CHAPTER III

DEFINITION

Definition is the process of explaining a subject by setting bounds to

it, enclosing it within its limits, showing its extent. The ocean is

properly defined by the shore; a continent or island is defined by its

coastline: shores set limits to the ocean; coastlines bound the island

or continent. So, when a child asks, "What is Switzerland?" you show

on the map the pink or yellow or green space that is included within

certain definite boundaries. These boundaries set a limit to the extent

of that country; in other words, they define it. As soon as a traveler

steps beyond the limit of that country, he is at once in another

realm, has become identified with a quite different set of conditions

and circumstances--he is, in fact, in a country that has a different

definition from that of Switzerland. In the same way, when some one

asks what truth is, or nickel steel, or a grand piano, or humanism, or

art, or rotation of crops, or a rocking chair, or the forward pass,

you attempt, in your reply, to set bounds to the thing in question, to

restrict it, to fence it off, to state the line beyond which if it goes

it ceases to be one thing and becomes another. It is by no means always

an easy task to find this line. Many a child has come to grief in his

attempts to keep safely within the limits of truth and yet be close up

to the realm of desirable falsehood. Likewise many witnesses in court

have been beguiled or browbeaten into crossing the line without knowing

that they were getting into the country of the enemy. But though the

quest for the line may be difficult, a true definition must set off the

thing being defined from other things, must set bounds to it, enclose it

within its limits, show its extent.

The Process of Definition

The logical process of defining consists of two steps: first, stating

the class or group to which the object of definition belongs, as to say

that Switzerland is a _country_, the forward pass is a _strategic device

in football_, humanism is a _philosophy of personal development_; and

second, pointing out the difference between the object of definition

and other members of the class, showing how it is distinguished from

them. Since the purpose of definition is to limit the thing defined,

the practical value of the first step is at once apparent. If, in

total ignorance, a resident of India asks you, "What is ragtime?" the

most helpful thing in the world that you can do for him is to cleave

away with one stroke everything else in the world but music--absolute

exclusion of all other human interests--and place ragtime in that

comparatively narrow field. That is the first thing of great help.

However many qualities you may attribute to ragtime,--whether you call

it inspiring, invigorating, pleasing, detestable, or what not,--you

are making at best only slow progress toward defining, really limiting

ragtime. The number of pleasing things, for example, is so endless, and

the things are so diverse in character that your listener is almost as

ignorant after such a quality has been attributed as he was before. But

the moment that you limit ragtime to music you scatter untold clouds of

doubt and place the inquirer in the comfortable position of having a

fairly large working knowledge. What is left for the inquirer to do is

merely to distinguish ragtime from other kinds of music--after all, a

rather simple task. Likewise in any definition, such as that of rotation

of crops, the first necessity is to place the subject in its proper

field, in this case agriculture; the grand piano in the class of musical

instruments; the rocking chair in the class of furniture.

Now sometimes the task of discovering to what class your subject

belongs is difficult. Is a believer in Unitarianism a Christian? He

follows the ethical teachings of Jesus but denies him any special

divinity. In this case obviously the question of classification will

depend on the definition that we make of Christianity. Is a man who

serves the state in legislative or judicial capacity and at the same

time writes novels to be called a statesman or a man of letters?

Governments have fallen into difficulty with each other over such

things as contraband of war, there being great doubt at times whether

a particular thing is properly contraband or not. The question is

sometimes doubtful--you will be inclined to say, "I don't know what to

call this," but in making a definition call it you must. The United

States Government, facing the problem of discovering the proper class

for frogs' legs, in determining customs duties after much perturbation

placed them under the heading "poultry." Ordinarily you will find

slight difficulty in determining the class; but in every case you must

patiently search until you have found some class into which your subject

naturally fits. Until you have done this you obviously cannot set it

apart from other members, because you will not really know what the

other members are, you will be forced to run through the total list of

human ideas and things. Until you know that _oligarchy_ is one form of

political society you cannot know whether to set it off from _democracy_

and _monarchy_ or from _Christianity_ and _Buddhism_. First, then,

however difficult, discover the class to which your subject belongs. In

the following definition of a _clearing-house_, you will find that in

the course of time the class to which the subject belongs has changed,

has come to include more space, needs a larger fence to surround it, and

therefore the definition has been changed.

What is a clearing-house? The Supreme Court of the State

of Pennsylvania has defined it thus: "It is an ingenious device

to simplify and facilitate the work of the banks in reaching

an adjustment and payment of the daily balances due to and from

each other at one time and in one place on each day. In practical

operation it is a place where all the representatives of the banks

in a given city meet, and, under the supervision of a competent

committee or officer selected by the associated banks, settle their

accounts with each other and make or receive payments of balances

and so 'clear' the transactions of the day for which the settlement

is made."

But we must go farther than this, for though originally

designed as a labor-saving device, the clearing-house has expanded

far beyond those limits, until it has become a medium for united

action among the banks in ways that did not exist even in the

imaginations of those who were instrumental in its inception. A

clearing-house, therefore, may be defined as a device to simplify

and facilitate the daily exchange of items and settlements of

balances among the banks, and a medium for united action upon all

questions affecting their mutual welfare.[13]

[13] Francis M. Burdick: _The Essentials of Business Law_. By courtesy

of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright

1902, 1908, by D. Appleton & Co.

The second step in the logical process of definition is to show how the

subject for definition differs from other members of its class. Once I

am told that the piano is a musical instrument I must next learn wherein

it differs from the violin, the kettle-drum, and the English horn. The

surname _Tomlinson_ partly defines a person as a member of the Tomlinson

family, but the definition is not complete until the name is modified

and the person is distinguished by _George_ or _Charles_ or whatever

name may belong to him. A skillful shepherd knows not only his flocks

but also the characteristics of the different members of the flocks,

so that he can say, "This sheep is the one in X flock that is always

getting into the clover." Here "X flock" is the class, and the quality

of abusing the clover is the distinguishing individual tag. Since the

desire in this part of the process of defining is to set individuals

apart, no mention will be made of qualities that are shared in common

but only of those that are peculiar to the individual. These qualities

that distinguish individual members of classes from each other are

called the _differentia_, just as the class is commonly called the

_genus_.

For convenience in keeping the list of differentia reasonably small,

to avoid unwieldiness of definition, care must be exercised in

choosing the class. When a class which itself contains other possible

classes is chosen, a long list of differentia will be necessary. It

is well, therefore, to choose a relatively small class to begin with.

For example, if I put the piano into the large class of _musical

instruments_, I shall then be under the necessity of amassing sufficient

differentia to set it apart from wind instruments whether of brass

or wood, from instruments of percussion, and from other stringed

instruments that do not use metal strings. If I restrict the class

to _stringed instruments_, I thereby exclude the differentia of both

wind instruments and instruments of percussion. If I further restrict

the class, at the beginning, to _instruments with metal strings_, I

need then to employ only such differentia as will set it off, perhaps,

from instruments that do not have a sounding board for their metal

strings. Such restriction of the class is advisable chiefly for purposes

of economy of effort in discovering the differentia, and is usually

accomplished, in expression, by preceding the class name with a limiting

adjective or by using a limiting phrase. This adjective or this phrase

is likely to be the expression of differentia among smaller classes, the

differentia among individual members being stated more at length later

in the definition.

The process of definition will be complete, then, when the subject of

definition has been assigned to a class, which for convenience should be

relatively small, and the qualities that distinguish the subject from

other members of the class have been found.

The Two Main Classes of Definitions

Two main classes of definition exist: first, the rigidly logical,

scientific kind such as is found in dictionaries, textbooks, and

other such writings which are not concerned with emotional values;

and second, the less rigid, more expanded, more informal kind which

aims to please as well as to instruct, and which is found in essays

and all forms of writing with a strong human appeal. The two kinds

are alike in the presence of both genus and differentia; they differ

chiefly in the presence, in the less formal, of the qualities of

pleasingness and stimulation as opposed to the quality, in the formal,

of scientific impersonality, cold intellectuality. For example, the

Standard Dictionary defines a _correspondent_ as "one who communicates

by means of letters; specifically one who sends regular communications

from a distant place to a newspaper or a business house." The author

of the volume entitled _Famous War Correspondents_[14] defines, with

much the same fundamental ideas, if not indeed exactly the same, a _war

correspondent_ as follows:

[14] F. L. Billiard: _Famous War Correspondents_. By courtesy of the

publishers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Copyright, 1914.

The war correspondent is a newspaper man assigned to cover a

campaign. He goes into the field with the army, expecting to send

his reports from that witching region known as "the front." He is

a special correspondent commissioned to collect intelligence and

transmit it from the camp and the battle ground. A non-combatant,

he mingles freely with men whose business it is to fight. He may be

ten thousand miles from the home office, but he finds competition

as keen as ever it is in Fleet Street or Newspaper Row. He is

engaged in the most dramatic department of a profession whose

infinite variety is equalled only by its fascination. If he becomes

a professional rather than an occasional correspondent, wandering

will be his business and adventure his daily fare. Mr. A. G. Hales

is of the opinion that the newspaper man who is chosen as a war

correspondent has won the Victoria Cross of journalism.

For the making of a first-rate war correspondent there are

required all the qualifications of a capable reporter in any other

branch of the profession, and others besides. Perhaps it is true

that the regular hack work of the ordinary newspaper man is the

best training for the scribe of war. The men who had reported

fires and train wrecks in American cities proved themselves able

to describe vigorously and clearly the campaign in Cuba. William

Howard Russell had been doing a great variety of descriptive

writing before he was sent to the Crimea. The prime requisites for

a satisfactory war correspondent are those fundamental to success

in any kind of newspaper work, the ability to see straight, to

write vividly and accurately, and to get a story on the wire.

Occasionally a brilliant workman appears from nowhere, the

happy possessor of an almost uncanny intuition of movements and

purposes. Such a man was Archibald Forbes. But Forbes, no less than

the average special, had to have the physical capacity to march

with the private soldier, to ride a hundred miles at a clip at

top speed over rough country, to sleep in the open, to stand the

heat of the desert and the cold of the mountain height, to endure

hunger and thirst and all the deprivations of a hard campaign.

Every correspondent at times must keep going until his strength is

utterly spent. He must have the tenacity which does not yield to

exhaustion until his messages are written and on the way to his

paper. When the soldier ceases fighting, the correspondent's work

is only begun. He needs also to have a degree of familiarity with

the affairs of the present and the history of the past which will

secure him the respect of the officers with whom he may associate.

Along with the courage of the scout he should possess the suavity

and tact of the diplomat, for he will have to get along with men of

all types, and occasionally, indeed, his own influence may overlap

into the field of international diplomacy. British correspondents,

having covered many wars, small and great, since 1870, usually

are acquainted with several languages, and often have acquired a

knowledge of the technicalities of military science.

Of the two kinds of definition--formal and informal--you will more often

have occasion to write the second. You must guard against the danger,

in such writing, of allowing the interest to cloud the truth, of being

led into inaccurate partial statements by your desire to please. At the

root of every good definition is still the accurate statement of genus

and differentia. It is chiefly of the second kind that we shall treat

here. If you can write a definition that is pleasing and stimulating and

also accurate, you can always boil it down into the more bald formal

statement such as the dictionary offers. Whatever powers of grace or

neatness in expression you possess, whatever powers of saying things

in a pleasing manner, it is your privilege to employ in the writing of

definitions.

General Cautions

For the sake of clearness and general effectiveness a few cautions need

to be made. In the first place, be sure to exclude everything from your

definition that does not properly belong in it. For example, if you

define the aeroplane as a machine that journeys through the air under

its own power, you include dirigible balloons, which are not aeroplanes.

You must introduce both the characteristics of being heavier than air

and of having a plane or planes before your definition can stand. You

will make this exclusion by choosing both class and differentia with the

greatest care.

In the second place, include everything that does properly belong in the

definition. If you define a bridge as a roadway over a stream, either

resting on piers or hanging on cables strung over towers, you exclude

pontoon bridges certainly, and all bridges across dry chasms, if not

other kinds. Not until you include all varieties of things crossed and

all the methods of support and the various materials used will your

definition be sound and complete. This does not mean that you will have

to make an endless list of all possible forms, but that you will make a

comprehensive statement which will allow of being distributed over all

the different forms and kinds of bridges.

In the third place, use simple and familiar diction. Since the first

purpose of a definition is to explain, one that is obscure or difficult

makes confusion worse confounded. The famous--or notorious--definition

which Dr. Johnson made of so simple a thing as _network_, "anything

reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices between

the intersections," is worse than useless because it positively throws

dust upon a comparatively easy matter to perceive--unless the reader

take time out for meditation. Remember that the Gettysburg Address and

many of Shakespeare's sonnets are largely in words of one syllable. And

then do not be afraid that you will be understood; the fire is always

presumably somewhat more uncomfortable than the frying-pan.

In the fourth place, do not use the term that you are defining, or

any derivative of it. When college freshmen, in mortal combat with a

quiz question, define a description as _something that describes_,

they use words that profit them nothing. That a cow is a cow is fairly

obvious. The temptation to make this mistake, which, in the intellectual

world, occupies the relative space of the saucy old advice, "Chase

yourself round the block!" occurs usually when a long definition is

being written, in which the writer forgets to keep the horizon clear,

and finally falls into the formula _x_ is _x_. To avoid yielding to

such temptation, you will do well, after a definition is complete, to

phrase it in a single sentence which shall include both differentia

and genus, and in which you can easily discover the evil formula _x_

is _x_. Bardolph, in Shakespeare's _King Henry IV_, yields to the

temptation--for which we are glad as to humor but not made wise as to

meaning--when Shallow puts him to the test:

_Shallow_: Better accommodated! it is good; yea, indeed, it

is: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.

Accommodated! it comes of accommodo: very good; a good phrase.

_Bardolph_: Pardon me, sir; I have heard the word. Phrase

call you it? by this good day, I know not the phrase; but I will

maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a

word of exceeding good command, by heaven. Accommodated; that is,

when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being,

whereby 'a may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent

thing.

In the fifth place, be sure that you define, and do not merely "talk

about" the subject. Any amount of however interesting comment that fails

to accomplish the two necessities of definition, statement of the genus

and the differentia, is futile; it is not definition. This temptation,

like the former one, will be overcome if you take the trouble to phrase

the actual material of your definition in one sentence that really

includes both genus and differentia. As a minor suggestion, do not begin

your definition with the words, "X is when" or "X is where," unless you

are defining either a unit of time or a place--and even then you will do

well to avoid these too frequently used phrases.

Finally, do not make your definition too mechanical, too much lacking in

real life. Thinking of how you must deal with genus and differentia, you

are liable to be overwhelmed with the grim duty of being logical, and to

forget that you should also be human, that people read definitions, as

other kinds of writing, in the double hope of information and pleasure.

No real antagonism exists between logic of the strictest kind and

pleasurable presentation, as is proved by the examples quoted during the

course of this chapter and at the end. While you remember your subject,

remember also your reader; then you will be unlikely to make a dull

definition.

Methods of Defining

You may use various methods of defining. Sometimes you will choose only

one, and sometimes you will combine. There is no special virtue in one

method more than another except as sometimes one happens to be more

useful for a given case, as we shall see. In selecting your method,

then, select on the basis of practical workability for the effect that

you desire to create, adhering to one or using several as seems most

effective.

_a._ _The Method of Illustration_

One of the most useful, natural, and easy methods is that of giving an

example or illustration of the thing that is being defined. The great

usefulness of this method lies in the stimulating quality that the

concrete example always has. If you wish to define an abstract quality,

for example, such as _patriotism_, or _honor_, or _generosity_, you

will often find advantage, for the first, in calling up the figure of

Washington, of Lincoln, of Cromwell; in citing, for the second, the

case of some man who, after bankruptcy, has set himself to pay all his

former debts, or of Regulus who, though he had the chance not to keep

his promise to return to Carthage as prisoner, yet bade Rome farewell

and returned to unspeakable torture; in presenting, for the third, a

specific set of conditions, such as possession of only one dime, which

is then shared with another person who is even less fortunate, or

showing a known person, like Sir Philip Sidney, who, though at death's

door on the field of battle, urged that the exquisite joy of cold water

be given to a comrade who was even more terribly in need. In every one

of these cases the quality under definition is presented in an easily

grasped, concrete form that has the great advantage of human interest,

of stimulating the reader's thought. That using such a method is natural

is apparent as soon as we remember that we think largely in concrete

forms, specific cases. That it is rather easy is obvious, because so

many instances are always at hand to be used.

The danger in this method is that the example chosen will not be

entirely fair. Such lack of fairness may occur if the example covers

too little ground of the definition or if it too highly accentuates

one phase of the subject of definition. If, for instance, you cite the

example of the man who gave away his only pair of shoes, as an example

of generosity, you may run the risk of making the reader think that

nothing but an extreme act has the real stamp of the generous giver, or

that generosity is expressed only in material ways, forgetting that it

is generous to acknowledge a fault or to overlook unintended affront.

To avoid this danger be sure that your example is fair and sufficiently

comprehensive, and if it is not, choose other examples to add to it

until you are convinced of the all-round fitness of your definition. In

the following examples you may feel that Gissing does not wholly define

_poverty_, whereas Shaw is more complete in his approach to defining

_ability that gives value for money_, and Mr. Morman by taking a typical

example and working it out arrives at complete understanding with

perhaps less of piquant interest.

Blackberries hanging thick upon the hedge bring to my memory

something of long ago. I had somehow escaped into the country and

on a long walk began to feel mid-day hunger. The wayside brambles

were fruiting; I picked and ate, and ate on, until I had come

within sight of an inn where I might have made a good meal. But

my hunger was satisfied; I had no need of anything more, and,

as I thought of it, a strange feeling of surprise, a sort of

bewilderment, came upon me. What! Could it be that I had eaten,

and eaten sufficiently, _without paying_? It struck me as an

extraordinary thing. At that time, my ceaseless preoccupation was

how to obtain money to keep myself alive. Many a day I had suffered

hunger because I durst not spend the few coins I possessed; the

food I could buy was in any case unsatisfactory, unvaried. But here

nature had given me a feast, which seemed delicious, and I had

eaten all I wanted. The wonder held me for a long time, and to this

day I can recall it, understand it.

I think there could be no better illustration of what it means

to be poor in a great town.[15]

[15] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Autumn."

By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York

City.

* * * * *

In business, as a rule, a man must make what he gets and

something over into the bargain. I have known a man to be employed

by a firm of underwriters to interview would-be insurers. His sole

business was to talk to them and decide whether to insure or not.

Salary, £4000 a year. This meant that the loss of his judgment

would have cost his employers more than £4000 a year. Other

men have an eye for contracts or whatnot, or are born captains

of industry, in which cases they go into business on their own

account, and make ten, twenty, or two hundred per cent where you or

I would lose five. Or, to turn back a moment from the giants to the

minnows, take the case of a woman with the knack of cutting out a

dress. She gets six guineas a week instead of eighteen shillings.

Or she has perhaps a ladylike air and a figure on which a mantle

looks well. For these she can get several guineas a week merely

by standing in a show-room letting mantles be tried on her before

customers. All these people are renters of ability; and their

ability is inseparable from them and dies with them. The excess of

their gains over those of an ordinary person with the same capital

and education is the "rent" of the exceptional "fertility." But

observe, if the able person makes £100,000, and leaves that to his

son, who, being but an ordinary gentleman, can get only from two

and a half to four per cent on it, that revenue is pure interest on

capital and in no sense whatever rent of ability.[16]

[16] George B. Shaw: _Socialism and Superior Brains_. By courtesy of

the publishers, John Lane Company, New York City.

* * * * *

By "amortization" is meant the method of paying a debt by

regular semi-annual or annual installments. To illustrate:

Suppose a farmer gives a mortgage on his farm of $1000, with

interest at 5 per cent. In addition to the interest, he agrees

to pay 2 per cent a year on the principal. This makes a total of

7 per cent a year, or a payment of $70, which may be paid in two

semi-annual installments of $35 each. The first year's interest

and payment on the principal are taken as the amount to be paid

annually. But of the first payment, $50 represents the interest

and $20 the payment on the principal. After the first year's

payment, therefore, instead of owing $1000, the farmer owes only

$980, with interest at 5 per cent.

For the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that payments

are made annually. When the next time of payment comes round,

the farmer pays his $70. Since his debt is less, the interest

the second year amounts to $49 instead of $50, and therefore the

payment on the principal is $21 instead of $20 as it was the first

year. In the second year the debt is reduced to $959.

On the return of the third time of payment the farmer pays

another $70, of which amount $47.95 represents the interest and

$22.05 the payment on the principal. This reduces the farmer's

mortgage debt to $936.95.

Now, this system of payment and method of reducing the debt

continues until the mortgage has been lifted by a gradual process.

Thus, while the annual payments are always the same, the amount

of interest is always decreasing and the amount of the payments

on the debt is always increasing. Consequently, the mortgage is

paid off in ten to forty years according to the rate of payment on

the loan that the debtor himself elects to pay when the contract

is made. This is the simple principle of amortization, and it is

recognized in Europe as the safest, easiest, and best method of

reducing land-mortgage indebtedness hitherto conceived and put into

practice.[17]

[17] J. B. Morman: _Principles of Rural Credit_. By courtesy of the

publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City.

If, then, you have a subject that is abstract and perhaps difficult

to understand in abstract explanation; if you wish, to stimulate your

readers and make their reading pleasant; if, for any reason, you wish

to write informally, then you may well decide to employ the useful,

natural, and easy method of definition by illustration.

_b._ _The Method of Comparison or Contrast_

A second method, closely akin to that by illustration, is the method of

defining by comparison or contrast. The value of this method lies in

its liveliness and the ease with which it makes an idea comprehended.

The liveliness derives largely from the usual presence of specific facts

or things with which the subject of definition is compared or to which

it is contrasted, and from the imaginative stimulus that perception of

similarity in function creates. The implied definition of leader in

politics in Lincoln's famous remark about changing political parties in

war time, "Don't swap horses while crossing a stream," is not only true,

but more, it is interesting. The ease of comprehension is due largely

to employing the method of proceeding from the known to the unknown

in that comparison is usually made to things already familiar. If

contrast is used, there is the added interest of dramatic presentation

found especially in oratorical definitions. Liveliness and ease in

comprehension make this method a valuable one in addressing a popular

or an unlearned body of readers; it presents the truth and it enlists

interest. In the following examples you will not be aware of dramatic

quality in the first but you will find picturesque qualities in both.

Lord Cromer describes a responsible statesman in a democracy

as very much in the position of a man in a boat off the mouth of a

tidal river. He long has to strive against wind and current until

finally a favorable conjunction of weather and tide forms a wave

upon which he rides safely into the harbor. There is an essential

truth in this which no man attempting to play the part of leader in

a democracy can forget except at his peril. Government by public

opinion is bound to get a sufficient body of public opinion on its

side. But withal it is manifestly the duty of a leader to help form

a just public opinion. He must dare to be temporarily unpopular,

if only in that way he can get a temporary hearing for the truths

which the people ought to have presented to them. He is to execute

the popular will, but he is not to neglect shaping it. It is his

duty to be properly receptive, but his main striving ought to be

that virtue should go out of him to touch and quicken the masses

of his citizens. If their minds and imaginations are played upon

with sufficient persistence and sufficient skill, they will give

him back his own ideas with enthusiasm. A man who throws a ball

against a wall gets it back again as if hurled by the dead brick

and mortar; but the original impulse is in his own muscle. So a

democratic leader may say, if he chooses, that he takes only what

is pressed upon him by the people; but his function is often first

to press it upon them.[18]

[18] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton

Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_.

* * * * *

The quack novel is a thing which looks like a book, and

which is compounded, advertised, and marketed in precisely the

same fashion as Castoria, Wine of Cardui, Alcola, Mrs. Summers's

free-to-you-my-sister Harmless Headache Remedy, Viavi Tablettes,

and other patent medicines, harmful and harmless. As the patent

medicine is made of perfectly well-known drugs, so the quack novel

of course contains perfectly familiar elements, and like the

medicine, it comes wrapped in superlative testimonials from those

who say they have swallowed it to their advantage. Instead of

"After twenty years of bed-ridden agony, one bottle of your Fosforo

cured every ache and completely restored my manhood," we have "The

secret of his powers is the same God-given secret that inspired

Shakespeare and upheld Dickens." This, from the Philadelphia

_Sunday Dispatch_, accompanies a quack novel by Mr. Harold Bell

Wright, of whom the Portland, Oregon, _Journal_ remarks, "It is

this almost clairvoyant power of reading the human soul that has

made Mr. Wright's books among the most remarkable works of the

present age." Similar to that aroma of piety and charity which

accompanies the quack medicines, an equally perceptible odor of

sanctity is wafted to us with Mr. Wright; and just as imitators

will make their boxes and bottles to resemble those of an already

successful trade article, so are Mr. Wright's volumes given that

red cloth and gold lettering which we have come to associate with

the bindings of Mr. Winston Churchill's very popular and agreeable

novels. Lastly--like the quack medicines--the quack novel is

(mostly) harmful; not always because it is poisonous (though this

occurs), but because it pretends to be literature and is taken for

literature by the millions who swallow it year after year as their

chief mental nourishment, and whose brains it saps and dilutes.

In short, both these shams--the book and the medicine--win and

bamboozle their public through methods almost identical.[19]

[19] Owen Wister: _Quack Novels and Democracy_. By courtesy of The

Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.

For complete truth you need to present both resemblance and difference.

This necessity is apparent as soon as we remember that the differentia

are of vital importance, that we understand the subject only when we

see how it differs from other members of the same class. When these

differences are obvious, of course they need no mention. But in defining

_wit and humor_, for example, or _immorality and unconventionality_,

we must know not only the parallelisms but also the divergencies. The

best method of procedure is to discover in each of the subjects compared

the vital things, the heart without which it could not exist, and then

to observe how these work out in the particulars of the subject. In

defining _State_ and _Nation_ in the following selection Mr. Russell

takes care to show both resemblances and differences.

_Nation_ is not to be defined by affinities of language or a

common historical origin, though these things often help to produce

a nation. Switzerland is a nation, in spite of diversities of race,

religion, and language. England and Scotland now form one nation,

though they did not do so at the time of our Civil War. This is

shown by Cromwell's saying, in the height of the conflict, that he

would rather be subject to the dominion of the royalists than to

that of the Scotch. Great Britain was one state before it was one

nation; on the other hand, Germany was one nation before it was one

state. What constitutes a nation is a sentiment and an instinct--a

sentiment of similarity and an instinct of belonging to the same

group or herd. The instinct is an extension of the instinct which

constitutes a flock of sheep, or any other group of gregarious

animals. The sentiment which goes with this is like a milder and

more extended form of family feeling. When we return to England

after having been on the Continent, we feel something friendly in

the familiar ways, and it is easy to believe that Englishmen on

the whole are virtuous while many foreigners are full of designing

wickedness.

Such feelings make it easy to organize a nation into a state.

It is not difficult, as a rule, to acquiesce in the orders of a

national government. We feel that it is our government, and that

its decrees are more or less the same as those which we should

have given if we ourselves had been the governors. There is an

instinctive, and usually unconscious, sense of a common purpose

animating the members of a nation. This becomes especially vivid

when there is a war or a danger of war. Any one who, at such a

time, stands out against the orders of his government feels an

inner conflict quite different from any that he would feel in

standing out against the orders of a foreign government, in whose

power he might happen to find himself. If he stands out, he does

so with a more or less conscious hope that his government may in

time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing out against a

foreign government, no such hope is necessary. This group instinct,

however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a nation, and what

makes it important that the boundaries of nations should also be

the boundaries of states.[20]

[20] Bertrand Russell: _National Independence and Internationalism_.

By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.

_c._ _The Method of Division_

A third method, often used, and similar in its general form to analysis,

divides the subject into its various headings, the sum of which must

equal the whole. This method differs from analysis, perhaps, in that it

treats the subject throughout as a unit rather than as a congregation of

parts. This method may be used to define a subject like _mathematics_,

in stating that it is the pure science which includes arithmetic,

algebra, geometry, etc., or to define a quality like _patriotism_, by

enumerating the qualities that patriotism has. These qualities may be,

also, the uses to which the subject can be put, as in defining a tool or

a machine. The method consists in establishing the genus and then, from

a mental map of the subject, selecting the various parts that constitute

the whole, whether these parts be of physical extent, as in defining

the United States by giving the various sections of the country, or of

spiritual significance, as in defining an honest man by stating the

qualities that he should possess.

One danger from this method is lack of completeness; great practical

value attaches here to the caution to be sure that the definition

includes all that properly belongs under it. Another danger is in the

temptation to "talk about" the subject without actually defining it,

merely saying some pleasant things and then ceasing. The caution against

this danger in general must be remembered. Properly used, this method,

though it is sometimes rather formal, should result in great clearness

through completeness of definition. The following celebrated definition

of a "classic" is a good example of compact definition by this method,

and the definition of "moral atmosphere" of a more leisurely, informal

breaking-up.

A classic is an author who has enriched the human mind, who

has really added to its treasure, who has got it to take a step

further; who has discovered some unequivocal moral truth, or

penetrated to some eternal passion, in that heart of man where it

seemed as though all were known and explored, who has produced his

thought, or his observation, or his invention, under some form, no

matter what, so it be large, great, acute, and reasonable, sane and

beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style of his own,

yet a style which finds itself the style of everybody,--in a style

that is at once new and antique, and is the contemporary of all

ages.[21]

[21] Sainte-Beuve.

* * * * *

The moral atmosphere of the office was ideal. I mean more in

the extended and not alone in our specific English sense, though

in the latter it was even perhaps more marked. There was not only

no temporizing, compromising, compounding with candor, in either

major matters or trifling; there was no partiality or ingenuity

or bland indifference by which the devil may be, and so often

is, whipped round the stump. There was in the _Nation's_ field

and conception of its function no temptation to anything of this

sort, to be sure, which consideration may conceivably qualify its

assessment of merit on the Day of Judgment--a day when we may hope

the sins of daily journalism will, in consequence of the same

consideration, be extended some leniency--but certainly cannot

obscure the fact of its conspicuous integrity. There were people

then--as now--that complained of its fairness; which involved,

to my mind, the most naïve attitude imaginable, since it was

the _Nation's_ practice that had provided the objector with his

criterion of fairness in journalism. Of course he might assert that

this was only a way of saying that the paper made extraordinary

claims which in his estimation it failed to justify; but this was

verbiage, the fact being as I have stated it.

But I also mean by moral atmosphere the peace, the serenity,

the gentleness, the self-respect, the feeling of character, that

pervaded the office. We seemed, to my sense, so recently filled

with the reactions of Park Row phenomena, "to lie at anchor in

the stream of Time," as Carlyle said of Oxford--which, actually,

we were very far from doing; there was never any doubt of the

_Nation's_ being what is now called a "live wire," especially

among those who took hold of it unwarily--as now and then some

one did. Mr. Garrison shared the first editorial room with me.

Mr. Godkin had the back office. The publication offices were in

front, occupied by the amiable Mr. St. John and his staff, which

included a gentle and aristocratic colored bookkeeper who resembled

an East Indian philosopher--plainly a Garrisonian protégé. The

silence I especially remember as delightful, and I never felt from

the first the slightest constraint; Mr. Garrison had the courtesy

that goes with active considerateness. The quiet was broken only

by the occasional interchange of conversation between us, or by

the hearty laugh of Mr. Godkin, whose laugh would have been the

most noteworthy thing about him if he had not had so many other

noteworthy characteristics; or by a visit now and then from Arthur

Sedgwick, in my time not regularly "on" the paper, who always

brought the larger world in with him (the office _was_ perhaps

a little cloistral as a rule), or the appearance of Earl Shinn

with his art or dramatic criticism--both the best written, if not

also the best we have ever had in this country, and the latter so

distinguished, I think, as to be unique.

Of course, there were visitors, contributors and candid

friends, but mainly we worked in almost Quakerish tranquillity five

days in the week during my incumbency.[22]

[22] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton

Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_.

_d._ _The Method of Repetition_

A fourth method, which may be used in connection with any other,

consists in repeating the definition over and over in different words,

from different points of view, driving home by accumulated emphasis.

The value of this method lies in its feeling of absolute sureness in

the reader's mind: once completed, the definition seems quite settled,

quite tamped down, quite clinched. It is a difficult method to employ,

for the writer is in great danger of saying exactly the same thing again

and again, forgetting to assume different points of view. From such a

definition tediousness is of course the result. The subjects treated by

this method are likely to be abstract matters upon which light is shed

from various angles, as if one poured spot lights from all sides upon

some object which remains the same but which delivers up all its phases.

Emerson often used this method, as in the following example where both

the method of repetition and that of comparison are used:

The two parties which divide the state, the party of

Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have

disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.... It

is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces.

Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the

last movement. "That which is was made by God," says Conservatism.

"He is leaving that, he is entering this other," enjoins Innovation.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of

conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It

affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it

will not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle which

conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good

and bad. The project of innovation is the best possible state

of things. Of course conservatism always has the worst of the

argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading

that to change would be to deteriorate: it must saddle itself

with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society,

must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and

stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right,

triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success. Conservatism

stands on man's confessed limitations, reform on his indisputable

infinitude; conservatism on circumstance, liberalism on power;

one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame, the other

to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is

debonair and social, reform is individual and imperious. We are

reformers in the spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand

by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform

is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for

comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold

another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase

its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no

invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence,

no husbandry. It makes a great difference to your figure and your

thought whether your foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism

never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is

not establishment, but reform. Conservatism tends to universal

seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that

men's temper governs them; that for me it avails not to trust in

principles, they will fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts

nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular

application,--law for all that does not include any one. Reform in

its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs;

it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless

pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation which ends in

hypocrisy and sensual reaction.

And so, while we do not go beyond general statements, it may

be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that

each is a good half but an impossible whole. Each exposes the

abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both

must combine.[23]

[23] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The Conservative," in _Nature, Addresses,

and Lectures_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

_e._ _The Method of Elimination_

Two methods, which are perhaps less frequently found, but which are

none the less useful, remain to be mentioned. The first is the method

of elimination, that is, the method of defining a thing by telling

what it is not, by eliminating all things with which it might become

confused. This method is of great value in defining an idea which is

often considered to mean what it actually does not. By shutting out

the erroneous interpretations, one by one, the errors are finally

disposed of. This method is most effective when not only are the wrong

interpretations excluded, but the correct idea, interpretation, is

positively stated at some point. If this is not done there lingers

in the reader's mind a taint of suspicion that either the author did

not know exactly the correct meaning, or that the subject is really

too difficult to bear real definition. And with a reader who does not

think clearly in original ways a positive statement is almost essential

lest he be unable to tell what the subject really is, after all, being

unable to supply the residue after the process of elimination has been

completed. Following this method Mr. Cross defines Socialism by showing

that it is not anarchy, is not single tax, is not communism, and is

not other systems with which it is often confused. The result is to

leave socialism standing out by itself with clearness. In the following

definition of college spirit the author has followed the method of

elimination to clear away the haze that in many minds surrounds the

subject:

College spirit is like ancestry: we are all supposed to have

it, but few of us know intimately what it is. The freshman in whose

heart beats desire to show loyalty, the graduate whose pulse stirs

as the train nears the "little old college," the alumnus who

unties his purse-strings at the clarion call of a deficit--do these

show loyalty by mere desire or by deeds? And if by deeds, by what

kind of action shall their loyalty be determined?

In the first place, college spirit is not mere voice culture.

The man who yells until his face is purple and his throat is a

candidate for the rest cure is not necessarily displaying college

spirit--though he may possess it. Yelling is not excluded; it

is merely denied the first place. For, to parody Shakespeare, a

man can yell and yell and still be a college slacker. Cheering,

indiscriminate noise making, even singing the college song with

gusto at athletic games--none of these will stamp a man as

necessarily loyal. Nor will participation in athletic sports or in

"college activities" of other natures be sufficient to declare a

man, for the participation may be of a purely selfish nature. The

man who makes a record in the sprints chiefly for his own glory,

or the man who edits the college paper because by so doing he can

"make a good thing out of it" for himself, is not possessed of

true college spirit, for college spirit demands more than mere

selfishness. In the same way, taking part in celebrations, marching

down Main Street with a flag fluttering round his ears, a sunflower

in his buttonhole, an inane grin on his face, a swagger in his

gait, and a determination to tell the whole world that his "dear

old Alma Mater" is "the finest little college in the world"--this,

too, is without avail, though it is not necessarily opposed to

college spirit. For this exhibition, also, is largely selfish.

Likewise, becoming a "grind," removing one's self from the human

fellowship that college ought to furnish in its most delightful

form, and becoming determined to prepare for a successful business

career without regard to the warm flow of human emotion through the

heart--this is not college spirit. All these harmless things are

excluded because they are primarily selfish, and college spirit is

primarily opposed to selfishness.

True college spirit is found in the man whose heart has warmed

to the love of his college, whose eyes have caught the vision of

the ideals that the college possesses, whose brain has thought

over and understood these ideals until they have become very fibre

of his being. This man will yell not for the selfish pleasure

of wallowing in sentimentality, but for the solid glory of his

college; will run and leap, will edit the paper with the desire to

make and keep the college in the front rank of athletic, social,

and intellectual life; will study hard that the college may not be

disgraced through him; will conduct himself like a gentleman that

no one may sneer at the institution which has sponsored him; will

resent any slurs upon the fair name of the college; will be willing

to sacrifice himself, his own personal glory, for the sake of the

college; will be willing to give of his money and his time until,

perhaps, it hurts. And above all, he will never forget the gleam

of idealism that he received in the old halls, the vision of his

chance to serve his fellows. The man who does these things, who

thinks these things, has true college spirit.

_f._ _The Method of Showing Origin, Cause, Effect_

The other of these two methods is that of defining by showing the origin

or causes of the subject or by showing its effects. If we can be made

to see what forces went to the making of anything, or what has resulted

from it, we shall have a fairly clear idea of the nature of the thing.

Thus we may perhaps best understand the nature of _cabinet government_

by showing how the system came into being, what need it filled, what

forces produced it. The same method might make clear _primitive Greek

drama_, _the Hanseatic League_, _fertilization of land_, _the Federal

Reserve System of Banking_, _the modern orchestra_. And by showing

the effects we might define such matters as _the Montessori method of

education_, _the Feudal System_, _anarchy_, _militarism_. The writer of

a definition after this method needs to take care that when he has shown

the various causes or effects, he surely binds them somehow together and

vitally to the subject of definition. There must be no dim feeling in

the mind of the reader that, after all, the subject is not yet clearly

limned, not yet set off from other things. The definition which follows

makes clear the origin of the mechanical engineer, and by showing what

he does, what need there was for him, what lack he fills, makes clear

what he is.

The period of systematic and scientific power development is

coincident with the true progress of the most basal of the several

branches of natural philosophy, chemistry, physics, mechanics,

thermodynamics, and the theory of elasticity of materials of

construction; and there is no doubt that the steam engine, which

was designed and built by workmen before these were formulated,

attracted the attention of philosophers who, in attempting

to explain what took place in it, created a related body of

principles by which future development was guided, and which are

now the fundamental bases for the design of the future. Those

men who became familiar with the natural sciences, and also with

the shop methods of making machinery, and who brought both to

bear on the problem of the production of machinery for specified

conditions, combining the special knowledge of the scientist and

the shop mechanic, were the first mechanical engineers; and the

profession of mechanical engineering, which is the term applied to

this sort of business, was created out of the efforts to improve

power systems, so as to make them more efficient and adapted to

all classes of service, and to render that service for the least

cost.[24]

[24] C. E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia

University Press.

Emerson makes a definition of the civilization of America in the

following selection wherein he describes the effect of American society

and life upon the individual.

The true test of civilization is, not the crops, not the

size of cities, not the census,--no, but the kind of man the

country turns out. I see the vast advantages of this country,

spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I see the immense

material prosperity,--towns on towns, states on states, and wealth

piled in the massive architecture of cities: California quartz,

mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally

alongshore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California

again. But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of

workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward

Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch

New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston,--not

these that make the real estimation. But when I look over this

constellation of cities which animate and illustrate the land, and

see how little the government has to do with their daily life, how

self-helped and self-directed all families are,--knots of men in

purely natural societies, societies of trade, of kindred blood, of

habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight

of opinion, of longer or better-directed industry; the refining

influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent

causes open to youth and labor: when I see how much each virtuous

and gifted person whom all men consider, lives affectionately with

scores of people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with

greatest reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in

the symmetry and force of their qualities,--I see what cubic values

America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than

great cities or enormous wealth.[25]

[25] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Civilization," in _Society and Solitude_.

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

These, then, are the various methods that are in common use. The list

might be extended, but perhaps enough varieties have been discussed to

be of practical value. The choice of method will depend on the result

that the writer wishes to accomplish; at times he will wish to please

the reader's fancy with an illustration, and again he may wish to

contrast the subject to something else. If at any time more methods than

one are useful, there is not the slightest objection to combining; in

fact, most definitions of any length will be found to have more than one

method employed. Remember that the methods were made for you, not you

for the methods. And so long as you make your subject clear, so long as

you set it off by itself in a class, distinct from other members of the

class, you can be sure of the value of your definition.

EXERCISES

I. Discover the restricting adjectives or phrases that will reduce

the number of differentia required by the genus in the following

definitions:

1. Vaudeville is _an entertainment_.

2. Pneumonia is _a disease_.

3. The Browning gun is _a machine_.

4. Landscape gardening is _an occupation_.

5. Smelting is _an operation_.

6. Lyrics are _writing_.

7. A college diploma is _a statement by a body of men_.

8. Rotation of crops is _a system_.

9. The Republican party is _an organization_.

10. Anglo-Saxon is _a language_.

11. An axe is _a tool_.

12. A printing press is _a steel structure_.

13. A hair-net is _weaving_.

14. Literature is _writing_.

15. Militarism is _an attitude of mind_.

II. Write a definition of any of the following, showing how the

subject has shifted its genus by its development, as the

_clearing-house_ (page 75) has.

1. The Temperance Movement (sentimental crusade; sensible

campaign for efficiency).

2. War.

3. Incantation (means of salvation; curiosity).

4. Household Science (drudgery; occupation).

5. Aristocracy (through physical strength; through birth;

through property).

6. Justice (B.C.; A.D.).

7. Chemistry (magic; utility).

8. The Presidency of the United States (as changed by Mr.

Wilson's procedure with Congress).

9. The Theater (under Puritan and Cavalier).

10. Electricity (curiosity; fearsome thing; utility).

Of course any one of these ten subjects can be defined with a

changeless genus, but such a genus is likely to be in the realm

of the abstract, pretty thoroughly divorced from practical life.

III. From the following definitions taken from Webster's New

International Dictionary construct definitions of a more

amplified, pleasing nature, after the manner of the definition of

_war correspondents_.

1. _Laziness_ is the state of being disinclined to action or

exertion; averse to labor; indolent; idle; slothful.

2. _Efficiency_ is the quality of being efficient, of producing

an effect or effects; efficient power or action.

3. A _department store_ is a store keeping a great variety of

goods which are arranged in several departments, especially

one with dry goods as the principal stock.

4. _Metabolism_ is the sum of the processes concerned in the

building up of protoplasm and its destruction incidental to

the manifestation of vital phenomena; the chemical changes

proceeding continually in living cells, by which the energy

is provided for the vital processes and activities and new

material is assimilated to repair the waste.

5. _Judgment_ is the faculty of judging or deciding rightly,

justly, or wisely; good sense; as, a man of judgment; a

politician without judgment.

6. _Puddling_ is the art or process of converting cast iron into

wrought iron, or, now rarely, steel by subjecting it to

intense heat and frequent stirring in a reverberatory furnace

in the presence of oxidizing substances, by which it is freed

from a portion of its carbon and other impurities.

7. _Overhead cost_ is the general expenses of a business, as

distinct from those caused by particular pieces of traffic.

8. A _joke_ is something said or done for the sake of exciting a

laugh; something witty or sportive (commonly indicating more

of hilarity or humor than jest).

9. A _diplomat_ is one employed or skilled in the art and

practice of conducting negotiations between nations, as in

arranging treaties; performing the business or art of

conducting international discourse.

10. A _visionary_ is one who relies, or tends to rely, on

visions, or impractical ideas, projects, or the like; an

impractical person.

11. An _entrepreneur_ is an employer in his character of one who

assumes the risk and management of business.

12. _Loyalty_ is fidelity to a superior, or to duty, love, etc.

13. A _prig_ is one narrowly and self-consciously engrossed in

his own mental or spiritual attainments; one guilty of moral

or intellectual foppery; a conceited precisian.

14. _Heresy_ is an opinion held in opposition to the established

or commonly received doctrine, and tending to promote

division or dissension.

15. _Eugenics_ is the science of improving stock, whether human

or animal, or of improving plants.

IV. Compare the definitions of the following which you find in the

Century Dictionary, the Standard Dictionary, the Webster's New

International Dictionary and the New English Dictionary; find the

common elements, and make a definition of your own.

1. Literature.

2. Living wage.

3. Capillary attraction.

4. Sympathy.

5. Classicism.

6. Inertia.

7. Fodder.

8. Religion.

9. Introspection.

10. Individuality.

11. Finance.

12. Capital.

13. Soil physics.

14. Progress.

15. Narrow-mindedness.

V. Look up the definitions of the following terms and estimate the

resulting amount of increase in your knowledge of the subject

which includes the terms. Do you find any stimulus toward

_thinking_ about the subject? What would you say, as the result

of this investigation, about the value of definitions? What does

Coleridge mean by his statement "Language thinks for us"?

1. _Religion_: awe, reverence, duty, mystery, peace, priest,

worship, loyalty, prayer, supplication, trust,

divinity, god, service, church, temple, heaven,

fate.

2. _Socialism_: property, social classes, economic rights,

capital, labor, wages, the masses, aristocracy,

envy, self-respect, economic distribution,

labor union, boycott, strike, lock-out,

materialism, profit-sharing.

3. _Ability_: genius, wit, talent, insight, judgment,

perseverance, logic, imagination, originality,

intellectuality, vitality.

4. _Music_: sound, rhythm, melody, harmony, orchestra,

interval (musical), key, beat, tonic,

modulation, musical register, polyphony,

monophony, sonata, oratorio, musical scale,

diatonic, chromatic, tempo.

5. _Democracy_: independence, suffrage, representation,

equality, popular, coöperation.

VI. Are the two statements which follow definitions? If not, why not?

What would be the effect of the use of definitions of this type

in argument? Write a defining theme with such a definition as its

nucleus, and test its value.

1. Beauty is its own excuse for being.

2. Virtue is its own reward.

VII. In the following definitions[26] what are the genera? Are the

definitions fair? How would you criticize them in general? Write

a theme using the differentia noted, and trying to catch in the

theme the spirit that is shown in the lists.

[26] From B. L. T.'s "The Line o' Type Column." By courtesy of the

_Chicago Tribune_.

Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics,

Bacon, the up-lift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension,

Euripides, "eyether," pâté de fois gras, lemon phosphate,

Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson.

Low-highbrow: Municipal government, Kipling,

socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf,

grand opera, bridge, chicken à la Maryland, "eether," stocks

and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in

private.

High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball,

moving pictures, small steak medium, whiskey, Robert W.

Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends.

Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven't

came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the Duchess,

beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse

John, chewing gum in public.

VIII. Expand the following definition[27] into a theme, using the

combined methods of illustration and comparison. What is the

value of having the heart of the definition stated before the

theme is begun?

[27] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the

publishers, Boni & Liveright.

The worthy artist or craftsman is he who serves

the physical and moral senses by feeding them with pictures,

musical compositions, pleasant houses and gardens, good

clothes and fine implements, poems, fictions, essays, and

dramas which call the heightened senses and ennobled faculties

into pleasurable activity. The great artist is he who goes a

step beyond the demand, and, by supplying works of a higher

beauty and a higher interest than have yet been perceived,

succeeds, after a brief struggle with its strangeness, in

adding this fresh extension of sense to the heritage of the

race.

IX. See "Poverty" (page 84).

1. In view of the fact that Gissing uses so slight an

illustration to fix his ideal, what makes the definition

valuable? Compare the value of this definition with another

of the same subject such as you might find in a text on

Sociology or Economics.

2. Define by illustration any of the following: Homesickness,

Jealousy, Despair, Discouragement, Vulgarity, Opulence,

Misery, Cheapness, Tenacity, Anger, Adaptability, Man of

action, Man of executive ability, Statesman, Ward boss, Man

of learning, Luck, Courage, Business success, "Bonehead

Play," Political shrewdness, The "College Widow," Perfect

technique, Up-to-date factory, Social tact, A Snob, "Some

Kid," Other-worldliness, A Gentleman, A Lady, A "real meal,"

A fighting chance, Good breeding, A "Social climber,"

Community music, Poetic justice, A wage-slave, A political

ring, Good team-work, Elasticity of mind, Bigotry.

How far is definition by illustration concerned

with _morality_? Could you, for example, so illustrate

_courage_ as to seem to exclude a really courageous person?

What necessity in employing this method does your answer to

the preceding question indicate?

Define any of the following: The ideal leader of

the "gang," The ideal ward boss, The ideal town librarian,

The ideal teacher, The ideal military general, captain,

corporal, The ideal headwaiter, The ideal foreman in a

factory, The ideal soda-clerk, The ideal athletic coach, The

ideal intellectual leader, The ideal orchestra conductor, The

ideal mayor, The ideal "boss" in a steel mill, on a farm, of

an engineering gang, of cotton pickers, of lumberjacks.

Is the definition of a _Responsible Statesman_ any

the less sound because the differentia are duties rather than

facts? Write a theme explaining why an executive too far

"ahead of his times" fails of immediate results.

3. In the manner of the definition of _Amortization_, write a

definition of the following: Collective buying, Sabotage,

Montessori method of education, Dry cleaning, Dry farming.

X. What is the chief value of the following selection as a real

definition? Which is of greater value, this selection or the kind

of definition that would be found in a text on geography?

Define, in a manner similar to that of the selection: New

England, The Middle West, The "Old Dominion," "The Cradle of

Liberty," "Gotham," The "Gold Coast," "Dixie," "The Old South,"

"The Auld Sod," "The Corn Belt," "The Wheat Belt," The Anthracite

Region, The Land of Big Game, "The Land of Heart's Desire," "The

Cockpit of Europe," "The Vacation Land."

Between the Seine and the Rhine lay once a beautiful

land wherein more history was made, and recorded in old

monuments full of grace and grandeur and fancy, than in

almost any other region of the world. The old names were

best, for each aroused memory and begot strange dreams:

Flanders, Brabant, the Palatinate; Picardy, Valois, Champagne,

Franche-Comté; Artois, Burgundy, and Bar. And the town names

ring with the same sonorous melody, evoking the ghosts of a

great and indelible past: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, and Liége;

Aix-la-Chapelle, Coblenz, and Trêves; Ypres and Lille, Tournai

and Fontenoy, Arras and Malplaquet; Laon, Nancy, Verdun, and

Varennes; Amiens, Soissons, and Reims. Cæsar, Charlemagne, St.

Louis, Napoleon, with proconsuls, paladins, crusaders, and

marshals unnumbered; kings, prince-bishops, monks, knights,

and aureoled saints take form and shape again at the clang of

the splendid names.

It is not a large land, this Heart of Europe; three

hundred and fifty miles, perhaps, from the Alps to the sea,

and not more than two hundred and fifty from the Seine at

Paris to the Rhine at Cologne; half the size, shall we say, of

Texas; but what Europe was for the thousand years following

the fall of Rome, this little country--or the men that made

it great--was responsible. Add the rest of Normandy, and the

spiritual energy of the Holy See, and with a varying and

sometimes negligible influence from the Teutonic lands beyond

the Rhine, and you have the mainsprings of mediævalism, even

though for its full manifestation you must take into account

the men in the far countries of the Italian peninsula and the

Iberian, in France and England, Bavaria, Saxony, Bohemia.[28]

[28] Ralph Adams Cram: _The Heart of Europe_. By courtesy of the

publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright,

1915.

XI. Note the two selections that follow, in comparison with the

definitions of a responsible statesman and quack novels on pages

87 and 88, and write a definition of any of the following groups,

using the method of comparison and contrast.

A sale of personal property is the transfer of its

general ownership from one person to another for a price

in money. It is almost always the result of a contract

between the seller and the buyer. If the contract provides

for the transfer of ownership at once the transaction is

called "a present sale," or "a bargain and sale," or "an

executed contract of sale." If it provides for the transfer

of ownership at some future time it is called "a contract to

sell," or "an executory contract of sale."

The business transaction most nearly resembling a

sale is that of barter, or the transfer of one article of

personal property for another, as when A and B trade horses,

or wagons, or oats, or cows. It differs from a sale only

in this, that the consideration for each transfer is the

counter-transfer of a chattel instead of money. Next to barter

in its likeness to sale is a mortgage of personal property,

usually called a chattel mortgage. This, in form, is a sale,

but it contains a proviso that if the mortgagor pays a certain

amount of money, or does some other act, at a stipulated time,

the sale shall be void. Even though the mortgagor does not

perform the act promised at the agreed time, he still has the

right to redeem the property from the mortgage by paying his

debt with interest. In other words, a chattel mortgage does

not transfer general ownership, or absolute property in the

chattels, while a sale does.

A sale differs from a bailment.... The former is the

transfer of title to goods, the latter of their possession.

A bailee undertakes to restore to the bailor the very thing

bailed, although it may be in a changed form, while the buyer

is to pay money to the seller for the subject-matter of their

contract.[29]

[29] Francis M. Burdick: _The Essentials of Business Law_. By courtesy

of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright,

1902 and 1908.

The familiar distinction between the poetic and the

scientific temper is another way of stating the same

difference. The one fuses or crystallizes external objects

and circumstances in the medium of human feeling and passion;

the other is concerned with the relations of objects and

circumstances among themselves, including in them all

the facts of human consciousness, and with the discovery

and classification of these relations. There is, too, a

corresponding distinction between the aspects which conduct,

character, social movement, and the objects of nature are able

to present, according as we scrutinize them with a view to

exactitude of knowledge, or are stirred by some appeal which

they make to our various faculties and forms of sensibility,

our tenderness, sympathy, awe, terror, love of beauty, and all

the other emotions in this momentous catalogue. The starry

heavens have one side for the astronomer, as astronomer, and

another for the poet, as poet. The nightingale, the skylark,

the cuckoo, move one sort of interest in an ornithologist,

and a very different sort in a Shelley or a Wordsworth. The

hoary and stupendous formations of the inorganic world, the

thousand tribes of insects, the great universe of plants,

from those whose size and form and hue make us afraid as if

they were deadly monsters, down to "the meanest flower that

blows," all these are clothed with one set of attributes by

scientific intelligence, and with another by sentiment, fancy,

and imaginative association.[30]

[30] John Morley: _Miscellanies_, vol. I. By courtesy of the

publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City.

1. Autocracy and Democracy.

2. Fame and Notoriety.

3. Cribbing and Lying.

4. Immorality and Unconventionality.

5. Musician and Music Lover.

6. Popularity and Cheapness.

7. Enthusiast and Crank.

8. An Irish Bull and a Paradox.

9. Puppy Love and Real Love.

10. Boiling and Broiling.

11. Honesty and Truthfulness.

12. White Lies and Falsehoods.

13. Liberty and License.

14. Wages and Unearned Increment.

15. Knowledge and Scholarship.

16. Religion and Superstition.

17. Broadmindedness and Spinelessness.

18. Architecture and Architectural Engineering.

19. Socialism and Anarchy.

20. Wit and Humor.

21. Enough and Sufficient.

22. Genetic Heredity and Social Heredity.

23. Lying and Diplomacy.

24. Theology and Religion.

25. Force, Energy, and Power.

26. Sanitary Engineers and Plumbers.

27. Business, Trade, and Commerce.

28. "Kidding" and Taunting.

29. Eminence and Prominence.

30. Realism and Romanticism.

31. Kinetic and Potential Energy.

32. Popular and Permanent Literature.

33. A "Gentleman Farmer" and a Producer.

34. An Employer and a Slave-driver.

35. A Practical Joke and a "Mean Trick."

Is the following selection properly a definition by the method

of comparison? What is defined? Are the general statements that

serve as background true? In how far does the whole selection

depend for its validity upon the truth of these general

statements?

There is a difference between boys and men, but it

is a difference of self-knowledge chiefly. A boy wants to do

everything because he does not know he cannot; a man wants to

do something because he knows he cannot do everything; a boy

always fails, and a man sometimes succeeds because the man

knows and the boy does not know. A man is better than a boy

because he knows better; he has learned by experience that

what is a harm to others is a greater harm to himself, and

he would rather not do it. But a boy hardly knows what harm

is, and he does it mostly without realizing that it hurts. He

cannot invent anything, he can only imitate; and it is easier

to imitate evil than good. You can imitate war, but how are

you going to imitate peace? So a boy passes his leisure in

contriving mischief. If you get another fellow to walk into a

wasp's camp, you can see him jump and hear him howl, but if

you do not, then nothing at all happens. If you set a dog to

chase a cat up a tree, then something has been done; but if

you do not set the dog on the cat, then the cat just lies in

the sun and sleeps and you lose your time. If a boy could find

out some way of doing good, so that he could be active in it,

very likely he would want to do good now and then; but as he

cannot, he very seldom wants to do good.[31]

[31] William Dean Howells: _A Boy's Town_. By courtesy of the

publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York City. Copyright, 1890.

XII. Does the style of the definition of moral atmosphere (page 9) fit

well with the subject? Would the definition be more effective if

written in a more formal style?

Define:

1. The scholarly atmosphere of a university.

2. The business atmosphere of the Stock Exchange.

3. The holy atmosphere of a large church.

4. The inhuman atmosphere of an ordinary criminal court.

5. The human atmosphere of a reunion (of a class, a family, a

group of friends).

6. The majestic atmosphere of Niagara Falls.

7. The beautiful atmosphere of a pond of skaters.

{inspiring }

8. The {overpowering} atmosphere of a steel mill.

{brutal }

{beautiful }

9. The calm atmosphere of a dairy farm.

XIII. Does the following selection serve to define _honor_ as too

difficult of attainment, as too closely bound up with fighting?

Is any definition of _privilege_ implied? Define honor as taught

in a college and honor as taught in the business world. Can a

State University afford to maintain the kind of honor that forces

it to "remain loyal to unpopular causes and painful truths"? Is

the honor that seeks "to maintain faith even with the devil"

foolish? Write a report on the state of honor in your college or

university such as Washington or Lincoln would have written after

investigating conditions in the student politics of the

institution, or conditions in examinations and quizzes.

Honor, perhaps because it is associated in the

public mind with old ideas of dueling and paying gambling

debts, and in general with the habits, good and bad, of

a privileged class, is not in high repute with a modern

industrial community, where bankruptcy laws, the letter of

the statute book, the current morality of an easy-going,

good-natured, success-loving people, mark out a smoother path.

But the business of a college is not to fit a boy for the

world, but to fit him to mould the world to his ideal. Honor

is not necessarily old-fashioned and antiquated; it will adapt

itself to the present and to the future. If it is arbitrary,

or at least has an arbitrary element, so are most codes of

law. If honor belongs to a privileged class, it is because

it makes a privileged class; a body of men whose privilege

it is to speak out in the scorn of consequence, to keep an

oath to their own hurt, to remain loyal to unpopular causes

and painful truths, to maintain faith even with the devil,

and not swerve for rewards, prizes, popularity, or any of the

blandishments of success. Because it is arbitrary, because it

has rules, it needs to be taught. To teach a code of honor is

one of the main purposes of education; a college cannot say,

"We teach academic studies," and throw the responsibility for

honor on parents, on preliminary schools, on undergraduate

opinion, on each boy's conscience. Honor is taught by the

companionship, the standards, the ideals, the talk, the

actions of honorable men; it is taught by honoring honorable

failure and turning the back on all manner of dishonorable

success.[32]

[32] Henry Dwight Sedgwick: _The New American Type_. Houghton Mifflin

Company, Boston, publishers.

XIV. Define, by showing the origin, any of the following:

Highway Engineering, The County Agricultural Adviser, Customs

Officer, A private secretary, The linotype machine, National

public opinion, The Federal Reserve Board, The "Spoils System,"

The American Federation of Labor, American "Moral Leadership" in

1918, The Caste System, The mechanical stoker, The canal lock,

The trial balance sheet, The Babcock Test.

XV. Are the following statements true definitions? Wherein does their

worth consist? What causes any weakness that they may have?

1. Life is one long process of getting tired.

2. Life is the distribution of an error--or errors.

3. Life is eight parts cards and two parts play; the unseen

world is made manifest to us in the play.

4. Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from

insufficient premises.

5. The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a

stewpan and the whole fixed upon stilts.

6. Morality is the custom of one's country and the current

feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal

country.

7. Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women.

Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional

truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of

both.

8. Going to your doctor is having such a row with your cells

that you refer them to your solicitor. Sometimes you, as it

were, strike against them and stop their food, when they go

on strike against yourself. Sometimes you file a bill in

chancery against them and go to bed.[33]

[33] All these are from _The Note-Books of Samuel Butler_, published

by A. C. Fifield, London.

XVI. In the light of the following definition of _Superiority of

Status_ write a definition of any of the following: Superiority

of birth, Superiority of training, Superiority of vitality,

Superiority of environment, Superiority of patronage.

There is another sort of artificial superiority which

also returns an artificial rent: the superiority of pure

status. What are called "superiors" are just as necessary

in social organization as a keystone is in an arch; but the

keystone is made of no better material than any other parts of

a bridge; its importance is conferred upon it by its position,

not its position by its importance. If half-a-dozen men are

cast adrift in a sailing-boat, they will need a captain. It

seems simple enough for them to choose the ablest man; but

there may easily be no ablest man. The whole six, or four

out of the six, or two out of the six, may be apparently

equally fit for the post. In that case, the captain must be

elected by lot; but the moment he assumes his authority, that

authority makes him at once literally the ablest man in the

boat. He has the powers which the other five have given him

for their own good. Take another instance. Napoleon gained the

command of the French army because he was the ablest general

in France. But suppose every individual in the French army

had been a Napoleon also! None the less a commander-in-chief,

with his whole hierarchy of subalterns, would have had to

be appointed--by lot if you like--and here, again, from the

moment the lot was cast, the particular Napoleon who drew the

straw for the commander-in-chief would have been the great,

the all-powerful Napoleon, much more able than the Napoleons

who were corporals and privates. After a year, the difference

in ability between the men who had been doing nothing but

sentry duty, under no strain of responsibility, and the man

who had been commanding the army would have been enormous.

As "the defenders of the system of Conservatism" well know,

we have for centuries made able men out of ordinary ones by

allowing them to inherit exceptional power and status; and

the success of the plan in the phase of social development to

which it was proper was due to the fact that, provided the

favored man was really an ordinary man, and not a duffer, the

extraordinary power conferred on him did effectually create

extraordinary ability as compared with that of an agricultural

laborer, for example, of equal natural endowments. The

gentleman, the lord, the king, all discharging social

functions of which the laborer is incapable, are products as

artificial as queen bees. Their superiority is produced by

giving them a superior status, just as the inferiority of the

laborer is produced by giving him an inferior status. But the

superior income which is the appanage of superior status is

not rent of ability. It is a payment made to a man to exercise

normal ability, in an abnormal situation. Rent of ability is

what a man gets by exercising abnormal ability in a normal

situation.[34]

[34] George Bernard Shaw: _Socialism and Superior Brains_. By courtesy

of the publishers, John Lane Company.

XVII. In the following selection how many definitions occur, or how

many things are defined? Do you understand what the author says?

How many words do you have to look up in the dictionary before

you understand the article? Could the author have made the

subject clear in a sensible extent of space?

What would you say is the chief virtue of the selection? How is

it gained? For what kind of audience was the article written?

What was the author's controlling purpose? Point out how he

attains it.

Do you find any _pattern-designers_ among novelists, poets,

architects, landscape gardeners? Name a novel, a poem, a

building, a park, which is primarily a pattern-design. Name one

which is not a pattern-design so much as a dramatic expression.

Which is the more significant? Which is more difficult to make?

Define: Futurist painting, Free verse, Social morality, in

relation to their preceding forms. Explain, through definition,

the controversy between Paganism and Christianity, between

Monarchy and Democracy, between Classical Education and

Industrial Education, between Party Politics and Independent

Politics, between Established Religion and Non-Conformist Views.

Music is like drawing, in that it can be purely decorative,

or purely dramatic, or anything between the two.... You

can compose a graceful, symmetrical sound-pattern that exists

solely for the sake of its own grace and symmetry. Or you can

compose music to heighten the expression of human emotion;

and such music will be intensely affecting in the presence

of that emotion, and utter nonsense apart from it. For

examples of pure pattern-designing in music I should have

to go back to the old music of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and

fifteenth centuries ... designed to affect the hearer solely

by its beauty of sound and grace and ingenuity of pattern;

absolute music, represented to-day in the formal sonata and

symphony....

The first modern dramatic composers accepted as binding

the rules of good pattern-designing in sound; and this

absurdity was made to appear practicable from the fact that

Mozart had such an extraordinary command of his art that his

operas contain numbers which, though they seem to follow the

dramatic play of emotion and character, without reference to

any other consideration whatever, are seen, upon examining

them from the point of view of the absolute musician, to be

perfectly symmetrical sound-patterns.... Even Mozart himself

broke away in all directions, and was violently attacked by

his contemporaries for doing so, the accusations levelled at

him being exactly those with which the opponents of Wagner so

often pester ourselves. Wagner completed the emancipation of

the dramatic musician from these laws of pattern-designing;

and we now have operas, and very good ones, too, written by

composers not musicians in the old sense at all: that is, they

are not pattern-designers; they do not compose music apart

from drama.

The dramatic development also touched purely instrumental

music. Liszt tried hard to extricate himself from pianoforte

arabesques, and become a tone poet like his friend Wagner.

He wanted his symphonic poems to express emotions and

their development. And he defined the emotion by connecting

it with some known story, poem, or even picture: Mazeppa,

Victor Hugo's Les Preludes, Kaulbach's Die Hunnenschlacht,

or the like. But the moment you try to make an instrumental

composition follow a story, you are forced to abandon the

decorative pattern forms, since all patterns consist of

some form which is repeated over and over again, and which

generally consists in itself of a repetition of two similar

halves. For example, if you take a playing-card (say the five

of diamonds) as a simple example of pattern, you find not only

that the diamond pattern is repeated five times, but that each

established form of a symphony is essentially a pattern form

involving just such symmetrical repetitions; and, since a

story does not repeat itself, but pursues a continuous chain

of fresh incident and correspondingly varied emotions, Liszt

invented the symphonic poem, a perfectly simple and fitting

common-sense form for his purpose, and one which makes Les

Preludes much plainer sailing for the ordinary hearer than

Mendelssohn's Melusine overture or Raff's Lenore or Im Walde

symphonies, in both of which the formal repetitions would

stamp Raff as a madman if we did not know that they were mere

superstitions.[35]

[35] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_, "Wagnerism." By

courtesy of the publishers, Boni & Liveright.