ir activity found its field, their passion its object and
nourishment.

Why are their poets and historians the wonder of the judicious, the
despair of rivals, unless it be because the actors introduced by them
were so deeply concerned in their own selves, in the narrow circle of
the fatherland, within the circumscribed path of their own life as well
as that of their fellow citizens, and because with all their mind,
inclination, and power, they worked in and for the present? Under such
conditions it could not be difficult for a writer of their opinion to
immortalize such a present. What was actually occurring was for them the
only thing of value, just as for us only what is thought or felt seems
of greatest worth.

In a certain sense the poet lived in his imagination, just as the
historian lived in the political, and the investigator in the natural
world. All held fast to the nearest, the true, the actual, and even the
pictures of their fantasy have bone and marrow. Man, and whatever was
human, was considered of the highest value, and all his inner and
external relations to the world were represented with the same great
intelligence with which they were observed. Feeling and observation had
not been separated; that almost incurable breach in the healthy power of
man had not yet occurred.

Not only in enjoying happiness, but in enduring unhappiness also, these
natures were remarkably gifted. For as a healthy tissue resists illness
and is speedily restored after every attack, so the wholesome mind of
such natures quickly and easily recovers from internal and external
misfortune. Such an antique nature, in so far as one can make this
statement of any of our contemporaries, was reincarnated in Winckelmann.
At the very beginning it endured its mighty probation, and was not tamed
by thirty years of humility, discomfort, and sorrow; it could neither be
diverted from its path, nor blunted by adversity. As soon as he attained
a worthy freedom, he appears well rounded and complete, quite in the
antique sense. He was to live a life of action, enjoyment and self
denial, joy and suffering, possession and loss, exaltation and
debasement--yet in such a strange medley he was always satisfied with
the beautiful world in which such a variable fate befalls us.

Just as in life he possessed a really antique spirit, so in his studies
he was faithful to the same ideal. In the treatment of science in
general the ancients were in a rather u