In its high and proper sense, however, criticism is not alone a matter of literature, but of life as well. Culture is mainly a matter of self-criticism. We do not really know unless we are fully aware what we know. In other words, the distinction between conscious knowledge and vague impression is the measure of development. The correctness of self-estimate marks the difference between the cultivated and the uncultivated mind. It might on first thought seem as if this confounded culture with self-consciousness. On the contrary it distinguishes it from that painful weakness. Self-consciousness arises from a doubt of the mind; an inability to tell what is one’s true value and one’s true place. Culture is a fair and reasonable appreciation at once of one’s mental merits and shortcomings; a knowledge of one’s intellectual rank. This fairness of estimate enables the possessor of this quality to take his intellectual place without false shame on the one hand or false pride on the other; two faults which are the warp and woof of self-consciousness. Education is not acquisition, but assimilation; and assimilation is impossible without that mental judgment which is the best and final form of criticism. Mental advancement is possible only by the establishment in the mind of well-defined standards, and the measuring by them of the thoughts, the ideas, the opinions; and to establish definite standards and to measure by them is criticism, the tonic of the mind.
[XXII]
STYLE
The question which these talks set out to consider was what one can do to learn to write well. I began by saying that there are two sorts of power which enter into literary production, the communicable and the incommunicable, that which may be taught and that which is inborn, the technical and the imaginative. Naturally we have discussed chiefly the power which may be learned, those details of structure and of quality which depend upon means which we are able to analyze. The subject of which I wish now to say a little is connected rather with those powers and qualities which can be directly neither acquired nor imparted. We cannot close without some consideration of Style, that thing most elusive and intangible in its elements, yet most definite and recognizable in its effects; and Style in its more exact sense is a matter which has to do less with the mechanics of literature than with the creative impulse of the mind. Regarded in its higher aspect it is closely linked with the imagination, that faculty which, if the figure were not too mathematical, one might call reason raised to the nth power.
The term style is commonly used rather indefinitely to indicate either technical finish or the more subtle qualities of literary expression. Of course as far as it is to be understood in the former sense, we have been discussing it from the very beginning of these talks. If we understand it to mean merely correctness or even elegance of language, the proper proportion of the different parts of a composition, the accurate choice of words and the judicious employment of figures and of ornaments, we may be said to have dealt with all this in the previous lectures.
If I were to attempt to sum up concisely the more important points of what I have said, hitherto, it would be possible to cover a large portion of the ground by saying that the secret of literary ease and finish lies in attention to details. In my youth and in the dame-school in which I began to learn to write it was the fashion to set down moral and improving sentiments in the copy-books, and one of them was the sententious maxim with which you are all familiar,—“Trifles make up perfection, but perfection is no trifle.” The hackneyed saying is a good deal nearer to being exact than are most didactic aphorisms. It is certainly true that though perfection is above all trifles yet a trifle may spoil it. The slightest touch breaks a bubble, and a single bad epithet will spoil a passage otherwise effective. To neglect details is to neglect the whole.
It is true that to consider only details is to deprive the work of all unity. It is like finishing carefully all the pieces which are to be set in a mosaic and neglecting to consider the design of the whole. I need not repeat here what has been said of the need of dealing with any literary work as a unit; but it is necessary to keep this in mind. Conceive a thing as broadly as possible. Look at it in the large; see it as clearly as you are able in its general outlines; and make it the aim of your labor to embody in words this broad conception firmly and clearly. When this is accomplished go over your work with a microscope to discover if there be anything in it which will prevent or injure the effect. Indeed, if you hope to be finished artists in words, it will be necessary that you see to it that every detail not only does not lessen the effect of the whole, but that it is a positive advantage and addition. It is only by such care in the management of trifling particulars that the finest results are to be obtained.
Going beyond all these largely mechanical matters, we come to the consideration of a more intangible, and yet a higher thing.