intermediary factor. No literary "generation" is composed of men
actually of the same age. Beside the quite young who are merely
panting to express themselves, stand the mature who exercise an
esthetic discernment, even as regards their own peculiar experience;
finally, there are also the older men who have already said their say.
In the same way every public is made up of people of all ages. These
make different demands of their poets; youth wishes to conquer,
manhood to fortify, old age merely not to lose. It is self-evident
that points of conformity are to be found between the most widely
differing fields: as, for example, conservative tendencies are present
in the camp of the destroyers, revolutionary tendencies in that of the
conservatives. In other words, in every community of men, no matter of
what description, who are united by any kind of higher interest, new
ideals grow up out of this very community of interest. Men who happen
to be thrown together mutually cause one another's demands to
increase; those who work in common try to outdo one another. Out of
their midst personalities arise, who, brought up with the loftiest
ideals, or often spurred on by the supineness of the public, with
passionate earnestness make what merely filled up the leisure hours of
others the sole purpose of their lives. Thus, in Germany above all,
the new ideal has been born again and again, constituting the
strongest motive power which exists, besides the personality of
genius itself.

Of the greatest importance, to begin with, is the _ideal of a national
literature itself_. Gottsched was the first in Germany, if not to
apprehend it, at least to ponder it and to advocate it with persistent
zeal. The literature of antiquity and the literature of France offered
types of fixed national units. The affinity between the two as
national units had been pointed out in France and England by means of