The examples of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Hume are
enough to show how such subjects can be mastered, and the very
implication of writing a book is that the writer has mastered his
material and can give it intelligible form.
A grave treatise, dealing with a narrow range of subjects or moving
amid severe abstractions, demands a gravity and severity of style which
is dissimilar to that demanded by subjects of a wider scope or more
impassioned impulse; but abstract philosophy has its appropriate
elegance no less than mathematics. I do not mean that each subject
should necessarily be confined to one special mode of treatment, in the
sense which was understood when people spoke of the "dignity of
history," and so forth. The style must express the writer's mind; and
as variously constituted minds will treat one and the same subject,
there will be varieties in their styles. If a severe thinker be also a
man of wit, like Bacon, Hobbes, Pascal, or Galileo, the wit will flash
its sudden illuminations on the argument; but if he be not a man of
wit, and condescends to jest under the impression that by jesting he is
giving an airy grace to his argument, we resent it as an impertinence.
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