Without Lifting A Finger

The country he's referring to is of course Austria. But these days ... * Wherever you look, tastelessness reigns supreme. And a total lack of interest in everything—as though the stomach were all-important and the mind quite superfluous, I said. Such a stupid people, I said, and such a magnificent country—an incomparably beautiful country. Natural beauty such as you find nowhere else, and a people that has so little interest in it.

     John had discovered that men in general were automata. All thought the same; all judged in the same fashion; and the more learned they were, the less independence of mind they displayed. This made him doubt the whole value of book education. The graduates who came from Upsala had, one and all, the same opinions on Rafael and Schiller, though the differences in their characters would have led one to expect a corresponding difference in their judgments. Therefore these men did not think, although they called themselves freethinkers, but merely talked and were merely parrots.

Rodin Museum, Paris , a photo by khera875 on Flickr. Thinking about Paris today, amongst other things.