We have just now recalled a saying become famous: "Art for art." Let us, once for all, explain ourselves in this question. If faith can be placed in an affirmation very general and very often repeated (we believe honestly), these words, "Art for art," would have been written by the author of this book himself. Written? Never! You may read, from the first to the last line, all that we have published; you will not find these words. It is the opposite which is written throughout our works, and, we insist on it, in our entire life. As for these words in themselves, how far are they real? Here is the fact, which several of our contemporaries remember as well as we do. One day, thirty-five years ago, in a discussion between critics and poets on Voltaire's tragedies, the author of this book threw out this suggestion: "This tragedy is not a tragedy. It is not men who live, it is sentences which speak in it! Rather a hundred times 'Art for art!'" This remark turned, doubtless involuntarily, from its true sense to serve the wants of discussion, has since taken, to the great surprise of him who had uttered it, the proportions of a formula. It is this opinion, limited to "Alzire" and to the "Orpheline de la Chine," and incontestable in that restricted application, which has been turned into a perfect declaration of principles, and an axiom to inscribe on the banner of art. This point settled, let us go on. Between two verses, the one by Pindar, deifying a coachman or glorifying the brass nails of the wheel of a chariot, the other by Archilochus, so powerful that, after having read it, Jeffreys would leave off his career of crimes and would hang himself on the gallows prepared by him for honest people,--between these two verses, of equal beauty, I prefer that of Archilochus. In times anterior to history, when poetry is fabulous and legendary, it has a Promethean grandeur. What composes this grandeur? Utility. Orpheus tames wild animals; Amphion builds cities; the poet, tamer and architect, Linus aiding Hercules, Musæus assisting Dædalus, poetry a civilizing power,--such is the origin. Tradition agrees with reason. The common-sense of peoples is not deceived in that. It always invents fables in the sense of truth. Everything is great in those magnifying distances. Well, then, the wild-beast-taming poet that you admire in Orpheus, recognize him in Juvenal.