After his marriage Frederick’s father still dictated his movements and kept him short of money. But the period of dragooning was over, and it becomes important to enquire what Frederick William had achieved by this stage of the second education begun with crime and carried on with cruelty. One answer to this question must be mentioned because it is supported by the authority of Carlyle. He holds that the execution of Katte was just, that the imprisonment of Frederick was salutary, that the King was a father yearning to reconcile his son with God and with himself, and that he was not only just and affectionate but also successful. An opinion more widely held is that the execution and imprisonment were unjust but politic, that reasons of state excused them, that their righteousness was proved by their success, and that by them Prussia gained a hero who made her great among the nations of the earth as none but he was able. On reflection we may think it strange that results so great should have been achieved by a scheme of education so stupid. The King owed the best features of his plan to suggestions from outside. He had condemned his son to tedious, nay, dangerous idleness: it was Wolden who obtained for him a grudging permission to work. He had set him to learn agriculture by attending board meetings: it was Hille who urged that he should be allowed to see how farming was carried on. The united efforts of Hille and Wolden could not convince him that the heir to the throne needed any books save books of devotion. These faults, though significant, were errors of detail. But the King’s whole plan is open to graver objections. It is in fact based on three of the commonest yet most fatal errors with regard to education. That boys are dough or putty to be placed in a mould and beaten till they take the exact shape of it, that a youth who is destined for a given career will succeed best by trying to make himself a facsimile of some one else who has been successful in it, and that it is good to limit training to the acquisition of professional aptitude—these are errors which Frederick William held in common with pedants and doctrinaires of every era.