The Art of Writing Speaking the English Language | Page 2

make far more out of a bad
medium than a poor mind will make out of the best. A great violinist
will draw such music from the cheapest violin that the world is

astonished. However is that any reason why the great violinist should
choose to play on a poor violin; or should one say nothing of the smoke
nuisance in Chicago because more light and heat penetrate its murky
atmosphere than are to be found in cities only a few miles farther north?
The truth is, we must regard the bad spelling nuisance, the bad
grammar nuisance, the inártistic and rambling language nuisance,
precisely as we would the smoke nuisance, the sewer-gas nuisance, the
stock-yards' smell nuisance. Some dainty people prefer pure air and
correct language; but we now recognize that purity is something more
than an esthetic fad, that it is essential to our health and well-being, and
therefore it becomes a matter of universal public interest, in language
as well as in air.
There is a general belief that while bad air may be a positive evil
influence, incorrect use of language is at most no more than a negative
evil: that while it may be a good thing to be correct, no special harm is
involved in being incorrect. Let us look into this point.
While language as the medium of thought may be compared to air as
the medium of the sun's influence, in other respects it is like the skin of
the body; a scurvy skin shows bad blood within, and a scurvy language
shows inaccurate thought and a confused mind. And as a disease once
fixed on the skin reacts and poisons the blood in turn as it has first been
poisoned by the blood, so careless use of language if indulged reacts on
the mind to make it permanently and increasingly careless, illogical,
and inaccurate in its thinking.
The ordinary person will probably not believe this, because he
conceives of good use of language as an accomplishment to be learned
from books, a prim system of genteel manners to be put on when
occasion demands, a sort of superficial education in the correct thing,
or, as the boys would say, "the proper caper." In this, however, he is
mistaken. Language which expresses the thought with strict logical
accuracy is correct language, and language which is sufficiently rich in
its resources to express thought fully, in all its lights and bearings, is
effective language. If the writer or speaker has a sufficient stock of
words and forms at his disposal, he has only to use them in a strictly

logical way and with sufficient fulness to be both correct and effective.
If his mind can always be trusted to work accurately, he need not know
a word of grammar except what he has imbibed unconsciously in
getting his stock of words and expressions. Formal grammar is purely
for critical purposes. It is no more than a standard measuring stick by
which to try the work that has been done and find out if it is imperfect
at any point. Of course constant correction of inaccuracies schools the
mind and puts it on its guard so that it will be more careful the next
time it attempts expression; but we cannot avoid the conclusion that if
the mind lacks material, lacks knowledge of the essential elements of
the language, it should go to the original source from which it got its
first supply, namely to reading and hearing that which is acknowledged
to be correct and sufficient---as the child learns from its mother. All the
scholastic and analytic grammar in the world will not enrich the mind
in language to any appreciable extent.
And now we may consider another objector, who says, "I have studied
grammar for years and it has done me no good." In view of what has
just been said, we may easily concede that such is very likely to have
been the case. A measuring stick is of little value unless you have
something to measure. Language cannot be acquired, only tested, by
analysis, and grammar is an analytic, not a constructive science.
We have compared bad use of language to a scurvy condition of the
skin. To cure the skin we must doctor the blood; and to improve the
language we should begin by teaching the mind to think. But that, you
will say, is a large undertaking. Yes, but after all it is the most direct
and effective way. All education should be in the nature of teaching the
mind to think, and the teaching of language consists in teaching
thinking in connection with word forms and expression through
language. The unfortunate thing is that teachers of language have failed
to go to the root of the trouble, and enormous