And so any criticism which approaches the question from such a false point of view is most unfair. The critic must look at our conditions, as they were and as they now are; he must consider the individual circumstances under which German writers obtained their training, and he will easily find the correct point of view. There is nowhere in Germany a common centre of social culture, where men of letters might gather together and perfect themselves, each one in his particular field, in conformity with the same standard. Born in the most widely scattered portions of the land, educated in the most diverse ways, left almost entirely to themselves or to impressions derived from the most varied environments, carried away by a special liking for this or that example of German or foreign literature, the German men of letters are forced, without any guidance, to indulge in all sorts of experiments, even in botch-work, in order to try their powers. Only gradually and after considerable reflection do they realize what they ought to do. Practice alone teaches them what they can do. Again and again the bad taste of a large public, which devours the bad and the good with equal pleasure, leads them into doubt. Then again an acquaintance with the educated though widely scattered population of the great empire encourages them, and the common labors and endeavors of their contemporaries fortify them. Such are the conditions under which German writers finally reach man’s estate. Then concern for their own support, concern for a family, force them to look about in the world at large, and often with the most depressing feeling, to do work for which they have no respect themselves, in order to earn a livelihood, so that they can devote themselves to that kind of work with which alone their cultured minds would occupy themselves. What German author of note will not recognize himself in this picture, and will not confess with modest regret that he often enough sighed for an opportunity to subordinate sooner the peculiarities of his original genius to a general national culture, which unfortunately did not exist? For foreign customs and literatures, irrespective of the many advantages they have contributed to the advancement of the higher classes, have prevented the Germans from developing sooner as Germans.