Note 58 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

The distinction between these two humanitarianisms is well expressed by Goethe when he relates (Dichtung und Wahrheit) the indifference of himself and his friends to the events of 1789. ‘In our little circle, we took no notice of news and newspapers; our object was to know Man; as for men, we left them to do as they chose.’ Need I recall that the ‘humanities’, as instituted by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, the ‘studia humanitatis’, are ‘the study of what is most essentially human’, in no sense altruistic exercises. See further Note I at the end of this book for a curious quotation from one of the ancients.