If you were arguing any question concerning the elective system or the
entrance requirements for your own college, you would often do well to
sketch the history of the present system as a means of defining it,
before you go on to urge that it be changed or kept as it is. So if you
were arguing for a further change in the football rules, your best
definition of the present game for your purpose would be a sketch of the
way in which the game has been changed in the past few years, at the
urgent demand of public opinion. Such a sketch you could easily get by
running through the back numbers of such a magazine as _Outing_, or the
sporting columns of some of the larger weeklies. Or again, if you were
arguing that the street railway systems of your city should be allowed
to combine, your best description or definition of the present situation
might well be a sketch of the successive steps by which it came to be
what it is. Here you would go for your material to the files of local
newspapers, or, if you could get at them, to sets of the reports of the
railway companies.
The definition of terms through the history of the question has the
advantage that, besides helping your readers to see why the terms you
use have the meaning you give them for the present case, it also makes
them better judges of the question by giving them a full background.
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