cases.  For as it is said of horses that they respect man only because, on account of the construction of their eye, they see in him a giant, so the child endowed with imagination stands still before a grain of sand only because it seems to him an insuperable mountain.  Things in themselves therefore cannot set the standard here; on the contrary, one must inquire about the shadows which they cast; hence the father can often laugh while the son is enduring the tortures of hell because the scales by which they weigh are fundamentally different.

An incident, comical in itself, belongs in this place because it throws a very clear light precisely on this point, so important for education.  I was once sent to get a roll for dinner.  The baker’s wife handed it to me and good-humoredly gave me at the same time an old nut-cracker, which had probably turned up somewhere when she was cleaning house.  I had never seen a nut-cracker before.  I was not acquainted with any of its hidden qualities, and took it like any other doll which appealed to me by reason of its red cheeks and staring eyes.  Joyously starting on my way home and pressing the nut-cracker, like a newly acquired favorite, tenderly to my breast, I noticed all of a sudden that it opened its jaws and in gratitude for my caresses showed me its cruel white teeth.  One may imagine my fright!  I shrieked loudly, I ran across the street as though pursued, but I had not sense or courage enough to throw the demon away, and as it naturally sometimes closed its mouth and sometimes opened it again, according to the movements I made while running, I could not help considering it alive, and arrived home half dead.  Here I was, of course, laughed at and enlightened as to the truth, at last even scolded.  It was all of no avail.  It was impossible for me to become reconciled again to the monster although I recognized its innocence, and I did not rest until I had received permission to give it away to another boy.  When my father learned of the matter he was of the opinion that there was no other youngster alive to whom such a thing could happen.  That was very possible, for there was perhaps no other at whom the cousins of the nut-cracker had made faces from the floor and from the walls in the evening when he was just going to sleep.  This very night the activity of my seething imagination culminated in a dream, which was so monstrous and left such an impression upon me that for that very reason it returned seven times in succession.  It seemed to me as though the dear Lord, of whom I had already heard so much, had stretched a rope between heaven and earth, had set me upon it, and placed Himself beside it to swing me.  Then without rest or pause I flew up and down with dizzy speed; now I was high up among the clouds, my hair fluttering in the wind, and I held on convulsively and closed my eyes; now I was so near the earth again that I could plainly see the yellow sand and the little red and white stones—­indeed could even reach