WE FEW, WE HAPPY FEW

As I was taking my four mile constitutional this morning, I found myself reflecting that the happy little band of brothers and sisters who visit this site regularly must be, pound for pound or IQ point for IQ point, the classiest audience in the blogosphere.  Where else can you find six or seven hundred people [maybe many more -- I am not sure how my Google counter works] who will sit still for a twenty-part essay on the mathematics, economics, and literary structure of Das Kapital and not run screaming for the door?  I visit other blogs, and often find there very thoughtful and insightful comments both on the passing scene and on more arcane subjects.  But the aficionados of this blog are another breed entirely.  You have the sort of admirable patience that was once exhibited by readers of the novels of Trollope or, heaven help us, of Samuel Richardson.  Twenty-five thousand words is for you the merest warming up, the ante-chamber to an idea.

Inasmuch as I seem to be incapable of shutting up, as a commentator noted some while back, and since it encourages me enormously to have an audience [although I do not think it is absolutely necessary -- witness the five or six books I have written and never published!], I thought it only fitting that I should express my enormous gratitude for your continued visits to The Philosopher's Stone.