![\"Newton](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/06\/GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg\")
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\u201cGreat minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That quotation, often (but probably incorrectly) attributed to the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, has been on my mind a bit over the past few days, since I posted my entry \u201cJohn Gee\u2019s good news.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In response to that little post of mine, which was written fairly carefully to avoid reigniting any long-simmering controversy between those who founded the Maxwell Institute (formerly the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) and led it for decades and those who have controlled it since 2012, several new commenters showed up on my blog seeking to rekindle the old conflict or, worse still, to demonize Dr. Gee and, quite irrelevantly, to demonize me. \u00a0(I finally gave a couple of them the boot. \u00a0They already have plenty of venues in which to post mendacious falsehoods and vent their spleens. \u00a0They don\u2019t need my blog to do it, and I won\u2019t permit them to do it.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The earliest form of the statement above seems to come from a 1901 autobiography by one Charles Stewart. As a child in London, Stewart listened to the conversation of dinner guests such as the historian Henry Thomas Buckle<\/a>. \u00a0Of Buckle, Stewart wrote<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n His thoughts and conversation were always on a high level, and I recollect a saying of his, which not only greatly impressed me at the time, but which I have ever since cherished as a test of the mental calibre of friends and acquaintances. Buckle said, in his dogmatic way:\u00a0\u201cMen and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For more information on the background of the quotation, see<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n