alone. We may learn something from it, certainly; but not culture as the
word is now understood. Our present culture is based on an emasculated
and mendacious study of antiquity. In order to understand how
ineffectual this study is, just look at our philologists . they, trained
upon antiquity, should be the most cultured men. Are they?

48

Origin of the philologist. When a great work of art is exhibited there
is always some one who not only feels its influence but wishes to
perpetuate it. The same remark applies to a great state--to everything,
in short, that man produces. Philologists wish to perpetuate the
influence of antiquity and they can set about it only as imitative
artists. Why not as men who form their lives after antiquity?

49

The decline of the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own
corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and
Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the
philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the sophisticism of the
second century.

50

Ah, it is a sad story, the story of philology! The disgusting erudition,
the lazy, inactive passivity, the timid submission.--Who was ever free?

51

When we examine the history of philology it is borne in upon us how few
really talented men have taken part in it. Among the most celebrated
philologists are a few who ruined their intellect by acquiring a
smattering of many subjects, and among the most enlightened of them were
several who could use their intellect only for childish tasks. It is a
sad story . no science, I think, has ever been so poor in talented
followers. Those whom we might call the intellectually crippled found a
suitable hobby in all this hair-splitting.

52

The teacher of reading and writing, and the reviser, were the first
types of the philologist.

53

Friedrich August Wolf reminds us how apprehensive and feeble were the
first steps taken by our ancestors in moulding scholarship--how even the
Latin classics, for example, had to be smuggled into the university
market under all sorts of pretexts, as if they had been contraband
goods. In the "Gottingen Lexicon" of 1737, J. M. Gesner tells us of the
Odes of Horace: "ut imprimis, quid prodesse _in severioribus studiis_
possint, ostendat."

54

I was pleased to read of Bentley "non tam grande pretium emendatiunculis
meis statuere soleo, ut singularem aliquam gratiam inde sperem aut
exigam."

Newton was