d them. They are my
intellectual window dressings. I talk about them with others who, I
suspect, have not read them either; and we confine ourselves to
generalities, with a careful qualification of all expressed opinions, no
matter how vague and elusive. For example--a safe conversational
opening:

"Of course there is a great deal to be said in favor of Bergson's
general point of view, but to me his reasoning is inconclusive. Don't
you feel the same way--somehow?"

You can try this on almost anybody. It will work in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred; for, of course, there is a great deal to be said in
favor of the views of anybody who is not an absolute fool, and most
reasoning is open to attack at least for being inconclusive. It is also
inevitable that your cultured friend--or acquaintance--should feel the
same way--somehow. Most people do--in a way.

The real truth of the matter is, all I know about Bergson is that he is
a Frenchman--is he actually by birth a Frenchman or a Belgian?--who as a
philosopher has a great reputation on the Continent, and who recently
visited America to deliver some lectures. I have not the faintest idea
what his theories are, and I should not if I heard him explain them.
Moreover, I cannot discuss philosophy or metaphysics intelligently,
because I have not to-day the rudimentary knowledge necessary to
understand what it is all about.

It is the same with art. On the one or two isolated varnishing days when
we go to a gallery we criticize the pictures quite fiercely. "We know
what we like." Yes, perhaps we do. I am not sure even of that. But in
eighty-five cases out of a hundred none of us have any knowledge of the
history of painting or any intelligent idea of why Velasquez is regarded
as a master; yet we acquire a glib familiarity with the names of half a
dozen cubists or futurists, and bandy them about much as my office boy
does the names of his favorite pugilists or baseball players.

It is even worse with history and biography. We cannot afford or have
not the decency to admit that we are uninformed. We speak casually of,
say, Henry of Navarre, or Beatrice D'Este, or Charles the Fifth. I
select my names intentionally from among the most celebrated in
history; yet how many of us know within two hundred years of when any
one of them lived--or much about them? How much definite historical
information have we, even about matters of genuine importance?

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