rnishing you with wings and
bearing you aloft.

"If you honest thinkers have honourably remained in these three stages
of intelligence, and have perceived that, in comparison with the
Greeks, the modern student is unsuited to and unprepared for
philosophy, that he has no truly artistic instincts, and is merely a
barbarian believing himself to be free, you will not on this account
turn away from him in disgust, although you will, of course, avoid
coming into too close proximity with him. For, as he now is, _he is
not to blame_: as you have perceived him he is the dumb but terrible
accuser of those who are to blame.

"You should understand the secret language spoken by this guilty
innocent, and then you, too, would learn to understand the inward
state of that independence which is paraded outwardly with so much
ostentation. Not one of these noble, well-qualified youths has
remained a stranger to that restless, tiring, perplexing, and
debilitating need of culture: during his university term, when he is
apparently the only free man in a crowd of servants and officials, he
atones for this huge illusion of freedom by ever-growing inner doubts
and convictions. He feels that he can neither lead nor help himself;
and then he plunges hopelessly into the workaday world and endeavours
to ward off such feelings by study. The most trivial bustle fastens
itself upon him; he sinks under his heavy burden. Then he suddenly
pulls himself together; he still feels some of that power within him
which would have enabled him to keep his head above water. Pride and
noble resolutions assert themselves and grow in him. He is afraid of
sinking at this early stage into the limits of a narrow profession;
and now he grasps at pillars and railings alongside the stream that he
may not be swept away by the current. In vain! for these supports give
way, and he finds he has clutched at broken reeds. In low and
despondent spirits he sees his plans vanish away in smoke. His
condition is undignified, even dreadful: he keeps between the two
extremes of work at high pressure and a state of melancholy
enervation. Then he becomes tired, lazy, afraid of work, fearful of
everything great; and hating himself. He looks into his own breast,
analyses his faculties, and finds he is only peering into hollow and
chaotic vacuity. And then he once more falls from the heights of his
eagerly-desired self-knowledge into an ironical scepticism. He divests
his struggles of t