en on suitable ground, that is to say, on the soil in
the homeland of the classic spirit. In this land of the raison
raisonnante[4104] it no longer encounters the antagonists who impeded
its growth on the other side of the Channel, and it not only immediately
acquires vigor of sap but the propagating organ which it required as
well.

I. The Propagating Organ, Eloquence.

Causes of this difference.--This art of writing in France.--
Its superiority at this epoch.--It serves as the vehicle of
new ideas.--Books are written for people of the world.--
This accounts for philosophy descending to the drawing room.

This organ is the "talent of speech, eloquence applied to the gravest
subjects, the talent for making things clear." [4105]"The great writers
of this nation," says their adversary, "express themselves better than
those of any other nation. Their books give but little information to
true savants," but "through the art of expression they influence men"
and "the mass of men, constantly repelled from the sanctuary of the
sciences by the dry style and bad taste of (other) scientific writers,
cannot resist the seductions of the French style and method." Thus the
classic spirit that furnishes the ideas likewise furnishes the means of
conveying them, the theories of the eighteenth century being like those
seeds provided with wings which float and distribute themselves on all
soils. There is no book of that day not written for people of the high
society, and even for women of this class. In Fontenelle's dialogues
on the Plurality of worlds the principal person age is a marchioness.
Voltaire composes his "Metaphysique" and his "Essai sur les Moeurs"
for Madame du Chatelet, and Rousseau his "Emile" for Madame d'Epinay.
Condillac wrote the "Traite des Sensations" from suggestions of
Mademoiselle Ferrand, and he sets forth instructions to young ladies
how to read his "Logique." Baudeau dedicates and explains to a lady his
"Tableau Economique." Diderot's most profound work is a conversation
between Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse and d'Alembert and Bordeu[4106].
Montesquieu had placed an invocation to the muses in the middle of the
"Esprit des Lois." Almost every work is a product of the drawing-room,
and it is always one that, before the public, has been presented with
its beginnings. In this respect the habit is so strong as to last up to
the end of 1789; the harangues about to be made in the National Asse