Transcriber's Note:
This lecture was taken from Volume III of The Complete Works ofFriedrich Nietzsche, Dr. Oscar Levy, Ed., J. M. Kennedy,Translator, 1910
At the present day no clear and consistent opinion seems to be heldregarding Classical Philology. We are conscious of this in the circlesof the learned just as much as among the followers of that scienceitself. The cause of this lies in its many-sided character, in the lackof an abstract unity, and in the inorganic aggregation of heterogeneousscientific activities which are connected with one another only by thename "Philology." It must be freely admitted that philology is to someextent borrowed from several other sciences, and is mixed together likea magic potion from the most outlandish liquors, ores, and bones. It mayeven be added that it likewise conceals within itself an artisticelement, one which, on æsthetic and ethical grounds, may be calledimperatival—an element that acts in opposition to its purely scientificbehaviour. Philology is composed of history just as much as of naturalscience or æsthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehendthe manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever newimages, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena;natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinctof man, that of speech; æsthetics, finally, because from variousantiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called"classical" antiquity, with the view and pretension of excavating theideal world buried under it, and to hold up to the present the mirror ofthe classical and everlasting standards. That these wholly differentscientific and æsthetico-ethical impulses have been associated under acommon name, a kind of sham monarchy, is shown especially by the factthat philology at every period from its origin onwards was at the sametime pedagogical. From the standpoint of the pedagogue, a choice wasoffered of those elements which were of the greatest educational value;and thus that science, or at least that scientific aim, which we callphilology, gradually developed out of the practical calling originatedby the exigencies of that science itself.
These philological aims were pursued sometimes with greater ardour andsometimes with less, in accordance with the degree of culture and thedevelopment of the taste of a particular period; but, on the other hand,the followers of this science are in the habit of regarding the aimswhich correspond to their several abilities as the aims of philology;whence it comes about that the estimation of philology in public opiniondepends upon the weight of the personalities of the philologists!
At the present time—that is to say, in a period which has seen mendistinguished in almost every department of philology—a generaluncertainty of judgment has increased more and more, and likewise ageneral relaxation of interest and participation in philologicalproblems. Such an undecided and imperfect state of public opinion isdamaging to a science in that its hidden and open enemies can work withmuch better prospects of success. And philology has a great many suchenemies. Where do we not meet with them, these mockers, always ready toaim a blow at the philological "moles," the animals that practisedust-eating ex professo, and that grub up and eat for the eleventhtime what they have already eaten ten times before. For opponents ofthis sort, however, philology is merely a useless, harmless, andinoffensive pastime, an object of laughter and not of hate. But, on theother hand, there is a boundless and infuriated hatred of philology