responsible for. In this respect they were quite right; for the
Philistine has not even the privilege of licence. With the cunning
proper to base natures, however, he availed himself of the
opportunity, in order to throw suspicion even upon the seeking spirit,
and to invite people to join in the more comfortable pastime of
finding. His eye opened to the joy of Philistinism; he saved himself
from wild experimenting by clinging to the idyllic, and opposed the
restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a
certain smug ease--the ease of self-conscious narrowness,
tranquillity, and self-sufficiency. His tapering finger pointed,
without any affectation of modesty, to all the hidden and intimate
incidents of his life, to the many touching and ingenuous joys which
sprang into existence in the wretched depths of his uncultivated
existence, and which modestly blossomed forth on the bog-land of
Philistinism.

There were, naturally, a few gifted narrators who, with a nice touch,
drew vivid pictures of the happiness, the prosaic simplicity, the
bucolic robustness, and all the well-being which floods the quarters
of children, scholars, and peasants. With picture-books of this class
in their hands, these smug ones now once and for all sought to escape
from the yoke of these dubious classics and the command which they
contained--to seek further and to find. They only started the notion
of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be
able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as
the work of epigones. With the view of ensuring their own
tranquillity, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to
transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease
into branches of history--more particularly philosophy and classical
philology. Through historical consciousness, they saved themselves