Of course, not all these words would be familiar to every reader (for example, “Maya”), but in the way they occur, they are usually not puzzling, for we can tell from the context just about what they must mean.
All remaining words for explaining—chiefly, words of two or more syllables and not specially defined—were put in Group 2 and were listed during the writing of this book. Many Group 2 words, of course, would be entirely familiar to every reader; but the list had several virtues. No hard words would suddenly be sprung like a trap. The same word would be used for the same idea. Every word of two or more syllables was continually checked: is it needed? can it be replaced by a shorter word? It is perhaps remarkable that there were fewer than 1800 different words allowed to stay in this list. This fact should be a comfort to a reader, as it was to the author.
Now there are more words in this book than words for explaining. So we shall do well to recognize:
Group 4. Words that do not need to be known or learned and that are not used in later explanation and definitions.
These words occur in the book in such a way that understanding them, though helpful, is not essential. One subdivision of Group 4 are names that appear just once in the book, as a kind of side remark, for example, “a chemical, called acetylcholine.” Such a name will also appear in the index, but it is not a word for explaining. Another subdivision of Group 4 are words occurring only in quotations. For example, in the quotation from Frankenstein on page 198, a dozen words appear that occur nowhere else in the book, including “daemon,” “dissoluble,” “maw,” “satiate.” Clearly we would destroy the entire flavor of the quotation if we changed any of these words in any way. But only the general drift of the quotation is needed for understanding the book, and so these words are Group 4 words.
In this way the effort to achieve simple explanation in this book proceeded. But even supposing that we could reach the best set of words for explaining, there is more to be done. How do we go from simple explanation to understanding?
UNDERSTANDING IDEAS
Understanding an idea is basically a standard process. First, we find the name of the idea, a word or phrase that identifies it. Then, we collect true statements about the idea. Finally, we practice using them. The more true statements we have gathered, and the more practice we have had in applying them, the more we understand the idea.
For example, do you understand zero? Here are some true statements about zero.
1. Zero is a number.