My father’s method, which, much as I feel indebted to it, was after all somewhat peculiar and utterly devoid of logic and consistency, would in all probability have led to violent quarrels between my parents, if my critical mother, who saw only its weaknesses and none of its virtues, had attached any special significance to it in general.  But that was not the case.  She only felt that my father’s way of teaching was totally different from the usual way, in that it would not lead to many practical results, i.e., would not give me much preparation for an examination, and in this respect she was perfectly right.  However, as she herself attached so little value to knowledge in general, she contented herself with smiling at the “Socratic method,” as she saw no reason for becoming seriously wrought up over it.  According to her honest conviction there were other things in life of far greater importance than knowledge, to say nothing of erudition, and these other things were:  a good appearance and good manners.  That her children should all present a good appearance was with her an article of faith, so to speak, and she considered it a natural consequence of their good appearance that they either already had or would acquire good manners.  So the only essential was to present a good appearance.  Serious studies seemed to her not a help, but, on the contrary, a hindrance to happiness, that is to say, real happiness, which she looked upon as inseparable from money and property.  A hundred-thousand-dollar man was something, and she respected, even honored him, whereas chief judges and councillors of the chancery commanded very little respect from her, and would have commanded even less, if the State, which she did respect, had not stood behind them.  She was incapable of bowing in good faith to any so-called spiritual authority, not because she cherished too exalted an opinion of herself—­she was, on the contrary, entirely without vanity and arrogance—­but solely because, constituted as she was, she could not recognize an authority of knowledge, much less of erudition, in a practical field of life—­and with her the non-practical fields never entered into consideration.

I still remember the time, some twenty years after the events just narrated, when my parents were thinking of separating and of eventually being divorced.  A separation actually came about, the divorce idea was dropped.  But the latter was for a time considered in all seriousness, and a friend of our family, Pastor Schultz, the then preacher at Bethany, who made a specialty of divorce questions—­it was in the reign of Frederick William IV., when such problems were treated with revived dogmatic severity—­Pastor Schultz, I say, opposed the plan, as soon as he heard of it, with all his power and eloquence.  My mother had a great deal of admiration for him and knew, besides, the respect he enjoyed of “those highest in authority,” and “those highest in authority” meant something to her; nevertheless his severe presentation