Meanwhile it goes on quietly working its way, and, like an
acid, undermining everything around it. From time to time a crash is
heard; the old error comes tottering to the ground, and suddenly the
new fabric of thought stands revealed, as though it were a monument
just uncovered. Everyone recognizes and admires it. To be sure, this
all comes to pass for the most part very slowly. As a rule, people
discover a man to be worth listening to only after he is gone; their
_hear, hear_, resounds when the orator has left the platform.
Works of the ordinary type meet with a better fate. Arising as they
do in the course of, and in connection with, the general advance in
contemporary culture, they are in close alliance with the spirit of
their age--in other words, just those opinions which happen to be
prevalent at the time. They aim at suiting the needs of the moment. If
they have any merit, it is soon recognized; and they gain currency as
books which reflect the latest ideas. Justice, nay, more than justice,
is done to them. They afford little scope for envy; since, as was said
above, a man will praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to
imitate it himself.
But those rare works which are destined to become the property of all
mankind and to live for centuries, are, at their origin, too far in
advance of the point at which culture happens to stand, and on that
very account foreign to it and the spirit of their own time.
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