Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/145

 classes. Here much knowledge of human nature might be brought to bear.

It is with epigrams as with inventions in general: the best are just those which annoy us because we did not think of them ourselves. I suppose that this must be what people mean when they say that thought ought to be natural. What really makes the writer for mankind is that he constantly gives expression to what the great mass of men think or feel without knowing it. The mediocre writer merely says what everyone would have said. There are said to have been men who, in writing down their thoughts, at once hit upon the best form for them. I don’t believe much of this. The question always remains whether the expression might not have been improved had the thought been turned over a little more? whether some abbreviation could not have been made? whether this or that word could not have been dispensed with? and so forth. To write at the first attempt like Tacitus, for example, is not in human nature. To render a thought perfectly clear requires a great deal of washing and rinsing, just as it does to make a thing clean. Anyone who compares the earlier editions of Rochefoucauld’s “Réflexions” with the later will be convinced of this fact. In any case, at the first attempt it will hardly be possible to write so that the work may be read over and over