It is rather an extraordinary verdict, but it has seized
the Parisian imagination, and I, for one, believe it is correct.
Some of the English newspapers, while generally approving of the
Sorbonne address, expressed the feeling that it contained some
platitudes. Of course it did; for the laws of social and moral health,
like the laws of hygiene, are platitudes. It was interesting to have a
French engineer and mathematician of distinguished achievements, who
discussed with me the character and effect of the Sorbonne address,
rather hotly denounce those who affected to regard Mr. Roosevelt's
restatement of obvious, but too often forgotten truth, as
platitudinous. "The finest and most beautiful things in life," said
this scientist, "the most abstruse scientific discoveries, are based
upon platitudes. It is a platitude to say that the whole is greater
than a part, or that the shortest distance between two points is a
straight line, and yet it is upon such platitudes that astronomy, by
aid of which we have penetrated some of the far-off mysteries of the
universe, is based. The greatest cathedrals are built of single blocks
of stone, and a single block of stone is a platitude. Tear the
architectural structure to pieces, and you have nothing left but the
single, common, platitudinous brick; but for that reason do you say
that your architectural structure is platitudinous? The effect of Mr.
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