III. Speech as a Formed Gesture

What does this imply? That in prose, as we have it today, there is a tendency to lose style altogether and replace it with a mere pointing of certain words. For it is the business of prose to state or tell something quite precisely. And since what has to be told has been acquired by means of the head, that is to say, by means of the roundness that imitates the apparent roundness of the universe, it has in itself no form. Our thoughts, in so far as they move in prose, are chaotically jumbled together. If it were not so, we would not have in our time the deplorable spectacle of the sciences working alongside one another but unconnected, and of the specialisation that goes on in each separate branch of knowledge. Why, today one can be reputed a great anatomist and have no understanding whatever for the soul. In reality that is simply not possible. In reality one can neither know the soul without some understanding of anatomy, nor know anatomy without some understanding of the soul. And yet it would appear that in our day such a thing is possible! This has come about because the generally accepted form of expression for prose consists in placing thoughts side by side and giving to each its own particular point and emphasis. Style, however, requires continuity of thought. Anyone setting out to write an essay and to write it in style, ought already to have his last sentence within the first. He should in fact pay even more attention to the last than to the first. And while he is writing his second sentence, he should have in mind the last but one. Only when he comes to the middle of his essay can he allow himself to concentrate on one sentence alone. If an author has a true feeling for style in prose, he will have the whole essay before him as he writes.