quote · Legacy record

Learning to Write Well.—The age of good speaking is over, because the age of city-state culture is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the great city—in which the town-crier must be able to make himself heard by the whole assembled community—troubles us as little as do any city-communities, us who even wish to be understood beyond the boundaries of nations. Therefore every one who is of a good European turn of mind must learn to write well, and to write better and better. He cannot help himself, he must learn that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad writing is looked upon as a national privilege. Better writing means better thinking; always to discover matter more worthy of communication; to be able to communicate it properly; to be translateable into the tongues of neighbouring nations; to make oneself comprehensible to foreigners who learn our language; to work with the view of making all that is good common property, and of giving free access everywhere to the free; finally, to pave the way for that still remote state of things, when the great task shall come for good Europeans—guidance and guardianship of the universal world-culture.—Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine of not troubling about good writing and good reading (both virtues grow together and decline together) is really showing the peoples a way of becoming more and more national. He is intensifying the malady of this century, and is a foe to good Europeans, a foe to free spirits.

Learning to Write Well.—The age of good speaking is over, because the age of city-state culture is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the great city—in which the town-crier must be able to make himself heard by the whole assembled community—troubles us as little as do any city-communities, us who even wish to be understood beyond the boundaries of nations. Therefore every one who is of a good European turn of mind must learn to write well, and to write better and better. He cannot help himself, he must learn that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad writing is looked upon as a national privilege. Better writing means better thinking; always to discover matter more worthy of communication; to be able to communicate it properly; to be translateable into the tongues of neighbouring nations; to make oneself comprehensible to foreigners who learn our language; to work with the view of making all that is good common property, and of giving free access everywhere to the free; finally, to pave the way for that still remote state of things, when the great task shall come for good Europeans—guidance and guardianship of the universal world-culture.—Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine of not troubling about good writing and good reading (both virtues grow together and decline together) is really showing the peoples a way of becoming more and more national. He is intensifying the malady of this century, and is a foe to good Europeans, a foe to free spirits.

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial