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Where do we see the effect of antiquity? Not in language, not in the imitation of something or other, and not in perversity and waywardness, to which uses the French have turned it. Our museums are gradually becoming filled up: I always experience a sensation of disgust when I see naked statues in the Greek style in the presence of this thoughtless philistinism which would fain devour everything.
PLANS AND THOUGHTS RELATING TO A WORK ON PHILOLOGY
(1875)
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Of all sciences philology at present is the most favoured · its progress having been furthered for centuries by the greatest number of scholars in every nation who have had charge of the noblest pupils. Philology has thus had one of the best of all opportunities to be propagated from generation to generation, and to make itself respected. How has it acquired this power?
Calculations of the different prejudices in its favour.
How then if these were to be frankly recognised as prejudices? Would not philology be superfluous if we reckoned up the interests of a position in life or the earning of a livelihood? What if the truth were told about antiquity, and its qualifications for training people to live in the present?
In order that the questions set forth above may be answered let us consider the training of the philologist, his genesis: he no longer comes into being where these interests are lacking.
If the world in general came to know what an unseasonable thing for us antiquity really is, philologists would no longer be called in as the educators of our youth.