Similarly, that there is getting to be something rather old-fashioned about settling general questions on the strength of single personal experiences. Except where strong likes and dislikes come into play, it is rarer than formerly to hear (shall we say?) divorce condemned because of the sad case of Mrs. Blank; or the eight-hours day rejected on account of last harvest having been soaked; or the practical utility of a classical education justified by the career of Mr. Gladstone. Modes of thought like this seem to be (slowly!) disappearing in the wake of the anecdote-mongering and epigram-and-joke button-holing of ancient bores who may have been brilliant conversationalists at Meredithian dinner-tables. And when one thinks of it: was not such the substance of much of our grandparents’ wit and wisdom? Nay, a little further back did not “gentlemen” ask the ladies riddles after themselves exchanging smutty _Joe Millers_ over their wine? And behold! there opens up a vista of euphuism, of pedantic discussions, of “sonnet, c’est un sonnet,” of “deliciæ eruditorum,” and “facetiæ”; boredom incalculable back through Hôtels de Rambouillets and Medicean academies to Courts of Love and the stale scurrilities of Shakespearian clowns.... Nay, was not Shakespeare himself ready to adorn with supremest poetry and philosophy stories often preposterously cock-and-bull? Which makes one suspect that Intelligence, in the sense in which I have been using the word, is of amazingly recent growth; and that the people of the past, superior though they may have been in genius, wit, humour, and even wisdom, would have struck us (and we shall doubtless strike future generations) as decidedly stupid.