; they
destroy the mind. Because people always read what is new instead of the
best of all ages, writers remain in the narrow circle of the ideas which
happen to prevail in their time; and so the period sinks deeper and
deeper into its own mire.

There are at all times two literatures in progress, running side by
side, but little known to each other; the one real, the other only
apparent. The former grows into permanent literature; it is pursued by
those who live _for_ science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet,
but extremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in
a century; these, however, are permanent. The other kind is pursued by
persons who live _on_ science or poetry; it goes at a gallop with much
noise and shouting of partisans; and every twelve-month puts a thousand
works on the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they?
where is the glory which came so soon and made so much clamor? This kind
may be called fleeting, and the other, permanent literature.

In the history of politics, half a century is always a considerable
time; the matter which goes to form them is ever on the move; there is
always something going on. But in the history of literature there is
often a complete standstill for the same period; nothing has happened,
for clumsy attempts don't count. You are just where you were fifty years
previously.

To explain what I mean, let me compare the advance of knowledge among
mankind to the course taken by a planet. The false paths on which
humanity usually enters after every important advance are like the
epicycles in the Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one of
them, the world is just where it was before it entered it. But the great
minds, who really bring the race further on its course do not accompany
it on the epicycles it makes from time to time. This explains why
posthumous fame is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise,
and _vice versa_. An instance of such an epicycle is the philosophy
started by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned by Hegel's caricature of
it. This epicycle was a deviation from the limit to which philosophy had
been ultimately brought by Kant; and at that point I took it up again
afterwards, to carry it further. In the intervening period the sham
philosophers I have mentioned and some others went through their
epicycle, which had just come to an end; so that those who went with
them on their course are conscious of the fac