Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/121

 It has always seemed to me a very deplorable thing that in most subjects at universities so much should be taught which serves no other purpose than to put young men in the position of being able to teach it over again. Greek is taught so that it may be re-taught; and so it passes from tutor to pupil, who himself, if it takes good root, at most becomes tutor, in his turn once again to train further tutors. It has always appeared to me that people weigh the merits of the ancients against those of the moderns in very defective scales, and give preferences to the latter which they do not deserve. The ancients wrote at a time when the great art of writing badly had not yet been invented, and merely to write meant to write well. They wrote the truth just as children speak the truth. Nowadays, when we come to our senses at sixteen, we already find ourselves, I might say, possessed by an evil spirit; and to drive this out by observing for oneself and by combating appearances, prejudice, and the effects of a fourteen years’ education, and then to set up Nature's house-keeping again, undoubtedly calls for more effort than did writing naturally in the infancy of the world; now that writing naturally has, I might say, almost become unnatural. Homer, it is certain, did not know that he wrote well, and neither did Shakespeare. Our good writers of to-day have all to learn the fatal art of knowing that they write well. To point out to the world the authors who, with