Two Extra Notes on Burckhardt

A few more quotes from the introduction to The Greeks and Greek Civilization.

Jacob Burckhardt, ed. Oswynn Murray, trans. Sheila Stern, The Greeks and Greek Civilization (St. Martin's Griffin, 1999) p. xiii:

Politically Burckhardt was a natural conservative, who disliked and despised the new industrialization and the development of the national state: he foresaw in the course of his own lifetime the coming of an age of 'terribles simplificateurs' and demagouges, who would control the masses and bring ruin to Europe.  This pessimistic conservatism is characteristic of a reflective historian, who cultivated irony and distance form the enthusiasms of contemporary nationalist historians.  In so far as he foresaw the development of industrial society toward the totalitarian popular regimes of National Socialism and Marxism, he was of course a prophet out of his time, standing against the tide of history.

And a passage a bit farther down the page, I believe from one of Burckhardt's letters.

But, my dear friend, Freedom and the State have lost nothing in me.  States are not built with men like me; though as long as I live I mean to be kind and sympathetic to my neighbour; I mean to be a good private individual, and affectionate friend, a good spirit; I have some talent in that direction and mean to develop it.  I can do nothing more with society as a whole; my attitude towards it is willy-nilly ironical; the details are my affair...we may all perish, but at least I want to discover the interest for which I am to perish, namely the ancient culture of Europe.