limitless
world, devoted itself to dissipation and desire for enjoyment, which, in
its entire want of moderation, abused nature. The finest form of the
extant education was that in _belles-lettres_, which also for the first
time came to belong to the sphere of Pedagogics. There had been a
degeneration of art in India and Greece, and also an artistic trifling.
But in Rome there arose a pursuit of art in order to win a certain
consideration in social position, and to create for one's self a
recreation in the emptiness of a soul satiated with sensual debauchery.
Such a seizing of art is frivolous, for it no longer recognizes its
absoluteness, and subordinates it as a means to subjective egotism.
Literary _salons_ then appear.

--In the introduction to his _Cataline_, Sallust has painted
excellently this complete revolution in the Roman education. The younger
Pliny in his letters furnishes ample material to illustrate to us this
pursuit of _belles-lettres_. In Nero it became idiotic. We should
transgress our prescribed limits did we enter here into particulars. An
analysis would show the perversion of the aesthetic into the practical,
the aesthetic losing thereby its proper nature. But the Roman could not
avoid this perversion, because, according to his original aim, he could
not move except towards the _utile et honestum_.--

Sec. 224. (3) But this pursuit of fine art, this aimless parade, must at
last weary the Roman. He sought for himself again an object to which he
could vigorously devote himself. His sovereignty was assured, and
conquest as an object could no more charm him. The national religion had
fallen with the destruction of the national individuality. The soul
looked out over its historical life into an empty void. It sought to
establish a relation between itself and the next world by means of
daemonic forces, and in place of the depreciated nationality and its
religion we find the eclecticism of the mystic society. There were, it
is true, in national religions certain secret signs, rites, words, and
meanings; but now, for the first time in the history of the world, there
appeared mysteries as pedagogical societies, which concerned themselves
only with private things and were indifferent to nationality. Everything
was profaned by the roughness of violence. Man believed no longer in the
old gods, and the superstitious faith in ghosts became only a thing fit
to frighten children with. Thus man took refuge in secr