Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/144

 average useful sort, will come of itself. Hence I have often been exercised by the thought how extraordinarily easy it is to write ill. I do not mean that it is easy for an author to write something bad which he himself thinks badoh, no! but that it is easy for him to write something bad which he himself thinks very beautiful. This is what is so humiliating. I draw a straight line, and all the world cries “that’s a crooked one"; I draw another, thinking that this will certainly be straight, and people actually say, “Why, it's crookeder still”! What is to be done? The best thing is not to draw any more straight lines, but to observe other people’s instead, or else to think for ourselves.

Anyone who thinks a good deal for himself will find much wisdom woven into language. He probably does not himself weave it all in, but much wisdom is certainly there, just as in proverbs. It is a great trick of rhetoric merely to persuade people now and then, when one could convince them; and thus they often think themselves convinced when one is able to do no more than persuade them. Beyond question the finest satire is the one in which ridicule is combined with so little malice and so much conviction that it forces a laugh even from those whom it hits. A novel ought chiefly to aim at exposing the errors no less than the trickeries of the various ages and