reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.—bacon.
any attempt to formulate a science or art of thinking would not be complete with-out at least some dis-cus-sion of writ-ing. indeed writing is so closely bound up with thinking that i have been compelled to refer to it several times in the discussion of thought and reading.
i have already spoken of writing as an aid to con-cen-tration. i was wont to depreciate it on account of its slowness. but this is practically its only fault. thoughts come to us when writing which we get in no other way. one is often surprised, when reading some-thing one has written at a previous time, at some of the remarks made. we seem to have tem-por-arily grown wiser than ourselves.
but the great advantage of writing is that it preserves thought. what printing has done for human-i-ty in preserving the knowledge of the ages, writing will do for the individual in preserving his own reflections.
when some thought has occurred to us we believe at the time we are thinking it that it is ours forever. we cannot conceive that it shall ever be forgotten. perish that belief! i have sometimes had an idea occur to me (really!), and have believed it ab-so-lute-ly new, at least so far as i was con-cerned. but on looking over things writ-ten before, i have found that i had had almost iden-ti-cal-ly the same thought at another time. not only did i forget the idea; i did not even recognize it at its second appearance. to be sure, in these cases the thoughts came a second time. but thoughts are seldom so obliging.
therefore when an idea occurs or when you have solved a problem, even a problem suggested by a book, you should immediately put the idea or solution in writing. you may of course wait until the end of the day. but the safest way of capturing an idea is to write it the minute after it flashes through your brain, or it may be lost forever. it was with this in mind that in the chapter on reading i advised immediately writing not only ideas but problems which occurred to one. the discovery of a new problem is just as important and necessary for in-tel-lec-tual advance as the solution of an old one. if we do not write our problems we are apt to forget they exist; we put ourselves in danger of assuming without question some proposition which is not true.
to facilitate the writing of your thoughts and meditations i suggest a notebook kept specially for that purpose. in addition to this you should always carry about with you some blank paper and a pencil, so as to be ever ready to jot down anything. to write an idea does not of course imply that you cannot later reject it, or change it, or develop it further.
the elusiveness of thoughts is most strikingly brought out when writing them down. when we are writing a long sentence we have in mind the exact words with which we are going to finish it. but our attention is called for the moment to the physical act of writing, and presto!—the words are gone; we are compelled to end our sentence in a different way. i have mentioned the advantages of shorthand and typewriting for keeping pace with thought. i need merely repeat my advice to use these acquirements if you have them. thoughts, i must repeat, are fleeting. no device for trapping them should be despised.
not least among the advantages of a notebook in which to write thoughts is the permanent historical record it gives. every thought we write should be dated, day, month and year, like a letter. when we come to read over ideas jotted down from time to time in this manner, we shall see before us an in-tel-lec-tual autobiography. we shall see how our recent thoughts compare with those written sometime ago. we shall see just what our opinions were at certain times, and how they have changed. and we shall see whether our mental progress has been marked, or whether we have been standing still.
it may be considered absurd to suggest that every thought you write in your note-book be put in the best style you can command. we are wont to differentiate “style” and “matter.” it is doubtful whether this distinction is quite valid. it is doubtful whether we know just what we mean when we make it. indeed arnold bennett goes so far as to say:
“style cannot be distinguished from matter. when a writer conceives an idea he conceives it in the form of words. that form of words constitutes his style, and it is absolutely governed by the idea. the idea can only exist in words, it can only exist in one form of words. you cannot say exactly the same thing in two different ways. slightly alter the expression, and you slightly alter the idea. surely it is obvious that the expression cannot be altered without altering the thing expressed! the writer, having conceived and expressed an idea, may, and probably will, ‘polish it up.’ but what does he polish up? to say that he polishes up his style is merely to say that he polishes up his idea, that he has discovered faults and imperfections in his idea, and is perfecting it. the idea exists in proportion as it is expressed; it exists when it is expressed, and not before. it expresses itself. a clear idea is expressed clearly and a vague idea vaguely.”21
mr. bennett, i suspect, is a victim of ex-ag-ger-a-tion. but this much is true: thought and style are mutually dependent to a far greater degree than is generally supposed. not only will an im-prove-ment in a thought improve its wording; an im-prove-ment in word-ing will im-prove the thought.
now as to the application of this. i have referred to the occurrence in reading of “inarticulate” objections. the sole reason these are inarticulate is because the objection is too vague even to find expression. in a case like this we should word our objection the best we can, no matter how ridiculous or indefensible it at first sounds. but we should word it in as many ways as possible; we should say it in all different sorts of ways; we should write it in every different kind of way. gradually our objection will become definite, clear, forceful. in short, we shall not only have improved our way of stating our thought; we shall have improved the thought itself. to study clearness of statement or acquisition of vocabulary is to study means of improving thought. your notebook should not be used solely for the entry of “thoughts” as such, but any striking way of wording a thought which occurs to you should likewise be immediately written.
but while there is some truth in arnold bennett’s statement that the wording is the thought, from another point of view its very opposite is true. the wording is never the thought. strictly speaking, “thought” is something which can exist only in the mind. it can never be transferred to paper. what then is it that we write? if words and sentences are not thought, what are they? if they are not thought how is it possible to transfer thought through the medium of writing?
the fact is that words, though they are not thought, are the associates of thought. you hear the word “horse.” very likely the visual image of a horse arises in mind. this image, idea, notion, “concept,” will depend on your experience of par-tic-u-lar horses. it will never be a logical abstract of these. it will never be a horse without color, par-tic-u-lar size, sex or breed, as is sometimes thought. it may however have different elements in it from different horses you have seen. it may be the image of just one par-tic-u-lar horse you remember. but no such thing as a general concept exists in the mind. we have a par-tic-u-lar image which stands for all horses. the name of course is general. it—or its definition—may be called the logical concept. but the name itself is not used in thought. it is an arbitrary symbol which serves merely to arouse a par-tic-u-lar image associated with it, and this image is dealt with as if general. this image we shall call the concept. it is the working concept: the psy-cho-log-i-cal as opposed to the logical concept.
as your concept of a horse will depend on your experience of par-tic-u-lar horses, another person’s concept will depend on his experience of that animal. and as his experience can never be exactly the same as yours, his concept, though it may be similar to yours, will not be the same. not only will no one else have the same mental image or concept as you but you yourself will never have exactly the same image twice. this image will vary with the setting in which it occurs—with the associates which happen to arouse it. if you are reading about a great battle and the word “horse” is mentioned, a certain kind of horse will suggest itself to you. if you are reading about a grocery wagon and see the word “horse” another kind will suggest itself. this whether the animal is described by adjectives or not. at one time you may think of the horse as in motion, at another time as at rest.
unfortunately many so-called psychologists seem to consider the concept, even this image-concept, as something fixed in the individual, or at best as only changing with actual experience of the thing conceived. the truth is that the image or images aroused on hearing any word are not the same for two seconds at a time. they are fluid, dynamic; never static, immobile. they are associates of the words in a constant state of flux.22 when the concept of one individual varies from one moment to the next, how must the concepts of different individuals differ from each other!
i have instanced the idea of a horse because it is so simple and concrete. in actual thinking we never meet with a simple separated concept or with a single word; we deal with at least an entire sentence. this means that our images vary even more widely at different times than was the case in the example. it means that the images of other people are at a cor-res-pond-ingly greater variance from ours.
as to the application of all this to writing. we have an idea; thinking it important we decide to jot it down. now we cannot jot down the idea, but only words associated with it. we cannot even write all the words associated with it, for there are too many. so we write a comparative few; and we say we have written the idea. but all we have really written is something associated with the idea. when we read this over at a later time we shall not have the same ideas aroused as were in mind originally, but at best only similar ideas. for the associates of words, like all associates, are constantly changing; and thanks to the frailties of human memory exactly the same associates are never aroused twice. so after a long interval they will be much different than at the time we wrote. the reader will often have the experience of “writing a thought” and thinking it very important, but on reading it at another time he will fail to see why he ever considered it worth putting on paper. the truth is that at the time he wrote the idea it probably was important, because he had the right concepts. but when he came back to the words he had written they failed to re-suggest the former concepts and associates.
this difference between words and thought is even more strikingly brought out when the written thought is read by some other person than the writer. the writer is likely at least to have approximately the same concepts as at the time of writing. and he is greatly aided by his memory in recalling the concepts and associated ideas previously in mind, the words suggesting these. but when a person reads what some one else has written, he translates the words into the concepts previously connected with them in his own mind. thus an author can never literally transfer an idea. he can merely put down certain arbitrary symbols, which will serve to arouse a similar thought in his readers. how greatly the reader’s thought differs from the author’s it is dif-fi-cult if not im-pos-sible to de-termine, for minds can only com-mun-i-cate by words. it is this dif-fer-ence in as-soc-iated con-cept which often makes a reader fail to ap-prec-iate the pro-foundest thoughts of an author, and even, on the other hand, oc-ca-sionally to see depth where it does not exist.
we come now to the solution of the problem to which this rather extended discussion has been preparatory. how is an author to convey, as nearly as possible, his actual idea? and the answer is: he should word it in as many different ways as possible.
if a person had never been to a city and you wanted to give him an idea of it, you would show him photographs taken from different viewpoints. one photograph would correct and supplement the other. and the more photographic viewpoints he saw the more complete and accurate would be his idea—the more his concept would approximate the actual city. but he could never more than approximate; he could never obtain the idea of a man who had visited that city.
an author’s language is a photograph of his thought. he can never actually transfer an idea, but by wording it in different ways he can show different photographs of it.
if, for example, a second wording does not conform with the first concept which a reader has formed, the reader will be obliged to modify that concept. and if the idea is repeated in a number of different ways he will have to modify his concept so much that he will gradually more and more approximate the idea of the author.
i remember the story in some educational treatise of an inspector who entered a school room, asked the teacher what she had been giving her class, and finally took up a book and asked the following question, “if you were to dig a hole thousands and thousands of feet deep, would it be cooler near the bottom or near the top, and why?” not a child answered. finally the teacher said, “i’m sure they know the answer but i don’t think you put the question in the right way.” so taking the book she asked, “in what state is the center of the earth?” immediately came the reply from the whole class in chorus, “the center of the earth is in a state of igneous fusion.” . . .
there is, and has been for the past generation, a great cry in educational circles that we should teach things, not words. in some instances this is inadvisable, even impracticable. but if the teacher in the foregoing story had taken the trouble to word her idea in at least more than one way, she might have implanted a real idea in her pupils. she would at least have found that as it was they had none.
one more question remains. if you are writing a composition, a letter, an essay, or even a book, what is the best way to get down all your thoughts, without losing any of value; to get them down in the best order and in the best style? in other words what is the path of greatest efficiency in transferring thoughts from your mind to paper?
we have already considered such devices as shorthand. of course dictation, where it is possible, is an obvious advantage. but i mean here to consider the aspects of the problem which apply more especially to compositions of some length.
it is related of auguste comte that he composed his books by thinking them over down to the minutest details, down to the very phraseology of the sentences, before penning a single word, but that when he came to writing he could turn out an astounding amount of work in a given time. unless a person have a remarkable memory, however, he will forget most of what he has thought by the time he comes to writing it. comte’s method might nevertheless be profitably applied to short sections of compositions. and where conciseness or perspicuity are desired, it will often be found useful to think out an entire sentence before writing a word of it.
perhaps the best way of ensuring efficiency in writing is by the card system. this consists in writing on a separate card every valuable idea that occurs to you, immediately after it occurs. when you finally come to writing you can arrange these cards in any order desired, throwing out the ideas you no longer consider important, and adding those which are necessary to complete or round out the work.
