:" but when, we would ask, saw any man,
in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this:
"Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning,
the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds
were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on
the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching in again, with short
squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct,
trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane,
to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone,
blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love the
Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned
beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any
rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a
Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling
slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower
world?"

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius
is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly
favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through
childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and continue
dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an
inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man of
the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other,
crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, and the like, has
exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at
the bottom of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teufelsdrockh,
"I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by
favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into
a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak.

"Nevertheless," continues he, "I too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence
of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf
bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow
cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of
all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the
characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what
hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so
pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also z