If we expect really to improve ourselves by books--still
I am speaking of fiction--we should try to remember and afterwards
discuss the thoughts they contained and which we found in the mouths
of the characters or in the comments of the author. There has never
been in my recollection a time when the fiction of the day was more
completely abreast of the advancing thought of the world, or in which
it teemed with more new and practical views logically connected with
passing events and new situations. It is when, closing the book, we
take away with us those seeds and subject them to the attrition of
discussion, which wears off the pollen, that we arrive at, possibly,
a new and valuable thought which may deserve the name of knowledge.
* * * * *
"It seems to me your observations are nothing but opinions," said Mrs.
Boyzy to me the other evening. She called it o-pin-ions. Women have
an art of expressing contempt by syllabic emphasis that men never
acquire. It is their failure to accomplish this that induces men to
substitute profanity. Nevertheless, as that excellent woman remarked,
the things I say in these papers are for the most part opinions. But
what of that; what moves the world but opinions--what has moved it up
to where it is now, but opinions? Where would the world be if it were
not for new opinions; where would men be? Suppose every public man
clung to precedents in public affairs; every politician pinned his
faith on his party policy, and every preacher planted himself on
orthodoxy--all with a determination to go no further.
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