m themselves, but in the hope that someone else will
get sense out of them.

[Footnote 1: In their Hegel-gazette, commonly known as _Jahrbuecher der
wissenschaftlichen Literatur_.]

And what is at the bottom of all this? Nothing but the untiring effort
to sell words for thoughts; a mode of merchandise that is always
trying to make fresh openings for itself, and by means of odd
expressions, turns of phrase, and combinations of every sort, whether
new or used in a new sense, to produce the appearence of intellect in
order to make up for the very painfully felt lack of it.

It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view will attempt
first one mannerism and then another, as though they were putting
on the mask of intellect! This mask may possibly deceive the
inexperienced for a while, until it is seen to be a dead thing, with
no life in it at all; it is then laughed at and exchanged for another.
Such an author will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as
though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next page, he will
be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and prolix, stumbling on in the
most cumbrous way and chopping up everything very small; like the late
Christian Wolf, only in a modern dress. Longest of all lasts the mask
of unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it was
introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and carried to its
highest pitch in Hegel--always with the best results.

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand;
just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep
things in such a way that every one must necessarily grasp them. All
the arts and tricks I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if
the author really has any brains; for that allows him to show himself
as he is, and confirms to all time Horace's maxim that good sense is
the source and origin of good style:

_Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons_.

But those authors I have named are like certain workers in metal, who
try a hundred different compounds to take the place of gold--the only
metal which can never have any substitute. Rather than do that, there
is nothing against which a writer should be more upon his guard than
the manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he really has;
because this makes the reader suspect that he possesses very little;
since it is always the case that if a man affects anything, whatever
it may be,