 One misunderstanding that has arisen about Dubos is the assumption that he democratizes taste, because in some passages of the Reflections, he states that the “public” and “tout le monde” can be susceptible to the proper reception of artworks. However, in other passages he explains what he means by these terms: “tout le monde” does not mean “everyone”, as it is usually translated: he in fact uses “le monde” to mean high society, also called “le beau monde” in the eighteenth century. As for the general public, he explicitly excludes “the lower class of people” from “the public capable of passing judgment on poems or pictures” (Dubos, Critical Reflections, II:245).