HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

3Pntrotiuction,
xxv
cause it was practically inconvenient,
they have seldom in suppressing it appealed
to reason, but always, if possible,
to soma precedent, or form, or letter,
which served as a convenient instrument
for their purpose, and which saved
them from the necessity of recurring to
general principles. They have thus become,
in a certain sense, of all people
the most inaccessible to ideas and the
most impatient of them; inaccessible to
them, because of their want of familiarity
with them; and impatient of them
because they have got on so well without
them, that they despise those who,
not having got on as well as themselves,
still make a fuss for what they themselves
have done so well without. But
there has certainly followed from hence,
in this country, somewhat of a general
depression of pure intelligence: Philistia
has come to be thought by us the
true Land of Promise, and it is anything
but that; the born lover of ideas, the
born hater of commonplaces, must feel
in this country, that the sky over his
head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast
for the idea, for reason, values
reason, the idea, in and for themselves;
he values them, irrespectively of the
practical conveniences which their triumph
may obtain for him ; and the man
who regards the possession of these
practical conveniences as something
sufficient in itself, something which
compensates for the absence or surren-