ng
for me to do but seize the rope once more so as not to fall and be
dashed to pieces. The week in which this dream occurred was perhaps the
most terrible one of all my childhood, for the memory of it did not
leave me the whole day. When, in spite of my struggles, I was put to bed
I carried the fear of its return with me, even immediately into my sleep
so that it was no wonder the dream continually recurred, until by
degrees it faded out.

VIII

I remained in Susanna's school until my sixth year and learned there to
read fluently. I was not permitted to learn to write yet on account of
my youth, as it was said; it was the last thing that Susanna had to
teach and therefore she prudently held it in reserve. But I had already
started with the first necessary exercises in memory; for as soon as the
youngster had been promoted from the sexless frock to trousers, and from
the primer to the catechism, he had to learn by heart the ten
commandments and the chief articles of the Christian Faith as Doctor
Martin Luther, the great reformer, formulated them three hundred years
ago for the guidance of the Protestant Church. Memorizing went no
farther and the tremendous dogmas, which without explanation or
elucidation passed from the book into the undeveloped childish brain,
became transformed into wonderful and in part grotesque pictures. These,
however, did the young mind no manner of harm, but gave it a healthy
impetus and stirred it up to prophetic activity. For what does it matter
if the child, when it hears of original sin, or of death and the devil,
forms a conception or a fantastic image of those profound symbols? To
fathom them is the task of our whole lifetime, but the developing man is
warned at the very beginning of an all-disposing higher power, and I
doubt if the same end could be reached by early initiation into the
mysteries of the rule of three or into the wisdom of AEsop's fables. The
remarkable part of it was, to be sure, that in my imagination Luther
came to stand almost directly beside Moses and Jesus Christ, but without
doubt the reason was that his thundering "What is that?" always
resounded immediately after the majestic laconic utterances of Jehovah,
and that moreover his rough, expressive face, out of which the spirit
speaks all the more forcibly because it must manifestly first gain the
victory over the thick resisting flesh, was reproduced in the front of
the catechism in heavy black ink. But so far as I