HISTORY AND USAGE OF THE WORD 169 



Language does not create thought. On the contrary, 

 thought demands language for its utterance. For this very 

 reason thought goes before language, and evokes it as an 

 instrument. But language once created, the words which 

 have been launched on their career, pregnant with antecedent 

 thoughts, react upon the minds of those who use them. As 

 the race exists now, the links of connection between language 

 and thought are so complicated, and of such immemorial 

 antiquity words are so shot and coloured with past emotions 

 and accepted meaning that, in literature, thought, the stuff 

 to be expressed, cannot be disentangled from its verbal 

 vehicle. Body is not more inseparable from soul than style 

 from thought, the language of expression from the mental 

 matter to be uttered. 



It might appear as though every thought had its inevitable 

 symbol in language, and that style is therefore uncontrollable. 

 This, however, is not the case ; for though thought needs the 

 vehicle of words for utterance, it has so fashioned language 

 that many modes of expression for the same idea or emotion 

 are possible. That only one of these is the absolutely right 

 one, will be admitted by those who have seriously studied the 

 problem of style. Yet it is not given to all nay, it is granted 

 to a very few in each generation to find the unerring, the 

 inevitable phrase. The thinker has a wide range for choice 

 and selection. He can deal with words to some extent in the 

 same way as the painter deals with form and colour. In this 

 sense language has an independence of its own, and may be 

 considered external to the literary artist, just as marble is 

 external to the sculptor and musical sound to the composer 

 of a symphony. Later on, however, we shall see that the 

 artist in language does not stand in the same relation to his 

 vehicle as the artist in form, colour, tone. 



Every thought, then, has its own fit and exact mould of 

 language ; and each variation of expression causes some 

 modification of the thought to be expressed. The aim of 

 art in writing is therefore to find that form of words which 

 shall most aptly render the thought we seek to utter. 



Attention to language and the niceties of style enables a 



