Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/217

Rh of culture which they now no longer possess, nay, which they have sluken off with a blind zeal, like some diserse: and yet they were not able to obtain in exchange anything better than a political and national mania. Thereby they have succeeded in becoming to other nations even more interesting than they formerly were through their culture: may they now feel satislied! Yet there is no denying that this German culture has fooled Europeans, and that it did not deserve such an interest; much less the imitation and cumulation on their part in appropriating it. Let us, just for a moment, turn back to Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling; let us peruse their correspondence and mix in the large circle of their followers: what have they in common, which fills us, such as we now are, alternately with nausea and with touching and pitiful emotions ? First, the passion for appearing, at any price, morally excited; then the desire for brilliant, feeble, commonplace remarks, and the set purpose of seeing everything (characters, passions, periods, customs) in a more rosy light—alas! “rosy,” according to a bad, Vague taste, which nevertheless boasted of Greek origin. It was a soft, goodnatured, silver-glittering idealism which, above all, wished to affect noble gestures and noble voices, being both presumptuous and harmless, and sincerely disgusted will the "cold" or "dry" reality, with anatomy, with complete passions, with every kind of philosophical