33
If the gymnasium is to train young men for science, people now say there can be no more preliminary preparation for any particular science, so comprehensive have all the sciences become. As a consequence teachers have to train their students generally, that is to say for all the sciences—for scientificality in other words; and for that classical studies are necessary! What a wonderful jump! a most despairing justification! Whatever is, is right,[4] even when it is clearly seen that the "right" on which it has been based has turned to wrong.
[4] The reference is not to Pope, but to Hegel.—TR.
34
It is accomplishments which are expected from us after a study of the ancients: formerly, for example, the ability to write and speak. But what is expected now! Thinking and deduction: but these things are not learnt from the ancients, but at best through the ancients, by means of science. Moreover, all historical deduction is very limited and unsafe; natural science should be preferred.
35
It is the same with the simplicity of antiquity as it is with the simplicity of style: it is the highest thing which we recognise and must imitate; but it is also the last Let it be remembered that the classic prose of the Greeks is also a late result
36
What a mockery of the study of the "humanities" lies in the fact that they were also called "belles lettres" (bellas litteras)!