their organisation and curriculum, and such people are, of course,
unconscious witnesses in favour of philology. If any who have not passed
through these institutions should happen to utter a word in
disparagement of this education, an unanimous and yet calm repudiation
of the statement at once follows, as if classical education were a kind
of witchcraft, blessing its followers, and demonstrating itself to them
by this blessing. There is no attempt at polemics · "We have been
through it all." "We know it has done us good."

Now there are so many things to which men have become so accustomed that
they look upon them as quite appropriate and suitable, for habit
intermixes all things with sweetness; and men as a rule judge the value
of a thing in accordance with their own desires. The desire for
classical antiquity as it is now felt should be tested, and, as it were,
taken to pieces and analysed with a view to seeing how much of this
desire is due to habit, and how much to mere love of adventure--I refer
to that inward and active desire, new and strange, which gives rise to a
productive conviction from day to day, the desire for a higher goal, and
also the means thereto · as the result of which people advance step by
step from one unfamiliar thing to another, like an Alpine climber.

What is the foundation on which the high value attached to antiquity at
the present time is based, to such an extent indeed that our whole
modern culture is founded on it? Where must we look for the origin of
this delight in antiquity, and the preference shown for it?

I think I have recognised in my examination of the question that all our
philology--that is, all its present existence and power--is based on the
same foundation as that on which our view of antiquity as the most
important of all means of training is based. Philology as a means of