Exposition

CHAPTER III.

EXPOSITION.

EXPOSITION may be briefly defined as explanation. It does not address the imagination, the feelings, or the will. It addresses the understanding excludefined. sively, and it may deal with any subject-matter with which the understanding has to do. In the fact that exposition does not appeal to the emotions lies the essential difference between exposition and description or narration. The writer of a description or of a narrative may, without injury to his readers, look at his subject through the medium of his own personality and color it with his individual feelings: the writer of an exposition should, as far as possible, keep his individuality out of his work and present his subject to his readers exactly as it is.

Theoretically, exposition treats the matter in hand with absolute impartiality, setting forth the pure truth, — the truth unalloyed by prejudice, pride of opinion, exaggeration of rhetoric, or glamour of sentiment. Except in works of a technical character, exposition in this strict sense is comparatively rare; but it is now and then found even in political writings.

"He [Mr. Robert Giffen] belongs to a limited class from whom the community receive an inestimable benefit, namely, white light upon every subject upon which they require information. He will use months in ascertaining for them the truth, say, as to an

Irish Land question, and in a report will never betray the political opinion to which his researches have led him. We have watched Mr. Giffen's work for thirty years, have never known it less than complete, and do not know now, with any approach to accuracy, what his political opinions are. That is the true attitude of a devoted servant of the whole nation." 1

Exposition is sometimes made to include personal essays, like many of those of Montaigne or of Lamb; but such essays, though they may be expository here and there, as they may now and then fall into description or narration, address, in the main, not the understanding, but the sympathies and the imagination. For the most part, they convey information so far only as they reveal the personality of the author; and this they do, not through the medium of formal composition, but after the manner of an intimate friend who takes us into his inner life. To class such essays with expository writings is to miss what constitutes their real charm, -the personal quality, the quality that makes Montaigne, or Lamb, or Emerson sui generis, a class by himself.

of exposition.

The function of exposition is to simplify the complex or the abstruse, to make the obscure clear, the confused distinct, to help the reader, in short, The function thoroughly to understand the subject before him. The man of science is expounding when he sets forth the results of observation, or of reflection on observed facts; the teacher, when he unravels knotty questions or clears up doubtful points; the preacher, when he unfolds the meaning of his text; the lawyer, when he elucidates the principles on which his argument is to rest; the physician, when he makes clear the pecularities of a case in his practice; the journalist, when he gives the bearings

1 The [London] Spectator, Nov. 24, 1894, p. 715.

of a piece of news; the critic, when he analyzes a book of essays or a play; the man of affairs, when he instructs his correspondent concerning the advantages and the disadvantages of an investment: any one is expounding when he explains anything said or done.

simplest form

of exposition.

The simplest form of exposition is the definition of a term. Many so-called definitions in dictionaries are not Definition, the definitions at all; for they are nothing but more or less successful attempts to translate words into their exact or approximate synonyms. A real definition is an explanation expressed in language simpler than the term defined, or in words that have already been defined; the simpler the term to be defined, the greater the difficulty in making a satisfactory definition. In every branch of science are many terms that must be explained before the subject to which they belong can be understood, and of these terms an exposition is the only useful definition. Such a definition is given in the following passage from Dr. Asa Gray's "Botanical TextBook":

THE EMBRYO.

"The embryo is the initial plant, originated in the seed. In some seeds it is so simple and rudimentary as to have no visible distinction of parts: in others, these parts may have assumed forms which disguise their proper character. But every welldeveloped embryo essentially consists of a nascent axis, or stem, bearing at one end a nascent leaf or leaves, or what answers to these, while from the other and naked end a root is normally to be produced. This stem is the primitive internode of the plant: its leaf or pair of leaves is that of the first node. The plant therefore begins as a single phytomer. Some embryos are no more than this, even when they have completed their proper germination: others have taken a further development in the seed itself, and exhibit the rudiments of one or more following phytomera."1

1 Asa Gray: Botanical Text-Book, vol. i. chap. ii.

An exposition like that just cited resembles a scientific description in that it aims at conveying information by means of analysis. There is, however, a slight difference between the two. The account of the barn-swallow, quoted as an example of scientific description,1 is descriptive so far as it deals with specific barn-swallows, expository so far as it deals with the abstract idea, or general notion, designated by the term "barn-swallow;" the passage from Dr. Gray is altogether expository, for it deals with nothing but the general notion designated by the term "embryo." The fact that it is possible to illustrate the description of the barn-swallow by a representation of a real bird and not possible to illustrate the exposition of the embryo by a representation of the embryo in general, shows the distinction between the two. Whenever description ceases to represent individual persons or things, it ceases to be description and partakes of the nature of exposition.

Other examples of definitions that are expositions are given in the following passages:

WORK AND PLAY.

"You will discover, at once, that work and play, taken as modes of mere outward, muscular activity, cannot be distinguished. There is motion in both, there is an exercise of force in both, both are under the will as acting on the muscular system; so that, taken outwardly, they both fall into the same category. Indeed, they cannot be discriminated till we pass within, to view them metaphysically, considering their springs of action, their impulse, aim, and object.

"Here the distinction becomes evident at once; namely, that work is activity for an end; play, activity as an end. One prepares the fund or resources of enjoyment, the other is enjoy. ment itself. Thus, when a man goes into agriculture, trade, or

1 See pages 252, 253.

the shop, he consents to undergo a certain expenditure of care and labor, which is the only form of painstaking rightly named, in order to obtain some ulterior good which is to be his reward. But when the child goes to his play, it is no painstaking, no means to an end; it is itself rather both end and joy. Accordingly, it is a part of the distinction I state, that work suffers a feeling of aver sion, and play excludes aversion. For the moment any play becomes wearisome or distasteful, then it is work; an activity that is kept up, not as being its own joy, but for some ulterior end, or under some kind of constraint." 1

PREACHING.

"What, then, is preaching, of which we are to speak? It is not hard to find a definition. Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it two essential elements, truth and personality. Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching. The truest truth, the most authoritative statement of God's will, communicated in any other way than through the personality of brother man to men, is not preached truth. Suppose it written on the sky, suppose it embodied in a book which has been so long held in reverence as the direct utterance of God that the vivid personality of the men who wrote its pages has well-nigh faded out of it; in neither of these cases is there any preaching. And on the other hand, if men speak to other men that which they do not claim for truth, if they use their powers of persuasion or of entertainment to make other men listen to their speculations, or do their will, or applaud their cleverness, that is not preaching either. The first lacks personality. The second lacks truth. And preaching is the bringing of truth through personality. It must have both elements. It is in the different proportion in which the two are mingled that the difference between two great classes of sermons and preaching lies. It is in the defect of one or the other element that every sermon and preacher falls short of the perfect standard. It is in the absence of one or the other element that a discourse ceases to be a sermon, and a man ceases to be a preacher altogether." 2

1 Horace Bushnell: Work and Play.

2 Phillips Brooks: Lectures on Preaching; The Two Elements in Preaching.