Interest in Education will acquire great strength only from the moment
when belief in a God and His care is renounced.... An education that no
longer believes in miracles must pay attention to three things: first,
how much energy is inherited? secondly, by what means can new energy
be aroused? thirdly, how can the individual be adapted to so many and
manifold claims of culture without being disquieted and destroying his
personality,--in short, how can the individual be initiated into the
counterpoint of private and public culture, how can he lead the melody
and at the same time accompany it. 1, 224-225
A higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain-chambers, so
to speak, one to feel science and the other to feel non-science, which
can lie side by side, without confusion, divisible, exclusive; this
is a necessity of health. In one part lies the source of strength,
in the other lies the regulator; it must be heated with illusions,
onesidednesses, passions; and the malicious and dangerous consequences
of overheating must be averted by the help of conscious Science. 1, 232
Simultaneous things hold together, it is said. A relative dies far
away, and at the same time we dream about him,--Consequently! But
countless relatives die and we do not dream about them.... This species
of superstition is found again in a refined form in historians and
delineators of culture, who usually have a kind of hydrophobic horror
of all that senseless mixture, in which individual and national life is
so rich. 1, 235
It is true that in the spheres of higher culture there must always be
a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the hands of the
_oligarchs of the mind._ In spite of local and political separation
they form a cohesive society, whose members _recognise and acknowledge_
each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of review and
newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in favour
of or against them. Mental superiority, which formerly divided and
embittered, nowadays generally _unites._ ... Oligarchs are necessary
to each other, they are each other's best joy, they understand their
signs, but each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in _his_
place and perishes rather than submit. 1, 243
The greatest advance that men have made lies in their acquisition of
the art to _reason rightly._ 1, 249-250
The strength and weakness of mental productiveness depend far less on
inherited talents than on the accompanying amount of _elasticity._
1, 250