Parisians in the Country by Honoré de Balzac
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page 13 of 311 (04%)
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bodies. After 1830 ideas became property. A writer, too wise to
publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs." Perhaps in course of time we may have an Exchange for thought; in fact, even now ideas, good or bad, have their consols, are bought up, imported, exported, sold, and quoted like stocks. If ideas are not on hand ready for sale, speculators try to pass off words in their stead, and actually live upon them as a bird lives on the seeds of his millet. Pray do not laugh; a word is worth quite as much as an idea in a land where the ticket on a sack is of more importance than the contents. Have we not seen libraries working off the word "picturesque" when literature would have cut the throat of the word "fantastic"? Fiscal genius has guessed the proper tax on intellect; it has accurately estimated the profits of advertising; it has registered a prospectus of the quantity and exact value of the property, weighing its thought at the intellectual Stamp Office in the Rue de la Paix. Having become an article of commerce, intellect and all its products must naturally obey the laws which bind other manufacturing interests. Thus it often happens that ideas, conceived in their cups by certain apparently idle Parisians,--who nevertheless fight many a moral battle over their champagne and their pheasants,--are handed down at their birth from the brain to the commercial travellers who are employed to spread them discreetly, "urbi et orbi," through Paris and the provinces, seasoned with the fried pork of advertisement and prospectus, by means of which they catch in their rat-trap the departmental rodent commonly called subscriber, sometimes stockholder, occasionally corresponding member or patron, but invariably fool. "I am a fool!" many a poor country proprietor has said when, caught by |
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