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67 when the citizens of a State were expressly trained up with a view to their political character, still the very object would be sacrificed which the association of human beings in a community was designed to secure. Whence I conclude, that the freest development of human nature, directed as little as possible to ulterior civil relations, should always be regarded as paramount in importance with respect to the culture of man in society. He who has been thus freely developed should then attach himself to the State; and the State should test and compare itself, as it were, in him. It is only with such a contrast and conflict of relations, that I could confidently anticipate a real improvement of the national constitution, and banish all apprehension with regard to the injurious influence of the civil institutions on human nature. For even although these were very imperfect, we could imagine how the force of human energies, struggling against the opposing barriers, and asserting, in spite of them, its own inherent greatness, would ultimately prove superior in the conflict. Still, such a result could only be expected when those energies had been allowed to unfold themselves in all their natural freedom. For how extraordinary must those efforts be which were adequate to maintain and exalt those energies, when even from the period of youth they were bound down and enfeebled by such oppressive fetters! Now all systems of national education, inasmuch as they afford room for the manifestation of a governmental spirit, tend to impose a definite form on civic development, and therefore to repress those vital energies of the nation.

When such a prevailing form of development is definite in itself, and still beautiful, although one-sided, as we find it to be in the ancient constitutions and even yet observe it perhaps in many a republic, there is not only more facility in its actual working, but it is attended with far less