That courage which o'ercomes, in hard-fought fight,
Sooner or later ev'ry earthly foe,--
That faith which soaring to the realms of light,
Now boldly presseth on, now bendeth low,
So that the good may work, wax, thrive amain,
So that the day the noble may attain."[2]

I should like you to regard all I have just said as a kind of preface,
the object of which is to illustrate the title of my lectures and to
guard me against any possible misunderstanding and unjustified
criticisms. And now, in order to give you a rough outline of the range
of ideas from which I shall attempt to form a judgment concerning our
educational institutions, before proceeding to disclose my views and
turning from the title to the main theme, I shall lay a scheme before
you which, like a coat of arms, will serve to warn all strangers who
come to my door, as to the nature of the house they are about to
enter, in case they may feel inclined, after having examined the
device, to turn their backs on the premises that bear it. My scheme is
as follows:--

Two seemingly antagonistic forces, equally deleterious in their
actions and ultimately combining to produce their results, are at
present ruling over our educational institutions, although these were
based originally upon very different principles. These forces are: a
striving to achieve the greatest possible _extension of education_ on
the one hand, and a tendency _to minimise and to weaken it_ on the
other. The first-named would fain spread learning among the greatest
possible number of people, the second would compel education to
renounce its highest and most independent claims in order to
subordinate itself to the service of the State. In the face of these
two antagonistic tendencies, we could but give ourselves up to
despair, did we not see the possibility of promoting the cause of two
other contending factors which are fortunately as completely German as
they are rich in promises for the future; I refer to the present
movement towards _limiting and concentrating_ education as the
antithesis of the first of the forces above mentioned, and that other
movement towards the _strengthening and the independence_ of education
as the antithesis of the second force. If we should seek a warrant for
our belief in the ultimate victory of the two last-named movements, we
could find it in the fact that both of the forces which we hold to be
deleterious are so opposed to the eternal purpose