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348 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
stituents of the thought in the order most convenient for
the building up that thought." 12
But Style appeals to the emotions as well as to the intellect,
and the arrangement
of words and sentences which will be
the most economical may not be the most musical, and the
most musical may not be the most pleasurably effective.
For
Climax and Variety
it may be necessary to sacrifice something
of rapid intelligibility: hence involutions, antitheses, and
suspensions, which disturb the most orderly arrangement,
may yet, in virtue of their own subtle influences, be counted
as improvements on that arrangement.
Tested by the Intellect and the Feelings, the law of Sequence
of the two. If we isolate
these elements for the purposes of exposition, we shall find
is seen to be a curious compound
that the principle of the first is much simpler and more easy
of obedience than the principle of the second. It
may be
thus stated :
The constituent elements of the conception expressed in the
sentence and the paragraph should be arranged
in strict correspondence
with an inductive or a deductive progression.
All exposition, like all research,
is either inductive or deductive.
It groups particulars so as to lead up to a general
conception which embraces them all, but which could not be
fully understood until they had been estimated; or else it
starts from some general conception, already familiar to the
mind, and as it moves along, casts its light upon numerous
particulars, which are thus shown to be related to it, but
which without that light would have been overlooked.
If the reader will meditate on that brief statement of the
principle, he will, I think, find it explain many doubtful points.
Let me merely notice one, namely, the dispute as to whether
the direct or the indirect style should be preferred. Some
writers insist, and others practise the precept without in-