Chapter IV: Analysis (1)

Suppose that the president of a railroad asked you to report on the feasibility of a proposed line through a range of hills; or that you found it necessary to prove to an over-conservative farmer that he should erect a hollow-tile silo at once; or that your duty as chairman of the town playground committee led you to examine an empty lot for its possibilities; or that, as an expert in finance, you were trying to learn the cause of the deficit in a country club's accounts. In the first case you would examine the proposed route for its practicability, would estimate the grades to be reduced, would look into the question of drainage, would consider the possibility of landslides, would survey the quality of the road-bed: all with a view to making a complete report on the practicability of the route proposed. In the other cases you would determine the conditions in general that you confronted, would answer the questions: what is the value of a hollow-tile silo? why is this site suitable for a playground? what is wrong with the finances of this club? Such tasks as these occur in life all the time; in college they confront one whenever an inconsiderate instructor asks for a term paper on, say, "Conditions in New York that Made the Tweed Ring Possible," or "The Influence of the Great War on Dyestuffs," or "Tennyson's Early Training as an Influence on his Poetry," or some other subject. In every one of these cases the writer who attempts to answer the questions involved is writing analysis, for _Analysis is the breaking up of a subject into its component parts, seeing of what it is composed_.

In every such case you would wish, first of all, to tell the truth. Of what use would your analysis be if you incorrectly estimated the drainage of the proposed railway route and the company had to expend thousands of dollars in fighting improper seepage? Unless the analysis was accurate, it would be useless or worse. But suppose that you told the truth about the site for the playground, its central position, its wealth of shade, its proper soil conditions, and yet forgot to take into account the sluggish, noisome stream that flowed on one side of the plot and bred disease? Your report would be valueless because it would be, in a vital point, quite lacking. In other words, it would be incomplete. For practical purposes it would therefore, of course, be untrue.

If you wish to write an analysis, then, your path is straight, and it leads between the two virtues of truth and thoroughness. Your catechism should be: Have I hugged my fact close and told the truth about it?, and, Have I really covered the ground?

The question of truth enters into every analysis; none may falsify. Completeness, on the other hand, is a more relative matter. In the report of a tariff commission it is essential; all the ground must be covered. In a thorough survey of Beethoven's music no sonata or quartette may be omitted. In determining the causes of an epidemic no clue is to be left unexamined until all possibilities have been exhausted. In the case of the term paper mentioned above, on the other hand, "Tennyson's Early Training as an Influence on his Poetry," not everything in his early life can be considered in anything short of a volume. In such a case you may well be puzzled what to do until you are suddenly cheered by the thought that your task is primarily one of interpretation, that what you are seeking is the _spirit_ of the training. There would seem, therefore, to be various degrees of completeness in analysis. On the basis of completeness, then, we may divide analysis into the two classes of the _Formal_ and the _Informal_.

The Two Classes of Analysis

Formal analysis is sometimes called _logical analysis_--that is, complete, as in the report of a tariff commission--because it continues its splitting into subheadings until the demands of the thought are entirely satisfied. Such thorough meeting of all demands might well occur in an analysis of trades-unions, or methods of heating houses, or such subjects. Informal analysis, on the other hand, which is sometimes called _literary analysis_, does not attempt to be so thorough, but aims rather at giving the core of the subject, at making the spirit of it clear to the reader. For example, Mr. P. E. More in an essay on Tennyson, which is primarily an informal analysis, makes one main point, that "Tennyson was the Victorian Age." This he divides into three headings: (1) Tennyson was humanly loved by the great Victorians; (2) Tennyson was the poet of compromise; (3) Tennyson was the poet of insight. Now in these three points Mr. More has not said all that he could say, in fact he has omitted many things that from some angle would be important, but he has said those things truthfully that are needed for a proper interpretation of the subject, for a sufficient illumination of it, for showing its spirit. It is, therefore, a piece of informal analysis.

The two examples which follow illustrate formal and informal analysis, the first one classifying rock drills thoroughly, and the second very informally discussing some odds against Shakespeare.

Hammer drills may be classed under several heads, as follows:
(1) Those mounted on a cradle like a piston drill and fed forward
by a screw; (2) those used and held in the hand; and (3) those used
and mounted on an air-fed arrangement. The last two classes are
often interchangeable.

Mr. Leyner, though now making drills of the latter classes,
was the pioneer of the large 3-inch diameter piston machine to be
worked in competition with large piston drills. The smaller Leyner
Rock Terrier drill was brought out for stopping and driving; it
could not, apparently, compete with machines of other classes.

When the drills are thus divided we have:

1. Cradle drills--Leyner, Leyner Rock Terrier, Stephens
Imperial hammer drills and the Kimber.

2. Drills used only with air feed--Gordon drill and the large
sizes of the Murphy, Little Wonder, and others.

3. Drills used held in the hand or with air feed--Murphy,
Flottman, Cleveland, Little Wonder, Shaw, Hardy Nipper, Sinclair,
Sullivan, Little Jap, Little Imp, Traylor, and others. Again, they
may be divided into those that are valveless, with the differential
piston or hammer itself acting as a valve. The Murphy, Sinclair,
Little Wonder, Shaw, Little Imp, Leyner Rock Terrier, and Kimber
drills belong to this class. The large Leyner drill is worked by a
spool valve resembling that of the Slugger drill; the Flottman by a
ball valve; the Little Jap by an axial valve; the Gordon drill, by
a spool valve set at one end of the cylinder at right angles to it;
the Waugh and Sullivan drills by spool valves set in the same axial
line as the cylinder; the Hardy Nipper, and the Stephens Imperial
hammer drills by an air-moved slide-valve set midway on the side of
the cylinder; the Cleveland by a spool set towards the rear of the
cylinder.

They may again be divided into those drills in which the
piston hammer delivers its blow on the end of the steel itself. A
collar is placed on the drill to prevent its entering the cylinder.
The other class has an anvil block or striking pin. This anvil
block fits into the end of the cylinder between the piston and the
steel. It receives and transmits the blow, and also prevents the
drill end from entering the cylinder.[36]

[36] Eustace M. Weston: _Rock Drills_. By courtesy of the publishers,
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Copyright.

* * * * *

Powerful among the enemies of Shakespeare are the commentator
and the elocutionist; the commentator because, not knowing
Shakespeare's language, he sharpens his faculties to examine
propositions advanced by an eminent lecturer from the Midlands,
instead of sensitizing his artistic faculty to receive the
impression of moods and inflexions of being conveyed by word-music;
the elocutionist because he is a born fool, in which capacity,
observing with pain that poets have a weakness for imparting to
their dramatic dialog a quality which he describes and deplores
as "sing-song," he devotes his life to the art of breaking up
verse in such a way as to make it sound like insanely pompous
prose. The effect of this on Shakespeare's earlier verse, which
is full of the naïve delight of pure oscillation, to be enjoyed
as an Italian enjoys a barcarolle, or a child a swing, or a baby
a rocking-cradle, is destructively stupid. In the later plays,
where the barcarolle measure has evolved into much more varied and
complex rhythms, it does not matter so much, since the work is no
longer simple enough for a fool to pick to pieces. But in every
play from _Love's Labour's Lost_ to _Henry V_, the elocutionist
meddles simply as a murderer, and ought to be dealt with as such
without benefit of clergy. To our young people studying for the
stage I say, with all solemnity, learn how to pronounce the English
alphabet clearly and beautifully from some person who is at once an
artist and a phonetic expert. And then leave blank verse patiently
alone until you have experienced emotion deep enough to crave for
poetic expression, at which point verse will seem an absolutely
natural and real form of speech to you. Meanwhile, if any pedant,
with an uncultivated heart and a theoretic ear, proposes to teach
you to recite, send instantly for the police.[37]

[37] George Bernard Shaw: _Dramatic Opinions and Essays_. Archibald
Constable & Co., Ltd., London, publishers.

Analyses are to be divided also upon the basis of whether the subject is an individual or a group of individuals, that is, whether the subject is, for example, the quality of patriotism, which is to be analyzed into its components, or, in the second place, shade trees, which are to be grouped into the classes which together constitute such trees. Of these two kinds of analysis we call the first _Partition_ and the second _Classification_. The logical process is the same in the two cases, in that it divides the subject; the difference lies in the fact that in the first case the subject is always single, though it may of course be complicated, and in the second it is always plural, and may contain a very large number of individuals, as for example the human race--all the billions of all the ages gone and yet to come.

In this treatment of analysis you will find the main divisions made on the basis of formality and the matter of single or plural subject treated under each of the other headings.

Formal Analysis

Formal analysis, which requires completeness of division,--which is not well done until every individual case is accounted for, or, in Partition, every quality or factor or part,--is found in reports to corporations, in estimates of conditions for some society, in government documents, in textbooks, and in other kinds of writing where detailed and complete information is necessary for judgment. A report to the city of Chicago on the subject of the smoke nuisance will be valuable largely as it entirely covers the ground, discovers all the conditions that the city has to face. Such a report will be primarily a partition of the question, though it may employ classification of various like situations or conditions. Likewise an account of the game birds of North America will be a formal analysis only if every kind of game bird is given a place in the account. The object of formal classification and partition is to give information, to array facts completely. The following classification of oriental rugs, which in its course also employs definition, or a close approach to it, will be finally sufficient only if no rug can be found which is not included within the classes named. The partition of the character of Queen Elizabeth will be of lasting value as formal partition only if it really accounts for the total character of the subject. That it makes only two main divisions is in no way indicative of its completeness; the question is merely, are all the qualities included under those two headings?

It is a common impression that oriental rugs are as difficult
to know as the 320,000 specimens of plants, and the 20,000,000
forms of animal life that Herbert Spencer advised for the teaching
of boys. This impression is wrong. There are only six groups or
families of oriental rugs, and less than fifty common kinds. The
novice can learn to distinguish the six families in sixty minutes.
He would confuse them occasionally on so short acquaintance, but a
college examiner would give him a passing grade.

Persian rugs are the rugs that are profusely decorated with
a great variety of flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional birds
and animals, woven free hand, with purely decorative intent. India
rugs are those in which flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional
animals are woven as they appear in nature. Early Indian weavers
transcribed flowers to rugs as if they were botanists; modern
Indian weavers are copyists of Persian patterns and their copies
are plainly not originals.

In broad generalization, therefore, the two families of
oriental rugs that are decorated almost exclusively with flowers
have distinct styles that render their identification comparatively
easy.

The Turkoman and Caucasian families of oriental rugs also
pair off by themselves. They are the rugs of almost pure geometric
linear design. Turkoman rugs, comprising the products of Turkestan,
Bokhara, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan, are red rugs with web or
open ends, woven in the patterns of the kindergarten--squares,
diamonds, octagons, etc. That wild tribes should dye their wools in
the shades of blood and weave the designs of childhood is fitting
and logical.

Caucasian rugs differ from Turkoman rugs in being dyed in
other colors than blood red, in omitting the apron ends, and
in being more crowded, elaborate, and pretentious in geometric
linear pattern. The Caucasian weaver's distinction as the oriental
cartoonist, the expert in wooden men, women, and animals, is
well deserved. He holds the oriental rug patent on Noah's ark
designs. Incidentally Mount Ararat and Noah's grave, "shown" near
Nakhitchevan, are located on the southern border of his country.

Chinese and Turkish rugs pair off almost as logically as the
other rug families, although they are totally unlike in appearance.
They contain both geometric linear and floral designs; the designs
of the very early rugs of both groups generally are geometric, and
the later ones floral. But these facts are not identifying.

Chinese rugs can be recognized instantly by their colors,
which are determined by their backgrounds, the reverse of the
Persian method, which is to make the design the principal color
medium. The Chinese colors are probably best described as the
lighter and softer colors of silk--dull yellows, rose, salmon red,
browns, and tans, the design usually being blue. The Chinese were
the original manufacturers and dyers of silk, and they applied
their silk dyes to their rugs.

Turkish rugs that are ornamented with flowers and leaves
can be distinguished from Persian and Indian products by the
ruler-drawn character of their patterns. A keen observer describes
them as quasi-botanical forms angularly treated. Turkish rugs that
contain the patterns common to the Caucasian and Turkoman families
can be recognized by their brighter, sharper, and more contrasting
colors. The key to the identification of this most difficult rug
family is to be found in the Turkish prayer rugs. To know Turkish
rugs, one must see many of them; to know the other families one
need see only a few.

Reduced to a minimum statement, the identification of the six
oriental rug families amounts to this:

Persian rugs--floral designs drawn free hand.

India rugs--floral designs photographed and copied.

Turkoman rugs--geometric linear design, blood red, web ends.

Caucasian rugs--geometric linear designs, numerous blended
colors.

Chinese rugs--floral and geometric linear designs, silk colors.

Turkish rugs--floral designs, angular, ruled; and geometrical
designs, bright contrasting colors.

To be able to identify an oriental rug as a particular kind
of Persian, Indian, Turkish, Turkoman, Caucasian or Chinese
weaving is somewhat more of an accomplishment. The way to begin
is to study first the rugs that have distinct or fairly constant
characteristics. Take Persian rugs, for example:

Bijar--rugs as thick as two or even three ordinary rugs.

Fereghan--small leaf design, usually with green border.

Gorevan or Scrapi--huge medallions, strong reds and blues.

Herat or Ispahan--intricate, stately design on claret ground.

Hamadan--a camel hair rug.

Kashan--dark, rich, closely patterned, extremely finely woven.

Kermanshah--the "parlor" rug, soft cream, rose, and blue.

Khorassan--plum colored, small leaf design, long, soft, wool.

Kurd--colored yarn run through the end web.

Meshed--soft rose and blue with silver cast.

Polonaise--delicately colored antique silk rug.

Saraband--palm leaf or India shawl design on rose or blue
ground.

Sehna--closest woven small rug, minute pattern.

Shiraz--limp rug, the sides overcast with yarns of various
colors.

Tabriz--reddish yellow, the design sometimes resembling a
baseball diamond.

To extend this list would make wearisome reading. Let it
suffice to indicate that many oriental rugs, like people, have
marked facial distinctions, and that many others have marked
peculiarities of body and finish, that make them easy to recognize.
Ease of naming, however, ceases with distinct markings, and rugs
that are out-and-out hybrids, the cross-bred products of wars,
migrations, and trade, are not named, but attributed.

Hybrid oriental rugs--the bane of the novice and the joy
of the collector--are largely an epitome of the wars of Asia.
Cyrus the Great, heading a host of Persians, conquered the
Babylonians 500 years before Christ. Of course the Babylonians
became interested in Persian rugs and appropriated some of their
patterns. Two hundred years later Alexander the Great invaded Asia
and conquered it, except the distant provinces of India and China.
The Mohammedan Arabs mastered the Persians in the East and the
Spaniards in the West in the sixth century. Genghis Khan, out of
China with warriors as numerous as locusts, made a single nation of
Central Asia in the thirteenth century; and Tamerlane later made
subject farther dominions. Even 200 years ago the Afghans conquered
the Persians; and as recently as 1771, 600,000 Tartars fled from
eastern Russia to the frontiers of China under conditions to make
DeQuincey's essay, "Revolt of the Tartars," a contribution to rug
literature.

The wonder is not, therefore, that Chinese patterns are
found in Turkestan, Persian, and Turkish rugs; that Persian
patterns are found in Indian, Caucasian and Turkish rugs; that
Turkish-Mohammedan patterns reach from Spain to China; and that
European designs are found wherever oriental invention bent the
knee to imitation. The wonder is rather that there are so many
oriental rugs with distinct or fairly constant characteristics.[38]

[38] Arthur U. Dilley: "Oriental Rugs," in _The New Country Life_,
November, 1917. By courtesy of the publishers, Doubleday, Page &
Co.

* * * * *

She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From
her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of
popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless
courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice,
her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came
to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were
school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear;
she would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to
swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in contrast
with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous,
self-indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendour
and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her
delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle
through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as
a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy
retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour.
She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity
remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens.
No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too
gross. "To see her was Heaven," Hatton told her, "the lack of her
was hell." She would play with her rings that her courtiers might
note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that the French
Ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her
sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter,
her unwomanly jests, gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her
character, in fact, like her portrait, was utterly without shade.
Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct
of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in
the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously
throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure
passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the
neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her "sweet
Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.[39]

[39] J. R. Green: _Short History of the English People_.

Informal Analysis

The formal analyses are in general far less frequent than the informal, which are found constantly in the weekly and monthly magazines and in the editorials of our daily papers. These analyses aim at giving the core of the subject, the gist of the matter, with sufficient important facts or points as background. Thus you will read an account of our relations with Mexico during the revolution in that country. Not everything is said; only the vital things. A study of the character of Mr. Roosevelt or of Mr. Wilson, an article explaining the problems that had to be faced in the building of the Keokuk or the Shoshone dams, a treatment of the question of conscription in England--these and thousands of others flood upon us with the object of illuminating our approach to the subject, of interpreting for us the heart of the matter. Mr. More, in the essay already mentioned, says little about Tennyson's verse form, about his zeal for the tale of Arthur, about the influence upon him of the classics of Greece and Rome. Into a complete treatise these would of course enter; here Mr. More's object is not all-inclusiveness, as one should examine the Pyramids for not only their plan and size but also for their minute finish, their varying materials, their methods of jointure, and the thousand other details; rather he estimates what his subject is, as one should journey round the Pyramids, view them in general, find their significance, and discover the few essentials that make them not cathedrals, not Roman circuses, but Pyramids. In other words, interpretation is the object rather than completeness of fact.

Obviously an informal analysis must be complete as far as it goes, must be complete for its author's purpose, is not good writing if it gives only a partial interpretation which gets nowhere. It is at once apparent, then, that the controlling purpose which has been discussed at length in an earlier chapter is in informal analysis of the utmost importance. Only as it is clearly held in mind will the author know when to stop, what to choose. In formal analysis, where his object is to say all that there is to say, he chooses and ceases to choose by the standard of completeness of fact; in informal analysis he must choose and cease to choose by the standard of whether he has accomplished the desired effect, made the desired interpretation. His analysis, therefore, is valuable only when he has chosen the proper interpretation and has made it effective and clear. If he wishes to analyze a period of history for the purpose of showing the romance of the period, he will choose and cease to choose largely in so far as his material helps to establish the romance, and he will not hesitate to neglect many a fact that would be otherwise important. In the following selection from George Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_ you will find an analysis of the effect of the Rhone scenery on the author written purposely with the intention of driving home the dreariness of the subject, and therefore with material chosen for that end:

Journeying down the Rhone on a summer's day, you have perhaps
felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud
the banks in certain parts of its course, telling how the swift
river once rose, like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down
the feeble generations whose breath is in their nostrils, and
making their dwellings a desolation. Strange contrast, you may
have thought, between the effect produced on us by these dismal
remnants of commonplace houses, which in their best days were
but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to
our own vulgar era; and the effect produced by those ruins on the
castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such harmony
with the green and rocky steeps, that they seem to have a natural
fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in the day when they
were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been
raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty
parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance!
If these robber barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they
had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them--they were forest
boars with tusks, tearing and rending: not the ordinary domestic
grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in collision
with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a
fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the
soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite.
That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel
and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle--nay,
of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not
cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave
their Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the
sacred East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me
with a sense of poetry: they belong to the grand historic life of
humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an epoch. But these
dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the
Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life--very much of
it--is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity
does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare
vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the
lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of
obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with
the generations of ants and beavers.[40]

[40] George Eliot: _Mill on the Floss_. Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, publishers.

Informal analysis is not only less complete, but also less strict in adherence to pure analysis alone. It employs whatever is of value, believing that the material, the message, is greater than the form. Outside really formal analysis, which is likely to be fairly dull to all except those who are eager for the particular information given, most analytical articles make free use of definition whenever it will serve well to aid the reader's understanding or to move his emotions toward a desired goal; of description if it, like definition, proves of value; even of anecdote and argument if these forms are the fittest instruments for the fight. Thus Hawthorne, analyzing English weather, does not hesitate to dress out his analysis in the charms of personal experience and anecdote and description, which in no way obscure the facts of the weather, but merely take away the baldness of a formal statement and add the relish of actual life.

One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy
has nothing like it, nor America. There never was such weather
except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible
east wind between February and June, and a brown October and
black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few
weeks of incomparable summer scattered through July and August,
and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but
exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospherical
delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombreness may have brought
out those sunny intervals in such high relief that I see them, in
my recollection, brighter than they really were: a little light
makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The
English, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the momentary
gleams of their summer are; they call it broiling weather, and
hurry to the seaside with red, perspiring faces, in a state of
combustion and deliquescence; and I have observed that even their
cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or
standing midleg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at
temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely
comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land
had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the
weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm; but it
was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a
bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During
my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial
part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without
a fire on the hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get
acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy,
but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling
summer; and in the succeeding years,--whether that I had renewed
my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood with English
ale, or whatever were the cause,--I grew content with winter and
especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness
than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now
speaking of, I must needs confess that the noontide sun came down
more fervently than I found altogether tolerable; so that I was
fain to shift my position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making
myself a movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours of
an almost interminable day.

For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far
as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer day
has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake, at any
reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains;
you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm
variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil lapse; and
at length you become conscious that it is bedtime again, while
there is still enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your
book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs
down a transparent veil through which the bygone day beholds its
successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may
be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that
To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They exist together
in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns
the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may
simultaneously touch them both with one finger of recollection and
another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how
many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome
toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray
out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I
lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to
dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At
least, this was the feeling of the moment; although the transitory,
flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps
the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the
comfort of house and home, without any sense of their weight upon
my back. The nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find
tents ready pitched for us at every stage.[41]

[41] Nathaniel Hawthorne: _Our Old Home_. Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, publishers.

An extension of this willingness to make grist of whatever comes to the writer's mill lies in the close approach, at times, that analysis makes to the informal essay. Of course the line is difficult to draw--and perhaps not necessarily drawn--and most informal essays are to some extent, at least, analytical. The more you desire your analysis to become interesting, the more you wish to take hold of your reader, the more you will make use of the close approach unless your subject and its facts are of a kind to repel such intimacy. An analysis of the nebular hypothesis deals with facts of so august a nature, on so nearly an unimaginable plane, that intimacy seems out of place, impudent, like levity in cathedrals. But if you have such a subject as George Gissing[42] chose in the following analysis of the sportswoman's attitude and character, you may well, as he did, throw aside the formalities of expression and at once make truce of intimacy with your reader. So long as you do not obscure the facts of the analysis, make it unclear or blurred, so long you are safe.

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

I found an article, by a woman, on "Lion Hunting," and in this
article I came upon a passage which seemed worth copying:

"As I woke my husband, the lion--which was then about forty
yards off--charged straight towards us, and with my .303 I hit
him full in the chest, as we afterwards discovered, tearing his
windpipe to pieces and breaking his spine. He charged a second
time, and the next shot hit him through the shoulder, tearing his
heart to ribbons."

It would interest me to look upon this heroine of gun and pen.
She is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a
graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk,
to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea
of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre.
Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and
gracious, highbred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of
art and of letters; they could drop a tear over Lesbia's sparrow;
at the same time, they were connoisseurs in torn windpipes,
shattered spines, and viscera rent open. It is not likely that many
of them would have cared to turn their own hands to butchery, and,
for the matter of that, I must suppose that our Lion Huntress of
the popular magazine is rather an exceptional dame; but no doubt
she and the Roman ladies would get on well together, finding only a
few superficial differences. The fact that her gory reminiscences
are welcomed by an editor with the popular taste in view is perhaps
more significant than appears either to editor or public. Were this
lady to write a novel (the chances are she will) it would have the
true note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by
her favourite reading; more than probably, her ways of thinking and
feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will
soon, I dare say, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is
"no nonsense about her." Such women should breed a terrible race.

Kinds of Informal Analysis

_a._ _Enumeration_

Informal analysis may appear in various forms, not all of which are at once apparent as analysis until we disabuse our minds of thinking that analysis must be, always, complete in facts. For example, informal analysis often appears in the form of enumeration, in which the author "has some things to say"--always for a definite purpose--and says them in some reasonable order. Thus Mr. Herbert Croly, in his article "Lincoln as More than American," analyzes Lincoln's character as related to the characters of other Americans through the qualities of intellectuality, humanness, magnanimity, and humility. More might be said; the analysis is not complete in fact, but it serves the purpose of the author. It is distinctly in the enumerative order, the progression being determined by the controlling purpose of delineating Lincoln as worthy of not only respect but even true awe, the awe that we give only to those great souls who, in spite of all their mental supremacy, are yet beautifully humble.

_b._ _Equation_

Informal analysis often appears in the form of equation: the subject of analysis is stated as equal to something else--a quality, an instrument from another field of human knowledge, the same thing in other more common or well-known words. For example, William James, in his essay "The Social Value of the College Bred," first states that the value of a college education is "to help you to know a good man when you see him," and then explains what he means by this phrase. This form of analysis, then, is usually in the nature of a double equation: _x_ is equal to _y_, which, in turn, can be split up into _a_, _b_, _c_. The method really consists in arriving at an easily comprehended statement of the significance of the subject through the medium of a more immediately workable or attractive or simple synonymous statement. It is an application of the old formula of going from the known to the unknown, except that in this case we proceed from the unknown to the known and then return to the unknown with increased light.

_c._ _Statement of Significance_

A third form of informal analysis is the showing of the significance of the subject, its root meaning. In this case the writer attempts not so much to break the subject into its obvious parts as to set before the reader the meaning of it as a whole, in so short a compass, often, that it will not need further explanation, or if it does, that it may be then divided after the statement in easier form has been made. The following explanation of the philosophy of Nietzsche illustrates this form of analysis:

The central motive of Nietzsche seems to me to be this. It is
clear to him that the moral problem concerns the perfection, not
of society, not of the masses of men, but of the great individual.
And so far he, indeed, stands where the standard of individualistic
revolt has so often been raised. But Nietzsche differs from other
individualists in that the great object toward which his struggle
is directed is the discovery of what his own individuality itself
means and is. A Titan of the type of Goethe's or Shelley's
Prometheus proclaims his right to be free of Zeus and of all other
powers. But by hypothesis Prometheus already knows who he is and
what he wants. But the problem of Nietzsche is, above all, the
problem. Who am I, and, What do I want? What is clear to him is
the need of strenuous activity in pressing on toward the solution
of this problem. His aristocratic consciousness is the sense that
common men are in no wise capable of putting or of appreciating
this question. His assertion of the right of the individual to
be free from all external restraints is the ardent revolt of the
strenuous seeker for selfhood against whatever hinders him in
this task. He will not be interrupted by the base universe in the
business--his life-business--of finding out what his own life is to
mean for himself. He knows that his own will is, above all, what he
calls the will for power. On occasion he does not hesitate to use
this power to crush, at least in ideal, whoever shall hinder him
in his work. But the problem over which he agonizes is the inner
problem. What does this will that seeks power genuinely desire?
What is the power that is worthy to be mine?[43]

[43] Josiah Royce: _Nietzsche_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly
Company.

_d._ _Relationship_

A fourth class of informal analytical writing is the showing the relationship that exists between two ideas or things, as cause and effect, as source and termination, as contrary forces, or as any relation that has real existence. Under this heading will be found the large group of articles that answer the question _why?_, as for example, "Why the Quebec Bridge Collapsed," "Causes of the Strike among the Garment Workers," "Popular Opinion as Affecting Government Action," and other such subjects. In the following analysis of the relation existing between human action as result, and impulse and desire as causes, you will find such an informal presentation of material.

All human activity springs from two sources: impulse and
desire. The part played by desire has always been sufficiently
recognized. When men find themselves not fully contented, and not
able instantly to procure what will cause content, imagination
brings before their minds the thought of things which they believe
would make them happy. All desire involves an interval of time
between the consciousness of a need and the opportunity for
satisfying it. The acts inspired by desire may in themselves be
painful, the time before satisfaction can be achieved may be very
long, the object desired may be something outside our own lives,
and even after our own death. Will, as a directing force, consists
mainly in following desires for more or less distant objects, in
spite of the painfulness of the acts involved and the solicitations
of incompatible but more immediate desires and impulses. All this
is familiar, and political philosophy hitherto has been almost
entirely based upon desire as the source of human actions.

But desire governs no more than a part of human activity, and
that not the most important but only the more conscious, explicit,
and civilized part.

In all the more instinctive part of our nature we are
dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, not by desires
for certain ends. Children run and shout, not because of any good
which they expect to realize, but because of a direct impulse to
running and shouting. Dogs bay the moon, not because they consider
that it is to their advantage to do so, but because they feel an
impulse to bark. It is not any purpose, but merely an impulse,
that prompts such actions, as eating, drinking, love-making,
quarrelling, boasting. Those who believe that man is a rational
animal will say that people boast in order that others may have a
good opinion of them; but most of us can recall occasions when we
have boasted in spite of knowing that we should be despised for it.
Instinctive acts normally achieve some result which is agreeable to
the natural man, but they are not performed from desire for this
result. They are performed from direct impulse, and the impulse
often is strong even in cases in which the normal desirable result
cannot follow. Grown men like to imagine themselves more rational
than children and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from themselves
how great a part impulse plays in their lives. This unconscious
concealment always follows a certain general plan. When an impulse
is not indulged in the moment in which it arises, there grows up
a desire for the expected consequences of indulging the impulse.
If some of the consequences which are reasonably to be expected
are clearly disagreeable, a conflict between foresight and impulse
arises. If the impulse is weak, foresight may conquer; this is
what is called acting on reason. If the impulse is strong, either
foresight will be falsified, and the disagreeable consequences will
be forgotten, or, in men of heroic mold, the consequences may be
recklessly accepted. When Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to
defeat, he does not shrink from the fight; he exclaims:--

Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be he that first cries, Hold, enough!

But such strength and recklessness of impulse is rare.
Most men, when their impulse is strong, succeed in persuading
themselves, usually by a subconscious selectiveness of attention,
that agreeable consequences will follow from indulgence of their
impulse. Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical valuation,
spring up in this way; they are the embodiment of a kind of
thought which is subservient to impulse, which aims at providing
a quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of impulse. The
only thought which is genuine is that which springs out of the
intellectual impulse of curiosity, leading to the desire to know
and understand. But most of what passes for thought is inspired by
some non-intellectual impulse, and is merely a means of persuading
ourselves that we shall not be disappointed or do harm if we
indulge this impulse.

When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort, or even
violent pain. We may indulge the impulse in order to escape from
this pain, and our action is then one which has a purpose. But the
pain only exists because of the impulse, and the impulse itself is
directed to an act, not to escaping from the pain of restraining
the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the
purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been
momentarily restrained.

Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much more than
desire. Desire has its place, but not so large a place as it
is seemed to have. Impulses bring with them a whole train of
subservient fictitious desires: they make men feel that they desire
the results which will follow from indulging the impulses, and that
they are acting for the sake of these results, when in fact their
action has no motive outside itself. A man may write a book or
paint a picture under the belief that he desires the praise which
it will bring him; but as soon as it is finished, if his creative
impulse is not exhausted, what he has done grows uninteresting to
him, and he begins a new piece of work. What applies to artistic
creation applies equally to all that is most vital in our lives:
direct impulse is what moves us, and the desires which we think we
have are a mere garment for the impulse.

Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true, a large and
increasing share in the regulation of men's lives. Impulse is
erratic and anarchical, not easily fitted into a well-regulated
system; it may be tolerated in children and artists, but it is not
thought proper to men who hope to be taken seriously. Almost all
paid work is done from desire, not from impulse: the work itself
is more or less irksome, but the payment for it is desired. The
serious activities that fill a man's working hours are, except in
a few fortunate individuals, governed mainly by purposes, not by
impulses toward these activities. In this hardly any one sees an
evil, because the place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is
not recognized.

An impulse, to one who does not share it actually or
imaginatively, will always seem to be mad. All impulse is
essentially blind, in the sense that it does not spring from
any prevision of consequences. The man who does not share
the impulse will form a different estimate as to what the
consequences will be, and as to whether those that must ensue are
desirable. This difference of opinion will seem to be ethical
or intellectual, whereas its real basis is a difference of
impulse. No genuine agreement will be reached, in such a case, so
long as the difference of impulse persists. In all men who have
any vigorous life, there are strong impulses such as may seem
utterly unreasonable to others. Blind impulses sometimes lead to
destruction and death, but at other times they lead to the best
things the world contains. Blind impulse is the source of war, but
it is also the source of science, and art, and love. It is not the
weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of
impulse toward life and growth rather than toward death and decay.

The complete control of impulse by will, which is sometimes
preached by moralists, and often enforced by economic necessity, is
not really desirable. A life governed by purposes and desires, to
the exclusion of impulses, is a tiring life; it exhausts vitality,
and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent to the very purposes
which he has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation lives in
this way, the whole nation tends to become feeble, without enough
grasp to recognize and overcome the obstacles to its desires.
Industrialism and organization are constantly forcing civilized
nations to live more and more by purpose rather than impulse. In
the long run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry up the
springs of life, produces new impulse, not of the kind which the
will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought
is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their
effects than those which have been checked. Excessive discipline,
especially when it has been imposed from without, often issues
in impulses of cruelty and destruction; this is one reason why
militarism has a bad effect on national character. Either lack of
vitality, or impulses which are oppressive and against life, will
almost always result if the spontaneous impulses are not able to
find an outlet. A man's impulses are not fixed from the beginning
by his native disposition: within certain wide limits, they are
profoundly modified by his circumstances and his way of life. The
nature of these modifications ought to be studied, and the results
of such study ought to be taken account of in judging the good or
harm that is done by political and social institutions.[44]

[44] Bertrand Russell: _Why Men Fight_. By courtesy of the publishers,
The Century Company, New York City.

_e._ _Statement of a Problem_

A fifth form in which analysis often appears is as a statement of a problem. An engineer who is asked by a city to investigate the conditions that confront the municipality as regards water supply will have such a problem to state. The statement will presumably consist of several divisions. First of all, of course--and this will be essential in all such statements--will be an analysis of the conditions themselves. In this particular case he will find out how much water is needed, how great the present supply is, what sources are available for increased supply, what the character of the water in these other sources is, and anything else that may be of value to the city. If any former attempts at solution have been made, he may mention them. If he is asked to recommend a plan of procedure, he will make an analysis of the details of this plan and will present them.

Now obviously the nature of the audience will determine somewhat the manner of approach to the conditions. If, for example, the problem is to be stated to the financial committee of the city, the angle of approach will be that of cost; if to a prospective constructing engineer, from that of difficulties of construction of reservoirs or from that of availability of sources. If you are to state the problem of lessening the illiteracy in a given neighborhood, you will approach the subject for the school committee from the angle, perhaps, of the establishment of night schools, or from that of the necessary welding of nationalities; for the charitable societies from that of the poverty that compels child labor in the community. And in the recommendations for meeting the conditions, if such recommendations are made, attention must be paid to the particular people who will read the analysis. Of course if you make an abstract, complete survey, you will cover the ground in whatever way seems most suitable.

Such an analysis, when it is in the nature of a report, will presumably be in brief, tabulated form. If, on the other hand, it is not a report, the subject may be treated more informally, made more pleasing. The following statement of the problem of the development of power machinery is made rather formally from the angle of the constructive engineer with an eye also to the financial conditions.