Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 17

195.

FROM a.s.sOCIATION WITH AUTHORS.-It is as bad a habit to go about with an author grasping him by the nose as grasping him by the horn (and every author has his horn).

196.

A TEAM OF TWO.-Vagueness of thought and outbursts of sentimentality are as often wedded to the reckless desire to have one's own way by hook or by crook, to make oneself alone of any consequence, as a genuinely helpful, gracious, and kindly spirit is wedded to the impulse towards clearness and purity of thought and towards emotional moderation and self-restraint.

197.

BINDING AND SEPARATING FORCES.-Surely it is in the heads of men that there arises the force that binds them-an understanding of their common interest or the reverse; and in their hearts the force that separates them-a blind choosing and groping in love and hate, a devotion to one at the expense of all, and a consequent contempt for the common utility.

198.

MARKSMEN AND THINKERS.-There are curious marksmen who miss their mark, but leave the shooting-gallery with secret pride in the fact that their bullet at any rate flew very far (beyond the mark, it is true), or that it did not hit the mark but hit something else. There are thinkers of the same stamp.

199.

ATTACK FROM TWO SIDES.-We act as enemies towards an intellectual tendency or movement when we are superior to it and disapprove of its aim, or when its aim is too high and unrecognisable to our eye-in other words, when it is superior to us. So the same party may be attacked from two sides, from above and from below. Not infrequently the a.s.sailants, from common hatred, form an alliance which is more repulsive than all that they hate.

200.

ORIGINAL.-Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and overlooked by every one, as something new. The first discoverer is usually that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary-chance.

201.

ERROR OF PHILOSOPHERS.-The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure. Posterity finds it in the stone with which he built and with which, from that time forth, men will build oftener and better-in other words, in the fact that the structure may be destroyed and yet have value as material.

202.

WIT.-Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

203.

THE MOMENT BEFORE SOLUTION.-In science it occurs every day and every hour that a man, immediately before the solution, remains stuck, being convinced that his efforts have been entirely in vain-like one who, in untying a noose, hesitates at the moment when it is nearest to coming loose, because at that very moment it looks most like a knot.

204.

AMONG THE VISIONARIES.-The thoughtful man, and he who is sure of his intelligence, may profitably consort with visionaries for a decade and abandon himself in their torrid zone to a moderate insanity. He will thus have travelled a good part of the road towards that cosmopolitanism of the intellect which can say without presumption, "Nothing intellectual is alien to me."

205.

KEEN AIR.-The best and healthiest element in science as amid the mountains is the keen air that plays about it.-Intellectual molly-coddles (such as artists) dread and abuse science on account of this atmosphere.

206.

WHY SAVANTS ARE n.o.bLER THAN ARTISTS.-Science requires n.o.bler natures than does poetry; natures that are more simple, less ambitious, more restrained, calmer, that think less of posthumous fame and can bury themselves in studies which, in the eye of the many, scarcely seem worthy of such a sacrifice of personality. There is another loss of which they are conscious. The nature of their occupation, its continual exaction of the greatest sobriety, weakens their will; the fire is not kept up so vigorously as on the hearths of poetic minds. As such, they often lose their strength and prime earlier than artists do-and, as has been said, they are aware of their danger. Under all circ.u.mstances they seem less gifted because they shine less, and thus they will always be rated below their value.

207.