raised themselves only to a slight extent, above that type of culture
which should be called a mere civilisation and bourgeois acquirement, as
opposed to the higher and true culture of the mind." He then explains
that this culture is spiritual and literary: "In a well-organised nation
this may be begun earlier than order and peacefulness in the outward
life of the people (enlightenment)."

He then contrasts the inhabitants of easternmost Asia ("like such
individuals, who are not wanting in clean, decent, and comfortable
dwellings, clothing, and surroundings; but who never feel the necessity
for a higher enlightenment") with the Greeks ("in the case of the
Greeks, even among the most educated inhabitants of Attica, the contrary
often happens to an astonishing degree; and the people neglect as
insignificant factors that which we, thanks to our love of order, are in
the habit of looking upon as the foundations of mental culture itself").


38

Our terminology already shows how prone we are to judge the ancients
wrongly: the exaggerated sense of literature, for example, or, as Wolf,
when speaking of the "inner history of ancient erudition," calls it,
"the history of learned enlightenment."


39

According to Goethe, the ancients are "the despair of the emulator."
Voltaire said. "If the admirers of Homer were honest, they would
acknowledge the boredom which their favourite often causes them."