xXVi THE LIFE OF GEORG SIMMEL 
time. He helped his hearers to live, to find an adaptation 
to that vast cultural environment which is the European 
social heritage. 
Simmel was not only the philosopher of European cul- 
ture, he was a bearer of that culture, a lover of the best it 
had to offer. Not only did he know it, he lived it. He had 
an understanding and a warm appreciation of music and 
a profound love for the best of sculpture and painting. 
His journeys to Italy and the periods there of intimate con- 
tact with the treasures of the Italian Renaissance became 
an absolute necessity to his artistic soul. He had enough 
artistic intuition to understand the great masters. He had 
enough analytical power to translate that intuitive under- 
standing into suggestive concepts. To this remarkable 
combination we owe the peculiar charm of his works on 
Goethe and Rembrandt and of his essays on Rodin and 
Michelangelo. 
Yet, although as a teacher and lecturer he was a great 
success, beloved by his students and admired by all who 
heard him, his academic promotion was slow and tedious. 
He remained a private lecturer in Berlin until the day of 
his departure for Strassburg in 1914. The Berlin Univer- 
sity gave him in 1900 the title of Extraordinary Professor 
(Ausserordentlicher Professor), but that meant merely an 
honorable distinction, not a definite position with an ade- 
quate remuneration. 
The causes of this slow promotion can only be sur- 
mised. Certain difficulties with Dilthey are supposed to 
have had something to do with it. But what was probably 
largely responsible was the fact of his Jewish ancestry. 
The Berlin University was Prussian in its atmosphere, and 
the Prussian view of things was not likely to lead to a 
speedy promotion and official encouragement of Jewish 
teachers.