Philology is composed of history just as much as of natural
science or aesthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehend
the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new
images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena;
natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct
of man, that of speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various
antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called
"classical" antiquity, with the view and pretension of excavating the
ideal world buried under it, and to hold up to the present the mirror of
the classical and everlasting standards. That these wholly different
scientific and aesthetico-ethical impulses have been associated under a
common name, a kind of sham monarchy, is shown especially by the fact
that philology at every period from its origin onwards was at the same
time pedagogical. From the standpoint of the pedagogue, a choice was
offered of those elements which were of the greatest educational value;
and thus that science, or at least that scientific aim, which we call
philology, gradually developed out of the practical calling originated
by the exigencies of that science itself.
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