[MA-270]
THE ART OF READING
Every strong tendency is one-sided; it approaches the aim of the straight line and, like this, is exclusive, that is, it does not touch many other aims, as do weak parties and natures in their wave-like rolling to-and-fro; it must also be forgiven to philologists that they are one-sided. The restoration and keeping pure of texts, besides their explanation, carried on in common for hundreds of years, has finally enabled the right methods to be found; the whole of the Middle Ages was absolutely incapable of a strictly philological explanation, that is, of the simple desire to comprehend what an author says - it was an achievement, finding these methods, let it not be under-valued ! Through this all science first acquired continuity and steadiness, so that the art of reading rightly, which is called philology, attained its summit.