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faults. As a rule, omit everything that is not strictly pertinent to the subject in hand and then abbreviate in form what still remains, stopping short always of the brevity which gives a sense of incompleteness or which leads to obscurity. Sometimes however force seems to be best gained by fullness and judicious repetition.

Beauty is not found in every phase of life, nor shall we expect to find it in every form of literature. Still its presence is rarely resented, and even among the practical, plain, and homely things with which life and literature alike must deal, touches of genuine beauty will not seem obtrusive. But least of all is this element to be sought, for least of all will it come for the seeking. Like loveliness of form and face, grace of pen and eloquence of speech do not hold themselves subject to our command. Partly they come, if at all, as a natural inheritance, and partly as the reward of long and patient wooing. And if they are not already ours, we can do no better than pursue our straightforward course, lured by no false glitter, turning aside for no meretricious ornament, and perhaps in the end we too shall find some share of these elusive charms.

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To expose or expound is to set forth, to lay open. Exposition then is the act of setting forth or laying open to view, the act of unfolding, defining, explaining, interpreting. And whenever this act concerns itself with terms, which denote objects of thought, or with propositions, which express relations between objects of thought, we have rhetorical or literary exposition.

We shall have to go a step further and say that rhetorical exposition concerns itself, not with singular terms, which denote single objects only, but with general terms, which stand for any one of a number of objects having certain qualities in common; and the same is true of propositions. For example, you cannot expound James White. You can describe him. You can say that he is a tall man with dark eyes and well chiseled features; and this is description. But it is not exposition. Now notice that in this description a great deal is taken for granted. There is the general term man

which is not explained. To an intelligence which should know nothing of the meaning of the word man, the description would be unintelligible until that word were explained. Such explanation would be technically called exposition.

How shall we set about expounding general terms? We should not say, as we said of

Take the term man.

James White, that a man has dark eyes, for that is true of some men only. But we should say, among other things, that a man is a creature with two eyes. That is, we should select only those qualities that are possessed by every normal individual of the class comprehended by the general term. Description deals with individuals, pointing out the features that distinguish one individual from all others; exposition deals with generals, with classes, pointing out the features that are common to all individuals of the class. The need of exposition in the above case may not be so obvious because the term is well understood, but if I say “ Paradise Lost is a sublime epic," many readers will want the meaning of the term epic expounded.

Of course, from another point of view, these class features are distinctive. That is, the class is only one among other classes, and to be distinguished from them. The possession of two eyes marks off men at once from all creatures possessing more eyes or fewer. Man is but one division of a more comprehensive class, animal. On the other hand classes may be subdivided, and features that are not common to the whole class may be common to the members of one of the subdivisions. For example, while we cannot say that men are dark-eyed, we may fairly say that Italians are so.

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And the Italian race may well be a subject for exposition. It is when we reach the individual in the last analysis that we have a proper subject for description. There are many Italians the term may be expounded; there is only one Dante - he may be described. You may expound the meaning of tree and meadow and river, but you describe the landscape about you which has no exact counterpart among all the landscapes of the earth.

Strictly speaking, a subject for exposition is neither a material object nor an actual event. It is merely a mental concept-a concept formed by putting together in thought a certain number of common qualities or actions. Every individual of a class has the common class-qualities, but it has something more than these — it has in addition its individual characteristics. If it were possible to strip it of these latter, we should have our concept embodied, so to speak. But it is manifestly impossible to have a rose possessing size without being of any particular size, or possessing color without being of any particular color, although that is just what is contemplated by the concept called up in our mind by the general term rose.

For the present then rhetorical exposition may be defined as the process of defining and explaining the concepts called up in the mind by general terms or propositions.

All that has been said thus far in this exercise may be taken as an example of this process: it is an exposition of the term exposition. Now take one of the two subjects given at the head of this exercise and write a brief expository essay upon it. You must have obtained

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