--This direction which Philosophy took is noteworthy, not alone in Cicero and Seneca, but at the fall of the Roman empire, when Boethius wrote in his prison his immortal work on the consolations of Philosophy.--
§ 223. The earnestness which sought a definite end degenerated in the very opposite of activity with him who had no definite aim. The idleness of the wealthy Roman, who felt himself to be the lord of a limitless world, devoted itself to dissipation and desire for enjoyment, which, in its entire want of moderation, abused nature. The finest form of the extant education was that in _belles-lettres_, which also for the first time came to belong to the sphere of Pedagogics. There had been a degeneration of art in India and Greece, and also an artistic trifling. But in Rome there arose a pursuit of art in order to win a certain consideration in social position, and to create for one's self a recreation in the emptiness of a soul satiated with sensual debauchery. Such a seizing of art is frivolous, for it no longer recognizes its absoluteness, and subordinates it as a means to subjective egotism. Literary _salons_ then appear.
--In the introduction to his _Cataline_, Sallust has painted excellently this complete revolution in the Roman education. The younger Pliny in his letters furnishes ample material to illustrate to us this pursuit of _belles-lettres_. In Nero it became idiotic. We should transgress our prescribed limits did we enter here into particulars. An analysis would show the perversion of the æsthetic into the practical, the æsthetic losing thereby its proper nature. But the Roman could not avoid this perversion, because, according to his original aim, he could not move except towards the _utile et honestum_.--
§ 224. (3) But this pursuit of fine art, this aimless parade, must at last weary the Roman. He sought for himself again an object to which he could vigorously devote himself. His sovereignty was assured, and conquest as an object could no more charm him. The national religion had fallen with the destruction of the national individuality. The soul looked out over its historical life into an empty void. It sought to establish a relation between itself and the next world by means of dæmonic forces, and in place of the depreciated nationality and its religion we find the eclecticism of the mystic society. There were, it is true, in national religions certain secret signs, rites, words, and meanings; but now, for the first time in the history of the world, there appeared mysteries as pedagogical societies, which concerned themselves only with private things and were indifferent to nationality. Everything was profaned by the roughness of violence. Man believed no longer in the old gods, and the superstitious faith in ghosts became only a thing fit to frighten children with. Thus man took refuge in secrecy, which had for his satiety a piquant charm.