If, now, we have rightly comprehended the force of this censure against the school and its master, we are already in the way to overcome and to heal this school malady. The malady does not inhere in the school as such, but in the false evaluation which we of today attribute to it, and in the dominion which the school exercises over human spirits, by virtue of this false appraisal. We think we can read if we have learned to read in school. But this learning to read has yet to begin! Whoever does not begin it his own self, will never truly learn it at all. We call our schools educational institutions and yet they are altogether _imitational_ institutions, _after_ which the true human education first begins. We do not think of this, that this man whose knowledge still tastes of his school, whose art shows his school, is still stuck in his school, and has not made proper use of his school—which is to apply it; especially to overcome it! Or, rather we think still less! We rest on the laurels of our school, and if we won them we think that we have carried off the warrior’s prize of life. But it is _our_ fault, not the school’s, if the school narrows rather than broadens our vision; if it binds us to its rules instead of releasing us from them. Where are the men who still learn after school, nay, who first begin then to learn what after all is the main thing of all learning—how they can become greater, freer men, independent personalities? How does it come that all stirring and moving of the modern spirit is at the same time an insurrection against some kind of school? How does it come that all creative, path-breaking spirits can begin to create, to live, only when they have snapped the fetters of some school? And how does it come that great discoveries of unknown islands of the human have never been made within, but only without, the schools? Most of all, how does it come that a Christ can speak with power only when he has learned not to speak as the scribes and schoolmasters? The answer in every case is that we are accustomed to expect of the school what, according to its very nature, it cannot do, namely: to give life, to create life. Therefore, it is all-important that we keep the path open, wide open, to the fountain of life in the abyss of the human heart, in the unfathomableness of the world, so that we too may learn to speak with power and not as the scribes; so that our schools may not be diseases to be overcome, for many never overcome during an entire life—but a staff with which we may learn to walk until we shall need staff no more, because our feet have grown strong to bear us on our way during the brief years of our pilgrimage. My Friend, the Incurable VI. CHOLERIC COMMENTS ON CACOPHONIES _On the G String_