of those who would run towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that
chokes all germinating hopes, the scorching sand to all those German
thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a new life. For the mind of
Germany is seeking; and ye hate it because it is seeking, and because
it will not accept your word, when ye declare that ye have found what
it is seeking. How could it have been possible for a type like that of
the Culture-Philistine to develop? and even granting its development,
how was it able to rise to the powerful Position of supreme judge
concerning all questions of German culture? How could this have been
possible, seeing that a whole procession of grand and heroic figures
has already filed past us, whose every movement, the expression of
whose every feature, whose questioning voice and burning eye betrayed
the one fact, that they were seekers, and that they sought that which
the Culture-Philistine had long fancied he had found--to wit, a
genuine original German culture? Is there a soil--thus they seemed to
ask--a soil that is pure enough, unhandselled enough, of sufficient
virgin sanctity, to allow the mind of Germany to build its house upon
it? Questioning thus, they wandered through the wilderness, and the
woods of wretched ages and narrow conditions, and as seekers they
disappeared from our vision; one of them, at an advanced age, was even
able to say, in the name of all: "For half a century my life has been
hard and bitter enough; I have allowed myself no rest, but have ever
striven, sought and done, to the best and to the utmost of my
ability."

What does our Culture-Philistinism say of these seekers? It regards
them simply as discoverers, and seems to forget that they themselves
only claimed to be seekers. We have our culture, say her sons; for
have we not our "classics"? Not only is the foundation there, but the
building already stands upon it--we ourselves constitute that