Note 379 — Chapter V

A popular view of the system of national education established in Germany will be found in Kay's Social Condition and Education of the People of Europe, vol. ii. pp. 1–344. But Mr. Kay, like most literary men, overrates the advantages of literary acquirements, and underrates that education of the faculties which neither books nor schools can impart to a people who are debarred from the exercise of civil and political rights. In the history of the protective spirit (chaps. ix. and x. of the present volume), I shall return to this subject, in connexion with France; and in the next volume I shall examine it in regard to German civilization. In the mean time, I must be allowed to protest against the account Mr. Kay has given of the results of compulsory education; an agreeable picture, drawn by an amiable and intelligent writer, but of the inaccuracy of which I possess decisive evidence. Two points only I will now refer to: 1st. The notorious fact, that the German people, notwithstanding their so-called education, are unfit to take any share in political matters, and have no aptitude for the practical and administrative parts of government. 2nd. The fact, equally notorious to those who have studied the subject, that there are more popular superstitions in Prussia, the most educated part of Germany, than there are in England; and that the tenacity with which men cling to them is greater in Prussia than in England. For illustration of the practical working, in individual cases, of compulsory education, and of the hardship it causes, see a scandalous occurrence, related in Laing's Notes of a Traveller, 8vo. 1842, p. 165, first series; and on the physical evils produced by German education, see Phillips on Scrofula, London, 1846, pp. 253, 254, where there is some useful evidence of the consequences of ‘that great German sin of over-regulation.’