th in what he
writes and what he does, but this applies less to the German than to any
other nation. In consequence of the state of things referred to, the
words "to cause" and "to effect" have almost entirely disappeared from
the literature of the last ten years, and people everywhere talk of
"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 ai