CHAPTER XVII
THE ADVERBIAL CLAUSE OF DEGREE OR COMPARISON
Function.—In Chapter XI. we showed that the manner in which an action is performed is often denoted by an adverbial clause. Now, it may sometimes be denoted by an adverb, as in the sentence,—He accumulated his learning quietly. But, in order to give force and point to this adverb, it is frequently accompanied by a clause of degree bringing in a comparison; thus, “He accumulated his learning as quietly as a stout lady accumulates her fat, by the daily satisfaction of his appetite.”—Hamerton. By comparing the quietness with which he accumulated learning to the quietness with which a stout lady accumulates fat, we provide a standard or illustration for the first thought, and so make it clear and impressive.
We often wish to tell in what degree a certain attribute is possessed. This may be done by a clause of result, as was seen in Chapter XIV., but we may also do it by comparison; for example, “Thou shalt be happy as heart can wish.” Here the degree of happiness thou shalt have is fixed by saying that it is equal to what thy heart wishes.
Number and amount often cannot be told absolutely but may be told relatively by means of a comparison; thus, “Mrs. Patten had more respect for her neighbor Mr. Hackit than for most people.”—George Eliot. It would hardly be possible or worth while to tell exactly the amount of respect that Mrs. Patten had for Mr. Hackit, but it is worth telling how this respect compared with the respect she had for other people.
Classification of Clauses of Degree.—1. A sentence may assert that two attributes are equal in degree; as, “They were as timid and cowardly as they were rebellious.”—Lord. Here the degree of their timidity and cowardice is shown by comparing these qualities with their rebelliousness, and the two sets of attributes are found to be equal. The clause in such a sentence is usually introduced by the subordinating conjunction as, and a correlative of this word usually precedes the word in the principal proposition denoting the idea to be compared. The first as is an adverb, being an adjunct of either an adjective or an adverb. It may be omitted, as was shown in the sentence,—Thou shalt be happy as heart can wish.
A clause denoting equality of degree is sometimes introduced by as if, which may be considered a compound conjunction unless we choose to supply the ellipsis. In the following sentence from Henry James, “I found as great a fascination in watching the odd lights and shades of his character as if he had been a creature from another planet,”—we may supply between as and if the words I would have found, thus obtaining a clause of degree having within it a clause of condition.
If the whole comparison is placed first in the sentence, the principal proposition is introduced by so followed by the word denoting the respect in which two ideas are compared; as, “But, as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman in particular, fanciful.”—Arnold. The words so eminently are not necessary for the complete structure of the sentence, but they add to its clearness.
A statement containing a comparison of equality may be denied by means of the negative adverb not, so that the sentence amounts finally to an assertion of inequality in degree; thus, “He is not by any means so wise as he looks.”
2. A sentence may assert that two attributes are unequal in degree; for example, “The manner of saying things often makes a deeper impression than the thing that is said (makes).”—Brook. Here the impression made by the manner of speaking and the impression made by the thing spoken are compared and said to be unequal in depth. The clause in such a sentence is introduced by the subordinating conjunction than, and is always an adjunct of some word in the comparative degree, or the words else, other, otherwise, or rather, the last being in reality a comparative of the Old English word rathe.
When a statement signifying inequality is denied by some negative word, the sentence amounts to a statement of equality; thus, “It is not more certain that Sarah Gamp liked her beer drawn mild than it is that your Englishman likes his poetry cut short.”—Birrell.
In clauses of both varieties given above there is often an ellipsis, the words omitted being those already expressed in the principal proposition and hence easily supplied. In the sentence, “Mrs. Patten had more respect for her neighbor Mr. Hackit than for most people,” when we analyze the clause we must fill it out so as to make it read, than she had respect for most people.
3. The clause of degree may tell not that things stand to each other in a relation of equality or inequality, but that they vary in the same proportion; thus, “The deeper the snow, the nearer the rabbit is brought to the tops of the tender bushes and shrubs.”—Burroughs. Here the rabbit’s nearness to the tops of the shrubs is said to vary with the depth of the snow.
In sentences of this sort, both principal proposition and subordinate proposition are constructed in the same form, but the principal proposition may always be ascertained by questioning the sentence; for example, does the foregoing sentence assert that the depth of snow varies with the rabbit’s nearness, or that the rabbit’s nearness varies with the depth of snow? Clearly, the latter. Indeed, it will almost invariably be found that in a sentence of this kind, especially if it be addressed to the eye, the second proposition contains the principal thought.
Sentences of this kind are often much abridged; thus, “The more, the merrier,” “The sooner, the better.”
Another form of the idiomatic sentence just given is one which makes use of the connective in proportion as; for example, “People dread to be thought unsafe in proportion as they get their living by being thought to be safe.”—Bagehot. This can easily be changed to the older form,—“The more people get their living by being thought to be safe, the more do they dread to be thought unsafe.”
Note.—According as may be used in place of in proportion as, as in the following sentence,—“The Sonnets are more or less striking according as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting.”—Macaulay.
Another form of this comparison is one in which the two propositions are introduced by the prepositional phrases by as much and by so much; for example, “Look at the most vigorous species; by as much as it swarms in numbers, by so much will it tend to increase still further.”
4. A fourth variety of the clause of degree is found in the following sentence,—“Night in the tropics, so far as animal life is concerned, is as the day.”—Drummond. Here the group of words, so far as animal life is concerned, tells the extent or degree to which night is like day. It might be separated into the base-word far modified by the adverb so and the clause as animal life is concerned; but it does not seem to be the author’s purpose to institute any comparison whatever, hence it is better to consider the whole group of words as one element denoting degree, and treat so far as as one subordinating connective.
Sometimes a clause of this kind performs a double duty. It gives the reason or ground for the main assertion and at the same time makes that assertion somewhat doubtful; for example, “As far as I could observe when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon.”—Emerson. Here the principal statement is based upon the writer’s observation when the meeting broke up; but he implies that his main assertion may not be true, for his observation may not have extended far enough to warrant any certainty in his conclusion.
Exercise 18
Dispose of all clauses of degree in the following sentences.
1. Never did people believe anything more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so very rich.—M. Arnold.
2. A shocking bad hat is perhaps as indifferent to Gladstone as a dirty old cloak was to Socrates.—Lord.
3. So far as a man thinks, he is free.—Emerson.
4. No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man.—Carlyle.
5. The drier the air, and the hotter the air, the greater is the amount of cloud which can be dissolved in it.—Tyndall.
6. The heretic was excluded, so far as ecclesiastical dogma could exclude him, from the pale of humanity, from consecrated earth, and from eternal salvation.—Motley.
7. The face of the water in time became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.—S. L. Clemens.
8. Leave a youth idle; and, the more brave and active and capable he is by nature, the more he will thirst for some appointed field for action.—Ruskin.
9. A long, dark hall stretched before me, extending, as well as I could judge in the gloom, entirely across the house.—Page.
10. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.—Lamb.
11. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.—Emerson.
12. As far as I can make out, the League was founded by an American millionaire.—Conan Doyle.
13. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes.—Macaulay.
14. To me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silences.—De Quincey.
15. But by as much as Kipling surpasses other poets and novelists in originality, by so much does he surpass them in methodical industry.—Hillis.
Exercise 19
Analyze the following sentences:—
1. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed.—Wm. James.
2. If they embroidered dresses or worked tapestries, they also wove the cloth for their husbands’ coats and made his shirts and knit his stockings.—Lord.
3. If I had my way, I would give the same education to the child of the collier and to the child of the peer.—Kingsley.
4. Fat as he is, and old as he is, his movements are astonishingly light and easy.—Collins.
5. The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer.—Stockton.
6. And no matter how superior you think yourselves, you will not pass here till you have something of your own to produce.—Froude.
7. Inglesant remained in prison, and would have thought that he had been forgotten, but that every few weeks he was sent for by the Committee and examined.—Shorthouse.
8. I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and you do not in work.—Ruskin.
9. Though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible course of circumstances, though we admire in common with all men of all parties the ability and energy of his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power even in his hands.—Macaulay.
10. Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst up from the sea, not been discovered by the Northmen.—Carlyle.
11. Clam and worm might be forever undisturbed so far as he was concerned.—J. T. Fields.
12. If pride of rank was generated in this fraternity of gentlemen, so also was scorn of lies and baseness.—Lord.
13. But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a place where a vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and trials as a Christian pilgrim.—Holmes.
14. The oriole shortens up its nest in proportion as the danger lessens.—Burroughs.
15. Suppose I gave you something to eat, would you listen to me afterward?—Miss Mulock.
16. Lord Mohun alone among historians, so far as my knowledge goes, has done fit and full justice to the French Parliaments.—Higginson.
17. No one is so blind to his own faults as a man who has the habit of detecting the faults of others.—Faber.
18. So high as the tree aspires to grow, so high will it find an atmosphere suited to it.—Thoreau.
19. And if you emigrate, you will soon find out, if you have eyes and common-sense, that the vegetable wealth of the world is no more exhausted than its mineral wealth.—Kingsley.
20. But music and painting, though they may be exquisite adornments of life, contain no living force that can develop a weak nation into a strong one.—Draper.
Exercise 20
Sentences containing all kinds of dependent propositions.
1. When you feel a true admiration for a teacher, a glow of enthusiasm for work, a thrill of pleasure at some excellent saying, give it expression.—C. W. Eliot.
2. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristocracy.—Macaulay.
3. You tremble when you think of how your sin has outgrown itself, and is running far, far away where you can never follow it.—Phillips Brooks.
4.
Broad steps ascended to a terrace broad,
Whereon lay still light from the open door.
—James Thomson.
5. Mankind in the aggregate is always wiser than any single man, because its experience is derived from a larger range of observation and experience, and because the springs that feed it drain a wider region both of time and space.—Lowell.
6. Whatever is fated, that will take place.—Emerson.
7. Whenever it is proved that a man broke one of the Ten Commandments, it is roundly replied that in his day there were only nine.—Stephen.
8. The market-place and the factory owe much to thinkers, just as the branches bowing down with ripe fruit owe much to the roots working in silence and darkness.—Hillis.
9. I myself must mix with action lest I wither by despair.—Tennyson.
10. The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over with his forefoot.—Kipling.
11. The poorest and the richest students are equally welcome here, provided that with their poverty or their wealth they bring capacity, ambition, and purity.—C. W. Eliot.
12.
In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.—Longfellow.
13. I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.—Emerson.
14.
Wherever men are gathered, all the air
Is charged with human feeling, human thought.
—James Thomson.
15. I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them.—Holmes.
16. Let us therefore send for the soothsayers, that they may interpret this thing unto us.—Bellamy.
17. Examples would indeed be excellent things, were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.—Hare.
18. Be the reasons what they may, the influence of generals, statesmen, and inventors is less deep and abiding than the influence of those poets who have sung of love and grief, of war and worship, and of the shepherd-care of God.—Hillis.
19. The Turk, who believes that his doom is written on the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the world, rushes on the enemy’s sabre with undivided will.—Emerson.
20. Where a man can trust his own heart and those of his friends, tomorrow is as good as today.—Stevenson.
21. Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?—Hamerton.
22.
If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows, that thou would’st forget,
If thou would’st read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills.—Longfellow.
23. While, therefore, good nature depends on the physical organization, and cannot be cultivated by effort; while good humor depends on circumstances, and is no part of the man himself,—good temper is something which we can all acquire, if we choose.—J. F. Clarke.
24. And what wicked thing have you done, that they should haunt you so?—R. H. Dana, Sr.
25. There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he would have done.—Thackeray.
26. It is the bit of truth in every slander, the hint of likeness in every caricature, that makes us smart.—Lowell.
27. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.—Emerson.
28. Calvin, whose life was darkened by disease, had a morbid and gloomy element in his theology.—J. F. Clarke.