notonous plaint. We were
indeed undisturbed.

Some time elapsed in this way, and while the glow of sunset grew
steadily paler the recollection of our youthful undertaking in the
cause of culture waxed ever more vivid. It seemed to us as if we owed
the greatest debt of gratitude to that little society we had founded;
for it had done more than merely supplement our public school
training; it had actually been the only fruitful society we had had,
and within its frame we even placed our public school life, as a
purely isolated factor helping us in our general efforts to attain to
culture.

We knew this, that, thanks to our little society, no thought of
embracing any particular career had ever entered our minds in those
days. The all too frequent exploitation of youth by the State, for its
own purposes--that is to say, so that it may rear useful officials as
quickly as possible and guarantee their unconditional obedience to it
by means of excessively severe examinations--had remained quite
foreign to our education. And to show how little we had been actuated
by thoughts of utility or by the prospect of speedy advancement and
rapid success, on that day we were struck by the comforting
consideration that, even then, we had not yet decided what we should
be--we had not even troubled ourselves at all on this head. Our little
society had sown the seeds of this happy indifference in our souls and
for it alone we were prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its
foundation with hearty gratitude. I have already pointed out, I think,
that in the eyes of the present age, which is so intolerant of
anything that is not useful, such purposeless enjoyment of the moment,
such a lulling of one's self in the cradle of the present, must seem
almost incredible and at all events blameworthy. How useless we were!
And how proud we were of being useless! We used even to quarrel with
each other as to which of us should have the glory of being the more
useless. We wished to attach no importance to anything, to have strong
views about nothing, to aim at nothing; we wanted to take no thought
for the morrow, and desired no more than to recline comfortably like
good-for-nothings on the threshold of the present; and we did--bless
us!

--That, ladies and gentlemen, was our standpoint then!--

Absorbed in these reflections, I was just about to give an answer to
the question of the future of _our_ Educational Institutions in the
same self-sufficient