4. Men become criminals by a gradual process.
5. Men's lives are affected by small things.
6. Defeat often proves to be real success.
(Have you made your meaning clear? Does your example really illustrate the topic statement? Can you think of other illustrations?)
+166. Exposition by Comparison or Contrast.+—We can frequently make our explanations clear by comparing the subject under discussion with something that is already familiar to the reader. In such a case we shall need to show in what respect the subject we are explaining is similar to or differs from that with which it is compared. (Section 48.) Though customary it is not necessary to compare the term under discussion with some well-known term. In the example below the term socialism is probably no more familiar than the term anarchism. Both are explained in the selection, and the explanations are made clearer by contrasting the one with the other.
Socialism, which is curiously confounded by the indiscriminating with Anarchism, is its exact opposite. Anarchy is the doctrine that there should be no government control; Socialism—that is, State Socialism—is the doctrine that government should control everything. State Socialism affirms that the state—that is, the government—should own all the tools and implements of industry, should direct all occupations, and should give to every man according to his need and require from every man according to his ability. State Socialism points to the evils of overproduction in some fields and insufficient production in others, under our competitive system, and proposes to remedy these evils by assigning to government the duty of determining what shall be produced and what each worker shall produce. If there are too many preachers and too few shoemakers, the preacher will be taken from the pulpit and assigned to the bench; if there are too many shoemakers and too few preachers, the shoemaker will be taken from the bench and assigned to the pulpit. Anarchy says, no government; Socialism says, all government; Anarchy leaves the will of the individual absolutely unfettered, Socialism leaves nothing to the individual will; Anarchism would have no social organism which is not dependent on the entirely voluntary assent of each individual member of the organism at every instant of its history; Socialism would have every individual of the social organism wholly subordinate in all his lifework to the authority of the whole body expressed through its properly constituted officers. It is true that there are some writers who endeavor to unite these two antagonistic doctrines by teaching that society should be organized wholly for industry, not at all for government. But how a coöperative industry can be carried on without a government which controls as well as counsels, no writer, so far as I have been able to discover, has ever even suggested.
—Lyman Abbott: Anarchism: Its Cause and Cure.
+Theme XCIII.+—Write an exposition that makes use of comparison:—
Suggested subjects:— 1. A bad habit is a tyrant. 2. Typewritten letters. 3. The muskrat's house. 4. Compare Shylock with Barabas in Marlowe's Jew of Malta. 5. Methods of reading. 6. All the world's a stage. 7. Compare life to a flower.
(Can you suggest any other comparisons which you might have used? Have you been careful in your selection of facts and arrangement?)