This is the _social idea_; and the men of culture are the true apostles
of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion
for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society
to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have
labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult,
abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient
outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining
the _best_ knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source,
therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard[426] in the
Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless
emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing[427]
and Herder[428] in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their
services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations
will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more
perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in
Germany; and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with a
reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters
will hardly awaken.
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