He thought that the Russian people whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts of unoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was occupied, to the
methods suitable to their purpose, and that their
methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed.
Yet it cannot be called talent to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; such
methods may gain empire, but not glory.
Both in sentiment and in
methods of work it was living close to the log-cabin period.
The only objection to the traditionary
method of doing your vulguses was the risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable grief was the result.
The
method was revealed perfectly in 'Smoke,' but each successive book of his that I read was a fresh proof of its truth, a revelation of its transcendent superiority.
There was no system whatever in swindling me out of a penny -- a clear fraud of fifty per cent -- no
method in any respect.
Still there remains, as has been pointed out above, the objection that this
method is not without danger.
The second
method is to consider the actions of some one man- a king or a commander- as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a single historic personage.
In respect of military
method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory.
Though we have properly enough entitled this our work, a history, and not a life; nor an apology for a life, as is more in fashion; yet we intend in it rather to pursue the
method of those writers, who profess to disclose the revolutions of countries, than to imitate the painful and voluminous historian, who, to preserve the regularity of his series, thinks himself obliged to fill up as much paper with the detail of months and years in which nothing remarkable happened, as he employs upon those notable aeras when the greatest scenes have been transacted on the human stage.
His was an original brain, very intelligent but--without
method. I did not go to bed.
There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new
method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.