The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law—which often comprises the written—must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done. Ideas They are like shadows—substantial enough until we try to grasp them. Expression The fact that every mental state is intensified by expression is of a piece with the fact that nothing has any existence at all save in its expression. Development All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed. Acquired Characteristics If there is any truth in the theory that these are inherited—and who can doubt it?—the eye and the finger are but the aspiration, or word, made manifest in flesh. Physical and Spiritual The bodies of many abandoned undertakings lie rotting unburied up and down the country and their ghosts haunt the law-courts. Trail and Writing Before the invention of writing the range of one man’s influence over another was limited to the range of sight, sound and scent; besides this there was trail, of many kinds. Trail unintentionally left is, as it were, hidden sight. Left intentionally, it is the unit of literature. It is the first mode of writing, from which grew that power of extending men’s influence over one another by the help of written symbols of all kinds without which the development of modern civilisation would have been impossible. Conveyancing and the Arts In conveyancing the ultimately potent thing is not the deed but the invisible intention and desire of the parties to the deed; the written document itself is only evidence of this intention and desire. So it is with music, the written notes are not the main thing, nor is even the heard performance; these are only evidences of an internal invisible emotion that can be felt but never fully expressed. And so it is with the words of literature and with the forms and colours of painting. The Rules for Making Literature, Music and Pictures The arts of the musician, the painter and the writer are essentially the same. In composing a fugue, after you have exposed your subject, which must not be too unwieldly, you introduce an episode or episodes which must arise out of your subject. The great thing is that all shall be new, and yet nothing new, at the same time; the details must minister to the main effect and not obscure it; in other words, you must have a subject, develop it and not wander from it very far. This holds just as true for literature and painting and for art of all kinds.