"'We real historians go for facts only. Ideas are sheer dilettantism. Give us facts, nothing but single, limited, middle-class facts. In the Republic of Letters we do not suffer any lordly ideas, no more than the idea of lords. One fact is as good as another, and far worse. Has not our greatest authority taught that the British Empire was established in and by absent-mindedness, that is, without a trace of reasoned ideas? As the British Empire, even so the British historians, and, cela vo sang dir, all the other historians. Mind is absent. "Mind" is a periodical; not a necessity. We solid researchers crawl from one fact to another for crawling's sake.'"
The gods and heroes were highly amused with the tale of Aristotle, and it was with genuine delight that they saw him resume the story of his experiences at the seats of learning. "When I left the Professor of History," continued Aristotle, "I felt somewhat heavy and dull. I could not easily persuade myself that such utter confusion should reign in the study of history after so many centuries of endless research. I hoped that the little ones might have made more real advance in philosophy; and with a view to ascertain the fact, I entered a lecturing hall where a professor was even then holding forth on my treatise 'De Anima.' He had just published a thick book on my little treatise, although (or perhaps because?...) another professor, a Frenchman, had recently published a much thicker book on it.
"I listened very attentively, but could not understand a word of what he said. He treated me text-critically, philologically, hermeneutically,—everything, except understandingly. I felt that my treatise was not mine at all. It was his. At a given moment I could not help uttering aloud a sarcastic remark about the professor's explanations. Down he came on me like thunder, and with a triumphant sneer he proved to me that what I had said I had not said at all. In that I differed entirely from a great statesman of theirs, who had said what he had said. The professor put me under a regular examination, and after twenty minutes formally ploughed me in 'De Anima.'
"This was a novel experience for me. In the Middle Ages, it is true, I had repeatedly had the same experience, and Albertus Magnus and St Thomas Aquinas had done me the same honour. But in modern times I had not yet experienced it. The next day I called upon the professor, who lived in a beautiful house, filled with books, amongst which I saw a great number of editions of my own works.
"I asked him whether he had ever cared to study the anima, or what they call the psychology of animals. I added that Aristotle had evidently done so, as his works explicitly prove, and that after he had surveyed all sorts of souls in the vegetable, animal and human kingdom, both normal and pathological, he wrote his treatise 'De Anima,' the real sense of which must escape him who has not taken such a wide range of the question. Ah—you ought to have seen the professor! He jumped from his seat, took another whisky and soda and said: 'My young friend, the first thing in science is to distinguish well. Bene docet qui bene distinguit. You speak of animals. What have they to do with human psychology? Their souls are studied by my colleague who goes in for comparative psychology; or rather by several of my colleagues, one of whom studies the comparative psychology of the senses; the other that of the emotions; the third that of memory; the fourth—the fifth—the sixth, etc., etc., etc.
"'I, I stick to my point. I have my speciality. You might think that my speciality is psychology, or Aristotle's psychology. Not at all. This is all too vague, too general. My speciality is quite special; a particularly singular speciality: the text of Aristotle's psychology. And even that goes too far; for what I really call my speciality is my version of the text which is said to have been written by Aristotle.
"'Now at last we are on firm ground. What under those conditions need I trouble about cats and rats? The latter, the rats, have, I admit, some little importance for me. They have in their time devoured parts of Aristotle's manuscripts, and I have now to reconstitute what they have swallowed. I am to them a kind of literary Beecham's Pill. But as to cats, mules or donkeys? What have they to do with me? Can they influence my version of the text? Hardly.
"'My young friend, if Aristotle himself came to me, I should tell him: "My good man, unless you accept my version of your text, you are out of court. I am a professor, and you are only an author. Worse than that—a Greek author. As theologians fix the value and meaning of gospel-words; as the State makes a piece of worthless paper worth five pounds sterling by a mere declaration; even so we say what you Aristotle did say. What you said or meant is indifferent; what we say you said or meant is alone of consequence." How then could even Aristotle refute me regarding my view of his views? It is logically impossible.
"'Don't you see, this is why we have invented our beautiful system of excessive specialisation. Where each of us studies only one very small thing, there he need not fear much competition, but may hope for exclusive authority. We shall soon establish chairs for professors of philosophy, who will study, each of them, just a mere splinter of a twig of one branch of the tree of philosophy; or better still, just one leaf of such a twig of such a branch; and finally, just a dewdrop on such a leaf of such a twig of such a branch. Then we shall have completed our network of authority.