A totally erroneous
conception of what constituted classical culture was thus brought about.
Where any distinction was actually made, for example, later Greek
thought was enormously over-rated, and early Greek thought equally
undervalued. Aphorism 44, together with the first half-dozen or so in
the book, may be taken as typical specimens of Nietzsche's protest
against this state of things.
It must be added, unfortunately, that Nietzsche's observations in this
book apply as much to England as to Germany. Classical teachers here may
not be rated so high as they are in Germany, but their influence would
appear to be equally powerful, and their theories of education and of
classical antiquity equally chaotic. In England as in Germany they are
"theologians in disguise." The danger of modern "values" to true culture
may be readily gathered from a perusal of aphorisms that follow: and, if
these aphorisms enable even one scholar in a hundred to enter more
thoroughly into the spirit of a great past they will not have been
penned in vain.
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