Caveat Lector.Let the reader look out for himself.The old Master, whose words I have so frequently quoted and shall quote more of, is a dogmatist who lays down the law, ex cathedra, from the chair of his own personality.I do not deny that he has the ambition of knowing something about a greater number of subjects than any one man ought to meddle with, except in a very humble and modest way.And that is not his way.There was no doubt something of, humorous bravado in his saying that the actual "order of things" did not offer a field sufficiently ample for his intelligence.But if I found fault with him, which would be easy enough, I should say that he holds and expresses definite opinions about matters that he could afford to leave open questions, or ask the judgment of others about.But I do not want to find fault with him.If he does not settle all the points he speaks of so authoritatively, he sets me thinking about them, and I like a man as a companion who is not afraid of a half-truth.I know he says some things peremptorily that he may inwardly debate with himself.There are two ways of dealing with assertions of this kind.One may attack them on the false side and perhaps gain a conversational victory.But I like better to take them up on the true side and see how much can be made of that aspect of the dogmatic assertion.It is the only comfortable way of dealing with persons like the old Master.
There have been three famous talkers in Great Britain, either of whom would illustrate what I say about dogmatists well enough for my purpose.You cannot doubt to what three I refer: Samuel the First, Samuel the Second, and Thomas, last of the Dynasty.(I mean the living Thomas and not Thomas B.)I say the last of the Dynasty, for the conversational dogmatist on the imperial scale becomes every year more and more an impossibility.
If he is in intelligent company he will be almost sure to find some one who knows more about some of the subjects he generalizes upon than any wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by the cargo is like to know.I find myself, at certain intervals, in the society of a number of experts in science, literature, and art, who cover a pretty wide range, taking them all together, of human knowledge.I have not the least doubt that if the great Dr.Samuel Johnson should come in and sit with this company at one of their Saturday dinners, he would be listened to, as he always was, with respect and attention.But there are subjects upon which the great talker could speak magisterially in his time and at his club, upon which so wise a man would express himself guardedly at the meeting where I have supposed him a guest.We have a scientific man or two among us, for instance, who would be entitled to smile at the good Doctor's estimate of their labors, as I give it here:
"Of those that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinion of their own importance and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life."--"Some turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day.Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable.
"There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again."I cannot transcribe this extract without an intense inward delight in its wit and a full recognition of its thorough half-truthfulness.
Yet if while the great moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be imagined as receiving a message from Mr.Boswell or Mrs.
Thrale flashed through the depths of the ocean, we can suppose he might be tempted to indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this:----A wise man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact.He who would bound the possibilities of human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take the dimensions of the infant in ordering the habiliments of the adult.It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.Will the Professor have the kindness to inform me by what steps of gradual development the ring and the loadstone, which were but yesterday the toys of children and idlers, have become the means of approximating the intelligences of remote continents, and wafting emotions unchilled through the abysses of the no longer unfathomable deep?
