The school system has doubtless changed, and at all events the
schoolmasters are probably long ago dead; the story has no longer
a practical value, and had very little even at the time; one
could at least say in defence of the German school that it was
neither very brutal nor very immoral. The head-master was
excellent in his Prussian way, and the other instructors were not
worse than in other schools; it was their system that struck the
systemless American with horror. The arbitrary training given to
the memory was stupefying; the strain that the memory endured was
a form of torture; and the feats that the boys performed, without
complaint, were pitiable. No other faculty than the memory seemed
to be recognized. Least of all was any use made of reason, either
analytic, synthetic, or dogmatic. The German government did not
encourage reasoning.

All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing
the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in
the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes.
The German machine was terribly efficient. Its effect on the
children was pathetic. The Friedrichs-Wilhelm-Werdersches
Gymnasium was an old building in the heart of Berlin which served
the educational needs of the small tradesmen or bourgeoisie of
the neighborhood; the children were Berliner-kinder if ever there
were such, and of a class suspected of sympathy and concern in
the troubles of 1848. None was noble or connected with good
society. Personally they were rather sympathetic than not, but as
the objects of education they were proofs of nearly all the evils
that a bad system could give. Apparently Adams, in his rigidly
illogical pursuit, had at last reached his ideal of a viciously