Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/159

Rh this. One group of our societary associations is with Greece and another with Rome. Political Science brings up the one group of associations, Social Science the other. If a writer has but one set of associations, a single word will fully express his meaning; but if he knows two languages and has a double set of words, each must find expression to relieve the subconscious memory. A style of this nature is called literary. With the single set of expressions the writer seems abrupt. A complaint is often made that I am elliptical in expression. I doubt not that many a reader has said this already in reading this article. If, however, he will go back to the places where I seem to have left out some step in the sequence of the thought, he may find that at that point he has some double association of words that I have disregarded. A fluent writer says in each sentence, or at least in each paragraph, "my thought is so in Greek, it is so in Latin, and finally so and so in English." The good writer in this sense uses all the synonyms in his own or the reader's mind before he passes along to the next topic. He brings up the whole range of his reader's sensory associations instead of calling for will power to suppress them. Concise, straightforward construction demands will power to follow. Every idea is then expressed once and only once. Those who are dominated by sensory associations can not readily follow such a writer. Like birds they fly several times around a spot before lighting.

This means that an ornate style is a defect and not a mark of genius. The study of languages weakens the will, or, to state the thought in another way, it prevents the growth of motor coordinations. If so, children should not be taught two languages. Moreover, they should be corrected when they use many adjectives or words of more than two syllables. Only short, concise expressions can come quickly enough to aid a child in his decisions. Any delay in the formation of trains of thought retards action and prevents the growth of will power. Only the child who thinks more quickly than he acts can develop adjustive reactions and thus escape from the domination of sex and sensory associations. The effects of these double word associations are everywhere visible.

I shall offer additional illustrations from the field of art, where sex and sensory dominance also has a crushing power. Time and space can not be directly pictured in art; nor can rest and motion be portrayed. These relations are brought into consciousness only through associations with surfaces and lines. Pictures are either color masses, or perspectives taking the thought beyond the visualized surfaces to the real world back of them. Most pictures combine these two factors, surfaces and lines. The differences among pictures is in the proportion and relation of these factors. If the color masses are in the foreground, and the lines creating the perspective in the background, the picture indicates a sensory dominance on the part of its maker. If the lines