The Importance of Method.

The Importance of Method.
IF the principles of style were derived by a more philosophical method, there would be fewer sympb¬thizers with the satiric, fling of Hndibras,
"For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.'
The chief reason why so small a value is attached to precepts of style is, that they savor too much of arbitrary statement in pedantic forms, of which many are ignorant who are practical masters of the art of expression. There is a lack of scientific analysis and co-ordination in both methods and precepts. As a conseguence there is a prevalent skepticism concerning the value of rhetorical studies. The fact that a pas¬sage is pleasing does not entitle it to legislate for all similar compositions. It must first be shown why it is pleasing, and what in it is pleasing. We must not sup¬pose that a form of expression is good because it has fortuitously been made the medium of revealing a noble sentiment, or an original thought. Scientific analysis must so dissect its specimens as to show whether it is the idea or the form which delights us, and why it delights us. We have been taught that "figures of speech are ornamental" and "impart vi¬vacity to the expression." Writers on style have classified figures by imposing upon us a cumbrous and useless nomenclature, but seldom explain why they contribute force to language. The truths dog¬matically embodied in such rules as "Use short sentences," "Avoid long parentheses," "Use Saxon rather than Latin words," would gain a new power over our minds if they were derived from fundamental prin¬ciples of mind and language, and grouped according to a scientific ordination. As the law of gravitation, so simple and yet so important, explains all the phe¬nomena of celestial motion, so there must be some principle underlying the effects of language upon the mind, some general law of expression, which will explain the phenomena of style.