al, as the reward of all their strivings after education.

"Now this last phenomenon should indeed surprise them; it should
remind them of that allied, slowly understood tendency of a philosophy
which was formerly promoted for reasons of State, namely, the
tendency of the Hegelian philosophy: yea, it would perhaps be no
exaggeration to say that, in the subordination of all strivings after
education to reasons of State, Prussia has appropriated, with success,
the principle and the useful heirloom of the Hegelian philosophy,
whose apotheosis of the State in _this_ subordination certainly
reaches its height."

"But," said the philosopher's companion, "what purposes can the State
have in view with such a strange aim? For that it has some State
objects in view is seen in the manner in which the conditions of
Prussian schools are admired by, meditated upon, and occasionally
imitated by other States. These other States obviously presuppose
something here that, if adopted, would tend towards the maintenance
and power of the State, like our well-known and popular conscription.
Where everyone proudly wears his soldier's uniform at regular
intervals, where almost every one has absorbed a uniform type of
national culture through the public schools, enthusiastic hyperboles
may well be uttered concerning the systems employed in former times,
and a form of State omnipotence which was attained only in antiquity,
and which almost every young man, by both instinct and training,
thinks it is the crowning glory and highest aim of human beings to
reach."

"Such a comparison," said the philosopher, "would be quite
hyperbolical, and would not hobble along on one leg only. For, indeed,
the ancient State emphatically did not share the utilitarian point of
view of recognising as culture only what was directly useful to the
State itself, and was far from wishing to destroy those impulses which
did not seem to be immediately applicable. For this very reason the
profound Greek had for the State that strong feeling of admiration and
thankfulness which is so distasteful to modern men; because he clearly
recognised not only that without such State protection the germs of
his culture could not develop, but also that all his inimitable and
perennial culture had flourished so luxuriantly under the wise and
careful guardianship of the protection afforded by the State. The
State was for his culture not a supervisor, regulator, and watchman,
but a vigor