! why thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a
hair more or less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a
man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast
hazel eyes. What eye but such eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head
is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath
been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled
with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog
that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a man for
wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new
shoes with old ribbons? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!"

XVIII. THE PROFOUND.--He leaves you at the edge, but himself plunges
like an expert diver into the vasty deeps; and there in twilight
visible, if not in darkness felt, he converses with you about the
mysterious, the metaphysical, the mystical, the profound. As you gaze
with wondering vision, you hear a voice, but see no man. He invites you
down into his caves of ocean thought; but, as you see not where he is,
and know not the way to follow, nor think it worth while to go at a
venture, you prefer remaining on the shore.

Nor is it always the _depth_ into which this talker delights to go. Were
it this, with _transparency_, there would not be so much objection. He
too frequently plunges into muddled waters, or makes them so by his
movements therein. He persuades himself that he has acquired profound
knowledge of philosophy from the dark and mystical writings of the
Germans translated into English. With this persuasion he courts your
attention, while he discourses to you in terms and phrases of marvellous
vagueness about the Ego within us--the Infinite and the Immense, the
Absolute, the Entity and Nonentity, and such-like subjects, of which you
can make neither "top nor tail," and of which he knows nothing save the
terms and phrases that he strings together with such adept expertness
and palpable absurdity.

"What do you think," asked Mr. Stanley of Professor Rigg, "of Hegel's
paradox, that nothing is equal to being, and that if being and nothing
be conjoined you have existence?"

The Professor answered with his usual gravity and profundity: "Nothing
could be more profound, and as lucid as profound, if Hegel's theory of
the 'evolution of the concrete' was remembered. According to that theory
the concrete is the idea which, as a unity, is various