The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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The main standpoints from which to consider the importance of antiquity: 1. There is nothing about it for young people; for it exhibits man with an entire freedom from shame. 2. It is not for direct imitation, but it teaches by which means art has hitherto been perfected in the highest degree. 3. It is accessible only to a few, and there should be a _police des mœurs_ in charge of it--as there should be also in charge of bad pianists who play Beethoven. 4. These few apply this antiquity to the judgment of our own time, as critics of it; and they judge antiquity by their own ideals and are thus critics of antiquity. 5. The contrast between the Hellenic and the Roman should be studied, and also the contrast between the early Hellenic and the late Hellenic. ---Explanation of the different types of culture. The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations. The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral one. Men not to be used like things!
From the former very incomplete philology and knowledge of antiquity there flowed out a stream of freedom, while our own highly developed knowledge produces slaves and serves the idol of the State. There will perhaps come a time when scientific work will be carried on by women, while the men will have to _create,_ using the word in a spiritual sense: states, laws, works of art, &c. People should study typical antiquity just as they do typical men: _i.e.,_ imitating what they understand of it, and, when the pattern seems to lie far in the distance, considering ways and means and preliminary preparations, and devising stepping-stones. The whole feature of study lies in this: that we should study only what we feel we should like to imitate; what we gladly take up and have the desire to multiply. What is really wanted is a progressive canon of the _ideal_ model, suited to boys, youths, and men. Goethe grasped antiquity in the right way: invariably with an emulative soul. But who else did so? One sees nothing of a well-thought-out pedagogics of this nature: who knows that there is a certain knowledge of antiquity which cannot be imparted to youths! The puerile character of philology: devised by teachers for pupils. The ever more and more common form of the ideal: first men, then institutions, finally tendencies, purposes, or the want of them. The highest form: the conquest of the ideal by a backward movement from tendencies to institutions, and from institutions to men.
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