while, but merely to cast it aside, and let it lie behind us. Generally speaking, a man is quite sufficiently saddened by his own passions and destiny, and need not make himself more so by the darkness of a barbaric past. He needs enlightening and cheering influences, and should therefore turn to those eras in art and literature, during which remarkable men obtained perfect culture, so that they were satisfied with themselves, and able to impart to others the blessings of their culture.

I

47 He [Victor Hugo] has a fine talent, but quite entangled in the unhappy romantic tendency of his time, by which he is seduced to represent, together with what is beautiful, also that which is most insupportable and hideous. have lately been reading his Notre Dame de Paris, and required no little patience to support the horror with which this reading has inspired me. It is the most abominable book that ever was written! Besides, one is not even indemnified for the torture one has to endure by the pleasure one might receive from a truthful representation of human nature or human character. His book is, on the contrary, utterly destitute of nature and truth! The so-called characters whom he brings forward are not human beings with living flesh and blood, but miserable wooden puppets, which he deals with as he pleases, and which he causes to make all sorts of contortions and grimaces just as he needs them for his desired effects. But what an age it must be which not only renders such a book possible and calls it into existence, but even finds it endurable and delightful.

48 "There are some poets who have a tendency always to occupy themselves with things which another likes to drive from his mind." What say you to this? There we know

at once where we are, and how we have to classify a great number of our most modern literati.

49 Usually, you [women] read a book to find nutrition for the heart, to find a hero whom you could love. This is not the way to read; the great point is, not whether this or that character pleases, but whether the whole book pleases.

50 We read far too many poor things, thus losing time, and gaining nothing.

28 REFLECTIONS AT A BREAKFAST-TABLE 1

Oliver Wendell Holmes

HERE are men of esprit who are excessively exhausting

THER

to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called jerky minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of those jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel.

2

Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line.

2

3 If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic? -I should say that its most frequent work was to build a pons asinorum over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker Hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, which couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other.

Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his

1 From The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.

is the "Autocrat."

2 Asses' bridge.

The speaker throughout

primary relations with truth, as I understand truth, not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may, of course, advise wisely, but not necessarily because he wrangles or plays well.

4 When John and Thomas

. are talking together, it

is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin 1 here that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.

Three
Johns

Three

Thomases

I The real John; known only to his Maker. 2 John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.

3 Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

I The real Thomas.

2 Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3 John's ideal Thomas.

Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the

1 A small boy of the household.

point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.

5 All a man's antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance, which gives at once the gauge of his education and his mental organization.

6 I have an immense respect for a man of talents plus "the mathematics." But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers is a kind of "detached lever" arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is about as common as the power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare endowment.

me.

Self-made men? Well, yes. Of
Of course everybody
It is a great deal better

likes and respects self-made men.