Vocal Expression Part 4

The teacher, moreover, must have over his mind discipline so firm that he is not dependent upon moods. He must cover the wide difference between the train of thought which springs spontaneously in the mind and that which is laboriously worked out as a logical sequence of ideas relating to a subject forced upon the attention.

The pupil may, to a certain extent, indulge the vagaries of his inclination, but the teacher must respond to the need of the moment. He must have trained his mind to give an intelligent judgment upon any matter presented to it. He is not equipped for instructing--nor is any individual ready for life--until he can command the resources of his inner self to the utmost. The trained person is one who can take a subject which may not at the outset especially appeal to him, which is full of complications, which is not in itself, perhaps, attractive, and can insist with himself that his mind shall master it thoroughly. He is able so to expend his whole mental strength, if need be, upon any necessary topic that the subject shall be examined, acquired, a.s.similated, and then shall be so organized, so illumined, and so presented that others shall be instructed. The mind of the teacher, in a word, is so disciplined that it will work when it is ordered.

The ideal state of mind for him who wishes to communicate knowledge is that of being absolute master of all its resources. Many who possess no inconsiderable powers of thought are practically unable to command the best powers of their intelligence. They depend upon the whim of the moment, upon some outward pressure or inward impulse, to arouse their intellect. They fail to reflect that while any ordinary intellect naturally forms some opinion upon any subject which interests it, only the trained mind is able to judge clearly and lucidly of an indifferent or uninteresting matter. In this mastery of thought lies the difference between the sterile and the productive mind. Only one brain in a thousand has not the disposition to shirk work if it is allowed, and every student has moments when his intelligence seems almost to act like a spoiled child that hates to get up when called on a cold morning. To establish the power of the will over the intellect is the object of education, and the ability to exercise this power is what is meant by the proper use of the word "cultivation."

The mental process of the cultivated thinker when considering any subject is likely to be: first, to become sure of his terms; then, clearly to set before his mind the facts and conditions; and, lastly, to make the possible and resulting deductions and conclusions. This gives a hint, and indeed practically affords a rule for the writer of exposition.

An exposition, broadly speaking, may be said to consist of three steps which nearly correspond to the three steps of mental activity just set down: the Definition, the Statement, and the Inference.

Definition is making clear to self or to the reader what is under discussion.

Statement is the setting forth of whatever is to be said of the facts, conditions, relations, and so on, which it is the object of the exposition to make clear.

Inference is the conclusion or conclusions drawn.

These three parts will seldom be found as formal divisions in any ordinary exposition, but in some sort they are always present; and the writer must at least have them clear in his mind if he hopes to render his work well ordered, comprehensive, and symmetrical.

Together they are woven as the strands which give a firmness of texture to the whole.

To ill.u.s.trate the bearing of this a.n.a.lysis on the composition of an exposition, we may imagine that a student has been required to write a theme on "The Influence of College Life." He has first to concern himself with definition. He must decide what he means by college life as a molding influence; whether its intellectual, its social, its moral aspects, or all these. He must consider, too, whether he is to deal with the effect upon specific characters or upon types; whether upon boys during the time they are in college or as a training for after life; whether at a special inst.i.tution or as the result of any college. If he limits himself to one phase of influence, he must in the same way decide fully in what sense he intends to treat that phase. If he is to consider the social effect of college life, for instance, he has to define for himself the sense in which he will use the word "social." Is it to mean simply formal society, adaptation to the more conventional and exclusive forms of human intercourse, or to imply all that renders a man more self-poised, more flexible, and more adaptable in any relations with his fellows? If, on the other hand, it is the intellectual influence of college life which is to be studied, the first step is to decide what is to be considered for this purpose the range of the term "intellectual"; whether it is to be taken to mean the mere acquirement of information; whether it has relation to acquirement or to modification of mental conditions; whether it means change in the mind in the way of development or of modification; whether it shall be applied to an alteration in the student's att.i.tude toward knowledge or toward life in general. All this is in the line of definition, and it is naturally connected with the statement of whatever facts bear upon the topic under discussion.

Statement has largely to do with fact. Theory belongs rather to whatever inference is part of an exposition. In the statement will come the observations of the writer; whatever he knows of general conditions at college, or such individual examples as bear upon the question in hand. From these he will inevitably draw some conclusions, and the value of the exposition will depend upon the reasonableness and convincingness of these inferences, as these will, in turn, depend upon the clearness of the writer's original knowledge in regard to his intentions and the logic of his statements.

Composition, it should be remembered, is the art of communicating to others what is in the mind of the writer. To write without having the subject abundantly in mind is to invite the reader to a Barmecide feast of empty dishes. The necessity of insisting upon such particulars as those just given of the process of making an exposition arises from the stubborn idea of the untrained student that writing is something done with paper and ink. It is, on the contrary, something which is done with brains; it is less putting things on paper than it is thinking things out in the mind.

Before leaving the ill.u.s.tration of a theme on the influence of college life we may glance a moment more at the difficulty, even with so simple a subject, of attaining perfect clarity of thinking.

One of the first things which must be determined is the essential difference of life in a college from ordinary existence. If the subject be given out to a cla.s.s of students half the themes handed in will begin with a remark upon the great change which comes to a boy who finds himself for the first time freed from the restraints of home. The moment this idea is presented to the mind it is to be looked at, not as something with which to fill so much paper, but as a stepping-stone toward ideas beyond. It is necessary, for instance, to determine the distinctions between freedom at college and freedom elsewhere; to decide wherein lie the differences in the conditions which surround a boy in a university and one who escapes from the restrictions of home by going away to live in a city or in a country village, on shipboard or in the army. To be of value, every thought in an exposition must have been tested by a comparison with allied ideas as wide and as exhaustive as the thinker is equal to making.

To learn to think is, after all, the prime essential in exposition-writing, and the beginning of thought is the realization of what is already known. The student who patiently examines his views on the subject of which he is to write, who determines to discover exactly how much he knows and what is the relative importance of each of his opinions, is likely soon to come to find that he is considering the theme chosen not only deeply, but with tangible results. The value of any exposition, to sum the matter up in a word, rests primarily and chiefly on the thoroughness of the thought which produces it.--ARLO BATES.[3]

[3] This selection from Prof. Arlo Bates's _Talks on Writing English_ is printed by permission of the author and his publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company.

The _Idylls of the King_ has been called a quasi-epic. Departing from the conventional epic form by its lack of a closely continuous narrative, it has yet that lofty manner and underlying unity of design which leads us to cla.s.s it with the epics, at least, in the essentials. It consists of a series of chivalric legends, taken chiefly from the _Morte d'Arthur_ of Sir Thomas Malory, grouped so as to exhibit the establishment, the greatness, and the downfall of an ideal kingdom of righteousness among men. "The Coming of Arthur," the ideal ruler, shows us the setting up of this kingdom.

Before this was disorder, great tracts of wilderness,

Wherein the beast was ever more and more, But man was less and less.

Arthur slays the beast and fells the forest, and the old order changes to give place to new. Then the song of Arthur's knights rises, a majestic chorus of triumph:

Clang battle-axe and clash brand. Let the king reign.

In "Gareth and Lynette" the newly established kingdom is seen doing its work among men. Arthur, enthroned in his great hall, dispenses impartial justice. The knights

Ride abroad redressing human wrongs.

The allegory shows us, in Gareth's contests with the knights "that have no law nor King," the contest of the soul with the temptations that at different periods of life successively attack it:

The war of Time against the soul of man.

Then follow the "Idylls," which trace the entrance and growth of an element of sin and discord, which, spreading, pulls down into ruin that "fellowship of n.o.ble knights," "which are an image of the mighty world." The purity of the ideal kingdom is fouled, almost at its source, by the guilty love of Lancelot and the Queen. Among some the contagion spreads; while others, in an extremity of protest, start in quest of the Holy Grail, leaving the duty at hand for mystical visions. Man cannot bring down heaven to earth; he cannot sanctify the ma.s.s of men by his own rapturous antic.i.p.ations; he cannot safely neglect the preliminary stages of progress appointed for the race; he "may not wander from the allotted field before his work be done."

So by impurity and by impatience the rift in the kingdom widens, and in "The Last Tournament," in the stillness before the impending doom, we hear the shrill voice of Dagonet railing at the King, who thinks himself as G.o.d, that he can make

Honey from hornet-combs And men from beasts.

In "Guinevere," unequaled elsewhere in the "Idylls" in pure poetry, the blow falls; at length, in the concluding poem, Arthur pa.s.ses to the isle of Avilion, and once more

The old order changeth, yielding place to new.

Tennyson himself tells us that in this, his longest poem, he has meant to shadow "sense at war with soul," the struggle in the individual and in the race, between that body which links us with the brute and the soul which makes us part of a spiritual order.

But the mastery of the higher over the lower is only obtained through many seeming failures. Wounded and defeated, the King exclaims:

For I, being simple, thought to work His will, And have but stricken with the sword in vain; And all whereon I lean'd, in wife and friend, Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm _Reels back into the beast_, and is no more.

But he also half perceives the truth which it is the poet's purpose to suggest to us. It is short-sighted to expect the immediate sanctification of the race; if we are disheartened, striving to "work His will," it is because "we see not the close." It is impossible that Arthur's work should end in failure--departing, he declares, "I pa.s.s, but shall not die," and when his grievous wound is healed, he will return. The _Idylls of the King_ is thus the epic of evolution in application to the progress of human society.

In it the teachings of "In Memoriam" a.s.sume a narrative form.

Move upward, working out the beast,

may be taken as a brief statement of its theme: and we read in it the belief in the tendency upward and an a.s.surance of ultimate triumph:

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void When G.o.d hath made the pile complete.

--PANCOAST.[4]

[4] Reprinted by permission from Pancoast's _Introduction to English Literature_. Copyright, 1907, by Henry Holt and Company.

As an interlude study which shall look back to the step we have just taken, and forward to the one we are about to take, let us test our growth in _vitality in thinking_ and our need of _intelligence in feeling_, by voicing the following selections from didactic poetry. This form affords the best exercise in both activities because it makes a double appeal, and so a double demand upon the interpreter--an appeal through form to emotion, through aim to intelligence, and through message and atmosphere to both. I have chosen examples of this form in which the beauty and fascination of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, and the didactic nature of the thought do not seem to overbalance each other. If either should predominate you must, by your interpretation, strike the balance. In reading Robert Browning's _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ (from which I shall quote but a few verses) you must carry to your auditor the full import of the philosophy, but in doing so you must not lose the beauty of the verse in which the poet has set it.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust G.o.d: see all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, ama.s.sing flowers, Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?"

Not that, admiring stars, It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!

Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three-parts pain!

Strive and hold cheap the strain, Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence--a paradox Which comforts while it mocks-- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.