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PROGRESSIVE READINGS IN PROSE

I.

EXPOSITION

HE term Exposition is applied to that form of composition which deals primarily with ideas about things-not things themselves. Its chief function is explanation, the discovery of contrasts and similarities, of relations and associations of causes and results. If one tells a story about a fish and a man, he will use concrete narration; but if he chooses to show the relation between the lower animal organism of the fish and the higher organism of the man as explained by the theory of evolution, he will then be dealing with the abstract and employing the expository form.

The particular form which an expository article takes should depend upon the fundamental conception which the writer forms before beginning his task. This is as important to him as the mental picture of the completed structure is to an architect about to start work on his blue-prints. By fundamental conception is meant that recognition by the prospective writer of the full obligations of the task before him -a recognition possible only after a due consideration of the nature of the subject chosen, the class of readers it is desired to reach, and the kind of appeal the author wishes to make.

If the subject divides itself naturally, like the backbone of a fish, into a number of coördinate sections, then the writer will doubtlessly use the catalogue method. So Wu Tingfang in "American Manners" and Walter Prichard Eaton in "The Menace from Above" do little more than enumerate the various points of their discourse with comment upon each. There is little or no climax, for none is needed. Obviously the great advantage of this method is the clarity which is secured. On the other hand as there is no growing

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importance of the subject, no heightening of the interest as we proceed, the content of most articles will necessitate the use of a form in which, after a gradual crescendo, a definite climax is reached. In this type special care must be taken that the different parts cohere naturally, that the proper transition shows how one paragraph grows out of another, how one large division of thought is related to the foregoing.

So much for the conditions which the subject itself imposes. The readers for whom the article is written should not be forgotten. Compare the simple lucid style in which Lafcadio Hearn addressed his Japanese students with the more involved structure of the essays by Herbert Croly or by Thomas De Quincey. Likewise study Thomas Huxley's "Piece of Chalk" in the light of an address deliv ered to a group of laboring men who cared much for what he might tell them in a straightforward way, and very little for any unnecessary elaboration of the language in which it was couched. The simple formula is: technical language for the specialist; simple, direct diction for the average man; and a literary style flavored with figure and allusion for the bibliophile.

Even more important, in view of its effect upon the finished article, is the kind of appeal which the writer wishes to make. The two great faculties of the mind are the intellect and the imagination. The intellect is brought into play. in writing Informative Prose; the imagination, in writing the Familiar Essay. The purpose of the former is utilitarianit is designed to bring us knowledge; the purpose of the latter is artistic-it aims to give pleasure. This same distinction

is to be noticed (1) between practical descriptions, where fidelity to detail is the requirement, and imaginative descriptions, in which the writer strives by a judicious selection of detail to create atmosphere; and (2) to a certain extent between narration of fact, whose very truth imposes inevitable and inviolable restrictions, and narration of fiction, in which the writer by a conscious arrangement of the parts may obtain a desired effect.

Thus there are created two distinct types of expository writing: the Informative Prose article, which should conform strictly to certain necessary principles;

and the Familiar Essay, which permits greater freedom of treatment. Occasionally these two types blend so that the line of demarcation is almost indistinguishable; but the elements of each are present nevertheless, one usually predominating.

Exposition is a mark of the developed mind. It represents a stage beyond that of passive acceptance of the phenomena of life. Simple narrations and descriptions are within the power of the most immature, but interpretation and reasoning bespeak a critical attitude which it is one aim of education to produce.

A. INFORMATIVE PROSE

IN Informative Prose the emphasis is laid on what is said, not on how it is said. This does not mean that diction is unimportant; it simply signifies that language is to subserve the best possible expression of the idea. All thought of ornamentation should be banished in the attempt to convey to the reader exactly the desired information. Certain subjects, especially those in the field of in- | terpretative literature, permit some licence in this regard. Matthew Arnold in❘ his essay on "Celtic Literature" succeeds through the agency of his rich style in enveloping his theme with some of the very magic he is writing of. And yet this may prove a dangerous tendency. It is undeniable that at times the florid writing of John Ruskin, with its long periods and balanced structure, obscures the idea he wishes to convey. It must be borne in mind that clarity is the chief purpose of Informative Prose.

To gain this end a definite form or skeleton upon which the thought fabric may be draped is essential. Many students fail to recognize this skeleton beneath the sentences of the articles they read. Because they do not perceive it, they evidently argue it is not there, and see no reason for its construction. It is for this reason that most teachers of English insist on written out

lines before any long exposition is attempted. Only a highly trained writer can keep vividly in mind the complete design of his prospective composition. Failure to confine one's self strictly to a definite plan of procedure leads to digressions, distracts the mind of the reader, and dulls the intended effect.

Students often complain that an outline hampers them by its unnecessary restrictions. This can be due only to a misunderstanding of its function. An outline should never be so rigid as to allow no alteration. As the mind sweeps forward, new ideas, new implications will present themselves. Minor details may be added without hesitation. More important changes usually necessitate a complete reorganization of the scheme of the outline either by the inclusion of new main headings, or by the realization that a new basis of division is needed.

Indeed, it is this work of organization which is of greatest value in the writing of exposition. No uncanny wielding of a flexible vocabulary, no adroit treatment of isolated topics can atone for a lack of organizing power. It is difficult to find a better example of informative writing in which the correlation of ideas is perfectly and naturally revealed than the chapter on "Habit" by William James. The student must develon the abil

ity to grasp the relationship between certain ideas; he must be able to select from an accumulated body of details that material which is essential to his purpose; and with due regard to the principles of unity, coherence, emphasis, and proportion to embody them in a written form whose chief virtue is clearness.

Of course, clarity alone will not make great writing. Unless one has something worth while to say, technique is useless. Originality depends largely on one's attitude toward life. There are comparatively few new things in the world; but there are always new phases of the old, new points of view regarding the old.

The majority of people are obsessed with a few traditional ideas. The student who chooses for a subject "How to Make Cider Vinegar" or "The Care of the Teeth" is unconsciously allying himself with the inert multitude. Human experience is far too rich in variety to excuse lazy thinking and sluggish imagination. Perhaps some day we shall discard the word theme from the classroom, and impress it upon the student that he is expected to write not merely a combination of words and sentences for the instructor to draw red lines through, but a short paper in which a valuable thought is given appropriate expression.

STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE1
CHARLES DARWIN

The foremost contribution to science made in the nineteenth century was the Theory of Evolution formulated by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). This theory purports to explain the origin of the various forms of life by proving them descended one from another, the higher and more complicated forms having evolved-with the lapse of time-from earlier and simpler ones. It met with bitter opposition, for it opposed directly the accepted belief in the individual creation of all species of animal and plant life-a belief resulting from a literal reading of the opening chapters of Genesis-and suggested the descent of human beings from ape-like ancestors. The theory was set forth in The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man, and after a half-century of fiery controversy it has been generally accepted by scientists. The first step in Darwin's argument that the struggle for existence results in the survival of the fittest through natural selection is a clear exposition of that struggle.

NOTHING is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult-at least I have found it so than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see or we forget that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their

1From Chap. 3 of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind that, though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.

The Term, Struggle for Existence, Used in a Large Sense

I should premise that I use this term in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more

properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes, growing close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in tempting the birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses, which pass into each other, I use for convenience's sake the general term of Struggle for Existence.

Geometrical Ratio of Increase A struggle for existence inevitably fol

lows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus1 applied with manifold force to the whole animal

1Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), English political economist, whose Principle of Population (1798) propounds the doctrine that the population of the world, if unchecked by disease and crime, would increase geometrically, while the resources increase only arithmetically.

and vegetable kingdom; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standingroom for his progeny. Linnæus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds-and there is no plant so unproductive as this-and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it

begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.

But we have better evidence on this subject than mere theoretical calculations; namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when circumstances have been favorable to them during two or three following seasons. Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals of many kinds which have run wild in several parts of the world; if the statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses in South America, and latterly in Australia, had not been well authenticated, they would have been incredible. So it is with plants; cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in a period of

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less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, which are now the commonest over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of every other plant, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, which have been imported from America since its discovery. In such cases, and endless others could be given, no one supposes that the fertility of the animals or plants has been suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious explanation is that the conditions of life have been highly favorable, and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and young, and that nearly all the young have been enabled to breed. Their geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains their extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion in their new homes.

In a state of nature almost every fullgrown plant annually produces seed, and among animals there are very few which do not annually pair. Hence we may confidentially assert that all plants and animals are tending to increase at geometrical ratio-that all would rapidly stock every station in which they could anyhow exist-and that this geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life. Our familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think, to mislead us: we see no great destruction falling on them, but we do not keep in mind that thousands are annually slaughtered for food, and that in a state of nature an equal number would have somehow to be disposed of.

The only difference between organisms which annually produce eggs or seeds by the thousand, and those which produce extremely few, is, that the slow-breeders would require a few more years to people, under favorable conditions, a whole district, let it be ever so large. The condor lays a couple of eggs and the ostrich

a score, and yet in the same country the condor may be the more numerous of the two; the Fulmar petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird in the world. One fly deposits hundreds of eggs, and another, like the hippobosca, a single one; but this difference does not determine how many individuals of the two species can be supported in a district. A large number of eggs is of some importance to those species which depend on a fluctuating amount of food, for it allows them rapidly to increase in number. But the real importance of a large number of eggs or seeds is to make up for much destruction at some period of life; and this period in the great majority of cases is an early one. If an animal can in any way protect its own eggs or young, a small number may be produced, and yet the average stock be fully kept up; but if many eggs or young are destroyed, many must be produced, or the species will become extinct. It would suffice to keep up the full number of a tree, which lived on an average for a thousand years, if a single seed were produced once in a thousand years, supposing that this seed were never destroyed, and could be insured to germinate in a fitting place. So that, in all cases, the average number of any animal or plant depends only indirectly on the number of its eggs or seeds.

In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind-never to forget that every single organic being may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount.

Nature of the Checks to Increase

The causes which check the natural tendency of each species to increase are

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