joys they anticipate, what fears they sustain, how they regard the end and cessation of life and perception, which waits for us all.  The worst of it is that people are often so modest; they think that their own experience is so dull, so unromantic, so uninteresting.  It is an entire mistake.  If the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work and love, religion and emotion, it would be a fascinating document.  My only sorrow is that the amateurs of whom I have spoken above will not do this; they rather turn to external and impersonal impressions, relate definite things, what they see on their travels, for instance, describing just the things which any one can see.  They tend to indulge in the melancholy labour of translation, or employ customary, familiar forms, such as the novel or the play.  If only they would write diaries and publish them; compose imaginary letters; let one inside the house of self instead of keeping one wandering in the park!  The real interest of literature is the apprehending of other points of view; one spends an immense time in what is called society, in the pursuit of other people’s views; but what a very little grain results from an intolerable deal of chaff!  And all because people are conventional and not simple-minded; because they will not say what they think; indeed they will not as a rule try to find out what they do think, but prefer to traffic with the conventional counters.  Yet what a refreshment it is to meet with a perfectly sincere person, who makes you feel that you are in real contact with a human being!  This is what we ought to aim at in writing:  at a perfectly sincere presentment of our thoughts.  We cannot, of course, all of us hope to have views upon art, upon theology, upon politics, upon education, because we may not have any experience in these subjects; but we have all of us experience in life, in nature, in emotion, in religion; and to express what we feel, as sincerely as we can, is certainly useful to ourselves, because it clears our view, leads us not to confuse hopes with certainties, enables us to disentangle what we really believe from what we conventionally adopt.

Of course this cannot be done all at once; when we first begin to write, we find how difficult it is to keep the thread of our thoughts; we keep turning out of the main road to explore attractive by-paths; we cannot arrange our ideas.  All writers who produce original work pass through a stage in which they are conscious of a throng of kindred notions, all more or less bearing on the central thought, but the movements of which they cannot wholly control.  Their thoughts are like a turbulent crowd, and one’s business is to drill them into an ordered regiment.  A writer has to pass through a certain apprenticeship; and the cure for this natural vagueness is to choose small precise subjects, to say all that we have in our minds about them, and to stop when we have finished; not to aim at fine writing, but at definiteness and clearness.