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People went to see him, after having heard his songs sung, to tell him how much they had been applauded and enjoyed, and, after the first compliments, found that the poet was a man of sense, a good talker on all subjects, interested in politics, a wonderful reasoner, with great knowledge of men, and characterizing them delicately with a few fine and happy touches.
There was not a jot of romance in Dave Brainerd's make-up, and not a great depth of imagination; but he was the keenest man on a trail, and the clearest reasoner among a large number of picked and tried detectives.
'Yes, exclaims our friend the reasoner, 'but the constitution of an Esquimaux is peculiarly adapted to the climate and food: what he enjoys would poison a European; and he also possesses skill to capture wild animals and fish, which the civilised man cannot exercise. Is this true? We answer to the first objection: only partially true; and the second, we utterly deny.
Imagine a man of about five-and-twenty, and who is morally about fifty years older than a healthy man of sixty, imagine him with the brain of age and the flower of youth; with a heart absorbed into the brain, and giving warm blood to frigid ideas: a man who sneers at everything I call lofty, yet would do nothing that he thinks mean; to whom vice and virtue are as indifferent as they were to the Aesthetics of Goethe; who would never jeopardize his career as a practical reasoner by an imprudent virtue, and never sully his reputation by a degrading vice.
"Do you hear this reasoner?" said Germain in some embarrassment. "He is right," replied little Marie, "you told him that; he has a good memory, and he remembers it. But you must understand, my little Pierre, that your father never lies. We passed the big forest while you were asleep, and now we're in the little forest, where there aren't any naughty beasts."
They had somehow made him insensible, stolen his motor-cycle, the papers and the model, and then brought him to this place, wherever it was. Tom was a shrewd reasoner, and he soon evolved a theory which he afterward learned was the correct one.
The whole world of contemporary journalism is arraigned for its subserviency to popular prejudices. The 'Record' is lashed for its religious rancour, and the 'Reasoner' for its vapid version of popular infidelity, though it is contemptuously preferred, in point of spirit, to the 'Record. Fitzjames flies occasionally at higher game.
The skill of the reasoner therefore consists of two parts: first, the sagacity to pick out of the complex fact before him, the attribute or characteristic which is significant for his present purpose; and second, the large knowledge of the subject which will enable him to follow it into other cases in which it occurs with different circumstances, or, in other words, to follow a similarity through diverse cases.
The study of jurisprudence may, no doubt, enlarge the intellect; but the habit of mind induced by an indiscriminate advocacy which may be summoned to the defence of a Sidney to-day and of a spoon-thief to-morrow is rather that of the sophist than of the philosophic reasoner.
The late Lord Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only writer that deserved the name of a political reasoner. Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time l ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very qualified.
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