Another characteristic of such writers is that they always avoid a positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so, in order to leave a loophole for escape in case of need. Hence they never fail to choose the more _abstract_ way of expressing themselves; whereas intelligent people use the more _concrete_; because the latter brings things more within the range of actual demonstration, which is the source of all evidence. There are many examples proving this preference for abstract expression; and a particularly ridiculous one is afforded by the use of the verb _to condition_ in the sense of _to cause_ or _to produce_. People say _to condition something_ instead of _to cause it_, because being abstract and indefinite it says less; it affirms that _A_ cannot happen without _B_, instead of that _A_ is caused by _B_. A back door is always left open; and this suits people whose secret knowledge of their own incapacity inspires them with a perpetual terror of all positive assertion; while with other people it is merely the effect of that tendency by which everything that is stupid in literature or bad in life is immediately imitated--a fact proved in either case by the rapid way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his own judgment in what he writes as well as in what he does; but there is no nation of which this eulogy is less true than of the Germans. The consequence of this state of things is that the word _cause_ has of late almost disappeared from the language of literature, and people talk only of _condition_. The fact is worth mentioning because it is so characteristically ridiculous. The very fact that these commonplace authors are never more than half-conscious when they write, would be enough to account for their dullness of mind and the tedious things they produce. I say they are only half-conscious, because they really do not themselves understand the meaning of the words they use: they take words ready-made and commit them to memory. Hence when they write, it is not so much words as whole phrases that they put together--_phrases banales_. This is the explanation of that palpable lack of clearly-expressed thought in what they say. The fact is that they do not possess the die to give this stamp to their writing; clear thought of their own is just what they have not got. And what do we find in its place?--a vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, current phrases, hackneyed terms, and fashionable expressions. The result is that the foggy stuff they write is like a page printed with very old type.