“I must admit that I had never dreamed about Rome,” said Cæsar. “And you boast of that?” asked Laura.
“No, I don’t boast of it, I merely state it. I understand how agreeable it is to know things. Cæsar died here! Cicero made speeches here! Saint Peter stumbled over this stone! It is fine! But not knowing things is also very comfortable. I am rather like a barbarian walking indifferently among monuments he knows nothing about.”
“Doesn’t such an idea make you ashamed?”
“No, why? It would be a bother to me to know a lot of things offhand. To pass by a mountain and know how it was thrown up, what it is composed of, what its flora and fauna are; to get to a town and know its history in detail.... What things to be interested in! It’s tiresome! I hate history too much. I far prefer to be ignorant of everything, and especially the past, and from time to time to offer myself a capricious, arbitrary explanation.”
“But I think that knowing things not only is not tiresome,” said Kennedy, “but is a great satisfaction.”
“You think even learning things is a satisfaction?”
“Thousands of years ago one could know things almost without learning them; nowadays in order to know, one has to learn. That is natural and logical.”
“Yes, certainly. And the effort to learn about useful things seems natural and logical to me too, but not to learn about merely agreeable things. To learn medicine and mechanics is logical; but to learn to look at a picture or to hear a symphony is an absurdity.”
“Why?”
“At any rate the neophytes that go to see a Rafael picture or to hear a Bach sonata and have an exclamation all ready, give me the sad impression of a flock of lambs. As for your sublime pedagogues of the Ruskin type, they seem to me to be the fine flower of priggishness, of pedantry, of the most objectionable bourgeoisie.”