TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
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over that theory without committing himself to anything very definite. “After all,” he concludes in one place, “I now believe that the question as to the objective reality of the external world is irrational.”
But whether concerned with these abstract subjects or with others more concrete, whatever Lichtenberg wrote was always free from formality. As a student of human nature the man was shrewd, as a critic sensible and direct, as a wit both pointed and fantastical; in all respects a sterling writer. Assuredly he may rank with those gifted individuals of whom he said that he was always very sorry when they died, as “Earth had greater need of their kind than Heaven.”
