It exists, therefore, only in order to be transparent; it has lost that secret consistency which, in the sixteenth century, inspissated it into a word to be deciphered, and interwove it with all the things of the world; it has not yet acquired the multiple existence about which we question ourselves today; in the Classical age, discourse is that translucent necessity through which representation and beings must pass as beings are represented to the mind's eye, and as representation renders beings visible in their truth.