And thus was prepared the Pseudomorphosis. The Magian Culture, geographically and historically, is the midmost of the group of higher Cultures--the only one which, in point both of space and of time, was in touch with practically all others. The structure of its history as a whole in our world-picture depends, therefore, entirely on our recognizing the true inner form which the outer moulds distorted. Unhappily, that is just what we do not yet know, thanks to theological and philological prepossessions, and even more to the modern tendency of over-specialization which has unreasonably subdivided Western research into a number of separate branches--each distinguished from the others not merely by its materials and its methods, but by its very way of thinking--and so prevented the big problems from being even seen. In this instance the consequences of specialization have been graver perhaps than in any other. The historians proper stayed within the domain of Classical philology and made the Classical language-frontier their eastern horizon; hence they entirely failed to perceive the deep unity of development on both sides of their frontier, which spiritually had no existence. The result is a perspective of “Ancient,” “Mediæval,” and “Modern” history, ordered and defined by the use of the Greek and Latin languages. For the experts of the old languages, with their “texts,” Axum, Saba, and even the realm of the Sassanids were unattackable, and the consequence is that in “history” these scarcely exist at all. The literature-researcher (he also a philologist) confuses the spirit of the language with the spirit of the work. Products of the Aramæan region, if they happen to be written in Greek or even merely preserved in Greek, he embodies in his “Late Greek literature” and proceeds to classify as a special period of that literature. The cognate texts in other languages are outside his department and have been brought into other groups of literature in the same artificial way. And yet here was the strongest of all proofs that the history of a literature never coincides with the history of a language.[281] Here, in reality, was a self-contained ensemble of Magian national literature, single in spirit, but written in several languages--the Classical amongst others. For a nation of Magian type has no mother tongue. There are Talmudic, Manichæan, Nestorian, Jewish, or even Neopythagorean national literatures, but _not_ Hellenistic or Hebrew.