2Now the way to save work for the r

2Now the way to save work for the reader is simply to write clearly. How easy it is to say that! “Simply to write clearly”—as if that were not one of the hardest things in the world! It is hard even to say what clearness means, let alone exemplify it in speech and writing. Indeed, there is no such thing if taken by itself; it lies in the relation between a giver-out and a taker-in. If there is trouble, it is sometimes wholly with the taker-in. Many a schoolboy has thought Euclid abominably obscure, and so he was—to the schoolboy. We have all known students who sat helpless before philosophers who were classics of clarity. On the other hand there are some purveyors of philosophy who pass all understanding, no matter whose. A master expositor, W. K. Clifford, said of an acquaintance: “He is writing a book on metaphysics, and is really cut out for it; the clearness with which he thinks he will make hisfortune as a philosopher.”