The amount of pains which my reviewers have taken to understand this book
is not so great as to encourage the belief that they would understand the
_Odyssey_, however much they studied it. Again, the people who could
read the _Odyssey_ without coming to much the same conclusions as mine
are not likely to admit that they ought to have done so.
If a man tells me that a house in which I have long lived is
inconvenient, not to say unwholesome, and that I have been very stupid in
not finding this out for myself, I should be apt in the first instance to
tell him that he knew nothing about it, and that I was quite comfortable;
by and by, I should begin to be aware that I was not so comfortable as I
thought I was, and in the end I should probably make the suggested
alterations in my house if, on reflection, I found them sensibly
conceived. But I should kick hard at first.