e what
we think we have gained from such a varied conversation.

"Remain in your present position," the philosopher seemed to say to
his companion, "for you may cherish hopes. It is more and more clearly
evident that we have no educational institutions at all; but that we
ought to have them. Our public schools--established, it would seem,
for this high object--have either become the nurseries of a
reprehensible culture which repels the true culture with profound
hatred--_i.e._ a true, aristocratic culture, founded upon a few
carefully chosen minds; or they foster a micrological and sterile
learning which, while it is far removed from culture, has at least
this merit, that it avoids that reprehensible culture as well as the
true culture." The philosopher had particularly drawn his companion's
attention to the strange corruption which must have entered into the
heart of culture when the State thought itself capable of tyrannising
over it and of attaining its ends through it; and further when the
State, in conjunction with this culture, struggled against other
hostile forces as well as against _the_ spirit which the philosopher
ventured to call the "true German spirit." This spirit, linked to the
Greeks by the noblest ties, and shown by its past history to have been
steadfast and courageous, pure and lofty in its aims, its faculties
qualifying it for the high task of freeing modern man from the curse
of modernity--this spirit is condemned to live apart, banished from
its inheritance. But when its slow, painful tones of woe resound
through the desert of the present, then the overladen and gaily-decked
caravan of culture is pulled up short, horror-stricken. We must not
only astonish, but terrify--such was the philosopher's opinion: not to
fly shamefully away, but to take the offensive, was his advice; but he
especially counselled his companion not to ponder too anxiously over
the individual from whom, through a higher instinct, this aversion for
the present barbarism proceeded, "Let it perish: the Pythian god had
no difficulty in finding a new tripod, a second Pythia, so long, at
least, as the mystic cold vapours rose from the earth."

The philosopher once more began to speak: "Be careful to remember, my
friend," said he, "there are two things you must not confuse. A man
must learn a great deal that he may live and take part in the struggle
for existence; but everything that he as an individual learns and does
with this en