Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/131

 in comparison with really great men these people are so insignificant that we have no interest whatever to know what they know. We read so many essays on genius nowadays that everyone thinks that he is one. The man is lost who considers himself a genius early in life. It is a pity that the majority of books should be written by men who rise to the task rather than unbend to it. Had Lessing, for instance, cared to publish a vademecum for the merry, I believe that it would have been translated into every language on earth. But then everybody prefers writing on subjects in which he himself takes pleasure; and rarely does anyone take pleasure in things that he grasps and has as much by heart as the multiplication table. A writer who in order to do himself justice says all that he knows, is surely a bad writer. On the contrary, when he has to restrain himself so as not to say too much, he can the sooner count on a good reception. Nowadays, in my opinion, we enter too minutely into the history of knowledge, to the great prejudice of knowledge itself. Such histories are not uninteresting to read, but although they may not, indeed, leave the head empty they leave it devoid of proper energy, just because they stuff it so full. Whoever has felt inclined, not to cram but to strengthen his mind, to develop and extend his powers and talents, will have found that there is