ently a science is propagated from the
way in which any special talent in a family is transmitted. The bodily
transmission of an individual science is something very rare. Do the
sons of philologists easily become philologists? _Dubito_. Thus there is
no such accumulation of philological capacity as there was, let us say,
in Beethoven's family of musical capacity. Most philologists begin from
the beginning, and even then they learn from books, and not through
travels, &c. They get some training, of course.

12

Most men are obviously in the world accidentally; no necessity of a
higher kind is seen in them. They work at this and that, their talents
are average. How strange! The manner in which they live shows that they
think very little of themselves: they merely esteem themselves in so far
as they waste their energy on trifles (whether these be mean or
frivolous desires, or the trashy concerns of their everyday calling). In
the so-called life's calling, which everyone must choose, we may
perceive a touching modesty on the part of mankind. They practically
admit in choosing thus. "We are called upon to serve and to be of
advantage to our equals--the same remark applies to our neighbour and to
his neighbour, so everyone serves somebody else; no one is carrying out
the duties of his calling for his own sake, but always for the sake of
others and thus we are like geese which support one another by the one
leaning against the other. _When the aim of each one of us is centred in
another, then we have all no object in existing;_ and this 'existing for
others' is the most comical of comedies."

13

Vanity is the involuntary inclination to set one's self up for an
individual while not really being one; that is to say, trying to appear
independent when one is dependent. The case of wisdom is the exact
contrary: it appears to be dependent while in reality it is independent.

14

The Hades of Homer--From what type of existence is it really copied? I
think it is the description of the philologist: it is better to be a
day-labourer than to have such an anaemic recollection of the past.--[1]

15

The attitude of the philologist towards antiquity is apologetic, or else
dictated by the view that what our own age values can likewise be found
in antiquity. The right attitude to take up, however, is the reverse
one, viz., to start with an insight into our modern topsyturviness, and
to look back from antiquity to it--and m