Science has this in common with art, that the most ordinary, everyday
thing appears to it as something entirely new and attractive, as if
metamorphosed by witchcraft and now seen for the first time. Life is
worth living, says art, the beautiful temptress; life is worth knowing,
says science. With this contrast the so heartrending and dogmatic
tradition follows in a _theory_, and consequently in the practice of
classical philology derived from this theory. We may consider antiquity
from a scientific point of view; we may try to look at what has happened
with the eye of a historian, or to arrange and compare the linguistic
forms of ancient masterpieces, to bring them at all events under a
morphological law; but we always lose the wonderful creative force, the
real fragrance, of the atmosphere of antiquity; we forget that
passionate emotion which instinctively drove our meditation and
enjoyment back to the Greeks. From this point onwards we must take
notice of a clearly determined and very surprising antagonism which
philology has great cause to regret. From the circles upon whose help we
must place the most implicit reliance--the artistic friends of
antiquity, the warm supporters of Hellenic beauty and noble
simplicity--we hear harsh voices crying out that it is precisely the
philologists themselves who are the real opponents and destroyers of the
ideals of antiquity.
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