McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1

McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1

To give to the world a collection of the successive portraits of a man is to tell his affairs openly, and so betray intimate personalities. We are often found quarrelling with the tone of the public press, because it yields to what is called the public demand to be told both the private affairs of noteworthy persons and the trivial details and circumstances of those who are insignificant. Some one has said that a sincere man willingly answers any questions, however personal, that are asked out of interest, but instantly resents those that have their impulse in curiosity; and that ones instinct always detects the difference. This I take to be a wise rule of conduct; but beyond lies the wider subject of our right to possess ourselves of personal information, although we have a vague remembrance, even in these days, of the belief of old-fashioned and decorous people, that subjects, not persons, are fitting material for conversation. But there is an honest interest, which is as noble a thing as curiosity is contemptible; and it is in recognition of this, that Lowell writes in the largest way in his Essay on Rousseau and the Sentimentalists. Yet our love of minute biographical details, he says, our desire to make ourselves spies upon the men of the past, seems so much of an instinct in us, that we must look for the spring of it in human nature, and that somewhat deeper than mere curiosity or love of gossip. And more emphatically in another paragraph: The moment he undertakes to establish ... a rule of conduct, we ask at once how far are his own life and deed in accordance with what he preaches? ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 36745
Author: Various
Release Date: Jul 16, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English