Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/83

Rh Spencer comes to consider figurative language. The main object of figures of speech is to bring one "more easily to the desired conception," that is, they tend to simplicity and clearness rather than to impressiveness and stimulation of the feeling. The metaphor owes its superiority over the simile to the great economy it achieves. Whately, on the other hand, had maintained that "all men are more gratified at catching the resemblance for themselves, than in having it pointed out to them." Spencer opposed this view. He probably recognized that underlying it was a principle that could be formulated in direct antithesis to his theory of style, ''not economy of mental energies and sensibilities, but the greatest possible stimulation. Not the minimum of effort, but the maximum of response!'' Attention is correlative with interest and it must be aroused rather than economized. It is not mere clearness of exposition, but the power to evoke, that is the supreme virtue of style.

Later in his essay Spencer stumbles on the secret of his so-called direct manner. "Mental excitement spontaneously prompts the use of those forms of speech which have been pointed out as the most effective." In other words, the inverted order is the emotional order distinguished by force, while the natural order is the intellectual order distinguished by clearness. When one reads what the essay contains concerning the economy of the mental sensibilities, the paradoxical character of the whole theory is greatly emphasized. Climax is more fruitfully described as an exploitation of the mental sensibilities than as an economy of the same. It is the cumulative effect of a summation of stimuli. What is the value of saying that antithesis and variety economize the attention rather than that they arouse the attention? The greatest possible emotional effect is the main purpose aimed at in the employment of the various figures of speech.

When Spencer comes to speak of poetry and proclaims its superiority to prose, into which view his brief for the inverted order leads him, there become marked the inadequacy and lack of discrimination of his whole theory of style. The principles that explain a prose style fail to account for a poetic style inasmuch as their purposes are different. To adopt Spencer's phraseology for a moment, economy of the mental energies is frequently at variance with economy of the mental sensibilities. Or, as I very much prefer to say, the appeal to the understanding is not always consistent with the appeal to the emotions; and in poetry clearness of expression is very often sacrificed to force. This conflict is apparent if we consider the question of rhythm. According to Spencer rhythmical structure is an economy of the reader's or hearer's attention. The strain required by the total irregularity of prose is diminished. If Spencer implies here by the indefinite word economy that the recipient's intellectual powers are utilized to the utmost and