To the mass of men this divine idea of the world
lies hidden; yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it,
is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the
end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. Literary men are
the appointed interpreters of this divine idea; a perpetual priesthood,
we might say, standing forth, generation after generation, as the
dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, to show it
in their writings and actions, in such particular form as their own
particular times require it in. For each age, by the law of its nature,
is different from every other age, and demands a different
representation of the divine idea, the essence of which is the same
in all; so that the literary man of one century is only by mediation
and reinterpretation applicable to the wants of another." [Footnote:
Ib., p. 69. There is a similar passage in the _Lectures on Heroes_
(Lec. v.), p. 145. In each case the reference is to Fichte's Lectures
_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_ (1805), especially to lectures i.
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