In philosophy he
is still worse off, because he must plumb the depths of
metaphysical jargon and master the criticism of methods.
Now, this is in a degree both right and necessary, because the
blind must not attempt to lead the blind; but it is treating the
whole thing in too strictly scientific a spirit for all that. The
misery of it is that the work of the specialist in all these
regions tends to set a hedge about the law; it tends to accumulate
and perpetuate a vast amount of inferior work. The result of it is,
in literature, for instance, that an immense amount of second-rate
and third-rate books go on being reprinted; and instead of the
principle of selection being applied to great authors, and their
inferior writings being allowed to lapse into oblivion, they go on
being re-issued, not because they have any direct value for the
human spirit, but because they have a scientific importance from
the point of view of development. Yet for the ordinary human being
it is far more important that he should read great masterpieces in
a spirit of lively and enthusiastic sympathy than that he should
wade into them through a mass of archaeological and philological
detail.
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