Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/132

 nothing more enervating than to consult a so-called littérateur upon a branch of knowledge in which he has done no thinking, but of which he knows a thousand and one historico-literary details. It is almost like reading a cookery book when you are starving. I imagine, too, that among thinkers possessing a sense of their own worth and that of the actual branch in question so-called literary history will never have much of a success. These men reason more than they trouble themselves to know how others have reasoned. It would have to be a terribly bad translation that could spoil a good book for a man of sense who forms his impressions from the whole, and does not stick at expressions and periods. A book not of such a character that even the worst translator can hardly obscure its good qualities for an intelligent reader, is certainly not a book written for posterity. To write a book earning the applause of men who, possessing genius, have made its subject a lifelong study, is undoubtedly most difficult: I have found that when I devote my chief attention for a week or a fortnight to some small point in physics, all the authors who have written on the subject give me the impression of being tame. If only great men would make known their methods of workthe actual way in which they have composed their masterpieces! I am certain that they did not begin these works by writing