Monday, June 26, 2017

The Two Factors of Education

Even the conventional everyday morality demands that man should hand down to his children not only the goods he has acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance of their lives. The supreme and unconditional morality also requires that the present generation should leave a twofold legacy to the next,--in the first place all the positive acquisitions of the past, all the savings of history; and, secondly, the capacity and the readiness to use this capital for the common good, for a nearer approach to the supreme goal.

This is the essential purpose of true education, which must be at once both traditional and progressive. The division and opposition between these two factors of the true life--between the ground and that which is built upon it, between the root and that which grows out of it--is absurd and detrimental to both sides.

[Vladimir Soloviev, The Justification of the Good, von Peters, ed. Catholic Resources (Chattanooga, TN: 2015), p. 445.]

Whewell also makes this point, calling the two aspects the 'permanent' and 'progressive'; although arguably Whewell takes them to be more detachable from each other than Soloviev does.