While we thus eagerly apply ourselves to learning the outward aspect of things, as the primitive method of understanding the objects about us, education aims at instilling into us ideas.  But ideas furnish no information as to the real and essential nature of objects, which, as the foundation and true content of all knowledge, can be reached only by the process called intuition.  This is a kind of knowledge which can in no wise be instilled into us from without; we must arrive at it by and for ourselves.

Hence a man’s intellectual as well as his moral qualities proceed from the depths of his own nature, and are not the result of external influences; and no educational scheme—­of Pestalozzi, or of any one else—­can turn a born simpleton into a man of sense.  The thing is impossible!  He was born a simpleton, and a simpleton he will die.

It is the depth and intensity of this early intuitive knowledge of the external world that explain why the experiences of childhood take such a firm hold on the memory.  When we were young, we were completely absorbed in our immediate surroundings; there was nothing to distract our attention from them; we looked upon the objects about us as though they were the only ones of their kind, as though, indeed, nothing else existed at all.  Later on, when we come to find out how many things there are in the world, this primitive state of mind vanishes, and with it our patience.

I have said elsewhere[1] that the world, considered as object,—­in other words, as it is presented to us objectively,—­wears in general a pleasing aspect; but that in the world, considered as subject,—­that is, in regard to its inner nature, which is will,—­pain and trouble predominate.  I may be allowed to express the matter, briefly, thus:  the world is glorious to look at, but dreadful in reality.

[Footnote 1:  Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Bk.  II. c. 31, p. 426-7 (4th Edit.), to which the reader is referred for a detailed explanation of my meaning.]

Accordingly, we find that, in the years of childhood, the world is much better known to us on its outer or objective side, namely, as the presentation of will, than on the side of its inner nature, namely, as the will itself.  Since the objective side wears a pleasing aspect, and the inner or subjective side, with its tale of horror, remains as yet unknown, the youth, as his intelligence develops, takes all the forms of beauty that he sees, in nature and in art, for so many objects of blissful existence; they are so beautiful to the outward eye that, on their inner side, they must, he thinks, be much more beautiful still.  So the world lies before him like another Eden; and this is the Arcadia in which we are all born.