, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily appropriate⁠—whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration of what is strange: all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards the best things of the world which are not their property or could not become their prey⁠—and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity.