Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/173

Rh which he could have anticipated 'Iphigenie' and the formation of an effective classical tradition in German literature.

Under this purely literary influence, Winckelmann protests against Christian Wolf and the philosophers. Goethe, in speaking of this protest, alludes to his own obligations to Emmanuel Kant. Kant's influence over the culture of Goethe, which he tells us could not have been resisted by him without loss, consisted in a severe limitation to the concrete. But he adds, that in born antiquaries like Winckelmann, constant handling of the antique, with its eternal outline, maintains that limitation as effectually as a critical philosophy. Plato however, saved so often for his redeeming literary manner, is excepted from Winckelmann's proscription of the philosophers. The modern most often meets Plato on that side which seems to pass beyond Plato into a world no longer pagan, based on the conception of a spiritual life. But the element of affinity which he presents to Winckelmann is that which is wholly Greek, and alien from the Christian world, represented by that group of brilliant youths in the Lysis, still uninfected by any spiritual sickness, finding the end of all endeavour in the aspects of the human form, the continual stir and motion of a comely human life.

This new-found interest in Plato's writings could