d desire in psychology; those of utility, contract
and law in politics and morality; those of capital, production, value,
exchange in political economy, and the same in the other sciences, all
of these being conceptions derived from passing experience; from which
it follows that, in appealing to common experience by means of a few
familiar circumstances, such as short stories, anecdotes, agreeable
tales, and the like, these conceptions are fashioned anew and rendered
precise. This being accomplished, almost everything is accomplished; for
nothing then remains but to lead the listener along step by step, flight
by flight, to the remotest consequences.

"Will Madame la Marechale have the kindness to recall
my definition?"--"I remember it well-do you call that a
definition?"--"Yes."--"That, then, is philosophy!"--"Admirable!"--"And
I have been philosophical?"--"As you read prose, without being aware of
it."

The rest is simply a matter of reasoning, that is to say, of leading
on, of putting questions in the right order, and of analysis. With
the conception thus renewed and rectified the truth nearest at hand is
brought out, then out of this, a second truth related to the first one,
and so on to the end, no other obligation being involved in this
method but that of carefully advancing step by step, and of omitting no
intermediary step.--With this method one is able to explain all, to make
everything understood, even by women, and even by women of society. In
the eighteenth century it forms the substance of all talents, the
warp of all masterpieces, the lucidity, popularity and authority of
philosophy. The "Eloges" of Fontenelle, the "Philosophe ignorant et le
principe d'action" by Voltaire, the "Lettre a M. de Beaumont," and the
"Vicaire Savoyard" by Rousseau, the "Traite de l'homme" and the "Epoques
de la Nature" by Buffon, the "Dialogues sur les bles" by Galiani, the
"Considerations" by d'Alembert, on mathematics, the "Langue des Calculs"
and the "Logique" by Condillac, and, a little later, the "Exposition
du systeme du Monde" by Laplace, and "Discours generaux" by Bichat and
Cuvier; all are based on this method[4112]. Finally, this is the method
which Condillac erects into a theory under the name of ideology, soon
acquiring the ascendancy of a dogma, and which then seems to sum up
all methods. At the very least it sums up the process by which the
philosophers of the century obtained their audience, propagated their
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