When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's no fool, to educate himself.

And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture--the magazines.

In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself--a Frenchman, for instance--would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way.

But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he's ready.

And that's not all--twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else--evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence--and that's all.