Chapter IV: Analysis (2)

The problem of power-machinery development is, therefore,
divisible into several parts: First, what processes must be carried
out to produce motion against resistance, from the energy of winds,
the water of the rivers, or from fuel. Second, what combinations of
simply formed parts can be made to carry out the process or series
of processes. These two steps when worked out will result in some
kind of engine, but it may not be a good engine, for it may use up
too much natural energy for the work it does; some part may break
or another wear too fast; some part may have a form that no workman
can make, or use up too much material or time in the making; in
short, while the engine may work, it may be too wasteful, or do its
work at too great a cost of coal or water, attendance in operation,
or investment, or all these together. There must, therefore, be
added several other elements to the problem, as follows: Third, how
many ways are there of making each part, and which is the cheapest,
or what other form of part might be devised that would be cheaper
to make, or what cheaper material is there that would be equally
suitable. Fourth, how sensitive to care are all these parts when
in operation, and how much attendance and repairs will be required
to keep the machine in good operating condition. Fifth, how big
must the important parts of the whole machine be to utilize all the
energy available, or to produce the desired amount of power. Sixth,
how much force must each part of the mechanism sustain, and how
big must it be when made of suitable material so as not to break.
Seventh, how much work can be produced by the process for each unit
of energy supplied.[45]

[45] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the
Columbia University Press.

Principles of Analysis

The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis, however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject, whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. And in truth without some such law or basis the mind soon becomes hopelessly enmeshed and bewildered. I cannot expect my reader to understand my treatise on locomotive engines, my classification of them, if I regard them now as engines of speed, now as means of conveyance, now as potential destroyers of life, and now as instruments whereby capitalists become rich and workmen become poor. As often as I change my point of view, so often I shall be under the necessity of making a new arrangement of the engines, a new alignment. It is like skimming past a cornfield with the platoons of green spears constantly shifting their number, their direction, and their general appearance. If I station myself at one point, I can soon make reasonable estimates, but so long as I whirl from point to point my estimate must whirl likewise and I shall be confused rather than helped. If, then, you are to analyze, say, our present-day domestic architecture, it is not enough to heap together everything that occurs to you about houses: their size, material, color, arrangement, finish, beauty, convenience, situation as regards sidewalks, their heating and upkeep. To prevent your reader from becoming hopelessly muddled, from seeming to deal with the valley of the unorganized dry bones of fact, you must have some guiding principle, some basis, some point of view. Suppose that you take _beauty_ as your basis. Then at once you have a standard by which you can judge all houses, to which you can relate questions of position, arrangement, convenience, lighting, heating, etc. Each of these questions is now significant as affecting the cause of beauty. You could, of course, choose _convenience_ as your basis, to which, then, beauty would be subordinate as contributing or opposing. Asked to analyze the architecture of a railroad terminal, you will not do well to plant dynamite under it and make an architectural rummage sale of its parts; rather you will choose, perhaps, _serviceability_ as your basis, and will then examine tracks, offices, waiting rooms, etc. to see what the whole is. No part will thereby be overlooked; each will be significant, and the whole will be unified by your single point of view. An analysis of MacDowell's music might be based on _emotional power_; of the currency problem on that of _general distribution_; of universities on that of _proportion of cultural to so-called practical courses_. Notice, also, that the choosing of a basis of division is just as necessary in one kind of analysis as in another, that formality and informality do not affect the logic of the situation in the least, that whatever the subject or the proposed method of treatment, you must be consistent in your point of view, must make a pivot round which the whole can turn.

Sometimes more than one principle will be necessary, in a complicated analysis, as in judging a route for a railway we saw the necessity for considering grades, drainage, landslides, etc., as we might interweave the bases of cost, beauty, convenience, etc., but--like the reins of the ten-span circus horses--all will be found to run back finally to the single driver--in the case of the railway, _practicability_. In classifying dredges, for example, we may use as basis the action of the machine upon the bottom of the body of water, that is, whether the action is continuous or intermittent; in this case we shall find four types of continuous dredges: the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring, and the pneumatic; and we shall find two classes of intermittent: the dipper and the grapple dredges. Or we may divide all dredges on the basis of whether they are self-propelling or non-propelling. Finally, we may take as basis for the classification the manner of disposing of the excavated materials, in which case we shall find several groups. In the following example we have two bases used for classifying clearing-houses. The use of more than one basis will depend on whether we can by such use make more easily clear to a reader the nature of the subject and on whether different readers will need different angles of approach.

The clearing-houses in the United States may be divided into
two classes, the sole function of the first of which consists in
clearing-notes, drafts, checks, bills of exchange, and whatever
else may be agreed upon; and the second of which, in addition to
exercising the functions of the class just mentioned, prescribes
rules and regulations for its members in various matters, such
as the fixing of uniform rates of exchange, interest charges,
collections, etc.

Clearing-houses may also be divided into two classes with
reference to the funds used in the settlement of balances: First,
those clearing-houses which make their settlements entirely on a
cash basis, or, as stated in the decision of the Supreme Court
above referred to, "by such form of acknowledgment or certificate
as the associated banks may agree to use in their dealings with
each other as the equivalent or representative of cash"; and
second, those clearing-houses which make their settlements by
checks or drafts on large financial centers.[46]

[46] James G. Cannon: _Clearing-Houses_. By courtesy of the
publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright, 1900.

Sometimes, also, the minor sections may have a different basis from the main one, a different principle of classification. For example, a general basis for an analysis of the Mexican situation during Mr. Wilson's administration might be _general world progress_. This might cover our immediate relations with Mexico, our less close relations with South America, and our rather more remote relations with Europe. The first division might then possibly choose for its principle _fundamental causes for inter-irritation_; the second, _our trade relations with South America_; and the third, the _possibility of trouble through the Monroe Doctrine_. All would unite under the one heading of general progress, and so long as they were kept distinct would be serviceable. For the uniting into one main principle is the important thing. It is by this, and this only, that the reader will easily receive a clear understanding of the subject.

Having selected this unifying basis, you must then be careful lest your subdivisions be only the subject restated in other words. If you are analyzing a railroad route for practicability, do not name one division _general serviceability_, for you will merely have made a revolution of 360 degrees and be facing exactly as you faced before. In analyzing Scott's works for humor do not name one division _ability to see the funny side of life_, for again you will have said only that two equals two. Each section must be less than the whole.

Even more caution is required to keep the divisions from overlapping. The man who wrote an enthusiastic account of the acting of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson with subheadings as follows: (1) emotional power, (2) effect on audience, (3) intellect, (4) appealing qualities, saw that his divisions--like a family of young kittens--overlapped and sprawled generally. When he had selected _moving power_ as his main principle, and had then divided the treatment into the following headings: (1) appearance, (2) voice, (3) general handling of the situation, (4) effect at the time, and (5) memories of the performance, he found that his kittens had become well-mannered little beasties and sat each in his place. The overlapping of subdivisions is likely to occur because of one or both of two causes: lack of clear thinking, and lack of clear expression. Be sure, then, first to cut neatly between parts in dividing your apple, and then to label each part carefully so that the reader will not say, "Why, three is just like two!"

Finally, be sure that the sum of your divisions equals the whole. This means that in logical analysis you must continue the process of dividing until nothing is left. You must follow the old advice: "Cut into as small pieces as possible, and then cut each piece several times smaller!" Such would be the process in analyzing and classifying types of cathedral architecture; your work will not be complete until you have included all possible forms. The same would hold true in a thorough analysis of bridges; all forms would demand entrance. When you write informal or literary analysis, on the other hand, since here the object is illumination rather than exhaustion, almost suggestiveness rather than completeness, choose the significant vital divisions and let the rest go. This does not mean that in informal analysis you may be careless; "any old thing" is far from being the motto; strict thinking and shrewd selection are quite as necessary as in formal analysis. The point is that the divisions will be fewer in number, as in an article on the subject of the failure of freshmen in the first semester your object, in informal analysis, would be to group the causes, for the convenience of the reader, into a few general divisions which should give him a clear idea of the subject without necessitating long and painful reading. In literary analysis especially it is often well to express in one sentence the gist of your thought, as Mr. More says, "Tennyson was the Victorian Age." It is always well to be able to express this sentence. Of course care must be exercised not to make the structure of the article too evident by the presence of such a sentence, but its judicious use will help to unify the thought for the reader. For most minds analysis is difficult. Whatever you can do, therefore, to make it easy will be worth while in gaining success.

EXERCISES

I. Why, from the point of view of analysis, is it difficult to
select a list of "the greatest ten" living men, or women? Make
such a list and then examine its foundations. Is a similar list
of novels or plays or symphonies as difficult to make?

II. Use any of the following sentences as a nucleus sentence on which
to build an informal analysis.

1. The attitude of scientific efficiency is incompatible with
feelings of humanity.

2. A college career does not always develop, but in fact often
kills, intellectual integrity.

3. The worst enemy of the American Public is the newspaper that
for political or business reasons distorts news.

4. Studies are the least valuable of college activities except
as they stimulate the imagination.

5. Our Country is so large that a citizen is really justified,
mentally and morally, in being provincial.

6. The study of literature in college is, except for the person
of no imagination, deadening to the spirit.

7. The fifteen-and twenty-cent magazine is a menace to American
life in that its fiction grossly distorts the facts of life.

8. The farmer who wishes to keep his soil in good condition
should use legumes as increasers of fertility.

9. The effect of acquisition of land property is always to drive
the possessors into the Tory camp.

10. The engineer is a poet who expresses himself in material
forms rather than words.

III. Make a formal classification, in skeleton form, of any of the
following subjects. Then determine what qualities the subject has
that indicate how such a classification can be made interesting,
either by material or treatment. Then write an analytical theme
which shall thoroughly cover the skeleton classification and
shall also be attractive. (Compare the classification of Rock
Drills (page 115) and Oriental Rugs (page 119) to note the
difference in the amount of interest.)

1. Building materials for houses.

2. China dinner-ware.

3. Forms of democratic government.

4. Methods of irrigation in the United States.

5. Types of lyric poetry.

6. Chairs.

7. Commercial fertilizers.

8. Tractors for the farm.

9. Contemporary philosophies of Europe and America.

10. American dances.

11. Elevators.

12. Filing systems.

13. Races of men in Europe.

14. Gas ranges.

15. Pianos.

16. Contemporary short stories of the popular magazines.

Indicate, in any given subject, how many possible bases for
classification you could choose, as, for example, you might
classify chairs on the basis of comfort, expense, presence of
rockers, upholstery, adaptation to the human figure, material for
the seat, shape of back, etc.

IV. Analyze any of the following problems, first without
recommendation of solution, and second with recommendation as if
you were making a report to a committee or employer or officer.

1. Summer work for college students.

2. Keeping informed of world affairs while doing one's college
work faithfully.

3. "Outside activities" for college students.

4. Faculty or non-faculty control of college politics.

5. Choosing a college course with relation to intended career in
life.

6. Selecting shrubbery for continuous bloom with both red and
blue berries in winter.

7. The mail-order houses.

8. Preventing money panics.

9. Dye-manufacture in the United States.

10. Gaining foreign markets.

11. The farmer and the commission merchant.

12. The brand of flour selected for use in large hotels.

13. Color photography.

14. Wind pressure in high buildings.

15. Street pavement.

16. Electrification of railroads.

17. Heating system for an eight-room house.

18. Choice of cereal for children of six, nine, and eleven--two
boys, one girl.

19. Lighting the farmhouse.

20. Creating a high class dairy or sheep herd.

21. Creating an apple (or other fruit) orchard.

22. Method of shipping potatoes to a distant point, in boxes,
barrels, sacks.

23. Best use of a twenty-acre farm near a large city.

24. Investment of $500.00.

25. Best system of bookkeeping for the farmer.

26. Kind of life insurance for a man of twenty.

27. Location of a shoe factory with capital of $250,000.00.

28. Cash system in a large general store.

29. Reconciling Shakespeare's works with the known facts of his
life.

30. The secret of Thomas Hardy's pessimism.

31. Reconciling narrow religious training with the increased
knowledge derived from college.

32. The failure of college courses in English composition to
produce geniuses.

33. The creation of a conscientious political attitude in a
democracy.

34. Selection of $10,000 worth of books as the nucleus for a
small town library.

V. Decide upon a controlling purpose for an informal analysis of any
of the following subjects, indicate how you hope to make the
analysis interesting, state why you choose the basis that you
do--and then write the theme.

1. Prejudices, Flirts, Entertainments, Shade-trees, Methods of
advertising, Languages, Scholastic degrees, Systems of
landscape gardening for small estates, Migratory song birds
of North America, Laces.

2. Causes of the Return-to-the-Soil movement, Origins of our
dairy cattle, Benefits of intensive agriculture, Imported
plant diseases, Legumes.

3. Opportunities for the Civil (or Mechanical or Electrical,
etc.) Engineer, Difficulties of modern bridge-building, The
relation of the engineer to social movements, The
contribution of the engineer to intellectual advance.

4. Changes in the United States system of public finance since
Hamilton's time, The equitable distribution of taxation, The
benefits of the Federal Reserve Movement in Finance, Forms of
taxation, Systems of credit.

5. Possibilities for Physiological Chemistry, Obstacles to color
photography, The chemistry of the kitchen, The future of the
telescope, The battle against disease germs, Theories of the
atom, Heredity in plants or animals, Edible fresh-water fish.

6. Bores, The terrors of childhood, The vanities of young men,
Methods of coquetry,--of becoming popular,--of always having
one's way, The idiosyncrasies of elderly bachelors, Books to
read on the train, Acquaintances of the dining-car.

VI. Write a 250 word analysis of whatever type you choose on any of
the following subjects:

The dishonesty of college catalogues, The prevalence of
fires in the United States, Causes of weakness in I beams, Effect
of fairy stories on children, Religious sectarianism, Public
attitude toward an actress, The business man's opinion of the
college professor, The tyranny of the teaching of our earliest
years, The state of American forests, Municipal wastefulness,
Opportunities for lucrative employment at ---- college or
university, The effect of oriental rugs in a room, The attitude
of people in a small town toward their young people in college,
People who are desolate without the "Movies" four or five times a
week.

VII. Write a 1500-2000 word analytical theme on any of the following
subjects:

1. The Responsibilities of Individualism.

2. American Slavery to the Printed Word.

3. The Ideal Vacation.

4. What Shall We Do with Sunday?

5. The Value of Reading Fiction.

6. Why I am a Republican, or Democrat, or Pessimist, or
Agnostic, or Humanist, or Rebel in general, or Agitator
or--whatnot?

7. The Classics and the American Student in the Twentieth
Century.

8. The Chief Function of a College.

9. The Decline of Manners.

10. A Defense of Cheap Vaudeville.

11. The Workingman Should Know His Place and Keep It.

12. The Study of History as an Aid to a Critical Estimate of the
Present.

13. The Relation of Friendship to Similarity in Point of View.

14. Intellectual Leadership in America.

15. The Present Situation in the World of Baseball.

16. The Reaction of War upon the Finer Sensibilities of
Civilians.

17. Patriotism and Intellectual Detachment.

18. The Breeding Place of Social Improvements.

19. Organization in Modern Life.

20. The Conflict of Political and Moral Loyalty.

21. Why Has Epic Poetry Passed from Favor?

22. The Stability of American Political Opinion.

23. The Shifting Geography of Intellectual Leadership in the
World.

VIII. In the following selection what does Mr. Shaw analyze? On what
basis? Is he thorough? If not, what does he omit? Does the
omission, if there is any, vitally harm the analysis?

Passion is the steam in the engine of all religious
and moral systems. In so far as it is malevolent, the
religions are malevolent too, and insist on human sacrifices,
on hell, wrath, and vengeance. You cannot read Browning's
Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island,
without admitting that all our religions have been made as
Caliban made his, and that the difference between Caliban
and Prospero is not that Prospero has killed passion in
himself whilst Caliban has yielded to it, but that Prospero
is mastered by holier passions than Caliban's. Abstract
principles of conduct break down in practice because kindness
and truth and justice are not duties founded on abstract
principles external to man, but human passions, which have, in
their time, conflicted with higher passions as well as with
lower ones. If a young woman, in a mood of strong reaction
against the preaching of duty and self-sacrifice and the rest
of it, were to tell me that she was determined not to murder
her own instincts and throw away her life in obedience to
a mouthful of empty phrases, I should say to her: "By all
means do as you propose. Try how wicked you can be: it is
precisely the same experiment as trying how good you can be.
At worst you will only find out the sort of person you are.
At best you will find that your passions, if you really and
honestly let them all loose impartially, will discipline you
with a severity which your conventional friends, abandoning
themselves to the mechanical routine of fashion, could not
stand for a day." As a matter of fact, we have seen over and
over again this comedy of the "emancipated" young enthusiast
flinging duty and religion, convention and parental authority,
to the winds, only to find herself, for the first time in her
life, plunged into duties, responsibilities, and sacrifices
from which she is often glad to retreat, after a few years'
wearing down of her enthusiasm, into the comparatively loose
life of an ordinary respectable woman of fashion.[47]

[47] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Boni & Liveright.

Analyze the relation of _sincerity_ to _teaching_,
of _intellectual bravery_ to _reading_, of _subservience_
to _politics_, of _vitality_ to _creative writing_, of
_broadmindedness_ to _social reform_, of _sympathy_ to _social
judgment_.

Rewrite Mr. Shaw's article so as to place the sentence
which now begins the selection at the end. Is the result an
improvement or a drawback? What difference in the reader might
make this change advisable?

IX. In the light of the following statement of the philosophy of Mr.
Arthur Balfour, the English statesman, analyze, into one word if
possible, the philosophy of Lincoln, of Bismarck, of Mr. Wilson,
of Robert E. Lee, of Webster, of William Pitt, of Burke, of any
political thinker of whom you know.

In the same way analyze the military policy of Napoleon or
Grant or any other general; the social philosophy of Jane Addams,
Rousseau, Carlyle, Jefferson, or any other thinker; the creed
of personal conduct of Browning, Whitman, Thackeray (as shown
in _Vanity Fair_), or of any other person concerned with the
individual.

Analyze the effect of such a philosophy as Mr. Balfour's.
Analyze the relation of such a philosophy as this to the actively
interested personal conduct of the holder of it toward definite
personal ends.

Balfour is essentially a sceptic. He looks out on
life with a mingled scorn and pity--scorn for its passionate
strivings for the unattainable, pity for its meanness and
squalor. He does not know the reading of the riddle, but he
knows that all ends in failure and disillusion. Ever the rosy
dawn of youth and hope fades away into the sadness of evening
and the blackness of night, and out of that blackness comes no
flash of revelation, no message of cheer.

The Worldly Hope men set their hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.

Why meddle with the loom and its flying shuttle? We
are the warp and weft with which the great Weaver works His
infinite design--that design which is beyond the focus of all
mortal vision, and in which the glory of Greece, the pomp of
Rome, the ambition of Carthage, seven times buried beneath the
dust of the desert, are but inscrutable passages of glowing
color. All our schemes are futile, for we do not know the end,
and that which seems to us evil may serve some ultimate good,
and that which seems right may pave the path to wrong. In this
fantastic mockery of all human effort the only attitude is the
"wise passiveness" of the poet. Let us accept the irrevocable
fate unresistingly.

In a word, Drift. That is the political philosophy of Mr.
Balfour.[48]

[48] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission
of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

X. Analyze the method of treatment that the author uses in the
following selections about King Edward VII and Mr. Thomas
Hardy, and in the one just quoted about Mr. Balfour. Would the
result in the reader's mind be as good, or better, if the author
specified a larger number of qualities? Why? What feeling do you
have as to the fairness of the three treatments? Does any one
of the three seem to claim completeness? Which is most nearly
complete?

Write a similar analysis, reducing to one or two main
qualities or characteristics, the American Civil War, the French
Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic Movement in
Literature, the Celtic Spirit, the Puritan Spirit, Socialism,
Culture.

Now, King Edward is, above everything else, a very
human man. He is not deceived by the pomp and circumstance in
the midst of which it has been his lot to live, for he has no
illusions. He is eminently sane. He was cast for a part in the
piece of life from his cradle, and he plays it industriously
and thoroughly; but he has never lost the point of view of the
plain man. He has much more in common with the President of a
free State than with the King by Divine right. He is simply
the chief citizen, _primus inter pares_, and the fact that
he is chief by heredity and not by election does not qualify
his views of the reality of the position. Unlike his nephew,
he never associates the Almighty with his right to rule,
though he associates Him with his rule. His common sense and
his gift of humor save him from these exalted and antiquated
assumptions. Nothing is more characteristic of this sensible
attitude than his love for the French people and French
institutions. No King by "Divine right" could be on speaking
terms with a country which has swept the whole institution of
Kingship on to the dust-heap.

And his saving grace of humor enables him to enjoy
and poke fun at the folly of the tuft-hunter and the collector
of Royal cherry stones. He laughingly inverts the folly. "You
see that chair," he said in tones of awe to a guest entering
his smoking room at Windsor. "That is the chair John Burns
sat in." His Majesty has a genuine liking for "J. B." who, I
have no doubt, delivered from that chair a copious digest of
his Raper lecture, coupled with illuminating statistics on
infantile mortality, some approving comments on the member
for Battersea, and a little wholesome advice on the duties
of a King. This liking for Mr. Burns is as characteristic of
the King as his liking for France. He prefers plain, breezy
men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those
who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had
no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great
qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine
glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of
his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when
he inadvertently sat on it.[49]

[49] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of
the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

Thomas Hardy lives in the deepening shadow of the
mystery of this unintelligible world. The journey that began
with the bucolic joy of _Under the Greenwood Tree_ has reached
its close in the unmitigated misery of _Jude the Obscure_,
accompanied by the mocking voices of those aerial spirits who
pass their comments upon the futile struggle of the "Dynasts,"
as they march their armies to and fro across the mountains and
rivers of that globe which the eye of the imagination sees
whirling like a midge in space. Napoleon and the Powers! What
are they but puppets in the hand of some passionless fate,
loveless and hateless, whose purposes are beyond all human
vision?

O Immanence, That reasonest not
In putting forth all things begot,
Thou buildest Thy house in space--for what?
O Loveless, Hateless!--past the sense
Of kindly-eyed benevolence,
To what tune danceth this Immense?

And for answer comes the mocking voice of the Spirit
Ironic--

For one I cannot answer. But I know
'T is handsome of our Pities so to sing
The praises of the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing
That turns the handle of this idle Show.

Night has come down upon the outlook of the writer
as it came down over the somber waste of Egdon Heath. There
is not a cheerful feature left, not one glint of sunshine in
the sad landscape of broken ambitions and squalor and hopeless
strivings and triumphant misery. Labor and sorrow, a little
laughter, disillusion and suffering--and after that, the dark.
Not the dark that flees before the cheerful dawn, but the dark
whose greatest benediction is eternal nothingness. Other men
of genius, most men of genius, have had their periods of deep
dejection in which only the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic
answered their passionate questionings. Shakespeare himself
may be assumed to have passed through the valley of gloom in
that tremendous period when he produced the great tragedies;
but he came out of the shadow, and _The Winter's Tale_ has the
serenity and peace of a cloudless sunset. But the pilgrimage
of Thomas Hardy has led us ever into the deeper shadow. The
shades of the prison-house have closed around us and there is
no return to the cheerful day. The journey we began with those
jolly carol-singers under the greenwood tree has ended in the
hopeless misery of Jude.[50]

[50] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of
the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

XI. On what basis is the following analysis of the farmer's life
made? Do you discover any overlapping of parts? Is the analysis
so incomplete as to be of slight value? At what point can you
draw the line between analysis and mere "remarks" about a
subject?

Over and above the hardiness which the farm
engenders, and of a far higher quality, is the moral courage
it calls into play. Courage is the elemental virtue, for
life has been and will forever be a fight. A farmer's life
is one incessant fight. Think what he dares! He dares to try
to control the face of this planet. In order to raise his
crops he pits himself against the weather and the seasons;
he forces the soil to his wishes; he wars against the plant
world, the bacterial world. Is not that a fight, looked at
philosophically, to make one stand aghast? After I had been on
the farm seven years, the tremendousness of the fight that my
fellow farmers were waging disclosed itself to me with a force
no figure of speech can convey. Until one can be brought
to some realization of this aspect of the farmer's life, he
has no adequate grounds for comprehending the discipline and
development which is the very nature of the case that life
must receive. I often contrast the life of the clerk at his
books, or the mechanic at his bench, or the professional man
at his desk, with the lot of the farmer. The dangers and
uncertainties they confront seem to me extraordinarily mild
compared with the risk the farmer runs. That the former will
be paid for their work is almost certain; it is extremely
uncertain whether the farmer will be paid for his. He must
dare to lose at every turn; scarcely a week passes in which
he does not lose, sometimes heavily, sometimes considerably.
Those moments in a battle when it seems as if every plan had
gone to smash, which so test the fortitude of a general, are
moments which a farmer experiences more frequently and more
strenuously than men in most occupations. If he sticks to his
task successfully his capacity for courage must grow to meet
the demands; if he will not stick, he is sifted out by force
of circumstance, leaving the stronger type of man to hold the
farm.[51]

[51] Arthur M. Judy: _From the Study to the Farm_. By courtesy of The
Atlantic Monthly Company.

Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor,
the head-nurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the
private detective.

XII. Would you classify the following selection as formal or informal
classification or partition?

Write a similar treatment of fuel power, moral power,
physical strength, intellectual power.

Wherever rain falls streams will form, the water of
which represents the concentrated drainage of all the land
sloping toward that particular valley at the bottom of which
the stream flows. This stream flow consists of the rainfall
over the whole watershed less the amount absorbed by the
earth or evaporated from the surface, and every such stream
is a potential source of power. The possible water-power of
a country or district is, therefore, primarily dependent on
rainfall, but also, of course, on absorption and surface
evaporation. In places where the land is approximately flat,
the tendency to concentrate rainfall into streams would be
small, as the water would tend to lie rather in swampy low
pools, or form innumerable tiny, slowly moving brooks. On the
contrary, if the country were of a rolling or mountainous
character, there would be two important differences
introduced. First, water would concentrate in a few larger
and faster-moving streams, the water of which would represent
the collection from perhaps thousands of square miles; and
secondly, it would be constantly falling from higher to lower
levels on its way to the sea. While, therefore, all streams
are potential, or possible sources of power, and water-power
might seem to be available all over the earth, yet, as a
matter of fact, only those streams that are large enough
or in which the fall of level is great enough, are really
worth while to develop; and only in these districts where
the rainfall is great enough and the earth not too flat or
too absorbent, or the air too dry, may any streams of useful
character at all be expected. The power represented by all the
water of a stream, and its entire fall from the source to the
sea, is likewise only partly available. No one would think of
trying to carry water in pipes from the source of a stream
a thousand miles to its mouth for the sake of running some
water-wheels.[52]

[52] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the
Columbia University Press.

XIII. For what kind of reader do you judge that the following partition
of the orchestra was written? Is the partition complete? What
is the basis on which it is made? How does it differ from an
appreciative criticism of the orchestra as a musical instrument?
(See chapter on _Criticism_.)

Make a similar partition of the brass band, the feudal
system, the United States Government, the United States Army, the
Hague Conference, the pipe organ, the printing press, a canal
lock, a Greek drama, a large modern circus, mathematics, etc.

The modern orchestra is the result of a long
development, which it would not be profitable to trace in this
book. It is a body of instruments, selected with a view to
their ability to perform the most complex music. It will be
readily understood that such an instrumental body must possess
a wide range of timbres, a great compass, extensive gradations
of force, the greatest flexibility, and a solid sonority
which can be maintained from the finest pianissimo to the
heaviest forte. Of course the preservation of some of these
qualities, such as flexibility and solidity, depend largely
upon the skill of the composer, but they are all inherent in
the orchestra. They are gained by the use of three classes of
instruments, grouped under the general heads of wood, brass,
and strings, which have special tone-colors and individuality
when heard in their distinct groups, but which combine
admirably in the ensemble.

It is the custom to name the three groups in the
order given because, for the sake of convenience, composers
place the flute parts at the top of the page of the score
where the wide margin gives room for their high notes. The
other wood-wind instruments follow the flutes, so as to keep
the wood-choir together. The brass is placed under the wood
because its members are so often combined with some of the
wood instruments in sounding chords. This brings the strings
to the bottom of the page, the instruments of percussion
(drums, cymbals, etc.) being inserted between them and the
brass.

The instruments of the conventional symphonic
orchestra of the classic period, then, are flutes, oboes,
clarinets, bassoons in the wood department, horns, trumpets,
and trombones in the brass, and violins, violas, violoncellos,
and double-basses for strings. Modern composers have added
for special reasons the English horn, which is the alto of
the oboe, the bass-clarinet, the contrabassoon (which sounds
an octave lower than the ordinary bassoon), the bass-tuba,
a powerful double-bass brass instrument, and the harp. The
piccolo, a small, shrill flute sounding an octave higher than
the ordinary flute, was introduced into the symphony orchestra
by Beethoven, though it had frequently been used before in
opera scores.[53]

[53] W. H. Henderson: _What is Good Music_? By courtesy of the
publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright,
1898.

XIV. Criticize the following analysis of the indispensability of Law.
Write an analysis of the necessity for conformity to current
style in dress, the necessity for theaters, of the reason why
ultimate democracy is inevitable for the whole world; of the
inevitability of conflict between advancing thought and
established religion; of the unavoidability of struggle between
capital and labor.

The truth is, laws, religions, creeds, and systems
of ethics, instead of making society better than its best
unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are
never up to date. You will ask me: "Why have them at all?"
I will tell you. They are made necessary, though we all
secretly detest them, by the fact that the number of people
who can think out a line of conduct for themselves even on
one point is very small, and the number who can afford the
time for it is still smaller. Nobody can afford the time to
do it on all points. The professional thinker may on occasion
make his own morality and philosophy as the cobbler may make
his own boots; but the ordinary man of business must buy at
the shop, so to speak, and put up with what he finds on sale
there, whether it exactly suits him or not, because he can
neither make a morality for himself nor do without one. This
typewriter with which I am writing is the best I can get; but
it is by no means a perfect instrument; and I have not the
smallest doubt that in fifty years' time authors will wonder
how men could have put up with so clumsy a contrivance. When a
better one is invented I shall buy it: until then, not being
myself an inventor, I must make the best of it, just as my
Protestant and Roman Catholic and Agnostic friends make the
best of their imperfect creeds and systems. Oh, Father Tucker,
worshiper of Liberty, where shall we find a land where the
thinking and moralizing can be done without division of labor?

Besides, what have deep thinking and moralizing to
do with the most necessary and least questionable side of
law? Just consider how much we need law in matters which have
absolutely no moral bearing at all. Is there anything more
aggravating than to be told, when you are socially promoted,
and are not quite sure how to behave yourself in the circles
you enter for the first time, that good manners are merely a
matter of good sense, and that rank is but the guinea's stamp:
the man's the gowd for a' that? Imagine taking the field
with an army which knew nothing except that the soldier's
duty is to defend his country bravely, and think, not of
his own safety, nor of home and beauty, but of England! Or
of leaving the traffic of Piccadilly or Broadway to proceed
on the understanding that every driver should keep to that
side of the road which seemed to him to promote the greatest
happiness to the greatest number! Or of stage managing Hamlet
by assuring the Ghost that whether he entered from the right
or the left could make no difference to the greatness of
Shakespeare's play, and that all he need concern himself
about was holding the mirror up to nature! Law is never so
necessary as when it has no ethical significance whatever,
and is pure law for the sake of law. The law that compels
me to keep to the left when driving along Oxford Street is
ethically senseless, as is shown by the fact that keeping
to the right serves equally well in Paris; and it certainly
destroys my freedom to choose my side; but by enabling me to
count on every one else keeping to the left also, thus making
traffic possible and safe, it enlarges my life and sets my
mind free for nobler issues. Most laws, in short, are not the
expression of the ethical verdicts of the community, but pure
etiquette and nothing else. What they do express is the fact
that over most of the field of social life there are wide
limits within which it does not matter what people do, though
it matters enormously under given circumstances whether you
can depend on their all doing the same thing. The wasp, who
can be depended on absolutely to sting if you squeeze him, is
less of a nuisance than the man who tries to do business with
you not according to the custom of business, but according
to the Sermon on the Mount, or than the lady who dines with
you and refuses, on republican and dietetic principles, to
allow precedence to a duchess or to partake of food which
contains uric acid. The ordinary man cannot get through the
world without being told what to do at every turn, and basing
such calculations as he is capable of on the assumption that
every one else will calculate on the same assumptions. Even
your man of genius accepts a hundred rules for every one
he challenges; and you may lodge in the same house with an
Anarchist for ten years without noticing anything exceptional
about him. Martin Luther, the priest, horrified the greater
half of Christendom by marrying a nun, yet was a submissive
conformist in countless ways, living orderly as a husband and
father, wearing what his bootmaker and tailor made for him,
and dwelling in what the builder built for him, although he
would have died rather than take his Church from the Pope.
And when he got a Church made by himself to his liking,
generations of men calling themselves Lutherans took that
Church from him just as unquestioningly as he took the fashion
of his clothes from the tailor. As the race evolves, many a
convention which recommends itself by its obvious utility
to every one passes into an automatic habit like breathing.
Doubtless also an improvement in our nerves and judgment
may enlarge the list of emergencies which individuals may
be entrusted to deal with on the spur of the moment without
reference to regulations; but a ready-made code of conduct for
general use will always be needed as a matter of overwhelming
convenience by all members of communities.

The continual danger to liberty created by law
arises, not from the encroachments of Governments, which are
always regarded with suspicion, but from the immense utility
and consequent popularity of law, and the terrifying danger
and obvious inconvenience of anarchy; so that even pirates
appoint and obey a captain. Law soon acquires such a good
character that people will believe no evil of it; and at this
point it becomes possible for priests and rulers to commit
the most pernicious crimes in the name of law and order.
Creeds and laws come to be regarded as applications to human
conduct of eternal and immutable principles of good and
evil; and breakers of the law are abhorred as sacrilegious
scoundrels to whom nothing is sacred. Now this, I need not
tell you, is a very serious error. No law is so independent
of circumstances that the time never comes for breaking it,
changing it, scrapping it as obsolete, and even making its
observance a crime. In a developing civilization nothing can
make laws tolerable unless their changes and modifications are
kept as closely as possible on the heels of the changes and
modifications in social conditions which development involves.
Also there is a bad side to the very convenience of law. It
deadens the conscience of individuals by relieving them of
the ethical responsibility of their own actions. When this
relief is made as complete as possible, it reduces a man to a
condition in which his very virtues are contemptible. Military
discipline, for example, aims at destroying the individuality
and initiative of the soldier whilst increasing his mechanical
efficiency, until he is simply a weapon with the power of
hearing and obeying orders. In him you have legality, duty,
obedience, self-denial, submission to external authority,
carried as far as it can be carried; and the result is that
in England, where military service is voluntary, the common
soldier is less respected than any other serviceable worker
in the community. The police constable, who is a civilian and
has to use his own judgment and act on his own responsibility
in innumerable petty emergencies, is by comparison a popular
and esteemed citizen. The Roman Catholic peasant who consults
his parish priest instead of his conscience, and submits
wholly to the authority of his Church, is mastered and
governed either by statesmen and cardinals who despise his
superstition, or by Protestants who are at least allowed to
persuade themselves that they have arrived at their religious
opinions through the exercise of their private judgment. The
moral evolution of the social individual is from submission
and obedience as economizers of effort and responsibility, and
safeguards against panic and incontinence, to willfulness and
self-assertion made safe by reason and self-control, just as
plainly as his physical growth leads him from the perambulator
and the nurse's apron strings to the power of walking alone,
and from the tutelage of the boy to the responsibility of the
man. But it is useless for impatient spirits (like you and
I, for instance) to call on people to walk before they can
stand. Without high gifts of reason and self-control: that is,
without strong common-sense, no man yet dares trust himself
out of the school of authority. What he does is to claim
gradual relaxations of the discipline, so as to have as much
liberty as he thinks is good for him, and as much government
as he thinks he needs to keep him straight. If he goes too
fast he soon finds himself asking helplessly, "What ought I
to do?" and so, after running to the doctor, the lawyer, the
expert, the old friend, and all the other quacks for advice,
he runs back to the law again to save him from all these and
from himself. The law may be wrong; but anyhow it spares
him the responsibility of choosing, and will either punish
those who make him look ridiculous by exposing its folly, or,
when the constitution is too democratic for this, at least
guarantee that the majority is on his side.[54]

[54] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Boni & Liveright.