Every people, every man even, who would become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a protecting cloud. But now men hate to become ripe, for they honour history above life. They cry in triumph that "science is now beginning to rule life." Possibly it might; but a life thus ruled is not of much value. It is not such true _life_, and promises much less for the future than the life that used to be guided not by science, but by instincts and powerful illusions. But this is not to be the age of ripe, alert and harmonious personalities, but of work that may be of most use to the commonwealth. Men are to be fashioned to the needs of the time, that they may soon take their place in the machine. They must work in the factory of the "common good" before they are ripe, or rather to prevent them becoming ripe; for this would be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power from the "labour market." Some birds are blinded that they may sing better; I do not think men sing to-day better than their grandfathers, though I am sure they are blinded early. But light, too clear, too sudden and dazzling, is the infamous means used to blind them. The young man is kicked through all the centuries: boys who know nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are considered fit to be introduced to political history. We moderns also run through art galleries and hear concerts in the same way as the young man runs through history. We can feel that one thing sounds differently from another, and pronounce on the different "effects." And the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense, or historical culture. The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find another emotion too--disgust. The young man has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all moralities. He knows "it was different in every age, and what you are does not matter." In a heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by him, and understands the meaning of Hölderlin's words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philosophers: "I have seen here too what has often occurred to me, that the change and waste in men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic than the fates that overtake what men are accustomed to call the only realities." No, such study of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns show. Consider the historical student, the heir of ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has the "methods" for original work, the "correct ideas" and the airs of the master at his fingers' ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies