pprehensions, the unity, the strict identity with
itself, of the apprehending mind. All the laws of good writing aim at
a similar unity or identity of the mind in all the processes by which
the word is associated to its import. The term is right, and has its
essential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what it signifies, as
with the names of simple sensations. To give the phrase, the sentence,
the structural member, the entire composition, song, or essay, a
similar unity with its subject and with itself:--style is in the right
way when it tends towards that. All depends upon the original unity,
the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or
view. So much is true of all art, which therefore requires always its
logic, its comprehensive reason--insight, foresight, retrospect, in
simultaneous action--true, most of all, of the literary art, as being
of all the arts most closely cognate to the abstract intelligence.
Such logical coherency may be evidenced not merely in the lines of
composition as a whole, but in the choice of a single word, while it by
no means interferes with, but may even prescribe, much variety, in the
building of the sentence for instance, or in the manner, argumentative,
descriptive, discursive, of this or that [23] part or member of the
entire design. The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's
expression of its needs, may alternate with the long-contending,
victoriously intricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity
of a single word, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look
closely, you can see much contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a
highly qualified matter into compass at one view. For the literary
architecture, if it is to be rich and expressive, involves not only
foresight of the end in the beginning, but also development or growth
of design, in the process of execution, with many irregularities,
surprises, and afterthoughts; the contingent as well as the necessary
being subsumed under the unity of the whole. As truly, to the lack of
such architectural design, of a single, almost visual, image,
vigorously informing an entire, perhaps very intricate, composition,
which shall be austere, ornate, argumentative, fanciful, yet true from
first to last to that vision within, may be attributed those weaknesses
of conscious or unconscious repetition of word, phrase, motive, or
member of the whole matter, indicating, as Flaubert was aware, an
or