and (3) I may make myself ridiculous. Why am I doing this?

 

One reason may be that my nature makes me incline toward diagnosing and talking

about errors in conventional wisdom. And despite years of being smoothed out by

the hard knocks that were inevitable for one with my attitude, I don’t believe

life ever knocked all the boy’s brashness out of the man.

 

A second reason for my decision is my approval of the attitude of Diogenes when

he asked: “Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody?”

 

My third and final reason is the strongest. I have fallen in love with my way of

laying out psychology because it has been so useful for me. And so, before I

die, I want to imitate to some extent the bequest practices of three characters:

the protagonist in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Benjamin Franklin, and my

first employer, Ernest Buffett. Bunyan’s character, the knight wonderfully named

“Old Valiant for Truth,” makes the only practical bequest available to him when

he says at the end of his life: “My sword I leave to him who can wear it.” And

like this man, I don’t mind if I have misappraised my sword, provided I have

tried to see it correctly, or that many will not wish to try it, or that some

who try to wield it may find it serves them not. Ben Franklin, to my great

benefit, left behind his autobiography, his Almanacks, and much else. And Ernest

Buffett did the best he could in the same mode when he left behind “How to Run a

Grocery Store and a Few Things I Have Learned about Fishing.” Whether or not

this last contribution to the genre was the best, I will not say. But I will

report that I have now known four generations of Ernest Buffett’s descendants