Word: greats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...same class, a boy from a suburban Boston school with low 500's on achievement tests, who spelled three words wrong in his essay, was accepted. He was not a "Harvard son," and he was not a great athlete. But his alumni interviewer called him "one of the nicest I've seen this year" and the admissions staff rated his personality...
...almost impossible concept to explain, but it is easy to demonstrate. Let us take our earlier examination question, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the age he lived in?" The equivocator would answer it this way: "Some people believe that David Hume was not necessarily a great philosopher, because his thoughts was merely a reflection of conditions around him colored by his own personality. Others, however, strongly support Hume's greatness on the grounds that his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived. It is not a question of the cart before the horse in either case...
...that means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject might mean something to a grader. The true master of the generality is the man who can write a ten-page essay which means nothing at all to him and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads...
...operation of a vague generality under fire, take a typical example: "Hume brought empiricism to its logical conclusion: "The question is asked. "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age he lived in?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with, "David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age he lived in, then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea what Hume really said, or what he said...
France is much in thrall to its own version of the heroic past. Accordingly, Gramont invokes, analyzes and denigrates Jules Michelet, the great French Romantic historian whose writings helped to "create" France's epic past. When Gramont describes French intellectual life, he gives a useful though jaundiced look at Descartes, including his life and times, his seminal Discours de la Méthode and the Freudian analysis of the philosopher's three dreams, which symbolized the difficulty of understanding the universe...