XV The Stream of Thought in Writing, Speaking, and Oral Reading
The highest joy is the freedom of the mind in the living play of all its powers.
Schiller.
The historian Niebuhr, speaking of the historian’s vocation, remarks that he who calls past ages into being enjoys a bliss analogous to that of creating. With still more truth may we say of that mind which is able, in the conscious awakening of all its powers, to give full and satisfactory utterance to its thick-coming thoughts, that it enjoys the joy of a creator. If there is one bright particular hour in the life of the educated man, in the career of the scholar, it is that hour for which all other hours of student-life were made,—that hour in which he gives original and full expression to what has been slowly gendering within him.
Shedd.
Unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men so that they shall draw from them as from wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and bones.
Beecher.
XV — The Stream of Thought in Writing, Speaking, and Oral Reading
The first speech.
Eventful in his career is the day on which a young person speaks in public for the first time. His hands and arms are in his way; his lower limbs quake; his lips and throat feel dry and parched; the vocal organs refuse to obey his bidding; he experiences other discomforts which he cannot explain and which are due to embarrassment and nervousness. What is worst of all, he cannot tell what has gone wrong in his mind. If his speech was committed, the memory fails to recall some word or sentence that seems absolutely essential to the sequence of thought. If he speaks extemporaneously, the stream of thought stops flowing, or turns back in eddies, or perhaps spreads out over all the land instead of moving towards the proper goal. In fact, all these annoyances have their fontal source in the mind, in a play of emotions in which stage-fright is the principal element. To this young man some trusted friend should whisper, “Take courage;” for if ever in his life a young man needs encouragement it is when he makes his first speech or preaches his first sermon.
Public speakers are made, not born.
Public speakers are made, not born. Native talent is helpful, but not all sufficient. Most of the obstacles to success disappear as soon as one has learned to think on his feet; that is, to control the stream of thought when facing an audience.
Dangers of fluency.
There are, of course, exceptions to all rules. Some young men possess an amount of self-confidence which is proof against embarrassment. Such youth are sometimes gifted with a flow of words that is fatal to ultimate success. It enables them to fill time without previous preparation. Bautain describes a “fatal facility a thousand times worse than hesitation or than silence, which drowns thought in floods of words, or in a torrent of copiousness, sweeping away good earth and leaving behind sand and stones alone. Heaven keep us from these interminable talkers, such as are often to be found in southern countries, who deluge you, relatively to anything and to nothing, with a shower of dissertation and a down-pouring of their eloquence. During nine-tenths of the time there is not one rational thought in the whole of this twaddle, carrying along in its course every kind of rubbish and platitude. The class of persons who produce a speech so easily and who are ready at the shortest moment to extemporize a speech, a dissertation, or a homily, know not how to compose a tolerable sentence; and I repeat that, with such exceptions as defy all rule, he who has not learned how to write will never know how to speak.”40
No one stands in greater need of the discipline derived from the use of the pen than those who overflow with words and sentences. Their dearth of ideas can be remedied in no other way. The sentence which escapes from the lips is fleeting and soon forgotten. The sentence in black and white, which stares you in the face from the written page, can be read and re-read until its lack of sense and its wealth of nonsense and absurdity grow too glaring to be endured. Paragraph after paragraph can thus be tested, condensed, and stuffed full of meaning. This discipline ultimately enables a fluent talker to speak with force and to the point, because it gradually transforms his habits of thinking, deepening the stream of thought and enabling it to carry craft too weighty to be borne by a shallow stream.
Hesitating speakers.
The person who is afflicted with hesitation and embarrassment also stands in sore need of the discipline of writing. In the solitude of the home one can take time to find and fix the right word, to weave it into sentences that stand the test of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and to arrange a line of thought from which everything irrelevant is excluded. Embarrassment vanishes with the advent of the feeling that one has something to say. The growth of language, which invariably accompanies the evolution and clarification of thought, corrects hesitation. Soon the hands drop to the side or obey the will in gesture, and the feeling of ease begins to color the delivery. Nothing more beneficial can happen to a young preacher than the call to preach the same discourse a number of times in succession, each time to a different audience. Repetition will make him a master of the train of ideas, improving his phraseology, and deeping the stream of thought. Who has not watched with delight the improvement in the presentation of a lecture heard from the same lips half a dozen times in succession? The change for the better was due to the deepening, straightening, and improvement of the channel in which the stream of thought seems to flow.
Writing.
If a student several times each month during a college course writes out and fixes a line of argument for a debate, he can acquire the power to fix and retain the thoughts as fast as he writes. The habit of memorizing the words is, of course, pernicious, because it is apt to make him the slave of his manuscript, to destroy his freedom in meeting the blows of an antagonist, and to divest him of the glow of feeling and animation which gives force to the delivery while the mind is engaged in the elaboration of the argument. The sequence of ideas rather than of words should be fixed in the mind, very much as the student of Euclid fixes in his mind, not the words, but the ideas which constitute the chain of proof. This kind of practice gives a young speaker the sense of security without destroying his freedom in modifying the line of thought while standing upon his feet.
Criticism.
From this point of view the folly of much criticism in teaching is very apparent. The current of thought is frequently interrupted by drawing attention at the wrong time to mistakes in grammar and errors of pronunciation. The proper time for such criticism is after the movement of thought has reached the goal; and even then the critic should not call attention to too many defects at one time; otherwise the effect will be to discourage and bewilder the pupil.
The thought.
The stream of thought is the most essential thing in writing, speaking, and oral reading. The management of face and hands and feet, the postures of the body, and the vocal utterance should, of course, not be neglected. The intelligent counsel of a good friend is needed to point out mannerisms and eccentricities. The practice prescribed by a wise teacher is helpful in pruning the delivery of defects and harmful habits which are sure to grow where attention to the thought sinks the delivery into the subconscious realm. Nevertheless, the main thing in writing and speaking is the stream of thought. A profound truth was stated by the Kentucky backwoodsman, who said that he would have it in him to become as great an orator as Henry Clay, were it not that he found himself lacking in two things: Whenever a favorable opportunity for a great speech presented itself he never knew what to say nor how to say it. The how is more easily acquired than the what. Both should receive attention, from the kindergarten to the university. The getting of something to say is invention. It is the one thing in which special teachers and special courses give least help. The power of invention is acquired by years of effort and discipline. Tributaries from many sources must pour into the stream of thought before it becomes full, copious, and capable of carrying great thoughts, or of supplying the motive power for great undertakings.
Hinderances.
In writing nothing should be allowed to interfere with the stream of thought. Some can write in the midst of noise. Others must seek silence and solitude. Gifted men like Horace Greeley can write in the cars, upon the knee, anywhere. Habit has much to do with the art of composing. In any event, the stream of thought must be kept flowing. In so far as the rules of grammar, logic, rhetoric have become unconscious guiding principles, they do not interfere with the evolution of thought. In so far as they absorb the attention and hinder the flow of thought, they should be cast to the winds during the first glow of writing. Better think of these during the process of rewriting, polishing, and correcting.
So great a thinker and successful a writer as Charles Darwin makes the following suggestive statement concerning his own methods of composing:
How Darwin composed.
“There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind, leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately.”41
No one should speak as he writes, nor should any one write as he speaks. Few men are satisfied with the stenographic report of a speech, exactly true to the language at the time of delivery. A reporter who cannot make a speech read better, without changing the line of thought, than if it were printed exactly as spoken is not a master of the art of reporting. Written discourse abounds in longer sentences, in more involved constructions, in forms of diction which please the eye, but are too cumbersome for the voice and the ear. The public speaker is prone to use short, simple sentences in which the subject of the sentence does not pass out of the mind before the predicate is reached. His style abounds in questions which arrest the attention of the hearer; if necessary, he indulges in colloquial expressions to which the ears of the hearer are accustomed, thereby bringing himself nearer the common people.
Fox’s opinion.
Written discourse.
Upon a speech delivered in the British Parliament high praise was bestowed in the hearing of Mr. Fox. “Does it read well?” he inquired. “Yes, grandly,” was the reply. “Then,” said he, “it was not a good speech.” It may be difficult to point out exactly wherein speaking differs from writing so far as the stream of thought is concerned; yet one feels the difference. Austin Phelps shows the difference by using an extract from an essay on the “End of God in Creation:”
“What was the final cause of creation? The transition from the unconditioned to the conditioned is incomprehensible by the human faculties. What that transition is, and how it could take place, and how it became an actualized occurrence, it is confessed on all hands are absolutely incomprehensible enigmas. We cannot reasonably imagine, then, that, if we are thus ignorant of the nature and mode of this stupendous fact, we can nevertheless comprehend its primitive ground, can explore its ultimate reasons, can define its final motive. Nor can we think to unveil the infinite soul at that moment when, according to our conceptions, the eternal uniformity was interrupted and a new mode of being, absolutely unintelligible to us, was first introduced. We cannot think to grasp all the views which were present to that soul, extending from the unbeginning past to the unending future, and to fathom all its purposes, and to analyze all its motives. If anywhere, we must here repel everything like dogmatic interpretation of the phenomena, and admit whatever is put forth only as conjectural in its nature, or, at all events, partial, and belonging far more to the surface than to the interior of the subject.”
Example of spoken discourse.
One can easily see how ill adapted to oral delivery these sentences are. Phelps throws the same leading thoughts and succession of thoughts into a form adapted for public speaking:
“Why did God create the universe? Creation is incomprehensible to man. What is creation? How was it possible? How did it ever come to be? I cannot answer. Can you? Every man of common sense confesses his ignorance here. But if we are ignorant of what creation is, and how it is, can we imagine that we understand why it is? Shall we think to unveil the mind of God in the stupendous act? That moment when God said ‘Let there be light’ was a moment of which we can know nothing but that ‘there was light.’ Shall we think to see all that God saw? Can we look through the past without beginning, and the future without end, and fathom all His purposes and all His motives? Can we, by searching, find out God? If we must repel assertion anywhere, we must do so here. Whatever we may think, it is but little more than guess-work. At the best it can be but knowing in part. The most we can know must be on the surface. It cannot penetrate to the heart of the matter.”42
Two kinds of style.
The plan of writing down a line of discussion helps to clarify the thought. Casting aside the manuscript as soon as the sequence of ideas is fixed in the mind emancipates the speaker from the written page. Several years of practice develop two kinds of style, one adapted for writing, the other for speaking. After this stage of development is reached, it may be no longer necessary to formulate on paper every line of argument. Nevertheless, the pen cannot be laid aside entirely without detriment to the quality of the thought and the effectiveness of oral discourse.
Dictating.
Everything calculated to interfere with the stream of thought should, so far as possible, be eliminated from the act of composing. Some men find the pen an irksome drain upon their energy and vitality. Their thought moves faster than they can write. The employment of a stenographer aids them in the work of composing. The danger against which they must guard is a growing dislike to the use of the pen, and a deterioration of their style resulting in the obliteration of the difference which distinguishes effective speaking from successful writing.
Lectures and orations.
There is a radical difference between a lecture and an oration. Public speaking which partakes of the nature of the lecture, aiming primarily at instruction or the communication of knowledge, may be assisted by experiments, by maps, charts, and pictures upon the screen, by specimens and models designed to throw light upon the theme under discussion. Public speaking which partakes of the nature of oratory, its aim being to move the will to action, is generally limited in the appliances it can utilize, and in the way it must appeal to the hearer. It must not exhaust the attention of the hearer by consuming his time in the establishment of principles, and in showing, by lengthy details, how results are obtained. Far better is it to cite authorities, to quote their language if necessary, and to make the application to the case in hand. In referring to recognized standards, like a dictionary, a treatise on law, or the Sacred Scriptures, it is always best to quote the exact words. This is also more appropriate on the written page than a reproduction of the thought in inferior forms of statement. In public speaking, however, the original statement may be too involved, and a breaking up into shorter, simpler sentences may aid the forward movement of the stream of thought. The first aim of the speaker is to be understood. If he fails to reach the understanding, he can neither persuade nor convince, nor spur the will to action.
Starting in too high a key.
There is another limitation to the kind of public speaking which partakes of the nature of oratory. The idea which the speaker seeks to have realized in the vote, or verdict, or conduct of others, must be carried back to the necessary ideas of the hearer. The full discussion of this peculiarity in the stream of thought belongs to treatises on rhetoric. Such a discussion can be found in Theremin’s Rhetoric, translated by Shedd. Suffice it to say that the recognition of this principle makes the speaker a more thoughtful man. It causes him to rely for the effect he seeks to produce upon solid and sterling qualities rather than showy rhetoric. It tends to make the stream of thought flow deeper, fuller, yet clearer and with more power. Any interference with the stream of thought while the speaker is before the audience may be disastrous. The crying of a child, or an outburst of feeling in the audience, or some other mishap may disconcert his mind. Legouvé tells how the world-renowned advocate, Berryer, lost a very good cause by unconsciously starting his speech in too high a key. “His temples soon felt the unusual fatigue of the larynx; from the temples it passed to the brain; the strain being too great, the brain gave way; the thought became confused, and the language disarranged and indistinct.” He broke down in open court because he never thought of descending from the lofty perch on which his voice started at the beginning of his plea. Legouvé claims, and the experience of many speakers confirms the claim, that the abuse of the high notes has not infrequently affected injuriously the orator’s very flow of thought.
The three generals.
Three generals made stump speeches on a joint trip during the last Presidential campaign. One day the name of the candidate of the other great political party was mentioned, when there was a perfect storm of applause in the gallery. A second reference elicited similar applause, and the disconcerted general, who had bravely faced the enemy on the battle-field, took his seat. The next general, walking on a crutch, came forward, and requested that all who had been sent to disturb the meeting should rise. Ho one moved. He exclaimed, “There are some cowards here.” Then he asked that all who had come to listen and learn should rise. Everybody rose. He exclaimed, “There are some liars here.” Next he announced that any one attempting to disturb the meeting would be pitched out of doors, the general on the crutch declaring he would lead the attack. Soon a man arose as if to ask a question. Whereupon a big burly policeman threw the fellow out, and there was no further outside interference with the stream of thought in the mind of speaker or listeners. The man on the platform always has the advantage over disturbers in the audience, provided he is master of his faculties, full of resources, and quick at repartee.
The schools of France.
The reading lesson.
The schools of France have been quoted to show the uselessness of exercises in oral reading. As in other things, so in school matters, distance lends enchantment to the view. Legouvé, in his lectures on the “Art of Reading,” mentions with approval that in the great Republic of North America reading aloud is justly considered one of the very first elements of a child’s education, whilst in France, reading aloud does not reach even the sorry dignity of a diverting art, but is regarded as a curiosity, a luxury, often something hardly better than a pretension.43 This was written several decades ago, and may not be just to the French nation at this time. The value of oral reading depends upon the way in which it is done. If it amounts to no more than calling words and parrot-like imitation of the teacher’s manner of reading, the exercise is a waste of time. The mastery of the new words and of the thought embodied should precede the attempt to read a lesson aloud. The mastery of the words involves ability to recognize them at sight, to pronounce them with fluency and ease, and to spell them by letter and by sound. It implies both a knowledge of their meaning and ability to use them in a sentence. An average series of readers has a vocabulary of five thousand words. The meaning of all these words may be known at sight, but ability to use them by tongue or pen is quite another thing, the vocabulary of most persons being not much in excess of a thousand words. The thought can be mastered by an exercise in silent reading, followed by the oral and written reproduction of the lesson. The mastery of the thought is a condition of proper vocal utterance.
Acting and reading.
Reading and talking.
There is a difference between acting and reading. The actor endeavors to speak and act after the exact manner of the character whom he impersonates. The reader aims to suggest the thought instead of imitating the original actors. An actor will go through the motion of stabbing or shooting an enemy; the reader simply aims to suggest the thought of what was done. Exercises in breathing, gesture, tone, pitch, cadence, voice may be needed for the sake of correcting defects; nevertheless, everything connected with oral reading should turn on and culminate in the stream of thought. If anything else is made the object of chief regard, the main purpose of oral reading is lost. It furnishes an excellent test by means of which the teacher can determine whether the pupil understands what he reads or is merely calling words after the manner of a parrot. To correct the unnatural tones acquired in the school-room, the pupil is wisely exhorted to read as he would talk. In the effort to develop a style of reading exactly like talking, some teachers ruin their natural way of talking and reading. In conversation, they talk as if they were trying to read. While reading, they seem to be trying to talk. The human voice is so made that it puts the quotation marks to selections recited from memory and to sentences read from a manuscript or book. As a rule, a person can read best what he himself has written; yet his voice tells whether his sentences and thoughts are framed and evolved at the moment of delivery, or taken from a manuscript prepared beforehand. As a matter of fact, no one can read as he talks or speaks. A blindfolded listener could tell when Spurgeon was reading or speaking. The same was true of Charles Sumner, and of every other great speaker America has produced.
Abiding thoughts.
To think the best thoughts of the best men is the privilege of him who can read. To plant these thoughts in other minds by reading aloud is a noble achievement. To give in speech something from our own resources that others shall treasure is nobler still, because it links our life with the creative workers of the world. But noblest of all is it to write what shall be read by our own and future generations, in our own and other lands, as a source of light and life, of uplift and enjoyment. The worst punishment that can befall a human being is to be cut off from participation in the movement of the race towards greater well-being and perfection. One naturally desires to employ his gifts and powers for the benefit of mankind. The stream of thought determines what we shall accomplish. If others are to be benefited by our thinking, they must think our thoughts. The stream of our thought must carry ideas of interest and value to them, ideas they will care to get and keep. If our thinking is busy with things of transient interest, transient will be our influence over others. If our thought is to abide, it must deal with verities of eternal moment to humanity, with the works of Him who made the heavens and the earth, with the truth of Him who is “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.”