has thought. His _style_ is an exact expression of _how_ he has
thought, of the essential state and general _quality_ of his thoughts.
It shows the _formal_ nature--which must always remain the same--of all
the thoughts of a man, whatever the subject on which he has thought or
what it is he has said about it. It is the dough out of which all his
ideas are kneaded, however various they may be. When Eulenspiegel was
asked by a man how long he would have to walk before reaching the next
place, and gave the apparently absurd answer _Walk_, his intention was
to judge from the man's walking how far he would go in a given time. And
so it is when I have read a few pages of an author, I know about how far
he can help me.

In the secret consciousness that this is the condition of things, every
mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style. This instantly
necessitates his giving up all idea of being _naive_, a privilege which
belongs to superior minds sensible of their superiority, and therefore
sure of themselves. For instance, it is absolutely impossible for men of
ordinary intelligence to make up their minds to write as they think;
they resent the idea of their work looking too simple. It would always
be of some value, however. If they would only go honestly to work and in
a simple way express the few and ordinary ideas they have really
thought, they would be readable and even instructive in their own
sphere. But instead of that they try to appear to have thought much more
deeply than is the case. The result is, they put what they have to say
into forced and involved language, create new words and prolix periods
which go round the thought and cover it up. They hesitate between the
two attempts of communicating the thought and of concealing it. They
want to make it look grand so that it has the appearance of being
learned and profound, thereby giving one the idea that there is much
more in it than one perceives at the moment. Accordingly, they sometimes
put down their thoughts in bits, in short, equivocal, and paradoxical
sentences which appear to mean much more than they say (a splendid
example of this kind of writing is furnished by Schelling's treatises on
Natural Philosophy); sometimes they express their thoughts in a crowd of
words and the most intolerable diffuseness, as if it were necessary to
make a sensation in order to make the profound meaning of their phrases
intelligible--while it is quite a simple idea if not