Definitions which classify without margins are a special evil: the
division into literature and journalism for example, with no
allowance for interlocking; or the confident separation of all
books into categories of good or bad. Wholesale definitions are
also objectionable, where having defined a poem as magazine verse,
or a collection of articles as a magazine, or a book as a sex
story, or a man as a journalist, or a tendency as erratic or
erotic, you think you have said something. May the muse of clear
thinking, and the little humorous gods who keep the sense of
proportion balancing, protect us from these also.
It occurs to me that I have made but a lame attempt to define
definition. This, however, is as it should be. For definition, in
the sense in which I am using it, like literature, has much of the
indefinable. It is a tool merely, or better still, because
broader, a device by which the things we enjoy and that profit us
may be placed in perspective, ranged, compared, sorted, and
distinguished. It is what Arnold meant by seeing steadily and
seeing whole. It is the scientist's microscope that defines
relationship, and equally the painter's brush that by a touch
reveals the hidden shapes of nature and the blend of colors.
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