We need not wonder at the reputation which he with seeming facility achieved.

He was, without being aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals.

His book was different from all others which were at that date in the world.
It diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels.

It told its readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer's opinion was about men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new light on many matters but darkly understood.

Above all, the essayist uncased himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public property.