To make his acquaintance first is to enter upon a store of high and fine enjoyment, and of strong and vivifying thought, which one must be either very rich of attainment or very feeble of grasp to find unprofitable or pleasureless.

THE VIRTUES OF STUPIDITY

From ‘Letters on the French Coup d’Etat’

I fear you will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most essential mental quality for a free people whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale:  it is much stupidity.  Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me take the Roman character; for with one great exception,—­I need not say to whom I allude,—­they are the great political people of history.  Now, is not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic?  What is the history of their speculative mind? a blank; what their literature? a copy.  They have left not a single discovery in any abstract science, not a single perfect or well-formed work of high imagination.  The Greeks, the perfection of human and accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the ideal forms of self-idolizing art, the Romans imitated and admired; the Greeks explained the laws of nature, the Romans wondered and despised; the Greeks invented a system of numerals second only to that now in use, the Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital and scientific calendar, the Romans began their month when the Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the new moon.  Throughout Latin literature, this is the perpetual puzzle:—­Why are we free and they slaves, we praetors and they barbers? why do the stupid people always win and the clever people always lose?  I need not say that in real sound stupidity the English are unrivaled:  you’ll hear more wit and better wit in an Irish street row than would keep Westminster Hall in humor for five weeks.

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In fact, what we opprobriously call “stupidity,” though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature’s favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion; it enforces concentration:  people who learn slowly, learn only what they must.  The best security for people’s doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side.  These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine:  they are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them.  Hear what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister:—­“Sharp?  Oh, yes! he’s too sharp by half.  He is not safe, not a minute, isn’t that young man.”  I extend this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be too clever to be practical and not dull enough to be free....