WHAT IS ORIGINALITY

ORIGINALITY. KINDS AND METHODS

WHAT IS ORIGINALITY

"And that virtue of originality that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness; it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed to the thick, hot, unreflecting drainage from other men's meadows. " Ruskin, Modern Painters,

There are two kinds of artists in this world: those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration. —ANNA KATHERINE GREEN, The Sword of Damocles.

Chaucer seems to me to have been one of the most purely original of poets. . . . He is original not in the sense that he thinks and says what nobody ever thought or said before, and what nobody can ever think and say again, but because he is always natural; because if not absolutely new, he is always delightfully fresh; because he sets before us the world as it honestly appeared to Geoffrey Chaucer, and not a world as it seemed proper to certain people that it ought to appear. —JAMES

RUSSELL LOWELL.

Samuel Johnson once said of Gray, the author of the Elegy, " He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great. " 2This savage criticism time has disallowed, but the critic has at least thrown a side-

light upon originality. The great mass of alleged original matter is merely old thought reset in new form. Originality is a relative term.

I. The Test of Originality

It is more important to know whether or not your own mind is creative than to determine that fact as to others. Here is a sure test:

How does my mind act when it receives new thought?

Does it take in a thought and then give it out again in exactly or substantially the same words? If credit is given to the author, that is quotation; otherwise it is literary theft.

Upon receiving a thought, does my mind feel stimulated to produce other thoughts, and yet utter the received thought without change? That is expansion.

Does my mind not only receive a stimulus from a new thought but also assimilate it, clarify, transform, and amplify it, so that in uttering that thought I utter it stamped with my own " image and superscription " ? That is originality.

Such is the test. It is as high as it is final. An original thought is a new birth — the fruit of a union of truth from without and of thought from within. A fertile intellect, open to new ideas, sensitive to take them in, and ready both to act upon them and to be acted upon by them, is that rarest of all intellectual beings, an original mind.

InVawder's Understudy James Knapp Reeve makes one of his characters remark that an original idea comes to a mind about once in a lifetime, and when it does come it should be entertained. This is too high an estimate for most minds. Ingenuity, novelty, cleverness, they may have, but real originality never. And this is not a disparagement. They are in good company, and have plenty of it. Even an original mind cannot always show its fertility, and many keen, cultured intellects never rise to originality in the high sense just set forth. Furthermore, some thoughts never do more than stimulate even a fertile mind, because they are complete in themselves. To change would be to destroy them. Their function is not to fructify but to stimulate the mind into which they enter. And a large part of our mental output is the result of such stimulating suggestion. This is not originality in the strictest sense, though such it is according to the popular use of the term. It is the only creative spirit that many able writers possess, and second only to pure originality itself. Popularly, we call that man original who stands on his own feet, uses the thoughts of others only to stimulate and supplement his own, and who does his best to color borrowed thought with the hue of his own personality. Such a man, if he be not a creator, is at least a thinker, and a thinker need never be a literary thief. The entrance of any thought that will set the mind to working should be welcome indeed.

2. The Sources of Originality

Rare as genuine originality is, the number of those who attain thereto would be largely increased did writers make it the object of serious effort.

A study of the mental habits of original writers reveals several suggestive facts.

Original minds are observers of nature. The same perennial source- spring is open to all. Upon every hand are the facts of inanimate and animate nature which spoke so powerfully to others. Human beings are much the same to-day as when their characteristic traits proved suggestive to Balzac and Stevenson. It needs but an alert, receptive mind to take these things and transform them into material for fiction.

Original minds have learned to think consecutively. This is an age of second-hand thinking. We ask for our milk malted, our meats peptonized, and our books digested. Reviews, condensations, and reference works, are quite as typical of the intellectual life of the period as labor-saving devices are characteristic of the material world. Short cuts are the mania of the age. One marked result of all this is its effect upon the mental powers. Men are losing both desire and ability to think consecutively on other than business lines. True, education is in part meeting this lack; but only in part, for education cannot cope with the hop-skip-and-jump mental habits fixed by the fragmentary articles which the average man skims over in his daily reading. A book that requires consecutive thought is generally voted dry-as-dust.

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler proposes five tests of education, in the broadest sense of the term, and among them he places reflection. Here they are :

I. Correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue.

Those refined and gentle manners which are the expression of fixed habits of thought and of action.

The power and habit of reflection.

The power of intellectual growth.

Efficiency, the power to do.

But if the lack of consecutive thinking is so general a failing, all the greater are the rewards offered to the writer who to his powers of observation is willing to add the ability to reflect, and to think systematically' Originality waits for him to crown his desire with gift.

(c)Original minds cherish the companionship of great thoughts. How much might here be said ! Three sentences must suffice. He who would produce original ideas must fertilize his mind by contact with the epoch- making thoughts of all ages. These he will find preserved to him in a few great books, and animating the minds of living men and women who are worth knowing. If there is anything in a mind, such companionship will call it forth.

3Talks to Students as the Art of Study, Frank Cramer (The Hoffman-Edwards Co., San Francisco) is full of suggestion

for those untrained in thinking. This book is out of print.

(d) Original minds dare to be themselves. Dare! The word is not ill-chosen. The penalty for failure is as severe as the meed of success is great. " Insist on yourself — never imitate, " said Emerson — himself a most individual man.

The quality of an earnest mind may be tested in this: Am I willing to stand on my own feet now — and so strengthen myself for future walking, even by my very stumbling efforts — rather than use crutches for the sake of more rapid progress in the beginning? The young writer who dares to be himself, casting artificiality to the winds, may begin by writing less brilliant stories than his companions who copy and crib, but his power and invention will increase, and he will end far in advance of his less original rivals. Far better the occasional blunders of an original writer than the inane and icy correctness of a lifeless imitator.

Doubtless natural gifts count for much, but let the young writer patiently observe nature, let him practice consecutive thinking, let him cherish the companionship of great thoughts, let him dare to be himself, and his mind will come to be as original as its native capacity will allow.

OUTLINE SUMMARY

I. The Test of Originality

2. The Sources of Originality

•	Observation of Nature •	•	Consecutive Thinking •	•	High Thinking •	•	Daring to be Oneself •	QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Do you recall any book which has especially set you to thinking?

In general, did you agree or disagree with it?

Which stimulates you more, agreement or disagreement with another thinker?

Which stimulates you most: books, observation, or discussion?

Do your experiences in this respect vary?

6. What influences work against clear, consecutive thinking?