is there beside him, says, “What is that?” “All who enter the world want it,” says the eldest; “perhaps you yourself.”  Wilhelm says, “Well, tell me what it is.”  “It is,” says the eldest, “reverence—­Ehrfurcht—­Reverence!  Honour done to those who are grander and better than you, without fear; distinct from fear.” Ehrfurcht—­“the soul of all religion that ever has been among men, or ever will be.”  And he goes into practicality.  He practically distinguishes the kinds of religion that are in the world, and he makes out three reverences.  The boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations, to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven, and they give their three reverences.  The first and simplest is that of reverence for what is above us.  It is the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that.  Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us—­reverence for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of man.  The third is reverence for what is beneath us—­to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood—­to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing.  And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian religion—­the highest of all religions; a height, as Goethe says—­and that is very true, even to the letter, as I consider—­a height to which the human species was fated and enabled to attain, and from which, having once attained it, it can never retrograde.  It cannot descend down below that permanently, Goethe’s idea is.

Often one thinks it was good to have a faith of that kind—­that always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbelieving times, he calculates there will be found some few souls who will recognise what that meant; and that the world, having once received it, there is no fear of its retrograding.  He goes on then to tell us the way in which they seek to teach boys, in the sciences particularly, whatever the boy is fit for.  Wilhelm left his own boy there, expecting they would make him a Master of Arts, or something of that kind; and when he came back for him he saw a thundering cloud of dust coming over the plain, of which he could make nothing.  It turned out to be a tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads who had a turn for hunting with their grooms.  His own son was among them, and he found that the breaking of colts was the thing he was most suited for. (Laughter.) This is what Goethe calls Art, which I should not make clear to you by any definition unless it is clear already. (A laugh.) I would not attempt to define it as music, painting, and poetry, and so on; it is in quite a higher sense than the common one, and in which, I am afraid, most of our painters, poets, and music men would not pass muster. (A laugh.) He considers that the highest pitch to which human culture can go; and he watches with great industry how it is to be brought about with men who have a turn for it.