On the other hand, the need of
man for a life worthy of his manhood and of his species pressed upon me
with all the more force, and, therefore, teaching and education again
asserted themselves vigorously as the chief subjects occupying my
thoughts. Consequently I was only able to keep my mind contented with
the duties of my post for two years; and, meanwhile, the stones in my
hand and under my eyes turned to living, speaking forms. The
crystal-world, in symbolic fashion, bare unimpeachable witness to me,
through its brilliant unvarying shapes, of life and of the laws of human
life, and spake to me with silent yet true and readable speech of the
real life of the world of mankind.
Leaving everything else, sacrificing everything else,[100] I was driven
back upon the education of man, driven also to my refuge in Nature,
wherein as in a mirror I saw reflected the laws of the development of
being, which laws I was now to turn to account for the education of my
race. My task was to educate man in his true humanity, to educate man
in his absolute being, according to the universal laws of all
development.[101] Therefore, leaving Berlin, and laying down my office,
I began late in the autumn of 1816 that educational work which, though
it still takes its impulse from me and exists under my leadership, yet
in its deepest nature is self-sufficient and self-conditioned.
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