DO you never, while occupying a dental chair and deploring the necessity
that drives you to that uncomfortable seat, admire the skill of the
dentist in the use of his instruments? A great many of these instruments
lie at his hand. To you they appear bewildering, so slightly different are
they from each other. Yet with unerring readiness the dentist lays hold of
the one he needs. Now this facility of his is not a blessing with which a
gracious heaven endowed him. It is the consequence and reward of hard
study, and above all of work, hard work.
You have been ambitious of like skill in the manipulation of words. Had
you not been, you would never have undertaken this study. You have
perceived that when you speak or write, words are your instruments. You
have wished to learn how to use them. Now for every idea you shall ever
have occasion to express await throngs of vocables, each presenting its
claims as a fit medium. These you must pass in instantaneous review, these
you must expertly appraise, out of these you must choose the words that
will best serve your purpose. With practice, you will make your selections
unconsciously. You will never, of course, quite attain the infallibility
of the dentist; for linguistic instruments are more numerous than dental,
and far more complex. But you will more and more nearly approximate the
ideal, will more and more nearly find that right expression has become
second nature with you.
All this is conditioned upon labor faithful and steadfast. Without labor
you will never be adept. At the outset of our study together we warned you
that, though we should gather the material and point the way, you yourself
must do the work. This book is not one to glance through. It is one to
dwell with, to toil with. It exacts much of you--makes you, for each page
you turn, pay with the sweat of your brain.
But, assuming that you have done your part, what have you gained? Without
answering this question at all fully, we may at this juncture engage in a
brief retrospect.
First of all, you have rid yourself of the notion that words are dead
things, unrealities worthy of no more than wooden and mechanical
employment. As much as anything else in the world, words are alive and
responsive, are fraught with unmeasured possibilities of good or ill.
You have taken due cognizance of the fact that words must be considered in
the aggregate as well as individually, and have reckoned with the pitfalls
and dangers as well as with the advantages of their use in combination.
But the basis of everything is a keener knowledge of words severally. You
have therefore come to study words with the zest and insight you exhibit
(or should exhibit) in studying men. Incidentally, you have acquired the
habit of looking up dictionary definitions, not merely to satisfy a
present need, but also to add permanently to your linguistic resources.
You have carried the study of individuals farther. You have come to know
words inside and out. Such knowledge not only assists you in your dealings
with your contemporaries; it illuminates for you great literature of the
past that otherwise would remain obscure. How much keener, for example, is
your understanding of Shakespeare's passage on the Seven Ages of Man
because of your thorough acquaintance with the single word
_pantaloon_! How quickly does the awe for big words slip from you
when you perceive that _precocious_ is in origin the equivalent of
_half-baked_! What intimacy of insight into words you feel when you
find that a _companion_ is a _sharer of one's bread_! What a
linking of language with life you discover when you learn the original
signification of _presently_, of _idiot_, of _rival_, of
_sandwich_, of _pocket handkerchief_! And what revelations as
into a mystic fraternalism with words do you obtain when you confront
such a phrase as "the bank _teller_" or "cut to the _quick_"!
Not only have words become more like living beings to you; you have
learned to think of them in relations analogous to the human. You can
detect the blood kinship, for example, between _prescribe_ and
_manuscript_, and know that the strain of _fact_ or _fie_ or _fy_ in
a word is pretty sure to betoken making or doing. You know that there are
elaborate intermarriages among words. You recognize _phonograph_, for
example, as a married couple; you even have confidential word as to the
dowry brought by each of the contracting parties to the new verbal
household.
You have discovered, further, that the language actually swarms with
"pairs"--words joined with each other not in blood or by marriage but
through meaning. You have so familiarized yourself with hundreds of these
pairs that to think of one word is to call the other to mind.
Finally, and in many respects most important of all, you have acquired a
vast stock of synonyms. You have had it brought to your attention that the
number of basic ideas in the world is surprisingly small; that for each of
these ideas there is in our language one generic word; that most people
use this one word constantly instead of seeking the subsidiary term that
expresses a particular phase of the idea; and that you as a builder of
your vocabulary must, while holding fast to the basic idea with one hand,
reach out with the other for the fit, sure material of specific words. Nor
have you rested in the mere perception of theory. You have had abundant
practice, have yourself covered the ground foot by foot. You can therefore
proceed with reasonable freedom from the commoner ideas of the human mind
to that expression of definite aspects of them which is anything but
common.
You have not, of course, achieved perfection. There still is much for you
to do. There always will be. Nevertheless in the ways just reviewed, and
in various other ways not mentioned in this chapter, you have made
yourself verbally rich. You are one of the millionaires of language. When
you speak, it is not with stammering incompetence, but with confident
readiness. When you write, it is with energy and assurance in the very
flow of the ink. Where you had long been a slave, you have become a
freeman and can look your fellows in the eye. You have the best badge of
culture a human being can possess. You have power at your tongue's end.
You have the proud satisfaction of having wrought well, and the
inspiration of knowing that whatever verbal need may arise, you are
trained and equipped to grapple with it triumphantly.