SUGGESTIONS: Study the foregoing definitions with the greatest care, and look in the dictionary for the meaning of each word that you do not know. Consider the difference between such expository definitions as "Memory," Labour," and Americanism," and the ordinary dictionary definition. 66 Do you notice any differences in logical method between "Memory" and "Labour?" Which seems to you the more exact and convincing? A Harvard student once wrote, beside the last paragraph of the definition of Memory, "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Does this comment seem to you justifiable, as a criticism upon the method of Professor James' exposition? Observe that Professor Matthews' definition of "Americanism" is not analytical, but constructive: he is fixing and giving point to a term that has hitherto been loosely and carelessly employed. Define and illustrate, in one or several meanings, any one of the following terms.* WIT WIT AND HUMOR † E. P. WHIPPLE was originally a general name for all the intellectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, perceives, knows, understands; it was gradually narrowed in its significance to express merely the resemblance between ideas; and lastly to note that resemblance when 5 *This list may, of course, be indefinitely extended. From Literature and Life, pp. 91-93. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. it occasioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas, lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Humor originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, oozing from the 5 brain, and enriching and fertilizing wherever it falls. Wit exists by antipathy; Humor by sympathy. Wit laughs at things; Humor laughs with them. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exaggerates single foibles into character; Humor glides into the heart of its 10 object, looks lovingly on the infirmities it detects, and represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful, and tosses its analogies in your face; Humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart. Wit is negative, analytical, destructive; Humor is creative. The 15 couplets of Pope are witty, but Sancho Panza is a humorous creation. Wit, when earnest, has the earnestness of passion, seeking to destroy; Humor has the earnestness of affection, and would lift up what is seemingly low into our charity and love. Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as 20 the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes, in an instant; Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions, 25 and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines; Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged 30 inequalities of existence, promoting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. Old Dr. Fuller's remark, that a negro is "the image of God cut in ebony," is humorous; Horace Smith's inversion of it, that the task master is "the image of the devil cut in ivory," is witty. Wit can co-exist with fierce and malignant passions; but Humor demands good feeling and fellow-feeling, feeling not merely for what is above us, but for what is around and beneath us. When Wit and Humor are commingled, 5 the result is a genial sharpness, dealing with its objects somewhat as old Izaak Walton dealt with the frog he used for bait, running the hook neatly through his mouth and out at his gills, and in so doing "using him as though he loved him!" Sidney Smith and Shakespeare's Touchstone 10 are examples. ADAPTED SUBJECTS Genius and Talent. Fame and Notoriety. Work and Labor. THE NATION AND THE STATES* JAMES BRYCE A FEW years ago the American Protestant Episcopal Church was occupied at its annual Convention in revising its liturgy. It was thought desirable to introduce among the short sentence prayers a prayer for the whole 15 people; and an eminent New England divine proposed the words "O Lord, bless our nation. Accepted one afternoon on the spur of the moment, the sentence was brought up the next day for reconsideration, when so many *American Commonwealth. v. i, pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 16-22. objections were raised by the laity to the word "nation," as importing too definite recognition of national unity, that it was dropped, and instead there were adopted the words "O Lord, bless these United States." 5 To Europeans who are struck by the patriotism and demonstrative national pride of their transatlantic visitors, this fear of admitting that the American people constitute a nation seems extraordinary. But it is only the expression on its sentimental side of the most striking and pervading 10 characteristic of the political system of the country, the existence of a double government, a double allegiance, a double patriotism. America—I call it America (leaving out of sight South America, Canada, and Mexico), in order to avoid using at this stage the term United States15 America is a Commonwealth of commonwealths, a Republic of republics, a State which, while one, is nevertheless composed of other States even more essential to its existence than it is to theirs. This is a point of so much consequence, and so apt to 20 be misapprehended by Europeans, that a few sentences may be given to it. When within a large political community smaller communities are found existing, the relation of the smaller to the larger usually appears in one or other of the two 25 following forms. One form is that of a league, in which a number of political bodies, be they monarchies or republics, are bound together so as to constitute for certain purposes, and especially for the purpose of common defence, a single body. The members of such a composite 30 body or league are not individual men but communities. It exists only as an aggregate of communities, and will therefore vanish so soon as the communities which compose it separate themselves from one another. Moreover it deals with and acts upon these communities only. With the individual citizen it has nothing to do, no right of taxing him, or judging him, or making laws for him, for in all these matters it is to his own community that the allegiance of the citizen is due. A familiar instance of this form is to be found in the Germanic Confederation as it existed 5 from 1815 until 1866. The Hanseatic League in medieval Germany, the Swiss Confederation down till the present century, are other examples. In the second form, the smaller communities are mere subdivisions of that greater one which we call the Nation. 10 They have been created, or at any rate they exist, for administrative purposes only. Such powers as they possess are powers delegated by the nation, and can be overridden by its will. The nation acts directly by its own officers, not merely on the communities, but upon every 15 single citizen; and the nation, because it is independent of these communities, would continue to exist were they all to disappear. Examples of such minor communities may be found in the departments of modern France and the counties of modern England. Some of the English 20 counties were at one time, like Kent or Dorset, independent kingdoms or tribal districts; some, like Bedfordshire, were artificial divisions from the first. All are now merely local administrative areas, the powers of whose local authorities have been delegated from the national 25 government of England. The national government does not stand by virtue of them, does not need them. They might all be abolished or turned into wholly different communities without seriously affecting its structure. The American Federal Republic corresponds to neither 30 of these two forms, but may be said to stand between them. Its central or national government is not a mere league, for it does not wholly depend on the component communities which we call the States. It is itself a common |