I do not know when or why the Seven Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, the Hundred Years' War or the Massacre of St. Bartholomew took place, why the Edict of Nantes was revoked or what it was, or who fought at Malplaquet, Tours, Soissons, Marengo, Plassey, Oudenarde, Fontenoy or Borodino--or when they occurred. I probably did know most if not all of these things, but I have entirely forgotten them. Unfortunately I manage to act as if I had not. The result is that, having no foundation to build on, any information I do acquire is immediately swept away. People are constantly giving me books on special topics, such as Horace Walpole and his Friends, France in the Thirteenth Century, The Holland House Circle, or Memoires of Madame du Barry; but of what use can they be to me when I do not know, or at least have forgotten, even the salient facts of French and English history? We are undoubtedly the most superficial people in the world about matters of this sort. Any bluff goes. I recall being at a dinner not long ago when somebody mentioned Conrad II. One of the guests hazarded the opinion that he had died in the year 1330. This would undoubtedly have passed muster but for a learned-looking person farther down the table who deprecatingly remarked: "I do not like to correct you, but I think Conrad the Second died in 1337!" The impression created on the assembled company cannot be overstated. Later on in the smoking room I ventured to compliment the gentleman on his fund of information, saying: "Why, I never even _heard_ of Conrad the Second!" "Nor I either," he answered shamelessly. It is the same with everything--music, poetry, politics. I go night after night to hear the best music in the world given at fabulous cost in the Metropolitan Opera House and am content to murmur vague ecstasies over Caruso, without being aware of who wrote the opera or what it is all about. Most of us know nothing of orchestration or even the names of the different instruments. We may not even be sure of what is meant by counterpoint or the difference between a fugue and an arpeggio. A handbook would give us these minor details in an hour's reading; but we prefer to sit vacuously making feeble jokes about the singers or the occupants of the neighboring boxes, without a single intelligent thought as to why the composer attempted to write precisely this sort of an opera, when he did it, or how far he succeeded. We are content to take our opinions and criticisms ready made, no matter from whose mouth they fall; and one hears everywhere phrases that, once let loose from the Pandora's Box of some foolish brain, never cease from troubling. In science I am in even a more parlous state. I know nothing of applied electricity in its simplest forms. I could not explain the theory of the gas engine, and plumbing is to me one of the great mysteries.