the whims and crotchets of his own
mind, inherited prejudice and strange delusion: the real world was
hidden from him, or the vision of it distorted. The first thing
that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the
brain--those false notions that have been put into us in youth.

To prevent their entrance at all would, of course, be the best form of
education, even though it were only negative in aim: but it would be a
task full of difficulty. At first the child's horizon would have to be
limited as much as possible, and yet within that limited sphere none
but clear and correct notions would have to be given; only after the
child had properly appreciated everything within it, might the sphere
be gradually enlarged; care being always taken that nothing was left
obscure, or half or wrongly understood. The consequence of this
training would be that the child's notions of men and things would
always be limited and simple in their character; but, on the other
hand, they would be clear and correct, and only need to be extended,
not to be rectified. The same line might be pursued on into the period
of youth. This method of education would lay special stress upon the
prohibition of novel reading; and the place of novels would be taken
by suitable biographical literature--the life of Franklin, for
instance, or Moritz' _Anton Reiser_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Moritz was a miscellaneous writer
of the last century (1757-93). His _Anton Reiser_, composed in the
form of a novel, is practically an autobiography.]

In our early days we fancy that the leading events in our life, and
the persons who are going to play an important part in it, will make
their entrance to the sound of drums and trumpets; but when, in old
age, we look back, we find that they all came in quite quietly,
slipped in, as it were, by the side-door, almost unnoticed.

From the point of view we have been taking up until now, life may be
compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of
his time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second
half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but
it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have
been worked together.

Intellectual superiority, even if it is of the highest kind, will not
secure for a man a preponderating place in conversation until after he
is forty years of age. For age and experience, though they ca