Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/98

 much observation, wise, conciliatory and practical. The man of reading lays too much stress on a single idea; the man of observation takes a hint from every class, makes all of them his model, sees how little people trouble themselves about the learned and their abstractions, and becomes a man of the world. It is a positive fact that some thoughts please us when we are lying down which fail to please us any more when we are on our feet. That in advancing years we should grow incapable of learning has some connection with age’s intolerance of being ordered about, and a very close connection, too. It is impossible to conceive to what lengths anthropomorphism, taking the word in its widest sense, may not be carried. People will revenge themselves on the dead; bones are dug up and dishonoured; and lifeless things awake sympathy. Thus someone once felt sorry for an indoor-clock which had been left out in the cold. This transferring of our own feelings to others obtains so widely and in such a variety of ways that to distinguish it is not always easy. The whole business of the personal pronoun has perhaps no other origin. What can be the cause of that singular phenomenon, which I have so often remarkedthe phenomenon, I mean, of speaking to someone in