SHORTER AiniCLES AND DISCUSSIOX. 



375 



of application and probable greater cer- 

 tainty of result, the element of word- 

 length was that to which attention was 

 first given. Besides, there is in this 

 another important advantage which 

 will be presently explained. 



Now, in spite of an oft-quoted asser- 

 tion to the contrary, words are used to 

 express ideas, and the particular words 

 used will depend largely, perhaps most 

 largely, on the idea to be expressed; 

 but they will also depend on the per- 

 son to whom they are addressed ; on 

 the conditions under which they are 

 spoken (as in private conversation, 

 public address, etc.) or written (in 

 correspondence, for publication in 

 newspapers, journals or books) ; es- 

 pecially on the age or period in which 

 their author lived; and perhaps on a 

 thousand other things; but in any or 

 in all of these cases they are determined 

 by the person who uses them. The 

 theory assumes that by combining a 

 sufficiently large number of verbal ex- 

 pressions of any author, variations due 

 to these thousand and one causes may 

 be eliminated and that due to the per- 

 sonality of the author, the only one in 

 fact which is common to them all, may 

 stand revealed. 



Moreover it is clear that in selecting 

 from many personal idiosyncrasies of 

 an author that which will best serve 

 for purposes of identification, it will be 

 wise to choose one of which he is him- 

 self unconscious, for this would most 

 certainly persist and prevail in every- 

 thing he wrote, never being either 

 shunned or encouraged. While an 

 author will often give thought to the 

 arrangement of words and sentences 

 and to other features of composition, 

 he will almost never stop to consider 

 the number of letters in the words 

 which he uses, and, therefore, such per- 

 sonal peculiarity as may be shown 

 by word length frequency curves is 

 almost certain to be persistent. 



Dr. Moritz is quite right in his be- 

 lief that ' form of composition ' ( sub- 

 ject matter, etc.) affects very power 

 fully the form of a word-curve, seem 



in'g, at first, to conceal the element of 

 personality, just us in the physical 

 world local, near-at-hand causes seem 

 in their effects to overshadow and con- 

 ceal those of remote but more constant 

 origin. 



But it must never be forgotten that 

 they only conceal, they do not destroy; 

 they may over-shadow, but they can not 

 obliterate. The position of a freely 

 suspended magnetic needle does not, at 

 first sight, appear to be in any way 

 related to the phases of the moon, but 

 a very long series' of observations re- 

 veals this relation very clearly and 

 certainly, although local happenings 

 affect it to a much greater degree and 

 apparently conceal the more persistent 

 influence of a more remote cause. It 

 is the constancy of this influence, the 

 fact that it is present all the time, 

 which makes it possible to differentiate 

 it from others, often exceeding it in 

 magnitude, but less regular in opera- 

 tion. And so it is in the long run 

 that the personal peculiarities of an 

 author, especially the unconscious 

 peculiarities, will be revealed, and the 

 so-called ' characteristic curve of com- 

 position ' was suggested as a means of 

 developing and displaying one of them. 



The question under discussion in- 

 cludes, therefore, two parts : First, 

 does the personality of an author enter 

 into his composition so as to affect its 

 purely mechanical aspect in a way of 

 which he is quite unconscious? — and, 

 second, does the ' characteristic curve ' 

 furnish a means of exhibiting such 

 peculiarities of composition if they ex- 

 ist? It is not likely that anybody, 

 after a little reflection and investiga- 

 tion, will be willing to say ' no ! ' to the 

 first, although few people fully recog- 

 nize how steadily and surely one is in- 

 fluenced by a bias of which one is 

 totally unconscious. Although such 

 unrecognized influences are often very 

 feeble, their very persistency, the fact 

 that they ' never sleep,' may give them 

 so large a place in the final summing 

 up of any series of operations that they 

 determine the distinctive character- 



