I. Through colored glasses.

Its signs, duration and power. — Its origin and public supporters. - Its vocabulary, grammar and style. — Its method, merits and defects.

This fixed intelligence consists of the classic spirit, which applied to the scientific acquisitions of the period, produces the philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution.  Various signs denote its presence, and notably its oratorical, regular and correct style, wholly consisting of ready-made phrases and contiguous ideas.  It lasts two centuries, from Malherbe and Balzac to Delille and de Fontanes, and during this long period, no man of intellect, save two or three, and then only in private memoirs, as in the case of Saint-Simon, also in familiar letters like those of the marquis and bailly de Mirabeau, either dares or can withdraw himself from its empire.  Far from disappearing with the ancient regime it forms the matrix out of which every discourse and document issues, even the phrases and vocabulary of the Revolution.  Now, what is more effective than a ready-made mold, enforced, accepted, in which by virtue of natural tendency, of tradition and of education, everyone can enclose their thinking?  This one, accordingly, is a historic force, and of the highest order; to understand it let us consider how it came into being. —­ It appeared together with the regular monarchy and polite conversation, and it accompanies these, not accidentally, but naturally and automatically.  For it is product of the new society, of the new regime and its customs:  I mean of an aristocracy left idle due the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who, withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pass their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of the intellect.[1] Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that’s their great affair.  In the seventeenth century they are called “les honnêtes gens"[2] and from now on a writer, even the most abstract, addresses himself to them.  “A gentleman,” says Descartes, “need not have read all books nor have studiously acquired all that is taught in the schools;” and he entitles his last treatise, “A search for Truth according to natural light, which alone, without aid of Religion or Philosophy, determines the truths a gentleman should possess on all matters forming the subjects of his thoughts."[3] In short, from one end of his philosophy to the other, the only qualification he demands of his readers is “natural good sense” added to the common stock of experience acquired by contact with the world. — As these make up the audience they are likewise the judges.  “One must study the taste of the court,” says Molière,[4] “for in no place are verdicts more just . . .  With simple common sense and intercourse