man against man, and strive with an
Athenian for the prize of higher humanity.

Whence comes this disadvantageous relation of individuals coupled with
great advantages of the race? Why could the individual Greek be
qualified as the type of his time; and why can no modern dare to offer
himself as such? Because all-uniting nature imparted its forms to the
Greek, and an all-dividing understanding gives our forms to us.

It was culture itself that gave these wounds to modern humanity. The
inner union of human nature was broken, and a destructive contest divided
its harmonious forces directly; on the one hand, an enlarged experience
and a more distinct thinking necessitated a sharper separation of the
sciences, while, on the other hand, the more complicated machinery of
states necessitated a stricter sundering of ranks and occupations.
Intuitive and speculative understanding took up a hostile attitude in
opposite fields, whose borders were guarded with jealousy and distrust;
and by limiting its operation to a narrow sphere, men have made unto
themselves a master who is wont not unfrequently to end by subduing and
oppressing all the other faculties. Whilst on the one hand a luxuriant
imagination creates ravages in the plantations that have cost the
intelligence so much labor; on the other hand, a spirit of abstraction
suffocates the fire that might have warmed the heart and inflamed the
imagination.

This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was
carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in
government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple
organization of the primitive republics should survive the quaintness of
primitive manners and of the relations of antiquity. But, instead of
rising to a higher and nobler degree of animal life, this organization
degenerated into a common and coarse mechanism. The zoophyte condition
of the Grecian states, where each individual enjoyed an independent life,
and could, in cases of necessity, become a separate whole and unit in
himself, gave way to an ingenious mechanism, when, from the splitting up
into numberless parts, there results a mechanical life in the
combination. Then there was a rupture between the state and the church,
between laws and customs; enjoyment was separated from labor, the means
from the end, the effort from the reward. Man himself, eternally chained
down to a little fragment of the whole, only forms a kind of