[2] A book so little known and disfigured in its pious editions. Nothing could be less pious, however, or less edifying, after the first volume, than this curious and confused encyclopedia, where we find _René_ and statistical tables, _Atala_ and a catalogue of Greek painters. It is a universal history of civilization and a plan of social reconstruction. [3] In speaking of the eighteenth century, exception must always be made of the grandiose and solitary Buffon, in his tower at Montbard, who was, in the modern sense of these words, a scientist, a philosopher, and a poet. [4] An attempt will be made some day in a study in the _World of Words_, to determine whether words have really a meaning--that is to say, a constant value. [5] _De l'Enseignement de notre langue_. [6] M. Albalat has italicized everything he deems "banal or useless." [7] See the chapter on the _cliché_, in my book, _L'Esthétique de la Langue française_. [8] _L'Art d'écrire_, p. 138. [9] Or rather, had them copied by his secretaries. He afterwards reworked the clean copy. There is a whole volume on this subject: _Les Manuscrits de Buffon_, by P. Flourens, Paris, Garnier, 1860. [10] There is, on this point, a pretty passage from Quintilian, quoted by M. Albalat, p. 213. [11] I take it for granted that the reader no longer believes that the Homeric poems were composed at haphazard by a multitude of rhapsodists of genius, and that it was enough to string these improvisations together to get the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. SUBCONSCIOUS CREATION[1] Certain men have received a special gift, which distinguishes them in a striking fashion from their fellows. The moment discus-throwers or generals, poets or clowns, sculptors or financiers rise above the common level, they demand the particular attention of the observer. The predominance of one of their faculties marks them out for analysis, and for that analytical method which consists in successive differentiation. We come thus to discern in mankind a class whose distinguishing trait is difference, just as, for common humanity, this trait is resemblance. There are men who let us know nothing of what they are going to say when they begin to speak. These are few. There are others who tell us all, as soon as they open their mouths. It is alleged that in this class there are marked disparities; for it is undeniable that, even among those who, at first sight, resemble each other most closely, there are no two creatures who are not, at bottom, contradictory. It is the highest glory of man, and the one that science has been unable to wrest from him, that there is no science of man.