All this time I worked with might and main at the development of my physical strength and accomplishments. I went every day to fencing practice, likewise to cavalry sword practice; I took lessons in the use of the bayonet, and I took part every afternoon in the shooting practices conducted by the officers--with the old muzzle-loaders which were the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr. Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holstein non-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "A smart fencer."
XVI.
Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, I here reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to in writing were:
1. To what extent can poetry be called the ideal History?
2. In what manner may the philosophical ideas of Spinoza and Fichte lead to a want of appreciation of the idea of beauty?
3. In what relation does the comic stand to its limitations and its various contrasts?
The three questions which were to be replied to in lectures before the University ran as follows:
1. Show, through poems in our literature, to what extent poetry may venture to set itself the task of presenting the Idea in a form coinciding with the philosophical understanding of it?
2. Point out the special contributions to a philosophical definition of the Idea made by Aesthetics in particular.
3. What are the merits and defects of Schiller's tragedies?