accustomed myself to regard such
science as a mere ramification of philology, and to value its
representatives in proportion as they are good or bad philologists. So
it has come about that _philosophy itself_ is banished from the
universities: wherewith our first question as to the value of our
universities from the standpoint of culture is answered.

"In what relationship these universities stand to _art_ cannot be
acknowledged without shame: in none at all. Of artistic thinking,
learning, striving, and comparison, we do not find in them a single
trace; and no one would seriously think that the voice of the
universities would ever be raised to help the advancement of the
higher national schemes of art. Whether an individual teacher feels
himself to be personally qualified for art, or whether a professorial
chair has been established for the training of aestheticising literary
historians, does not enter into the question at all: the fact remains
that the university is not in a position to control the young
academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen
what happens, willy-nilly--and this is the cutting answer to the
immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves as
the highest educational institutions.

"We find our academical 'independents' growing up without philosophy
and without art; and how can they then have any need to 'go in for'
the Greeks and Romans?--for we need now no longer pretend, like our
forefathers, to have any great regard for Greece and Rome, which,
besides, sit enthroned in almost inaccessible loneliness and majestic
alienation. The universities of the present time consequently give no
heed to almost extinct educational predilections like these, and found
their philological chairs for the training of new and exclusive
generations of philologists, who on their part give similar
philological preparation in the public schools--a vicious circle which
is useful neither to philologists nor to public schools, but which
above all accuses the university for the third time of not being what
it so pompously proclaims itself to be--a training ground for culture.
Take away the Greeks, together with philosophy and art, and what
ladder have you still remaining by which to ascend to culture? For, if
you attempt to clamber up the ladder without these helps, you must
permit me to inform you that all your learning will lie like a heavy
burden on your shoulders rather than fu