For while there is a
reciprocating influence between the standard version and the current
versions, it is these current versions as distributed among men which
affect their behavior. [Footnote: But unfortunately it is ever so much
harder to know this actual culture than it is to summarize and to
comment upon the works of genius. The actual culture exists in people
far too busy to indulge in the strange trade of formulating their
beliefs. They record them only incidentally, and the student rarely
knows how typical are his data. Perhaps the best he can do is to
follow Lord Bryce's suggestion [_Modern Democracies_, Vol. i, p.
156] that he move freely "among all sorts and conditions of men," to
seek out the unbiassed persons in every neighborhood who have skill in
sizing up. "There is a _flair_ which long practise and 'sympathetic
touch' bestow. The trained observer learns how to profit by small
indications, as an old seaman discerns, sooner than the landsman,
the signs of coming storm." There is, in short, a vast amount of
guess work involved, and it is no wonder that scholars, who enjoy
precision, so often confine their attentions to the neater formulations
of other scholars.]
"The theory of Relativity," says a critic whose eyelids, like the Lady
Lisa's, are a little weary, "promises to develop into a principle as
adequate to universal application as was the theory of Evolution.
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