The imitation of antiquity: is not this a principle which has been refuted by this time?
The flight from actuality to the ancients: does not this tend to falsify our conception of antiquity?
5
We are still behindhand in one type of contemplation: to understand how the greatest productions of the intellect have a dreadful and evil background: the sceptical type of contemplation. Greek antiquity is now investigated as the most beautiful example of life.
As man assumes a sceptical and melancholy attitude towards his life's calling, so we must sceptically examine the highest life's calling of a nation: in order that we may understand what life is.
6
My words of consolation apply particularly to the single tyrannised individual out of a hundred: such exceptional ones should simply treat all the unenlightened majorities as their subordinates; and they should in the same way take advantage of the prejudice, which is still widespread, in favour of classical instruction—they need many helpers. But they must have a clear perception of what their actual goal is.
7
Philology as the science of antiquity does not, of course, endure for ever; its elements are not inexhaustible. What cannot be exhausted, however, is the ever-new adaptation of one's age to antiquity; the comparison of the two. If we make it our task to understand our own age better by means of antiquity, then our task will be an everlasting one.—This is the antinomy of philology: people have always endeavoured to understand antiquity by means of the present—and shall the present now be understood by-means of antiquity? Better: people have explained antiquity to themselves out of their own experiences; and from the amount of antiquity thus acquired they have assessed the value of their experiences. Experience, therefore, is certainly an essential pre-requisite for a philologist—that is, the philologist must first of all be a man; for then only can he be productive as a philologist. It follows from this that old men are well suited to be philologists if they were not such during that portion of their life which was richest in experiences.