feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years' standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their most will, a pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself, because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves are—suppose you want a formula—the con-summate self-dissolution of morals.
5
Last not least: Why should we so loudly and so eagerly proclaim what we are, wish, and do not wish? Let us view it in a colder, more distant, wiser and loftier light; let us proclaim it, as though to oneselves, in so soft a voice that all the world overhears it—that everybody hears us! Let is, above all, proclaim it slowly. This preface appears late, but not too late; what really do fire or six years matter? A book and a problem like these are in no hurry whatever: moreover we two— I as well as my book—are friends of the "lento." I have not been philologist in vain, perhaps I still am, that is, a teacher of slow reading. I even write slowly. It is not only my habit, but even my fancy—perhaps a malicious fancy —to write nothing else but what may drive everybody to despair who is "pressed for time." For philology is that venerable art which expects from its admirer one thing above all: to step aside, take his leisure, grow silent, slow—as the goldsmith's art which has to perform
