Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/129

 yet the whole tone of the man should reveal the thinker, and we should always be able to learn something from him. Even in the most trivial concerns his power of judging things ought to be of such a character that we could see what would result were he to make a quiet and concentrated use of it. In the writings of popular yet mediocre authors the most that we find is what they want to convey ; whereas in the works of the systematic thinker, who embraces everything with his mind, we never lose sight of the whole, and of the way in which every thing fits together. The former seek and find their needle by the light of a match only giving a miserable glimmer at one spot, while the latter strikes a light that spreads all round. Nothing more clearly proves to me how things go in the world of learning than the fact that people so long took Spinoza for a bad, disreputable man, and considered his opinions dangerous. So it fares, too, with the fame of many another.

Most dogmatists omit to defend their theories, not because they are convinced of the truth of them, but because they once maintained that they were true. I look upon reviews as a kind of infant malady to which new-born books are more or less subject. Instances are on record of the healthiest of books dying of it, and on the other hand, the most weakly often recover. Some never have the disease at all.