Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/148

 IF you wish to become great in any particular style of writing, let your reading extend beyond the books of that class. Even if you do not want your branches to cover a great deal of ground, it will always make for fertility to have your roots well spread out. A good way to attain sound common sense is to be constantly striving after clear ideas ; and this, not merely by means of other people’s definitions, but as far as possible by personal inquiry. We ought repeatedly to scrutinize things with the intention of finding something about them that others have not yet observed. Of every word we ought at least once to have given ourselves an explanation, and never use any that we do not understand. A man ought never to say to himself: “This subject is beyond me ; it is one for an expert ; I had better turn to something simpler.” To do so is a weakness that may easily degenerate into complete inactivity. There is no subject for which we ought to consider ourselves not good enough.

So to manage one’s reading and study that it shall be connected is a piece of advice which, although the