solation for the duty to live to any one of us who requires for life something more than food; the hope of a better future is the only atmosphere in which we can still breathe. But only the dreamer can base this hope on anything but what he himself can plant in the present for the development of a future. Let those who rule over us permit us to think as well of them as we do of each other, and as the better man feels! Let them put themselves at the head of the business that is to us, too, quite clear, so that we may yet see arising before our eyes that which will some day wipe from our memory the shame that has been done to the German name before our eyes!
170. If the State undertakes the proposed task, it will make this education universal throughout the length and breadth of its domain for every one of its future citizens without exception. Indeed, it is for that universality alone that we need the State, since for individual beginnings and isolated attempts the resources of well-disposed private persons would suffice. Of course, it is not to be expected that all parents will be willing to be separated from their children, and to hand them over to this new education, a notion of which it will be difficult to convey to them. From past experience we must reckon that everyone who still believes he is able to support his children at home will set himself against public education, and especially against a public education that separates so strictly and lasts so long. Now, in these cases of expected resistance it has been customary in the past for statesmen to reject the proposal with the reply: The State has no right to use compulsion for that purpose. If they want to wait until all men have the good will, since universal goodwill will never be produced without education, they are thereby secured against all improve-
