leaders, so that the
masses may be persuaded that they can easily find the path for
themselves--following the guiding star of the State!

"A new phenomenon! The State as the guiding star of culture! In the
meantime one thing consoles me: this German spirit, which people are
combating so much, and for which they have substituted a gaudily
attired _locum tenens_, this spirit is brave: it will fight and redeem
itself into a purer age; noble, as it is now, and victorious, as it
one day will be, it will always preserve in its mind a certain pitiful
toleration of the State, if the latter, hard-pressed in the hour of
extremity, secures such a pseudo-culture as its associate. For what,
after all, do we know about the difficult task of governing men,
_i.e._ to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of
boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, envious,
malignant, and hence very narrow-minded and perverse human beings; and
thus to protect the few things that the State has conquered for itself
against covetous neighbours and jealous robbers? Such a hard-pressed
State holds out its arms to any associate, grasps at any straw; and
when such an associate does introduce himself with flowery eloquence,
when he adjudges the State, as Hegel did, to be an 'absolutely
complete ethical organism,' the be-all and end-all of every one's
education, and goes on to indicate how he himself can best promote the
interests of the State--who will be surprised if, without further
parley, the State falls upon his neck and cries aloud in a barbaric
voice of full conviction: 'Yes! Thou art education! Thou art indeed
culture!'"

FOURTH LECTURE.

(_Delivered on the 5th of March 1872._)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--Now that you have followed my tale up to this
point, and that we have made ourselves joint masters of the solitary,
remote, and at times abusive duologue of the philosopher and his
companion, I sincerely hope that you, like strong swimmers, are ready
to proceed on the second half of our journey, especially as I can
promise you that a few other marionettes will appear in the
puppet-play of my adventure, and that if up to the present you have
only been able to do little more than endure what I have been telling
you, the waves of my story will now bear you more quickly and easily
towards the end. In other words we have now come to a turning, and it
would be advisable for us to take a short glance backwards to se