abandoned to every conceivable chimera which any one talks him into, and which, acting on his will as a motive, may influence him to perversities and follies of every kind, to the most unheard-of extravagances, and also to actions most contrary to his animal nature. True culture, in which knowledge and judgment go hand in hand, can only be brought to bear on a few; and still fewer are capable of receiving it. For the great mass of men a kind of training everywhere takes its place. It is effected by example, custom, and the very early and firm impression of certain conceptions, before any experience, understanding, or judgment were there to disturb the work. Thus thoughts are implanted, which afterward cling as firmly, and are as incapable of being shaken by any instruction as if they were _inborn_; and indeed they have often been regarded, even by philosophers, as such. In this way we can, with the same trouble, imbue men with what is right and rational, or with what is most absurd. For example, we can accustom them to approach this or that idol with holy dread, and at the mention of its name to prostrate in the dust not only their bodies but their whole spirit; to sacrifice their property and their lives willingly to words, to names, to the defence of the strangest whims; to attach arbitrarily the greatest honour or the deepest disgrace to this or that, and to prize highly or disdain everything accordingly with full inward conviction; to renounce all animal food, as in Hindustan, or to devour still warm and quivering pieces, cut from the living animal, as in Abyssinia; to eat men, as in New Zealand, or to sacrifice their children to Moloch; to castrate themselves, to fling themselves voluntarily on the funeral piles of the dead—in a word, to do anything we please. Hence the Crusades, the extravagances of fanatical sects; hence Chiliasts and Flagellants, persecutions, _autos da fe_, and all that is offered by the long register of human perversities. Lest it should be thought that only the dark ages afford such examples, I shall add a couple of more modern instances. In the year 1818 there went from Würtemberg 7000 Chiliasts to the neighbourhood of Ararat, because the new kingdom of God, specially announced by Jung Stilling, was to appear there.(17) Gall relates that in his time a mother killed her child and roasted it in order to cure her husband’s rheumatism with its fat.(18) The tragical side of error lies in the practical, the comical is reserved for the theoretical. For example, if we could firmly persuade three men that the sun is not the cause of daylight, we might hope to see it soon established as the general conviction. In Germany it was possible to proclaim as the greatest philosopher of all ages Hegel, a repulsive, mindless charlatan, an unparalleled scribbler of nonsense, and for twenty years many thousands have believed it stubbornly and firmly; and indeed, outside Germany, the