"Can you? I am listening."
"The answer is simple. He cannot be educated at all."
"What! not at all?"
"That is what I affirm. The great mysterious Destiny alone can educate him. All that we can do is, to work with him, and to help him rule over and apply whatever strength he has."
"To rule over and to apply," Sonnenkamp murmured to himself; "that sounds well, and I must say that you confirm an impression which has often before this been made upon me. Only a soldier, only a man who has developed and trained his own inborn courageous energies, only such an one can accomplish anything great in our time; nothing can be done by sermons and books, for they cannot overcome the old, nor create the new age."
In a changed, almost cringingly humble tone, Sonnenkamp continued,—
"It may appear in the highest degree strange, that I, a man of little knowledge, who have not had time in the active business of life to learn anything rightly,—that I should seem to subject you to examination; but you must be convinced that I do it for my own instruction. I see, already, that I have even more to learn from you than Roland has.
"I pray you then to tell me what training—imagine yourself a father in my circumstances—what training you would give your own son."
"I believe," Eric answered, "that fantasy can call up all sorts of pictures, but a relation which is one of the mysteries of nature can only be known through experience, and cannot be apprehended by any stretch of the imagination. Permit me then to answer from my own outside point of view."
"Very well."