His little pamphlet was printed, and a good many copies were sold to visitors to the village about that time; it also received some public recognition, but the teacher was wise enough to perceive that his fragmentary labors, in which no one supported him, were basically without value.
“It is the aim of this pamphlet […] to help in giving the schoolmaster’s book the wide publicity it deserves. If I succeed in that, then may my name, which I regard as only transiently and indirectly associated with this question, be blotted from it at once.”
[…] I was often struck by the fact that he showed almost a keener penetration where I was concerned than he had done in his pamphlet.
All that he was concerned with was the thing itself, and with that alone. But I was only of disservice to it, for I did not understand it, I did not prize it at its true value, I had no real feeling for it. It was infinitely above my intellectual capacity.
An unpardonable confusion of identity.
These were my words; they were not entirely sincere, but what was sincere in them was obvious enough.
But the final deceit that lies in their words consists in this, that at bottom they have always said what they are saying now.
What interests one interests all the rest immediately. They take their views from one another and promptly make those views their own.
“I do not ask for the return of the pamphlet because I retract in any way the opinions defended there or wish them to be regarded as erroneous or even indemonstrable on any point. My request has purely personal and moreover very urgent grounds; but no conclusion whatever must be drawn from it as regards my attitude to the whole matter.”
I didn’t consider what I was doing carefully enough at the time to be able to answer that clearly now. I wanted to help you, but that was a failure, and the worst failure I have ever had.
