All life is a continual game between hope and fulfilment, between expectation and disappointment. And therein lies our good fortune--that we can still be deceived. Were we in possession of all truth and all knowledge, life would lose its value and its charm. Only because, in a certain sense, we all stand outside, because the fullness of life and “the thing itself” will continue to be a riddle, are we capable of continuing on our journey and approaching erectly the valley of death in which the shades dwell. “Father, the show is over!” A child’s sweet voice wakes me from my revery. Outside I again look at the children still standing there and staring with large, hungry eyes into the Circus.... WHAT CHILDREN ASPIRE TO Who can say when the first wish opens its pious eyes in the child’s soul? The child probably sleeps away the first few weeks of its existence without a single wish, all its behaviour being probably only manifestations of its inherited instincts. Suddenly the first wish awakens and the humanization of the little animal has begun. And with it begins the wild succession of desires, mounting ever higher and higher and finally aspiring even to the stars. How few of the things we have been dreaming of does life fulfil! Wish after wish, stripped of its purple mantle, sinks to the ground in a state of “looped and windowed raggedness,” till the last wish of all--the longing for peace, eternal peace--puts an end to the play. Our childhood wishes determine our destiny. They die only with our bodies. They go whirling through our dreams, are the masters of our unconscious emotions, and determine the resonance of the most delicate oscillations of our souls. It certainly seems worth while taking a closer look at these wishes. Unfortunately we are deprived of the best source of such knowledge: the observation of ourselves. For we forget so easily, and our earliest desires lie far behind us, hidden in thick mist. Only the dream pierces the thick veil and brings us greetings from a long forgotten era. From the study of our children we can learn of only one kind of desire. A desire that can be easily observed, that the child betrays most easily in the games it plays. “And what are you going to be?” That is the question one most often puts to children and which they very seldom allow to go unanswered.