essays by Paul Grahm
http://www.paulgraham.com/heresy.html
Heresy
2022-03-18
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>April 2022<p>One of the most surprising things I've witnessed in my lifetime is
the rebirth of the concept of heresy.</p><p>In his excellent biography of Newton, Richard Westfall writes about the
moment when he was elected a fellow of Trinity College:
</p><blockquote>
 Supported comfortably, Newton was free to devote himself wholly
 to whatever he chose. To remain on, he had only to avoid the three
 unforgivable sins: crime, heresy, and marriage.
 [<a href="#f1n">1</a>]
</blockquote>
The first time I read that, in the 1990s, it sounded amusingly
medieval. How strange, to have to avoid committing heresy. But when
I reread it 20 years later it sounded like a description of
contemporary employment.<p>There are an ever-increasing number of opinions you can be fired
for. Those doing the firing don't use the word "heresy" to describe
them, but structurally they're equivalent. Structurally there are
two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority
over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs
everything else the speaker has done.</p><p>For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also
implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do
not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is
true or not. Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of
signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used:
to end a discussion.</p><p>If you find yourself talking to someone who uses these labels a
lot, it might be worthwhile to ask them explicitly if they believe
any babies are being thrown out with the bathwater. Can a statement
be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is
yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth. That's obvious
enough that I'd guess most would answer no. But if they answer no,
it's easy to show that they're mistaken, and that in practice such
labels are applied to statements regardless of their truth or
falsity.</p><p>The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is
considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work
that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it,
but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does.
</p>[<a href="#f2n">2</a>]<p>The other distinctive thing about heresies, compared to ordinary
opinions, is that the public expression of them outweighs everything
else the speaker has done. In ordinary matters, like knowledge of
history, or taste in music, you're judged by the average of your
opinions. A heresy is qualitatively different. It's like dropping
a chunk of uranium onto the scale.</p><p>Back in the day (and still, in some places) the punishment for
heresy was death. You could have led a life of exemplary goodness,
but if you publicly doubted, say, the divinity of Christ, you were
going to burn. Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get
fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the
structure of the situation is the same: the heresy
outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years
saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're
automatically fired.</p><p>It's much the same as if you committed a crime. No matter how
virtuously you've lived, if you commit a crime, you must still
suffer the penalty of the law. Having lived a previously blameless
life might mitigate the punishment, but it doesn't affect whether
you're guilty or not.</p><p>A heresy is an opinion whose expression is treated like a crime —
one that makes some people feel not merely that you're mistaken,
but that you should be punished. Indeed, their desire to see you
punished is often stronger than it would be if you'd committed an
actual crime. There are many on the far left who believe
strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet
seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never
work again.</p><p>There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished
for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few
decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to
agree that it's so.</p><p>Why? Why has this antiquated-sounding religious concept come back
in a secular form? And why now?</p><p>You need two ingredients for a wave of intolerance: intolerant
people, and an ideology to guide them. The intolerant people are
always there. They exist in every sufficiently large society. That's
why waves of intolerance can arise so suddenly; all they need is
something to set them off.</p><p>I've already written an </p><a href="conformism.html"><u>essay</u></a> 
describing the aggressively
conventional-minded. The short version is that people can be
classified in two dimensions according to (1) how independent- or
conventional-minded they are, and (2) how aggressive they are about
it. The aggressively conventional-minded are the enforcers of
orthodoxy.<p>Normally they're only locally visible. They're the grumpy, censorious
people in a group — the ones who are always first to complain when
something violates the current rules of propriety. But occasionally,
like a vector field whose elements become aligned, a large number
of aggressively conventional-minded people unite behind some ideology
all at once. Then they become much more of a problem, because a mob
dynamic takes over, where the enthusiasm of each participant is
increased by the enthusiasm of the others.</p><p>The most notorious 20th century case may have been the Cultural
Revolution. Though initiated by Mao to undermine his rivals, the
Cultural Revolution was otherwise mostly a grass-roots phenomenon.
Mao said in essence: There are heretics among us. Seek them out and
punish them. And that's all the aggressively conventional-minded
ever need to hear. They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing
squirrels.</p><p>To unite the conventional-minded, an ideology must have many of the
features of a religion. In particular it must have strict and
arbitrary rules that adherents can demonstrate their 
</p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM"><u>purity</u></a> 
by obeying, and its adherents must believe that anyone who obeys these
rules is ipso facto morally superior to anyone who doesn't.
[<a href="#f3n">3</a>]<p>In the late 1980s a new ideology of this type appeared in US
universities. It had a very strong component of moral purity, and
the aggressively conventional-minded seized upon it with their usual
eagerness — all the more because the relaxation of social norms
in the preceding decades meant there had been less and less to
forbid. The resulting wave of intolerance has been eerily similar
in form to the Cultural Revolution, though fortunately much smaller
in magnitude.
</p>[<a href="#f4n">4</a>]<p>I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here.
Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now
as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in
which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed,
this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of
detecting witch hunts in any era.</p><p>And that's the second reason I've avoided mentioning any specific
heresies. I want this essay to work in the future, not just now.
And unfortunately it probably will. The aggressively conventional-minded
will always be among us, looking for things to forbid. All they
need is an ideology to tell them what. And it's unlikely the current
one will be the last.</p><p>There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right
and the left. The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from
the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to
come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine
what that would be like.</p><p>Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is
nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions
you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still
much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the
derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever
wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected
freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has
decreased.
</p>[<a href="#f5n">5</a>]<p>The situation is similar to what's happened with infectious diseases
like measles. Anyone looking into the future in 2010 would have
expected the number of measles cases in the US to continue to
decrease. Instead, thanks to anti-vaxxers, it has increased. The
absolute number is still not that high. The problem is the derivative.
</p>[<a href="#f6n">6</a>]<p>In both cases it's hard to know how much to worry. Is it really
dangerous to society as a whole if a handful of extremists refuse
to get their kids vaccinated, or shout down speakers at universities?
The point to start worrying is presumably when their efforts start
to spill over into everyone else's lives. And in both cases that
does seem to be happening.</p><p>So it's probably worth spending some amount of effort on pushing
back to keep open the window of free expression. My hope is that
this essay will help form social antibodies not just against current
efforts to suppress ideas, but against the concept of heresy in
general. That's the real prize. How do you disable the concept of
heresy? Since the Enlightenment, western societies have discovered
many techniques for doing that, but there are surely more to be
discovered.</p><p>Overall I'm optimistic. Though the trend in freedom of expression
has been bad over the last decade, it's been good over the longer
term. And there are signs that the current wave of intolerance is
peaking. Independent-minded people I talk to seem more confident
than they did a few years ago. On the other side, even some of the
</p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opinion/cancel-culture-free-speech-poll.html"><u>leaders</u></a> are starting to wonder if things have 
gone too far. And popular culture among the young has already moved on. 
All we have
to do is keep pushing back, and the wave collapses. And then we'll
be net ahead, because as well as having defeated this wave, we'll
also have developed new tactics for resisting the next one.<p><b>Notes</b></p><p>[</p><a>1</a>] 
Or more accurately, biographies of Newton, since Westfall wrote
two: a long version called <i>Never at Rest</i>, and a shorter one called
<i>The Life of Isaac Newton</i>. Both are great. The short version moves
faster, but the long one is full of interesting and often very funny
details. This passage is the same in both.<p>[</p><a>2</a>]
Another more subtle but equally damning bit of evidence is
that claims of x-ism are never qualified. You never hear anyone say
that a statement is "probably x-ist" or "almost certainly y-ist."
If claims of x-ism were actually claims about truth, you'd expect
to see "probably" in front of "x-ist" as often as you see it in
front of "fallacious."<p>[</p><a>3</a>] 
The rules must be strict, but they need not be demanding. So
the most effective type of rules are those about superficial matters,
like doctrinal minutiae, or the precise words adherents must use.
Such rules can be made extremely complicated, and yet don't repel
potential converts by requiring significant sacrifice.<p>The superficial demands of orthodoxy make it an inexpensive substitute
for virtue. And that in turn is one of the reasons orthodoxy is so
attractive to bad people. You could be a horrible person, and yet
as long as you're orthodox, you're better than everyone who isn't.</p><p>[</p><a>4</a>] 
Arguably there were two. The first had died down somewhat by
2000, but was followed by a second in the 2010s, probably caused
by social media.<p>[</p><a>5</a>] 
Fortunately most of those trying to suppress ideas today still
respect Enlightenment principles enough to pay lip service to them.
They know they're not supposed to ban ideas per se, so they have
to recast the ideas as causing "harm," which sounds like something
that can be banned. The more extreme try to claim speech itself is
violence, or even that silence is. But strange as it may sound,
such gymnastics are a good sign. We'll know we're really in trouble
when they stop bothering to invent pretenses for banning ideas —
when, like the medieval church, they say "Damn right we're banning
ideas, and in fact here's a list of them."<p>[</p><a>6</a>] 
People only have the luxury of ignoring the medical consensus
about vaccines because vaccines have worked so well. If we didn't
have any vaccines at all, the mortality rate would be so high that
most current anti-vaxxers would be begging for them. And the situation
with freedom of expression is similar. It's only because they live
in a world created by the Enlightenment that kids from the suburbs
can play at banning ideas.<b>Thanks</b> to Marc Andreessen, Chris Best, 
Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas
Christakis, Daniel Gackle, Jonathan Haidt, Claire Lehmann, Jessica
Livingston, Greg Lukianoff, Robert Morris, and Garry Tan for reading
drafts of this.</td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||           
           
           
           
 April 2022           
           
 One of the most surprising things I've witnessed in my lifetime is the rebirth of the concept of heresy.         
           
 In his excellent biography of Newton, Richard Westfall writes about the moment when he was elected a fellow of Trinity College:         
 Supported comfortably, Newton was free to devote himself wholly to whatever he chose. To remain on, he had only to avoid the three unforgivable sins: crime, heresy, and marriage. [1]        
 The first time I read that, in the 1990s, it sounded amusingly medieval. How strange, to have to avoid committing heresy. But when I reread it 20 years later it sounded like a description of contemporary employment.       
           
 There are an ever-increasing number of opinions you can be fired for. Those doing the firing don't use the word "heresy" to describe them, but structurally they're equivalent. Structurally there are two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs everything else the speaker has done.     
           
 For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is true or not. Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.     
           
 If you find yourself talking to someone who uses these labels a lot, it might be worthwhile to ask them explicitly if they believe any babies are being thrown out with the bathwater. Can a statement be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth. That's obvious enough that I'd guess most would answer no. But if they answer no, it's easy to show that they're mistaken, and that in practice such labels are applied to statements regardless of their truth or falsity.  
           
 The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. [2]       
           
 The other distinctive thing about heresies, compared to ordinary opinions, is that the public expression of them outweighs everything else the speaker has done. In ordinary matters, like knowledge of history, or taste in music, you're judged by the average of your opinions. A heresy is qualitatively different. It's like dropping a chunk of uranium onto the scale.     
           
 Back in the day (and still, in some places) the punishment for heresy was death. You could have led a life of exemplary goodness, but if you publicly doubted, say, the divinity of Christ, you were going to burn. Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the structure of the situation is the same: the heresy outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired.  
           
 It's much the same as if you committed a crime. No matter how virtuously you've lived, if you commit a crime, you must still suffer the penalty of the law. Having lived a previously blameless life might mitigate the punishment, but it doesn't affect whether you're guilty or not.      
           
 A heresy is an opinion whose expression is treated like a crime — one that makes some people feel not merely that you're mistaken, but that you should be punished. Indeed, their desire to see you punished is often stronger than it would be if you'd committed an actual crime. There are many on the far left who believe strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never work again.   
           
 There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to agree that it's so.       
           
 Why? Why has this antiquated-sounding religious concept come back in a secular form? And why now?         
           
 You need two ingredients for a wave of intolerance: intolerant people, and an ideology to guide them. The intolerant people are always there. They exist in every sufficiently large society. That's why waves of intolerance can arise so suddenly; all they need is something to set them off.      
           
 I've already written an essay describing the aggressively conventional-minded. The short version is that people can be classified in two dimensions according to (1) how independent- or conventional-minded they are, and (2) how aggressive they are about it. The aggressively conventional-minded are the enforcers of orthodoxy.      
           
 Normally they're only locally visible. They're the grumpy, censorious people in a group — the ones who are always first to complain when something violates the current rules of propriety. But occasionally, like a vector field whose elements become aligned, a large number of aggressively conventional-minded people unite behind some ideology all at once. Then they become much more of a problem, because a mob dynamic takes over, where the enthusiasm of each participant is increased by the enthusiasm of the others.   
           
 The most notorious 20th century case may have been the Cultural Revolution. Though initiated by Mao to undermine his rivals, the Cultural Revolution was otherwise mostly a grass-roots phenomenon. Mao said in essence: There are heretics among us. Seek them out and punish them. And that's all the aggressively conventional-minded ever need to hear. They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels.    
           
 To unite the conventional-minded, an ideology must have many of the features of a religion. In particular it must have strict and arbitrary rules that adherents can demonstrate their purity by obeying, and its adherents must believe that anyone who obeys these rules is ipso facto morally superior to anyone who doesn't. [3]      
           
 In the late 1980s a new ideology of this type appeared in US universities. It had a very strong component of moral purity, and the aggressively conventional-minded seized upon it with their usual eagerness — all the more because the relaxation of social norms in the preceding decades meant there had been less and less to forbid. The resulting wave of intolerance has been eerily similar in form to the Cultural Revolution, though fortunately much smaller in magnitude. [4]   
           
 I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed, this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of detecting witch hunts in any era.     
           
 And that's the second reason I've avoided mentioning any specific heresies. I want this essay to work in the future, not just now. And unfortunately it probably will. The aggressively conventional-minded will always be among us, looking for things to forbid. All they need is an ideology to tell them what. And it's unlikely the current one will be the last.     
           
 There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right and the left. The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like.      
           
 Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased. [5]   
           
 The situation is similar to what's happened with infectious diseases like measles. Anyone looking into the future in 2010 would have expected the number of measles cases in the US to continue to decrease. Instead, thanks to anti-vaxxers, it has increased. The absolute number is still not that high. The problem is the derivative. [6]     
           
 In both cases it's hard to know how much to worry. Is it really dangerous to society as a whole if a handful of extremists refuse to get their kids vaccinated, or shout down speakers at universities? The point to start worrying is presumably when their efforts start to spill over into everyone else's lives. And in both cases that does seem to be happening.     
           
 So it's probably worth spending some amount of effort on pushing back to keep open the window of free expression. My hope is that this essay will help form social antibodies not just against current efforts to suppress ideas, but against the concept of heresy in general. That's the real prize. How do you disable the concept of heresy? Since the Enlightenment, western societies have discovered many techniques for doing that, but there are surely more to be discovered.   
           
 Overall I'm optimistic. Though the trend in freedom of expression has been bad over the last decade, it's been good over the longer term. And there are signs that the current wave of intolerance is peaking. Independent-minded people I talk to seem more confident than they did a few years ago. On the other side, even some of the leaders are starting to wonder if things have gone too far. And popular culture among the young has already moved on. All we have to do is keep pushing back, and the wave collapses. And then we'll be net ahead, because as well as having defeated this wave, we'll also have developed new tactics for resisting the next one.
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
 Notes           
           
 [1] Or more accurately, biographies of Newton, since Westfall wrote two: a long version called Never at Rest, and a shorter one called The Life of Isaac Newton. Both are great. The short version moves faster, but the long one is full of interesting and often very funny details. This passage is the same in both.      
           
 [2] Another more subtle but equally damning bit of evidence is that claims of x-ism are never qualified. You never hear anyone say that a statement is "probably x-ist" or "almost certainly y-ist." If claims of x-ism were actually claims about truth, you'd expect to see "probably" in front of "x-ist" as often as you see it in front of "fallacious."     
           
 [3] The rules must be strict, but they need not be demanding. So the most effective type of rules are those about superficial matters, like doctrinal minutiae, or the precise words adherents must use. Such rules can be made extremely complicated, and yet don't repel potential converts by requiring significant sacrifice.      
           
 The superficial demands of orthodoxy make it an inexpensive substitute for virtue. And that in turn is one of the reasons orthodoxy is so attractive to bad people. You could be a horrible person, and yet as long as you're orthodox, you're better than everyone who isn't.      
           
 [4] Arguably there were two. The first had died down somewhat by 2000, but was followed by a second in the 2010s, probably caused by social media.        
           
 [5] Fortunately most of those trying to suppress ideas today still respect Enlightenment principles enough to pay lip service to them. They know they're not supposed to ban ideas per se, so they have to recast the ideas as causing "harm," which sounds like something that can be banned. The more extreme try to claim speech itself is violence, or even that silence is. But strange as it may sound, such gymnastics are a good sign. We'll know we're really in trouble when they stop bothering to invent pretenses for banning ideas — when, like the medieval church, they say "Damn right we're banning ideas, and in fact here's a list of them." 
           
 [6] People only have the luxury of ignoring the medical consensus about vaccines because vaccines have worked so well. If we didn't have any vaccines at all, the mortality rate would be so high that most current anti-vaxxers would be begging for them. And the situation with freedom of expression is similar. It's only because they live in a world created by the Enlightenment that kids from the suburbs can play at banning ideas.    
           
           
           
 Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Chris Best, Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas Christakis, Daniel Gackle, Jonathan Haidt, Claire Lehmann, Jessica Livingston, Greg Lukianoff, Robert Morris, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this.       
           
           
           
           
           

April 2022One of the most surprising things I've witnessed in my lifetime is
the rebirth of the concept of heresy. In his excellent biography of Newton, Richard Westfall writes about the
moment when he was elected a fellow of Trinity College:
 
 Supported comfortably, Newton was free to devote himself wholly
 to whatever he chose. To remain on, he had only to avoid the three
 unforgivable sins: crime, heresy, and marriage.
 [1]
The first time I read that, in the 1990s, it sounded amusingly
medieval. How strange, to have to avoid committing heresy. But when
I reread it 20 years later it sounded like a description of
contemporary employment.There are an ever-increasing number of opinions you can be fired
for. Those doing the firing don't use the word "heresy" to describe
them, but structurally they're equivalent. Structurally there are
two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority
over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs
everything else the speaker has done. For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also
implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do
not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is
true or not. Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of
signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used:
to end a discussion. If you find yourself talking to someone who uses these labels a
lot, it might be worthwhile to ask them explicitly if they believe
any babies are being thrown out with the bathwater. Can a statement
be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is
yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth. That's obvious
enough that I'd guess most would answer no. But if they answer no,
it's easy to show that they're mistaken, and that in practice such
labels are applied to statements regardless of their truth or
falsity. The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is
considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work
that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it,
but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does.
[2]The other distinctive thing about heresies, compared to ordinary
opinions, is that the public expression of them outweighs everything
else the speaker has done. In ordinary matters, like knowledge of
history, or taste in music, you're judged by the average of your
opinions. A heresy is qualitatively different. It's like dropping
a chunk of uranium onto the scale. Back in the day (and still, in some places) the punishment for
heresy was death. You could have led a life of exemplary goodness,
but if you publicly doubted, say, the divinity of Christ, you were
going to burn. Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get
fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the
structure of the situation is the same: the heresy
outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years
saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're
automatically fired. It's much the same as if you committed a crime. No matter how
virtuously you've lived, if you commit a crime, you must still
suffer the penalty of the law. Having lived a previously blameless
life might mitigate the punishment, but it doesn't affect whether
you're guilty or not. A heresy is an opinion whose expression is treated like a crime —
one that makes some people feel not merely that you're mistaken,
but that you should be punished. Indeed, their desire to see you
punished is often stronger than it would be if you'd committed an
actual crime. There are many on the far left who believe
strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet
seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never
work again. There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished
for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few
decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to
agree that it's so. Why? Why has this antiquated-sounding religious concept come back
in a secular form? And why now? You need two ingredients for a wave of intolerance: intolerant
people, and an ideology to guide them. The intolerant people are
always there. They exist in every sufficiently large society. That's
why waves of intolerance can arise so suddenly; all they need is
something to set them off. I've already written an   essay  
describing the aggressively
conventional-minded. The short version is that people can be
classified in two dimensions according to (1) how independent- or
conventional-minded they are, and (2) how aggressive they are about
it. The aggressively conventional-minded are the enforcers of
orthodoxy.Normally they're only locally visible. They're the grumpy, censorious
people in a group — the ones who are always first to complain when
something violates the current rules of propriety. But occasionally,
like a vector field whose elements become aligned, a large number
of aggressively conventional-minded people unite behind some ideology
all at once. Then they become much more of a problem, because a mob
dynamic takes over, where the enthusiasm of each participant is
increased by the enthusiasm of the others. The most notorious 20th century case may have been the Cultural
Revolution. Though initiated by Mao to undermine his rivals, the
Cultural Revolution was otherwise mostly a grass-roots phenomenon.
Mao said in essence: There are heretics among us. Seek them out and
punish them. And that's all the aggressively conventional-minded
ever need to hear. They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing
squirrels. To unite the conventional-minded, an ideology must have many of the
features of a religion. In particular it must have strict and
arbitrary rules that adherents can demonstrate their 
  purity  
by obeying, and its adherents must believe that anyone who obeys these
rules is ipso facto morally superior to anyone who doesn't.
[3]In the late 1980s a new ideology of this type appeared in US
universities. It had a very strong component of moral purity, and
the aggressively conventional-minded seized upon it with their usual
eagerness — all the more because the relaxation of social norms
in the preceding decades meant there had been less and less to
forbid. The resulting wave of intolerance has been eerily similar
in form to the Cultural Revolution, though fortunately much smaller
in magnitude.
[4]I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here.
Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now
as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in
which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed,
this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of
detecting witch hunts in any era. And that's the second reason I've avoided mentioning any specific
heresies. I want this essay to work in the future, not just now.
And unfortunately it probably will. The aggressively conventional-minded
will always be among us, looking for things to forbid. All they
need is an ideology to tell them what. And it's unlikely the current
one will be the last. There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right
and the left. The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from
the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to
come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine
what that would be like. Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is
nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions
you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still
much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the
derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever
wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected
freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has
decreased.
[5]The situation is similar to what's happened with infectious diseases
like measles. Anyone looking into the future in 2010 would have
expected the number of measles cases in the US to continue to
decrease. Instead, thanks to anti-vaxxers, it has increased. The
absolute number is still not that high. The problem is the derivative.
[6]In both cases it's hard to know how much to worry. Is it really
dangerous to society as a whole if a handful of extremists refuse
to get their kids vaccinated, or shout down speakers at universities?
The point to start worrying is presumably when their efforts start
to spill over into everyone else's lives. And in both cases that
does seem to be happening. So it's probably worth spending some amount of effort on pushing
back to keep open the window of free expression. My hope is that
this essay will help form social antibodies not just against current
efforts to suppress ideas, but against the concept of heresy in
general. That's the real prize. How do you disable the concept of
heresy? Since the Enlightenment, western societies have discovered
many techniques for doing that, but there are surely more to be
discovered. Overall I'm optimistic. Though the trend in freedom of expression
has been bad over the last decade, it's been good over the longer
term. And there are signs that the current wave of intolerance is
peaking. Independent-minded people I talk to seem more confident
than they did a few years ago. On the other side, even some of the
  leaders  are starting to wonder if things have 
gone too far. And popular culture among the young has already moved on. 
All we have
to do is keep pushing back, and the wave collapses. And then we'll
be net ahead, because as well as having defeated this wave, we'll
also have developed new tactics for resisting the next one. Notes  [ 1] 
Or more accurately, biographies of Newton, since Westfall wrote
two: a long version called Never at Rest, and a shorter one called
The Life of Isaac Newton. Both are great. The short version moves
faster, but the long one is full of interesting and often very funny
details. This passage is the same in both.[ 2]
Another more subtle but equally damning bit of evidence is
that claims of x-ism are never qualified. You never hear anyone say
that a statement is "probably x-ist" or "almost certainly y-ist."
If claims of x-ism were actually claims about truth, you'd expect
to see "probably" in front of "x-ist" as often as you see it in
front of "fallacious."[ 3] 
The rules must be strict, but they need not be demanding. So
the most effective type of rules are those about superficial matters,
like doctrinal minutiae, or the precise words adherents must use.
Such rules can be made extremely complicated, and yet don't repel
potential converts by requiring significant sacrifice.The superficial demands of orthodoxy make it an inexpensive substitute
for virtue. And that in turn is one of the reasons orthodoxy is so
attractive to bad people. You could be a horrible person, and yet
as long as you're orthodox, you're better than everyone who isn't. [ 4] 
Arguably there were two. The first had died down somewhat by
2000, but was followed by a second in the 2010s, probably caused
by social media.[ 5] 
Fortunately most of those trying to suppress ideas today still
respect Enlightenment principles enough to pay lip service to them.
They know they're not supposed to ban ideas per se, so they have
to recast the ideas as causing "harm," which sounds like something
that can be banned. The more extreme try to claim speech itself is
violence, or even that silence is. But strange as it may sound,
such gymnastics are a good sign. We'll know we're really in trouble
when they stop bothering to invent pretenses for banning ideas —
when, like the medieval church, they say "Damn right we're banning
ideas, and in fact here's a list of them."[ 6] 
People only have the luxury of ignoring the medical consensus
about vaccines because vaccines have worked so well. If we didn't
have any vaccines at all, the mortality rate would be so high that
most current anti-vaxxers would be begging for them. And the situation
with freedom of expression is similar. It's only because they live
in a world created by the Enlightenment that kids from the suburbs
can play at banning ideas.Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Chris Best, 
Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas
Christakis, Daniel Gackle, Jonathan Haidt, Claire Lehmann, Jessica
Livingston, Greg Lukianoff, Robert Morris, and Garry Tan for reading
drafts of this.
Heresy
http://www.paulgraham.com/heresy.html
http://paulgraham.com/words.html
Putting Ideas into Words
2022-01-01
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>February 2022<p>Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows
you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas
into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually
wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over </p> to
get them exactly right. And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but
incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones
you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write
them.<p>Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you
wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your
ideas, and now you've expressed them. But you know this isn't true.
You know that putting your ideas into words changed them. And not
just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that
turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead.</p><p>It's not just having to commit your ideas to specific words that
makes writing so exacting. The real test is reading what you've
written. You have to pretend to be a neutral reader who knows nothing
of what's in your head, only what you wrote. When he reads what you
wrote, does it seem correct? Does it seem complete? If you make an
effort, you can read your writing as if you were a complete stranger,
and when you do the news is usually bad. It takes me many cycles
before I can get an essay past the stranger. But the stranger is
rational, so you always can, if you ask him what he needs. If he's
not satisfied because you failed to mention x or didn't qualify
some sentence sufficiently, then you mention x or add more
qualifications. Happy now? It may cost you some nice sentences, but
you have to resign yourself to that. You just have to make them as
good as you can and still satisfy the stranger.</p><p>This much, I assume, won't be that controversial. I think it will
accord with the experience of anyone who has tried to write about
anything nontrivial. There may exist people whose thoughts are so
perfectly formed that they just flow straight into words. But I've
never known anyone who could do this, and if I met someone who said
they could, it would seem evidence of their limitations rather than
their ability. Indeed, this is a trope in movies: the guy who claims
to have a plan for doing some difficult thing, and who when questioned
further, taps his head and says "It's all up here." Everyone watching
the movie knows what that means. At best the plan is vague and
incomplete. Very likely there's some undiscovered flaw that invalidates
it completely. At best it's a plan for a plan.</p><p>In precisely defined domains it's possible to form complete ideas
in your head. People can play chess in their heads, for example.
And mathematicians can do some amount of math in their heads, though
they don't seem to feel sure of a proof over a certain length till
they write it down. But this only seems possible with ideas you can
express in a formal language. </p>[<a href="#f1n">1</a>] Arguably what such people are
doing is putting ideas into words in their heads. I can to some
extent write essays in my head. I'll sometimes think of a paragraph
while walking or lying in bed that survives nearly unchanged in the
final version. But really I'm writing when I do this. I'm doing the
mental part of writing; my fingers just aren't moving as I do it.
[<a href="#f2n">2</a>]<p>You can know a great deal about something without writing about it.
Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying
to explain what you know? I don't think so. I've written about at
least two subjects I know well — Lisp hacking and startups
— and in both cases I learned a lot from writing about them.
In both cases there were things I didn't consciously realize till
I had to explain them. And I don't think my experience was anomalous.
A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if
anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners.</p><p>I'm not saying that writing is the best way to explore all ideas.
If you have ideas about architecture, presumably the best way to
explore them is to build actual buildings. What I'm saying is that
however much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you'll
still learn new things from writing about them.</p><p>Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course.
You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience,
writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal
sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of
voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem
excessive in conversation. I'll often spend 2 weeks on an essay and
reread drafts 50 times. If you did that in conversation
it would seem evidence of some kind of
mental disorder. 
If you're lazy,
of course, writing and talking are equally useless. But if you want
to push yourself to get things right, writing is the steeper hill.
</p>[<a href="#f3n">3</a>]<p>The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point
is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking.
If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more
complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully
formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully
formed ideas about anything nontrivial.</p><p>It feels to them as if they do, especially if they're not in the
habit of critically examining their own thinking. Ideas can feel
complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you
discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that
test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never
realize it.</p><p>Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they'll be
right. Far from it. But though it's not a sufficient condition, it
is a necessary one.</p><p><b>Notes</b></p><p>[</p><a>1</a>] Machinery and
circuits are formal languages.<p>[</p><a>2</a>] I thought of this
sentence as I was walking down the street in Palo Alto.<p>[</p><a>3</a>] There are two
senses of talking to someone: a strict sense in which the conversation
is verbal, and a more general sense in which it can take any form,
including writing. In the limit case (e.g. Seneca's letters),
conversation in the latter sense becomes essay writing.<p>It can be very useful to talk (in either sense) with other people
as you're writing something. But a verbal conversation will never
be more exacting than when you're talking about something you're
writing.</p> <b>Thanks</b> to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick
Collison, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this. </td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||               
               
               
               
 February 2022              
               
 Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over to get them exactly right. And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write them.       
               
 Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your ideas, and now you've expressed them. But you know this isn't true. You know that putting your ideas into words changed them. And not just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead.        
               
 It's not just having to commit your ideas to specific words that makes writing so exacting. The real test is reading what you've written. You have to pretend to be a neutral reader who knows nothing of what's in your head, only what you wrote. When he reads what you wrote, does it seem correct? Does it seem complete? If you make an effort, you can read your writing as if you were a complete stranger, and when you do the news is usually bad. It takes me many cycles before I can get an essay past the stranger. But the stranger is rational, so you always can, if you ask him what he needs. If he's not satisfied because you failed to mention x or didn't qualify some sentence sufficiently, then you mention x or add more qualifications. Happy now? It may cost you some nice sentences, but you have to resign yourself to that. You just have to make them as good as you can and still satisfy the stranger.
               
 This much, I assume, won't be that controversial. I think it will accord with the experience of anyone who has tried to write about anything nontrivial. There may exist people whose thoughts are so perfectly formed that they just flow straight into words. But I've never known anyone who could do this, and if I met someone who said they could, it would seem evidence of their limitations rather than their ability. Indeed, this is a trope in movies: the guy who claims to have a plan for doing some difficult thing, and who when questioned further, taps his head and says "It's all up here." Everyone watching the movie knows what that means. At best the plan is vague and incomplete. Very likely there's some undiscovered flaw that invalidates it completely. At best it's a plan for a plan.  
               
 In precisely defined domains it's possible to form complete ideas in your head. People can play chess in their heads, for example. And mathematicians can do some amount of math in their heads, though they don't seem to feel sure of a proof over a certain length till they write it down. But this only seems possible with ideas you can express in a formal language. [1] Arguably what such people are doing is putting ideas into words in their heads. I can to some extent write essays in my head. I'll sometimes think of a paragraph while walking or lying in bed that survives nearly unchanged in the final version. But really I'm writing when I do this. I'm doing the mental part of writing; my fingers just aren't moving as I do it. [2]   
               
 You can know a great deal about something without writing about it. Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying to explain what you know? I don't think so. I've written about at least two subjects I know well — Lisp hacking and startups — and in both cases I learned a lot from writing about them. In both cases there were things I didn't consciously realize till I had to explain them. And I don't think my experience was anomalous. A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners.     
               
 I'm not saying that writing is the best way to explore all ideas. If you have ideas about architecture, presumably the best way to explore them is to build actual buildings. What I'm saying is that however much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you'll still learn new things from writing about them.          
               
 Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience, writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem excessive in conversation. I'll often spend 2 weeks on an essay and reread drafts 50 times. If you did that in conversation it would seem evidence of some kind of mental disorder. If you're lazy, of course, writing and talking are equally useless. But if you want to push yourself to get things right, writing is the steeper hill. [3]    
               
 The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.         
               
 It feels to them as if they do, especially if they're not in the habit of critically examining their own thinking. Ideas can feel complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never realize it.         
               
 Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they'll be right. Far from it. But though it's not a sufficient condition, it is a necessary one.            
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
 Notes               
               
 [1] Machinery and circuits are formal languages.              
               
 [2] I thought of this sentence as I was walking down the street in Palo Alto.             
               
 [3] There are two senses of talking to someone: a strict sense in which the conversation is verbal, and a more general sense in which it can take any form, including writing. In the limit case (e.g. Seneca's letters), conversation in the latter sense becomes essay writing.          
               
 It can be very useful to talk (in either sense) with other people as you're writing something. But a verbal conversation will never be more exacting than when you're talking about something you're writing.           
               
               
               
 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.             
               
               
               
               
 French Translation              
               
               
               
               
               
               

February 2022Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows
you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas
into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually
wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over  to
get them exactly right. And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but
incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones
you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write
them.Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you
wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your
ideas, and now you've expressed them. But you know this isn't true.
You know that putting your ideas into words changed them. And not
just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that
turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead. It's not just having to commit your ideas to specific words that
makes writing so exacting. The real test is reading what you've
written. You have to pretend to be a neutral reader who knows nothing
of what's in your head, only what you wrote. When he reads what you
wrote, does it seem correct? Does it seem complete? If you make an
effort, you can read your writing as if you were a complete stranger,
and when you do the news is usually bad. It takes me many cycles
before I can get an essay past the stranger. But the stranger is
rational, so you always can, if you ask him what he needs. If he's
not satisfied because you failed to mention x or didn't qualify
some sentence sufficiently, then you mention x or add more
qualifications. Happy now? It may cost you some nice sentences, but
you have to resign yourself to that. You just have to make them as
good as you can and still satisfy the stranger. This much, I assume, won't be that controversial. I think it will
accord with the experience of anyone who has tried to write about
anything nontrivial. There may exist people whose thoughts are so
perfectly formed that they just flow straight into words. But I've
never known anyone who could do this, and if I met someone who said
they could, it would seem evidence of their limitations rather than
their ability. Indeed, this is a trope in movies: the guy who claims
to have a plan for doing some difficult thing, and who when questioned
further, taps his head and says "It's all up here." Everyone watching
the movie knows what that means. At best the plan is vague and
incomplete. Very likely there's some undiscovered flaw that invalidates
it completely. At best it's a plan for a plan. In precisely defined domains it's possible to form complete ideas
in your head. People can play chess in their heads, for example.
And mathematicians can do some amount of math in their heads, though
they don't seem to feel sure of a proof over a certain length till
they write it down. But this only seems possible with ideas you can
express in a formal language. [1] Arguably what such people are
doing is putting ideas into words in their heads. I can to some
extent write essays in my head. I'll sometimes think of a paragraph
while walking or lying in bed that survives nearly unchanged in the
final version. But really I'm writing when I do this. I'm doing the
mental part of writing; my fingers just aren't moving as I do it.
[2]You can know a great deal about something without writing about it.
Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying
to explain what you know? I don't think so. I've written about at
least two subjects I know well — Lisp hacking and startups
— and in both cases I learned a lot from writing about them.
In both cases there were things I didn't consciously realize till
I had to explain them. And I don't think my experience was anomalous.
A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if
anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners. I'm not saying that writing is the best way to explore all ideas.
If you have ideas about architecture, presumably the best way to
explore them is to build actual buildings. What I'm saying is that
however much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you'll
still learn new things from writing about them. Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course.
You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience,
writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal
sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of
voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem
excessive in conversation. I'll often spend 2 weeks on an essay and
reread drafts 50 times. If you did that in conversation
it would seem evidence of some kind of
mental disorder. 
If you're lazy,
of course, writing and talking are equally useless. But if you want
to push yourself to get things right, writing is the steeper hill.
[3]The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point
is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking.
If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more
complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully
formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully
formed ideas about anything nontrivial. It feels to them as if they do, especially if they're not in the
habit of critically examining their own thinking. Ideas can feel
complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you
discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that
test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never
realize it. Putting ideas into words is certainly no guarantee that they'll be
right. Far from it. But though it's not a sufficient condition, it
is a necessary one.  Notes  [ 1] Machinery and
circuits are formal languages.[ 2] I thought of this
sentence as I was walking down the street in Palo Alto.[ 3] There are two
senses of talking to someone: a strict sense in which the conversation
is verbal, and a more general sense in which it can take any form,
including writing. In the limit case (e.g. Seneca's letters),
conversation in the latter sense becomes essay writing.It can be very useful to talk (in either sense) with other people
as you're writing something. But a verbal conversation will never
be more exacting than when you're talking about something you're
writing. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick
Collison, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
Putting Ideas into Words
http://www.paulgraham.com/words.html
http://paulgraham.com/goodtaste.html
Is There Such a Thing as Good Taste?
2021-01-01
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>November 2021<p><i>(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union.)</i></p><p>When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so.
Some people like some things, and other people like other things,
and who's to say who's right?</p><p>It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste
that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father
was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by
reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no
such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are
obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong.</p><p>We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow
sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one
in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof
would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm
going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if
the art you like is better than the art I like.</p><p>If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing
as </p><a href="goodart.html"><u>good art</u></a>. Because if there is such a
thing as good art, it's
easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot
of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to
choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better
taste.<p>So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have
to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to
discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which
means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not
just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You
can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers
either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones.</p><p>We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept
of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases.
But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters
is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a
randomly chosen eight year old.</p><p>That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying
painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you
could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get
better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were
much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary.
They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be
good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all.</p><p>Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good
taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There
are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement
about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined
impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this
the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous
museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most
people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors.</p><p>And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken.
The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation
are often so different from those admired a few generations later.
It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only
when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and
comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in
fact exist.</p><p>The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there
doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The
argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work
of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a
property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it
doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads
of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do you choose
between them?</p><p>The solution to this puzzle is to realize that the purpose of art
is to work on its human audience, and humans have a lot in common.
And to the extent the things an object acts upon respond in the
same way, that's arguably what it means for the object to have the
corresponding property. If everything a particle interacts with
behaves as if the particle had a mass of <i>m</i>, then it has a mass of
<i>m</i>. So the distinction between "objective" and "subjective" is not
binary, but a matter of degree, depending on how much the subjects
have in common. Particles interacting with one another are at one
pole, but people interacting with art are not all the way at the
other; their reactions aren't <i>random</i>.</p><p>Because people's responses to art aren't random, art can be designed
to operate on people, and be good or bad depending on how effectively
it does so. Much as a vaccine can be. If someone were talking about
the ability of a vaccine to confer immunity, it would seem very
frivolous to object that conferring immunity wasn't really a property
of vaccines, because acquiring immunity is something that happens
in the immune system of each individual person. Sure, people's
immune systems vary, and a vaccine that worked on one might not
work on another, but that doesn't make it meaningless to talk about
the effectiveness of a vaccine.</p><p>The situation with art is messier, of course. You can't measure
effectiveness by simply taking a vote, as you do with vaccines.
You have to imagine the responses of subjects with a deep knowledge
of art, and enough clarity of mind to be able to ignore extraneous
influences like the fame of the artist. And even then you'd still
see some disagreement. People do vary, and judging art is hard,
especially recent art. There is definitely not a total order either
of works or of people's ability to judge them. But there is equally
definitely a partial order of both. So while it's not possible to
have perfect taste, it is possible to have good taste.</p>
<b>Thanks</b> to the Cambridge Union for inviting me, and to Trevor
Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts
of this.
</td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||           
           
           
           
 November 2021           
           
 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union.)          
           
 When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?         
           
 It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong.     
           
 We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like.     
           
 If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste.      
           
 So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones.    
           
 We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old.       
           
 That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all.    
           
 Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors.   
           
 And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist.     
           
 The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do you choose between them?    
           
 The solution to this puzzle is to realize that the purpose of art is to work on its human audience, and humans have a lot in common. And to the extent the things an object acts upon respond in the same way, that's arguably what it means for the object to have the corresponding property. If everything a particle interacts with behaves as if the particle had a mass of m, then it has a mass of m. So the distinction between "objective" and "subjective" is not binary, but a matter of degree, depending on how much the subjects have in common. Particles interacting with one another are at one pole, but people interacting with art are not all the way at the other; their reactions aren't random.
           
 Because people's responses to art aren't random, art can be designed to operate on people, and be good or bad depending on how effectively it does so. Much as a vaccine can be. If someone were talking about the ability of a vaccine to confer immunity, it would seem very frivolous to object that conferring immunity wasn't really a property of vaccines, because acquiring immunity is something that happens in the immune system of each individual person. Sure, people's immune systems vary, and a vaccine that worked on one might not work on another, but that doesn't make it meaningless to talk about the effectiveness of a vaccine. 
           
 The situation with art is messier, of course. You can't measure effectiveness by simply taking a vote, as you do with vaccines. You have to imagine the responses of subjects with a deep knowledge of art, and enough clarity of mind to be able to ignore extraneous influences like the fame of the artist. And even then you'd still see some disagreement. People do vary, and judging art is hard, especially recent art. There is definitely not a total order either of works or of people's ability to judge them. But there is equally definitely a partial order of both. So while it's not possible to have perfect taste, it is possible to have good taste. 
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
 Thanks to the Cambridge Union for inviting me, and to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.         
           
           
           
           
           

November 2021 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union.)  When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so.
Some people like some things, and other people like other things,
and who's to say who's right? It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste
that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father
was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by
reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no
such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are
obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow
sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one
in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof
would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm
going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if
the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing
as   good art . Because if there is such a
thing as good art, it's
easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot
of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to
choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better
taste.So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have
to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to
discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which
means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not
just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You
can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers
either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept
of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases.
But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters
is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a
randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying
painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you
could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get
better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were
much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary.
They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be
good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good
taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There
are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement
about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined
impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this
the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous
museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most
people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken.
The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation
are often so different from those admired a few generations later.
It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only
when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and
comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in
fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there
doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The
argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work
of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a
property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it
doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads
of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do you choose
between them? The solution to this puzzle is to realize that the purpose of art
is to work on its human audience, and humans have a lot in common.
And to the extent the things an object acts upon respond in the
same way, that's arguably what it means for the object to have the
corresponding property. If everything a particle interacts with
behaves as if the particle had a mass of m, then it has a mass of
m. So the distinction between "objective" and "subjective" is not
binary, but a matter of degree, depending on how much the subjects
have in common. Particles interacting with one another are at one
pole, but people interacting with art are not all the way at the
other; their reactions aren't random. Because people's responses to art aren't random, art can be designed
to operate on people, and be good or bad depending on how effectively
it does so. Much as a vaccine can be. If someone were talking about
the ability of a vaccine to confer immunity, it would seem very
frivolous to object that conferring immunity wasn't really a property
of vaccines, because acquiring immunity is something that happens
in the immune system of each individual person. Sure, people's
immune systems vary, and a vaccine that worked on one might not
work on another, but that doesn't make it meaningless to talk about
the effectiveness of a vaccine. The situation with art is messier, of course. You can't measure
effectiveness by simply taking a vote, as you do with vaccines.
You have to imagine the responses of subjects with a deep knowledge
of art, and enough clarity of mind to be able to ignore extraneous
influences like the fame of the artist. And even then you'd still
see some disagreement. People do vary, and judging art is hard,
especially recent art. There is definitely not a total order either
of works or of people's ability to judge them. But there is equally
definitely a partial order of both. So while it's not possible to
have perfect taste, it is possible to have good taste.
Thanks to the Cambridge Union for inviting me, and to Trevor
Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts
of this.
Is There Such a Thing as Good Taste?
http://www.paulgraham.com/goodtaste.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/smart.html
Beyond Smart
2021-01-01
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>October 2021<p>If you asked people what was special about Einstein, most would say
that he was really smart. Even the ones who tried to give you a
more sophisticated-sounding answer would probably think this first.
Till a few years ago I would have given the same answer myself. But
that wasn't what was special about Einstein. What was special about
him was that he had important new ideas. Being very smart was a
necessary precondition for having those ideas, but the two are not
identical.</p><p>It may seem a hair-splitting distinction to point out that intelligence
and its consequences are not identical, but it isn't. There's a big
gap between them. Anyone who's spent time around universities and
research labs knows how big. There are a lot of genuinely smart
people who don't achieve very much.</p><p>I grew up thinking that being smart was the thing most to be desired.
Perhaps you did too. But I bet it's not what you really want. Imagine
you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing
new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas. Surely
you'd take the latter. I would. The choice makes me uncomfortable,
but when you see the two options laid out explicitly like that,
it's obvious which is better.</p><p>The reason the choice makes me uncomfortable is that being smart
still feels like the thing that matters, even though I know
intellectually that it isn't. I spent so many years thinking it
was. The circumstances of childhood are a perfect storm for fostering
this illusion. Intelligence is much easier to measure than the value
of new ideas, and you're constantly being judged by it. Whereas
even the kids who will ultimately discover new things aren't usually
discovering them yet. For kids that way inclined, intelligence is
the only game in town.</p><p>There are more subtle reasons too, which persist long into adulthood.
Intelligence wins in conversation, and thus becomes the basis of
the dominance hierarchy.
</p>[<a href="#f1n">1</a>]
Plus having new ideas is such a new
thing historically, and even now done by so few people, that society
hasn't yet assimilated the fact that this is the actual destination,
and intelligence merely a means to an end.
[<a href="#f2n">2</a>]<p>Why do so many smart people fail to discover anything new? Viewed
from that direction, the question seems a rather depressing one.
But there's another way to look at it that's not just more optimistic,
but more interesting as well. Clearly intelligence is not the only
ingredient in having new ideas. What are the other ingredients?
Are they things we could cultivate?</p><p>Because the trouble with intelligence, they say, is that it's mostly
inborn. The evidence for this seems fairly convincing, especially
considering that most of us don't want it to be true, and the
evidence thus has to face a stiff headwind. But I'm not going
to get into that question here, because it's the other ingredients
in new ideas that I care about, and it's clear that many of them
can be cultivated.</p><p>That means the truth is excitingly different from the story I got
as a kid. If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn,
the natural consequence is a sort of <i>Brave New World</i> fatalism. The
best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude"
for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least
be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it.
Whereas if intelligence isn't what matters, but only one of several
ingredients in what does, and many of those aren't inborn, things
get more interesting. You have a lot more control, but the problem
of how to arrange your life becomes that much more complicated.</p><p>So what are the other ingredients in having new ideas? The fact
that I can even ask this question proves the point I raised earlier
— that society hasn't assimilated the fact that it's this and not
intelligence that matters. Otherwise we'd all know the answers
to such a fundamental question.
</p>[<a href="#f3n">3</a>]<p>I'm not going to try to provide a complete catalogue of the other
ingredients here. This is the first time I've posed
the question to myself this way, and I think it may take a while
to answer. But I wrote recently about one of the most important:
an obsessive </p><a href="genius.html"><u>interest</u></a> in a particular topic. 
And this can definitely be cultivated.<p>Another quality you need in order to discover new ideas is
</p><a href="think.html"><u>independent-mindedness</u></a>. I wouldn't want to 
claim that this is
distinct from intelligence — I'd be reluctant to call someone smart
who wasn't independent-minded — but though largely inborn, this
quality seems to be something that can be cultivated to some extent.<p>There are general techniques for having new ideas — for example,
for working on your own </p><a href="own.html"><u>projects</u></a>
and
for overcoming the obstacles you face with <a href="early.html"><u>early</u></a> work
— and these
can all be learned. Some of them can be learned by societies. And
there are also collections of techniques for generating specific types
of new ideas, like <a href="startupideas.html">startup ideas</a> and 
<a href="essay.html">essay topics</a>.<p>And of course there are a lot of fairly mundane ingredients in
discovering new ideas, like </p><a href="hwh.html"><u>working hard</u></a>, 
getting enough sleep, avoiding certain
kinds of stress, having the right colleagues, and finding tricks
for working on what you want even when it's not what you're supposed
to be working on. Anything that prevents people from doing great
work has an inverse that helps them to. And this class of ingredients
is not as boring as it might seem at first. For example, having new
ideas is generally associated with youth. But perhaps it's not youth
per se that yields new ideas, but specific things that come with
youth, like good health and lack of responsibilities. Investigating
this might lead to strategies that will help people of any age to
have better ideas.<p>One of the most surprising ingredients in having new ideas is writing
ability. There's a class of new ideas that are best discovered by
writing essays and books. And that "by" is deliberate: you don't
think of the ideas first, and then merely write them down. There
is a kind of thinking that one does by writing, and if you're clumsy
at writing, or don't enjoy doing it, that will get in your way if
you try to do this kind of thinking.
</p>[<a href="#f4n">4</a>]<p>I predict the gap between intelligence and new ideas will turn out
to be an interesting place. If we think of this gap merely as a measure
of unrealized potential, it becomes a sort of wasteland that we try to
hurry through with our eyes averted. But if we flip the question,
and start inquiring into the other ingredients in new ideas that
it implies must exist, we can mine this gap for discoveries about
discovery.</p><p>
<b>Notes</b></p><p>[</p><a>1</a>]
What wins in conversation depends on who with. It ranges from
mere aggressiveness at the bottom, through quick-wittedness in the
middle, to something closer to actual intelligence at the top,
though probably always with some component of quick-wittedness.<p>[</p><a>2</a>]
Just as intelligence isn't the only ingredient in having new
ideas, having new ideas isn't the only thing intelligence is useful
for. It's also useful, for example, in diagnosing problems and figuring
out how to fix them. Both overlap with having new ideas, but both
have an end that doesn't.<p>Those ways of using intelligence are much more common than having
new ideas. And in such cases intelligence is even harder to distinguish
from its consequences.</p><p>[</p><a>3</a>]
Some would attribute the difference between intelligence and
having new ideas to "creativity," but this doesn't seem a very
useful term. As well as being pretty vague, it's shifted half a frame
sideways from what we care about: it's neither separable from
intelligence, nor responsible for all the difference between
intelligence and having new ideas.<p>[</p><a>4</a>]
Curiously enough, this essay is an example. It started out
as an essay about writing ability. But when I came to the distinction
between intelligence and having new ideas, that seemed so much more
important that I turned the original essay inside out, making that
the topic and my original topic one of the points in it. As in many
other fields, that level of reworking is easier to contemplate once
you've had a lot of practice.
<b>Thanks</b> to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston,
Robert Morris, Michael Nielsen, and Lisa Randall for reading drafts
of this.
</td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||             
             
             
             
 October 2021            
             
 If you asked people what was special about Einstein, most would say that he was really smart. Even the ones who tried to give you a more sophisticated-sounding answer would probably think this first. Till a few years ago I would have given the same answer myself. But that wasn't what was special about Einstein. What was special about him was that he had important new ideas. Being very smart was a necessary precondition for having those ideas, but the two are not identical.     
             
 It may seem a hair-splitting distinction to point out that intelligence and its consequences are not identical, but it isn't. There's a big gap between them. Anyone who's spent time around universities and research labs knows how big. There are a lot of genuinely smart people who don't achieve very much.        
             
 I grew up thinking that being smart was the thing most to be desired. Perhaps you did too. But I bet it's not what you really want. Imagine you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas. Surely you'd take the latter. I would. The choice makes me uncomfortable, but when you see the two options laid out explicitly like that, it's obvious which is better.      
             
 The reason the choice makes me uncomfortable is that being smart still feels like the thing that matters, even though I know intellectually that it isn't. I spent so many years thinking it was. The circumstances of childhood are a perfect storm for fostering this illusion. Intelligence is much easier to measure than the value of new ideas, and you're constantly being judged by it. Whereas even the kids who will ultimately discover new things aren't usually discovering them yet. For kids that way inclined, intelligence is the only game in town.    
             
 There are more subtle reasons too, which persist long into adulthood. Intelligence wins in conversation, and thus becomes the basis of the dominance hierarchy. [1] Plus having new ideas is such a new thing historically, and even now done by so few people, that society hasn't yet assimilated the fact that this is the actual destination, and intelligence merely a means to an end. [2]      
             
 Why do so many smart people fail to discover anything new? Viewed from that direction, the question seems a rather depressing one. But there's another way to look at it that's not just more optimistic, but more interesting as well. Clearly intelligence is not the only ingredient in having new ideas. What are the other ingredients? Are they things we could cultivate?       
             
 Because the trouble with intelligence, they say, is that it's mostly inborn. The evidence for this seems fairly convincing, especially considering that most of us don't want it to be true, and the evidence thus has to face a stiff headwind. But I'm not going to get into that question here, because it's the other ingredients in new ideas that I care about, and it's clear that many of them can be cultivated.      
             
 That means the truth is excitingly different from the story I got as a kid. If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn, the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude" for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it. Whereas if intelligence isn't what matters, but only one of several ingredients in what does, and many of those aren't inborn, things get more interesting. You have a lot more control, but the problem of how to arrange your life becomes that much more complicated.  
             
 So what are the other ingredients in having new ideas? The fact that I can even ask this question proves the point I raised earlier — that society hasn't assimilated the fact that it's this and not intelligence that matters. Otherwise we'd all know the answers to such a fundamental question. [3]        
             
 I'm not going to try to provide a complete catalogue of the other ingredients here. This is the first time I've posed the question to myself this way, and I think it may take a while to answer. But I wrote recently about one of the most important: an obsessive interest in a particular topic. And this can definitely be cultivated.       
             
 Another quality you need in order to discover new ideas is independent-mindedness. I wouldn't want to claim that this is distinct from intelligence — I'd be reluctant to call someone smart who wasn't independent-minded — but though largely inborn, this quality seems to be something that can be cultivated to some extent.       
             
 There are general techniques for having new ideas — for example, for working on your own projects and for overcoming the obstacles you face with early work — and these can all be learned. Some of them can be learned by societies. And there are also collections of techniques for generating specific types of new ideas, like startup ideas and essay topics.       
             
 And of course there are a lot of fairly mundane ingredients in discovering new ideas, like working hard, getting enough sleep, avoiding certain kinds of stress, having the right colleagues, and finding tricks for working on what you want even when it's not what you're supposed to be working on. Anything that prevents people from doing great work has an inverse that helps them to. And this class of ingredients is not as boring as it might seem at first. For example, having new ideas is generally associated with youth. But perhaps it's not youth per se that yields new ideas, but specific things that come with youth, like good health and lack of responsibilities. Investigating this might lead to strategies that will help people of any age to have better ideas.
             
 One of the most surprising ingredients in having new ideas is writing ability. There's a class of new ideas that are best discovered by writing essays and books. And that "by" is deliberate: you don't think of the ideas first, and then merely write them down. There is a kind of thinking that one does by writing, and if you're clumsy at writing, or don't enjoy doing it, that will get in your way if you try to do this kind of thinking. [4]      
             
 I predict the gap between intelligence and new ideas will turn out to be an interesting place. If we think of this gap merely as a measure of unrealized potential, it becomes a sort of wasteland that we try to hurry through with our eyes averted. But if we flip the question, and start inquiring into the other ingredients in new ideas that it implies must exist, we can mine this gap for discoveries about discovery.      
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
 Notes            
             
 [1] What wins in conversation depends on who with. It ranges from mere aggressiveness at the bottom, through quick-wittedness in the middle, to something closer to actual intelligence at the top, though probably always with some component of quick-wittedness.        
             
 [2] Just as intelligence isn't the only ingredient in having new ideas, having new ideas isn't the only thing intelligence is useful for. It's also useful, for example, in diagnosing problems and figuring out how to fix them. Both overlap with having new ideas, but both have an end that doesn't.        
             
 Those ways of using intelligence are much more common than having new ideas. And in such cases intelligence is even harder to distinguish from its consequences.          
             
 [3] Some would attribute the difference between intelligence and having new ideas to "creativity," but this doesn't seem a very useful term. As well as being pretty vague, it's shifted half a frame sideways from what we care about: it's neither separable from intelligence, nor responsible for all the difference between intelligence and having new ideas.       
             
 [4] Curiously enough, this essay is an example. It started out as an essay about writing ability. But when I came to the distinction between intelligence and having new ideas, that seemed so much more important that I turned the original essay inside out, making that the topic and my original topic one of the points in it. As in many other fields, that level of reworking is easier to contemplate once you've had a lot of practice.      
             
             
             
 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Michael Nielsen, and Lisa Randall for reading drafts of this.          
             
             
             
             
             

October 2021If you asked people what was special about Einstein, most would say
that he was really smart. Even the ones who tried to give you a
more sophisticated-sounding answer would probably think this first.
Till a few years ago I would have given the same answer myself. But
that wasn't what was special about Einstein. What was special about
him was that he had important new ideas. Being very smart was a
necessary precondition for having those ideas, but the two are not
identical. It may seem a hair-splitting distinction to point out that intelligence
and its consequences are not identical, but it isn't. There's a big
gap between them. Anyone who's spent time around universities and
research labs knows how big. There are a lot of genuinely smart
people who don't achieve very much. I grew up thinking that being smart was the thing most to be desired.
Perhaps you did too. But I bet it's not what you really want. Imagine
you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing
new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas. Surely
you'd take the latter. I would. The choice makes me uncomfortable,
but when you see the two options laid out explicitly like that,
it's obvious which is better. The reason the choice makes me uncomfortable is that being smart
still feels like the thing that matters, even though I know
intellectually that it isn't. I spent so many years thinking it
was. The circumstances of childhood are a perfect storm for fostering
this illusion. Intelligence is much easier to measure than the value
of new ideas, and you're constantly being judged by it. Whereas
even the kids who will ultimately discover new things aren't usually
discovering them yet. For kids that way inclined, intelligence is
the only game in town. There are more subtle reasons too, which persist long into adulthood.
Intelligence wins in conversation, and thus becomes the basis of
the dominance hierarchy.
[1]
Plus having new ideas is such a new
thing historically, and even now done by so few people, that society
hasn't yet assimilated the fact that this is the actual destination,
and intelligence merely a means to an end.
[2]Why do so many smart people fail to discover anything new? Viewed
from that direction, the question seems a rather depressing one.
But there's another way to look at it that's not just more optimistic,
but more interesting as well. Clearly intelligence is not the only
ingredient in having new ideas. What are the other ingredients?
Are they things we could cultivate? Because the trouble with intelligence, they say, is that it's mostly
inborn. The evidence for this seems fairly convincing, especially
considering that most of us don't want it to be true, and the
evidence thus has to face a stiff headwind. But I'm not going
to get into that question here, because it's the other ingredients
in new ideas that I care about, and it's clear that many of them
can be cultivated. That means the truth is excitingly different from the story I got
as a kid. If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn,
the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The
best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude"
for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least
be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it.
Whereas if intelligence isn't what matters, but only one of several
ingredients in what does, and many of those aren't inborn, things
get more interesting. You have a lot more control, but the problem
of how to arrange your life becomes that much more complicated. So what are the other ingredients in having new ideas? The fact
that I can even ask this question proves the point I raised earlier
— that society hasn't assimilated the fact that it's this and not
intelligence that matters. Otherwise we'd all know the answers
to such a fundamental question.
[3]I'm not going to try to provide a complete catalogue of the other
ingredients here. This is the first time I've posed
the question to myself this way, and I think it may take a while
to answer. But I wrote recently about one of the most important:
an obsessive   interest  in a particular topic. 
And this can definitely be cultivated.Another quality you need in order to discover new ideas is
  independent-mindedness . I wouldn't want to 
claim that this is
distinct from intelligence — I'd be reluctant to call someone smart
who wasn't independent-minded — but though largely inborn, this
quality seems to be something that can be cultivated to some extent.There are general techniques for having new ideas — for example,
for working on your own   projects 
and
for overcoming the obstacles you face with  early  work
— and these
can all be learned. Some of them can be learned by societies. And
there are also collections of techniques for generating specific types
of new ideas, like startup ideas and 
essay topics.And of course there are a lot of fairly mundane ingredients in
discovering new ideas, like   working hard , 
getting enough sleep, avoiding certain
kinds of stress, having the right colleagues, and finding tricks
for working on what you want even when it's not what you're supposed
to be working on. Anything that prevents people from doing great
work has an inverse that helps them to. And this class of ingredients
is not as boring as it might seem at first. For example, having new
ideas is generally associated with youth. But perhaps it's not youth
per se that yields new ideas, but specific things that come with
youth, like good health and lack of responsibilities. Investigating
this might lead to strategies that will help people of any age to
have better ideas.One of the most surprising ingredients in having new ideas is writing
ability. There's a class of new ideas that are best discovered by
writing essays and books. And that "by" is deliberate: you don't
think of the ideas first, and then merely write them down. There
is a kind of thinking that one does by writing, and if you're clumsy
at writing, or don't enjoy doing it, that will get in your way if
you try to do this kind of thinking.
[4]I predict the gap between intelligence and new ideas will turn out
to be an interesting place. If we think of this gap merely as a measure
of unrealized potential, it becomes a sort of wasteland that we try to
hurry through with our eyes averted. But if we flip the question,
and start inquiring into the other ingredients in new ideas that
it implies must exist, we can mine this gap for discoveries about
discovery. 
Notes  [ 1]
What wins in conversation depends on who with. It ranges from
mere aggressiveness at the bottom, through quick-wittedness in the
middle, to something closer to actual intelligence at the top,
though probably always with some component of quick-wittedness.[ 2]
Just as intelligence isn't the only ingredient in having new
ideas, having new ideas isn't the only thing intelligence is useful
for. It's also useful, for example, in diagnosing problems and figuring
out how to fix them. Both overlap with having new ideas, but both
have an end that doesn't.Those ways of using intelligence are much more common than having
new ideas. And in such cases intelligence is even harder to distinguish
from its consequences. [ 3]
Some would attribute the difference between intelligence and
having new ideas to "creativity," but this doesn't seem a very
useful term. As well as being pretty vague, it's shifted half a frame
sideways from what we care about: it's neither separable from
intelligence, nor responsible for all the difference between
intelligence and having new ideas.[ 4]
Curiously enough, this essay is an example. It started out
as an essay about writing ability. But when I came to the distinction
between intelligence and having new ideas, that seemed so much more
important that I turned the original essay inside out, making that
the topic and my original topic one of the points in it. As in many
other fields, that level of reworking is easier to contemplate once
you've had a lot of practice.
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston,
Robert Morris, Michael Nielsen, and Lisa Randall for reading drafts
of this.
Beyond Smart
http://www.paulgraham.com/smart.html
https://paulgraham.com/weird.html
Weird Languages
2021-01-01
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>August 2021<p>When people say that in their experience all programming languages
are basically equivalent, they're making a statement not about
languages but about the kind of programming they've done.</p><p>99.5% of programming consists of gluing together calls to library
functions. All popular languages are equally good at this. So one
can easily spend one's whole career operating in the intersection
of popular programming languages.</p><p>But the other .5% of programming is disproportionately interesting.
If you want to learn what it consists of, the weirdness of weird
languages is a good clue to follow.</p><p>Weird languages aren't weird by accident. Not the good ones, at
least. The weirdness of the good ones usually implies the existence
of some form of programming that's not just the usual gluing together
of library calls.</p><p>A concrete example: Lisp macros. Lisp macros seem weird even to
many Lisp programmers. They're not only not in the intersection of
popular languages, but by their nature would be hard to implement
properly in a language without turning it into a dialect of
Lisp. And macros are definitely evidence of techniques that go
beyond glue programming. For example, solving problems by first
writing a language for problems of that type, and then writing
your specific application in it. Nor is this all you can do with
macros; it's just one region in a space of program-manipulating
techniques that even now is far from fully explored.</p><p>So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be,
one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language
that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart,
and then focus on the differences between this language and the
intersection of popular languages. What can you say in this language
that would be impossibly inconvenient to say in others? In the
process of learning how to say things you couldn't previously say,
you'll probably be learning how to think things you couldn't
previously think.</p>
<b>Thanks</b> to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Daniel Gackle, Amjad
Masad, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
</td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||          
          
          
          
 August 2021          
          
 When people say that in their experience all programming languages are basically equivalent, they're making a statement not about languages but about the kind of programming they've done.       
          
 99.5% of programming consists of gluing together calls to library functions. All popular languages are equally good at this. So one can easily spend one's whole career operating in the intersection of popular programming languages.       
          
 But the other .5% of programming is disproportionately interesting. If you want to learn what it consists of, the weirdness of weird languages is a good clue to follow.        
          
 Weird languages aren't weird by accident. Not the good ones, at least. The weirdness of the good ones usually implies the existence of some form of programming that's not just the usual gluing together of library calls.       
          
 A concrete example: Lisp macros. Lisp macros seem weird even to many Lisp programmers. They're not only not in the intersection of popular languages, but by their nature would be hard to implement properly in a language without turning it into a dialect of Lisp. And macros are definitely evidence of techniques that go beyond glue programming. For example, solving problems by first writing a language for problems of that type, and then writing your specific application in it. Nor is this all you can do with macros; it's just one region in a space of program-manipulating techniques that even now is far from fully explored.
          
 So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be, one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart, and then focus on the differences between this language and the intersection of popular languages. What can you say in this language that would be impossibly inconvenient to say in others? In the process of learning how to say things you couldn't previously say, you'll probably be learning how to think things you couldn't previously think.  
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Daniel Gackle, Amjad Masad, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.        
          
          
          
          
 Japanese Translation          
          
          
          
          
          
          

August 2021When people say that in their experience all programming languages
are basically equivalent, they're making a statement not about
languages but about the kind of programming they've done. 99.5% of programming consists of gluing together calls to library
functions. All popular languages are equally good at this. So one
can easily spend one's whole career operating in the intersection
of popular programming languages. But the other .5% of programming is disproportionately interesting.
If you want to learn what it consists of, the weirdness of weird
languages is a good clue to follow. Weird languages aren't weird by accident. Not the good ones, at
least. The weirdness of the good ones usually implies the existence
of some form of programming that's not just the usual gluing together
of library calls. A concrete example: Lisp macros. Lisp macros seem weird even to
many Lisp programmers. They're not only not in the intersection of
popular languages, but by their nature would be hard to implement
properly in a language without turning it into a dialect of
Lisp. And macros are definitely evidence of techniques that go
beyond glue programming. For example, solving problems by first
writing a language for problems of that type, and then writing
your specific application in it. Nor is this all you can do with
macros; it's just one region in a space of program-manipulating
techniques that even now is far from fully explored. So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be,
one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language
that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart,
and then focus on the differences between this language and the
intersection of popular languages. What can you say in this language
that would be impossibly inconvenient to say in others? In the
process of learning how to say things you couldn't previously say,
you'll probably be learning how to think things you couldn't
previously think.
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Daniel Gackle, Amjad
Masad, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
Weird Languages
http://www.paulgraham.com/weird.html
http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html
How to Work Hard
2021-01-01
None
<div><div><tbody><tr><td>June 2021<p>It might not seem there's much to learn about how to work hard.
Anyone who's been to school knows what it entails, even if they
chose not to do it. There are 12 year olds who work amazingly hard. And
yet when I ask if I know more about working hard now than when I
was in school, the answer is definitely yes.</p><p>One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll
have to work very hard. I wasn't sure of that as a kid. Schoolwork
varied in difficulty; one didn't always have to work super hard to
do well. And some of the things famous adults did, they seemed to
do almost effortlessly. Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard
work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question.
There isn't.</p><p>The reason some subjects seemed easy was that my school had low
standards. And the reason famous adults seemed to do things
effortlessly was years of practice; they made it look easy.</p><p>Of course, those famous adults usually had a lot of natural ability
too. There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability,
practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to
do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability
<i>and</i> to have practiced a lot <i>and</i> to be trying very hard. 
</p>[<a href="#f1n">1</a>]<p>Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business
in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never
took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." It was similar
with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth
coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but
his dedication and his desire to win. P. G. Wodehouse would probably
get my vote for best English writer of the 20th century, if I had
to choose. Certainly no one ever made it look easier. But no one
ever worked harder. At 74, he wrote
</p><blockquote>
 with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that
 this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A
 good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and
 makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases
 twenty times.
</blockquote>
Sounds a bit extreme, you think. And yet Bill Gates sounds even
more extreme. Not one day off in ten years? These two had about
as much natural ability as anyone could have, and yet they also
worked about as hard as anyone could work. You need both.<p>That seems so obvious, and yet in practice we find it slightly hard
to grasp. There's a faint xor between talent and hard work. It comes
partly from popular culture, where it seems to run very deep, and
partly from the fact that the outliers are so rare. If great talent
and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare
squared. Most people you meet who have a lot of one will have less
of the other. But you'll need both if you want to be an outlier
yourself. And since you can't really change how much natural talent
you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces
to working very hard.</p><p>It's straightforward to work hard if you have clearly defined,
externally imposed goals, as you do in school. There is some technique
to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate
(which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and
not to give up when things go wrong. But this level of discipline
seems to be within the reach of quite young children, if they want
it.</p><p>What I've learned since I was a kid is how to work toward goals
that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed. You'll
probably have to learn both if you want to do really great things.</p><p>The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working
without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm
bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working
hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it
feels awful.
</p>[<a href="#f2n">2</a>]<p>There wasn't a single point when I learned this. Like most little
kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did
something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of
disgust when I wasn't achieving anything. The one precisely dateable
landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13.</p><p>Several people I've talked to remember getting serious about work
around this age. When I asked Patrick Collison when he started to
find idleness distasteful, he said
</p><blockquote>
 I think around age 13 or 14. I have a clear memory from around
 then of sitting in the sitting room, staring outside, and wondering
 why I was wasting my summer holiday.
</blockquote>
Perhaps something changes at adolescence. That would make sense.<p>Strangely enough, the biggest obstacle to getting serious about
work was probably school, which made work (what they called work)
seem boring and pointless. I had to learn what real work was before
I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because
even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire
departments that are pointless. But as I learned the shape of real
work, I found that my desire to do it slotted into it as if they'd
been made for each other.</p><p>I suspect most people have to learn what work is before they can
love it. Hardy wrote eloquently about this in <i>A Mathematician's
Apology</i>:
</p><blockquote>
 I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any <i>passion</i> for
 mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of
 a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in
 terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other
 boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most
 decisively.
</blockquote>
He didn't learn what math was really about till part way through
college, when he read Jordan's <i>Cours d'analyse</i>.
<blockquote>
 I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that
 remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians
 of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what
 mathematics really meant.
</blockquote>
There are two separate kinds of fakeness you need to learn to
discount in order to understand what real work is. One is the kind
Hardy encountered in school. Subjects get distorted when they're
adapted to be taught to kids — often so distorted that they're
nothing like the work done by actual practitioners.
[<a href="#f3n">3</a>]
The other
kind of fakeness is intrinsic to certain types of work. Some types
of work are inherently bogus, or at best mere busywork.<p>There's a kind of solidity to real work. It's not all writing the
<i>Principia</i>, but it all feels necessary. That's a vague criterion,
but it's deliberately vague, because it has to cover a lot of
different types.
</p>[<a href="#f4n">4</a>]<p>Once you know the shape of real work, you have to learn how many
hours a day to spend on it. You can't solve this problem by simply
working every waking hour, because in many kinds of work there's a
point beyond which the quality of the result will start to decline.</p><p>That limit varies depending on the type of work and the person.
I've done several different kinds of work, and the limits were
different for each. My limit for the harder types of writing or
programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running
a startup, I could
work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd
kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional
vacations.
</p>[<a href="#f5n">5</a>]<p>The only way to find the limit is by crossing it. Cultivate a
sensitivity to the quality of the work you're doing, and then you'll
notice if it decreases because you're working too hard. Honesty is
critical here, in both directions: you have to notice when you're
being lazy, but also when you're working too hard. And if you think
there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea
out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but
getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people,
then to yourself.
</p>[<a href="#f6n">6</a>]<p>Finding the limit of working hard is a constant, ongoing process,
not something you do just once. Both the difficulty of the work and
your ability to do it can vary hour to hour, so you need to be
constantly judging both how hard you're trying and how well you're
doing.</p><p>Trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself to work, though.
There may be some people who do, but I think my experience is fairly
typical, and I only have to push myself occasionally when I'm
starting a project or when I encounter some sort of check. That's
when I'm in danger of procrastinating. But once I get rolling, I
tend to keep going.</p><p>What keeps me going depends on the type of work. When I was working
on Viaweb, I was driven by fear of failure. I barely procrastinated
at all then, because there was always something that needed doing,
and if I could put more distance between me and the pursuing beast
by doing it, why wait? </p>[<a href="#f7n">7</a>]
Whereas what drives me now, writing
essays, is the flaws in them. Between essays I fuss for a few days,
like a dog circling while it decides exactly where to lie down. But
once I get started on one, I don't have to push myself to work,
because there's always some error or omission already pushing me.<p>I do make some amount of effort to focus on important topics. Many
problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff
at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the
extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll
only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should
always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling.</p><p>The bigger question of what to do with your life is one of these
problems with a hard core. There are important problems at the
center, which tend to be hard, and less important, easier ones at
the edges. So as well as the small, daily adjustments involved in
working on a specific problem, you'll occasionally have to make
big, lifetime-scale adjustments about which type of work to do.
And the rule is the same: working hard means aiming toward the
center — toward the most ambitious problems.</p><p>By center, though, I mean the actual center, not merely the current
consensus about the center. The consensus about which problems are
most important is often mistaken, both in general and within specific
fields. If you disagree with it, and you're right, that could
represent a valuable opportunity to do something new.</p><p>The more ambitious types of work will usually be harder, but although
you should not be in denial about this, neither should you treat
difficulty as an infallible guide in deciding what to do. If you
discover some ambitious type of work that's a bargain in the sense
of being easier for you than other people, either because of the
abilities you happen to have, or because of some new way you've
found to approach it, or simply because you're more excited about
it, by all means work on that. Some of the best work is done by
people who find an easy way to do something hard.</p><p>As well as learning the shape of real work, you need to figure out
which kind you're suited for. And that doesn't just mean figuring
out which kind your natural abilities match the best; it doesn't
mean that if you're 7 feet tall, you have to play basketball. What
you're suited for depends not just on your talents but perhaps even
more on your interests. A </p><a href="genius.html"><u>deep interest</u></a> 
in a topic makes people
work harder than any amount of discipline can.<p>It can be harder to discover your interests than your talents.
There are fewer types of talent than interest, and they start to
be judged early in childhood, whereas interest in a topic is a
subtle thing that may not mature till your twenties, or even later.
The topic may not even exist earlier. Plus there are some powerful
sources of error you need to learn to discount. Are you really
interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make
a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you,
or because your parents want you to?
</p>[<a href="#f8n">8</a>]<p>The difficulty of figuring out what to work on varies enormously
from one person to another. That's one of the most important things
I've learned about work since I was a kid. As a kid, you get the
impression that everyone has a calling, and all they have to do is
figure out what it is. That's how it works in movies, and in the
streamlined biographies fed to kids. Sometimes it works that way
in real life. Some people figure out what to do as children and
just do it, like Mozart. But others, like Newton, turn restlessly
from one kind of work to another. Maybe in retrospect we can identify
one as their calling — we can wish Newton spent more time on math
and physics and less on alchemy and theology — but this is an
</p><a href="disc.html"><u>illusion</u></a> induced by hindsight bias. 
There was no voice calling to him that he could have heard.<p>So while some people's lives converge fast, there will be others
whose lives never converge. And for these people, figuring out what
to work on is not so much a prelude to working hard as an ongoing
part of it, like one of a set of simultaneous equations. For these
people, the process I described earlier has a third component: along
with measuring both how hard you're working and how well you're
doing, you have to think about whether you should keep working in
this field or switch to another. If you're working hard but not
getting good enough results, you should switch. It sounds simple
expressed that way, but in practice it's very difficult. You shouldn't
give up on the first day just because you work hard and don't get
anywhere. You need to give yourself time to get going. But how much
time? And what should you do if work that was going well stops going
well? How much time do you give yourself then?
</p>[<a href="#f9n">9</a>]<p>What even counts as good results? That can be really hard to decide.
If you're exploring an area few others have worked in, you may not
even know what good results look like. History is full of examples
of people who misjudged the importance of what they were working
on.</p><p>The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is
whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously
subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're
going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who's in a better
position than you to judge whether it's important, and what's a
better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting?</p><p>For this test to work, though, you have to be honest with yourself.
Indeed, that's the most striking thing about the whole question of
working hard: how at each point it depends on being honest with
yourself.</p><p>Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated,
dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You
have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind
you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you
can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of
and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can
without harming the quality of the result. This network is too
complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and
clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and
you'll be productive in a way few people are.</p><p><b>Notes</b></p><p>[</p><a>1</a>]
In "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius" I said the three ingredients
in great work were natural ability, determination, and interest.
That's the formula in the preceding stage; determination and interest
yield practice and effort.<p>[</p><a>2</a>]
I mean this at a resolution of days, not hours. You'll often
get somewhere while not working in the sense that the solution to
a problem comes to you while taking a 
<a href="top.html"><u>shower</u></a>, or even in your sleep,
but only because you were working hard on it the day before.<p>It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation,
I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach.</p><p>[</p><a>3</a>]
The thing kids do in school that's most like the real version
is sports. Admittedly because many sports originated as games played
in schools. But in this one area, at least, kids are doing exactly
what adults do.<p>In the average American high school, you have a choice of pretending
to do something serious, or seriously doing something pretend.
Arguably the latter is no worse.</p><p>[</p><a>4</a>]
Knowing what you want to work on doesn't mean you'll be able
to. Most people have to spend a lot of their time working on things
they don't want to, especially early on. But if you know what you
want to do, you at least know what direction to nudge your life in.<p>[</p><a>5</a>]
The lower time limits for intense work suggest a solution to
the problem of having less time to work after you have kids: switch
to harder problems. In effect I did that, though not deliberately.<p>[</p><a>6</a>]
Some cultures have a tradition of performative hard work. I
don't love this idea, because (a) it makes a parody of something
important and (b) it causes people to wear themselves out doing
things that don't matter. I don't know enough to say for sure whether
it's net good or bad, but my guess is bad.<p>[</p><a>7</a>]
One of the reasons people work so hard on startups is that
startups can fail, and when they do, that failure tends to be both
decisive and conspicuous.<p>[</p><a>8</a>]
It's ok to work on something to make a lot of money. You need
to solve the money problem somehow, and there's nothing wrong with
doing that efficiently by trying to make a lot at once. I suppose
it would even be ok to be interested in money for its own sake;
whatever floats your boat. Just so long as you're conscious of your
motivations. The thing to avoid is <i>unconsciously</i> letting the need
for money warp your ideas about what kind of work you find most
interesting.<p>[</p><a>9</a>]
Many people face this question on a smaller scale with
individual projects. But it's easier both to recognize and to accept
a dead end in a single project than to abandon some type of work
entirely. The more determined you are, the harder it gets. Like a
Spanish Flu victim, you're fighting your own immune system: Instead
of giving up, you tell yourself, I should just try harder. And who
can say you're not right?<p>
<b>Thanks</b> to Trevor Blackwell, John Carmack, John Collison, Patrick Collison,
Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.</p></td></tr></tbody></div>||||I||||               
               
               
               
 June 2021               
               
 It might not seem there's much to learn about how to work hard. Anyone who's been to school knows what it entails, even if they chose not to do it. There are 12 year olds who work amazingly hard. And yet when I ask if I know more about working hard now than when I was in school, the answer is definitely yes.          
               
 One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard. I wasn't sure of that as a kid. Schoolwork varied in difficulty; one didn't always have to work super hard to do well. And some of the things famous adults did, they seemed to do almost effortlessly. Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question. There isn't.        
               
 The reason some subjects seemed easy was that my school had low standards. And the reason famous adults seemed to do things effortlessly was years of practice; they made it look easy.            
               
 Of course, those famous adults usually had a lot of natural ability too. There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. [1]          
               
 Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win. P. G. Wodehouse would probably get my vote for best English writer of the 20th century, if I had to choose. Certainly no one ever made it look easier. But no one ever worked harder. At 74, he wrote      
 with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases twenty times.           
 Sounds a bit extreme, you think. And yet Bill Gates sounds even more extreme. Not one day off in ten years? These two had about as much natural ability as anyone could have, and yet they also worked about as hard as anyone could work. You need both.           
               
 That seems so obvious, and yet in practice we find it slightly hard to grasp. There's a faint xor between talent and hard work. It comes partly from popular culture, where it seems to run very deep, and partly from the fact that the outliers are so rare. If great talent and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare squared. Most people you meet who have a lot of one will have less of the other. But you'll need both if you want to be an outlier yourself. And since you can't really change how much natural talent you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces to working very hard.     
               
 It's straightforward to work hard if you have clearly defined, externally imposed goals, as you do in school. There is some technique to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate (which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and not to give up when things go wrong. But this level of discipline seems to be within the reach of quite young children, if they want it.        
               
 What I've learned since I was a kid is how to work toward goals that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed. You'll probably have to learn both if you want to do really great things.            
               
 The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful. [2]          
               
 There wasn't a single point when I learned this. Like most little kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of disgust when I wasn't achieving anything. The one precisely dateable landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13.          
               
 Several people I've talked to remember getting serious about work around this age. When I asked Patrick Collison when he started to find idleness distasteful, he said            
 I think around age 13 or 14. I have a clear memory from around then of sitting in the sitting room, staring outside, and wondering why I was wasting my summer holiday.            
 Perhaps something changes at adolescence. That would make sense.              
               
 Strangely enough, the biggest obstacle to getting serious about work was probably school, which made work (what they called work) seem boring and pointless. I had to learn what real work was before I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless. But as I learned the shape of real work, I found that my desire to do it slotted into it as if they'd been made for each other.       
               
 I suspect most people have to learn what work is before they can love it. Hardy wrote eloquently about this in A Mathematician's Apology:             
 I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.          
 He didn't learn what math was really about till part way through college, when he read Jordan's Cours d'analyse.             
 I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.           
 There are two separate kinds of fakeness you need to learn to discount in order to understand what real work is. One is the kind Hardy encountered in school. Subjects get distorted when they're adapted to be taught to kids — often so distorted that they're nothing like the work done by actual practitioners. [3] The other kind of fakeness is intrinsic to certain types of work. Some types of work are inherently bogus, or at best mere busywork.        
               
 There's a kind of solidity to real work. It's not all writing the Principia, but it all feels necessary. That's a vague criterion, but it's deliberately vague, because it has to cover a lot of different types. [4]            
               
 Once you know the shape of real work, you have to learn how many hours a day to spend on it. You can't solve this problem by simply working every waking hour, because in many kinds of work there's a point beyond which the quality of the result will start to decline.           
               
 That limit varies depending on the type of work and the person. I've done several different kinds of work, and the limits were different for each. My limit for the harder types of writing or programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running a startup, I could work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional vacations. [5]        
               
 The only way to find the limit is by crossing it. Cultivate a sensitivity to the quality of the work you're doing, and then you'll notice if it decreases because you're working too hard. Honesty is critical here, in both directions: you have to notice when you're being lazy, but also when you're working too hard. And if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself. [6]      
               
 Finding the limit of working hard is a constant, ongoing process, not something you do just once. Both the difficulty of the work and your ability to do it can vary hour to hour, so you need to be constantly judging both how hard you're trying and how well you're doing.           
               
 Trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself to work, though. There may be some people who do, but I think my experience is fairly typical, and I only have to push myself occasionally when I'm starting a project or when I encounter some sort of check. That's when I'm in danger of procrastinating. But once I get rolling, I tend to keep going.         
               
 What keeps me going depends on the type of work. When I was working on Viaweb, I was driven by fear of failure. I barely procrastinated at all then, because there was always something that needed doing, and if I could put more distance between me and the pursuing beast by doing it, why wait? [7] Whereas what drives me now, writing essays, is the flaws in them. Between essays I fuss for a few days, like a dog circling while it decides exactly where to lie down. But once I get started on one, I don't have to push myself to work, because there's always some error or omission already pushing me.     
               
 I do make some amount of effort to focus on important topics. Many problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling.         
               
 The bigger question of what to do with your life is one of these problems with a hard core. There are important problems at the center, which tend to be hard, and less important, easier ones at the edges. So as well as the small, daily adjustments involved in working on a specific problem, you'll occasionally have to make big, lifetime-scale adjustments about which type of work to do. And the rule is the same: working hard means aiming toward the center — toward the most ambitious problems.       
               
 By center, though, I mean the actual center, not merely the current consensus about the center. The consensus about which problems are most important is often mistaken, both in general and within specific fields. If you disagree with it, and you're right, that could represent a valuable opportunity to do something new.          
               
 The more ambitious types of work will usually be harder, but although you should not be in denial about this, neither should you treat difficulty as an infallible guide in deciding what to do. If you discover some ambitious type of work that's a bargain in the sense of being easier for you than other people, either because of the abilities you happen to have, or because of some new way you've found to approach it, or simply because you're more excited about it, by all means work on that. Some of the best work is done by people who find an easy way to do something hard.      
               
 As well as learning the shape of real work, you need to figure out which kind you're suited for. And that doesn't just mean figuring out which kind your natural abilities match the best; it doesn't mean that if you're 7 feet tall, you have to play basketball. What you're suited for depends not just on your talents but perhaps even more on your interests. A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can.        
               
 It can be harder to discover your interests than your talents. There are fewer types of talent than interest, and they start to be judged early in childhood, whereas interest in a topic is a subtle thing that may not mature till your twenties, or even later. The topic may not even exist earlier. Plus there are some powerful sources of error you need to learn to discount. Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to? [8]      
               
 The difficulty of figuring out what to work on varies enormously from one person to another. That's one of the most important things I've learned about work since I was a kid. As a kid, you get the impression that everyone has a calling, and all they have to do is figure out what it is. That's how it works in movies, and in the streamlined biographies fed to kids. Sometimes it works that way in real life. Some people figure out what to do as children and just do it, like Mozart. But others, like Newton, turn restlessly from one kind of work to another. Maybe in retrospect we can identify one as their calling — we can wish Newton spent more time on math and physics and less on alchemy and theology — but this is an illusion induced by hindsight bias. There was no voice calling to him that he could have heard.  
               
 So while some people's lives converge fast, there will be others whose lives never converge. And for these people, figuring out what to work on is not so much a prelude to working hard as an ongoing part of it, like one of a set of simultaneous equations. For these people, the process I described earlier has a third component: along with measuring both how hard you're working and how well you're doing, you have to think about whether you should keep working in this field or switch to another. If you're working hard but not getting good enough results, you should switch. It sounds simple expressed that way, but in practice it's very difficult. You shouldn't give up on the first day just because you work hard and don't get anywhere. You need to give yourself time to get going. But how much time? And what should you do if work that was going well stops going well? How much time do you give yourself then? [9]
               
 What even counts as good results? That can be really hard to decide. If you're exploring an area few others have worked in, you may not even know what good results look like. History is full of examples of people who misjudged the importance of what they were working on.           
               
 The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who's in a better position than you to judge whether it's important, and what's a better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting?         
               
 For this test to work, though, you have to be honest with yourself. Indeed, that's the most striking thing about the whole question of working hard: how at each point it depends on being honest with yourself.            
               
 Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are.     
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
 Notes               
               
 [1] In "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius" I said the three ingredients in great work were natural ability, determination, and interest. That's the formula in the preceding stage; determination and interest yield practice and effort.           
               
 [2] I mean this at a resolution of days, not hours. You'll often get somewhere while not working in the sense that the solution to a problem comes to you while taking a shower, or even in your sleep, but only because you were working hard on it the day before.           
               
 It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach.             
               
 [3] The thing kids do in school that's most like the real version is sports. Admittedly because many sports originated as games played in schools. But in this one area, at least, kids are doing exactly what adults do.           
               
 In the average American high school, you have a choice of pretending to do something serious, or seriously doing something pretend. Arguably the latter is no worse.            
               
 [4] Knowing what you want to work on doesn't mean you'll be able to. Most people have to spend a lot of their time working on things they don't want to, especially early on. But if you know what you want to do, you at least know what direction to nudge your life in.           
               
 [5] The lower time limits for intense work suggest a solution to the problem of having less time to work after you have kids: switch to harder problems. In effect I did that, though not deliberately.            
               
 [6] Some cultures have a tradition of performative hard work. I don't love this idea, because (a) it makes a parody of something important and (b) it causes people to wear themselves out doing things that don't matter. I don't know enough to say for sure whether it's net good or bad, but my guess is bad.          
               
 [7] One of the reasons people work so hard on startups is that startups can fail, and when they do, that failure tends to be both decisive and conspicuous.            
               
 [8] It's ok to work on something to make a lot of money. You need to solve the money problem somehow, and there's nothing wrong with doing that efficiently by trying to make a lot at once. I suppose it would even be ok to be interested in money for its own sake; whatever floats your boat. Just so long as you're conscious of your motivations. The thing to avoid is unconsciously letting the need for money warp your ideas about what kind of work you find most interesting.       
               
 [9] Many people face this question on a smaller scale with individual projects. But it's easier both to recognize and to accept a dead end in a single project than to abandon some type of work entirely. The more determined you are, the harder it gets. Like a Spanish Flu victim, you're fighting your own immune system: Instead of giving up, you tell yourself, I should just try harder. And who can say you're not right?        
               
               
               
 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, John Carmack, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.             
               
               
               
               
 Arabic Translation               
               
               
               
               
               
               

June 2021It might not seem there's much to learn about how to work hard.
Anyone who's been to school knows what it entails, even if they
chose not to do it. There are 12 year olds who work amazingly hard. And
yet when I ask if I know more about working hard now than when I
was in school, the answer is definitely yes. One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll
have to work very hard. I wasn't sure of that as a kid. Schoolwork
varied in difficulty; one didn't always have to work super hard to
do well. And some of the things famous adults did, they seemed to
do almost effortlessly. Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard
work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question.
There isn't. The reason some subjects seemed easy was that my school had low
standards. And the reason famous adults seemed to do things
effortlessly was years of practice; they made it look easy. Of course, those famous adults usually had a lot of natural ability
too. There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability,
practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to
do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability
and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. 
[1]Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business
in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never
took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." It was similar
with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth
coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but
his dedication and his desire to win. P. G. Wodehouse would probably
get my vote for best English writer of the 20th century, if I had
to choose. Certainly no one ever made it look easier. But no one
ever worked harder. At 74, he wrote
 
 with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that
 this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A
 good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and
 makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases
 twenty times.
Sounds a bit extreme, you think. And yet Bill Gates sounds even
more extreme. Not one day off in ten years? These two had about
as much natural ability as anyone could have, and yet they also
worked about as hard as anyone could work. You need both.That seems so obvious, and yet in practice we find it slightly hard
to grasp. There's a faint xor between talent and hard work. It comes
partly from popular culture, where it seems to run very deep, and
partly from the fact that the outliers are so rare. If great talent
and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare
squared. Most people you meet who have a lot of one will have less
of the other. But you'll need both if you want to be an outlier
yourself. And since you can't really change how much natural talent
you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces
to working very hard. It's straightforward to work hard if you have clearly defined,
externally imposed goals, as you do in school. There is some technique
to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate
(which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and
not to give up when things go wrong. But this level of discipline
seems to be within the reach of quite young children, if they want
it. What I've learned since I was a kid is how to work toward goals
that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed. You'll
probably have to learn both if you want to do really great things. The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working
without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm
bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working
hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it
feels awful.
[2]There wasn't a single point when I learned this. Like most little
kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did
something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of
disgust when I wasn't achieving anything. The one precisely dateable
landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13. Several people I've talked to remember getting serious about work
around this age. When I asked Patrick Collison when he started to
find idleness distasteful, he said
 
 I think around age 13 or 14. I have a clear memory from around
 then of sitting in the sitting room, staring outside, and wondering
 why I was wasting my summer holiday.
Perhaps something changes at adolescence. That would make sense.Strangely enough, the biggest obstacle to getting serious about
work was probably school, which made work (what they called work)
seem boring and pointless. I had to learn what real work was before
I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because
even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire
departments that are pointless. But as I learned the shape of real
work, I found that my desire to do it slotted into it as if they'd
been made for each other. I suspect most people have to learn what work is before they can
love it. Hardy wrote eloquently about this in A Mathematician's
Apology:
 
 I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for
 mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of
 a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in
 terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other
 boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most
 decisively.
He didn't learn what math was really about till part way through
college, when he read Jordan's Cours d'analyse.
 I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that
 remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians
 of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what
 mathematics really meant.
There are two separate kinds of fakeness you need to learn to
discount in order to understand what real work is. One is the kind
Hardy encountered in school. Subjects get distorted when they're
adapted to be taught to kids — often so distorted that they're
nothing like the work done by actual practitioners.
[3]
The other
kind of fakeness is intrinsic to certain types of work. Some types
of work are inherently bogus, or at best mere busywork.There's a kind of solidity to real work. It's not all writing the
Principia, but it all feels necessary. That's a vague criterion,
but it's deliberately vague, because it has to cover a lot of
different types.
[4]Once you know the shape of real work, you have to learn how many
hours a day to spend on it. You can't solve this problem by simply
working every waking hour, because in many kinds of work there's a
point beyond which the quality of the result will start to decline. That limit varies depending on the type of work and the person.
I've done several different kinds of work, and the limits were
different for each. My limit for the harder types of writing or
programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running
a startup, I could
work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd
kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional
vacations.
[5]The only way to find the limit is by crossing it. Cultivate a
sensitivity to the quality of the work you're doing, and then you'll
notice if it decreases because you're working too hard. Honesty is
critical here, in both directions: you have to notice when you're
being lazy, but also when you're working too hard. And if you think
there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea
out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but
getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people,
then to yourself.
[6]Finding the limit of working hard is a constant, ongoing process,
not something you do just once. Both the difficulty of the work and
your ability to do it can vary hour to hour, so you need to be
constantly judging both how hard you're trying and how well you're
doing. Trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself to work, though.
There may be some people who do, but I think my experience is fairly
typical, and I only have to push myself occasionally when I'm
starting a project or when I encounter some sort of check. That's
when I'm in danger of procrastinating. But once I get rolling, I
tend to keep going. What keeps me going depends on the type of work. When I was working
on Viaweb, I was driven by fear of failure. I barely procrastinated
at all then, because there was always something that needed doing,
and if I could put more distance between me and the pursuing beast
by doing it, why wait? [7]
Whereas what drives me now, writing
essays, is the flaws in them. Between essays I fuss for a few days,
like a dog circling while it decides exactly where to lie down. But
once I get started on one, I don't have to push myself to work,
because there's always some error or omission already pushing me.I do make some amount of effort to focus on important topics. Many
problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff
at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the
extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll
only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should
always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling. The bigger question of what to do with your life is one of these
problems with a hard core. There are important problems at the
center, which tend to be hard, and less important, easier ones at
the edges. So as well as the small, daily adjustments involved in
working on a specific problem, you'll occasionally have to make
big, lifetime-scale adjustments about which type of work to do.
And the rule is the same: working hard means aiming toward the
center — toward the most ambitious problems. By center, though, I mean the actual center, not merely the current
consensus about the center. The consensus about which problems are
most important is often mistaken, both in general and within specific
fields. If you disagree with it, and you're right, that could
represent a valuable opportunity to do something new. The more ambitious types of work will usually be harder, but although
you should not be in denial about this, neither should you treat
difficulty as an infallible guide in deciding what to do. If you
discover some ambitious type of work that's a bargain in the sense
of being easier for you than other people, either because of the
abilities you happen to have, or because of some new way you've
found to approach it, or simply because you're more excited about
it, by all means work on that. Some of the best work is done by
people who find an easy way to do something hard. As well as learning the shape of real work, you need to figure out
which kind you're suited for. And that doesn't just mean figuring
out which kind your natural abilities match the best; it doesn't
mean that if you're 7 feet tall, you have to play basketball. What
you're suited for depends not just on your talents but perhaps even
more on your interests. A   deep interest  
in a topic makes people
work harder than any amount of discipline can.It can be harder to discover your interests than your talents.
There are fewer types of talent than interest, and they start to
be judged early in childhood, whereas interest in a topic is a
subtle thing that may not mature till your twenties, or even later.
The topic may not even exist earlier. Plus there are some powerful
sources of error you need to learn to discount. Are you really
interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make
a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you,
or because your parents want you to?
[8]The difficulty of figuring out what to work on varies enormously
from one person to another. That's one of the most important things
I've learned about work since I was a kid. As a kid, you get the
impression that everyone has a calling, and all they have to do is
figure out what it is. That's how it works in movies, and in the
streamlined biographies fed to kids. Sometimes it works that way
in real life. Some people figure out what to do as children and
just do it, like Mozart. But others, like Newton, turn restlessly
from one kind of work to another. Maybe in retrospect we can identify
one as their calling — we can wish Newton spent more time on math
and physics and less on alchemy and theology — but this is an
  illusion  induced by hindsight bias. 
There was no voice calling to him that he could have heard.So while some people's lives converge fast, there will be others
whose lives never converge. And for these people, figuring out what
to work on is not so much a prelude to working hard as an ongoing
part of it, like one of a set of simultaneous equations. For these
people, the process I described earlier has a third component: along
with measuring both how hard you're working and how well you're
doing, you have to think about whether you should keep working in
this field or switch to another. If you're working hard but not
getting good enough results, you should switch. It sounds simple
expressed that way, but in practice it's very difficult. You shouldn't
give up on the first day just because you work hard and don't get
anywhere. You need to give yourself time to get going. But how much
time? And what should you do if work that was going well stops going
well? How much time do you give yourself then?
[9]What even counts as good results? That can be really hard to decide.
If you're exploring an area few others have worked in, you may not
even know what good results look like. History is full of examples
of people who misjudged the importance of what they were working
on. The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is
whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously
subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're
going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who's in a better
position than you to judge whether it's important, and what's a
better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting? For this test to work, though, you have to be honest with yourself.
Indeed, that's the most striking thing about the whole question of
working hard: how at each point it depends on being honest with
yourself. Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated,
dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You
have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind
you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you
can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of
and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can
without harming the quality of the result. This network is too
complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and
clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and
you'll be productive in a way few people are.  Notes  [ 1]
In "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius" I said the three ingredients
in great work were natural ability, determination, and interest.
That's the formula in the preceding stage; determination and interest
yield practice and effort.[ 2]
I mean this at a resolution of days, not hours. You'll often
get somewhere while not working in the sense that the solution to
a problem comes to you while taking a 
 shower , or even in your sleep,
but only because you were working hard on it the day before.It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation,
I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach. [ 3]
The thing kids do in school that's most like the real version
is sports. Admittedly because many sports originated as games played
in schools. But in this one area, at least, kids are doing exactly
what adults do.In the average American high school, you have a choice of pretending
to do something serious, or seriously doing something pretend.
Arguably the latter is no worse. [ 4]
Knowing what you want to work on doesn't mean you'll be able
to. Most people have to spend a lot of their time working on things
they don't want to, especially early on. But if you know what you
want to do, you at least know what direction to nudge your life in.[ 5]
The lower time limits for intense work suggest a solution to
the problem of having less time to work after you have kids: switch
to harder problems. In effect I did that, though not deliberately.[ 6]
Some cultures have a tradition of performative hard work. I
don't love this idea, because (a) it makes a parody of something
important and (b) it causes people to wear themselves out doing
things that don't matter. I don't know enough to say for sure whether
it's net good or bad, but my guess is bad.[ 7]
One of the reasons people work so hard on startups is that
startups can fail, and when they do, that failure tends to be both
decisive and conspicuous.[ 8]
It's ok to work on something to make a lot of money. You need
to solve the money problem somehow, and there's nothing wrong with
doing that efficiently by trying to make a lot at once. I suppose
it would even be ok to be interested in money for its own sake;
whatever floats your boat. Just so long as you're conscious of your
motivations. The thing to avoid is unconsciously letting the need
for money warp your ideas about what kind of work you find most
interesting.[ 9]
Many people face this question on a smaller scale with
individual projects. But it's easier both to recognize and to accept
a dead end in a single project than to abandon some type of work
entirely. The more determined you are, the harder it gets. Like a
Spanish Flu victim, you're fighting your own immune system: Instead
of giving up, you tell yourself, I should just try harder. And who
can say you're not right?
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, John Carmack, John Collison, Patrick Collison,
Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.
How to Work Hard
http://www.paulgraham.com/hwh.html
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Grahm
Grahm
2022-06-23
None
<div><div>
	<main>
	<div><div>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<th><p></p>
</th>
<td>For other similarly-named characters, see <a href="/wiki/Graham">Graham</a>.
</td></tr></tbody></table>
</div>
<div><p>“Grahm and Chally the moo-moo's Fair Trades. We find you. You trade fair. Or die. Guaranteed.”</p></div>
<p><b>Grahm</b> is a friendly <a href="/wiki/Super_mutant_(Fallout_76)">super mutant</a> <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_vendors">merchant</a> and chef living in <a href="/wiki/Appalachia">Appalachia</a> with his <a href="/wiki/Brahmin_(Fallout_76)">pack brahmin</a> companion, <a href="/wiki/Chally_the_moo-moo">Chally the moo-moo</a>.
</p>
<h2>Background</h2>
<p>Little is known of Grahm's history prior to 2102, other than what minute information he offers in his dialogue. He mentions someone he refers to as "Smarty," whose advice guided Grahm into becoming a merchant.<sup><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup>
</p><p>By 2102, Grahm would be one of, if not the only, remaining live humanoids that was both sapient and friendly towards humans in Appalachia. As <a href="/wiki/Vault_Dweller_(Fallout_76)">Dwellers</a> of Vault 76 re-entered the world and swept into <a href="/wiki/Appalachia">Appalachia</a>, Grahm found much enjoyment in trading with them.
</p><p>Grahm travels with 'Chally the moo-moo' (<i>rhymes with "alley"</i>) and considers trading to be a game with the brahmin.<sup><a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> He puts a great deal of personal responsibility into the overall wellbeing of Chally and will frequently engage in one-sided conversation with her on their travels.
</p><p>A long time ago during a warm day, Grahm used to spend time with his friends and cook meat. Since then, he has felt alone, remembering the old days. Due to that, Grahm decided to cook meat again for his new friends he had made across <a href="/wiki/Appalachia">Appalachia</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup> According to Grahm, the first Meat Week was on a sunny day that made the super mutant want to spend time outside and cook. Grahm began to have more and more of these "meat days" and wanted to come up with a name for them. Eventually, after tossing out "Meat Many Days," he decided on "<a href="/wiki/Grahm%27s_Meat-Cook">Meat Week</a>."<sup><a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a></sup>
</p><p>Sometime after <a href="/wiki/Reclamation_Day">Reclamation Day</a>, Grahm and Chally hosted their "Meat Week" event close to Vault 76, with an express invitation toward the Vault Dwellers. Here, Grahm would prepare a grand cookout, with Dwellers assisting him in his grilling, in exchange for various prizes he'd collected through trading in the past year.
</p><p>As of 2103, Grahm has become acquainted with many of the newly-arrived people in Appalachia, such as <a href="/wiki/Ayla">Ayla</a> and <a href="/wiki/Sofia_Daguerre">Sofia Daguerre</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-6">[6]</a></sup> He is fond of stopping by the new farms and settlements that have sprung up, likely due to the new business opportunities they bring.<sup><a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a></sup> His business is well-known around Appalachia, mostly for the novelty of a super mutant who sells goods, with even the scavengers of <a href="/wiki/Emmett_Mountain_disposal_site">Emmett Mountain disposal site</a> having heard of tales of the friendly super mutant trader.<sup><a href="#cite_note-8">[8]</a></sup> <a href="/wiki/Maul">Maul</a>, another super mutant, also knows Grahm.<sup><a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a></sup>
</p>
<h2>Interactions with the player character</h2>
<h3>Interactions overview</h3>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<th><b>Interactions</b>
</th></tr>
<tr>
<td><div><p><a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/8/81/Icon_interactions_essential.webp/revision/latest?cb=20210317034350"></a></p></div>
</td>
<td>This character <b>cannot be killed</b>.
</td></tr>
 
 
 
 
 
	
 
<tr>
<td><div><p><a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/0/0e/FO76_ui_trading_team.png/revision/latest?cb=20201127024510"></a></p></div>
</td>
<td>This character is a <b><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_vendors">vendor</a></b>.
</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Accepts <a href="/wiki/Bottle_cap"></a></li>
<li>Sells:</li></ul>
<ul>
<a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_plans">plans</a>, <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_junk_items">junk</a>, <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_ammunition">ammo</a>, and mods
</ul>
</td></tr>
 
 
 
 
 
<tr>
<td><div><p><a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/0/05/FO76_icon_map_event.png/revision/latest?cb=20201126234317"></a></p></div>
</td>
<td>This character is <b>involved in <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_events">events</a></b>.
</td>
<td>
<p><a href="/wiki/Grahm%27s_Meat-Cook">Grahm's Meat-Cook</a> 
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td><div><p><a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/a/a1/FO76_ui_roleplay_team.png/revision/latest?cb=20201127024343"></a></p></div>
</td>
<td>This character is <b>involved in <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_random_encounters">random encounters</a></b>.
</td>
<td>
<p>Travel (all regions)
</p>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h2>Inventory</h2>
<h2>Merchandise</h2>
<p>Grahm is the only source of the following items:
</p>
<p>The following items, which can be obtained by other means, are sold only by Grahm:
</p>
<h2>Location</h2>
<ul><li>Chance to spawn at <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_random_encounters">travel-type encounter</a>s throughout Appalachia.</li>
<li>While Meat Week is active, he can be found at the unmarked cookout spot southwest of Vault 76 for the full duration of the event.</li></ul>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<ul><li>Grahm does take damage from enemies, and can be downed, but he will never die and quickly recovers from an attack. Grahm will not respond to attacks from player characters; however, he will fight enemies that are present along his route, which can be used to the player character's benefit by leading enemies toward Grahm to fight.</li>
<li>At night, Grahm will eventually stop moving.</li>
<li>When Grahm is near <a href="/wiki/Hillfolk_Hotdogs">Hillfolk Hotdogs</a>, he can say that this place is familiar, the meat he smells is familiar, and meat is where the home is.</li>
<li><a href="/wiki/Julie_(Wastelanders)">Julie</a> of <a href="/wiki/Appalachia_Radio">Appalachia Radio</a> has been in contact with Grahm, who has repeatedly asked for songs about meat, with "<a href="/wiki/Butcher_Pete_(Part_1)">Butcher Pete</a>" being the closest one she can find.<sup><a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a></sup></li></ul>
<h2>Appearances</h2>
<p>Grahm appears only in <i><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76">Fallout 76</a></i>.
</p>
<h2>Behind the scenes</h2>
<ul><li>Three different voice actors have had the role of Grahm attributed to them, including <a href="/wiki/Ray_Chase">Ray Chase</a>, <a href="/wiki/Chip_Joslin">Chip Joslin</a> and <a href="/wiki/Dave_Fennoy">Dave Fennoy</a> (all of whom also voice generic super mutants). Chase has promoted the role of Grahm on social media,<sup><a href="#cite_note-11">[Non-game 1]</a></sup> as has Joslin.<sup><a href="#cite_note-12">[Non-game 2]</a></sup> Joslin was described as an "alternate" voice for Grahm in a Twinfinite article,<sup><a href="#cite_note-13">[Non-game 3]</a></sup> though the exact distinction of who voiced which lines between Chase and Joslin is unclear. Fennoy only voiced Grahm as part of dialogue from the <i><a href="/wiki/Wastelanders">Wastelanders</a></i> <a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_updates">update</a>, including lines such as his conversation with <a href="/wiki/Sofia_Daguerre">Sofia Daguerre</a>.</li>
<li>Quest designer <a href="/wiki/Carl_McKevitt">Carl McKevitt</a> contributed to the writing of Grahm's Meat Week dialogue, though he did not create the character.<sup><a href="#cite_note-14">[Non-game 4]</a></sup></li></ul>
<h2>Gallery</h2>
<div><div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:Grahm_and_Chally_in_Ash_Heap.png"></a></p></div><p>Grahm in the Ash Heap</p></div><div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:FO76_Grahm_and_Chally_in_Forest.png"></a></p></div><p>Grahm in the Forest</p></div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:FO76WL_Grahm_Crater.png"></a></p></div><div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:FO76_Grahm_downed.png"></a></p></div><p>Grahm after being downed</p></div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:Primal_Cuts_Meat-Cook.png"></a></p></div><div><p><a href="/wiki/File:Atx_camp_floordecor_plushie_grahm_l.webp"></a></p></div></div>
<h2>References</h2>
<div><ol>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-1">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Smarty say once, "Murder is just okay. Trades? So good. Things break if you just take." Think about it."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-2">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Smarty said once, "Trade better than kills. Easy. Live to trade again." Think about it."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-3">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Moo-moo, you need good name. You remind me of... I dunno. Something. Someone. Huh. I like you, moo-moo. Gonna call you Chally. Quiet, you follow me. You a good friend. Carry my trades. Never go away, Chally. Me and you, always. Chally and Grahm, Grahm and Chally. Good friends on the road."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-4">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Grahm remember time, long ago. Weather get hot, go outside, cook meat. Delicious meat. Share with friends. Friends love meat and Grahm love friends. Grahm miss that. So Grahm start Meat Week. Together we meat-cook, we meat eat, we meat-share. Humans are Grahm's friends, we meat eat together. But no eat human meat. Grahm is good. Grahm don't do that."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-5">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Grahm tell humans story of first Meat Week. Sunny weather make Grahm want cook meat good. So Grahm do. Grahm have many meat days. Want to name it. Try "Meat Many Days." No, bad words. So Grahm think "Many days... Day... Week... Meat... Week. Grahm do Meat Week! Wahaha! That great day. Like now. Now great day. Great Meat Week."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-6">↑</a> Grahm: <i>"Hey. Hey you. You different than the other squishies. You seem fresh. Not stinky. How so not stinky?"</i><br /><a href="/wiki/Sofia_Daguerre">Commander Daguerre</a>: <i>"Oh, uh, well. Okay. Thanks? It's probably because I haven't been irradiated and soaked with all the despair yet. No doubt I'll probably start... stinking... soon though. Being in space kept me safe from a lot of things for a while."</i><br />Grahm: <i>"SPACE?! You're from... the MOON?! Or... the SUN?! Or... the little TWINKLES?!"</i><br />Commander Daguerre: <i>"The Space Station, yes, but... before it crashed. All that is in the past though --"</i><br />Grahm: <i>"Can you take Chally to Space? Chally want to fly someday. Grahm okay with the ground. But Chally have dreams."</i><br />Commander Daguerre: <i>"Uh... I haven't been able to get in touch with the USSA ---"</i><br />Grahm: <i>"What do Space people eat? You eat meat? Space meat?! MOON MEAT?"</i><br />Commander Daguerre: <i>"Moon... meat? No. I eat grains, plants, mushrooms... I don't eat meat. Wait... do you think the moon is made of meat?"</i><br />Grahm: <i>"Oh! Greenies. Like Chally. SEE? Chally is ready for SPACE! Chally is going to the MOON!"</i><br />Commander Daguerre: <i>"Er... well. I doubt that we could find a helmet ---"</i><br />Grahm: <i>"Chally isn't Moo-Moo for long! Soon Chally is MOON-MOON!"</i><br />Commander Daguerre: <i>"Why not? Dream big or don't dream at all... um. I gotta get back to... literally anything else now."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Grahm/Dialogue">Grahm</a> and <a href="/wiki/Sofia_Daguerre/Dialogue#21">Sofia Daguerre's dialogue</a>) <a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/File:Astronaut_Grahm_Chally_Chat.ogg">https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/File:Astronaut_Grahm_Chally_Chat.ogg</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-7">↑</a> <a href="/wiki/Ayla%27s_plans">Ayla's plans</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-8">↑</a> <a href="/wiki/Marion_Copeland">Marion Copeland</a>: <i>"I heard there's a Super Mutant in Appalachia who's all about business. Now there's a guy with his priorities straight."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Marion_Copeland/Dialogue">Marion Copeland's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-9">↑</a> <a href="/wiki/Maul">Maul</a>: <i>"Maul know Grahm. He have pet too, and not eat. Maul like this. Not every food goes in stomach."</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Maul/Dialogue#212">Maul's dialogue</a>)
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-10">↑</a> <a href="/wiki/Julie_(Wastelanders)">Julie</a>: <i>"I'm told there's a certain traveling merchant out there who really, really loves meat. He's asked for songs about it and this is about as close as I can get. Enjoy! "Butcher Pete": how much should we read into this song? You make the call! You know him, you love him: here's Roy Brown, with "Butcher Pete". I'm sorry, what's that? It's a metaphor? Ohh, you don't say!"</i><br />(<a href="/wiki/Julie.txt">Julie's dialogue</a>)
</li>
</ol></div>
<p><b>Non-game</b>
</p>
<div><ol>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-11">↑</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/raychase/status/1062860339723722754">Ray Chase on Twitter</a>: <i>"Out today officially - I play Grahm the friendly Super Mutant and many others in Fallout 76! Happy Reclamation Day, Vault Dwellers!"</i>
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-12">↑</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/chipjoslin/status/1062726127364464640">Chip Joslin on Twitter</a>: <i>"Here's one of the seven characters I voice named Grahm. Thanks to the talented people at Blindlight, Bethesda and my amazing team at Arlene Thornton and Associates! Pick up the game and let's play"</i>
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-13">↑</a> <a href="https://twinfinite.net/gallery/fallout-76-voice-actor-voice-cast/7/">Meet the Voice Actors of Fallout 76’s Voice Cast</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#cite_ref-14">↑</a> BGS_Carl (<a href="/wiki/Carl_McKevitt">Carl McKevitt</a>) <a href="https://i.imgur.com/uBL3Dpz.png">on Bethesda Game Studios' official Discord</a>
</li>
</ol></div>
<div><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Navbox_vendors_FO76">v</a> · <a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template_talk:Navbox_vendors_FO76">d</a> · <a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Navbox_vendors_FO76?action=edit">e</a></p></div><div><p><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_vendors"><i>Fallout 76</i> vendors</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="/wiki/Legendary_scrip"></a> <a href="/wiki/Legendary_scrip">Legendary scrip</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Purveyor_Murmrgh">Purveyor Murmrgh</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="/wiki/Gold_bullion"></a> <a href="/wiki/Gold_bullion">Gold bullion</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Minerva">Minerva</a> · <a href="/wiki/Mortimer_(Wastelanders)">Mortimer</a> · <a href="/wiki/Reginald_Stone">Regs</a> · <a href="/wiki/Samuel_(Wastelanders)">Samuel</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="/wiki/Stamp">Stamps</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Giuseppe_Della_Ripa">Giuseppe</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="/wiki/Bottle_cap"></a> <a href="/wiki/Cap_(Fallout_76)">Caps</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><b>Allies</b> (): <a href="/wiki/Beckett_(Wastelanders)">Beckett</a> · <a href="/wiki/Daphne">Daphne</a> · <a href="/wiki/Katherine_Swan">Katherine Swan</a> · <a href="/wiki/Maul">Maul</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sam_Nguyen">Sam Nguyen</a> · <a href="/wiki/Solomon_Hardy">Solomon Hardy</a> · <a href="/wiki/Xerxo">Xerxo</a> · <a href="/wiki/Yasmin_Chowdhury">Yasmin Chowdhury</a>
<p><b>Ally associates</b>: <a href="/wiki/ATHENA">ATHENA</a> ()<br />
<b>Whitesprings</b>: <a href="/wiki/Alexis">Alexis</a> · <a href="/wiki/Antoine">Antoine</a> · <a href="/wiki/Brotherhood_vendor">Brotherhood vendor</a> · <a href="/wiki/Bubbles">Bubbles</a> · <a href="/wiki/Cap%27n_Kidd">Cap'n</a> · <a href="/wiki/Cunningham_(Fallout_76)">Cunningham</a> ·<br /> <a href="/wiki/Doc_Stanley">Doc Stanley</a> · <a href="/wiki/Flauresca">Flauresca</a> · <a href="/wiki/Flintlock">Flintlock</a> · <a href="/wiki/Free_States_vendor">Free States vendor</a> · <a href="/wiki/Friedrich">Friedrich</a> · <a href="/wiki/Helena_(Fallout_76)">Helena</a> · <a href="/wiki/Marie_(Fallout_76)">Marie</a> · <a href="/wiki/MODUS_medical_terminal">MODUS medical terminal</a> · <a href="/wiki/MODUS_armory_terminal">MODUS armory terminal</a> · <a href="/wiki/MODUS_production_terminal">MODUS production terminal</a> · <a href="/wiki/MODUS_science_terminal">MODUS science terminal</a> · <a href="/wiki/Pendleton">Pendleton</a> · <a href="/wiki/Raiders_vendor">Raiders vendor</a> · <a href="/wiki/Responders_vendor">Responders vendor</a> · <a href="/wiki/Shopping_mall_vendor">Shopping mall vendor</a> · <a href="/wiki/Tannin">Tannin</a> · <a href="/wiki/Tweed">Tweed</a> · <a href="/wiki/The_Whitespring_Station_vendor">The Whitespring Station vendor</a><br />
<b>Crater</b>: <a href="/wiki/Ae-Ri">Ae-Ri</a> · <a href="/wiki/Molly_(Wastelanders)">Molly</a> · <a href="/wiki/Raf">Raf</a><br />
<b>Foundation</b>: <a href="/wiki/Sunny_(Wastelanders)">Sunny (Armory)</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sunny_(Wastelanders)">Sunny (General)</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sunny_(Wastelanders)">Sunny (Kitchen)</a><br />
<b>Blue Ridge</b>: <a href="/wiki/Carver_Timmerman">Carver Timmerman</a> · <a href="/wiki/Eugenie">Eugenie</a> · <a href="/wiki/Rudy_Fernandez">Rudy Fernandez</a><br />
</p>
<b>Other</b>: <a href="/wiki/Duchess">Duchess</a> · <strong>Grahm</strong> () · <a href="/wiki/Mr._Squeeze">Mr. Squeeze</a> () <a href="/wiki/Scavenger_trader">Scavenger trader</a> () · <a href="/wiki/Smiley_(Wastelanders)">Smiley</a> () · <a href="/wiki/Traveling_merchant_(Fallout_76)">Traveling merchant</a> () · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Bob">Vendor bot Bob</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Chad">Vendor bot Chad</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Greg">Vendor bot Greg</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Mack">Vendor bot Mack</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Phoenix">Vendor bot Phoenix</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Raider">Vendor bot Raider</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Resin">Vendor bot Resin</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Responder">Vendor bot Responder</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Responder_(random_encounter)">Vendor bot Responder</a> () · <a href="/wiki/Vendor_bot_Wallace">Vendor bot Wallace</a> · <a href="/wiki/Watoga_vendor_bot">Watoga vendor bot</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div>
<div><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Navbox_characters_FO76">v</a> · <a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template_talk:Navbox_characters_FO76">d</a> · <a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Navbox_characters_FO76?action=edit">e</a></p></div><div><p><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_characters"><i>Fallout 76</i> major characters</a></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_factions">Major factions</a> (base game)</p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>Player character</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Vault_Dweller_(Fallout_76)">Vault Dweller</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Steel_(Fallout_76)">Brotherhood of Steel</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Elizabeth_Taggerdy">Elizabeth Taggerdy</a> · <a href="/wiki/Esposito">Esposito</a> · <a href="/wiki/Gary_Weber">Gary Weber</a> · <a href="/wiki/Grant_McNamara">Grant McNamara</a> · <a href="/wiki/Hailey_Takano">Hailey Takano</a> · <a href="/wiki/Hannah_de_Silva">Hannah de Silva</a> · <a href="/wiki/Johnny_Moreno">Johnny Moreno</a> · <a href="/wiki/Roger_Maxson">Roger Maxson</a> · <a href="/wiki/Ted_Wilson">Ted Wilson</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Enclave_(Fallout_76)">Enclave</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Ellen_Santiago">Ellen Santiago</a> · <a href="/wiki/Jefferson_Grey">Jefferson Grey</a> · <a href="/wiki/MODUS">MODUS</a> · <a href="/wiki/Ragnarsdottir">Ragnarsdottir</a> · <a href="/wiki/Thomas_Eckhart">Thomas Eckhart</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Free_States">Free States</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Abigayle_Singh">Abigayle Singh</a> · <a href="/wiki/Ella_Ames">Ella Ames</a> · <a href="/wiki/Lucy_Harwick">Lucy Harwick</a> · <a href="/wiki/Raleigh_Clay">Raleigh Clay</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sam_Blackwell">Sam Blackwell</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Raiders_(Fallout_76)">Raiders</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Brody_Torrance">Brody Torrance</a> · <a href="/wiki/David_Thorpe">David Thorpe</a> · <a href="/wiki/Freddie_Lang">Freddie Lang</a> · <a href="/wiki/Margie_McClintock">Margie McClintock</a> · <a href="/wiki/Morris_Stevens">Morris Stevens</a> · <a href="/wiki/Olivia_Rivers">Olivia Rivers</a> · <a href="/wiki/Rosalynn_Jeffries">Rosalynn Jeffries</a> · <a href="/wiki/Rose_(Fallout_76)">Rose</a> · <a href="/wiki/Walter_Griswold">Walter Griswold</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Responders">Responders</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Dassa_Ben-Ami">Dassa Ben-Ami</a> · <a href="/wiki/Hank_Madigan">Hank Madigan</a> · <a href="/wiki/Jeff_Nakamura">Jeff Nakamura</a> · <a href="/wiki/Maria_Chavez">Maria Chavez</a> · <a href="/wiki/Melody_Larkin">Melody Larkin</a> · <a href="/wiki/Miguel_Caldera">Miguel Caldera</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>Miscellaneous</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Barbara_Elizabeth">Barbara Elizabeth</a> · <a href="/wiki/Charles_(Cult_of_the_Mothman)">Charles</a> · <a href="/wiki/Evan_(Fallout_76)">Evan</a> · <a href="/wiki/Evans">Evans</a> · <strong>Grahm</strong> · <a href="/wiki/Otis_Pike">Otis Pike</a> · <a href="/wiki/Purveyor_Murmrgh">Purveyor Murmrgh</a> · <a href="/wiki/Reuben_Gill">Reuben Gill</a> · <a href="/wiki/Scott_Conroy">Scott Conroy</a> · <a href="/wiki/Scott_Turner">Scott Turner</a> · <a href="/wiki/Shannon_Rivers">Shannon Rivers</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vault_76_overseer">Vault 76 overseer</a> · <a href="/wiki/Wise_Mothman">Wise Mothman</a> · <a href="/wiki/ZAX_1.3c">ZAX</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><i><a href="/wiki/Wastelanders">Wastelanders</a></i></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Fallout_76_allies">Ally</a> quests</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/A.T.H.E.N.A.">A.T.H.E.N.A.</a> · <a href="/wiki/Beckett_(Wastelanders)">Beckett</a> · <a href="/wiki/Emerson_Hale">Emerson Hale</a> · <a href="/wiki/Frankie_Beckett">Frankie Beckett</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sage">Sage</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sofia_Daguerre">Sofia Daguerre</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Raiders_(Wastelanders)">Crater Raiders</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Caleb_Fisher">Caleb Fisher</a> · <a href="/wiki/Gail">Gail</a> · <a href="/wiki/Johnny_Weston">Johnny Weston</a> · <a href="/wiki/Lev">Lev</a> · <a href="/wiki/Lucky_Lou">Lucky Lou</a> · <a href="/wiki/Meg_Groberg">Meg Groberg</a> · <a href="/wiki/Ra-Ra">Ra-Ra</a> · <a href="/wiki/Weasel">Weasel</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Settlers_(Wastelanders)">Foundation Settlers</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Fred_Radcliff">Fred Radcliff</a> · <a href="/wiki/Jen">Jen</a> · <a href="/wiki/Maggie_Williams">Maggie Williams</a> · <a href="/wiki/Mochou">Mochou</a> · <a href="/wiki/Paige">Paige</a> · <a href="/wiki/Penelope_Hornwright">Penelope Hornwright</a> · <a href="/wiki/Ward_(Wastelanders)">Ward</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>Miscellaneous</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Daniel_(Wastelanders)">Daniel</a> · <a href="/wiki/Duchess">Duchess</a> · <a href="/wiki/Mordecai_McCoy">Mordecai McCoy</a> · <a href="/wiki/Roper">Roper</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sol">Sol</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vault_76_overseer">Vault 76 overseer</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><i><a href="/wiki/Steel_Dawn">Steel Dawn</a></i> and <i><a href="/wiki/Steel_Reign">Steel Reign</a></i></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/Brotherhood_First_Expeditionary_Force">Brotherhood of Steel</a></td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Colin_Putnam">Colin Putnam</a> · <a href="/wiki/Daniel_Shin">Daniel Shin</a> · <a href="/wiki/Erika_Hewsen">Erika Hewsen</a> · <a href="/wiki/Leila_Rahmani">Leila Rahmani</a> · <a href="/wiki/Marcia_Leone">Marcia Leone</a> · <a href="/wiki/Marty_Putnam">Marty Putnam</a> · <a href="/wiki/Norland">Norland</a> · <a href="/wiki/Odessa_Valdez">Odessa Valdez</a> · <a href="/wiki/Russell_Dorsey">Russell Dorsey</a> · <a href="/wiki/Vernon_Dodge">Vernon Dodge</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>Raiders</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Dagger">Dagger</a> · <a href="/wiki/Burke_(Steel_Dawn)">Burke</a> · <a href="/wiki/Pierce_(Steel_Dawn)">Pierce</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sheena">Sheena</a> · <a href="/wiki/Tally_Lang">Tally Lang</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>Miscellaneous</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Aries">Aries</a>  · <a href="/wiki/Cassie_Halloway">Cassie Halloway</a> · <a href="/wiki/Edgar_Blackburn">Edgar Blackburn</a> · <a href="/wiki/Farha">Farha</a> · <a href="/wiki/Jain_(Steel_Reign)">Jain</a> · <a href="/wiki/Jennie_Brown">Jennie Brown</a> · <a href="/wiki/Joanna_Mayfield">Joanna Mayfield</a> · <a href="/wiki/Mike_Tiller">Mike Tiller</a> · <a href="/wiki/Nellie_Wright">Nellie Wright</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table><tbody><tr><th><div><p><i><a href="/wiki/Expeditions:_The_Pitt">Expeditions: The Pitt</a></i></p></div></th></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>The Whitespring Refuge</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Esme_Rousseau">Esme Rousseau</a> · <a href="/wiki/Giuseppe_Della_Ripa">Giuseppe</a> · <a href="/wiki/Lennox">Lennox</a> · <a href="/wiki/Orlando">Orlando</a> · <a href="/wiki/Rucker">Rucker</a> · <a href="/wiki/Skippy_Roerich">Skippy Roerich</a> · <a href="/wiki/Sophie_Wagoner">Sophie Wagoner</a></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td>The Pitt</td><td></td><td><a href="/wiki/Ava_Rose">Ava Rose</a> · <a href="/wiki/Danilo">Danilo</a> · <a href="/wiki/Hex_(Expeditions:_The_Pitt)">Hex</a> · <a href="/wiki/Wicker">Wicker</a></td></tr></tbody></table><table></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div>
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 in: Fallout 76 merchants, Fallout 76 super mutant characters
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 Grahm

 View source
 * History
 * Talk (0)
 For other similarly-named characters, see Graham.
 

 Fallout 76 vendor

 Grahm

 * Trading
 * Meat Week

 Grahm traveling Appalachia

 Grahm hosting a meat cook during Meat Week

 * Overview
 * Stats
 * Technical

 Lore

 Race

 Super mutant

 Gender

 Male

 Affiliation

 Chally the moo-moo

 Role

 Vendor
 Chef

 Gameplay

 Location

 Appalachia

 Events

 Grahm's Meat-Cook
 Primal Cuts

 Random encounters

 Travel

 Appearances

 Fallout 76
 
 0 8 0 0 0 0 0
 

 Level

 50

 Misc stats

 Hit Points: 541 
 Action Points: 50 
 Damage Res.: 135 
 Energy Res.: 80 
 Radiation Res.: Immune
 

 Combat

 Faction

 GQ10_SupermutantMerchantVendorFaction
 PlayerFriendFaction

 Class

 BoSScribeClass

 Combat style

 csSupermutantRanged

 Aggression

 Unaggressive

 Confidence

 Foolhardy

 Assistance

 Helps Allies

 Voice actor

 Ray Chase
 Chip Joslin (alternate)
 Dave Fennoy ()

 Designer

 Carl McKevitt (Meat Week)

 Form ID

 0017F096

 Ref ID

 0044D49E

 Editor ID

 GQ_SuperMutantMerchant_Grahm

 Race

 SuperMutantRace

 Dialogue

 Grahm/Dialogue

 “ Grahm and Chally the moo-moo's Fair Trades. We find you. You trade fair. Or die. Guaranteed. ”

 https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/File:Grahm_002ba3cd_1.ogg

 Grahm is a friendly super mutant merchant and chef living in Appalachia with his pack brahmin companion, Chally the moo-moo.

 Contents

 * 1 Background
 * 2 Interactions with the player character
 + 2.1 Interactions overview
 * 3 Inventory
 * 4 Merchandise
 * 5 Location
 * 6 Notes
 * 7 Appearances
 * 8 Behind the scenes
 * 9 Gallery
 * 10 References

 Background

 Little is known of Grahm's history prior to 2102, other than what minute information he offers in his dialogue. He mentions someone he refers to as "Smarty," whose advice guided Grahm into becoming a merchant.[1][2]

 By 2102, Grahm would be one of, if not the only, remaining live humanoids that was both sapient and friendly towards humans in Appalachia. As Dwellers of Vault 76 re-entered the world and swept into Appalachia, Grahm found much enjoyment in trading with them.

 Grahm travels with 'Chally the moo-moo' (rhymes with "alley") and considers trading to be a game with the brahmin.[3] He puts a great deal of personal responsibility into the overall wellbeing of Chally and will frequently engage in one-sided conversation with her on their travels.

 A long time ago during a warm day, Grahm used to spend time with his friends and cook meat. Since then, he has felt alone, remembering the old days. Due to that, Grahm decided to cook meat again for his new friends he had made across Appalachia.[4] According to Grahm, the first Meat Week was on a sunny day that made the super mutant want to spend time outside and cook. Grahm began to have more and more of these "meat days" and wanted to come up with a name for them. Eventually, after tossing out "Meat Many Days," he decided on "Meat Week."[5]

 Sometime after Reclamation Day, Grahm and Chally hosted their "Meat Week" event close to Vault 76, with an express invitation toward the Vault Dwellers. Here, Grahm would prepare a grand cookout, with Dwellers assisting him in his grilling, in exchange for various prizes he'd collected through trading in the past year.

 As of 2103, Grahm has become acquainted with many of the newly-arrived people in Appalachia, such as Ayla and Sofia Daguerre.[6] He is fond of stopping by the new farms and settlements that have sprung up, likely due to the new business opportunities they bring.[7] His business is well-known around Appalachia, mostly for the novelty of a super mutant who sells goods, with even the scavengers of Emmett Mountain disposal site having heard of tales of the friendly super mutant trader.[8] Maul, another super mutant, also knows Grahm.[9]

 Interactions with the player character

 Interactions overview

 Interactions
 This character cannot be killed. 
  * Accepts 
 This character is a vendor. * Sells: 
  plans, junk, ammo, and mods
 This character is involved in events. Grahm's Meat-Cook 
  
 This character is involved in random encounters. Travel (all regions) 
  
 

 Inventory

 Apparel Weapon Other items
 Super sledge 
 Super mutant armor Pipe rifle 
 Super mutant helmet Sledgehammer 
 Grahm's Tenderizer 
 

 Merchandise

 Grahm is the only source of the following items:

 Plan: Domestic kitchen tables Plan: Metal picnic table Plan: Mirror ball 
 Plan: Park bench Plan: Radiation emitter Plan: Starburst clock
 Plan: Stone benches Recipe: Chally's feed (only during Meat Week) 
 

 The following items, which can be obtained by other means, are sold only by Grahm:

 Plan: Chinese officer sword Plan: Fire axe Plan: Gamma gun 
 Plan: Ripper Plan: Shishkebab Plan: Sledge hammer
 Plan: Super sledge Plan: War drum 
 

 Location

 * Chance to spawn at travel-type encounters throughout Appalachia.
 * While Meat Week is active, he can be found at the unmarked cookout spot southwest of Vault 76 for the full duration of the event.

 Notes

 * Grahm does take damage from enemies, and can be downed, but he will never die and quickly recovers from an attack. Grahm will not respond to attacks from player characters; however, he will fight enemies that are present along his route, which can be used to the player character's benefit by leading enemies toward Grahm to fight.
 * At night, Grahm will eventually stop moving.
 * When Grahm is near Hillfolk Hotdogs, he can say that this place is familiar, the meat he smells is familiar, and meat is where the home is.
 * Julie of Appalachia Radio has been in contact with Grahm, who has repeatedly asked for songs about meat, with "Butcher Pete" being the closest one she can find.[10]

 Appearances

 Grahm appears only in Fallout 76.

 Behind the scenes

 * Three different voice actors have had the role of Grahm attributed to them, including Ray Chase, Chip Joslin and Dave Fennoy (all of whom also voice generic super mutants). Chase has promoted the role of Grahm on social media,[Non-game 1] as has Joslin.[Non-game 2] Joslin was described as an "alternate" voice for Grahm in a Twinfinite article,[Non-game 3] though the exact distinction of who voiced which lines between Chase and Joslin is unclear. Fennoy only voiced Grahm as part of dialogue from the Wastelanders update, including lines such as his conversation with Sofia Daguerre.
 * Quest designer Carl McKevitt contributed to the writing of Grahm's Meat Week dialogue, though he did not create the character.[Non-game 4]

 Gallery

 Grahm in the Ash Heap
 Grahm in the Forest
 Grahm at the Crater
 Grahm after being downed
 As depicted in Grahm's Meat-Cook
 Grahm plushie

 References

 1. ↑ Grahm: "Smarty say once, "Murder is just okay. Trades? So good. Things break if you just take." Think about it."
 ( Grahm's dialogue )
 2. ↑ Grahm: "Smarty said once, "Trade better than kills. Easy. Live to trade again." Think about it."
 ( Grahm's dialogue )
 3. ↑ Grahm: "Moo-moo, you need good name. You remind me of... I dunno. Something. Someone. Huh. I like you, moo-moo. Gonna call you Chally. Quiet, you follow me. You a good friend. Carry my trades. Never go away, Chally. Me and you, always. Chally and Grahm, Grahm and Chally. Good friends on the road."
 ( Grahm's dialogue )
 4. ↑ Grahm: "Grahm remember time, long ago. Weather get hot, go outside, cook meat. Delicious meat. Share with friends. Friends love meat and Grahm love friends. Grahm miss that. So Grahm start Meat Week. Together we meat-cook, we meat eat, we meat-share. Humans are Grahm's friends, we meat eat together. But no eat human meat. Grahm is good. Grahm don't do that."
 ( Grahm's dialogue )
 5. ↑ Grahm: "Grahm tell humans story of first Meat Week. Sunny weather make Grahm want cook meat good. So Grahm do. Grahm have many meat days. Want to name it. Try "Meat Many Days." No, bad words. So Grahm think "Many days... Day... Week... Meat... Week. Grahm do Meat Week! Wahaha! That great day. Like now. Now great day. Great Meat Week."
 ( Grahm's dialogue )
 6. ↑ Grahm: "Hey. Hey you. You different than the other squishies. You seem fresh. Not stinky. How so not stinky?"
 Commander Daguerre : "Oh, uh, well. Okay. Thanks? It's probably because I haven't been irradiated and soaked with all the despair yet. No doubt I'll probably start... stinking... soon though. Being in space kept me safe from a lot of things for a while."
 Grahm: "SPACE?! You're from... the MOON?! Or... the SUN?! Or... the little TWINKLES?!"
 Commander Daguerre: " The Space Station, yes, but... before it crashed. All that is in the past though -- "
 Grahm: "Can you take Chally to Space? Chally want to fly someday. Grahm okay with the ground. But Chally have dreams."
 Commander Daguerre: "Uh... I haven't been able to get in touch with the USSA ---"
 Grahm: "What do Space people eat? You eat meat? Space meat?! MOON MEAT?"
 Commander Daguerre: " Moon... meat? No. I eat grains, plants, mushrooms... I don't eat meat. Wait... do you think the moon is made of meat? "
 Grahm: "Oh! Greenies. Like Chally. SEE? Chally is ready for SPACE! Chally is going to the MOON!"
 Commander Daguerre: " Er... well. I doubt that we could find a helmet --- "
 Grahm: "Chally isn't Moo-Moo for long! Soon Chally is MOON-MOON!"
 Commander Daguerre: "Why not? Dream big or don't dream at all... um. I gotta get back to... literally anything else now."
 ( Grahm and Sofia Daguerre's dialogue ) https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/File:Astronaut_Grahm_Chally_Chat.ogg
 7. ↑ Ayla's plans
 8. ↑ Marion Copeland : "I heard there's a Super Mutant in Appalachia who's all about business. Now there's a guy with his priorities straight."
 ( Marion Copeland's dialogue )
 9. ↑ Maul : "Maul know Grahm. He have pet too, and not eat. Maul like this. Not every food goes in stomach."
 ( Maul's dialogue )
 10. ↑ Julie : "I'm told there's a certain traveling merchant out there who really, really loves meat. He's asked for songs about it and this is about as close as I can get. Enjoy! "Butcher Pete": how much should we read into this song? You make the call! You know him, you love him: here's Roy Brown, with "Butcher Pete". I'm sorry, what's that? It's a metaphor? Ohh, you don't say!"
 ( Julie's dialogue )

 Non-game

 1. ↑ Ray Chase on Twitter : "Out today officially - I play Grahm the friendly Super Mutant and many others in Fallout 76! Happy Reclamation Day, Vault Dwellers!"
 2. ↑ Chip Joslin on Twitter : "Here's one of the seven characters I voice named Grahm. Thanks to the talented people at Blindlight, Bethesda and my amazing team at Arlene Thornton and Associates! Pick up the game and let's play"
 3. ↑ Meet the Voice Actors of Fallout 76’s Voice Cast
 4. ↑ BGS_Carl ( Carl McKevitt ) on Bethesda Game Studios' official Discord
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For other similarly-named characters, see Graham.
   
 “Grahm and Chally the moo-moo's Fair Trades. We find you. You trade fair. Or die. Guaranteed.” 
 Grahm is a friendly super mutant merchant and chef living in Appalachia with his pack brahmin companion, Chally the moo-moo.
Background
Little is known of Grahm's history prior to 2102, other than what minute information he offers in his dialogue. He mentions someone he refers to as "Smarty," whose advice guided Grahm into becoming a merchant. [1]   [2] 
 By 2102, Grahm would be one of, if not the only, remaining live humanoids that was both sapient and friendly towards humans in Appalachia. As Dwellers of Vault 76 re-entered the world and swept into Appalachia, Grahm found much enjoyment in trading with them.
 Grahm travels with 'Chally the moo-moo' (rhymes with "alley") and considers trading to be a game with the brahmin. [3]  He puts a great deal of personal responsibility into the overall wellbeing of Chally and will frequently engage in one-sided conversation with her on their travels.
 A long time ago during a warm day, Grahm used to spend time with his friends and cook meat. Since then, he has felt alone, remembering the old days. Due to that, Grahm decided to cook meat again for his new friends he had made across Appalachia. [4]  According to Grahm, the first Meat Week was on a sunny day that made the super mutant want to spend time outside and cook. Grahm began to have more and more of these "meat days" and wanted to come up with a name for them. Eventually, after tossing out "Meat Many Days," he decided on "Meat Week." [5] 
 Sometime after Reclamation Day, Grahm and Chally hosted their "Meat Week" event close to Vault 76, with an express invitation toward the Vault Dwellers. Here, Grahm would prepare a grand cookout, with Dwellers assisting him in his grilling, in exchange for various prizes he'd collected through trading in the past year.
 As of 2103, Grahm has become acquainted with many of the newly-arrived people in Appalachia, such as Ayla and Sofia Daguerre. [6]  He is fond of stopping by the new farms and settlements that have sprung up, likely due to the new business opportunities they bring. [7]  His business is well-known around Appalachia, mostly for the novelty of a super mutant who sells goods, with even the scavengers of Emmett Mountain disposal site having heard of tales of the friendly super mutant trader. [8]  Maul, another super mutant, also knows Grahm. [9] 
Interactions with the player character
Interactions overview
 
 Interactions
 
      
This character cannot be killed.
 
 
 
 
 
 
	
 
      
This character is a  vendor .
 Accepts   
Sells: 
plans, junk, ammo, and mods
 
 
 
 
 
 
      
This character is involved in events .
 Grahm's Meat-Cook 
 
      
This character is involved in random encounters .
Travel (all regions)
 
 
Inventory
Merchandise
Grahm is the only source of the following items:
The following items, which can be obtained by other means, are sold only by Grahm:
Location
 Chance to spawn at travel-type encounters throughout Appalachia.
While Meat Week is active, he can be found at the unmarked cookout spot southwest of Vault 76 for the full duration of the event. 
Notes
 Grahm does take damage from enemies, and can be downed, but he will never die and quickly recovers from an attack. Grahm will not respond to attacks from player characters; however, he will fight enemies that are present along his route, which can be used to the player character's benefit by leading enemies toward Grahm to fight.
At night, Grahm will eventually stop moving.
When Grahm is near Hillfolk Hotdogs, he can say that this place is familiar, the meat he smells is familiar, and meat is where the home is.
 Julie of Appalachia Radio has been in contact with Grahm, who has repeatedly asked for songs about meat, with "Butcher Pete" being the closest one she can find. [10]   
Appearances
Grahm appears only in  Fallout 76 .
Behind the scenes
 Three different voice actors have had the role of Grahm attributed to them, including Ray Chase, Chip Joslin and Dave Fennoy (all of whom also voice generic super mutants). Chase has promoted the role of Grahm on social media, [Non-game 1]  as has Joslin. [Non-game 2]  Joslin was described as an "alternate" voice for Grahm in a Twinfinite article, [Non-game 3]  though the exact distinction of who voiced which lines between Chase and Joslin is unclear. Fennoy only voiced Grahm as part of dialogue from the  Wastelanders  update, including lines such as his conversation with Sofia Daguerre.
Quest designer Carl McKevitt contributed to the writing of Grahm's Meat Week dialogue, though he did not create the character. [Non-game 4]   
Gallery
        Grahm in the Ash Heap         Grahm in the Forest               Grahm after being downed              
References
 
 ↑ Grahm: "Smarty say once, "Murder is just okay. Trades? So good. Things break if you just take." Think about it." (Grahm's dialogue)
 ↑ Grahm: "Smarty said once, "Trade better than kills. Easy. Live to trade again." Think about it." (Grahm's dialogue)
 ↑ Grahm: "Moo-moo, you need good name. You remind me of... I dunno. Something. Someone. Huh. I like you, moo-moo. Gonna call you Chally. Quiet, you follow me. You a good friend. Carry my trades. Never go away, Chally. Me and you, always. Chally and Grahm, Grahm and Chally. Good friends on the road." (Grahm's dialogue)
 ↑ Grahm: "Grahm remember time, long ago. Weather get hot, go outside, cook meat. Delicious meat. Share with friends. Friends love meat and Grahm love friends. Grahm miss that. So Grahm start Meat Week. Together we meat-cook, we meat eat, we meat-share. Humans are Grahm's friends, we meat eat together. But no eat human meat. Grahm is good. Grahm don't do that." (Grahm's dialogue)
 ↑ Grahm: "Grahm tell humans story of first Meat Week. Sunny weather make Grahm want cook meat good. So Grahm do. Grahm have many meat days. Want to name it. Try "Meat Many Days." No, bad words. So Grahm think "Many days... Day... Week... Meat... Week. Grahm do Meat Week! Wahaha! That great day. Like now. Now great day. Great Meat Week." (Grahm's dialogue)
 ↑ Grahm: "Hey. Hey you. You different than the other squishies. You seem fresh. Not stinky. How so not stinky?"  Commander Daguerre: "Oh, uh, well. Okay. Thanks? It's probably because I haven't been irradiated and soaked with all the despair yet. No doubt I'll probably start... stinking... soon though. Being in space kept me safe from a lot of things for a while." Grahm: "SPACE?! You're from... the MOON?! Or... the SUN?! Or... the little TWINKLES?!" Commander Daguerre: "The Space Station, yes, but... before it crashed. All that is in the past though --" Grahm: "Can you take Chally to Space? Chally want to fly someday. Grahm okay with the ground. But Chally have dreams." Commander Daguerre: "Uh... I haven't been able to get in touch with the USSA ---" Grahm: "What do Space people eat? You eat meat? Space meat?! MOON MEAT?" Commander Daguerre: "Moon... meat? No. I eat grains, plants, mushrooms... I don't eat meat. Wait... do you think the moon is made of meat?" Grahm: "Oh! Greenies. Like Chally. SEE? Chally is ready for SPACE! Chally is going to the MOON!" Commander Daguerre: "Er... well. I doubt that we could find a helmet ---" Grahm: "Chally isn't Moo-Moo for long! Soon Chally is MOON-MOON!" Commander Daguerre: "Why not? Dream big or don't dream at all... um. I gotta get back to... literally anything else now." (Grahm and Sofia Daguerre's dialogue) https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/File:Astronaut_Grahm_Chally_Chat.ogg
 ↑ Ayla's plans
 ↑ Marion Copeland: "I heard there's a Super Mutant in Appalachia who's all about business. Now there's a guy with his priorities straight." (Marion Copeland's dialogue)
 ↑ Maul: "Maul know Grahm. He have pet too, and not eat. Maul like this. Not every food goes in stomach." (Maul's dialogue)
 ↑ Julie: "I'm told there's a certain traveling merchant out there who really, really loves meat. He's asked for songs about it and this is about as close as I can get. Enjoy! "Butcher Pete": how much should we read into this song? You make the call! You know him, you love him: here's Roy Brown, with "Butcher Pete". I'm sorry, what's that? It's a metaphor? Ohh, you don't say!" (Julie's dialogue)
 
 Non-game
 
 ↑ Ray Chase on Twitter: "Out today officially - I play Grahm the friendly Super Mutant and many others in Fallout 76! Happy Reclamation Day, Vault Dwellers!"
 ↑ Chip Joslin on Twitter: "Here's one of the seven characters I voice named Grahm. Thanks to the talented people at Blindlight, Bethesda and my amazing team at Arlene Thornton and Associates! Pick up the game and let's play"
 ↑ Meet the Voice Actors of Fallout 76’s Voice Cast
 ↑ BGS_Carl (Carl McKevitt) on Bethesda Game Studios' official Discord
 
       v · d · e      Fallout 76 vendors                   Legendary scrip           Purveyor Murmrgh             Gold bullion           Minerva · Mortimer · Regs · Samuel           Stamps           Giuseppe             Caps           Allies (): Beckett · Daphne · Katherine Swan · Maul · Sam Nguyen · Solomon Hardy · Xerxo · Yasmin Chowdhury
 Ally associates: ATHENA ()
Whitesprings: Alexis · Antoine · Brotherhood vendor · Bubbles · Cap'n · Cunningham · Doc Stanley · Flauresca · Flintlock · Free States vendor · Friedrich · Helena · Marie · MODUS medical terminal · MODUS armory terminal · MODUS production terminal · MODUS science terminal · Pendleton · Raiders vendor · Responders vendor · Shopping mall vendor · Tannin · Tweed · The Whitespring Station vendor 
Crater: Ae-Ri · Molly · Raf 
Foundation: Sunny (Armory) · Sunny (General) · Sunny (Kitchen) 
Blue Ridge: Carver Timmerman · Eugenie · Rudy Fernandez 
Other: Duchess · Grahm () · Mr. Squeeze () Scavenger trader () · Smiley () · Traveling merchant () · Vendor bot Bob · Vendor bot Chad · Vendor bot Greg · Vendor bot Mack · Vendor bot Phoenix · Vendor bot Raider · Vendor bot Resin · Vendor bot Responder · Vendor bot Responder () · Vendor bot Wallace · Watoga vendor bot           
       v · d · e      Fallout 76 major characters                 Major factions (base game)         Player character    Vault Dweller         Brotherhood of Steel     Elizabeth Taggerdy · Esposito · Gary Weber · Grant McNamara · Hailey Takano · Hannah de Silva · Johnny Moreno · Roger Maxson · Ted Wilson         Enclave     Ellen Santiago · Jefferson Grey · MODUS · Ragnarsdottir · Thomas Eckhart         Free States     Abigayle Singh · Ella Ames · Lucy Harwick · Raleigh Clay · Sam Blackwell         Raiders     Brody Torrance · David Thorpe · Freddie Lang · Margie McClintock · Morris Stevens · Olivia Rivers · Rosalynn Jeffries · Rose · Walter Griswold         Responders     Dassa Ben-Ami · Hank Madigan · Jeff Nakamura · Maria Chavez · Melody Larkin · Miguel Caldera        Miscellaneous    Barbara Elizabeth · Charles · Evan · Evans · Grahm · Otis Pike · Purveyor Murmrgh · Reuben Gill · Scott Conroy · Scott Turner · Shannon Rivers · Vault 76 overseer · Wise Mothman · ZAX            Wastelanders            Ally quests    A.T.H.E.N.A. · Beckett · Emerson Hale · Frankie Beckett · Sage · Sofia Daguerre         Crater Raiders     Caleb Fisher · Gail · Johnny Weston · Lev · Lucky Lou · Meg Groberg · Ra-Ra · Weasel         Foundation Settlers     Fred Radcliff · Jen · Maggie Williams · Mochou · Paige · Penelope Hornwright · Ward        Miscellaneous    Daniel · Duchess · Mordecai McCoy · Roper · Sol · Vault 76 overseer            Steel Dawn  and  Steel Reign            Brotherhood of Steel     Colin Putnam · Daniel Shin · Erika Hewsen · Leila Rahmani · Marcia Leone · Marty Putnam · Norland · Odessa Valdez · Russell Dorsey · Vernon Dodge        Raiders    Dagger · Burke · Pierce · Sheena · Tally Lang        Miscellaneous    Aries  · Cassie Halloway · Edgar Blackburn · Farha · Jain · Jennie Brown · Joanna Mayfield · Mike Tiller · Nellie Wright            Expeditions: The Pitt           The Whitespring Refuge    Esme Rousseau · Giuseppe · Lennox · Orlando · Rucker · Skippy Roerich · Sophie Wagoner        The Pitt    Ava Rose · Danilo · Hex · Wicker
Grahm
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Grahm
https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names/details/grahm-1464115
Grahm - Baby name meaning, origin, and popularity
2020-08-01
None
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Our Baby Name Generator helps you find the perfect name, sorted by gender, letter, meaning, and more. You don't need to fill out every field, just the ones you're interested in.  About the name structure  I am looking for a           name starting with       and ending with       with           syllables.  About the name meaning  The name means       and the theme is           . The origin is           .
Grahm - Baby name meaning, origin, and popularity
https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names/details/grahm-1464115
https://twitter.com/RandallGrahm?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Tue Mar 31 20:05:24 +0000 2009
RandallGrahm?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
<div>Founder of @BonnyDoonVineyd, Partner in Language of Yes (http://languageofyeswine.com) and Quixotic Breeder of New Grape Varieties @Popelouchum.| profile_url: http://www.popelouchum.com | name: Randall Grahm | created_at: Tue Mar 31 20:05:24 +0000 2009 | favourites_count: 5062 | followers_count: 261397 | friends_count: 4602 | media_count: 1527 | possibly_sensitive: False | verified: False | statuses_count: 76131 | location: iPhone: 36.972572,-122.036209 </div>
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https://www.amazon.com/Pauline-Perspectives-Essays-Paul-2013/dp/0800699637
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3173/3173-h/3173-h.htm
ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET
2006-08-20
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<pre>Project Gutenberg's Essays on Paul Bourget, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Essays on Paul Bourget
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3173]
Last Updated: February 24, 2018
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET ***
Produced by David Widger
</pre>
 
 
 <h2>
 by Mark Twain
 </h2>
 
 <hr />
 
 <h2>
 Contents
 </h2>
 <div>
 <p>
 <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US </a>
 </p>
 <p>
 <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET </a>
 </p>
 </div>
 
 <hr />
 
 <h2>
 WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
 </h2>
 <p>
 He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does
 he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his
 parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon us—advertisedly
 in our own special interest—a natural apprehension moves us to ask,
 What is the diameter of his reflector?
 </p>
 <p>
 I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
 newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
 whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
 our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon the
 land.
 </p>
<pre> “His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
 timed.”
 “He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
 profitably studied.”
 </pre>
 <p>
 These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
 public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to whether
 so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
 70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
 pull it through without assistance.
 </p>
 <p>
 I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
 and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
 tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there
 was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became
 more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my
 mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment? What
 was his method?
 </p>
 <p>
 He had gotten his equipment in France.
 </p>
 <p>
 Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
 Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
 The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies
 their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to
 group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice
 shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he labels all
 those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is
 now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result he intimately
 knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true,
 but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had
 the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to
 error.
 </p>
 <p>
 The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
 Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be
 all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
 able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad
 observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is
 then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's
 chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no
 more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new
 ways which it will prefer to its own.
 </p>
 <p>
 To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be
 France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark—almost
 Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France, teach
 us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading.
 Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter.
 Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date—1809.
 Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we
 taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own
 specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility,
 Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate.
 Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot
 rob the poor to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the
 others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing
 left of the book.
 </p>
 <p>
 I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
 But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
 except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
 well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
 feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they
 had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And
 true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand,
 because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
 gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
 been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
 pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
 say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—subdued joy, so to speak,
 not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
 other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
 thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
 and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
 interviewer: “It was severe—yes, it was bitterly severe; but
 oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!”
 </p>
 <p>
 If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I
 seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to
 know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would
 be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
 understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
 </p>
 <p>
 It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself—that
 would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug
 to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug—that is quite a
 different matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows
 himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
 </p>
 <p>
 A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
 that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
 interior—its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
 knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
 or six—absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years
 and years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
 sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
 loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
 shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
 its adorations—of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the
 national name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
 through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
 </p>
 <p>
 There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
 life of a people and make a valuable report—the native novelist.
 This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have
 fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time.
 This native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
 absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived
 from conscious “observation”? The amount is so slight that it
 counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of
 the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation—absorption.
 The native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech,
 character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they
 mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be astonished
 to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of
 these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes a foreigner, with a
 foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State whose life is
 familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got
 his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
 both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to
 the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study-conscious observation—his
 failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the
 unacclimated observer, evidently.
 </p>
 <p>
 To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize
 the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of
 a few people grouped in a certain place—his own place—and that
 is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
 the people of the whole nation—the life of a group in a New England
 village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
 in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
 States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
 a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; and
 the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the
 Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the
 Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the
 Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
 Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the
 Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,
 the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. And
 when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of
 the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not
 anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, manners,
 feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
 </p>
<pre> “'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
 vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
 'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
 and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
 church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
 suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite
 sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
 great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
 Newport for those who choose to see it.”—M. Paul Bourget.
</pre>
 <p>
 [The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he
 has undertaken. “Records” is a pretty poor word there, but I
 think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word
 is 'fastes'. I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he
 expected to find the great “American soul” secreted behind the
 ostentations of Newport; and that he was going to get it out and examine
 it, and generalize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its
 hidden vast mystery: “the nature of the people” of the United
 States of America. We have been accused of being a nation addicted to
 inventing wild schemes. I trust that we shall be allowed to retire to
 second place now.
 </p>
 <p>
 There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
 “American.” There isn't a single human ambition, or
 religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code
 of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference
 for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head
 or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
 disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
 rationally be generalized as “American.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Whenever you have found what seems to be an “American”
 peculiarity, you have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in
 the social scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can
 cross the Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious
 drift, or sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of
 face, but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and
 west, where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with
 everything else which one might propose to call “American.” M.
 Bourget thinks he has found the American Coquette. If he had really found
 her he would also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she
 exists in other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart
 and the same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our
 coquette; I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our
 novels, and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen
 ours. He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was
 a Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
 and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
 “types,” and labeled them in his usual scientific way with
 “formulas”—brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a
 person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are
 pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important matter; they surprise,
 they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his
 efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of
 the coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:
 </p>
<pre> THE COLLECTOR.
 THE EQUILIBREE.
 THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
 THE BLUFFER.
 THE GIRL-BOY.
</pre>
 <p>
 If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
 obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
 them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and
 furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
 light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
 note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
 world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
 genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native
 the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel
 and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can
 tell him—any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was
 “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest—to be plain,
 it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless
 and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
 have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M.
 Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type
 of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these
 people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the
 same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and
 always the spirit of treachery.
 </p>
 <p>
 In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to
 the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
 frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
 situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
 confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
 </p>
 <p>
 But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
 himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
 exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
 himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
 daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
 worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
 that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
 unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his
 behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was
 “significant” facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine
 the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
 conspiracy against him almost from the start—a conspiracy to freight
 him up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed
 brains could invent.
 </p>
 <p>
 The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
 things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but
 they did not excite his. Consider this:
 </p>
<pre> “There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
 statue.”
 </pre>
 <p>
 If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
 reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and
 inquire a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the
 present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with
 this innocent comment:
 </p>
<pre> “This small fact is strangely significant.”
 </pre>
 <p>
 It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.
 </p>
 <p>
 Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of.
 I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
 suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
 strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If
 he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:
 </p>
<pre> “If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
 is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
 a tribute.”
 </pre>
 <p>
 Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;
 one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be
 ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a “tribute.” I
 think a little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like
 this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be
 ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like
 to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula:
 the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of
 argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for
 suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and
 regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.
 </p>
 <p>
 I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
 too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
 art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour
 intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves
 them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a
 mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American
 girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any
 other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.
 </p>
 <p>
 It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
 be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
 name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps
 one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German
 gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The
 nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two—the composed
 Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other
 countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us,
 but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it;
 it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty
 with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name “American.”
 That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but
 the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the
 beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that
 nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose
 our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't
 provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or
 summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things
 have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.
 </p>
 <p>
 It is my belief that there are some “national” traits and
 things scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that
 have lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is
 the dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
 since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
 about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
 few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
 people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
 women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
 how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot tell
 them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
 missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into
 this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let
 fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:
 </p>
<pre> “In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
 to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
 the weaknesses of the French soul.”
 </pre>
 <p>
 You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; a
 science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian
 existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be
 taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those pathetic,
 neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education
 which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our
 high Parisian life.
 </p>
 <p>
 I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been
 parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider the
 Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is “American”;
 and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is “American.” I
 believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
 American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,
 for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has existed
 everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
 </p>
 <p>
 I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
 to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
 efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of
 all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
 opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
 another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
 coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolerably
 long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably
 expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for
 them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter
 what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he
 had had the same chance.
 </p>
 <p>
 In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker
 stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a
 stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or
 her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
 </p>
 <p>
 But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
 there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
 almost an unknown thing—and has been, from the beginning.
 </p>
 <p>
 Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
 when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
 European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the
 Railroad King; France saw it in 1720—time of Law and the Mississippi
 Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
 madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
 comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a
 cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
 anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more “American”
 than it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
 Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.
 </p>
 <p>
 But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
 When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly
 and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters
 a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely
 examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go; but that
 is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know why that thing
 exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he will not let go of
 it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason
 where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not
 seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might
 almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.
 </p>
 <p>
 He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
 women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told
 him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the
 country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
 trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is not
 particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
 character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
 out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
 himself.
 </p>
 <p>
 In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
 are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
 that protects her?
 </p>
 <p>
 It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
 to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M.
 Bourget: “Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that
 a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
 beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room for
 the corruptor.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
 at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column—three
 columns—and with artillery.
 </p>
 <p>
 “Two reasons of a very different kind explain”—that
 fact.
 </p>
 <p>
 And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
 reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat
 now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I am honest
 and not trying to deceive any one.
 </p>
 <p>
 1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in
 New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a
 Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery
 with death.
 </p>
 <p>
 2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
 protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.
 </p>
 <p>
 If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
 irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
 'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this
 paralyzing Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.
 </p>
 <p>
 1. This universality of “protection” has existed in our
 country from the beginning; before the death penalty existed in New
 England, and during all the generations that have dragged by since it was
 annulled.
 </p>
 <p>
 2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
 any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
 been thought of.
 </p>
 <p>
 Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
 years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
 thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
 Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
 “protected” by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan
 scare—what is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the
 20,000,000? They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was
 no easy divorce law to protect them.
 </p>
 <p>
 Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking—hunting
 for it in out-of-the-way places—was new; but that was an error. I
 remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
 astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
 which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and
 their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
 caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
 which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
 gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure—by the
 natural processes of animal decay—of the phosphorus contained in
 them.
 </p>
 <p>
 This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
 thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
 own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and
 he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the
 locusts do like that in Egypt.
 </p>
 <p>
 Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's
 important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined
 to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he
 pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
 a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
 suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
 their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
 burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.
 </p>
 <p>
 These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
 with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
 who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
 account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the
 Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
 because God “wanted to hev it so,” the admirable idea fell
 perfectly flat.
 </p>
 <p>
 As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
 scientific one. He says, “Above all, I do not believe much in
 anecdotes.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Why? “In history they are all false”—a sufficiently
 broad statement—“in literature all libelous”—also
 a sufficiently sweeping statement, coming from a critic who notes that we
 are “a people who are peculiarly extravagant in our language—”
 and when it is a matter of social life, “almost all biased.”
 It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He has built two or three
 breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes—mainly “biased”
 ones, I suppose; and, as they occur “in literature,” furnished
 by his pen, they must be “all libelous.” Or did he mean not in
 literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not able
 to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the
 translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an
 intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
 either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
 confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
 side-tracked.
 </p>
 <p>
 “But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on
 divorces appear to me to be most conclusive.” And he sets himself
 the task of explaining—in a couple of columns—the process by
 which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and
 perfected an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN
 40 YEARS. No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion
 for statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic
 miracle.
 </p>
 <p>
 I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but
 I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was
 not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually
 dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for
 I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America,
 but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it
 didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.
 </p>
 <p>
 Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it
 crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments
 flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget
 said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember
 exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon.
 He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the
 United States, of course; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the
 difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the
 opening, and he said:
 </p>
 <p>
 “Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an
 American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put
 in his time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who
 his grandfather was!”
 </p>
 <p>
 I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
 back at him as quick as a flash—“Right, your Excellency! But I
 reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too;
 because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't
 find out who his father was!”
 </p>
 <p>
 Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! He
 reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:
 </p>
 <p>
 “Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George,
 I never heard it said so good in my life before! Say it again.”
 </p>
 <p>
 So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then
 he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and
 doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my
 opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear
 old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh
 sort of original way.
 </p>
 <p>
 But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is
 the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming
 to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.
 </p>
 
 
 <h2>
 A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
 </h2>
<pre> [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
 in an article entitled “Mark Twain and Paul Bourget,” by Max
 O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
 article. It is possible that the position assumed here—that
 M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself—is untenable.]
</pre>
 <p>
 You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
 if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say
 it without hurt—and certainly I mean no offence—I believe you
 would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
 home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
 persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
 when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
 above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
 practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks
 definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it
 lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
 wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
 more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have
 named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of
 practice in dictating.
 </p>
 <p>
 Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
 had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
 definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
 reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
 invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
 intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
 a private dispute between friends, unasked.
 </p>
 <p>
 Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
 this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
 strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, of
 course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
 representative. I asked some questions—asked them of myself. I
 answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all devoted
 to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of guesses as
 to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one page of doubts
 as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and our ways; two
 or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain results which
 it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show the justness of
 these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of slight fault-findings
 with certain minor details of your literary workmanship, of extracts from
 your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; then I closed with an
 anecdote. I repeat—for certain reasons—that I closed with an
 anecdote.
 </p>
 <p>
 When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to “answer” a
 “reply” to that article of mine, I said “yes,” and
 waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the “reply” to come. I
 already knew, by the cablegram, that the “reply” would not be
 signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it would be dictated by you,
 because no volunteer would feel himself at liberty to assume your
 championship in a private dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you
 are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and
 are not in need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make
 such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous.
 And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would
 look too much like anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been
 provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back
 way, and with a false key; that is to say, a pretext—a pretext
 invented for the occasion by putting into my mouth words which I did not
 use, and by wresting sayings of mine from their plain and true meaning.
 Would he resort to methods like those to get in? No; there are no people
 of that kind. So then I knew for a certainty that you dictated the Reply
 yourself. I knew you did it to save yourself manual labor.
 </p>
 <p>
 And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content—perfectly
 content.
 </p>
 <p>
 Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
 if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
 </p>
 <p>
 Because then it would have replied—and that is really what a Reply
 is for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute—as you will
 easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold
 of: he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
 refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead of
 dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
 mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
 one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
 Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
 SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON—as in the present case—when he ought
 to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The
 great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a
 fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the
 great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation between a
 shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the
 topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV.,
 section 7 from chapter ix. of “Revised Rules for Conducting
 Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person,” it will assist us
 in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules:
 </p>
 <p>
 Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
 </p>
 <p>
 Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I—
 </p>
 <p>
 Shouter. It's his NAME I want—his NAME.
 </p>
 <p>
 Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
 </p>
 <p>
 Shouter. No, no, no!—you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If—
 </p>
 <p>
 Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again, and
 let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
 </p>
 <p>
 You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
 really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours; in
 detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk
 twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your doubtful
 scientific system, and your painstaking classification of nonexistent
 things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your disloyal
 attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe statistics
 and for facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and come back at
 me with eight pages of weather.
 </p>
 <p>
 I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
 change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
 article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
 on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with a
 person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather;
 and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse
 with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
 </p>
 <p>
 “A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think
 that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
 interior;”—[And you say: “A man of average intelligence,
 who has passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are
 worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating.
 For my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more
 interesting than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean
 'how the country struck the foreigner.'”]—which is
 a quite clear way of saying that a foreigner's report is only
 valuable when it restricts itself to impressions. It pleases me to have
 you follow my lead in that glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to
 combat. You should give me something to deny and refute; I would do as
 much for you.
 </p>
 <p>
 It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
 your books seriously.—[When I published Jonathan and his Continent,
 I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: “If ever you should
 insist in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and
 of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
 exploded.”]—Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in
 earlier days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom
 Sawyer.
 </p>
<pre> NOTICE.
 Persons attempting to find a motive in
 this narrative will be prosecuted;
 persons attempting to find a moral in it
 will be banished; persons attempting to
 find a plot in it will be shot.
 BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
 PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
</pre>
 <p>
 The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see—the public must not
 take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
 life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
 you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But it leaves me nothing
 to combat; and that is damage to me.
 </p>
 <p>
 Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? If
 so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
 general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you—can teach
 us.—[“What could France teach America!” exclaims Mark
 Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there
 is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen
 than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach
 her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be
 happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but
 that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
 wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
 confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
 their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
 These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
 and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever
 knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark
 Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.
 </p>
 <p>
 I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
 club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
 had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
 be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
 his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
 Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a
 creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the
 following day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
 business?']—It is a good answer.
 </p>
 <p>
 It relates to manners, customs, and morals—three things concerning
 which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
 verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
 subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as
 any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail
 of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay evidence,
 and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly facts?—facts
 in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I asked what
 France could teach us about government. I laid myself pretty wide open,
 there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too, when I did it. France
 can teach us how to levy village and city taxes which distribute the
 burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness than is the case in any
 other land; and she can teach us the wisest and surest system of
 collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to elect a President in
 a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing the country into
 earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, stir up
 party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful people wish the term
 extended to thirty years. France can teach us—but enough of that
 part of the question. And what else can France teach us? She can teach us
 all the fine arts—and does. She throws open her hospitable art
 academies, and says to us, “Come”—and we come, troops
 and troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest
 masters in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us
 all that we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us
 with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own;
 and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it
 home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we
 come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill—there is
 nothing to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does
 America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
 </p>
 <p>
 I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
 talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, something
 to refute—but you persistently won't. You leave good chances
 unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing unimportant
 things. For instance, you have proven and established these eight facts
 here following—a good score as to number, but not worth while:
 </p>
 <p>
 Mark Twain is—
 </p>
 <p>
 1. “Insulting.”
 </p>
 <p>
 2. (Sarcastically speaking) “This refined humorist.”
 </p>
 <p>
 3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
 </p>
 <p>
 4. Has uttered “an ill-natured sneer.”
 </p>
 <p>
 5. Is “nasty.”
 </p>
 <p>
 6. Needs a “lesson in politeness and good manners.”
 </p>
 <p>
 7. Has published a “nasty article.”
 </p>
 <p>
 8. Has made remarks “unworthy of a gentleman.”—[“It
 is more funny than his” (Mark Twain's) “anecdote, and
 would have been less insulting.”]
 </p>
 <p>
 A quoted remark of mine “is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
 America.”
 </p>
 <p>
 “He has read La Terre, this refined humorist.”
 </p>
 <p>
 “When Mark Twain visits a garden... he goes in the far-away corner
 where the soil is prepared.”
 </p>
 <p>
 “Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them”
 (the Frenchwomen).
 </p>
 <p>
 “When he” (Mark Twain) “takes his revenge he is unkind,
 unfair, bitter, nasty.”
 </p>
 <p>
 “But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark,” etc.
 </p>
 <p>
 “Mark might certainly have derived from it” (M. Bourget's
 book) “a lesson in politeness and good manners.”
 </p>
 <p>
 A quoted remark of mine is “unworthy of a gentleman.”—
 </p>
 <p>
 These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
 for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
 them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
 name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
 exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very young
 and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name them, in
 order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our
 magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think that such words
 sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly strenuous about
 it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your proof-sheets to
 France closed thus—for your protection:
 </p>
 <p>
 “It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider
 as personal.”
 </p>
 <p>
 It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
 needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you
 any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
 unoffending and dearest ones present.
 </p>
 <p>
 Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
 would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like
 that one of yours to a lady for a small fault—or a large one.—[When
 M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
 Americans, “who can always get away with a few years' trying
 to find out who their grandfathers were,”] he merely makes an
 allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a
 humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of
 bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for
 thus speaking in their name!
 </p>
 <p>
 Snobbery.... I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen.
 It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared my readers
 might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American
 character instead of a rare exception.
 </p>
 <p>
 I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of
 a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private
 engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be
 given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
 arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she
 wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full
 of after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is
 generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran
 thus: “I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the
 lecture.”
 </p>
 <p>
 I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in a
 bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:
 </p>
 <p>
 “Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times
 had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old
 aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being
 entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may
 interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor
 of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as
 to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New
 York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to
 expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to
 keep the engagement.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,
 adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique
 scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the
 gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
 [But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.]—We
 should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with
 kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it
 and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying,
 “Who humiliates my mother includes his own.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M.
 Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously
 inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it
 with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your
 article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
 you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which
 you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh
 names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have
 proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to do
 it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher
 quality.
 </p>
 <p>
 Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent
 information about Balzac and those others.—[“Now the style of
 M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to
 Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,
 Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read
 Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those
 books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the
 novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he
 read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre
 Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier,
 Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose
 names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to
 come? He has read La Terre—this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When
 Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the
 jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the far-away corner where the
 soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M. Paul Bourget had
 read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly
 understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre.'”]—All
 this in simple justice to you—and to me; for, to gravely accept
 those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at
 the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my
 penetration ought to be lodged.
 </p>
 <p>
 And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which
 the Reply grew—the anecdote which closed my recent article—and
 consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous
 dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would
 know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified
 some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to
 creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing—nothing but
 error. When you say that I “retort by calling France a nation of
 bastards,” it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I
 made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine
 would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.
 </p>
 <p>
 You told an anecdote. A funny one—I admit that. It hit a foible of
 our American aristocracy, and it stung me—I admit that; it stung me
 sharply. It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French
 kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
 </p>
 <p>
 “He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his
 grandfather?” That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
 </p>
 <p>
 Now that hits only a few of us, I grant—just the upper crust only—but
 it hits exceedingly hard.
 </p>
 <p>
 I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your
 chapters I found this chance:
 </p>
 <p>
 “In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to
 arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses
 of the French soul.”
 </p>
 <p>
 You see? Your “higher Parisian” class—not everybody, not
 the nation, but only the top crust of the Nation—applies to
 debauchery all the powers of its soul.
 </p>
 <p>
 I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an
 anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me—but
 see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in
 paragraph eleven of your Reply.—[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not
 like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the
 great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American
 humorist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for
 taking a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]
 </p>
 <p>
 For example: See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:
 </p>
 <p>
 “I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
 whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
 always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
 was.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Hear the answer:
 </p>
 <p>
 “I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull
 time, too; because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see
 if he can't find out who his father was.”
 </p>
 <p>
 The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I
 may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
 gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women—a remark
 unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
 a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
 Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where
 to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open
 wide to you.
 </p>
 <p>
 If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French “chestnut,” I
 might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than
 his, and would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are
 abusing each other. “Ah, hold your tongue,” says one, “you
 ain't got no father.”
 </p>
 <p>
 “Ain't got no father!” replies the other; “I've
 got more fathers than you.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because it
 had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point.
 You wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.
 </p>
 <p>
 My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It wouldn't
 have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark
 about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it
 would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had
 struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the
 entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and if
 you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you
 are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed the
 industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.
 </p>
 <p>
 Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can
 to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do
 anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
 </p>
 <p>
 I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
 </p>
 <p>
 We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I
 will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of
 France:
 </p>
 <p>
 “Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who
 your grandfathers were?”
 </p>
 <p>
 They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
 trace their lineage back through centuries.
 </p>
 <p>
 And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:
 </p>
 <p>
 “And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your
 fathers were.” They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel
 hurt, because they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
 </p>
 <p>
 Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you
 see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.
 </p>
 <p>
 That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.
 I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing
 that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your
 amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.
 And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
 another one—on the give-and-take principle, you know—which is
 American. I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no
 take, and you didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything
 comfortable again, and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any
 point any more, I know you will forgive me.
 </p>
<pre>
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</pre>
 
 
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Project Gutenberg's Essays on Paul Bourget, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Essays on Paul Bourget

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3173]
Last Updated: February 24, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET ***



Produced by David Widger







ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET



by Mark Twain





Contents

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 
 
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
 






WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon us—advertisedly in our own special interest—a natural apprehension moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?

I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon the land.


 “His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
 timed.”

 “He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
 profitably studied.”
 

These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as 70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and pull it through without assistance.

I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament, and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment? What was his method?

He had gotten his equipment in France.

Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists. The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to error.

The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways which it will prefer to its own.

To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark—almost Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date—1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment? But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction, except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—subdued joy, so to speak, not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the interviewer: “It was severe—yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!”

If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself—that would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug—that is quite a different matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.

A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its interior—its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four or six—absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed; sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion, its adorations—of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report—the native novelist. This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time. This native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived from conscious “observation”? The amount is so slight that it counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation—absorption. The native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be astonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes a foreigner, with a foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study-conscious observation—his failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently.

To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of a few people grouped in a certain place—his own place—and that is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and the people of the whole nation—the life of a group in a New England village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village; in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; and the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists, the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.


 “'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
 vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
 'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
 and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
 church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
 suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite
 sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
 great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
 Newport for those who choose to see it.”—M. Paul Bourget.


[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he has undertaken. “Records” is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is 'fastes'. I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great “American soul” secreted behind the ostentations of Newport; and that he was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: “the nature of the people” of the United States of America. We have been accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.

There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled “American.” There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can rationally be generalized as “American.”

Whenever you have found what seems to be an “American” peculiarity, you have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift, or sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face, but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west, where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything else which one might propose to call “American.” M. Bourget thinks he has found the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette; I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels, and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours. He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her, and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls “types,” and labeled them in his usual scientific way with “formulas”—brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:


 THE COLLECTOR.
 THE EQUILIBREE.
 THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
 THE BLUFFER.
 THE GIRL-BOY.


If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can tell him—any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest—to be plain, it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and always the spirit of treachery.

In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.

But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was “significant” facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of conspiracy against him almost from the start—a conspiracy to freight him up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they did not excite his. Consider this:


 “There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
 statue.”
 

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this innocent comment:


 “This small fact is strangely significant.”
 

It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:


 “If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
 is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
 a tribute.”
 

Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised; one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a “tribute.” I think a little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula: the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.

I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.

It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two—the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name “American.” That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.

It is my belief that there are some “national” traits and things scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:


 “In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
 to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
 the weaknesses of the French soul.”
 

You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our high Parisian life.

I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider the Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is “American”; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is “American.” I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations, for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.

I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolerably long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he had had the same chance.

In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.

But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is almost an unknown thing—and has been, from the beginning.

Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720—time of Law and the Mississippi Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more “American” than it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.

But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions. When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he will not let go of it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.

He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but himself.

In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it that protects her?

It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M. Bourget: “Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room for the corruptor.”

Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column—three columns—and with artillery.

“Two reasons of a very different kind explain”—that fact.

And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I am honest and not trying to deceive any one.

1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery with death.

2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of 'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.

1. This universality of “protection” has existed in our country from the beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.

2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet been thought of.

Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population. Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were “protected” by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare—what is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000? They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy divorce law to protect them.

Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking—hunting for it in out-of-the-way places—was new; but that was an error. I remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo, which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure—by the natural processes of animal decay—of the phosphorus contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the locusts do like that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer, who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was because God “wanted to hev it so,” the admirable idea fell perfectly flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a scientific one. He says, “Above all, I do not believe much in anecdotes.”

Why? “In history they are all false”—a sufficiently broad statement—“in literature all libelous”—also a sufficiently sweeping statement, coming from a critic who notes that we are “a people who are peculiarly extravagant in our language—” and when it is a matter of social life, “almost all biased.” It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes—mainly “biased” ones, I suppose; and, as they occur “in literature,” furnished by his pen, they must be “all libelous.” Or did he mean not in literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got side-tracked.

“But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces appear to me to be most conclusive.” And he sets himself the task of explaining—in a couple of columns—the process by which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS. No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.

I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the United States, of course; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the opening, and he said:

“Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather was!”

I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was back at him as quick as a flash—“Right, your Excellency! But I reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who his father was!”

Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:

“Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it said so good in my life before! Say it again.”

So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh sort of original way.

But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.





A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET


 [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
 in an article entitled “Mark Twain and Paul Bourget,” by Max
 O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
 article. It is possible that the position assumed here—that
 M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself—is untenable.]


You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation, if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say it without hurt—and certainly I mean no offence—I believe you would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm, persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into a private dispute between friends, unasked.

Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized representative. I asked some questions—asked them of myself. I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat—for certain reasons—that I closed with an anecdote.

When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to “answer” a “reply” to that article of mine, I said “yes,” and waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the “reply” to come. I already knew, by the cablegram, that the “reply” would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is to say, a pretext—a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to save yourself manual labor.

And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content—perfectly content.

Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me, if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.

Because then it would have replied—and that is really what a Reply is for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute—as you will easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of: he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set. Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON—as in the present case—when he ought to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV., section 7 from chapter ix. of “Revised Rules for Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person,” it will assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules:

Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?

Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I—

Shouter. It's his NAME I want—his NAME.

Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.

Shouter. No, no, no!—you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If—

Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again, and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.

You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours; in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe statistics and for facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and come back at me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

“A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its interior;”—[And you say: “A man of average intelligence, who has passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country struck the foreigner.'”]—which is a quite clear way of saying that a foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to deny and refute; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of your books seriously.—[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: “If ever you should insist in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be exploded.”]—Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.


 NOTICE.

 Persons attempting to find a motive in
 this narrative will be prosecuted;
 persons attempting to find a moral in it
 will be banished; persons attempting to
 find a plot in it will be shot.
 BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
 PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.


The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see—the public must not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But it leaves me nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you—can teach us.—[“What could France teach America!” exclaims Mark Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness. These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from business?']—It is a good answer.

It relates to manners, customs, and morals—three things concerning which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly facts?—facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too, when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us—but enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us? She can teach us all the fine arts—and does. She throws open her hospitable art academies, and says to us, “Come”—and we come, troops and troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill—there is nothing to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!

I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, something to refute—but you persistently won't. You leave good chances unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these eight facts here following—a good score as to number, but not worth while:

Mark Twain is—

1. “Insulting.”

2. (Sarcastically speaking) “This refined humorist.”

3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.

4. Has uttered “an ill-natured sneer.”

5. Is “nasty.”

6. Needs a “lesson in politeness and good manners.”

7. Has published a “nasty article.”

8. Has made remarks “unworthy of a gentleman.”—[“It is more funny than his” (Mark Twain's) “anecdote, and would have been less insulting.”]

A quoted remark of mine “is a gross insult to a nation friendly to America.”

“He has read La Terre, this refined humorist.”

“When Mark Twain visits a garden... he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared.”

“Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them” (the Frenchwomen).

“When he” (Mark Twain) “takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.”

“But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark,” etc.

“Mark might certainly have derived from it” (M. Bourget's book) “a lesson in politeness and good manners.”

A quoted remark of mine is “unworthy of a gentleman.”—

These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your proof-sheets to France closed thus—for your protection:

“It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as personal.”

It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your unoffending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like that one of yours to a lady for a small fault—or a large one.—[When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the Americans, “who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out who their grandfathers were,”] he merely makes an allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in their name!

Snobbery.... I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American character instead of a rare exception.

I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: “I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture.”

I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:

“Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement.”

Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not! [But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.]—We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying, “Who humiliates my mother includes his own.”

Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher quality.

Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent information about Balzac and those others.—[“Now the style of M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre—this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M. Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre.'”]—All this in simple justice to you—and to me; for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.

And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew—the anecdote which closed my recent article—and consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing—nothing but error. When you say that I “retort by calling France a nation of bastards,” it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.

You told an anecdote. A funny one—I admit that. It hit a foible of our American aristocracy, and it stung me—I admit that; it stung me sharply. It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:

“He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?” That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.

Now that hits only a few of us, I grant—just the upper crust only—but it hits exceedingly hard.

I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your chapters I found this chance:

“In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul.”

You see? Your “higher Parisian” class—not everybody, not the nation, but only the top crust of the Nation—applies to debauchery all the powers of its soul.

I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me—but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in paragraph eleven of your Reply.—[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]

For example: See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:

“I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather was.”

Hear the answer:

“I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too; because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't find out who his father was.”

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women—a remark unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to you.

If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French “chestnut,” I might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each other. “Ah, hold your tongue,” says one, “you ain't got no father.”

“Ain't got no father!” replies the other; “I've got more fathers than you.”

Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.

My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.

Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.

I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.

We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of France:

“Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your grandfathers were?”

They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can trace their lineage back through centuries.

And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:

“And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers were.” They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.

Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.

That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it. I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so. And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with another one—on the give-and-take principle, you know—which is American. I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again, and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I know you will forgive me.







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Project Gutenberg's Essays on Paul Bourget, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Essays on Paul Bourget
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3173]
Last Updated: February 24, 2018
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET ***
Produced by David Widger
 
 
 
 by Mark Twain
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 
 
  WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 
 
 
  A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
 
 
 He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does
 he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his
 parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon us—advertisedly
 in our own special interest—a natural apprehension moves us to ask,
 What is the diameter of his reflector?
 
 
 I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
 newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
 whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
 our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon the
 land.
 
 “His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
 timed.”
 “He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
 profitably studied.”
 
 
 These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
 public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to whether
 so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
 70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
 pull it through without assistance.
 
 
 I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
 and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
 tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there
 was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became
 more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my
 mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment? What
 was his method?
 
 
 He had gotten his equipment in France.
 
 
 Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
 Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
 The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies
 their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to
 group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice
 shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he labels all
 those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is
 now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result he intimately
 knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true,
 but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had
 the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to
 error.
 
 
 The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
 Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be
 all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
 able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad
 observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is
 then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's
 chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no
 more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new
 ways which it will prefer to its own.
 
 
 To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be
 France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark—almost
 Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France, teach
 us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading.
 Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter.
 Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date—1809.
 Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we
 taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own
 specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility,
 Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate.
 Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot
 rob the poor to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the
 others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing
 left of the book.
 
 
 I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
 But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
 except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
 well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
 feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they
 had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And
 true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand,
 because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
 gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
 been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
 pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
 say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—subdued joy, so to speak,
 not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
 other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
 thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
 and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
 interviewer: “It was severe—yes, it was bitterly severe; but
 oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!”
 
 
 If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I
 seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to
 know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would
 be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
 understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
 
 
 It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself—that
 would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug
 to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug—that is quite a
 different matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows
 himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
 
 
 A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
 that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
 interior—its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
 knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
 or six—absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years
 and years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
 sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
 loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
 shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
 its adorations—of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the
 national name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
 through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
 
 
 There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
 life of a people and make a valuable report—the native novelist.
 This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have
 fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time.
 This native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
 absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived
 from conscious “observation”? The amount is so slight that it
 counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of
 the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation—absorption.
 The native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech,
 character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they
 mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be astonished
 to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of
 these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes a foreigner, with a
 foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State whose life is
 familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got
 his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
 both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to
 the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study-conscious observation—his
 failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the
 unacclimated observer, evidently.
 
 
 To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize
 the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of
 a few people grouped in a certain place—his own place—and that
 is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
 the people of the whole nation—the life of a group in a New England
 village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
 in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
 States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
 a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; and
 the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the
 Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the
 Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the
 Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
 Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the
 Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,
 the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. And
 when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of
 the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not
 anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, manners,
 feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
 
 “'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
 vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
 'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
 and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
 church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
 suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite
 sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
 great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
 Newport for those who choose to see it.”—M. Paul Bourget.
 
 [The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he
 has undertaken. “Records” is a pretty poor word there, but I
 think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word
 is 'fastes'. I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he
 expected to find the great “American soul” secreted behind the
 ostentations of Newport; and that he was going to get it out and examine
 it, and generalize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its
 hidden vast mystery: “the nature of the people” of the United
 States of America. We have been accused of being a nation addicted to
 inventing wild schemes. I trust that we shall be allowed to retire to
 second place now.
 
 
 There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
 “American.” There isn't a single human ambition, or
 religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code
 of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference
 for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head
 or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
 disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
 rationally be generalized as “American.”
 
 
 Whenever you have found what seems to be an “American”
 peculiarity, you have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in
 the social scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can
 cross the Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious
 drift, or sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of
 face, but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and
 west, where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with
 everything else which one might propose to call “American.” M.
 Bourget thinks he has found the American Coquette. If he had really found
 her he would also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she
 exists in other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart
 and the same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our
 coquette; I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our
 novels, and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen
 ours. He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was
 a Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
 and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
 “types,” and labeled them in his usual scientific way with
 “formulas”—brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a
 person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are
 pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important matter; they surprise,
 they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his
 efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of
 the coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:
 
 THE COLLECTOR.
 THE EQUILIBREE.
 THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
 THE BLUFFER.
 THE GIRL-BOY.
 
 If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
 obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
 them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and
 furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
 light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
 note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
 world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
 genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native
 the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel
 and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can
 tell him—any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was
 “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest—to be plain,
 it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless
 and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
 have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M.
 Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type
 of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these
 people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the
 same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and
 always the spirit of treachery.
 
 
 In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to
 the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
 frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
 situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
 confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
 
 
 But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
 himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
 exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
 himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
 daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
 worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
 that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
 unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his
 behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was
 “significant” facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine
 the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
 conspiracy against him almost from the start—a conspiracy to freight
 him up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed
 brains could invent.
 
 
 The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
 things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but
 they did not excite his. Consider this:
 
 “There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
 statue.”
 
 
 If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
 reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and
 inquire a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the
 present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with
 this innocent comment:
 
 “This small fact is strangely significant.”
 
 
 It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.
 
 
 Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of.
 I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
 suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
 strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If
 he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:
 
 “If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
 is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
 a tribute.”
 
 
 Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;
 one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be
 ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a “tribute.” I
 think a little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like
 this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be
 ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like
 to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula:
 the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of
 argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for
 suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and
 regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.
 
 
 I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
 too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
 art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour
 intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves
 them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a
 mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American
 girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any
 other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.
 
 
 It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
 be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
 name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps
 one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German
 gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The
 nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two—the composed
 Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other
 countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us,
 but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it;
 it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty
 with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name “American.”
 That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but
 the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the
 beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that
 nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose
 our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't
 provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or
 summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things
 have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.
 
 
 It is my belief that there are some “national” traits and
 things scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that
 have lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is
 the dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
 since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
 about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
 few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
 people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
 women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
 how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot tell
 them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
 missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into
 this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let
 fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:
 
 “In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
 to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
 the weaknesses of the French soul.”
 
 
 You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; a
 science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian
 existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be
 taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those pathetic,
 neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education
 which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our
 high Parisian life.
 
 
 I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been
 parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider the
 Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is “American”;
 and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is “American.” I
 believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
 American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,
 for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has existed
 everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
 
 
 I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
 to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
 efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of
 all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
 opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
 another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
 coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolerably
 long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably
 expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for
 them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter
 what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he
 had had the same chance.
 
 
 In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker
 stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a
 stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or
 her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
 
 
 But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
 there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
 almost an unknown thing—and has been, from the beginning.
 
 
 Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
 when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
 European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the
 Railroad King; France saw it in 1720—time of Law and the Mississippi
 Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
 madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
 comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a
 cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
 anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more “American”
 than it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
 Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.
 
 
 But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
 When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly
 and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters
 a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely
 examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go; but that
 is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know why that thing
 exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he will not let go of
 it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason
 where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not
 seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might
 almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.
 
 
 He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
 women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told
 him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the
 country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
 trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is not
 particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
 character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
 out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
 himself.
 
 
 In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
 are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
 that protects her?
 
 
 It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
 to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M.
 Bourget: “Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that
 a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
 beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room for
 the corruptor.”
 
 
 Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
 at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column—three
 columns—and with artillery.
 
 
 “Two reasons of a very different kind explain”—that
 fact.
 
 
 And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
 reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat
 now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I am honest
 and not trying to deceive any one.
 
 
 1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in
 New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a
 Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery
 with death.
 
 
 2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
 protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.
 
 
 If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
 irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
 'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this
 paralyzing Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.
 
 
 1. This universality of “protection” has existed in our
 country from the beginning; before the death penalty existed in New
 England, and during all the generations that have dragged by since it was
 annulled.
 
 
 2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
 any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
 been thought of.
 
 
 Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
 years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
 thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
 Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
 “protected” by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan
 scare—what is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the
 20,000,000? They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was
 no easy divorce law to protect them.
 
 
 Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking—hunting
 for it in out-of-the-way places—was new; but that was an error. I
 remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
 astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
 which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and
 their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
 caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
 which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
 gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure—by the
 natural processes of animal decay—of the phosphorus contained in
 them.
 
 
 This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
 thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
 own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and
 he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the
 locusts do like that in Egypt.
 
 
 Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's
 important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined
 to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he
 pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
 a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
 suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
 their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
 burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.
 
 
 These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
 with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
 who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
 account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the
 Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
 because God “wanted to hev it so,” the admirable idea fell
 perfectly flat.
 
 
 As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
 scientific one. He says, “Above all, I do not believe much in
 anecdotes.”
 
 
 Why? “In history they are all false”—a sufficiently
 broad statement—“in literature all libelous”—also
 a sufficiently sweeping statement, coming from a critic who notes that we
 are “a people who are peculiarly extravagant in our language—”
 and when it is a matter of social life, “almost all biased.”
 It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He has built two or three
 breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes—mainly “biased”
 ones, I suppose; and, as they occur “in literature,” furnished
 by his pen, they must be “all libelous.” Or did he mean not in
 literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not able
 to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the
 translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an
 intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
 either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
 confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
 side-tracked.
 
 
 “But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on
 divorces appear to me to be most conclusive.” And he sets himself
 the task of explaining—in a couple of columns—the process by
 which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and
 perfected an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN
 40 YEARS. No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion
 for statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic
 miracle.
 
 
 I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but
 I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was
 not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually
 dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for
 I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America,
 but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it
 didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.
 
 
 Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it
 crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments
 flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget
 said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember
 exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon.
 He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the
 United States, of course; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the
 difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the
 opening, and he said:
 
 
 “Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an
 American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put
 in his time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who
 his grandfather was!”
 
 
 I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
 back at him as quick as a flash—“Right, your Excellency! But I
 reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too;
 because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't
 find out who his father was!”
 
 
 Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! He
 reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:
 
 
 “Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George,
 I never heard it said so good in my life before! Say it again.”
 
 
 So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then
 he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and
 doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my
 opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear
 old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh
 sort of original way.
 
 
 But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is
 the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming
 to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.
 
 
 
 
 A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
 
 [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
 in an article entitled “Mark Twain and Paul Bourget,” by Max
 O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
 article. It is possible that the position assumed here—that
 M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself—is untenable.]
 
 You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
 if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say
 it without hurt—and certainly I mean no offence—I believe you
 would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
 home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
 persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
 when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
 above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
 practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks
 definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it
 lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
 wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
 more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have
 named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of
 practice in dictating.
 
 
 Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
 had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
 definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
 reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
 invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
 intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
 a private dispute between friends, unasked.
 
 
 Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
 this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
 strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, of
 course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
 representative. I asked some questions—asked them of myself. I
 answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all devoted
 to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of guesses as
 to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one page of doubts
 as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and our ways; two
 or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain results which
 it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show the justness of
 these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of slight fault-findings
 with certain minor details of your literary workmanship, of extracts from
 your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; then I closed with an
 anecdote. I repeat—for certain reasons—that I closed with an
 anecdote.
 
 
 When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to “answer” a
 “reply” to that article of mine, I said “yes,” and
 waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the “reply” to come. I
 already knew, by the cablegram, that the “reply” would not be
 signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it would be dictated by you,
 because no volunteer would feel himself at liberty to assume your
 championship in a private dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you
 are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and
 are not in need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make
 such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous.
 And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would
 look too much like anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been
 provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back
 way, and with a false key; that is to say, a pretext—a pretext
 invented for the occasion by putting into my mouth words which I did not
 use, and by wresting sayings of mine from their plain and true meaning.
 Would he resort to methods like those to get in? No; there are no people
 of that kind. So then I knew for a certainty that you dictated the Reply
 yourself. I knew you did it to save yourself manual labor.
 
 
 And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content—perfectly
 content.
 
 
 Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
 if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
 
 
 Because then it would have replied—and that is really what a Reply
 is for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute—as you will
 easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold
 of: he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
 refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead of
 dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
 mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
 one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
 Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
 SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON—as in the present case—when he ought
 to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The
 great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a
 fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the
 great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation between a
 shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the
 topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV.,
 section 7 from chapter ix. of “Revised Rules for Conducting
 Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person,” it will assist us
 in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules:
 
 
 Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
 
 
 Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I—
 
 
 Shouter. It's his NAME I want—his NAME.
 
 
 Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
 
 
 Shouter. No, no, no!—you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If—
 
 
 Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again, and
 let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
 
 
 You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
 really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours; in
 detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk
 twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your doubtful
 scientific system, and your painstaking classification of nonexistent
 things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your disloyal
 attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe statistics
 and for facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and come back at
 me with eight pages of weather.
 
 
 I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
 change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
 article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
 on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with a
 person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather;
 and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse
 with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
 
 
 “A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think
 that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
 interior;”—[And you say: “A man of average intelligence,
 who has passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are
 worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating.
 For my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more
 interesting than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean
 'how the country struck the foreigner.'”]—which is
 a quite clear way of saying that a foreigner's report is only
 valuable when it restricts itself to impressions. It pleases me to have
 you follow my lead in that glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to
 combat. You should give me something to deny and refute; I would do as
 much for you.
 
 
 It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
 your books seriously.—[When I published Jonathan and his Continent,
 I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: “If ever you should
 insist in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and
 of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
 exploded.”]—Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in
 earlier days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom
 Sawyer.
 
 NOTICE.
 Persons attempting to find a motive in
 this narrative will be prosecuted;
 persons attempting to find a moral in it
 will be banished; persons attempting to
 find a plot in it will be shot.
 BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
 PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
 
 The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see—the public must not
 take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
 life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
 you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But it leaves me nothing
 to combat; and that is damage to me.
 
 
 Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? If
 so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
 general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you—can teach
 us.—[“What could France teach America!” exclaims Mark
 Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there
 is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen
 than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach
 her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be
 happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but
 that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
 wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
 confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
 their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
 These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
 and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever
 knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark
 Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.
 
 
 I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
 club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
 had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
 be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
 his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
 Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a
 creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the
 following day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
 business?']—It is a good answer.
 
 
 It relates to manners, customs, and morals—three things concerning
 which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
 verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
 subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as
 any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail
 of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay evidence,
 and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly facts?—facts
 in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I asked what
 France could teach us about government. I laid myself pretty wide open,
 there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too, when I did it. France
 can teach us how to levy village and city taxes which distribute the
 burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness than is the case in any
 other land; and she can teach us the wisest and surest system of
 collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to elect a President in
 a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing the country into
 earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, stir up
 party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful people wish the term
 extended to thirty years. France can teach us—but enough of that
 part of the question. And what else can France teach us? She can teach us
 all the fine arts—and does. She throws open her hospitable art
 academies, and says to us, “Come”—and we come, troops
 and troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest
 masters in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us
 all that we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us
 with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own;
 and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it
 home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we
 come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill—there is
 nothing to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does
 America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
 
 
 I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
 talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, something
 to refute—but you persistently won't. You leave good chances
 unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing unimportant
 things. For instance, you have proven and established these eight facts
 here following—a good score as to number, but not worth while:
 
 
 Mark Twain is—
 
 
 1. “Insulting.”
 
 
 2. (Sarcastically speaking) “This refined humorist.”
 
 
 3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
 
 
 4. Has uttered “an ill-natured sneer.”
 
 
 5. Is “nasty.”
 
 
 6. Needs a “lesson in politeness and good manners.”
 
 
 7. Has published a “nasty article.”
 
 
 8. Has made remarks “unworthy of a gentleman.”—[“It
 is more funny than his” (Mark Twain's) “anecdote, and
 would have been less insulting.”]
 
 
 A quoted remark of mine “is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
 America.”
 
 
 “He has read La Terre, this refined humorist.”
 
 
 “When Mark Twain visits a garden... he goes in the far-away corner
 where the soil is prepared.”
 
 
 “Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them”
 (the Frenchwomen).
 
 
 “When he” (Mark Twain) “takes his revenge he is unkind,
 unfair, bitter, nasty.”
 
 
 “But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark,” etc.
 
 
 “Mark might certainly have derived from it” (M. Bourget's
 book) “a lesson in politeness and good manners.”
 
 
 A quoted remark of mine is “unworthy of a gentleman.”—
 
 
 These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
 for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
 them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
 name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
 exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very young
 and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name them, in
 order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our
 magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think that such words
 sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly strenuous about
 it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your proof-sheets to
 France closed thus—for your protection:
 
 
 “It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider
 as personal.”
 
 
 It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
 needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you
 any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
 unoffending and dearest ones present.
 
 
 Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
 would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like
 that one of yours to a lady for a small fault—or a large one.—[When
 M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
 Americans, “who can always get away with a few years' trying
 to find out who their grandfathers were,”] he merely makes an
 allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a
 humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of
 bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for
 thus speaking in their name!
 
 
 Snobbery.... I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen.
 It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared my readers
 might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American
 character instead of a rare exception.
 
 
 I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of
 a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private
 engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be
 given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
 arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she
 wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full
 of after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is
 generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran
 thus: “I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the
 lecture.”
 
 
 I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in a
 bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:
 
 
 “Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times
 had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old
 aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being
 entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may
 interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor
 of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as
 to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New
 York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to
 expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to
 keep the engagement.”
 
 
 Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,
 adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique
 scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the
 gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
 [But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.]—We
 should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with
 kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it
 and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying,
 “Who humiliates my mother includes his own.”
 
 
 Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M.
 Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously
 inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it
 with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your
 article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
 you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which
 you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh
 names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have
 proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to do
 it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher
 quality.
 
 
 Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent
 information about Balzac and those others.—[“Now the style of
 M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to
 Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,
 Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read
 Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those
 books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the
 novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he
 read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre
 Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier,
 Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose
 names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to
 come? He has read La Terre—this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When
 Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the
 jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the far-away corner where the
 soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M. Paul Bourget had
 read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly
 understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre.'”]—All
 this in simple justice to you—and to me; for, to gravely accept
 those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at
 the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my
 penetration ought to be lodged.
 
 
 And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which
 the Reply grew—the anecdote which closed my recent article—and
 consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous
 dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would
 know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified
 some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to
 creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing—nothing but
 error. When you say that I “retort by calling France a nation of
 bastards,” it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I
 made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine
 would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.
 
 
 You told an anecdote. A funny one—I admit that. It hit a foible of
 our American aristocracy, and it stung me—I admit that; it stung me
 sharply. It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French
 kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
 
 
 “He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his
 grandfather?” That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
 
 
 Now that hits only a few of us, I grant—just the upper crust only—but
 it hits exceedingly hard.
 
 
 I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your
 chapters I found this chance:
 
 
 “In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to
 arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses
 of the French soul.”
 
 
 You see? Your “higher Parisian” class—not everybody, not
 the nation, but only the top crust of the Nation—applies to
 debauchery all the powers of its soul.
 
 
 I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an
 anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me—but
 see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in
 paragraph eleven of your Reply.—[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not
 like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the
 great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American
 humorist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for
 taking a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]
 
 
 For example: See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:
 
 
 “I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
 whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
 always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
 was.”
 
 
 Hear the answer:
 
 
 “I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull
 time, too; because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see
 if he can't find out who his father was.”
 
 
 The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I
 may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
 gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women—a remark
 unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
 a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
 Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where
 to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open
 wide to you.
 
 
 If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French “chestnut,” I
 might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than
 his, and would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are
 abusing each other. “Ah, hold your tongue,” says one, “you
 ain't got no father.”
 
 
 “Ain't got no father!” replies the other; “I've
 got more fathers than you.”
 
 
 Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because it
 had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point.
 You wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.
 
 
 My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It wouldn't
 have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark
 about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it
 would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had
 struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the
 entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and if
 you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you
 are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed the
 industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.
 
 
 Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can
 to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do
 anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
 
 
 I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
 
 
 We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I
 will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of
 France:
 
 
 “Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who
 your grandfathers were?”
 
 
 They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
 trace their lineage back through centuries.
 
 
 And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:
 
 
 “And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your
 fathers were.” They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel
 hurt, because they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
 
 
 Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you
 see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.
 
 
 That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.
 I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing
 that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your
 amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.
 And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
 another one—on the give-and-take principle, you know—which is
 American. I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no
 take, and you didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything
 comfortable again, and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any
 point any more, I know you will forgive me.
 
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ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3173/3173-h/3173-h.htm
https://www.bartleby.com/topics/Apostle-Paul-Essay
Apostle Paul Essay
2023-01-01
None
<div><section><ul><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Paul-Of-The-Apostle-Paul-P368KJVW5U385"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Paul-Of-The-Apostle-Paul-P368KJVW5U385"><h2>The Paul Of The Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>THE APOSTLE PAUL
Whatever tales may have spun out of the antiquity of time, Jesus was not the initiator of Christianity as we know it. The division between Jews and Christians did not begin with the death of Christ. Indeed, many of his teachings have been lost forever for none of his disciples ever wrote a single word down. Although this religion, established solidly upon this man, does not even regard Jesus in most of the New Testament (Collier). The man behind the curtain, the usurper, and divider</p></div><div><ul><li>1502 Words</li><li>7 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/A-Letter-Written-By-The-Apostle-Paul-PKTFCCVWKFT8X"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/A-Letter-Written-By-The-Apostle-Paul-PKTFCCVWKFT8X"><h2>A Letter Written By The Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>Ephesians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul during his imprisonment in Rome. This is the same Paul who had previously persecuted the church, under the name Saul. Paul is not writing to a particular church body, rather his intended audience was various churches in the surrounding vicinity of Ephesus. His purpose was to encourage the faithful on “The spiritual privileges of the Church,” and “The spiritual responsibilities of the Church.” Paul was addressing three issues facing these growing church</p></div><div><ul><li>994 Words</li><li>4 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Paul-The-Apostle-Of-The-Church-P3843JHT36YKW"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Paul-The-Apostle-Of-The-Church-P3843JHT36YKW"><h2>Paul The Apostle Of The Church</h2></a></p><p>Paul the apostle is known for his letters in the Bible to the church in Philippi. Paul devotes his faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, to promote Christianity to the people of the Philippians. He is seen throughout the New Testament furthering God’s Word and projecting it in such a way to get fellow Jewish people to convert to Christianity. In the midst of this activity, Paul was travelling in between cities when a mob broke out against him. Israelites were furious with him spreading the</p></div><div><ul><li>1766 Words</li><li>8 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-PKMJWWYVJ"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-PKMJWWYVJ"><h2> Apostle Paul Essay</h2></a></p><p>who has had as much of an impact in history as Jesus Christ.
	The apostle Paul, who once rejected Jesus Christ, later became one of the greatest men of God. In the history of the Christian church, he was the most significant missionary. He was</p></div><div><ul><li>1212 Words</li><li>5 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Scripture-The-Apostle-Paul-PK25Z67X4A6"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Scripture-The-Apostle-Paul-PK25Z67X4A6"><h2>Scripture : The Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>Testament characters recorded in Scripture, the Apostle Paul, by far, is one of the most intriguing. Like the twelve apostles who were companions of Jesus during His earthly ministry, the Apostle Paul was far from perfect but he possessed an extraordinary zeal for God that stood out against the other apostles. Consequently, Jesus likely took notice of Paul’s zeal as well, thus it is no surprise, at least to this author, that Jesus would choose Paul to take the gospel to the Gentiles in faraway lands</p></div><div><ul><li>1617 Words</li><li>7 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-F3V6DXZVC"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-F3V6DXZVC"><h2> The Apostle Paul Essay</h2></a></p><p>Harris calls Paul “the most influential apostle and missionary of the mid-first-century CE church and author of seven to nine New Testament letters” (H G-33). It would be quite an accolade to receive such recognition, but what makes it even more remarkable is that Paul, or Saul, (Saul was his Judean name and Paul was his Roman name (footnotes B 1943)) originally persecuted the ekklesia or “church”. Paul went from persecuting the ekklesia or “church” to being its “most influential apostle and missionary”</p></div><div><ul><li>1086 Words</li><li>5 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Use-Of-The-Armor-Of-PCCMUDHAJU"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Use-Of-The-Armor-Of-PCCMUDHAJU"><h2>Apostle Paul Use Of The Armor Of God</h2></a></p><p>Hermeneutical Application by George Mburu, KE100653
Apostle Paul use of the Armor of God
The author undertakes an application of biblical Hermeneutics in respect to the Apostle Paul’s address of the armor of God to the Ephesian Church. Actually, the author comes alive to the need of proper Hermeneutic skills for right application of the biblical Corpus. Indeed, the use of necessary tools has been encouraged for better application of the Scriptures. Towards the end of the essay, the author makes tentative</p></div><div><ul><li>1845 Words</li><li>8 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-6CABC8609FF119CB"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-6CABC8609FF119CB"><h2>Apostle Paul Research Paper</h2></a></p><p>Apostle Paul was once known as a man with a bad reputation. He was once a persecutor of the church, but he later became “the persecuted among Christians” (Shelly 40). He later became known as a man of perseverance, endurance, and knowledge through proclaiming Christ Jesus. Apostle Paul was a man of “three worlds: Jewish, Greek, and Roman” and he was a “Roman citizen” (Shelly 40). As a result of his familiarity with Greek thought and literature and being able to speak Greek fluently allowed him to</p></div><div><ul><li>305 Words</li><li>2 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Baptist-Theological-Seminary-Apostle-Paul-And-His-P32UQX4JP9L5"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Baptist-Theological-Seminary-Apostle-Paul-And-His-P32UQX4JP9L5"><h2>Baptist Theological Seminary : Apostle Paul And His Message On Grace</h2></a></p><p>Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary
Apostle Paul and His Message on Grace 
Dexter Tomblin
L25979163
NBST 520
Dr. Dale Marshfield
December 07, 2014
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Thesis............................................................................................................................ 
Methodology............................................................................................................................
Outline.........................................</p></div><div><ul><li>1426 Words</li><li>6 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-And-The-New-Testament-F3Z7Z2PRX3YF"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-And-The-New-Testament-F3Z7Z2PRX3YF"><h2>The Apostle Paul And The New Testament</h2></a></p><p>Writings of the Apostle Paul populate the canon of the New Testament. The rawness and earnestness found within spring from the pages igniting a wonder in the reader of who Paul the Apostle was. Paul went to great lengths to spread the name of Jesus and one cheers anxiously from the sideline waiting to see if he ever gets the upper hand. Attacked, insulted, beaten, discredited, and victimized are just a few adjectives that could describe daily life for Paul. He becomes a model of devotion and fervor</p></div><div><ul><li>1425 Words</li><li>6 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Recconstructionalism-The-Letters-Of-Paul-The-Apostle-728905B57342406E"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Recconstructionalism-The-Letters-Of-Paul-The-Apostle-728905B57342406E"><h2>Recconstructionalism: The Letters Of Paul The Apostle</h2></a></p><p>The letters of Paul are among the earliest Christian documents. Paul the apostle is believed to have written such compositions to various Christian churches and communities. The significance of such letters is therefore tremendous as they provide a first hand account into the beliefs and thoughts of Paul.
 In contrast, the author of Luke is ascribed authorship to Acts. Acts of the Apostles follows early Christianity as it was spread throughout the Roman Empire. Being that Acts exists as a second</p></div><div><ul><li>654 Words</li><li>3 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-Dealing-With-The-Galatians-PCKJK53Y7NV"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-Dealing-With-The-Galatians-PCKJK53Y7NV"><h2>The Apostle Paul Dealing With The Galatians</h2></a></p><p>chapter about how the Apostle Paul had to deal with the Galatians Christians because he was totally disturbed in how the Christians were easily misled after he had spent time teaching the ways of God. "After he had left, a religious sect called theJudaizers came into town. They preached a phony gospel that required Christians to obey all of the Jewish traditions (such as celebrating the feast and male circumcision)" (Bickel &amp; Jantz, 1998, p. 273). Consequently, the Apostle Paul had to remind the Galatians</p></div><div><ul><li>260 Words</li><li>2 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-FE12E0E872FE19E0"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-FE12E0E872FE19E0"><h2>Apostle Paul Research Paper</h2></a></p><p>Reformation and reclamation are words that could accurately describe apostle Paul’s life. For much of his younger life Paul persecuted people for their faith, even bearing false witness against people to get them put in prison for their faith. Paul even persecuted christians after Jesus’s death; that all changed after his experience on Damascus road though. Paul went through a conversion after this experience, in which Jesus came to talk to him about his persecution of Christians. From being a zealous</p></div><div><ul><li>626 Words</li><li>3 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-3E0AD6240C5CEB6A"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-3E0AD6240C5CEB6A"><h2>Apostle Paul Research Paper</h2></a></p><p>Apostle Paul was not always a preacher of Christianity, Paul’s parents were Jewish as well as Roman citizens. Paul was to be a Rabbi though his future plans changed, on Paul’s journey of scorning Jesus, he had a vision in which Jesus asked why Paul scorns him, then commissions Paul to preach his message to the Gentiles who received mercy through Jewish unbelief. Around A.D. 56-58; Apostle Paul wrote the Romans, verses 8:26-30 states, “26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do</p></div><div><ul><li>1436 Words</li><li>6 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-A60212B8EC303D1D"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Apostle-Paul-Research-Paper-A60212B8EC303D1D"><h2>The Apostle Paul Research Paper</h2></a></p><p>The Apostle Paul was originally named Saul; it wasn’t until he listened to the voice of God and became a true believer in him that he became Paul. In the beginning Saul couldn’t understand why anybody would follow Jesus; he asked “how could anyone profess to follow a crucified Messiah?”(Shelley 19) Saul found the answer to the question that he had asked one day while outside of Damascus. Saul confronted the Lord, and was blinded by a light, he had to drop to his knees and yield to the voice of that</p></div><div><ul><li>304 Words</li><li>2 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Book-Of-Romans-By-Apostle-Paul-F3LCWUK9D4HQ"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Book-Of-Romans-By-Apostle-Paul-F3LCWUK9D4HQ"><h2>The Book Of Romans By Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>The book of Romans is written by Apostle Paul, and he talks about different aspects of the Christianity there. He talks about how should human beings view the natural world, their identity, and relationship with God. Romans chapter one to eight shows the aspects of those areas: God so loved human beings that He reveals Himself through natural world that people could know Him; true human identity can be discovered by seeing God’s image within human beings, and to do so, Jesus need to justify, sanctify</p></div><div><ul><li>1512 Words</li><li>7 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-The-Tenth-Chapter-That-Was-FKQW6Y9WVS6"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Apostle-Paul-The-Tenth-Chapter-That-Was-FKQW6Y9WVS6"><h2>Apostle Paul : The Tenth Chapter That Was Written To The Romans</h2></a></p><p>authored by Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul, otherwise known as Saint Paul was a teacher of the gospel. Alongside Christ, in the bible, Apostle Paul was one of the most significant key figures in biblical history. During apostle Paul’s first years of ministry he never actually met Jesus Christ. Which is what makes it extremely interesting how Paul ended up being one of the most important biblical figures in biblical history. Paul considered himself to be a Roman citizen and also a Jew. Paul was born circa</p></div><div><ul><li>1809 Words</li><li>8 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Great-Apostle-Paul-and-the-Law-PK8N4WCTJ"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Great-Apostle-Paul-and-the-Law-PK8N4WCTJ"><h2>The Great Apostle Paul and the Law Essay</h2></a></p><p>The Great Apostle Paul and The Law
Who is this Apostle Paul and why is he so important in the way we refer to the Law? The discovery of who Paul is seems to strike most new believers as surprising and refreshing. Giving them the ability to dig into part of the Bible’s past. Conclusions to these findings make the words of God comprehendible. Thus, the problem is not that there is something wrong with the Law; rather, what Paul criticizes is the wrong attitude toward the Law. (Koperski) Paul’s</p></div><div><ul><li>2206 Words</li><li>9 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Paul-Of-The-Apostle-Paul-PK7D8LJP9L5"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/The-Paul-Of-The-Apostle-Paul-PK7D8LJP9L5"><h2>The Paul Of The Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>The apostle Paul was known to many as Saul of Tarsus. There is no doubt he was born to Jewish parents whose residence was in the city of Tarsus of Cilicia. In the Book of Acts 23:6, his own admission relates that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, but he was also a son of a Pharisee. In Phil. 3:4-5, Paul states that he was from the tribe of Benjamin. At an early age, Paul was taught in tent-making according to Acts 18:3. At an early age, he was sent to Jerusalem to study under a well-known teacher by the</p></div><div><ul><li>1817 Words</li><li>8 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li><li><div><p><a href="/essay/Colossians-Prison-Epistle-Written-By-The-Apostle-C3C77391AB3C6109"></a></p><div><p><a href="/essay/Colossians-Prison-Epistle-Written-By-The-Apostle-C3C77391AB3C6109"><h2>Colossians: Prison Epistle Written By The Apostle Paul</h2></a></p><p>that was written by the Apostle Paul, with the aid of Timothy, while he was imprisoned in Rome around 60-62 A.D. Paul wrote the letter to the church of Colossae and the neighboring churches of Hierapolis and Laodicea, after he received news from Epaphras, about the heresy that was growing throughout the church. Epaphras was also imprisoned so to expedite the letter to Colossae it was transported by Tychicus and Onesimus who were also delivering the letter to Philemon. Paul wrote the letter in a Hellenistic</p></div><div><ul><li>744 Words</li><li>3 Pages</li></ul></div></div></li></ul></section>||||I|||| * Essay
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 The Paul Of The Apostle Paul

 THE APOSTLE PAUL Whatever tales may have spun out of the antiquity of time, Jesus was not the initiator of Christianity as we know it. The division between Jews and Christians did not begin with the death of Christ. Indeed, many of his teachings have been lost forever for none of his disciples ever wrote a single word down. Although this religion, established solidly upon this man, does not even regard Jesus in most of the New Testament (Collier). The man behind the curtain, the usurper, and divider

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 Ephesians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul during his imprisonment in Rome. This is the same Paul who had previously persecuted the church, under the name Saul. Paul is not writing to a particular church body, rather his intended audience was various churches in the surrounding vicinity of Ephesus. His purpose was to encourage the faithful on “The spiritual privileges of the Church,” and “The spiritual responsibilities of the Church.” Paul was addressing three issues facing these growing church

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 Paul the apostle is known for his letters in the Bible to the church in Philippi. Paul devotes his faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, to promote Christianity to the people of the Philippians. He is seen throughout the New Testament furthering God’s Word and projecting it in such a way to get fellow Jewish people to convert to Christianity. In the midst of this activity, Paul was travelling in between cities when a mob broke out against him. Israelites were furious with him spreading the

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 who has had as much of an impact in history as Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul, who once rejected Jesus Christ, later became one of the greatest men of God. In the history of the Christian church, he was the most significant missionary. He was

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 Harris calls Paul “the most influential apostle and missionary of the mid-first-century CE church and author of seven to nine New Testament letters” (H G-33). It would be quite an accolade to receive such recognition, but what makes it even more remarkable is that Paul, or Saul, (Saul was his Judean name and Paul was his Roman name (footnotes B 1943)) originally persecuted the ekklesia or “church”. Paul went from persecuting the ekklesia or “church” to being its “most influential apostle and missionary”

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 Hermeneutical Application by George Mburu, KE100653 Apostle Paul use of the Armor of God The author undertakes an application of biblical Hermeneutics in respect to the Apostle Paul’s address of the armor of God to the Ephesian Church. Actually, the author comes alive to the need of proper Hermeneutic skills for right application of the biblical Corpus. Indeed, the use of necessary tools has been encouraged for better application of the Scriptures. Towards the end of the essay, the author makes tentative

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 Apostle Paul was once known as a man with a bad reputation. He was once a persecutor of the church, but he later became “the persecuted among Christians” (Shelly 40). He later became known as a man of perseverance, endurance, and knowledge through proclaiming Christ Jesus. Apostle Paul was a man of “three worlds: Jewish, Greek, and Roman” and he was a “Roman citizen” (Shelly 40). As a result of his familiarity with Greek thought and literature and being able to speak Greek fluently allowed him to

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 Baptist Theological Seminary : Apostle Paul And His Message On Grace

 Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary Apostle Paul and His Message on Grace Dexter Tomblin L25979163 NBST 520 Dr. Dale Marshfield December 07, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS Thesis............................................................................................................................ Methodology............................................................................................................................ Outline.........................................

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 Writings of the Apostle Paul populate the canon of the New Testament. The rawness and earnestness found within spring from the pages igniting a wonder in the reader of who Paul the Apostle was. Paul went to great lengths to spread the name of Jesus and one cheers anxiously from the sideline waiting to see if he ever gets the upper hand. Attacked, insulted, beaten, discredited, and victimized are just a few adjectives that could describe daily life for Paul. He becomes a model of devotion and fervor

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 chapter about how the Apostle Paul had to deal with the Galatians Christians because he was totally disturbed in how the Christians were easily misled after he had spent time teaching the ways of God. "After he had left, a religious sect called theJudaizers came into town. They preached a phony gospel that required Christians to obey all of the Jewish traditions (such as celebrating the feast and male circumcision)" (Bickel & Jantz, 1998, p. 273). Consequently, the Apostle Paul had to remind the Galatians

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 Reformation and reclamation are words that could accurately describe apostle Paul’s life. For much of his younger life Paul persecuted people for their faith, even bearing false witness against people to get them put in prison for their faith. Paul even persecuted christians after Jesus’s death; that all changed after his experience on Damascus road though. Paul went through a conversion after this experience, in which Jesus came to talk to him about his persecution of Christians. From being a zealous

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 Apostle Paul was not always a preacher of Christianity, Paul’s parents were Jewish as well as Roman citizens. Paul was to be a Rabbi though his future plans changed, on Paul’s journey of scorning Jesus, he had a vision in which Jesus asked why Paul scorns him, then commissions Paul to preach his message to the Gentiles who received mercy through Jewish unbelief. Around A.D. 56-58; Apostle Paul wrote the Romans, verses 8:26-30 states, “26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do

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 The Apostle Paul was originally named Saul; it wasn’t until he listened to the voice of God and became a true believer in him that he became Paul. In the beginning Saul couldn’t understand why anybody would follow Jesus; he asked “how could anyone profess to follow a crucified Messiah?”(Shelley 19) Saul found the answer to the question that he had asked one day while outside of Damascus. Saul confronted the Lord, and was blinded by a light, he had to drop to his knees and yield to the voice of that

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 The apostle Paul was known to many as Saul of Tarsus. There is no doubt he was born to Jewish parents whose residence was in the city of Tarsus of Cilicia. In the Book of Acts 23:6, his own admission relates that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, but he was also a son of a Pharisee. In Phil. 3:4-5, Paul states that he was from the tribe of Benjamin. At an early age, Paul was taught in tent-making according to Acts 18:3. At an early age, he was sent to Jerusalem to study under a well-known teacher by the

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 that was written by the Apostle Paul, with the aid of Timothy, while he was imprisoned in Rome around 60-62 A.D. Paul wrote the letter to the church of Colossae and the neighboring churches of Hierapolis and Laodicea, after he received news from Epaphras, about the heresy that was growing throughout the church. Epaphras was also imprisoned so to expedite the letter to Colossae it was transported by Tychicus and Onesimus who were also delivering the letter to Philemon. Paul wrote the letter in a Hellenistic

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The Paul Of The Apostle Paul   THE APOSTLE PAUL
Whatever tales may have spun out of the antiquity of time, Jesus was not the initiator of Christianity as we know it. The division between Jews and Christians did not begin with the death of Christ. Indeed, many of his teachings have been lost forever for none of his disciples ever wrote a single word down. Although this religion, established solidly upon this man, does not even regard Jesus in most of the New Testament (Collier). The man behind the curtain, the usurper, and divider    1502 Words 7 Pages              A Letter Written By The Apostle Paul   Ephesians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul during his imprisonment in Rome. This is the same Paul who had previously persecuted the church, under the name Saul. Paul is not writing to a particular church body, rather his intended audience was various churches in the surrounding vicinity of Ephesus. His purpose was to encourage the faithful on “The spiritual privileges of the Church,” and “The spiritual responsibilities of the Church.” Paul was addressing three issues facing these growing church    994 Words 4 Pages              Paul The Apostle Of The Church   Paul the apostle is known for his letters in the Bible to the church in Philippi. Paul devotes his faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, to promote Christianity to the people of the Philippians. He is seen throughout the New Testament furthering God’s Word and projecting it in such a way to get fellow Jewish people to convert to Christianity. In the midst of this activity, Paul was travelling in between cities when a mob broke out against him. Israelites were furious with him spreading the    1766 Words 8 Pages               Apostle Paul Essay   who has had as much of an impact in history as Jesus Christ.
	The apostle Paul, who once rejected Jesus Christ, later became one of the greatest men of God. In the history of the Christian church, he was the most significant missionary. He was    1212 Words 5 Pages              Scripture : The Apostle Paul   Testament characters recorded in Scripture, the Apostle Paul, by far, is one of the most intriguing. Like the twelve apostles who were companions of Jesus during His earthly ministry, the Apostle Paul was far from perfect but he possessed an extraordinary zeal for God that stood out against the other apostles. Consequently, Jesus likely took notice of Paul’s zeal as well, thus it is no surprise, at least to this author, that Jesus would choose Paul to take the gospel to the Gentiles in faraway lands    1617 Words 7 Pages               The Apostle Paul Essay   Harris calls Paul “the most influential apostle and missionary of the mid-first-century CE church and author of seven to nine New Testament letters” (H G-33). It would be quite an accolade to receive such recognition, but what makes it even more remarkable is that Paul, or Saul, (Saul was his Judean name and Paul was his Roman name (footnotes B 1943)) originally persecuted the ekklesia or “church”. Paul went from persecuting the ekklesia or “church” to being its “most influential apostle and missionary”    1086 Words 5 Pages              Apostle Paul Use Of The Armor Of God   Hermeneutical Application by George Mburu, KE100653
Apostle Paul use of the Armor of God
The author undertakes an application of biblical Hermeneutics in respect to the Apostle Paul’s address of the armor of God to the Ephesian Church. Actually, the author comes alive to the need of proper Hermeneutic skills for right application of the biblical Corpus. Indeed, the use of necessary tools has been encouraged for better application of the Scriptures. Towards the end of the essay, the author makes tentative    1845 Words 8 Pages              Apostle Paul Research Paper   Apostle Paul was once known as a man with a bad reputation. He was once a persecutor of the church, but he later became “the persecuted among Christians” (Shelly 40). He later became known as a man of perseverance, endurance, and knowledge through proclaiming Christ Jesus. Apostle Paul was a man of “three worlds: Jewish, Greek, and Roman” and he was a “Roman citizen” (Shelly 40). As a result of his familiarity with Greek thought and literature and being able to speak Greek fluently allowed him to    305 Words 2 Pages              Baptist Theological Seminary : Apostle Paul And His Message On Grace   Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary
Apostle Paul and His Message on Grace 
Dexter Tomblin
L25979163
NBST 520
Dr. Dale Marshfield
December 07, 2014
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Thesis............................................................................................................................ 
Methodology............................................................................................................................
Outline.........................................    1426 Words 6 Pages              The Apostle Paul And The New Testament   Writings of the Apostle Paul populate the canon of the New Testament. The rawness and earnestness found within spring from the pages igniting a wonder in the reader of who Paul the Apostle was. Paul went to great lengths to spread the name of Jesus and one cheers anxiously from the sideline waiting to see if he ever gets the upper hand. Attacked, insulted, beaten, discredited, and victimized are just a few adjectives that could describe daily life for Paul. He becomes a model of devotion and fervor    1425 Words 6 Pages              Recconstructionalism: The Letters Of Paul The Apostle   The letters of Paul are among the earliest Christian documents. Paul the apostle is believed to have written such compositions to various Christian churches and communities. The significance of such letters is therefore tremendous as they provide a first hand account into the beliefs and thoughts of Paul.
 In contrast, the author of Luke is ascribed authorship to Acts. Acts of the Apostles follows early Christianity as it was spread throughout the Roman Empire. Being that Acts exists as a second    654 Words 3 Pages              The Apostle Paul Dealing With The Galatians   chapter about how the Apostle Paul had to deal with the Galatians Christians because he was totally disturbed in how the Christians were easily misled after he had spent time teaching the ways of God. "After he had left, a religious sect called theJudaizers came into town. They preached a phony gospel that required Christians to obey all of the Jewish traditions (such as celebrating the feast and male circumcision)" (Bickel &amp; Jantz, 1998, p. 273). Consequently, the Apostle Paul had to remind the Galatians    260 Words 2 Pages              Apostle Paul Research Paper   Reformation and reclamation are words that could accurately describe apostle Paul’s life. For much of his younger life Paul persecuted people for their faith, even bearing false witness against people to get them put in prison for their faith. Paul even persecuted christians after Jesus’s death; that all changed after his experience on Damascus road though. Paul went through a conversion after this experience, in which Jesus came to talk to him about his persecution of Christians. From being a zealous    626 Words 3 Pages              Apostle Paul Research Paper   Apostle Paul was not always a preacher of Christianity, Paul’s parents were Jewish as well as Roman citizens. Paul was to be a Rabbi though his future plans changed, on Paul’s journey of scorning Jesus, he had a vision in which Jesus asked why Paul scorns him, then commissions Paul to preach his message to the Gentiles who received mercy through Jewish unbelief. Around A.D. 56-58; Apostle Paul wrote the Romans, verses 8:26-30 states, “26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do    1436 Words 6 Pages              The Apostle Paul Research Paper   The Apostle Paul was originally named Saul; it wasn’t until he listened to the voice of God and became a true believer in him that he became Paul. In the beginning Saul couldn’t understand why anybody would follow Jesus; he asked “how could anyone profess to follow a crucified Messiah?”(Shelley 19) Saul found the answer to the question that he had asked one day while outside of Damascus. Saul confronted the Lord, and was blinded by a light, he had to drop to his knees and yield to the voice of that    304 Words 2 Pages              The Book Of Romans By Apostle Paul   The book of Romans is written by Apostle Paul, and he talks about different aspects of the Christianity there. He talks about how should human beings view the natural world, their identity, and relationship with God. Romans chapter one to eight shows the aspects of those areas: God so loved human beings that He reveals Himself through natural world that people could know Him; true human identity can be discovered by seeing God’s image within human beings, and to do so, Jesus need to justify, sanctify    1512 Words 7 Pages              Apostle Paul : The Tenth Chapter That Was Written To The Romans   authored by Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul, otherwise known as Saint Paul was a teacher of the gospel. Alongside Christ, in the bible, Apostle Paul was one of the most significant key figures in biblical history. During apostle Paul’s first years of ministry he never actually met Jesus Christ. Which is what makes it extremely interesting how Paul ended up being one of the most important biblical figures in biblical history. Paul considered himself to be a Roman citizen and also a Jew. Paul was born circa    1809 Words 8 Pages              The Great Apostle Paul and the Law Essay   The Great Apostle Paul and The Law
Who is this Apostle Paul and why is he so important in the way we refer to the Law? The discovery of who Paul is seems to strike most new believers as surprising and refreshing. Giving them the ability to dig into part of the Bible’s past. Conclusions to these findings make the words of God comprehendible. Thus, the problem is not that there is something wrong with the Law; rather, what Paul criticizes is the wrong attitude toward the Law. (Koperski) Paul’s    2206 Words 9 Pages              The Paul Of The Apostle Paul   The apostle Paul was known to many as Saul of Tarsus. There is no doubt he was born to Jewish parents whose residence was in the city of Tarsus of Cilicia. In the Book of Acts 23:6, his own admission relates that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, but he was also a son of a Pharisee. In Phil. 3:4-5, Paul states that he was from the tribe of Benjamin. At an early age, Paul was taught in tent-making according to Acts 18:3. At an early age, he was sent to Jerusalem to study under a well-known teacher by the    1817 Words 8 Pages              Colossians: Prison Epistle Written By The Apostle Paul   that was written by the Apostle Paul, with the aid of Timothy, while he was imprisoned in Rome around 60-62 A.D. Paul wrote the letter to the church of Colossae and the neighboring churches of Hierapolis and Laodicea, after he received news from Epaphras, about the heresy that was growing throughout the church. Epaphras was also imprisoned so to expedite the letter to Colossae it was transported by Tychicus and Onesimus who were also delivering the letter to Philemon. Paul wrote the letter in a Hellenistic    744 Words 3 Pages
Apostle Paul Essay
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https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Vintage-Classics-Graham/dp/0099282674
COLLECTED ESSAYS (NEW COVER REI) (Vintage Classics): Graham Greene: 9780099282679: Amazon.com: Books
1999-01-01
Graham Greene
<div><p>Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.</p><p>Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.</p><div><p>Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective. </p><p>Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.</p></div></div>||||I|||| Skip to main content
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 COLLECTED ESSAYS (NEW COVER REI) (Vintage Classics) Paperback – Import, January 1, 1999

 by Graham Greene (Author)
 3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
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 This volume contains nearly 80 essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed by Greene between novels, plays and travel books, over four prolific decades. They are as revealing as autobiography and as characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.
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 January 1, 1999
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 0099282674
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 * Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; New Ed edition (January 1, 1999)
 * Language ‏ : ‎ English
 * Paperback ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
 * ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099282674
 * ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099282679
 * Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.1 ounces
 * Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.87 x 7.8 inches
 * Best Sellers Rank: #3,268,624 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )
 + #3,048 in Nature Writing & Essays
 + #90,466 in Memoirs (Books)
 + #1,266,445 in Literature & Fiction (Books)
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 Graham Greene

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 Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective.

 Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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  Jim McKenna
  5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just a good novelist
  Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2000
  Greene is a master of the short essay. He's a particularly good book reviewer, with tastes ranging from Rider Haggard to Henry James. He is, in fact, particularly fine on James, which is somewhat surprising, since at first glance they wouldn't seem to have much in common. They both, however, were deeply concerned with the craft of fiction, and it is that interest in craftmanship, more so than Greene's political or religious views, which dominates these essays.
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  Judith E. Hanhisalo
  3.0 out of 5 stars Hollywood Comes to London
  Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2013
  Verified Purchase
  I bought this book for the essay "Film Lunch," and haven't read much else. My husband read some of the other essays and sort of shrugged when I asked him how he liked them. "Film Lunch" is about the launch of MGM's British film making unit. It gives Greene ample opportunity to denigrate the simple minded Americans while eating their food. There is also a whiff of anti-Semitism about his treatment of Louis B. Mayer. I'm not encouraged to read more.
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  pulling cheek swirl better shake up
  4.0 out of 5 stars Samuel Butler had his own mind, and then somebody got caught in a stupid act
  Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2016
  I like what I learned about Henry James as someone who was haunted by the American grab oxen. Two boys in the James family were soldiers in the American Civil War and Henry might have hidden something that kept him from being another soldier. Time is such a problem that Greene considers the backward abysm of characters in novels by Ford Maddox Ford more interesting than any story that starts on the first page and maintains a present sense of what is going on all the way to the end. I was living at the end of the last fertility boom before the political economy of social order had the collective electronic mentalities of oncoming system wipe out.
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  John H. Wilson
  3.0 out of 5 stars Many old reviews
  Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2014
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  Some good material here, especially on Greene's travels in Malaya, Kenya, and Israel, but also many tedious reviews of forgotten books from the 1930s. Greene is an astute critic, but one longs for more of his opinions on works still read today. At the same time, four essays on Henry James seem like overkill. Selection could have been more judicious.
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  cinemanna
  4.0 out of 5 stars Very lively and readable set of essays by Graham Greene
  Reviewed in India on March 25, 2021
  Verified Purchase
  The book is as described. I was glad to find it on amazon. One star less because the cover page shown is not correct. Why don't they put the correct image?
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  5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
  Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2018
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  Excellent.
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  Whiteriot1977
  1.0 out of 5 stars Kindle edition type
  Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2020
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  Why is the entire Kindle edition of this book printed in underlined type?
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  Gerald J. Meyer
  5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate work
  Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 21, 2013
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  the venerable graham greene needs no endorsement from me, but for the record this is a splendid collection of splendid essays.
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  Amazon Customer
  1.0 out of 5 stars not as described
  Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2017
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  1.0 out of 5 stars not as described
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Brief content visible, double tap to read full content. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.  Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective.  Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
COLLECTED ESSAYS (NEW COVER REI) (Vintage Classics): Graham Greene: 9780099282679: Amazon.com: Books
https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Vintage-Classics-Graham/dp/0099282674