No, my old friend Rohde, I allow no one to speak so disrespectfully of Monsieur Taine as you do in your letter and you least of all, because it is contrary to all decency to treat any man in the way you do, when you know I think highly of him. If you choose to do so you may, if you like, talk nonsense about me to your heart's content—that lies in the natura verum; I have never complained about it or ever expected anything else. But in regard to a scholar like Taine who is more akin to your own species, you ought to have eyes in your head. To call him "jejune" is, to return to our student's jargon, simply frantically stupid—for he happens to be the most substantial thinker in present-day France; and in this connection it would not be inopportune to remark that where a man can detect no substance it does not necessarily follow there is none, but simply that there is none for him. In the harrowing history of the modern soul, which is in many respects a tragic history, Taine takes his place as a well-constituted and venerable type possessing many of the noblest qualities of this soul—its reckless courage, its absolutely sincere intellectual conscience, its stirring and modest stoicism amid acute privations and isolation. With such qualities a thinker deserves respect; he belongs to the few who immortalize their age. I enjoy the sight of such a brave pessimist who does his duty patiently and resolutely without any need of noise or stage effect—aye, and who can honestly say of himself: satis sunt mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus. In this way, whether he wishes it or no, his life becomes a mission, his attitude to all his problems is an inevitable one (and not the optional or accidental one that your own and most philologists are to philology).