Expository Writing

by Mervin James Curl

Methods of Defining

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

a. The Method of Illustration

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

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

Blackberries hanging thick upon the hedge bring to my memory something of long ago. I had somehow escaped into the country and on a long walk began to feel mid-day hunger. The wayside brambles were fruiting; I picked and ate, and ate on, until I had come within sight of an inn where I might have made a good meal. But my hunger was satisfied; I had no need of anything more, and, as I thought of it, a strange feeling of surprise, a sort of bewilderment, came upon me. What! Could it be that I had eaten, and eaten sufficiently, without paying? It struck me as an extraordinary thing. At that time, my ceaseless preoccupation was how to obtain money to keep myself alive. Many a day I had suffered hunger because I durst not spend the few coins I possessed; the food I could buy was in any case unsatisfactory, unvaried. But here nature had given me a feast, which seemed delicious, and I had eaten all I wanted. The wonder held me for a long time, and to this day I can recall it, understand it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

b. The Method of Comparison or Contrast

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

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

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

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

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

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

c. The Method of Division

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

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

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

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

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

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

d. The Method of Repetition

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

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

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

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

e. The Method of Elimination

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

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

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

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

f. The Method of Showing Origin, Cause, Effect

The other of these two methods is that of defining by showing the origin or causes of the subject or by showing its effects. If we can be made to see what forces went to the making of anything, or what has resulted from it, we shall have a fairly clear idea of the nature of the thing. Thus we may perhaps best understand the nature of cabinet government by showing how the system came into being, what need it filled, what forces produced it. The same method might make clear primitive Greek drama, the Hanseatic League, fertilization of land, the Federal Reserve System of Banking, the modern orchestra. And by showing the effects we might define such matters as the Montessori method of education, the Feudal System, anarchy, militarism. The writer of a definition after this method needs to take care that when he has shown the various causes or effects, he surely binds them somehow together and vitally to the subject of definition. There must be no dim feeling in the mind of the reader that, after all, the subject is not yet clearly limned, not yet set off from other things. The definition which follows makes clear the origin of the mechanical engineer, and by showing what he does, what need there was for him, what lack he fills, makes clear what he is.

The period of systematic and scientific power development is coincident with the true progress of the most basal of the several branches of natural philosophy, chemistry, physics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and the theory of elasticity of materials of construction; and there is no doubt that the steam engine, which was designed and built by workmen before these were formulated, attracted the attention of philosophers who, in attempting to explain what took place in it, created a related body of principles by which future development was guided, and which are now the fundamental bases for the design of the future. Those men who became familiar with the natural sciences, and also with the shop methods of making machinery, and who brought both to bear on the problem of the production of machinery for specified conditions, combining the special knowledge of the scientist and the shop mechanic, were the first mechanical engineers; and the profession of mechanical engineering, which is the term applied to this sort of business, was created out of the efforts to improve power systems, so as to make them more efficient and adapted to all classes of service, and to render that service for the least cost.[24]

Emerson makes a definition of the civilization of America in the following selection wherein he describes the effect of American society and life upon the individual.

The true test of civilization is, not the crops, not the size of cities, not the census,—no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I see the immense material prosperity,—towns on towns, states on states, and wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities: California quartz, mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally alongshore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again. But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston,—not these that make the real estimation. But when I look over this constellation of cities which animate and illustrate the land, and see how little the government has to do with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed all families are,—knots of men in purely natural societies, societies of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight of opinion, of longer or better-directed industry; the refining influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes open to youth and labor: when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with greatest reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities,—I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.[25]

These, then, are the various methods that are in common use. The list might be extended, but perhaps enough varieties have been discussed to be of practical value. The choice of method will depend on the result that the writer wishes to accomplish; at times he will wish to please the reader's fancy with an illustration, and again he may wish to contrast the subject to something else. If at any time more methods than one are useful, there is not the slightest objection to combining; in fact, most definitions of any length will be found to have more than one method employed. Remember that the methods were made for you, not you for the methods. And so long as you make your subject clear, so long as you set it off by itself in a class, distinct from other members of the class, you can be sure of the value of your definition.