Hence the educational problem is wholly different according as you stand within or without the Tao. For those within, the task is to train in the pupil those responses which are in themselves appropriate, whether anyone is making them or not, and in making which the very nature of man consists. Those without, if they are logical, must regard all sentiments as equally non-rational, as mere mists between us and the real objects. As a result, they must either decide to remove all sentiments, as far as possible, from the pupil’s mind; or else to encourage some sentiments for reasons that have
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Ponder this. I don’t think “as a result” one needs to purge ideas of sentiment as “unreal.” We can recognize them and interrogate them. Think of how we get students to recognize prejudice, or internalized assumptions heretofore unexamined. This also happens at the “gut” or sentimental level - why an “instinctive” aversion to the Other?
