it was disgraceful to be beaten,” says he, “it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow.”  On the whole, that same excellent “Passivity,” so notable in Teufelsdrockh’s childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment.  “He wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited.  Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (Ungestum) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankin.”  In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a height quite sickly, and disproportioned to its breadth?

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were “mechanically” taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all.  So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself “went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen’s workshops, there learning many things;” and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper’s house, where he lodged,—­his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted.  Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment.  Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag Scorpio, where we now are, and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger.

“My Teachers,” says he, “were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man’s nature, or of boy’s; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books.  Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind.  How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought?  How shall he give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder?  The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much:  that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods.