2 - On the nature of the new education in general

Summary

My proposed means of preserving the German nation, to the clear perception of which these addresses might lead you, and along with you the entire nation, proceeds from the complexion of the age, as well as from the national characteristics of the Germans, and this means must in turn affect the age and the formation of these national characteristics. Consequently, this means will not be rendered perfectly clear and intelligible until it has been compared together with these and these with it, and both presented in complete interpenetration. This business requires a little time, and thus perfect clarity can be expected only at the conclusion of our addresses. Since we must begin with one of these individual elements, however, it will be most expedient to consider first of all that means itself, in isolation from its surroundings in time and space, by itself in its inner nature, and so today's address and the one immediately following shall be devoted to this task.

The means indicated was an entirely new system of German national education, the like of which has never before existed in any other nation. In the foregoing address I described the distinction between this new education and the old thus: until now education at most only exhorted its pupils to good order and morality, but these exhortations bore no fruit in real life, which is constituted on the basis of principles that are quite different and wholly inaccessible to this education.