and M. de Luxembourg’s; the Abbé Barthelemy to the Duchesse de Choiseul’s; Thomas, Marmontel and Gibbon to Madame Necker’s; the encyclopedists to d’Holbach’s ample dinners, to the plain and discreet table of Madame Geoffrin, and to the little drawing room of Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse, all belonging to the great central state drawing-room, that is to say, to the French Academy, where each newly elected member appears to parade his style and obtain from a polished body his commission of master in the art of discourse.  Such a public imposes on an author the obligation of being more a writer than a philosopher.  The thinker is expected to concern himself with his sentences as much as with his ideas.  He is not allowed to be a mere scholar in his closet, a simple erudite, diving into folios in German fashion, a metaphysician absorbed with his own meditations, having an audience of pupils who take notes, and, as readers, men devoted to study and willing to give themselves trouble, a Kant, who forms for himself a special language, who waits for a public to comprehend him and who leaves the room in which he labors only for the lecture-room in which he delivers his lectures.  Here, on the contrary, in the matter of expression, all are experts and even professional.  The mathematician d’Alembert publishes a small treatise on elocution; Buffon, the naturalist pronounces a discourse on Style; the legist Montesquieu composes an essay on Taste; the psychologist Condillac writes a volume on the art of writing.  In this consists their greatest glory; philosophy owes its entry into society to them.  They withdrew it from the study, the closed-society and the school, to introduce it into company and into conversation.

II.  Its method.

Owing to this method it becomes popular.

“Madame la Maréchale,” says one of Diderot’s personages,[10].  “I must consider things from a somewhat higher point of view.” — " As high as you please so long as I understand you.” — “If you do not understand me it will be my fault.” — " You are very polite, but you must know that I have studied nothing but my prayer. book.” — That makes no difference; the pretty woman, ably led on, begins to philosophize without knowing it, arriving without effort at the distinction between good and evil, comprehending and deciding on the highest doctrines of morality and religion. — Such is the art of the eighteenth century, and the art of writing.  People are addressed who are perfectly familiar with life, but who are commonly ignorant of orthography, who are curious in all directions, but ill prepared for any; the object is to bring truth down to their level[11].  Scientific or too abstract terms are inadmissible; they tolerate only those used to ordinary conversation.  And this is no obstacle; it is easier to talk philosophy in this language than to use it for discussing precedence and clothes.  For, in every abstract question there is some leading