有朝一日，在大公无私的评判者面前，就可以判断：德国精神在甚么时代和何人身上一向是最坚定地努力向古希腊人学习。
Some day, before an impartial judge, it may be decided in what time and in what men the German spirit has s far striven most resolutely to learn from the Greeks;
但是，如果我们满怀信心，承认歌德、席勒、温克尔曼的学术探讨应该特别表扬，那末我们就不得不补充一句：自从他们的时代，继他们的奋斗的直接影响之后，从同一途径进窥希腊文化和古希腊人的努力，却莫明其妙地日渐衰微。
and if we confidently assume that this unique praise must be accorded to the noblest intellectual efforts of Goethe, Schiller, and Winckelmann, we should certainly have to add that since their time and the more immediate consequences of their efforts, the endeavor to attain to culture and to the Greeks on the same path has grown incomprehensibly feebler and feebler.
难道为了使我们对德国精神不致完全失望，就不该作出如下的结论吗？我认为，甚至这些战士既不能进窥希腊性格的核心，也不能在德国文化与希腊文化之间建立持久的盟约。
That we may not despair utterly of the German spirit, must we not conclude that, in some essential manner, even these champions did not penetrate into the core of the Hellenic nature, to establish a permanent alliance between German and Greek culture?
所以，不知不觉间看到这个缺点，也许会使得诚恳的人们丧失信心，怀疑到我们能不能跟着那些先驱者在这条文化路上跨进一步，或者到底能不能达到目的。
So an unconscious recognition of this shortcoming may have prompted the disheartening doubt, even in very serious people, whether after such predecessors they could possibly advance further on this path of culture or could reach the goal at all.
因此，自从那个时代，我们就看到：关于希腊人的文化贡献的论调，极其严重地每况愈下。
Accordingly, we see that opinions concerning the value if the Greeks for education have beendegenerating in the most alarming manner since that time.
在各种各样学术的和非学术的阵营中，可以听到一种优越感的怜惜的口吻，或者在别的场合，卖弄毫无用处的词令，说甚么“希腊的和谐”，“希腊的美”，“希腊的乐观”等等。甚至在那些以努力汲尽希腊文化泉源来裨益德国文化为其光荣使命的团体，在高等教育机关的教授们当中，人们也认为最好是及时地适当地同古希腊人妥协，往往竟至于抱着怀疑态度放弃希腊的理想，甚或完全与古学研究的真正目的背道而驰。
Expressions of compassionate condescension may be heard in the most varied camps of the spirit--and of lack of spirit. Elsewhere, ineffectual rhetoric plays with the phrases "Greek harmony," "Greek beauty," "Greek cheerfulness." And those very circles whose dignified task it might be to draw indefatigably from the Greek reservoir for the good of German culture, the teachers of the higher educational institutions, have learned best to come to terms with the Greeks easily and in good time, often by skeptically abandoning the Hellenic ideal and completely perverting the true purpose of antiquarian studies.
在那些团体中，还有些人尚有余力冀图做个可靠的古籍校勘者，或精细的语言发展史鉴定者，他或许也冀图“从历史上”把希腊古学同其它古学一起研究，然而总是依照今日有修养的编史家的方法，而且带着不可一世的神气。
Whoever in these circles has not completely exhausted himself in his endeavor to be a dependable corrector of old texts or a linguistic microscopist who apes natural history is probably trying to assimilate Greek antiquity "historically," along with other antiquities, at any rate according to the method and with the supercilious airs of our present cultured historiography.
所以，当我们高等教育机关的实在教育功能再没有比今日更低落更薄弱的时候，当今日的纸张奴隶“新闻记者们”在一切有关文化方面都战胜了教授们，而教授们只落得重复以前常常经历的转变，在自己的范围内还是那样风流潇洒，用新闻记者的口吻来说，正象一只飘飘然风雅的蝴蝶翩翩飞舞的时候；
The cultural power of our higher educational institutions has perhaps never been lower or feebler than at present. The "journalist," the paper slave of the day, triumphs over the professor in all matters pertaining to culture; and nothing remains to the latter but the metamorphosis, often experienced by now, of fluttering also like a cheerful cultured butterfly, with the "light elegance" peculiar to this sphere, employing the journalist's style.
在今日那样的时代，有教养的人们，目睹酒神精神之苏醒和悲剧之复兴的现象，安得不感到痛苦的惶惑呢？这现象只能用类推方法从向来未阐明的关于希腊天才的深奥原理才能体会。
In what painful confusion must the cultured class of such a period gaze at the phenomenon which perhaps is to be comprehended analogically only by means of the profoundest principle of the hitherto unintelligible Hellenic genius--the phenomenon of the reawakening of the Dionysian spirit and the rebirth of tragedy?
从未有过一个艺术时代，象今日那样使我们目击所谓文化与真正艺术那么彼此疏远而且互相对立。
There has never been another period in the history of art in which so-called culture and true art have been so estranged and opposed as we may observe them to be at present.
为甚么这样不健康的文化如此厌恶真正的艺术呢？是可以理解的；因为它害怕在艺术手上遭到毁灭。然而，整个文化类型，换句话说，苏格拉底——亚历山德里亚文化，既已达到象我们现代文化那样纤巧脆弱的极端，它可不是已成强弩之末！
We can understand why so feeble a culture hates true art; it fears destruction from its hands. But has not an entire cultural form, namely, the Socratic-Alexandrian, exhausted itself after culminating in such a daintily tapering point as our present culture?
如果象歌德和席勒那样的英雄们，尚且不能打破引向希腊灵山的魔关，如果他们以勇往直前的精神，尚且只能绻恋遥望，而不能再进一步，象歌德的伊斐格尼亚从荒凉的托鲁斯山，隔洋兴叹，遥望故乡那样；那末，那些英雄的后辈又能希望甚么呢？——除非这道魔关，在更生的悲剧音乐的神秘声中，蓦然对他们自动打开，露出迄今一切文化努力尚未触及的另一方面。
If heroes like Goethe and Schiller could not succeed in breaking open the enchanted gate which leads into the Hellenic magic mountain; if with their most dauntless striving they couldnot go beyond the longing gaze which Goethe's Iphigenia casts from barbaric Tauris to her home across the ocean, what could the epigones of such heroes hope for--unless, amid the mystic tones of reawakened tragic music, the gate should open for them suddenly of its own accord, from an entirely different side, quite overlooked in all previous cultural endeavors.