of the whole. For in the whole is contained the real excellence of a writing-in the paragraph, not in the sentence; in the chapter, not in the paragraph; in the book, rather than in the chapter. And the character of the writer dimly seen may be often greater than the book which he has written.

Yet one more cause of failure in our lives here may be briefly spoken of the want of method or order. Men do not consider sufficiently, not merely what is suited to the generality, but what is suited to themselves individually. They have different gifts, and therefore their studies should take a different course. One man is capable of continuous thought and reading, while another has not the full use of his faculties for more than an hour or two at a time. It is clear that persons so differently constituted should proceed on a different plan. Again, one man is gifted with powers of memory and acquisition, another with thought and reflection; it is equally clear that there ought to be a corresponding difference in the branches of study to which they devote themselves. Things are done in half the time and with half the toil when they are done upon a well-considered system when there is no waste, and nothing has to be unlearned. As mechanical forces pressed into the service of man increase a hundredfold more and more his bodily strength, so does the use of method, — of all the methods which science has already invented (for as actions are constantly passing into habits, so is science always being converted into method)-of all the methods which an individual can devise for himself, enlarge and extend the mind. And yet how rarely does any one ever make a plan of study for himself — or a plan of his own life.

Let me illustrate the subject of which I am speaking from the sphere of business. Suppose a person of ability to be engaged in the management of a great institution

such as a public school, or a manufactory — will not his first aim be to organize such an institution in the fittest manner? He will consider how the work which he has to do will be carried on in the shortest time, at the least cost and with the smallest expenditure of labor. He will see his own objects clearly, and from time to time he will apply proper methods of comparison and examination which will enable him to discover whether they are being carried out. He will not devote himself to small matters which can be done by others. He will know whom to trust; he will seize upon the main points, and above all he will avoid waste.

Now there may be a waste in study as well as in business; such a waste, for example, is the idleness of reading when we sit in an armchair by the fire and receive passively the impression of books without thought, without judgment, without any effort of “what we are pleased to call our minds.'" We may learn Latin and Greek in such a manner that we never acquire any real sense of the meaning of words or constructions, but only remember how they are to be translated in a particular passage. Can this be called education? So we may learn history in such a fashion that we only recollect dates and facts and have no sense of the laws which pervade it, or interest in the human beings who are the actors in it: Is not this again a waste of time? Lastly, in philosophy, that study which has so great an interest for us at a certain time of life, which makes a sort of epoch in the mental history of many, from which we are likely to experience the greatest good and the greatest harm; in philosophy we may go on putting words in the place of things, unlearning instead of learning, losing definiteness and clearness in the extent of the prospect opening upon us, until we are fairly overmastered by it, seeming to have acquired new powers of thought so vast that they prevent

us from thinking for ourselves, or expressing ourselves like other men: "And this also is vanity."1

EXERCISE 22. (Written.) Take your five theme outlines and study them with reference to the scale of treatment. Write down at the head of each outline the total number of words which, in your opinion, the completed theme should have. After consultation with the instructor you may be convinced that your scale is either too large or too small.

§ 5. Proportion of Parts in the Theme. — By proportion of parts is meant relative scale of parts, so that this section merely applies the topic of the preceding section to the main divisions, or the paragraphs, of the whole composition. Every division should ordinarily have bulk according to its importance as a part.2 A scale of treatment which would be appropriate to a subject considered by itself may be very inappropriate to that subject when introduced for some subordinate purpose in a long theme.

1 College Sermons (Macmillan). Quoted in Specimens of the Forms of Discourse (Holt), to illustrate another principle.

2 There are a very few exceptions to this rule; for two examples, see pp. 150-151, where a short paragraph is introduced by a special declaration of its importance.

G

A long introduction injures not only emphasis but the proportion of parts. It is human nature to begin any undertaking on too big a scale, and in a theme all the earlier topics are likely to receive more than their share of attention. There is sometimes an excuse for this, as when the pleasure of a camping trip turns out to have resided chiefly in the great expectations and the elaborate preparation. But even when something really fine and wonderful occurs on a camping trip-as for instance the shooting of a large, hungry bear, the amateur's account of the various stages (1) preparation, (2) journey, (3) pitching camp, (4) fishing, (5) shooting bear-is likely to show the following proportions:

1

2

3

4 5

It is not always the apparent size of a paragraph topic which makes it worth writing on. Huxley, in one of his beautiful expositions, devotes three pages to describing the cross-section of a horse, and then two pages to the microscopic structure of its living tissue. He goes on to show that all animals approach one pattern in general structure, and in the last analysis are apparently of identical structure.

The

microscopic cell is of as much importance in this discussion as the structure millions of times larger; and so Huxley thinks it worthy of about as much space, and gives it a goodsized illustration.

Suppose we wish to understand all about the horse. Our first object must be to study the structure of the animal. The whole of his body is enclosed within a hide, a skin covered with hair; and if that hide or skin be taken off, we find a great mass of flesh, or what is technically called muscle, being the substance which by its power of contraction enables the animal to move. These muscles move the hard parts one upon the other, and so give that strength and power of motion which renders the horse so useful to us in the performance of those services in which we employ him.

And then, on separating and removing the whole of this skin and flesh, you have a great series of bones, hard structures, bound together with ligaments, and forming the skeleton which is represented here.

In that skeleton there are a number of parts to be recognised. The long series of bones, beginning from the skull and ending in the tail, is called the spine, and those in front are the ribs; and then there are two pairs of limbs, one before and one behind; and these are what we all know as the fore-legs and the hind-legs. If we pursue our researches into the interior of this animal, we find within the framework of the skeleton a great cavity, or rather, I should say, two great cavities, — one cavity beginning in the skull and running through the neck bones, along the spine, and ending in the tail, containing the brain and the spinal marrow, which are extremely important organs. The second great cavity,