Composition-Rhetoric

by Stratton D. Brooks; Marietta Hubbard

EXERCISES

A. Can you tell which of the following are classifications? Which are partitions? Which are defective?

1. The inhabitants of the United States are Americans, Indians, and negroes.

2. Lines are straight, curved, and crooked.

3. Literature is composed of prose, poetry, and fiction.

4. The political parties in the last campaign were Republican and Democrat.

5. The United States Government has control of states and territories

6. Plants are divided into two groups: (1) the phanerogams, or flowering plants, and (2) cryptogams, or flowerless plants.

7. All phanerogamous plants consist of (1) root and (2) shoot; the shoot consisting of (a) stem and (b) leaf. It is true that some exceptional plants, in maturity, lack leaves, or lack root. These exceptions are few.

8. We may divide the activities of the government into: keeping order, making law, protecting individual rights, providing public schools, providing and mending roads, caring for the destitute, carrying the mail, managing foreign relations, making war, and collecting taxes.

B. Notice the following paragraphs, State briefly the divisions made.

+1. Plan of the Book.+—What is government? Who is the government? We shall begin by considering the American answers to these questions.

What does The Government do? That will be our next inquiry. And with regard to the ordinary practical work of government, we shall see that government in the United States is not very different from government in the other civilized countries of the world.

Then we shall inquire how government officials are chosen in the United States, and how the work of government is parceled out among them. This part of the book will show what is meant by self-government and local self-government, and will show that our system differs from European systems chiefly in these very matters of self-government and local self-government.

Coming then to the details of our subject, we shall consider the names and duties of the principal officials in the United States; first, those of the township, county, and city, then those of the state, and then those of the federal government.

Finally, we shall examine certain operations in the American system, such as a trial in court, and nominations for office, and conclude with an outline of international relations, and a summary of the commonest laws of business and property.

—Clark: The Government.

2. +Zoölogy and its Divisions.+—What things we do know about the dog, however, and about its relatives, and what things others know can be classified into several groups; namely, things or facts about what a dog does or its behavior, things about the make-up of its body, things about its growth and development, things about the kind of dog it is and the kinds of relatives it has, and things about its relations to the outer world and its special fitness for life.

All that is known of these different kinds of facts about the dog constitutes our knowledge of the dog and its life. All that is known by scientific men and others of these different kinds of facts about all the 500,000 or more kinds of living animals, constitutes our knowledge of animals and is the science zoölogy. Names have been given to these different groups of facts about animals. The facts about the bodily make-up or structure of animals constitute that part of zoölogy called animal anatomy or morphology; the facts about the things animals do, or the functions of animals, compose animal physiology; the facts about the development of animals from young to adult condition are the facts of animal development; the knowledge of the different kinds of animals and their relationships to each other is called systematic zoölogy or animal classification; and finally the knowledge of the relations of animals to their external surroundings, including the inorganic world, plants and other animals, is called animal ecology.

Any study of animals and their life, that is, of zoölogy, may include all or any of these parts of zoölogy.

—Kellogg: Elementary Zoölogy.

3. Are not these outlines of American destiny in the near-by future rational? In these papers an attempt has been made:—

First, to picture the physical situation and equipment of the American in the modern world.

Second, to outline the large and fundamental elements of American character, which are:—

(a) Conservatism—moderation, thoughtfulness, and poise.
(b) Thoroughness—conscientious performance, to the minutest detail,
of any work which we as individuals or people may have in hand.
(c) Justice—that spirit which weighs with the scales of righteousness
our conduct toward each other and our conduct as a nation toward
the world.
(d) Religion—the sense of dependence upon and responsibility to the
Higher Power; the profound American belief that our destiny is in
His hands.
(e) The minor elements of American character—such as the tendency to
organize, the element of humor, impatience with frauds, and the
movement in American life toward the simple and sincere.

—Beveridge: Americans of To-day and To-morrow.

C. Consult the table of contents or opening chapters of any text-book and notice the main divisions.

D. Find in text-books five examples of classification or division.

E. Make one or more divisions of each of the following:—

1. The pupils in your school.
2. Your neighbors.
3. The books in the school library.
4. The buildings you see on the way to school.
5. The games you know how to play.
6. Dogs.
7. Results of competition.

+Theme LXXXIX.+—Write an introductory paragraph showing what divisions you, would make if called upon, to write about one of the following topics:—

1. Mathematics.

2. The school system of our city.

3. The churches of our town.

4. Methods of transportation.

5. Our manufacturing interests.

6. Games that girls like.

7. The inhabitants of the United States.

(Have you mentioned all important divisions of your subject? Have you included any minor and unimportant divisions? Consider other possible principles of division of your subject. Have you chosen the one best suited to your purpose?)

+163. Exposition of a Proposition.+—Two terms united into a sentence so that one is affirmed of the other become a proposition. Propositions, like terms, may be either specific or general. "Napoleon was ambitious" is a specific proposition; "Politicians are ambitious" is a general one.

When a proposition is presented to the mind, its meaning may not at once be clear. The obscurity may arise from the fact that some of the terms in the proposition are unfamiliar, or are obscure, or misleading. In this case the first step, and often the only step necessary, is the explanation of the terms in the proposition. The following selection taken from Dewey's Psychology illustrates the exposition of a proposition by explaining its terms:—

The habitual act thus occurs automatically and mechanically. When we say that it occurs automatically, we mean that it takes place, as it were, of itself, spontaneously, without the intervention of the will. By saying that it is mechanical, we mean that there exists no consciousness of the process involved, nor of the relation of the means, the various muscular adjustments, to the end, locomotion.

It is possible for our listeners or readers to understand each term in a proposition and yet not be able to understand the meaning of the proposition as a whole. When this is the case, we shall find it necessary to make use of methods of exposition discussed later.