d all belief and authority from what
he hears, all training for culture, in the true sense of the term,
reverts to himself; and the independence it was thought desirable to
aim at in the public school now presents itself with the highest
possible pride as 'academical self-training for culture,' and struts
about in its brilliant plumage.

"Happy times, when youths are clever and cultured enough to teach
themselves how to walk! Unsurpassable public schools, which succeed in
implanting independence in the place of the dependence, discipline,
subordination, and obedience implanted by former generations that
thought it their duty to drive away all the bumptiousness of
independence! Do you clearly see, my good friends, why I, from the
standpoint of culture, regard the present type of university as a mere
appendage to the public school? The culture instilled by the public
school passes through the gates of the university as something ready
and entire, and with its own particular claims: _it_ demands, it gives
laws, it sits in judgment. Do not, then, let yourselves be deceived in
regard to the cultured student; for he, in so far as he thinks he has
absorbed the blessings of education, is merely the public school boy
as moulded by the hands of his teacher: one who, since his academical
isolation, and after he has left the public school, has therefore been
deprived of all further guidance to culture, that from now on he may
begin to live by himself and be free.

"Free! Examine this freedom, ye observers of human nature! Erected
upon the sandy, crumbling foundation of our present public school
culture, its building slants to one side, trembling before the
whirlwind's blast. Look at the free student, the herald of
self-culture: guess what his instincts are; explain him from his
needs! How does his culture appear to you when you measure it by three
graduated scales: first, by his need for philosophy; second, by his
instinct for art; and third, by Greek and Roman antiquity as the
incarnate categorical imperative of all culture?

"Man is so much encompassed about by the most serious and difficult
problems that, when they are brought to his attention in the right
way, he is impelled betimes towards a lasting kind of philosophical
wonder, from which alone, as a fruitful soil, a deep and noble culture
can grow forth. His own experiences lead him most frequently to the
consideration of these problems; and it is especially in the
tempe