hands for the difficult labor with her head,
and the speculation succeeded perfectly, and in the shortest space of
time imaginable.

To the boys and girls of more advanced age severe, sombre gymnasiums and
grammar-schools did indeed open their doors. These were under a sort of
supervision and in case of necessity were recruited by the secular arm,
if new comers did not enlist of their own accord. But in these
institutions too, only the merest manual training was given, in spite of
the pompous sounding names which they flaunted, and which to this hour
have remained a mystery to me. A brother of my mother's, universally
admired on account of his talents--whom the principal, though by no
means over modest, had dismissed with the solemn declaration that he
could teach him nothing further because he knew as much as he
himself--was indeed a mighty calligrapher, and decorated his New Year's
cards with tints and flourishes in India ink as the old printers Fust
and Schoeffer did their incunabula, but nevertheless he could not achieve
a single grammatical sentence.

These conditions, undeniably defective and much in need of improvement,
were now once and for all to be brought to an end. The people were to be
educated from the cradle up, superstition was to be exterminated root
and branch. Whether thorough consideration was given to that which
should have been considered above everything else must remain in doubt;
for the conception of culture is extremely relative, and just as the
most disgusting intoxication follows the nipping from every bottle, so
superficial encyclopedical knowledge, which at the most can be made
broad, engenders precisely the most repulsive kind of arrogance. It will
no longer bow to any authority and yet never penetrates to the depths in
which the multifarious logical inconsistencies and contradictions find
their own solution.

Probably the right method was adopted when they founded normal schools
on the one hand and primary schools on the other, so that the essence
which had been distilled in the former and poured into the empty
schoolmaster heads in the form of rationalism, could from the latter
spread itself immediately over the whole land. The result was that a
somewhat superstitious generation was followed by an excessively
overwise one; for it is astonishing how the grandchild feels when he
knows that a nocturnal fiery meteor is composed merely of inflammable
gases, while his grandfather sees in i