 |
Book 10 - Chapter 6
|
 |
Of thought and premeditation.
1. NEXT to writing is meditation, which indeed derives strength from it and is something between the labor of writing and the trial of our fortune in extemporary speaking. I do not know whether it is more frequently used than either, for we cannot write everywhere and at all times, but there is abundance of time and room for thought. Meditation may in a very few hours embrace all points of the most important causes. When our sleep is broken at night, meditation is aided by the very darkness. Between the different stages in the pleading of a cause, it finds some room to exercise itself and never allows itself to be idle. 2. Nor does it only arrange within its circle the order of things (which would itself be a great assistance to us), but forms an array of words and connects together the whole texture of speech, with such effect that nothing is wanting but to write it down. Indeed, in general, ideas are more firmly fixed in the memory if our attention does not relax its hold on them by trusting too securely to writing.
But we cannot arrive at such power of thought suddenly or even soon. 3. In the first place, a certain form of thinking must be acquired by great practice in writing, a form which may be continually attendant on our meditations. A habit of thinking must then be gradually gained by embracing in our minds a few particulars at first, in such a way that they may be faithfully repeated. Next, by additions so moderate that our task may scarcely feel itself increased, our power of conception must be enlarged and sustained by plenty of exercise. This power, to a great degree, depends on memory, and I shall consequently defer some remarks on it till I enter on that head of my subject. 4. Yet it has already been made apparent that he to whom nature does not obstinately refuse her aid may attain, if assisted only by zealous application, such proficiency that what he has merely meditated, as well as what he has written and learned by heart, may be faithfully expressed in his efforts at oratory. Cicero indeed has acquainted us that among the Greeks, Metrodorus of Scepsis, and Empylus of Rhodes, and Hortensius among our own countrymen, could, when they pleaded a cause, repeat word for word what they had premeditated.
5. But if by chance, while we are speaking, some glowing thought, suggested on the instant, should spring up in our minds, we must certainly not adhere too superstitiously to that which we have studied, for what we meditate is not to be settled with such nicety that room is not to be allowed for a happy conception of the moment, when thoughts that suddenly arise in our minds are often inserted even in our written compositions. Hence the whole of this kind of exercise must be so ordered that we may easily depart from what we have arranged and easily return to it. Though it is of the first importance to bring with us from home a prepared and precise array of language, it would be the greatest folly to reject the offerings of the moment. 6. Let our premeditation, therefore, be made with such care that fortune, while she is unable to disappoint, may have it in her power to assist us. But it will depend on the strength of our memory, whether what we have embraced in our minds flows forth easily and does not prevent us, while we are anxious and looking back, and relying on no hope but that of recollection, from casting a glance in advance. Otherwise, I should prefer extemporary venturesomeness to premeditation of such unhappy coherence. It has the very worst effect to be turning back in quest of our matter, because, while we are looking for what is in one direction, we are diverted from what is in another, and we derive our thoughts from mere memory rather than from our proper subject. Supposing, too, that we had to depend wholly on premeditation or wholly on the conception of the moment, we know very well that more may be imagined than has been imagined.
|
