hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon wins his
reader's confidence that, when he writes, he has really and truly
_something to say_; and this gives the intelligent reader patience to
follow him with attention. Such an author, just because he really has
something to say, will never fail to express himself in the simplest
and most straightforward manner; because his object is to awake the
very same thought in the reader that he has in himself, and no other.
So he will be able to affirm with Boileau that his thoughts are
everywhere open to the light of the day, and that his verse always
says something, whether it says it well or ill:

_Ma pensee au grand jour partout s'offre et s'expose,
Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose_:

while of the writers previously described it may be asserted, in the
words of the same poet, that they talk much and never say anything at
all--_quiparlant beaucoup ne disent jamais rien_.

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, an