566 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 461. 



requires thought. Papers by Writers" of this 

 class are inevitably amorphous and weak. If 

 those by the second class do exhibit power, the 

 power is apt to be lawless, and the tectonics 

 are likely to be distractingly apparent to the 

 reader. Only papers by the third class can 

 possess structure and grace. Schopenhauer 

 declares further that an author's style is an 

 exact expression of his mode of thought; that 

 it shows the formal nature — which must al- 

 ways remain the same — of all the thoughts 

 of a man; and, therefore, that when he has 

 read a few pages of an author, whatever the 

 subject, he knows about how far that author 

 can help him. Similarly wrote Dean Alford 

 in his 'Plea for the Queen's English': "If 

 the way in which men express their thoughts 

 is slipshod and mean, it will be very difficult 

 for their thoughts themselves to escape being 

 the same." 



Again, effective composition implies con- 

 centration, distillation, a process akin to 

 chemical rectification; and this it is that 

 energizes. Josh Billings said : " I don't care 

 how much a man talks if he only says it in a 

 few words." Lecky calls this power the su- 

 preme literary gift of condensation, which 

 Gibbon possessed in so high degree. In the 

 case of a talented writer this process is sub- 

 conscious and rapid, but others achieve the 

 result through conscious effort if not down- 

 right labor. Macaulay made almost endless 

 changes, both of matter and of style. Said 

 Joubert : " If there is a man tormented by 

 the accursed ambition to put a whole book into 

 a page, a whole page into a phrase, and that 

 phrase into a word, it is I." Little wonder 

 that Joubert has succeeded La Rochefouca^ild 

 as the most famous coiner of aphorisms. John 

 Burroughs has lately said, in his ' Literary 

 Values ' : " There is a sort of mechanical 

 equivalent between the force expended in 

 compacting a sentence and the force or stimu- 

 lus it imparts to the reader's mind. * * * 

 So much writing there is that is like half -live 

 coals buried in ashes — dead verbiage." Spen- 

 cer, in his essay on ' The Philosophy of Style,' 

 observes that the strongest effects are pro- 

 duced by interjections, which condense en- 



tire sentences into syllables, and that signs 

 are still more forcible. For instance, to say 

 ' Leave the room ' is less expressive than to 

 point to the door. Doubtless science would 

 make slow progress if obliged to use the sign 

 language; yet in the prolixity and tenuity 

 which characterize much of the scientific writ- 

 ing of the day there is no progress, but only 

 vexation of the spirit of the reader. " It is 

 with words as with sunbeams," says Saxe, 

 " the more they are condensed the deeper 

 they burn." In sententiousness there is 

 strength. We feel it in the epigrammatic 

 sentences of Emerson, who wrote to Carlyle 

 of ' paragraphs incompressible,' and most of 

 whose titles are single words. On the other 

 hand, some of Kant's sentences have been 

 measured by a carpenter and been found to 

 run two feet eight by six inches. "A sentence 

 with that enormous span," says De Quincey, 

 " is fit only for the use of a megatherium." 



As an example of scientific writing which 

 is not only clear and methodical, but forcible, 

 I may mention that of the late George H. 

 Williams, in whose untimely death the sci- 

 entific world suffered a loss. 



That clearness and force are desiderata in 

 scientific writing will be admitted by all. It 

 may be somewhat rash, however, even to men- 

 tion in such connection a higher quality; but 

 I observe that into this article the words 

 ' grace ' and ' beauty ' have already crept and 

 I am not disposed to cancel them. Says Jou- 

 bert : " In the mind of certain writers nothing 

 is grouped or draped or modeled; their pages 

 offer only a flat surface on which words roll." 

 Says Lewes : "A man must have the art of ex- 

 pression or he will remain obscure." Says 

 Buffon : " Only well-written works will sur- 

 vive ; abundance of knowledge and singularity 

 of facts are not a guaranty of immortality." 



Ehetoric, we know, was to Huxley an 

 abomination — a vile cosmetic; yet it is not 

 difficult to discover in Huxley's writings pages 

 that are rhetorically elegant. The fact that 

 with him the action was spontaneous is merely 

 evidence of his artistic endowment; and there 

 can be no doubt that his shafts were hurled 

 at the foolishness of literary foppery, not at 



