s own actions, can make any headway.

"We know, however, what the aspiration is of those who would disturb
the healthy slumber of the people, and continually call out to them:
'Keep your eyes open! Be sensible! Be wise!' we know the aim of those
who profess to satisfy excessive educational requirements by means of
an extraordinary increase in the number of educational institutions
and the conceited tribe of teachers originated thereby. These very
people, using these very means, are fighting against the natural
hierarchy in the realm of the intellect, and destroying the roots of
all those noble and sublime plastic forces which have their material
origin in the unconsciousness of the people, and which fittingly
terminate in the procreation of genius and its due guidance and proper
training. It is only in the simile of the mother that we can grasp the
meaning and the responsibility of the true education of the people in
respect to genius: its real origin is not to be found in such
education; it has, so to speak, only a metaphysical source, a
metaphysical home. But for the genius to make his appearance; for him
to emerge from among the people; to portray the reflected picture, as
it were, the dazzling brilliancy of the peculiar colours of this
people; to depict the noble destiny of a people in the similitude of
an individual in a work which will last for all time, thereby making
his nation itself eternal, and redeeming it from the ever-shifting
element of transient things: all this is possible for the genius only
when he has been brought up and come to maturity in the tender care of
the culture of a people; whilst, on the other hand, without this
sheltering home, the genius will not, generally speaking, be able to
rise to the height of his eternal flight, but will at an early moment,
like a stranger weather-driven upon a bleak, snow-covered desert,
slink away from the inhospitable land."

"You astonish me with such a metaphysics of genius," said the
teacher's companion, "and I have only a hazy conception of the
accuracy of your similitude. On the other hand, I fully understand
what you have said about the surplus of public schools and the
corresponding surplus of higher grade teachers; and in this regard I
myself have collected some information which assures me that the
educational tendency of the public school _must_ right itself by this
very surplus of teachers who have really nothing at all to do with
education, and wh