, we get the feeling as if it were only then that
we really became men.

446

The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and
grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life.

447

In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and
art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and
even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any
rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of
several thousand years has rolled upon us.

448

There is no such thing as patriotic art and patriotic science. Both art
and science belong, like all things great and good, to the whole world,
and can be furthered only by a free and general interchange of ideas
among contemporaries, with continual reference to the heritage of the
past as it is known to us.

449

Poetical talent is given to peasant as well as to knight; all that is
required is that each shall grasp his position and treat it worthily.

450

An historic sense means a sense so cultured that, in valuing the deserts
and merits of its own time, it takes account also of the past.

451

The best that history gives us is the enthusiasm it arouses.

452

The historian's duty is twofold: first towards himself, then towards his
readers. As regards himself, he must carefully examine into the things
that could have happened; and, for the reader's sake, he must determine
what actually did happen. His action towards himself is a matter between
himself and his colleagues; but the public must not see into the secret
that there is little in history which can be said to be positively
determined.

453

The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain
from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

454

It is seldom that any one of great age becomes historical to himself,
and finds his contemporaries become historical to him, so that he
neither cares nor is able to argue with any one.

455

On a closer examination of the matter, it will be found that the
historian does not easily grasp history as something historical. In
whatever age he may live, the historian always writes as though he
himself had been present at the time of which he treats, instead of
simply narrating the facts and movements of that time. Even the mere
chronicler only points more or less to his own limitations, or the
peculiarities o