In the exact sciences complete exposition is the aim, and classification is necessary; but in other writing the purpose in hand is often better accomplished by omitting minor divisions.  A writer of history might consider the political growth, the wars, and the religion of a nation and omit its domestic life and educational progress, especially if these did not greatly influence the result that he wishes to make plain.  If we wished to explain the plan of the organization of a high school, it would be satisfactory to divide the pupils into freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, even though, in any particular school, there might be a few special and irregular pupils who belonged to none of these classes.  An exposition of the use of hammers would omit many occasional and unimportant uses.  Such a classification though exact is incomplete and is called partition.

EXERCISES

A. Can you tell which of the following are classifications?  Which are partitions?  Which are defective?

1.  The inhabitants of the United States are Americans, Indians, and negroes.

2.  Lines are straight, curved, and crooked.

3.  Literature is composed of prose, poetry, and fiction.

4.  The political parties in the last campaign were Republican and Democrat.

5.  The United States Government has control of states and territories

6.  Plants are divided into two groups:  (1) the phanerogams, or flowering plants, and (2) cryptogams, or flowerless plants.

7.  All phanerogamous plants consist of (1) root and (2) shoot; the shoot consisting of (a) stem and (b) leaf.  It is true that some exceptional plants, in maturity, lack leaves, or lack root.  These exceptions are few.

8.  We may divide the activities of the government into:  keeping order, making law, protecting individual rights, providing public schools, providing and mending roads, caring for the destitute, carrying the mail, managing foreign relations, making war, and collecting taxes.

B.  Notice the following paragraphs, State briefly the divisions made.

+1.  Plan of the Book.+—­What is government?  Who is the government?  We shall begin by considering the American answers to these questions.

What does The Government do?  That will be our next inquiry.  And with regard to the ordinary practical work of government, we shall see that government in the United States is not very different from government in the other civilized countries of the world.

Then we shall inquire how government officials are chosen in the United States, and how the work of government is parceled out among them.  This part of the book will show what is meant by self-government and local self-government, and will show that our system differs from European systems chiefly in these very matters of self-government and local self-government.