There is nothing that so greatly recreates the mind as the works of the old classic writers.  Directly one has been taken up, even if it is only for half-an-hour, one feels as quickly refreshed, relieved, purified, elevated, and strengthened as if one had refreshed oneself at a mountain stream.  Is this due to the perfections of the old languages, or to the greatness of the minds whose works have remained unharmed and untouched for centuries?  Perhaps to both combined.  This I know, directly we stop learning the old languages (as is at present threatening) a new class of literature will spring up, consisting of writing that is more barbaric, stupid, and worthless than has ever yet existed; that, in particular, the German language, which possesses some of the beauties of the old languages, will be systematically spoilt and stripped by these worthless contemporary scribblers, until, little by little, it becomes impoverished, crippled, and reduced to a miserable jargon.

Half a century is always a considerable time in the history of the universe, for the matter which forms it is always shifting; something is always taking place.  But the same length of time in literature often goes for nothing, because nothing has happened; unskilful attempts don’t count; so that we are exactly where we were fifty years previously.

To illustrate this:  imagine the progress of knowledge among mankind in the form of a planet’s course.  The false paths the human race soon follows after any important progress has been made represent the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system; after passing through any one of them the planet is just where it was before it entered it.  The great minds, however, which really bring the race further on its course, do not accompany it on the epicycles which it makes every time.  This explains why posthumous fame is got at the expense of contemporary fame, and vice versa.  We have an instance of such an epicycle in the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, crowned by Hegel’s caricature of it.  This epicycle issued from the limit to which philosophy had been finally brought by Kant, where I myself took it up again later to carry it further.  In the interim the false philosophers I have mentioned, and some others, passed through their epicycle, which has just been terminated; hence the people who accompanied them are conscious of being exactly at the point from which they started.

This condition of things shows why the scientific, literary, and artistic spirit of the age is declared bankrupt about every thirty years.  During that period the errors have increased to such an extent that they fall under the weight of their absurdity; while at the same time the opposition to them has become stronger.  At this point there is a crash, which is followed by an error in the opposite direction.  To show the course that is taken in its periodical return would be the true practical subject of the history of literature; little notice is taken of it,