“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”

Lord Byron.

I.Introduction

The exposition of ideas is difficult and important. It takes many forms, but only three can be noticed in this chapter: (1) Exposition through Narration; (2) Exposition through Condensation; (3) Exposition through Comparison. The three following models illustrate these three forms, respectively.

II.ModelI

PUFFERS

The wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the covering of apologue; and, though this practice is generally thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay.

A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went forth to buy one. There lived in his neighborhood three rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said, “Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice.” “It is for that very purpose,” said the holy man, “that I came forth this day.” Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, “Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue, callest thou that cur a sheep?” “Truly,” answered the other, “it is a sheep of the finest fleece and of the sweetest flesh. O Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods.” “Friend,” said the Brahmin, “either thou or I must be blind.”

Just then one of the accomplices came up. “Praised be the gods,” said this second rogue, “that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?” When the Brahmin heard this his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. “Sir,” said he to the newcomer, “take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur.” “O Brahmin,” said the newcomer, “thou art drunk or mad!”

At this time the third confederate drew near. “Let us ask this man,” said the Brahmin, “what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say.” To this the others agreed, and the Brahmin called out, “O stranger, what dost thou call this beast?” “Surely, O Brahmin,” said the knave, “it is a fine sheep.” Then the Brahmin said, “Surely the gods have taken away my senses”; and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.

Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Æsop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of people who have more than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious or a more difficult trick than when they passed Mr. Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet.—Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Mr. Robert Montgomery’s Poems.

III.Topics for Discussion

1. The Fable, which is here illustrated, is a simple story told to point a moral or to make clear a complicated situation. Æsop and George Ade are perhaps the most interesting authors of fables—at least to twentieth-century Americans. An entertaining program may be arranged by assigning each member of the class a fable of one of these writers for oral reporting. The model illustrates well the value of the fable form in newspaper exposition.
2. Note the paragraph structure: (1) Introduction; (2) “Four W’s,” or Situation1; (3) Climax, or Situation2; (4) DÉnouement, Result, or Situation3; (5) Moral, or Point.
3. Define and discuss the etymology of “antiquity,” “apologue,” “apology,” “edition,” “fable,” “impostor,” “accomplice,” “confederate,” “knave,” “ghee,” “caution,” “puffers.”
4. What proportion of Macaulay’s words in Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 are monosyllables and dissyllables? Does he here use more or fewer big words in proportion than in Paragraphs 1 and 5? What is the effect on his style?
5. What proportion of his sentences are simple? Compound? Complex?
6. Topics for reports or speeches: Mr. Robert Montgomery; Pilpay; The Brahmins; Æsop; Sanscrit.
7. Explain the allusion in the phrase, “the Sanscrit Æsop.”
8. Explain some episode in American history by means of a fable.
9. Write an editorial on some question of local and current interest, using the fable method to illustrate the situation.

IV.ModelII

A Voltairean view of war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. After congratulating his terrestrial hearers on being so small and adding that, with so manifest a subordination of matter to mind, they must pass their lives in the pleasures of intellectual pursuits and mutual love—a veritable spiritual existence—the stranger is thus answered by one of the philosophers: “We have more matter than we need for the accomplishment of much evil, if evil comes from matter, and more mind than we need if evil comes from mind. Do you know that at the present moment there are a hundred thousand fools of our species, wearing caps, who are killing a hundred thousand other animals wearing turbans, or who are themselves being massacred by the latter, and that almost everywhere on earth this is the immemorial usage?” The Sirian, properly shocked, demands the reason of these horrible encounters between creatures so puny. “It is all about a pile of dirt no bigger than your heel,” is the reply. “Not that any one of these millions of men marching to slaughter has the slightest claim to this pile of dirt; the only question is whether it shall belong to a certain man known as Sultan or to another having the title of Czar. Neither of the two has ever seen or ever will see the patch of ground in dispute, and hardly a single one of these animals engaged in killing one another has ever seen the animal for whom they are thus employed.” Again the stranger expresses his horror, and declares he has half a mind to annihilate with a kick or two the whole batch of ridiculous assassins. “Don’t give yourself the trouble,” is the rejoinder; “they will accomplish their own destruction fast enough. Know that ten years hence not a hundredth part of these miserable wretches will be left alive; and know, too, that even if they were not to draw the sword, hunger, exhaustion, or intemperance would make an end of most of them. Besides, they are not the ones to punish, but rather those sedentary barbarians who, from the ease and security of their private apartments, and while their dinner is digesting, order the massacre of a million men, and then solemnly return thanks to God for the achievement.” The visitor from Sirius is moved with pity for a race of beings presenting such astonishing contrasts.—The Dial, January1, 1915.9

V.Exercises

1. Topics for short speeches: Voltaire; Micromegas; planets; Sirius.
2. What is the moral of this fable?
3. Discuss the meaning and etymology of “Micromegas,” “philosophers,” “fantasy,” “translation,” “terrestrial,” “intellectual,” “Czar,” “annihilate,” “ridiculous,” “rejoinder,” “sedentary.”
4. Find in the model one simple, one compound, and one complex sentence.
5. One loose and one periodic sentence.
6. Two antitheses.
7. Explain in one paragraph the point of some old book of current interest.

VI.ModelIII

Theodor Mommsen’s “Law of National Expansion,” in view of the present war, is interesting. In his History of Rome, which was published in 1857, he says in substance that a young nation which has both vigor and culture is sure to absorb older nations whose vigor is waning and younger nations whose civilization is undeveloped, just as an educated young man is sure to supplant an old man in his dotage and to get the better of a muscular ignoramus. That nations, as well as individuals, should do this is, in Mommsen’s opinion, not only inevitable but right.

In ancient times the Romans were the only people in whom were combined a superior political organization and a superior civilization. The result was that they subdued the Greek states of the East, which were ripe for destruction, and dispossessed the people of lower grades of culture in the West. The union of Italy was accomplished through the overthrow of the Samnite and Etruscan civilizations. The Roman Empire was built upon the ruins of countless secondary nationalities which had long before been marked out for destruction by the levelling hand of civilization. When Latium became too narrow for the Romans, they cured their political ills by conquering the rest of Italy. When Italy became too narrow, CÆsar crossed the Alps.

So far Mommsen. The conclusions drawn from his “law” by some of his successors are ingenious. They amount to this: As Rome grew in power and culture, so Brandenburg, since the days of the Great Elector, has been expanding in spirit and in territory. That illustrious prince began by absorbing Prussia. Frederick the Great added Silesia and a slice of Poland. WilhelmI obtained Schleswig, Holstein, Alsace, and Lorraine by war, and Saxony and Bavaria by benevolent assimilation. The present Kaiser has already acquired Belgium by the former and Austria by the latter process. Like the Rome of CÆsar, the German Empire is now at war on the one hand with decadent civilizations and on the other with a horde of barbarians. What Greece and Carthage were to Rome, France and England are to Germany, while Russia is the modern counterpart of the Gauls, Britons, and Germans of the Commentaries. Such at least is what certain writers think the Germans think.

VII.Notes and Exercises

1. Note the framework: (Par.1) Mommsen’s Law; (Par.2) Illustration1—Rome; (Par.3) Illustration2—Germany.
2. Topics for short speeches: Theodor Mommsen; The Rise of the Roman Empire; The Greeks; The People of the West; The Samnites and Etruscans; Brandenburg; The Great Elector; Prussia; Frederick the Great; Silesia; Poland; Schleswig and Holstein; Alsace and Lorraine; Saxony and Bavaria; Carthage; Julius CÆsar and his Commentaries.
3. Add to the model paragraphs on the expansion of Spain, France, Russia, England, and the United States, or on any one of them.

VIII.Suggested Reading

CÆsar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Macaulay’s Frederick the Great. Southey’s Life of Nelson. Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac. Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe. Fiske’s The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War.

IX.Memorize

HUMANITY

I would not enter on my list of friends,
Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility, the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die;
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field.
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong.
The sum is this: If man’s convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all—the meanest things that are—
As free to live and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who, in his sovereign wisdom, made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.

William Cowper.
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