Page images
PDF
EPUB

A to E we find the real social conflict. It is a contest between different kinds of laborers, a contest of varying grades of industrial capacity with each other. It is a free-to-all race, in which the most competent win. The great industrial manager, being the most highly skilled laborer, obtains enormous wages for exceptional services to production. This exposition gives us, in brief, the economic reason why, in a country of phenomenal resources like the United States, men of exceptional industrial ability can acquire exceptionally large fortunes legitimately.1

95. Requisites of a good classification.— While rhetorical classification does not usually make any pretense at the exactness of logical division, it may not therefore neglect all the rules of logic. On the contrary, if it is to have any practical value, it must conform to certain well-established principles.

In the first place, the basis upon which the classification is made must remain unchanged throughout, otherwise, confusion is inevitable. It must be remembered that most things may be classified in a variety of ways in as many ways, in fact, as they have relations to one another, or as the mind is capable of regarding them. Thus, for instance, buildings may be classified, according to the material out of which they are constructed, as wooden, brick, stone, iron, and the like; or, according to the purpose for which they are intended, as dwelling-houses, warehouses, shops, museums, churches, and so on; or, again, according to their style of architecture, as

1 J. Lawrence Laughlin, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1905, p. 42.

Greek, Roman, Gothic, modern, and so on. Each classification here is based on some one distinct principle, and this unity of basic principle renders possible the attainment of the main end of the classification, namely, the comprehensive survey of the subject from some particular point of view. If one were to classify buildings loosely, however, as dwelling-houses, warehouses, brick houses, churches, and so on, this end could not be attained, because the point of view could not remain the same. One could never be sure, in this case, where to put any particular building. It would be like filing letters at haphazard, now according to the writers' names and again according to subject-matter- a method obviously not to be recommended on the score of convenience.

The chief virtue of a good classification being that no individual of the class divided can be put in more than one division, it follows, also, that the divisions must be mutually exclusive. No one division must include any other division, either in whole or in part, otherwise the value of the classification will be destroyed. Thus, if we were to classify literature as history, biography, fiction, poetry, and prose, the classification would be open to the objection that fiction might include poetry as well as part of prose, and that prose would include practically all of both history and biography.

Again, a classification, to have its highest value, should be exhaustive; that is, all the divisions taken together should equal the class divided. Thus, if

we were to classify houses, for example, according to the material out of which they are constructed, as wooden, brick, and stone houses, the classification would be open to the objection that it did not include all houses: in some places houses are built mainly of iron; in others, of clay or earth.

This rule, it is to be observed, however, is imperative only in cases where exactness and precision are of first importance. In ordinary literary exposition it is seldom insisted on. A classification may have great practical value even if it is not exhaustive. In fact, no classification can be held to be absolutely exhaustive, logically speaking, except the so-called bifurcate classification, where there are but two divisions, one of which is expressly stated to contain all of the class not contained in the other. For example, the citizens of the United States may be classed as those who have the right to vote, and those who have not that right. The classification is absolutely exhaustive, since it is not possible that there are citizens of the United States not included in either of these classes or divisions.

From the fact that one of the divisions in the bifurcate method of classification must always be distinguished by negative characteristics, that method is of little practical value. It is useful mainly as a means of testing other methods of classification, or as a means of arriving, through a process of continued subdivision, at a classification that will have practical value as well as the merit of exhaustiveness.

Thus, to find a logically complete classification of dwelling-houses, we might proceed, using material as the basis of the classification, as follows:

[blocks in formation]

By keeping up this process of subdivision, we can make the residuum or miscellaneous division as small as we please, so small, in fact, as to become practically a negligible quantity. Absolute exhaustiveness will not be secured, however, unless we retain the residuum as a division by itself.

96. Partition. - Somewhat similar to classification yet quite distinct from it in purpose, is what is commonly known as partition, or the division of a subject into its component parts. In partition, there is no question of kinds or classes, the object being, merely,

such a division of the subject as will best suit the convenience of the writer. A partition should not, of course, be purely arbitrary, but it may be made almost as elastic as the writer chooses.

Huxley's division of his subject in his lecture, "On the Study of Biology," for instance, is an example of partition. "I shall, therefore, address myself to the endeavor," he says to his audience, "to give you some answer to these four questions - what biology is; why it should be studied; how it should be studied; and when it should be studied." Convenience and system in the treatment of his subject, rather than the setting forth of the relation of kinds or classes to one another, is obviously the main aim of the lecturer in making such a division as this.

In no

97. Necessity of clearness in exposition. other kind of discourse, perhaps, is the need of clearness so great as in exposition. The aim in exposition being elucidation, all the means at the writer's command for making the meaning clear should be used. To this end, the writer should see that his material is thoroughly unified, that his arrangement of that material is clear and logical, and that the terms he uses are as simple and as definite as he can make them.

EXERCISES

1. Comment upon the following definitions:

a. Capital is the accumulated stock of human labor. b. Education is training for complete living.

c. Education is training for social efficiency.

« PreviousContinue »