All this time I worked with might and main at the development of my
physical strength and accomplishments. I went every day to fencing
practice, likewise to cavalry sword practice; I took lessons in the use
of the bayonet, and I took part every afternoon in the shooting
practices conducted by the officers--with the old muzzle-loaders which
were the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr.
Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holstein
non-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "A
smart fencer."
XVI.
Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, I
here reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to in
writing were:
1. To what extent can poetry be called the ideal History?
2. In what manner may the philosophical ideas of Spinoza and Fichte lead
to a want of appreciation of the idea of beauty?
3. In what relation does the comic stand to its limitations and its
various contrasts?
The three questions which were to be replied to in lectures before the
University ran as follows:
1. Show, through poems in our literature, to what extent poetry may
venture to set itself the task of presenting the Idea in a form
coinciding with the philosophical understanding of it?
2.
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