existence and
binds it together. A wonderful law in the world, which some men call
Providence, others fate, decrees that a man like you must be led in
far-off paths, through various callings, and armed for his work, till
he stands ready in his noble beauty. Ah, do not shake your head, let me
go on; it is a holy thought, that a mysterious power, which we must
name God, has led you hither to train a beautiful human being, an
Apollo-like creature, who is to have nothing to do in the world but to
be noble and to feel nobly. I did not rightly manage Roland; I sowed
before I knew whether the soil was prepared. Today, as I saw a man
raking in the vineyards, I thought, there is Copernicus."

"Copernicus?" asked Eric, in perplexity.

"Understand me aright; the first man who dug up the ground with pointed
stick, horn, bone, or stone, in order to plant seeds, he moved the
earth, he was the father of our culture, as Copernicus at last
discovered that the whole planet is in motion."

"What do you think, then, is now to be made of Roland?" said Eric,
bringing him back to the subject.

"What is to be made of him? A noble man. Is it not a mistaken
course to drive a human being to goodness, by the sight of all sorts of
misery and weakness? That makes him morbid, sentimental, and weak.
The Greeks had a different method, that of energy, cheerfulness,
self-reliance,--that makes him strong. Our virtue is no longer
'virtus,' but only a feminine hospital-work. Ah," continued Knopf, "the
genuinely noble man, or the genuine man, is the unexamined man, a
species no longer to be found in Europe. We are all born to be
examined. That was the greatness of the Greek, that they had no
examination commissions. Plato took no degree, and do you know, that is
the greatness which is bringing forward a new Greece in America, that
_there_ also, properly speaking, there are no examinations."

"Don't wander so far," interposed Eric.

"Yes," Knopf went on unheeding, "Roland is the unexamined human being;
he need learn nothing in order to be questioned about it. Why must
every modern man become something special? '_Civis Romanus sum_,' that
ought to be sufficient."

Again Eric drew him back from his digression, asking,--

"Can you suggest any vocation for Roland?"

"Vocation! vocation! The best that can be learned is not found in any
plan of study, and costs no school-fees. The division of callings, on
which we so much pride ourselves, is nothing but