things which usually illumines an explanation, there are some things which are best understood through their unlikeness. Everyone knows how the jeweler, the painter, and the architect use contrast in getting visual effects; and it has a similar value in matters purely intellectual. For instance, the traveler has abundant chance to understand many things about the political principles and social customs of a foreign country through their essential unlikeness to things at home; and upon his return he realizes many things about the life and institutions of his native land which he had never observed before. In like manner the expository writer may make an explanation clear by showing the points of difference between the matter under discussion and some other matter familiar to his reader. He may adopt merely an antithetical arrangement of phrases or clauses in a sentence, as in Dr. Johnson's oft-quoted contrast of Dryden and Pope, "If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing"; or his purpose in an entire article may be one of differentiation, as in Mr. Brownell's chapter on New York after Paris at the end of his French Traits. But exposition by contrast is especially useful in explaining ideas which are easily confused with other ideas. To give a satisfactory explanation of such widely separated policies as protection and free trade without contrasting the one with the other would be entirely possible, though not natural; but to make a clear and unmistakable explanation of wit without contrasting it with humor, or of morality without showing how it differs from religion, would be practically impossible. So in the making of close distinctions contrast becomes an almost indispensable auxiliary of definition. F. THE METHODS IN COMBINATION Much of what has been said in the preceding paragraphs shows the advantage of adopting some combination of these expository methods rather than of depending on a single one of them. Each may have its special value when applied to a particular problem. One may tend to give an explanation simplicity, another exactness; one may make it lucid, another interesting. But several of these methods taken together will secure the quality most essential, without the sacrifice of any other that may be highly desirable. In this connection it will be decidedly instructive to study the work of skilled writers. The following paragraphs, chosen to represent various types of exposition, do not by any means exhaust the possibilities of combining the methods effectively. (1) Three large influences make for a mutual understanding from folk to folk. The first is the newspaper, which every morning prints information from the uttermost parts of the earth. The second is travel, which teaches a multitude of people that the Chinaman, the Turk, the Zulu, and the Mexican are, after all, rather agreeable people. The third influence is the internationalization of men of learning in their world-congresses of doctors, of publicists, of engineers, of journalists, of what not, which have a mighty effect in breaking down the feeling that a man is dangerous to you because he uses strange sounds, eats out of an unaccustomed kettle, and wears his traditional costume.1 (2) What is a great man? Common speech, which after all must be our guide to the sense of the terms which the world uses, gives this name to many sorts of men. How far greatness lies in the power and range of the intellect, how far in the strength of the will, how far in elevation of view and aim and purpose, this is a question too large to be debated here. But of Abraham Lincoln it may be truly said that in his greatness all three elements were present. He had not the brilliance, either in thought or word or act, that dazzles, nor the restless activity that occasionally pushes to the front even persons with gifts not of the first order. He was a patient, thoughtful, melancholy man, whose intelligence, working sometimes slowly, but always steadily and surely, was capacious enough to embrace and vigorous enough to master the incomparably difficult facts and problems he was called to deal with. His executive talent showed itself not in sudden and startling strokes but in the calm serenity with which he formed his judgments and laid his plans, in the undismayed firmness with which he adhered to them in the face of popular clamor, of conflicting counsels from his advisers, sometimes, even, of what others deemed all but hopeless failure. These were the qualities needed in one who had to pilot the republic through the heaviest storm that had ever broken upon it. But the mainspring of his power, and the truest evidence of his greatness, lay in the nobility of his aims, in the fervor of his 1 Albert Bushnell Hart, School Books and International Prejudices. conviction, in the stainless rectitude which guided his action and won for him the confidence of the people. Without these things neither the vigor of his intellect nor the firmness of his will would have availed.1 (3) The article of consumption most often neglected is leisure. Leisure is an indispensable element of all enjoyment. It is the thing in which the American, despite his overflowing wealth, is the poorest. Americans have never taken time and still do not take time for leisure. We seek to telescope our pleasures, to enjoy much in little time. As a nation we are like the instantaneous American traveler who does the Louvre in an hour and the Vatican in half a morning. We are obsessed by the doctrine of a strenuous life, of a life of effort and labor, without leisure or quiet development. The American conception of leisure has always been one of mild disapprobation. There was rather a feeling that we should live to labor, not labor to live. This conception, which was more or less explicable during the days of the conquest of the continent, is not a little ludicrous to-day, when advanced by the financier who is benefiting by our accumulating surplus. An austere disapprobation of holidays is also given expression by many of our newspapers, and when, to please the Italian vote, a State legislature made Columbus Day a holiday, some of our journals preached eloquent sermons against idle workmen, supine legislators, and reckless Genoese sailors. In the eyes of these journals and many well-meaning manufacturers and professional men, the workman should prefer to work twelve hours instead of eight, if by working four hours more he earns more. What is, however, more needed in America than almost anything else is a wider leisure and a better knowledge of how to use it. We need shorter hours for workman, merchant, banker, lawyer, doctor, engineer. The American who has made his money and now dies of ennui represents the situation at one end of the line; the Polish workman in a steel mill who labors all day and every day, Sunday, week-day, and holiday, represents it at the other. Between the two we have the "ambitious," "self-respecting," hard-working man, with no idea but labor. What does he earn, this tame, virtuous, selfdriven, over-ambitious drudge? More dollars in the bank, fewer years of life, and fewer pleasures while he lives. Better a "sturdy beggar" or a vermin-infested tramp than a desiccated toiler who works twelve hours a day, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year.2 (4) Of all the devices for promoting a good understanding the old-fashioned Preface was the most excellent. It was not an introduction to the subject, its purpose was personal. In these days the Preface, where it survives, is reduced to the smallest possible space. It is like the platform of an 1 1 James Bryce, Abraham Lincoln's Speeches and Letters. The Macmillan Company. Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. XIX. The Macmillan Com pany. electric car which affords the passenger a precarious foothold while he strives to obey the stern demand of the conductor that he move forward. But time was when the Preface was the broad hospitable porch on which the Author and Reader sat for an hour or so and talked over the enterprise that was before them. Sometimes they would talk so long that they almost forgot their ostensible subject.1 (5) The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manner of the other.2 III. EFFECTIVENESS IN EXPOSITION A. IN INSTRUMENTAL EXPOSITION 1. Standards of effectiveness. - In the nature of the case, instrumental exposition, which is written to meet some demand for information or opinion, can be effective only when it explains with entire clearness. In untangling some complex financial matter, in giving instruction about some industrial process, in presenting some national problem, in setting forth some principle of science or of art, the writer cannot in any sense succeed if he is not exact beyond the possibility of vagueness, and simple beyond the possibility of obscurity. He must reach the mind of his reader without error and with the minimum of resistance. Incidentally, it is this rigid demand for crystal clearness which makes practice in expository composition particularly valuable to the writer's own mind, clarifying his thought and stimulating his mental activity. But we must admit that this intellectual clearness, without any element of personal feeling or human interest, leaves instrumental exposition too cold and impersonal. 1 Samuel McChord Crothers, The Gentle Reader. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2 Charles Lamb, The Two Races of Men. - Much instrumental exposition, and sometimes the most authoritative, goes unread, even when it is entirely clear. It fails as communication, simply because the writer is at no pains to relate his writing to his reader's life, to make him feel that what is said really concerns him. In this connection, too, we must consider making instrumental exposition permanently effective. Of course, so many of the explanations in daily life involve technical or ephemeral material, and so many of them are written hastily, that instrumental exposition is often denied the quality essential to higher literary art. Few business letters are intended to reach more than one individual. The newspaper reporter frankly acknowledges that he writes of a day and for a day. In truth, anyone who attempts to convey facts or ideas to the public is frequently embarrassed by some advance in knowledge which renders his writing out of date and hence valueless. And yet no writer has good reason to be satisfied with his explanation until he has breathed into it the breath of his own personality and made his workmanship as perfect as possible. Any letter, any article, any book will reach more people, be reread oftener, and continue to be read longer, if it is written with charm as well as clearness. Furthermore, it occasionally happens that some piece of instrumental exposition which no longer has much value so far as its information goes, Isaac Walton's Compleat Angler, for example,— is still read by thousands because of the author's personality and his perpetually delightful grace of expression. Full effectiveness in this most practical of all forms of writing, therefore, demands that the writer meet all three of the conditions which have been laid down in the preceding chapter. Without satisfying the demands of good form, as well as having his material thoroughly in hand and enlisting his reader's interest, no writer of instrumental exposition can have more than a superficial or temporary success. 2. The application of general principles. Any degree of effectiveness in instrumental exposition depends in large measure on the careful following of the general principles and ART WRIT. ENG. - 16 |