  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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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. 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] 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]
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]
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] 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 - 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?
- Use any of the following sentences as a nucleus sentence on which to build an informal analysis.
- The attitude of scientific efficiency is incompatible with feelings of humanity.
- A college career does not always develop, but in fact often kills, intellectual integrity.
- The worst enemy of the American Public is the newspaper that for political or business reasons distorts news.
- Studies are the least valuable of college activities except as they stimulate the imagination.
- Our Country is so large that a citizen is really justified, mentally and morally, in being provincial.
- The study of literature in college is, except for the person of no imagination, deadening to the spirit.
- The fifteen-and twenty-cent magazine is a menace to American life in that its fiction grossly distorts the facts of life.
- The farmer who wishes to keep his soil in good condition should use legumes as increasers of fertility.
- The effect of acquisition of land property is always to drive the possessors into the Tory camp.
- The engineer is a poet who expresses himself in material forms rather than words.
- 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.)
- Building materials for houses.
- China dinner-ware.
- Forms of democratic government.
- Methods of irrigation in the United States.
- Types of lyric poetry.
- Chairs.
- Commercial fertilizers.
- Tractors for the farm.
- Contemporary philosophies of Europe and America.
- American dances.
- Elevators.
- Filing systems.
- Races of men in Europe.
- Gas ranges.
- Pianos.
- 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. - 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.
- Summer work for college students.
- Keeping informed of world affairs while doing one's college work faithfully.
- "Outside activities" for college students.
- Faculty or non-faculty control of college politics.
- Choosing a college course with relation to intended career in life.
- Selecting shrubbery for continuous bloom with both red and blue berries in winter.
- The mail-order houses.
- Preventing money panics.
- Dye-manufacture in the United States.
- Gaining foreign markets.
- The farmer and the commission merchant.
- The brand of flour selected for use in large hotels.
- Color photography.
- Wind pressure in high buildings.
- Street pavement.
- Electrification of railroads.
- Heating system for an eight-room house.
- Choice of cereal for children of six, nine, and eleven—two boys, one girl.
- Lighting the farmhouse.
- Creating a high class dairy or sheep herd.
- Creating an apple (or other fruit) orchard.
- Method of shipping potatoes to a distant point, in boxes, barrels, sacks.
- Best use of a twenty-acre farm near a large city.
- Investment of $500.00.
- Best system of bookkeeping for the farmer.
- Kind of life insurance for a man of twenty.
- Location of a shoe factory with capital of $250,000.00.
- Cash system in a large general store.
- Reconciling Shakespeare's works with the known facts of his life.
- The secret of Thomas Hardy's pessimism.
- Reconciling narrow religious training with the increased knowledge derived from college.
- The failure of college courses in English composition to produce geniuses.
- The creation of a conscientious political attitude in a democracy.
- Selection of $10,000 worth of books as the nucleus for a small town library.
- 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.
- 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.
- Causes of the Return-to-the-Soil movement, Origins of our dairy cattle, Benefits of intensive agriculture, Imported plant diseases, Legumes.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. - Write a 1500-2000 word analytical theme on any of the following subjects:
- The Responsibilities of Individualism.
- American Slavery to the Printed Word.
- The Ideal Vacation.
- What Shall We Do with Sunday?
- The Value of Reading Fiction.
- Why I am a Republican, or Democrat, or Pessimist, or Agnostic, or Humanist, or Rebel in general, or Agitator or—whatnot?
- The Classics and the American Student in the Twentieth Century.
- The Chief Function of a College.
- The Decline of Manners.
- A Defense of Cheap Vaudeville.
- The Workingman Should Know His Place and Keep It.
- The Study of History as an Aid to a Critical Estimate of the Present.
- The Relation of Friendship to Similarity in Point of View.
- Intellectual Leadership in America.
- The Present Situation in the World of Baseball.
- The Reaction of War upon the Finer Sensibilities of Civilians.
- Patriotism and Intellectual Detachment.
- The Breeding Place of Social Improvements.
- Organization in Modern Life.
- The Conflict of Political and Moral Loyalty.
- Why Has Epic Poetry Passed from Favor?
- The Stability of American Political Opinion.
- The Shifting Geography of Intellectual Leadership in the World.
- 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] 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? - 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] - 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] 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] - 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] Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor, the head-nurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the private detective. - 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] - 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] - 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]
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