s with us, and
is prepared to follow up its demands by force: which phenomenon
certainly makes the same impression upon most people as if they were
addressed by the eternal law of things. For the rest, a 'Culture-State,'
to use the current expression, which makes such demands, is rather a
novelty, and has only come to a 'self-understanding' within the last
half century, _i.e._ in a period when (to use the favourite popular
word) so many 'self-understood' things came into being, but which are in
themselves not 'self-understood' at all. This right to higher education
has been taken so seriously by the most powerful of modern
States--Prussia--that the objectionable principle it has adopted, taken
in connection with the well-known daring and hardihood of this State, is
seen to have a menacing and dangerous consequence for the true German
spirit; for we see endeavours being made in this quarter to raise the
public school, formally systematised, up to the so-called 'level of the
time.' Here is to be found all that mechanism by means of which as many
scholars as possible are urged on to take up courses of public school
training: here, indeed, the State has its most powerful inducement--the
concession of certain privileges respecting military service, with the
natural consequence that, according to the unprejudiced evidence of
statistical officials, by this, and by this only, can we explain the
universal congestion of all Prussian public schools, and the urgent and
continual need for new ones. What more can the State do for a surplus of
educational institutions than bring all the higher and the majority of
the lower civil service appointments, the right of entry to the
universities, and even the most influential military posts into close
connection with the public school: and all this in a country where both
universal military service and the highest offices of the State
unconsciously attract all gifted natures to them. The public school is
here looked upon as an honourable aim, and every one who feels himself
urged on to the sphere of government will be found on his way to it.
This is a new and quite original occurrence: the State assumes the
attitude of a mystogogue of culture, and, whilst it promotes its own
ends, it obliges every one of its servants not to appear in its presence
without the torch of universal State education in their hands, by the
flickering light of which they may again recognise the State as the
highest go