Glass. 
 
 Book__ 
 
^7*3 A 
 
 THE ART 
 
 EXTEMPORE SPEAKING. 
 
 HINTS 
 
 FOR 
 
 THE PULPIT, THE SENATE, AND THE BAR. 
 
 BY m/BATJTAIN", 
 
 VICAR-GENERAL AND PROFESSOR AT THE SORBONNE, ETC., ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 
 
 Sranir (Sbftiwr. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 BOSWORTH AND HARRISON, 215, RESENT STREET. 
 1859. 
 

 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY G. J. PALMER, 27, LAMB'S CONDUIT STREET. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The art of speaking with facility in public 
 is apt to be considered by us rather as a 
 gift of nature than a power to be acquired 
 Debating societies exist, much business is trans- 
 acted in public, and the clergy are now being 
 called upon to abandon, at least occasionally, 
 written discourses. A Manual or Treatise on 
 the Art of Extempore Speaking is much to b^ 
 desired, and the present translation has been 
 undertaken, as containing much useful instruc- 
 tion, which may be turned to advantage by 
 many amongst us, who enjoy freedom of 
 thought and liberty of speech in an unex- 
 ampled degree. 
 
 a 2 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Exposition of the Subject. — Definition of an Extempora- 
 neous Speech . . . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Qualifications necessary for Public Speaking . .10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Mental Aptitudes for Public Speaking, capable of being 
 acquired, or formed by study . . .41 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 Physical Qualities of the Orator, Natural and Acquired . 84 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PA.GS 
 
 Division of the Subject . . . .108 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Preparation of the Plan . . . . US 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Political and Forensic Speaking . . . .124 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Speaking from the Pulpit, and Teaching . .138 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Determination of the Subject and Conception of the Idea of 
 the Discourse . . . • .146 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Conception of the Subject. —Indirect Method . .155 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Conception of the Subject.— Indirect Method . . 162 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Formation and the Arrangement of Ideas . .176 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arrangement of the Plan . . . .188 
 
 CHAPTER XIV, 
 Character of the Plan ... . 1P9 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Final Preparation before Speaking . . . .206 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Final Intellectual Preparation . . . .208 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Final Moral Preparation , . . .218 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Bodily Preparation . . . . .229 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Discourse . . . . • .238 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Beginning, or Exordium . , . .240 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 Entrance into the Subject .... 247 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Developement . . . . .254 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 The Crisis of the Discourse .... 263 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 The Close of the Discourse, or Peroration . .280 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 After the Discourse . . . . .287 
 
THE AET 
 
 EXTEMPOBE SPEAKING. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EXPOSITION OF THE SUBJECT. — DEFINITION OF 
 AN EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEECH. 
 
 Let us in the first place determine accurately 
 the subject we propose to treat, in order that 
 nothing may be expected from us beyond that 
 which it is our wish and in our power to illus- 
 trate. 
 
 We have no intention of composing a trea- 
 tise on eloquence. The world has had enougl^- 
 on this subject since the time of Aristotle 
 Cicero, Quintilian, Fenelon, and many others 
 
 B 
 
2 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 Works on rhetoric abound, and it appears 
 scarcely necessary to produce a new one. 
 
 It is not our intention to treat of the art of 
 writing, or of reciting a discourse elaborated at 
 leisure, and committed to memory. 
 
 It is true, men may become great orators by 
 writing speeches and reciting them well. 
 Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and many 
 others, are examples of this fact, and it is pos- 
 sible in this manner to instruct the mind, to 
 touch the feelings, and to persuade the hearer; 
 thus realising the aim of all oratory. 
 
 Our subject is confined within narrower 
 limits to the art of speaking well, whether in 
 the pulpit or in the professorial chair, at the 
 bar or in deliberative assemblies. We shall 
 therefore confine our attention solely to a dis- 
 course, neither written nor learnt by heart, but 
 improvised ; necessarily composed by the 
 orator on the very moment of delivery, without 
 any preparation or previous combination of 
 phrases. Let us then determine, in the first 
 place, what is an improvised (or extempore) 
 speech, and the manner in which a speech is 
 extemporised. 
 
 Extemporisation implies speaking on the first 
 
STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 3 
 
 impulse, on any subject presented to the mind, 
 without a preliminary arrangement of phrases. 
 It is the instantaneous manifestation of a 
 thought ; the ready exposition of a mental im- 
 pression. 
 
 It is evident that the art of extemporising 
 has reference only to the form of words, or the 
 form of a discourse ; for, in order to speak, it 
 is necessary to have something to say, and that 
 something must already be existing in the 
 mind, or still more deeply in the intimate feel- 
 ing of the orator. Nevertheless, the thought 
 or feeling may be in a concealed state, and the 
 possessor may not have clearly appreciated or 
 distinctly perceived it at the moment of open- 
 ing his lips under the impression of some cir- 
 cumstance or some unforeseen cause of excite- 
 ment. 
 
 Ideas and conditions of the mind cannot be 
 elaborated at will ; and the more perfectly they 
 are possessed or felt, the greater is the proba- 
 bility of their lively expression, or of their being 
 developed with force and clearness. 
 
 We will not speak of those exceptional 
 cases where a passion, involuntarily excited or 
 aroused, bursts forth of a sudden in some sub- 
 
 B 2 
 
4 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 lime words, or with an eloquent harangue 
 " Facit indignatio versum," says Juvenal. 
 
 Every feeling unexpectedly aroused in an ex- 
 cited mind may, like a volcano, scatter around 
 burning lava, or, like a cloud charged with 
 storms, produce thunder and lightning, with 
 terrible and devastating hail. No advice can 
 be given for such a situation, for nature alone 
 furnishes the means referable to individual 
 constitution and development. There lies the 
 source af all poetry, of all eloquence, and of all 
 artistic power. Improvisation such as this re- 
 cognises no rules, and rejects teaching. The 
 coarsest, the most ignorant man may thus occa- 
 sionally be eloquent, if he feel vividly and 
 express himself energetically, in words and 
 gesture. 
 
 We will devote our attention only to pre- 
 pared extempore speaking, that is to say, to those 
 addresses which have to be delivered in public 
 before a specified auditory, on a particular 
 subject, and with the view of achieving a certain 
 result. 
 
 It is true that in such cases the discourse, if 
 written beforehand, can be recited or read. 
 There are some persons who are masters of reci- 
 
STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 5 
 
 tation or reading, and can thus produce a great 
 effect. In this manner, doubtless, both thoughts 
 and words can be bettter weighed, and the 
 speaker can deliver what he has to say with 
 greater precision. But there is this disadvan- 
 tage, that the discourse is colder, less apposite, 
 and approximates too nearly to dissertation. 
 Nay, should any unforeseen circumstance occur, 
 such as an objection, a rejoinder, or a discussion 
 of any kind, the speaker not expecting it, may 
 find himself at a loss, to the great detriment of 
 his cause or his subject. Moreover, a preacher, 
 a professor, or a senator, who is liable to be 
 called upon to speak at any moment, has not 
 always the time to compose a discourse, still 
 less to learn it by rote. Therefore, in speaking 
 from his fulness, as the saying is, he can speak 
 oftener, and, if he speak well, may produce a 
 great effect. 
 
 His language will also be more forcible and 
 brilliant, — more real and more apposite. Ori- 
 ginating with the occasion, and at the very 
 moment, it will bear more closely on the sub- 
 ject, and strike with greater force and precision. 
 His words will be warmer from their freshness; 
 they will in this manner communicate increased 
 
6 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 fervour to the audience, and will have all the 
 energy of an instantaeous effort. 
 
 The vitality of thought is singularly stimu- 
 lated by this necessity of instantaneous produc- 
 tion, by this actual necessity of self-expression, 
 and of communication to other minds- It is 
 an effort which engages the sympathy of 
 hearers, who witness with lively interest this 
 labour of mental life, by which an idea well 
 conceived is brought to light, and presented in 
 a graceful and well-constructed phraseology. 
 
 But it is not our object to compare these 
 two methods of public speaking, nor to place 
 in the balance their advantages and defects. 
 It is possible to excel in both ways, and 
 every one must endeavour to discover the 
 manner which best suits him, and the method 
 by which, according to his nature, his qualities 
 and his position, his words can achieve the 
 greater amount of good, instruct more clearly" 
 and more fully, and touch the heart more effec- 
 tually. What suits one does not suit another. 
 God distributes his gifts as seems best to 
 Him ; and every tree bears fruit according to 
 its kind. It is important for man to discover 
 the gift he has received, to make use of it 
 
STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 7 
 
 with usury, and to discharge faithfully his high 
 vocation. " Fiunt oratores, nascuntur poetae," 
 as said Quintilian; meaning, doubtless, that 
 poetic genius is a gift from heaven, and that 
 oratorical talent can be acquired. This is only 
 half true ; for if teaching and labour can con- 
 tribute to the formation of an orator, neither 
 the one nor the other will give him the germ 
 and the power of eloquence. They can excite 
 and nourish, but they can never ignite the sacred 
 fire. 
 
 But amongst those who have received this 
 divine gift of words some have only been 
 enabled to exercise it with the pen, and occa- 
 sionally even the most eloquent writers are 
 incapable of delivering in public that which 
 they are so well able to compose in private. 
 They are troubled and embarrassed before 
 the least imposing audience. Rousseau could 
 never speak in public ; and the Abbe de 
 Lamenais, whose style is so vigorous, never 
 ventured to enter the pulpit, and w r as unable to 
 address even a meeting of children. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, possess the faculty 
 of easily expressing in public their feelings and 
 their thoughts. The presence of hearers stimu- 
 
8 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 lates them, and augments the elasticity of their 
 mind, and the vivacity of their tongue. It is 
 these only that we shall address, for we have 
 spoken in this manner through life and have 
 never been able to do otherwise. Many a 
 time, however, have we made the attempt, by 
 preparing an exordium, a tirade, or a perora- 
 tion, with the intention of speaking better or 
 in a more striking manner. But we have 
 never succeeded in reciting what we had pre- 
 pared, and in the manner in which we had con- 
 structed it. Our laboured compositions have 
 always missed their object, and have made us 
 embarrassed or obscure. Thus, it appears, we 
 were made, and we have been forced to follow 
 our nature. In such matters the lesson to be 
 learnt is in turning to account the demands of 
 nature which must be satisfied. 
 
 As extemporising a speech regards the form 
 only, as has been before stated, it follows 
 that, before attempting to speak in this manner, 
 two things are necessary. L The foundation 
 of the discourse, or the thought and succession 
 of thoughts to be expressed. 2. The means of 
 expression, or the language in which our 
 thoughts are to be conveyed, so as to avoid the 
 
STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. B 
 
 necessity of seeking the words at the moment 
 the idea is conceived, and the risk of stopping 
 short of or being embarrassed in the composition 
 of the phraseology. In other terms, the speaker 
 must know what he wishes to say and how to 
 say it. 
 
 Improvisation, therefore, supposes the special 
 qualifications on which we are about to speak, 
 not precisely with the view of teaching the 
 means of acquiring them, as for the most part 
 they are gifts of nature ; but to induce those to 
 cultivate and develope them who have the good 
 fortune to possess them ; and, above all, to 
 point out the signs by which any one may dis- 
 cover whether he be capable of speaking in 
 public, and how, in so doing, to succeed. 
 
10 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 THE QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY FOR PUBLIC 
 SPEAKING. 
 
 At the root of every real talent, whatever it 
 may be, there lies a natural aptitude, conferring 
 on the person endowed with it a particular 
 power ; and this aptitude depends alike on the 
 intellectual temperament and the physical or- 
 ganisation ; for man being essentially composed 
 of mind and body, all that he does in reason, 
 or in his quality as a reasonable thing, comes 
 from these two portions of his being and from 
 their mutual relations. The mind commands, 
 it is true, and the body must obey like an 
 instrument; but the instrument has also its 
 influence, especially over the talent of the 
 artist, by the manner in which it responds to 
 his wishes, to his feelings, to the motions which 
 he communicates to it, to the vigour which 
 he seeks to display. Thus speaking is an 
 art, and the finest of arts ; it should express 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 11 
 
 the mind by form, ideas by words, feelings by 
 sounds, all that the mind feels, thinks, and 
 wishes by signs and external action. To ob- 
 tain skill in this art, therefore there are some 
 qualifications which regard the mind, and others 
 which depend on the body. 
 
 The dispositions of the mind are natural or 
 acquired. The former, which we are about to 
 set forth in this chapter, are — 
 
 1. A lively sensibility. 
 
 2. A penetrating intelligence. 
 
 3. A sound reason, or, as it is commonly 
 
 called, good sense. 
 
 4. A prompt imagination. 
 
 5. A firm and decisive will. 
 
 6. A natural necessity of expansion, or of 
 
 communicating to others ideas and feel- 
 ings. 
 
 7. Finally, a certain instinct which urges a 
 
 man to speak, as a bird to sing. 
 
 § 1. — A lively Sensibility. 
 
 Art has its root in sensibility, and although 
 the latter depends much on the body, and espe- 
 cially on the nerves which are its physical 
 
12 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 medium, sensibility is nevertheless one of the 
 principal powers of the mind, not to say a 
 faculty, since the word faculty denotes a manner 
 of acting, and sensibility is a manner of suffer- 
 ing or of sustaining an action. 
 
 Thus the mind w T hich lives only by its affini- 
 ties, and which for action always requires an 
 impression, acts only in proportion to the in- 
 citements it receives, and the manner in which 
 it receives them. It is, therefore, in this pe- 
 culiar manner of receiving and appropriating 
 impressions that the vivacity of sensibility 
 necessary to artistic expression consists. Every 
 man feels according to his sensitiveness ; but 
 all do not feel in the same manner, and thus 
 are neither able to express what they feel in 
 the same manner, nor are disposed to the same 
 kind of expression. Hence vocation to the 
 different arts, or the natural inclination of the 
 mind to express one particular thing which it feels 
 the most strongly, and with the greatest pleasure. 
 In this, also, lies the origin of taste in art, and 
 in a particular art, the inclination either towards 
 the exercise of such art or for the appreciation 
 of its works. Some have more taste and faci- 
 lity in the plastic arts ; others in the acoustic 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 13 
 
 arts ; and even in the exercise of the same 
 art there are different dispositions to a certain 
 mode of expression which produce different 
 styles. Thus in poetry there are poets who 
 compose odes, epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, 
 satire, idyls and eclogues, &c, &c, which are 
 all poetic expressions of the human mind : and 
 so far they resemble each other ; but they differ 
 in the object which they reproduce, in the 
 manner of representing it, and a poet in one 
 style rarely succeeds in another. He can sing 
 in one strain and not otherwise, as the song of 
 the lark is not that of the nightingale. 
 
 It is thus in the art of speaking ; one speaker 
 has more power to set forth ideas, their con- 
 nexion, and their gradations. He discerns 
 perfectly the congruity, the difference, the con- 
 trast of thoughts, and thus he will deliver 
 them impromptu with facility, delicacy, and 
 subtil ty. He has perception and ideality ; he 
 conceives distinctly, and will therefore enunciate 
 gracefully and clearly. Such an one is made 
 to teach and to instruct. 
 
 Another has a greater enjoyment of every- 
 thing relating to the feelings and affections, to 
 soft or strong emotions. He will therefore 
 
14 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 employ with greater pleasure and greater 
 success all that can touch, move, and hurry- 
 away his auditors ; he will cause the fibres of 
 the heart to vibrate. Such an one will be an 
 orator rather than a professor, and will be better 
 able to persuade by emotion than to convince 
 by reason. 
 
 A third delights in images and pictures. 
 He feels more vividly everything that he can 
 grasp and reproduce in his imagination ; he 
 therefore takes pleasure in these reproductions. 
 Such an one will be a descriptive speaker, 
 and will rise almost to poetry in his prose. 
 He will speak to the imagination of his hearers 
 rather than to their heart or mind : he will 
 affect but little, and instruct still less ; but he 
 will be able to amuse and interest, he will 
 attract by originality, by the variety of his 
 pictures, and by the vivacity and brilliancy of 
 his colouring. 
 
 In these different instances we see that sen- 
 sibility is vividly excited either by ideas, by 
 feelings, or by images ; and it is evident that 
 he who would extemporise a discourse in one 
 of these three methods, must feel vividly the 
 subject upon which he has to speak, and employ 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 15 
 
 language proportionate to the impression he 
 has received and retained. 
 
 But if sensibility must be strong, it must 
 nevertheless be kept within certain limits; 
 otherwise it renders expression impossible from 
 the agitation of the mind, and the over-excite- 
 ment of the nervous system. Thus, the precept 
 of Horace, " Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
 primum ipsi tibi," is true only for those who 
 write in their closet, and does not apply to the 
 orator. Before the public he must not weep, 
 nor even be moved to such a point that his 
 voice shall fail him, or be stifled by sobs ; he 
 must weep with his voice, and not with his eyes ; 
 he should have tears in his voice, but retain the 
 mastery of them. 
 
 At times, doubtless, a great effect may be 
 produced by the very inability to speak, by the 
 enthusiasm of feeling or the violence of grief; 
 but then the discourse is finished, or, rather, it 
 is no longer needed, and little matter, if the ob- 
 ject be attained. But, for the art of oratory, 
 sensibility must be restrained sufficiently at 
 least for words to run their proper course. The 
 feelings must not be declared at once, but 
 escape little by little, so as gradually to 
 
16 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 animate the whole body of the discourse. It 
 is thus that art idealises nature in rejecting all 
 that from instinct or passion may be too rough 
 or impetuous. The character of Christian art, 
 that which renders it sublime, is, that in all its 
 works there is a predominance of mind over 
 matter, of the soul over the body, of man over 
 nature. Christian feeling is never intemperate, 
 never disorderly. It is always restrained within 
 a certain point by the power of that will which, 
 assisted by the higher strength supporting it, 
 governs events, or rather, does not yield to 
 them ; and when it appears overcome it bends 
 beneath the storm of adversity, but is righted 
 by resignation, and does not break. It is more 
 than the thinking reed of Pascal ; it is a reed 
 that wills. For this reason the types of Chris- 
 tian art will never be surpassed. Never beneath 
 the sun will there be seen images more sublime 
 or more beautiful, than the figures of Jesus 
 Christ and the Virgin. In this point of view 
 the Christian orator, inasmuch as he is a Chris- 
 tian, is very superior to the Pagan orator : he 
 conceives, he feels very differently, both earthly 
 and heavenly things, and his manner of feeling 
 is more spiritual, pure, and worthy of man, for 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 17 
 
 being less material, it gives to his expression 
 something noble, elevated, and superhuman, 
 approaching the language of heaven. 
 
 The same may be said for the statement of 
 ideas. It is doubtless necessary that they 
 should be felt strongly with all that they em- 
 brace, so that they may be analysed and deve- 
 loped ; that, having been developed, they may 
 be re-embodied, again concentrated, and reduced 
 to unity. In this operation there is an infinity 
 of gradations which must be delicately perceived 
 and appreciated. But if this feeling become 
 too strong, or take too completely possession 
 of the mind, analysis or exposition becomes 
 impossible ; the speaker is absorbed by the con- 
 templation only of the general idea, is unable to 
 enter upon its development, and from that 
 moment he is incapable of speaking. This is 
 the case with men of genius, but of an exag- 
 gerated mental sensibility, who feel the necessity 
 of writing to display their thoughts, because they 
 require time to reflect and recover themselves 
 from the fulness of the idea which overcomes 
 them at first, or when they are required to speak 
 of a sudden. Such was probably the case with 
 Rousseau, w r ho was endowed w T ith remarkable 
 
 c 
 
18 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 sensibility of mind. It may even happen that 
 a too vehement and over exclusive perception 
 of an idea may convert it into a fixed idea, and 
 may lead to madness. Everything is so well 
 balanced in our existence, everything must be 
 done in such measure and proportion, that, no 
 sooner do we exceed, however little, that mean 
 point where lies the relative perfection of hu- 
 manity, — than we fall into exaggeration, which 
 destroys and renders powerless as much as de- 
 ficiency itself. — In medio virtus. 
 
 For description sensibility is required, but 
 here also it must not run riot, or we wander to 
 impressions of detail, and end by producing a 
 species of poem or a monograph of each flower 
 or object w T hich pleases us. 
 
 This in painting is called tableaux de genre ; 
 it may for an instant attract and amuse, but 
 does not represent one idea worthy of art. It 
 is in literature that kind of poetry or romance 
 in which the Germans and English delight, and 
 which consists in painting in the greatest detail 
 the commonest things of life. Impressions are 
 then borrowed from the domestic hearth, the 
 life of a family, or of a country, as aesthetic 
 sentiments, as effects of art, falling into a paltry 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 19 
 
 realism, which lowers art in making it descend 
 to the commonplace realities of life. Finally, 
 it is the defect of those preachers who delight 
 in continual descriptions, whether of a physical 
 or of a moral nature, to render their sermons 
 subject to their taste for imagery, and thus they 
 become mere galleries of pictures, which amuse 
 those who recognise in them the portraits of 
 others, but fail to receive instruction to them- 
 selves. He who would speak well, therefore, 
 must feel what he has to say with sufficient 
 strength to express it with warmth and vivacity ; 
 but his feeling must not attain to that vehe- 
 mence which prevents the mind from acting, 
 and paralyses the expression from the very ful- 
 ness of the feeling. This would be a sort of 
 intellectual apoplexy, taking away the gift of 
 speech, and rendering it powerless by excess 
 of life. 
 
 § 2. — Keen Intelligence. 
 
 In oratory the feelings must be resolved into 
 ideas, thoughts, images, and thence into words, 
 phrases, language, as a cloud or condensed 
 vapour is transformed and distilled into rain, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 " Eloquium Domini sicut imbres," says the 
 Psalmist. The faculty which effects this trans- 
 formation, by the operation of the mind account- 
 ing inwardly and reflectively for all that is 
 passing through it, is intelligence. It is for 
 this reason that animals possessing sensibility, 
 at times more subtle than that of man, are in- 
 capable of speaking, although, like all other 
 beings on earth, they may have a spontaneous 
 language, by which a kindred nature manifests 
 all that takes place among them. They have 
 no intelligence, and thus they have neither con- 
 sciousness nor reflection, though there exists in 
 them a principle of life, gifted with. sensibility 
 and instinct, which gives them the semblance 
 of human intelligence, but it cannot be main- 
 tained that they are reasonable; this would 
 imply liberty and moral responsibility for their 
 acts. For reason to exist, it is necessary that 
 the mind, capable of feeling and seeing, should 
 have the power of self-possession by means of 
 reflection, and to consider and analyse by 
 thought all that it has perceived and seen. 
 Thus is formed in us an intellectual world 
 peopled by our conceptions, that is to say, with 
 ideas, with notions and images, which we can 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. '21 
 
 compare, combine, and divide in a thousand 
 manners, according to their approximation or 
 their difference ; and which are finally expressed 
 in speech, — the successive development of which 
 is always the analysis of thought. 
 
 Thus every extemporised discourse presup- 
 poses a preliminary operation of thought. The 
 thought must have been w T ell conceived, held, 
 and grasped in a single idea which contains the 
 v^hole substance. Then, for the exposition of 
 this idea, it must have been divided into its 
 principal parts, or into other subordinate ideas 
 as members of it, and then again into others still 
 more minutely, until the subject is exhausted. 
 This multitude of thoughts must be w r ell ar- 
 ranged, so that at the very moment each may 
 arrive in the place marked out for it, and 
 appear in its turn in the discourse to play its 
 part and fulfil its function, the value of which 
 consists in the antecedents which prepare and 
 the consequences which develope it, as figures 
 in an arithmetical operation have value in them- 
 selves and also by their position. 
 
 Much intelligence is therefore required for 
 this preparatory labour, so useful in extem- 
 porisation ; or, in other words, for the elabora- 
 
22 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 tion of a plan, without which it would be ha- 
 zardous to venture on ground so dangerous and 
 so slippery. The first condition of speaking is 
 to know what is intended to be said, and the 
 greater the intelligence employed in the pre- 
 paration of the speech, and the more clearly it 
 is conceived, the greater is the probability of 
 presenting it forcibly to others. 
 
 That which is well conceived is clearly enun- 
 ciated. 
 
 Nevertheless, this first labour is not sufficient ; 
 it is easy enough in the silence of the closet, 
 pen in hand, to elaborate a plan to be com- 
 mitted to paper, and polished at leisure. But 
 this plan must pass from the paper to the head, 
 and be there established in divisions and subdi- 
 visions, according to the order of thoughts both 
 as a whole and in detail ; which cannot be well 
 done, and in a sure and lasting manner, unless 
 the mind keeps the ideas linked by their inti- 
 mate, and not by their superficial relations; 
 — by accidental or purely external associations, 
 as are often formed by the imagination and the 
 senses. In a word, there must reign between 
 all the parts of the plan an order of filiation or 
 generation; which is called the logical con- 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 23 
 
 nection. Thus, the logical connection is the 
 product of the intelligence which intuitively 
 perceives the connection of ideas, even the 
 most removed and the most profound; and of 
 the reason which completes the view of the 
 intelligence, by showing on the one hand con- 
 nection by a chain of intermediary ideas, and 
 on the other the order of this connection, by 
 means pf reflection, and uniting them in a 
 thought to be presented, or an end to be at- 
 tained. 
 
 Then comes a third step, which exacts even 
 a greater subtlety and greater promptitude of 
 mind. This plan which has been committed to 
 paper, which is now carefully kept in the head, 
 must be realised in words, and endowed with 
 vitality. It is like dry bones which, by the 
 breath of the orator, are of a sudden to reassume 
 their muscles, nerves, and skin, and to rise, each 
 in its place, to form a living body, beautiful to 
 behold. The speaker must successively pass 
 before his hearers all that he carries in his 
 mind — all his ideas, giving to each, in its place, 
 body, covering, colouring, and life. He should, 
 however, while speaking, Janus-like, see double ; 
 within, at his plan ; without, at the thread 
 
•24 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 of his discourse ; so as to keep within the 
 line of his thought, without disturbing his 
 arrangement, or diverging. He must, finally, 
 be able, as on a day of battle, suddenly to 
 modify what he has beforehand prepared ; fol- 
 lowing whatever may present itself, and this 
 without relinquishing his principal idea, which 
 sustains all, and without which he would become 
 the plaything of chance. He requires still 
 many things, which will be pointed out later, 
 when we shall speak of the discourse itself; 
 and all of which, like those we have just men- 
 tioned, presumes the exercise of an intense, 
 rapid, and most penetrating intelligence. 
 
 § 3.— Bight Reason or Gfood Sense. 
 
 A great deal of talent may exist without 
 common sense, and this anomaly is often met 
 with in clever persons, and those who wish 
 to appear clever. By endeavouring to study 
 objects under new phases, to say new things, or 
 things apparently new, they end by never con- 
 sidering them in a right light ; and the habit 
 of regarding them in their varied aspects, takes 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 2o 
 
 away the faculty of seeing them in their true 
 meanings and natural bearings. 
 
 Now, nothing is so fatal to extemporisation 
 as this wretched tendency of the mind to lose 
 itself in details, and to neglect the main point. 
 Without at this moment speaking of the con- 
 struction of the plan, wherein simplicity and 
 clearness are needed, good sense is singularly 
 conducive, and ought, above all things, to pre- 
 vail ; it is evident that this quality, so useful 
 in business, is more than ever so in the instanta- 
 neous formation of a discourse, and in the dan- 
 gerous task of extemporising, whether as regards 
 matter or manner. 
 
 Good sense is the instinctive action of right 
 reason, discriminating with a rapidity of feel- 
 ing, and by an intuitive perception, what is or 
 is not suitable to any circumstance. Therefore, it 
 is a sudden appreciation of a thousand bearings 
 presented to the mind, as when, amidst the 
 fervour of delivery and from the general effect 
 of the address, — things not to be estimated by 
 the plan alone, but declaring themselves on the 
 instant, — an idea on which stress should be 
 laid, — what part of it should be neglected, — 
 what should be compressed, — what should be 
 
26 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 enlarged upon, — must all be promptly seized. 
 Then a new thought which suggests itself and 
 must be introduced, — an explanation which 
 might run to too great a length and which 
 must be abridged, — an emotion or effect to be 
 excited as you pass on without losing sight of 
 the main effect, — a digression into which you 
 may enter without breaking the guiding thread 
 of this labyrinth and while at need recovering 
 it, — all have to be judged of, decided upon, 
 and executed at the very moment itself, and 
 during the unsuspended progress of the dis- 
 course. 
 
 The same applies to the form or style of the 
 speech. How many mental and literary pro- 
 prieties to be observed ! A doubtful phrase 
 coming into the mouth and to be discarded, — 
 an ambitious, pretentious expression to be 
 avoided, — a trite or commonplace term which 
 occurs to be excluded, — a sentence which is 
 opened with a certain boldness and the close 
 of which is not yet clear, — even while you 
 are finishing the development of one period, 
 your view thrown forward to the next thought, 
 and to the link which is to connect it with that 
 which you are ending ! Truly there is enough 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 27 
 
 to produce giddiness when one reflects on the 
 matter ; nevertheless, the discernment of such 
 a multiplicity of points must be instantaneous, 
 and indeed it is performed with a kind of cer- 
 tainty, and as it were of its own accord, if the 
 subject have been fitly prepared, if you be 
 thoroughly in possession of it, and if you be 
 well inclined at the moment. 
 
 But in order to walk with this direct and 
 firm step through a discourse, which arises, as 
 it were, before the orator in proportion as he 
 advances, like an enchanted forest, all teeming 
 with sorceries and apparitions, in which so many 
 different paths cross each other, — in order to 
 accept none of these brilliant phantoms save 
 those which can be serviceable to the subject, 
 dispelling like vain shadows all the rest, — in 
 order to choose exactly the road which leads 
 most directly to your destination, and to keep 
 constantly in that which you have marked out 
 for yourself beforehand, shunning all other 
 byways, however alluring they may appear, — 
 you most assuredly require that clear, decisive, 
 and certain sight which good sense gives, and 
 that kind of instinct of taste for truth which it 
 alone produces. 
 
28 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 § 4.— -Readiness of Imagination. 
 
 Imagination is like a double-faced mirror, in 
 part turned towards the outer world, and reflect- 
 ing its objects, in part towards the light of ideas, 
 tinging it with its hues, forming it into repre- 
 sentations, and disposing it into pictures, while 
 decomposing it as the prism does the solar ray. 
 It is thus that speech renders metaphysical 
 objects more approachable and comprehensible ; 
 it gives them a body, or a raiment, which makes 
 them visible and almost palpable. 
 
 Imagination is one of the most necessary of 
 the orator's faculties, and especially to him who ' 
 extemporises ; first, in order that he may be able 
 to fix his plan well in his mind— -for it is 
 chiefly by means of the imagination that it is 
 there fixed, or painted ; in the second place, 
 in order that it may be preserved there in full 
 life, well connected, and well arranged, until 
 the moment for realising it or putting it forth 
 by means of the discourse. Imagination is also 
 very useful to him in order to represent sud- 
 denly to himself what he wishes to express to 
 others when a new thought arises, and when 
 an image, germinating, as it were, in the heat 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 29 
 
 of oratorical action, like a flower opening 
 forthwith under the sun's rays, is presented 
 unexpectedly to the mind. Then the instant 
 he has a glimpse of it, after having rapidly de- 
 cided whether it suits the subject and befits its 
 place, he, while yet speaking, seizes it eagerly, 
 passes it warm beneath the active machinery 
 of the imagination, extends, refines, developes, 
 makes it ductile and glittering, and marks 
 it at once with some of the types or moulds 
 which imagination possesses. Or else, if we 
 maybe allowed another comparison, the thought 
 passes through the presses of the imagination, 
 like those sheets of paper which revolve be- 
 tween the cylinders of mechanical presses, and 
 issue forth all covered with characters and 
 images. 
 
 Now this most complicated and subtle labour 
 must be performed with the quickness of light- 
 ning, amidst the onward current of the discourse, 
 which cannot be arrested or slackened without 
 becoming languid. The imagination ought 
 then to be endowed with great quickness in 
 the formation and variation of its pictures ; but 
 it requires also great clearness, in order to pro- 
 duce at the first effort, a well-marked image, 
 
30 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 the lines and outlines defined with exactitude, 
 and the tints bright, — so that language has 
 only to reproduce it unhesitatingly, and uncon- 
 fusedly, as an object is faithfully represented 
 in a spotless glass. For you must not grope 
 for your words while speaking, under penalty 
 of braying like a donkey, which is the death of 
 a discourse. The expression of the thought 
 must be effected at the first stroke, and de- 
 cidedly — a condition which hinders many men, 
 and even men of talent, from speaking in public. 
 Their imagination is not sufficiently supple, 
 ready, or clear; it works too slowly, and is 
 left behind by the lightning of the thought, 
 which at first dazzles it, a result due either to 
 a natural deficiency, or to want of practice ; or 
 else, — and this is the most general case with 
 men of talent, — it arises from allowing the 
 mind to be too much excited and agitated in 
 the presence of the public and in the hurry of 
 the moment ; whence a certain incapacity for 
 speaking, not unlike inability to walk produced 
 by giddiness. 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 31 
 
 § 5. — Firmness and Decision of Will. 
 
 Unquestionably courage is necessary to ven- 
 ture upon speaking in public. To rise before 
 an assembly, often numerous and imposing, 
 without books or notes, carrying everything 
 in the head, and to undertake a discourse in 
 the midst of general silence, with all eyes 
 fixed on you, under the obligation of keeping 
 that audience attentive and^interestedfor three- 
 quarters of an hour, an hour, and sometimes 
 longer, is assuredly an arduous task and a 
 weighty burden. All who accept this burden, 
 or have it imposed upon them, know how 
 heavy it is, and what physical and mental 
 suffering is experienced until it is discharged. 
 Timidity or hesitation will make a person inca- 
 pable of the duty ; and such will always recoil 
 from the dangers of the situation. 
 
 When, indeed, it is remembered how little 
 is required to disconcert and even paralyse the 
 orator, — his own condition, bodily and moral, 
 which is not always favourable at a given mo- 
 ment — that of the hearers so unstable and 
 prone to vary never known, — the distractions 
 which may assail and divert him from his sub- 
 
32 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 ject, — the failure perhaps of memory, so that 
 a part of the plan, and occasionally its main 
 division, may be lost on the instant, — the inert- 
 ness of the imagination, which may play him 
 false, and bring feebly and confusedly to the 
 mind what it represents, — the escape of an 
 unlucky expression, — the not finding the pro- 
 per term, — a sentence badly begun, out of 
 which he no longer knows his way, — and finally, 
 all the influences to which he is subjected, and 
 which converge upon him from a thousand eyes, 
 — when all these things are borne in mind, it 
 is truly enough to make a person lose head or 
 heart, and the only wonder is that men can be 
 found who will face such dangers, and fling 
 themselves into the midst of them. Nor, 
 indeed, ought they to be courted save when 
 duty urges, when your mission enjoins it, or in 
 order to fulfil some obligation of conscience 
 or of position. Any other motive — such as 
 ambition, vainglory, or interest — exposes you 
 to cruel miscalculations and w T ell-merited down- 
 falls. 
 
 The strength of will needed to hold so 
 responsible a position is of course aided and 
 sustained by a suitable preparation.; and, of 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 33 
 
 all preparations, the best is, to have a clear 
 conception of the subject upon which you would 
 speak. But, besides the possession of the 
 idea, and the chain of thoughts suggested by 
 it, there is still the hazard of uttering inappro- 
 priate as well as appropriate w T orcls. Who is 
 assured beforehand, that, on such a day, ex- 
 pressions will not prove rebellious to him, that 
 the right phrase will come in the place ap- 
 pointed, and that language (like a sword) will 
 not turn its edge ? It is in the details of diction 
 at the moment, or the instantaneous composition 
 of the discourse, that great decision is required 
 to select words as they fly past, to control them 
 immediately, and, amidst many unsuitable, to 
 allow none but what are suitable to drop from 
 the lips. Moreover, a certain boldness is re- 
 quired, — and who knows whether it will 
 always be a successful boldness ? — to enter 
 upon the development of any sudden idea, 
 without knowing whither it will lead you, — to 
 obey some oratorical inspiration which may 
 carry you far away from the subject, and, finally, 
 to jump, as it w r ere, into a sentence, the issue of 
 which you cannot foresee, particularly in French, 
 which has only one possible class of termi- 
 
34 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 nations to its periods, is surely a dangerous ex- 
 periment. Nevertheless, when once you have 
 begun, you must rigidly beware of retreating by 
 any break in the thought or in the sentence. 
 You must go on daringly to the end, even 
 though you take refuge in some unauthorised 
 turn of expression or some incorrectness of 
 language. Timid minds are frightened from 
 adopting these extreme resources ; for which 
 reason we affirm that to expose oneself to this 
 hazard, — and whoever extemporises does so, — 
 decision and even a little rashness of will are 
 necessary, both beforehand and during the pro- 
 cess, in order that we may close our subject 
 without a fall. 
 
 § 6. — Expansiveness of Character. 
 
 There are two sorts of expansiveness, that of 
 the mind and that of the heart. 
 
 The mind seeks after truth, which is its 
 natural object. 
 
 Now truth is like light, or rather, it is the 
 light of the intelligence ; and this is why it is 
 diffusive by its very nature, and spontaneously 
 enters wherever an avenue is opened to it. 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 35 
 
 When, therefore, we perceive, or think that we 
 perceive a truth, the mind rejoices in, and 
 feeds upon it, because it is its natural ali- 
 ment ; in assimilating and appropriating it, the 
 mind partakes of its expansive force, and expe- 
 riences the desire of announcing to others what 
 it knows itself, and of making them see what it 
 sees. It is its happiness to become a torch 
 to this light, and to help in diffusing it. It 
 sometimes even glories in the joy it feels ; the 
 pride also of enlightening our fellows, and so 
 of ruling them to a certain extent, is part of the 
 feeling. A keen and intelligent mind, which 
 seeks truth, seizes it quickly and conceives it 
 clearly, is more eager than another to commu- 
 nicate what it knows ; and if, along with this, 
 such a mind loves glory, — and who loves it not, 
 at least in youth ? — it will be impelled the more 
 towards public speaking, and be the more 
 capable of exercising the power of eloquence. 
 
 But there is, besides, a certain disposition of 
 character and heart which contributes much 
 to the same result, as is seen in women and 
 children, who speak willingly and with great 
 ease, on account of their more impressionable 
 sensibility, the greater delicacy of their organs, 
 
 d 2 
 
36 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 and their extreme mobility. Something of this 
 is required in the extemporiser. A self-centred 
 person, who reflects a great deal and meditates 
 long before he can perceive a truth or seize an 
 analogy, and who either cannot or will not 
 manifest what he feels or thinks, until he has 
 exactly shaped the expression of it, is not fitted 
 for extemporaneous speaking. A melancholy, 
 morose, misanthropic person, who shuns society, 
 dreads the intercourse of men, and delights in 
 solitary musing, will have a difficulty in speaking 
 in public ; he has not the taste for it, and his 
 nature is against it. What is needed for this 
 art, with a quick mind, is an open, confiding, 
 and cheerful character, which loves men and 
 takes pleasure in joining itself to others. Mis- 
 trust shuts the heart, the mind, and the mouth. 
 This expansiveness of character, which is 
 favourable to extemporaneous speaking, has, 
 however, its disadvantages. It sometimes gives 
 to the mind an unsettled levity, and too much 
 recklessness, something venturesome or super- 
 ficial to the style. But these disadvantages 
 may be lessened or neutralised by a serious 
 preparation, by a well-considered and well- 
 defined plan, which will sustain and direct the 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 37 
 
 exuberance of language, and remove by pre- 
 vious reflection the chances of digressiveness 
 and inconsequence. 
 
 § 7. — Instinctive or Natural Grift of Speaking. 
 
 Art may develope, and perfect the talent of 
 a speaker, but cannot produce it. The exer- 
 cises of grammar and of rhetoric will teach 
 a person how to speak correctly and elegantly ; 
 but nothing can teach him to be eloquent, or give 
 that eloquence which comes from the heart, and 
 goes to the heart. All the precepts and arti- 
 fices on earth can but form the appearances or 
 semblance of it. Now this true and natural 
 eloquence which moves, persuades, and tran- 
 sports, consists of a soul and a body, like man, 
 whose image, glory, and word it is. 
 
 The soul of eloquence is the centre of the 
 human soul itself, which, enlightened by the 
 impression, flashes or bursts forth to manifest, 
 by some sign or other, what it feels or sees. 
 This it is which gives movement and life to a 
 discourse ; it is like a kindled torch, or a deli- 
 cately vibrating nerve. 
 
 The body of eloquence is the language 
 
38 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 which it requires in order to speak, and which 
 must harmoniously clothe what it thinks or 
 feels, as a fine shape harmonises with the spirit 
 which it contains. The material part of lan- 
 guage is learnt instinctively, and practice makes 
 us feel, and seize its delicacies and shades. 
 The understanding then, which sees rightly 
 and conceives clearly, and the heart which feels 
 keenly, find naturally, and without effort, the 
 words, and the arrangements of words, most 
 analogous to what is to be expressed. Hence 
 the innate talent of eloquence, which results 
 alike from certain intellectual and moral apti- 
 tudes, and from the physical constitution, espe- 
 cially from that of the senses and of the organs 
 of the voice. 
 
 There are men organised to speak well, as 
 there are birds organised to sing well, bees to 
 make honey, and beavers to build. 
 
 Doubtless, all men are capable of speaking, 
 since they are rational beings, and the exercise 
 of reason is impossible, without speech ; beyond 
 all doubt, moreover, any man may become 
 momentarily eloquent, being suddenly illumi- 
 nated by an idea, by some passing inspiration, 
 or the vehement impulse of a feeling ; bursts 
 
NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 39 
 
 and cries of passion are often a high kind of 
 eloquence. But it is the effect of an instant, 
 which passes away with the unusual circum- 
 stances, which have produced it; during the 
 rest of their lives these same persons may speak 
 very ill, and be incapable of pronouncing a 
 sentence in public. They have not the gift of 
 words, and those alone who are endowed with 
 it by nature, can derive advantage from the ad- 
 vice we offer, in order to turn this precious talent 
 to account in the service of truth and justice. 
 
 It is with eloquence as with all art ; to suc- 
 ceed in it, you must be made for it, or called to 
 it, by a mysterious tendency or inexplicable 
 attraction, which influences the whole being, 
 which ultimately turns to its object, as the mag- 
 netic needle to the north. At the root of all 
 arts, so various in their expression, there is 
 something in common to them all — the life of 
 the soul, the life of the mind, which feels the 
 want of diffusing, manifesting, and multiplying 
 itself; each individual also has something 
 peculiar and original, by which he is impelled, 
 on account of his special organisation, or con- 
 stitution of mind and body, to reproduce his 
 mental life in such or such a way, by such or 
 
40 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 
 
 such means, or in such or such a material form. 
 Hence the boundless diversity of the arts and 
 of their productions. Speech is certainly the 
 noblest and most powerful of the arts; first, 
 because by its nature, it is nearest to the intel- 
 ligence whose ideas it alone perfectly expresses ; 
 secondly, in consequence of the higher purity, 
 the more exquisite delicacy of its means of 
 expression, being the least gross of any, hold- 
 ing on to earth by nothing save a light breath ; 
 lastly, on account of its powerful and direct 
 action over the mind, making it conceive things, 
 comprehend thought, and grasp the truth. 
 
 In order, then, to exercise with success the 
 art of speaking, — or to speak eloquently, — it 
 is necessary to have a natural talent, which is 
 a gift of Heaven, and which all science with 
 its precepts, and all earth's teaching with its 
 exercises, are unable to supply. 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 41 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MENTAL APTITUDES FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING, 
 CAPABLE OF BEING ACQUIRED, OR FORMED 
 BY STUDY. 
 
 The dispositions which can be acquired, or 
 formed by study, come next after the natural 
 aptitudes of the mind, and these will be the 
 subject of this chapter. 
 
 We give the name of acquired dispositions to 
 certain aptitudes of mind, the germ of which is 
 no doubt supplied by nature, but which may be 
 called forth and developed in a remarkable 
 manner by instruction, practice, and habit, 
 whereas purely natural talent, although it also 
 may be perfected by art, resembles, neverthe- 
 less, to a certain extent, that instinct which 
 attains its object at the first effort. It may 
 even happen that a remarkable, acquired ability, 
 such, for instance, as the art of speaking rheto- 
 rically, has but slight natural root, that is, but 
 little real talent, producing nothing except by 
 
42 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 dint of art, practice, and toil ; if the natural 
 root be absent, however beautiful the products 
 may at first appear, people soon feel their arti- 
 ficial character and want of life. 
 
 The acquired mental aptitudes are, the art or 
 method of thinking, and the art or method of speak- 
 ing. Bnt before considering them, we will say 
 a few words about the orator's fund or store of 
 knowledge, which must not be confounded 
 with acquired qualities. 
 
 § 1. — Acquisitions or Fund needful to the Orator. 
 
 The orator's capital is that sum of science or 
 knowledge which is necessary to him in order 
 to speak pertinently upon any subject what- 
 ever ; and science or knowledge are not extem- 
 porised. Although knowledge does not give 
 the talent for speaking, still he who knows w T ell 
 what he has to say, has many chances of saying 
 it w ? ell, especially if he have a clear and distinct 
 conception of it. 
 
 " What you conceive aright, you express clearly; 
 And the words to say it in, come easily." 
 
 It is an excellent preparation, then, for the 
 art of speaking to study perseveringly, — not 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 43 
 
 merely the matter about which you have to 
 discourse — a thing always done before speaking 
 in public, unless a person be presumptuous and 
 demented, — but generally all those subjects 
 which form part of a liberal education, and 
 which constitute the usual instruction of men 
 intended for intellectual and moral professions. 
 These were what were formerly termed clas- 
 sical studies, and they included grammar, rhe 
 toric, logic, a certain portion of literature, his- 
 tory, mathematical and physical science, and 
 religious knowledge. These " classical studies" 
 were perfected and completed, by the superior 
 courses of the universities. 
 
 To have passed through a good educational 
 career, or to have been distinguished at school, 
 as it is commonly expressed, is an immense 
 advantage ; for it is in childhood and youth 
 that the greatest number of things are learnt, 
 and the knowledge acquired at that age, is 
 most durable. It is more than this, it is inef- 
 faceable, and constitutes an indestructible 
 fund, a sort of mental ground-work upon 
 which is raised all other instruction and 
 education ; and this fund, according to the 
 manner in which it is placed in the mind, 
 
44 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 determines the solidity and dimensions of each 
 person's intellectual and moral existence. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate accurately the 
 influence of the first instruction, which a man 
 receives : that influence depends upon the virtue 
 of the words w T hich instruct, and on the way 
 they are received. It is a sort of fertilisation, 
 the fruits of which are sometimes slow in 
 ripening, and come forth late. As the life- 
 giving action of instruction cannot be exercised 
 but through the medium of words, the signs of 
 language, so the form often overlies the spirit, 
 and many retain scarcely more than the letter 
 or the words, which they reproduce from 
 memory with great facility. The larger part of 
 infantine successes and collegiate glories are 
 limited to this. Others, on the contrary, deeply 
 smitten with the spirit of what is said, early 
 conceive ideas of a fertile kind, destined to 
 become the parent ideas of their future thoughts. 
 The more impressed and absorbed the mind is 
 inwardly, the less vividly and the less bril- 
 liantly will it manifest itself outwardly. It 
 carries within it ideas too great for what con- 
 tains them, and of which it cannot yet render 
 to itself an account ; and it is only afterwards, 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 45 
 
 when it has capacity and time for reflection, 
 that it knows how to recognise, turn to advan- 
 tage, and bring forth to the light, the treasures 
 buried within. 
 
 Hence two kinds of intellectual wealth 
 dependent upon instruction, and derived 
 from the manner in which it has been given 
 and received. 
 
 1. A collection of words, expressions, images, 
 facts, superficial thoughts, common places, — 
 things commonly received and already dis- 
 cussed ; whatever, in a word, strikes the senses, 
 excites the imagination, and easily impresses 
 itself upon the memory. It is not to be denied 
 that this intellectual store, however light, 
 accumulated during many years, and arranged 
 with a certain degree of order, may be of some 
 service towards speaking with facility on some 
 occasions, but like the rhetorician ; the speaker 
 composes on the instant a sort of discourse or 
 harangue more or less elegant, wherein there 
 may be certain happy expressions but few 
 ideas, and which may yet afford a transient 
 pleasure to the listener, but without moving or 
 instructing him. In many circumstances, dis- 
 courses of this class suffice. It is a part played, 
 
46 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 a portion of the programme performed, and it 
 is assuredly an advantage not to be despised 
 to acquit oneself of it with honour, and without 
 discredit. 
 
 2. But the real fund is in ideas, not in 
 phrases, in the succession or connection of 
 the thoughts, and not in a series of facts or 
 images. He who has laid in a store of this 
 kind is not so ready at a speech, because 
 there is within him a veritable thought, with 
 which his spirit strives in order to master, 
 possess, and manifest it, so soon as he shall 
 have thoroughly entered into it; such a man 
 speaks not merely from memory or imagination, 
 but with a labour of the understanding, and 
 thus he produces something with life in it, 
 and capable of inspiring life — and this is just 
 what distinguishes the orator from the rheto- 
 rician. 
 
 The latter may charm by his language, but 
 he imparts no life ; and thus nothing is produced 
 in the mind of the hearer. It is pleasant 
 music which delights the ear for a moment, 
 and leaves nothing behind it. Vox et prceterea 
 nihil. 
 
 The former raises up a new set of objects in 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 47 
 
 the hearer's mind, producing therein feelings, 
 affections, emotions, ideas ; he renews it, trans- 
 forms it, and turns it into a likeness of him- 
 self; and as the Almighty created all things by 
 His word, so the true orator animates those 
 who understand him, and makes them live with 
 his own intellectual life. But in this, as in all 
 things, it is only by a Divine virtue that life 
 is transmitted. The sacred fire which warms 
 the bosom of the orator is inspiration from 
 on high: pectus est quod clisertum facit. Without 
 this life-giving fire, the finest phrases that 
 can be put together are but sounding brass and 
 tinkling cymbals. 
 
 The fund to be amassed, therefore, by those 
 who intend to speak in public, is a treasury of 
 ideas, thoughts, and principles of knowledge, 
 strongly conceived, firmly linked together, 
 carefully wrought out, in such a way that, 
 throughout all this diversity of study, the mind, 
 so far as may be, shall admit nothing save what 
 it thoroughly comprehends, or at least has 
 made its own to a certain extent, by medita- 
 tion. Thus, knowledge becomes strangely 
 subservient to the understanding; and memory 
 lends its stores to enlarge the mind. It is 
 
48 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 the essence of things reduced to their simplest 
 expression, and comprising all their concen- 
 trated virtue. It is the drop of oil extracted 
 from thousands of roses, and fraught with their 
 accumulated odours; the healing power of a 
 hundred-weight of bark in a few grains of 
 quinine. In a word, it is the idea in its intel- 
 lectuality, and metaphysical purity, compared 
 to the multiplicity of facts and images from 
 which it has been extracted, and of which it is 
 the law. This point is not well enough under- 
 stood in our day, when material things are 
 made paramount,- ^and the spirit is postponed 
 to the letter, — to such a degree indeed, that 
 even in instruction, and in spiritual or men- 
 tal things, quantity is considered more than 
 quality. 
 
 Under the specious pretext of preparing 
 men betimes for their future profession in 
 society, and of making them what are called 
 special men, their attention is directed from the 
 tenderest age to phenomena, which occupy the 
 senses and the imagination without exciting 
 thought ; and above all, without recalling the 
 mind home to itself, in order to teach it self- 
 knowledge, self-direction, and self-possession, 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 49 
 
 — worth, assuredly, the knowledge or possession 
 of everything else. Instruction is materialised 
 to the utmost ; and in the same degree educa- 
 tion is sensualised. It is driven headlong into 
 that path which is the acknowledged reproach 
 of contemporary art, — not nature and truth, 
 but naturalism and realism. People care no 
 longer for any but positive, or, as it is styled, 
 professional instruction, — that is, such as may 
 directly serve to earn the bread of this world. 
 Men are trained for the one end of turning 
 this earth to account, and securing in it a com- 
 fortable position. It is forgotten that the true 
 man, like thought, is an idea, more than the 
 body or the letter, and that the body and the 
 letter have no value except from the idea 
 which animates him, and which he should 
 express. The ideal is dreaded now-a-days, or 
 rather it is not understood, it is no longer 
 appreciated, because our views are absorbed 
 by the real, and the pleasures of the body are 
 more sought after, than those of the mind. 
 
 For this reason the natural and physical 
 sciences, which make matter their study, with 
 mathematics as their handmaidens, because 
 they measure the finite, are so much honoured 
 
 E 
 
50 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 in our day. In these pursuits everything is 
 positive, — matter, form, letter, number, weight, 
 and measure ; and as the end of these studies 
 is the amelioration, or at least the embellish- 
 ment of earthly life, the multitude rushes 
 readily in this direction, and the mind becomes 
 the servant, or rather the slave of the body. 
 
 At the present moment, every science which 
 is not directly or indirectly subservient to 
 some material want or enjoyment, — that is to 
 say, to something positive, — falls into contempt 
 and opprobrium, and is abandoned. Philo- 
 sophy furnishes a melancholy example of this 
 fact. True, it has well deserved this fate by 
 its excess and extravagance in recent times ; 
 and the same will invariably befall it, whenever 
 it affects independence, and refuses fealty to 
 Divine authority. It is the same w r ith litera- 
 ture, the fine arts, and whatever promotes the 
 civilisation of men and the triumph of the 
 Divine principle, made after the image of God, 
 over the brute formed after the image of the 
 world. All these noble objects are abandoned 
 as useless, or of little importance to the wants 
 and happiness of actual society. Religion has 
 alone survived, thanks to her unchangeable 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 51 
 
 teaching and her Divine origin, which place 
 her above human institutions and the vicissi- 
 tudes of earth. But for the Rock of the Divine 
 Word, but for the Divine foundation-stone, on 
 which she is built, she also, under pretence of 
 rendering her more useful or more positive, 
 more suited to the wants and lights of the age, 
 would have been lowered and materialised, 
 and the last link which binds humanity to 
 heaven, would have been broken, the spiritual 
 man would have been wholly interred, in the 
 slough of this world, and buried in sensuality. 
 Let but one glance be given at what has been 
 the fate of Religion and its Divine authority, 
 in some instances, and a notion will be gained 
 of the degradation from which Religion still 
 preserves the human race. She is the last 
 refuge of freedom and dignity of mind against 
 material force. Everywhere else, religious in- 
 struction, without faith and without fixed rule, 
 is at the mercy of human science, and therefore 
 of the world's power, which makes that science 
 the instrument of its own predominance. 
 
 I crave forgiveness for this digression which 
 has escaped from a heart deeply saddened at 
 the lowering of our system of studies and 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 the decline of our education, which will lead 
 to a new species of barbarism in this age of 
 ours. 
 
 I return to my subject, that is, to the fund 
 which he who wishes to speak in public should 
 form within himself; and I say to the young 
 w 7 ho may read me, — if, indeed, they will read 
 me — I say, at least to those who may feel 
 themselves impelled to the noble exercise of 
 eloquence : " My young friends, before speak- 
 ing, endeavour to know what you have to say, 
 and for this, study— study well. Obtain by 
 perseverance an acquaintance first with all that 
 relates to classical learning; and then let each 
 labour ardently in the department to which his 
 vocation urges him. Whatever you study, do so 
 solidly and conscientiously. Bend your w 7 hole 
 mind to the object you seek to know, and let 
 it not go till you have entered into, mastered, 
 and grasped it, so as to comprehend it, to con- 
 ceive it within yourselves, to possess the full 
 idea of it, and to be able to give an account 
 of it to yourselves and others. There is but 
 one time for acquirement, it is the time of 
 youth. Bees gather in the flower-season only 
 they afterwards live upon their wax and honey. 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 53 
 
 In youth all the faculties are wondrously 
 adapted to receive and retain, and the mind 
 eagerly welcomes what comes from without. 
 It is now that supplies should be laid in, the 
 harvest gathered, and stored in the garner. 
 Later comes the threshing of the sheaves, and 
 the severing of the grain from the straw, — 
 the grinding, the formation of pure flour, the 
 kneading of it, and the making of bread. But 
 there would be neither bread, nor flour, nor 
 grain, if there had been no reaping, — and what 
 can be reaped if the seed has not been cast, nor 
 the ground opened and prepared ? Sow, then, 
 the field of your mind as much as possible, till 
 it, and moisten it with your sweat, that the good 
 seed may bear fruit, and use the sickle cou- 
 rageously in the heat of the day, in order to fill 
 the storehouse of your understanding. Then 
 when you shall have to feed a famishing people 
 with the bread of eloquence, you will have in 
 hand rich ears to beat, and generous grain 
 yielding pure substance ; from this substance, 
 kneaded in your mind with a little leaven 
 from on high, imparting to it a Divine fer- 
 mentation, you may form intellectual bread 
 full of flavour and solidity, which will give 
 
54 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 your audience the nourishment of mind and 
 soul, even as bread gives aliment to the body." 
 
 § 2. — To know how to speak, you must first "know 
 how to think. 
 
 We now come to the acquired qualities pro- 
 perly so called, that is, to the art of thinking, 
 and the method of expressing what is thought, 
 which may be learnt by study and formed by 
 well-directed practice. 
 
 Although we think by nature, yet there is 
 an art of thinking, which teaches us to do with 
 greater ease and certainty what our nature, as 
 rational beings, leads us to do spontaneously. 
 In all that man voluntarily does, liberty has its 
 own share ; and liberty, which nowhere exists 
 without intelligence, is ever the source of pro- 
 gress and perfection. Man learns how to think 
 as he learns how to speak, read, write, and 
 sing, to move his body gracefully, and to use all 
 the powers of mind and body. 
 
 Logic teaches the art of thinking. The 
 orator therefore must be a good logician ; not 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 55 
 
 theoretically, but practically. It is not his 
 business to know how to declaim about the 
 origin and formation of ideas, nor about the 
 four operations of thought. It is not the 
 method of teaching, but the use of logic which 
 he requires, — and a prompt and dexterous 
 familiarity with it he will not acquire, except 
 by long and repeated exercises, under the 
 guidance of an experienced thinker, an artist 
 of thought, who will teach him how to do with 
 ease, what he knows how to do already of him- 
 self imperfectly. 
 
 We, in this point of view and to a certain 
 degree, regret the old syllogistic method of the 
 schools; for we are convinced that, properly 
 applied and seriously directed, it gives quick- 
 ness, subtlety, clearness, and something sure 
 and firm to the mind, rarely found in the 
 thinkers of the present day. The fault for- 
 merly, perhaps, was in the excess of the dia- 
 lectical turn, by which the style became spoilt 
 by dryness, heaviness, and an appearance of 
 pedantry. Still, men knew how to state a 
 question, and how to treat it : they knew at 
 which end to begin it, in order to develope and 
 solve it; and the line of the argument, dis- 
 
56 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 tinctly marked out, led straight to the object 
 and to its conclusion. The fault now-a-days 
 is in an absence or deficiency of method. 
 People remain a long time before their subject, 
 without knowing how to begin it, even though 
 they rightly understand its very terms. This 
 superinduces interminable preparations, desul- 
 tory introductions, a confused exposition, a 
 disorderly development, and finally no conclu- 
 sion, or at least nothing decisive. There are 
 many men in our day who know how to think, 
 and develope a subject in such a way as to 
 instruct and interest those who listen to them. 
 A horror is everywhere felt for rules or for 
 what imposes constraint, and, as nearly all the 
 barriers have been removed which supported 
 and protected human activity, by obliging it 
 to exert itself within fixed lines, liberty has 
 become disorder, men swerve from the track, 
 in order to walk at their ease ; and, far from 
 gaining by it, they lose great part of their time 
 and strength in seeking a path which would 
 have been shown them from the outset had 
 they chosen to accept of discipline, and to 
 allow themselves to be guided. In order to 
 think in their own fashion, or to be original, 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 57 
 
 they think at random, just as ideas happen to 
 come ; and the upshot, for the most part, is 
 vagueness, oddity and confusion. This is the 
 era of the vague and the almost. Everybody 
 wants to speak of everything, as everybody 
 wants to interfere in everything ; and the result 
 is that amidst this flood of thoughts, this over- 
 flow of divergent or irreconcilable words and 
 actions, the minds of men, tossed to and fro, 
 float uncertain, without a notion where they are 
 going just as the wind blows or the current 
 drive 5. 
 
 I would have, then, persons who are intended 
 for public speaking, follow a course of logic, 
 rather practical than theoretic, in which the 
 mind should be vigorously trained to the divi- 
 sion and combination of ideas upon interesting 
 and instructive topics. These exercises should 
 be written or oral. Sometimes it should be a 
 dissertation on a point of literature, morals, 
 or history; and a habit should be acquired 
 of composing with order and method, by point- 
 ing out, in proportion as the student proceeded, 
 the several parts of the discourse, the steps of 
 the development, and means of proof — in a 
 word, whatever serves to treat a subject suitably. 
 
58 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 Sometimes it should be a discussion between 
 several debaters, with the whole apparatus and 
 strict rules of a dialectic argument, under the 
 master's direction ; the disputants should not 
 be allowed to proceed or conclude without re- 
 ducing their thoughts to the forms of syllogistic 
 reasoning, — a process which entails some 
 lengthiness, and even heaviness upon the dis- 
 course, but it gives greater clearness, order, and 
 certainty. At other times, the debate might be 
 extemporaneous, and then, in the unforeseen 
 character of the discussion and in all the 
 sparks of intelligence which it strikes forth, 
 will be seen the minds which are distinguished, 
 the minds that know how to take possession 
 of an idea at once, enter into it, divide, and 
 expound it. There should, for every position 
 or thesis, be the counter-position or antithesis, 
 and some one to maintain it; for in every 
 subject there are reasons for and against. 
 Thus would the student learn to look at things 
 in various lights, and not to allow himself to 
 be absorbed by one point of view, or by a pre- 
 conceived opinion. But these gymnastics of 
 thinking ought to be led by an intelligent mas- 
 ter, who suffers not himself to be swayed by 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 59 
 
 forms or enslaved by routine. Real thinking 
 must be effected under all these forms of dis- 
 putation and argument, but the letter must not 
 kill the spirit, as frequently was the case in the 
 schools of antiquity. For then it would no 
 longer be anything but an affair of memory, 
 and the life of intelligence would die away. I 
 am convinced, — -and I have made the experi- 
 ment for a length of years in the Faculty of 
 Strasbourg, where I had established these ex- 
 ercises, which proved exceedingly useful, — I 
 am convinced that young men who thus occu- 
 pied themselves during a year or two in turn- 
 ing over and handling a variety of questions, 
 in stirring up a multiplicity of ideas, and who 
 should, with a view to this, write and speak a 
 great deal, always with order, with method, 
 and under good guidance, would become able 
 thinkers ; and, if endowed with high intelli- 
 gence, would become men mighty in word or 
 in deed, or in both together, according to their 
 capacity, character, and nature. 
 
60 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 § 3. — That Cfood Speaking may be learnt, and 
 how. 
 
 However, it is not enough to think metho- 
 dically, in order to speak well, although this be 
 a great step towards it ; to express or say what 
 is thought is also necessary; in other words, 
 form must be added to the substance. 
 
 We must learn then how to speak as well as 
 how to think well. 
 
 Here again, practice surpasses theory, and 
 daily exercise is worth more than precepts. 
 Rhetoric teaches the art of language; that 
 is, of speaking or writing elegantly, while 
 grammar shows how to do so with correctness. 
 It is clear that before anything else, the rules 
 of language must be known and observed ; 
 but correctness gives neither elegance nor 
 grace, which are the most requisite qualities of 
 the orator. How are they then to be acquired ? 
 
 In the first place there is what cannot be 
 acquired — a natural fund, which nature alone 
 can give. Women are remarkable for it. The 
 gracefulness with which nature has endowed 
 them, diffuses itself generally into their lan- 
 guage ; and some speak, and even write, admi- 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 61 
 
 rably, without any study ; under the sole in- 
 spiration of feeling or passion. Credit, indeed, 
 must be given to the medium in which they 
 are placed, and the society in which they live, 
 constituting a moral atmosphere in which their 
 very impressionable and open minds — unless 
 wilfully closed— absorb all influences with 
 avidity, and receive a kind of spontaneous culture 
 and education. As plants, which bear in their 
 germs the hidden treasures of the most brilliant 
 and odoriferous flowers, inhale from the ground 
 where they are fixed, and the air which encom- 
 passes them, the coarsest juices and the subtlest 
 fluids, which they marvellously transform by 
 assimilation ; so these delicate souls absorb into 
 themselves all thev come into contact with, all 
 that impresses or nourishes them ; which they 
 manifest by a soft radiation, by a graceful 
 efflorescence in their movements, actions, words, 
 and whatever emanates from their persons. 
 
 Women naturally speak better than men. 
 They express themselves more easily, more 
 vividly ; with more arch simplicity, because 
 they feel more rapidly and more delicately. 
 Hence the loquacity with which they are re- 
 proached, and which is an effect of their 
 
62 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 constitution and temperament. Hence there 
 are so many women who write in an admi- 
 rable and remarkable manner, although they 
 have studied neither rhetoric nor logic, and 
 have not even a perfect knowledge of grammar. 
 They write as they speak ; they speak pretty 
 much as the birds sing, — and their language 
 has the same charm. Add to this the sweetness 
 of their organ, the flexibility of their voice, the 
 variety of their intonations, according to the 
 feeling which animates them; the mobility of 
 their physiognomy, which greatly increases 
 the effect of words, the picturesqueness of their 
 gestures, and in short the gracefulness of their 
 whole exterior : thus, although not destined for 
 orators by their sex or social position, they 
 have all the power of the orator, and all his 
 success, in their sphere, and in the circle of 
 their activity. For none better know how to 
 touch, persuade, and influence, which, I think, 
 is the end and the perfection of eloquence. 
 
 Men, then, who wish to acquire the art of 
 speaking, must learn by study what most 
 women do naturally; and in this respect those 
 whose temperament most approaches the femi- 
 nine, in greater sensibility, and livelier im- 
 
, ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 63 
 
 pressionableness, will have less difficulty than 
 others, and will succeed better. 
 
 However, as the man who speaks in public 
 has to express loftier ideas, general notions, and 
 more extensive combinations, which imply 
 depth, — penetration of mind, and reflective 
 power, — qualities very scarce among women, 
 — he will never be able to expound these sub- 
 jects, the result of abstraction and meditation, 
 with grace of feeling and easiness of language 
 spontaneously, and by nature. Here art must 
 supply what nature refuses ; by diligent labour, 
 by exercises multiplied without end, the diction 
 must be rendered pliable, the speech disci- 
 plined, and broken in, that it may become an 
 amenable instrument which, obedient to the 
 least touch of the will, and the lightest chal- 
 lenge of thought, furnishes instantly a copious 
 style, seeming to flow spontaneously, the 
 result nevertheless of the subtlest art ; like 
 fountains which, with great cost and magnifi- 
 cence, carry the waters of our rivers into our 
 squares, yet appear to pour forth naturally. 
 Thus the words of the orator, without seeming 
 to engage his attention, by dint of toil and of 
 art, and this even on the most abstract subjects, 
 
64 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. , 
 
 ought to attain a limpid and an easy flow, in 
 order to bring to light the ideas of his mind, 
 the images of his fancy, and the emotions of 
 his heart. 
 
 Such is the talent to be acquired ! Fit 
 fabricando faber, says the adage; and it is the 
 same with the journeyman of words, and the 
 forger of eloquence. The iron must be often 
 beaten, especially while it is hot, to give it 
 shape ; so must we continually hammer lan- 
 guage to become masters of it, and to fashion 
 it, if we would become capable of speaking in 
 public. It is not enough to learn the rules of 
 style, the tropes and figures of rhetoric ; the 
 use and proper application of them must be 
 known ; and this cannot be learnt except by 
 much speaking and much writing under the 
 direction of an able master, who knows how to 
 write and speak himself; for in this both pre- 
 cept and example are necessary, and example 
 is better than precept. 
 
 He who has a capacity for public speaking 
 will learn it best by listening to those who 
 know how to speak well, and he will make 
 more progress by striving to imitate them, than 
 by all their instructions : as the young birds, 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 65 
 
 on their first attempts to quit the parent nest, 
 try at first their unskilful flight in the track of 
 their parents, guided and sustained by their 
 wings, and venture not except with eyes fixed 
 on them, so a youth who is learning how to 
 become a writer, follows his master with confi- 
 dence w r hile imitating him, and in his first 
 essays cleaves timidly at his heels, daring in 
 the beginning to go only where he is led, but 
 every day tries to proceed a little farther, 
 drawn on, and, as it were, carried by his guide. 
 It is a great blessing to have an able man for 
 a master. It is w r orth more than all books ; 
 for it is a living book, imparting life at the 
 same moment as instruction. It is one torch 
 kindling another. Then an inestimable advan- 
 tage is gained, for, to the authority of the 
 master, which youth is always more or less 
 prone to dispute, is added the authority of 
 talent which invariably prevails. He gladly 
 receives the advice and guidance of the man 
 whose superiority he recognises. This much 
 is needed to quell the pride of youth, and 
 cast down, or at least abate, its presumption 
 and self-confidence. It willingly listens to 
 
 F 
 
66 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 the master it admires, and feels happy in his 
 society. 
 
 I had this happiness, and I have always 
 been deeply grateful to the Almighty who pro- 
 cured it for me, and to the illustrious man who 
 was the instrument of His beneficence. For 
 nearly four years, at the Lyceum of Charle- 
 magne and the Ecole Normale, I profited daily 
 by the lessons and example of Monsieur Ville- 
 main, then almost as young as his pupils ; and, 
 if I know anything of the art of speaking and 
 writing, I say it before the world, to him, after 
 God, I owe it. 
 
 § 4. — That to speak well in public, one must first 
 know how to write. 
 
 You will never be capable of speaking pro- 
 perly in public, unless you acquire such mas 
 tery of your own thought as to be able to 
 decompose it into its parts, to analyse it into 
 its elements, and then, at need, to recompose, 
 regather, and concentrate it again by a synthe- 
 tical process. Now this analysis of the idea, 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 67 
 
 which displays it, as it were, before the eyes of 
 the mind, is well executed only by writing. 
 The pen is the scalpel which dissects the 
 thoughts, and never, except when you write 
 down what you behold internally, can you 
 succeed in clearly discerning all that is con- 
 tained in a conception, or in obtaining its well- 
 marked scope. You then understand your- 
 self, and make others understand you. 
 
 You should therefore begin by learning to 
 write, in order to give yourself a just view of 
 your own thoughts, before you venture yourself 
 to speak. They who have not learned this 
 first, speak in general badly and with difficulty ; 
 unless, indeed, they have that fatal facility, a 
 thousand times worse than hesitation or than 
 silence, which drowns thought in floods of 
 words, or in a torrent of copiousness, sweeping 
 away good earth, and leaving behind sand and 
 stones alone. Heaven keep us from those 
 interminable talkers, such as are often to be 
 found in southern countries, who deluge you, 
 relatively to anything and to nothing, with a 
 shower of dissertation and a downpouring of 
 their eloquence! During nine tenths of the 
 time, there is not one rational thought in the 
 
 f 2 
 
68 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 whole of this twaddle, carrying along in its 
 course every kind of rubbish and platitude. 
 The class of persons who produce a speech 
 so easily, and who are ready at the shortest 
 moment to extemporise a speech, a dissertation, 
 or a homily, know not how to compose a 
 tolerable sentence ; and I repeat that, with such 
 exceptions as defy all rule, he who has not 
 learnt how to write will never know how to 
 speak. 
 
 To learn to write, one must write a great 
 deal in imitation of those who know how, and 
 under their guidance, just as one learns to 
 draw or paint from good models, and by means 
 of wise instruction. It is a school process, or 
 a workshop process, if the phrase be preferred, 
 and to a great extent mechanical and literal, 
 but indispensable to, the student of letters. 
 Thus the musician must wrest his fingers to 
 pliancy, in order to execute easily and instan- 
 taneously all the movements necessary for the 
 quick production of sounds, depending on the 
 structure of his instrument. Thus, likewise, 
 the singer must become master of all the move- 
 ments of his throat, and must long and unre- 
 mittingly practise vocal exercises, until the will 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND* 69 
 
 experiences no difficulty in determining those 
 contractions and expansions of the windpipe 
 which modify and inflect the voice in every 
 degree and fraction of its scale. 
 
 In the same manner, the future orator must, 
 by long study and repeated compositions of a 
 finished kind, handle and turn all expressions 
 of language, various constructions of sentences, 
 and endless combinations of words, until they 
 have become supple and well-trained instru- 
 ments of the mind, giving him no longer any 
 trouble while actually speaking, and accommo- 
 dating themselves unresistingly to the slightest 
 guidance of his thought. 
 
 With inverted languages, in which the sen- 
 tence may assume several arrangements, this is 
 more easy, for you have more than one way to 
 express the same thought ; and thus there are 
 more chances of expressing yourself, if not 
 better, at least more conveniently. But in 
 our language,* whose principal merit is clear- 
 ness, and whose path is always the most direct 
 and logical, — a quality which constitutes its 
 
 * The English language holds, in this respect, a 
 middle place between the French and the two great all- 
 capable tongues of classic antiquity. 
 
70 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 value, — it is more difficult to speak well, and 
 especially to extemporise, because there is but 
 one manner of constructing the sentence, and 
 if you have the misfortune of missing, at the 
 outset, this direct and single way, you are in- 
 volved in a by-path without a thoroughfare, 
 and can emerge from it only by breaking 
 through the enclosures or escaping across 
 country. You are then astray, or lost in a 
 quicksand, — a painful result for all concerned, 
 for both him who speaks, and for those who 
 listen. 
 
 It is therefore indispensable to acquire a 
 perfect mastery of your instrument, if you 
 wish so to play upon it in public as to give 
 pleasure to others, and avoid bringing confu- 
 sion upon yourself. As the violinist commands 
 with the touch every part of the string, and 
 his fingers alight on the exact point in order 
 to produce the required sound, so the mind 
 of the orator ought to alight precisely on the 
 right word, corresponding to each part of the 
 thought, and to seize on the most suitable 
 arrangement of words, in order to exhibit the 
 development of its parts with due regard to 
 each sentence as well as to the whole dis- 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 7* 
 
 course ; an admirable and prodigious task in 
 the quickness and certitude of the discernment 
 is exercised at the moment of extemporising, 
 and in the taste and the tact which it implies. 
 And here especially are manifested the truth 
 and use of our old classical studies, and of the 
 method which, up to our own day, has been 
 constantly employed, but now apparently de- 
 spised or neglected, to the great injury of logic 
 and eloquence. 
 
 The end of that method is to stimulate and 
 bring out the intelligence of youth by the 
 incessant decomposition and recomposition of 
 speech, — in other words, by the continual exer- 
 cise of both analysis and synthesis ; and that 
 the exercise in question may be the more 
 closely argued and profitable, it is based 
 simultaneously on two languages studied to- 
 gether, the one ancient and dead, and not 
 therefore to be learnt by rote, the other living 
 and as analogous as possible to the first. The 
 student is then made to account to himself 
 for all the words of both, and for their bearings 
 in particular sentences, in order to establish the 
 closest parallel between them, the most exact 
 equiponderance, and so to reproduce with all 
 
72 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 attainable fidelity the idea of one language in 
 the other. Hence what are termed themes 
 and versions, — the despair of idle school-boys, 
 indeed, but very serviceable in forming and 
 perfecting the natural logic of the mind; and, 
 if carefully pursued for several years is the 
 best way of teaching the unpractised and 
 tender reason of youth all the operations of 
 thought, — a faculty which, after all, keeps 
 pace with words, and can work and manifest 
 itself only by means of the signs of language. 
 
 Superficial philosophers imagine that the 
 object of this protracted trial, which occupies 
 the finest years of youth, is to learn Latin or 
 Greek, and then they exclaim that the result is 
 not worth either the trouble or the time which 
 it costs, and that, if comparing one language 
 with another be desirable, it would be more 
 profitable to teach children modern and spoken 
 tongues which might hereafter be of use to 
 them in life. Such persons would be quite 
 right if this were the only end in view ; for 
 doubtless, French or German would be more 
 serviceable for travel, trade, or anything of 
 that nature. 
 
 But there is another object which these per- 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 73 
 
 sons do not see, although it is the main object: 
 which is to teach thinking to individuals who 
 are destined to work in social life by their 
 thought, — -to fashion labourers of the mind 
 to the functions of intelligence, as an appren- 
 tice or handicraftsman is fashioned to material 
 functions and bodily toil. As these last are 
 taught to use their tools, and therefore to know 
 them thoroughly and handle them skilfully, in 
 like manner the former must also learn per- 
 fectly the implements of their calling, and 
 tools of their craft, in order to use them ably 
 on all possible occasions. Now the necessary 
 instrument, — thought's indispensable tool, — 
 is language ; and therefore, although people 
 speak naturally and almost without any teach- 
 ing, merely through living together, yet if 
 a person wish to become an able workman of 
 speech, and consequently of thought, as if he 
 sought to be an able locksmith or a skilful 
 mason, he must get instruction in the pro- 
 cesses of art, and be initiated in the rules 
 and methods which make it easier and more 
 efficient. 
 
 This is obtained by the study of languages 
 which is the object of classical pursuits. From 
 
74 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 the elementary class to the " humanities," it 
 is one course of logic by means of compa- 
 rative grammar, — and it is the only logic 
 of which youth is capable. It is the easiest 
 training of thought by and through words, 
 its material signs. A youth is thus taught 
 for several years to learn the connections of 
 ideas by the relations of words, which he 
 is continually fashioning and re-fashioning ; 
 and while learning to form sentences, ever 
 with a thought in view T , the details of which 
 he must explain and convey, he becomes used 
 to analysis and combination, and executes, in 
 the humble functions of grammar, a prelude 
 to the highest operations of science, which, 
 after all, are but the decomposition and mar- 
 shalling of ideas. 
 
 Who does not at once see w T hat facility 
 the mind acquires by this perpetual comparison 
 of the terms and idioms of two languages, 
 which must be made to fit each other, and to 
 what a degree thought becomes refined and 
 subtle, in the presence of some idea w T hich 
 has to be expressed ? the phrases of two lan- 
 guages are measured and weighed incessantly ; 
 they are compared, each with each, and each 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. /O 
 
 with the idea, to ascertain which will render 
 it best. 
 
 The efforts are not useless which are made 
 by these youthful minds who thus, day after 
 day, wrestle with the thoughts of the most 
 illustrious writers of antiquity, in order to un- 
 derstand and translate them. How great a 
 privilege to commune daily with the exalted 
 reason, the noble ideas, and the splendid diction 
 of those great and noble minds ! How great 
 the advantage derived from such an intercourse, 
 and how great the intellectual gain in such a 
 company, and daily familiarity ! Then what a 
 pleasure to have found an equivalent term, and 
 to have transferred into one's own language, with 
 the same vigour or the same delicacy, what some 
 famous author has said in his ! What profit 
 in this concussion of idioms, from which the 
 spark of ideas is so often stricken forth, — this 
 strife, unequal indeed, yet replete with a noble 
 emulation, between a youth, trying the nascent 
 strength of his thoughts, and some master 
 mind whose works enlighten and guide hu- 
 manity ! And finally, what more particularly 
 concerns our subject, what facility of expres- 
 sion, what aptitude for extemporaneous speak- 
 
76 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 ing, must not accrue from this habit, contracted 
 from childhood, of handling and turning a 
 sentence in every direction, until the most 
 perfect form be found, of combining its terms 
 in all ways, in order to arrive at the arrange- 
 ment best fitted for the manifestation of the 
 thought, of polishing each member of it by 
 effacing asperities and smoothing crevices, of 
 balancing one sentence against another, in 
 order to give the whole, oneness, measure, 
 harmony, a sort of music, rendering it as agree- 
 able to the ear when spoken, as it is luminous 
 to the mind by which it is meditated. 
 
 No ; in no other way can the artist of words 
 be ever formed ; and if a different method be 
 attempted, as is somewhat signified at present, 
 you will have, not artists, but handicraftsmen. 
 Means should always be proportioned to ends. 
 If you want orators, you must teach them how 
 to speak, and you will not teach them otherwise 
 than they have been taught heretofore. All 
 our (French) great orators of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries have been formed in 
 this manner, and I am not aware that there 
 have ever been greater writers in the w T orld, or 
 that the glory of France in this particular has 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 77 
 
 been excelled. Let this splendour of civilisa- 
 tion, this blooming forth of the mind in poetry, 
 literature, and eloquence, which have always 
 been the brightest crown and most beautiful 
 garland of humanity on earth, be once aban- 
 doned, in favour of conquest, and of the riches 
 produced by industry and commerce, — which 
 are much to be admired, no doubt, but, after 
 all, minister more to body than to soul, 
 — be it so ; we shall perhaps become more 
 learned in material things, and certainly more 
 wealthy ; we shall have more ways of winning 
 money and of losing it, more ways of enjoying 
 earthly life, and therefore of wearing out, and 
 perchance of degrading it : but shall we be the 
 happier ? This is not certain. Shall we be 
 the better ? — less certain still ; but what is 
 certain, is, that the life of human society or 
 civilisation, however gilt, will be less beautiful, 
 less noble, and less glorious. 
 
 There is another practice which strikingly 
 conduces towards facilitating expression and 
 towards perfecting its form ; we mean the 
 learning by heart of the finest passages of great 
 writers, and especially of the most musical 
 poets, so as to be able to recite them at a single 
 
78 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 effort, at moments of leisure, or during a 
 solitary walk, when the mind so readily falls 
 back upon its own resources. This practice, 
 adopted in all schools, is particularly advanta- 
 geous in rhetoric, and during the bright years 
 of youth. At that age it is easy and agreeable, 
 and he who aspires to the art of speaking 
 ought never to neglect it. Besides furnishing 
 the mind with all manner of fine thoughts, well 
 expressed and well linked together, and thus 
 nourishing, developing, and enriching it, it has 
 the additional advantage of filling the under- 
 standing with graceful images, of forming the 
 ear to the rhythm and number of the period, 
 and of obtaining a sense of the harmony of 
 speech, which is not without its own kind of 
 music ; for ideas, and even such as are the 
 most abstract, enter the mind more readily, and 
 sink into it more deeply, when presented in a 
 pleasing fashion. By dint of reading the 
 beautiful lines of Corneille and Racine, 
 Bossuet's majestic and pregnant sentences, the 
 harmonious and cadenced compositions of 
 Fenelon and Massillon, one gradually and with- 
 out effort acquires a language approaching theirs 
 and imitates them instinctively through the na- 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 79 
 
 tural attraction of the beautiful, and the pro- 
 pensity to reproduce whatever pleases ; and at 
 last, by repeating this exercise daily for years, 
 one attains a refined taste of the delicacies of 
 language and the shades of style, just as a 
 palate accustomed to the flavour of the most 
 exquisite viands can no longer endure the 
 coarser. But what is only a disadvantage in 
 bodily taste, at least under certain circumstances, 
 is always beneficial to the literary taste, which 
 should seek its nutriment, like the bee, in the 
 most aromatic portions of the flower, in order 
 to combine them into delicious and perfumed 
 honey. 
 
 By this process is prepared, moreover, in the 
 imaginative part of the understanding, a sort of 
 capacity for the oratorical form, for the shaping 
 of sentences, w 7 hich I cannot liken to anything 
 better than to a mould carefully prepared, and 
 traced with delicate lines and varied patterns, 
 into w r hich the stream of thought, flowing full 
 of life and ardour from a glowing mind in the fire 
 of declamation or composition, becomes fixed 
 even while it is being cast, as metal in a state 
 of fusion becomes instantaneously a beautiful 
 statue. Thus the oratorical diction should be 
 
80 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 cast, all of one piece, by a single throw, in order 
 to exhibit a beautiful and a living unity. But 
 for this a beautiful mould is indispensable, and 
 the young orator, who must have further re- 
 ceived from nature the artistic power, cannot 
 form within him that mould save with the 
 assistance of the great masters and by imitating 
 them. Genius alone is an exception to this 
 rule, and genius is rare. 
 
 The best rhetorical professors, those who are 
 veritably artists of speech, and who seek to 
 fashion others to their own likeness, recommend 
 and adopt this exercise largely ; it is irksome 
 to the indolent, but it amply indemnifies the 
 toil which it exacts by the fruits which it brings. 
 There is, besides, a way of alleviating the 
 trouble of it, and that is, to read and learn 
 select pages of our great authors, while stroll- 
 ing under the shades of a garden or through 
 some rich country, when nature is in all her 
 brilliancy. You may then recite them aloud in 
 such beautiful scenery, the impressions of which 
 deliriously blend with those of eloquence and 
 song. Every young man of talent or literary 
 taste has made the experiment. During 
 the spring time of life, there is a sin- 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 81 
 
 gular charm in the spring time of nature ; 
 and the redundance of fresh life in a youthful 
 soul trying its own powers in thought, in 
 painting, or in poesy, is marvellously and in- 
 stinctively wooed into sympathy with that 
 glorious life of the world around, whose ferti- 
 lising virtue evokes his genius, while it enchants 
 his senses by the subtlest emotions, and en- 
 riches his imagination with varied pictures and 
 brilliant hues. 
 
 Moreover, — and this is a privilege of youth, 
 which has its advantages as well as its inconve- 
 niences, — poetry and eloquence are never 
 better relished, that is, never with greater 
 delight and love, than at this age, in the dawn 
 of the soul's life, amidst the first fruits of the 
 imagination and the heart's innocence, in the 
 opening splendours of the ideal, which seem 
 to the understanding as a rising sun, tinging 
 and illumining all things with its radiant fires. 
 The beauty that is understood and that which 
 is merely sensible wondrously harmonise, they 
 give each other enhancement and relief; or, to 
 speak more truly, material beauty is appreciated 
 only through the reflected light of mental 
 
 G 
 
82 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 
 
 beauty, and as the rays emitted by an idea 
 illuminate and transfigure nature's forms and 
 nature's life, — so nature, on the other hand, 
 while it lovingly receives the lustre of some 
 heavenly thought, refracts it gloriously in its 
 prisms, and multiplies, while reflecting its 
 beams. 
 
 All this the youthful orator, or he who has 
 the power to become one, will feel and ex- 
 perience, according to his nature and his cha- 
 racter, as he awakens the echoes of some beau- 
 tiful scene with the finest accents of human 
 eloquence or poetry. While impressing these 
 more deeply in his memory, by help of the 
 spots wherein he learns them, which will add 
 to and hereafter facilitate his recollections, he 
 will imbibe unconsciously a twofold life, the 
 purest and sublimest life of humanity, and that 
 great life of nature which is the thought of 
 the Almighty diffused throughout creation. 
 These two great lives, that of man and that of 
 nature, which spring from the same source, and 
 thither return, blended without being con- 
 founded within him, animating and nourishing 
 his own life, the life of his mind and of his 
 
ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 83 
 
 soul, will yet draw forth from his bosom, from 
 his poet's or orator's heart, a stream of eloquence 
 or of song which will run an imperishable 
 course. 
 
 g 2 
 
84 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PHYSICAL QUALITIES OF THE ORATOR, 
 NATURAL AND ACQUIRED. 
 
 It is not enough for the orator to have ideas 
 and to know how to express them, imparting 
 the most graceful turn to his diction, and pour- 
 ing forth copious words into the form of a 
 musical and sonorous period ; he must further 
 know how to articulate his speech, how to 
 pronounce and deliver his discourse. He 
 must have propriety of voice and gesture, or 
 the oratorical action, — a thing of immense 
 importance to success in eloquence, in which 
 nature, as in everything, has a considerable 
 share, but art may play a great part. Here, 
 then, also is to be developed a natural 
 predisposition, and a certain skill is to be 
 acquired. 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 85 
 
 § I.— The Voice. 
 
 The voice, including all the organs which 
 serve to produce or modify it, is the speaker's 
 chief instrument ; and its quality essentially 
 depends, in the first instance, upon the forma-, 
 tion of the chest, the throat, and mouth. Art 
 can do little to ameliorate this formation, but 
 it can do much to facilitate and strengthen 
 the organic movements in all that regards 
 breathing, the emission of sound, and pro- 
 nunciation. These matters ought to be the 
 object of a special study. 
 
 It is very important, in speaking as in sing- 
 ing, to know how to send forth and how to 
 husband the breath, so as to spin lengthened 
 sounds and deliver a complete period, without 
 being blown, and without breaking a sentence 
 already begun, or a rush of declamation by a 
 gasp, — needful, indeed, for lungs that have 
 failed, but making a sort of disagreeable gap 
 or stoppage. 
 
 Care should also be taken not to speak too 
 fast, too loud, or with too much animation at 
 the outset ; for if you force your voice in the 
 beginning you are presently out of breath, or 
 
86 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 your voice is cracked or hoarse, and then you 
 can no longer proceed without repeated efforts 
 which fatigue the hearers and exhaust the 
 speaker. All these precautions, which appear 
 trivial, but which are really of high importance, 
 are learned by labour, practice, and personal 
 experience. Still it is a very good thing to be 
 w r arned and guided by the experience of others, 
 and this may be ensured advantageously by 
 frequent recitations aloud under the direction 
 of some master of elocution. 
 
 Enough stress is not laid on these things, if, 
 indeed, they are attended to at all, in the 
 schools of rhetoric, in literary establishments, 
 and in seminaries, — wherein orators, neverthe- 
 less, are expected to be formed. Scarce any 
 but actors now-a-days trouble themselves about 
 them, and that is the reason we have so few 
 men in the liberal professions who know how 
 to speak, or even to read or recite a discourse 
 rightly. 
 
 On this point the ancients had a great advan- 
 tage over us ; they attached far more import- 
 ance than we do to oratorical action, as we see 
 in the treatises of Cicero and Quintilian. It 
 was with them one half of eloquence at the 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 87 
 
 least ; and it is said that Demosthenes made it 
 the orator's chief quality. They, perhaps, went 
 too far in this respect ; and it came, doubtless, 
 of their having to speak before the multitude, 
 whose senses must be struck, whose passions 
 must be excited, and on whom power and bril- 
 liancy of voice have immense effect. As for 
 us, we fall into the contrary extreme, and fre- 
 quently our orators, even those most distin- 
 guished in point of style, do not know how to 
 speak their speeches. We are so unused to 
 beauty of form and nobility of air, that we are 
 amazed when we meet them. There is a cer- 
 tain orator of our day who owes his success 
 and reputation merely to these advantages. 
 On the other hand, these alone are too little ; 
 we miss much when a fine elocution and an 
 elegant or splendid delivery carry off common- 
 place thoughts and expressions, more full of 
 sound than of sense. This is quickly perceived 
 in the perusal of those harangues which pro- 
 duced so great an effect when delivered, and in 
 which scarcely any of the emotions experienced 
 in listening to them is recovered after they 
 have once been fixed warm, as it were, on 
 
88 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 paper by the reporter's art. The spell of the 
 oratorical action is gone from them. 
 
 The modulation of the voice proceeds prin- 
 cipally from the larynx, which produces and 
 modifies it almost without limit, by expansion 
 and contraction. First, then, we have the 
 formation of the larynx, with its muscles, 
 cartilages, membranes, and tracery, which are 
 to the emission of vocal sound what the invo- 
 lutions of the brain probably are, instrumentally, 
 in the operations of thought. But, in the one 
 case as in the other, the connection of the 
 organs with the effects produced entirely escapes 
 us ; and although we are continually availing 
 ourselves of the instrument, we do not perceive 
 in any manner the how of its ministrations. It 
 is only by use, and experiments often repeated 
 that w 7 e learn to employ them with greater 
 ease and power, and our skill in this respect 
 is wholly empirical. The researches of the 
 subtlest anatomy have given us no discovery in 
 the matter. All that we have ascertained is, 
 that every voice has its natural bell-tone, which 
 makes it a bass voice, a tenor, or a soprano, 
 each with intermediate gradations. The middle 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 89 
 
 voice, or tenor, is the most favourable for 
 speaking ; it is that which maintains itself the 
 best, and which reaches the farthest when well 
 articulated . It is also the most pleasing, the 
 most endearing, and has the largest resources 
 for inflection, because, being in the middle of 
 the scale, it rises or sinks with greater ease, 
 and leans itself better to either hand. It there- 
 fore commands a greater variety of intonations, 
 which hinders monotony of elocution, and re- 
 awakens the attention of the hearer, so prone 
 to doze. 
 
 The upper voice, exceedingly clear at first, 
 is continually tending towards a scream. It 
 becomes harsh as it proceeds, and at last attains 
 to the falsetto and nasal. It requires great 
 talent, great liveliness of thought, language, 
 and elocution to compensate or redeem this 
 blemish. One of the most distinguished 
 orators of our time is an example in point. 
 He used to succeed in obtaining a hearing for 
 several hours together, in spite of his lank and 
 creaking voice, — a real victory of mind over 
 matter. 
 
 A bass voice is with difficulty pitched high, 
 and continually tends back. Grave and ma- 
 
90 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 jestic at the outset, it soon grows heavy and 
 monotonous ; it has magnificent chords, but, if 
 long listened to, produces frequently the effect 
 of a drone, and soon tires and lulls to sleep 
 by the medley of commingling sounds. What, 
 then, if it be coarse, violent, uttered with 
 bursts ? Why, it crushes the ear, if it thunders 
 in too confined an apartment ; and if it breaks 
 forth amidst some vast nave, where echoes 
 almost always exist, the billows of sound re- 
 verberating from every side, blend together, 
 should the orator be speaking fast, and the 
 result is a deafening confusion, and a sort of 
 acoustic chaos. 
 
 It is an advantage, then, to a speaker to 
 have a middle voice, since he has the greater 
 play for expression in its more numerous in- 
 flections. It is easy to understand how, by 
 constant practice, by frequent and intelligent 
 recitations under able guidance, a person may 
 become master of these inflections, may pro- 
 duce them at will, and raise and lower his 
 voice in speaking as in singing, either gra- 
 dually or abruptly, from tone to tone, up to 
 the very highest, according to the feeling, the 
 thought, or the emotions of the mind. Between 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 91 
 
 the acts of the mental life and those of the 
 organs which are subservient to them there is 
 a natural correspondence and an inborn ana- 
 logy, by virtue of the human constitution, 
 which consists of a soul in union with a body \ 
 and, for this reason, all the impressions, agita- 
 tions, shudderings, and throbbings of the heart, 
 when it is stirred by the affections and the 
 passions, no less than the subtlest acts, the 
 nimblest operations of the intelligence — in a 
 word, all the modifications of the moral life 
 should find a tone, an accent in the voice, as 
 well as a sign in language, an accord, a pa- 
 rallel, in the physical life, and in its means of 
 expression. 
 
 In all cases, whatever be the tone of the 
 voice, bass, tenor, or soprano, — what most 
 wins upon the hearers, what best seizes and 
 most easily retains their attention, is what may 
 be called a sympathetic voice. It is difficult 
 enough to say in what it consists ; but what 
 very clearly characterises it, is the gift of 
 causing itself to be attended to. It is a cer- 
 tain power of attraction which draws to it the 
 hearer's mind, and on its accents hangs his 
 attention. It is a secret virtue which is in 
 
92 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 speech, and which penetrates at once, or little 
 by little, through the ear to the mind or into 
 the heart of those who listen, charms them, 
 and holds them beneath the charm, to such a 
 degree that they are disposed, not only to 
 listen, but even to admit what is said, and to 
 receive it with confidence. It is a voice which 
 inspires an affection for him who speaks, and 
 puts you instinctively on his side, so that his 
 words find an echo in the mind, repeating 
 there what he says, and reproducing it easily 
 in the understanding and the heart. 
 
 A sympathetic voice singularly helps the 
 effect of the discourse, and is, the best, and 
 most insinuating of exordiums (introductions). 
 I know an orator who has, among other qualities, 
 this in his favour, and who, every time he 
 mounts the pulpit, produces invariably a pro- 
 found sensation by his apostolic countenance, 
 and by the very first sounds of his voice. 
 
 Whence comes, above all others, this quality 
 which can hardly be acquired by art ? First, 
 certainly from the natural constitution of the 
 vocal organ, as in singing; but, next to this, 
 the soul may contribute much towards it by 
 the feelings and thoughts which actuate it, 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 93 
 
 and by the efforts which it makes to express 
 what is felt, and to convey it to others. There 
 is something sympathetic in the lively and 
 sincere manifestation of any affection ; and 
 when the hearer sees that the speaker is really 
 moved, the emotion gains upon him by a sort 
 of contagion, and he begins to feel with him 
 and like him : as two chords vibrating in unison. 
 Or, again, if a truth be unfolded to him with 
 clearness, in good order, and fervently, and if 
 the speaker show that he understands or feels 
 what he says, the hearer, all at once enlight- 
 ened and sharing in the same light, acquiesces 
 willingly, and receives the words addressed to 
 him with pleasure. In such cases the power 
 of 'conviction animates, enlivens, and trans- 
 figures the voice, rendering it agreeable and 
 effective by virtue of the expression, just as a 
 lofty soul or a great mind exalts and embel- 
 lishes an ordinary and even an ugly counte- 
 nance. 
 
 The best way in which an orator can impart 
 to his voice the sympathetic power, even when 
 he may happen not to have it naturally, is to 
 express, vividly whatever he says, and conse- 
 quently to feel it well himself, in order to make 
 
94 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 others feel it. Above all, the way is, to have 
 great benevolence, great charity in the heart, 
 and to love to put them in practice, for nothing 
 gives more of sympathy to the voice than real 
 goodness. 
 
 Here the precepts of art are useless. We 
 cannot teach emotion, nor quick feelings, nor 
 the habit of throwing ardour and transport into 
 word and action; it is the 'pectus (heart) 
 which accomplishes all this, and it is the pec- 
 tus also which makes the orator — Pectus est 
 quod disertum facit. For which reason, while 
 we admit the great efficacy of art and precept 
 in rendering the voice supple, in disciplining 
 it, in making it obedient, ready, capable of 
 traversing all the degrees of inflexion, and 
 producing each tone ; and while we recommend 
 those who desire to speak in public to devote 
 themselves to this preliminary study for the 
 formation of their instrument, like some skilful 
 singer or practised actor, we must still remind 
 them that the best prepared instrument remains 
 powerless and dead unless there be a soul to 
 animate it ; and that even without any culture, 
 without preparation, without this gymnastic 
 process, or this training of the vocal organs, 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 95 
 
 whoever is impelled to speak by feeling, by 
 passion, or by conviction, will find spontaneously 
 the tone, the inflexions, and all the modifica- 
 tions of voice which can best correspond with 
 what he wishes to express. Art is useful 
 chiefly to reciters, speakers from memory, and 
 actors, and thus, it is not to be denied, much 
 effect may also be produced by the illusion of 
 the natural. Still, it is after all an illusion 
 only, a semblance of nature, and thus a thing 
 of artifice ; and nature itself will always be 
 superior to it. 
 
 For the same reason an extemporised ad- 
 dress, if it be such as it ought to be, is more 
 effective, and more impressive, than a recited 
 discourse. It partakes less of art, and the voice 
 vibrating and responsive to what the speaker 
 feels at the moment, finds naturally the tone 
 most proper, the true inflexions, and genuine 
 expression. 
 
 § 2— ■Utterance. 
 
 Utterance is a very important condition of 
 being audible, and consequently of being 
 attended to. It determines the voice, or the 
 
96 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 vowel, by the modification which this last re- 
 ceives from the consonant; it produces syllables, 
 and by joining them together, gives the words, 
 the series of which forms what is termed articu- 
 late language. Man being organised for speech 
 speaks naturally the language he hears, and as he 
 hears it. His instinctive and original pronun- 
 ciation depends on the formation of the vocal 
 organs, and on the manner in which those around 
 him pronounce. Therefore, nature discharges 
 here the chief function, but art may also exert 
 certain power either to correct or abate organic 
 defects or vicious habits, or to develope and 
 perfect favourable aptitudes. Demosthenes, 
 the greatest orator of antiquity, whose very 
 name continues to be the symbol of eloquence, 
 is a remarkable case in point. Everybody is 
 aware that by nature he had a difficulty of ut- 
 terance almost amounting to a stammer, w 7 hich 
 he succeeded in overcoming by frequently de- 
 claiming on the sea-shore with pebbles in his 
 mouth. The pebbles obliged him to redouble 
 his exertions to subdue the rebellious organ, 
 and the noise of the surge, obliging him to 
 speak more loudly and more distinctly in order 
 to hear his own words, accustomed him to the 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 97 
 
 still more deafening uproar of the people's 
 mighty voice in the market-place. 
 
 Professors of elocution lay great stress on 
 the manner of utterance, and they are right. 
 To form and "break" the organs to a distinct 
 and agreeable utterance, much practice is re- 
 quisite, under able tuition, and such as affords 
 an example of what it inculcates. 
 
 First, there is the emission of the voice,- — 
 which the practitioner should know how to 
 raise and lower through every degree within 
 its range, — and in each degree to increase or 
 diminish, heighten or soften its power accord- 
 ing to circumstances, but always so as to pro- 
 duce no sound that is false or disagreeable to 
 the ear. 
 
 Then comes articulation, which should be 
 neat, clear, sharp, — yet unexaggerated, or else 
 it will become heavy, harsh, and hammer-like, 
 rending the ear. 
 
 Next to this the prosody of the language 
 must be observed, giving its longs and its 
 shorts ; as in singing, the minims, semibreves, 
 quavers, and crotchets. This imparts to the 
 sentence variety, movement, and measure. A 
 written or spoken sentence admits, indeed, 
 
 H 
 
98 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED 'QUALITIES. 
 
 strictly of notation as well as a bar of music ; 
 and when this notation is followed by the 
 voice of the speaker, naturally or artificially, 
 the discourse gains in expression and plea- 
 santness. 
 
 Moreover there is accentuation, and em- 
 phasis, which mark the paramount tone of each 
 sentence, word, and syllable, on which the 
 chief stress should be laid. Art may here 
 effect somewhat, especially in the enunciation 
 of words ; but as regards the emphasis of the 
 sentence, it is impressed principally by the 
 palpitation of the soul, thrilling with desire, 
 feeling, or conviction. 
 
 Finally, there is the declamatory movement, 
 which, like the measure in music, should adapt 
 itself to what is to be conveyed, now grave and 
 solemn, now light, and rapid, with a guiding 
 rein, slackening or urging the pace, becoming 
 nervous or gentle, according to the occasion ; 
 bursting forth at times with the vehemence of 
 a torrent, and at times flowing gently with the 
 clearness of a stream, or even trickling, drop 
 by drop, like water noiselessly filtered; which, 
 at last, fills the vessel that receives it, or wears 
 out the stone on which it falls. 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 99 
 
 In vocal speech, as in vocal music, there are 
 an infinitude of gradations ; and the orator 
 should have the feeling, the instinct, or the 
 acquired habit by which he can produce all 
 these effects ; and this implies in him a special 
 taste and tact which art may develope, but can 
 never implant. And thus there is need of 
 caution here, as in many other cases, not to 
 spoil nature by science, while endeavouring to 
 perfect her. School precepts may teach a 
 manner, a certain mechanical skill in elocution, 
 but can never impart the sacred fire which gives 
 life to speech, nor those animated, delicate, 
 just feelings of an excited or impassioned soul, 
 and of a mind convinced, which grasps on the 
 instant the peculiarity of expression and of 
 voice which are most appropriate. 
 
 In general the masters of elocution and 
 enunciation somewhat resemble M. Jourdain's 
 professor of philosophy, who shows him how to 
 do with difficulty, and badly, what he used to 
 do naturally and well. We all speak prose, 
 and not the worst prose, from the outset. It is 
 pretty nearly the same with the enunciation of 
 a discourse ; and with the utterance, the accen- 
 tuation, and the management of speech. The 
 
 h 2 
 
100 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 best guides in these matters, the implied pre- 
 dispositions, are nature and the inspiration of 
 the moment ; while example is the most pro- 
 fitable kind of teaching. He who has a turn 
 for eloquence will learn how to speak by hear- 
 ing good speaking. It is orators who princi* 
 pally form orators. 
 
 § 3. — Oratorical Action. 
 
 Under this title are particularly comprised 
 the movements of the countenance, the carriage 
 and postures of the body, and above all ges- 
 ticulation ; — three things which naturally ac- 
 company speech, and in an extraordinary de- 
 gree augment its expressiveness. Here, again, 
 nature achieves a great deal ; but art also assists, 
 especially in the management of the body, and 
 in gesticulation. 
 
 An idea may be derived of what the coun- 
 tenance of the speaker adds to his address, from 
 the instinctive want we experience, of beholding 
 him, even when he is already sufficiently 
 audible. Not only all ears, but all eyes like- 
 wise are bent upon the speaker. The fact is 
 that man's face, and, above all, his eye, is the 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 101 
 
 mirror of his soul ; also, in the lightning of 
 the glance, there is a flush of lustre which 
 illumines what is said ; and on this account it 
 was unspeakably to be regretted that Bour- 
 daloue should have spoken with his eyes closed. 
 One of the disadvantages of a recited speech 
 is to quench, or at least to enfeeble and dim 
 the brilliancy of the discourse- 
 Besides which the rapid contractions and 
 dilatations of the facial muscles, — which are 
 each moment changing and renewing the phy- 
 siognomy, by forming upon the visage a sort of 
 picture, analogous to the speaker's feeling, or 
 to his thought, — these signs of dismay or joy, 
 of fear or hope, of affliction of heart or of 
 calmness, of storm or serenity, all these causes 
 which successively plough and agitate the 
 countenance, like a sea shaken by the winds 
 and which impart so much movement and life 
 to the physiognomy that it becomes like a 
 second discourse which doubles the force of 
 the first, — ought to be employed by the orator 
 as so many means of effect, mighty upon the 
 crowd which they strike and carry away. But 
 it is under nature's dictate that he will best em- 
 ploy them ; and the best, the only method which 
 
102 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 it behoves him to follow in this respect, is to 
 grasp powerfully, and to conceive thoroughly, 
 what he has to unfold or to describe ; and then 
 to say it with all the sincerity and all the fervour 
 of conviction and emotion. The face w r ill play 
 its own part spontaneously ; for, as the various 
 movements of the countenance are produced of 
 their own accord in the ratio of the feeling ex- 
 perienced, whenever you are really moved and 
 under the influence of passion, the face natu- 
 rally adapts the emotion of the words, as these 
 that of the mind ; and art can be of little avail 
 under these circumstances. 
 
 Let us, in truth, not forget that the orator is 
 not an actor, w T ho plays a fictitious character 
 by putting himself in another's position. He 
 must, by dint of art, enter into the situation 
 which he represents, and thus he has no means 
 of becoming impressed or moved except by the 
 study of his model, and the meditation of his 
 part. He must, accordingly, compose his voice 
 as well as his countenance, and it requires 
 great cleverness and long habit to imitate by 
 the inflexions of the voice, and the play of the 
 physiognomy, the true and spontaneous feeling 
 of nature. The actor, in a word, is obliged to 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 103 
 
 imitate morally as well as physically; and on 
 this account, even when most successful, when 
 most seeming to feel what he impersonates, as 
 he in general feels it not, something of this is 
 perceptible ; and it is the most consummate 
 actor's fate, that, through a certain illusion of 
 the imagination his acting is never more than 
 an imitation. Hence the vice, and hence the 
 disfavour of that profession, notwithstanding 
 all the talent and study which it requires : there 
 is always something disingenuous in saying 
 what you do not think, in manifesting senti- 
 ments which are not your own. 
 
 The orator, on the contrary, unless he chooses 
 to become the advocate of falsehood, has truth 
 always on his side. He must feel and think 
 whatever he says, and consequently he may 
 allow his face and his eyes to speak for them- 
 selves. As soon as his soul is moved, and 
 becomes fervid, it will find immediate expres- 
 sion in his countenance and in his whole person, 
 and the more natural and spontaneous is the 
 play of his physiognomy, the more effect it 
 will produce. It is not the same, or not to the 
 same degree, with regard to the movements of 
 the body and to gesticulation. The body, 
 
104 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 indeed, and limbs of the speaker, animated by 
 a soul expressing itself fervidly, will represent 
 naturally to a certain degree, by their outward 
 movements the inward movements of the mind. 
 But the machinery, if I may say so, is more 
 complicated, heavier, and more cumbersome, 
 because matter predominates here ; it is not 
 easy to move the whole body elegantly, and 
 particularly the arms, although the most mobile 
 organs. How many have a tolerably good 
 notion of speaking, and yet cannot move their 
 arms and hands properly, so as to present at 
 once postures graceful and in accordance with 
 their words. It is in this department of action 
 that speakers most betray their inexperience 
 and embarrassment ; and spoil the effect of the 
 best speech by the inappropriateness of the 
 gestures; and the puerility or affectation of the 
 attitudes used. 
 
 Efforts are worth making, then, to acquire 
 beforehand good habits in this respect, in order 
 that the body, trained with deliberation to the 
 impulse of the words, and to adapt itself to 
 their inspiration, may execute of its own accord, 
 and gracefully, the most expressive movements, 
 may itself take the most appropriate attitudes, 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 105 
 
 and not have its limbs working ineffectually or 
 untowardly, with the arms motionless and tied 
 down the figure, or the hands nailed to the 
 pulpit or the platform balustrade. An abrupt 
 or jerky gesticulation is specially to be avoided, 
 such as by a regular swing up and down, down 
 and up again, of the speaker's arms, which gives 
 the appearance of two hatchets incessantly at 
 work. Generally speaking, moderation is 
 better than superfluity of gesticulation. Nothing 
 is more wearisome to the audience than a 
 violent delivery without respite; and next to a 
 monotony of voice, nothing more readily puts 
 it to sleep than a gesture for ever repeated, 
 which marks with exactness each part of the 
 period, as a pendulum keeps time. 
 
 This portion of oratorical delivery, more im- 
 portant than it is supposed, greatly attended to 
 by the ancients, and too much neglected by the 
 moderns, may be acquired by all the exercises 
 which form the body, by giving it carriage and 
 ease, grace of countenance and motion ; and 
 still more by well-directed studies in elocution 
 in what concerns gesture under a clever master. 
 To this should be added the often-repeated 
 study of the example of those speakers who 
 
106 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 
 
 are most distinguished for the quality in ques- 
 tion, — which is only too rare at the present 
 day. 
 
 But what perhaps conduces more than all 
 this to form the faculty mentioned is the fre- 
 quenting of good company, — that is, of the so- 
 ciety most distinguished for elegance of lan- 
 guage and refinement of manners. Nothing 
 can supply the place of this primary part of a 
 man's education. In this medium the youth 
 fashions himself, as it were, of his own accord, 
 by the impressions he is every moment receiv- 
 ing, and the instinctive imitation of what he 
 sees and hears. It is the privilege of high so- 
 ciety, and court manners to give this finish 
 to education. There one learns to speak with 
 correctness and grace, almost without study, 
 by the mere force of habit; and if persons of 
 quality combined with this facility of manner 
 that science, which is to be acquired only by 
 study, and the pow r er of reflection, w T hich is 
 formed chiefly in solitude, — they would achieve 
 oratorical successes more easily than other 
 people. 
 
 But they are, for the most part, deficient in 
 
PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 107 
 
 acquirements, — whereas learned and thinking 
 men generally err in manner. 
 
 To sum up : over and above the store of 
 science and of knowledge indispensable to the 
 orator, — who should be thoroughly acquainted 
 with his subject, — the predispositions most 
 needful in the art of speaking, and susceptible 
 of acquisition, are — 
 
 1. The habit of taking thought to pieces, 
 
 and putting it together, — or analysis 
 and synthesis. 
 
 2. A knowledge of how to write correctly, 
 
 clearly, and elegantly. 
 
 3. A capacity for the handling of language 
 
 at will and without effort, and for the 
 sudden construction of sentences, with- 
 out stoppages or faults. 
 
 4. A power of ready and intelligent decla- 
 
 mation. 
 
 5. A neat, distinct, and emphatic utterance. 
 
 6. A good carriage of body. 
 
 7. An easy, expressive, and graceful gesticu- 
 
 lation. 
 
 8. And, above ail this, the manners and air 
 
 of a gentleman, whether natural or 
 acquired. 
 
108 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 We have stated all the dispositions, natural 
 or acquired which are necessary, to the orator. 
 We proceed now to set him to work, and we 
 shall consider him in all the steps of his task, 
 and the successive processes which he has to 
 employ, to carry it prosperously to com- 
 pletion. 
 
 It is perfectly understood that we make no 
 pretence to the laying down of rules ; our 
 object is not to promulgate a theory nor a 
 didactic treatise. We are giving a few recom- 
 mendations derived from our own experience, 
 — and each person w r ill take advantage of them 
 
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 109 
 
 as he best may, adopting or omitting them 
 according to his own bent or requirements. 
 
 Each mind, inasmuch as it is a personality, 
 has its individual character, its own life, which 
 can never be another's, although it resembles 
 all of its kind. If in the physical world there 
 are no two things quite alike, still less do we 
 look for oneness among intelligent and free 
 creatures. Here, a still more wondrous variety 
 prevails in consequence of a certain liberty which 
 exists, and which acts upon these different 
 natures, though limited to certain general con- 
 ditions of developement and subject to the same 
 laws. To this is due the originality of minds, 
 which is, to the intellectual order, what respon- 
 sibility is to the moral. 
 
 But while fully granting this variety of action, 
 springing from the nature, dispositions, and 
 circumstances of each person, still after all, as 
 w T e are of the same species and the same race, 
 and as our mental and physical organisation 
 is at the root the same, we must all, when in 
 similar situations, act in a manner fundamen- 
 tally analogous, although different as to form ; 
 and for this reason, indications of a general 
 nature, the result of a long and laborious 
 
110 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 experience, may, within a certain measure, 
 prove useful to all, or at least to many. 
 
 This it is which encourages us to unfold the 
 experience of our own minds ; giving it for 
 what it is, without imposing it on anybody, 
 in the deeply sincere desire of doing a service 
 to the young generation which comes after us, 
 and sparing them the rocks and mishaps of a 
 difficult navigation often accomplished by us. 
 
 To speak in public is to address several per- 
 sons at once, an assemblage incidentally or in- 
 tentionally collected, for some purpose or other. 
 Now this may be done under the most diverse 
 circumstances, and for various objects, — and 
 accordingly the discourse must be adapted both 
 in matter and in form to these varying condi- 
 tions. Yet are there requisites common to 
 them all, which must be everywhere fulfilled, 
 if the speaker would speak pertinently, and with 
 any chance of success. 
 
 In fact, the end of public speaking is to win 
 the assent of the hearers, to imbue them with 
 your own convictions, or at least to incline 
 them to feel, to think, and to will according 
 to your purpose, with reference to a particular 
 subject. 
 
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. Ill 
 
 Hence, whenever you speak, and whatever 
 the audience, there is something to be said 
 which is indicated by the circumstances; there 
 is the way of saying it, or the method and 
 plan according to which you will unfold your 
 thought; and finally there is the realisation of 
 this plan by the actual discourse, composed and 
 uttered on the instant before those whom you 
 would persuade. Thus in an extemporaneous 
 discourse there are three things to be con- 
 sidered : — 
 
 1st. The subject being supplied by the cir- 
 cumstances, there is the preparation of the plan 
 or the organisation of the discourse, by means 
 of which you take possession of your subject. 
 
 •2ndly. The transcript or impression of this 
 plan (originally fixed on paper by the pen) in 
 the head of the speaker, wherein it should be 
 written in a living fashion. 
 
 3rdly. The discourse itself, or the successive 
 and, as far as possible, completely spoken 
 realisation of the plan prepared. 
 
 Sometimes the two first operations blend 
 into one : — as, for example, you have to speak 
 suddenly without having time to write your 
 plan or to consider it. But when time is 
 
112 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 allowed, they should be separate, and each 
 requires its own moment. 
 
 We proceed to examine these three matters 
 in succession. 
 
113 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 The preparation of a plan or the organization 
 of a discourse implies, especially, a knowledge 
 of the things about which you have to speak ; 
 but a general knowledge is not enough; you 
 may have a great quantity of materials, of docu- 
 ments, and of information in your memory, and 
 not be aware how to bring them to bear. It 
 sometimes happens that those who know most, or 
 have most matter in their heads, are the least 
 capable of rightly conveying it. The over 
 abundance of ideas, crushes the mind, and 
 stifles it, just as the head is paralysed by a 
 too great determination of blood, or a lamp is 
 extinguished by an excess of oil. 
 
 You must begin, therefore, by methodising 
 what you know about the subject you wish to 
 treat, and thus, in each discourse, you must 
 adopt as your centre or chief idea, the point 
 
 i 
 
114 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 to be explained ; while the rest must be sub- 
 ordinate to this idea, but in such a way as to 
 constitute a sort of organism, having its head, 
 its organs, its main limbs, and all the means of 
 connection and of circulation by which the 
 light of the paramount idea, emanating from the 
 focus, may be communicated to the furthest 
 parts, even to the last thought, and last word ; 
 as in the human body the blood emerges from 
 the heart, and is spread throughout all the 
 tissues, animating and colouring the surface of 
 the skin. 
 
 Thus only will there be life in the discourse, 
 because a true unity will reign in it, — that is a 
 natural unity resulting from an interior deve- 
 lopement, an unfolding from within, and not from 
 an artificial gathering of heterogeneous mem- 
 bers and their arbitrary juxtaposition. 
 
 This constitutes the difference between living 
 and dead words. These last may have a cer- 
 tain brilliancy from the gorgeousness of the 
 style or the elegance of the sentence, but after 
 having for a moment charmed the ear, they 
 leave the mind cold, and the heart empty. 
 The speaker not being master of his subject, 
 which he has not made his own by meditation, 
 
PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 115 
 
 reflects or reverberates other people's ideas, 
 without adding to them a particle of heat or 
 life. It is a pale and borrowed light, which, 
 like that of the moon, enables you to see 
 vaguely and indistinctly, but neither warms nor 
 fertilises ; possessing only a frigid and dead- 
 ened lustre. 
 
 Speakers of this kind, even when they ex- 
 temporise, speak rather from memory than from 
 the understanding or feelings. They repro- 
 duce more or less easily shreds of what they 
 have read or heard, — and they have exactly 
 enough mind to effect this reproduction with a 
 certain facility, which tends to fluency or to 
 twaddle. They do not thoroughly know what 
 they are speaking about ; they do not them- 
 selves understand all they say, still less do 
 they make others understand. They have not 
 entered into their subject ; they have filled their 
 apprehension with a mass of things relating to 
 it, which trickle out gradually as from a reser- 
 voir or through a tap which they open and shut 
 at pleasure. Eloquence of this description is 
 but so much plain water, or rather it is so much 
 troubled water, bearing nothing along its pas- 
 sage but words and the spectres of thoughts, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 and pouring into the hearer's mind, disgust, 
 wearisomeness, and nausea. Silence, which 
 would at least leave the desire of listening, 
 were a hundredfold preferable ; but these spin- 
 ners of talk, who give us phrases instead of 
 thoughts, and exclamations instead of feelings, 
 take away all wish to hear, and on the contrary, 
 inspire a disgust for speaking itself. 
 
 There is no way of avoiding this disadvantage 
 except by means of a well- conceived, deeply- 
 considered, and seriously-elaborated plan. He 
 who knows not how to form such plan, will 
 never speak in a living or an effective manner. 
 He may become a rhetorician; but he will 
 never be an orator. 
 
 Let us, then, see by what process this found- 
 ation of the orator's task must be laid ; for it 
 is to a discourse what the architect's design is 
 to a building. 
 
 The plan of a discourse is the order of the 
 things which have to be unfolded. You must 
 therefore begin by gathering these together, 
 whether facts or ideas, and examining each 
 separately, in their relation to the subject or 
 purport of the discourse, and in their mutual 
 bearings w 7 ith respect to it. Next, after having 
 
PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 117 
 
 selected those which befit the subject, and 
 rejecting those which do not, you must marshal 
 them around the main idea, in such a way as 
 to arrange them according to their rank and 
 importance, with respect to the result w 7 hich 
 you have in view. But, what is worth still 
 more than even this composition or synthesis, 
 you should try, when possible, to draw forth, 
 by analysis or deduction, the complete develope- 
 ment of one single idea, which becomes not 
 merely the centre, but the very principle of the 
 rest. This is the best manner of explaining 
 or developing, because existences are thus pro- 
 duced in nature, and a discourse, to have its 
 full value, and full efficiency, should imitate 
 her, in her vital process, and perfect it by 
 idealising that process. 
 
 In fact, reason, when thinking and express- 
 ing its thought, performs a natural function, 
 like the plant which germinates, flowers, and 
 bears fruit. It operates, indeed, according to 
 a more exalted power, but it follows in the 
 operation the same laws as all beings endued 
 with life; and the methods of analysis and 
 synthesis, of deduction and induction, essential 
 to it, have their types and symbols in the vital 
 
118 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 acts of organic beings, which all proceed like- 
 wise by the way of expansion and contraction, 
 unfolding and enfolding, diffusion and collec- 
 tion. 
 
 The most perfect plan is, therefore, the plan 
 which organises a discourse upon the same 
 principle that nature employs, in the formation 
 of any being, fraught with life. It is the sole 
 means of giving to oratory a real and natural 
 unity, and, consequently, strength and beauty. 
 
 This is doubtless the best method ; but you 
 can often but make an approach towards it, 
 depending on the nature of the subject and the 
 circumstances in which you have to speak. 
 Hence a few differences, which must be men- 
 tioned, in the elaboration of the plan. 
 
 In the first place, we give warning that we 
 do not mean to concern ourselves with that 
 popular eloquence which sometimes fulminates 
 like a thunderbolt, amidst the anarchy of states, 
 in riots, insurrections, and revolutions. Elo- 
 quence of that sort has no time to arrange a 
 plan ; it speaks according to the circumstances 
 and, as it were, at the dictate of the winds by 
 which it is borne along ; it partakes of that 
 disorder which has called it forth, and this for 
 
PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 119 
 
 the most part, constitutes its power, which is 
 mighty to destroy. It acts after the fashion of 
 a hurricane, which upsets everything in its 
 course by the blind fury of the passions which 
 it arouses, by the unreasoning wills which it 
 carries with it, and yields no ray from the light 
 of thought, nor charm from the beauty of style. 
 This instinctive and not very intelligent kind 
 of eloquence is to that of which we are treating, 
 as the force of nature, when let loose in the 
 earthquake or in great floods, is to the ordinary 
 and regular laws of Providence, which produce, 
 develope, and preserve whatever exists ; it is 
 the force of the steam which bursts the boiler, 
 and spreads disaster and death wherever it 
 reaches ; whereas, when powerfully compressed 
 within its proper limits, and directed with 
 intelligence, it works regularly under the con- 
 trol of a skilful hand, and toils orderly and in 
 peace for the welfare of men. 
 
 We have no recommendation, then, to offer 
 to the orators of cabal rooms and riots, nor even 
 to those who may be called on to resist or 
 quell them. It is hard to make any suitable 
 preparation in such emergencies, and, besides, 
 they are fraught with so much of the unfore- 
 
120 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 seen, that, in nine cases out of ten, all prepara- 
 tion would be disconcerted. What can be done 
 is what must be done, according to the moment; 
 and, in general, it is the most passionate, the 
 most violent, and he who shouts the loudest who 
 carries the day. Moreover, there is nearly al- 
 ways a species of fatality which prevails in 
 these situations : the force of things crushes 
 the force of men. It is a rock loosened from 
 the mountain- side, and falling headlong, — a 
 torrent swelling as it rushes onward, or the 
 lava of a volcano overflowing: to endeavour 
 to stay them is madness. All one can do is 
 to protect oneself; the evil will be exhausted 
 by its own course, and order will return after 
 the storm. 
 
 But in the normal state of society, — and it 
 is for that state we write, — by the very fact of 
 social organisation, and springing out of its 
 forms, there are constantly cases in which you 
 may be called to speak in public, on account of 
 the position which you fill, or the duties which 
 you discharge. Thus, committees will conti- 
 nually exist, in which are discussed state or 
 municipal interests, and deliberative resolutions 
 are passed by a majority of votes, whatever 
 
PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 121 
 
 may be the constitution or the power of such 
 assemblies, — considerations with which we have 
 no concern here. There will always be a 
 council of state, general and borough councils, 
 legislative assemblies, parliaments, and com- 
 mittees of a hundred sorts. 
 
 In the second place, there will always be 
 tribunals where justice is dispensed, and where 
 the interests of individuals, in collision with 
 those of the public or with one another, have 
 to be contended for, before judges whom you 
 must seek to convince or persuade. 
 
 There will alw T ays be a system of public 
 teaching to enlighten and train the people, 
 whether by the addresses of scientific men, 
 who have to instruct the multitude in various 
 degrees, and to inform them what is needed 
 for the good guidance of public and of private 
 life in temporal matters, or addresses made by 
 the ministers of religion, who, teaching in the 
 name of the Almighty, must unremittingly re- 
 mind men of their last end, and of the best 
 means with which to meet it, making their 
 earthly and transitory interest subordinate to 
 their celestial and everlasting happiness- 
 
122 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 
 
 Here, then, we have four great fields, in 
 which men are daily called on to speak in 
 public, in order there to discuss the gravest 
 interests of society, of families, and of indivi- 
 duals, or else to unfold truths more or less 
 lofty, often hard to comprehend or to admit, 
 but the knowledge or conviction of which, is of 
 the highest moment to the welfare of society 
 and persons. It is anything but immaterial, 
 then, that men belonging to such callings, des- 
 tined from day to day to debate on public ot 
 private concerns, or to demonstrate the funda- 
 mental truths of science and religion, should 
 know how to do so with method, clearness, 
 power, and gracefulness, — -in one word, with 
 all the means of persuasion, — that they may 
 not fail in their mission, and especially that 
 they may disseminate and render triumphant 
 in the minds of men, together with good sense 
 and right reason, that justice, and truth, and 
 those principles, in the absence of which nothing 
 can be stable or durable among nations. This 
 alone would show what importance for good or 
 for evil the orator may acquire in society, since 
 to his lot it falls to prepare, train, and control 
 
PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 1*23 
 
 almost all the resolutions of communities or of 
 individuals, that can modify their present, or 
 decide their future condition. 
 
 Our remarks then will apply to four classes 
 of speakers : — the political orator ; the forensic 
 orator, whether magistrate or advocate ; the 
 orator of education, or the professor; and the 
 orator of the pulpit, or the preacher. In these 
 four arenas, the political assembly, the sanc- 
 tuary of justice, the academy, and the Church, 
 extemporaneous speaking is daily practised, 
 and is capable of the most salutary influence, 
 when fraught with ability, life, and power, or, 
 in other words, when performed with elo- 
 quence. 
 
124 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC SPEAKING 
 DISCUSSED. 
 
 I will say but little of political and forensic 
 speaking, because I have not been used to 
 either, and my wish is to be the exponent of 
 my own experience. I leave professional 
 adepts to give their colleagues the best of all 
 advice, that derived from actual practice. 
 This would require details with which nothing 
 but the exercise of public duties, or of the 
 bench and bar themselves, could make us ac- 
 quainted. I will therefore confine myself to a 
 few general remarks derived from the theory of 
 the oratorical art, as applied to the duties of 
 the politician and advocate. 
 
 The political orator may have two sorts of 
 questions to treat — questions of principle, and 
 questions of fact. 
 
POLITICAL AND FORENSIC SPEAKING. 125 
 
 In the latter, which is the more ordinary case, 
 at least among well constituted communities, 
 whose legislation and government rest upon 
 remote precedents and are fixed by experience, 
 the plan of a discourse is easy to construct. 
 With principles acknowledged by all parties, 
 the only point is to state the matter, with the 
 circumstances which qualify it, and the reasons 
 which urge the determination demanded from 
 the voice of the assembly. The law or custom 
 to which appeal is made, constitutes the major 
 premiss (as it is termed in Logic) ; the actual 
 case, brought by the circumstances, within 
 that law or those precedents, constitutes the 
 minor premiss ; and the conclusion follows of 
 its own accord. In order to carry away the 
 assent of the majority, you describe the advan- 
 tages of the proposed measure, and the inex- 
 pediency of the opposite course, or of any other 
 line. 
 
 To treat such subjects properly, there needs 
 no more than good sense, a certain business 
 habit, and a clear conception of what you 
 would say and what you demand. You must 
 thoroughly know what you want, and how to 
 express it. In my mind, this is the best 
 
126 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 political eloquence, that is, business speaking, 
 expounding the business clearly, succinctly, 
 with a knowledge of the matter, saying only 
 what is necessary, with tact and temperately, 
 and omitting all parade of words and big ex- 
 pressions, even those which embody sentiments, 
 save now and then in the exordium and pero- 
 ration, according to the case. It is in this way 
 that men generally speak in the British Par- 
 liament ; and these speeches are of some use ; 
 they come to something, and carry business 
 forward, or end it. Happy the nation which 
 has no other sort of political eloquence ! Un- 
 fortunately for us, another sort has prevailed in 
 our own parliamentary assemblies. 
 
 Among us, from the day that representative 
 government was established, political dis- 
 courses have almost invariably turned upon 
 questions of principle: no well established and 
 universally respected constitution, — no settled 
 course of legislation confirmed by custom, — no 
 recognised and admitted precedents, — things 
 all of which strengthen the orator's position, 
 because he has already decisions on which to 
 rest, and examples to give him their support. 
 Time has been almost always employed, or 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 127 
 
 rather wasted, in laying down principles, or in 
 trying to enforce what were advanced as 
 principles. The constitution itself and, con- 
 sequently, the organisation of society and 
 government have always been subjects of dis- 
 pute, and all our assemblies, — whatever the 
 name with which they have been adorned, — 
 have been directly or indirectly in the state of 
 a constituent (or primary) body. 
 
 Now, this is the most difficult situation for 
 the orator, for the assemblies themselves, and 
 for the country ; and experience has proved it, 
 in spite of good speeches, and the reputation of 
 orators of whom France is proud. 
 
 In these cases, in fact, the speaker is greatly 
 at a loss how to treat new and unexampled 
 questions, except by foreign instances which 
 are never exactly applicable to another country. 
 His ideas, not being enlightened or supported 
 by experience, remain vague and float in a 
 kind of chaos ; and yet, as demonstration re- 
 quires a basis of some sort, he is obliged to 
 have recourse to philosophic theories, to 
 abstract ideas which may always be disputed, 
 which are often obscure and unintelligible to 
 the majority of the hearers, and are impugned 
 
128 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 by the votaries of hostile systems. Once 
 launched into the ideas of philosophers the 
 debate knows neither limits nor law. The 
 most irreconcilable opinions meet and clash, 
 and it is not always light which springs from 
 their collision. On the contrary the longer 
 the deliberation continues, the thicker the 
 darkness becomes ; Parliament degenerates into 
 an academy of philosophers, an arena of sophists 
 and rhetoricians ; and, as something must be 
 concluded, either because of the pressure of 
 necessity, or in consequence of the wearisome- 
 ness of the speeches, and the satiety of debate, 
 the discussion is closed without the question 
 having been settled, and the votes, at least 
 those of the majority, are given, not in accord- 
 ance with any convictions newly acquired, but 
 with the signal of each voter's party. 
 
 It is said that such a course is necessary in 
 an assembly, if business is to be transacted ; 
 and I believe it, since there would otherwise be 
 no end of the deliberation. But it must be 
 conceded to me withal, that to vote from confi- 
 dence in party leaders, and because these have 
 marked out the path to be pursued, is not a 
 very enlightened way of serving one's country 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 129 
 
 and discharging the trust reposed by a con- 
 stituency. 
 
 Unfortunately, decisions thus formed lead to 
 nothing permanent, and are fatal both to assem- 
 blies and to the nation. They establish 
 nothing, because they are not held in serious 
 regard by a community, divided like their 
 Parliaments into majorities and minorities, 
 which obtain the mastery in turn over each other. 
 It comes to pass that what one government does 
 the next cancels ; and as the battle is perpetu- I 
 ally renewed, and parties competing for power 
 attain it, in more or less rapid succession, every 
 form of contradiction, within a brief space, 
 appears and vanishes, each having sufficiently 
 prevailed in rotation, to destroy its rival. 
 
 Hence a profound discredit in public opinion 
 for laws continually passed and continually 
 needing to be passed again, and thus rendered 
 incapable of taking root in the minds of the 
 citizens or securing their reverence. Legis- 
 lation becomes a species of chaos in which 
 nothing can be solidly fixed, because it abounds 
 with elements of revolt which combat and dis- 
 organise whatever is produced there. 
 
 Moreover, — and this too is a calamity for 
 
130 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 the country, — as parties are, for the most part, 
 not unevenly matched, and as the majority 
 depends on a few votes, in order to come to a 
 decision so habitually uncertain, it is necessary, 
 on important occasions, to make a fusion or 
 coalition of parties in one way or another by 
 the lures of private interest, which can be 
 effected only through mutual concessions ; and 
 then, when unanimity appears to have been 
 procured in the mass of stipulations, each per- 
 son, desirous of obtaining his own guarantees, 
 requires that some special provision, on his 
 account, be introduced in some particular to 
 the subversion of the general design. Now, 
 let but three or four parties exist in a na- 
 tional assembly (and it is a blessing if there 
 be no more) , and it is easy to see what sort of 
 law it will be which is thus made ; a species of 
 compound, mixed of the most irreconcilable 
 opinions; a monstrous being, the violently 
 united parts of which wage an intestine war, 
 and which, therefore, after all the pain which 
 its production has cost, is incapable of life. 
 Nor can such laws be applied ; and after a 
 disastrous trial, if they are not presently 
 abolished by the party which next obtains the 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 131 
 
 mastery in its turn, they fall into disuse, 01 
 operate only by dint of exceptions, remaining 
 as a weight and a clog upon the wheels of the 
 political machine, which they continually 
 threaten with dislocation. 
 
 Whatever may have been said or done in 
 our own day, there is nothing more deplorable 
 for a people than a constitution-making assem- 
 bly ; for it is a collection, of philosophers, or of 
 men who fancy they are such, who do not quite 
 understand themselves, and assuredly' do not 
 understand each other. Then are the destinies 
 of a nation, its form of government, its admi- 
 nistration, its condition and its fortune, its wel- 
 fare and its misery, its glory and its shame, 
 consigned to the hazards and contradictions of 
 systems and theories. 
 
 Now, only name me a single philosopher who 
 has uttered the truth, and the whole truth, 
 about the principles, metaphysical, moral, and 
 political, w 7 hich should serve as the basis of the 
 social structure. Have they not in this most 
 serious concern, to even a greater degree than 
 in other matters, justified that remark of Cicero, 
 that there is not an absurdity which has not found 
 some philosopher to maintain it ? If you set 
 
 K 2 
 
132 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 several of them together, then, to work out a 
 constitution, how can you hope they will agree ? 
 They cannot agree except in one way, — that 
 which we just now described, — by mutual con- 
 cessions extorted from interest, not from con- 
 viction ; and the force of things will oblige them 
 to produce a ridiculous and impracticable 
 result, repugnant to the good sense and con- 
 science of the nation. 
 
 But how then, it will be said, make a nation's 
 constitution ? To this I answer, a nation's 
 constitution is not made, it grows of itself; or 
 j rather it is Divine Providence, who assumes the 
 I office of making it, by the process of centuries, 
 and writes it with His finger in a people's 
 history. It was thus the English constitution 
 was formed, and that is why it lasts. 
 
 Or if, unhappily, after a revolution which 
 has destroyed all a country's precedents, which 
 has shaken and uprooted everything in the land, 
 it becomes necessary to constitute it anew, we 
 must then do as the ancients did, who had 
 more sense than we have in this respect ; we 
 must entrust the business to one man, endowed 
 with an intelligence and an authority, adequate 
 to this great feat, and impersonating, for the 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 133 
 
 moment, the entire nation ; we must commit it 
 to a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Pythagoras ; for 
 nothing needs more wisdom, reason, or courage 
 than such an enterprise, and men of genius are 
 not always equal to it, if circumstances do not 
 assist them. At all events, to this we must 
 come after revolutions, and their various expe- 
 riments of parliamentary constitution. The 
 seven or eight constitutions of the first republic 
 ended in that of the empire which sprang full 
 armed from the head of the new Jupiter ; and 
 the Constituent Assembly of 1848, with its new 
 birth so laboriously produced, but no more 
 capable of life than the others, vanished in a 
 single day, before the constitution of the new 
 empire, which has nothing at its root but that 
 of the old one. By this road have we come — 
 if not to that liberty, of which they have said 
 so much, but which they never allowed us to 
 behold — to good sense and order, and to the 
 peace of social life. 
 
 Tn one word, then, I will say, to close what 
 relates to political eloquence : if you have to 
 speak on a matter in which there are admitted 
 principles and authorised precedents, study it 
 well in its connexion with both, that you may 
 
134 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 have a foundation and examples. Then exa- 
 mine it in all its actual elements, all its ramifi- 
 cations and consequences. You will then easily 
 construct your plan, which must be determined 
 by the nature of things, and when you have 
 well conceived and pondered it, you will speak 
 easily, simply, and effectively. 
 
 But if you must discuss the origin of society, 
 the rights of men and nations, natural rights 
 and social rights, and other questions of that 
 kind, I have but one advice to give you : begin 
 by reading on these questions all the systems 
 of the philosophers and jurists, and after doing 
 so, you will be so much in the dark, and will 
 find such difficulty in arriving at a rational con- 
 viction, that if you are sincere and honest, that 
 is, unwilling to assert or maintain anything, 
 except what you know or believe, you will 
 decline speaking, and adopt the plan of keeping 
 silence, in order not to add to darkness or 
 increase the confusion. 
 
 As to the bar, with the exception of the ad- 
 justments of corn prices * and the harangues at 
 
 * In France and some other countries, as in our own 
 formerly, government interferes to settle the market con- 
 ditions of certain staples, such as corn, flour, and bread" 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 135 
 
 the opening of the courts, which are didactic 
 or political, and, therefore, belong to another 
 class of speaking, the addresses or pleadings 
 whether by advocates, or from the floor of the 
 court, are always business speeches ; and ac- 
 cordingly the plan of them is easy, because it 
 is pointed out by the facts, and by the develop- 
 ment of the matter in litigation. Besides, the 
 speaker, in this description of discourse, has 
 his papers in his hand; and a man must be 
 truly a blockhead, or else have a very bad 
 cause to sustain, if he do not with ease, keep to 
 the line of his subject, to which every thing 
 conspires to recall and guide him. It is the 
 easiest sort of speaking, because it demands the 
 least invention, and because by comparing, 
 however superficially, the facts of the case with 
 the articles of the law, the reasons for and 
 against occur of themselves, according to the 
 side you wish to espouse, and the only thing 
 in general to be done, is to enumerate them, 
 with an explanation of each. 
 
 And yet, in this, as in everything, good 
 speeches are rare, because talent is rare in all 
 things ; it is merely easier to be decently suc- 
 cessful in a description of speaking, which com- 
 
136 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 
 
 prises a number of details, proceeds entirely 
 upon facts, and is constantly supported by notes 
 and corroborative documents. 
 
 The preparation of the plan in addresses of 
 this nature, costs, therefore, little trouble. The 
 character of the subject bears nearly all the 
 burden, and not much remains for the inven- 
 tion or imagination. We should add that, 
 having never pleaded, we cannot speak in any 
 way from experience, and theory is hardly of 
 any use in such matters. 
 
 The great difficulty for the forensic orator is 
 not to develope his matter, or to discover w^hat 
 to say, but, on the contrary, to restrict it, to 
 concentrate it, and to say nothing but what is 
 necessary. Advocates are generally prolix and 
 diffuse, and it must be said in their excuse, they 
 are led into this, by the nature of their subject, 
 and by the way in which they are compelled 
 to treat it. Having constantly facts to state, 
 documents to interpret, contradictory arguments 
 to discuss, they easily become lost in details 
 to which they are obliged to attach great im- 
 portance ; and subtle discussion on the articles 
 of the law, on facts, and on objections, occupies 
 a very large space. It requires an exceedingly 
 
SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 137 
 
 clear mind and no ordinary talent, to avoid 
 being carried along by the current of this too 
 easy eloquence, which degenerates so readily 
 into mere fluency. Here, more than elsewhere, 
 moderation and sobriety deserve praise, and the 
 aim should be, not to say a great deal, but to 
 avoid saying too much. 
 
138 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPEAKING FROM THE PULPIT, AND TEACHING. 
 
 We unite in our enquiry, so far as the pre- 
 paring of a plan is concerned, both pulpit and 
 professorial speaking. Although there is a 
 striking difference between these two modes of 
 speaking, on account of the situation of the ora- 
 tors, and of the subjects which they handle, — a 
 difference which we will indicate in passing, — 
 yet a great analogy subsists between them, espe- 
 cially in what regards the plan ; for they both 
 aim at instructing the hearers, — that is, they 
 aim at making the hearers understand and 
 admit a truth, at impressing it on their convic- 
 tion or persuasion, and at showing them the 
 best means of applying it or putting it into 
 practice. 
 
 This resemblance, which may seem paradox- 
 ical at first sight, is nevertheless founded on 
 nature, and thus we shall perceive if these 
 
ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 139 
 
 several kinds of discourse be thoroughly appre- 
 ciated and considered, as to the end which 
 they have in view, and not merely as to the 
 oratorical form or words. 
 
 What, in fact, is the preacher's grand aim ? 
 Whither must he tend with all his might? 
 What do the nature and the gravity of his 
 ministry make incumbent upon him ? Clearly, 
 the religious and moral instruction of those 
 who listen to him, in order to induce them by a 
 knowledge and conviction of the Divine Word, 
 to observe it in their conduct, and to apply to 
 their actions its precepts, counsels, and in- 
 spirations. Wherefore, whether he expound 
 a dogma, or morals, or aught that relates to 
 worship and to discipline, he always takes as 
 his starting point and basis, some truth doc- 
 trinal or practical, which he has to explain, 
 analyse, unfold, maintain, and elucidate. He 
 must shed light by means of that truth, that it 
 may enter the hearer's mind, and produce 
 therein a clear view, a conviction, and that it 
 may arouse or increase his faith ; and this faith, 
 this conviction, this enlightenment must induce 
 him to attach himself to it, to seize it through 
 his volition, and to realise it in his life. 
 
140 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 
 
 However great may be the* ornament and 
 pomp of the style, the brilliancy and variety of 
 imagery, the movement and pathos of the 
 phrases, the accent and the action: whether 
 he excite powerfully the imagination, or move 
 the sensibility, awake the passions, or cause 
 the heartstrings to vibrate : all which is good, 
 but only as accessory, and as a means to help 
 the end, the elucidation of the truth. All these 
 things, if unaccompanied by the principal one, 
 lose their efficacy ; or, if they produce any 
 effect, it will neither be deep nor lasting, be- 
 cause there is no basis to the speech ; and from 
 the orator having laboured so much on the ex- 
 terior, he w T ill have nothing more to do. In 
 one word, there is no idea in those words; 
 only phrases, images, and movements. I 
 know well that men may be carried captive 
 and inflamed for the moment by this process ; 
 but it is a blinding influence, that often leads 
 to evil, or at least to an exaggeration that can- 
 not be kept up. It is a passing warmth that 
 soon cools in the midst of obstacles, and fades 
 easily in the confusion it has caused through 
 imprudence and precipitation. 
 
 Teaching earnestly, or speaking only to the 
 
ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 141 
 
 imagination, convincing the mind and per- 
 suading the will, or carrying away the heart by 
 the excitation of sensibility,- — these methods 
 distinguish sacred orators as well as others. 
 But to instruct and convince the listener, one 
 must be instructed and convinced. To make 
 truth pass into the minds of others, one must 
 possess it in one's own ; and this can only be 
 done both for oneself and for others, indepen- 
 dently of supernatural faith, which is the gift 
 of God, by an earnest meditation of the. holy 
 Word, and the energetic and persevering 
 labour of thought applied to the truth to be 
 expounded, and the point of doctrine to be 
 taught. The same exists in all kinds of scien- 
 tific or literary teaching. 
 
 It is evident in philosophy. He who teaches 
 has always a doctrine to expound. Let a man 
 treat of the faculties of the soul ; of the opera- 
 tion of thought and its method ; of duties and 
 rights ; of justice ; of what is good ; and even 
 of what is beautiful : of the Supreme Being ; 
 of beings and their laws ; of the finite and the 
 infinite; of contingent and necessary matter; 
 of the relative and the absolute : he has always 
 before him an idea to expose, to develope and 
 
142 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 
 
 illustrate ; and the knowledge of this idea, that 
 he tries to give his disciples must help to make 
 them better as well as more enlightened, or 
 else philosophy is no more worthy of her name. 
 She would neither be the lover of wisdom nor 
 its pursuit. 
 
 If in the teaching of natural sciences the 
 professor limits himself to practical experiences, 
 to describe facts and phenomena, he will, no 
 doubt, be able to amuse and interest his listen- 
 ers, youth particularly ; but then he is only a 
 painter, an experimenter, or an empiric. His 
 is natural philosophy in sport, and his lectures 
 are a kind of show, or recreative sittings. To 
 be really a professor he must teach, and he can 
 only teach through ideas ; that is, by explaining 
 the laws that rule facts, and in connecting them 
 as much as possible with the whole of the admi- 
 rable system of the creation. He must lead his 
 disciples up to the heights that command facts ; 
 down in the depths from whence spring pheno- 
 mena ; and there will only be science in his 
 teaching, if he limit it to some heads of doc- 
 trine, the connection of which constitutes 
 precisely the science of which he is the master. 
 
 He will then be able to follow them in their 
 
ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 143 
 
 consequences, and to confirm their theory by 
 applications to mechanical and industrial arts, 
 or to any other use to which they may be ap- 
 plied by man. 
 
 The teaching of letters and of arts is the 
 same : it must always be directed by the expo- 
 sition of principles, rules, and methods. It is 
 not sufficient to admire ecstatically great 
 models, and become enthusiastic for master 
 w T orks. It is something without doubt, when 
 the enthusiasm is sincere, and the admiration 
 is truly felt; but the teaching must be di- 
 dactic ; he must himself learn while he teaches 
 the secret of the work ; he must indicate the 
 process, and direct the work. He must teach 
 the pupils to acknowledge, to have a taste for 
 what is beautiful, and to reproduce it; and to 
 do this we must be able to say in what the 
 beautiful consists in each art, and how we come 
 to discern it in nature, to preserve or imagine it 
 in our minds, while idealising it, and to transfer 
 the ideal into reality, by the resources of art. 
 
 Although here facts and examples have more 
 influence, because feeling and imagination play 
 the chief part in the work, yet ideas are also 
 necessary, and especially in literature, poetry, 
 
144 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 
 
 and the arts of language. That which chiefly 
 distinguishes artists and schools from each 
 other is the predominance of the idea, or the 
 predominance of the form. The most beautiful 
 forms in the world, without ideas, remain super- 
 ficial, cold, and dead. The idea alone gives life 
 to any human production, as the Divine ideas 
 vivify the productions of nature. For in all 
 things the spirit quickeneth; but the letter, 
 when alone, Mlleth. Therefore, he who teaches 
 literature or art, ought to have a method, 
 a certain science of his art, the principles of 
 which he should expound, by rules and pro- 
 cesses, applying them practically, and support- 
 ing them with examples. 
 
 Were we to pass in review all kinds of 
 instruction one after another, we should find 
 the same end and the same conditions as in pul- 
 pit discourse or in religious teaching ; namely : 
 the clear exposition of some truth for the 
 instruction of the hearer, with a view to con- 
 vince him and induce him to act according to 
 his conviction. 
 
 Let us see, then, at present in a general 
 way, how we should set about preparing the 
 plan of a discourse, and doing what we have 
 
ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 145 
 
 just said, whether as a preacher or as a pro- 
 fessor. We shall here speak from experience 
 and with simplicity, a circumstance which gives 
 us some confidence, beeause we have been ac- 
 customed to do so for nearly forty years in 
 teaching philosophy, we still do so, and desire 
 to do so while any strength and energy remain. 
 
146 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DETERMINATION OF THE SUBJECT AND CON- 
 CEPTION OF THE IDEA OF THE DISCOURSE, 
 
 He who wishes to speak in public must, above 
 all, see clearly on what he has to speak, and 
 have a right conception of the idea. The pre- 
 cise determination of the subject, and the idea 
 of the discourse, — these are the two first 
 stages of the preparation. 
 
 It js not so easy as it seems to know upon 
 what one is to speak ; many orators, at least, 
 seem to be ignorant of it, or to forget it, in the 
 course of their address ; for it is sometimes 
 their case to speak of all things except those 
 which would best relate to the occasion. This 
 exact determination of the subject is still 
 more needful in extemporisation ; for there 
 many more chances of discursiveness exist. 
 The address not being sustained by the me- 
 mory or by notes, the mind is more exposed to 
 the influences of the moment ; and nothing is 
 
THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 147 
 
 required but the failure or inexactitude of a 
 word, the suggestion of a new thought, a little 
 inattention, to lure it from the subject, and 
 throw it into some crossroad, which takes it 
 far away. Add the necessity of continuing' 
 when once a speech is begun, because to stop 
 is embarrassing; to withdraw, a disgrace. 
 
 Therefore, in order to lead and sustain the 
 progress of a discourse, one must clearly know 
 whence one starts, and whither one goes, and 
 never lose sight of either the point of departure 
 or the destination. But, to effect this, the road 
 must be measured beforehand, and the principal 
 distance marks must be placed: there is other- 
 wise a risk of losing one's way, and then, either 
 we fail to reach our destination, or attain it 
 only after an infinity of turns and circuits, 
 which have wearied the hearer as well as the 
 speaker, without profit or pleasure to anybody. 
 
 The determination of the subject ought not 
 to fix merely the point upon which one has to 
 speak, but further the radiation of this point 
 and the circumference which it will embrace. 
 The circle may be more or less extensive, and 
 as all things are connected in the world of 
 ideas, even more closely than in that of mate- 
 
 l 2 
 
143 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 
 
 rial bodies, so you may render your discourse 
 too discursive, and this often befalls those who 
 extemporise; and thus the discourse rules the 
 mind, not the mind the discourse. 
 
 It is as a ship which falls away for want of a 
 helm, and he who is within, unable to control 
 her, abandons himself to the current of the 
 stream, at the risk of wrecking himself upon 
 the first breaker, not knowing where he shall 
 touch the shore. 
 
 It is but wise, then, not to begin a speech 
 without having at least by a rapid general view, 
 if there be no time to prepare a plan, decided 
 the main line of the discourse, and sketched in 
 the mind an outline of its most prominent 
 features. In this precepts are not of great 
 use ; good sense, tact, and a clear and lively 
 intelligence are requisite to seize exactly the 
 point in question and to hold to it ; and for this 
 end nothing is better than to formularise it at 
 once by some expression, some proposition, 
 which may serve to reduce the subject to its 
 simplest shape, and to determine its propor- 
 tions. 
 
 ques tion well stated is half solved. In 
 ike manner a subject well fixed, admits of 
 
THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 149 
 
 easier treatment, and singularly facilitates the 
 discourse. As to the rest, the occasion, the 
 circumstances, and the nature of the subject, do 
 much in the same direction. There are cases 
 in which the subject determines itself by the 
 necessity of the situation and the force of 
 things. The case is more embarrassing when the 
 speaker is master of circumstances, as in teach- 
 ing, where he may distribute his materials at his 
 pleasure, and design each lesson's part. In any 
 case, and however he sets to work, each dis- 
 course must have its own unity, and constitute 
 a whole, in order that the hearer may embrace 
 in his understanding what has been said to him, 
 may conceive it in his own fashion, and be able 
 to reproduce it at need. 
 
 But the general view of the subject, and 
 the formula which gives it precision, are not 
 enough ; the idea of it, the living idea, the 
 parent idea, which is the source of the life in 
 a discourse, and without which the words will 
 be but a dead letter, must be obtained. 
 
 What is this parent idea, and how to obtain 
 it? 
 
 In the physical world, whatever has life 
 comes from a germ, and this germ, previously 
 
150 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 
 
 contained in another living existence, there 
 takes life in itself, and on its own account, by the 
 process of fecundation. Fecundated, it quits 
 its focus ; pundum saliens, it radiates and tends 
 to develope itself by reason of the primordial 
 life which it bears within it, and of the nurture 
 it receives ; then by gradual evolution, it ac- 
 quires organic form, constituted existence, in- 
 dividuality, and body. 
 
 It is the same in the intellectual world, and 
 in all the productions of our mind, made visible 
 through language and discourse. There are in 
 our understanding germs of mental existences, 
 and when they are evoked by a mind which is 
 of their own nature, they take life, become 
 developed and organised, first in the depth 
 of the understanding winch is their brooding- 
 receptacle, and finally passing into the outer 
 world by that speech which gives them a 
 body, they become incarnate there, so to speak, 
 and form living productions, instinct with more 
 or less of life by reason of their fecundated 
 germ of the understanding which begets them, 
 and of the mind which vivifies them. 
 
 In every discourse, if it have life, there is a 
 parent idea or fertile germ, and all the parts of 
 
THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 151 
 
 the discourse are like the principal organs and 
 the members of an animated body. The pro- 
 positions, expressions, and words, resemble 
 those secondary organs which connect the 
 principal organs, the nerves, muscles, vessels 
 tissues, attaching them to one another, and 
 rendering them copartners in life and death. 
 Then amid this animate and organic mass there 
 is the spirit of life, which is in the blood, and 
 is everywhere diffused with the blood from the 
 heart, life's centre, to the epidermis. So in 
 eloquence, there is the spirit of the words, the 
 soul of the orator, inspired by the subject, his 
 intelligence illumined with mental light, w 7 hich 
 circulates through the whole body of the dis- 
 course, and pours therein brightness, heat, and 
 life. A discourse without a parent idea, is a 
 stream without a fountain, a plant without a 
 root, a body without a soul; empty phrases, 
 sounds which beat the air, or a tinkling cymbal. 
 Nevertheless, let us not be misapprehended ; 
 if we say that a discourse requires a parent 
 idea, we do not mean that this idea must be a 
 new one, never before conceived or developed 
 by any one. Were this so, no more orators 
 would be possible, since already from Solomon's 
 
152 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 
 
 day, there has been nothing new under the sun, 
 and the cycle of ages continually brings back 
 the same things under different forms. 
 
 It is not likely, then, that there should be 
 more new ideas in our day than in the time of 
 the King of Israel ; but ideas, like all the 
 existences of this world, are renewed in each 
 age, and for each generation. They are re- 
 produced under varied forms and with modifi- 
 cations of circumstance : " Non nova sed nove," 
 said Vincent of Lerins. The same things are 
 differently manifested; aud thus they adopt 
 themselves to the wants of men, which change 
 with time and place. 
 
 For this reason the orator may, and should 
 say, ancient things, in substance ; but he will 
 say them in another manner, corresponding 
 with the dispositions of the men of his epoch, 
 and he will add the originality of his individual 
 conception and expression. 
 
 For this purpose, in all the rigour of the word 
 he should conceive his subject, in order to have 
 the idea of it ; this idea must be born in him, and 
 grow, and be organised in a living manner ; and 
 as there is no conception without fecundation, 
 this mental fecundation must come to him from 
 
THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 153 
 
 without, either spontaneously, or, at least, in an 
 invisible manner, as in the inspirations and il- 
 luminations of genius, — or, what oftener hap- 
 pens, by means of the attentive consideration 
 of the subject and meditation upon the thoughts 
 of others. 
 
 In any case, whatever be the fashion of the 
 understanding's fecundation, and from whatever 
 quarter light comes to it, — and light is the life 
 of the mind, — he must absolutely conceive the 
 idea of what he shall say, if he is to say any- 
 thing fraught with life, — that is, engendered, 
 born in his mind, and bearing the character of it. 
 His thoughts will then be proper to him (his 
 own) by virtue of their production, and despite 
 their resemblance to others, — as children belong 
 to their mother, notwithstanding their likeness 
 to all the members of the human race. But 
 they all and each possess something new for 
 the family and generation in which they are to 
 live. It is all we would say when we require 
 of him who has to speak in public, that he 
 should have, at least, an idea to expound, 
 sprung mentally, if we may so say, from his 
 loins, and produced alive in the intellectual 
 world by his words, as in the physical order a 
 
154 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 
 
 child by its mother. This simply means, in the 
 language of common sense, that the orator 
 should have a clear conception of what he would 
 say. 
 
155 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. INDIRECT 
 
 METHOD. 
 
 How ensure a good conception of your sub- 
 ject ? There are two ways or methods ; the one 
 direct, which is always the best when you can 
 take it; the other indirect, longer and less 
 certain, but more accessible to beginners, more 
 within reach of ordinary minds, and serving to* 
 form them. You may indeed use both ways ; 
 either coming back the second way, when you 
 have gone out by the first, or beginning with 
 the easiest, in order to arrive at the most 
 arduous. 
 
 The main way, or that which by preeminence 
 deserves the designation, consists in placing 
 yourself immediately in relation with the object 
 about which you have to speak, so as to con- 
 sider it face to face, looking through it with the 
 mind's eye, while you are yourself irradiated 
 with the light which the object gives forth. 
 
156 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 In this crossing of rays, and by means of 
 their interpenetration, a conception, represent- 
 ing that object which begets it, is produced in 
 the understanding, and partakes of the nature 
 of that in which it is formed, and which con- 
 tains it. 
 
 In this case a fecundation of the mind, or 
 subject, is effected by the object, and the result is 
 the idea of the object, begotten and brought 
 into a living state in the understanding by its 
 own force. This idea is always in the ratio of 
 the two factors or causes which combine to call 
 it forth, of their relation to each other, and of 
 ' the success with which the union is effected. 
 
 If the mind be simple, unwarped, pure, 
 greedy of knowledge, and eager after truth, — 
 when it places itself before the object fully, 
 considers it generally, at the same time that it 
 opens itself unreservedly to its light with a wish 
 to be penetrated by it, and to penetrate it, to 
 become united to it with all its strength and 
 capacity; and if, further, it have the energy 
 and persistency to maintain itself in this atti- 
 tude of attention without distraction, and col- 
 lecting all its faculties, concentrating all its 
 lights, it makes them converge upon this single 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 157 
 
 point, and becomes wholly absorbed in the union 
 which thus ensures intellectual fecundity, the 
 conception then takes place after a normal and 
 a plenary fashion. The very life of the object, 
 or thing contemplated, passes with its light 
 into the subject or mind contemplating, and 
 from the life-endowed mental germ springs the 
 idea, at first weak and dark, like whatever is 
 newly-begotten, but growing afterwards by the 
 labour of the mind and by nutrition. It will 
 become gradually organised, full-grown, and 
 complete, as soon as its constitution is strong 
 enough to emerge from the understanding, it 
 will seek the birth of words, in order to unfold 
 to the world the treasures of truth and life which 
 it contains within it. 
 
 But if it be only examined obliquely, under 
 an incidental or restricted aspect, the result will 
 be a conception analogous to the connection 
 which produces it, and consequently an idea of 
 the object, possessing perhaps some truth and 
 some life, but representing the object only in 
 one phase, only in part, and thus leading to a 
 narrow and inadequate knowledge. 
 
 It is clear that as it is in the physical, so it is 
 in the moral world. Knowledge is formed by 
 
158 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 the same laws as existence, the knowledge of 
 metaphysical like that of sensible things, al- 
 though these differ essentially in their nature 
 and in their limits. The laws by which life is 
 transmitted, are those by which thought is 
 transmitted, which is, after its own fashion, 
 conceived and generated ; a fact arising from 
 the application to the production of all living 
 beings, of the eternal law of the Divine genera- 
 tion, by which the Being of beings, the Prin- 
 ciple of life, Who is life itself, engenders in 
 Himself His image or His Word, by the know- 
 ledge which He has eternally of Himself, and 
 by the love of His own perfection which He 
 contemplates. 
 
 Thus with the human mind, which is made 
 in the image of God, and which reproduces a 
 likeness of it in all its operations ; the know- 
 ledge of a human mind is also a sort of genera- 
 tion. It has no knowledge of sensible things, 
 except through the images which they produce 
 in the understanding, and that such images 
 should arise, it is requisite that the under- 
 standing be penetrated by the impressions of 
 objects, through the senses and their organs. 
 Hence appearances, images, ideas, or, to speak 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 159 
 
 more philosophically, conceptions of exterior 
 things, which are not only the raw material of 
 knowledge, but the principles more or less 
 pregnant of the sciences of nature, according as 
 they may have been formed in the mind. This 
 accounts in part for the power of first impres- 
 sions, the virtue of the first aspect, or of the 
 primary meeting of the "subject" and object. 
 
 Now we have intelligible and spiritual, as 
 well as material and sensible existences around 
 us. We live by our mind and by its inter- 
 course with that of our fellow creatures in a 
 moral world, which is realised and perpetuated 
 by speech and in language, as physical existences 
 are fixed in the soil, and from the soil developed. 
 The language spoken by a human community, 
 and constituting the depository, the magazine 
 of the thoughts, ideas, and knowledge of that 
 community, forms a true world of minds, a 
 sphere of intellectual existences, having its own 
 life, light, and laws. 
 
 Now it is with these subtle and, and as it 
 were, ethereal existences, which are condensed 
 in words, like vapour in clouds, — it is with these 
 metaphysical realities that our mind must 
 come into contact, in order by them to be 
 
160 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 fecundated, without other medium than the 
 signs which express them, and in order to 
 conceive the ideas which science has to develope 
 by analysis, and which the speaker will unfold 
 in his discourse, so as to bring home their 
 truth to those who are ignorant of it. Any- 
 body must feel how difficult it is to hold 
 commune by the sight of the mind with things 
 so delicate, so evanescent, things which cannot 
 be seized except by their nebulous and ever 
 shifting dress of language ; and how much more 
 difficult it is to persist long in this contempla- 
 tion, and how soon the intelligence gets fatigued 
 of pursuing objects so scarcely tangible, objects 
 escaping its grasp on all sides. In truth it is 
 only a very rare and choice class of minds which 
 know how to look directly, fixedly, and perse- 
 veringly at objects of pure intelligibility. For 
 the same reason they have greater fecundity, 
 because entering into a close union with the ob- 
 jects of their thought, and becoming thoroughly 
 penetrated by them, they take in the very 
 nature and vitality of things, with the light 
 which they emit. 
 
 These are the minds, moreover, that con- 
 ceive ideas and think for the rest of mankind, 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 161 
 
 whose torches and guides they are in the intel- 
 lectual world ; and as their words, the vehicle 
 of their conceptions and thoughts, are employed 
 during instruction in reproducing, that is, in 
 engendering within the minds of their fellow- 
 creatures the ideas which the light of the things 
 themselves has produced in their own, they are 
 called men of genius, that is, generators by 
 intelligence, or transmitters by means of lan- 
 guage, of the light and life of the mind. 
 
 This consideration brings us to the second 
 way or method by which feebler intellects, or 
 such as have talent without having genius, may 
 also succeed in conceiving the idea of the sub- 
 ject upon which they are about to speak. 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT.— INDIRECT 
 METHOD. 
 
 Those who have to treat a subject which has 
 not been treated before, are obliged to draw 
 from a consideration of the subject, and from 
 their own resources, all they have to say. 
 Then, according to their genius and their pe- 
 netration, and in proportion to the manner in 
 which they put themselves in presence of the 
 things, will their discourse evince more or less 
 truth, exactitude, and depth. They are sure to 
 be original, since they are the first to treat the 
 subject, and, uninfluenced by any prejudice or 
 bias, the natural impression of the object upon 
 their soul, produces clear and profound ideas, 
 which remain in the kingdom of science or of 
 art as common property, and a sort of patrimony 
 for those w T ho come later. Afterwards, when 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 163 
 
 the way is opened, and many have trodden it, 
 leaving their traces behind them, when a sub- 
 ject has been discussed at various times and 
 among several circles, it is hard to be original, 
 in the strict sense, upon that topic ; that is, to 
 have new thoughts — thoughts not expressed 
 before. But it is both possible and incumbent 
 to have that other species of originality, which 
 consists in putting forth no ideas except such 
 as we have made our own, and which are thus 
 quickened with the life of our own mind. This 
 is called taking possession in the finders name; 
 and Moliere, when he imitated Plautus and 
 Terence ; La Fontaine, when he borrowed from 
 iEsop and Phsedrus, were not ashamed of the 
 practice. This condition is indispensable, if 
 life is to be imparted to the discourse ; and it 
 is this which distinguishes the orator, who 
 draws on his own interior resources even when 
 he borrows, from the actor who impersonates, 
 or the reader who recites the productions of 
 another. 
 
 In such a case the problem stands therefore 
 thus: — When you have to speak on a subject 
 already treated by several authors, you must care- 
 fully cull their justest and most striking thoughts, 
 
 M 2 
 
164 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 analyse and sift these with critical discernment 
 and penetration, then fuse them in your own 
 alembic by a powerful synthetic operation, 
 which, rejecting whatever is heterogeneous, 
 collects and kneads whatever is homogeneous 
 or amalgamable, and fashions forth a complex 
 idea that shall assume consistency, unity, and 
 colour in the understanding, by the very heat 
 of the mind's labour. 
 
 If we may compare things spiritual with 
 things material, — and we always may, since 
 they are governed by the same laws, and hence 
 their analogy, — we would say that, in the 
 formation of an idea by this method, some- 
 thing occurs similar to what is observed in the 
 productions of the ceramic or modeller's art, 
 composed of various elements, earths, salts, 
 metals, alkalies, acids, and the rest, which, 
 when suitably separated, sifted, purified, are 
 first united into one compound, then kneaded, 
 shaped, moulded, or turned, and finally sub- 
 jected to the action of the fire which combines 
 them in unity, and gives to the whole solidity 
 and splendour. 
 
 Thus, the orator w T ho speaks after many 
 others, and must treat the same topic, ought 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 165 
 
 first to endeavour to make himself acquainted 
 with all that has been written on the subject, 
 in order to extract from the mass the thoughts 
 which best serve his end ; he ought then to 
 collect and fuse within his own thought the 
 lights emitted by other minds, gather and con- 
 verge upon a single point the rays of those 
 various luminaries. 
 
 He cannot shirk this labour, if he would 
 treat his subject with fulness and profundity ; 
 in a word, if he is in earnest with his business, 
 which is to seek truth, and to make it known. 
 Like every true artist, he has an intuition of 
 the ideal, and to that ideal he is impelled by 
 the divine instinct of his intelligence to lift his 
 conceptions and his thoughts, in order to pro- 
 duce, first in himself and then upon others, by 
 speaking or by whatever is his vehicle of ex- 
 pression, something which shall for ever tend 
 towards it, without ever attaining it. For 
 ideas, properly so called, being the very con- 
 ceptions of the Supreme Mind, the eternal 
 archetypes after which all created things have 
 been modelled with all their powers, the human 
 mind, made after the image of the Creator, 
 yet always finite, whatever its force or its light, 
 
166 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 can catch but glimpses of them here below, and 
 will always be incapable of conceiving and of 
 reproducing them in their immensity and in- 
 finitude. 
 
 However, care must be taken here not to 
 allow oneself to be carried away by too soaring 
 a train of considerations, or into too vast a 
 field; all things are linked together and in 
 the higher world, the realm of sovereign unity, 
 and universality, this is more especially the 
 case. A philosopher, meditating and writing, 
 may give wings to his contemplation, and his 
 flight will never be too lofty nor too vigorous, 
 provided his intelligence be illumined with the 
 true light, and guided in the right path ; but 
 the speaker generally stands before an audience 
 who are not on his own level, and whom he 
 must take at theirs. Again, he speaks with a 
 view to some immediate effect, some definite 
 end. His topic is restricted by these conditions, 
 and his manner of treating it must be subor- 
 dinated to them, his discourse adapted to them. 
 It is no business of his to say all that might be 
 said, but merely what is necessary or useful in 
 the actual case, in order to enlighten and 
 persuade his hearers. He must, therefore, cir- 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 167 
 
 cumscribe his matter within the limits of his 
 purpose ; and his discourse must have just that 
 extent, that elevation, and discretion, which 
 the special circumstances demand. 
 
 It is with this aim that the orator ought to 
 prepare his materials, and lay in, as it were, 
 the provisions for his discourse. 
 
 First, as we have said, he must collect the 
 materials for his discourse. Then he will do 
 what the bee does, which rifles the flowers, — 
 and by an admirable instinct which never mis- 
 leads it, it extracts from the cup of the flower 
 only what serves to form the wax and the 
 honey, the aromatic and the oleaginous parti- 
 cles. But, be it well observed, the bee first 
 nourishes itself with these extracts, digests them, 
 transmutes them, and turns them into wax and 
 honey solely by an operation of absorption 
 and assimilation. 
 
 Just so should the speaker do. Before him 
 lie the fields of science and of literature, rich 
 in each description of flower and fruit, — every 
 hue, every flavour. In these fields he will seek 
 his booty, but with discernment ; and choosing 
 only what suits his work, he will extract from 
 it, by thoughtful reading and by the process of 
 
168 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 mental tasting (his thoughts all absorbed in his 
 topic, and darting at once upon whatever re- 
 lates to it), everything which can minister nutri- 
 ment to his intelligence, or fill it, or even per- 
 fume it ; in a word, the substantial or aromatic 
 elements of his honey, or idea, but ever so as 
 to take in and to digest, like the bee, in order 
 that there may be a real transformation and 
 appropriation, and consequently a production 
 fraught with life. 
 
 The way in which he should set to work, 
 or at least the way in which we have ourselves 
 proceeded under similar circumstances, and 
 with good results, is this. 
 
 [We hope we shall be forgiven for these 
 details of the interior, these private manage- 
 ments of an orator : we think them more useful 
 to show how to contrive than the didactics of 
 teaching would be ; they are the contrivances 
 of the craft, secrets of the workshop. Besides, 
 we are not writing for adepts, but for novices ; 
 and these will be better helped by practical 
 advice, and by the results of positive ex- 
 perience, than by general rules or by specu- 
 lations.] 
 
 Above all, then, you must decide with the 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 169 
 
 utmost clearness what it is you are going to 
 speak upon. Many orators are too vague in 
 this ; and it is an original vice which makes 
 itself felt in their whole labour, and, later, in 
 their audience. Nothing is worse than vague- 
 ness in a discourse ; it produces obscurity, dif- 
 fuseness, rigmarole, and wearisomeness. The 
 hearer does not cling to a speaker who talks 
 without knowing what he would say, and who, 
 undertaking to guide him, seems to be ignorant 
 whither he is going. 
 
 The topic once well settled, the point to be 
 treated, once well defined, you know where to 
 go for help. You ask for the most approved 
 writers on that point ; you get together their 
 works, and begin to read them with attention, 
 pausing, above all, upon the chapters and pas- 
 sages which specially concern the matter in 
 question. 
 
 Always read pen or pencil in hand. Mark 
 the parts which most strike you, those in 
 which you perceive the germ of an idea or of 
 anything new to you; then, when you have 
 finished your reading, make a note, but let it 
 be a substantial note, not a mere transcrip- 
 tion or extract — a note embodying the very 
 
170 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 thought which you have apprehended, and 
 which you have already made your own by 
 digestion and assimilation. 
 
 Above all, let these notes be short and lucid ; 
 put them down one under the other, so that 
 you may afterwards be able to run over them 
 at a single view. 
 
 Mistrust long readings from which you carry 
 nothing away. Our mind is naturally so lazy, 
 the labour of thought is so irksome to it, that 
 it gladly yields to the pleasure of reading other 
 people's thoughts, in order to avoid the trouble 
 of forming any itself; and then time passes in 
 endless readings, the pretext of which is some 
 hunt after materials, and which comes to no- 
 thing. The mind ruins its own sap, and gets 
 burdened with trash : it is as though overladen 
 with undigested food, which gives it neither 
 force nor light. 
 
 Quit not a book until you have wrested from 
 it whatever relates the most closely to your 
 subject. Not till then go on to another, and 
 if I may so express myself, get the cream off 
 in the same manner. 
 
 Repeat this labour with several books, until 
 you find the same ideas are presented to the 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 171 
 
 mind, and there is nothing more to gain ; or 
 until you feel your understanding to be suffi- 
 ciently furnished, and that your mind now 
 requires to digest the nutriment which it has 
 taken. 
 
 Rest awhile, in order to let the intellectual 
 digestion operate. Then, when these various 
 aliments begin to be transformed, and inter- 
 penetrated, comes the labour of the desk, which 
 will extract from the mass of nourishment its 
 very juices, distribute them everywhere, and 
 will contribute to form, from diversity of pro- 
 ducts, unity of life. 
 
 It is with the mind as with the body ; after 
 nourishment and repose, it requires to act and 
 to transmit. When it has repaired its strength, 
 it must exert it ; when it has received, it must 
 give ; after having concentrated itself, it needs 
 dilation ; it must yield back what it has ab- 
 sorbed ; fulness unrelieved is as painful to it as 
 inanition. These are the two vital movements, 
 — attraction and expansion. 
 
 The moment this fulness is felt, the moment 
 of acting or thinking for yourself has arrived. 
 
 You take up your notes and you carefully 
 re-read them face to face with the topic to be 
 
172 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 treated. You blot out such as diverge from 
 it too much, or are not sufficiently substantial, 
 and by this elimination you gradually concen- 
 trate and compress the thoughts which have the 
 greatest reciprocal bearing. You work these a 
 longer or a shorter time in your understanding, 
 as in a crucible, by the inner fire of reflection, 
 and, in nine cases out of ten, they end by 
 amalgamating and fusing into one another, 
 until they form a homogeneous mass, which is 
 reduced, like the metallic particles in incandes- 
 cence, by the persistent hammering of thought, 
 into a dense and solid oneness. 
 
 As soon as you become conscious of this 
 unity, you obtain a glimpse of the essential 
 idea of the composition, and in that essential 
 idea, the leading ideas which will distribute 
 your topic, and which already appear like the 
 first organic lineaments of the discourse. 
 
 In the case supposed, the idea forms itself 
 synthetically, or by a sort of intellectual coa- 
 gulation, which is fraught with life, because 
 there is really a crossing or interpenetration of 
 various thoughts in one single mind, which has 
 assimilated them to one another only by first 
 assimilating them to itself. They take life in 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE . SUBJECT. 173 
 
 its life which unifies them, and although the 
 idea be thus compounded of a multiplicity of 
 elements, nevertheless as these elements have 
 been transformed into that one mind's own 
 thought, they become harmonised therein, and 
 constitute a new production endowed by the 
 understanding in which it is called forth, with 
 something individualising and original. 
 
 However, a different result sometimes occurs, 
 and this happens particularly in the most stirring 
 and fertile intellects. The perusal of other 
 men's thoughts, and the meditation thus excited, 
 becomes for them not the efficient cause, but 
 the occasion, of the requisite idea, which springs 
 into birth by a sudden illumination, in the 
 midst of their mental labour over other people's 
 ideas, as the spark darts from the flint when 
 stricken by steel. 
 
 It is a mixed method between the direct, 
 which is that of nature, and the indirect, which 
 we have been describing. It partakes of the 
 former, because there is in it a kind of genera- 
 tion of the idea which is instantaneously effected ; 
 but it is a generation less instinct with life, and, 
 as it w r ere, at second hand ; for it is not formed 
 in the mi» by the action of the thing itself, 
 
174 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 but by its image or reflection in a human ex- 
 pression. It partakes of the second method, 
 because the birth of the idea is brought about 
 by reading and meditation. 
 
 The idea which is its offspring, though infe- 
 rior to that engendered by the object itself, is 
 more natural, and, therefore, more living than 
 that produced by synthesis ; simpler, more one, 
 more original; it is more racy of the mind, 
 which has conceived it at one effort, and from 
 which it springs full of life, as Minerva in the 
 fable sprang full armed from the head of Jupiter, 
 cleft by Vulcan's hatchet. Thus it is with 
 the orator's understanding, which is suddenly 
 opened by a thought that strikes it, and from 
 which arises completely organised the idea of 
 his topic to become the Minerva or wisdom of 
 his discourse. In this case the plan of his com- 
 position arranges itself spontaneously. The 
 parent idea takes the place of sovereignty at 
 once, by right of birth, and all the others 
 group themselves around her, and to her subor- 
 dinate themselves, in order to co-operate in 
 better displaying her and doing her honour, 
 as bees surround the queen bee to work under 
 her direction at the common task, or as, in the 
 
CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 175 
 
 revolutions and the emergencies which end 
 them, nations instinctively rally about the man 
 raised up by the Almighty to re-establish order, 
 equity, and peace. 
 
176 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FORMATION AND THE ARRANGEMENT 
 OF IDEAS. 
 
 The idea is formed either through the fecun- 
 dation of the understanding by the object 
 which there engenders its image and deposits 
 its life, or by the bringing together of various 
 elements transformed and made one by the ab- 
 sorbing and reflecting operations of the mind ; 
 or else by a mixed process which partakes of 
 both these, and which we just now described. 
 
 In all three cases, however, at the first 
 moment of conception, there is as yet only a 
 shapeless and vague product which floats, so to 
 say, upon the waters of the understanding, and 
 over which broods the spirit of life which has 
 indeed animated it, but which has still to 
 develope and to organise it, to establish it in a 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS. 177 
 
 definite state of existence, and to give it an 
 individuality * by means of words. 
 
 It is the germ fecundated in the parent soil, 
 but which cannot vet spring forth without 
 danger, for want of the necessary organisation 
 to live and take its place in the world to which 
 it is destined to belong. Therefore, a period of 
 incubation and organogenesis is indispensable to 
 it under pain of its abortion, and the loss of 
 its life. 
 
 This is precisely the speaker's case ; he has 
 conceived his idea, and he bears it in his un- 
 derstanding. He must not commit it to the 
 day until it is able to appear with the con- 
 ditions of vitality, that is to say, before it is 
 organised in all its parts, in order that it 
 may properly perform its functions in the 
 world which it is to enter ; — neglect this, and 
 you will have an abortive discourse, words 
 without life. 
 
 ;; :i A local habitation and a name." There is through- 
 out the whole of these passages a striking analogy between 
 the thoughts of Shakspeare. as they are hinted in his 
 brief picture of the poet, and those which M. Bautain, 
 applying them to the orator, more philosophically analyses 
 and more fully (level opes. 
 
 N 
 
178 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 Sometimes the idea thus conceived, is de- 
 veloped and formed rapidly, and then the plan 
 of the discourse arranges itself on a sudden, 
 and you transmit it to paper warm with the 
 fervour of the conception which has just taken 
 place, as the metal in a state of fusion is poured 
 into the mould, and fills at a single turn all its 
 lineaments. It is the case most favourable to 
 eloquence, — that is, if the idea has been well 
 conceived, and if it be fraught with light. 
 
 But in general, one must not be in a hurry 
 to form one's plan. In nature, life always 
 needs a definite time for self-organisation, — 
 and it is only ephemeral beings which are 
 quickly formed, for they as quickly pass away. 
 Everything destined to be durable is of slow T 
 growth, and both the solidity and the strength 
 of existing things bear a direct ratio to the 
 length of their increase and the matureness 
 of their production. 
 
 When, therefore, you have conceived an 
 idea, unless it be perfectly clear to you at the 
 first glance, be in no haste to throw it into 
 shape. Carry it for a time in your mind, and 
 it will of itself tend towards development and 
 completion. By means of the spiritual medi- 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS* 179 
 
 tation, it will, when sufficiently mature to be 
 trusted to the light of day, spontaneously 
 strive to break from confinement, and to issue 
 forth to view; — then comes the moment for 
 writing. 
 
 The organic generation of ideas is as impos- 
 sible to explain fully as that of bodies. Nature's 
 work is as mysterious in the one respect as in 
 the other ; only there being a part for freewill 
 and conscience to play in the intellectual 
 sphere, we see a little more clearly in this than 
 in the other, and co-operate a little more di- 
 rectly. 
 
 The understanding, in fact, is a spiritual soil 
 which has feeling, consciousness, and, up to a 
 certain point, a knowledge of whatever is 
 taking place in it. We cannot conceive an 
 idea without being conscious of it ; for the very 
 property of a mental conception is the for- 
 mation within us of a new knowledge ; and 
 thus we are not left, in this respect, as in the 
 physical order, to the operation of the blind 
 force of nature. The mother of the Maccabees 
 said to her children — " I know not how you 
 were formed, . . . nor how the life you have re- 
 
 N 2 
 
180 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 ceived was created ;" now, the understanding, 
 which is the mother of the ideas engendered 
 by it and living in it, has the privilege not 
 only of feeling but of seeing their formation ; 
 otherwise it would not be understanding. It 
 assists at the development of its ideas, and co- 
 operates therein, actively and intelligently, by 
 the functions of thought and reflection, by 
 meditation and mental toil. Such is the dif- 
 ference between the physical and moral nature, 
 between the life of the body and that of the 
 mind, between the action of animaie matter 
 and that of intelligence. 
 
 The thoughts apply themselves to a frequent 
 consideration of the idea conceived ; they turn 
 and re-turn it in every direction, look at it in 
 all its aspects, place it in all manner of relations ; 
 they penetrate it with their light, scrutinise 
 its foundation, and examine its principal parts 
 in succession ; these begin to come out, to 
 separate themselves from each other, to assume 
 sharp outlines, just as the bud in the first 
 rudimentary traces of the flower are discernible ; 
 then the other organic lines, appearing one 
 after the other, instinct with life, or like the 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS. 181 
 
 confused, first animate form, which little by 
 little, declares itself in all the finish of its pro- 
 portions. In like manner, the idea, in the 
 successive stages of its formation, shows itself 
 each day in fuller development to the mind 
 which bears it, and which acquires the assur- 
 ance of its progress by persevering medita- 
 tion. 
 
 There are frequently good ideas which 
 perish in a man's understanding, whether 
 for want of nourishment, or from the debility 
 of the mind which, through levity, indolence, 
 or giddiness, fails to devote a sufficient amount 
 of reflection to what it has conceived. It 
 is even observable that those w 7 ho conceive 
 with the greatest quickness and facility, bring 
 forth, generally, both in thoughts and in lan- 
 guage, the weakest and the least durable produc- 
 tions ; whether it be that they do not take time 
 enough to mature what they have conceived, — 
 hurried into precocious display by the vivacity 
 of their feelings and imagination, — or on account 
 of the impressionability and activity of their 
 minds, which, ever yielding to fresh emotions, 
 exhausting themselves in too rapid an alternation 
 
182 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 of revulsions, have not the strength for patient 
 meditation, and allow the half-formed idea or 
 the crude thought, born without life, to escape 
 from the understanding. Much, then, is in 
 our own power towards the ripening and per- 
 fecting of our ideas. 
 
 Nevertheless, we must acknowledge and 
 with humility confess, — even while conceding 
 their full share in the result to reason and our 
 own voluntary efforts, — a share as undeni- 
 able in this case, and perhaps more undeni- 
 able, than in any other, — that there is a great 
 deal which is not within our power in the 
 whole of this operation, and that a man's own 
 proper part, or merit, in the matter, is of 
 very slight account, compared to the immense 
 and gratuitous gifts on which he must rely. 
 Who can give to genius, or even to talent, that 
 marvellous understanding by which things are 
 promptly and lucidly conceived, — that fertile 
 and sensitive mirror of ideas which responds to 
 the slightest objective impression, and so as- 
 tonishingly reproduces all its types ? 
 
 Who can give them that powerful intelligence, 
 whose piercing glance seizes every relation, 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS. 183 
 
 discerns every shade, traverses the whole extent 
 of ideas ? That glowing imagination which 
 invests each conception with brilliant colouring, 
 — that unfailing and tenacious memory which 
 preserves unimpaired all the features of it, and 
 reproduces them at will, either separately or 
 together, to assist the labour of thought and 
 meditation ? 
 
 Who can give them that vigorous attention, 
 that strong grasp of the mind, which seizes 
 with energy and holds with perseverance before 
 the eye of intelligence, the object to be consi- 
 dered and sounded; who gives them that 
 patience of observation, which is itself a species 
 of genius, especially in the study of Nature ? 
 
 All these rich endowments may, indeed, be 
 developed by exercise and perfected by art ; 
 but neither exercise nor art can give them. 
 And since in the order of intelligence, and of 
 science, as in the physical w T orld, we see 
 nothing without the light w 7 hich illumines 
 objects, whence do these select minds get that 
 intellectual and immaterial light, which shines 
 upon them more abundantly than on others, 
 and enables them to discern in things and in the 
 
184 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 ideas of things what others see not ? So that, 
 according to the magnificent expression of the 
 Royal Prophet they see the light in the light. 
 Whence the lofty aspirations, the sudden 
 flashings of genius, producing great and new 
 ideas, so deeply and so mightily conceived, 
 that they become by their radiation so many 
 centres of light, so many torches of the human 
 race ? How is it that, in the presence of nature 
 or of society, they experience such emotions and 
 such impressions, that they see and understand 
 what to others is all darkness and void ? 
 
 We might as well ask why one soil is more 
 fruitful than another, why the sun in one 
 climate is brighter, and his light more pure 
 than in another. The Almighty dispenses His 
 treasures and His favours as He deems best, 
 and this in the moral, no less than in the 
 physical world. In this dispensation to nations 
 or to individuals, He always has in view the 
 manifestation of His truth, His power, and 
 His mercy ; and wherever He kindles a larger 
 share than usual of light and fire, wherever the 
 magnitude of His gifts is specially remarkable, 
 there has He chosen organs of His will, wit- 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS. 185 
 
 nesses of His truth, heralds of His science, re- 
 presentatives of His glory, and benefactors of 
 mankind. 
 
 In this is the true secret of those wonders of 
 power, of virtue, and of genius, which appear 
 from time to time on earth. It is the Almighty 
 who would make Himself known by His 
 envoys, or would act by His instruments ; and 
 the real glory and happiness of both, where 
 they are intelligent and free beings, are to co- 
 operate with their whole strength and their 
 whole will towards the great coming of God's 
 kingdom upon earth, and towards the fullest 
 possible realisation of His eternal ideas. 
 
 In this respect, the same thing is true of the 
 works of man's mind in science, which is true 
 of the acts of his will in the practice of bene- 
 ficence. He cannot do a good action without 
 wishing it, and he cannot wish it without the 
 exercise of his liberty ; but the inspiration of 
 good, which induces him to choose it, and gives 
 him the strength to accomplish it, comes not 
 from himself. It is a gratuitous gift from the 
 sole Giver of all that is good. It is for this 
 reason we are told that, of ourselves, we cannot 
 
186 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 form a good resolution, nor think a good 
 thought, nor perform a good action ; and never- 
 theless, we will, we choose, we act freely, — for 
 we are responsible. In like manner, we can 
 effect nothing of ourselves in the conception 
 and expression of our ideas. We stand in 
 need of the life of our understanding being 
 perpetually renewed ; of the life or the impres- 
 sion of objects, penetrating it more or less 
 deeply ; of the light which fertilises, engenders, 
 fosters; in fine, of the life which surrounds 
 minds and spirits, as well as bodies, — that 
 moral atmosphere which calls forth, feeds, and 
 developes whatever has motion therein. And 
 amid all this, and along with it, is required the 
 energetic co-operation of the spirit or mind itself, 
 which feels, conceives, and thinks, and without 
 which nothing human can be accomplished. 
 
 Thus, then, in the order of speculation for 
 our mental productions, as in the moral order, 
 for the accomplishment of our actions, while 
 maintaining our freewill, while exercising to 
 the full, the activity of our intelligence, which 
 have their own rights, lot, and part, let us 
 reckon above all upon Him who has in Him 
 
FORMATION OF IDEAS. 187 
 
 life itself, who enlightens minds and fertilises 
 or enriches them, just as He impresses and 
 guides hearts, and Whose virtue, in imparting 
 itself to men, becomes the source of perfect 
 gifts, of luminous conceptions, of great ideas, 
 as well as of good inspirations, holy resolves, 
 and virtuous actions. 
 
188 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF THE PLAN. 
 
 Everything in nature comes in its own time 
 and at the predetermined instant. The fruit, 
 drops its seed when it is ripe and fit for 
 reproduction, and the child is born when the 
 hour has arrived, and when the new being is 
 sufficiently organised to live. 
 
 It is thus with the mental production which 
 the orator bears in his understanding. There 
 is a moment when the idea tends to issue forth 
 from its obscure retreat, in order to alight in 
 the world of day, appear in the face of the sun, 
 and there unfold itself. 
 
 Only this much difference there is, that the 
 latter production, being intellectual, depends to 
 a certain degree upon the freedom of the 
 mind ; that, consequently, the moment of birth 
 is not, in it, predestinary or necessary, as in 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 189 
 
 the physical order, and thus the will of the 
 author may hasten or delay it often to the injury 
 of the production and of its development. Pre- 
 mature expression (that is, when you seek to 
 reduce to plan an idea which is not ripe, and 
 the organisation of which is still vague) may 
 lead to a failure, or at least to a disappointing 
 off-shoot, incapable of life, or capable of only a 
 sickly life — a fate which often befals youthful 
 authors too eager to produce. 
 
 But, on the other side, too much delay in the 
 composition of the plan, when the idea is ready 
 and demands expression, is equally prejudicial 
 to the work, which may wither, perish, and be 
 even stifled in the understanding, for want of 
 that air and light which have become indispens- 
 able to its life, and which it can derive only 
 from being set in the open day. 
 
 There are men who experience the greatest 
 difficulty imaginable in bringing forth their 
 thoughts, either from a deficiency of the need- 
 ful vigour to put them forward and invest them 
 with a suitable form, or from a natural indo- 
 lence which is incapable of continued efforts ; 
 like those plants which will never pierce the 
 soil by their own unaided energy, and for 
 
190 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 
 
 which the spade must be used at the risk of 
 destroying their tender shoots. This sluggish- 
 ness, or rather incapability of producing when 
 the time is come, is a sign of mental feebleness, 
 of a species of impotency. It invariably be- 
 tokens some signal defect in the intellectual 
 constitution, and those who are afflicted with it 
 will write little, will write that little with 
 difficulty, and will never be able to speak ex- 
 temporaneously in public ; they will never be 
 orators. 
 
 Nevertheless, even in him who is capable of 
 becoming one, there is sometimes a certain 
 inertness and laziness. We have naturally a 
 horror of labour, and of all kinds the labour of 
 thought is the hardest and the most trouble- 
 some ; so that frequently, for no other reason 
 than to avoid the pain which must be under- 
 gone, a person long keeps in his own head an 
 idea, already perfectly ripe and requiring only 
 to be put forth. He cannot bring himself to 
 take up the pen and put his plan into shape ; he 
 procrastinates, day after day, under the futile 
 pretext of not having read enough, not having 
 reflected enough, and that the moment is not 
 yet come, and that the work will gain by more 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 191 
 
 prolonged studies. Then, by this unseasonable 
 delay, the fruit languishes in the understanding 
 from want or nourishment; falls by degrees 
 into atrophy, loses its vital force, and dies 
 before it is yet born. Many an excellent idea 
 thus perishes in the germ, or is stifled in its 
 development by the laziness or the debility of 
 the minds which have conceived them, and 
 which have been impotent to give them forth. 
 
 The Almighty's gift is lost through man's 
 fault. This happens to men otherwise distin- 
 guished and gifted with rare qualities, but who 
 dread the responsibilities of duty and the pres- 
 sure of the circumstances in which they may 
 become involved. Under pretext of preserving 
 their freedom, but really in order to indulge 
 their indolence, they shun the necessity of 
 labour, with its demands and its fatigues, and 
 thus deprive themselves of the most active 
 stimulus of intellectual life. Given up to 
 themselves, and fearing every external influence 
 as a bondage, they pass their lives in conceiving 
 without ever producing, — in reading without 
 contributing anything of their own, — in re- 
 flecting, or rather in ruminating, without ever 
 either writing or speaking publicly. It would 
 
192 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 
 
 have been happy for such men to have been 
 obliged to work for a living ; for, in the spur of 
 want their mind would have found a spring 
 which it has missed, and the necessity of sub- 
 sisting by labour, or positive hunger, would 
 have effected in them what the love of truth or 
 of glory w r as not able to accomplish. 
 
 The very best thing for him who has received 
 the gift of eloquence, and who could make an 
 orator, is, therefore, that he should be compelled 
 to become one. The labour of eloquence, and 
 the labour of thinking which it presupposes, 
 cost so much trouble and are so difficult, that 
 save some choice characters, impelled by their 
 genius or by ambition, nothing short of some 
 downright necessity, physical or moral, is re- 
 quisite to drive men to undertake them. 
 
 But if a man is a professor, and must deliver 
 his lecture or instructions on some fixed day, 
 and at an appointed hour, — or a clergyman, 
 and is obliged to mount the pulpit at such or 
 such a moment; or a barrister, who has to 
 address the court at the time fixed by the 
 judges ; or member of some council or delibera- 
 tive assembly, under an engagement to speak 
 in a certain business, then, indeed, a man must 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 193 
 
 be ready, on pain of failing in his duty, or of 
 compromising his position, his reputation. On 
 such occasions, an effort is made, laziness is 
 shaken off, and a man strives in earnest either 
 to fathom the question (and this is never done 
 so well as when it is necessary to write or to 
 speak thereon), or else to form a clearer notion of 
 it, or, in short, to prepare the best exposition of 
 it, with a view to producing conviction and 
 persuasion. In this respect, we may say in the 
 words of the Gospel, " Blessed are the poor" 
 Penury or want is the keenest spur of the 
 mind and of the will. You are forced to bestir 
 yourself and to draw on your inventive re- 
 sources, and in youth especially, which is the 
 most favourable time for securing instruction 
 and acquirements, it is a great happiness to be 
 plucked away by necessity from the enticement 
 of pleasure, the dissipations of the world, the inac- 
 tivity of supineness. There needs nothing short 
 of this kind of compulsion, and of the fear which 
 it inspires, to recal to reflection, meditation, and 
 the persevering exercise of thought, a soul drawn 
 outward by all the senses, athirst for enjoyment, 
 and carried away by the superabundance of 
 life (which at that age is overflowing) into the 
 
 o 
 
194 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 
 
 external world, there to seek for that nourish- 
 ment and happiness which it will not there find. 
 Our own entire youth was passed in that violent 
 state, that unceasing conflict between the in- 
 stinct of nature and the duty of toil. By this 
 we know what it costs to achieve the triumph, 
 and what most tends to ensure it. 
 
 How ought your plan to be arranged ? 
 
 In order to produce or arrange it well, you 
 must take your pen in hand. Writing is a 
 whetstone, or flattening engine, which wonder- 
 fully stretches ideas, and brings out all their 
 malleableness and ductility. 
 
 On some unforeseen occasion you may, with- 
 out doubt, after a few moments of reflection, 
 array suddenly the plan of your discourse, and 
 speak appropriately and eloquently. This pre- 
 supposes, in other respects, that you are well 
 versed in your subject, and that you have in your 
 understanding chains of thought formed by pre- 
 vious meditations ; for it is impossible to ex- 
 temporise the thoughts, at least during the whole 
 of a discourse. 
 
 But if you have time for preparation, never 
 undertake to speak without having put on paper 
 the sketch of what you have to say, the links 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 195 
 
 of your ideas ; and this for two reasons : — the 
 first and weightiest is, that you thus possess 
 your subject better, and consequently speak 
 more closely and with less risk of digressions. 
 The second is, that when you write down a 
 thought you analyse it. The division of the 
 subject becomes clear, becomes determinate, 
 and a crowd of things which were not before 
 perceived present themselves under the pen. 
 
 Speaking is thinking aloud, but it is more ; 
 it is thinking with method and more distinctly, 
 so that in embodying your idea you not only make 
 others understand it, but you understand it 
 better yourself while spreading it out before 
 your own eyes and unfolding it by words. 
 
 Writing adds more still to speech, giving it 
 more precision, more fixity, more strictness, and 
 by being forced more closely to examine what 
 you wish to write down you extract hidden 
 relations, you reach greater depths, wherein 
 may be disclosed rich veins or abundant lodes. 
 
 Experience teaches us that we are never 
 fully conscious of all that is in our own 
 thoughts, except after having written it out. 
 So long as it remains shut up in the mind, it 
 preserves a certain haziness; we do not see 
 
 o 2 
 
196 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 
 
 it completely unfolded ; and we cannot con- 
 sider it in all its aspects and bearings. 
 
 Again, while it merely flies through the air 
 in words, it retains something vague, mobile, 
 and indefinite. Its outlines are loosely drawn, 
 its shape is uncertain, the expression of it is more 
 or less precarious, and there is always some- 
 thing to be added or withdrawn. Tt is never 
 more than a sketch. Style only gives to thought 
 its just expression, its finished form, and perfect 
 manifestation. 
 
 Nevertheless, beware of introducing style 
 into the arrangement of your plan ; it ought to 
 be like an artist's draught, the sketch, which, 
 by a few lines unintelligible to everybody save 
 him who has traced them, decides what is to 
 enter into the composition of the picture, 
 and each object's place. Light and shadow, 
 colouring and expression will come later. Or, 
 to take another image, the plan is a skeleton, 
 the dry bone-frame of the body, repulsive to all 
 except the adept in anatomy, but full of 
 interest, of meaning, and of significance for 
 him who has studied it and who has practised 
 dissection ; for there is not a cartilage, a. pro- 
 tuberance, or a hollow, which does not mark 
 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 197 
 
 what that structure ought to sustain, — and 
 therefore you have here the whole body in 
 epitome, the entire organisation in miniature. 
 
 Hence, the moment you feel that your idea 
 is mature, and that you are master of it in its 
 centre and in its radiations, its main or trunk 
 lines, take the pen and throw upon paper what 
 you see, what you conceive in your mind. If 
 you are young or a novice, allow the pen to 
 have its way and the current of thought to flow 
 on. There is always life in this first rush, and 
 care should be taken not to check its impetus 
 or cool its ardour. Let the volcanic lava run ; 
 it will become fixed and crystalline of itself. 
 
 Make your plan at the first impulse, and 
 follow your inspiration to the end ; after which 
 let things alone for a few days, or at least for 
 several hours. Then re-read attentively what 
 you have written, and give a new form to your 
 plan ; that is, re-write it from one end to the 
 other, leaving only what is necessary, what is 
 essential. Eliminate inexorably whatever is 
 accessory or superfluous, and trace, engrave 
 with care the leading characteristics which de- 
 termine the configuration of the discourse, and 
 contain within their demarcations the parts 
 
198 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 
 
 which are to compass it. Only take pains to 
 have the principal features well marked, vividly 
 brought out, and strongly connected together, 
 in order that the division of the discourse may 
 be clear and the links firmly welded. 
 
199 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 
 
 The essential properties of the plan are deriv- 
 able from its very nature. As it is the design 
 of the oratorical building, it ought to be drawn 
 with neatness, distributed suitably into its com- 
 partments, in right proportions, so that at one 
 glance, the architect or any one versed in this 
 kind of work, should perceive the aim of the 
 construction or the idea to be realised, as well 
 as the means for attaining it. The plan is a 
 failure if it does not suggest to the intelligent 
 observer these things. 
 
 First. — The drawing depends on the mind 
 which conceives and thinks, and on the hand 
 which wields the pencil. A design will always 
 bear a sure ratio to the manner of feeling, con- 
 ceiving, and reproducing what is seen in nature 
 or what is imagined ; and whatever may be the 
 dexterity of the hand, if the soul animate it not, 
 
200 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 
 
 if the understanding guide it not, it will com- 
 pose nothing but images without life, and copies, 
 possibly exact, yet void of expression. By the 
 simplest touch, by one stroke of the brush, the 
 whole soul may be revealed ; witness that great 
 painter who recognised his equal from a single 
 line traced by him. 
 
 Now what advice can we give on this head ? 
 All the precepts in the w r orld will never teach 
 feeling or conception. We have said pretty 
 nearly all that can be said, when speaking of 
 the conception and formation of ideas. But 
 what may indeed be recommended to the inex- 
 perienced orator is to confine himself in con- 
 structing his plan to the salient features of his 
 subject, to lay down boldly the trunk lines of 
 the discourse, omitting all filling up ; to draw 
 broadly, with hatchet- strokes, so to say, and not 
 to set about punctuating, not to get lost in 
 minutiae, when the business is to mark out the 
 main ways. 
 
 Another advice which may be given is, to 
 leave nothing obscure, doubtful, or vague in 
 these outlines, and to admit no feature into his 
 sketch which does not indicate something of 
 importance. By practice and the directions of 
 
CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 201 
 
 a skilful master, lie will learn to deal in those 
 potent pencillings which express so much in so 
 small a space ; and this it is which makes ex- 
 temporisation so easy and so copious, because 
 each point of the plan becomes instinct with 
 life, and by pressing upon it as you pass along, 
 your discourse makes it a spring, gushing with 
 luminous ideas and inexhaustible expressions. 
 
 The first etchings of the great masters are 
 sometimes more precious in the artist's eye 
 than their finished pictures, because they dis- 
 close the author's thoughts more unveiled, and 
 the means he has adopted for conveying them. 
 And in like manner the young writer will 
 profitably study the plans of great speakers, in 
 order to learn how to model as they did ; and 
 what will be still more improving, he will con- 
 struct those plans himself from their discourses, 
 and by a deep meditation of their masterpieces 
 and the intellectual labour which the construc- 
 tion just hinted demands, he will get further 
 into their innermost thoughts, and will better 
 appreciate the relation between those thoughts 
 and the magnificent embodiment of them. 
 
 Secondly. — The right distribution of your 
 plan depends also on your manner of conceiving 
 
202 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 
 
 your subject and the end you have in view in 
 your discourse ; nor have general rules much 
 practical range even here. What are required 
 are, good sense, sagacity, and tact ; good sense 
 to see things as they are, in their true light, or 
 in their most favourable aspect, so as not to say 
 what will not befit the occasion ; sagacity, to 
 turn the subject over, penetrate it through, 
 analyse it, anatomise it, and exhibit it, first on 
 paper, then in speaking ; tact, to speak appro- 
 priately, leave in the shade whatever cannot 
 appear without disadvantage, and bring out into 
 strong light whatever is most in your favour ; 
 to put everything in its own place, and to do all 
 this quickly, with neatness, clearness, simplicity, 
 so that in the very knot of the statement of the 
 case may be discerned all the folds and coils of 
 the main idea about to be untied and laid forth 
 by the discourse. 
 
 An ill- conceived, an ill-divided plan, which 
 does not at once bring the hearer in to the 
 middle of the subject and in full possession of 
 the matter, is rather an encumbrance than a 
 help. It is a rickety scaffolding which will 
 bear nothing. It but loads and disfigures the 
 building instead of serving to raise it. 
 
CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 203 
 
 Thirdly. — Proportion and harmony in its 
 parts contribute to the beauty of a discourse. 
 In all things beauty is the result of variety in 
 unity and of unity in variety. It is the neces- 
 sity of oneness which assigns to each part its 
 rank, place, and dimensions. 
 
 Frequently the exordium is too long, and 
 the peroration interminable. There is little or 
 nothing left for the middle ; and you get a 
 monster with an enormous head, a measureless 
 tail, and a diminutive body. At other times, 
 it is some limb of the discourse which is 
 lengthened until the body of the work is out 
 of sight, the result being a shocking deformity, 
 as when a man has long arms or legs with a 
 dwarfs body. The main idea ought to present 
 itself in each part ; the hearer ought to be 
 led back to it by the development of the ac- 
 cessory thoughts, these having no vitality save 
 by the sustained circulation of the former. 
 Should they grow and dilate too much, it can 
 only be at the cost of the parent-idea ; and 
 they must produce deformity and a sort of 
 disease in the discourse, like those monstrous 
 excrescences which devour the animal on which 
 there is any irregular or excessive growth of 
 
204 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 
 
 one organ, through the abnormal congestion 
 of the blood, thus withdrawn from the rest of 
 the organisation. 
 
 It is chiefly when you have to extemporise 
 that you must take the most care of your di- 
 vision, and of the nice allotment of all the 
 parts of your plan ; one of the disadvantages 
 of extemporisation, and perhaps the greatest, 
 being, diffuseness, slowness, and digressiveness, 
 — for you cannot always command the result 
 amidst the mass of words and the distractions 
 of the imagination. 
 
 You will obviate this danger, as far as may 
 be, by strongly determining beforehand the 
 proportion of the various parts ; and this so 
 clearly and so strikingly as never to lose sight 
 of it while speaking, and thus to be constantly 
 recalled to it, and to recall the hearer athwart 
 the digressions, episodes, or sudden develop- 
 ments which may present themselves, and which 
 are not always to be excluded; nay, sometimes 
 amidst the emotions of sensibility or the trans- 
 ports of passion, into which by the torrent of 
 extemporisation the orator may be hurried. 
 
 Let the plan of the speech, then, be traced 
 with a firm hand, distributed with exactitude, 
 
CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 205 
 
 and rightly proportioned in all its members, 
 and then it will be an immense help to the 
 speaker whom the suddenness and adventu- 
 rousness of extemporisation invariably agitates 
 more or less. He will then abandon himself 
 with greater confidence to his inspirations and 
 to the tide of words, when he feels a solid 
 ground well known to him beneath his feet; 
 and is aware of all its advantages and incon- 
 veniences, if he remain always mindful of the 
 end he has in view and of the way which leads 
 to it. 
 
206 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FINAL PREPARATION BEFORE SPEAKING. 
 
 The plan of a discourse, however well put 
 together, is still but a barren letter, or, as we 
 have said, a species of skeleton to which flesh 
 and vitality must be given by words. It is the 
 discourse potentially, and has to become such 
 actually. Now before passing from the power 
 of acting to action, and with a view to effecting 
 this passage, which at the very moment of 
 executing it is always difficult, there is a last 
 preparation not without its importance and 
 calculated to conduce largely towards success. 
 Thus the soldier gets ready his weapons and 
 his resolution before the fight ; thus the general 
 makes his concluding arrangements after having 
 fixed on his order of battle, and in order to 
 carry it well into effect. So is it with the 
 speaker. After having fixed his ideas upon 
 paper in a clearly defined sketch, which is to 
 
PREPARATION. 207 
 
 him a plan of the campaign, he ought, a little 
 while before entering the lists or battle field, 
 to collect himself once more in order to gather 
 up all his energies, call forth all the powers of 
 his soul, mind, and body for the work which 
 he has undertaken, and hold them in the spring 
 and direction whither they have to rush. This 
 is the culminating point of the preparation, a 
 critical moment which is very agitating and 
 very painful to whoever is about to speak. We 
 shall proceed to depict it, and to show r what 
 may then be done towards the success of a 
 discourse, by the use of the speaker's entire 
 means, that is, of all his intellectual, moral, 
 and physical faculties. For the true orator 
 speaks with his entire personality, with all the 
 powers of his being, and for that reason, at the 
 moment just preceding his address, he should 
 summon, and marshal, and concentrate all his 
 instruments. 
 
208 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FINAL INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION. 
 
 The plan is written down, but it is exterior to 
 the mind, it is on paper ; and although it has 
 issued from the mind, still the linking of ideas 
 is a thing so subtle that it easily escapes, and 
 especially in the midst of the turmoil in which 
 the speaker must take his stand, and which is 
 liable to present a thousand distracting contin- 
 gencies. An hour, therefore, or half an hour, 
 or a quarter of an hour before speaking, he 
 ought at the last moment to go over his plan 
 again silently, review all its parts with their 
 connection, settle in the most definite manner 
 the main ideas and the order in which they 
 occur ; in a word, deeply inscribe or engrave 
 in his imagination what is written on the paper, 
 so as to be able to read within himself, in his 
 own understanding, and this with certainty and 
 without effort, the signs of what he has to say. 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 209 
 
 This is, as it were, the internal proof-copy of 
 the external manuscript, in order that, without 
 the help of notes, he may find the whole array 
 of his ideas upon the Hying tablets of his ima- 
 gination. For this purpose, he sums up that 
 array once again, and epitomises it in a few words 
 which perform the office at once of colours and 
 of sign posts — colours around which are mus- 
 tered fragmentary or incidental thoughts, like 
 soldiers around their officer, and sign-posts 
 indicating the road to be followed in order to 
 reach the destination without fail. Finally, by 
 one last effort of thought he connects all these 
 signs together in order to take them all in at a 
 single glance in their respective places and 
 their mutual bearings, with a view to the end 
 which the discourse is intended to attain ; just 
 as a general acts, who, as the fight begins, 
 looks from some height upon the ordering of 
 his army and sees each division and each regi- 
 ment where he had appointed it to be. Then, 
 after having possessed himself of the whole by 
 means of this glance, he holds it as it were in 
 his grasp and can hurl it into action according 
 to the plan which he has conceived. It is easy 
 to understand that in order to be able to do 
 
 p 
 
210 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 this, the plan must not only have been well 
 conceived and well ordered, but clearly written 
 out on paper, so that, at a moment of such 
 pressure, a single glance may suffice to review 
 it both as a whole and in its parts. 
 
 In general, the most concise plans are the 
 best, if they be well stored with ideas; and 
 whenever it is practicable to reduce all the 
 ideas to one, the various consequences of which 
 are thus derivatively commanded, nothing can 
 be so convenient or so sure. 
 
 This accounts for the fact that one may 
 sometimes speak wonderfully well without 
 much preparation, and produce a great effect. 
 All that is required is one idea, of which the 
 speaker is deeply convinced, and the conse- 
 quences and applications of which he clearly 
 discerns, or else some lively and heart-stirring 
 sentiment ; and then the light of the idea or 
 the emotion of the feeling bursts forth into words 
 like the pent-up torrent of a water-shed through 
 a fissure in the dam ; but the w T ater-shed must 
 have been full, and the plenteousness of the 
 inundation supposes protracted toil for the 
 previous collection. It is thus with the most 
 prompt and copious extemporisations; they are 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 211 
 
 invariably the reservoir of ideas and feelings, 
 prepared and accumulated with time, and rush- 
 ing forth in a discourse. 
 
 In all cases, what is of the first importance 
 is to see all the ideas in a single idea, in order 
 to keep up the unity of the subject, amidst the 
 variety of exposition and the multiplicity of 
 representations ; for in this consists the fine 
 ordering of a speech. Once sure of the leading 
 idea, the divisions and sub-divisions must be 
 rapidly inspected. You must proceed from 
 one to the other reflectively in order to test 
 what they will be worth at the decisive instant, 
 and to penetrate them by a glance of the mind, 
 — a glance which is never more vigorous or 
 more piercing than at the last moment. It is, 
 we repeat, the general who passes among the 
 ranks before the signal is given, and who as- 
 sures himself by the appearance of his troops 
 that they will behave well, while he excites 
 their courage by words of fire, and pours fresh 
 spirit and boldness into their hearts. He too 
 has his picked troops on whom he relies more 
 than on the rest, and these picked troops are 
 to act at the crisis of the fight. He keeps them 
 in reserve to decide the victory, and he is 
 
 p 2 
 
212 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 aware beforehand of all the power with which 
 they furnish him. 
 
 So, among the various thoughts which make 
 up a discourse ; there are some better calcu- 
 lated than others to strike the imagination and 
 to move the soul : some stirring picture, some 
 unusually interesting narrative, some con- 
 vincing proof, some motive which will carry 
 away the hearer's decision ; and the like. The 
 orator, during his final preparation, distin- 
 guishes and places in reserve these resources. 
 He arranges them appropriately so as to bring 
 them in at such a part of his discourse ; and 
 without fully fathoming them before it is time, 
 he keeps them under his eye, well knowing 
 that here are wells of living water which shall 
 gush forth when he desires it, at a touch of the 
 sounding rod. Upon such means the success 
 of a speech generally turns, as the winning of 
 a battle upon a charge opportunely made. 
 
 Only care must be taken not to confound 
 these reserves of idea, these well husbanded 
 resources, with what are called hits of eloquence 
 or effective phrases. These last devices which 
 sometimes fling a brilliant radiance over a speech 
 by a semblance of originality, by eccentric 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 213 
 
 perceptions, by far- fetched approximations, and 
 above all by strangeness of expression, run the 
 risk almost invariably of sacrificing sense to 
 sound, substance to form, and of superseding 
 depth of thought and warmth of feeling by sound 
 of words and an exaggerated oratorical delivery. 
 You get to aim at effect, that is, at astonishing 
 your hearers and making them admire you ; 
 you therefore use every means of dazzling and 
 confounding them, which is nearly always done 
 at the expense of your subject's truthfulness and 
 of your own dignity. Besides, as you cannot 
 extemporise these effective phrases, because the 
 effect depends on a certain combination of 
 words very difficult to arrange and is spoiled 
 if a single word be misapplied, you have to 
 compose these phrases beforehand, learn them 
 by heart, and know them literally ; and even 
 then you have still to get them into your dis- 
 course and to prepare their admission, in order 
 that they may make a brilliant appearance and 
 produce the wished-for effect. The conse- 
 quence is that you convey them from a greater 
 or smaller distance with more or less artifice 
 and disguise, so that a part of the exposition is 
 devoted to clearing the way for them, and to 
 
214 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 marshalling their entry on the boards — -a pro- 
 cess which necessarily entails fillings-up, gaps, 
 and lengthiness in various passages respectively. 
 And, indeed, these brilliant hits which dis- 
 charge a great amount of sparks, and a small 
 amount of either light or heat, are for the most 
 part purchased at the price of the truthfulness 
 as well as the interest of the discourse. It is 
 a firework display which dazzles and charms 
 for a moment only to plunge you in thick 
 darkness again. 
 
 This is not a genuine nor moving eloquence ; 
 it is the parody of eloquence and a mere parade 
 of words ; if I may dare to say so, a sort of 
 oratorical charlatanry. Woe to the speaker 
 who makes use of such means ! He will 
 speedily exhaust himself by the mental efforts 
 to find out new effects, and his addresses, 
 aiming at the sublime and the extraordinary, 
 will become often ludicrous, always impotent. 
 
 Nor must you rely on the notes which you 
 may carry in your hand to help you in the 
 exposition and to save you from breaking down. 
 Doubtless, they may have their utility, especi- 
 ally in business speaking, as at the bar, at the 
 council board, or in a deliberative assembly. 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 215 
 
 Sometimes they are even necessary to re- 
 member facts or to state figures. They are 
 the material part, the baggage of the orator, 
 and he should lighten it and disencumber 
 himself of this burden, to the utmost of his 
 power. In truth, on the very occasions when 
 notes should seem to be most needed, they are 
 totally worthless. In the most fervid moments 
 of extemporaneous speaking, when light teems, 
 and the sacred fire burns, when the mind is 
 hurried along upon the tide of thoughts, and 
 the tongue, obedient to its impulse, accommo- 
 dates itself in a wonderful manner to its opera- 
 tions, and lavishes the treasures of expression, 
 everything should proceed from within. The 
 mind's glance is bent inwards, absorbed by the 
 subject and its ideas, you distinguish none of 
 the external objects, and you can no longer 
 even read your notes on the paper. You see 
 the lines without understanding them, and they 
 become an embarrassment instead of a help. 
 Nothing so thoroughly freezes the oratorical 
 flow as to consult those wretched notes. No- 
 thing is so inimical to the prestige of eloquence ; 
 it forthwith brings down to the common earth 
 both the speaker and his audience. 
 
 Try then, when you have to speak, to carry 
 
216 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 all things in yourself, like Bias the philosopher, 
 and after having, to the best of your ability, 
 conscientiously prepared, allow yourself, filled 
 with your subject, to be borne along by the 
 current of your ideas and the tide of words, 
 and above all by the Spirit from on High who 
 enlightens and inspires. He who cannot speak 
 except with notes, knows not how to speak, 
 nor what speaking is ; so the man of lore knows 
 not what learning is, if he be so only with his 
 books around him. 
 
 In fine, you must distrust all methods of 
 mnemonics or artificial memory, intended to 
 localise and to bind together in your imagina- 
 tion the different parts of your address. Cicero 
 and Quintilian recommend them, I think, in 
 moderation; be it so, but let it be in the 
 strictest possible moderation. For it is putting 
 the mechanism of form in the stead of the or- 
 ganisation of thoughts, — substituting arbitrary 
 and conventional links for the natural associa- 
 tion of ideas ; at the very least, it is introducing 
 into the head an apparatus of signs, forms, or 
 images which are to serve as a support to the 
 discourse, and which must needs burden, ob- 
 scure, and hamper the march of it. 
 
 If your address be the expression of an idea 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 217 
 
 fraught with life, it will develope itself natu- 
 rally, as plants germinate, as animals grow, 
 through the sustained action of a vital force, by 
 an incessant organic operation, by the effusion 
 of a living principle. It ought to issue from 
 the depths of the soul, as the stream from its 
 spring — ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, "out 
 of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." 
 But a heart there must be; and in that 
 heart a fulness of feeling, manifesting itself by 
 a plenitude of ideas, which will give in its 
 turn plenitude of expression. The mouth 
 speaks with ease when the heart is full ; but if 
 it be empty, the head takes its office, and it is 
 the head which has recourse to these artificial 
 means, for want of the inspiration which fails 
 it. It is the resource of rhetoricians. 
 
218 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FINAL MORAL PREPARATION. 
 
 When you at last are in possession of your 
 plan, and have engraved it upon your under- 
 standing, in the manner we have just said, you 
 must try to remain calm and collected. This 
 is not always easy, you may have to speak at 
 the bar, or in a public scene, or a deliberative 
 assembly : you are not in such cases free to 
 choose your own moment, and you have to be 
 ready for the occasion. You may have to wait 
 long for your turn, and till then there occur un- 
 avoidable distractions, from which you must 
 keep yourself safe. If the will reject them, the 
 mind remains self-possessed, and may even pre- 
 serve its collectedness amidst the most varied 
 scenes, which indeed may touch the senses, 
 without disturbing the mind. 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 219 
 
 But if you have it in your power to remain 
 in solitude until the moment for speaking, as 
 generally happens to the preacher and the 
 lecturer, it is well to avoid all external excite- 
 ment which might change the current of the 
 thoughts, and drive your attention into an- 
 other channel. You should then take refuge 
 within the depth of yourself, as in a sanctuary 
 where the Almighty has deigned to manifest 
 Himself, since your object in speaking is but 
 to announce the truth, and the Almighty is 
 Truth itself. 
 
 I do not speak here of those men who dis- 
 course solely in the interests of passion or of 
 party, and whose object is not the triumph of 
 what is true, but merely the gain of some 
 success, some advantage, conducive to their 
 ambition, their pride or their avarice. These 
 men will never be orators in the proper sense of 
 the word — vir bonus dicendi peritus ; for lan- 
 guage ought not to be used except in the 
 interests of truth — to employ it for any other 
 end is to make of it a commodity or a traffic. 
 
 If in the stage which we are depicting, the 
 soul of him who is about to speak be liable to 
 be affected, by the variety of character, predis- 
 
2*20 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 position, and momentary state, sometimes, after 
 the final preparation is over, it perceives that 
 it possesses its subject, that it is master of it, 
 so far as this may be, and it then experiences 
 a certain sense of security which is not without 
 sweetness. A mind in this state need not 
 think any more, but may remain passive and 
 repose itself ere proceeding to action. It has 
 sometimes happened to myself to fall asleep 
 while awaiting the summons to the pulpit, 
 to lose consciousness, at least, and to awake 
 refreshed. 
 
 At other times, and indeed more frequently, 
 a man is restless and agitated. The chest is 
 weighted with a heavy burden which checks 
 the breathing, makes the limbs sore, and op- 
 presses all the faculties of mind and body. 
 This is an extremely painful state, especially 
 if a man has to speak on a grave occasion, or 
 on a solemn day, in the pulpit. He is then 
 conscious that there is a divine duty to be dis- 
 charged, and there is a fear of proving unfaith- 
 ful or unequal to it ; he feels the full weight 
 of responsibility before God. It is a truly 
 agonising sensation, in which several feelings 
 are blended, and which it may not be useless 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 221 
 
 to analyse, in order to distinguish what it com- 
 prises that is legitimate, that is advantageous 
 to an orator, and, on the contrary, what is amiss 
 in it and liable to do him harm. 
 
 In the first place, it is to be noted that this 
 sensation, experienced by him who is on the 
 point of speaking, is salutary, to a certain ex- 
 tent, but if it go to the length of paralysing 
 the orator, or of impairing the use of his means, 
 it is inconvenient and fatal ; those whom it is 
 able thus to crush, will never be capable of 
 speaking in public, as we have already observed 
 in the case of two celebrated writers, admirable 
 for their style and powerless in harangue. 
 
 Woe to him who experiences no fear before 
 speaking in public ! It shows him to be un- 
 conscious of the importance of the function 
 which he is about to discharge, — that he does 
 not understand what truth is, whose apostle he 
 himself should be, or that he little cares, and 
 that he is not animated by that sacred fire 
 which comes down from heaven to burn in the 
 soul. I except altogether the Prophets, the 
 Apostles of Jesus Christ, all who speak under 
 supernatural inspiration, and who have been 
 commanded not to prepare what they shall say 
 
222 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 when they stand before the arbiters of the world, 
 for that all they should say shall be given to 
 them at the time itself. 
 
 It is not for men like these that we write. 
 The Almighty, whose instruments they are, 
 and who fills them with His Spirit, makes them 
 act and speak as He pleases, and to them the 
 resources of human experience are entirely un- 
 necessary. They fear not, because He who 
 is truth and light is with them, and speaks by 
 them. But others fear not because their en- 
 lightenment is small and their self-assurance 
 great. They are unconscious of the sacredness 
 of their task and of their ministry, and they go 
 forward like children who, knowing not what 
 they do, play with some terrible weapon, and 
 with danger itself. The most valiant troops 
 always feel some emotion at the first cannon 
 shot, and I have heard it stated that one of the 
 most celebrated generals of the empire, — who 
 was even called "the bravest of the brave," was 
 always obliged to dismount from his horse at 
 that solemn moment; after which he rushed 
 like a lion into the battle. Braggarts, on the 
 contrary, are full of assurance before the en- 
 gagement, and give way during the action. 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 2*23 
 
 So is it with those fine talkers, who think 
 themselves competent to undertake any subject 
 and to face any audience, and who, in the ex- 
 cellent opinion which they entertain of them- 
 selves, do not even think of making any serious 
 preparation. After a few phrases uttered with 
 confidence, they hesitate, they break down, or 
 if they have sufficient audacity to push forward 
 amidst the confusion of their thoughts and the 
 incoherency of their discourse, they twaddle 
 without understanding their own words, and 
 drench their audience with their inexhaustible 
 volubility. 
 
 It is well then to feel somewhat afraid ere 
 speaking, first in order that you may not 
 lightly expose yourself to mortification ; and, 
 in the second place, that if you are obliged to 
 speak, you may maturely consider what you 
 should say, seriously study your subject, pene- 
 trate it, become master of it, and thus be able 
 to speak usefully to a public audience. 
 
 The fear in question is also useful in making 
 the speaker feel his want of help from above, 
 such as shall give him the adequate light, 
 strength, and vividness of life. All men who 
 have experience in public speaking, and who 
 
224 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 have ever themselves been eloquent, know how 
 much they have owed to the inspiration of the 
 moment, and to that mysterious power which 
 gives it. It is precisely because a man may 
 have sometimes received this efficacy from 
 above, rendering him superior to himself, that 
 he dreads being reduced to his own strength in 
 that critical situation, and so to prove beneath 
 the task which he has to accomplish. 
 
 This fear which agitates the soul of a person 
 about to speak, has also another and a less 
 noble cause, which unfortunately prevails in 
 the majority of instances ; that is, self-love — 
 vanity, which dreads falling below oneself and 
 below the expectations of men, — a desire of 
 success and of applause. Public speaking is a 
 singularly conspicuous sort of thing, exposing 
 a person to all manners of observations. Doubt- 
 less there is no harm in seeking the esteem of 
 one's fellows, and the love of a good reputation 
 is an honourable motive of action, capable of 
 producing excellent effects. But carried too 
 far, it becomes a love of glory, a passion to 
 make a dazzling appearance, and to cause one's- 
 self to become the theme of talk, — and then, 
 like all other passions, it is ready to sacrifice 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 22° 
 
 truth, justice, and good to its own gratification 
 or success. 
 
 Nothing can be better than that the orator 
 should endeavour to please and satisfy his 
 audience ; that desire will impel him to noble 
 exertions and the exercise of all his means ; but 
 that, while actually speaking, such an end 
 should engross him above everything else, and 
 that the care of his own glory should agitate 
 him more than any love of the truths w 7 hich he 
 has to announce, or of the souls of the hearers 
 whom he should enlighten and edify, — this, I 
 say, is a gross abuse, a perversion of the 
 talent and of the ministry intrusted to him by 
 Providence, and sooner or later it will bring 
 him to grief. This inordinate attention to him- 
 self and his success agitates, disturbs, and 
 makes him unhappy, — too often inciting him 
 to exaggerations for the sake of effect. In 
 taking away from him simplicity it takes away 
 his right sense, his tact, his good taste, and 
 he becomes displeasing by dint of striving to 
 please. 
 
 Yet far from us be the idea of condemning a 
 love of glory in the orator, and especially in the 
 lay orator. While still young a man needs 
 
 Q 
 
226 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 this spur, which sometimes produces prodigies 
 of talent and of labour ; and it may safely be 
 affirmed that very great progress must have 
 been made in wisdom and perfection to dispense 
 with it altogether. Even where it ought to 
 have the least influence, it still too often has 
 sway, and the minister of the holy Word, who 
 ought to be inspired by the Spirit from on High, 
 and to refer exclusively to God all that he may 
 do, has much difficulty in preserving himself 
 indifferent to the praises of men, seeking these 
 praises only too often, and thus making self, 
 almost unconsciously, the end of his speaking 
 and of his success. In such a case the move- 
 ments of nature and of grace get mingled in 
 his heart, and it is hard to distinguish and 
 separate them. This is the reason why so 
 many deceive themselves, and why piety itself 
 has its illusions. 
 
 If it is good to entertain some fear before 
 speaking, it would nevertheless be prejudicial 
 to entertain too much : first, because a great 
 fear disturbs the power of expression ; and 
 secondly, because if it does not proceed from 
 timidity of character, it often springs from ex- 
 cessive self-love, from too violent an attachment 
 
FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 227 
 
 to praise, or from the passion of glory, which 
 overcomes the love of truth. The real orator 
 should have truth alone in view; he should 
 forget himself in presence of the truth and 
 make it alone appear, — and this happens natu- 
 rally, spontaneously, whenever he is profoundly 
 impressed by it, and identifies himself with it, 
 heart and mind. Then he grows like it, great, 
 mighty, and dazzling. It is no longer he who 
 lives, it is the truth which lives and acts in him ; 
 his language is truly inspired; the man vanishes 
 in the virtue of the Almighty who manifests 
 Himself by His organ, — and this is the 
 speaker's noblest, truest glory. Then are 
 wrought the miracles of eloquence which turn 
 men's wills and change their souls. Such is 
 the end at which the Christian orator should 
 aim. He should try to dwarf himself, to anni- 
 hilate himself, as it were, in his discourse, in 
 order to allow Him whose minister he is, to 
 speak and to work, — a result oftenest attained 
 when the speaker thinks he has done nothing, 
 from his too fervent and too natural desire to 
 do a great deal. 
 
 Oh, you who have taken the Lord for your 
 inheritance, and who prefer the light and ser- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 FINAL PREPARATION. 
 
 vice of Heaven to all the honours and all the 
 works of earth, — you, particularly, who are 
 called to the Apostleship, and who glow with 
 the desire to announce to men the word of God ! 
 remember that here, more than anywhere else, 
 virtue consists in disinterestedness, and power 
 in abnegation of self. Endeavour to see in the 
 triumphs of eloquence, if they be granted you, 
 one thing only, — the glory of God. If you 
 have the gift of touching the souls of others, 
 seek one thing only, — to bring them to God. 
 For this end repress, stifle within your heart, 
 the natural movements of pride, which, since 
 the days of sin, would attribute all things to 
 itself, even the most manifest and the most 
 precious gifts ; and each time that you have to 
 Convey to the people the Word of Heaven, ask 
 urgently of God the grace to forget yourself, 
 and to think of Him and of Him only. 
 
229 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 /j c BODILY PREPARATION. 
 
 The body also requires to be prepared in a 
 certain manner before an harangue. It should 
 be subjected to a sort of magnetism, as the 
 phrase runs in these days ; and the orator who 
 knows the difficulties and the resources of his 
 art will take very good care not to undertake a 
 speech, unless he is compelled by circumstances 
 to do so, without making his arrangements in 
 this respect too. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that the body plays 
 its part in all that we do, even in the most 
 abstract thoughts and the most exquisite feel- 
 ings. We are not angels, and the human soul 
 cannot act here below without the co-operation 
 of the organisation to which it is united, and 
 which forms an essential part of its personality. 
 The Ugo, in truth, is applicable to the functions 
 of the body no less than to those of the mind. 
 A man says : " I walk, / eat, I digest," as he 
 
230 BODILY PREPARATION. 
 
 says, u I think, I wish, I love ;" and although 
 the organs have an inferior office in human 
 actions, yet that office is sufficiently consider- 
 able for the organs to promote or to impede those 
 actions in a signal manner. The body then should 
 be well disposed in order that the intellectual 
 and moral functions may be properly performed, 
 and that they may not experience a hindrance 
 where they ought to find an assistance. In the 
 first place, the general state of the health ought 
 to be good, or at least tolerable, in order that 
 the thinking power may enjoy instruments 
 ready to receive its impulses, and the will be 
 able easily to set them in motion. 
 
 A man speaks with difficulty when suffering. 
 Life is then checked, and absorbed by th£ 
 organs, which divert it from intellectual action, 
 or at least weaken its activity. One may, 
 doubtless, by an effort of the will, excited -by 
 circumstances, do violence to the rebellion or 
 inertness of the body, anet hurl it into action, — 
 but never without great fatigue, an exhaustion 
 of one's strength ; and, later, its indisposition 
 and its decay entail a painful reaction after 
 this unseasonable soaring, so that the higher 
 the previous elevation, the deeper the subse- 
 
BODILY PREPARATION. 231 
 
 quent fall. Now the orator ought to spare a 
 servant so necessary to him, just as an accom- 
 plished rider treats the generous steed whom 
 he might ruin on a single occasion by over 
 urging him. 
 
 The orator should have a strong constitution ; 
 he should have a sound head, a good digestion, 
 and, above all, a robust chest, for nothing is so 
 fatiguing or so exhausting as declamation when 
 long continued. I speak of oratorical declama- 
 tion, which brings simultaneously into action 
 the whole person, moral and physical, — the head, 
 all the economy of which is strained to the 
 uttermost by extemporisation ; the lungs, which 
 inhale and respire with violence, frequently 
 with a shock and a gulp, according to the dis- 
 course ; the larynx, which is expanded and con- 
 tracted precipitately ; the nervous system, which 
 is wound up to the highest degree of sensi- 
 bility; tr^e muscular system which is keenly 
 agitated by the oratorical stage-play from the 
 sole of the foot to the tips of the fingers ; and, 
 finally, the blood which warms, boils, makes 
 heart and arteries beat with quick strokes, and 
 shoots fire through the whole organisation, till 
 the humours of the body evaporate and stream 
 
232 BODILY PREPARATION. 
 
 in drops of perspiration along the surface of the 
 skin. Judge from this whether, in order to 
 bear such fatigue, health and vigour be required. 
 Nevertheless, there is an illusion against 
 which you must be on your guard ; it is that of 
 thinking yourself ill when you have to speak in 
 public, and to mistake for inability the often 
 very sensible indisposition which you expe- 
 rience when called upon for a discourse, either 
 through the indolence which is combated by 
 labour and fatigue, or on account of the extreme 
 emotion which is felt at the thought of appear- 
 ing in public, an emotion which produces on the 
 body, and on the bowels especially, an effect 
 reacting all over you. Your arms and legs 
 hang dead, you can hardly drag yourself along, 
 or even stand upright. There is an oppression 
 of the respiration, a weight on the chest, and a 
 man experiences, in a fashion sometimes very 
 burdensome, what has been felt by the bravest 
 at the first cannon-shot. Many a time do I re- 
 member having found myself in this state at 
 the moment for mounting the pulpit and while 
 waiting for my summons. Could I have fled 
 away without shame, most assuredly I should 
 have done so, I envied the lot of those poor 
 
BODILY PREPARATION. 233 
 
 creatures who think of nothing, and who know 
 not these mental agonies and lacerations. 
 
 They who have not the strength to overcome 
 these temptations and discouragements will 
 never know how to speak. They will not even 
 have the courage to expose themselves to such 
 trials, I may as well say it, they amount occa- 
 sionally to such a torture that a man involun- 
 tarily compares himself to a convict dragged to 
 the gallows. Those who have known this state 
 and triumphed over it are aware that I do not 
 exaggerate. 
 
 Strange ! It proves the contradictions which 
 exist in man as he is, whose original consti- 
 tution has been overthrown by sin which has 
 set in opposition to each other, in one and the 
 same person, the various elements which ought 
 to harmonise in the unity of a single life. You 
 wish and you do not wish simultaneously ; the 
 body is at war with the mind, and their laws 
 come into collision and into conflict. The soul, 
 enlightened by divine truth, touched by charity, 
 transported by the Spirit of God, or by the love 
 of glory, desires to proclaim what it sees, 
 knows, believes, feels, even in the teeth of con- 
 tradiction, and at the cost of the greatest 
 
234 BODILY PREPARATION. 
 
 fatigue, nay, sometimes of the sharpest suffer- 
 ings ; but the body, like some unbroken beast, 
 refuses to the utmost of its power, and you 
 cannot get it along save with a bloody spur. 
 It resists with all its might, takes every oppor- 
 tunity of evasion, every opportunity to shake 
 off the reins which rule it and control its move- 
 ments. A man of spirit would afterwards be 
 inconsolable that he should have shrunk at the 
 moment of appearing in public, if duty call 
 him, like the soldier who wavered at the begin- 
 ning of the action ; and yet, in the former case, 
 I can bear witness that a man would, a hun- 
 dred times over, surrender his task ere under- 
 taking it, — if he dared. 
 
 I know but one effectual remedy for this 
 fear, — -the remedy I have already indicated ; 
 it is never to mount platform or pulpit, save 
 on the call of conscience alone, — to fulfil a 
 duty, and to put aside whatever is merely 
 personal, — glory, reputation, public opinion, — 
 whatever relates to self. A man then goes 
 forward as a victim of duty, resigned to the 
 sacrifice, and seeking only the glory of Him 
 to whom the sacrifice is offered. You never 
 succeed better than under these conditions, 
 
BODILY PREPARATION. 235 
 
 and everybody is a gainer ; the speaker, in 
 calmness, dignity, land simplicity, — the audience, 
 in a loftier and more penetrating address, be- 
 cause it is untainted by selfishness and almost 
 above what is merely human. 
 
 Some persons calculate upon giving them- 
 selves courage by stimulating drinks or by a 
 generous nourishment. A strange sort of 
 courage that ! In war, where physical force 
 predominates, I can conceive such a thing, — 
 and it is a resource not to be disdained before 
 a battle ; but as our business is a battle of elo- 
 quence, that is of the subtlest, most intelligent, 
 and most mental element that can be imagined, 
 there is need of another spirit rather than the 
 spirit of alcohol or of wine to stimulate the 
 faculties and warm the heart. Orators who 
 have recourse to such means in order to become 
 capable of moving their hearers, will never get 
 beyond the sphere of the imagination and of 
 the senses, and if they ever have any eloquence, 
 it will be that of the clubs, the taproom, and the 
 crossroads, — an eloquence which has a power of 
 its own, but in the interest of evil passions. 
 
 Finally, in a physical respect, there are pre- 
 cautions to be taken, relatively to such and such 
 
236 BODILY PREPARATION. 
 
 an organ which, from its habitual weakness, or 
 its irritated state may need repose or strength- 
 ening. In this, each person must manage 
 according to his temperament, constitution, and 
 habits. Some are unable to speak fasting, and 
 no wonder ; for it is indispensable to be well 
 supported against a fatigue so great. The 
 voice is weakened, broken by inanition or an 
 empty stomach. 
 
 Others, again, cannot speak after a meal, 
 and this too is intelligible ; because the labour 
 of thinking draws the blood to the head, and 
 defrauds the stomach of it, thus stopping diges- 
 tion, — so that the blood throbs violently in the 
 head and produces giddiness. As in all other 
 earthly cases, the right course here is the middle 
 course. You should have had nourishment, but 
 in moderation : and you should not speak, except 
 before digestion has begun its labour, or else 
 after it has so far proceeded as not to be any 
 longer liable to be arrested. 
 
 Every one must settle his own regimen of 
 health in this matter, and nobody can know 
 what will agree with him so well as the speaker 
 himself. He will therefore do as did the 
 athletes of old, who underwent a most rigor- 
 
BODILY PREPARATION. 237 
 
 ous discipline in order that they might be 
 masters of their whole strength at the moment 
 of conflict ; and if they had this resolution who 
 contended in mere bodily strifes, and for perish- 
 able garlands, what ought not the wrestlers of 
 eloquence to undergo, whom the Almighty 
 calls to the battles of intelligence, to the pro- 
 clamation and the defence of truth, of justice, 
 of excellence, of the noblest things of both 
 heaven and earth, and to a share in their death- 
 less glory ! 
 
238 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 We have said how the orator should prepare 
 in mind, heart, and even body, for the great 
 work of addressing others ; let us now follow 
 him to his field of action at the moment when 
 he is about to establish truth, or combat error 
 with the sword of eloquence. This is the 
 solemn moment of battle. 
 
 For the sake of greater clearness we will 
 divide this consideration into six points, and 
 arrange under that number of heads all that 
 we have to say that may be the most useful. 
 We do not aim in this at laying down any in- 
 violable order, but merely at having a frame 
 to unite and connect our remarks, our reflec- 
 tions, and the results of our experience ; for 
 we must here repeat that we have had no in- 
 tention of writing a treatise on the oratorical 
 art j our object being merely to give an account 
 
PARTS OF THE DISCOURSE. 239 
 
 to others of what we have done ourselves, and 
 of how we have done it. 
 
 We shall speak serially : first, of the begin- 
 ning of the discourse, or exordium ; secondly, 
 of the entry upon the subject; thirdly, of the 
 realisation of the plan, or the exposition and 
 the progression of the ideas ; fourthly, of the 
 supreme (all decisive) moment of the discourse ; 
 fifthly, of the peroration ; sixthly, of oratorical 
 action. 
 
240 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OR EXORDIUM. 
 
 I term the beginning everything which the 
 orator utters from the moment he opens his 
 mouth to the moment when he not merely 
 shows the object of his discourse, but enters 
 into and developes his subject. " What I know 
 best is my opening," says the confidant in the 
 comedy of the " Plaideurs" This is true of 
 him who recites a written discourse ; it is not 
 true of him who extemporises. His opening- 
 is that which he knows worst, because he is not 
 yet under weigh and he has to get so. 
 
 I am well aware that a man can write his 
 exordium and learn it by heart. It is a useful 
 practice in certain cases, and for persons 
 who have the habit of blending written with 
 extemporary passages, and of stepping alter- 
 nately from what they have learnt by heart 
 to what they unfold that very instant from 
 
THE COMMENCEMENT. 241 
 
 their minds. There are speakers who go 
 through this process remarkably well, and who 
 contrive to produce an effect chiefly by decla- 
 mation prepared beforehand. I do not blame 
 them for it. The art of speaking is so difficult 
 that you must do in each position what you 
 can, and all is well that ends well. Besides, 
 as in every applied theory, the art must be 
 made to fit the talents of each practitioner. 
 Minds are so various, that what suits one does 
 not suit another, — so that here no absolute 
 laws exist. 
 
 Nevertheless I believe I may assert that the 
 true orator, — that is, he who does not recite, 
 but who speaks, — is not inclined to employ 
 this process, and hardly finds it answer when 
 he has recourse to it. The very most he can 
 do is to prepare his first sentence, and if he tries 
 to learn a whole exordium he generally entan- 
 gles himself, gets confused, and fares worse 
 than if he had spoken. Even in his exordium 
 he needs the freedom of his paces ; — the one 
 thing indispensable is to keep well before his 
 mind the exact enunciation of his subject, and 
 as rigorous and simple a formula as possible of 
 the idea which he has to exhibit. Here should 
 
242 THE COMMENCEMENT. 
 
 be no vagueness nor obscurity, but a clear in- 
 tuition and an unhesitating expression. It is 
 in this that the majority of would-be extem- 
 porisers fail, because, for want of reflection and 
 meditation, they know clearly neither the ob- 
 ject of their discourse nor the way to treat it. 
 They perceive it in the gross or approximately, 
 and thereupon they utter common-places, empty 
 generalities, and turn continually around and 
 about their subject, without ever once going 
 into it. 
 
 Those who speak are in quite a different 
 position at starting from that of persons who 
 recite. They are generally weak and rather 
 obscure in the opening, whereas the others ap- 
 pear strong and brilliant. But it is the same 
 with whatever has life in nature. Life always 
 opens by an obscure point, hardly perceptible, 
 and proceeds from darkness to light. Accord- 
 ing to Genesis, all things were created from 
 night to morning. But life grows and assumes 
 organisation little by little, and finally it blooms 
 into all its magnificence. So with the spoken 
 address, which is a something endued with life, 
 it is born, it grows, it assumes organisation in 
 the hearer's presence. 
 
THE COMMENCEMENT. 243 
 
 For this reason, the speaker ought to begin 
 softly, modestly, and without any pompous 
 announcement of what is to follow. The grain 
 of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, 
 produces a great tree in which the birds of 
 heaven come and take shelter. 
 
 The exordium of an extemporaneous dis- 
 course ought to be the simplest thing in the 
 world. Its principal use is in laying the sub- 
 ject well down and in giving a glimpse of the 
 idea which has to be developed. 
 
 Unquestionably, if circumstances require it, 
 you may also introduce certain oratorical pre- 
 cautions, — insinuations, commendations, and a 
 delicate and supple mind always finds a way to 
 insert these things. But, generally they clog 
 the] mind, because they are outside of its idea 
 and may divert it from the idea ; and as the 
 expressions are not ready made, the mind runs 
 a risk of being carried away from its subject 
 at the first start, and of missing its plan. 
 
 For the same reason, the speaker's voice will 
 be moderate, nay a little weak at first, and it 
 may happen, at least in a vast audience, that 
 his first expressions are not heard, or are heard 
 ill. This is of course an inconvenience, but it 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE COMMENCEMENT. 
 
 cannot be helped, and it is not without its ad- 
 vantages. 
 
 Tt cannot be helped, or can scarcely be so, 
 because as he who extemporises carries all his 
 ideas in his brain, and is never quite sure of his 
 language, he always gets into the pulpit or 
 upon the platform in a state of deep emotion. 
 Now it is out of the question to bawl when in 
 that state, and it is the most one can do to find 
 voice at all; the mouth is dry, the tongue 
 cleaves to the palate, — " vox faucibus hceret" — 
 and one can hardly articulate. 
 
 Besides, should the orator force his voice in 
 the beginning, it will be presently rendered 
 hoarse, broken, exhausted, and it will fail him 
 before a quarter of an hour. You must speak 
 neither too loudly nor too fast at first ; or else 
 the violent and rapid expansions and contrac- 
 tions of the larynx force it and falsify it. You 
 must husband your voice at starting in order 
 that it may last and maintain itself to the end. 
 When you gradually strengthen and animate it, 
 it does not give way, — it remains clear, strong, 
 and pleasing to the close of your harangue. 
 Now this is a very important particular for 
 speaker and for hearers ; for the former, because 
 
THE COMMENCEMENT. 245 
 
 he keeps sound and powerful the instrument 
 without which he can do nothing ; for the latter, 
 because nothing tires them more than hoarse, 
 obstreperous, and ill- articulated sounds. 
 
 The inconvenience in question has the further 
 advantage of establishing silence among the au- 
 dience, especially if it is considerable and 
 diffused over a vast space, as in churches. At 
 the beginning of a sermon, there is always 
 noise ; people taking their places, chairs or 
 benches turning, coughs, pocket-handkerchiefs, 
 murmurs, a hubbub more or less protracted 
 which is unavoidable in a large assembly of 
 persons settling themselves. But if you speak 
 low, softly, and the audience sees you speak, 
 without hearing you, it will make haste to be 
 still that it may listen, and all ears will be 
 directed more eagerly towards the pulpit. In 
 general, men esteem only what they have not, 
 or what they dread losing, and the words which 
 they fear they shall not be able to catch, become 
 more valuable. 
 
 For the same reason, again, the bearing of 
 the extemporaneous speaker is modest and even 
 somewhat abashed, as he presents himself in 
 the pulpit, or on the platform ; for he almost 
 
246 THE COMMENCEMENT. 
 
 invariably mounts thither as to the place of 
 torture, so full is he of anguish, so heavy feels 
 the burden of speaking. Nevertheless, he 
 must beware of allowing his agitation to be too 
 apparent, and above all of affecting the victim. 
 For the rest, if he be a true orator, his counte- 
 nance, as well as interior feelings, will soon 
 change. He will hardly have pronounced a 
 few sentences ere all his confusion will vanish, 
 the mind will assert its superiority and sway 
 the body. Once face to face, and at grappling 
 point with his idea, he will forget everything 
 else. He will no longer see anything save the 
 thought which he has to manifest, the feeling 
 of his heart which he has to communicate. His 
 voice, which just now was so tremulous and 
 broken, will acquire assurance, authority, bril- 
 liancy; if he is rightly inspired that day, if 
 light from on high beams in his intelligence 
 and warms his soul, his eyes will shoot light- 
 ning, and his voice the thunderbolt ; his coun- 
 tenance will shine like the sun, and the weak- 
 ness of humanity will undergo its transfigur- 
 ation. He will stand on the Mount Thabor of 
 eloquence. 
 
247 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ENTRANCE INTO THE SUBJECT. 
 
 After the exordium, which should clearly 
 and briefly lay down the theme of the discourse, 
 as well as its division, the business must be en- 
 tered upon and the developement begun. 
 
 This is perhaps the hardest part of extempo- 
 raneous speaking, and that in which it offers 
 most disadvantages. The point is to get out of 
 harm, and there is but a narrow passage which 
 it is easy to miss. A favourable wind is neces- 
 sary to waft you into the open sea. Many are 
 wrecked in this passage, and know not how to 
 get out into the open sea of their subject. 
 
 In writing you have time for reflection, and 
 can arrange at leisure the sequence of your ideas. 
 Nevertheless, everybody knows what trouble 
 this arrangement often costs, and how great the 
 perplexity is in distinguishing amidst seve- 
 ral ideas that which commands the rest and will 
 
248 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 
 
 open a way for them, as a principle has its 
 consequences and a cause its effects. Some- 
 times whole hours are consumed in seeking the 
 end of the chain, so as to unrol it suitably, and 
 too often, as when trying to disentangle a skein 
 of thread, you proceed awkwardly and you 
 complicate, instead of develope the subject. 
 This is one of the chief annoyances of those 
 who want to write, especially in the period of 
 impatient, fancy -rid den youth, when one readily 
 mistakes whatever glitters or produces effect, 
 for the main point and the thing essential. 
 A rare sagacity, or much reflection is requisite 
 to catch, at the first glance, the true serial con- 
 nection of ideas, and to put everything in its 
 right place, without groping and without un- 
 successful trials. 
 
 What then, if you must decide at once 
 without hesitation, without being able to " try," 
 before an audience, which has its eyes riveted 
 upon you, its ears intent, and its expectation 
 eagerly awaiting the words that are to fall from 
 your lips ? The slightest delay is out of the 
 question, and you must rush into the arena, 
 often but half accoutred or ill-armed. The 
 moment is come, you must begin to speak, even 
 
ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 249 
 
 though you do not exactly know what you 
 are going to say, nor whether what you shall 
 say will lead precisely to the passage which 
 leads into the open sea. This is a critical in- 
 stant for the orator, an instant which will decide 
 the fate of his discourse. 
 
 No doubt he has prepared the sequence of 
 his thoughts, and he is in possession of his plan. 
 But this plan comprises only the leading ideas 
 stationed widely apart, and in order to reach 
 the first station from the starting point, there is 
 a rush to make and an aim to take, and therein 
 lies the difficulty. The best way is to enter at 
 once upon your subject. But a man has not always 
 the courage and the strength to do this; be- 
 sides which, he is afraid of being deficient in 
 materials if he makes short work with his ex- 
 position, and thus of breaking down after a 
 while, without having filled up the time assigned 
 to them. This is a common illusion among 
 beginners. They are always in dread of want- 
 ing sufficient materials, and either in their plan, 
 or in their discourse, they heap up all manner 
 of things, and end by being lengthy, diffuse, 
 and confused. A man is never short of mate- 
 rials, when he is in the true line of his deve- 
 
250 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 
 
 lopement. But be must strike the rock with the 
 rod of Moses, and above all he must strike it 
 as God has commanded in order that the waters 
 may gush from it in an inexhaustible stream. 
 When the miner has touched the right lode, 
 wealth abounds. 
 
 Unfortunately, things do not always happen 
 thus. Too often one takes the first path that 
 offers to reach the main idea, and that path is 
 not always the straightest nor the clearest. 
 Once in the way, with eyes bent towards the 
 point of destination, a man plies, not indeed 
 the oars, but words, in order to attain the 
 idea, and he attains it only by circuitous and 
 tortuous efforts. The hearer who is following 
 you does not very well see whither you are 
 leading him, and if this position continues for 
 a little longer, the discomfort of the speaker 
 gains upon the listeners, and a coldness is dif- 
 fused among the assembly. 
 
 Have you at times contemplated from the 
 shore a white sail striving to leave the road- 
 stead, and by the wind's help to gain the offing ? 
 It tacks in all directions, to gain its object, and 
 when baulked, it flutters inwards and oscillates 
 without advancing, until at last the favourable 
 
ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 251 
 
 breeze distends it, and then it passes swiftly 
 over the waters, enters upon the open sea, and 
 speedily vanishes below the horizon. Thus it 
 is with the orator who misses his right course 
 in the first instance. Eager to set out, he 
 hoists his sail to the first wind that blows, and 
 disappointed, he tries again with as poor suc- 
 cess, and runs the risk of either not advancing 
 or of taking a wrong line. He then makes for 
 the first image that presents itself, and it be- 
 guiles him far from his subject. He would fain 
 return, but no longer knows his way. He sees 
 his goal afar, eluding him, as Ithaca escaped 
 Ulysses, and like Ulysses he may wander long 
 ere reaching it. Perhaps he will never attain 
 it, and that is sadder still. 
 
 There are persons who speak for a whole 
 hour, within sight of their subject, and yet can- 
 not manage to enter upon it. Sometimes, again, 
 they arrive at it when they ought to be taking 
 leave of it — that is when their time is exhausted. 
 Hence interminable orations which tire the 
 hearer without either instructing or moving 
 him; the orator wears himself out in utter 
 futility, and his toil is fruitless. He has 
 plunged into a quagmire ; the more he strug- 
 
252 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 
 
 gles, the deeper he sinks ; he flounders right 
 and left to find his road and recover solid 
 ground, and if he gains it, it is covered all over 
 with the mud through which he has waded. 
 
 Horace says — " qui bene ccepit, facti dimidium 
 habet" "he who has begun well, has half done 
 his work." This is perfectly applicable to the 
 orator, who, after having clearly laid down his 
 subject, attacks it full front, and takes up un- 
 derstandingly the thread of his ideas. He has 
 then nothing to do but to suffer his skiff to 
 float along ; the very current will carry it on 
 to the destination, and the strokes of his oars, 
 and the breeze in his sails, will be so many ac- 
 cessorial means of propulsion, l But if he is out 
 of the current, and, still more, if he is against 
 the current, should the breeze fail him or prove 
 adverse, the more he rows the less he advances. 
 He will lose time and trouble, and fill w T ith 
 uneasiness or with pity those who watch him 
 from the shore. 
 
 But how begin well ? How find this thread 
 of the deep water, this favourable current, or, 
 to speak without metaphor, the leading idea by 
 which a man should open, and which w 7 ill bring 
 after it the others ? Can a precept be given, a 
 
ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 253 
 
 method prescribed for this end ? No precept, 
 no method, avails anything, except in so far as 
 one knows how to apply them ; and in order to 
 understand them rightly, and above all, in 
 order to make use of them successfully, what 
 we need is good sense, intelligence, and an un- 
 warped, piercing mind. A man should be able 
 to discern rapidly what is to be done in the 
 case which we have just described, — he must 
 know how to take advantage of the rising 
 breeze which can help him, and how to extri- 
 cate himself from the embarrassment in which 
 he is involved. There is need, in short, for 
 the orator, as for any other person who has to 
 face a danger or ^escape from a disadvantage, of 
 both mind and presence of mind ; — things not 
 to be taught. 
 
254 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 
 
 The speaker should have his plan well fixed, 
 not only on paper, but in his head, so as to keep 
 ever present before his mind the chain of the 
 thoughts, and so as to proceed successively from 
 one to the other in the prescribed order of the 
 exposition. ' The discourse, then, is mounted, 
 as it were, in a frame from which it ought not 
 to slip, under pain of digressing and diverting, 
 by its deviations, the attention of the hearers 
 from the subject, as a river which overflows its 
 bed sweeps away whatever it meets, and spreads 
 dearth and ruin where it ought to have dif- 
 fused refreshment and fertility. 
 
 Or to speak more properly, the discourse 
 which thus overflows carries nothing at all with 
 it except those wordy waves which beat upon 
 the ears without leaving behind them a single 
 
THE DEVELOPEMENT. 255 
 
 idea or moving a single feeling. Many of those 
 who are anxious to speak extemporaneously, and 
 who do not understand it, for want of talent or 
 of preparation, are lost in this manner. The 
 current of their discourse, which is not kept 
 within its banks, gets every moment divided 
 and loses itself in emptiness, like those rivers 
 with a multiplicity of mouths, which are ab- 
 sorbed by the sands. 
 
 It is a highly important matter, then, to know 
 how to confine one's-self to one's plan, — although 
 one must not be such a slave to it, as to leave 
 no room for the new thoughts which may occur 
 at the moment. That would be to deprive one's- 
 self of one of the chief advantages of extem- 
 porisation, — the inspiration of the moment and 
 the life it gives to the discourse. 
 
 A man who is accustomed to speak in public 
 even foresees to a certain extent, — or rather he 
 has a presentiment in the matter not indeed of 
 the instant at which he will have this inspira- 
 tion, but of the ideas which may offer themselves 
 in certain stages of the developement ; he catches 
 sight of what is involved in an idea which he 
 has yet only indicated. It is like a plunge of 
 the sounding rod, dropped beforehand into a 
 
256 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 
 
 spring, and he carefully recloses it until he shall 
 require to uncover it and make it gush forth. 
 He would weaken, and perhaps exhaust it, were 
 he to pierce it during the preparatory portion ; 
 he reserves it for the favourable moment, sure 
 to find there a plentiful well when he pleases. 
 
 But every advantage has its drawback. In 
 the warmth of exposition a man is not always 
 master of his own words, and when new thoughts 
 arise, they may lead a long way from the sub- 
 ject, to which there is sometimes a difficulty in 
 returning. Hence digressions, prolixities, ap- 
 pendages, which cause the main object to be 
 lost to view, and wear out or render languid the 
 attention of the audience. 
 
 All who extemporise have had this misfor- 
 tune Some time or other. If you do not ac- 
 custom yourself to hold with a firm hand the 
 thread of your thoughts, so that you can always, 
 amidst the labyrinth of the discourse and the 
 many mazes into which you may be drawn, re- 
 cover your way, you will never come to speak 
 in an endurable manner ; and even though you 
 should have fine passages, the hearer will grow 
 weary of your devious style, and when all | is 
 said he will be neither instructed nor impressed. 
 
THE DEVELOPEMENT. 257 
 
 You may dazzle him by the pomp of language, 
 surprise him by ideas more or less ingenious, 
 may amuse him, for a moment, by the wit and 
 sparkle of your expressions ; but you will not 
 suggest one idea to his mind nor instil a single 
 feeling into his ear, because there will be neither 
 order nor unity, and therefore no life in your 
 discourse. 
 
 It is further essential to beware of the dis- 
 tractions which may break the thread of the 
 exposition, and abruptly send the mind into a 
 totally different and an unprepared channel. 
 This is another of the dangers attending extem- 
 porisation, which imperatively demands that 
 you should give yourself wholly to your sub- 
 ject, and thus exclude from your mind every 
 extraneous image and thought ; — no easy task, 
 when a man stands face to face with a nume- 
 rous assembly, whose eyes from all directions 
 are centred upon him, tempting him to look at 
 people, were it only because people are all 
 looking at him. 
 
 On this account it is necessary that the orator 
 before speaking should be collected, — he should 
 be wholly absorbed in his ideas, and proof against 
 the interruptions and impressions which sur- 
 
 s 
 
258 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 
 
 round him. The slightest distraction to which 
 he yields may break the chain of his thoughts, 
 mar his plan, and even sponge out of his mind 
 the very remembrance of his subject. This 
 appears incredible, and I would not believe it 
 myself had I not experienced it. 
 
 One day, I had to preach in one of the prin- 
 cipal churches of Paris. It was a solemn fes- 
 tival, and there was an immense audience, in- 
 cluding part of the Court then reigning. As I 
 was ascending the pulpit I perceived a person 
 whom I had supposed absent, and my mind was 
 carried away suddenly by a train of recollec- 
 tions. I reached the pulpit-landing, knelt 
 down as usual, and when I should have risen 
 to speak, I had forgotten not only my text, 
 but even the subject of my sermon. I lite- 
 rally knew no longer what I had come to speak 
 upon, and, despite of all my efforts to re- 
 member it, I could see nothing but one com- 
 plete blank. My embarrassment and anguish 
 may be conceived. T remained on my knees a 
 little longer than was customary, not knowing 
 what to do. Nevertheless, not losing head or 
 heart, I looked full at my danger without being 
 scared by it, yet without seeing how I was to 
 
THE DEVELOPEMENT. 259 
 
 get out of it. At last, unable to recover any- 
 thing by my own proper strength, — neither 
 subject nor text, — I had recourse to God, and 
 I said to Him, from the very bottom of my 
 heart and with all the fervour of my anxiety, — 
 " Lord if it be Thy will that I preach, give me 
 back my plan ;" and at that instant, my text 
 came back into my mind, and with my text 
 the subject. I think that never in my life 
 have I experienced anything more astonishing, 
 nor a more lively emotion of gratitude. 
 
 At other times you lose while speaking the 
 thread of your discourse, especially when some 
 new idea crosses the mind, or if you allow 
 yourself to look about among the audience. 
 You generally become aware of it ere the sen- 
 tence you are uttering is finished ; for when a 
 man extemporises, you always see the next 
 idea before you have done with its predecessor, 
 and in order to advance with certainty you 
 must look somewhat forward, in order to discern 
 where you are going to plant your foot pre- 
 sently. Suddenly, you can see nothing before 
 you, and you are come to the closing member of 
 your period. If you then become agitated, you 
 are lost ; for anxiety, far from enabling you to 
 
 s 2 
 
260 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 
 
 recover your ideas, confuses thetn still more, 
 and the more disturbed you get, the less capa- 
 ble are you of retrieving your plan and re-en- 
 tering the road. In these cases, you must 
 calmly, under another form, with other phrases, 
 resume the same thought you have just ex- 
 pressed, and nearly always it recalls that which 
 was lost ; it gently excites the remembrance of 
 it, by virtue of the association of ideas and of 
 the previous elaboration of the plan. But 
 while yet speaking, you must look inwards with 
 the whole sight of your mind, in order to dis- 
 cern what this species of conjuration shall 
 evoke, and at the slightest sign to grasp your 
 idea once more. All this is not effected with- 
 out perplexity or without interior tribulation. 
 
 There are untoward days, when one is 
 scarcely master of one's attention, and in spite 
 of the most laborious preparation the plan re- 
 fuses to fix itself in the head, or to stay there, 
 escaping on one side or on the other, as in 
 a sieve ; or else something comes across which 
 throws you out of your way. It is often 
 the effect of some physical cause ; — a nervous 
 or a feverish state, arising from atmospheric 
 influences, from indisposition, and anxieties of 
 heart or mind. 
 
THE DEVELOPEMENT. 261 
 
 In such cases there is much difficulty in 
 entering upon one's plan or in keeping to it. 
 Sometimes, indeed, we do not enter into it at 
 all, but speak at the side of it, so to say, trying 
 to catch it, and unable to overtake it, like a 
 man who runs after the conveyance w r hich is to 
 carry him, and who reaches the door without 
 being able to open it. This is one of the most 
 fatiguing situations with which I am acquainted. 
 It exhausts alike the will, the mind, and the 
 body ; — the will, which makes vain endeavours 
 to recapture a subject perpetually evading it ; 
 the mind, which struggles in a desperate 
 wrestle with its own thoughts ; and the body, 
 which travails, as if to compensate by exterior 
 agitation for the interior activity which is de- 
 ficient. 
 
 For the greatest possible avoidance of dis- 
 tractions, I will recommend a thing which I 
 have always found successful — that is, not to 
 contemplate the individuals who compose the 
 audience, and thus not to establish a special 
 understanding with any one of them. The 
 short-sighted have no need of my recommen- 
 dation, but it will be useful to those who see 
 far, and who may be disturbed by some sudden 
 
262 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 
 
 impression or some movement of curiosity. As 
 for myself I carefully avoid all ocular contact, 
 and I restrict myself to a contemplation of the 
 audience as a whole, — keeping my looks above 
 the level of the heads. Thus T see all and dis- 
 tinguish nobody, so that the entire attention of 
 my mind remains fastened upon my plan and 
 my ideas. 
 
 I do not, however, advise an imitation of 
 Bourdaloue, who closed his eyes while de- 
 livering his sermon, lest his memory should 
 fail, or some distraction sweep away part of his 
 discourse. It is a great disadvantage to shut 
 the eyes while speaking ; for the look and its 
 play are among the most effectual means of 
 oratorical action. It darts fire and light, it 
 radiates the most vital energy, and people un- 
 derstand the orator by looking at him and 
 following the play of his eyes almost as well as 
 by listening to his voice and words. 
 
263 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 I give this name to the moment when the 
 speech produces its highest effect by piercing 
 and mastering the hearer's soul either with the 
 light which it imparts, or the feelings which it 
 arouses. The listener is at that solemn instant 
 wou, and remains passive under the influence 
 which touches and vivifies. But in order to 
 understand this state, it is necessary to con- 
 sider closely, and in their respective relation, the 
 two poles which speaking instantaneously unites 
 for the achievement of its end. 
 
 Eloquence has this peculiarity which distin- 
 guishes it from other arts, that it is always 
 through the intelligence it reaches the heart, — 
 that is, it is by means of the idea which it en- 
 genders ; and this is what makes it the most ex- 
 cellent, the most profound of arts, because it 
 
264 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 takes possession of the whole man and can 
 neither charm, nor move, nor bear him along, 
 except by enlightening him and causing him 
 to think. It is not a matter of mere sensibility, 
 imagination, or passion, as in music and paint- 
 ing, which may produce great effects without 
 thought having a predominant share in them, 
 although those arts themselves have a loftier 
 and a wider range in proportion as the intelli- 
 gence plays a greater part, and ideas exercise 
 a higher sway in their operations. 
 
 Yet in music and in the plastic arts, ideas are 
 so blended with form and so controlled by it, 
 that it is very difficult to abstract them from 
 it, with a view of testing their value and ana- 
 lysing them; they flow with the form which is 
 their vehicle, and you could scarcely translate 
 them into any intelligible or precise language. 
 Hence the vagueness of these arts, and particu- 
 larly of music; a fact which does not prevent 
 it from exercising a powerful effect at the very 
 moment of the impression, which, however, 
 is transient, and leaves little behind it. It 
 vanishes almost as soon as the sounds which 
 have produced it cease. 
 
 In eloquence, on the contrary, the form is 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 265 
 
 subordinate to the idea. In itself it possesses 
 little to dazzle or to charm, — it is articulate 
 language, which certainly is far less agreeable 
 than language sung, or melody. However 
 sonorous the voice of the speaker, it will never 
 charm the ear like a musical passage, and even 
 the most graceful or the most energetic orato- 
 rical action can never have the elegance, har- 
 mony, or finish which the painter or the 
 sculptor is able to give to the bodies of the 
 characters whom he represents. Notwith- 
 standing which the tones and action of the 
 speaker often produce astonishing effects on 
 those who hear him, which are lost in reading 
 what he has said, or in his written discourse. 
 
 It follows that eloquence has its own artistic 
 or sesthetical side, besides that idea which it 
 is its business to convey. But it relies much 
 more on the idea than do the other arts, so that 
 the absence or the feebleness of the idea is 
 much more felt in it, and it is impossible to be 
 a great orator, without possessing a lofty intel- 
 ligence and great power of thought ; whereas 
 a man may be a distinguished musician, painter, 
 or sculptor without any brilliant share of these 
 endowments ; which amounts to this, that elo- 
 
266 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 quence is the most intellectual of the arts, and 
 the exercise of which requires the mightiest 
 faculties of the mind. 
 
 Whence, again, it follows, — and it is to this 
 we would come, — that eloquence is the pro- 
 foundest and the most difficult of arts, on 
 account of the end at which it aims, which is 
 not merely to charm, please, or amuse, tran- 
 siently, but to penetrate into the soul, that it 
 may move and change the will, may excite or 
 may prevent its action by means of the ideas 
 which it engenders, or, as it is expressed in 
 rhetorical treatises, by convincing and per- 
 suading. The true end of the orator is to make 
 himself master of souls, guiding them by his 
 mind, causing them to think as he thinks, and 
 thus imparting to their wills the movements and 
 direction of his own. 
 
 I well know that the multitude may be 
 stirred and carried away by fine phrases, by 
 brilliant images, and above all by bursts of 
 voice and vehement action, without any great 
 amount of ideas at the root. The orator, in 
 this instance, acts after the manner of music, 
 which produces feelings and sometimes deeds, 
 without thoughts. But what is sufficient in 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 267 
 
 music is at the very utmost but half of what 
 eloquence requires, and although it may indeed 
 produce some effect in this way, it remains be- 
 neath itself, and loses in dignity. It is sonorous 
 but empty ; it is a sounding cymbal, or, if the 
 comparison be liked better, it is a scenic deco- 
 ration, which produces a momentary illusion, 
 and leaves little behind it. 
 
 Eloquence is not worthy of its name, and 
 fulfils not its high vocation, except in so far as 
 it sways the human will by intelligence, deter- 
 mining its resolutions in a manner suitable to 
 a rational and free being, not by mere sensible 
 impressions, or by sallies of passion, but above 
 all, by the aspect of truth, by convictions 
 of what is just and right, that is, by the idea 
 of them which it gives, or rather, which it 
 ought to engender, develope, and bring to life 
 in the soul. 
 
 In a word, everything in the discourse is 
 reducible to this point — that the hearer should 
 be made to conceive what the orator under- 
 stands, and as he understands it, in order that 
 he may feel what the orator feels and will what 
 he wills; in other words, that an idea should be 
 engendered in the understanding of the hearer 
 
268 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 similar to the idea of the speaker, in order that 
 their hearts as well as their minds may be in 
 unison. There lies the difficulty, and they 
 who can overcome it are indeed eloquent. 
 
 But there are many things required for this, 
 — or, to put it in another way, there are, in 
 the operation which the orator has to effect, 
 several stages or degrees which are known to 
 all who speak in public, or of which at least 
 they have had experience, even if they have 
 not categorically explained them to themselves. 
 
 The first stage is that in which the audience 
 is won, — the speaker commands it. 
 
 The second is that in which his address 
 enters the hearer's soul, and makes him con- 
 ceive the idea. 
 
 The third is like the organisation of this 
 conception. 
 
 The hearer who has conceived the idea makes 
 one with the orator in mind and will — there is 
 but one soul between them, — it is the com- 
 pletion of the work by which the speaker takes 
 possession of him whom he has moved and con- 
 vinced. 
 
 Let us consider these three stages. 
 
 To win the hearer is to seize his attention, 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 269 
 
 and so to fix it that he shall listen without 
 effort, and even with pleasure to what is said, 
 opening his mind for its reception and absorp- 
 tion, to the exclusion of every other thought, 
 image, or sensation which may arise. Now 
 this capture of mind by a discourse is no easy 
 matter, and it sometimes requires a considerable 
 time and sustained exertions to obtain it. At 
 other times, it is effected at once, at the first 
 words, whether on account of the confidence 
 inspired by the speaker, or of the lively interest 
 of the subject and the curiosity which it ex- 
 cites, or for whatever reason else. It is hard to 
 give a recommendation in this respect, seeing the 
 great diversity of circumstances which may in 
 this case exercise a favourable or an adverse in- 
 fluence ; but this we may safely assert, that you 
 must attain this point in order to produce any 
 impression by your speech. 
 
 There are few who know how to listen ; it 
 presupposes a great desire for instruction, and 
 therefore a consciousness of ignorance, and a 
 certain mistrust of self, which springs from mo- 
 desty or humility, — the rarest of virtues. Be- 
 sides, listening demands a certain strength of 
 will, which makes a person capable of directing 
 
270 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 the mind to one point and there to keep it 
 despite of every distraction. Even when you 
 are alone with a serious book, what trouble you 
 have in concentrating your attention so as to 
 comprehend what you are reading. And if 
 the perusal be protracted, what a number of 
 things escape and have to be read over again ! 
 What will it not be, then, in the midst of a 
 crowd in which you are assailed on all hands by 
 a variety of impressions ? 
 
 Besides, each individual comes with a dif- 
 ferent disposition, with different anxieties or 
 with prejudices in proportion to age, condition, 
 and antecedents. Imagine several hundreds, 
 several thousands, of persons in an audience, 
 and you have as many opinions as there are 
 heads, as many passions as there are interests 
 and situations, and in all this great crowd few 
 agree in thoughts, feelings, and desires. Each 
 muses on this matter or on that, desires one 
 thing or another, has such or such preposses- 
 sions ; when lo ! in the midst of all these diver- 
 gences, of all these contrarieties, I rise, a 
 man, mount pulpit or platform, and have to 
 make all attend in order to make all think, feel, 
 and will, just as I do. Truly it is a stupen- 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 271 
 
 dous task, and one which cannot be achieved 
 except by a power almost above humanity. 
 
 Rhetoricians say that the exordium should 
 be devoted to this purpose. It is at the outset 
 that you should endeavour to captivate the 
 mind and to attach it to the subject, either by 
 forcibly striking it by surprise, as in the exor- 
 dium ex ahr-upto, or in dexterously winning 
 goodwill, as in the exordium " of insinuation." 
 All this is true, but the precept is not easy 
 to reduce to practice. It is tantamount to 
 saying that in order to make a good begin- 
 ning a great power, or a great adroitness, 
 in speaking is required. Who shall give us 
 this ? 
 
 The first moments of the discourse are gene- 
 rally very difficult to the orator, not only on 
 account of the trouble he experiences in setting 
 out, in laying down and developeing his subject, 
 as we just now showed, but also on account of 
 the necessity of making his audience set out ; 
 and here he meets at starting, either the re- 
 sistance of inertness, the indolence loth to take 
 the pains of listening, or else the levity w T hich 
 flies off each instant, or else the latent or the 
 express opposition of some adverse prejudice, 
 
272 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 or interest. He has, therefore, to wrestle with 
 his hearer in order to overcome him, and in 
 this he is not always successful. 
 
 Until everybody has taken his place and 
 settled himself well in it, and coughed, and 
 made a stir as long as he decently can in his 
 situation, the poor orator speaks more or less 
 in the midst of noise, or at least of a half-re- 
 pressed disturbance, which hinders his words 
 from having any effect upon the mind. They 
 penetrate nowhere, they return to him, and he is 
 tempted to give way to discouragement, especi- 
 ally in large assemblies, as at a sermon. If he 
 waver, he is undone, he will never become master 
 of his hearers, and his discourse will be powerless. 
 
 What will sustain him is, first of all, a lively 
 sense of the mission intrusted to him, of the 
 duty he has to fulfil, — and, in the next place, 
 that something which is peculiar to the strong- 
 man, and by which he derives incitement from 
 opposition or difficulty, and enthusiasm from the 
 strife. The greater the resistance, the greater 
 the endeavour to prevail ; — it is one of valour's 
 spurs in the conflict. Again, what is very 
 useful in this emergency is the authority 
 of speech which soon asserts a kind of 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 273 
 
 ascendancy over the hearer, — a sympathetic 
 something in the voice which pleases the ear 
 and reaches the heart, or else a certain pun- 
 gency of pronunciation and accent which wins 
 the attention. 
 
 By these means, and those of which we be- 
 fore spoke, and above all by help from on high, 
 you succeed more or less quickly in seizing 
 your audience, in commanding it, in winning 
 it, in chaining it, to your discourse, so that all 
 minds, rallying in a common attention, converge 
 towards a single point, and appear to hang on 
 the speaker's lips, while all eyes are fixed upon 
 him. Then is established that solemn stillness 
 upon which the life of the speaker is condi- 
 tional. No more fidgetings on chair or bench ; 
 no more throat-clearing ; even colds are cured 
 as if by magic, and in the absence of all noisy 
 sounds, there is nothing to be heard save the 
 respiration of the audience and the voice of the 
 orator, as it arises, prevails, and diffuses itself. 
 The assembly is won — it listens. 
 
 Secondly. — Now alone can be achieved the 
 task of eloquence, which is to engender in the 
 hearer the requisite idea, so as to make him 
 conceive and feel what it enunciates. 
 
274 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 Here, as in all conceptions, there are two 
 poles, the one active, which transmits life, the 
 other passive, which conceives by admitting it ; 
 and conception is effected by their interpene- 
 tration. Such is the operation when all looks 
 are bent, strained, towards the orator, every 
 mind is open to welcome and absorb his words 
 with all its powers, and those words sink into 
 and fertilise it by their virtue. It is thus that 
 ideas are produced by instruction, which is a 
 real fertilisation and a nourishment of the in- 
 telligence ; for " man lives not by bread alone, but 
 by every word of truth" 
 
 This is the most momentous period of the 
 discourse, what w r e term the crisis, or supreme 
 effort of speaking ; it is truth itself, it is He 
 who calls Himself " the way, the truth, and the 
 life," who, by the mouth of His minister, acts 
 upon the soul, pierces it, and makes a settle- 
 ment therein, that it may become as a throne 
 where He loves to sit, as a sanctuary which He 
 is pleased to inhabit, as a mirror in which He 
 reflects Himself with predilection, as a torch 
 by which He desires to shine and to diffuse 
 His light. 
 
 In the physical world wherever there is the 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 275 
 
 communication and reproduction of life, it is 
 also the Living God who acts ; whereas the 
 men, the animals, and the plants which are 
 employed in this great operation, are merely 
 organs and implements in the work. This is 
 why the gospel declares that there is but one 
 Father, He from whom all paternity is derived 
 in heaven and on earth ; as He alone is good, 
 because He is the source of every good, and 
 He alone is Master and Lord, because He is 
 truth. 
 
 It is just the same, and for still greater 
 reason, in the moral world, or in the communi- 
 cation of intellectual life. It is an operation 
 performed according to the same laws, — and 
 on this account, he who instructs or effects a 
 mental genesis (the true meaning of the word 
 "instruct"), — that person also is a father in- 
 tellectually, and it is the noblest and most pro- 
 lific species of paternity. 
 
 Such is the sublime mission of the orator, 
 such the high function which he discharges. 
 When he circulates a living word, it is a trans- 
 mission of life, it is a reproduction and multi- 
 plication of truth in the souls of others whom 
 he intellectually vivifies, as a father his off- 
 
 t 2 
 
276 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 spring according to the flesh. As He, whose 
 image and instrument he is, diffuses His light, 
 warmth, and life over all creatures, so the 
 orator, filled with inspiration, instils upon the 
 spot into thousands of hearers the light of his 
 word, the warmth of his heart, and the life of 
 his soul. He fertilises all these intelligences 
 at once ; and this is why, as soon as the rays 
 of his discourse have entered them and im- 
 parted to them the new conception, they make 
 but one soul with him, and he is master of that 
 soul, and pours into it virtue from on high. 
 
 They all live in unison at that important 
 moment, identified by the words which have 
 mastered them. 
 
 This critical instant of the discourse, when 
 the supreme effort of eloquence is achieved, is 
 accordingly marked by the profoundest emotion 
 of which men are susceptible, that which always 
 attends the communication of life, and in this 
 case by so much the more replete with happi- 
 ness as the life of the intellect is more pure, 
 and less remote from Him who is its source. 
 Hence that exquisite feeling, to which no other 
 is to be compared, which the orator experiences 
 when his words enter into and vivify the minds 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 277 
 
 of his audience ; and hence also the sweet im- 
 pressions of which these last are conscious 
 when they receive the spirit of the word and 
 by it are nourished. 
 
 Thirdly. — When the orator has thus pene- 
 trated into the hearer's soul by the radiation of his 
 speech, animating that soul with its life, he be- 
 comes master of it, impresses, moves, and turns it 
 at will, without effort, in the simplest manner, by 
 a word, a gesture, an exclamation, nay silence 
 itself. The fact is, he possesses the hearer's 
 heart ; it is open to him, and there is between 
 them an intimate communication which has 
 scarcely any further need of exterior means. 
 Thus it is with two persons who love each 
 other dearly, and who have confidence in each 
 other; they understand each other, without 
 speaking, and the feeling which animates and 
 unites them is so intimate and so sweet that 
 language is powerless to express it, and they 
 need it no longer to make themselves mutually 
 understood. 
 
 Everything, then, is in the orator's power 
 when he has thus won his audience, and he 
 ought to take advantage of this power which is 
 given to him temporarily, to complete his work, 
 
278 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 and to develope and organise in the minds of the 
 listeners the idea to which he has given birth ; 
 this is the third stage of his undertaking. 
 
 Strike the iron while it is hot, says the pro- 
 verb. In the present instance there is something 
 more than iron and better than iron to forge 
 and fashion ; there is the young life which elo- 
 quence has called forth to develope, in order 
 that the conceived idea may take shape in the 
 understanding, and influence the will — partly 
 through the emotion which it has produced, and 
 partly through the intellectual views which 
 furnish the will with motives, as feeling and 
 passion supply it with incentives. Eloquence 
 would miss its aim, if it failed to lead the hearer 
 to some act by which the idea is to be realised. 
 
 It is in this last stage, then, that the prac- 
 tical part of the discourse should be placed 
 along with the application of deductions. In 
 these must the speaker reap the fruits of his 
 labour. After having imparted his feelings 
 and thoughts to the listener, he must also make 
 them partakers of his will. He must imprint 
 his personality upon them, fashion them in his 
 resemblance, so that they shall feel, think, and 
 will as he does, in the interest of that truth 
 
CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 279 
 
 and excellence of which he has brought home 
 to them the manifestation. He must not take 
 leave of his audience till he has touched, con- 
 vinced, and carried it away. It is in the pero- 
 ration, as we are about to see, that the seal 
 must be set to the work, and that it must receive 
 its plenary completeness. 
 
280 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF THE DISCOURSE, OR THE 
 PERORATION. 
 
 If it be difficult to begin an extemporary 
 discourse, it is still more difficult to finish it 
 well. Most orators spoil their speeches by 
 lengthiness, and prolixity is the principal dis- 
 advantage of extemporaneous speaking. In 
 it, more than in any other, we want time to be 
 brief, and there is a perpetual risk of being 
 carried away by the movement of the thoughts 
 or the expressions. 
 
 It sometimes happens, unfortunately, that you 
 have barely entered upon your subject when 
 you should end it ; and then, with a confused 
 feeling of all that you have omitted, and a sense 
 of what you might still say, you are anxious to 
 recover lost ground in some degree, and you 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 281 
 
 attempt to develope some new idea when you 
 ought to be concluding. This tardy and 
 unseasonable, yet crude after-growth, has the 
 very worst effect upon the audience which, 
 already fatigued, becomes impatient and listens 
 no longer. The speaker loses his words and 
 his trouble, and everything which he adds 
 by way of elucidating or corroborating what 
 he has said, spoils what has gone before, 
 destroying the impression of it. It is a less 
 evil to terminate abruptly than to weary the 
 attention. 
 
 The bored hearer becomes almost an enemy. 
 He can no longer attend, and yet, at that mo- 
 ment, he is unable to think of anything else. 
 His mind is like an overladen stomach which 
 requires rest, and into which additional aliment 
 is thrust despite of its distaste and repugnance ; 
 it needs not much to make it rise, rebel, and 
 disgorge the whole of what it has received. An 
 unseasonable or awkward speaker inflicts a 
 downright torture on those who are compelled 
 to hear him, a torture that may amount to 
 sickness or a nervous paroxysm. Such is the 
 state into which a too lengthy discourse, and 
 
282 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 above all, a never-ending peroration, plunge 
 the audience. It is easy to calculate the 
 dispositions which it inspires and the fruit it 
 produces. 
 
 Sometimes — and I humbly confess that I here 
 speak from experience — the orator is still more 
 unfortunate, if that were possible. He wants 
 to finish, and no longer knows how, like a man 
 who seeks to quit a house in danger, and finds 
 all the doors shut ; he runs right and left to 
 discover an escape, and strikes against dead 
 walls. Meanwhile time presses, and the im- 
 patience of the public betrays itself by a re- 
 pressed disturbance, some rising to go away, 
 some moving on their seats to relieve themselves, 
 while a confused hum ascends towards the 
 speaker, — a too certain token that he is no 
 longer attended to, and that he is speaking to 
 the air, which fact only increases his agitation 
 and perplexity. At last, as everything has an 
 end in this world, he reaches his conclusion 
 after some fashion or other, and war- weary, 
 either by catching hold of the common-place 
 wind-up about eternal life, should he be preach- 
 ing, or, under other circumstances, by some 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 283 
 
 panting period which has the air of expressing 
 a feeling or a thought, and which, in nine cases 
 out often, fills the ear with sonorous and empty- 
 words. And thus the poor orator who could do 
 better, and who is conscious that he has done 
 ill, retires, with lowly mien, much confused, and 
 vowing, though rather late, that they shall not 
 catch him in that way any more. 
 
 Alas ! yet again, perhaps, he shall be caught, 
 even after the most laborious preparation; 
 for there is nothing so fitful as eloquence. It 
 needs but an omission, a distraction to break 
 the thread of the ideas and launch you into 
 void or darkness, and then you grope in a 
 forest, or rather struggle amid a chaos. It is a 
 true oratorical discomfiture and rout; and I 
 have remarked that it happens most when an 
 orator is most sure of himself and hopes to 
 produce the greatest effect. These are lessons 
 which He, who exalts the humble and abases 
 the proud, is pleased occasionally to give to 
 public speakers, so prone to be elated by 
 success and to ascribe to themselves its credit 
 and its glory. Happy are they if they profit 
 by them. 
 
284 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 There is a way of concluding which is the 
 most simple, the most rational, and the 
 least generally adopted. True, it gives little 
 trouble and affords no room for pompous 
 sentences, and that is why so many despise 
 it, and do not even give it a thought. It 
 consists merely of winding up by a rapid 
 recapitulation of the whole discourse, present- 
 ing in sum what has been developed in the 
 various parts, so as to enunciate only the 
 leading ideas with their connection ; — a 
 process which gives the opportunity of a 
 nervous and lively summary, foreshortening 
 all that has been stated, and making the 
 remembrance and profitable application of it 
 easy. 
 
 And since you have spoken to gain some 
 point, to convince and persuade your hearer, 
 and thus influence his will by impressions and 
 considerations, and finally by some paramount 
 feeling which must give the finishing stroke 
 and determine him to action, the epitome of 
 the ideas must be itself strengthened, and, as it 
 were, rendered living by a few touching words, 
 which inspirit the feeling in question at the 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 285 
 
 last moment, so that the convinced and af- 
 fected auditor shall be ready to do what he is 
 is required. 
 
 Such, in my mind, is the best peroration, 
 because it is alike the most natural and the 
 most efficacious. It is the straight aim of the 
 discourse, and as it issues from the subject and 
 from the direct intention of the speaker, it goes 
 right to the soul of the listener and places the 
 two in unison at the close. 
 
 I am aware that you may, and with success, 
 adopt a different mode of concluding, either 
 by some pungent things which you reserve for 
 your peroration, and which tend to maintain to 
 the last and even to reawaken the attention of 
 the audience ; or else by well-turned periods 
 which flatter the ear and excite all sorts of 
 feelings, more or less analogous to the subject. 
 Undoubtedly there are circumstances in which 
 these oratorical artifices are in keeping, and 
 may prove advantageous or agreeable ; I do 
 not reject them, for in war all means, not con- 
 demned by humanity and honour, and capable 
 of procuring victory, are allowable, — and public 
 speaking is a real conflict ; I merely depose 
 
286 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 that the simplest method is also the best, and 
 that the others, belonging more to art than 
 to nature, are rather in the province of rhetoric 
 than of true eloquence. 
 
287 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 AFTER THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 It should seem as if all had been said, once 
 the discourse is concluded; and yet we will 
 add a few words on the physical and moral in- 
 terest of the speaker, we will point out to him 
 various precautions which may appear futile to 
 certain persons, and may prove serviceable to 
 others ; at least we have always found our own 
 account in having adopted them. 
 
 On quitting the pulpit, the platform, or any 
 other place where you have been speaking for 
 a considerable time and with animation, you 
 should try to remain quiet for a while in order 
 to recompose yourself gradually, and to allow 
 the species of fever which has excited and con- 
 sumed you to subside. The head particularly 
 needs rest, — for nothing is so fatiguing to it as 
 extemporaneous speaking, which brings into 
 
288 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 
 
 play all the faculties of the mind, strains them 
 to the uttermost, and thus causes a powerful 
 determination of blood to the brain. More- 
 over, the nervous system, which is ancillary to 
 it, is strongly agitated, — it requires tranquil- 
 lising, — and the w T hole body, violently agitated 
 as it has been by the oratorical delivery, re- 
 requires repose ; and this, a slight doze, if it 
 be possible to obtain one, will afford better 
 than any other means. 
 
 The vocal organs which have just been ex- 
 ercised to excess, ought to be kept unem- 
 ployed; and therefore great care should be 
 taken, — if indeed the inconvenience can be 
 avoided, — not to receive visits or hold conver- 
 sations. In the fatigue of the moment, any 
 new effort, however small, is prejudicial, and 
 takes away more strength than the most vio- 
 lent exertions at another time. The first thing 
 to do in this state is to return thanks to God 
 for the danger escaped, and for the help re- 
 ceived, even when you fancy that you have 
 not achieved the success which you desire. 
 Public speaking is so hazardous a thing, that one 
 never knows what will be the issue of it, and 
 in nothing is assistance from above so really 
 necessary. 
 
THE DISCOURSE ENBED. 289 
 
 He who feels the importance and the clanger 
 of speaking, who has any notion of what the 
 orator ought to be, any notion of all that he 
 needs to accomplish his task, the obstacles he 
 must surmount, the difficulties he must over- 
 come, and, on the other hand, how slight a matter 
 suffices to overthrow or paralyse him, — he who 
 understands all this can well conceive also that 
 he requires to be breathed upon from on high 
 in order to receive the inspiration, the light, 
 the fire, which shall make his discourse living 
 and efficacious. For all life comes from Him 
 who is life itself, life infinite, life eternal, inex- 
 haustible, and the life of the mind more than 
 that of the body, since God is spirit. It is but 
 just, therefore, to pay Him homage for what 
 He has vouchsafed to give us, and to refer to Him 
 at the earliest moment the fruit or glory of 
 what we have received. This is the more fitting, 
 because there is nothing more intoxicating than 
 the success of eloquence ; and in the elation 
 which its power gives, owing to a consciousness 
 of strength, and the visible influence which it 
 exercises over our fellow- creatures, it is natu- 
 rally prone to exalt a man in his own con- 
 ceit, and leads him to ascribe to himself, 
 
 u 
 
290 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 
 
 directly or indirectly, wholly or partially, the 
 effect produced. We should beware of these 
 temptations of pride, these illusions of vanity, 
 which are invariably fatal to true talent. 
 
 Within measure, it is allowable to rejoice 
 at what we have achieved, and in the great 
 relief which is experienced after speaking. 
 I know nothing equal to this sense of relief, 
 especially when we think that the task has not 
 been unworthily performed. 
 
 There is a sort of infantine joy at being 
 delivered from a difficult task, or disencum- 
 bered of a heavy burden. Labour weighs 
 hard upon all the children of Adam, even on 
 those who feel most its necessity, and we 
 instinctively shun it to the utmost. Besides 
 which, rest after sharp fatigue is delicious, 
 and particularly after the labours of the mind. 
 Socrates, the son of a midwife, used to say 
 that he continued the occupation of his 
 mother; but it was in the mental order, by 
 means of his interrogatories and dialectics, 
 and hence the eristic method. One may say, 
 then, with the wisest of the Greeks, that the 
 delivery of a discourse in public is the pro- 
 duction of an intellectual offspring ; and very 
 
THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 291 
 
 fortunate it is when that offspring is not 
 dead or unlikely to live. To conceive an 
 idea, to organise it in a plan vigorously 
 meditated, and to carry this mental progeny 
 for more or less time in the understanding, 
 and then when matured to give it to the 
 light amidst the dangers and the throes of 
 public speaking, this is an exertion which pro- 
 duces immense relief and a very great satis- 
 faction when it succeeds. And truly, how light 
 one feels after a speech, and how comfortable 
 the relaxation of mind and body after the ex- 
 treme tension which has wrung all the springs 
 and exhausted all the exertions of one's vital 
 power ! None can know it, save him who has 
 experienced it. 
 
 After this comes a feeling at once higher and 
 deeper, that of duty accomplished, of a task 
 honourably fulfilled, one of the sweetest joys 
 of conscience. Finally, another feeling raises 
 us in our own estimation even while inspiring 
 us with humility, that of being an instrument 
 of truth to make it known to men as far as our 
 weakness allows, and of having given testimony 
 to it at the cost of some sacrifices, or at least 
 of our toil and sweat. You are never more 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 
 
 closely united with Truth than when you are 
 announcing it with conviction and devotedness. 
 When you are called to proclaim it solemnly, 
 it reveals itself or makes itself felt in a manner 
 quite peculiar, and, as Bossuet says, with sudden 
 illuminations. He who instructs others derives 
 more profit than those whom he teaches, and 
 receives more light than he imparts. This is 
 why teaching is the best method of learning. 
 
 From these mingled sentiments results a 
 state full of sweetness, especially if you believe 
 that you have succeeded, and in general your 
 own feeling does not deceive you in this 
 respect. Still, illusion is possible, w T hether 
 for good or ill, because the true orator, who 
 always needs inspiration, never has a very 
 clear consciousness of what he has done, or 
 rather of what has been done by him. God 
 alone, who inspires him, illumines the minds 
 of the hearers by His light, and changes their 
 hearts by His grace. Now God frequently 
 employs the weakest instruments, apparently, 
 to touch the soul, as He has renewed the face 
 of the world by what, in the eyes of human 
 wisdom, were the meanest and most foolish of 
 mankind. 
 
THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 293 
 
 Thus, a discourse with which a speaker is 
 dissatisfied, because it has fallen short of his 
 idea and of his plan, has produced a profound 
 impression and has subjugated every listener; 
 whereas another, with which he was delighted, 
 and which he thought highly effective, has 
 produced nothing save his own fruitless exulta- 
 tion, and too often an augmentation of his 
 vain-glory. Here, as in everything, the Al- 
 mighty is absolute : — He sports with the desires, 
 efforts, and opinions of men, and makes them 
 instrumental, according to His good pleasure, 
 in the manifestation of truth, and the promo- 
 tion of the designs of His justice or His mercy. 
 
 Let no speaker, then, too much disquiet 
 himself as to the effect he may have produced 
 and the results of his discourse ; let him leave 
 all this in the hands of God, whose organ he 
 is, and let him beseech Him to make some- 
 thing accrue from it to His glory, if success 
 have been achieved ; or if he have had the mis- 
 fortune to fail, to make good out of this evil 
 come, as it belongs to the Divine Power to do, 
 and to that power alone. 
 
 Above all, let him not canvass this person 
 and that inquisitively concerning what their 
 
294 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 
 
 feelings were in hearing him, and their opinion 
 of his discourse and his manner. All such 
 questions seek a motive for self-love, rather 
 than any useful hints ; they are an indirect 
 way of going in quest of praise and admiration, 
 and may be carried to a very abject extent, in 
 order to obtain consideration, criticising one's 
 own performance merely to elicit a contrary 
 verdict — tricks and subterfuges of vanity, which 
 begs its bread in the meanest quarters, and 
 which in its excessive craving for flattery, chal- 
 lenges applause and extorts eulogy. This 
 wretched propensity is so inborn in human na- 
 ture, since original sin, that frequently the 
 greatest orators are not proof against this little- 
 ness, which abuses them in the eyes of God 
 and man. Besides, it is a way of exposing 
 oneself to cruel disappointments. 
 
 At length when the speaker is sufficiently 
 rested, and has become more calm, next day, 
 for instance, let him review his plan while his 
 recollections are still new, in order to correct 
 and perfect it by the side of what lie has 
 actually said, either rectifying the succession 
 of the ideas, if necessary, or adding those 
 which have occurred to him while speaking. 
 
THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 295 
 
 It will be so much gained for some future 
 speech on the same plan. 
 
 If the discourse has been really successful, 
 and he feels inclined, let him write according 
 to his plan as he has spoken, and thus he will 
 compose a finished, after having delivered an 
 extemporaneous, production. Great orators 
 have in this manner written several of their 
 orations subsequently, — Cicero, Bossuet, and 
 others. In this case, the surest method is 
 to have a short-hand writer who shall supply 
 you with the whole of what you have said, and 
 whose reports you can use, so as to preserve 
 whatever vivid or striking things the spoken 
 words possessed. 
 
 This is a labour which we have often exe- 
 cuted, always with advantage, and never with- 
 out a feeling of humility. For unless you 
 have verified it, you can hardly form an idea 
 how wretched upon paper looks the most easy, 
 the most elegant extemporaneous address, even 
 that which produced the greatest effect at the 
 moment itself; and how very much it admits of 
 improvement in point of style and readableness. 
 That is w r hy orators of mark, and even of the 
 highest order, whose quivering and action- 
 
296 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 
 
 heated eloquence moves and overcomes any 
 assembly, vanish, as it were, on being perused ; 
 so that on seeing the reckoning of their extem- 
 poraneous harangues, divested of the accents 
 of their voice, the play of their physiognomy, 
 and their gestures, you ask yourself with 
 amazement how such a discourse could have 
 produced an effect so wondrous. It is that 
 speaking and writing are not the same thing; 
 people do not write as they speak, and fre- 
 quently he who speaks the best knows nothing 
 about writing, just as the ablest writer is not 
 always the most capable of speaking. 
 
 Our modest task is over; for we had, we 
 repeat, no pretention of composing a treatise 
 on the art of speaking; our single object was 
 to transfer the results of our experience to 
 those whose calling it is to speak in public. 
 These very simple counsels, we hope, may 
 prove useful to some, either by sparing them 
 trials which are always painful, even when 
 they are productive of fruit, or by showing 
 them a more easy process than their own, or a 
 surer way. 
 
 However this may be, we warn them at 
 parting that those alone can derive any benefit 
 
CONCLUSION. 297 
 
 from our remarks, who shall have received from 
 nature the gift of eloquence, and whom God, 
 who is the Word by pre-eminence, shall assist 
 by His grace in the management of this for- 
 midable weapon, this two-edged sword, for the 
 manifestation of truth, the fulfilment of His 
 designs among men, and the renewal of the 
 world. 
 
 And now, my little book, go forth ; it is time 
 you quit the paternal roof, he who is to pre- 
 sent you in the world awaits you. I have 
 done my best to enable you to make a suitable 
 appearance there ; the all-decisive moment of 
 separation has come, we must say farewell to 
 one another. Dear offspring of my aged days, 
 my heart throbs at parting with you, not merely 
 with fear at what may betide you on the 
 journey, weak as you still are, and about 
 to face so many dangers, but with grief at 
 leaving you, after having reared and formed you 
 with so much care, the object so long of my 
 solicitude and partiality. Image of myself, 
 you recalled to me my youthful years, and, 
 
298 CONCLUSION. 
 
 amidst daily business and anxiety, you have 
 often been a source to me of delight and 
 consolation. It was a continual pleasure to 
 watch your growth and gradual formation ; 
 your infancy cheered my solitude and charmed 
 my hours of leisure. But our children belong 
 not to us ; they are God's, who has intrusted 
 them to us for His glory. Go forth, then, and 
 labour, if possible, for the glory of Him who is 
 the Giver of every perfect gift, and bestowed 
 life upon you. 
 
 Yet still, dear offspring, one w T ord of advice 
 as we part : never forget the mediocrity of 
 your station, and the humble form in which I 
 send you into the world. Let your modesty 
 equal your littleness, and do not seek to make 
 a noise or to shed forth any lustre. Your 
 destiny is to be useful and not to shine. Try 
 to do some good as you pass along, and do not 
 be diverted from your object by the obstacles 
 or contradictions you may encounter. All who 
 meet you will not look on you with a favourable 
 eye. Some when they see you appear beside 
 them will be indignant at your audacity, and 
 will hinder your progress ; others more skilful, 
 without being more benevolent, will refuse 
 
CONCLUSION. 299 
 
 their aid to you because you are not of their 
 country ; and will pretend not to perceive you. 
 Be not angry, but proceed on your way with 
 simplicity, and if you have the good fortune to 
 meet, as I hope you may, some charitable soul, 
 who will take an interest in your youth and 
 help you forward, accept his assistance with 
 gratitude, and profit by his hints and advice, 
 so as to reach the goal more safely, and to per- 
 fect yourself. 
 
 Friendly reader, whoever you are, who love 
 what is true and right above all things, without 
 party spirit or acceptance of persons, should 
 you meet this poor little child on the high road 
 of the world, I recommend it to your benevo- 
 lence ) and you will not meet with ingratitude. 
 
 THE END. 
 
LONDON I 
 FEINTED BY G. J. PALMER, 27, LAMB'S CONDUIT STREET.