Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church.
ATTRIBUTION:
Friedrich Von Schlegel (1772–1829), German philosopher. Aphorism 35 in Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797), translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Pennsylvania University Press (1968).
