Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history Jor lifestruggle with themselves and through protracted application of thatoracle, they even became the happiest enrichers and augmenters ofthe treasure they had inherited and the first-born and models of allfuture cultured nations.This is a parable for each one of us: he must organize the chaoswithin him by thinking back to his real needs. His honesty, thestrength and truthfulness of his character, must at some time orother rebel against a state of things in which he only repeats what hehas heard, learns what is already known, imitates what already exists;he will then begin to grasp that culture can be something other thana decoration of life , that is to say at bottom no more than dissimulationand disguise; for all adornment conceals that which is adorned.Thus the Greek conception of culture will be unveiled to him inantithesis to the Roman - the conception of culture as a new andimprovedphysis, without inner and outer, without dissimulation andconvention, culture as a unanimity oflife, thought, appearance andwill. Thus he will learn from his own experience that it was throughthe higher force of their moral nature that the Greeks achieved victoryover all other cultures, and that every increase in truthfulness mustalso assist to promote true culture: even though this truthfulness maysometimes seriously damage precisely the kind of cultivatednessnow held in esteem, even though it may even be able to procure thedow I"i. fall of an entire merely decorative culture.123