The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education Part 2

I. A school is primarily a place of learning, and to this purpose all else in it is rightfully subordinated. But learning is itself an act, and one more dependent than most on moral guidance. It occurs, too, at a period of life whose chief business is the transformation of a thing of nature into a spiritual being. Several stages in this spiritual transformation through which the process of learning takes us I will point out.

A school generally gives a child his first acquaintance with an authoritatively organized world and reveals his dependence upon it. By nature, impulses and appet.i.tes rule him. A child is charmingly self-centred. The world and all its ordered goings he notices merely as ministering to his desires. Nothing but what he wishes, and wishes just now, is important. He relates all this but little to the wishes of other people, to the inherent fixities of things, to his own future states, to whether one wish is compatible with another. His immediate mood is everything. Of any difference between what is whimsical or momentary and what is rational or permanent he is oblivious. To him dreams and fancies are as substantial as stars, hills, or moving creatures. He has, in short, no idea of law nor any standards of reality.

Now it is the first business of instruction to impart such ideas and standards; but no less is this a work of moralization. The two accordingly go on together. Whether we call the chaotic conditions of nature in which we begin life ignorance or deficient morality, it is equally the work of education to abolish them. Both education and morality set themselves to rationalize the moody, lawless, transient, isolated, self-a.s.sertive, and impatient aspects of things, introducing the wondering scholar to the inherent necessities which surround him.

"Schoolmasters," says George Herbert, "deliver us to laws." And probably most of us make our earliest acquaintance with these impalpable and controlling ent.i.ties when we take our places in the school. There our primary lesson is submission. We are bidden to put away personal likings and see how in themselves things really are. Eight times nine does not permit itself to be seventy-three or sixty-four, but exactly and forever seventy-two. Cincinnati lies obstinately on the Ohio, not on the Mississippi, and it is nonsense to speak of Daniel Webster as a President of the United States. The agreement of verbs and nouns, the reactions of chemical elements were, it seems, settled some time before we appeared. They pay little attention to our humors. We must accept an already const.i.tuted world and adjust our little self to its august realities. Of course the process is not completed at school. Begun there, it continues throughout life; its extent, tenacity, and instantaneous application marking the degree which we reach in scientific and moral culture. Let a teacher attempt to lighten the task of himself or his pupil by accepting an inexact observation, a slipshod remembrance, a careless statement, or a distorted truth, and he will corrupt the child's character no less than his intelligence. He confirms the child's habit of intruding himself into reality and of remaining listless when ordained facts are calling. Education may well be defined as the banishment of moods at the bidding of the permanently real.

But to acquire such obedient alertness persistence is necessary, and in gaining it a child wins a second victory over disorderly nature. By this he becomes acquainted not merely with an outer world, but with a still stranger object, himself. I have spoken already of the eagerness of young desires. They are blind and disruptive things. One of them pays small heed to another, but each blocks the other's way, preventing anything like a coherent and united life. A child is notoriously a creature of the moment, looking little before and after. He must be taught to do so before he can know anything or be anybody. A school matures him by connecting his doings of to-day with those of to-morrow.

Here he begins to estimate the worth of the present by noticing what it contributes to an organic plan. Each hour of study brings precious discipline in preferring what is distantly important to what is momentarily agreeable. A personal being, in some degree emanc.i.p.ated from time, consequently emerges, and a selfhood appears, built up through enduring interests. The whole process is in the teacher's charge. It is his to enforce diligence and so to a.s.sist the vague little life to knit itself solidly together.

Nor should it be forgotten that to become each day the possessor of increasing stores of novel and interesting truths normally brings dignity and pleasure. This honorable delight reacts, too, on the process of learning, quickening its pace, sharpening its observation, and confirming its persistence. It is of no less importance for the character, to which it imparts ease, courage, beauty, and resourcefulness. But on the teacher it will depend whether such pleasure is found. A teacher who has entered deeply into his subject, and is not afraid of allowing enthusiasm to appear, will make the densest subject and the densest pupil glow; while a dull teacher can in a few minutes strip the most engrossing subject of interest and make the diligence exacted in its pursuit deadening. It is dangerous to dissociate toil and delight. The school is the place to initiate their genial union. Whoever learns there to love knowledge, will be pretty secure of becoming an educated and useful man and of finding satisfaction in whatever employment may afterwards be his.

One more contribution to character which comes from the school as a place of learning I will mention: it should create a sense of freedom.

Without this both learning and the learner are distorted. It is not enough that the child become submissive to an already const.i.tuted world, obedient to its authoritative organization; not enough that he find pleasure in it, or even discover himself emerging, as one day's diligence is bound up with that of another. All these influences may easily make him think of himself as a pa.s.sive creature, and consequently leave him half formed. There is something more. Rightly does the Psalmist call the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom rather than its end; for that education is defective which fashions a docile and slavish learner. As the child introduces order into his previously capricious acts, thoughts, and feelings, he should feel in himself a power of control unknown before, and be encouraged to find an honorable use for his very peculiarities. He should be brought to see that the world is unfinished and needs his joyful cooperation, that it has room for individual activity and admits rationally constructed purposes. From his earliest years a child should be encouraged to criticise, to have preferences, and to busy himself with imaginative constructions; for all this development of orderly freedom and of rejoicing in its exercise is building up at once both knowledge and character.

II. Yet a school becomes an ethical instrument not merely through being a place of learning but because it is also a social unit. It is a cooperative group, or company of persons pledged every instant to consider one another, their common purpose being jarred by the obtrusion of any one's dissenting will. Accordingly much that is proper elsewhere becomes improper here. As soon as a child enters a schoolroom he is impressed by the unaccustomed silence. A happy idea springs in his mind and clamors for the same outgo it would have at home, but it is restrained in deference to the a.s.sembled company. In crossing the room he is taught to tread lightly, though for himself a joyous dash might be agreeable; but might it not distract the attention of those who are studying? The school begins at nine o'clock and each recitation at its fixed hour, these times being no better than others except as facilitating common corporate action. To this each one's private ways become adjusted. The subordination of each to all is written large on every arrangement of school life; and it needs must be so if there is to be moral advance. For morality itself is nothing but the acceptance of such habits as express the helpful relations of society and the individual. Punctuality, order, quiet, are signs that the child's life is beginning to be socialized. A teacher who fails to impress their elementary righteousness on his pupils brutalizes every child in his charge.

Such relations between the social whole and the part a.s.sume a variety of forms, and the school is the best place for introducing a child to their niceties. Those other persons whom a schoolboy is called on continually to regard may be either his superiors, equals, or inferiors. To each we have specific duties, expressed in an appropriate type of manners. Our teachers are above us,--above us in age, experience, wisdom, and authority. To treat them as comrades is unseemly. Confession of their superiority colors all our approaches. They are to be listened to as others are not. Their will has the right of way. Our bearing toward them, however trustful or even affectionate, shows a respectfulness somewhat removed from familiarity. On the other hand schoolmates are comrades, at least those of the same s.e.x, cla.s.s, strength, and intelligence. Among them we a.s.sert ourselves freely, yet with constant care to secure no less freedom for them, and we guard them against any damage or annoyance which our hasty a.s.sertiveness might cause. In case of clash between their interest and our own, ours is withdrawn. And then toward those who are below us, either in rank or powers, helpfulness springs forth. We are eager to bridge over the separating chasm and by our will to abolish hindering defects. These three types of personal adjustment--respect, courtesy, and helpfulness, with their wide variety of combination--form the groundwork of all good manners. In their beginnings they need prompting and oversight from some one who is already mature. A school which neglects to cultivate them works almost irreparable injury to its pupils. For if these possibilities of refined human intercourse are not opened in the school years, it is with great difficulty they are arrived at afterwards.

The spiritualizing influence of the school as a social unit is, however, not confined to the cla.s.sroom. It is quite as active on the playground.

There a boy learns to play fair, accustoms himself to that greatest of social ties, _l'esprit du corps_. Throughout life a man needs continually to merge his own interests in those of a group. He must act as the father of a family, an operative in a factory, a voter of Boston, an American citizen, a member of an engine company, union, church, or business firm. His own small concerns are taken up into these larger ones, and devotion to them is not felt as self-sacrifice. A preparation for such moral enn.o.blement is laid in the sports of childhood. What does a member of the football team care for battered shins or earth-sc.r.a.ped hands? His side has won, and his own gains and losses are forgotten. Soon his team goes forth against an outside team, and now the honor of the whole school is in his keeping. What pride is his! As he puts on his uniform, he strips off his isolated personality and stands forth as the trusted champion of an inst.i.tution. Nor does this august supersession of the private consciousness by the public arise in connection with sports alone. As a member of the school, a boy acts differently from what he otherwise would. There is a standard of conduct recognized as suitable for a Washington School boy, and from it his own does not widely depart. For good or for ill each school has its ideals of "good form" which are compulsive over its members and are handed on from cla.s.s to cla.s.s. To a.s.sist in moulding, refining, and maintaining these is the weightiest work of a schoolmaster. For these ideals have about them the sacredness of what is traditional, inst.i.tutional, and are of an unseen, august, and penetrative power, comparable to nothing else in character-formation. To modify them ever so slightly a teacher should be content to work for years.

III. A third aspect of the school I have called its character as a Dependent Fellowship, and I have said that this is merely incidental. A highly important incident it is, however, and one that never fails to recur. What I would indicate by the dark phrase is this: in every school an imperfect life is a.s.sociated with one similar but more advanced, one from which it perpetually receives influences that are not official nor measurable in money payment. A teacher is hired primarily to teach, and with a view also to his ability to keep order throughout his little society and to make his authority respected there. But side by side with these public duties runs the expression of his personality. This is his own, something which he hides or discloses at his pleasure. To his pupils, however, he must always appear in the threefold character of teacher, master, and developed human being; while they correspondingly present themselves to him as pupils, members of the school, and elementary human beings. Of these pairs of relationships two are contrasted and supplemental,--teacher and pupil, master and scholar, having nothing in common, each being precisely what the other is not. As human beings, however, pupil and teacher are akin and removed from one another merely by the degree of progress made by the elder along a common path. Here then the relation is one of fellowship, but a fellowship where the younger is largely dependent on the older for an understanding of what he should be. By example, friendship, and personal influence a teacher is certain to affect for good or ill every member of his school. In any account of the school as an ethical instrument this subtlest of its moral agencies deserves careful a.n.a.lysis.

There are different sorts of example. I may observe how the shopman does up a package, and do one so myself the next morning. A companion may have a special inflection of voice, which I may catch. I may be drawn to industry by seeing how steadily my cla.s.smate studies. I may adopt a phrase, a smile, or a polite gesture, which was originally my teacher's.

All these are cases of direct imitation. Some one possesses a trait or an act which is pa.s.sed over entire to another person, by whom it is subst.i.tuted for one of his own. Though the adoption of such alien ways is dangerous, society could hardly go on without it. It is its mode of transmitting what is supposed to be already tested and of lodging it in the lives of persons of less experience, with the least cost to the receivers. Most teachers will have habits which their pupils may advantageously copy. Yet supposing the imitated ways altogether good, which they seldom are, direct imitation is questionable as disregarding the particular character of him in whom the ways are found and in a.s.suming that they will be equally appropriate if engrafted on anybody.

But this is far from true, and consequently he who imitates much is, or soon will be, a weakling. On the whole, a teacher needs to guard his pupils against his imitable peculiarities. If sensible, he will snub whoever is disposed to repeat them.

Still, there is a n.o.ble sort of imitation, and that school is a poor place where it does not go on. Certain persons have a strange power of invigorating us by their presence. When with them, we can do what seems impossible alone. They are our examples rather as wholes, and in their strength and spirit, than in their single traits or acts; and so whatever is most distinctive of ourselves becomes renewed through contact with them. It was said of the late Dr. Jowett that he sent out more pupils who were widely unlike himself than any Oxford teacher of his time. That is enviable praise; for the wholesomeness of example is tested by inquiring whether it develops differences or has only the power of duplicating the original. Every teacher knows how easy it is to send out cheap editions of himself, and in his weaker moments he inclines to issue them. But it is ign.o.ble business. Our manners and tones and phrases and the ways we have of doing this and that are after all valuable only as expressions of ourselves. For anybody else they are rubbish. What we should like to impart is that earnestness, accuracy, unselfishness, candor, reverence for G.o.d's laws, and st.u.r.diness through hardship, toward which we aspire--matters in reality only half ours and which spring up with fresh and original beauty in every soul where they once take root. The Dependent Fellowship of a school makes these larger, enkindling, and diversifying influences peculiarly possible. It should be a teacher's highest ambition to exercise them. And though we might naturally expect that such inspiring teachers would be rare, I seldom enter a school without finding indications of the presence of at least one of them.

But for those who would acquire this larger influence a strange caution is necessary: Examples do not work that are not real. We sometimes try to "set an example," that is, to put on a type of character for the benefit of a beholder; and are usually disappointed. Personal influence is not an affair of acting, but of being. Those about us are strangely affected by what we veritably are, only slightly by what we would have them see. If we are indisposed to study, yet, knowing that industry is good for our scholars, a.s.sume a bustling diligence, they are more likely to feel the real portion of the affair, our laziness, than the activity which was designed for their copying. Astonishingly shrewd are the young at scenting humbug and being unaffected by its pretensions. There is consequently no method to be learned for gaining personal influence.

Almost everything else requires plan and effort. This precious power needs little attention. It will not come in one way better than another.

A fair measure of sympathetic tact is useful for starting it; but in the long run persons rude and suave, talkative and silent, handsome and ugly, stalwart and slight, possess it in about equal degree, the very characteristics which we should be disposed to count disadvantageous often seeming to confirm its hold. Since it generally comes about that our individual interests become in some measure those of our pupils too, the only safe rule for personal influence is to go heartily about our own affairs, with a friendly spirit, and let our usual nature have whatever effect it may.

Still, there is one important mode of preparation: seeing that personal influence springs from what we are, we can really be a good deal. In a former paper, on The Ideal Teacher, I pointed this out and insisted that to be of any use in the cla.s.sroom we teachers must bring there an already acc.u.mulated wealth. I will not repeat what I have said already, for a little reflection will convince any one that when he lacks personal influence he lacks much besides. A great example comes from a great nature, and we who live in fellowship with dependent and imitative youth should acquire natures large enough to serve both their needs and our own. Let teachers be big, bounteous, and unconventional, and they will have few backward pupils.

Personal influence is often a.s.sumed to be greater the closer the intimacy. I believe the contrary to be the case. Familiarity, says the shrewd proverb, breeds contempt. And certainly the young, who are little trained in estimating values, when brought into close a.s.sociation with their elders are apt to fix their attention on petty points and so to miss the larger lines of character. These they see best across an interval where, though visible only in outline, they are clear, unconfused with anything else, and so productive of their best effect.

For the immature, distance is a considerable help in inducing enchantment, and nothing is so destructive of high influence as a slap-on-the-back acquaintance. One who is to help us much must be above us. A teacher should carefully respect his own dignity and no less carefully that of his pupil. In our eagerness to help, we may easily cheapen a fine nature by intruding too frequently into its reserves; and on the other hand I have observed that the boy who comes oftenest for advice is he who profits by it least. It is safest not to meddle much with the insides of our pupils. An occasional weighty word is more compulsive than frequent talk.

Within the limits then here marked out we who live in these Dependent Fellowships must submit to be admired. We must allow our pupils to idealize us and even offer ourselves for imitation. It is not pleasant.

Usually n.o.body knows his weaknesses better than the one who is mistaken for an example. But what a helpful mistake! What enn.o.bling influences come to schoolboys when once they can think their teacher is the sort of person they would like to be! Perhaps at the very moment that teacher is thinking they are the sort of person he would like to be. No matter.

What they admire is worthy, even if not embodied precisely where they imagine. In humility we accept their admiration, knowing that nothing else can so enlarge their lives. As I recall my college days, there rise before me two teachers. As I entered the lecture rooms of those two men, I said to myself, "Oh, if some day I could be like that!" And always afterwards as I went to those respective rooms, the impression of dignity deepened. I have forgotten the lessons I learned from those instructors. I never can discharge my debt to the instructors themselves.

Such are the moral resources of our schools. Without turning aside in the slightest from their proper aim of imparting knowledge, teachers are able,--almost compelled--to supply their pupils with an intellectual, social, and personal righteousness. What more is wanted? When such opportunities for moral instruction are already within their grasp, is it worth while to incur the grave dangers of ethical instruction too? I think not, and I even fear that the establishment of courses in moral theory might weaken the sense of responsibility among the other teachers and lead them to attach less importance to the moralization of their pupils by themselves. This is burdensome business, no doubt, but we must not shift it to a single pair of shoulders. Rather let us insist, when bad boys and girls continue in a school, that the blame belongs to the teachers as a whole, and not to some ethical coach. It is from the management and temper of a school that its formative influence proceeds.

We cannot safely turn over anything so all-pervading to the instructors of a single department. That school where neatness, courtesy, simplicity, obtain; where enthusiasm goes with mental exact.i.tude, thoroughness of work with interest, and absence of artificiality with refinement; where sneaks, liars, loafers, pretenders, rough persons are despised, while teachers who refuse to be mechanical hold sway--that school is engaged in moral training all day long.

Yet while I hold that the systematic study of ethics had on the whole better be left to the colleges, I confess that the line which I have attempted to draw between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the age which is best directed by instinct and the age when the questioning faculties put forward their inexorable demands, is a wavering one and cannot be sharply drawn. By one child it is crossed at one period, by another at another. Seldom is the crossing noticed.

Before we are aware we find ourselves in sorrow on the farther side.

Happy the youth who during the transition time has a wise friend at hand to answer a question, to speak a steadying word, to open up the vista which at the moment needs to be cleared. Only one in close personal touch is serviceable here. But in defect of home guidance, to us teachers falls much of the charge of developing the youthful consciousness of moral matters naturally, smoothly, and without jar.

This has always been a part of the teacher's office. So far as I can ascertain schools of the olden time had in them a large amount of wholesome ethical training. Schools were unsystematic then; there lay no examination paper ahead of them; there was time for pause and talk.

If a subject arose which the teacher deemed important for his pupils'

personal lives, he could lead them on to question about it, so far as he believed discussion useful. This sort of ethical training the hurry of our time has largely exterminated; and now that wholesome incidental instruction is gone, we demand in the modern way that a clear-cut department of ethics be introduced into the curriculum. But such things do not let themselves be treated in departmental fashion. The teacher must still work as a friend. He cannot be discharged from knowing when and how to stimulate a question, from discerning which boy or girl would be helped by consciousness and which would be harmed. In these high regions our pupils cannot be approached in cla.s.ses. They require individual attention. And not because we are teachers merely, but because we and they are human beings, we must be ready with spiritual aid.

IV

SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH

English study has four aims: the mastery of our language as a science, as a history, as a joy, and as a tool. I am concerned with but one, the mastery of it as a tool. Philology and grammar present it as a science; the one attempting to follow its words, the other its sentences, through all the intricacies of their growth, and so to manifest laws which lie hidden in these airy products no less than in the moving stars or the myriad flowers of spring. Fascinating and important as all this is, I do not recommend it here. For I want to call attention only to that sort of English study which can be carried on without any large apparatus of books. For a reason similar, though less cogent, I do not urge historical study. Probably the current of English literature is more attractive through its continuity than that of any other nation. Notable works in verse and prose have appeared in long succession, and without gaps intervening, in a way that would be hard to parallel in any other language known to man. A bounteous endowment this for every English speaker, and one which should stimulate us to trace the marvellous and close-linked progress from the times of the Saxons to those of Tennyson and Kipling.

Literature too has this advantage over every other species of art study, that everybody can examine the original masterpieces and not depend on reproductions, as in the cases of painting, sculpture, and architecture; or on intermediate interpretation, as in the case of music. To-day most of these masterpieces can be bought for a trifle, and even a poor man can follow through centuries the thoughts of his ancestors. But even so, ready of access as it is, English can be studied as a history only at the cost of solid time and continuous attention, much more time than the majority of those for whom I am writing can afford. By most of us our mighty literature cannot be taken in its continuous current, the later stretches proving interesting through relation with the earlier. It must be taken fragmentarily, if at all, the attention delaying on those parts only which offer the greatest beauty or promise the best exhilaration. In other words, English may be possible as a joy where it is not possible as a history.

In the endless wealth which our poetry, story, essay, and drama afford, every disposition may find its appropriate nutriment, correction, or solace. He is unwise, however busy, who does not have his loved authors, veritable friends with whom he takes refuge in the intervals of work and by whose intimacy he enlarges, refines, sweetens, and emboldens his own limited existence. Yet the fact that English as a joy must largely be conditioned by individual taste prevents me from offering general rules for its pursuit. The road which leads one man straight to this joy leads another to tedium. In all literary enjoyment there is something incalculable, something wayward, eluding the precision of rule, and rendering inexact the precepts of him who would point out the path to it. While I believe that many suggestions may be made, useful to the young enjoyer and promotive of his wise vagrancy, I shall not undertake here the complicated task of offering them. Let enjoyment go, let history go, let science go, and still English remains--English as a tool. Every hour our language is an engine for communicating with others, every instant for fashioning the thoughts of our own minds. I want to call attention to the means of mastering this curious and essential tool, and to lead every one who reads me to become discontented with his employment of it.

The importance of literary power needs no long argument. Everybody acknowledges it, and sees that without it all other human faculties are maimed. Shakespeare says that death-bringing time "insults o'er dull and speechless tribes." It and all who live in it insult over the speechless person. So mutually dependent are we that on our swift and full communication with one another is staked the success of almost every scheme we form. He who can explain himself may command what he wants.

He who cannot is left to the poverty of individual resource; for men do what we desire only when persuaded. The persuasive and explanatory tongue is, therefore, one of the chief levers of life. Its leverage is felt within us as well as without, for expression and thought are integrally bound together. We do not first possess completed thoughts and then express them. The very formation of the outward product extends, sharpens, enriches the mind which produces, so that he who gives forth little after a time is likely enough to discover that he has little to give forth. By expression too we may carry our benefits and our names to a far generation. This durable character of fragile language puts a wide difference of worth between it and some of the other great objects of desire,--health, wealth, and beauty, for example.

These are notoriously liable to accident. We tremble while we have them.

But literary power, once ours, is more likely than any other possession to be ours always. It perpetuates and enlarges itself by the very fact of its existence and perishes only with the decay of the man himself.

For this reason, because more than health, wealth, and beauty, literary style may be called the man, good judges have found in it the final test of culture and have said that he, and he alone, is a well-educated person who uses his language with power and beauty. The supreme and ultimate product of civilization, it has well been said, is two or three persons talking together in a room. Between ourselves and our language there accordingly springs up an a.s.sociation peculiarly close.

We are as sensitive to criticism of our speech as of our manners. The young man looks up with awe to him who has written a book, as already half divine; and the graceful speaker is a universal object of envy.

But the very fact that literary endowment is immediately recognized and eagerly envied has induced a strange illusion in regard to it. It is supposed to be something mysterious, innate in him who possesses it and quite out of the reach of him who has it not. The very contrary is the fact. No human employment is more free and calculable than the winning of language. Undoubtedly there are natural apt.i.tudes for it, as there are for farming, seamanship, or being a good husband. But nowhere is straight work more effective. Persistence, care, discriminating observation, ingenuity, refusal to lose heart,--traits which in every other occupation tend toward excellence,--tend toward it here with special security. Whoever goes to his grave with bad English in his mouth has no one to blame but himself for the disagreeable taste; for if faulty speech can be inherited, it can be exterminated too. I hope to point out some of the methods of subst.i.tuting good English for bad.

And since my s.p.a.ce is brief, and I wish to be remembered, I throw what I have to say into the form of four simple precepts which, if pertinaciously obeyed, will, I believe, give anybody effective mastery of English as a tool.

First then, "Look well to your speech." It is commonly supposed that when a man seeks literary power he goes to his room and plans an article for the press. But this is to begin literary culture at the wrong end.

We speak a hundred times for every once we write. The busiest writer produces little more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have command of his language or not. If he is slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom pull himself up to strength and exact.i.tude in the hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one piece, and the same being runs through a mult.i.tude of performances. Whether words are uttered on paper or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the same. Vigor or feebleness results according as energy or slackness has been in command. I know that certain adaptations to a new field are often necessary. A good speaker may find awkwardnesses in himself when he comes to write, a good writer when he speaks. And certainly cases occur where a man exhibits distinct strength in one of the two, speaking or writing, and not in the other. But such cases are rare. As a rule, language once within our control can be employed for oral or for written purposes. And since the opportunities for oral practice enormously outbalance those for written, it is the oral which are chiefly significant in the development of literary power.

We rightly say of the accomplished writer that he shows a mastery of his own tongue.

This predominant influence of speech marks nearly all great epochs of literature. The Homeric poems are addressed to the ear, not to the eye. It is doubtful if Homer knew writing, certain that he knew profoundly every quality of the tongue,--veracity, vividness, shortness of sentence, simplicity of thought, obligation to insure swift apprehension. Writing and rigidity are apt to go together. In Homer's smooth-slipping verses one catches everywhere the voice. So too the aphorisms of Hesiod might naturally pa.s.s from mouth to mouth, and the stories of Herodotus be told by an old man at the fireside.

Early Greek literature is plastic and garrulous. Its distinctive glory is that it contains no literary note; that it gives forth human feeling not in conventional arrangement, but with apparent spontaneity--in short, that it is speech literature, not book literature. And the same tendency continued long among the Greeks. At the culmination of their power the drama was their chief literary form,--the drama, which is but speech enn.o.bled, connected, clarified.

Plato too, following the dramatic precedent and the precedent of his talking master, accepted conversation as his medium for philosophy and imparted to it the vivacity, ease, waywardness even, which the best conversation exhibits. Nor was the experience of the Greeks peculiar. Our literature shows a similar tendency. Its bookish times are its decadent times, its talking times its glory. Chaucer, like Herodotus, is a story-teller, and follows the lead of those who on the Continent entertained courtly circles with pleasant tales.

Shakespeare and his fellows in the s.p.a.cious times of great Elizabeth did not concern themselves with publication. Marston in one of his prefaces thinks it necessary to apologize for putting his piece in print, and says he would not have done such a thing if unscrupulous persons, hearing the play at the theatre, had not already printed corrupt versions of it. Even the Queen Anne's men, far removed though they are from anything dramatic, still shape their ideals of literature by demands of speech. The essays of the Spectator, the poems of Pope, are the remarks of a cultivated gentleman at an evening party. Here is the brevity, the good taste, the light touch, the neat epigram, the avoidance of whatever might stir pa.s.sion, controversy, or laborious thought, which characterize the conversation of a well-bred man.

Indeed it is hard to see how any literature can be long vital which is based on the thought of a book and not on that of living utterance.

Unless the speech notion is uppermost, words will not run swiftly to their mark. They delay in delicate phrasings while naturalness and a sense of reality disappear. Women are the best talkers. I sometimes please myself with noticing that three of the greatest periods of English literature coincide with the reigns of the three English queens.

Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the use of English must chiefly come through speech; because we are always speaking, whatever else we do. In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language the poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage as compared with the leisured rich. It is true the strong impulse which comes from the suggestion and approval of society may in some cases be absent, but this can be compensated by the st.u.r.dy purpose of the learner. A recognition of the beauty of well-ordered words, a strong desire, patience under discouragements, and promptness in counting every occasion as of consequence,--these are the simple agencies which sweep one on to power.

Watch your speech then. That is all which is needed. Only it is desirable to know what qualities of speech to watch for. I find three,--accuracy, audacity, and range,--and I will say a few words about each.

Obviously, good English is exact English. Our words should fit our thoughts like a glove and be neither too wide nor too tight. If too wide, they will include much vacuity beside the intended matter. If too tight, they will check the strong grasp. Of the two dangers, looseness is by far the greater. There are people who say what they mean with such a naked precision that n.o.body not familiar with the subject can quickly catch the sense. George Herbert and Emerson strain the attention of many. But n.i.g.g.ardly and angular speakers are rare. Too frequently words signify nothing in particular. They are merely thrown out in a certain direction to report a vague and undetermined meaning or even a general emotion. The first business of every one who would train himself in language is to articulate his thought, to know definitely what he wishes to say, and then to pick those words which compel the hearer to think of this and only this. For such a purpose two words are often better than three. The fewer the words, the more pungent the impression. Brevity is the soul, not simply of a jest, but of wit in its finer sense where it is identical with wisdom. He who can put a great deal into a little is the master. Since firm texture is what is wanted, not embroidery or superposed ornament, beauty has been well defined as the purgation of superfluities. And certainly many a paragraph might have its beauty brightened by letting quiet words take the place of its loud words, omitting its "verys," and striking out its purple patches of fine writing. Here is Ben Jonson's description of Bacon's language: "There happened in my time one n.o.ble speaker who was full of gravity in his speech. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his discretion." Such are the men who command, men who speak "neatly and pressly." But to gain such precision is toilsome business. While we are in training for it, no word must unpermittedly pa.s.s the portal of the teeth. Something like what we mean must never be counted equivalent to what we mean. And if we are not sure of our meaning or of our word, we must pause until we are sure. Accuracy does not come of itself. For persons who can use several languages, capital practice in acquiring it can be had by translating from one language to another and seeing that the entire sense is carried over.

Those who have only their native speech will find it profitable often to attempt definitions of the common words they use. Inaccuracy will not stand up against the habit of definition. Dante boasted that no rhythmic exigency had ever made him say what he did not mean. We heedless and unintending speakers, under no exigency of rhyme or reason, say what we mean but seldom, and still more seldom mean what we say. To hold our thoughts and words in significant adjustment requires unceasing consciousness, a perpetual determination not to tell lies; for of course every inaccuracy is a bit of untruthfulness. We have something in mind, yet convey something else to our hearer. And no moral purpose will save us from this untruthfulness unless that purpose is sufficient to inspire the daily drill which brings the power to be true. Again and again we are shut up to evil because we have not acquired the ability of goodness.

But after all, I hope that n.o.body who hears me will quite agree. There is something enervating in conscious care. Necessary as it is in shaping our purposes, if allowed too direct and exclusive control consciousness breeds hesitation and feebleness. Action is not excellent, at least, until spontaneous. In piano-playing we begin by picking out each separate note; but we do not call the result music until we play our notes by the handful, heedless how each is formed. And so it is everywhere. Consciously selective conduct is elementary and inferior.

People distrust it, or rather they distrust him who exhibits it. If anybody talking to us visibly studies his words, we turn away. What he says may be well enough as school exercise, but it is not conversation.

Accordingly, if we would have our speech forcible, we shall need to put into it quite as much of audacity as we do of precision, terseness, or simplicity. Accuracy alone is not a thing to be sought, but accuracy and dash. It was said of Fox, the English orator and statesman, that he was accustomed to throw himself headlong into the middle of a sentence, trusting to G.o.d Almighty to get him out. So must we speak. We must not before beginning a sentence decide what the end shall be; for if we do, n.o.body will care to hear that end. At the beginning, it is the beginning which claims the attention of both speaker and listener, and trepidation about going on will mar all. We must give our thought its head, and not drive it with too tight a rein, nor grow timid when it begins to prance a bit. Of course we must retain coolness in courage, applying the results of our previous discipline in accuracy; but we need not move so slowly as to become formal. Pedantry is worse than blundering. If we care for grace and flexible beauty of language, we must learn to let our thought run. Would it, then, be too much of an Irish bull to say that in acquiring English we need to cultivate spontaneity? The uncultivated kind is not worth much; it is wild and haphazard stuff, unadjusted to its uses. On the other hand no speech is of much account, however just, which lacks the element of courage. Accuracy and dash, then, the combination of the two, must be our difficult aim; and we must not rest satisfied so long as either dwells with us alone.

But are the two so hostile as they at first appear? Or can, indeed, the first be obtained without the aid of the second? Supposing we are convinced that words possess no value in themselves, and are correct or incorrect only as they truly report experience, we shall feel ourselves impelled in the mere interest of accuracy to choose them freshly and to put them together in ways in which they never cooperated before, so as to set forth with distinctness that which just we, not other people, have seen or felt. The reason why we do not naturally have this daring exact.i.tude is probably twofold. We let our experiences be blurred, not observing sharply, nor knowing with any minuteness what we are thinking about; and so there is no individuality in our language. And then, besides, we are terrorized by custom and inclined to adjust what we would say to what others have said before. The cure for the first of these troubles is to keep our eye on our object, instead of on our listener or ourselves; and for the second, to learn to rate the expressiveness of language more highly than its correctness. The opposite of this, the disposition to set correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar diction known as "school-ma'am English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage all the picturesque, imaginative and forceful employment of words is sacrificed. Of course we must use words so that people can understand them, and understand them too with ease; but this once granted, let our language be our own, obedient to our special needs. "Whenever," says Thomas Jefferson, "by small grammatical negligences the energy of an idea can be condensed, or a word be made to stand for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt." "Young man," said Henry Ward Beecher to one who was pointing out grammatical errors in a sermon of his, "when the English language gets in my way, it doesn't stand a chance." No man can be convincing, writer or speaker, who is afraid to send his words wherever they may best follow his meaning, and this with but little regard to whether any other person's words have ever been there before. In a.s.sessing merit let us not stupefy ourselves with using negative standards. What stamps a man as great is not freedom from faults, but abundance of powers.

Such audacious accuracy, however, distinguishing as it does n.o.ble speech from commonplace speech, can be practised only by him who has a wide range of words. Our ordinary range is absurdly narrow. It is important, therefore, for anybody who would cultivate himself in English to make strenuous and systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand words. The average speaker employs about three thousand. Is this because ordinary people have only three or four thousand things to say? Not at all. It is simply due to dulness. Listen to the average schoolboy. He has a dozen or two nouns, half a dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglomerate together. This ordinary speech deserves the description which Hobbes gave to his "State of Nature," that "it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The fact is, we fall into the way of thinking that the wealthy words are for others and that they do not belong to us. We are like those who have received a vast inheritance, but who persist in the inconveniences of hard beds, scanty food, rude clothing, who never travel, and who limit their purchases to the bleak necessities of life. Ask such people why they endure n.i.g.g.ardly living while wealth in plenty is lying in the bank, and they can only answer that they have never learned how to spend. But this is worth learning. Milton used eight thousand words, Shakespeare fifteen thousand. We have all the subjects to talk about that these early speakers had; and in addition we have bicycles and sciences and strikes and political combinations and all the complicated living of the modern world.