so maliciously ironical as to call them "a
nation of thinkers."

For an example of the general system of epicycles drawn from the history
of art, look at the school of sculpture which flourished in the last
century and took its name from Bernini, more especially at the
development of it which prevailed in France. The ideal of this school
was not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of the
simplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the manners of a
French minuet.

This tendency became bankrupt when, under Winkelman's direction, a
return was made to the antique school. The history of painting furnishes
an illustration in the first quarter of the century, when art was looked
upon merely as a means and instrument of mediaeval religious sentiment,
and its themes consequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone:
these, however, were treated by painters who had none of the true
earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they followed Francesco
Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico da Fiesole and others like them,
rating them higher even than the really great masters who followed. It
was in view of this terror, and because in poetry an analogous aim had
at the same time found favor, that Goethe wrote his parable
_Pfaffenspiel_. This school, too, got the reputation of being whimsical,
became bankrupt, and was followed by a return to nature, which
proclaimed itself in _genre_ pictures and scenes of life of every kind,
even though it now and then strayed into what was vulgar.

The progress of the human mind in literature is similar. The history of
literature is for the most part like the catalogue of a museum of
deformities; the spirit in which they keep best is pigskin. The few
creatures that have been born in goodly shape need not be looked for
there. They are still alive, and are everywhere to be met with in the
world, immortal, and with their years ever green. They alone form what I
have called real literature; the history of which, poor as it is in
persons, we learn from our youth up out of the mouths of all educated
people, before compilations recount it for us.

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for reading literary
histories, in order to be able to chatter about everything, without
having any real knowledge at all, let me refer to a passage in
Lichtenberg's works (vol. II., p. 302), which is well worth perusal.

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history of science
a