E-text prepared by Al Haines Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 19509-h.htm or 19509-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19509/19509-h/19509-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19509/19509-h.zip) THE OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER. by ROBERT GRANT With an Etching by W. H. Hyde [Frontispiece: Etching by W. H. Hyde] New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1895 Copyright, 1893, 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons THE OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER I My wife Josephine declares that I have become a philosopher in my old age, and perhaps she is right. Now that I am forty, and a trifle less elastic in my movements, with patches of gray about my ears which give me a more venerable appearance, I certainly have a tendency to look at the world as through a glass. Yet not altogether darkly be it said. That is, I trust I am no cynic like that fellow Diogenes who set the fashion centuries ago of turning up the nose at everything. I have a natural sunniness of disposition which would, I believe, be proof against the sardonic fumes of contemplation even though I were a real philosopher. However, just as the mongoose of the bag-man's story was not a real mongoose, neither am I a real philosopher. You will remember that Diogenes, who was a real philosopher, occupied a tub as a permanent residence. He would roll in hot sand during the heat of summer, and embrace a statue of snow in winter, just to show his superiority to ordinary human conventions and how much wiser he was than the rest of the world. The real philosophers of the present day are not quite so peculiar; but they are apt to be fearfully and wonderfully superior to the weaknesses of humanity. For the most part they are to be found in the peaceful environs of a university or on some mountain top a Sabbath day's journey from the hum of civilization, where they eschew nearly everything which the every-day mortal finds requisite to comfort and convenience, unless it be whiskey and water. I have sometimes fancied that more real philosophers than we are aware of are partial on the sly to whiskey and water. But that is neither here nor there; for, as I have already stated, I am not a real philosopher.