There is something not quite unlike modern Germany in that; and yet these older activities of the Germans make a strange contrast with their work to-day.  It was in the city of Cologne that Caxton first made acquaintance with his craft.  Everywhere the Germans spread printing like a new religion, adapting it to existing conditions.  In Bavaria they used the skill of the wood-engravers, and at Augsburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg produced the first illustrated printed books.  It was two Germans of the old school, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, who carried the art to Italy, casting the first type in Roman characters, and printing editions of the classics, first in the Benedictine monastery of St. Scholastica at Subiaco, and later at Rome.  They also cast the first Greek type.  It was three Germans, Gering, Kranz, and Freyburger, who first printed at Paris, in 1470.  It was a German who set up the first printing-press in Spain, in 1474.  The Germans were once the cherishers, as now they are the destroyers, of the inheritance of civilization.  I do not pretend to explain the change.  Perhaps it is a tragedy of education.  That is a dangerous moment in the life of a child when he begins to be uneasily aware that he is valued for his simplicity and innocence.  Then he resolves to break with the past, to put away childish things, to forgo affection, and to earn respect by imitating the activities of his elders.  The strange power of words and the virtues of abstract thought begin to fascinate him.  He loses touch with the things of sense, and ceases to speak as a child.  If his first attempts at argument and dogma win him praise and esteem, if he proves himself a better fighter than an older boy next door, who has often bullied him, and if at the same time he comes into money, he is on the road to ruin.  His very simplicity is a snare to him.  ‘What a fool I was’, he thinks, ’to let myself be put upon; I now see that I am a great philosopher and a splendid soldier, born to subdue others rather than to agree with them, and entitled to a chief share in all the luxuries of the world.  It is for me to say what is good and true, and if any of these people contradict me I shall knock them down.’  He suits his behaviour to his new conception of himself, and is soon hated by all the neighbours.  Then he turns bitter.  These people, he thinks, are all in a plot against him.  They must be blind to goodness and beauty, or why do they dislike him!  His rage reaches the point of madness; he stabs and poisons the villagers, and burns down their houses.  We are still waiting to see what will become of him.