where they sound so powerful and so profound, they lose their virtue and appear to be indeterminate, contradictory or fallacious. It is quite another question as to whether his sentiment was based upon what are called mental or philosophical _presumptions_ and as to what these, properly speaking, were; because, as regards the first point, it must be at once admitted that a sentiment does not appear without a basis of certain mental presumptions or concepts, that is to say, of certain convictions, affirmations, negations and doubts. As regards the second point, the legitimacy of the enquiry will be admitted, and it will also be noted that this forms one of several historical enquiries, relating to Shakespeare in his poetry, to which belongs the place unduly usurped by ineptitudes and superficialities on the theme of his private affairs; his domestic relations, his business transactions, and his pretended love intrigues with Mary Fitton and the hostess Madam Davenant. It is also true that the researches into the mental presumptions of Shakespeare have often strayed into the external and the anecdotic, as is the case with such problems as the religion that he followed and his political opinions. Stated in this way, they likewise sink to the level of biographical problems, indifferent to art. That Shakespeare belonged to the Anglican and not to the Catholic confession (as some still maintain, and in 1864 Rio wrote a whole book on the subject), and opposed Puritanism in one quality or the other; that he supported Essex in his conspiracy, or on the contrary was on the side of Queen Elizabeth, has nothing to do with the mental presuppositions immanent in his poetry. He may have been impious and profane in active practical life as a Greene or a Marlowe, or a devout papist, worshipping with secret superstition, like an adept of Mary Stuart, and nevertheless he may have composed poetry with different presuppositions, upon thoughts that had entered his mind and had there become formed and dominated in his spirit, without for that reason having changed the faith previously selected and observed. The research of which we speak does not concern the superficial, but the profound character of the man; it is not concerned with the congealed and solidified stratum, but with the tide that flows beneath it, which others would call the unconscious in relation to the conscious, whereas, it would be more exact to invert the two qualifications. Presuppositions are the philosophemes that everyone carries with him, gathering them from the times and from tradition, or forming them anew by means of his own observations and rapid reflections. In poetical works, they form the condition remote from the psychological attitude, which generates poetical visions.