d 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.

On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks to us when he
writes, and that is why he is able to rouse our interest and commune
with us. It is the intelligent author alone who puts individual words
together with a full consciousness of their meaning, and chooses them
with deliberate design. Consequently, his discourse stands to that of
the writer described above, much as a picture that has been really
painted, to one that has been produced by the use of a stencil. In the
one case, every word, every touch of the brush, has a special purpose;
in the other, all is done mechanically. The same distinction may be
observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says that Garrick's soul
seemed to be in every muscle in his body, so it is the omnipresence of
intellect that always and everywhere characterizes the work of genius.

I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works of these
writers; and in this connection it is to be observed, generally, that
tediousness is of two kinds; objective and subjective. A work is
objectively tedious when it contains the defect in question; that is
to say, when its author has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to
communicate. For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge in him,
his aim will be to communicate it, and he will direct his energies
to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are everywhere clearly
expressed. The result is that he