From Albert Jay Nock, “The Triumph of the Gadget,” The American Mercury, July, 1939

During the last fifty years there has been invented almost every conceivable labor-saving device, with the consequence that the average man is in a state of utter manual incompetence. This is well-known and is often commented upon. But what is not so often observed is that these gadgets are not only labor-saving but brain-saving, thought-saving; and it seems an inescapable conclusion that a correlative mental incompetence is being induced.

A certain amount of resistance seems necessary for the proper functioning of mental and moral attributes, as it is for that of physical attributes. In any of these three departments of life, if you can get results without effort, and habitually do so, the capacity for making the effort dwindles. Whatever takes away the opportunity for effort, whatever obviates or reduces the need for making it, is therefore to some degree deleterious. It needs a bit of brains to manage a furnace-fire successfully; an automatic heater needs none; hence many householders today could not manage a furnace-fire to save their lives. It needs some brainwork to add up a column of figures; running an adding-machine needs nothing but attention; consequently there are many book-keepers and bank-clerks now who not only do not add but cannot. As we all have frequently had occasion to observe, shopkeeping now seldom requires any more strenuous mental exercise than is involved in consulting a price-list. Cooking is a great art, requiring a lot of brain-work; running the modern kitchen requires far less.

(The whole essay is available at IWP Articles. The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

Essays by Albert Jay Nock at IWP Articles:

• Artemus Ward (1924)
• The Decline of Conversation (1928)
• A Cultural Forecast (1928)
• Pantagruelism (1932)
• Artemus Ward’s America (1934)
• Isaiah’s Job (1936)
• Free Speech and Plain Language (1936)
• College is No Place to Get an Education (1939)
• The Triumph of the Gadget (1939)

Nock’s complete works are available at JAYS.

Pascal on Eloquence

Jacques Barzun Translation (2003)

16. Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way (1) that those to whom we speak are able to hear them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel their self-interest involved, so that self-love leads them the more willingly to think over what has been said. It consists, then, in a correspondence which we try to establish, on the one hand, between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions that we use. This presupposes that we have studied the heart of man in order to know all its workings and that we find the right arrangement of the remarks that we wish to make suitable. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and try out on our own heart the appeal we make in what we say, so as to see whether the one is rightly made for the other, and whether we can feel confident that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is small or diminish that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject and there must be in it nothing excessive or lacking.

W. F. Trotter Translation (1958)

16. Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way — (1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it. It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. This assumes that we have studied well the heart of man so as to know all its powers, and then to find the just proportions of the discourse which we wish to adapt to them. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.

From Albert Jay Nock, “Liberals Never Learn,” The American Mercury, August, 1937

What I have seen of the Liberal and Progressive movement gives me no wish for its continuance — far from it — and if it disintegrated tomorrow I should be disposed to congratulate the country on its deliverance from a peculiarly dangerous and noisome nuisance. With regard to “all Liberal and Progressive ideas,” I have never been able to make out that there are any. Pseudo-ideas, yes, in abundance; sentiment, emotion, wishful dreams and visions, grandiose castles in Spain, political panaceas and placebos made up of milk, moonshine, and bilge-water in approximately equal parts — yes, these seem to be almost a peculium of Liberalism. But ideas, no.

(The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

From “Some of Mayor Gaynor’s Letters and Speeches”

December 4th, 1911.

Dear Mr. Smith: I thank you exceedingly for the edition of Don Quixote which you sent me. The illustrations by Doré are grand. The translation I notice is by Motteux. Of the English translations I deem that by Jarvis the best. It is so deft and nimble. I imagine that it approaches the spirit of the original more nearly than any of the others. When a younger man I often entertained the intention of trying to learn Spanish in order to read Don Quixote in the original. I envy your being able to do so. In translating a work of imagination it is almost always necessary to depart from literalness in order to give the genius and spirit. This Jarvis does, while Motteux is often painfully literal. And yet his literalness brings out some things that should not be lost. For instance, in the account of Don Quixote’s manner of living, and what dishes he ate each day of the week, Jarvis says, “an omelet on Saturdays,” which is certainly common-place enough. But Motteux gives the original exactly, namely, “griefs and groans on Saturdays,” which was some kind of a mixed dish which evidently caused belly ache, or some sort of distress in the paunch. But cases like that are few, and the nimble and light touches of Jarvis which let you right into the spirit of the narrative are often departures from the literal rendering of the original. At best a translation of a work of imagination bears about the same resemblance to the original as the reverse side of a tapestry to the true side. That is why I am sorry I do not understand Spanish as you do. If I did we could continue that discussion of the writings of Cervantes which we commenced on the train up from Richmond.

Let me cite a passage or two to show how much more attractive the translation of Jarvis is. After Don Quixote is knocked down by the sail of the wind-mill, Sancho Panza comes galloping up on Dapple and says, according to Motteux: “Mercy on me, did not I give your Worship fair warning? Did not I tell you they were wind-mills, and that nobody could think otherwise unless he also had wind-mills in his head?” But Jarvis more nimbly says: “God save us, quoth Sancho Panza, did not I warn you to have a care of what you did, for that they were nothing but wind-mills, and nobody could mistake them but one that had the like in his head.” And again, speaking of the company at Antonio’s house who were entertaining Don Quixote, Motteux says: “Among others were two ladies of an airy and waggish disposition.” Contrast this with the way Jarvis puts it: “Among the ladies there were two of an arch and jocose disposition.” But I must not multiply these instances except to quote the rendering of a proverb. Motteux makes Don Quixote say to Sancho: “I have always heard it said that to do a kindness to clowns is like throwing water into the sea.” Jarvis has it that “to do good to the vulgar is to throw water into the sea.”

Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day — or rather one died ten days later than the other according to the modern reckoning of time, but I do not remember which. But I find they made use of the same expression. Sancho Panza is made to say, “There is some difference between a hawk and a handsaw.” Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Years ago I copied every proverb, or philosophical or wise saying there is in Don Quixote. I think that an equal number of good ones is not found in any other book except the Bible. I am half tempted to quote a few to you and let you compare them with the original. “Who but a madman would mind what a madman says,” is one. “Diligence is the mother of good fortune,” is another. And this: “It is pleasant to govern though it be but a flock of sheep.” And this: “Some people go out for wool and come home shorn.” And this: “Letters without virtue are pearls upon a dunghill.” And this: “Though habit and example do much, good sense is the foundation of good language.” And this: “When they give you a heifer be ready with the rope.” And this of the same meaning: “When good fortune knocks, make haste to let her in.” And some or all of those elected to office might well say with Sancho Panza when his old clothes were being taken off and he was being dressed up in his official garments when he was entering upon the government of his island: “Clothe me as you will, I shall be Sancho Panza still.” And it were well if they could all say, as Sancho did when he gave up his governorship and they had stripped him of his official garments to reclothe him with his old ones: “Naked came I into this government and naked come I out of it.” And let me wind up with this one which the ladies might take offense at: “Between the yea and the nay of a woman I would not undertake to thrust the point of a needle.”

And while I am at it, and since we went into this book talk on the train at all, I will set down for you the books which I think have had the largest effect on my life. I will give them in the order in which I think I was affected by them:

The Bible,

Euclid,

Shakespeare,

Hume’s History of England (especially the notes),

Homer,

Milton,

Cervantes (Don Quixote),

Rabelais,

Gil Blas,

Franklin’s Autobiography and letters,

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations,

Bacon’s Works.

I have left out of this list those works on what for want of a better name I may call the philosophy of history. I have derived immense satisfaction and, I hope, much profit, from them. And no doubt I have omitted some books I would mention if I took the time.

From Albert Jay Nock, “The Politician’s Opinion of You,” The American Mercury, December, 1936

Edmund Burke, probably the greatest British statesman of all time, once wrote a letter to the Duke of Richmond, criticizing his political associates. He said they were good routineers, first-rate on pushing legislation, strong on winning elections, but no good whatever “on that which is the end and object of all elections, namely: the disposing our people to a better sense of their condition.”

In the language of the street, that seems to be distinctly a new one on us. We never heard that candidates and campaign-managers were supposed to do anything like that, or that elections were held for any such object. Burke’s idea was that the true purpose of an election is to make the people look themselves over and see what sort of folk they actually are, and where they actually stand; and the business of candidates and campaign-managers and politicians generally is to help them do that. His complaint was that his fellow-politicians did not seem to get that idea. He said in some bitterness on another occasion that as things stood, the main business of a politician was “still further to contract the narrowness of men’s ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities”; and as things stand with us, that is precisely the main business of a politician now.

In the light of the recent election, it might be a good thing for us to put these two sayings of Burke side by side, and think them over. Did our politicians do anything that would enable us to get a better understanding of our actual condition as a people? Not a hand’s turn; not even with regard to our economic condition. On the contrary, they did everything they could to mislead and confuse our understanding, for party purposes. Did they do or say anything to enlarge our ideas, to soften our prejudices, to allay our vulgar passions and discourage our absurdities? Nothing; on the contrary, they justified Burke’s complaint in every particular. Consequently the election has left us with our understanding of our own condition as incorrect and distorted as their best efforts could possibly make it. No wonder Henry Adams said he was going to the Fijis, “where the natives eat one another, and perhaps may eat me, but where they do not have any Presidential elections.”

(The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

From Albert Jay Nock, “Progress toward Collectivism,” The American Mercury, February, 1936

An acquaintance said to me the other day that he did not believe the country could stand another four years under Mr. Roosevelt. I said I had no opinion about that; what I was sure of was that no country could stand indefinitely being ruled by the spirit and character of a people who would tolerate Mr. Roosevelt for fifteen minutes, let alone four years. I was of course speaking of the generic Roosevelt; the personal Roosevelt is a mere bit of the Oberhefe which specific gravity brings to the top of the Malebolge of politics. He does not count, and his rule does not count. What really counts is the spirit and character of a people willing under any circumstances whatever to accept the genus, whether the individual specimen who offers himself be named Roosevelt, Horthy, Hitler, Mussolini, or Richard Roe.

(The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

From Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

I have known many persons, some quite intimately, who thought it was their duty to take “the social point of view” on mankind’s many doings and misdoings, and to support various proposals, mainly political, for the mass-improvement of society. One of them is a friend of long standing who has done distinguished service of this kind throughout a lifetime, and is directly responsible for the promulgation of more calamitous and coercive “social legislation” than one could shake a stick at. In a conversation with me not many months ago, this friend said mournfully, “My experience has cured me of one thing. I am cured of believing that society can ever be improved through political action. After this, I shall “cultivate my garden.”

Il faut cultiver notre jardin. With these words Voltaire ends his treatise called Candide, which in its few pages assays more solid worth, more informed common sense, than the entire bulk of nineteenth-century hedonist literature can show. To my mind, those few concluding words sum up the whole social responsibility of man. The only thing that the psychically-human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit. In a word, ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individualist method which Jesus apparently regarded as the only one whereby the Kingdom of Heaven can be established as a going concern; that is, the method of each one doing his very best to improve one.

In practice, however, this method is extremely difficult; there can be no question about that, for experience will prove it so. It is also clear that very few among mankind have either the force of intellect to manage this method intelligently, or the force of character to apply it constantly. Hence if one “regards mankind as being what they are,” the chances seem to be that the deceptively easier way will continue to prevail among them throughout an indefinitely long future. It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organise something, to institutionalise this-or-that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure-groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for six thousand years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again. This being so, it seems highly probable that the hope for any significant improvement of society must be postponed, if not forever, at any rate to a future so far distant that consideration of it at the present time would be sheer idleness.

Contact, Verb (From Wilson Follett, 1966, Modern American Usage, ed. Jacques Barzun)

Persons old enough to have been repelled by the verb contact when it was still a crude neologism may as well make up their minds that there is no way to arrest or reverse the tide of its popularity. Persons young enough to have picked up the word without knowing that anyone had reservations about it may as well make up their minds that a considerable body of their elders abominate it and would despise themselves if they succumbed to the temptation to use it. In this converted noun we have the perfect example of a coinage that has thirty or forty more years of intolerance to face from a dwindling minority of conservatives while enjoying the full approval — and, more important, the increasing use — of a growing majority that will eventually be unanimous. This clash of generations — a forlorn cultural resistance or a healthy disposition to make the most of linguistic growth, according to how you look at it — is one of the standard phenomena of change.

If in doubt, contact your physician — this locution is as natural to the American of thirty as it is grotesque to the American of sixty, for whom the idea of surfaces touching is the essence of contact. The elderly can therefore see no fitness and no use for the word in its new sense, when the vocabulary already provides consult, ask, approach, get in touch with, confer with, and simply see. Their juniors can perceive no point in forgoing so plainly useful an invention.

The conservative retains one advantage: no one insists that he must use contact, and if he sticks to consult and other inconspicuous synonyms no one will even notice his abstention. But this argument is unlikely to persuade the addicts of contact, who exploit the word because it sounds brisk and comprehensive.

Two other ‘vogue words’ in the same category of nouns converted into verbs for ‘dynamic’ reasons are implement and process. A plan or program is implemented when supplied with the practical apparatus — appropriations, staff, schedule, or what not — needed to carry it out. The word is perhaps a shade less harsh than contact, very likely because of its analogy with tool and retool, standard words for a factory’s preparing to undertake new or increased production. With implement the layman can sound technical. As for the second word, an application, request, memorandum, or some other document is processed when it goes through the usual sequence of consideration, approval, and execution. The word sounds as if it should mean something more exact than considered, appraised, weighed, handled, studied, dealt with, etc., but does it?

It is to be noted that all three of these currently fashionable verbs — contact, implement, process — belong to the proliferating vocabulary of bureaucratic organization, the patter of officialdom. This is a linguistic medium that practically everyone not immersed in it systematically mocks, but meanwhile its toxic properties undermine our resistance, and in the end contemporary speech becomes, regardless of the occasion, more and more bureaucratic.

E. M. Forster on Desmond MacCarthy (Published as a Pamphlet in 1952, by the Mill House Press)

I have not many recollections of the early Desmond MacCarthy, but fortunately I can clearly remember the first time we met. It was about fifty years ago, in Cambridge, and at one of those little discussion-societies which are constantly being born and dying inside the framework of the university. They still continue, I am glad to say, and I know that he too would be glad.

This particular society was called the Apennines. Its invitation-card displayed a range of mountains, and there was also a pun involved, upon which I will not expatiate. I had to read a paper to the Apennines, then I was pulled to pieces, and among my critics was a quiet, dark young man with a charming voice and manner, who sat rather far back in the room, and who for all his gentleness knew exactly what he wanted to say, and in the end how to say it. That was my first impression of him, and I may say it is my last impression also. The young man became an old one and a famous one, but he remained charming and gentle, he always knew his own mind, and he always sat rather far back in the room. Compare him in this respect with that trenchant critic Mr. So-and-So, or with that chatty columnist Sir Somebody Everything, who always manage to sit well in front. I do not think it was modesty on Desmond’s part that made him retiring. He just knew where he wanted to be. Some years after the Apennines, when he was doing literary journalism, he chose for a pseudonym the name “Affable Hawk.” Nothing could have been more apt. He was affable to his fellow writers, whenever possible. But if a book was shallow or bumptious or brutal, then down pounced the hawk, and the victim’s feathers flew.

He and I were always friendly and I stayed with him in Suffolk in those far-off days, and elsewhere later on, but all my vivid memories of him are in a group with other people. So let us now move from Cambridge to London. There, in the early years of this century, I remember a peculiar organisation which had been formed for the purpose of making Desmond write his novel. He wanted to write his novel. He could talk his novel – character, plot, incidents, all were fascinating; I recall a green valley in Wales where a famous picture had got hidden: but he could not get his novel on to paper. So some of his friends thought that if a society was formed at which we all wrote novels and read a fresh chapter aloud at each meeting, Desmond would be reluctantly dragged down the path of creation. Needless to say, he eluded so crude a device. Other people wrote their novels – which usually began well and fell to bits in the second chapter. He – he had forgotten, he had mislaid the manuscript, he had not the time. And he did not write his novel. And after the first world war the group was reconstituted: not to write novels but to write reminiscences.

Here Desmond was supreme. “Memory,” he often said, “is an excellent compositor.” And in the midst of a group which included Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, he stood out in his command of the past, and in his power to rearrange it. I remember one paper of his in particular – if it can be called a paper. Perched away in a corner of Duncan Grant’s studio, he had a suit-case open before him. The lid of the case, which he propped up, would be useful to rest his manuscript upon, he told us. On he read, delighting us as usual, with his brilliancy, and humanity, and wisdom, until – owing to a slight wave of his hand – the suit-case unfortunately fell over. Nothing was inside it. There was no paper, no manuscript. He had been improvising.

AND/OR (From Wilson Follett, 1966, Modern American Usage, ed. Jacques Barzun)

Whether a lawyer can or cannot make out a case for the necessity of this ungraceful expression in legal documents only a lawyer is competent to say; but anyone else is entitled to the view that it has no right to intrude in ordinary prose. One such intrusion may stand for all: A majority of the tourists come here with camping and/or fishing on their minds. Suppose this to be written with camping or fishing on their minds. How will any sensible reader interpret it? He will presume that some camp without fishing, some fish without camping, and some do both, nothing being said or implied to prevent the three equal possibilities. Note, besides, that these possibilities would be the same if and alone had been used.

We see in this example one of the usual effects of borrowing phraseology from the professions: it kills the plain sense of the words formerly deemed adequate by the layman. That plain sense in the sentence under review is that and can sometimes suggest or, and that generally or includes and. The weatherman’s Snow or sleet tomorrow is no guarantee that we shall have only the one or the other. For generations the chairman has asked Are there corrections or additions to the minutes? well knowing that there may be both. The phrase either… or was invented for situations in which it is important to exclude one of a pair. To be sure, in casual speech you or I must go carries the meaning either you or I; but If he tries that stunt he will be hurt or killed makes it clear that the inclusion of and in or arises naturally from the facts and is habitual for most readers.

Indeed, if the users of and/or were as logical as they pretend to be when they insist on the legalism, they would have to say and or or, since their assumption is that the two cannot co-exist. That assumption is not made better by the punctuation in well, then, there’s Mackenzie and, or, his associates. And if a writer thinks his readers have been so corrupted by the abuse of and/or as to misunderstand his simple or, he should courageously repudiate the hybrid and write – using our first example – tourists come here to camp or fish or both. Let him remember that, except for lawyers, English speakers and writers have managed to express this simple relationship without and/or for over six centuries. This truth is commemorated in the couplet:

Had he foreseen the modern use of and/оr,

It would have sickened Walter Savage Landor.

From Wilson Follett (1966), Modern American Usage (ed. Jacques Barzun)

Wherever we can make twenty-five words do the work of fifty, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish, and by reducing the span of attention required we increase the force of the thought. To make our words count for as much as possible is surely the simplest as well as the hardest secret of style. Its difficulty consists in the ceaseless pursuit of the thousand ways of rectifying our mistakes, eliminating our inaccuracies, and replacing our falsities — in a word, editing our prose. When we can do this habitually (even though it never becomes easy) we shall find ourselves honoring the faculty that can do more toward this end than a mastery of prescriptive grammar, more than the study of etymology and semantics, more than an observance of idiom and the maxims of rhetoric. And what is this faculty? It is the blessing of an orderly mind.

Bernstein’s Second Law (From Theodore Bernstein (1965), The Careful Writer)

Until now Bernstein’s Law has designated a statement, known throughout the civilized world, of a property common to such articles as cuff links, dimes, table-tennis balls, and caps of toothpaste tubes. Stated in its simplest, nay its only, form, it affirms: “A falling body always rolls to the most inaccessible spot.” Practically, this means that if you drop a cuff link, it is useless to look at the open floor area near your feet. The only thing to do is to get down on all fours, preferably with a flashlight, and peer under the bed.

Henceforth this principle will have to be known as Bernstein’s First Law, for now there is a Second Law. The new one is a kind of Gresham’s Law applied to words. Gresham’s Law, it will be recalled (just as Sir Thomas Gresham recalled it from an earlier formulator), states that “bad money drives out good.” This is true of words, too, but the two laws differ in important respects.

When a bad currency drives out a good one, the good money at least retains its value and, indeed, sometimes gains in value, whereas the bad currency remains bad. When a bad word drives out a good one, however, different things may happen. First, the good word most often depreciates in value, although it may hold its own; it never, however, gains in value. Second, the bad word, like the bad currency, may remain bad, but often it appreciates to the level of the good word and sometimes even becomes more valuable than the word it displaced. Stated more succinctly but not more clearly, Bernstein’s Second Law holds: “Bad words tend to drive out good ones, and when they do, the good ones never appreciate in value, sometimes maintain their value, but most often lose in value, whereas the bad words may remain bad or get better.”

The term “bad words,” as used here, refers to secondary meanings that diverge from the true or primary meanings of words, and that come into use because of ignorance, confusion, faddishness, or the importunities of slang.

When such powerful words as awful, dreadful, fearful, or horrible are used as mere commonplace expressions of disapproval, the primary meanings of the words are displaced and depreciated. At the same time the new meanings remain debased, so that there is a gross loss all around. When enormity is widely used in contexts where enormousness is meant, the useful genuine meaning of the word tends to become lost and no one is the gainer. The same is true of such manhandled words as disinterested, glamour, publicist, and transpire. And, of course, there are countless more.

In another category are “bad words” with real utility that drive out “good words” with little or none. There is no need for fruition in the meaning of gratification in the use or possession of something, because the occasions for its use are rare and because pleasure or gratification will usually serve. But there is need for fruition meaning coming to fruit. Internecine in the sense of deadly – its original sense – is a redundant word in the language, but internecine referring to mutual destruction or fratricidal strife is useful. It is a rare occasion when a writer would wish to use shambles in its traditional meaning – a place of slaughter – but frequently he would have use for it in the more recent meaning of a scene of chaos. All these are instances of bad words that drive out good ones and then gain in value.

In another category are bad words that all but drive out good ones, but do not quite do it and so simply coexist with them. The noun alibi in the casual sense of an excuse is a prevalent word, but it also holds its own in its true meaning of a plea of having been elsewhere, undoubtedly because it is indispensable in jurisprudence. Connive as a casualism meaning to conspire or finagle is pressing hard the primary meaning of the word of shutting one’s eyes to wrongdoing, but the primary meaning survives and is likely to continue to do so.

It would be absurd to deplore without qualification the tendency of bad words to drive out good ones. This tendency is one of the ways in which the language grows and becomes more responsive to the writer’s and the speaker’s needs. Dip into the dictionary casually and you will find word after word – probably they add up to a majority – in which the present-day meaning is a derived or secondary one rather than a rigid rendering of the root of the word. Decide today does not mean to cut off; down does not mean off the hill; mass does not mean a barley cake or a kneading; piano does not mean something soft and smooth; secret does not mean something put apart. Words, like trees, grow from their roots.

What may well be deplored is the displacement of good words by bad ones to no purpose, or to the detriment of the good ones. It is in this field that the operation of Bernstein’s Second Law should be resisted. It is in this field that the language can lose precision and vitality.

Windyfoggery (From Theodore Bernstein (1965), The Careful Writer)

In nature wind and fog do not normally coexist. In language, however, they sometimes do, and the greater the wind the more impenetrable the fog. This linguistic condition may be thought of as windyfoggery. It embraces gobbledygook, that wordy, involved, and often unintelligible language usually associated with bureaucracy and big business. But it also includes the self-important circumlocution of ordinary orators, the pretentious pseudoscientific jargon of the pseudosciences, and the monumental unintelligibility of some criticism of those arts that do not readily accept the bridle of plain words.

There have been many translations into windyfoggery of well known pieces of simple writing – passages from the Bible, from Lincoln, from Shakespeare – and there have been many parodies in windyfoggery of ordinary thoughts. One illustration will bring out the point. Prof. Lionel Trilling of Columbia takes the statement “They fell in love and married” and translates it thus: “Their libidinal impulses being reciprocal, they activated their individual erotic drives and integrated them within the same frame of reference.” A contrived example, to be sure; but is it much different from writing, “improved financial support and less onerous work loads,” when one wishes to say, “more pay and less work”? Or is it much different from writing, “The supervision of driver and safety education at the state and local levels should be assigned to personnel qualified by virtue of their adequate personal characteristics and specialized training and experience in this field,” when all that is being said is that good teachers are needed?

Turn now, if you will, to art criticism. This is the kind of thing you sometimes find: “Motherwell seems to have several kinds of courage; one of them is the courage to monumentalize the polymorphous-perverse world of his inner quickenings; he is the architect of a lyrical anxiety where Gorky was its master scrivener; the liquefied tick of Gorky’s id-clock becomes in Motherwell the resonant Versaillean tock, the tall duration of a muralizing necessity that strains to leap its pendulum’s arc while carrying a full weight of iconographic potency.”

Pseudoscientific writing occasionally includes this sort of observation: “A factor analysis of the scale scores has yielded six attitude clusters that make sense intuitively and that resemble factors found in other job satisfaction studies.” Or this type of definition (this one is a definition of reading presented by a professor of educational psychology): “A processing skill of symbolic reasoning, sustained by the interfacilitation of an intricate hierarchy of substrata factors that have been mobilized as a psychological working system and pressed into service in accordance with the purpose of the reader.” Let us mobilize our substrata factors and proceed.

Dr. William B. Bean, who in the Archives of Internal Medicine often tilted a lancet at the writing operations of his fellow healers, has passed on the story of a New York plumber who had cleaned out some drains with hydrochloric acid and then wrote to a chemical research bureau, inquiring, “Was there any possibility of harm?” As told by Dr. Bean, the story continues:

“The first answer was, ‘The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputably established but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.’ The plumber was proud to get this and thanked the people for approving of his method. The dismayed research bureau rushed another letter to him saying, ‘We cannot assume responsibility for the production of a toxic and noxious residue with hydrochloric acid. We beg leave to suggest to you the employment of an alternative procedure.’ The plumber was more delighted than ever and wrote to thank them for reiterating their approval. By this time the bureau got worried about what might be happening to New York’s sewers and called in a third man, an older scientist, who wrote simply, ‘Don’t use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of pipes.”

Windyfoggery may result from sheer pomposity. It may result from a kind of wistful desire to make learned sounds. It may result from an incapacity for direct, clear thinking. Or it may result from incomplete knowledge of one’s subject, which leads one to wrap a paucity of information in a plethora of words. Jargon may be useful for communication between members of the same profession. But windyfoggery, which often is jargon gone wrong and blanketed in blurriness, is not useful to any purpose.

Inside Talk (From Theodore Bernstein (1965), The Careful Writer)

Unfortunately, all the words that describe the kinds of specialized language that fall within this classification have connotations that range from faintly to strongly disparaging. That is why the neutral label inside talk has been affixed to them. The subclassifications are these:

Argot: the speech of thieves and rogues, and, by derived meaning, the speech of any particular class of persons.

Jargon: originally meaningless, unintelligible speech, but now also the language of a science, sect, trade, profession, or the like.

Lingo: in contemptuous reference, the speech of foreigners or of a special class of persons.

Slang: current language below the level of standard usage employing new words or old words in new ways; a language that may or may not be peculiar to a particular class.

The reason that all these words have disparaging connotations is that outsiders dislike being outsiders. They envy or resent those who can speak and understand inside talk. And in some instances the very desire to keep outsiders out accounts for these languages: it is certainly the reason behind argot, it is often the reason behind slang, and it is sometimes the reason behind jargon. There is a tendency in specialized groups, for reasons of either establishing a kind of mystic bond or asserting a kind of self-importance, to employ esoteric or pretentious words. It is difficult to see, for instance, what function is performed for the psychologist by instinctual that is not just as well performed by instinctive; what function is performed for the sociologist by target ends that is not just as well performed by goals; what function is performed for the pedagogue by subject area and classroom situation and classroom teacher that is not just as well performed by subject and classroom and teacher.

This is by no means to say that all inside talk, all jargon, is pretentious and useless. On the contrary, most of it is highly necessary. Those in specialized fields have need to communicate with one another in precise terms and with an economy of expression. A single word will often convey to a colleague what would require a sentence, a paragraph, or perhaps an even longer description to convey to a layman. The fact that the layman does not comprehend the single word does not indict it for use within its proper sphere.

With the onward march of education, however, the layman comes to comprehend more and more of the jargon of the specialties. In this way more and more useful words enter the language of the ordinary man and the language is enriched. But there is a danger here. It often happens that the layman does not exactly comprehend the specialized word or phrase he is taking over from the specialist, and the word comes into the language with an erroneous meaning so that thenceforth it becomes an ambiguous expression. In economics, for instance, the phrase economy of scarcity has a well defined meaning; it refers to a deliberate creation of scarcity to drive prices up. But during World War II one of our newspaper military analysts, who had heard but not understood the phrase, applied it as a description of mere shortages of ammunition or ships or blankets or what not. The terms of psychoanalysis have suffered the most at the hands of lay writers and lay conversationalists. The cause is undoubtedly twofold: first, there is such an abundance of those terms; second, psychoanalysis has become fashionable in literature and conversation. Thus, complex is often used as if it meant a mere psychological peculiarity, fixation as if it meant an obsession, exhibitionism as if it meant showing off. And there are a host of other Freudian terms that are habitually misused because they are only half understood

A pointed text for this particular sermon might be the following passage from Ngaio Marsh’s Death of a Peer:

“What do you think of me?” asked Frid, striking an attitude. “Aren’t I quite lovely?”

“Don’t tell her she is,” said Colin. “The girl’s a nymphomaniac…

“My dear Colin,” said his father, “it really would be a good idea if you’d stick to the words you understand.”

A final caution may be of value in a discussion of inside talk. In writing intended for general reading the use, whether by a specialist or by a layman, of jargon terms that are not commonly understood smacks of pedantry. If the writer believes that it is imperative to use such a term, he should at least explain it when it is introduced. It must never be forgotten that the function of writing is communication.

The Prophet

Translated from the Russian of Pushkin by Maurice Baring

With fainting soul athirst for Grace,

I wandered in a desert place,

And at the crossing of the ways

I saw the sixfold Seraph blaze;

He touched mine eyes with fingers light

As sleep that cometh in the night:

And like a frighted eagle’s eyes,

They opened wide with prophecies.

He touched mine ears, and they were drowned

With tumult and a roaring sound:

I heard convulsion in the sky,

And flights of angel hosts on high,

And beasts that move beneath the sea,

And the sap creeping in the tree.

And bending to my mouth he wrung

From out of it my sinful tongue,

And all deceit and idle rust,

And ’twixt my lips a-perishing

A subtle serpent’s forked sting

With Right hand wet with blood he thrust.

And with his sword my breast he cleft,

My quaking heart thereout he reft,

And in the yawning of my breast

A coal of living fire he pressed.

Then in the desert I lay dead,

And God called unto me and said:

“Arise, and let My voice be heard,

Charged with My Will go forth and span

The land and sea, and let My Word

Lay waste with fire the heart of man.”

(Published in Life and Letters, 1931, vol. VII, no. 39.)

“Where the development of talent is concerned we are still in the food-gathering stage. We do not know how to grow it. Up to now in this country when one of the masses starts to write, paint, etc., it is because he happens to bump into the right accident. In my case the right accident happened in the 1930s. I had the habit of reading from childhood, but very little schooling. I spent half of my adult life as a migratory worker and the other half as a longshoreman. The Hitler decade started me thinking, but there is an enormous distance between thinking and the act of writing. I had to acquire a taste for a good sentence — taste it the way a child tastes candy — before I stumbled into writing. Here is how it happened. Late in 1936 I was on my way to do some placer mining near Nevada City, and I had a hunch that I would get snowbound. I had to get me something to read, something that would last me for a long time. So I stopped over in San Francisco to get a thick book. I did not really care what the book was about — history, theology, mathematics, farming, anything, so long as it was thick, had small print and, no pictures. There was at that time a large secondhand bookstore on Market Street called Lieberman’s and I went there to buy my book. I soon found one. It had about a thousand pages of small print and no pictures. The price was one dollar. The title page said these were The Essays of Michel de Montaigne. I knew what essays were but I did not know Montaigne from Adam. I put the book in my knapsack and caught the ferry to Sausalito. Sure enough, I got snowbound. I read the book three times until I knew it almost by heart. When I got back to the San Joaquin Valley I could not open my mouth without quoting Montaigne, and the fellows liked it. It got so whenever there was an argument about anything — women, money, animals, food, death—they would ask: ‘What does Montaigne say?’ Out came the book and I would find the right passage. I am quite sure that even now there must be a number of migratory workers up and down the San Joaquin Valley still quoting Montaigne. I ought to add that the Montaigne edition I had was the John Florio translation. The spelling was modem, but the style seventeenth century — the style of the King James Bible and of Bacon’s Essays. The sentences have hooks in them which stick in the-mind; they make platitudes sound as if they were new. Montaigne was not above anyone’s head. Once in a workers’ barrack near Stockton, the man in the next bunk picked up my Montaigne and read it for an hour or so. When he returned it he said: ‘Anyone can write a book like this’.”(Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time)

Barzun, A Stroll with William James

Anyone brought up in the Alps and taking trips among them knows that “a mountain” is never twice the same — in shape, color, and “character.” It is “one thing” by a fiat helped by a name.

Bagehot, “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration”

Human character is a most complex thing, and the impressions which different people form of it are as various as the impressions which the inhabitants of an impassable mountain have of its shape and size. Each observer has an aggregate idea derived from certain actions and certain sayings, but the real man has always or almost always said a thousand sayings of a kind quite different and in a connection quite different; he has done a vast variety of actions among “other men” and “other minds”; a mobile person will often seem hardly the same if you meet him in very different societies. And how, except by discussion, is the true character of such a person to be decided? Each observer must bring his contingent to the list of data; those data must be arranged and made use of. The certain and positive facts as to which every one is agreed must have their due weight; they must be combined and compared with the various impressions as to which no two people exactly coincide. A rough summary must be made of the whole. In no other way is it possible to arrive at the truth of the matter. Without discussion each mind is dependent on its own partial observation. A great man is one image — one thing, so to speak — to his valet, another to his son, another to his wife, another to his greatest friend. None of these must be stereotyped; all must be compared. To prohibit discussion is to prohibit the corrective process.

Some of the authors at IWP Books:

• Walter Bagehot
• John Jay Chapman
• Erwin Chargaff
• G. Lowes Dickinson
• E. M. Forster
• Aldous Huxley
• Desmond MacCarthy
• Albert Jay Nock
• José Ortega y Gasset
• Agnes Repplier
• Alfred Sidgwick
• Anne Goodwin Winslow

New at IWP Books: Jacob Zeitlin, 1934, Montaigne. The book first appeared as the introduction to Jacob Zeitlin’s translation of the Essays, published in 1934–36. The translation itself is not available online, and a physical copy is a rare find. Donald Frame, who published his own translation in 1958, thought the introduction was “excellent.”

On Montaigne at IWP Articles:

• Jacques Barzun, 1957, The Man-Mountain
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1883, An Essayist of Three Hundred Years Ago
• André Gide, 1939, Montaigne
• F. L. Lucas, 1934, The Master Essayist

Elsewhere:

• Theodore Dalrymple, 2021, Montaigne’s Humanity
• Joseph Epstein, 1993, Reading Montaigne

A new collection of Horace translations, including 134 English translations of Exegi Monumentum (ode 30, book III), is available at the translations page. A few of the first lines of different translations:

I have reared a monument outlasting brass
I have reared a monument to outlive bronze
I have wrought out a monument more durable than bronze
I here have reared a monument
I now have rais’d a firmer monument
In princely state, by Egypt’s scorching sand
In vain the future snaps his fangs
I’ve a monument reared more enduring than brass
I’ve built a monument of brass
I’ve built a monument to outlast
I’ve built my monument outlasting brass
I’ve finished all constructive pains
I’ve made a monument to outlast bronze
I’ve made a monument to pass
I’ve rais’d a lasting Monument t’ out-vye
I’ve rais’d a Monument
I’ve rais’d a trophy firm o’er brass
I’ve rais’d a Work, that shall surpass
I’ve raised a monument outlasting bronze
I’ve raised a monument than brass more durable
I’ve raised a Monument which will endure
I’ve raised a pillar that shall last
I’ve rear’d a monument, my own
I’ve reared a fame outlasting brass
I’ve reared a goodly monument
I’ve reared a monument alone
I’ve reared a monument more strong than brass
I’ve wrought a Monument more strong then Brass
I’ve wrought a monument more tall

New at IWP Books: Albert Jay Nock (Editor), 1924, Selected Works of Artemus Ward.

Be sure and vote at leest once at all elecshuns. Buckle on yer Armer and go to the Poles. See two it that your naber is there. See that the kripples air provided with carriages. Go to the poles and stay all day. Bewair of the infamous lise whitch the Opposishun will be sartin to git up fur perlitical effek on the eve of eleckshun. To the poles! and when you git there vote jest as you darn please. This is a privilege we all possess, and it is 1 of the booties of this grate and free land.

At a special Congressional ’lection in my district the other day I delib’ritly voted for Henry Clay. I admit that Henry is dead, but inasmuch as we don’t seem to have a live statesman in our National Congress, let us by all means have a first-class corpse.

“My female frends,” sed I, “be4 you leeve, I’ve a few remarks to remark; wa them well. The female woman is one of the greatest institooshuns of which this land can boste. It’s onpossible to get along without her. Had there bin no female wimin in the world, I should scacely be here with my unparalleld show on this very occashun. She is good in sickness – good in wellness – good all the time. O, woman! woman!” I cried, my feelins worked up to a hi poetick pitch, “you air a angle when you behave yourself; but when you take off your proper appairel & (mettyforically speaken) get into pantyloons – when you desert your firesides, & with your heds full of wimin’s rites noshuns go round like roarin lyons, seekin whom you may devour someboddy – in short, when you undertake to play the man, you play the devil and air an emfatic noosance. My female friends,” I continnered, as they were indignantly departin, “wa well what A. Ward has sed!”

The Col. says it is fortnit we live in a intellectooal age which wouldn’t countenance such infamus things as occurd in this Tower. I’m aware that it is fashin’ble to compliment this age, but I ain’t so clear that the Col. is altogether right. This is a very respectable age, but it’s pretty easily riled; and considerin upon how slight a provycation we who live in it go to cuttin each other’s throats, it may perhaps be doubted whether our intellecks is so much massiver than our ancestors’ intellecks was, after all.

New at IWP Books: Herbert Spencer (Introduction by Albert Jay Nock), 1884, The Man Versus the State.

New at IWP Books: Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1897, The Children of the Night.