Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/92

 to say that philosophy bakes no cakes, or is of no help to a philosopher with toothache. There is no doubt an intellectual satisfaction in pushing consistency and law into their highest reaches. But this does not justify the contempt for fragmentary thought and feeling and their expression in journalism. It is, however, right for me to limit this defence of journalism to writing done under fair and free conditions. The “middles” of the best weekly papers are here “the golden mean,” giving the best expression to the fragmentary wisdom of the mind and pen. In the prose writings of our generation there have been many large literary and philosophic treatises of high intellectual merit. But their very height and length are limitations to the influence which they exert: for such prolonged expositions in high thinking evoke some suspicion of artificiality even among the minority of qualified readers. I think that there exists a widespread feeling, almost a belief, that wisdom comes in short runs. Perhaps the most striking instance in our literature is Bacon’s Essays, the force and drive of which far exceed those of his more formal treatises. Coming nearer to journalism, one might cite the piecemeal utterances of Addison and Steele, of Johnson, Hazlitt, as examples of portable wit and wisdom which outlive most larger literary edifices. Within the last generation I find more vitality and fineness of expression in the journalistic work of Lowes Dickinson, H. W. Nevinson, Havelock Ellis, J. A. Spender, A. G. Gardiner, H. N.