‘Separate to Connect’

Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804), held a view concerning the relation between church and state, which Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831), briefly summarized thus: ‘Both, state and church, should leave each other alone and go their separate ways’. This statement of separation was, for Hegel, a challenge to recover some principle of unity from an apparent lack of connection.

Friedrich Fröbel, (1782–1852), (educator, creator of the concept of ‘kindergarten’, in which children are allowed to develop their unique abilities, and attend to their particular needs, naturally, through play, practical activities, social interaction, etc.), expressed a similar impulse (‘separate to connect’) through his poem, ‘Song of the Bridge’:

Das Lied von der Brücke

Auch Getrenntes zu verbinden,

Lass das kind im Spiele finden;

Und dass wohl die Menschenkraft

Da auch die Verknüpfung schafft,

Wo die Trennung scheinbar unbezwinglich,

Wo die Ein’gung unerschwinglich.

Song of the Bridge

Even separate to connect,

The games let the child inspect;

And perhaps the human power

There will the link also endower,

Where the separation seems unassailable,

Where the agreement exceeds the available.

(I was hoping to find a good translation of this poem on the internet, but it was not to be, so this is my own translation, and I (who have no poetic talent) have endeavoured to preserve the rhyme, though I gave up worrying about metre, … I do apologize to Fröbel for turning his poem into a piece of doggerel… but I think it preserves his point closely enough, or perhaps not, but, I tried).

Anyway, the poem is an expression of the principle of dialectic synthesis, finding meaning in connection, through the unifying of seemingly opposite things.

‘Only connect!’, as E. M. Forster wrote. ‘Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die’.

While working as a teacher I sometimes thought of myself as more of a student than a teacher, for it is the student’s attitude that is the proper rational attitude for a mind to grow and develop through finding connections between things. Hegel himself exhibited a power of learning patiently, as his system of finding connections between apparently opposed things slowly matured; his system, that ‘foster child of silence and slow time’, as Keats described his Grecian urn.

This shows the strength of an insight that grows and is not hurried, that understands the need for silence, and a compliance in the learner. ‘One must begin by striving to comprehend the thoughts of others’, Hegel wrote. ‘Willingness to yield one’s ideas is the first necessity for a learner… The inner nature of a man is broadened by culture, and given him as a possession through self-restraint. Thought is enriched and the mind visualized by silence’.

‘Why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are, what we want, and what we do not want?’, asked Nietzsche. ‘Let us look at this more calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it slowly . …… learn to read me well!’

Important words for our own times, as ideologues constantly and loudly proclaim what they are, (‘identity politics’), and what they want, and in particular what they do not want. They do not, for instance, want to be exposed to ideas that challenge their own (this is exemplified in certain educational institutions, with their ‘safe spaces’). We need only to watch and listen to ‘debates’ (note the inverted commas) on YouTube, to see this. There is very little ‘striving to comprehend the thoughts of others’, there is no attempt to engage with what people are actually saying, glaringly obvious facts are just not seen if they don’t fit in with a particular ideology, argument is shut down by accusations of bigotry, hate speech, etc.

For myself I prefer to subject my own thoughts to a constant and severe criticism and interrogation, while being generous and patient toward the thoughts of others as I attempt to engage with them. As Hegel said, and I repeat this important piece of advice for our times:

‘One must begin by striving to comprehend the thoughts of others. Willingness to yield one’s ideas is the first necessity for a learner’.