Truth, wherever it may be sought, is, as a rule, so simple that it often does not look learned enough. People feel as if they must add to it something which is not essential to the nature of truth, in order to give to truth a respectable and academic look. Among learned people, it is often the case that one must first earn his reputation by some piece of work which is of no use to himself or to any one else, and in which he heaps together the hitherto undiscovered rubbish of some remote century. Lassalle was able to write his famous work on Herakleitos without forfeiting his interest in the affairs of modern life, but there are few authors with this capacity for practical concerns. On the contrary, many authors in their maiden venture of learned work not only have their eyesight ruined by their researches, but lose their inward vision, which is a matter of much more consequence. They reach the goal of their ambition and become of no further use. A further way of saving a deal of time is to do one’s work and be done with it; not to deal with it, that is to say, in a provisional or preparatory manner. This kind of immediate thoroughness is in our day extremely rare, and in my opinion much of the blame should be laid to the newspapers, which accustom people to superficial surveys of truth. The editorial writer says, at the close of his article, “We shall return to this subject later”; but in fact he never returns. So it is with the modern reader. If he wants to make use of what he has read, he has to begin the reading of it afresh. His skimming of the subject--as the phrase is--has had no result, and so the time that he has given to skimming has been lost. This is the reason why people have so little thorough knowledge in our day, and why, though they have studied a subject ten times, on the eleventh occasion when they need it, they must study it again. Indeed, there are people who would be extremely glad if they could remember even the works of which they themselves were the authors.