preparatory criticism: they are
far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they
are clear-sighted; but they shrink from devoting themselves to it, for
fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. "I have no mind,"
wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense
_Corpus_ of unpublished and printed documents relating to the history of
the law of nations; "I have no mind to turn transcriber.... Does it not
occur to you that the advice you give me resembles that of a man who
should wish to marry his friend to a shrew? For to engage a man in a
lifelong work is much the same as to find him a wife."[111] And Renan,
speaking of those immense preliminary labours "which have rendered
possible the researches of the higher criticism" and attempts at
historical construction, says: "The man who, with livelier intellectual
needs [than those of the men who performed these labours], should now
accomplish such an act of abnegation, would be a hero...."[112] Although
Renan directed the publication of the _Corpus Inscriptionum
Semiticarum_, and Leibnitz was the editor of the _Scriptores rerum
Brunsvicensium_, neither Leibnitz, nor Renan, nor their peers have,
fortunately, had the heroism to sacrifice their higher faculties to
purely critical learning.

Outside the class of superior men (and the infinitely more numerous
class of those who wrongly think themselves such), nearly every one, as
we have already said, finds in the long run a kind of satisfaction in
the minutiae of preparatory criticism. The reason is, that the practice
of this criticism appeals to and develops two very widespread
tastes--the taste for collecting and the taste for puzzles. The pleasure
of collecting is one which is felt not by children only, but by adults
as well, no matter whether the collection be one of various readings or
of postage-stamps. The deciphering of rebuses, the solution of small
problems of strictly definite scope, are occupations which attract many
able minds. Every find brings pleasure, and in the field of erudition
there are innumerable finds--some lying exposed and obvious, some
guarded by all but impenetrable barriers--to reward both those who do
and those who do not delight in surmounting difficulties. All the
scholars of any distinction have possessed in an eminent degree the
instincts of the collector and the puzzle-solver, and some of them have
been quite conscious of the fact. "The more di