WHAT shall be taught in the schools? In what shall man be instructed as a learner during his boyhood? Only the consideration of what is required to further his development as a boy and a learner will enable us to answer that question, while the knowledge of what this requirement is and of his actuality is derivable only from the phenomenon of manhood in the condition of boyhood. According to this phenomenon then, and under the mode of its manifestation, what is it that the boy should be taught? The life and the epiphany of manhood beginning in boyhood show first a living, penetrating consciousness of its own spiritual self. It shows too the dim suspicion of a conditioned existence already attained and of the dependence of its own spiritual self on that highest reality by which the reality of all things is conditioned, out of which all things have proceeded, and on which all things depend. In boyhood man has a living consciousness of and sympathy with that life-giving breath and vital motion, in which and through which all things live and by which all things are invisibly surrounded,—as fish are in water, or as man and all created animals are in the clear, pure air. Man as a boy and as an incipient learner seems to be conscious of his spiritual essence, having a presentiment of God and of a spiritual reality in all things. He is manifested with an aspiration to verify his perceptions of truth and to confirm himself more and more in his apprehension of the Divine. Manhood in its condition of boyhood confronts its environment, feeling and hoping that in all things which surround it there is a pervading spirit like its own; and this feeling excites in the boy a vehement and irresistible longing in every spring and every autumn, with every quiet evening and every return of a happy holiday, to become conscious of the Omnipresent Spirit and to make it part of himself. The outer world confronts man in his boyhood with this double problem: Firstly, it is a world conditioned and originated by the needs of mankind, by man’s power and will according to human progress; or else it is conditioned and sprung from the necessities and active forces of nature. Expression evolves itself from this outer, substantial, and corporeal world and the inner, essential, spiritual world, originally appearing at enmity with both, and finally separating itself from both,—uniting both, however, even in doing so.

  Thus human nature and its environment of outer nature through its connecting medium of expression are the angle points of a boy’s life,—as the Scriptures show they were the angle points of universal humanity in the first stage of its progress towards responsibility. Through this, the school and its training shall lead the boy to a triune knowledge,—that is, to a knowledge of himself in all his relations; to a knowledge of mankind in general, its being and conditions; to the knowledge of God as the Eternal Condition, the Everlasting Foundation and Source of human life and of all things; and finally to the knowledge of nature and the outer world as proceeding from this Everlasting Spirit and being conditioned by it. Instruction and the school shall guide mankind to this threefold knowledge, at unity with itself and in complete harmony with life and action. Through this threefold unity of knowledge, education and the school shall lead manhood in boyhood from inclination to purpose, from purpose to determination; and thus, steadfastly advancing to the attainment of its destiny and its calling, to the realization of its earthly perfection.