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the other qualities accompanying it in real things; as; length, extension, weight, fluidity, elasticity, attraction, intelligence, goodness, temperance. The mind must still run over the particular objects possessing the quality, so as to affirm nothing of the abstract idea that is not true of all the concrete instances of it. Now it is a work of labor to recall the necessary examples; and a speaker or writer should use such language as to suggest these readily to the mind. Hence the advantage of the figures that substitute the special, individual, and concrete, for the general and abstract (§ 31). It is possible to express a general truth in terms that shall be themselves highly concrete. Compare the two following modes of expressing the same principle of human nature. "In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulation of their penal codes will be severe." "According as men delight in battles, bull-fights, and combats of gladiators, so will they punish by hanging, burning, and crucifying."

Such terms as pain, feeling, are less conceivable and less forcible than ache, penury. Curve is very general, circle is less so, wheel approaches the particular; sun, full moon, are individual, and the most intelligible of all.

The style of Bishop Butler is rendered difficult by the excessive employment of general and abstract terms, unrelieved by such as are specific and concrete. The following sentences will give an idea of what is meant :—" Self-love and interestedness was stated to consist in, or be, an affection to ourselves, a regard to our own private good. But that benevolence is distinct from, that is, not the same thing with self-love, is no reason for its being looked upon with any peculiar suspicion, because every principle whatever, by means of which self-love is gratified, is distinct from it," &c, (Sermon xi.)

70. The Abstract Noun is the form that carries abstract naming farthest; as, motion, whiteness, color, virtue, comprehension. Nouns denoting whole classes of objects, Adjectives, Verbs, and Adverbs, tend rather to suggest the concrete.

A Class Noun, as river, tree, city, denotes concrete objects, although requiring a whole class to be taken into account, which class the mind selects one or two individuals to represent. An Adjective, as, large, wise, fruitful,—supposes a name denoting a whole class, which it limits and renders more concrete; as a “large house," a "fruitful field." The Verb requires the mention of a subject, and very often an object also; as, "he comprehends the meaning," which is more concrete and suggestive than the abstract noun "comprehension." The Adverb, in this regard, resembles the adjective.

In the following sentence, abstract nouns are employed: "The understanding of this truth will preclude that great source of human misery, groundless expectations." To convert these nouns into verbs and adjectives, the sentence would have to be changed thus: "If we clearly understand that this is true, we shall be saved from what often makes us miserable, namely, expecting what is groundless." In this form, the idea is more readily conveyed than when expressed, as above, by a succession of abstract nouns.

noun.

It will readily be seen, from the above and other instances, what are the compensating advantages of using the abstract In the first place, it is often more concise, which entitles it to preference when brevity is an object; as in subordinate clauses, which must not by their length overwhelm the principal clause.

In the next place, it allows a passive and impersonal form to be employed, which is often convenient: "Unless care be taken."

71. A series of abstract terms is difficult to follow.

Each separate abstraction requires a reference to examples in the concrete, and we cannot, without labor, make this reference as rapidly as abstract words can be uttered.

72. The operation of the foregoing principle is modified under certain circumstances.

(1.) When the abstractions are simple and easy; as length, motion, warmth, strength, blackness, pain, sweetness, love.

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(2.) When they have some natural connection, or have been often grouped together; as, "light and heat," "time and space," "number and importance," "virtue and happiness," "learning and talents," "law, order, and morality."

(3.) When they are repeated in the concrete (Extract V.). (4.) When they are merely symbols to connect thoughts, and do not require attention directed upon themselves. This is the case with the abstractions of mathematics, and in scientific reasoning generally.

(5.) When they are intended to rouse the feelings. Thus, an enumeration of the virtues may have no other object than to excite a glow of approving sentiment: as, "faith, hope, charity;" "truth, justice, benevolence."

For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love."

Among simple writers in English, we may name More, Hobbes, Bunyan, Defoe, Tillotson, Addison, Swift, Goldsmith, Cowper, Paley, Southey, Macaulay, Irving, Prescott, Bryant.

As examples of the more learned and abstruse style, we have Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Milton, Barrow, Jeremy Taylor, South, Butler, Cowley, Pope, Johnson, Gibbon, Bentham, Robert Hall, De Quincey, Carlyle, Bancroft, Emerson, Longfellow.

73. Simplicity of Structure means an arrangement of clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, suited for easy comprehension.

The principles of good arrangement have been in part adverted to already (§65, 66), and will be more fully considered under various subsequent heads.

74. With a view to simplicity of arrangement, it is desirable to avoid a complication of negatives.

Such an expression as "The loss of blood destroys the strength," is not so intelligible as the positive form "Abundance of blood gives strength." Compare "Indifference to suffering is unfavorable to sympathy," with "Being alive to

suffering favors sympathy." Again, "If they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I think never happened above once or twice at most," is a puzzling, if not ambiguous, construction. "It is not to be denied that a high degree of beauty does not lie in simple forms."

CLEARNESS.

75. Clearness is opposed to obscurity, vagueness, ambiguity, or ill-defined boundaries.

A statement is clear when there is no possibility of confounding it with anything else. This is more than is meant by simplicity. Some of the means of attaining clearness have been described under Figures (especially those of Similarity and Contrast); others will be given in treating of Exposition.

76. Ambiguity of language being one chief obstacle to clearness, words with a plurality of meanings should be used in such connections only as exclude all but the one intended.

It is not uncommon to find words used in such connections as suggest most readily the meaning not intended. For example: "A man who has lost his eye-sight has in one sense less consciousness than he had before." The word sense, being used after the mention of eye-sight, is naturally supposed to mean one of our five senses, which is not the case. Again: "And seeing dreams are caused by the distemper of the inward parts of the body;" here the word seeing, followed by dreams, is apt to suggest the act of vision, instead of the meaning which the word really has, inasmuch as. "There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion." Here the first idea suggested by the word painting is the art of painting; what we find to be the meaning is a painted face.

At other times, the word is simply ambiguous; two meanings being equally suggested. "His presence was against him" means either "the fact of his being present and not absent," or

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his "demeanor and appearance."

"I remarked the circum

stance might imply either "I made a remark to some one," or "I was myself struck with the circumstance." The word common, from its two significations, "usual" and "widely spread," is a frequent cause of ambiguity.

The most effectual remedy for equivocal language is to mention the term opposed to what is meant. This method, however, being cumbrous, is reserved for cases of special difficulty or importance: we may say, "the moral as opposed to the physical," or "as opposed to the intellectual," or "as opposed to the immoral," according to the intended signification of the word moral.

To prevent ambiguity, tautology is sometimes allowable. "Sense and acceptation "determines one meaning of sense; "sense or susceptibility" gives the other meaning.

77. The recurrence, at a short interval, of the same word, in two different senses, is to be avoided.

Such constructions as the following tend to obscurity, besides being inelegant :—"If the show of anything be good for anything, sincerity is better." "It is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality, as to have it." "He turned to the left of the House, and then left abruptly." "The truth is that error and truth are blended in their minds." "I look upon it as my duty, so long as I keep within the bounds of truth, of duty, and of decency."

The two senses of the pronoun we, called the editorial and the representative, are apt to be confused in this way. "We (the writer) will now proceed to enquire how we (men generally) first arrive at such notions." It is in discussing human nature that this clash arises, and the mode of avoiding it is to use the singular pronoun for the speaker's self, or else to make the construction passive or impersonal.

When a recurring word has one meaning prevailing through the same discourse, it is wrong to bring it in unexpectedly in one of its other meanings.

The word wit is said to be used, in Pope's Essay on Criticism, in seven different acceptations.