Philistine, if he be true to himself, will admit that, in regard to
the philosophies which men of his stamp produce, he is conscious of a
frequent lack of intellectuality, although of course they are always
thoroughly healthy and profitable.

Now and again, the Philistines, provided they are by themselves,
indulge in a bottle of wine, and then they grow reminiscent, and speak
of the great deeds of the war, honestly and ingenuously. On such
occasions it often happens that a great deal comes to light which
would otherwise have been most stead-fastly concealed, and one of them
may even be heard to blurt out the most precious secrets of the whole
brotherhood. Indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a short while
ago, to a well-known aesthete of the Hegelian school of reasoning. It
must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an
unusual character. A company of Philistines were feasting together, in
celebration of the memory of a genuine anti-Philistine--one who,
moreover, had been, in the strictest sense of the words, wrecked by
Philistinism. This man was Holderlin, and the afore-mentioned aesthete
was therefore justified, under the circumstances, in speaking of the
tragic souls who had foundered on "reality"--reality being understood,
here, to mean Philistine reason. But the "reality" is now different,
and it might well be asked whether Holderlin would be able to find his
way at all in the present great age. "I doubt," says Dr. Vischer,
"whether his delicate soul could have borne all the roughness which is
inseparable from war, and whether it had survived the amount of
perversity which, since the war, we now see flourishing in every
quarter. Perhaps he would have succumbed to despair. His was one of
the unarmed souls; he was the Werther of Greece, a hopeless lover; his
life was full of softness and yearning, but there was strength and
substance in his will, and in his style, greatness, riches and life;