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342 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
In like manner, as we said just now, when treating of diction
they have overlooked the fact that the simplest must be that
which best expresses the thought. Simplicity of diction is
integrity of speech;
that which admits of least equivocation,
that which by the clearest verbal symbols most readily calls
up in the reader's mind the images and feelings which the
writer wishes to call up. Such diction may be concrete or
abstract, familiar or technical; its simplicity is determined
by the nature of the thought. We shall often be simpler in
using abstract and technical terms than in using concrete and
familiar terms which by their very concreteness and familiarity
call up images and feelings foreign to our immediate purpose.
If we desire the attention to fall
upon some general idea we
only blur its outlines by using words that call up particulars.
Thus, although it may be needful to give some definite direction
to the reader's thoughts by the suggestion of a particular
fact, we must be careful not to arrest his attention on the
fact itself, still less to divert it
by calling up vivid images of
facts unrelated to our present purpose.
For example, I wish
to fix in the reader's mind a conception of a lonely meditative
man walking on the seashore, and I fall into the vicious style
of our day which is lauded as word-painting, and write something
like this :
"The fishermen mending their storm-beaten boats upon
after him as
the shore would lay down the hammer to gaze
he passed abstractedly before their huts, his hair streaming
in the salt breeze, his feet crushing the scattered seaweed, his
eyes dreamily fixed upon the purple heights of the precipitous
crags."
Now it is obvious that the details here assembled are mostly
foreign to my purpose, which has nothing whatever to do
with fishermen, storms, boats, seaweeds, or purple crags and
;
by calling up images of these I only divert the attention from