“to condition.”  The fact is worth mentioning because it is characteristically ridiculous.  Everyday authors are only half conscious when they write, a fact which accounts for their want of intellect and the tediousness of their writings; they do not really themselves understand the meaning of their own words, because they take ready-made words and learn them.  Hence they combine whole phrases more than words—­phrases banales.  This accounts for that obviously characteristic want of clearly defined thought; in fact, they lack the die that stamps their thoughts, they have no clear thought of their own; in place of it we find an indefinite, obscure interweaving of words, current phrases, worn-out terms of speech, and fashionable expressions.  The result is that their foggy kind of writing is like print that has been done with old type.  On the other hand, intelligent people really speak to us in their writings, and this is why they are able to both move and entertain us.  It is only intelligent writers who place individual words together with a full consciousness of their use and select them with deliberation.  Hence their style of writing bears the same relation to that of those authors described above, as a picture that is really painted does to one that has been executed with stencil.  In the first instance every word, just as every stroke of the brush, has some special significance, while in the other everything is done mechanically.  The same distinction may be observed in music.  For it is the omnipresence of intellect that always and everywhere characterises the works of the genius; and analogous to this is Lichtenberg’s observation, namely, that Garrick’s soul was omnipresent in all the muscles of his body.  With regard to the tediousness of the writings referred to above, it is to be observed in general that there are two kinds of tediousness—­an objective and a subjective.  The objective form of tediousness springs from the deficiency of which we have been speaking—­that is to say, where the author has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate.  For if a writer possesses any clear thought or knowledge it will be his aim to communicate it, and he will work with this end in view; consequently the ideas he furnishes are everywhere clearly defined, so that he is neither diffuse, unmeaning, nor confused, and consequently not tedious.  Even if his fundamental idea is wrong, yet in such a case it will be clearly thought out and well pondered; in other words, it is at least formally correct, and the writing is always of some value.  While, for the same reason, a work that is objectively tedious is at all times without value.  Again, subjective tediousness is merely relative:  this is because the reader is not interested in the subject of the work, and that what he takes an interest in is of a very limited nature.  The most excellent work may therefore be tedious subjectively to this or that person, just as, vice versa, the worst work may be subjectively diverting to this or that person:  because he is interested in either the subject or the writer of the book.