ANALYSIS
Suppose that the president of a railroad asked you to report on the
feasibility of a proposed line through a range of hills; or that you
found it necessary to prove to an over-conservative farmer that he
should erect a hollow-tile silo at once; or that your duty as chairman
of the town playground committee led you to examine an empty lot for
its possibilities; or that, as an expert in finance, you were trying
to learn the cause of the deficit in a country club's accounts. In the
first case you would examine the proposed route for its practicability,
would estimate the grades to be reduced, would look into the question of
drainage, would consider the possibility of landslides, would survey the
quality of the road-bed: all with a view to making a complete report on
the practicability of the route proposed. In the other cases you would
determine the conditions in general that you confronted, would answer
the questions: what is the value of a hollow-tile silo? why is this site
suitable for a playground? what is wrong with the finances of this club?
Such tasks as these occur in life all the time; in college they confront
one whenever an inconsiderate instructor asks for a term paper on, say,
"Conditions in New York that Made the Tweed Ring Possible," or "The
Influence of the Great War on Dyestuffs," or "Tennyson's Early Training
as an Influence on his Poetry," or some other subject. In every one of
these cases the writer who attempts to answer the questions involved is
writing analysis, for _Analysis is the breaking up of a subject into its
component parts, seeing of what it is composed_.
In every such case you would wish, first of all, to tell the truth.
Of what use would your analysis be if you incorrectly estimated the
drainage of the proposed railway route and the company had to expend
thousands of dollars in fighting improper seepage? Unless the analysis
was accurate, it would be useless or worse. But suppose that you told
the truth about the site for the playground, its central position, its
wealth of shade, its proper soil conditions, and yet forgot to take into
account the sluggish, noisome stream that flowed on one side of the plot
and bred disease? Your report would be valueless because it would be, in
a vital point, quite lacking. In other words, it would be incomplete.
For practical purposes it would therefore, of course, be untrue.
If you wish to write an analysis, then, your path is straight, and it
leads between the two virtues of truth and thoroughness. Your catechism
should be: Have I hugged my fact close and told the truth about it?,
and, Have I really covered the ground?
The question of truth enters into every analysis; none may falsify.
Completeness, on the other hand, is a more relative matter. In the
report of a tariff commission it is essential; all the ground must
be covered. In a thorough survey of Beethoven's music no sonata or
quartette may be omitted. In determining the causes of an epidemic
no clue is to be left unexamined until all possibilities have been
exhausted. In the case of the term paper mentioned above, on the other
hand, "Tennyson's Early Training as an Influence on his Poetry," not
everything in his early life can be considered in anything short of
a volume. In such a case you may well be puzzled what to do until
you are suddenly cheered by the thought that your task is primarily
one of interpretation, that what you are seeking is the _spirit_ of
the training. There would seem, therefore, to be various degrees of
completeness in analysis. On the basis of completeness, then, we may
divide analysis into the two classes of the _Formal_ and the _Informal_.
The Two Classes of Analysis
Formal analysis is sometimes called _logical analysis_--that is,
complete, as in the report of a tariff commission--because it continues
its splitting into subheadings until the demands of the thought are
entirely satisfied. Such thorough meeting of all demands might well
occur in an analysis of trades-unions, or methods of heating houses, or
such subjects. Informal analysis, on the other hand, which is sometimes
called _literary analysis_, does not attempt to be so thorough, but
aims rather at giving the core of the subject, at making the spirit
of it clear to the reader. For example, Mr. P. E. More in an essay
on Tennyson, which is primarily an informal analysis, makes one main
point, that "Tennyson was the Victorian Age." This he divides into
three headings: (1) Tennyson was humanly loved by the great Victorians;
(2) Tennyson was the poet of compromise; (3) Tennyson was the poet of
insight. Now in these three points Mr. More has not said all that he
could say, in fact he has omitted many things that from some angle
would be important, but he has said those things truthfully that are
needed for a proper interpretation of the subject, for a sufficient
illumination of it, for showing its spirit. It is, therefore, a piece of
informal analysis.
The two examples which follow illustrate formal and informal analysis,
the first one classifying rock drills thoroughly, and the second very
informally discussing some odds against Shakespeare.
Hammer drills may be classed under several heads, as follows:
(1) Those mounted on a cradle like a piston drill and fed forward
by a screw; (2) those used and held in the hand; and (3) those used
and mounted on an air-fed arrangement. The last two classes are
often interchangeable.
Mr. Leyner, though now making drills of the latter classes,
was the pioneer of the large 3-inch diameter piston machine to be
worked in competition with large piston drills. The smaller Leyner
Rock Terrier drill was brought out for stopping and driving; it
could not, apparently, compete with machines of other classes.
When the drills are thus divided we have:
1. Cradle drills--Leyner, Leyner Rock Terrier, Stephens
Imperial hammer drills and the Kimber.
2. Drills used only with air feed--Gordon drill and the large
sizes of the Murphy, Little Wonder, and others.
3. Drills used held in the hand or with air feed--Murphy,
Flottman, Cleveland, Little Wonder, Shaw, Hardy Nipper, Sinclair,
Sullivan, Little Jap, Little Imp, Traylor, and others. Again, they
may be divided into those that are valveless, with the differential
piston or hammer itself acting as a valve. The Murphy, Sinclair,
Little Wonder, Shaw, Little Imp, Leyner Rock Terrier, and Kimber
drills belong to this class. The large Leyner drill is worked by a
spool valve resembling that of the Slugger drill; the Flottman by a
ball valve; the Little Jap by an axial valve; the Gordon drill, by
a spool valve set at one end of the cylinder at right angles to it;
the Waugh and Sullivan drills by spool valves set in the same axial
line as the cylinder; the Hardy Nipper, and the Stephens Imperial
hammer drills by an air-moved slide-valve set midway on the side of
the cylinder; the Cleveland by a spool set towards the rear of the
cylinder.
They may again be divided into those drills in which the
piston hammer delivers its blow on the end of the steel itself. A
collar is placed on the drill to prevent its entering the cylinder.
The other class has an anvil block or striking pin. This anvil
block fits into the end of the cylinder between the piston and the
steel. It receives and transmits the blow, and also prevents the
drill end from entering the cylinder.[36]
[36] Eustace M. Weston: _Rock Drills_. By courtesy of the publishers,
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Copyright.
* * * * *
Powerful among the enemies of Shakespeare are the commentator
and the elocutionist; the commentator because, not knowing
Shakespeare's language, he sharpens his faculties to examine
propositions advanced by an eminent lecturer from the Midlands,
instead of sensitizing his artistic faculty to receive the
impression of moods and inflexions of being conveyed by word-music;
the elocutionist because he is a born fool, in which capacity,
observing with pain that poets have a weakness for imparting to
their dramatic dialog a quality which he describes and deplores
as "sing-song," he devotes his life to the art of breaking up
verse in such a way as to make it sound like insanely pompous
prose. The effect of this on Shakespeare's earlier verse, which
is full of the naïve delight of pure oscillation, to be enjoyed
as an Italian enjoys a barcarolle, or a child a swing, or a baby
a rocking-cradle, is destructively stupid. In the later plays,
where the barcarolle measure has evolved into much more varied and
complex rhythms, it does not matter so much, since the work is no
longer simple enough for a fool to pick to pieces. But in every
play from _Love's Labour's Lost_ to _Henry V_, the elocutionist
meddles simply as a murderer, and ought to be dealt with as such
without benefit of clergy. To our young people studying for the
stage I say, with all solemnity, learn how to pronounce the English
alphabet clearly and beautifully from some person who is at once an
artist and a phonetic expert. And then leave blank verse patiently
alone until you have experienced emotion deep enough to crave for
poetic expression, at which point verse will seem an absolutely
natural and real form of speech to you. Meanwhile, if any pedant,
with an uncultivated heart and a theoretic ear, proposes to teach
you to recite, send instantly for the police.[37]
[37] George Bernard Shaw: _Dramatic Opinions and Essays_. Archibald
Constable & Co., Ltd., London, publishers.
Analyses are to be divided also upon the basis of whether the subject is
an individual or a group of individuals, that is, whether the subject
is, for example, the quality of patriotism, which is to be analyzed
into its components, or, in the second place, shade trees, which are to
be grouped into the classes which together constitute such trees. Of
these two kinds of analysis we call the first _Partition_ and the second
_Classification_. The logical process is the same in the two cases, in
that it divides the subject; the difference lies in the fact that in the
first case the subject is always single, though it may of course be
complicated, and in the second it is always plural, and may contain a
very large number of individuals, as for example the human race--all the
billions of all the ages gone and yet to come.
In this treatment of analysis you will find the main divisions made
on the basis of formality and the matter of single or plural subject
treated under each of the other headings.
Formal Analysis
Formal analysis, which requires completeness of division,--which is
not well done until every individual case is accounted for, or, in
Partition, every quality or factor or part,--is found in reports to
corporations, in estimates of conditions for some society, in government
documents, in textbooks, and in other kinds of writing where detailed
and complete information is necessary for judgment. A report to the city
of Chicago on the subject of the smoke nuisance will be valuable largely
as it entirely covers the ground, discovers all the conditions that the
city has to face. Such a report will be primarily a partition of the
question, though it may employ classification of various like situations
or conditions. Likewise an account of the game birds of North America
will be a formal analysis only if every kind of game bird is given a
place in the account. The object of formal classification and partition
is to give information, to array facts completely. The following
classification of oriental rugs, which in its course also employs
definition, or a close approach to it, will be finally sufficient only
if no rug can be found which is not included within the classes named.
The partition of the character of Queen Elizabeth will be of lasting
value as formal partition only if it really accounts for the total
character of the subject. That it makes only two main divisions is in no
way indicative of its completeness; the question is merely, are all the
qualities included under those two headings?
It is a common impression that oriental rugs are as difficult
to know as the 320,000 specimens of plants, and the 20,000,000
forms of animal life that Herbert Spencer advised for the teaching
of boys. This impression is wrong. There are only six groups or
families of oriental rugs, and less than fifty common kinds. The
novice can learn to distinguish the six families in sixty minutes.
He would confuse them occasionally on so short acquaintance, but a
college examiner would give him a passing grade.
Persian rugs are the rugs that are profusely decorated with
a great variety of flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional birds
and animals, woven free hand, with purely decorative intent. India
rugs are those in which flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional
animals are woven as they appear in nature. Early Indian weavers
transcribed flowers to rugs as if they were botanists; modern
Indian weavers are copyists of Persian patterns and their copies
are plainly not originals.
In broad generalization, therefore, the two families of
oriental rugs that are decorated almost exclusively with flowers
have distinct styles that render their identification comparatively
easy.
The Turkoman and Caucasian families of oriental rugs also
pair off by themselves. They are the rugs of almost pure geometric
linear design. Turkoman rugs, comprising the products of Turkestan,
Bokhara, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan, are red rugs with web or
open ends, woven in the patterns of the kindergarten--squares,
diamonds, octagons, etc. That wild tribes should dye their wools in
the shades of blood and weave the designs of childhood is fitting
and logical.
Caucasian rugs differ from Turkoman rugs in being dyed in
other colors than blood red, in omitting the apron ends, and
in being more crowded, elaborate, and pretentious in geometric
linear pattern. The Caucasian weaver's distinction as the oriental
cartoonist, the expert in wooden men, women, and animals, is
well deserved. He holds the oriental rug patent on Noah's ark
designs. Incidentally Mount Ararat and Noah's grave, "shown" near
Nakhitchevan, are located on the southern border of his country.
Chinese and Turkish rugs pair off almost as logically as the
other rug families, although they are totally unlike in appearance.
They contain both geometric linear and floral designs; the designs
of the very early rugs of both groups generally are geometric, and
the later ones floral. But these facts are not identifying.
Chinese rugs can be recognized instantly by their colors,
which are determined by their backgrounds, the reverse of the
Persian method, which is to make the design the principal color
medium. The Chinese colors are probably best described as the
lighter and softer colors of silk--dull yellows, rose, salmon red,
browns, and tans, the design usually being blue. The Chinese were
the original manufacturers and dyers of silk, and they applied
their silk dyes to their rugs.
Turkish rugs that are ornamented with flowers and leaves
can be distinguished from Persian and Indian products by the
ruler-drawn character of their patterns. A keen observer describes
them as quasi-botanical forms angularly treated. Turkish rugs that
contain the patterns common to the Caucasian and Turkoman families
can be recognized by their brighter, sharper, and more contrasting
colors. The key to the identification of this most difficult rug
family is to be found in the Turkish prayer rugs. To know Turkish
rugs, one must see many of them; to know the other families one
need see only a few.
Reduced to a minimum statement, the identification of the six
oriental rug families amounts to this:
Persian rugs--floral designs drawn free hand.
India rugs--floral designs photographed and copied.
Turkoman rugs--geometric linear design, blood red, web ends.
Caucasian rugs--geometric linear designs, numerous blended
colors.
Chinese rugs--floral and geometric linear designs, silk colors.
Turkish rugs--floral designs, angular, ruled; and geometrical
designs, bright contrasting colors.
To be able to identify an oriental rug as a particular kind
of Persian, Indian, Turkish, Turkoman, Caucasian or Chinese
weaving is somewhat more of an accomplishment. The way to begin
is to study first the rugs that have distinct or fairly constant
characteristics. Take Persian rugs, for example:
Bijar--rugs as thick as two or even three ordinary rugs.
Fereghan--small leaf design, usually with green border.
Gorevan or Scrapi--huge medallions, strong reds and blues.
Herat or Ispahan--intricate, stately design on claret ground.
Hamadan--a camel hair rug.
Kashan--dark, rich, closely patterned, extremely finely woven.
Kermanshah--the "parlor" rug, soft cream, rose, and blue.
Khorassan--plum colored, small leaf design, long, soft, wool.
Kurd--colored yarn run through the end web.
Meshed--soft rose and blue with silver cast.
Polonaise--delicately colored antique silk rug.
Saraband--palm leaf or India shawl design on rose or blue
ground.
Sehna--closest woven small rug, minute pattern.
Shiraz--limp rug, the sides overcast with yarns of various
colors.
Tabriz--reddish yellow, the design sometimes resembling a
baseball diamond.
To extend this list would make wearisome reading. Let it
suffice to indicate that many oriental rugs, like people, have
marked facial distinctions, and that many others have marked
peculiarities of body and finish, that make them easy to recognize.
Ease of naming, however, ceases with distinct markings, and rugs
that are out-and-out hybrids, the cross-bred products of wars,
migrations, and trade, are not named, but attributed.
Hybrid oriental rugs--the bane of the novice and the joy
of the collector--are largely an epitome of the wars of Asia.
Cyrus the Great, heading a host of Persians, conquered the
Babylonians 500 years before Christ. Of course the Babylonians
became interested in Persian rugs and appropriated some of their
patterns. Two hundred years later Alexander the Great invaded Asia
and conquered it, except the distant provinces of India and China.
The Mohammedan Arabs mastered the Persians in the East and the
Spaniards in the West in the sixth century. Genghis Khan, out of
China with warriors as numerous as locusts, made a single nation of
Central Asia in the thirteenth century; and Tamerlane later made
subject farther dominions. Even 200 years ago the Afghans conquered
the Persians; and as recently as 1771, 600,000 Tartars fled from
eastern Russia to the frontiers of China under conditions to make
DeQuincey's essay, "Revolt of the Tartars," a contribution to rug
literature.
The wonder is not, therefore, that Chinese patterns are
found in Turkestan, Persian, and Turkish rugs; that Persian
patterns are found in Indian, Caucasian and Turkish rugs; that
Turkish-Mohammedan patterns reach from Spain to China; and that
European designs are found wherever oriental invention bent the
knee to imitation. The wonder is rather that there are so many
oriental rugs with distinct or fairly constant characteristics.[38]
[38] Arthur U. Dilley: "Oriental Rugs," in _The New Country Life_,
November, 1917. By courtesy of the publishers, Doubleday, Page &
Co.
* * * * *
She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From
her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of
popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless
courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice,
her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came
to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were
school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear;
she would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to
swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in contrast
with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous,
self-indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendour
and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her
delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle
through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as
a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy
retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour.
She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity
remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens.
No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too
gross. "To see her was Heaven," Hatton told her, "the lack of her
was hell." She would play with her rings that her courtiers might
note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that the French
Ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her
sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter,
her unwomanly jests, gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her
character, in fact, like her portrait, was utterly without shade.
Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct
of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in
the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously
throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure
passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the
neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her "sweet
Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.[39]
[39] J. R. Green: _Short History of the English People_.
Informal Analysis
The formal analyses are in general far less frequent than the informal,
which are found constantly in the weekly and monthly magazines and in
the editorials of our daily papers. These analyses aim at giving the
core of the subject, the gist of the matter, with sufficient important
facts or points as background. Thus you will read an account of our
relations with Mexico during the revolution in that country. Not
everything is said; only the vital things. A study of the character
of Mr. Roosevelt or of Mr. Wilson, an article explaining the problems
that had to be faced in the building of the Keokuk or the Shoshone
dams, a treatment of the question of conscription in England--these
and thousands of others flood upon us with the object of illuminating
our approach to the subject, of interpreting for us the heart of the
matter. Mr. More, in the essay already mentioned, says little about
Tennyson's verse form, about his zeal for the tale of Arthur, about the
influence upon him of the classics of Greece and Rome. Into a complete
treatise these would of course enter; here Mr. More's object is not
all-inclusiveness, as one should examine the Pyramids for not only
their plan and size but also for their minute finish, their varying
materials, their methods of jointure, and the thousand other details;
rather he estimates what his subject is, as one should journey round the
Pyramids, view them in general, find their significance, and discover
the few essentials that make them not cathedrals, not Roman circuses,
but Pyramids. In other words, interpretation is the object rather than
completeness of fact.
Obviously an informal analysis must be complete as far as it goes,
must be complete for its author's purpose, is not good writing if it
gives only a partial interpretation which gets nowhere. It is at once
apparent, then, that the controlling purpose which has been discussed
at length in an earlier chapter is in informal analysis of the utmost
importance. Only as it is clearly held in mind will the author know
when to stop, what to choose. In formal analysis, where his object is
to say all that there is to say, he chooses and ceases to choose by the
standard of completeness of fact; in informal analysis he must choose
and cease to choose by the standard of whether he has accomplished
the desired effect, made the desired interpretation. His analysis,
therefore, is valuable only when he has chosen the proper interpretation
and has made it effective and clear. If he wishes to analyze a period
of history for the purpose of showing the romance of the period, he
will choose and cease to choose largely in so far as his material helps
to establish the romance, and he will not hesitate to neglect many a
fact that would be otherwise important. In the following selection from
George Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_ you will find an analysis of the
effect of the Rhone scenery on the author written purposely with the
intention of driving home the dreariness of the subject, and therefore
with material chosen for that end:
Journeying down the Rhone on a summer's day, you have perhaps
felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud
the banks in certain parts of its course, telling how the swift
river once rose, like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down
the feeble generations whose breath is in their nostrils, and
making their dwellings a desolation. Strange contrast, you may
have thought, between the effect produced on us by these dismal
remnants of commonplace houses, which in their best days were
but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to
our own vulgar era; and the effect produced by those ruins on the
castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such harmony
with the green and rocky steeps, that they seem to have a natural
fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in the day when they
were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been
raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty
parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance!
If these robber barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they
had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them--they were forest
boars with tusks, tearing and rending: not the ordinary domestic
grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in collision
with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a
fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the
soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite.
That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel
and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle--nay,
of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not
cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave
their Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the
sacred East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me
with a sense of poetry: they belong to the grand historic life of
humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an epoch. But these
dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the
Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life--very much of
it--is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity
does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare
vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the
lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of
obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with
the generations of ants and beavers.[40]
[40] George Eliot: _Mill on the Floss_. Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, publishers.
Informal analysis is not only less complete, but also less strict in
adherence to pure analysis alone. It employs whatever is of value,
believing that the material, the message, is greater than the form.
Outside really formal analysis, which is likely to be fairly dull to all
except those who are eager for the particular information given, most
analytical articles make free use of definition whenever it will serve
well to aid the reader's understanding or to move his emotions toward a
desired goal; of description if it, like definition, proves of value;
even of anecdote and argument if these forms are the fittest instruments
for the fight. Thus Hawthorne, analyzing English weather, does not
hesitate to dress out his analysis in the charms of personal experience
and anecdote and description, which in no way obscure the facts of the
weather, but merely take away the baldness of a formal statement and add
the relish of actual life.
One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy
has nothing like it, nor America. There never was such weather
except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible
east wind between February and June, and a brown October and
black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few
weeks of incomparable summer scattered through July and August,
and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but
exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospherical
delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombreness may have brought
out those sunny intervals in such high relief that I see them, in
my recollection, brighter than they really were: a little light
makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The
English, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the momentary
gleams of their summer are; they call it broiling weather, and
hurry to the seaside with red, perspiring faces, in a state of
combustion and deliquescence; and I have observed that even their
cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or
standing midleg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at
temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely
comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land
had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the
weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm; but it
was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a
bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During
my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial
part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without
a fire on the hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get
acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy,
but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling
summer; and in the succeeding years,--whether that I had renewed
my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood with English
ale, or whatever were the cause,--I grew content with winter and
especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness
than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now
speaking of, I must needs confess that the noontide sun came down
more fervently than I found altogether tolerable; so that I was
fain to shift my position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making
myself a movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours of
an almost interminable day.
For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far
as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer day
has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake, at any
reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains;
you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm
variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil lapse; and
at length you become conscious that it is bedtime again, while
there is still enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your
book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs
down a transparent veil through which the bygone day beholds its
successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may
be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that
To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They exist together
in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns
the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may
simultaneously touch them both with one finger of recollection and
another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how
many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome
toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray
out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I
lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to
dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At
least, this was the feeling of the moment; although the transitory,
flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps
the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the
comfort of house and home, without any sense of their weight upon
my back. The nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find
tents ready pitched for us at every stage.[41]
[41] Nathaniel Hawthorne: _Our Old Home_. Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, publishers.
An extension of this willingness to make grist of whatever comes to the
writer's mill lies in the close approach, at times, that analysis makes
to the informal essay. Of course the line is difficult to draw--and
perhaps not necessarily drawn--and most informal essays are to some
extent, at least, analytical. The more you desire your analysis to
become interesting, the more you wish to take hold of your reader,
the more you will make use of the close approach unless your subject
and its facts are of a kind to repel such intimacy. An analysis of
the nebular hypothesis deals with facts of so august a nature, on
so nearly an unimaginable plane, that intimacy seems out of place,
impudent, like levity in cathedrals. But if you have such a subject as
George Gissing[42] chose in the following analysis of the sportswoman's
attitude and character, you may well, as he did, throw aside the
formalities of expression and at once make truce of intimacy with your
reader. So long as you do not obscure the facts of the analysis, make it
unclear or blurred, so long you are safe.
[42] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Spring."
By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York
City.
I found an article, by a woman, on "Lion Hunting," and in this
article I came upon a passage which seemed worth copying:
"As I woke my husband, the lion--which was then about forty
yards off--charged straight towards us, and with my .303 I hit
him full in the chest, as we afterwards discovered, tearing his
windpipe to pieces and breaking his spine. He charged a second
time, and the next shot hit him through the shoulder, tearing his
heart to ribbons."
It would interest me to look upon this heroine of gun and pen.
She is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a
graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk,
to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea
of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre.
Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and
gracious, highbred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of
art and of letters; they could drop a tear over Lesbia's sparrow;
at the same time, they were connoisseurs in torn windpipes,
shattered spines, and viscera rent open. It is not likely that many
of them would have cared to turn their own hands to butchery, and,
for the matter of that, I must suppose that our Lion Huntress of
the popular magazine is rather an exceptional dame; but no doubt
she and the Roman ladies would get on well together, finding only a
few superficial differences. The fact that her gory reminiscences
are welcomed by an editor with the popular taste in view is perhaps
more significant than appears either to editor or public. Were this
lady to write a novel (the chances are she will) it would have the
true note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by
her favourite reading; more than probably, her ways of thinking and
feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will
soon, I dare say, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is
"no nonsense about her." Such women should breed a terrible race.
Kinds of Informal Analysis
_a._ _Enumeration_
Informal analysis may appear in various forms, not all of which are
at once apparent as analysis until we disabuse our minds of thinking
that analysis must be, always, complete in facts. For example, informal
analysis often appears in the form of enumeration, in which the
author "has some things to say"--always for a definite purpose--and
says them in some reasonable order. Thus Mr. Herbert Croly, in his
article "Lincoln as More than American," analyzes Lincoln's character
as related to the characters of other Americans through the qualities
of intellectuality, humanness, magnanimity, and humility. More might
be said; the analysis is not complete in fact, but it serves the
purpose of the author. It is distinctly in the enumerative order, the
progression being determined by the controlling purpose of delineating
Lincoln as worthy of not only respect but even true awe, the awe that
we give only to those great souls who, in spite of all their mental
supremacy, are yet beautifully humble.
_b._ _Equation_
Informal analysis often appears in the form of equation: the subject of
analysis is stated as equal to something else--a quality, an instrument
from another field of human knowledge, the same thing in other more
common or well-known words. For example, William James, in his essay
"The Social Value of the College Bred," first states that the value of a
college education is "to help you to know a good man when you see him,"
and then explains what he means by this phrase. This form of analysis,
then, is usually in the nature of a double equation: _x_ is equal to
_y_, which, in turn, can be split up into _a_, _b_, _c_. The method
really consists in arriving at an easily comprehended statement of the
significance of the subject through the medium of a more immediately
workable or attractive or simple synonymous statement. It is an
application of the old formula of going from the known to the unknown,
except that in this case we proceed from the unknown to the known and
then return to the unknown with increased light.
_c._ _Statement of Significance_
A third form of informal analysis is the showing of the significance
of the subject, its root meaning. In this case the writer attempts not
so much to break the subject into its obvious parts as to set before
the reader the meaning of it as a whole, in so short a compass, often,
that it will not need further explanation, or if it does, that it may
be then divided after the statement in easier form has been made. The
following explanation of the philosophy of Nietzsche illustrates this
form of analysis:
The central motive of Nietzsche seems to me to be this. It is
clear to him that the moral problem concerns the perfection, not
of society, not of the masses of men, but of the great individual.
And so far he, indeed, stands where the standard of individualistic
revolt has so often been raised. But Nietzsche differs from other
individualists in that the great object toward which his struggle
is directed is the discovery of what his own individuality itself
means and is. A Titan of the type of Goethe's or Shelley's
Prometheus proclaims his right to be free of Zeus and of all other
powers. But by hypothesis Prometheus already knows who he is and
what he wants. But the problem of Nietzsche is, above all, the
problem. Who am I, and, What do I want? What is clear to him is
the need of strenuous activity in pressing on toward the solution
of this problem. His aristocratic consciousness is the sense that
common men are in no wise capable of putting or of appreciating
this question. His assertion of the right of the individual to
be free from all external restraints is the ardent revolt of the
strenuous seeker for selfhood against whatever hinders him in
this task. He will not be interrupted by the base universe in the
business--his life-business--of finding out what his own life is to
mean for himself. He knows that his own will is, above all, what he
calls the will for power. On occasion he does not hesitate to use
this power to crush, at least in ideal, whoever shall hinder him
in his work. But the problem over which he agonizes is the inner
problem. What does this will that seeks power genuinely desire?
What is the power that is worthy to be mine?[43]
[43] Josiah Royce: _Nietzsche_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly
Company.
_d._ _Relationship_
A fourth class of informal analytical writing is the showing the
relationship that exists between two ideas or things, as cause and
effect, as source and termination, as contrary forces, or as any
relation that has real existence. Under this heading will be found the
large group of articles that answer the question _why?_, as for example,
"Why the Quebec Bridge Collapsed," "Causes of the Strike among the
Garment Workers," "Popular Opinion as Affecting Government Action," and
other such subjects. In the following analysis of the relation existing
between human action as result, and impulse and desire as causes, you
will find such an informal presentation of material.
All human activity springs from two sources: impulse and
desire. The part played by desire has always been sufficiently
recognized. When men find themselves not fully contented, and not
able instantly to procure what will cause content, imagination
brings before their minds the thought of things which they believe
would make them happy. All desire involves an interval of time
between the consciousness of a need and the opportunity for
satisfying it. The acts inspired by desire may in themselves be
painful, the time before satisfaction can be achieved may be very
long, the object desired may be something outside our own lives,
and even after our own death. Will, as a directing force, consists
mainly in following desires for more or less distant objects, in
spite of the painfulness of the acts involved and the solicitations
of incompatible but more immediate desires and impulses. All this
is familiar, and political philosophy hitherto has been almost
entirely based upon desire as the source of human actions.
But desire governs no more than a part of human activity, and
that not the most important but only the more conscious, explicit,
and civilized part.
In all the more instinctive part of our nature we are
dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, not by desires
for certain ends. Children run and shout, not because of any good
which they expect to realize, but because of a direct impulse to
running and shouting. Dogs bay the moon, not because they consider
that it is to their advantage to do so, but because they feel an
impulse to bark. It is not any purpose, but merely an impulse,
that prompts such actions, as eating, drinking, love-making,
quarrelling, boasting. Those who believe that man is a rational
animal will say that people boast in order that others may have a
good opinion of them; but most of us can recall occasions when we
have boasted in spite of knowing that we should be despised for it.
Instinctive acts normally achieve some result which is agreeable to
the natural man, but they are not performed from desire for this
result. They are performed from direct impulse, and the impulse
often is strong even in cases in which the normal desirable result
cannot follow. Grown men like to imagine themselves more rational
than children and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from themselves
how great a part impulse plays in their lives. This unconscious
concealment always follows a certain general plan. When an impulse
is not indulged in the moment in which it arises, there grows up
a desire for the expected consequences of indulging the impulse.
If some of the consequences which are reasonably to be expected
are clearly disagreeable, a conflict between foresight and impulse
arises. If the impulse is weak, foresight may conquer; this is
what is called acting on reason. If the impulse is strong, either
foresight will be falsified, and the disagreeable consequences will
be forgotten, or, in men of heroic mold, the consequences may be
recklessly accepted. When Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to
defeat, he does not shrink from the fight; he exclaims:--
Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be he that first cries, Hold, enough!
But such strength and recklessness of impulse is rare.
Most men, when their impulse is strong, succeed in persuading
themselves, usually by a subconscious selectiveness of attention,
that agreeable consequences will follow from indulgence of their
impulse. Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical valuation,
spring up in this way; they are the embodiment of a kind of
thought which is subservient to impulse, which aims at providing
a quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of impulse. The
only thought which is genuine is that which springs out of the
intellectual impulse of curiosity, leading to the desire to know
and understand. But most of what passes for thought is inspired by
some non-intellectual impulse, and is merely a means of persuading
ourselves that we shall not be disappointed or do harm if we
indulge this impulse.
When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort, or even
violent pain. We may indulge the impulse in order to escape from
this pain, and our action is then one which has a purpose. But the
pain only exists because of the impulse, and the impulse itself is
directed to an act, not to escaping from the pain of restraining
the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the
purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been
momentarily restrained.
Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much more than
desire. Desire has its place, but not so large a place as it
is seemed to have. Impulses bring with them a whole train of
subservient fictitious desires: they make men feel that they desire
the results which will follow from indulging the impulses, and that
they are acting for the sake of these results, when in fact their
action has no motive outside itself. A man may write a book or
paint a picture under the belief that he desires the praise which
it will bring him; but as soon as it is finished, if his creative
impulse is not exhausted, what he has done grows uninteresting to
him, and he begins a new piece of work. What applies to artistic
creation applies equally to all that is most vital in our lives:
direct impulse is what moves us, and the desires which we think we
have are a mere garment for the impulse.
Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true, a large and
increasing share in the regulation of men's lives. Impulse is
erratic and anarchical, not easily fitted into a well-regulated
system; it may be tolerated in children and artists, but it is not
thought proper to men who hope to be taken seriously. Almost all
paid work is done from desire, not from impulse: the work itself
is more or less irksome, but the payment for it is desired. The
serious activities that fill a man's working hours are, except in
a few fortunate individuals, governed mainly by purposes, not by
impulses toward these activities. In this hardly any one sees an
evil, because the place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is
not recognized.
An impulse, to one who does not share it actually or
imaginatively, will always seem to be mad. All impulse is
essentially blind, in the sense that it does not spring from
any prevision of consequences. The man who does not share
the impulse will form a different estimate as to what the
consequences will be, and as to whether those that must ensue are
desirable. This difference of opinion will seem to be ethical
or intellectual, whereas its real basis is a difference of
impulse. No genuine agreement will be reached, in such a case, so
long as the difference of impulse persists. In all men who have
any vigorous life, there are strong impulses such as may seem
utterly unreasonable to others. Blind impulses sometimes lead to
destruction and death, but at other times they lead to the best
things the world contains. Blind impulse is the source of war, but
it is also the source of science, and art, and love. It is not the
weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of
impulse toward life and growth rather than toward death and decay.
The complete control of impulse by will, which is sometimes
preached by moralists, and often enforced by economic necessity, is
not really desirable. A life governed by purposes and desires, to
the exclusion of impulses, is a tiring life; it exhausts vitality,
and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent to the very purposes
which he has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation lives in
this way, the whole nation tends to become feeble, without enough
grasp to recognize and overcome the obstacles to its desires.
Industrialism and organization are constantly forcing civilized
nations to live more and more by purpose rather than impulse. In
the long run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry up the
springs of life, produces new impulse, not of the kind which the
will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought
is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their
effects than those which have been checked. Excessive discipline,
especially when it has been imposed from without, often issues
in impulses of cruelty and destruction; this is one reason why
militarism has a bad effect on national character. Either lack of
vitality, or impulses which are oppressive and against life, will
almost always result if the spontaneous impulses are not able to
find an outlet. A man's impulses are not fixed from the beginning
by his native disposition: within certain wide limits, they are
profoundly modified by his circumstances and his way of life. The
nature of these modifications ought to be studied, and the results
of such study ought to be taken account of in judging the good or
harm that is done by political and social institutions.[44]
[44] Bertrand Russell: _Why Men Fight_. By courtesy of the publishers,
The Century Company, New York City.
_e._ _Statement of a Problem_
A fifth form in which analysis often appears is as a statement of
a problem. An engineer who is asked by a city to investigate the
conditions that confront the municipality as regards water supply will
have such a problem to state. The statement will presumably consist
of several divisions. First of all, of course--and this will be
essential in all such statements--will be an analysis of the conditions
themselves. In this particular case he will find out how much water is
needed, how great the present supply is, what sources are available for
increased supply, what the character of the water in these other sources
is, and anything else that may be of value to the city. If any former
attempts at solution have been made, he may mention them. If he is
asked to recommend a plan of procedure, he will make an analysis of the
details of this plan and will present them.
Now obviously the nature of the audience will determine somewhat the
manner of approach to the conditions. If, for example, the problem
is to be stated to the financial committee of the city, the angle
of approach will be that of cost; if to a prospective constructing
engineer, from that of difficulties of construction of reservoirs or
from that of availability of sources. If you are to state the problem
of lessening the illiteracy in a given neighborhood, you will approach
the subject for the school committee from the angle, perhaps, of the
establishment of night schools, or from that of the necessary welding
of nationalities; for the charitable societies from that of the poverty
that compels child labor in the community. And in the recommendations
for meeting the conditions, if such recommendations are made, attention
must be paid to the particular people who will read the analysis. Of
course if you make an abstract, complete survey, you will cover the
ground in whatever way seems most suitable.
Such an analysis, when it is in the nature of a report, will presumably
be in brief, tabulated form. If, on the other hand, it is not a report,
the subject may be treated more informally, made more pleasing. The
following statement of the problem of the development of power machinery
is made rather formally from the angle of the constructive engineer with
an eye also to the financial conditions.
The problem of power-machinery development is, therefore,
divisible into several parts: First, what processes must be carried
out to produce motion against resistance, from the energy of winds,
the water of the rivers, or from fuel. Second, what combinations of
simply formed parts can be made to carry out the process or series
of processes. These two steps when worked out will result in some
kind of engine, but it may not be a good engine, for it may use up
too much natural energy for the work it does; some part may break
or another wear too fast; some part may have a form that no workman
can make, or use up too much material or time in the making; in
short, while the engine may work, it may be too wasteful, or do its
work at too great a cost of coal or water, attendance in operation,
or investment, or all these together. There must, therefore, be
added several other elements to the problem, as follows: Third, how
many ways are there of making each part, and which is the cheapest,
or what other form of part might be devised that would be cheaper
to make, or what cheaper material is there that would be equally
suitable. Fourth, how sensitive to care are all these parts when
in operation, and how much attendance and repairs will be required
to keep the machine in good operating condition. Fifth, how big
must the important parts of the whole machine be to utilize all the
energy available, or to produce the desired amount of power. Sixth,
how much force must each part of the mechanism sustain, and how
big must it be when made of suitable material so as not to break.
Seventh, how much work can be produced by the process for each unit
of energy supplied.[45]
[45] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the
Columbia University Press.
Principles of Analysis
The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis,
however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The
first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject,
whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this
arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life
seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of
it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some
logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. And in truth
without some such law or basis the mind soon becomes hopelessly enmeshed
and bewildered. I cannot expect my reader to understand my treatise
on locomotive engines, my classification of them, if I regard them
now as engines of speed, now as means of conveyance, now as potential
destroyers of life, and now as instruments whereby capitalists become
rich and workmen become poor. As often as I change my point of view,
so often I shall be under the necessity of making a new arrangement of
the engines, a new alignment. It is like skimming past a cornfield with
the platoons of green spears constantly shifting their number, their
direction, and their general appearance. If I station myself at one
point, I can soon make reasonable estimates, but so long as I whirl from
point to point my estimate must whirl likewise and I shall be confused
rather than helped. If, then, you are to analyze, say, our present-day
domestic architecture, it is not enough to heap together everything that
occurs to you about houses: their size, material, color, arrangement,
finish, beauty, convenience, situation as regards sidewalks, their
heating and upkeep. To prevent your reader from becoming hopelessly
muddled, from seeming to deal with the valley of the unorganized dry
bones of fact, you must have some guiding principle, some basis, some
point of view. Suppose that you take _beauty_ as your basis. Then at
once you have a standard by which you can judge all houses, to which you
can relate questions of position, arrangement, convenience, lighting,
heating, etc. Each of these questions is now significant as affecting
the cause of beauty. You could, of course, choose _convenience_ as your
basis, to which, then, beauty would be subordinate as contributing or
opposing. Asked to analyze the architecture of a railroad terminal, you
will not do well to plant dynamite under it and make an architectural
rummage sale of its parts; rather you will choose, perhaps,
_serviceability_ as your basis, and will then examine tracks, offices,
waiting rooms, etc. to see what the whole is. No part will thereby be
overlooked; each will be significant, and the whole will be unified by
your single point of view. An analysis of MacDowell's music might be
based on _emotional power_; of the currency problem on that of _general
distribution_; of universities on that of _proportion of cultural to
so-called practical courses_. Notice, also, that the choosing of a
basis of division is just as necessary in one kind of analysis as in
another, that formality and informality do not affect the logic of the
situation in the least, that whatever the subject or the proposed method
of treatment, you must be consistent in your point of view, must make a
pivot round which the whole can turn.
Sometimes more than one principle will be necessary, in a complicated
analysis, as in judging a route for a railway we saw the necessity for
considering grades, drainage, landslides, etc., as we might interweave
the bases of cost, beauty, convenience, etc., but--like the reins of
the ten-span circus horses--all will be found to run back finally to
the single driver--in the case of the railway, _practicability_. In
classifying dredges, for example, we may use as basis the action of
the machine upon the bottom of the body of water, that is, whether the
action is continuous or intermittent; in this case we shall find four
types of continuous dredges: the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring,
and the pneumatic; and we shall find two classes of intermittent: the
dipper and the grapple dredges. Or we may divide all dredges on the
basis of whether they are self-propelling or non-propelling. Finally,
we may take as basis for the classification the manner of disposing of
the excavated materials, in which case we shall find several groups.
In the following example we have two bases used for classifying
clearing-houses. The use of more than one basis will depend on whether
we can by such use make more easily clear to a reader the nature of the
subject and on whether different readers will need different angles of
approach.
The clearing-houses in the United States may be divided into
two classes, the sole function of the first of which consists in
clearing-notes, drafts, checks, bills of exchange, and whatever
else may be agreed upon; and the second of which, in addition to
exercising the functions of the class just mentioned, prescribes
rules and regulations for its members in various matters, such
as the fixing of uniform rates of exchange, interest charges,
collections, etc.
Clearing-houses may also be divided into two classes with
reference to the funds used in the settlement of balances: First,
those clearing-houses which make their settlements entirely on a
cash basis, or, as stated in the decision of the Supreme Court
above referred to, "by such form of acknowledgment or certificate
as the associated banks may agree to use in their dealings with
each other as the equivalent or representative of cash"; and
second, those clearing-houses which make their settlements by
checks or drafts on large financial centers.[46]
[46] James G. Cannon: _Clearing-Houses_. By courtesy of the
publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright, 1900.
Sometimes, also, the minor sections may have a different basis from
the main one, a different principle of classification. For example,
a general basis for an analysis of the Mexican situation during Mr.
Wilson's administration might be _general world progress_. This might
cover our immediate relations with Mexico, our less close relations with
South America, and our rather more remote relations with Europe. The
first division might then possibly choose for its principle _fundamental
causes for inter-irritation_; the second, _our trade relations with
South America_; and the third, the _possibility of trouble through the
Monroe Doctrine_. All would unite under the one heading of general
progress, and so long as they were kept distinct would be serviceable.
For the uniting into one main principle is the important thing. It is
by this, and this only, that the reader will easily receive a clear
understanding of the subject.
Having selected this unifying basis, you must then be careful lest your
subdivisions be only the subject restated in other words. If you are
analyzing a railroad route for practicability, do not name one division
_general serviceability_, for you will merely have made a revolution
of 360 degrees and be facing exactly as you faced before. In analyzing
Scott's works for humor do not name one division _ability to see the
funny side of life_, for again you will have said only that two equals
two. Each section must be less than the whole.
Even more caution is required to keep the divisions from overlapping.
The man who wrote an enthusiastic account of the acting of Sir Johnston
Forbes-Robertson with subheadings as follows: (1) emotional power, (2)
effect on audience, (3) intellect, (4) appealing qualities, saw that
his divisions--like a family of young kittens--overlapped and sprawled
generally. When he had selected _moving power_ as his main principle,
and had then divided the treatment into the following headings: (1)
appearance, (2) voice, (3) general handling of the situation, (4) effect
at the time, and (5) memories of the performance, he found that his
kittens had become well-mannered little beasties and sat each in his
place. The overlapping of subdivisions is likely to occur because of
one or both of two causes: lack of clear thinking, and lack of clear
expression. Be sure, then, first to cut neatly between parts in dividing
your apple, and then to label each part carefully so that the reader
will not say, "Why, three is just like two!"
Finally, be sure that the sum of your divisions equals the whole.
This means that in logical analysis you must continue the process of
dividing until nothing is left. You must follow the old advice: "Cut
into as small pieces as possible, and then cut each piece several
times smaller!" Such would be the process in analyzing and classifying
types of cathedral architecture; your work will not be complete until
you have included all possible forms. The same would hold true in a
thorough analysis of bridges; all forms would demand entrance. When you
write informal or literary analysis, on the other hand, since here the
object is illumination rather than exhaustion, almost suggestiveness
rather than completeness, choose the significant vital divisions and let
the rest go. This does not mean that in informal analysis you may be
careless; "any old thing" is far from being the motto; strict thinking
and shrewd selection are quite as necessary as in formal analysis. The
point is that the divisions will be fewer in number, as in an article
on the subject of the failure of freshmen in the first semester your
object, in informal analysis, would be to group the causes, for the
convenience of the reader, into a few general divisions which should
give him a clear idea of the subject without necessitating long and
painful reading. In literary analysis especially it is often well to
express in one sentence the gist of your thought, as Mr. More says,
"Tennyson was the Victorian Age." It is always well to be able to
express this sentence. Of course care must be exercised not to make the
structure of the article too evident by the presence of such a sentence,
but its judicious use will help to unify the thought for the reader. For
most minds analysis is difficult. Whatever you can do, therefore, to
make it easy will be worth while in gaining success.
EXERCISES
I. Why, from the point of view of analysis, is it difficult to
select a list of "the greatest ten" living men, or women? Make
such a list and then examine its foundations. Is a similar list
of novels or plays or symphonies as difficult to make?
II. Use any of the following sentences as a nucleus sentence on which
to build an informal analysis.
1. The attitude of scientific efficiency is incompatible with
feelings of humanity.
2. A college career does not always develop, but in fact often
kills, intellectual integrity.
3. The worst enemy of the American Public is the newspaper that
for political or business reasons distorts news.
4. Studies are the least valuable of college activities except
as they stimulate the imagination.
5. Our Country is so large that a citizen is really justified,
mentally and morally, in being provincial.
6. The study of literature in college is, except for the person
of no imagination, deadening to the spirit.
7. The fifteen-and twenty-cent magazine is a menace to American
life in that its fiction grossly distorts the facts of life.
8. The farmer who wishes to keep his soil in good condition
should use legumes as increasers of fertility.
9. The effect of acquisition of land property is always to drive
the possessors into the Tory camp.
10. The engineer is a poet who expresses himself in material
forms rather than words.
III. Make a formal classification, in skeleton form, of any of the
following subjects. Then determine what qualities the subject has
that indicate how such a classification can be made interesting,
either by material or treatment. Then write an analytical theme
which shall thoroughly cover the skeleton classification and
shall also be attractive. (Compare the classification of Rock
Drills (page 115) and Oriental Rugs (page 119) to note the
difference in the amount of interest.)
1. Building materials for houses.
2. China dinner-ware.
3. Forms of democratic government.
4. Methods of irrigation in the United States.
5. Types of lyric poetry.
6. Chairs.
7. Commercial fertilizers.
8. Tractors for the farm.
9. Contemporary philosophies of Europe and America.
10. American dances.
11. Elevators.
12. Filing systems.
13. Races of men in Europe.
14. Gas ranges.
15. Pianos.
16. Contemporary short stories of the popular magazines.
Indicate, in any given subject, how many possible bases for
classification you could choose, as, for example, you might
classify chairs on the basis of comfort, expense, presence of
rockers, upholstery, adaptation to the human figure, material for
the seat, shape of back, etc.
IV. Analyze any of the following problems, first without
recommendation of solution, and second with recommendation as if
you were making a report to a committee or employer or officer.
1. Summer work for college students.
2. Keeping informed of world affairs while doing one's college
work faithfully.
3. "Outside activities" for college students.
4. Faculty or non-faculty control of college politics.
5. Choosing a college course with relation to intended career in
life.
6. Selecting shrubbery for continuous bloom with both red and
blue berries in winter.
7. The mail-order houses.
8. Preventing money panics.
9. Dye-manufacture in the United States.
10. Gaining foreign markets.
11. The farmer and the commission merchant.
12. The brand of flour selected for use in large hotels.
13. Color photography.
14. Wind pressure in high buildings.
15. Street pavement.
16. Electrification of railroads.
17. Heating system for an eight-room house.
18. Choice of cereal for children of six, nine, and eleven--two
boys, one girl.
19. Lighting the farmhouse.
20. Creating a high class dairy or sheep herd.
21. Creating an apple (or other fruit) orchard.
22. Method of shipping potatoes to a distant point, in boxes,
barrels, sacks.
23. Best use of a twenty-acre farm near a large city.
24. Investment of $500.00.
25. Best system of bookkeeping for the farmer.
26. Kind of life insurance for a man of twenty.
27. Location of a shoe factory with capital of $250,000.00.
28. Cash system in a large general store.
29. Reconciling Shakespeare's works with the known facts of his
life.
30. The secret of Thomas Hardy's pessimism.
31. Reconciling narrow religious training with the increased
knowledge derived from college.
32. The failure of college courses in English composition to
produce geniuses.
33. The creation of a conscientious political attitude in a
democracy.
34. Selection of $10,000 worth of books as the nucleus for a
small town library.
V. Decide upon a controlling purpose for an informal analysis of any
of the following subjects, indicate how you hope to make the
analysis interesting, state why you choose the basis that you
do--and then write the theme.
1. Prejudices, Flirts, Entertainments, Shade-trees, Methods of
advertising, Languages, Scholastic degrees, Systems of
landscape gardening for small estates, Migratory song birds
of North America, Laces.
2. Causes of the Return-to-the-Soil movement, Origins of our
dairy cattle, Benefits of intensive agriculture, Imported
plant diseases, Legumes.
3. Opportunities for the Civil (or Mechanical or Electrical,
etc.) Engineer, Difficulties of modern bridge-building, The
relation of the engineer to social movements, The
contribution of the engineer to intellectual advance.
4. Changes in the United States system of public finance since
Hamilton's time, The equitable distribution of taxation, The
benefits of the Federal Reserve Movement in Finance, Forms of
taxation, Systems of credit.
5. Possibilities for Physiological Chemistry, Obstacles to color
photography, The chemistry of the kitchen, The future of the
telescope, The battle against disease germs, Theories of the
atom, Heredity in plants or animals, Edible fresh-water fish.
6. Bores, The terrors of childhood, The vanities of young men,
Methods of coquetry,--of becoming popular,--of always having
one's way, The idiosyncrasies of elderly bachelors, Books to
read on the train, Acquaintances of the dining-car.
VI. Write a 250 word analysis of whatever type you choose on any of
the following subjects:
The dishonesty of college catalogues, The prevalence of
fires in the United States, Causes of weakness in I beams, Effect
of fairy stories on children, Religious sectarianism, Public
attitude toward an actress, The business man's opinion of the
college professor, The tyranny of the teaching of our earliest
years, The state of American forests, Municipal wastefulness,
Opportunities for lucrative employment at ---- college or
university, The effect of oriental rugs in a room, The attitude
of people in a small town toward their young people in college,
People who are desolate without the "Movies" four or five times a
week.
VII. Write a 1500-2000 word analytical theme on any of the following
subjects:
1. The Responsibilities of Individualism.
2. American Slavery to the Printed Word.
3. The Ideal Vacation.
4. What Shall We Do with Sunday?
5. The Value of Reading Fiction.
6. Why I am a Republican, or Democrat, or Pessimist, or
Agnostic, or Humanist, or Rebel in general, or Agitator
or--whatnot?
7. The Classics and the American Student in the Twentieth
Century.
8. The Chief Function of a College.
9. The Decline of Manners.
10. A Defense of Cheap Vaudeville.
11. The Workingman Should Know His Place and Keep It.
12. The Study of History as an Aid to a Critical Estimate of the
Present.
13. The Relation of Friendship to Similarity in Point of View.
14. Intellectual Leadership in America.
15. The Present Situation in the World of Baseball.
16. The Reaction of War upon the Finer Sensibilities of
Civilians.
17. Patriotism and Intellectual Detachment.
18. The Breeding Place of Social Improvements.
19. Organization in Modern Life.
20. The Conflict of Political and Moral Loyalty.
21. Why Has Epic Poetry Passed from Favor?
22. The Stability of American Political Opinion.
23. The Shifting Geography of Intellectual Leadership in the
World.
VIII. In the following selection what does Mr. Shaw analyze? On what
basis? Is he thorough? If not, what does he omit? Does the
omission, if there is any, vitally harm the analysis?
Passion is the steam in the engine of all religious
and moral systems. In so far as it is malevolent, the
religions are malevolent too, and insist on human sacrifices,
on hell, wrath, and vengeance. You cannot read Browning's
Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island,
without admitting that all our religions have been made as
Caliban made his, and that the difference between Caliban
and Prospero is not that Prospero has killed passion in
himself whilst Caliban has yielded to it, but that Prospero
is mastered by holier passions than Caliban's. Abstract
principles of conduct break down in practice because kindness
and truth and justice are not duties founded on abstract
principles external to man, but human passions, which have, in
their time, conflicted with higher passions as well as with
lower ones. If a young woman, in a mood of strong reaction
against the preaching of duty and self-sacrifice and the rest
of it, were to tell me that she was determined not to murder
her own instincts and throw away her life in obedience to
a mouthful of empty phrases, I should say to her: "By all
means do as you propose. Try how wicked you can be: it is
precisely the same experiment as trying how good you can be.
At worst you will only find out the sort of person you are.
At best you will find that your passions, if you really and
honestly let them all loose impartially, will discipline you
with a severity which your conventional friends, abandoning
themselves to the mechanical routine of fashion, could not
stand for a day." As a matter of fact, we have seen over and
over again this comedy of the "emancipated" young enthusiast
flinging duty and religion, convention and parental authority,
to the winds, only to find herself, for the first time in her
life, plunged into duties, responsibilities, and sacrifices
from which she is often glad to retreat, after a few years'
wearing down of her enthusiasm, into the comparatively loose
life of an ordinary respectable woman of fashion.[47]
[47] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Boni & Liveright.
Analyze the relation of _sincerity_ to _teaching_,
of _intellectual bravery_ to _reading_, of _subservience_
to _politics_, of _vitality_ to _creative writing_, of
_broadmindedness_ to _social reform_, of _sympathy_ to _social
judgment_.
Rewrite Mr. Shaw's article so as to place the sentence
which now begins the selection at the end. Is the result an
improvement or a drawback? What difference in the reader might
make this change advisable?
IX. In the light of the following statement of the philosophy of Mr.
Arthur Balfour, the English statesman, analyze, into one word if
possible, the philosophy of Lincoln, of Bismarck, of Mr. Wilson,
of Robert E. Lee, of Webster, of William Pitt, of Burke, of any
political thinker of whom you know.
In the same way analyze the military policy of Napoleon or
Grant or any other general; the social philosophy of Jane Addams,
Rousseau, Carlyle, Jefferson, or any other thinker; the creed
of personal conduct of Browning, Whitman, Thackeray (as shown
in _Vanity Fair_), or of any other person concerned with the
individual.
Analyze the effect of such a philosophy as Mr. Balfour's.
Analyze the relation of such a philosophy as this to the actively
interested personal conduct of the holder of it toward definite
personal ends.
Balfour is essentially a sceptic. He looks out on
life with a mingled scorn and pity--scorn for its passionate
strivings for the unattainable, pity for its meanness and
squalor. He does not know the reading of the riddle, but he
knows that all ends in failure and disillusion. Ever the rosy
dawn of youth and hope fades away into the sadness of evening
and the blackness of night, and out of that blackness comes no
flash of revelation, no message of cheer.
The Worldly Hope men set their hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.
Why meddle with the loom and its flying shuttle? We
are the warp and weft with which the great Weaver works His
infinite design--that design which is beyond the focus of all
mortal vision, and in which the glory of Greece, the pomp of
Rome, the ambition of Carthage, seven times buried beneath the
dust of the desert, are but inscrutable passages of glowing
color. All our schemes are futile, for we do not know the end,
and that which seems to us evil may serve some ultimate good,
and that which seems right may pave the path to wrong. In this
fantastic mockery of all human effort the only attitude is the
"wise passiveness" of the poet. Let us accept the irrevocable
fate unresistingly.
In a word, Drift. That is the political philosophy of Mr.
Balfour.[48]
[48] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission
of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.
X. Analyze the method of treatment that the author uses in the
following selections about King Edward VII and Mr. Thomas
Hardy, and in the one just quoted about Mr. Balfour. Would the
result in the reader's mind be as good, or better, if the author
specified a larger number of qualities? Why? What feeling do you
have as to the fairness of the three treatments? Does any one
of the three seem to claim completeness? Which is most nearly
complete?
Write a similar analysis, reducing to one or two main
qualities or characteristics, the American Civil War, the French
Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic Movement in
Literature, the Celtic Spirit, the Puritan Spirit, Socialism,
Culture.
Now, King Edward is, above everything else, a very
human man. He is not deceived by the pomp and circumstance in
the midst of which it has been his lot to live, for he has no
illusions. He is eminently sane. He was cast for a part in the
piece of life from his cradle, and he plays it industriously
and thoroughly; but he has never lost the point of view of the
plain man. He has much more in common with the President of a
free State than with the King by Divine right. He is simply
the chief citizen, _primus inter pares_, and the fact that
he is chief by heredity and not by election does not qualify
his views of the reality of the position. Unlike his nephew,
he never associates the Almighty with his right to rule,
though he associates Him with his rule. His common sense and
his gift of humor save him from these exalted and antiquated
assumptions. Nothing is more characteristic of this sensible
attitude than his love for the French people and French
institutions. No King by "Divine right" could be on speaking
terms with a country which has swept the whole institution of
Kingship on to the dust-heap.
And his saving grace of humor enables him to enjoy
and poke fun at the folly of the tuft-hunter and the collector
of Royal cherry stones. He laughingly inverts the folly. "You
see that chair," he said in tones of awe to a guest entering
his smoking room at Windsor. "That is the chair John Burns
sat in." His Majesty has a genuine liking for "J. B." who, I
have no doubt, delivered from that chair a copious digest of
his Raper lecture, coupled with illuminating statistics on
infantile mortality, some approving comments on the member
for Battersea, and a little wholesome advice on the duties
of a King. This liking for Mr. Burns is as characteristic of
the King as his liking for France. He prefers plain, breezy
men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those
who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had
no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great
qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine
glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of
his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when
he inadvertently sat on it.[49]
[49] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of
the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.
Thomas Hardy lives in the deepening shadow of the
mystery of this unintelligible world. The journey that began
with the bucolic joy of _Under the Greenwood Tree_ has reached
its close in the unmitigated misery of _Jude the Obscure_,
accompanied by the mocking voices of those aerial spirits who
pass their comments upon the futile struggle of the "Dynasts,"
as they march their armies to and fro across the mountains and
rivers of that globe which the eye of the imagination sees
whirling like a midge in space. Napoleon and the Powers! What
are they but puppets in the hand of some passionless fate,
loveless and hateless, whose purposes are beyond all human
vision?
O Immanence, That reasonest not
In putting forth all things begot,
Thou buildest Thy house in space--for what?
O Loveless, Hateless!--past the sense
Of kindly-eyed benevolence,
To what tune danceth this Immense?
And for answer comes the mocking voice of the Spirit
Ironic--
For one I cannot answer. But I know
'T is handsome of our Pities so to sing
The praises of the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing
That turns the handle of this idle Show.
Night has come down upon the outlook of the writer
as it came down over the somber waste of Egdon Heath. There
is not a cheerful feature left, not one glint of sunshine in
the sad landscape of broken ambitions and squalor and hopeless
strivings and triumphant misery. Labor and sorrow, a little
laughter, disillusion and suffering--and after that, the dark.
Not the dark that flees before the cheerful dawn, but the dark
whose greatest benediction is eternal nothingness. Other men
of genius, most men of genius, have had their periods of deep
dejection in which only the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic
answered their passionate questionings. Shakespeare himself
may be assumed to have passed through the valley of gloom in
that tremendous period when he produced the great tragedies;
but he came out of the shadow, and _The Winter's Tale_ has the
serenity and peace of a cloudless sunset. But the pilgrimage
of Thomas Hardy has led us ever into the deeper shadow. The
shades of the prison-house have closed around us and there is
no return to the cheerful day. The journey we began with those
jolly carol-singers under the greenwood tree has ended in the
hopeless misery of Jude.[50]
[50] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of
the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.
XI. On what basis is the following analysis of the farmer's life
made? Do you discover any overlapping of parts? Is the analysis
so incomplete as to be of slight value? At what point can you
draw the line between analysis and mere "remarks" about a
subject?
Over and above the hardiness which the farm
engenders, and of a far higher quality, is the moral courage
it calls into play. Courage is the elemental virtue, for
life has been and will forever be a fight. A farmer's life
is one incessant fight. Think what he dares! He dares to try
to control the face of this planet. In order to raise his
crops he pits himself against the weather and the seasons;
he forces the soil to his wishes; he wars against the plant
world, the bacterial world. Is not that a fight, looked at
philosophically, to make one stand aghast? After I had been on
the farm seven years, the tremendousness of the fight that my
fellow farmers were waging disclosed itself to me with a force
no figure of speech can convey. Until one can be brought
to some realization of this aspect of the farmer's life, he
has no adequate grounds for comprehending the discipline and
development which is the very nature of the case that life
must receive. I often contrast the life of the clerk at his
books, or the mechanic at his bench, or the professional man
at his desk, with the lot of the farmer. The dangers and
uncertainties they confront seem to me extraordinarily mild
compared with the risk the farmer runs. That the former will
be paid for their work is almost certain; it is extremely
uncertain whether the farmer will be paid for his. He must
dare to lose at every turn; scarcely a week passes in which
he does not lose, sometimes heavily, sometimes considerably.
Those moments in a battle when it seems as if every plan had
gone to smash, which so test the fortitude of a general, are
moments which a farmer experiences more frequently and more
strenuously than men in most occupations. If he sticks to his
task successfully his capacity for courage must grow to meet
the demands; if he will not stick, he is sifted out by force
of circumstance, leaving the stronger type of man to hold the
farm.[51]
[51] Arthur M. Judy: _From the Study to the Farm_. By courtesy of The
Atlantic Monthly Company.
Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor,
the head-nurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the
private detective.
XII. Would you classify the following selection as formal or informal
classification or partition?
Write a similar treatment of fuel power, moral power,
physical strength, intellectual power.
Wherever rain falls streams will form, the water of
which represents the concentrated drainage of all the land
sloping toward that particular valley at the bottom of which
the stream flows. This stream flow consists of the rainfall
over the whole watershed less the amount absorbed by the
earth or evaporated from the surface, and every such stream
is a potential source of power. The possible water-power of
a country or district is, therefore, primarily dependent on
rainfall, but also, of course, on absorption and surface
evaporation. In places where the land is approximately flat,
the tendency to concentrate rainfall into streams would be
small, as the water would tend to lie rather in swampy low
pools, or form innumerable tiny, slowly moving brooks. On the
contrary, if the country were of a rolling or mountainous
character, there would be two important differences
introduced. First, water would concentrate in a few larger
and faster-moving streams, the water of which would represent
the collection from perhaps thousands of square miles; and
secondly, it would be constantly falling from higher to lower
levels on its way to the sea. While, therefore, all streams
are potential, or possible sources of power, and water-power
might seem to be available all over the earth, yet, as a
matter of fact, only those streams that are large enough
or in which the fall of level is great enough, are really
worth while to develop; and only in these districts where
the rainfall is great enough and the earth not too flat or
too absorbent, or the air too dry, may any streams of useful
character at all be expected. The power represented by all the
water of a stream, and its entire fall from the source to the
sea, is likewise only partly available. No one would think of
trying to carry water in pipes from the source of a stream
a thousand miles to its mouth for the sake of running some
water-wheels.[52]
[52] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the
Columbia University Press.
XIII. For what kind of reader do you judge that the following partition
of the orchestra was written? Is the partition complete? What
is the basis on which it is made? How does it differ from an
appreciative criticism of the orchestra as a musical instrument?
(See chapter on _Criticism_.)
Make a similar partition of the brass band, the feudal
system, the United States Government, the United States Army, the
Hague Conference, the pipe organ, the printing press, a canal
lock, a Greek drama, a large modern circus, mathematics, etc.
The modern orchestra is the result of a long
development, which it would not be profitable to trace in this
book. It is a body of instruments, selected with a view to
their ability to perform the most complex music. It will be
readily understood that such an instrumental body must possess
a wide range of timbres, a great compass, extensive gradations
of force, the greatest flexibility, and a solid sonority
which can be maintained from the finest pianissimo to the
heaviest forte. Of course the preservation of some of these
qualities, such as flexibility and solidity, depend largely
upon the skill of the composer, but they are all inherent in
the orchestra. They are gained by the use of three classes of
instruments, grouped under the general heads of wood, brass,
and strings, which have special tone-colors and individuality
when heard in their distinct groups, but which combine
admirably in the ensemble.
It is the custom to name the three groups in the
order given because, for the sake of convenience, composers
place the flute parts at the top of the page of the score
where the wide margin gives room for their high notes. The
other wood-wind instruments follow the flutes, so as to keep
the wood-choir together. The brass is placed under the wood
because its members are so often combined with some of the
wood instruments in sounding chords. This brings the strings
to the bottom of the page, the instruments of percussion
(drums, cymbals, etc.) being inserted between them and the
brass.
The instruments of the conventional symphonic
orchestra of the classic period, then, are flutes, oboes,
clarinets, bassoons in the wood department, horns, trumpets,
and trombones in the brass, and violins, violas, violoncellos,
and double-basses for strings. Modern composers have added
for special reasons the English horn, which is the alto of
the oboe, the bass-clarinet, the contrabassoon (which sounds
an octave lower than the ordinary bassoon), the bass-tuba,
a powerful double-bass brass instrument, and the harp. The
piccolo, a small, shrill flute sounding an octave higher than
the ordinary flute, was introduced into the symphony orchestra
by Beethoven, though it had frequently been used before in
opera scores.[53]
[53] W. H. Henderson: _What is Good Music_? By courtesy of the
publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright,
1898.
XIV. Criticize the following analysis of the indispensability of Law.
Write an analysis of the necessity for conformity to current
style in dress, the necessity for theaters, of the reason why
ultimate democracy is inevitable for the whole world; of the
inevitability of conflict between advancing thought and
established religion; of the unavoidability of struggle between
capital and labor.
The truth is, laws, religions, creeds, and systems
of ethics, instead of making society better than its best
unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are
never up to date. You will ask me: "Why have them at all?"
I will tell you. They are made necessary, though we all
secretly detest them, by the fact that the number of people
who can think out a line of conduct for themselves even on
one point is very small, and the number who can afford the
time for it is still smaller. Nobody can afford the time to
do it on all points. The professional thinker may on occasion
make his own morality and philosophy as the cobbler may make
his own boots; but the ordinary man of business must buy at
the shop, so to speak, and put up with what he finds on sale
there, whether it exactly suits him or not, because he can
neither make a morality for himself nor do without one. This
typewriter with which I am writing is the best I can get; but
it is by no means a perfect instrument; and I have not the
smallest doubt that in fifty years' time authors will wonder
how men could have put up with so clumsy a contrivance. When a
better one is invented I shall buy it: until then, not being
myself an inventor, I must make the best of it, just as my
Protestant and Roman Catholic and Agnostic friends make the
best of their imperfect creeds and systems. Oh, Father Tucker,
worshiper of Liberty, where shall we find a land where the
thinking and moralizing can be done without division of labor?
Besides, what have deep thinking and moralizing to
do with the most necessary and least questionable side of
law? Just consider how much we need law in matters which have
absolutely no moral bearing at all. Is there anything more
aggravating than to be told, when you are socially promoted,
and are not quite sure how to behave yourself in the circles
you enter for the first time, that good manners are merely a
matter of good sense, and that rank is but the guinea's stamp:
the man's the gowd for a' that? Imagine taking the field
with an army which knew nothing except that the soldier's
duty is to defend his country bravely, and think, not of
his own safety, nor of home and beauty, but of England! Or
of leaving the traffic of Piccadilly or Broadway to proceed
on the understanding that every driver should keep to that
side of the road which seemed to him to promote the greatest
happiness to the greatest number! Or of stage managing Hamlet
by assuring the Ghost that whether he entered from the right
or the left could make no difference to the greatness of
Shakespeare's play, and that all he need concern himself
about was holding the mirror up to nature! Law is never so
necessary as when it has no ethical significance whatever,
and is pure law for the sake of law. The law that compels
me to keep to the left when driving along Oxford Street is
ethically senseless, as is shown by the fact that keeping
to the right serves equally well in Paris; and it certainly
destroys my freedom to choose my side; but by enabling me to
count on every one else keeping to the left also, thus making
traffic possible and safe, it enlarges my life and sets my
mind free for nobler issues. Most laws, in short, are not the
expression of the ethical verdicts of the community, but pure
etiquette and nothing else. What they do express is the fact
that over most of the field of social life there are wide
limits within which it does not matter what people do, though
it matters enormously under given circumstances whether you
can depend on their all doing the same thing. The wasp, who
can be depended on absolutely to sting if you squeeze him, is
less of a nuisance than the man who tries to do business with
you not according to the custom of business, but according
to the Sermon on the Mount, or than the lady who dines with
you and refuses, on republican and dietetic principles, to
allow precedence to a duchess or to partake of food which
contains uric acid. The ordinary man cannot get through the
world without being told what to do at every turn, and basing
such calculations as he is capable of on the assumption that
every one else will calculate on the same assumptions. Even
your man of genius accepts a hundred rules for every one
he challenges; and you may lodge in the same house with an
Anarchist for ten years without noticing anything exceptional
about him. Martin Luther, the priest, horrified the greater
half of Christendom by marrying a nun, yet was a submissive
conformist in countless ways, living orderly as a husband and
father, wearing what his bootmaker and tailor made for him,
and dwelling in what the builder built for him, although he
would have died rather than take his Church from the Pope.
And when he got a Church made by himself to his liking,
generations of men calling themselves Lutherans took that
Church from him just as unquestioningly as he took the fashion
of his clothes from the tailor. As the race evolves, many a
convention which recommends itself by its obvious utility
to every one passes into an automatic habit like breathing.
Doubtless also an improvement in our nerves and judgment
may enlarge the list of emergencies which individuals may
be entrusted to deal with on the spur of the moment without
reference to regulations; but a ready-made code of conduct for
general use will always be needed as a matter of overwhelming
convenience by all members of communities.
The continual danger to liberty created by law
arises, not from the encroachments of Governments, which are
always regarded with suspicion, but from the immense utility
and consequent popularity of law, and the terrifying danger
and obvious inconvenience of anarchy; so that even pirates
appoint and obey a captain. Law soon acquires such a good
character that people will believe no evil of it; and at this
point it becomes possible for priests and rulers to commit
the most pernicious crimes in the name of law and order.
Creeds and laws come to be regarded as applications to human
conduct of eternal and immutable principles of good and
evil; and breakers of the law are abhorred as sacrilegious
scoundrels to whom nothing is sacred. Now this, I need not
tell you, is a very serious error. No law is so independent
of circumstances that the time never comes for breaking it,
changing it, scrapping it as obsolete, and even making its
observance a crime. In a developing civilization nothing can
make laws tolerable unless their changes and modifications are
kept as closely as possible on the heels of the changes and
modifications in social conditions which development involves.
Also there is a bad side to the very convenience of law. It
deadens the conscience of individuals by relieving them of
the ethical responsibility of their own actions. When this
relief is made as complete as possible, it reduces a man to a
condition in which his very virtues are contemptible. Military
discipline, for example, aims at destroying the individuality
and initiative of the soldier whilst increasing his mechanical
efficiency, until he is simply a weapon with the power of
hearing and obeying orders. In him you have legality, duty,
obedience, self-denial, submission to external authority,
carried as far as it can be carried; and the result is that
in England, where military service is voluntary, the common
soldier is less respected than any other serviceable worker
in the community. The police constable, who is a civilian and
has to use his own judgment and act on his own responsibility
in innumerable petty emergencies, is by comparison a popular
and esteemed citizen. The Roman Catholic peasant who consults
his parish priest instead of his conscience, and submits
wholly to the authority of his Church, is mastered and
governed either by statesmen and cardinals who despise his
superstition, or by Protestants who are at least allowed to
persuade themselves that they have arrived at their religious
opinions through the exercise of their private judgment. The
moral evolution of the social individual is from submission
and obedience as economizers of effort and responsibility, and
safeguards against panic and incontinence, to willfulness and
self-assertion made safe by reason and self-control, just as
plainly as his physical growth leads him from the perambulator
and the nurse's apron strings to the power of walking alone,
and from the tutelage of the boy to the responsibility of the
man. But it is useless for impatient spirits (like you and
I, for instance) to call on people to walk before they can
stand. Without high gifts of reason and self-control: that is,
without strong common-sense, no man yet dares trust himself
out of the school of authority. What he does is to claim
gradual relaxations of the discipline, so as to have as much
liberty as he thinks is good for him, and as much government
as he thinks he needs to keep him straight. If he goes too
fast he soon finds himself asking helplessly, "What ought I
to do?" and so, after running to the doctor, the lawyer, the
expert, the old friend, and all the other quacks for advice,
he runs back to the law again to save him from all these and
from himself. The law may be wrong; but anyhow it spares
him the responsibility of choosing, and will either punish
those who make him look ridiculous by exposing its folly, or,
when the constitution is too democratic for this, at least
guarantee that the majority is on his side.[54]
[54] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Boni & Liveright.