ces 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 Marechale," says one of Diderot's personages,[4110]. "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[4111]. 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 and simple conception on which the rest
depends, those of unity, proportion, mass and motion in mathematics;
those of organ, function and being in physiology; those of sensation,
pain, pleasure an