Some thoughtful people are convinced that writing, even business
letters, is as much a matter for professional training as music or
painting or carpentry or plumbing. That view certainly seems
reasonable. And against that is the conviction of the general public
that use of language is an art essentially different from any of the
other arts, that all people possess it more or less, and that the degree
to which they possess it depends on their general education and
environment; while the few who possess it in a preeminent degree,
do so by reason of peculiar endowments and talent, not to say genius.
This latter view, too, is full of truth. We have only to reflect
a moment to see that rhetoric as it is commonly taught can by
no possibility give actual skill. Rhetoric is a system of
scientific analysis. Aristotle was a scientist, not an artist.
Analysis tears to pieces, divides into parts, and so destroys.
The practical art of writing is wholly synthesis,---building up,
putting together, creating,---and so, of course, a matter of instinct.
All the dissection, or vivisection, in the world, would never teach a
man how to bring a human being into the world, or any other living
thing; yet the untaught instinct of all animals solves the problem of
creation every minute of the world's history.
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