This third stock, but dimly
familiar if familiar at all, is in no practical sense yours. And indeed
some of the words are too abstruse, learned, or technical for you to
burden your memory with them. But many--most--are worth acquiring. By
writing down the words of these three classes you have done something to
stamp them upon your memory as associates. You must now make it your
business to bring them into use. Never call upon them for volunteers, but
like a wise commander summon the individual that can rightly perform a
particular service. Thus will your speech, perhaps vague and indolent now,
become exact, discriminating, competent, vital.
In the second place, you should obtain specific and detailed command of
general ideas. Not of out-of-the-way ideas. But of the great basic ideas
that are the common possession of all mankind. For through these basic
ideas is the most natural and profitable approach to the study of
synonyms. Each of them is represented by a generic word. So elementary are
idea and word alike that a person cannot have the one in mind without
having the other ready and a-quiver on his tongue. Every person is master
of both. But it is unsafe to predicate the person's acquaintance with the
shades and phases of the idea, or with the corresponding discriminations
in language.
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