E-text prepared by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Etching by W. H. Hyde]
THE OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER.
BY
ROBERT GRANT
WITH AN ETCHING BY W. H. HYDE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1895
COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1895, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | CHAPTER II | CHAPTER III | CHAPTER IV | CHAPTER V |
| CHAPTER VI | CHAPTER VII | CHAPTER VIII | CHAPTER IX | CHAPTER X |
THE OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER
I
My wife Josephine declares that I have become a philosopher in my oldage, and perhaps she is right. Now that I am forty, and a trifle lesselastic in my movements, with patches of gray about my ears which give mea more venerable appearance, I certainly have a tendency to look at theworld as through a glass. Yet not altogether darkly be it said. Thatis, I trust I am no cynic like that fellow Diogenes who set the fashioncenturies ago of turning up the nose at everything. I have a naturalsunniness of disposition which would, I believe, be proof against thesardonic fumes of contemplation even though I were a real philosopher.
However, just as the mongoose of the bag-man's story was not a realmongoose, neither am I a real philosopher.
You will remember that Diogenes, who was a real philosopher, occupied atub as a permanent residence. He would roll in hot sand during the heatof summer, and embrace a statue of snow in winter, just to show hissuperiority to ordinary human conventions and how much wiser he was thanthe rest