With your penetrating judgment you quarrelled with that term "German
education;" but, after all, even the appeal to be made thorough Germans
proved to be too grandiose and liable to be misunderstood. For every one
said "German? Well, I _am_ German, and have been so from my birth, just
as a mushroom is a mushroom;[103] what, then, do I want with education
to teach me to be a thorough German?" What would these worthy people
have said, had I asked them to train themselves to become thorough men?
Now had I planned my educational institute altogether differently, had I
offered to train a special class, body-servants, footmen or housemaids,
shoemakers or tailors, tradesmen or merchants, soldiers or even
noblemen, then should I have gained fame and glory for the great
usefulness and practical nature of my institution, for certain; and
surely all men would have hastened to acknowledge it as an important
matter, and as a thing to be adequately supported by the State. I should
have been held as the right man in the right place by the State and by
the world; and so much the more because as a State-machine I should have
been engaged in cutting out and modelling other State-machines.
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