What Is Rational Is Actual

What Experience And History Teach Is This - That Nations And Governments Have Never Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Any Lessons They Might Have Drawn From It. Variant: What Experience And History Teach Is This - That People And Governments Never Have Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Principles Deduced From It.

It Is A Matter Of Perfect Indifference Where A Thing Originated; The Only Question Is: Is It True In And For Itself?

Education To Independence Demands That Young People Should Be Accustomed Early To Consult Their Own Sense Of Propriety And Their Own Reason. To Regard Study As Mere Receptivity And Memory Work Is To Have A Most Incomplete View Of What Instruction Means.

Every Philosophy Is Complete In Itself And, Like A Genuine Work Of Art, Contains The Totality. Just As The Works Of Apelles And Sophocles, If Raphael And Shakespeare Had Known Them, Should Not Have Appeared To Them As Mere Preliminary Exercises For Their Own Work, But Rather As A Kindred Force Of The Spirit, So, Too Reason Cannot Find In Its Own Earlier Forms Mere Useful Preliminary Exercises For Itself.

In The Case Of Various Kinds Of Knowledge, We Find That What In Former Days Occupied The Energies Of Men Of Mature Mental Ability Sinks To The Level Of Information, Exercises, And Even Pastimes For Children; And In This Educational Progress We Can See The History Of The World's Culture Delineated In Faint Outline.