“What is man ?” Buber wrote of a Hasidist who once addressed his students thus: “I wanted to write a book called Adam, which would be about the whole man. But then I decided not to write it.” If answering the question “What is man?” by itself is so chal-lenging and difficult, what might be said about an effort to write not of man only but of God, man, and world? Under specialistic attitudes of our time, a number of characterizations come to mind. Not all are complimentary! And yet how does one begin to con-sider the question “What is man ?” unless the ways are kept open that relate man to God and to the world ?
The work of education is one of the most important of human employments. In its widest sense it includes the instruction of adults as well as children, in spiritual as well as in natural things, and in this sense it is the most important of all uses, because it not only prepares for a good and useful life in this world, but it also prepares for eternal life in heaven.
Johann Friedrich Oberlin “A scholarly investigation of his think-ing, his education and his influence upon the world, with a short biography,” by Horand K. Gutfeldt. Accepted in June 1968 at the University of Vienna, Austria.