ing in his mind at once. Such ability may easily become a fixed and spontaneous habit, which will endow his whole sphere of observation with greatly increased significance. Whatever he reads, even casually, is almost sure to contain something that either clusters round some nucleus of thought already in his mind, or, no less frequently, establishes a new thought centre therein.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL PROCESSES IN THE ORDERING OF MATERIAL.

As has already been shown, it is almost exclusively the ordering of material, the sifting of it mainly as involved in the ordering, and hardly at all the actual finding of it, that a treatise on invention can discuss with hope of imparting direct practical aid. All the rest must be left to the writer's individual genius. On the discussion of this accessible stage of invention we now enter; and first of all by considering, as the task of the present chapter, the processes included in the general construction of discourse, processes common, therefore, with certain modifications, to all literary forms.

The Order of Discourse not Arbitrary. That is, it is not determined by the mere willfulness of the writer's constructive fancy, but rather by the nature of the material, as interpreted by the exactions of present adaptedness. The writer's whole quest is to find the simple and natural progress of the thought, from beginning to culmination, to follow that one order which answers best to what has been well called "the self-movement of the subject." A self-evident ideal this; and yet there are tendencies, not uncommon among authors, which make against it.

1. Unless the writer takes especial care to diversify his inventive methods, there is a strong tendency after some experience to run into a certain stereotyped way of planning every subject; exemplified by the clergyman who said he always made his sermons consist of "two points and an application." This is evidently an unconscious surrender to the tyranny of a mental habit; and the result is that the writer does not submit implicitly to the guidance of his subject, but seeks to manipulate the thought by a preconceived scheme devised and imposed from without. Not

always so undisguised as this, the same tendency may manifest itself in a craving after an equal number of subdivisions under each main heading, or after some mechanical symmetry between part and part of the plan. But however manifested, it is something against which the writer needs to be so on his guard as to distrust any structure not obviously dictated, or at least made natural, by the suggestion of the subject.

NOTE. There have been periods in the history of literature when such artificial methods prevailed as a vogue; as when old divines would in their discourses adopt a three-fold division, because there are three persons in the Trinity, or four-fold because there are four elements of matter, or seven-fold because seven is the perfect sacred number. Herodotus divided his history into nine books, which he named after the nine muses; and Goethe followed his example in the nine cantos of his "Hermann and Dorothea.” The notation of these works is of course arbitrary; though the division may have corresponded with the natural articulation of the subject, and been named thus as an afterthought. The arbitrary rule that tragedy must invariably have five acts,

"Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu
Fabula "

may have its rationale in the natural rise, culmination, and dénouement of a plot. So also in every plan there are steps that, being founded in the nature of a course of thinking, are too organic for arbitrariness.

2. A writer's mental activities may be naturally abstruse, or made so by exclusive working in profound subjects; again a writer's mind may be impelled by nature to move in odd and eccentric sequences of thought. The latter may perhaps indulge his propensities in humorous writing; but apart from the acknowledged privileges of this kind of composition, the writer should be conscientious in comparing his own mind's habitual working with the capacities and tendencies of ordinary men. Accordingly, he should consult not himself alone but more especially his readers, seeking always if there may be discerned a selfmovement of the subject along the lines most easily followed by them. Not all subjects are capable of a simple plan; but in all cases the writer should work for the utmost simplicity possible for

the adequate presentation of his subject, and be ready to deny his personal preferences, if necessary, for his readers' sake.

NOTE.-The poet Browning has often been reproached as ordering his thought in willfully abstruse sequences. Not willfully, as he has himself avowed; but it must be acknowledged that sometimes the intricate dodgings and windings of his thought are needlessly difficult for readers, even when allowance is made for the exceptionally profound nature of his subject-matter. He has been confessedly too unmindful of the art that seeks to make thought plain and pleasant for ordinary capacities.

Of the eccentrically working mind the humorist Charles F. Browne (“ Artemus Ward") may be mentioned as a remarkable example. It is said that no idea ever presented itself to him as it would to any other person; he could see only the ludicrous side of things; and the prevailing principle of his humor lies in odd and quaintly twisted sequences of thought.

The Unit of Structure. In a preceding section the paragraph has been named as the unit of invention. By this is meant that in the proper construction of a paragraph there are suggested in miniature the main problems involved in the construction of an entire discourse. And indeed there is one case, the editorial paragraph, wherein this smallest section of discourse has come to be recognized as a distinct literary form, a discourse in itself.

Referring then to the section on The Paragraph, and especially to the scheme of paragraph structure laid down on page 199, we see that a paragraph must have a subject, a plan, a proportion of parts; that its progress must be obvious and continuous from one part to another; that, beginning with what explains its topic, it moves on to what establishes, by proof or otherwise, and finally to what applies and gives results. In every production, whatever its form or scope, this unit of structure may be traced, modified of course by particular requirements, and with its elements in varying proportions, but easily recognizable when the circumstances of writing and the nature of the subject-matter are taken into consideration.

The Form of Discourse here chosen as Norm. - By reason of its brevity no single paragraph would be likely to represent all the elements of structure in the typical fullness desirable for study.

Some would be merely suggested rather than expressed, while others would perhaps be elided altogether.

A form better adapted to this purpose is found in the essay or short treatise, as it appears in the best review articles of the day. Apart from its convenient length, which makes it easy to trace the relation of its parts to one another and to the whole idea, the essay presents the most normal and rounded type of structure, because, being more purely a work of the intellect, it depends more entirely on the writer's constructive powers. This we see by comparing various literary forms. In a narrative, for instance, the plan is guided mainly by the order of time; in a description by the order of place; argument follows the logical necessities of the proof; oratory modifies the logical order more or less by the emotional. The essay, which belongs predominantly to the expository form (see below, page 403), presents a more purely intellectual product, built according to the laws that control the constructive powers of the mind; it is here chosen, therefore, as uniting in one production normal structure and convenient limits.

The general processes included in the ordering of material may be grouped under three sections: on the determination of the theme; on the construction of the plan; and on amplification.

SECTION FIRST.

DETERMINATION OF THE THEME.

Definition. - The theme, which in some form underlies the structure of every literary work, may be briefly defined as the working-idea of the discourse.

The fundamental requirement of the theme is sufficiently indicated in the derivation of the word, from the Greek léμa (τíðŋμi), something placed or laid down, that is, as a basis for treatment. As such a working-basis, the theme must be an idea so definite and clear-cut that the writer can resort to it for every step of his