ous and muscular companion and friend, ready for war, who
accompanied his noble, admired, and, as it were, ethereal friend
through disagreeable reality, earning his thanks therefor. This,
however, does not happen when a modern State lays claim to such hearty
gratitude because it renders such chivalrous service to German culture
and art: for in this regard its past is as ignominious as its present,
as a proof of which we have but to think of the manner in which the
memory of our great poets and artists is celebrated in German cities,
and how the highest objects of these German masters are supported on
the part of the State.

"There must therefore be peculiar circumstances surrounding both this
purpose towards which the State is tending, and which always promotes
what is here called 'education'; and surrounding likewise the culture
thus promoted, which subordinates itself to this purpose of the State.
With the real German spirit and the education derived therefrom, such
as I have slowly outlined for you, this purpose of the State is at
war, hiddenly or openly: _the_ spirit of education, which is welcomed
and encouraged with such interest by the State, and owing to which the
schools of this country are so much admired abroad, must accordingly
originate in a sphere that never comes into contact with this true
German spirit: with that spirit which speaks to us so wondrously from
the inner heart of the German Reformation, German music, and German
philosophy, and which, like a noble exile, is regarded with such
indifference and scorn by the luxurious education afforded by the
State. This spirit is a stranger: it passes by in solitary sadness,
and far away from it the censer of pseudo-culture is swung backwards
and forwards, which, amidst the acclamations of 'educated' teachers
and journalists, arrogates to itself its name and privileges, and
metes out insulting treatment to the word 'German.' Why does the State
require that surplus of educational institutions, of teachers? Why
this education of the masses on such an extended scale? Because the
true German spirit is hated, because the aristocratic nature of true
culture is feared, because the people endeavour in this way to drive
single great individuals into self-exile, so that the claims of the
masses to education may be, so to speak, planted down and carefully
tended, in order that the many may in this way endeavour to escape the
rigid and strict discipline of the few great