The Primary Class is composed of the born seers--men who see for
themselves and who originate. These are poets, philosophers,
discoverers. The Secondary Class is composed of men less puissant in
faculty, but genuine also in their way, who travel along the paths
opened by the great originaters, and also point out many a side-path
and shorter cut. They reproduce and vary the materials furnished by
others, but they do this, not as echoes only, they authenticate their
tidings, they take care to see what the discoverers have taught them to
see, and in consequence of this clear vision they are enabled to
arrange and modify the materials so as to produce new results. The
Primary Class is composed of men of genius; the Secondary Class of men
of talent. It not unfrequently happens, especially in philosophy and
science, that the man of talent may confer a lustre on the original
invention; he takes it up a nugget and lays it down a coin. Finally,
there is the largest class of all, comprising the Imitators in Art, and
the Compilers in Philosophy. These bring nothing to the general stock.
They are sometimes (not often) useful; but it is as cornfactors, not as
corn-growers. They sometimes do good service by distributing knowledge
where otherwise it might never penetrate; but in general their work is
more hurtful than beneficial: hurtful, because it is essentially bad
work, being insincere work, and because it stands in the way of better
work.

Even among Imitaters and Compilers there are almost infinite degrees of
merit and demerit: echoes of echoes reverberating echoes in endless
succession; compilations of all degrees of worth and worthlessness.
But, as will be shown hereafter, even in this lower sphere the worth of
the work is strictly proportional to the Vision, Sincerity, and Beauty;
so that an imitator whose eye is keen for the forms he imitates, whose