THE ART OF EXACT EXPRESSION.
It is popularly supposed that the use of language, spoken or written, is to convey the precise meaning of the speaker or writer. Unfortunately, it very often conveys something quite different. We have the best authority for saying of the children of men that they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. It may be that this hereditary obliquity of speech does in part account for the fact that the average man or woman finds it very difficult to convey the exact meaning intended. I am not speaking at all of politicians and lawyers, whose profession it is to play with language and to juggle with words. Were they not allowed to do so, their occupation would soon be gone. It is not for their interest to study the art of exact expression, but rather the art of making the worse the better reason seem. We dismiss them entirely. But there are men in other professions who would find it to the advantage of the community, if not to their own, if they would apply themselves to the study of this art. A full understanding and practice of it would save a long-suffering people from the unseemly exhibitions of so many heresy trials. “Unfortunate terminology” is indeed an unfortunate factor, but a very important and common one in these trials. It may not be so easy to define one’s meaning clearly in theological and metaphysical matters as in chemistry or mathematics; but it is far more important. Incertitude and vagueness of definition on the part of the preacher may result in incertitude of belief on the part of the hearer. We must, however, concede in favor of the preacher the difficulty of exactly defining the different shades of thought and opinion concerning creeds and confessions. It certainly ought to be expected of the business man that he should know how to write an intelligible business letter, and to express himself with so much clearness that a would-be customer could understand his meaning. Yet this very last Christmas time a lady who was in correspondence with a business house in Boston(!) concerning some intended Christmas purchases, was obliged to write three times before she could get an intelligible reply to her queries. Even then she had to call in outside assistance before she could feel quite certain what meaning was intended, and “the lady from Philadelphia” and the woman suffragist from Kansas who came to the rescue had to devote all the strength of their intellects for an hour or more to the study. The art of exact expression ought not to become one of the lost arts. As life grows more complex with all the new discoveries and appliances, language ought to grow more terse and direct and exact. We have not time to spend in unraveling the meaning of words and phrases. Some of us may be too old to acquire this art, if we have not already learned it. Hence we say:— “Wanted—in every common school, academy, college, university, and theological seminary, a professor of the art of exact expression.”—Anna F. Raffensperger, in Christian Union.