; over
all that concerns knowledge itself it has no right to any authority. For
it exceeds its mission, it betrays it, it disfigures the object that it
ought faithfully to transmit, it lays claim to authority out of its
proper province; if it tries to carry out there, too, its own law, which
is nothing but that of pleasing the imagination and making itself
agreeable to the intuitive faculties; if it applies this law not only to
the operation, but also to the matter itself; if it follows this rule not
only to arrange the materials, but also to choose them. When this is the
case the first consideration is not the things themselves, but the best
mode of presenting them so as to recommend them to the senses. The
logical sequence of conceptions of which only the strictness should have
been hidden from us is rejected as a disagreeable impediment. Perfection
is sacrificed to ornament, the truth of the parts to the beauty of the
whole, the inmost nature of things to the exterior impression. Now,
directly the substance is subordinated to form, properly speaking it
ceases to exist; the statement is empty, and instead of having extended
our knowledge we have only indulged in an amusing game.

The writers who have more wit than understanding and more taste than
science, are too often guilty of this deception; and readers more
accustomed to feel than to think are only too inclined to forgive them.
In general it is unsafe to give to the aesthetical sense all its culture
before having exercised the understanding as the pure thinking faculty,
and before having enriched the head with conceptions; for as taste always
looks at the carrying out and not at the basis of things, wherever it
becomes the only arbiter, there is an end of the essential difference
between things. Men become indifferent to reality, and they finish by
giving value to form and appearance only.

Hence arises that superficial and frivolous bel-esprit that we often see
hold sway in social conditions and in circles where men pride themselves,
and not unreasonably, on the finest culture. It is a fatal thing to
introduce a young man into assemblies where the Graces hold sway before
the Muses have dismissed him and owned his majority. Moreover, it can
hardly be prevented that what completes the external education of a young
man whose mind is ripe turns him who is not ripened by study into a fool.
I admit that to have a fund of conceptions, and not form, is only a half
poss