stimulate them to think; by such methods will he succeed in purging their thought of the prejudices and intolerances and easy inherited assents which are the enemies of the truth. By these methods and by these alone can he teach them to write.

Such is the purpose of this book to furnish the text and starting point for work of the kind just indicated. The aim of the editor will have been fulfilled if it leads the student to see for himself that there is imagination in science as well as in literature, reason in literature as well as in science, and human truth in both; if it sharpens his intellectual curiosity and teaches him to be content with no partial view, but to seek from science, from literature and from the practical world to build up for himself a conception of life worthy of his best thought, one which will impel him to take advantage of the broader and nobler and more human opportunities of his profession.

ENGLISH AND ENGINEERING

I

Writing and Thinking

By John Ruskin 1

THE chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and accent, instead of simply the careful expression of right thought. All the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral; it becomes accurate if the speaker desires to be true; clear, if he speaks with sympathy and a desire to be

1 These paragraphs on Writing and Thinking, which are to be taken as a kind of motto for this book, are from Ruskin's lecture on "The Relation of Art to Morals," which forms Chapter III of his Lectures on Art, 1870.

John Ruskin, 1819-1900, was an art critic and writer on social and economic questions: among his best known works are Modern Painters, 1843-60, Unto This Last, 1860, Sesame and Lilies, 1865, and Crown of Wild Olive, 1866. Ruskin has perhaps been most influential in his attempt to show the connection between the art of a people and the social, economic, and religious conditions of their lives. This selection on the art of writing is typical of his point of view toward all the arts.

Following to some extent the lead of Carlyle, Ruskin attacked the problems of nineteenth-century industrialism in a way which has had an important influence on the political economy of today. An illustration is the essay, "Traffic," printed in this volume; this aspect of his work is ably discussed by J. A. Hobson in his book, John Ruskin, Social Reformer. "The Mystery of Life and Its Arts," which forms the last selection in this collection, is an attempt to show the inevitable connection of art and literature with the fundamental problems of life.-EDITOR,

intelligible; powerful, if he has earnestness; pleasant, if he has sense of rhythm and order. There are no other virtues of language producible by art than these but let me mark more deeply for an instant the significance of one of them. Language, I said, is only clear when it is sympathetic. You can, in truth, understand a man's word only by understanding his temper. Your own word is also as of an unknown tongue to him unless he understands yours. And it is this which makes the art of language, if any one is to be chosen separately from the rest, that which is fittest for the instrument of a gentleman's education. To teach the meaning of a word thoroughly, is to teach the nature of the spirit that coined it; the secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the principles of beautiful speech have all been fixed by sincere and kindly speech. On the laws which have been determined by sincerity, false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterwards be constructed; but all such utterance, whether in oration or poetry, is not only without permanent power, but it is destructive of the principles it has usurped. So long as no words are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of language goes on exalting itself; but the moment it is shaped and chiselled on external principles, it falls into frivolity, and perishes. And this truth would have been long ago manifest, had it not been that in periods of advanced academical science there is always a tendency to deny the sincerity of the first masters of language. Once learn to write gracefully in the manner of an ancient author, and we are apt to think that he also wrote in the manner of some

one else. But no noble nor right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart.

No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not mean what he says; nor was any great style ever invented but by some man who meant what he said. Find out the beginner of a great manner of writing, and you have also found the declarer of some true facts or sincere passions: and your whole method of reading will thus be quickened, for, being sure that your author really meant what he said, you will be much more careful to ascertain what it is that he means.

And of yet greater importance is it deeply to know that every beauty possessed by the language of a nation is significant of the innermost laws of its being. Keep the temper of the people stern and manly; make their associations grave, courteous, and for worthy objects; occupy them in just deeds; and their tongue must needs be a grand one. Nor is it possible, therefore - observe the necessary reflected action that any tongue should be a noble one, of which the words are not so many trumpet-calls to action. All great languages invariably utter great things, and command them; they cannot be mimicked but by obedience; the breath of them is inspiration because it is not only vocal, but vital; and you can only learn to speak as these men spoke, by becoming what these men were.