To these rules might not inappropriately be added the saying of Sophocles: “Truth is always the strongest argument.”
The practical application of Argument to literary work is not difficult to discover. The most obvious use of this sort of composition is in the plea of the lawyer, the editorials of the newspaper, the essay establishing scientific theories, literary opinions, or the like. Whoever writes at all, however, even if it be but in simple private correspondence, is sure to employ Argument sooner or later, and to a greater or less degree. It may be in defense of a friend, the justification of one’s own acts, in proving the value of a new invention, supporting political or scientific views, in urging a particular line of investment,—in short, in any one of a thousand different ways. In one shape or another, reasoning comes constantly into play. He is merely a “mush of concession” who never attempts to bring another to his way of thinking. Indeed, he who does not endeavor to make others think as he thinks may be suspected of never thinking at all. Life is a continuous conflict, the strife for the survival of the fittest. The instinct to make our opinions prevail is in the blood of the meekest. Civilization differs from barbarism chiefly in that the strife has become intellectual instead of physical; and intellectual conflict is but another name for Argument. Since our lot is cast in a civilized state of society, to neglect this form of composition is to neglect the manual of arms of the battalion in which Fate has enrolled us!
[XIV]
DESCRIPTION
Description is at once the most common and the most difficult of the varieties of composition. It is apparently a thing which nobody fears to undertake, while it is certainly one which only a master is able to do really well. Everybody attempts it, yet there are probably in literature fewer fully successful descriptions than there are examples of any other sort of writing whatever.
A description is an endeavor to call up before the mind of the reader a picture of the thing described. Nothing is easier than to make a catalogue of things which one has seen; to schedule the details of a landscape, the particulars of a building, a room or a person. To convey a clear and accurate idea of the whole is most difficult. The untrained writer is apt to make of his attempts at description a mere running memorandum of points which he remembers in a scene. He sets down a list of matters more or less important, not because he can thus make the whole vivid and real to the reader, but because they are true. The result is that he has forced the truth to convey a falsehood—if indeed it be made to convey anything intelligible.
No student can go far in the examination of any of the arts without discovering that the object of expression is not so much to tell the truth as to produce an impression of truth. The literal truth may easily give a false impression, and becomes in that case the most vicious of falsehoods of which art is capable, just as the telling of facts with intent to deceive is the most dangerous form of lying. The thing to be sought is not accuracy of statement, but accuracy of perception, and the means must be subordinated to the effect.
It follows that even more vitally important than that all details be true, is that they be significant; that they not only appeal to the memory or the reason of the writer, but that they have a creative effect upon the mind of the reader. The author may remember that all the things which he sets down are true, yet it may be that all which he writes is false in its result. In morals it is fitting that we give credit for good intentions, no matter what the result of them may be; in authorship the intention is of no consequence whatever. The result is the only thing to be taken into account. Here to fail is to fail, whether one meant well or ill; and from this there is no escape.