enactment of the last Congress. The Parables are older than the 'Meditations' of Aurelius Antoninus: why, then, rehearse them as if from the proof-sheets of the first edition? In a word, why suffer the minds of your audience to be more nimble than your own, and to outrun you?

"It degrades exposition to putter over it in a pettifogging way, trusting nothing to the good sense of an audience, and assuming nothing as already known to them. On the text, ‘I am the good shepherd,' said a preacher in the chapel of this Seminary, and that after twenty years of experience in the pulpit, —‘a sheep, my brethren, is a very defenseless animal. A shepherd is one who takes care of sheep.' If a New England audience can not be supposed to know what a sheep is, what do they know?"1

In exposition, as in other kinds of composition, a writer should stimulate interest by variety in expression. He may avail himself of every means by which he can explain or illustrate his thought,—comparison, contrast, antithesis, climax, epigram, figure of speech,— but he should never forget that these are means to the end of exposition and are useful so far and so far only as they conduce to that end.

Exposition

Except in the most abstruse writing, exposition may be, and usually is, accompanied by passages of description or of narration that give life and variety to the composition and at the same time help to communicate combined with the meaning intended. Exposition may preand narration. pare the way for a description or a narrative; it often serves to explain what the descriptive writer or the narrator is talking about; and it sometimes uses description or narration as a means to its own end.2

description

1 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching, lect. xiii.

2 See the passage from Taine (pp. 305, 306), and that from Webster (pp. 308-310).

In the following passage, both description and narration are used in the service of exposition, the exposition of a woman's personality:

"Mrs. Peacocke, in her line, succeeded almost as well [as her husband]. She was a woman something over thirty years of age when she first came to Bowick, in the very pride and bloom of woman's beauty. Her complexion was dark and brown,—so much so, that it was impossible to describe her colour generally by any other word. But no clearer skin was ever given to a woman. Her eyes were brown, and her eye-brows black, and perfectly regular. Her hair was dark and very glossy, and always dressed as simply as the nature of a woman's head will allow. Her features were regular, but with a great show of strength. She was tall for a woman, but without any of that look of length under which female altitude sometimes suffers. She was strong and well made, and apparently equal to any labour to which her position might subject her. When she had been at Bowick about three months, a boy's leg had been broken, and she had nursed him, not only with assiduity, but with great capacity. The boy was the youngest son of the Marchioness of Altamont; and when Lady Altamont paid a second visit to Bowick, for the sake of taking her boy home as soon as he was fit to be moved, her ladyship Imade a little mistake. With the sweetest and most caressing smile in the world, she offered Mrs. Peacocke a tenpound note. 'My dear madam,' said Mrs. Peacocke, without the slightest reserve or difficulty, 'it is so natural that you should do this, because you cannot of course understand my position; but it is altogether out of the question.' The Marchioness blushed, and stammered, and begged a hundred pardons. Being a good-natured woman, she told the whole story to Mrs. Wortle. I would just as soon have offered the money to the Marchioness herself,' said Mrs. Wortle, as she told it to her husband. 'I would have done it a deal sooner,' said the Doctor. 'I am not in the least afraid of Lady Altamont; but I stand in awful dread of Mrs. Peacocke.' Nevertheless Mrs. Peacocke had done her work by the little lord's bed-side, just as though she had been a paid nurse.

"And so she felt herself to be. Nor was she in the least ashamed of her position in that respect. If there was aught of

shame about her, as some people said, it certainly did not come from the fact that she was in receipt of a salary for the performance of certain prescribed duties. Such remuneration was, she thought, as honourable as the Doctor's income; but to her American intelligence, the acceptance of a present of money from a Marchioness would have been a degradation.”1

Examples of exposition.

66

Among examples of successful exposition that are too long to quote are: the lecture on "Idealism and Naturalism," in Mr. Otto Pfleiderer's "Philosophy and Development of Religion;" the chapter on "Intellectual Education," in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Education;" the chapter on "Money," in Mill's “Principles of Political Economy;" the chapter on "Sweetness and Light," in Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy;" the report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies to the National Council of Education; Walter Bagehot's "English Constitution;" Mr. A. R. Wallace's "Darwinism."

» 2

1 Anthony Trollope: Dr. Wortle's School, part i. chap. ii.

2 Other examples are given in "Specimens of Exposition," selected and edited by Hammond Lamont

CHAPTER IV.

ARGUMENT,

from

ARGUMENT, like exposition, addresses the understanding; but there is an important difference between the two. Exposition achieves its purpose if it makes the Argument persons addressed understand what is said; distinguished argument achieves its purpose if it makes exposition. them believe that what is maintained is true: exposition aims at explaining, argument at convincing. The difference between an argument and an exposition may be shown by a comparison between the address of an advocate to the jury and the charge of the judge. The advocate tries to convince the jury that his client has the right on his side; the judge, if he has the truly judicial spirit, tries to make the jury understand the question at issue exactly as it is.

the form of

The work of argument is sometimes done by exposition. Thus, Cardinal Newman1 expounds the distinction between true and false education so skilfully Argument in that the reader draws for himself the conclu- exposition. sion suggested, but not proved, by the author; and Webster2 points out so plainly the evils that would result from an attempt to nullify a law of the United States that the inference from what he says is unmistakable. Argument which thus takes the form of expo* See pages 308–310.

1 See pages 312, 313.

sition may be more effective than it would be in its own form.

Argument

prepared for

The way for argument is often prepared by exposition. Some words of the assertion in dispute may need to be defined and their relations to one another made by exposition. clear. If the subject is novel or complex, the assertion as a whole may need to be explained before the argument is begun. It is useless to try to convince a man of the truth of anything that he does not understand.

and proof

SECTION I.

PROPOSITION AND PROOF.

The body of every composition in which reasoning plays an important part consists of the PROPOSITION in Proposition dispute, the assertion which is to be proved defined. or disproved, and the PROOF, which includes whatever tends to show either that this proposition is true or that it is false. The aim of argument is to convince the persons addressed that the proof is sufficient to establish, or to overthrow, the proposition.

A word not a subject for argument.

For exposition a word may serve as subject, since one form of exposition is the definition of a word; but for argument a word cannot so serve. "Honesty," for example, is in no just sense a subject for argument; for, though many propositions about honesty can be framed, the word by itself suggests no one of them rather than another: but "Honesty is the best policy" is a subject; for it makes a definite assertion, an assertion that can be reasoned about.

Nothing can free a writer or a speaker from the obliga tion of having the proposition distinctly fixed in his own