Furthermore, because the class of the adjective contains so many terms of dialectical import, such as _good_, _evil_, _noble_, _base_, _useful_, _useless_, there is bound to exist an initial suspicion of all adjectives. (Even when they are the positive kind, as is true with most limiting adjectives, there lurk the questions “Who made up the statistics?” and “How were they gathered?”) The dialectical adjective is too often a “fighting word” to be used casually. Because in its very origin it is the product of disputation, one is far from being certain in advance of assent to it. How would you wish to characterize the world? If you wish to characterize it as “round,” you will win a very general assent, although not a universal one. But if you wish, with the poet, to characterize it as “sorry,” you take a position in respect to which there are all sorts of contrary positions. In strictest thought one might say that every noun contains its own analysis, but an adjective applied to a noun is apparatus brought in from the outside; and the result is the object slightly “fictionized.” Since adjectives thus initiate changes in the more widely received substantive words, one has to have permission of his audience to talk in adjectives. Karl Shapiro seems to have had something like this in mind in the following passage from his _Essay on Rime_: for the tyrannical epithet Relies upon the adjective to produce The image; and no serious construction In rime can build upon the modifier.[126] One of the common mistakes of the inexperienced writer, in prose as well as poetry, is to suppose that the adjective can set the key of a discourse. Later he learns what Shapiro indicates, that nearly always the adjective has to have the way prepared for it. Otherwise, the adjective introduced before its noun collapses for want of support. There is a perceptible difference between “the irresponsible conduct of the opposition with regard to the Smith bill” and “the conduct of the opposition with regard to the Smith bill has been irresponsible,” which is accounted for in part by the fact that the adjective comes after the substantive has made its firm impression. In like manner we are prepared to receive Henley’s Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole because “night” has preceded “black.” I submit that if the poem had begun “Black as ...” it would have lost a great deal of its rhetorical force because of the inherent character of the opening word. The adjective would have been felt presumptuous, as it were, and probably no amount of supplementation could have overcome this unfortunate effect.