Style is the physiognomy of the mind.  It is a more reliable key to character than the physiognomy of the body.  To imitate another person’s style is like wearing a mask.  However fine the mask, it soon becomes insipid and intolerable because it is without life; so that even the ugliest living face is better.  Therefore authors who write in Latin and imitate the style of the old writers essentially wear a mask; one certainly hears what they say, but one cannot watch their physiognomy—­that is to say their style.  One observes, however, the style in the Latin writings of men who think for themselves, those who have not deigned to imitate, as, for instance, Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, etc.

Affectation in style is like making grimaces.  The language in which a man writes is the physiognomy of his nation; it establishes a great many differences, beginning from the language of the Greeks down to that of the Caribbean islanders.

We should seek for the faults in the style of another author’s works, so that we may avoid committing the same in our own.

In order to get a provisional estimate of the value of an author’s productions it is not exactly necessary to know the matter on which he has thought or what it is he has thought about it,—­this would compel one to read the whole of his works,—­but it will be sufficient to know how he has thought.  His style is an exact expression of how he has thought, of the essential state and general quality of his thoughts.  It shows the formal nature—­which must always remain the same—­of all the thoughts of a man, whatever the subject on which he has thought or what it is he has said about it.  It is the dough out of which all his ideas are kneaded, however various they may be.  When Eulenspiegel was asked by a man how long he would have to walk before reaching the next place, and gave the apparently absurd answer Walk, his intention was to judge from the man’s walking how far he would go in a given time.  And so it is when I have read a few pages of an author, I know about how far he can help me.

In the secret consciousness that this is the condition of things, every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style.  This instantly necessitates his giving up all idea of being naive, a privilege which belongs to superior minds sensible of their superiority, and therefore sure of themselves.  For instance, it is absolutely impossible for men of ordinary intelligence to make up their minds to write as they think; they resent the idea of their work looking too simple.  It would always be of some value, however.  If they would only go honestly to work and in a simple way express the few and ordinary ideas they have really thought, they would be readable and even instructive in their own sphere.  But instead of that they try to appear to have thought much more deeply than is the case.  The result