As a general rule, redundancy is injurious; and the reason of the rule
will enable us to discriminate when redundancy is injurious and when
beneficial. It is injurious when it hampers the rapid movement of the
reader's mind, diverting his attention to some collateral detail. But
it is beneficial when its retarding influence is such as only to detain
the mind longer on the thought, and thus to secure the fuller effect of
the thought. For rapid reading is often imperfect reading. The mind is
satisfied with a glimpse of that which it ought to have steadily
contemplated; and any artifice by which the thought can be kept long
enough before the mind, may indeed be a redundancy as regards the
meaning, but is an economy of power. Thus we see that the phrase or the
clause which we might be tempted to lop away because it threw no light
upon the proposition, would be retained by a skilful writer because it
added power. You may know the character of a redundancy by this one
test: does it divert the attention, or simply retard it? The former is
always a loss of power; the latter is sometlmes a gain of power.
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