 I look at it from the point of view of my own work. When I chisel a wheel, if the blows of the mallet are too gentle, the chisel slides and won’t take hold. But if they’re too hard, it bites in and won’t budge. Not too gentle, not too hard—you can get it in your hand and feel it in your mind. You can’t put it into words, and yet there is a knack to it somehow. I can’t teach it to my son and he can’t learn it from me. So I’ve gone along for seventy years and at my age I am still chiseling wheels. When the men of old died they took with them the things that couldn’t be handed down. So what you are reading there must be nothing but the chaff and dregs of the men of old. (tr. Watson 1968: 152–3)