truths, to solve linguistic problems, to reconstruct the story of man in what are now known as the prehistoric stages of his existence, and even—in the opinion of many sanguine souls—to overturn or make us reconsider much that is now accepted as fundamental religious truth.
Aristotle says that the determination of what a thing is, is (
Greek characters), "as the judicious would determine." Matthew Arnold calls this admirable common sense; and in truth it is good that the world is inclined to follow the lead of those whom it looks upon as the judicious, for the judicious are right in fifty-one cases out of a hundred, while the fool is right only in forty-nine. It is in the recognition of that one possible case above the average that all human progress lies, and in order to effect this recognition nature forces men into fashions and conventions of thought, so that gradually, slowly but surely, the fool shall run his thoughts into the same mould as that of the judicious, and shall finally learn wherein they are right. But, as the judicious go wrong in forty-nine cases out of the hundred, it is good also that these conventions should be sufficiently plastic to alter from generation to generation, so that the errors of the judicious, the right thinking of fools, may also come in due time to be recognized as part and parcel of the world's stock of knowledge. The folly of one generation is often the wisdom of the next.
In the Middle Ages the judicious occupied their minds with the acknowledged classics of literature, and with the most ingenious scholastic disputations in regard to the future destiny of man. To the custody of clowns and fools they left all those charming fictions and superstitions which, descending from a remote antiquity, contained within them the most reliable records as to the past history of man; and upon the very ignorance of the lower orders depended the traditional transmission of these myths in something like their pristine purity. The great romantic revival of the eighteenth century, which instilled a new life into literature, was simply an acknowledgment on the part of the judicious of the merit of these traditions from the purely artistic point of view, just as the recent kindling of philosophical interest in comparative folk-lore has been an acknowledgment of their scientific value.
The judicious have always grieved over the corruption of language, over the slang phrases and the grammatical misconceptions that defile its purity and outrage its subtler beauty. And from their point of view they are right; for if rules of grammar and principles of order were not universally respected wherever they are apprehended, there would be no such thing as language at all. Yet it is precisely through the misapprehensions of fools and clowns, through ignorance and stupidity, that the most sonorous and magnificent of modern languages have had their origin, and it is through similar misapprehensions, ignorance, and stupidity that they are continually growing in volume and in riches. The most valuable and significant additions that are made to our vocabularies are coined in the gutters, and not in the laboratories or the libraries of the judicious.
Charles Mackay complains in his Autobiography that the songs he has
thrown off in the heat of the moment, "There's a Good Time Coming, Boys," "Cleon hath a Thousand Acres," etc., have obtained wide popularity, while the serious and earnest work of his lifetime has received the approval only of a
