ISBN: 9781458893000

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1918. Excerpt: ... SECT… More...

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1918. Excerpt: ... SECTION VI PRAXIS SOME REFLECTIONS ON MENTAL ATTITUDES AND METHODS I To suppose that originality of thought can be made the subject of a curriculum is to suppose an impossibility. It is as if one attempted to teach personality itself--i.e. how the individualism of a remarkable intellect can be reproduced in another mind by a course of lessons under the guidance of a tutor. A man''s literary style is as much a part of himself as the colour of his eyes or the manner of his walk; and in the same way his originality is his own--no one can take it from him. We can imitate it, but imitation is the very thing we wish to avoid. To be original is to be oneself, and although our originality may not be of much value, it is nevertheless ours. Such phrases as The poet is born not made have always seemed to us beside the mark. That some men are born with great gifts is undoubted, but, by this time, it is clear that those gifts are trained by experience, and that, in consequence, even the poet is made just as he himself is a maker. This effort to establish genius as something outside mental laws, and as a quality that descends from God fully wrought and ready for use, is a psychological superstition. So far from being lawless, genius is the law of mind in the very perfection of its fulfilment. Therefore the question we have now to answer is not: How may originality be taught? but: What are the conditions of life, mental and physical, which will enable a man to produce the originality that is in him, be it distinctive, or otherwise? It is not a puerile question: it is, on the contrary, one of the utmost importance both to the individual and to the nation. Much intellectual wealth has been lost to the world because we have made no effort to develop it--no effort, that is, of a truly scientific cha... Thomas Sharper Knowlson, Books, Fiction and Literature, Fiction, Originality; A Popular Study Of The Creative Mind Books>Fiction and Literature>Fiction, General Books LLC<