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."

40

The position we have taken up towards classical antiquity is at bottom
the profound cause of the sterility of modern culture; for we have taken
all this modern conception of culture from the Hellenised Romans. We
must distinguish within the domain of antiquity itself: when we come to
appreciate its purely productive period, we condemn at the same time the
entire Romano-Alexandrian culture. But at the same time also we condemn
our own attitude towards antiquity, and likewise our philology.

41

There has been an age-long battle between the Germans and antiquity,
_i.e._, a battle against the old culture. It is certain that precisely
what is best and deepest in the German resists it. The main point,
however, is that such resistance is only justifiable in the case of the
Romanised culture; for this culture, even at that time, was a
falling-off from something more profound and noble. It is this latter
that the Germans are wrong in resisting.

42

Everything classic was thoroughly cultivated by Charles the Great,
whilst he combated everything heathen with the severest possible
measures of coercion. Ancient mythology was developed, but German
mythology was treated as a crime. The feeling underlying all this, in my
opinion, was that Christianity had already overcome the old religion .
people no longer feared it, but availed themselves of the culture that
rested upon it. But the old German gods were feared.

A great superficiality in the conception of antiquity--little else than
an appreciation of its formal accomplishments and its knowledge--must
thereby have been brought about. We must find out the forces that stood
in the way of incre