becoming filled up: I always experience a sensation of disgust when I
see naked statues in the Greek style in the presence of this thoughtless
philistinism which would fain devour everything.


PLANS AND THOUGHTS RELATING TO A WORK ON PHILOLOGY

(1875)


26

Of all sciences philology at present is the most favoured · its progress
having been furthered for centuries by the greatest number of scholars
in every nation who have had charge of the noblest pupils. Philology has
thus had one of the best of all opportunities to be propagated from
generation to generation, and to make itself respected. How has it
acquired this power?

Calculations of the different prejudices in its favour.

How then if these were to be frankly recognised as prejudices? Would not
philology be superfluous if we reckoned up the interests of a position
in life or the earning of a livelihood? What if the truth were told
about antiquity, and its qualifications for training people to live in
the present?

In order that the questions set forth above may be answered let us
consider the training of the philologist, his genesis: he no longer
comes into being where these interests are lacking.