and not before.  It expresses itself.  A clear idea is expressed clearly, and a vague idea vaguely.  You need but take your own case and your own speech.  For just as science is the development of common-sense, so is literature the development of common daily speech.  The difference between science and common-sense is simply one of degree; similarly with speech and literature.  Well, when you “know what you think,” you succeed in saying what you think, in making yourself understood.  When you “don’t know what to think,” your expressive tongue halts.  And note how in daily life the characteristics of your style follow your mood; how tender it is when you are tender, how violent when you are violent.  You have said to yourself in moments of emotion:  “If only I could write—­,” etc.  You were wrong.  You ought to have said:  “If only I could think—­on this high plane.”  When you have thought clearly you have never had any difficulty in saying what you thought, though you may occasionally have had some difficulty in keeping it to yourself.  And when you cannot express yourself, depend upon it that you have nothing precise to express, and that what incommodes you is not the vain desire to express, but the vain desire to think more clearly.  All this just to illustrate how style and matter are co-existent, and inseparable, and alike.

You cannot have good matter with bad style.  Examine the point more closely.  A man wishes to convey a fine idea to you.  He employs a form of words.  That form of words is his style.  Having read, you say:  “Yes, this idea is fine.”  The writer has therefore achieved his end.  But in what imaginable circumstances can you say:  “Yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine”?  The sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words.  The fine idea has reached you.  How?  In the words, by the words.  Hence the fineness must be in the words.  You may say, superiorly:  “He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can see what he means.”  By what light?  By something in the words, in the style.  That something is fine.  Moreover, if the style is clumsy, are you sure that you can see what he means?  You cannot be quite sure.  And at any rate, you cannot see distinctly.  The “matter” is what actually reaches you, and it must necessarily be affected by the style.

Still further to comprehend what style is, let me ask you to think of a writer’s style exactly as you would think of the gestures and manners of an acquaintance.  You know the man whose demeanour is “always calm,” but whose passions are strong.  How do you know that his passions are strong?  Because he “gives them away” by some small, but important, part of his demeanour, such as the twitching of a lip or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching the hand.  In other words, his demeanour, fundamentally, is not calm.  You know the man who is always “smoothly polite and agreeable,” but who affects you unpleasantly.