Johnson's
sarcastic classification of facts with donkeys. The great majority of
so-called facts, and especially those detailed by travellers, are of no
consequence whatever to man or beast. What is it to us that Mr. A. has
been condescending enough to look at the Venus of Milo, or that Mr. B.,
with more time than he knows what to do with already on his hands, must
steal a couple of good working hours from Carlyle, worth probably five
guineas apiece? That Hannibal crossed the Alps was something; that
Goethe did was and is also of some consequence; but the transit of Mr.
Anarithmon Smith need cause no excitement in the observatories. That a
man has found out, by laborious counting, which is the middle word
in the New Testament, is pretty sure to get into the newspapers as a
remarkable fact; that he had discovered its central thought, and made
it the keystone to knit together his else incomplete outward and inward
lives, would hardly be esteemed of so much consequence. Facts are such
different things, especially to different persons! The truth is, that
we should distinguish between real facts and the mere images of facts,
though the newspapers teach us to confound them, putting side by side,
as they do, Garibaldi's entry into Naples and Dennis McQuigley's into
the lock-up.
The man who gives us a really new fact deserves to be classed with
him who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, for it
contains the germinal principle of knowledge.
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