Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/157

 without moving his hands in much the same way as he moves his legs. Many people fling their arms about in walking, not from imitation, but by nature. It appears that what moves the feet must at the same time move the hands. It is a fact, too, that in jumping people make a springing movement with the hands. As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.

I have never yet met anyone who did not think it an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.

To follow everything to its farthest limit, so that not the slightest obscurity remains; to discover its defects by experiment; to mend them or for this purpose to suggest something more perfectthat is the only way of endowing ourselves with so-called common sense, which ought to be the chief object of our endeavours. Without common sense there can be no true virtue; it alone makes the great writer. Scribendi recte sapere est et pricipium et fons. We must only have the will, as Helvetius said.

It is always a good sign when artists can often be hindered by trifles from the due performance of their art. F. . . . used to dip his fingers into flour before playing the piano; and another great pianist could never be brought to perform if he had shortly before cut his nails. Such things do not disconcert the mediocre man, because his power of