Dear Comrade:
You have been studying several weeks now in this Plain English Course
and we trust you are enjoying the unfolding of the powers of expression.
We have been necessarily studying rules to some extent but you have seen
how these grew out of the need for expression. We have been breaking the
sentence up into its different parts. First we had the names of things
and now we are studying the words used to tell what these things _do_
and _are_--namely verbs. And as our life has grown complex and our
powers of thinking diversified covering the whole range of time, past,
present and future, we have had to invent many forms of the verb to
express it all.
Now do not try to commit these facts concerning the verb to memory. You
are not studying English in order to know rules. You are studying
English that you may be able to say and write the things you _think_. So
first of all, _think_, _think_! That is your inalienable right! Do not
accept anything just by blind belief. Think it out for yourself. Study
until you see the '_why_' of it all. "Independent thinking has given us
the present, and we will forever continue to make tomorrow better than
today. The right to think is inalienable, or a man is a machine. Thought
is life or a human soul is a thing."
And do not lack the courage of your own thoughts. _You_ do not need to
cringe or apologize to any man. "Our life is not an apology but a life."
Dare to think and dare to express and live your thought.
Did you ever read Emerson's definition of genius? "To believe your own
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is
true for all men,--that is genius." Then he says, "We dismiss without
notice our own thoughts, because they are ours. Tomorrow a stranger will
say with masterly good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt
all along and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
another."
Have you not experienced this? How often we hear some one express a
truth and we say to ourselves, "That is just what I have long believed
but I have never dared say so." We have been so taught all our lives to
depend on some outside power and discredit the power within ourselves,
that we pay no attention to the thoughts that are ours for who are we
that we should dare to think and perchance disagree with those who have
assumed authority over us! But that is precisely what we should dare to
do--to think and to do our own thinking always. Who dares place anything
before a man!
So _think_ as you study these lessons and use these rules and formulas
simply as means to an end, as tools to aid you in expressing these
thoughts.
Yours for Education,