The Opinions of a Philosopher

The Opinions of a Philosopher,
by Robert

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Title: The Opinions of a Philosopher
Author: Robert Grant

Release Date: October 9, 2006 [eBook #19509]
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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.
I have altogether too many faults to be one, and should constantly be
flying in the face of my own theories. Barring the aforesaid weakness
for whiskey and water, it is fair to assume that the average real
philosopher lives up to his own lights and by them; whereas I, at least
according to Josephine, am liable to be frightfully inconsistent. She has
never forgotten my profanity on the occasion when we discovered after
dinner that the soot had come down in the drawing-room and was over
everything in spite of the fact that the chimney had been swept three
weeks before. Now, if there is one thing which I abhor and am
perpetually inveighing against as vulgar and futile, it is unbridled
language. Josephine must have heard me say fifty times if she has heard
me one that the man who fouls his tongue with an oath is a senseless
oaf. And yet I am bound to admit that when I discovered what had
happened I swore deliberately and roundly like the veriest trooper. In
order to appreciate the situation exactly I should add that it has long
been a mooted point between Josephine and me whether chimneys
require to be swept at all. My darling insists that the sweep shall
overhaul the house annually, while I cling, with what she is pleased to
call masculine fatuity, to the theory that soot, like sleeping dogs, should
be let alone.

Have you ever entered a drawing-room just after a healthy, thorough
fall of soot? If so, you will appreciate what is meant by its
all-pervasiveness. The remotest articles of furniture are rife with
infinitesimal smut, much as they were rife with the remains of the lady
in Kipling's story after the jealous orang-outang had done with her. And
yet granting that the provocation was dire, a philosopher, a real
philosopher, would