In most instances general terms are the same as abstract, and specific the same as concrete.  Some subtle discriminations may, however, be made.  Of these the only one that need concern us here is that the wording of a passage may not be abstract and yet be general.  Suppose, for example, you were telling the story of the prodigal son and should say:  “He was very hungry, and could; not obtain food anywhere.  When he had come to his senses, he thought, ‘I should be better off at home.’” This language is not abstract, but it is general rather than specific.  When Jesus told the story, he wished to put the situation as poignantly as possible and therefore avoided both abstract and general terms:  “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat:  and no man gave unto him.  And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” Many a person who shuns abstractions and talks altogether of the concrete things of life, yet traps out circumstance in general rather than specific terms.  To do this is always to sacrifice force.

EXERCISE — Abstract

1.  Discuss as abstractly as possible such topics as those listed in Activity 1 for EXERCISE — Discourse, or as the following: 

Is there any such thing as luck?  Is the Golden Rule practicable in the modern business world?  Is modesty rather than self-assertion regarding his own merits and abilities the better policy for an employee?  Are substantial, home-keeping girls or girls rather fast and frivolous the more likely to obtain good husbands?  Is it desirable for a young man to take out life insurance?  Is self-education better than collegiate training?  Should one always tell the truth?

2.  Discuss as concretely as possible the topics you have selected from 1.  Use illustrations drawn from life.

3.  Restate in concrete terms such generalizations as the following: 

Experience is the best teacher. 
Self-preservation is the first law of nature. 
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language. 
Necessity is the mother of invention. 
The bravest are the tenderest. 
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 
Pride goeth before destruction. 
The evil that men do lives after them.

4.  Compare the abstract statement “Truths and high ethical principles are received by various men in various ways” with the concrete presentation of the same idea in Appendix 3.  Which expression of the thought would be the more easily understood by the average person?  Why?  Which would you yourself remember the longer?  Why?

5.  Compare the statement “The second period of a human being’s life is that of his reluctant attendance at school” with Shakespeare’s picture of the schoolboy in Appendix 4.