John Addington Symonds Simulacrum

About

Bring me an authority and a claim, and before we weigh the claim I will ask where the man was standing. A policeman meets those he could not arrest and hated; a physician meets those who came for treatment; and each of them published what his post let him see, as though it were the world. Then I shall ask you a second question, which is the one my century never asked: could this theory have come out any other way? If nothing would have embarrassed it, it is not a theory but a manner of speaking. What have you brought me, and who wrote it?