e forehead bothered
him greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses, he
always aims at expanding the horizon; as he himself once remarked: the
revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments are European, and he must
often hear that even the wish for combining the Scandinavian countries
borders on treason. Thus he becomes a "solitary soul." He has even
nothing in common with the radicals; he not only hates the state, the
enemy of individuality, but he is averse to all attempts which aim at
the drilling of the masses. He loves Bjoernson as a poet, but he wants to
have nothing to do with him as a politician. In a letter to Brandes he
writes:

"Bjoernson says: 'The majority is always right.' And as a practical
politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must
of necessity say: 'The minority is always right.' Naturally, I am not
thinking of that minority of stagnationists who are left behind by the
great middle party, but I mean that minority which leads the van, and
urges on to points which the majority has not yet reached. I mean that
man is right who has allied himself most closely with the future."

* * * * *

+"Under the Wheel"+ is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in
which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school
system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers'
profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for
all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the
purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of
them. The author says with fine irony of the teacher: "It is his duty
and vocation, entrusted to him by the state, to hinder and exterminate
the rough forces and passions of nature in the young people and to put
in place of them quiet moderation and ideals recognized by the state.
Many a one who at present is a contented citizen or an ambitious
official, would have become without these endeavors of the school an
unmanageable innovator or a hopeless dreamer. There was something in
him, something wild, lawless, which first had to be broken, a flame
which had to be extinguished. The school must break and forcibly
restrict the natural being; it is its duty to make a useful member of
society out of him, according to principles approved by the state's
authority. The wonderful work is crowned with the careful training in
the barracks."