the clouds in fine weather, move slowly. Again, men, the earth, and pendulums go quicker in winter. Or, again, the name of Jehovah, of Eastern princes, and of Rome's guardian deity, as well as the Sibylline books, the most ancient Christian and the Catholic Bible, and the Veda, were concealed. It is indescribable what great readiness and pliability of thought children thus attain. Of course the information which you wish to combine must first be in the head. But enough ! the pedant understands and does not approve ; and the less prejudiced reader also says. Enough ! " This paragraph follows some introductory arguments in the Invisible Lodge, Book I. p. 260. I 364 LKVANA. § 137. After the severe rule and lesson-time of mathematics, the sans-culottish freedom and play-time of wit best fol- lows ; and if the former, like the Neptunist, forms all things coldly and slowly, the latter, like the Vulcanist, ascribes to them a rapid and fiery origin. The glance of wit passes over long and dark series of ideas, acquired by the power of preliminary education, in order afterwards to create. The first efforts of intellectual growth are witty. And the passage from geometry to the electric art of wit, as Lichtenberg, Kästner, D'Alembert, and the French in general, prove, is a natural and an easy, rather than a forced march. The Spartans, Cato, Seneca, Taci- tus, Bacon, Young, Lessing, Lichtenberg, are examples how the full, heavy, thunder-clouds of knowledge break out in the lightning of wit. Every discovery is at first an incidence ; and from this moving point is developed a progressive living form. The intellectual effort doubles and trebles itself; one witty idea produces another, as the new-born Diana assisted at the birth of her twin brother Apollo. §138. It is easier to perceive that wit precedes reflection and imagination, in the nursery and the school-room, than to see how to produce it. The great majority of teachers will object that they do not themselves possess it, and that it is very difficult to imitate the French language-master who helped out his German pupils with their German, and yet knew nothing of it. Niemeyer recommends for this purpose charades and anagrams, ■— but these only serve for reflection upon language ; — and. riddles, — which, though better, are yet but witty definitions ; — and games in company, the majority of which, however, tend WIT. 365 to excite a spirit of rational talking rather than wit. But can no witty poems, no witty anecdotes, no play upon words, be discovered ? And is it not at first an easy mat- ter to let children seek moral resemblances in physical substances, until their pinions have grown sufficiently strong to reach from mental to bodily resemblances ? ( Vide my Introduction to Esthetics, ii.) The author once presided for three years over a small school, comprising ten children of his friends ; the best head among his pupils, of different ages and sexes, had only mastered Cornelius Nepos. So, along with the Latin language, German, French, and English had to be begun, as well as the so-called practical sciences. The diaries of this eccentric school, — during whose holiday hours the Invisible Lodge and Hesperus were composed, — along with the confession of all his mistaken views, belong to the account of the author's life hereafter to be published. But what follows will find its right place here. After half a year's daily instruction for five hours, in the repetitions of which such witty resemblances as accident offered were sought, and during which the chil- dren had the Spartan permission to attack one another, — by which means when out of school they were preserved from the German fault of over-sensitiveness, — the author, to encourage the children and confirm the habit, made a manuscript book, entitled " Anthology of my Pupils' Bon- mots," in which he wrote in their presence every idea of a not merely local character. A few examples may serve to show his method. " A boy, G , twelve years old, the cleverest of the children, endowed with mathematical and satirical talents, said as follows : ' Man is imitated by four things, an echo, a shadoAV, an ape, and a mirror ; — the windpipe, the bigoted Spaniards, and ants suffer no 366 LEVANA. foreign substance within their limits, but drive it out ; — the air-bag of the whale, out of which it breathes when under water, is the water-stomach of the camel, whence it drinks when there is no other water ; — the conceal- ment of the Greeks in the Trojan horse was a living transmigration of souls ; — when calculations become longer, logarithms must be made of logarithms ; — mer- cury is poison, and the mythological Mercury conducted souls both into heaven and hell," &c., &c. The same boy's younger brother, ten and a half years old, said : "God is the only perpetuiim mobile ; — the Hungarians preserve both their wine and their beehives in the earth ; — Constantinople looks beautiful from a distance, but ugly when near, and it stands upon seven hills ; so the planet Venus shines gloriously from a distance, but on approaching nearer you find it uneven and full of steep mountains," &c., &c. His sister, seven years old, said : " Every night we are seized with apoplexy, but in the morning we are well again ; — the world is the body of God ; — when the pulse beats quickly, we are ill ; when slowly, well : so when the clouds move fast, they betoken foul weather ; when slowly, fair weather ; — when the Spartans were in battle, they wore red cloaks, so that the blood might not be seen ; and certain Italians wear black ones, so that you may not see the fleas ; — my school is a Quakers' meeting-house where every one may speak ; — the stupidest people dress themselves the most showily ; so the stupidest animals, insects, are the gaudiest," &c. Sometimes there were several fathers and mothers to the same idea ; one spark drew out the rest too quickly, and then they all justly insisted on a community of honor in the "Anthology of Bon-mots." Slavislmess darkens and hides all the' salt-springs of WIT. 367 wit; hence those teachers who, like weak princes, can only maintain their position by the censorship of the press, will probably do wisely to choose walks, and leave the children at liberty in order to make them witty. The writer of the " Anthology of Bon-mots " permitted his scholars to exercise their wit upon, but not against, himself. A learned gentleman* fears danger to the sense of truth from these exercises of the wit, though he has no fault to find with the things themselves; but if so, he must also dread that something better, — sentiment, — which takes the place of truth in our dark age, will be falsified by the forms of speech which teach and analyze its expression and its cause. And for what reason shall witty similes be held incompatible with truth, as if they also did not really, though not so obviously, illustrate it ? We do not recommend children any Olympic games of wit but such as are German ; and the Northern nature itself is so excellent a check to all over-excitement, that even a German university could redress the balance of the strong and pungent wit of two such men as Kästner and Lichtenberg, and learnedly held out against them in the learned journal of Göttingen. * A reviewer of Levana in " Göttinger Gelehrte-Anzeige," a liter- ary journal, so called, and still published at Göttingeu. 368 LEVANA. CHAPTER V. DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTION, ABSTRACTION, AND SELF- KNOWLEDGE ; TOGETHER WITH AN EXTRA PARAGRAPH ON THE POWERS OF ACTION AND BUSINESS. § 139. I MAY be most brief about what is most important ; for time and libraries are sufficiently prolix about it. The reflected contemplation of self, which conceals and annihilates the external and superterrene universe, by guiding and lowering man into his own inner world, now finds its mining-ladders in every book-shop. Moreover, our modern life, broken up into particles by the search after pleasure, and destitute of any great, active aims to unite mind and matter, is enough, without further cause, to make every one live within himself, and forget the universe until some shock to his nerves of feeling pain- fully reminds him of existence. If any men of the present age are of a poetical nature, life quickly becomes a desert to them, in whose undulating air, as in that of other deserts, objects appear both wavering and gigantic. If they are of a philosophical disposition, they fancy the ideal garden-ladder against which they lean to be a fruit- tree, its dead steps living branches, and mounting them to be gathering fruit. Hence self-destruction soon follows the philosophical destruction of the world. Hence there are more lunatics and fewer poets than formerly : the philosopher and the madman ceaselessly point with the left-hand index finger to the right hand, and cry out «Object, — Subject!" Consequently, in philosophical and poetical natures, always endeavor to postpone the reflecting observation of REFLECTION, ABSTRACTION, ETC. 369 self until the glowing season of the passions, so that the child may garner and preserve a fresh, steadfast, and earnest life. Children of common and merely active dispositions, who do not so readily lose sight of the outer works of the world, may be advanced five years eai-lier, by the wheels of logic, physiology, and transcendental philosophy, into the citadel of the soul, so that they may learn thence to contemplate their course of life. The inner world is the remedy or antidote for the man of business ; as the exter- nal universe is for the philosopher. Poetry, as the happy union of both worlds, promotes the higher welfare of both ; as, by it, that healthful reflection and abstraction are attained which raise man above want and time to a nobler view of life. §140. This is a suitable place to speak of the development of the faculties for business, the sense of the man of the world which, in contradistinction to reflection, is a media- tor between matter and mind ; but it serves to mix rather than to combine them indissolubly. This sense for the objects of sense, this presence of mind for what is exter- nally present, a quality so gloriously perfect in heroes, creates or annihilates things by the quickest combinations of such dissimilar materials as external and internal ob- servations, or sensations and ideas, by a simultaneous exercise of comprehension, foresight, and physical power. Like the two-headed eagle in the fable, which watched with one head while it took nourishment with the other, the man of the world must look at once within and with- out, unblinded by what is within, unalarmed by what is without ; and he must stand upon a point which, though 10 * X 370 LEVANA. he himself move, yet never alters the circle nor changes its position. But it is difficult to provide a palcestra for the develop- ment of this power suited to boys ; they must contend with the only world they have about them, — that of education. It is not a fighting-school they must pass through, — for as yet they should have no enemies, — but they may run a practising gauntlet against what lies in their way, and war upon things, not men. It is to be hoped that the teacher may find them the needful oppor- tunities. CHAPTEK VI. ON THE EDUCATION OF THE RECOLLECTION; NOT OF THE MEMORY. § 141. THE difference between recollection and memory is insisted upon by moralists more than by writers on education. Memory, a receptive, not a creative faculty, is subjected to physical conditions more than all other mental powers ; for every kind of weakness (direct and indirect, as well bleeding as intoxication) impairs it, and dreams interrupt it ; it is not subject to the will, is pos- sessed by us in common with the beasts ; and can be most effectually strengthened by the physician : a bitter stom- achic will increase it more than a whole dictionary learnt by heart. For if it gained strength by what it receives, it would grow with increasing years, that is, in proportion to its wealth in hoarded names ; but it can carry the RECOLLECTION. 371 heaviest burdens most easily in unpractised youth, and it holds those so firmly that they appear above the gray hairs of age as the evergreens of childhood. § 142. On the contrary, recollection, the creative power, as free to call forth or to discover a consequence from the given ideas of memory, as wit or imagination are from their own stores ; this exercise of the will denied to beasts, which belongs chiefly to the mind, and therefore grows with its growth ; this faculty comes within the sphere of the educator. Hence, memory can be iron, recollection only quicksilver, and the graving-tool acts corrosively only on the former. The division of this power into memory for words and memory for things, is, therefore, erroneous, at least in expression. He who can retain in his head a page of Hottentot words will certainly much more easily retain a volume of Kant ; for either he un- derstands it, — and then every idea calls up an associated idea more readily than a word can a perfectly dissimilar word, — or he does not understand it; and then he merely retains a philosophical vocabulary, and uses it as well in every disputation, or for every combination, as many renowned students of the Critique already prove. But memory for things does not presuppose memory for names ; but only because, instead of being called memory for things, it ought to be called recollection. Recollection, like every other mental power, can only work according to the laws of association; not sounds, but things, that is to say, thoughts, educate. Read a vol- ume of history to a boy, and compare the copious abstract he can furnish of that with the miserable remnant he could collect from a page of Humboldt's Mexican words 372 LEVANA. which you had read aloud to him. Plattner remarks in his Anthropology, that things merely in juxtaposition are retained with more difficulty than things coming in se- quence : an animal, as it seems to me, would experience the very reverse ; and for this reason : memory applies to juxtaposition, recollection to sequence, because it, and not the former, excites to mental activity by causation, or some other association of ideas. Pythagoras recom- mended his pupils each evening to recall the events of the day, not solely as an act of self-mortification, but also as a means of strengthening the recollection. Kalov knew the whole Bible by heart ; Barthius, when but in his ninth year, Terence ; Sallust, Demosthenes ; and Scaliger learned Homer in twenty-one days : but then these are books full of intimately associated words, not mere dictionaries ; a whole library with all its volumes is easier to retain, — for the connection assists the recollec- tion, — than a short list of them. When D'Alembert makes the easy retention of a poem a proof of its excel- lence, his position loses something of novelty, but gains in truth by the versus memoriales, mnemonic verses, and the laws of the ancient lawgivers promulgated in verse. He, in other words, observes, that the recollection is assisted by the close connection of the parts, a quality peculiarly possessed by good poems. Hence the Abbe Delille rightly regards his poems as better than, for instance, his translated originals ; not only because he has them in his mind before he transcribes them, and so can sell the pub- lisher his manuscript full of the final rhymes, to which he afterwards attaches the rest of the verse, — but also be- cause he cannot I'emember much of Milton or Virgil, although he has read both several times. To strengthen the combining power of the recollection, RECOLLECTION. 373 accustom your children from their earhest years to relate to you some passage in history, or a tale ; and for this purpose the most diffusely told story is the best. Fur- ther, if you wish your child to advance rapidly, both in a foreign language and in power of recollection, do not set him to learn words, but a chapter which he has trans- lated a few times : here recollection assists the memory ; words are remarked in their verbal connection, and the best dictionary is a favorite book. It is more difficult to remember a single thing than many joined together. The example of Lessing, who always devoted himself exclusively for a time to one par- ticular branch of knowledge, proves the truth of Locke's remark, that the way to become learned is to pursue one subject only for a considerable period. The reason lies in the systematic nature of the recollection ; it is certain that a science will adhere more closely wliich has had time to spread its roots in the soil. Hence nothing so much en- feebles the recollection as leaps from one branch of the tree of knowledge to another ; as men become forgetful who have the management of several dissimilar offices. Let your child pursue one and the same branch of knowledge uninterruptedly for a month ; what a proba- bility of growth in twelve branches during the year ! The dislike of the sameness will soon be lost in the pleasure of progress ; and the science thus grounded and daily increasing its limits will in time present a variety of flowers. Certainly the foundations of every science should be laid and worked upon for some time without the intermixture of any other ; then a new one may be commenced, and the other repeated for a change ; and thus we may proceed, until, after the careful erection of the scaffolding, we may begin the building, and not till 374 LEVANA. many of these are completed can a street be formed. For a contemporaneous multiplicity of sciences is not adapted to early youth, which is only capable of embra- cing an individual subject, — but to maturer age, which can compare them together. Recollection by association of place, — falsely called memoria localis, — this play-room of the so-called arts of memory, — shows the necessity of connection. For this reason travelhng enfeebles local recollection. A prison, said a Frenchman, is a memoria localis ; and many, Bas- sompierre for example, have therein written their memoirs solely on the walls — of the skull. § 143. But there is one mental talisman even for the memory, — I mean the charm of the object. A woman retains the titles of books with as much difficulty as her learned husband does the names of fashionable dresses; "an old philologist, oblivious of other things, does not sufier an unknown word to escape his verbal treasure-house. No one has a memory for everything, because no one feels an interest in everything. And the physical powers set bounds even to the strengthening influence of desire on the memory, — think of that when with children, — for instance, if a Hebrew bill of exchange for a thousand pounds were promised, on condition of demanding its pay- ment in the very words of the document, as once read aloud, everybody would try to remember them, but, unless he were a Jew, the words and the form would fail him. If grown-up people find italics and German-text useful to mark their memoranda, I should think it possible that little children also might require some such assistance. But teachers instigate them to make uninterrupted marks, RECOLLECTION. 375 and then, when they have printed whole books (or lessons) in italic or German-text, ask, with wonder, " whether it is possible a thing can be overlooked, written in different or large text ? " Permit something to be forgotten, when you desire them to remember so much. Resemblance, the rudder of recollection, is the danger- ous rock of memory. Among related objects, only one can exert the charm of novelty or priority. Thus, the correct spelling of very similar words, such as contemn condemn, were where, of off, is more difficult than that of totally different ones. There are few aged men who remain at home, and are able to remember or relate the little circumstances of their monotonous life for a fortnight; by the constant recurrence of the daily echo, the history of their lives is as much shortened as life itself is pro- longed. The history of the fourth or fifth ten years of life shrivels up into a note, compared with the chapter on the foarth or fifth year. An eternity might at last be- come shorter than a moment. It is incomprehensible to me, how people fancy they can teach children to read or write the letters easily by point- ing out their resemblances, and laying before them at once i y, c e, or, in writing, i r, h k, &c. The very oppo- site plan ought to be pursued ; i should be placed next g, V next z, next r ; the contrast, like light and shadow, make both prominent ; until reflected lights and half shades can separate them anew from each other. The fast-rooted dissimilarities serve at last to hold fast the re- semblance that exists among them. So the old plan of teaching spelling by lists of words alphabetically arranged is bad, on account of the difficulty of distinguishing simi- lar sounds ; whereas that of classing together derivatives from the same Latin or Greek word assists the remem- 376 LEVANA. brance, because the radical word does not alter. If in- struction in arts of memory had a place in the Levana, I might suggest the following sportive methods : daily drawing tickets in a spelling-lottery, where each child would not only observe his own, but his companions' words ; every pupil might each day receive a foreign word of parole, wherewith to greet his teacher : or the scholar might be set to print a short Latin sentence, with its trans- lation ; or he might be told to write the same word in various styles of penmanship : in dates, for which these methods are much more necessary than for words, the teacher might give the years written merely with conso- nants, because the addition of the necessary vowels would impress the whole line on the memory ; and he might cut wortliless maps into sections, allow his pupils to take them home, and expect them to be brought back joined togeth- er in the fashion of architectural games ; and so forth : it were, indeed, a miserable prospect if hundreds (Jf such arts did not occur to the teacher. I myself, however, M^ould not choose any of these proposed methods of catch- ing and yoking attention, but would adopt that of steady industry. I do believe that a rod would help a creeping child to walk better than crutches under his arms, which at first carry, but afterwards are carried by him. Yea yea, nay nay, are the best double watchwords for chil- dren. § 144 Artemidorus, the grammarian, forgot everything when he was terrified. Fear cripples the memory, both by pro- ducing physical weakness and mental irritation ; the frost of cold fear chains every living power which it approach- es. The bonds are removed even from the criminal. RECOLLECTION. 377 when he is to speak and be judged ! And yet many teachers put fresh fetters on their pupils before they hear, and threaten before they teach them. Do they suppose the terrified soul can observe or remember anything better than the pain of fear, and the blows of the stick ? Can the free glance of the mental eye coexist with the abject slavery of the heart? Will the poor sinner on the scaffold embrace the beauties of the surrounding land- scape, and in contemplating them forget the impending axe ? EIGHTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Beauty limited to the Outward Sense, §§ 145, 146; to the Inner Sense, §§ 147, 148. — Chap. II. Classical Education, §§ 149, 150. CHAPTER I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. §145. USE the expression sense of beauty instead of taste ; taste for the subhme, sounds as badly as smell for the sublime. The French publish one of the best instructions on taste, under the title Almanack des Gourmands. Further ; the sense of beauty is not the same as the instinctive desire to express beauty ; the development and improvement of this latter faculty belongs properly to schools of art. If your boy, even in the school-room, is taught to produce, instead of only to feel and see, beautiful forms and beautiful thoughts, he is as much spoiled as if he were a father before being a lover. Nothing is more dangerous, either for art or heart, than the premature expression of feeling ; many a poetic genius has been fatally chilled by delicious draughts of Hippocrene in the warm season of youth. The feelings of the poet especially should be closely and coolly covered, and the hardest and driest sciences should ' SENSE OF BEAUTY. 379 retard the bursting blossoms till the due spring-time. Pope, when a boy, wrote poems of sentiment ; when a man, epigrams. It is said that every clever man, such as Leibnitz and Kant, for instance, must have written verses in his youth : this may be very true of him who writes none in maturer life ; the philosopher, the mathematician, the statesman, may begin where the poet ends, and vice versa ! The poet is the only one who reveals the most secret, the holiest, and the tenderest aspirations of human- ity ; let him then attain the full stature of his model before he copies it. Let him, like the beautiful white butterfly, first live on the leaves of the schools, and unfold his wings when the flowers hold honey. § 14.^. Children, like women, always kindly disposed towards pedants, would not think it utterly ridiculous if one at- tempted, for instance, to instil into a boy admiration for a girl's beautiful features by displaying drawings of hid- eous noses, lips, and necks, and along with them beautiful paintings of the same parts, so that when the young man left the school of design, he might at once fall in love with a beautiful woman as judiciously as a simpleton who had never been to school. Something very similar is done by those teachers who try to educate the sense of the sublime ; which, however, is not increased, but diminished, by the given examples of sublimity. The circumnavigator of the world does not think the sea so sublime as does his wife, who views it only from the coast ; the stars come at last to look smaller in the naked eye of an astronomer than in ours. In fact, men want to educate everything (themselves "excepted) which will certainly educate itself; and they 380 LEVANA. do this the more earnestly because the result is certain and irresistible, as in walking, seeing, tasting, &c. : but for the sense of artistic beauty, which peculiarly needs education, schools are rarely built. A child may be conducted into the artistic realm of beauties appreciable by the outward senses, such as paint- ing, music, architecture, earlier than into that of beauties appreciable only by the mind, such as poetry. Above all things, educate the German eye, which is so far behind the German ear. Conceal from him every distortion of shape or drawing, — one might add of the streets, if it were possible to hide the grotesque appearance of our houses, dresses, and ornaments, or rather disfigure- ments, — and surround his beauteous age with beauty. The example of the critically correct Italians proves that an artist's hand is not the necessary accompaniment of an artist's eye. Open a child's eye, more than his heart, to the beauties of nature ; the latter opens naturally in its proper season, and sees farther and more beauties than those you place before it. Unfortunately little can be accomplished in this direction by your unaided efforts ; only the state — which, however, loves better to carve its wood into parade-beds than cradles of art — can pro- vide true education for the eye, which is best taught by streets, temples, and gardens. Must royalty and art be everywhere as far distant from each other as the Sun and Venus, — a space which a cannon-ball would require sev- enteen years to traverse ? The former paragraph clearly excludes poets from the proposed school of art. A great poetic gallery, filled with novices, gathered together for the express purpose of poetizing, could at most but fur- nish poems upon poetry and poets, in short, but mock- heroic imitations ; an evil which the acquirement of tech- SENSE OF BEAUTY. 381 nical facility, the great advantage of a school for art, does not compensate. A true poet must, like Shakespeare and Cervantes, have struggled with life and all its conditions ; then he may take the pencil, not merely to lay color by color, but to paint his soul upon the canvas. If an inti- mate acquaintance with poems led to writing poems, actors ought to have written the best plays. An artistic school for the ear is less required from deficiency of teachers, patterns, and energy, than from a superfluity of them, for sometimes the teachers will drown one another, though at the risk of being them- selves out of tune. Fortunately it is more difficult to change or destroy the simple taste of the hearing, than of the seeing or reading, public. Behind the most sensitive ear the heart always remains open to the simplest melo- dies : the virtuoso alone is his own empoisoner. § 147. If the art of poetry have been pronounced, and with justice, to embrace all human nature, to be the Venus girdle which enchantingly combines the most opposite powers, the most graceful alternate transformation of form into subject, and this again into that, like the candle whose flame assumes a shape, and yet through which the wick is visible ; if this be so, we must indeed wonder that the study of this unity in plurality should be appointed for that time of life in which variety is small, and the power of combining it weak, or even erring. Must not children resemble nations on whom the sun of beauty first shone after the tempest of their wants was stilled ? And does not poetry, the bridal ornament of Psyche, require her to be full-grown and a bride ? Be- fore the thirteenth or fourteenth year, before the time of 382 LEVANA. opening manhood, which throws a romantic splendor round sun, and moon, and spring, and sex, and poetry, the child regards poetical flowers as so many dried medi- cinal herbs. The error of prematurely introducing a child to the treasures of poetry can only arise from the aesthetic mistake of believing the spirit of poetry to con- sist less in the whole, than in its variously-scattered, daz- zling charms of sound, pictures, events, and feelings ; for these, a child has naturally a ready ear. Rhymers and verse-writers may, indeed, play a useful part at an early age. Rhyme delights both the most uncultivated and the youngest ear ; and the harmony of full-sounding prose will soon melt the little soul. Instructive poetry, resem- bling circular light-holders, also is good. Songs, too, are passable. Tales, particularly Oriental tales, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, (those romantic summer nights, so short whether to men or children ! ) will arouse the dreaming poetic heart with gentle charms until it is after- wards strong enough to comprehend the lofty lyric ode, the wide-extended level epic, the thronging passions of tragedy. When manhood and womanhood have kindled the tran- sitory joy-fires of life, and all their powers seek unity and the future, then let the poet approach, and be the Orpheus who animates dead bodies, as well as tames wild beasts. But what poets shall the teacher bring ? §148. Our own! Neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Hebrew, nor Indian, nor French, but German. Let the English- man select English poets, and every nation its own. Only when we call to mind the poverty of the Dark Ages, whose seeming corpse the miracles of Greece and SENSE OF BEAUTY. 383 Rome reanimated, can we comprehend the existing ab- surdity of not educating and preparing the mind by- means of native, related, and young beauties, for those of foreign and distant ages ; but of precisely reversing the matter, and placing him among strangers, instead of those who speak his mother tongue. The quickest com- prehension and perception of all the secondary tints in a poet's work, the in tensest feeling for its subject, the widest embrace of its aim, and of its humor, — all this is only possible to the reader of his own countryman, not of any foreign wonderful being ; if the actual conditions of his native country help the poet to color, they also help the reader to see : she was a Roman who at once inspired Raffaelle, — the Roman, — as a mistress and a Madonna. Must we in the North dig all our beauties and hopes, hke vases and urns, out of sepulchres ? "We may do so rightly if we speak only of vases and similar objects ; that is to say, of the artistic education of the eye. The most beautiful forms should be first pre- sented to the eye, — a Grecian Venus to a Chinese. But if the education of the inner sense is the object, offer the nearest first. The outer sense accustoms itself, by degrees, to the most preposterous forms, as all journals of fashion show, and becomes attached to them by length of time ; the inner sense is formed by the contemplation of childish beauties to the comprehension of mental beauty. Begin with Raffaelle and Gluck, but not with Sophocles. At home and at school let the native poets be first placed on the altar as gods of the household and the country; let the little child rise from the lesser to the greater gods. What love of country must not that hang- ing on the lips of native poets inspire ! And to what beautiful, slow reading should we not be accustomed, (for 384 LEVANA. the German reads everything quickly that is not very far removed in distance, age, and language,) if one of Klop- stock's odes, for instance, were as critically dissected as one of Horace's ! What power should we not obtain over our own language, if, at the age when schoolmasters usually discourse about Pindar and Aristophanes, we were introduced to the sonorous odes of Klopstock and Voss, into the antique temple of Goethe, the lofty dome of Schiller ! For even our own language must speak to us according to a model, if it is to produce any eiFect. Hence the old humanists (and some modern ones too) wrote Latin best, and both old and new worldlings write French best, and both parties often wrote miserable Ger- man: Leibnitz and the Rectors on the one side, and Frederick the Great on the other, confirm my observa- tion. CHAPTER II. CLASSICAL EDUCATION. § 149. FOR the sake of brevity, I begin this chapter with the request that the reader will first peruse, in the Invisible Lodge, Book First, the supplement headed " Why I give my Gustavus witty and bad authors, but forbid the classical, I mean Greek and Latin writers " ; thereby I shall be spared both copying and printing it over again ; and also the bad attempt to clothe the same thoughts, or soul, with another tfody. I have not yet met with any refutation of that paragraph ; nor, during CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 385 the twenty years which have elapsed since its pubHca- tion, have I been able to refute myself. What follows might be appended to a second or third edition. I ask whether those men who have given us Wieland's explanation of the satires of Horace, Voss's translation of Homer, Schleiermacher's introductory translations of Plato's discourses, have sprung from that Latin town which Maupertuis recommended to be founded ? Only men of mind, of power, and of education, completed by more and higher studies than mere philology, only chil- dren born on fortunate days, such as Goethe and Herder, have ever seen the spirit of antiquity ; the rest have only beheld, instead, treasures of words, and gleanings of flow- ers. Is it not madness to think it even possible that a boy of fourteen or sixteen, however great his abilities, can comprehend the harmony of poetry and deep thought con- tained in one of Plato's discourses, or the worldly persi- flage of Horace's satires, when the genius itself has not conducted the men I name to the pure cold heights of antiquity until long after the fiery season of youth ? Why do teachers demand what they can so seldom do themselves ? I entreat them to think partly of the indif- ference with which they and the Italian savans await the unrolling of the eight hundred manuscripts in Herculane- um ; partly of the stupidity with which they first mistook, and afterwards criticised, the new Greek spirit of Goethe in his elegies on the antique at Weimar ; partly of the numberless mistakes they have made in attributing a Gre- cian resemblance to many a flat production, merely on account of its German dulness and French form, and denying it to such pure, powerful works as those of Her- der. And does not tlic preference which the youth of our 17 Y 386 LEVANA. universities manifests towards every new hairy comet, really show what is effected by the ancient astronomy in our youthful training-places ? And is it possible, even if all other things were different, that the tender, indivisible form of beauty can be appreciated if grammatic divisions break it, like the Medicean Venus, into thirteen frag- mentg, and thirty smaller pieces ? What, in this case, the youth may gladly confound with the enjoyment of the whole, and with the goddess of flowers, is the pleasure derived from some wayside flower in the sandy desert of philological exercises ; and the ordinary teacher mistakes his sand-bath for the floral deity. This perversity causes the study of the ancients, which must present its casket of phrases at every boy's toilet, to give his concetti to the Italian, his host of synonymes to the English, and to the German every taste which he can find. And thus the new age is lost to us by the wounds of beauty. § 150. Let antiquity be the Venus and morning star which rises over the evening of our North. It depends on our position, with regard to the star of beauty, whether it shall shine upon us with a full or only a partial light. The language of the ancients is a very different thing. So, again, is the spirit of their history, or subject ; and, thirdly, the spirit of their form, or poetry. The learning of the ancient languages, and their har- monic beauty, has no prematurity to dread ; but why are these canonical writings of the spirit desecrated into books for teaching the alphabet and reading ? Do not people understand that no mind, least of all a child's, can turn at once in such opposite directions as language and subject, even though it be a poet's subject, require ? CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 387 Especial care should be taken never to reduce a reality to a mere arrangement of words, particularly because the recollection rejects as indigestible all single, isolated mat- ters. If the fact stands prominently forth, the word or name is often lost sight of. Thus it has frequently been remarked, that those boys find it most difficult to remem- ber the names of the heroes in ancient Greek or Roman story who have their deeds impressed most vividly on their minds. So, in novels, the interest of the story, and of the hero, will sometimes make a young lady read the whole without knowing the names of the hero or heroine, which yet stand upon every page, and cause her to forget them in their lives as completely as the Greeks, who, according to Lessing, named their tragedies after pei'sons who did not appear in them. What Greek or Latin books are the most suitable for teaching those languages ? Partly imitations, which may be made in order not to lead a deaf and dumb spirit to the divine oracles of the ancients ; partly also those an- cient books which possess most interest for the youthful mind : for instance, the younger Pliny (as a forerunner of the French letter-writers), and even the elder Pliny ; at least he is much more suitable than Tacitus, so full of poison, the world, and life ; also Lucan, Seneca, Ovid, Martial, Quinctilian, Cicero's youthful orations, &c. In Greek the romantic Odyssey, in spite of its impor- tance, might occupy an early place, then Plutarch, ^lian, and even the Plutarch of philosophers, Diogenes Laertius. The ages of iron and brass, like the metals after which they are named, should be laid at once on the surface, and the nobler metals raised afterwards upon them. In short, to obtain strength, observe the Grecian law, which forbade athletes even to look upon beauties. 388 LEVANA. The fortifications round the city of God have been laid by the ancients for every age in the history of theh' own. The present ranlis of humanity would sink irrecoverably if the youth did not take its way through the silent tem- ple of the mighty past into the market-place of after life. The names of Socrates, Cato, Eparainondas, and others, are pyramids of the power of will. Rome, Athens, Sparta, are the three crowning cities of the giant Geryon ; and after ages fix their eyes on the youth as on the primitive mountains of humanity. Not to know the ancients is to be an ephemeron, which neither sees the sun rise nor set. But do not expose this antique temple as though it were a receptacle for cast-off customs and phrases, and as though its holy relics, instead of being worshipped, might, like warriors' bones, be converted into knife-handles, and the like. The man can draw the history of the ancients from their own springs ; the child may draw them from the man : one ancient alone I would except, Plutarch, from whose hand the young may receive the animating palm-wine of the mighty past. But schoolmasters will- ingly sacrifice the purification of the soul by ancient history to a pure Grecian. So Demosthenes, destitute of ornament, poor in flowery garlands, rich in chains of argument, and rich in ands, is sacrificed to sounding, flowery Cicero. It were surely well to consult the age and advancement of the pupils in schqols, and begin with the easier classical authors, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Herodotus, Anacreon, Tyr- t£eus, Euripides ; afterwards advancing to the more diffi- cult, Horace, Caesar, Lucretius, Sophocles, Plato, Aris- tophanes. Here, as is natural, that orderly dishonor is scorned by which masters place the difficulty of under- standing an author in the phrases, rather than in the CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 389 higher spirit ; just similarly in a French school Goethe would be read by the lower classes, Schiller by the sec- ond, Haller by the first, and I by nobody. I call Virgil an easy classical author ; C^sar a difficult one ; the odes of Horace are easy, his satires difficult ; Klopstock is oftener easy than Goethe, because merely verbal diffi- culties may be overcome by teaching and industry, but mental difficulties only by the maturity of thought, which comes with years. If it be asked where time is to be found for the so- called knowledge of things, and the studies whereby a livelihood is to be obtained, since their subjects constantly increase, and we resemble an army, the last ranks of which must march quickest, — I tranquilly answer. Give natural philosophy and natural history, astronomy and geometry, and abundant supplies of " bread studies," in tlie school-rooms and lecture-rooms of your gymnasiums ; and in so doing you will give the boys ten times more pleasure than they receive from the unfolding of the mummy-bandages of the ancient graces ; thus, too, you impart the common nourishment needed by both the future divisions of your pupils into sons of the muses and sons of labor. Then the higher schools are reserved for the instructions of the greatest teachers, the ancients. NINTH FRAGMENT, OR CONCLUSION. § 151. TREATISE on education does not include the theory of instruction, whose wide realm embraces the mistakes of all sciences and arts ; nor the theory of remedies, which would re- quire libraries instead of volumes for the complication of mistakes, years, positions, and relations. At the same time no science is entirely disconnected from the rest ; the feet cannot move without the hands. § 152. Lavater, in a painted series of four-and-twenty faces, converted a frog's head into an Apollo's : I would that a poem could, in a similar way, depict the restoration of some naturally gifted but ruined child to the pure features of humanity, instead of taking a sun-god to school as Xenophon and Rousseau did. Yes, one might exhibit an educational history of many false cures effected on the same human limb ; and it would be nothing else than useful and difficult. How often has not the ill-set arm of humanity to be broken afresh so as to be rightly healed ! §153. The best and most complete education cannot exhibit its true power upon one child, but upon a number of CONCLUSION. 391 united children ; — romantic Cyropedagogues of one indi- vidual should think of this : — a lawgiver influences mul- titudes by multitudes ; one Jew alone could not produce a Moses. But this very Mosaic people — which has spread unaltered through the ocean of all time, as sea- plants in all the zones of the ocean, and has retained its Mosaic coloring even when burning Africa has changed its bodily hue — is the strongest witness to the power of education, for, during its dispersion, the Mosaic education of the people can only be maintained by private educa- tion. Let this fact inspire all parents with courage to disregard all that is malignant in the future into which they must send theii' children. § 154. For the same reason this courage should not be les- sened by a well-known contradictory appearance ; namely, that children, like plants acclimatized to the nursery and school-room, can scarcely be recognized in a strange apartment, in a carriage, in the country, or at midnight. " It was all forced fruit," says then the good, vexed father, " and I have lost my labor and my hope." But if the angry man will then sit down and consider that he, a plant equally acclimatized to his position, has frequently been made unlike himself by strangeness of place or cir- cumstances, yet with very transitory injury to his powers, he may cool his wrath, by applying the same observation, though in a stronger degree, to his children, who, being more excitable, feeble, and inexperienced, must naturally obey and succumb to every new presence. §155. In some circumstances we cannot be sufRciently diffuse 392 LEVANA. with children, in others not sufficiently short. Speak at greatest length in tales, and when you wish to give the passions time to cool, as a kind of rhetorical signal that something important is to come. The utmost brevity should be used in confronting logical sentences for exer- cise, — in forbidding, — and further, in necessary punish- ments ; then, after the billows are laid, loquacity may be advantageously resumed. § 156. If a father is boldly obedient to the right rule of letting a boy, especially one destined to a learned profession, lie fallow during the first five years of life, only learning what he teaches himself, so that his body may become strong enough to bear its future mental treasures, let him be prepared when the child first goes to school for a dilficulty which may, perhaps, last some months : it is this, — that the boy, hitherto accustomed only to his own mental teaching, cannot immediately apply with ease to instruction ft'om without, but receives the foreign rays at first as in a dispersing concave glass. But by and by they will be collected and combined by a convex mirror. Since I have again fallen on the subject of instruction, which, especially in later years, becomes continually more and more closely combined with education, I know not how better to make amends for my digression than by pursuing it, and saying that a boy of five years old can be sent to no better preparatory school for a learned edu- cation, though but for a few hours daily, than to one of only three classes, Latin, mathematics, and history. In fact, these three kinds of knowledge attune the mind to the threefold harmony of education. First, the Latin language, by its brevity and great dissimilarity to our CONCLUSION. 393 own, exercises the child's mind in logic, and is, theivfore, a preparatory school of philosophy. Brevity of speech gives comprehensiveness of thought. Secondly, mathe- matics, as a mediator between the intuitions of the senses and of the mind, excites and forms a power distinct from philosophy, and not sufficiently esteemed in its connection with the material universe ; which, by the analyzing of space from without, and time from within, brings the ultimate conclusions of numbers within the power of thought. Thirdly, history, like religion, unites all learn- ing and power ; especially ancient history, that is, the history of the nations of the youthful world, Grecian and Roman, Jewish and early Christian. As the epic poem and the romance may be made to contain the floating materials of all knowledge, their mother, History, may still more easily be made into the firm pulpit of every moral and religious opinion ; and every department of morality, moral theology, moral philosophy and casuistry, finds its leader in ancient history. The young heart lives in the mighty youthful past, and, by this active art of poetry, buried centuries are raised from the dead in a few school- hours. The devils removed into historic distance grieve less, and tempt far less, than when standing in our pres- ence ; the angels, on the contrary, cleared by distance from neighboring mists, shine and sparkle more brilliantly than ever ; and they tell us what there is yet to do in the future which may be worthy of the past. History — if you are not determined to make it into the biography of the Devil — is the third Bible ; for the book of nature is the second ; and ancient history alone can convert and improve modern history. The father of the Levana — although in the case of a goddess this name would be more humbly and appropri- 17* 394 LEVANA. ately changed into worshipper — has (he ventures now to recall to himself) kept the promise of the Preface to jest but httle. He has wanted room, — but that another book will furnish, — rather than occasion for two satires, both directed against one evil, — the affliction of children, — teaching. A short, serious epitome must be permitted. Certainly, as regards children's sufferings, we must ad- mit that nature, which makes them cry sooner than laugh, has the precedence of us. Not the human egg, but the bee's, is laid upon honey. Among all entrances into new circumstances none is so important as that into life, and there also the new apprentice must pay his footing ; or, as a novice in life's mysteries, he, hke the ancient Greek, must be severely scourged ; or he must receive that which in prisons — and such Plato esteemed the earth to be — is called a welcome, which does not consist in the old German sparkling goblet {that his mother's breast offers him), but in what most would think a flogging. According to the Catholic Church, children, those of Bethlehem under Herod, were the first martyrs ; it is the emblem of wdiat still exists. According to the same Church, the unbaptized passed either into hell or into purgatory ; but they pass between the two fires upon earth, if they pursue the way from the first to the second sacrament. If baptism be necessary to salvation, so also is the sacrament of the Eucharist ; therefore before the Lord's Supper, the feast of love, you justly repress what- e^'er seems rather to resemble hate. And so the tears which Garrick could draw by the mere repetition of the alphabet, the child soon learns to shed by itself. But among all the schoolmasters who have flogged either the author or his readers, and endeavored to enlighten their minds with the cane as with a pedagogic lamp-post, or CONCLUSION. 395 who have understood how to use their fists like players on the French horn, who apply theirs to the wide mouth of the horn and draw forth its delicate semi-tones ; yet among all schoolmasters, I say, it is a rare and difficult tiling to find a John Jacob Häuberle. Which of us can boast, like Häuberle, of having administered, during his schoolmastership of fifty-one years and seven months, 911,527* strokes of the cane and 124,000 of the rod; also 20,989 blows with the ruler ; not only 10,235 boxes on the ear, but al?^o 7,905 tugs at the same member ; and a sum total of 1,115,800 blows with the knuckles on the head? Who besides Jacob Häuberle has given 22,763 impositions, partly in the Bible, partly in the catechism, partly in the Psalm-book, partly in the grammar, as with four syllogistic logical figures, or a sonate ä quatre mains'^ And did he not threaten the rod to 1,707 children who did not receive it, and make 777 kneel upon round hard peas, and 631 upon a sharp-edged piece of wood, to which are to be added a corps of 5,001 riders on the wooden horse ? For if any one had done this, why did he not keep an account of his blows, like Häuberle, from whom alone we have to learn this interesting intelligence as from a Flogging Diary, or Martyrologium, or Imperial School Flogging Journal ? But I fear most teachers only deserve the contemptuous surname of Ccesarius, who was called " the Mild " because he suffered no nun to receive more than six-and-thirty lashes. If the benefit to be derived from thus converting life into a hell be anything more than seeming, good infernal machines — in which we always succeed better than in celestial machines — ought to be made for the purpose, * These numbers are to be found in the twelfth quarterly number of the Pedagogic Entertainment for Teachers. 396 LEVANA. and people attached to them expressly to torment. No one torments better than one who has himself been tor- mented, — monks, for instance. If you wish me to weep, says Horace, you must first weep yourself. And the schoolmaster can do the last ; no one could have better sat to an Albert Durer, who loved to paint crucifixions, than the united body of German schoolmasters ; and if the crucifixion came at the conclusion of Christ's ministry, with us they accompany each other. England, which gives a sub-rector a yearly salary of a thousand pounds, will apparently attain this end less quickly — although in all its schools it will exalt the rod to the post of educa- tional honor — than countries where, as in Prussia, the whole average salaries of schoolmasters amount only to 250 thalers ; so we may fairly reckon that 184 masters may be pointed out, who only receive from five to ten thalers.* Five thalers ! — Certainly it might be less, and in Baireuth it is so ; for there a village schoolmaster receives from every pupil, for the months of November, December, January, February, March, and April, twenty- four kreuzers, or a monthly stipend of four kreuzers. But the schoolmaster — which perhaps would not be expected — grows fat in the summer holidays, because he goes out to pasture with the cattle (it is only in winter that he is a shepherd of souls). The evil effects of this system soon break out in him, for he drives the cattle away from wrong roads with much fewer blows than the children. The receipt of four kreuzers repaid by pain ! Isocrates wept from shame to receive college fees, amounting to three thousand pounds, from his hundred pupils : might not shame and weeping find a more appro- priate place here ? Happily the state, which converts * Alg. Lit. Zeitung. No. 267. 180Ö. CONCLUSION. 397 schools into industrial schools for the pupils rather than the masters, declares that none but clergymen shall be schoolmasters, and students of divinity house tutors for the liigher classes of pupils (as the Dalai Lama may only be attended by priests). Theologians are active Theopa- .schists, and every Bible comes into their hands sooner than the Bihlia in nummis ; for it has ever been a Prot- estant principle, in order not to separate them too far from the Catholic clergy, to compel the Lutheran minis- ters strictly to keep the vows of poverty. In short, they have little ; therefore, all the more is to be taken from them by giving them the office of schoolmasters. If we ascend to the higher scholastic positions, we find that where the young men, having attained the honor of the gymnasium, need fewer mortifications, there also the teachers require fewer ; thus, a head-master always receives a trifle more pay than his subordinate. To which is to be added a second reason ; that the latter has more work, and, consequently, requires more spurring, more oil in the joints and wheels, to accomplish his heavier movements, — that is to say, more unemployed gastric juice. For, according to an ancient political law, the labor and trouble of an office increase in reverse pro- portion to its remuneration, and, wdiere the former are alto- gether wanting, there that law of the artisans is acted upon, according to which, every travelling journeyman who cannot find work in a place receives a present. It is, however, so ordered, that even in the highest school offices, as in fruitful Hindustan, where there are yearly three harvests and a famine, the four quarterly' harvests shall not always exclude a famine. As regards drink, we know, from Langen's clerical law, that Karpzov bestowed on all school-teachers the privilege of exemption 398 LEVANA. from tax on all liquors. In this, the state has not had so much regard, as at first appears, to the wants and thirst of the profession, but has followed the old custom of giving still greater privileges to schoolmasters ; such as exemption from the taxes on Tokay wine and pheas- ants, and license for all their pearls and jewels to enjoy the immunities of students' goods. § 157. But enough of this ! I spoke above of a hostile future for our children : every father holds out this prospect, which he has inherited from his own. Who, indeed, has been so blessed, when finally closing his eyes, as to con- template two fair worlds, his own yet hidden, and one left behind for his children ? The whole of humanity always seems to us a salt sea, which the sweet showers and streams of individuals do not sweeten ; yet the pure water on the earth is as little dried up as the salt sea ; nay, it even rises from it. Therefore, father, the higher thou thinkest thyself, whether truly or not, exalted above thy age, (consequently above its daughters, whom yet thou must, however unwilhngly, see thy children marry,) all the more thank-offerings hast thou to lay on the altar of the past, which has made thee so noble ; and how canst thou better present them to thy parents than by the hands of thy children ? What, then, are children really ? Their constant pres- ence, and their often disturbing wants, conceal from us the charms of these angelic forms, which we know not how to name with sufficient beauty and tenderness, — blossoms, dew-drops, stars, butterflies. But when you kiss and love them, you give and feel all their names ! A single child upon the earth would seem to us a won- CONCLUSION. 399 derful angel, come from some distant home, who, unac- customed to our strange language, manners, and air, looked at us speechless and inquisitive, but pure as a RafFaelle's infant Jesus ; and hence, we can always adopt every new child into the child's place, but not every new friend into the friend's place. And daily from the un- known world these pure beings are sent upon the wild earth ; and sometimes they alight on slave-coasts, or bat- tle-fields, or in prison for execution ; and sometimes in flowery valleys, and on lofty mountains ; sometimes in a most baleful, sometimes in a most holy age ; and after the loss of their only father they seek an adopted one here below. I once composed a poem on the Last Day, and the two last children : — its latter part will serve for a conclusion. " So go down to the earth," said the angel to two little naked souls, " and be born as brother and sister ! " It will be very pretty down there, said they both, and flew hand in hand to the earth, which was already enveloped in the flames of the last day, and from which the dead were rising. " Look there ! " said the brother, " these are very big, tall children ; the flowers, compared to them, are quite little ; they will certainly carry us about everywhere, and tell us about everything ; they are very large angels, sister ! " " But see," answered she, " that great angel, and every one has clothing round him ; — and the morning red glows over the whole earth." " But look," said he, " the sun has fallen upon the earth, and it burns everywhere ; and there a gigantic dew-drop makes fiery waves, and look how the great angels plunge into it." " They stretch their hands upwards," said she, " and kiss them to us." " And hark ! " he said, " how the thun- der sings, and the stars dance about among those great 400 LEVANA. chiklren." " Which are the great children," asked she, " who are to be our two parents ? " " Dost thou not see," repHed he, " how these angels sleep under the earth, and then rise up from it ? Let us fly quickly ! " And the children approached nearer to the flaming earth, and said, " Look kindly upon us, ye parents, and do not hurt us, and play with us a long, long time, and tell us many tales, and kiss us ! " They were born just as the world, full of sins, vanished and they remained alone ; their little hands played with the flames, and at last they also, like Adam and Eve, were driven away, and the world closed with the Para- dise of Children. Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 3477