in the hope that one of them may
fit. But the artist knows which epithet does fit, uses that, and
rejects the rest. The characteristic weakness of bad writers is
inaccuracy: their symbols do not adequately express their ideas. Pause
but for a moment over their sentences, and you perceive that they are
using language at random, the choice being guided rather by some
indistinct association of phrases, or some broken echoes of familiar
sounds, than by any selection of words to represent ideas. I read the
other day of the truck system being "rampant" in a certain district;
and every day we may meet with similar echoes of familiar words which
betray the flaccid condition of the writer's mind drooping under the
labour of expression.

Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are
as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that
writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality. In a
lower sphere many are remarked as writers although they may lay no
claim to distinction as thinkers, if they have the faculty of
felicitously expressing the ideas of others; and many who are really
remarkable as thinkers gain but slight recognition from the public,
simply because in them the faculty of expression is feeble. In
proportion as the work passes from the sphere of passionless
intelligence to that of impassioned intelligence, from the region of
demonstration to the region of emotion, the art of Style becomes more
complex, its necessity more imperious. But even in Philosophy and
Science the art is both subtle and necessary; the choice and
arrangement of the fitting symbols, though less difficult than in Art,
is quite indispensable to success. If the distinction which I formerly
drew between the Scientific and the Artistic tendencies be accepted, it
will disclose a corresponding difference in the Style which suits a
ratiocinative exposition fixing attention on abstract relations, and an
emotive exposition fixing attention on objects as related to the
feelings. We do not expect the scientific writer to stir our emotions,
otherwise than by the secondary influences which arise from our awe and
delight at the unveiling of new truths. In his own researches he should
extricate himself from the perturbing influences of emotion, and
consequently he should protect us from such suggestions in his
exposition. Feellng too often smites intellect with blindness, and
intellect too often paralyses th