children through the tyranny of their fellows, a tyranny which sometimes takes harsher, sometimes milder forms, it would upset the prejudice that the usefulness of the school in this respect cannot be replaced. Besides there is the levelling pressure of a uniform discipline, which stunts personality from above, while life with school companions restricts it on all sides. Every criticism on this formal pedantry is met with the answer, "In a school it is absolutely impossible to permit children to do what can be done in the household; only fancy if all children in the school were to sharpen their lead pencils or erase words in their exercises." There is no need to insist further on this point. Hundreds of petty rules must exist, we are told, for the sake of discipline. And even if the rules could be reduced to a fourth of their present cubic contents, even the best schools would still feel the pressure of uniformity. The more this pressure is resisted by individuals, so much the better. Education in the first years must aim to strengthen individuality. The whole of biographical literature supplies an almost uniform proof of the importance of not commencing too early the levelling social education of the school. Early attendance at school is one of the reasons why we so frequently meet, as Dumas says, so many clever children, and so many stupid adults. Almost all great men and women, who have thought and created for themselves, have received either no education in school at all, or have gone to school at a rather later period, with longer or shorter interruptions, or have been trained in different schools. In most cases it was an accident, some living point of view, a book read in secret, a personal choice of subject that gave these exceptional beings their training. In this respect Goethe's education was ideal, considered apart from some pedantry due to his father's influence. At his mother's work-table he learnt to know the Bible; French he learnt from a theatrical company; English from a language master, in company with his father; Italian, because he heard his sister being taught the language; mathematics from a friend in the household, a study which Goethe applied immediately, first in cardboard diagrams, later in architectural drawings. His essays he prepared in the form of a correspondence in different languages between different relatives, scattered in various parts of the world. Geography he eagerly studied in books of travel in order to be able to give his narrative local colour. He knocked about with his father, learnt to observe different kinds of handwork, and also to try himself small experiments of his own skill.