EXERCISES

  1. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
    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.
  5. 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. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Write a 250 word analysis of whatever type you choose 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Write a 1500-2000 word analytical theme on any of the following subjects:
  10. 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?
  11. 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]
  12. 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.
  13. 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?
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. In a word, Drift. That is the political philosophy of Mr. Balfour.[48]
  22. 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?
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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]
  26. 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?
  27. 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?
  28. And for answer comes the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic—
  29. 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.
  30. 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]
  31. 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?
  32. 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]
  33. Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor, the head-nurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the private detective.
  34. Would you classify the following selection as formal or informal classification or partition?
  35. Write a similar treatment of fuel power, moral power, physical strength, intellectual power.
  36. 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]
  37. 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].)
  38. 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.
  39. 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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]
  42. 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.
  43. 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?
  44. 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.
  45. 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]

[CHAPTER V]
MECHANISMS, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATIONS

The problem of giving directions for making or doing something, or of explaining the working of an organization, is not always easy to solve. Most difficulties, however, occur through lack of considering just what the problem involves, and through lack of sufficiently simplifying the material. Thus, when you ask an old man in a strange city where the post-office is, he is likely to reply somewhat as follows: "You keep on just as you are going for a little ways, and then turn down a narrow street on the right and go along for four blocks, and then turn to your left and go until you come to a square, and then go across it and down a side street and through an office building, and then it's the stone building on the corner of the second street to your right." You stroke your chin, meditate a bit, and, if you are polite, thank your informant for his kind intentions. Then you ask the next person whom you meet to tell you where the post-office is. The old man meant well, of course, but he failed to simplify. So did the author of the little book that Johnny received for Christmas mean well when he explained how to make a beautiful chemical effect. But Johnny, who was a fairly impetuous youth, did not stop to read the footnote at the end which warned against working near a fire. When he was seraphically pouring his chemicals together near the old oil lamp in the "shop" there came a flash, a deafening roar—and little Johnny had no time either to examine footnotes or, after the smoke had cleared, for post-mortem complaints. The trouble lay in the fact that the author did not give Johnny the necessary information at the essential time.

It seems that neither piety nor wit will suffice to locate post-offices or direct experiments or explain machines. Better than either of these is the ability to make the mechanism, the process, the organization transparently clear, with each bit of information given at exactly the proper moment. For, since the object of such explanation as attempts to make clear is primarily information, the main quality of the writing should be clearness. Everything that stands in the way of this quality should be made to surrender to explanation. If the subject is itself interesting or remarkable, the facts may speak for themselves, as in an account of the nebular hypothesis; if the subject is merely common, as for example the force pump, the primary aim should be clearness. Pleasing presentation, however desirable, is secondary. No amount of pleasant reading on the subject of making photographs, the working of periscopes, the organization of literary societies will be of value if at the end the reader has not a well-ordered idea of how to go to work or of how the thing of which you treat is operated.