that in the course of
thousands of years, out of milliards of people, only half a score of
Confucius', Buddhas, Solomons, Socrates, Solons, and Homers have been
produced. Evidently, they are rarely met with among men, in spite of the
fact that these men have not been selected from a single caste, but from
mankind at large. Evidently, these true teachers and artists and learned
men, the purveyors of spiritual nourishment, are rare. And it is not
without reason that mankind has valued and still values them so highly.

But it now appears, that all these great factors in the science and art
of the past are no longer of use to us. Nowadays, scientific and
artistic authorities can, in accordance with the law of division of
labor, be turned out by factory methods; and, in one decade, more great
men have been manufactured in art and science, than have ever been born
of such among all nations, since the foundation of the world. Nowadays
there is a guild of learned men and artists, and they prepare, by
perfected methods, all that spiritual food which man requires. And they
have prepared so much of it, that it is no longer necessary to refer to
the elder authorities, who have preceded them,--not only to the ancients,
but to those much nearer to us. All that was the activity of the
theological and metaphysical period,--all that must be wiped out: but the
true, the rational activity began, say, fifty years ago, and in the
course of those fifty years we have made so many great men, that there
are about ten great men to every branch of science. And there have come
to be so many sciences, that, fortunately, it is easy to make them. All
that is required is to add the Greek word "logy" to the name, and force
them to conform to a set rubric, and the science is all complete. They
have created so many sciences, that not only can no one man know them
all, but not a single individual can remember all the titles of all the
existing sciences; the titles alone form a thick lexicon, and new
sciences are manufactured every day. They have been manufactured on the
pattern of that Finnish teacher who taught the landed proprietor's
children Finnish instead of French. Every thing has been excellently
inculcated; but there is one objection,--that no one except ourselves can
understand any thing of it, and all this is reckoned as utterly useless
nonsense. However, there is an explanation even for this. People do not
appreciate the full value