§ 258. The Oriental-theocratic education is immanent in Christian education through the Bible. Through the mediation of the Greek and Roman churches the views of the ancient world were subsumed but not entirely subdued. To accomplish this was the problem of humanitarian education. It aimed to teach the Latin and Greek languages, expecting thus to secure the action of a purely humane disposition. The Greeks and Romans being sharply marked nationalities, how could one cherish such expectations? It was possible only relatively in contradiction, partly to a provincial population from whom all genuine political sense had departed, partly to a church limited by a confessional, to which the idea of humanity as such had become almost lost in dogmatic fault-findings. The spirit was refreshed in the first by the contemplation of the pure patriotism of the ancients, and in the second by the discovery of Reason among the heathen. In contrast to formlessness distracted by the want of all ideal of culture of provincialism and dogmatic confusions, we find the power of representation of ancient art. The so-called uselessness of learning dead languages imparted to the mind, it knew not how, an ideal drift. The very fact that it could not find immediate profit in its knowledge gave it the consciousness of a higher value than material profit. The ideal of the Humanities was the truth to Nature which was found in the thought-painters of the ancient world. The study of language merely with regard to its form, must lead one involuntarily to the actual seizing of its content. The Latin schools were fashioned into _Gymnasia_, and the universities contained not merely professors of Eloquence, but also teachers of Philology. (_b_) _The Philanthropic Ideal._