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CHAPTER V

EQUIPMENT

It is possible that even before a man has determined the lines on which his work can be best done, he will have found his intellectual equipment more or less inadequate for coping with his task. "It is not sufficient," observes Sir Walter Scott in the Introduction to St. Ronan's Well, "that a mine be in itself rich and easily accessible; it is necessary that the engineer who explores it should himself, in mining phrase, have an accurate knowledge of the country, and possess the skill necessary to work it to advantage." If then a writer discovers his acquaintance with the subject upon which he has ventured inadequate, or his power to deal with it hampered by this or that defect in his general store of information, or finds both of these hindering him, he is confronted with a new difficulty, essentially different from that of imperfect mastery of his pen. The last disqualification can be always

overcome by a sufficient amount of practice, but no assiduity in writing will of itself fill up the deficiencies of a man's information.

The writer who encounters this lack of equipment will have to proceed with great circumspection, and with a sort of circumspection which he may find demanding of him more knowledge of himself than is always at the command of human beings. It is not on all occasions easy, it is often very difficult for a man to lay his finger exactly upon his own weak points.

Any one desirous of taking stock of his own literary equipment, should first of all make sure that he sees quite lucidly the Scylla and Charybdis of the enquiry. All attempt to deal with the complicated questions of sufficient or insufficient competence, are worse than vain, and likely to lead only to misunderstandings, if a clear conception is not first formed of the essential difference between exaggerated apprehension of incompetence on the one hand, and making too light of actual incompetence on the other.

These opposite mistakes are, of course, to some extent dependent upon temperament and training.

An exaggerated apprehension of incom

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petence is more likely to discourage the well-educated, widely-read, and scrupulously accurate man. He will be persuaded that what he cannot do exceedingly well had better not be attempted. He will feel that competent knowledge of any subject implies at least no little knowledge of the subjects bordering upon it, and will mistrust the sufficiency of his general information. He will particularly if he has already had some experience of authorship — entertain doubts whether his literary ability is sufficient to enable him to treat his subject with the judgment and lucidity demanded: and, finally, he will be ill able, if at all able, to content himself with anything less than having read all that has been written, and having learned not only all that is known, but also all that is knowable about it. These sentiments are, of themselves, excellent. They represent the frame of mind in which a cultivated man ought to approach literary work. Only, if exaggeration is permitted to enter, a result of any kind is easily rendered impossible. No man's general information is all-embracing. No degree of literary ability can produce a book without an imperfection, nor is perfect knowledge of any single thing attainable by man. Long

studies may be necessary to fill up the lacunæ in the writer's general or special information. A book of any serious purpose is hardly conceivable without much labour bestowed upon its subject, even when this is one respecting which the author is well informed before he begins to write. Great pains too as well as labour may be required to present the matter satisfactorily. If, however, the author has new information to offer, and not a little of it; or, though the information may not be absolutely new, if he can put it within the reach of those whom it has not yet reached, he makes a mistake in distrusting abilities, which if strenuously exerted may accomplish something that is wanted. What is wanted is not the impossible-a thing that men of parts occasionally demand from themselves—but what shall be worth writing. The man who will not do all that he can, because he cannot do all that he would, must often end with doing nothing at all. An exaggerated apprehension of incompetence leads to sterility.

Equally fatal is the opposite humour which, making light of incompetence, will rashly venture on the enterprise of letting imperfect equipment suffice. This mistake is more likely to be the delusion of the imper

fectly educated man. The man who knows very little easily persuades himself that there is little that he does not know. His arriving at that conviction is only natural. Every man measures what is beyond his ken by the boundary line of his knowledge. When the intellectual domain is small, its horizon also is of brief extent; and so, all that lies outside it does not appear to be necessarily any very great matter. Ignorance is also invariably confident. So a man may very easily plunge into the enterprise of writing a book beyond his powers. As it never takes a pen long to bring a man face to face with what he does not know, the lack of equipment will be very soon revealed. That is the point at which the writer has to pause, and to review the whole situation.

To equip himself for the task which he has chosen may be possible, or it may not. He may, for example, be rightly persuaded that the necessary studies would involve an expenditure of time greater than he is in a position to make. Only, if for any reason he cannot properly equip himself for his task, the task should be relinquished. The writer who obstinately perseveres in attempting what he is not competent to perform, will be infallibly drawn into all the dishones

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