“This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne of the present. It endeavors either to bring the leaders down to the level of its own servitude or else to cast them out altogether.” Whether Nietzsche’s theories of education were derived from his political philosophy, or the reverse, I do not know. We are not, however, interested in discussing political and sociological theories. The point is that Nietzsche held that education is difficult and dangerous, and that only the rare, strong, courageous spirits may attain it. The many really do not want education at all, he thinks, but only that cheaper knowledge which will give them success and enable them to take their places in the rank and file; seeking such education the herd tramples culture under foot, like cattle in growing corn when the fences are down. Difficult and dangerous as knowledge is, it is to Nietzsche the most precious possession of man. All his writing on this subject is a warning cry that the cultural values of civilization are in danger of being lost in an education for democracy. I think he had a real issue, although I wish he had possessed more self-control in arguing his case; he had always something of the intemperance and over-excited gestures of a religious evangelist or soap-box orator. A much more sane statement of the true aims of education in conflict with Philistinism is that of Matthew Arnold. I hesitate to mention Arnold because those who are still guilty of the errors he exposed will say he was a Victorian, and how could his ideas of education have any value for a progressive twentieth century population? I doubt if many men of today, advocates of advanced theories of education included, are as far removed from the vulgarities and pseudo-culture of the Victorian age as Arnold was. Like Nietzsche, he holds that the multitude gives evidence that it does not really want education. Unlike Nietzsche, he does not think that knowledge is some grim secret which only a few heroic supermen may attain. The fruits of knowledge are not merely ideas about life and reality which men may or may not believe in, but are to be known in the quality of life and thought which characterize the educated mind.