describe some particular open-air schoolroom-perhaps show a class in session there as a means of making our writing more effective. Or, if we are explaining what the model dairy is and how it is conducted, we may tell how a particular wellconducted dairy looks and smells as a means of serving our general expository purpose. It is possible to go even further: we can offer a description of one model dairy as representing what all dairies ought to be. Our method is particular and descriptive, to be sure, but our purpose remains general and explanatory. This is especially common in scientific writing, where the description of any one bird, or fish, or flower, may be really equivalent to an exposition of the general class of birds, or fishes, or flowers, to which the particular one chosen belongs. An explanation of the common house sparrow, for instance, except for some information about food and nesting, can be little different from a description of a single sparrow. And so it is with the ordinary brook trout or the American field daisy. As a matter of fact, whenever the explanation of some general class of objects or institutions is practically coincident with the description of any particular object or institution which is typical of its class, exposition and description come together, really merge, and the writing may be regarded as one kind or the other at will. In very much the same way exposition and narration may be combined. If the expository piece seeks to explain some abstract conception, like loyalty or "common honesty," it increases the effectiveness of the explanation greatly if a few incidents are cited to show these qualities. Or if the writer seeks to comment on American ideas of recreation, he may well supplement his general discussion by telling what certain people, presumably typical of their locality or social class, do to amuse themselves. In a similar way, we often find an expository element in narratives, especially narratives of fact like biography and history. It is only where the matter to be explained approaches the particular or where some time element is involved in it, however, that there is any chance of confusing exposition and narration. When one undertakes to explain how a tariff bill is enacted into law in the United States, or how some famous catcher played his position, or how the New Harmony movement in Indiana was instituted, his problem is indeed somewhat similar to the narrator's. Yet the difference lies just here: exposition tries to make some general process, or method, or movement clear to the reader's understanding; narration tries to make a series of particular events real to the reader's imagination. C. TWO KINDS OF EXPOSITION Our subdivision of exposition involves little that is new. Instrumental exposition meets some definite demand of practical life, whereas æsthetic exposition, like all fine art, gives pleasure. Instrumental exposition, on the one hand, is essentially formal; it is systematically planned, predominantly intellectual, and relatively impersonal. Esthetic exposition, on the other hand, is somewhat informal; it often has a careless, go-as-you-please way, it is largely imaginative or emotional in its appeal, and it is usually personal, even familiar, in style. In exposition that is instrumental the abstract or general is explained largely by explicit statement, with only an incidental use of the concrete for the sake of illustration; but in exposition that is æsthetic the concrete and the specific are used freely to suggest individual opinion or impression. Among wellknown expository writers of the past century, Macaulay and Arnold and Newman are plainly instrumental in most of their work; they had certain information and ideas to give their fellow countrymen and they wrote in the name of truth. On the contrary, such writers as Addison and Lamb and Stevenson produced essays which are plainly æsthetic; they had delightful whims and dreams, happy combinations of sense and nonsense, and these they set down in the name of pleasure and beauty. Of course all writing is not so easily assigned to its class as the work of these men. There is inevitably some over lapping; much exposition shows characteristics of both kinds; and, as we shall see in a later paragraph, instrumental exposition often increases in effectiveness if it approaches the æsthetic in some points of method and style. After all, it is very much as it is with the walks we take: some of them are strictly business expeditions, wherein we hurry straight to our goal with no thought for the beauty of the world about us and above us; some of them are frankly pleasure strolls, wherein we give ourselves entirely to the enjoyment of birds and flowers, clouds and stars, with never a thought of getting anywhere in particular; and some of them, many of them indeed, are walks wherein we combine business and pleasure as well as we can without detriment to our main purpose. II. EXPOSITORY METHODS Before we take up the specific problems of effectiveness in the two kinds of exposition, we must understand some expository methods common to both. Much of the time, to be sure, we accept the explanations made to us in speech and writing without questioning the method; but if we notice carefully, it will appear that there are five principal ways of explaining: analysis, definition, exemplification, comparison, and contrast. These methods may be used separately, but more often they are used in combination. We may observe further that while all five of them are used in instrumental exposition, the last three are used more freely in æsthetic exposition. A. ANALYSIS One method of exposition, then, is analysis or division. To lay a subject off into parts, to find the joints in it, to resolve it into its factors, makes it more easily understood. The parts can then be taken up, examined separately, and considered in relation to each other. Suppose that we have a process to explain, a political situation to account for, a type of character to present. The analytic method accomplishes the explanation by picking out the separate steps of the process, the separate causes of the political situation, the separate traits of the character type. Thus one writer whose purpose it is to explain the handling of garden land divides the process into several steps: draining, trenching and subsoiling, preparation of the surface, saving the moisture, weeding and subsequent tillage, and enriching.1 Another writer who seeks to explain the opportunities of journalism as a profession divides his material into four parts: the opportunities due to the number of publications issued, those due to specialization, those due to the power of the press, and those due to the value of press experience. Or, again, a critic who attempts to weigh an author's claim to literary permanence divides his study into three parts: style, romance, and morality. Indeed since the object of all exposition is to simplify and make clear, there is often no better way of explaining a matter which is complicated than to resolve it into its natural or logical parts. This method is without value, however, unless the analysis is sound. In the first place, the division into parts must be complete; if not in an absolute or exhaustive sense, at least complete for all practical purposes. An analysis of athletic eligibility, for example, which did not include physical fitness, would be seriously incomplete. Then again, there must be no cross division, that is, no change in point of view during the analysis. To divide college students into loafers, sports, athletes, and vegetarians is worse than incomplete; it is inconsistent, and if less ridiculous it would be confusing, because the basis of classification is changed in the process of analysis. Moreover, the parts into which anything is divided must be mutually exclusive. In the example just cited, the analysis is worthless, not only because the classes enumerated do not include all college students and because the point of view is shifted, but also because the classes overlap. Indeed cross division and the overlapping of parts almost inevitably go 1 L. H. Bailey, Manual of Gardening, Chap. IV. 2 Walter Raleigh, Robert Louis Stevenson. together. Finally, it is essential that the parts be of similar rank. Thus an analysis of athletic eligibility under five conditions, university enrollment, physical fitness, scholarship, amateur record, and time of participation,— is imperfect because it does not recognize the parts which are logically coördinate and those which are logically subordinate; and explanation based upon such an analysis would be obscured. In reality, students who wish to participate in college athletics must undergo four main tests: they must be properly enrolled in the institution which they mean to represent, they must be physically fit for the sport in question, they must be in good scholastic standing, and they must be in good athletic standing. This last test includes both their previous record in athletics and the length of their participation in college athletics. In view of all these requirements, then, it is evident that although analysis may be a very effective method of explanation, it is not an easy one. In fact, to use it in more than an elementary way requires a distinctly analytic mind. And analytic power is about as rare as it is practically important. B. DEFINITION A second method of exposition is definition. The logicians seem to differ among themselves about the essential nature and form of a definition, but we need only to understand that one way of making a matter clear is by showing its limits. This is just what the father does when he improvises an answer to his child's question, "What is a dynamo?" It is just what the teacher does when he seeks to give his pupil an adequate conception of a participle or an infinitive. It is just what everyone must be doing continually in meeting the demands of life, since all are called upon to make definitions of one kind or another. It may be that a single word needs brief explanation because it is new and strange. It may be that a term is used like catholic, democratic, realism, or beauty which needs full and explicit interpretation because it can easily be understood |