ice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and
variations of key and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC
world took delight. The laws of the written style were then the same
as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the
surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx;
partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In
the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch
as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes
and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath,
were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling
how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty
in the deliverance of such a period;--WE have really no right to the
BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those
ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently
connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to
the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all
Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song
(and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany,
however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began
shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was
properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical
discourse--that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one
in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a
sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone
had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons
are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom
attained by a German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece of
German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its
greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German
book. Compared with Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely
"literature"--something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore
has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has
done.

248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and
seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified
and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are
t