t because we take this matter so seriously, we
should not take our own poor selves so seriously: at the very moment
we are falling some one else will grasp the banner of our faith. I
will not even consider whether I am strong enough for such a fight,
whether I can offer sufficient resistance; it may even be an
honourable death to fall to the accompaniment of the mocking laughter
of such enemies, whose seriousness has frequently seemed to us to be
something ridiculous. When I think how my contemporaries prepared
themselves for the highest posts in the scholastic profession, as I
myself have done, then I know how we often laughed at the exact
contrary, and grew serious over something quite different----"

"Now, my friend," interrupted the philosopher, laughingly, "you speak
as one who would fain dive into the water without being able to swim,
and who fears something even more than the mere drowning; _not_ being
drowned, but laughed at. But being laughed at should be the very last
thing for us to dread; for we are in a sphere where there are too many
truths to tell, too many formidable, painful, unpardonable truths, for
us to escape hatred, and only fury here and there will give rise to
some sort of embarrassed laughter. Just think of the innumerable crowd
of teachers, who, in all good faith, have assimilated the system of
education which has prevailed up to the present, that they may
cheerfully and without over-much deliberation carry it further on.
What do you think it will seem like to these men when they hear of
projects from which they are excluded _beneficio naturae_; of commands
which their mediocre abilities are totally unable to carry out; of
hopes which find no echo in them; of battles the war-cries of which
they do not understand, and in the fighting of which they can take
part only as dull and obtuse rank and file? But, without exaggeration,
that must necessarily be the position of practically all the teachers
in our higher educational establishments: and indeed we cannot wonder
at this when we consider how such a teacher originates, how he
_becomes_ a teacher of such high status. Such a large number of higher
educational establishments are now to be found everywhere that far
more teachers will continue to be required for them than the nature of
even a highly-gifted people can produce; and thus an inordinate stream
of undesirables flows into these institutions, who, however, by their
preponderating numbers and