Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/115

 book; not because he looks upon it as arcanafar from itbut because he thinks it unsuitable for a book. Intelligent people, when they set about writing books too commonly force their minds into a shape determined by a certain notion which they have about style, just as they screw up their faces when they are going to have their portraits taken. Constant reading and getting up facts, without exercise of one’s powers, has the drawback (as I have remarked for some years in my own case) that everything comes to depend on memory, and nothing upon a system of thought. This is why the best arguments never occur to me so readily during an argument as when I am alone. Properly speaking, I am actually obliged to find out what I already knew; but as a rule I become aware that I knew the point in question only at the moment when to have known it is of no use to me. It seems to me that the German’s special forte is original work in those fields where some other remarkable mind has already prepared the way. In other words, he possesses, in a superlative degree, the art of becoming original by imitation. He possesses a genius for instantly snatching at forms, and he can make his air out of all the notes given him by the foreign originator. For fifty who admire Homer I suppose there is hardly one who understands him. People have never heard him found fault with, and so can enjoy