Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/68

58 Nature has done much to create differences, and human egotism has come in to second the efforts of Nature, and supplement her work by getting up differences in our favor where no such thing in point of fact exists. B may be a fool, but thinks himself wiser than C, who is in truth far wiser than B. C thinks himself much wiser than he really is, and in comparing himself with B gets the full benefit of the real difference, with a large surplus from the inflation. Thus are both men made happy. Indeed, should you take each man's estimate of himself, you might, to find a fool, be obliged to do as Diogenes did to find an honest man. But, if you should take each man's opinion of other men's abilities, the fools would outnumber the wise men ten to one, that one being himself. Alas! what should we philosophers do were there no simple souls whereby to measure our colossal intellects? Thank God for wise men, but thank God for fools! Every fool as well as every knave has done a great. deal for human happiness. Woe is the day when fools and knaves shall be no more! O stirpiculturist, stay thy hand, and leave us still a background to the great picture of life! And thank God for egotism, which enables us to make so much out of so little. It was not the philosopher that "Oh'd!" when the poet wrote:

He was wiser who wrote—

It will be a black-letter day when we find ourselves out. Why not let us go on, each one thinking himself the biggest toad in the puddle, and being happy? Why not let us still have the difference in our favor, since it is so cheap a happiness, and withal so innocent?

Those who agree with me thus far may yet ask: "But is not the number as well as the degree of differences too great? Has not Nature rather overdone the thing when she gets up a hell-bender" (vide Webster and the Aquarium), "or gives us not only an Apollo whom we admire, but a leper whom we loathe?" Why, my dear sir, after all the orthodox animals were made—though I don't know where you would draw the line between the regulars and the irregulars—you and I both could find much pleasure in looking at a hell-bender, and he no doubt finds far more pleasure in being a hell-bender than in being nobody. However many forms we may have seen, we still want to see something different. Yes, but how about the miserable, suffering leper? How about these extremes of wretchedness? Something in the way of music may be got up from the eight simple tones of a simple octave. If you are to have music worth hearing, you must extend the scale through the octave above and the octave below; but, if you would have music with all its pathos, power, and sublimity, you must make use of all the octaves that are at the command of the