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The Education Of The Human Race
The Education Of The Human Race
That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the Race.
Education is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is
Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race.Whether it can
be of any advantage to the science of instruction to contemplate Education in
this point of view, I will not here inquire; but in Theology it may
unquestionably be of great advantage, and may remove many difficulties, if
Revelation be conceived of as the Educator of Humanity.
Education gives to Man nothing which he might no educe out of himself; it
gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more
easily. In the same way too, Revelation gives nothing to the human species,
which the human reason left to itself might not attain; only it has given, and
still gives to it, the most important of these things earlier. And just as in
Education, it is not a matter of indifference in what order the powers of a
man are developed, as it cannot impart to a man all at once; so was God also
necessitated to maintain a certain order, and a certain measure in His
Revelation.
Even if the first man were furnished at once with a conception of the One
God; yet it was not possible that this conception, imparted, and not gained by
thought, should subsist long in its clearness. As soon as the Human Reason,
left to itself, began to elaborate it, it broke up the one Immeasurable into
many Measurables, and gave a note or sign of mark to every one of these parts.
Hence naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who can say how many
millions of years human reason would have been bewildered in these errors,
even though in all places and times there were individual men who recognized
them as errors, had it not pleased God to afford it a better direction by
means of a new Impulse? But when He neither could nor would reveal Himself any
more to each individual man, He selected an individual People for His special
education; and that exactly the most rude and the most unruly, in order to
begin with it from the very commencement.
This was the Hebrew People, respecting whom we do not in the least know
what kind of Divine Worship they had in Egypt. For so despised a race of
slaves was not permitted to take part in the worship of the Egyptians; and the
God of their fathers was entirely unknown to them. It is possible that the
Egyptians had expressly prohibited the Hebrews from having a God or gods;
perhaps they had forced upon them the belief that their despised race had no
God, no gods, that to have a God or gods was the prerogative of the superior
Egyptians only, and this may have been so held in order to have the power of
tyrannising over them with a greater show of fairness. Do Christians even now
do much better with their slaves?
To this rude people God caused Himself to be announced first, simply as
"the God of their fathers," in order to make them acquainted and familiar with
the idea of a God belonging to them also, and to begin with confidence in Him.
Through the miracles with which He led them out of Egypt, and planted them in
Canaan, He testified of Himself to them as a God mightier than any other God.
And as He proceeded, demonstrating Himself to be the Mightiest of all, which
only One can be, He gradually accustomed them thus to the idea of The One. But
how far was this conception of The One, below the true transcendental
conception of the One which Reason learnt to derive, so late with certainty,
from the conception of the Infinite One?
Although the best of the people were already more or less approaching the
true conception of the One only, the people as a whole could not for a long
time elevate themselves to it. And this was the sole true reason why they so
often abandoned their one God, and expected to find the One, i.e., as they
meant, the Mightiest, in some God or other, belonging to another people. But
of what kind of moral education was a people so raw, so incapable of abstract
thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood capable? Of none other but such
as is adapted to the age of children, an education by rewards and punishments
addressed to the senses. Here too Education and Revelation meet together. As
yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other law than one
through obedience to which they might hope to be happy, or through
disobedience to which they must fear to be unhappy. For as yet their regards
went no further than this earth. They knew of no immortality of the soul; they
yearned after no life to come. But now to reveal these things to one whose
reason had as yet so little growth, what would it have been but the same fault
in the Divine Rule as is committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry
his pupil too rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to
ground him?
But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude a
people, a people with whom God had to begin so entirely from the beginning? I
reply, in order that in the process of time He might employ particular members
of this nation as the Teachers of other people. He was bringing up in them the
future Teachers of the human race. It was the Jews who became their teachers,
none but Jews; only men out of a people so brought up, could be their
teachers.
For to proceed. When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had grown
and was now come to years of understanding, the Father sent it at once into
foreign countries: and here it recognised at once the Good which in its
Father`s house it had possessed, and had not been conscious of.While God
guided His chosen people through all the degrees of a child-like education,
the other nations of the earth had gone on by the light of reason. The most
part had remained far behind the chosen people. Only a few had got before
them. And this too, takes place with children, who are allowed to grow up left
to themselves: many remain quite raw, some educate themselves even to an
astonishing degree.
But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the use and
necessity of Education, so the few heathen nations, who even appear to have
made a start in the knowledge of God before the chosen people, prove nothing
against a Revelation. The Child of Education begins with slow yet sure
footsteps; it is late in overtaking many a more happily organised child of
nature; but it does overtake it; and thenceforth can never be distanced by it
again. Similarly - Putting aside the doctrine of the Unity of God, which in a
way is found, and in a way is not found, in the books of the Old Testament -
that the doctrine of immortality at least is not discoverable in it, is wholly
foreign to it, that all doctrine connected therewith of reward and punishment
in a future life, proves just as little against the Divine origin of these
books. Notwithstanding the absence of these doctrines, the account of miracles
and prophecies may be perfectly true. For let us suppose that these doctrines
were not only wanting therein, but even that they were not at all true; let us
suppose that for mankind all was over in this life; would the Being of God be
for this reason less demonstrated? Would God be for this less at liberty,
would it less become Him to take immediate charge of the temporal fortunes of
any people out of this perishable race? The miracles which He performed for
the Jews, the prophecies which He caused to be recorded through them, were
surely not for the few mortal Jews, in whose time they had happened and been
recorded: He had His intentions therein in reference to the whole Jewish
people, to the entire Human Race, which, perhaps, is destined to remain on
earth forever, though every individual Jew and every individual man die
forever.
Once more, The absence of those doctrines in the writings of the Old
Testament proves nothing against their Divinity. Moses was sent from God even
though the sanction of his law only extended to this life. For why should it
extend further? He was surely sent only to the Israelitish people of that
time, and his commission was perfectly adapted to the knowledge, capacities,
yearnings of the then existing Israelitish people, as well as to the
destination of that which belonged to the future. And this is sufficient. So
far ought Warburton to have gone, and no further. But that learned man
overdrew his bow. Not content that the absence of these doctrines was no
discredit to the Divine mission of Moses, it must even be a proof to him of
the Divinity of the mission. And if he had only sought this proof in the
adaptation of such a law to such a people! But he betook himself to the
hypothesis of a miraculous system continued in an unbroken line from Moses to
Christ, according to which, God had made every individual Jew exactly happy or
unhappy, in the proportion to his obedience or disobedience to the law
deserved. He would have it that this miraculous system had compensated for the
want of those doctrines (of eternal rewards and punishments, &c.), without
which no state can subsist; and that such a compensation even proved what that
want at first sight appeared to negative.
How well it was that Warburton could by no argument prove or even make
likely this continuous miracle, in which he placed the existence of
Israelitish Theocracy! For could he have done so, in truth, he could then, and
not till then, have made the difficulty really insuperable, to me at least.
For that which was meant to prove the Divine character of the Mission of
Moses, would have rendered the matter itself doubtful, which God, it is true,
did not intend then to reveal; but which on the other hand, He certainly would
not render unattainable. I explain myself by that which is a picture of
Revelation. A Primer for children may fairly pass over in silence this or that
important piece of knowledge or art which it expounds, respecting which the
Teacher judged, that it is not yet fitted for the capacities of the children
for whom he was writing. But it must contain absolutely nothing which blocks
up the way towards the knowledge which is held back, or misleads the children
from it. Rather far, all the approaches towards it must be carefully left
open; and to lead them away from even one of these approaches, or to cause
them to enter it later than they need, would alone be enough to change the
mere imperfection of such a Primer into an actual fault. In the same way, in
the writings of the Old Testament those primers for the rude Israelitish
people, unpractised in thought, the doctrines of the immortality of the soul,
and future recompenses, might be fairly left out: but they were bound to
contain nothing which could have even procrastinated the progress of the
people, for whom they were written, in their way to this grand truth. And to
say but a small thing, what could have more procrastinated it than the promise
of such a miraculous recompense in this life? A promise made by Him who
promises nothing that He does not perform. For although unequal distribution
of the goods of this life, Virtue and Vice seem to be taken too little into
consideration, although this unequal distribution does not exactly afford a
strong proof of the immortality of the soul and of a life to come, in which
this difficulty will be reserved hereafter, it is certain that without this
difficulty the human understanding would not for a long time, perhaps never,
have arrived at better or firmer proofs. For what was to impel it to seek for
these better proofs? Mere curiosity?
An Israelite here and there, no doubt, might have extended to every
individual member of the entire commonwealth, those promises and threatenings
which belong to it as a whole, and be firmly persuaded that whosoever should
be pious must also be happy, and that whoever was unhappy must be bearing the
penalty of his wrong-doing, which penalty would forthwith change itself into
blessing, as soon as he abandoned his sin. Such a one appears to have written
Job, for the plan of it is entirely in this spirit. But daily experience could
not possibly be permitted to confirm this belief, or else it would have been
all over, for ever, with people who had this experience, so far as all
recognition and reception was concerned of the truth as yet unfamiliar to
them. For if the pious were absolutely happy, and it also of course was a
necessary part of his happiness that his satisfaction should be broken by no
uneasy thoughts of death, and that he should die old, and satisfied with life
to the full: how could he yearn after another life? and how could he reflect
upon a thing after which he did not yearn? But if the pious did not reflect
thereupon, who then should reflect? The transgressor? he who felt the
punishments of his misdeeds, and if he cursed this life, must have so gladly
renounced that other existence? Much less would it signify if an Israelite
here and there directly and expressly denied the immortality of the soul and
future recompense, on account of the law having no reference thereto. The
denial of an individual, had it even been a Solomon, did not arrest the
progress of the general reason, and was even in itself a proof that the nation
had now come a great step nearer the truth. For individuals only deny what the
many are bringing into consideration; and to bring into consideration that,
concerning which no one troubled himself at all before, is half way to
knowledge.
Let us also acknowledge that it is a heroic obedience to obey the laws of
God simply because they are God`s laws, and not because He has promised to
reward the obedience to them here and there; to obey them even though there be
an entire despair of future recompense, and uncertainty respecting a temporal
one. Must not a people educated in this heroic obedience towards God have been
destined, must they not have been capable beyond all others of executing
Divine purposes of quite a special character? Let the soldier, who pays blind
obedience to his leader, become also convinced of his leader`s wisdom, and
then say what that leader may not undertake to achieve with him.
As yet the Jewish people had reverenced in their Jehovah rather the
mightiest than the wisest of all Gods; as yet they had rather feared Him as a
Jealous God than loved Him: a proof this too, that the conception which they
had of their eternal One God was not exactly the right conception which we
should have of God. However, now the time was come that these conceptions of
theirs were to be expanded, ennobled, rectified, to accomplish which God
availed Himself of a quite natural means, a better and more correct measure,
by which it got the opportunity of appreciating Him. Instead of, as hitherto,
appreciating Him in contrast with the miserable idols of the small neighboring
peoples, with whom they lived in constant rivalry, they began, in captivity
under the wise Persians, to measure Him against the "Being of all Beings" such
as a more disciplined reason recognized and reverenced. Revelation had guided
their reason, and now, all at once, reason gave clearness to their Revelation.
This was the first reciprocal influence which these two (Reason and
Revelation) exercised on one another; and so far is the mutual influence from
being unbecoming to the Author of them both, that without it either of them
would have been useless. The child, sent abroad, saw other children who knew
more, who lived more becomingly, and asked itself, in confusion, "Why do I not
know that too? Why do I not live so too? Ought I not to have been taught and
admonished of all this in my father`s house?" Thereupon it again sought out
its Primer, which had long been thrown into a corner, in order to throw off a
blame upon the Primer. But behold, it discovers that the blame does not rest
upon the books, that the shame is solely its own, for not having long ago,
known this very thing, and lived in this very way.
Since the Jews, by this time, through the medium of the pure Persian
doctrine, recognized in their Jehovah, not simply the greatest of all national
deities, but God; and since they could, the more readily find Him and indicate
Him to others in their sacred writings, inasmuch as He was really in them; and
since they manifested as great an aversion for sensuous representations, or at
all events, were instructed in these Scriptures, to have an aversion to them
as great as the Persians had always felt; what wonder that they found favor in
the eyes of Cyrus, with a Divine Worship which he recognized as being, no
doubt, far below pure Sabeism, but yet far above the rude idolatries which in
its stead had taken possession of the forsaken land of the Jews. Thus
enlightened respecting the treasures which they had possessed, without knowing
it, they returned, and became quite another people, whose first care it was to
give permanency to this illumination amongst themselves. Soon an apostacy and
idolatry among them was out of the question. For it is possible to be
faithless to a national deity, but never to God, after He has once been
recognised.
The theologians have tried to explain this complete change in the Jewish
people in a different way; and one, who has well demonstrated the
insufficiency of these explanations, at last was for giving us, as a true
account - "the visible fulfillment of the prophecies which had been spoken and
written respecting the Babylonish captivity and the restoration from it." But
even this reason can be only so far the true one, as it presupposes the, by
this time, exalted ideas of God. The Jews must by this time have recognized
that to do miracles, and to predict the future, belonged only to God, both of
which they had ascribed formerly to false idols, by which it came to pass that
even miracles and prophecies had hitherto made so weak an impression upon
them. Doubtless, the Jews were made more acquainted with the doctrine of
immortality among the Chaldeans and Persians. They became more familiar with
it too in the schools of the Greek Philosophers in Egypt. However, as this
doctrine was not in the same condition in reference to their Scriptures that
the doctrines of God`s Unity and Attributes were - since the former were
entirely overlooked by that sensual people, while the latter would be sought
for: - and since too, for the former, previous exercising was necessary, and
as yet there had been only hints and allusions, the faith in the immortality
of the soul could naturally never be the faith of the entire people. It was
and continued to be only the creed of a certain section of them.
An example of what I mean by "previous exercising" for the doctrine of
immortality, is the Divine threatenings of punishing the misdeeds of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. This
accustomed the fathers to live in thought with their remotest posterity, and
to feel, as it were, beforehand, the misfortune which they had brought upon
these guiltless ones. By an allusion I mean that which was intended only to
excite curiosity and to occasion questions. As, for instance, the
oft-recurring mode of expression, describing death by "he was gathered to his
fathers." By a "hint" I mean that which already contains any germ, out of
which the, as yet, held back truth allows itself to be developed. Of this
character was the inference of Christ from the naming of God "the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This hint appears to me to be unquestionably
capable of being worked out into a strong proof. In such previous
exercitations, allusions, hints, consists the positive perfection of a Primer;
just as the above-mentioned peculiarity of not throwing difficulties or
hindrances in the way to the suppressed truth constitutes the negative
perfection of such a book. Add to all this the clothing and style.
1. The clothing of abstract truths, which were not entirely to be passed
over, in allegories and instructive single circumstances, which were narrated
as actual occurrences. Of this character are the Creation under the image of
growing Day; the Origin of Evil in the story of the Forbidden Tree; the source
of the variety of languages in the history of the Tower of Babel, &c.
2. The style - sometimes plain and simple, sometimes poetical, throughout
full of tautologies, but of such a kind as practised sagacity, since they
sometimes appear to be saying something else, and yet the same thing;
sometimes the same thing over again, and yet to signify or to be capable of
signifying at the bottom, something else: -
And then you have all the properties of excellence which belong to a
Primer for a childlike people, as well as for children.
But every Primer is only for a certain age. To delay the child, that has
outgrown it, longer in it than it was intended for, is hurtful. For to be able
to do this in a way in any sort profitable, you must insert into it more than
there is really in it, and extract from it more than it can contain. You must
look for and make too much of allusions and hints; squeeze allegories too
closely; interpret examples too circumstantially; press too much upon words.
This gives the child a petty, crooked, hair splitting understanding; it makes
him full of mysteries, superstitions; full of contempt for all that is
comprehensible and easy. The very way in which the Rabbis handled their sacred
books! The very character which they thereby imparted to the character of
their people! A Better Instructor must come and tear the exhausted Primer from
the child`s hands. Christ came!
That portion of the human race which God had willed to comprehend in one
Educational plan, was ripe for the second step of Education. He had, however,
only willed to comprehend on such a plan, one which by language, mode of
action, government, and other natural and political relationships, was already
united in itself. That is, this portion of the human race was come so far in
the exercise of its reason, as to need, and to be able to make use of nobler
and worthier motives of moral action than temporal rewards and punishments,
which had hitherto been its guides. The child had become a youth. Sweetmeats
and toys have given place to the budding desire to go as free, as honored, and
as happy as its elder brother. For a long time, already, the best individuals
of that portion of the human race (called above the elder brother) had been
accustomed to let themselves be ruled by the shadow of such nobler motives.
The Greek and Roman did everything to live on after this life, even if it were
only in the remembrance of their fellow-citizens. It was time that another
true life to be expected after this should gain an influence over the youth`s
actions. And so Christ was the first certain practical Teacher of the
immortality of the soul.
The first certain Teacher. Certain, through the prophecies which were
fulfilled in Him; certain, through the miracles which He achieved; certain,
through His own revival after a death through which He had sealed His
doctrine. Whether we can still prove this revival, these miracles, I put
aside, as I leave on one side who the Person of Christ was. All that may have
been at that time of great weight for the reception of His doctrine, but it is
now no longer of the same importance for the recognition of the truth of His
doctrine.
The first practical Teacher. For it is one thing to conjecture, to wish,
and to believe the immortality of the soul, as a philosophic speculation:
quite another thing to direct the inner and outer acts by it.And this at least
Christ was the first to teach. For although, already before Him, the belief
had been introduced among many nations, that bad actions have yet to be
punished in that life; yet they were only such actions as were injurious to
civil society, and consequently, too, had already had their punishment in
civil society. To enforce an inward purity of heart in reference to another
life, was reserved for Him alone.
His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines: and if they had
even had no other merit, than that of having effected a more general
publication, among other nations, of a Truth which Christ had appeared to have
destined only for the Jews, yet would they have even on the account alone, to
be reckoned among the Benefactors and Fosterers of the Human Race. If,
however, they transplanted this one great Truth together with other doctrines,
whose truth was less enlightening, whose usefulness was of a less exalted
character, how could it be otherwise. Let us not blame them for this, but
rather seriously examine whether these very commingled doctrines have not
become a new impulse of directions for human reason. At least, it is already
clear that the New Testament Scriptures, in which these doctrines after some
time were found preserved, have afforded, and still afford, the second better
Primer for the race of man. For seven hundred years past they have exercised
human reason more than all other books, and enlightened it more, were it even
only through the light which the human reason itself threw into them.
It would have been impossible for any other book to become so generally
known among different nations: and indisputably, the fact that modes of
thought so diverse from each other have been occupied on the same book, has
helped on the human reason more than if every nation had had its own Primer
specially for itself. It was also highly necessary that each people for a
period should hold this Book as the ne plus ultra of their knowledge. For the
youth must consider his Primer as the first of all books, that the impatience
to finish this book, may not hurry him on to things for which he has, as yet,
laid no basis.
And one thing is also of the greatest importance even now. Thou abler
spirit, who art fretting and restless over the last page of the Primer,
beware! Beware of letting thy weaker fellow scholars mark what thou perceivest
afar, or what thou art beginning to see! Until these weaker fellow scholars
are up with thee, rather return once more into this Primer, and examine
whether that which thou takest only for duplicates of the method, for a
blunder in the teaching, is not perhaps something more.
Thou hast seen in the childhood of the human race, respecting the
doctrine of God`s unity, that God makes immediate revelations of mere truths
of reason, or has permitted and caused pure truths of reason to be taught, for
some time, as truths of immediate revelation, in order to promulgate them the
more rapidly, and ground them the more firmly. Thou experiencest in the
boyhood of the Race the same thing in reference to the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. It is preached in the better Primer as a Revelation,
instead of taught as a result of human reason. As we by this time can dispense
with the Old Testament, in reference to the doctrine of the unity of God, and
as we are by degrees beginning also to be less dependent on the New Testament,
in reference to the immortality of the soul: might there not in this Book also
be other truths of the same sort prefigured, mirrored, as it were, which we
are to marvel at, as revelations, exactly so long as until the time shall come
when reason shall have learned to educe them, out of its other demonstrated
truths and bind them up with them?
For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. How if this doctrine should at
last, after endless errors, right and left, only bring men on the road to
recognise that God cannot possibly be One in the sense in which finite things
are one, that even His unity must be a transcendental unity, which does not
exclude a sort of plurality? Must not God at least have the most perfect
conception of Himself, i.e., a conception in which is found everything which
is in Him? But would everything be found in it which is in Him, if a mere
conception, a mere possibility, were found even of his necessary Reality as
well as of His other qualities? This possibility exhausts the being of His
other qualities. Does it that of His necessary Reality? I think not.
Consequently God can either have no perfect conception of himself at all, or
this perfect conception is just as necessarily real, i.e., actually existent,
as He Himself is. Certainly the image of myself in the mirror is nothing but
an empty representation of me, because it only has that of me upon the surface
of which beams of light fall. But now if this image had everything, everything
without exception, which I have myself, would it then still be a mere empty
representation, or not rather a true reduplication of myself? When I believe
that I recognise in God a familiar reduplication, I perhaps do not so much
err, as that my language is insufficient for my ideas: and so much at least
for ever incontrovertible, that they who wish to make the idea thereof popular
for comprehension, could scarcely have expressed themselves more intelligibly
and suitably than by giving the name of a Son begotten from Eternity.
And the doctrine of Original Sin. How, if at last everything were to
convince us that man standing on the first and lowest step of his humanity, is
not so entirely master of his actions as to be able to obey moral laws?
And the doctrine of the Son`s satisfaction. How, if at last, all
compelled us to assume that God, in spite of that original incapacity of man,
chose rather to give him moral laws, and forgive him all transgressions in
consideration of His Son, i.e., in consideration of the self-existent total
of all His own perfections, compared with which, and in which, all
imperfections of the individual disappear, than not to give him those laws,
and then to exclude him from all moral blessedness, which cannot be conceived
of without moral laws.
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