Most men show clearly enough that they do not regard themselves as individuals:  their lives indicate this.  The Christian command that everyone shall steadfastly keep his eyes fixed upon his salvation, and his alone, has as its counterpart the general life of mankind, where every man lives merely as a point among other points—­living not only as the result of earlier generations, but living also only with an eye to the future.  There are only three forms of existence in which a man remains an individual as a philosopher, as a Saviour, and as an artist.  But just let us consider how a scientific man bungles his life:  what has the teaching of Greek particles to do with the sense of life?—­Thus we can also observe how innumerable men merely live, as it were, a preparation for a man, the philologist, for example, as a preparation for the philosopher, who in his turn knows how to utilise his ant-like work to pronounce some opinion upon the value of life.  When such ant-like work is not carried out under any special direction the greater part of it is simply nonsense, and quite superfluous.

10

Besides the large number of unqualified philologists there is, on the other hand, a number of what may be called born philologists, who from some reason or other are prevented from becoming such.  The greatest obstacle, however, which stands in the way of these born philologists is the bad representation of philology by the unqualified philologists.

Leopardi is the modern ideal of a philologist:  The German philologists can do nothing. (As a proof of this Voss should be studied!)

11

Let it be considered how differently a science is propagated from the way in which any special talent in a family is transmitted.  The bodily transmission of an individual science is something very rare.  Do the sons of philologists easily become philologists? Dubito.  Thus there is no such accumulation of philological capacity as there was, let us say, in Beethoven’s family of musical capacity.  Most philologists begin from the beginning, and even then they learn from books, and not through travels, &c.  They get some training, of course.

12

Most men are obviously in the world accidentally; no necessity of a higher kind is seen in them.  They work at this and that, their talents are average.  How strange!  The manner in which they live shows that they think very little of themselves:  they merely esteem themselves in so far as they waste their energy on trifles (whether these be mean or frivolous desires, or the trashy concerns of their everyday calling).  In the so-called life’s calling, which everyone must choose, we may perceive a touching modesty on the part of mankind.  They practically admit in choosing thus.  “We are called upon to serve and to be of advantage to our equals—­the same remark applies to our neighbour and to his neighbour, so everyone serves somebody else; no one is carrying out the duties of his calling for his own sake, but always for the sake of others and thus we are like geese which support one another by the one leaning against the other. When the aim of each one of us is centred in another, then we have all no object in existing; and this ’existing for others’ is the most comical of comedies.”