348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



resides. There is something pathetic in the reflection that we walk 

 this world half hidden from one another, a constant struggle going 

 on to make known the thoughts, beliefs, and aspirations of the real 

 but partly-imprisoned being, which never can be known exactly as 

 they are to any but the mind that conceives them. Like savages, we 

 speak mostly by signs, which serve us well enough, but leave much 

 un communicated. It is well, however, that this imperfection is an 

 imperfection that produces beauty ; that the grating of the machine 

 is not harsh, but musical. Mr. Herbert Spencer is successful in show- 

 ing that the various devices of language do serve to the economy of 

 the reader's attention, and that beauties of style are beauties partly 

 because they eflfect this end. But he has not raised a question which 

 seems closely akin to the subject. Why is it needful to have recourse 

 to these expedients at all, and why is there an infinite variety in every 

 man's use of them? The answer to these questions seems to give an 

 insight into a higher law, to which Mr. Spencer's principle stands 

 rather as an empirical generalization. It is this : that each man's 

 inmost nature is a secret to all but himself and that a secret which 

 in no two cases is the same. Every attempt to communicate it partly 

 fails, and so language is full of compromises and expedients; each 

 nature to be revealed is different, and so there is a countless variety 

 of styles. This, then, is not due to poverty of speech ; rather it is due 

 to multiplicity of individualities, each speaking its own language and 

 telling its own tale. 



The ideal style, then, is for an ideal being, but for an ideal being 

 who is to be without personality. The perfect writer may write, now 

 like Junius, now like Lamb, now like Carlyle, but like himself he can 

 never write. He cannot, as we say, express himself. A significant 

 phrase, for after all it is when a man, as far as he can, expresses him- 

 self, that his communication is most worth having. It is the one 

 thing of which he certainly knows something, where he can indeed 

 speak with authority. It is not so much what a man knows as how 

 he knows it, not so much the extent as the quality of his information, 

 that gains him a right to be heard. Originality is far oftener origi- 

 nality of expression than idea, a fresh aspect of something old, not a 

 discovery of something new. And so there starts up here an answer 

 to the difficulties encountered at the outset, " Why men are influenced 

 by language at least as much as by ideas ; " and " Why power of 

 expression is intimately associated with mental grasp generally." 

 Partly, no doubt, because in language resides the personality of the 

 speaker or writer, and men are influenced by personality but far 

 more for another reason. The highest form of ability is something 

 which pervades the whole being ; it is not restricted to an intellect pre- 

 ternaturally acute, to vividness of imagination, or fineness of feeling; 

 but it is the manifestation of a nature of a self, which is really great. 

 And it has been seen that it is in expression, or style, that the self of 



