There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.  An example may be seen in the passage which has been a favourite illustration from the days of Longinus to our own.  “God said:  Let there be light! and there was light.”  This is a conception of power so calm and simple that it needs only to be presented in the fewest and the plainest words, and would be confused or weakened by any suggestion of accessories.  Let us amplify the expression in the redundant style of miscalled eloquent writers:  “God, in the magnificent fulness of creative energy, exclaimed:  Let there be light! and lo! the agitating fiat immediately went forth, and thus in one indivisible moment the whole universe was illumlned.”  We have here a sentence which I am certain many a writer would, in secret, prefer to the masterly plainness of Genesis.  It is not a sentence which would have captivated critics.

Although this sentence from Genesis is sublime in its simplicity, we are not to conclude that simple sentences are uniformly the best, or that a style composed of propositions briefly expressed would obey a wise Economy.  The reader’s pleasure must not be forgotten; and he cannot be pleased by a style which always leaps and never flows.  A harsh, abrupt, and dislocated manner irritates and perplexes him by its sudden jerks.  It is easier to write short sentences than to read them.  An easy, fluent, and harmonious phrase steals unobtrusively upon the mind, and allows the thought to expand quietly like an opening flower.  But the very suasiveness of harmonious writing needs to be varied lest it become a drowsy monotony; and the sharp short sentences which are intolerable when abundant, when used sparingly act like a trumpet-call to the drooping attention.

II.  The law of simplicity.

The first obligation of Economy is that of using the fewest words to secure the fullest effect.  It rejects whatever is superfluous; but the question of superfluity must, as I showed just now, be determined in each individual case by various conditions too complex and numerous to be reduced within a formula.  The same may be said of Simplicity, which is indeed so intimately allied with Economy that I have only given it a separate station for purposes of convenience.  The psychological basis is the same for both.  The desire for simplicity is impatience at superfluity, and the impatience arises from a sense of hindrance.

The first obligation of Simplicity is that of using the simplest means to secure the fullest effect.  But although the mind instinctlvely rejects all needless complexity, we shall greatly err if we fail to recognise the fact, that what the mind recoils from is not the complexity, but the needlessness.  When two men are set to the work of one, there is a waste of means; when two phrases are used to express one meaning twice, there is a waste of power; when incidents are multiplied