The Scum Are the Rule

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 23, § 273 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): The thinking minds, the people of proper judgement and the people who are serious about things are all only exceptions; everywhere in the world the scum are the rule, and they are always at hand and busily at work to corrupt and 'unimprove' in their way anything said by thinkers after mature consideration. Therefore whoever wants to inform himself about a subject should beware of reaching for the latest books on it, in the assumption that the sciences always make progress and that during the writing of these new books older ones had been used. They probably have been, but the question is how. The writer often does not thoroughly understand the older writers, but does not want to simply use their text word for word and therefore transmogrifies and butchers what they said far better and more clearly, since they wrote from their own vivid knowledge of the…