poem; the events which led to the execution of the
Emperor Maximilian and deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the
hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest possible material for a
tragedy; the invasion of France by the Germans, the overthrow of
Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic ready to hand that only
awaits its Homer; yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who is far
gone in intellectual decadence, no great poet has sung of these things
yet. The subjects are as good as can be, but too near. Neither poet nor
reader is disinterested enough for the intellectual enjoyment of these
subjects: the poet would not see his way clearly, the reader would not
follow unreservedly.

It may be added, however, in this connection, that even past history is
hardly ever written disinterestedly. Historians write with one eye on
the past and the other on the pre-occupations of the present. So far as
they do this they fall short of the intellectual standard. An ideally
perfect history would tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as
it was ascertainable.

Artists are seldom good critics of art, because their own practice
biasses them, and they are not disinterested. The few artists who have
written soundly about art have succeeded in the difficult task of
detaching saying from doing; they have, in fact, become two distinct
persons, each oblivious of the other.

The strongest of all the reasons in favor of the study of the dead
languages and the literatures preserved in them, has always appeared to
me to consist in the more perfect disinterestedness with which we
moderns can approach them. The men and events are separated from us by
so wide an interval, not only of time and locality, but especially of
modes of thought, that our passions are not often enlisted, and the
intellect is sufficiently free.

It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific class, and
therefore more than commonly aware of the great importance of
disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment
when they feel the approaches of disease. They know that it is difficult
for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate
conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly
as his own, even although the person who suffers has the advantage of
actually experiencing the morbid sensations.

To all this you may answer that intellectual disinterestedness seems
more an accident of situ