Chapter III: Definition (1)

Definition is the process of explaining a subject by setting bounds to it, enclosing it within its limits, showing its extent. The ocean is properly defined by the shore; a continent or island is defined by its coastline: shores set limits to the ocean; coastlines bound the island or continent. So, when a child asks, "What is Switzerland?" you show on the map the pink or yellow or green space that is included within certain definite boundaries. These boundaries set a limit to the extent of that country; in other words, they define it. As soon as a traveler steps beyond the limit of that country, he is at once in another realm, has become identified with a quite different set of conditions and circumstances--he is, in fact, in a country that has a different definition from that of Switzerland. In the same way, when some one asks what truth is, or nickel steel, or a grand piano, or humanism, or art, or rotation of crops, or a rocking chair, or the forward pass, you attempt, in your reply, to set bounds to the thing in question, to restrict it, to fence it off, to state the line beyond which if it goes it ceases to be one thing and becomes another. It is by no means always an easy task to find this line. Many a child has come to grief in his attempts to keep safely within the limits of truth and yet be close up to the realm of desirable falsehood. Likewise many witnesses in court have been beguiled or browbeaten into crossing the line without knowing that they were getting into the country of the enemy. But though the quest for the line may be difficult, a true definition must set off the thing being defined from other things, must set bounds to it, enclose it within its limits, show its extent.

The Process of Definition

The logical process of defining consists of two steps: first, stating the class or group to which the object of definition belongs, as to say that Switzerland is a _country_, the forward pass is a _strategic device in football_, humanism is a _philosophy of personal development_; and second, pointing out the difference between the object of definition and other members of the class, showing how it is distinguished from them. Since the purpose of definition is to limit the thing defined, the practical value of the first step is at once apparent. If, in total ignorance, a resident of India asks you, "What is ragtime?" the most helpful thing in the world that you can do for him is to cleave away with one stroke everything else in the world but music--absolute exclusion of all other human interests--and place ragtime in that comparatively narrow field. That is the first thing of great help. However many qualities you may attribute to ragtime,--whether you call it inspiring, invigorating, pleasing, detestable, or what not,--you are making at best only slow progress toward defining, really limiting ragtime. The number of pleasing things, for example, is so endless, and the things are so diverse in character that your listener is almost as ignorant after such a quality has been attributed as he was before. But the moment that you limit ragtime to music you scatter untold clouds of doubt and place the inquirer in the comfortable position of having a fairly large working knowledge. What is left for the inquirer to do is merely to distinguish ragtime from other kinds of music--after all, a rather simple task. Likewise in any definition, such as that of rotation of crops, the first necessity is to place the subject in its proper field, in this case agriculture; the grand piano in the class of musical instruments; the rocking chair in the class of furniture.

Now sometimes the task of discovering to what class your subject belongs is difficult. Is a believer in Unitarianism a Christian? He follows the ethical teachings of Jesus but denies him any special divinity. In this case obviously the question of classification will depend on the definition that we make of Christianity. Is a man who serves the state in legislative or judicial capacity and at the same time writes novels to be called a statesman or a man of letters? Governments have fallen into difficulty with each other over such things as contraband of war, there being great doubt at times whether a particular thing is properly contraband or not. The question is sometimes doubtful--you will be inclined to say, "I don't know what to call this," but in making a definition call it you must. The United States Government, facing the problem of discovering the proper class for frogs' legs, in determining customs duties after much perturbation placed them under the heading "poultry." Ordinarily you will find slight difficulty in determining the class; but in every case you must patiently search until you have found some class into which your subject naturally fits. Until you have done this you obviously cannot set it apart from other members, because you will not really know what the other members are, you will be forced to run through the total list of human ideas and things. Until you know that _oligarchy_ is one form of political society you cannot know whether to set it off from _democracy_ and _monarchy_ or from _Christianity_ and _Buddhism_. First, then, however difficult, discover the class to which your subject belongs. In the following definition of a _clearing-house_, you will find that in the course of time the class to which the subject belongs has changed, has come to include more space, needs a larger fence to surround it, and therefore the definition has been changed.

What is a clearing-house? The Supreme Court of the State
of Pennsylvania has defined it thus: "It is an ingenious device
to simplify and facilitate the work of the banks in reaching
an adjustment and payment of the daily balances due to and from
each other at one time and in one place on each day. In practical
operation it is a place where all the representatives of the banks
in a given city meet, and, under the supervision of a competent
committee or officer selected by the associated banks, settle their
accounts with each other and make or receive payments of balances
and so 'clear' the transactions of the day for which the settlement
is made."

But we must go farther than this, for though originally
designed as a labor-saving device, the clearing-house has expanded
far beyond those limits, until it has become a medium for united
action among the banks in ways that did not exist even in the
imaginations of those who were instrumental in its inception. A
clearing-house, therefore, may be defined as a device to simplify
and facilitate the daily exchange of items and settlements of
balances among the banks, and a medium for united action upon all
questions affecting their mutual welfare.[13]

[13] Francis M. Burdick: _The Essentials of Business Law_. By courtesy
of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright
1902, 1908, by D. Appleton & Co.

The second step in the logical process of definition is to show how the subject for definition differs from other members of its class. Once I am told that the piano is a musical instrument I must next learn wherein it differs from the violin, the kettle-drum, and the English horn. The surname _Tomlinson_ partly defines a person as a member of the Tomlinson family, but the definition is not complete until the name is modified and the person is distinguished by _George_ or _Charles_ or whatever name may belong to him. A skillful shepherd knows not only his flocks but also the characteristics of the different members of the flocks, so that he can say, "This sheep is the one in X flock that is always getting into the clover." Here "X flock" is the class, and the quality of abusing the clover is the distinguishing individual tag. Since the desire in this part of the process of defining is to set individuals apart, no mention will be made of qualities that are shared in common but only of those that are peculiar to the individual. These qualities that distinguish individual members of classes from each other are called the _differentia_, just as the class is commonly called the _genus_.

For convenience in keeping the list of differentia reasonably small, to avoid unwieldiness of definition, care must be exercised in choosing the class. When a class which itself contains other possible classes is chosen, a long list of differentia will be necessary. It is well, therefore, to choose a relatively small class to begin with. For example, if I put the piano into the large class of _musical instruments_, I shall then be under the necessity of amassing sufficient differentia to set it apart from wind instruments whether of brass or wood, from instruments of percussion, and from other stringed instruments that do not use metal strings. If I restrict the class to _stringed instruments_, I thereby exclude the differentia of both wind instruments and instruments of percussion. If I further restrict the class, at the beginning, to _instruments with metal strings_, I need then to employ only such differentia as will set it off, perhaps, from instruments that do not have a sounding board for their metal strings. Such restriction of the class is advisable chiefly for purposes of economy of effort in discovering the differentia, and is usually accomplished, in expression, by preceding the class name with a limiting adjective or by using a limiting phrase. This adjective or this phrase is likely to be the expression of differentia among smaller classes, the differentia among individual members being stated more at length later in the definition.

The process of definition will be complete, then, when the subject of definition has been assigned to a class, which for convenience should be relatively small, and the qualities that distinguish the subject from other members of the class have been found.

The Two Main Classes of Definitions

Two main classes of definition exist: first, the rigidly logical, scientific kind such as is found in dictionaries, textbooks, and other such writings which are not concerned with emotional values; and second, the less rigid, more expanded, more informal kind which aims to please as well as to instruct, and which is found in essays and all forms of writing with a strong human appeal. The two kinds are alike in the presence of both genus and differentia; they differ chiefly in the presence, in the less formal, of the qualities of pleasingness and stimulation as opposed to the quality, in the formal, of scientific impersonality, cold intellectuality. For example, the Standard Dictionary defines a _correspondent_ as "one who communicates by means of letters; specifically one who sends regular communications from a distant place to a newspaper or a business house." The author of the volume entitled _Famous War Correspondents_[14] defines, with much the same fundamental ideas, if not indeed exactly the same, a _war correspondent_ as follows:

[14] F. L. Billiard: _Famous War Correspondents_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Copyright, 1914.

The war correspondent is a newspaper man assigned to cover a
campaign. He goes into the field with the army, expecting to send
his reports from that witching region known as "the front." He is
a special correspondent commissioned to collect intelligence and
transmit it from the camp and the battle ground. A non-combatant,
he mingles freely with men whose business it is to fight. He may be
ten thousand miles from the home office, but he finds competition
as keen as ever it is in Fleet Street or Newspaper Row. He is
engaged in the most dramatic department of a profession whose
infinite variety is equalled only by its fascination. If he becomes
a professional rather than an occasional correspondent, wandering
will be his business and adventure his daily fare. Mr. A. G. Hales
is of the opinion that the newspaper man who is chosen as a war
correspondent has won the Victoria Cross of journalism.

For the making of a first-rate war correspondent there are
required all the qualifications of a capable reporter in any other
branch of the profession, and others besides. Perhaps it is true
that the regular hack work of the ordinary newspaper man is the
best training for the scribe of war. The men who had reported
fires and train wrecks in American cities proved themselves able
to describe vigorously and clearly the campaign in Cuba. William
Howard Russell had been doing a great variety of descriptive
writing before he was sent to the Crimea. The prime requisites for
a satisfactory war correspondent are those fundamental to success
in any kind of newspaper work, the ability to see straight, to
write vividly and accurately, and to get a story on the wire.

Occasionally a brilliant workman appears from nowhere, the
happy possessor of an almost uncanny intuition of movements and
purposes. Such a man was Archibald Forbes. But Forbes, no less than
the average special, had to have the physical capacity to march
with the private soldier, to ride a hundred miles at a clip at
top speed over rough country, to sleep in the open, to stand the
heat of the desert and the cold of the mountain height, to endure
hunger and thirst and all the deprivations of a hard campaign.
Every correspondent at times must keep going until his strength is
utterly spent. He must have the tenacity which does not yield to
exhaustion until his messages are written and on the way to his
paper. When the soldier ceases fighting, the correspondent's work
is only begun. He needs also to have a degree of familiarity with
the affairs of the present and the history of the past which will
secure him the respect of the officers with whom he may associate.
Along with the courage of the scout he should possess the suavity
and tact of the diplomat, for he will have to get along with men of
all types, and occasionally, indeed, his own influence may overlap
into the field of international diplomacy. British correspondents,
having covered many wars, small and great, since 1870, usually
are acquainted with several languages, and often have acquired a
knowledge of the technicalities of military science.

Of the two kinds of definition--formal and informal--you will more often have occasion to write the second. You must guard against the danger, in such writing, of allowing the interest to cloud the truth, of being led into inaccurate partial statements by your desire to please. At the root of every good definition is still the accurate statement of genus and differentia. It is chiefly of the second kind that we shall treat here. If you can write a definition that is pleasing and stimulating and also accurate, you can always boil it down into the more bald formal statement such as the dictionary offers. Whatever powers of grace or neatness in expression you possess, whatever powers of saying things in a pleasing manner, it is your privilege to employ in the writing of definitions.

General Cautions

For the sake of clearness and general effectiveness a few cautions need to be made. In the first place, be sure to exclude everything from your definition that does not properly belong in it. For example, if you define the aeroplane as a machine that journeys through the air under its own power, you include dirigible balloons, which are not aeroplanes. You must introduce both the characteristics of being heavier than air and of having a plane or planes before your definition can stand. You will make this exclusion by choosing both class and differentia with the greatest care.

In the second place, include everything that does properly belong in the definition. If you define a bridge as a roadway over a stream, either resting on piers or hanging on cables strung over towers, you exclude pontoon bridges certainly, and all bridges across dry chasms, if not other kinds. Not until you include all varieties of things crossed and all the methods of support and the various materials used will your definition be sound and complete. This does not mean that you will have to make an endless list of all possible forms, but that you will make a comprehensive statement which will allow of being distributed over all the different forms and kinds of bridges.

In the third place, use simple and familiar diction. Since the first purpose of a definition is to explain, one that is obscure or difficult makes confusion worse confounded. The famous--or notorious--definition which Dr. Johnson made of so simple a thing as _network_, "anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices between the intersections," is worse than useless because it positively throws dust upon a comparatively easy matter to perceive--unless the reader take time out for meditation. Remember that the Gettysburg Address and many of Shakespeare's sonnets are largely in words of one syllable. And then do not be afraid that you will be understood; the fire is always presumably somewhat more uncomfortable than the frying-pan.

In the fourth place, do not use the term that you are defining, or any derivative of it. When college freshmen, in mortal combat with a quiz question, define a description as _something that describes_, they use words that profit them nothing. That a cow is a cow is fairly obvious. The temptation to make this mistake, which, in the intellectual world, occupies the relative space of the saucy old advice, "Chase yourself round the block!" occurs usually when a long definition is being written, in which the writer forgets to keep the horizon clear, and finally falls into the formula _x_ is _x_. To avoid yielding to such temptation, you will do well, after a definition is complete, to phrase it in a single sentence which shall include both differentia and genus, and in which you can easily discover the evil formula _x_ is _x_. Bardolph, in Shakespeare's _King Henry IV_, yields to the temptation--for which we are glad as to humor but not made wise as to meaning--when Shallow puts him to the test:

_Shallow_: Better accommodated! it is good; yea, indeed, it
is: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.
Accommodated! it comes of accommodo: very good; a good phrase.

_Bardolph_: Pardon me, sir; I have heard the word. Phrase
call you it? by this good day, I know not the phrase; but I will
maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a
word of exceeding good command, by heaven. Accommodated; that is,
when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being,
whereby 'a may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent
thing.

In the fifth place, be sure that you define, and do not merely "talk about" the subject. Any amount of however interesting comment that fails to accomplish the two necessities of definition, statement of the genus and the differentia, is futile; it is not definition. This temptation, like the former one, will be overcome if you take the trouble to phrase the actual material of your definition in one sentence that really includes both genus and differentia. As a minor suggestion, do not begin your definition with the words, "X is when" or "X is where," unless you are defining either a unit of time or a place--and even then you will do well to avoid these too frequently used phrases.

Finally, do not make your definition too mechanical, too much lacking in real life. Thinking of how you must deal with genus and differentia, you are liable to be overwhelmed with the grim duty of being logical, and to forget that you should also be human, that people read definitions, as other kinds of writing, in the double hope of information and pleasure. No real antagonism exists between logic of the strictest kind and pleasurable presentation, as is proved by the examples quoted during the course of this chapter and at the end. While you remember your subject, remember also your reader; then you will be unlikely to make a dull definition.

Methods of Defining

You may use various methods of defining. Sometimes you will choose only one, and sometimes you will combine. There is no special virtue in one method more than another except as sometimes one happens to be more useful for a given case, as we shall see. In selecting your method, then, select on the basis of practical workability for the effect that you desire to create, adhering to one or using several as seems most effective.

_a._ _The Method of Illustration_

One of the most useful, natural, and easy methods is that of giving an example or illustration of the thing that is being defined. The great usefulness of this method lies in the stimulating quality that the concrete example always has. If you wish to define an abstract quality, for example, such as _patriotism_, or _honor_, or _generosity_, you will often find advantage, for the first, in calling up the figure of Washington, of Lincoln, of Cromwell; in citing, for the second, the case of some man who, after bankruptcy, has set himself to pay all his former debts, or of Regulus who, though he had the chance not to keep his promise to return to Carthage as prisoner, yet bade Rome farewell and returned to unspeakable torture; in presenting, for the third, a specific set of conditions, such as possession of only one dime, which is then shared with another person who is even less fortunate, or showing a known person, like Sir Philip Sidney, who, though at death's door on the field of battle, urged that the exquisite joy of cold water be given to a comrade who was even more terribly in need. In every one of these cases the quality under definition is presented in an easily grasped, concrete form that has the great advantage of human interest, of stimulating the reader's thought. That using such a method is natural is apparent as soon as we remember that we think largely in concrete forms, specific cases. That it is rather easy is obvious, because so many instances are always at hand to be used.

The danger in this method is that the example chosen will not be entirely fair. Such lack of fairness may occur if the example covers too little ground of the definition or if it too highly accentuates one phase of the subject of definition. If, for instance, you cite the example of the man who gave away his only pair of shoes, as an example of generosity, you may run the risk of making the reader think that nothing but an extreme act has the real stamp of the generous giver, or that generosity is expressed only in material ways, forgetting that it is generous to acknowledge a fault or to overlook unintended affront. To avoid this danger be sure that your example is fair and sufficiently comprehensive, and if it is not, choose other examples to add to it until you are convinced of the all-round fitness of your definition. In the following examples you may feel that Gissing does not wholly define _poverty_, whereas Shaw is more complete in his approach to defining _ability that gives value for money_, and Mr. Morman by taking a typical example and working it out arrives at complete understanding with perhaps less of piquant interest.

Blackberries hanging thick upon the hedge bring to my memory
something of long ago. I had somehow escaped into the country and
on a long walk began to feel mid-day hunger. The wayside brambles
were fruiting; I picked and ate, and ate on, until I had come
within sight of an inn where I might have made a good meal. But
my hunger was satisfied; I had no need of anything more, and,
as I thought of it, a strange feeling of surprise, a sort of
bewilderment, came upon me. What! Could it be that I had eaten,
and eaten sufficiently, _without paying_? It struck me as an
extraordinary thing. At that time, my ceaseless preoccupation was
how to obtain money to keep myself alive. Many a day I had suffered
hunger because I durst not spend the few coins I possessed; the
food I could buy was in any case unsatisfactory, unvaried. But here
nature had given me a feast, which seemed delicious, and I had
eaten all I wanted. The wonder held me for a long time, and to this
day I can recall it, understand it.

I think there could be no better illustration of what it means
to be poor in a great town.[15]

[15] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Autumn."
By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York
City.

* * * * *

In business, as a rule, a man must make what he gets and
something over into the bargain. I have known a man to be employed
by a firm of underwriters to interview would-be insurers. His sole
business was to talk to them and decide whether to insure or not.
Salary, £4000 a year. This meant that the loss of his judgment
would have cost his employers more than £4000 a year. Other
men have an eye for contracts or whatnot, or are born captains
of industry, in which cases they go into business on their own
account, and make ten, twenty, or two hundred per cent where you or
I would lose five. Or, to turn back a moment from the giants to the
minnows, take the case of a woman with the knack of cutting out a
dress. She gets six guineas a week instead of eighteen shillings.
Or she has perhaps a ladylike air and a figure on which a mantle
looks well. For these she can get several guineas a week merely
by standing in a show-room letting mantles be tried on her before
customers. All these people are renters of ability; and their
ability is inseparable from them and dies with them. The excess of
their gains over those of an ordinary person with the same capital
and education is the "rent" of the exceptional "fertility." But
observe, if the able person makes £100,000, and leaves that to his
son, who, being but an ordinary gentleman, can get only from two
and a half to four per cent on it, that revenue is pure interest on
capital and in no sense whatever rent of ability.[16]

[16] George B. Shaw: _Socialism and Superior Brains_. By courtesy of
the publishers, John Lane Company, New York City.

* * * * *

By "amortization" is meant the method of paying a debt by
regular semi-annual or annual installments. To illustrate:

Suppose a farmer gives a mortgage on his farm of $1000, with
interest at 5 per cent. In addition to the interest, he agrees
to pay 2 per cent a year on the principal. This makes a total of
7 per cent a year, or a payment of $70, which may be paid in two
semi-annual installments of $35 each. The first year's interest
and payment on the principal are taken as the amount to be paid
annually. But of the first payment, $50 represents the interest
and $20 the payment on the principal. After the first year's
payment, therefore, instead of owing $1000, the farmer owes only
$980, with interest at 5 per cent.

For the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that payments
are made annually. When the next time of payment comes round,
the farmer pays his $70. Since his debt is less, the interest
the second year amounts to $49 instead of $50, and therefore the
payment on the principal is $21 instead of $20 as it was the first
year. In the second year the debt is reduced to $959.

On the return of the third time of payment the farmer pays
another $70, of which amount $47.95 represents the interest and
$22.05 the payment on the principal. This reduces the farmer's
mortgage debt to $936.95.

Now, this system of payment and method of reducing the debt
continues until the mortgage has been lifted by a gradual process.
Thus, while the annual payments are always the same, the amount
of interest is always decreasing and the amount of the payments
on the debt is always increasing. Consequently, the mortgage is
paid off in ten to forty years according to the rate of payment on
the loan that the debtor himself elects to pay when the contract
is made. This is the simple principle of amortization, and it is
recognized in Europe as the safest, easiest, and best method of
reducing land-mortgage indebtedness hitherto conceived and put into
practice.[17]

[17] J. B. Morman: _Principles of Rural Credit_. By courtesy of the
publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City.

If, then, you have a subject that is abstract and perhaps difficult to understand in abstract explanation; if you wish, to stimulate your readers and make their reading pleasant; if, for any reason, you wish to write informally, then you may well decide to employ the useful, natural, and easy method of definition by illustration.

_b._ _The Method of Comparison or Contrast_

A second method, closely akin to that by illustration, is the method of defining by comparison or contrast. The value of this method lies in its liveliness and the ease with which it makes an idea comprehended. The liveliness derives largely from the usual presence of specific facts or things with which the subject of definition is compared or to which it is contrasted, and from the imaginative stimulus that perception of similarity in function creates. The implied definition of leader in politics in Lincoln's famous remark about changing political parties in war time, "Don't swap horses while crossing a stream," is not only true, but more, it is interesting. The ease of comprehension is due largely to employing the method of proceeding from the known to the unknown in that comparison is usually made to things already familiar. If contrast is used, there is the added interest of dramatic presentation found especially in oratorical definitions. Liveliness and ease in comprehension make this method a valuable one in addressing a popular or an unlearned body of readers; it presents the truth and it enlists interest. In the following examples you will not be aware of dramatic quality in the first but you will find picturesque qualities in both.

Lord Cromer describes a responsible statesman in a democracy
as very much in the position of a man in a boat off the mouth of a
tidal river. He long has to strive against wind and current until
finally a favorable conjunction of weather and tide forms a wave
upon which he rides safely into the harbor. There is an essential
truth in this which no man attempting to play the part of leader in
a democracy can forget except at his peril. Government by public
opinion is bound to get a sufficient body of public opinion on its
side. But withal it is manifestly the duty of a leader to help form
a just public opinion. He must dare to be temporarily unpopular,
if only in that way he can get a temporary hearing for the truths
which the people ought to have presented to them. He is to execute
the popular will, but he is not to neglect shaping it. It is his
duty to be properly receptive, but his main striving ought to be
that virtue should go out of him to touch and quicken the masses
of his citizens. If their minds and imaginations are played upon
with sufficient persistence and sufficient skill, they will give
him back his own ideas with enthusiasm. A man who throws a ball
against a wall gets it back again as if hurled by the dead brick
and mortar; but the original impulse is in his own muscle. So a
democratic leader may say, if he chooses, that he takes only what
is pressed upon him by the people; but his function is often first
to press it upon them.[18]

[18] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton
Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_.

* * * * *

The quack novel is a thing which looks like a book, and
which is compounded, advertised, and marketed in precisely the
same fashion as Castoria, Wine of Cardui, Alcola, Mrs. Summers's
free-to-you-my-sister Harmless Headache Remedy, Viavi Tablettes,
and other patent medicines, harmful and harmless. As the patent
medicine is made of perfectly well-known drugs, so the quack novel
of course contains perfectly familiar elements, and like the
medicine, it comes wrapped in superlative testimonials from those
who say they have swallowed it to their advantage. Instead of
"After twenty years of bed-ridden agony, one bottle of your Fosforo
cured every ache and completely restored my manhood," we have "The
secret of his powers is the same God-given secret that inspired
Shakespeare and upheld Dickens." This, from the Philadelphia
_Sunday Dispatch_, accompanies a quack novel by Mr. Harold Bell
Wright, of whom the Portland, Oregon, _Journal_ remarks, "It is
this almost clairvoyant power of reading the human soul that has
made Mr. Wright's books among the most remarkable works of the
present age." Similar to that aroma of piety and charity which
accompanies the quack medicines, an equally perceptible odor of
sanctity is wafted to us with Mr. Wright; and just as imitators
will make their boxes and bottles to resemble those of an already
successful trade article, so are Mr. Wright's volumes given that
red cloth and gold lettering which we have come to associate with
the bindings of Mr. Winston Churchill's very popular and agreeable
novels. Lastly--like the quack medicines--the quack novel is
(mostly) harmful; not always because it is poisonous (though this
occurs), but because it pretends to be literature and is taken for
literature by the millions who swallow it year after year as their
chief mental nourishment, and whose brains it saps and dilutes.
In short, both these shams--the book and the medicine--win and
bamboozle their public through methods almost identical.[19]

[19] Owen Wister: _Quack Novels and Democracy_. By courtesy of The
Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.

For complete truth you need to present both resemblance and difference. This necessity is apparent as soon as we remember that the differentia are of vital importance, that we understand the subject only when we see how it differs from other members of the same class. When these differences are obvious, of course they need no mention. But in defining _wit and humor_, for example, or _immorality and unconventionality_, we must know not only the parallelisms but also the divergencies. The best method of procedure is to discover in each of the subjects compared the vital things, the heart without which it could not exist, and then to observe how these work out in the particulars of the subject. In defining _State_ and _Nation_ in the following selection Mr. Russell takes care to show both resemblances and differences.

_Nation_ is not to be defined by affinities of language or a
common historical origin, though these things often help to produce
a nation. Switzerland is a nation, in spite of diversities of race,
religion, and language. England and Scotland now form one nation,
though they did not do so at the time of our Civil War. This is
shown by Cromwell's saying, in the height of the conflict, that he
would rather be subject to the dominion of the royalists than to
that of the Scotch. Great Britain was one state before it was one
nation; on the other hand, Germany was one nation before it was one
state. What constitutes a nation is a sentiment and an instinct--a
sentiment of similarity and an instinct of belonging to the same
group or herd. The instinct is an extension of the instinct which
constitutes a flock of sheep, or any other group of gregarious
animals. The sentiment which goes with this is like a milder and
more extended form of family feeling. When we return to England
after having been on the Continent, we feel something friendly in
the familiar ways, and it is easy to believe that Englishmen on
the whole are virtuous while many foreigners are full of designing
wickedness.

Such feelings make it easy to organize a nation into a state.
It is not difficult, as a rule, to acquiesce in the orders of a
national government. We feel that it is our government, and that
its decrees are more or less the same as those which we should
have given if we ourselves had been the governors. There is an
instinctive, and usually unconscious, sense of a common purpose
animating the members of a nation. This becomes especially vivid
when there is a war or a danger of war. Any one who, at such a
time, stands out against the orders of his government feels an
inner conflict quite different from any that he would feel in
standing out against the orders of a foreign government, in whose
power he might happen to find himself. If he stands out, he does
so with a more or less conscious hope that his government may in
time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing out against a
foreign government, no such hope is necessary. This group instinct,
however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a nation, and what
makes it important that the boundaries of nations should also be
the boundaries of states.[20]

[20] Bertrand Russell: _National Independence and Internationalism_.
By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston.

_c._ _The Method of Division_

A third method, often used, and similar in its general form to analysis, divides the subject into its various headings, the sum of which must equal the whole. This method differs from analysis, perhaps, in that it treats the subject throughout as a unit rather than as a congregation of parts. This method may be used to define a subject like _mathematics_, in stating that it is the pure science which includes arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc., or to define a quality like _patriotism_, by enumerating the qualities that patriotism has. These qualities may be, also, the uses to which the subject can be put, as in defining a tool or a machine. The method consists in establishing the genus and then, from a mental map of the subject, selecting the various parts that constitute the whole, whether these parts be of physical extent, as in defining the United States by giving the various sections of the country, or of spiritual significance, as in defining an honest man by stating the qualities that he should possess.

One danger from this method is lack of completeness; great practical value attaches here to the caution to be sure that the definition includes all that properly belongs under it. Another danger is in the temptation to "talk about" the subject without actually defining it, merely saying some pleasant things and then ceasing. The caution against this danger in general must be remembered. Properly used, this method, though it is sometimes rather formal, should result in great clearness through completeness of definition. The following celebrated definition of a "classic" is a good example of compact definition by this method, and the definition of "moral atmosphere" of a more leisurely, informal breaking-up.

A classic is an author who has enriched the human mind, who
has really added to its treasure, who has got it to take a step
further; who has discovered some unequivocal moral truth, or
penetrated to some eternal passion, in that heart of man where it
seemed as though all were known and explored, who has produced his
thought, or his observation, or his invention, under some form, no
matter what, so it be large, great, acute, and reasonable, sane and
beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style of his own,
yet a style which finds itself the style of everybody,--in a style
that is at once new and antique, and is the contemporary of all
ages.[21]

[21] Sainte-Beuve.

* * * * *

The moral atmosphere of the office was ideal. I mean more in
the extended and not alone in our specific English sense, though
in the latter it was even perhaps more marked. There was not only
no temporizing, compromising, compounding with candor, in either
major matters or trifling; there was no partiality or ingenuity
or bland indifference by which the devil may be, and so often
is, whipped round the stump. There was in the _Nation's_ field
and conception of its function no temptation to anything of this
sort, to be sure, which consideration may conceivably qualify its
assessment of merit on the Day of Judgment--a day when we may hope
the sins of daily journalism will, in consequence of the same
consideration, be extended some leniency--but certainly cannot
obscure the fact of its conspicuous integrity. There were people
then--as now--that complained of its fairness; which involved,
to my mind, the most naïve attitude imaginable, since it was
the _Nation's_ practice that had provided the objector with his
criterion of fairness in journalism. Of course he might assert that
this was only a way of saying that the paper made extraordinary
claims which in his estimation it failed to justify; but this was
verbiage, the fact being as I have stated it.

But I also mean by moral atmosphere the peace, the serenity,
the gentleness, the self-respect, the feeling of character, that
pervaded the office. We seemed, to my sense, so recently filled
with the reactions of Park Row phenomena, "to lie at anchor in
the stream of Time," as Carlyle said of Oxford--which, actually,
we were very far from doing; there was never any doubt of the
_Nation's_ being what is now called a "live wire," especially
among those who took hold of it unwarily--as now and then some
one did. Mr. Garrison shared the first editorial room with me.
Mr. Godkin had the back office. The publication offices were in
front, occupied by the amiable Mr. St. John and his staff, which
included a gentle and aristocratic colored bookkeeper who resembled
an East Indian philosopher--plainly a Garrisonian protégé. The
silence I especially remember as delightful, and I never felt from
the first the slightest constraint; Mr. Garrison had the courtesy
that goes with active considerateness. The quiet was broken only
by the occasional interchange of conversation between us, or by
the hearty laugh of Mr. Godkin, whose laugh would have been the
most noteworthy thing about him if he had not had so many other
noteworthy characteristics; or by a visit now and then from Arthur
Sedgwick, in my time not regularly "on" the paper, who always
brought the larger world in with him (the office _was_ perhaps
a little cloistral as a rule), or the appearance of Earl Shinn
with his art or dramatic criticism--both the best written, if not
also the best we have ever had in this country, and the latter so
distinguished, I think, as to be unique.

Of course, there were visitors, contributors and candid
friends, but mainly we worked in almost Quakerish tranquillity five
days in the week during my incumbency.[22]

[22] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton
Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_.

_d._ _The Method of Repetition_

A fourth method, which may be used in connection with any other, consists in repeating the definition over and over in different words, from different points of view, driving home by accumulated emphasis. The value of this method lies in its feeling of absolute sureness in the reader's mind: once completed, the definition seems quite settled, quite tamped down, quite clinched. It is a difficult method to employ, for the writer is in great danger of saying exactly the same thing again and again, forgetting to assume different points of view. From such a definition tediousness is of course the result. The subjects treated by this method are likely to be abstract matters upon which light is shed from various angles, as if one poured spot lights from all sides upon some object which remains the same but which delivers up all its phases. Emerson often used this method, as in the following example where both the method of repetition and that of comparison are used:

The two parties which divide the state, the party of
Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have
disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.... It
is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces.
Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the
last movement. "That which is was made by God," says Conservatism.
"He is leaving that, he is entering this other," enjoins Innovation.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of
conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It
affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it
will not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle which
conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good
and bad. The project of innovation is the best possible state
of things. Of course conservatism always has the worst of the
argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading
that to change would be to deteriorate: it must saddle itself
with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society,
must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and
stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right,
triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success. Conservatism
stands on man's confessed limitations, reform on his indisputable
infinitude; conservatism on circumstance, liberalism on power;
one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame, the other
to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is
debonair and social, reform is individual and imperious. We are
reformers in the spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand
by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform
is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for
comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold
another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase
its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no
invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence,
no husbandry. It makes a great difference to your figure and your
thought whether your foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism
never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is
not establishment, but reform. Conservatism tends to universal
seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that
men's temper governs them; that for me it avails not to trust in
principles, they will fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts
nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular
application,--law for all that does not include any one. Reform in
its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs;
it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless
pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation which ends in
hypocrisy and sensual reaction.

And so, while we do not go beyond general statements, it may
be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that
each is a good half but an impossible whole. Each exposes the
abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both
must combine.[23]

[23] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The Conservative," in _Nature, Addresses,
and Lectures_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

_e._ _The Method of Elimination_

Two methods, which are perhaps less frequently found, but which are none the less useful, remain to be mentioned. The first is the method of elimination, that is, the method of defining a thing by telling what it is not, by eliminating all things with which it might become confused. This method is of great value in defining an idea which is often considered to mean what it actually does not. By shutting out the erroneous interpretations, one by one, the errors are finally disposed of. This method is most effective when not only are the wrong interpretations excluded, but the correct idea, interpretation, is positively stated at some point. If this is not done there lingers in the reader's mind a taint of suspicion that either the author did not know exactly the correct meaning, or that the subject is really too difficult to bear real definition. And with a reader who does not think clearly in original ways a positive statement is almost essential lest he be unable to tell what the subject really is, after all, being unable to supply the residue after the process of elimination has been completed. Following this method Mr. Cross defines Socialism by showing that it is not anarchy, is not single tax, is not communism, and is not other systems with which it is often confused. The result is to leave socialism standing out by itself with clearness. In the following definition of college spirit the author has followed the method of elimination to clear away the haze that in many minds surrounds the subject:

College spirit is like ancestry: we are all supposed to have
it, but few of us know intimately what it is. The freshman in whose
heart beats desire to show loyalty, the graduate whose pulse stirs
as the train nears the "little old college," the alumnus who
unties his purse-strings at the clarion call of a deficit--do these
show loyalty by mere desire or by deeds? And if by deeds, by what
kind of action shall their loyalty be determined?

In the first place, college spirit is not mere voice culture.
The man who yells until his face is purple and his throat is a
candidate for the rest cure is not necessarily displaying college
spirit--though he may possess it. Yelling is not excluded; it
is merely denied the first place. For, to parody Shakespeare, a
man can yell and yell and still be a college slacker. Cheering,
indiscriminate noise making, even singing the college song with
gusto at athletic games--none of these will stamp a man as
necessarily loyal. Nor will participation in athletic sports or in
"college activities" of other natures be sufficient to declare a
man, for the participation may be of a purely selfish nature. The
man who makes a record in the sprints chiefly for his own glory,
or the man who edits the college paper because by so doing he can
"make a good thing out of it" for himself, is not possessed of
true college spirit, for college spirit demands more than mere
selfishness. In the same way, taking part in celebrations, marching
down Main Street with a flag fluttering round his ears, a sunflower
in his buttonhole, an inane grin on his face, a swagger in his
gait, and a determination to tell the whole world that his "dear
old Alma Mater" is "the finest little college in the world"--this,
too, is without avail, though it is not necessarily opposed to
college spirit. For this exhibition, also, is largely selfish.
Likewise, becoming a "grind," removing one's self from the human
fellowship that college ought to furnish in its most delightful
form, and becoming determined to prepare for a successful business
career without regard to the warm flow of human emotion through the
heart--this is not college spirit. All these harmless things are
excluded because they are primarily selfish, and college spirit is
primarily opposed to selfishness.

True college spirit is found in the man whose heart has warmed
to the love of his college, whose eyes have caught the vision of
the ideals that the college possesses, whose brain has thought
over and understood these ideals until they have become very fibre
of his being. This man will yell not for the selfish pleasure
of wallowing in sentimentality, but for the solid glory of his
college; will run and leap, will edit the paper with the desire to
make and keep the college in the front rank of athletic, social,
and intellectual life; will study hard that the college may not be
disgraced through him; will conduct himself like a gentleman that
no one may sneer at the institution which has sponsored him; will
resent any slurs upon the fair name of the college; will be willing
to sacrifice himself, his own personal glory, for the sake of the
college; will be willing to give of his money and his time until,
perhaps, it hurts. And above all, he will never forget the gleam
of idealism that he received in the old halls, the vision of his
chance to serve his fellows. The man who does these things, who
thinks these things, has true college spirit.

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