The teacher answered: "No! it is flagrantly unjust! But there are other types of character, which are also laudable."
"Yes, indeed, but that does not lessen the value of his life; he was faithful in small things."
The Unpracticalness of Husk-eating.—The teacher said: "Young people say, 'What do we want with the wisdom of age? We want to learn for ourselves.' I generally answer, 'Yes, learn for yourselves—from us! What good-fortune to be able to inherit the rich experiences of others, and not to make these expensive, dirty experiments for oneself! If the young commenced where we left off, the world and humanity would progress with giant strides. Instead of this everyone begins afresh, that is, in the moral sphere. When it is a question of making a new incandescent lamp, we do not begin with a machine for generating electricity, but continue from the latest discovery of our predecessors.
"I have also asked myself whether it is necessary first to be burnt in order to dread the fire. I have never seen my children go to the oven and lay hold of the red dampers to see whether they would be burnt. They let themselves be warned, and therefore escaped the painful experience. I have asked myself whether one must first feed with the swine before one can appreciate the food of the household, and whether the Prodigal Son is a necessary transitionary type. But to all these stupid and impertinent questions life has given a negative answer.
"Swedenborg says that all sin and wickedness leave traces behind them, but that these are not apparent in the human face till old age. Subsequently, in the disrobing-room on the other side, they look as if they had been thrown through a magnifying-glass on a white screen. I once looked into an attic-room; the curtain was drawn aside, and an old man put out his head in order to look at the sun. When he saw me he hid his face immediately.
"That was a face!... God protect us!"
A Youthful Dream for Seven Shillings.—The teacher said: "There are people who carry about with them a measuring-rule for everything. They demand exactness and order; they love perfection in all things. They are called discontented, carping, pedantic. But it is unfair to blame them. If one is content with the mediocre, one will at last only get the worst. Men give only as little as they can, and the whole of life is defective. Conscientious men are not happy, for they cannot lower their demands; they appear to simpletons who have not learnt, that nothing is what it gives itself out to be, that nothing answers the expectations we formed of it. One is inclined to ask whether such men bring with them at birth recollections of a place or a condition where ideal perfection existed. When I was seven years old, I often remained standing fascinated before a music-dealer's shop window, and contemplated a hunter's horn which was hung up there. There was something charming in the proportions of these curved lines. This brass tube tapered off beautifully from the great width of its bell-mouth to its narrowed mouthpiece. In the gloomy street it made me hear nature's music in woods and fields; I loved the instrument. But when a boy told me that it cost thirty shillings, I wondered whether life would ever fulfil my desire, for in order to buy it I would have to go for two and a half years without breakfast. Finally I got to be thirty years old, and had some money to spare for the first time in my life. I bought the hunting-horn; it cost only seven shillings; the boy had told a lie. But the instrument had only three notes. When I got tired of my prize it was consigned to the attic.
"It was, at any rate, the fulfilment of a youthful dream!"
Envy Nobody!—The teacher said: "Envy nobody! As a child I was boarded out in the country in mean surroundings. I lived in a kind of shanty, ate from an earthenware plate, sat on a wooden stool. But there was a castle in the neighbourhood, a real castle, with portraits of kings in the entrance-hall, the ancestors of the young count who lived there. One Sunday we were allowed to go, first into the castle, then into the garden. That was paradise! We could bathe, and were allowed to pick the cherries, blood-black, gold-yellow, fire-red. The count looked on, but ate nothing; he had had enough. Then we left, and the gate of paradise was shut behind us.
"Fifty years later I saw the portrait of the young count, and heard his history. He looked unhappy and despairing, as though he were weary of everything. He had passed through the bitterest experiences of life, including poverty for a time. His affairs came into liquidation, and he had to spend ten years abroad in an hotel, his expenses being defrayed by his creditors. He also had his wife with him, who, as she thought, had married into paradise, in order to be immediately driven out of it again. The man had been nothing and had done nothing; all he could do was to wait for his meals. He had possessed horses and a yacht; he had gambled and borrowed money; he had eaten truffles and drunk wine; but when he was forty had to give it up, for his nose grew red and he had gout in his great toe. I will not speak of his domestic miseries.