enemies. Where do we not meet with them, these mockers, always ready to
aim a blow at the philological "moles," the animals that practise
dust-eating _ex professo_, and that grub up and eat for the eleventh
time what they have already eaten ten times before. For opponents of
this sort, however, philology is merely a useless, harmless, and
inoffensive pastime, an object of laughter and not of hate. But, on the
other hand, there is a boundless and infuriated hatred of philology
wherever an ideal, as such, is feared, where the modern man falls down
to worship himself, and where Hellenism is looked upon as a superseded
and hence very insignificant point of view. Against these enemies, we
philologists must always count upon the assistance of artists and men of
artistic minds; for they alone can judge how the sword of barbarism
sweeps over the head of every one who loses sight of the unutterable
simplicity and noble dignity of the Hellene; and how no progress in
commerce or technical industries, however brilliant, no school
regulations, no political education of the masses, however widespread
and complete, can protect us from the curse of ridiculous and barbaric
offences against good taste, or from annihilation by the Gorgon head of
the classicist.

Whilst philology as a whole is looked on with jealous eyes by these two
classes of opponents, there are numerous and varied hostilities in other
directions of philology; philologists themselves are quarrelling with
one another; internal dissensions are caused by useless disputes about
precedence and mutual jealousies, but especially by the
differences--even enmities--comprised in the name of philology, which
are not, however, by any means naturally harmonised instincts.

Science has this in common with art, that the most ordinary, everyday
thing appears to it as something entirely new and attractive, as if