o are called into existence and pursue this path
solely because there is a demand for them. Every man who, in an
unexpected moment of enlightenment, has convinced himself of the
singularity and inaccessibility of Hellenic antiquity, and has warded
off this conviction after an exhausting struggle--every such man knows
that the door leading to this enlightenment will never remain open to
all comers; and he deems it absurd, yea disgraceful, to use the Greeks
as he would any other tool he employs when following his profession or
earning his living, shamelessly fumbling with coarse hands amidst the
relics of these holy men. This brazen and vulgar feeling is, however,
most common in the profession from which the largest numbers of
teachers for the public schools are drawn, the philological
profession, wherefore the reproduction and continuation of such a
feeling in the public school will not surprise us.

"Just look at the younger generation of philologists: how seldom we
see in them that humble feeling that we, when compared with such a
world as it was, have no right to exist at all: how coolly and
fearlessly, as compared with us, did that young brood build its
miserable nests in the midst of the magnificent temples! A powerful
voice from every nook and cranny should ring in the ears of those who,
from the day they begin their connection with the university, roam at
will with such self-complacency and shamelessness among the
awe-inspiring relics of that noble civilisation: 'Hence, ye
uninitiated, who will never be initiated; fly away in silence and
shame from these sacred chambers!' But this voice speaks in vain; for
one must to some extent be a Greek to understand a Greek curse of
excommunication. But these people I am speaking of are so barbaric
that they dispose of these relics to suit themselves: all their modern
conveniences and fancies are brought with them and concealed among
those ancient pillars and tombstones, and it gives rise to great
rejoicing when somebody finds, among the dust and cobwebs of
antiquity, something that he himself had slyly hidden there not so
very long before. One of them makes verses and takes care to consult
Hesychius' Lexicon. Something there immediately assures him that he is
destined to be an imitator of AEschylus, and leads him to believe,
indeed, that he 'has something in common with' AEschylus: the miserable
poetaster! Yet another peers with the suspicious eye of a policeman
into every