th, to be sure, the
added capital of a degree of bachelor of laws.

Now since my graduation, twenty-eight years ago, I have given no time to
the systematic study of any subject except law. I have read no serious
works dealing with either history, sociology, economics, art or
philosophy. I am supposed to know enough about these subjects already. I
have rarely read over again any of the masterpieces of English
literature with which I had at least a bowing acquaintance when at
college. Even this last sentence I must qualify to the extent of
admitting that I now see that this acquaintance was largely vicarious,
and that I frequently read more criticism than literature.

It is characteristic of modern education that it is satisfied with the
semblance and not the substance of learning. I was taught _about_
Shakspere, but not Shakspere. I was instructed in the history of
literature, but not in literature itself. I knew the names of the works
of numerous English authors and I knew what Taine and others thought
about them, but I knew comparatively little of what was between the
covers of the books themselves. I was, I find, a student of letters by
proxy. As time went on I gradually forgot that I had not, in fact,
actually perused these volumes; and to-day I am accustomed to refer
familiarly to works I never have read at all--not a difficult task in
these days of handbook knowledge and literary varnish.

It is this patent superficiality that so bores me with the affected
culture of modern social intercourse. We all constantly attempt to
discuss abstruse subjects in philosophy and art, and pretend to a
familiarity with minor historical characters and events. Now why try to
talk about Bergson's theories if you have not the most elementary
knowledge of philosophy or metaphysics? Or why attempt to analyze the
success or failure of a modern post-impressionist painter when you are
totally ignorant of the principles of perspective or of the complex
problems of light and shade? You might as properly presume to discuss a
mastoid operation with a surgeon or the doctrine of _cypres_ with a
lawyer. You are equally qualified.

I frankly confess that my own ignorance is abysmal. In the last
twenty-eight years what information I have acquired has been picked up
principally from newspapers and magazines; yet my library table is
littered with books on modern art and philosophy, and with essays on
literary and historical subjects. I do not rea