AND
808.5
S933
COP. 2
THA
B 947,098

ARTES
1837
LIBRARY VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
SI-QUÆRIS PENINSULAM-ANŒNAM..
CIRCUMSPICE
LIBRARY
OF
RHETORIC AND
CRITICISM
THE GIFT OF
FRED NEWTON SCOTT
STUDIES IN RHETORIC
AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
This edition is limited
to four hundred copies
of which this is
No. 15.8
4.1.

STUDIES IN RHETORIC
AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
In Honor of
JAMES ALBERT WINANS
By
PUPILS AND COLLEAGUES

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1925
Copyright, 1925, by
THE CENTURY Co.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
To
JAMES ALBERT WINANS
upon his completion of a quarter of a century of teaching,
during which period, by his work in college classrooms, by
his writings, and by his personal qualities, he has exercised
a beneficent leadership in the field of academic instruction in
public speaking, this book is offered by his pupils and colleagues.
1
PREFACE
THE papers in this volume of Studies in Rhetoric and Public
Speaking have been contributed by several of Professor Winans'
pupils, colleagues, and friends, who prize their association with him
in the work of the Department of Public Speaking in Cornell Uni-
versity. Those who have been familiar with academic instruction in
public speaking in the United States during the last twenty-five years
know how great the influence of Professor Winans' teaching, writ-
ing, and counsel has been. All contributors to this book have been
moved by gratitude for that influence, and every one of them has the
stronger motive of personal friendship in desiring thus to express his
regard.
The publication of the volume was made possible by the contribu-
tions of a larger group of pupils, former colleagues, and friends who
wished to share in this tribute to Professor Winans, and to join
in a congratulatory recognition of his work as teacher for more than
twenty years at Cornell University, and in recent years at Dartmouth
College.
These resources were augmented by the coöperation of Professor
Winans' publishers, the Century Company, whose secretary, Mr.
Dana H. Ferrin, has given the publication his sympathetic and help-
ful attention.
The planning and general editing of the volume has been in
charge of A. M. Drummond. Several of the contributors aided in
preparing manuscript for the press, but the editor is especially in-
debted to Herbert A. Wichelns and Lee S. Hultzén for their generous
assistance with the proofs.
CONTENTS
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC AND RHETORICIANS
Everett Lee Hunt, M.A.
Assistant Professor of Public Speaking, Cornell University
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING
Harry Caplan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Classics, Cornell University
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
Robert Hannah, A.M.
Instructor in Public Speaking, Cornell University
· DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, Ph.D.
Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh
Theodore Thorson Stenberg, A.M.
PAGE
3
61
91
133
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
153
Instructor in English, University of Texas
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
181
Herbert August Wichelns, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Public Speaking, Cornell University
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
217
Wayland Maxfield Parrish, A.M.
Assistant Professor of Public Speaking, University of Pittsburgh
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
233
Lee S. Hultzén, A.B.
Formerly Assistant Professor of Public Speaking, Washington University
STUTTERING
•
Smiley Blanton, M.D.
Director Minneapolis Child Guidance Clinic
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING
t
Margaret Gray Blanton
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION
William Emil Utterback, A.M.
Assistant Professor of Public Speaking, Dartmouth College
253
267
283
STUDIES IN RHETORIC
AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
STUDIES IN RHETORIC AND
T
PUBLIC SPEAKING
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
AND RHETORICIANS
EVERETT LEE HUNT
I
HE art of rhetoric offered to the Athenian of the fifth century
B.C. a method of higher education and, beyond that, a way
of life. Plato attacked both. He gave rhetoric a conspicuous
place in his dialogues because it represented in Athenian life that
which he most disliked. His pictures of the rhetoricians are so
broadly satirical that at times they become caricatures; but his liter-
ary power and philosophical originality have so impressed themselves
upon succeeding ages that the sophists and rhetoricians of Athens
have become symbolical of false pretense of knowledge, overweening
conceit, fallacious argument, cultivation of style for its own sake,
demagoguery, corruption of youth through a scepticism which pro-
fessed complete indifference to truth, and, in general, a ready substi-
tution of appearance for reality.
We have the more readily accepted Plato's account because these
faults have never been absent from civilization. If the sophists and
rhetoricians of Plato's dialogues had not existed, it would have been
necessary to invent them. The qualities they typify are so universal
that certain collective names for them have become a necessity for
thought. Even Grote, the great defender of the historical sophists,
when he desires to point out the fallacies of the Platonic Socrates,
finds it convenient to accuse Plato of "sophistry."1 These qualities
are not only objectively ever present, but we attribute them readily
to any persons or arguments when for any reason our approval has
¹George Grote, Plato, London, 1888, III, 63.
3
4
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
not been won. An argument which we do not accept is sophistical,
and the person who presents it a sophist. An appeal to the feelings
of men which does not happen to warm our own hearts is rhetorical,
and its author a rhetorician. It was so in Plato's time, and it was
no more safe then than now to take the words "sophistry” and
"rhetoric" at their face value.
3
When we ask, who were the sophists, what did they teach, and
what is the connection between sophistry and rhetoric, we have
asked questions involving great historical and philosophical dispute.
Generations of historians of philosophy, accepting Plato's account,
have made the sophists the scapegoats for all intellectual-and, at
times, moral-delinquencies. It is to Hegel that the sophists owe
their rehabilitation in modern times.¹ G. H. Lewes, five years before
Grote published his famous defense of the sophists, characterized
them as professors of rhetoric,² and pointed out the bias which had
caused their unfair treatment at the hands of Plato. Grote's classic
treatment of the sophists in his History of Greece was termed by
Henry Sidgwick “a historical discovery of the highest order.” “Be-
fore it was written," says Professor Sidgwick, "the facts were all
there, but the learned world could not draw the right inference.”
In two vigorous essays he defends Grote and makes some significant
contributions to the controversy. John Stuart Mill, in an extended
review of Grote's Plato, defends his interpretation in almost all
points, and furnishes many additional arguments in defense of the
sophists. E. M. Cope, in his essays on the sophistic rhetoric,
rejects many of Grote's conclusions. Zeller is not inclined to look
upon the sophists with favor." Chaignet, in his history of rhetoric,
accepts the conventional contrast between Plato and the sophists.Ⓡ
5
4
6
¹G. W. Hegel, Lectures on Philosophy, 2d ed., 1840, tr. E. S. Haldane,
London, 1892.
"G. H. Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy, London, 1857, pp. 87 ff.
Grote, History of Greece, London, 1851, VIII, 67.
8
"H. Sidgwick, "The Sophists," Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and
other Philosophical Lectures and Essays, London, 1905.
"J. S. Mill, "Grote's Plato," Dissertations and Discussions, New York,
1874, IV.
E. M. Cope, "The Sophistic Rhetoric," Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology, II (1855), 129-69, III (1856), 34-80, 253-88.
'E. Zeller, Pre-Socratic Philosophy, tr. S. F. Alleyne, London, 1881, II,
sect. iii. For still other points of view, see A. W. Benn, The Greek Philos-
ophers, London, 1882, ch. 2. Also Sir A. Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle,
London, 1874, I, 103-54.
8
A. E. Chaignet, La Rhétorique et son Histoire, Paris, 1888, pp. 43, 44.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
5
Jowett, Plato's translator, accepts many of Grote's conclusions, but
rejects others.¹ Gomperz, in his Greek Thinkers, written fifty years
after Grote's history was published, says of his own contemporaries
among historians of philosophy:
They still begin by handsomely acknowledging the ambiguity of the word
"sophist," and the injustice done to the bearers of that name in the fifth
century B.C. by the ugly sense in which the term came to be used, and they
admit that restitution is due. But the debt is forgotten before it is paid;
the debtor reverts to the old familiar usage, and speaks of the sophists once
more as if they were really mere intellectual acrobats, unscrupulous tormentors
of language, or the authors of pernicious teachings. The spirit may be
willing, but the reason is helpless against the force of inveterate habits of
thought. Verily the sophists were born under an evil star. Their one short
hour of triumphant success was paid for by centuries of obloquy. Two
invincible foes were banded against them-the caprice of language, and the
genius of a great writer, if not the greatest writer of all times."
3
The itinerant sophists founded no schools, and most of their
works have been lost. The evidence in the case is therefore of the
kind which makes endless argument possible. A few conclusions.
may, however, be stated as generally agreed upon. The term sophist
originally had no unfavorable connotation, and was applied to any
man who was thought to be learned. Thus the seven sages of Greece,
universally honored, were at times called sophists. In the time of
Plato the word carried with it something of reproach, but it was
not a definitely understood term. Rival teachers employed it against
each other. Thus Isocrates regarded speculative thinkers (Plato
among them) as sophists, because he thought their speculations fruit-
less. He also attacked as sophists other teachers of rhetoric whose
instruction he regarded as unintelligent, and whose promises to their
pupils he thought impossible of fulfilment. The general public used
the term with almost no discrimination, and Aristophanes seized
upon Socrates as the sophist who could be most effectively lampooned.
As to what they taught, it has been established that such terms
1
4
¹ Introduction to his translation of Plato's Sophist.
"Theodore Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, tr. L. Magnus, New York, 1901,
I, 422.
For citations illustrating the various uses of the word "sophist" by Greek
writers, see Gomperz, op. cit., I, 579.
4
Isocrates, Antidosis, Against the Sophists. For translations of selected
passages see Jebb, Attic Orators, London, 1893, II, 124-47. See also W. H.
Thompson, "On the Philosophy of Isocrates and his Relation to the Socratic
Schools," in his edition of Plato's Phædrus, London, 1868.
6
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
as a sophistic mind, a sophistic morality, a sophistic scepticism, and
others implying a common basis of doctrine, are quite without justi-
fication. Their common characteristics were that they were pro-
fessional teachers, that they accepted fees, and that rhetoric was a
large element in the teaching of virtually all of them. The general
emphasis upon rhetoric does not mean that, as scholars, all the
sophists found their intellectual interests centered in rhetoric. But
rhetoric was the one subject with which they could be sure to make a
living. The conditions which made rhetorical training a universal
necessity in Athens have been frequently set forth. The sophist who
was a master of rhetoric had a number of possibilities before him.
He could win power and repute by the delivery of eulogistic orations
at public funerals, or deliberative addresses at times of political
crises. He could appear at games, or upon occasions of his own
making, with what we sometimes call occasional, or literary, ad-
dresses, expounding Homer or other works of Greek literature. He
could write speeches for clients who were to appear in court. He
was not allowed to appear in person as an advocate unless he could
show that he had a direct connection with the case, but the profes-
sion of logographer was profitable. Finally, he was more certain
of pupils in rhetoric than in any other subject.¹ It is not strange,
then, that with a wide range of individual interests, the sophists, with
varying emphasis, should unite upon rhetoric as the indispensable
part of their stock in trade.
The claim to impart virtue has at times been held to be the dis-
tinguishing mark of the sophist, and the attempt has been made to
divide the sophists from the rhetoricians upon this basis. This can-
not be done, for the two activities of making men virtuous and
making them eloquent were inextricably intermingled. Hegel has
pointed out what he regards as an essential difference between the
sophists and modern professors.2 The professor makes no preten-
sion to making men good or wise; he only presents to students his
organized knowledge, realizing that knowledge comes but wisdom
lingers. The sophists, on the other hand, laid claim to some actual
effect from their teachings; they made men wise. This was at least
in part due to the dominance of rhetoric. Aristotle might lecture
¹See O. T. Navarre, Essai sur la Rhétorique Grecque avant Aristote,
Paris, 1900.
'Hegel, op. cit., I, 352.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
7
upon the theoretical aspects of rhetoric-a procedure which seems to
have been productive of little eloquence-but the prime purpose of
the teaching of rhetoric was practical. Certain sophists made the
payment of their fees dependent upon some proof that they had
actually given to a pupil the ability to persuade an audience. With
such a background, it is natural that the teaching of ethics as abstract
knowledge, would seem about as futile as the teaching of an abstract
rhetoric. A man who taught ethics taught it practically, with injunc-
tions and exhortations, and he expected practical consequences to
follow. But one of the consequences always looked for was that the
pupil should become such a person as to be persuasive when speaking
in a public assembly. Ethics thus was often absorbed in rhetoric.
The failures of many pupils to become either good or persuasive gave
rise, then as now, to cynical reflections upon the futility of education,
and there were many arguments as to whether virtue or rhetoric
could be taught. In these arguments there were two extreme posi-
tions. Some inclined to believe that if you teach a man to be virtu-
ous, he will naturally be eloquent, and rhetorical instruction is un-
necessary. Other sophists believed it quite impossible to teach virtue,
but by constant attention to becoming a persuasive speaker, virtue
would be unconsciously acquired. The controversy over the relation
of virtue to eloquence runs through the history of rhetoric, and may
be viewed as a technical question in that field. The attitude of
sophists toward the teaching of virtue, then, cannot distinguish the
sophists from the rhetoricians, and for the purposes of our study the
two terms may be used almost synonymously-the word sophist, per-
haps, being somewhat more inclusive.
II
The way in which the sophists combined their own intellectual
interests with the teaching of rhetoric may best be made clear by a
brief study of the four principal figures: Prodicus, Hippias, Protago-
ras, and Gorgias. Since these are the men most often referred to by
Plato, it is also desirable to have some historical knowledge of them
with which to correct the impressions given by the Platonic pictures.
Protagoras and Gorgias were older than Prodicus and Hippias,
but they lived longer and matured later. They were therefore more
affected by the movement away from the natural sciences, and as
8
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
humanists devoted a larger portion of their energies to definitely
rhetorical instruction.
Prodicus of Ceos has been called the earliest of the pessimists.¹
He was frail of body, but with a powerful voice he moved his
audiences by descriptions of the different ages of man from birth
to second childhood and death. He would depict death as "a stony-
hearted creditor, wringing pledges one by one from his tardy debtor,
first his hearing, then his sight, and next the free movement of his
limbs." His pessimism had none of the usual consequences-
passive resignation, retreat from the world, or a great desire to seek
pleasures while they might be found. To face death courageously
was a virtue, and he taught his disciples that while we are, death is
not; when death is, we are not. Life, while it lasted, was to be
lived vigorously His most famous lecture, The Choice of Hercules,
has been preserved by Xenophon,³ who tells us that Socrates quoted
it with approval; through many centuries it has had a great effect
in exalting the ideals of labor, hardihood, and simplicity. It was not
in popular religion that Prodicus found his sustaining faith, for his
speculations upon the origin of religion have the point of view of the
modern critical historian. He accounted for the divinities of the
various nations by pointing out that they deified the objects most use-
ful to them-sun, moon, rivers, fruits of the field, and heroic men.
The more technical instruction of Prodicus was devoted to a study
of language. He sought to collect and compare words of similar
meaning. He desired to reduce the ambiguities in the arguments of
the Greeks, and to aid in the development of literary style. He
attempted to clarify ideas by insisting upon accuracy in the use of
words, believing, with Hobbes, that "the light of human minds is
perspicuous words.”
The lectures of Prodicus were well known in all the cities of
Greece, and commanded large sums in all places except Sparta, where
foreign teachers were discouraged by a law against the payment of
1
¹ For Prodicus, see the following: Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists,
tr. W. C. Wright, New York, 1922, pp. 37-9; F. Welcker, "Prodikos von
Keos, Vorgänger des Sokrates," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, III
(1833), 1-39; Gomperz, op. cit., I, 425-30; Benn, op. cit., I, 77-81; Bromley
Smith, "Prodicus of Ceos," Quarterly Journal of Speech Education, VI, ii
(1920), 51.
2
ch. I.
Pseudo-Platonic Axiochus, 360, D. Cited by Gomperz, op. cit., I, 428.
Xenophon's Memorabilia, tr. E. C. Marchant, New York, 1923, II,
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
9
fees.
Nevertheless he was welcomed there. He served his native
island frequently as ambassador, and in the discharge of his civic
duties displayed the qualities which in his lectures he urged upon
youth.
Prodicus, then, was the rhetor rather than the teacher of rhetoric;
and his chief contributions to the thought of his time were made as
philosopher and grammarian.
Hippias of Elis, whom Plato especially disliked, is chiefly remem-
bered for his versatility.¹ As an orator he was known throughout
Greece. He recited certain well-known compositions of his in which
figures of the Iliad are compared upon the basis of their virtues, or
old men give advice to aspiring youths. He was rewarded by being
made a freeman of many cities, and it is especially significant that his
lectures on history and ethics were also acceptable to the conserva-
tive Spartans. He never gave himself to the routine of perfecting
his students in rhetoric, but was occupied with innumerable pursuits.
He was a mathematician of considerable note; he wrote on theories
of sculpture and painting, on phonetics, rhythm, and music; he
developed a system that enabled him to perform surprising feats of
memory in his old age; he was an ambassador for his native city,
Elis; he attempted most of the prevailing forms of literature; and he
prided himself upon his facility in mastering all the arts and crafts.
The antithesis between nature and convention seems to have origi-
nated with Hippias. He observed the variety and changeability of
the laws of the Greek democracies, and felt that only laws possessing
the universality and permanence of the laws of nature should be really
sacred and binding. To give validity to the laws of men, the laws of
all states should be compared, and the universal elements in them.
selected as the "natural" laws for the governing of nations. In be-
lieving that all men were by nature equal, Hippias was perhaps the
originator of the doctrine of natural rights. When the distinction
between nature and convention has been clearly made, one may, of
course, espouse either. Hippias was one of the first preachers of a
return to nature. This suggests a reason for his efforts to achieve
so wide a versatility. The return to nature is only possible when each
person is relatively self-sufficient, and self-sufficiency was a favorite
doctrine with Hippias. He doubtless believed, as have men of other
¹For Hippias, see Philostratus, op. cit., p. 35; Gomperz, op. cit., I, 431-4:
Benn, op. cit., I, 81-5.
IO
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
ages, that the development of personality gained by the consciousness
of being equal to any situation more than offsets the dissipation of
energy and efficiency incurred by the performance of all sorts of
tasks; but one motive was clearly that of independence, and the
development of the sort of ingenuity that enables a Robinson Crusoe
to exist. Such a man would live by his work as well as by his wits.
Rhetoric would not be the chief means of obtaining what he desired,
and it is not surprising that rhetoric should be relatively less impor-
tant to those who would be governed by nature than to those who saw
in convention the power that offers the best government.
Hippias was more than a popular orator preaching to the cities
of Greece. In his thought we have the beginnings of the cosmopoli-
tanism of the later Cynics, the self-sufficiency of the Stoics, the belief
in natural rights, and the ideal of versatility as a means of developing
the whole man.
Protagoras of Abdera accepted the distinction of Hippias between
nature and convention; but he had no sympathy for the return to
nature.¹ In the variety and changeability of the laws of men lay
the great hope of progress. He therefore turned away from the
natural sciences and devoted himself to the "humanities." He, too,
was a man of great versatility; he invented a porter's pad; as a friend
of Pericles, he was given the task of framing the laws for the colony
at Thurium. As a teacher, his instruction was chiefly intended to
offer a training for public life. He included within his curriculum
oratory and its auxiliary arts, educational theory, jurisprudence, poli-
tics, and ethics. In his teaching of public speaking he insisted upon
the value of practical exercises. He declared that there were two
sides to every proposition, and that a speaker should be able to set
forth the arguments on either side. His practice of having his stu-
dents argue upon both sides of certain general themes may have been
responsible for the charge against him, recorded by Aristotle, that
he made the worse appear the better reason. But as this was a stand-
ing reproach against philosophers as well as rhetoricians, and as we
have no evidence which impeaches his moral character, we may believe
1
¹ For Protagoras, see the following: Philostratus, op. cit., pp. 33-5;
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, tr. C. D. Yonge, London, 1853,
bk. ix, ch. 8; Hegel, op. cit., I, 372-8; Gomperz, op. cit., I, 438-75; Benn,
op. cit., I, 85-95; E. Barker, Greek Political Theory, London, 1918, pp. 60-4;
Bromley Smith, "Protagoras of Abdera," Quarterly Journal of Speech Educa
tion, IV (1918), 196.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
II
that this charge applied no more to his teaching than to all instruc-
tion in the art of reasoning.
In addition to the training in debate, Protagoras practised his
pupils in the development of what were called commonplaces.
Speeches were made which praised or blamed certain human quali-
ties, such as patriotism, friendship, courage, cupidity. These speeches
had no reference to a concrete situation, but they equipped the pupils
with a stock of thoughts and phrases for use when a real occasion
demanded ready utterance. The debates developed keenness and
dexterity; the commonplaces gave the speakers a certain copiousness
and elegance.
Grammar was also given attention, and Protagoras is recognized
as the first to introduce the subject into his curriculum. It has been
remarked that the level attained by Greek literature before Protago-
ras wrote his book On Correct Speech seems to indicate that a mas-
tery of language may be acquired quite independently of conscious
rules. But the desire of Protagoras to introduce order and consist-
ency in the tenses of the verb, moods of predication, and genders of
substantives, was in harmony with the intellectual tendencies of the
times, and shows him to have been by no means totally absorbed in
the practical business of advising youth how to get on in the world.
The ethical theory of Protagoras was set forth in the lost work,
On the Incorrect Actions of Mankind. In his seventieth year he read
publicly, at the house of Euripides, his work, On the Gods. Only
the first sentence has been preserved.
In respect to the gods, I am unable to know either that they are or that
they are not, for there are many obstacles to such knowledge, above all the
obscurity of the matter, and the life of man, in that it is so short.¹
Whether Protagoras meant to assail the belief in the gods, or whether
he meant merely to point out that in the nature of the case we could
not have knowledge of them, we do not know. At any rate, his
scepticism so alarmed certain of his contemporaries that his book was
publicly burned, and he was exiled.
The philosophical doctrine for which Protagoras is chiefly known,
and for which he was vigorously assailed by Plato, is summarized in
the dictum that man is the measure of all things. Since we have only
1
¹ Diogenes Laertius, IX, 51.
12
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
:
the first sentence of the work in which this doctrine was developed,
it is not strange that scholars are far apart in their interpretation of
the meaning of Protagoras; but they are generally agreed that the
Platonic interpretation of it in the Theatetus is quite unfair. Few
interpreters now consider it to involve the degree of relativity and
subjectivism with which Protagoras and the sophists generally have
been burdened. Gomperz points out that a man who preached that
anything was true which any one believed to be so, would not be the
man to suffer for a denial of the possibility of knowledge of the gods.
Professor F. C. S. Schiller, in his Studies in Humanism, devotes
two dialogues to Protagoras; one explaining his humanism, and the
other defending his scepticism. In his introduction to the volume
Professor Schiller says:
Our only hope of understanding knowledge, our only chance of keeping
philosophy alive by nourishing it with the realities of life, lies in going back
from Plato to Protagoras, and ceasing to misunderstand the great teacher
who discovered the measure of man's universe.¹
But this is not the place to discuss the philosophical aspects of the
teachings of Protagoras; it is only desired to make it clear that there
are grounds for regarding him as did Hegel.
*
[He was] not merely a teacher of culture, but likewise a deep and solid
thinker, a philosopher who reflected on fundamental questions of an alto-
gether universal kind."
Gorgias of Leontini,³ who first appeared in Athens as the head
of an embassy petitioning for aid against the aggressions of Syra-
cuse upon Sicilian cities, is known as the founder of the art of prose.
Chiefly interested in oratory of the epideictic type, he employed what
is termed the "grand" style. The resources of the poets, whose
works were so successful in holding the attention of Greek audiences,
1
2
Schiller, Studies in Humanism, London, 1907, p. xiv.
Hegel, op. cit., I, 373.
3 For Gorgias, see the following: Philostratus, op. cit., pp. 29-33; Diodorus
Siculus, bk. xii, ch. 7; The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, tr.
George Booth, London, 1814, I, 465-6; F. Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit,
Leipzig, 1864, Í, ch. 2; Navarre, op. cit., ch. 3; W. H. Thompson's introduction
to his edition of Plato's Gorgias, London, 1871; Hegel, op. cit., I, 378-84;
Gomperz, op. cit., I, 476-94; Benn, op. cit., I, 95-100; Bromley Smith, "Gorgias:
A Study of Oratorical Style," Quarterly Journal of Speech Education, VII
(1921), 335.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
13
ކ
were turned to the purposes of the orator. Gorgias was interested in
style for style's sake; his foreign accent and distinguished air de-
lighted the Athenians; and throughout his career he sought to per-
suade by pleasing. The extravagances and artificialities of his style
have often been pointed to as the source of the euphuism of the
seventeenth century, and of the stylistic eccentricities of other periods
of decadence.
It cannot be said, however, that the oratory of Gorgias was devoid
of ideas. In common with other itinerant teachers, he preached Pan-
Hellenism in all the cities of Greece. In his Olympian oration he
urged the Greeks to cease their internal rivalries, and to turn their
spears against the barbarians. In the Athenian funeral oration he
warned his hearers that victories over their fellow Greeks called for
dirges of lament. As a teacher of oratory, Gorgias was condemned
by Aristotle for placing too much emphasis upon memorization and
declamation.¹ Little is known concerning his pedagogical method,
but there is no reason to suppose that it differed markedly from the
custom of having the pupils declaim speeches written by themselves
and by the master, drill in topics of amplification and deprecia-
tion, and practise upon commonplaces and disputations. Although
an epideictic speaker would be constantly praising virtue and censur-
ing vice, and in so doing could hardly avoid entertaining certain
ethical theories, Gorgias never announced himself as a teacher of
virtue. He agreed with Isocrates that one who tried to become per-
suasive in discoursing about justice and virtue and expediency would
probably become as virtuous as mere knowledge could make him.
As a philosopher, Gorgias engaged in controversy with the Eleatic
school. All we know of his book On Nature or Not-Being, is its
threefold thesis that "Being does not exist, if it did exist it would
not be cognizable, and if it were cognizable, the cognition would not
be communicable." 2 We cannot here enter upon metaphysical ques-
tions; but the conventional construction put upon this thesis is that it
goes beyond Protagoras, and is the ultimate of sophistical scepticism,
that it is a nihilism which makes all knowledge impossible, that it
makes immediate plausibility the sole standard of the critical judg-
ment, and that rhetoric was the chief of all subjects for Gorgias be-
cause the one certainty of life was that the man who could persuade
Aristotle, Sophistici Elenchi, tr. Edward Poste, London, 1866, ch. 34.
As translated in Gomperz, op. cit., I, 482.
1
14
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
others to do his will was, temporarily at least, the possessor of great
power. This interpretation is not justified either by an examination
of the philosophical disputes of the time, or by a study of the life of
Gorgias himself. The Eleatic school, following Parmenides and
Melissus, was quite willing to doubt all evidence of the senses, and
yet to trust implicitly in a priori reasoning about Absolute Being.
The protest of Gorgias against this was quite in harmony with the
growing modesty of the scientific endeavor of the times, which was
beginning to see the necessity of increasing knowledge bit by bit,
and to question the claim of the philosophers to a higher knowledge.
Had Gorgias, in denying the tenets of the Eleatics, meant that he
believed scientific truth to be unattainable, it is not likely that he
would have written upon physics, nor that a statue would have
appeared upon the tomb of Isocrates representing Gorgias as direct-
ing the attention of his pupil to a globe. The attack of Gorgias upon
the contradictions of his predecessors in philosophy does not show
that he abandoned all search for truth. Socrates attacked his phil-
osophical predecessors in a similar manner, he abandoned all inquiry
in natural science, and he had as little confidence in the attributes
of being as Gorgias; yet he is not accused of denying the validity of
established scientific truth, or of abandoning all belief in the possi-
bility of knowledge. The account of Gorgias offered by many his-
torians of philosophy is a reductio ad absurdum rather than an
interpretation.
Although we think of Gorgias chiefly as an orator and a teacher
of oratory, and as a creator of a style which is now looked upon
unfavorably, he was too active a participant in the philosophical con-
troversies of his time for us to dismiss him as intellectually insig-
nificant. Since we have lost his philosophical works, we cannot prove
that he made a constructive contribution to the thought of his time,
but his attack upon an absolutistic philosophy was something, and
the evidence certainly does not warrant the supposition that he was
guilty of meaningless absurdities, or that his teaching was necessarily
immoral in its implications.
Numerous other rhetoricians might be mentioned-Polus and
Thrasymachus especially-but our information concerning them is
scanty, and the four we have dealt with are the most significant when
we consider their prominence as rhetoricians, their contribution to the
thought of the time, and the attention they received from Plato.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
15
لله
III
One is inevitably led to ask why such men as these have suffered
so greatly in the estimation of posterity. Why has Plato's opinion
been accepted uncritically and its perversions further distorted by
later commentators? In addition to what has already been suggested
—that we need the terminology of the attack upon the Athenian
sophists to describe an ever present sophistry-there is the fact that
Athenian hostility to the sophists has often been taken as a confirma-
tion of Plato's account. This is to forget that Athenian public opin-
ion distrusted the sophists for reasons similar to those which led
it to execute Socrates, and that the disagreement between Plato and
the Athenian public was profound. The activities which gave these
teachers their influence with the Athenians were just the ones which
led Plato to condemn them; while many aspects of their thought
which led to popular disfavor were the ones which Plato would have
regarded with approval. We may learn much about the sophists by
contrasting the typical Athenian criticism of them with that of
Plato.
In accounting for the disfavor with which the Athenians looked
upon the sophists it must not be forgotten that a complementary pic-
ture of their power and influence could quite as easily be drawn, and
that both are necessary to a true estimate of their position in Athenian
life. The sophists exerted a much greater influence upon their times
than Plato, and the element of jealousy should not be entirely over-
looked in considering his attitude toward them.¹ But the conservative
1
¹G. H. Lewes has shown why the relationship between the solitary thinker
and the public speaker tends to remain constant. "The Sophists were wealthy;
the Sophists were powerful; the Sophists were dazzling, rhetorical, and not
profound. Interrogate human nature-above all, the nature of philosophers-
and ask what will be the sentiment entertained respecting the Sophists by
their rivals. Ask the solitary thinker what is his opinion of the showy, power-
ful, but shallow rhetorician who usurps the attention of the world. The
man of convictions has at all times a superb contempt for the man of
mere oratorical or dialectical display. The thinker knows that the world is
ruled by Thought; yet he finds Expression gaining the world's attention.
He knows that he has within him thoughts pregnant with human welfare;
yet he sees the giddy multitude intoxicated with the enthusiasm excited by
some plausible fallacy, clothed in enchanting language. He sees through
the fallacy, but cannot make others as clear-sighted. His warning is un-
heeded; his wisdom is spurned; his ambition is frustrated; the popular Idol
is carried onward in triumph. The neglected thinker would not be human if
he bore this with equanimity. He does not. He is loud and angry in lament-
ing the fate of a world that can be so led; loud and angry in his contempt of
16
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
elements of the city, of whom Aristophanes was a prominent repre-
sentative, charged the sophists with corrupting the youth. Plato
dissented from this charge in the case of Socrates, and defended the
sophists generally from it, asserting that the real corrupter of youth
in Athens was public opinion, which the sophists only reflected.¹ John
Stuart Mill, who had reasons for analyzing the motives of those who
are overzealous in protecting the young, has stated the case most
clearly:
When the charge of corrupting youth comes to be particularized, it
always resolves itself into making them think themselves wiser than the
laws, and fail in proper respect to their fathers and seniors. And this is a
true charge; only it ought to fall, not on the Sophists, but on intellectual
culture generally. Whatever encourages young men to think for themselves,
does lead them to criticize the laws of their country-does shake their faith
in the infallibility of their fathers and elders, and make them think their
own speculations preferable. It is beyond doubt that the teaching of Socrates,
and of Plato after him, produced these effects in an extraordinary degree.
Accordingly, we learn from Xenophon that the youths of rich families who
frequented Socrates, did so, for the most part, against the severe disapproba-
tion of their relatives. In every age and state of society, fathers and elder
citizens have been suspicious and jealous of all freedom of thought and all
intellectual cultivation (not strictly professional) in their sons and juniors,
unless they can get it controlled by some civil or ecclesiastical authority in
which they have confidence. But it had not occurred to Athenian legislators
to have an established Sophistical Church, or State Universities. The teaching
of the Sophists was all on the voluntary principle; and the dislike of it was
of the same nature with the outcry against "godless colleges," or the objec-
tion of most of our higher and middle classes to any schools but denomina-
tional ones.
They disapproved of any teaching unless they could be certain
that all their own opinions would be taught. It mattered not that the instruc-
tors taught no heresy; the mere fact that they accustomed the mind to ask
questions, and require other reasons than use and wont, sufficed at Athens,
as it does in other places, to make the teaching dangerous in the eyes of self-
satisfied respectability. Accordingly, respectability, as Plato himself tells us,
looked with at least as evil an eye on Philosophers as on Sophists.2
This explanation of Mill's is more applicable to the ethical and
philosophical, than to the rhetorical, aspects of the sophists' teaching.
To be sure, the rhetoricians professed to be able to speak upon either
one who could so lead it. Should he become a critic or historian of his age,
what exactness ought we to expect in his account of the popular idol?"
Op. cit., p. 88.
1
Republic, VI, 492.
2 Op. cit., IV, 262.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
17
side of any case, and to impart this ability to their pupils; this was
the cause of a certain distrust analogous to that with which lawyers
are sometimes viewed today. But when lawyers turn public orators,
they are the most vigorous and platitudinous upholders of the status
quo. So the sophists, as public orators, illustrated and reënforced
the received dogmas of Athenian society. Their speeches were ac-
ceptable to the most conservative. Even their teaching of the art
of speaking upon either side of any case did not rest so much upon a
willingness to attack prevalent morality and customs as it did upon
the cultivation of an ability to make either side of the case appear to
be consistent with common standards of right and justice. Rhetoric
as the art of persuasion must always appeal to the people upon the
basis of whatever beliefs they may happen to have. It is not likely,
then, that it was the rhetoric of the sophists which led to the charge
that they broke down religion and corrupted youth. It was rather
that they concerned themselves enough with philosophy to incur some-
thing of the distrust with which speculative thought has always been.
viewed. In all the disputes between the earlier schools of philosophy
there was one point upon which they were agreed; namely, that the
popular beliefs and explanations of phenomena were entirely wrong.
For them, as for modern philosophers, the incarnation of ignorance
was "the man in the street." Their arrogance and their contempt
for the public naturally roused resentment. Their lofty pretensions
were contrasted with their apparent practical helplessness, and the
story of Thales falling into a well while gazing at the stars is typical
of the popular attitude toward philosophers. The popular distrust
of the sophists was not so much that, as rhetoricians, they were dif-
ferent from Socrates and Plato, but that, as philosophers, they were
so much like them.
There was a certain aspect of the rhetorical teaching which caused
a portion of the public to dislike the popular teachers. After the
downfall of the Thirty in Athens, it was evident that democracy was
the order of the day. Members of the aristocracy could retain their
power in the state only by developing their ability to persuade an
audience. Teachers of rhetoric, in such a situation, were indispen-
sable. But the fees charged by the sophists placed their instruction
beyond the reach of many, who naturally resented what seemed an
unfair advantage possessed by those more adequately trained for
public life.
18
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
The fees of the sophists seem to have been a cause of universal
reproach, but the feeling was too complex to be explained simply.
There was, of course, the aristocratic bias of Athenian life. Phys-
icians were the only wage-earners who suffered no loss of social
standing. Sculptors were artisans rather than artists because their
work was a method of gaining a livelihood. Plato, the man of wealth
and family, was for once in agreement with the popular prejudice,
and he attacked the sophists both for the insignificance of their petty
fees, and for the large fortunes that they made.¹ The acceptance
of fees marked a certain institutionalizing and mechanizing of higher
education, which was disliked. The philosopher whose chief occupa-
tion was the pursuit of truth might impart his wisdom to such per-
sons and at such times as suited him, without seriously interrupting
his own thinking. He probably found a certain number of disciples
a stimulus. But the introduction of fees and the acceptance of re-
sponsibility for practical training in public speaking made the teacher
seem to be a servant of the pupil. He became a professional edu-
cator, and as such insisted disagreeably upon the importance of edu-
cation. As philosophers, the sophists could probably have retained
the measure of freedom and leisure that Plato demanded, even while
accepting pay for their work. But as teachers of rhetoric they tended
to become submerged in the routine of schoolmastering.
As philosophers, the sophists incurred a different sort of penalty
for their fee-taking. Then, as now, certain activities of what may
perhaps be termed men's higher natures were especially removed from
thoughts of gain. We do not like to think that popular preachers are
making money; we deplore the commercialized theatre, and the novel
written only to sell. These activities, we believe, should be ends in
themselves. It is not difficult to understand why the spectacle of for-
eign teachers coming to Athens to teach virtue for a price should have
roused a resentment somewhat distinct from that of those who dis-
liked the teaching of rhetoric.
IV
Turning to Plato, we have already noted that he shared the gen-
eral dislike of fee-taking; but we should consider also those aspects
of his thought which led him to dislike any persons who accepted
¹Apology, 20; Cratylus, 384 and 391.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
19
Athenian life and institutions and participated actively in public
affairs. Mill has pointed out:
Plato, if he returned to life, would be to the full as contemptuous of our
statesmen, lawyers, clergy, authors, and all others who lay claim to mental
superiority as he ever was of the corresponding classes at Athens.¹
ཨཀྑ།, སྶ
ン
​This would be true because Plato would find that our life bears a
much closer resemblance to the Athens he knew, than to his Republic.
We may cite the Republic and the Laws as sufficient evidence of
Plato's discontent with the sorry scheme of things entire. He was
not a reformer who could be contented with a gradual evolution in
the direction of his ideals; nor did it disturb him that his Republic
was not an earthly city, he was satisfied to believe that its pattern
was laid up in the heavens. Scholars are becoming increasingly
conscious, however, that his gaze was not exclusively heavenward
as he wrote the Republic. He knew what he disliked in Athens, and
his utopia owes at least as much to his dislikes as to his desires.
Had the sophists and rhetoricians been the only objects of his scorn
he might not have been driven to writing the Republic. But the poli-
tics, poetry, art, education, and religion of Athens were all wrong-
so wrong that it was easier to paint a utopia than seriously to attempt
the reformation of Athens. We may say in the beginning, then, that
Plato's condemnation of rhetoric and rhetoricians is merely a small
part of his condemnation of all contemporary civilization. We may
note in passing, that rhetoric has its uses even for those who attack
it; and that Plato's contrast between the rhetorician's world of appear-
ance and the philosopher's world of reality was drawn with consum-
mate rhetorical skill.
The supreme remedy for the ills of civilization, Plato believed,
lay in the government of philosopher-kings. But until philosophers
were kings, and could govern autocratically by their wisdom, without
the necessity for persuading the multitude, they were to remain aloof
from public affairs.
The lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known
their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political
assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or votes of the State written
or spoken; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of offices,-
¹Op. cit., IV, 245.
20
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
clubs, banquets, and revels, and singing maidens, do not even enter into their
dreams.¹
In Plato's ideal realm, there was no place for rhetoric as a political
agency. Large questions of policy were to be settled by the phi-
losophers. Administration of routine affairs was to be in the hands
of experts. There would be no litigation, for, there would be no laws.
Laws were as absurd and useless for philosopher-kings as decrees of
the public assembly would be for pilots and physicians, whose actions.
were governed by their own arts. Later in life Plato despaired of
finding philosophers, even in utopia, who could be trusted to govern
without laws, or of inducing people to have confidence in them, even
if they could be found, and his Laws is a concession to that feeling.
But even in his later utopia there was no freedom of utterance, with-
out which, of course, the development of rhetoric would be an impos-
sibility. With the dogmatism of age upon him, he laid down laws.
which were to be permanent. The games of children,2 the restric-
tions upon foreign travel,³ the denial of freedom of speech, and the
enforcement of ethical and theological dogmas, were all designed to
protect the city against changes of any sort. The use of rhetoric in
administering and interpreting the laws was also carefully guarded
against."
4
Although rhetoric had no place in the courts or political assemblies
of Plato's ideal realms, its scope in another field was to be greatly
increased. All the literature and art of the Greeks was to be exam-
ined with a single eye to its effect upon the morals of the citizens.
Truth and beauty were subordinated to goodness-to goodness as
Plato conceived it. Whenever the attempt is made to govern the
ideals of a people by censoring art in the interests of a dogmatic
morality, all art tends to become rhetorical. To say that rhetoric
was banished from the Republic, then, is not quite true. It was
driven out the door only to fly in at the window. The unsympathetic
interpreter of Plato would say that literature became part of the edu-
cator's rhetoric, with Plato as chief educator and chief rhetorician;
a better Platonist, however, would hold that literature and education
became philosophy, with Plato as chief philosopher.
1
Theætetus, 173. Jowett's translation.
'Laws, VII, 798.
3
• Laws, XII, 950.
* Laws, II, 662.
5
Laws, XI, 938.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
21
One source of rhetoric and rhetoricians in any democracy is the
continual and restless striving of the people to better their individual
conditions. They perpetually seek to become what they are not, and
in doing this they strive to bend the wills of others to their own
ends. This state of affairs Plato avoided, in his Republic, by having
a fixed and settled order of society, an order of experts, in which
every man did his own work, and no man attempted the work of
another. In this way ambitious, self-seeking demagoguery was to
be eliminated.
There is no indication in the Republic, that even under phi-
losopher-kings, with a scheme of education devised by Plato himself,
and with art and literature revised in the interest of morals, the mass
of the people were expected to rise to greater heights than a certain
efficiency in minding their own routines. It is not particularly
strange, then, that Plato had a great contempt for the people of
Athens, who lived under a government so little influenced by Plato-
nism. Plato adhered to the philosophic tradition in regarding public
opinion as always wrong both because it was public and because it
was merely opinion. Plato despised mere opinion almost as much
as he did the public. He was never tired of contrasting the knowl-
edge of the philosopher, who had attained real knowledge by dia-
lectical investigation, and by contemplation of Ideas, with that
shadow knowledge called opinion.¹ Sometimes, of course, opinion
would turn out to be right. And right opinion had a certain value
as a guide to action in practical affairs; but even right opinion fell
far short of philosophic knowledge. Plato never believed that prob-
ability was the guide of life. Education, for him, was a process of
keeping the mass of people at their tasks with as few opinions as
might be, and of enabling the few whose intelligence would permit,
to attain philosophic knowledge. Those who knew, were to abandon
the pleasures of knowing, at stated intervals, and govern those who
did not know. Thus opinion was largely to be eliminated from the
State. The education given by the sophists and rhetoricians, on the
other hand, was for the purpose of enabling a man to get on in a
world of conjecture. Isocrates (whom we have not discussed, be-
cause, though he receives passing mention, he is hardly a figure in
the Platonic pictures of contemporary rhetoricians) stated as his
philosophy of education:
1
See especially Republic, VI, 509 ff.
22
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
It is impossible to attain absolute knowledge of what we ought or ought not
to do; but the wise man is he who can make a successful guess as a general
rule, and philosophers are those who study to attain this practical wisdom.¹
Akin to this is the educational aim of Protagoras-given us by
Plato, but probably quite acceptable to Protagoras:
If a young man comes to me he will learn prudence in affairs private as
well as public, he will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and
he will be best able to speak and act in affairs of state.²
The education given by the sophists varied with individual teach-
ers, but in general it aimed to enable the pupils to become leaders of
men in a democracy. It was practical in the sense in which all train-
ing for public affairs is practical; and it sought to enable the indi-
vidual to use existing institutions rather than to overthrow them.
The perversions of such education-half-knowledge, propaganda,
demagoguery, philistinism, worship of the appearance of success-
are probably even more prevalent now than then. Whether they are
worse than the perversions of Platonism is too large a question to be
argued here. But whether for good or ill, the conception of the aims
and purposes of the American liberal college as set forth by the most
distinguished modern educators, is much closer to Isocrates and
Protagoras than to Plato.
It is evident, from Plato's literary activities as an idealistic re-
former and creator of utopias, from his conception of the philosopher
as the true governor of mankind, and from his social, political, and
educational philosophy, that he would have differed profoundly from
the sophists and rhetoricians, even had all of them possessed the
highest character and wisdom.
V
It will be convenient to discuss Plato's treatment of rhetoric and
rhetoricians under four heads: the pictures he has given us of the
individual rhetoricians, his general indictment of rhetoric in Athens,
his suggestions for the creation of a nobler and better rhetoric, and
his later attack upon the eristical rhetoricians who imitated the
argumentative methods of Socrates.
The Platonic pictures of the sophists are scattered throughout
¹ Antidosis, tr. J. F. Dobson, in his Greek Orators, New York, 1920,
P. 142.
2 Protagoras, 318.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
23
the dialogues; but the most extended and vivid characterizations of
them are in the Protagoras, the Hippias Major and Hippias Minor,
the Gorgias, and the Euthydemus. Plato constantly contrasts them
with the ironical Socrates. Socrates affects a great humility, the
sophists are conceited and self-confident; Socrates is skilled in closely
reasoned argument, the sophists are helpless in his hands; Socrates
defines his terms, but the sophists, accustomed to haranguing uncriti-
cal audiences, use their terms with all the looseness and inaccuracy
of common conversation.
Protagoras is pictured at the head of a group of admiring listen-
ers, pleased at an opportunity to lecture in the presence of rival
sophists.¹ Although the reader feels that in the discussion with So-
crates common sense is with Protagoras, he cannot but be amused
at the spectacle of the eloquent, deep-voiced orator unable to defend
even a sound argument against the dialectical attack of Socrates.
Protagoras, with his popular lectures and his conventional morality,
was too powerful a figure to please Plato, who was somewhat neg-
lected in the Academy.
Hippias seems to have incurred the most vigorous enmity of
Plato.2 In the Hippias Minor Socrates exposes the fallacies in the
popular lecture on Homer that Hippias was accustomed to give be-
fore approving audiences. In the picture of Hippias at the Olympic
games in garments, rings, and accoutrements of his own make, there
is no suggestion that he was attempting to reënforce his favorite doc-
trine of self-sufficiency; the Platonic view is that Hippias was insuf-
ferably conceited over his versatility.
The references to Prodicus are scattered and incidental. He is
described as a "taker to pieces of words," as "drawing useless dis-
tinctions about names," and as beginning his instruction with
"initiation into the correct use of terms." 5 In the Cratylus there
is a satirical reference to the relationship between the fees of Prodi-
cus and the amount of knowledge imparted.
6
1 For the Platonic treatment of Protagoras, see the dialogue of that name,
and also Cratylus, 386; Euthydemus, 286; Theætetus, 152-78; Meno, 91;
Republic, 600; Phædrus, 267.
2
See Hippias Major and Hippias Minor. Only Hippias Minor is admitted
into the Platonic canon by Jowett. Grote held to the genuineness of the
Hippias Major, and gives an exposition of it in his Plato.
4
Laches, 197.
• Charmides, 163.
5
6
Euthydemus, 277.
Cratylus, 384.
24
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Gorgias is portrayed in the dialogue bearing his name¹ as pro-
fessing to be able to answer any questions which may be asked him,
and as being so familiar with all possible subjects of discussion that
for many years he has heard no new question. He indulges in
oratorical praise of the art of rhetoric, and is shown to be quite.
incapable of dialectical argument.
3
Polus,2 a young pupil of Gorgias, Callicles, a practical politician
rather than a professional rhetorician, and Thrasymachus, the
spokesman for doctrines that Plato wished to discredit, are described
as being much like the better-known sophists.
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who belong to a later group of
sophists, are caricatured in the Euthydemus with a dramatic vivacity
and comic force which almost equals the Clouds of Aristophanes.
They are characterized as "a new importation of sophists," who "will
give lessons in speaking and pleading, and in writing speeches.
This occupation is new to them, for they were previously teachers of
the art of fighting in armor. They also profess to be teachers of
virtue.
"95
Although there are no formal charges made against any individual
sophists in any of the dialogues, Plato has used all his literary
resources to add to the effectiveness of his philosophical attack upon
them.
VI
There is in the Gorgias a deeper purpose than an exhibition of
the deficiencies of the predominant rhetorical technique. Plato here
gives us a contrast between the true and the false life. The philo-
sophic import of the dialogue has led some commentators to believe
that the treatment of rhetoric is only incidental, or that rhetoric is
used merely as introductory to the higher themes of philosophy. But
Plato, for all his idealism, took as the point of departure for his
reforms the weaknesses which he thought he saw in Athens, and
rhetoric is, after all, a chief subject of the dialogue. Rhetoric, as
philosophy, was a way of life. Rhetoric dealt not only with form
¹ Other characterizations of Gorgias are found in Meno, 70; Phædrus,
267; and Symposium, 198.
3
Gorgias, 466 ff.
Gorgias, 481 ff.
•Republic, I.
Euthydemus, 272.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
25
and style; it also treated the matter and policy of public speaking.
It offered something of a philosophy to the orator. It was almost
indistinguishable from political science, and to the general public the
orator was the statesman.
If there was anything which could pretend to dispute with philosophy the
position of a master knowledge, or put forward a rival claim for the guidance
of life and affairs, it was this art of rhetoric, which professed to train men
for politics, and to make them able to act as well as speak efficiently. The
teacher of philosophy had thus to be vindicated against the teacher of
rhetoric; the philosophical statesman had also to be vindicated against the
orator-statesman of actual Athenian politics.¹
In contrasting the philosopher and the rhetorician, Plato at
times gives the impression of being on the defensive. This is not
merely because rhetoric is more popular, but also because he had
felt the reproaches of his friends for his inactivity in Athenian
affairs. He was keenly conscious of the criticism of the philosopher
which he put into the mouth of Callicles:
He [the philosopher] creeps into the corner for the rest of his life, and
talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths, but never speaks out
like a freeman in a satisfactory manner.2
" 3
One way to establish the supremacy of philosophy was to show that
the claims of rhetoric as "the art of becoming great in the city,"
were not to be taken seriously. There must be an appeal to higher
values. The belief that might makes right, the trust in things that
are seen, must be replaced with a desire for the goods of the soul.
The ignorance, prejudice, and selfishness of the rhetorician must be
exposed; the most popular of arts must be shown to be no art at all
when subjected to the scrutiny of a philosophical mind. The Gorgias,
then, undertakes to refute the claims made for rhetoric by Gorgias,
Polus, and Callicles. Socrates defeats each one in turn, so that we
really have three dialogues in one, each antagonist advancing a some-
what different claim for rhetoric.
Gorgias, in the beginning, praises rhetoric for the power and
influence it confers. He also defends it from the oft-repeated charge
that it is frequently used wrongfully and works mischief in the state.
But the definition of rhetoric is what Socrates seeks, and Gorgias
¹E. Barker, op. cit., p. 133.
2
Gorgias, 485.
8
Gorgias, 513.
26
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
appears to be as devoid of abstract ideas with which to frame a
definition as the other rhetoricians. The art of formal logic did not
yet exist, and Socrates presses Gorgias with various analogies and
ambiguities which both appear to mistake for valid arguments.
Logic and rhetoric have not yet been clearly conceived as universal
arts or sciences which admit of application to any subject matter;
and it is not strange that Gorgias was unable to furnish the clear
conception that Socrates sought. Socrates, then, had no great diffi-
culty in establishing his own definition, that rhetoric is the art of
persuading an ignorant multitude about the justice or injustice of a
matter, without imparting any real instruction. Rhetoric is most
powerful with the ignorant many, because the rhetorician, as rhetori-
cian, does not really know what he is talking about, he only appears.
to know; and the appearance is persuasive only with the ignorant.
Plato here limits rhetoric to the discussion of matters concerning
justice. He probably chose to discuss the forensic rather than the
deliberative or epideictic rhetoric because the contemporary rhetori-
cians devoted most of their attention to it.
Socrates also compels Gorgias to admit that rhetoricians do not
really know their business, for they do not teach their pupils about
justice and injustice (an essential part of rhetoric, by the definition
previously established). The actions of the pupils show that they
have never learned to know justice-any rhetorician must admit that
his pupils often act unjustly. Two things are to be noted about this
argument. Gorgias and Socrates have different ideas of what it
means to know justice. Gorgias means by it a sufficient practical
knowledge of men and affairs to know what is conventionally moral
in any given case. Socrates, on the other hand, means abstract,
philosophical knowledge of the nature of justice. There is also
underlying the argument the "vicious intellectualism" of Socrates.
The Platonic Gorgias fails to object to the Socratic thesis that if
students of rhetoric knew the nature of justice, they would never
commit an injustice. To Gorgias the teaching of justice was not a
heavy responsibility, because the just or unjust actions of his pupils
did not depend upon any ethical theories taught by him. The just
rhetorician was just because he sought to live in a manner which his
common sense told him would win the approval of his fellow men,
and not because he had been taught to be virtuous.¹ It is difficult to
1 ¹ See Meno, 95.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
27
believe that the real Gorgias would have been so easily entrapped
by the argument that the injustices committed by pupils of the
rhetoricians proved the ignorance of the teachers.
Polus indignantly attempts to rescue his master, but he also falls
an easy victim to the Socratic dialectic. Since both Gorgias and
Polus have been more apt at praising rhetoric than at defining it,
Socrates proceeds to attack their claims and to establish the point
that rhetoric is not of much use in the world. There are four argu-
ments to substantiate this: (1) Rhetoric is not an art; (2) Rhetoric
does not confer power; (3) Rhetoric as a protection against suffering
wrong is of little importance; and (4) Rhetoric as a means of escap-
ing a deserved punishment is not to be commended. The philosophy
developed in support of these points loses little of its significance
when separated from its immediate purpose of refuting the claims of
rhetoric; but the unity of the dialogue is not perceived until it is
understood that the philosophical theses are part of a consistent
argumentative plan.
Rhetoric was not an art, Plato believed, because it did not rest
on universal principles. It was really only a knack, a routine, or
experience. Aiming at persuasion, it cared only for appearance. It
did not aim at justice, but only at a semblance of justice. By an art,
Plato meant more nearly what we should call a science, that is, a
body of knowledge organized on universally valid principles. The
dispute as to whether or not rhetoric was an art was of great prac-
tical significance to the rhetoricians. If it was not an art, and
rested upon no principles, then the attempt to teach it must be futile.
There has always been considerable scepticism as to the possibility
of teaching rhetoric profitably. Its rules have often been multiplied
in order to have something more to teach. Plato, in common with
other writers of genius, was fond of minimizing the importance of
technique, just as teachers as a class are fond of overemphasizing it.
Aside from the immediately practical effect upon the teaching of
the subject, it was injurious to the prestige of rhetoric to deny it a
scientific character. As Gomperz observes of the age:
All the business of mankind, from cooking a dinner to painting a picture,
from going a walk to waging a war, was guided by rules and, wherever
possible, reduced to principles.¹
1 Op. cit., I, 386.
28
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Plato's charge that rhetoric was not an art, then, was somewhat
analogous to the denial of a place among the sciences to sociology
or psychology. Such a charge, even if unaccompanied by any impli-
cations concerning the doubtful morality of persuading ignorant
multitudes, was enough to injure the subject.
In denying that rhetoric is an art, Plato gives it a place among
the pseudo-arts. In the hierarchy of arts and pseudo-arts, the higher
arts aim at the production, real or apparent, of permanent condi-
tions; the lower, at the removal, real or apparent, of temporary
derangements. Sophistry is distinguished from rhetoric and placed
above it. Sophistry is an imitation of the statesman's art, which is
higher than the art of the pleader, because the pleader only remedies.
miscarriages of justice, while the statesman has the opportunity to
create permanent institutions which give society an organization.
based upon justice. We probably agree today in paying more
honor to the statesman than to the trial lawyer. In the Gorgias, the
sophist is the sham statesman; the rhetorician is the pleader who
"makes the worse appear the better reason," and forgets justice in
the winning of his case.
The second argument against rhetoric in the dialogue with Polus
is that rhetoric, in spite of appearances, does not really confer power.
People who do not know, in the philosophical sense (and Plato
believed that very few could know anything in the philosophical
sense), what is really good for them, have no power, for they are
unable to do what they will. When they do evil, they are not doing
what they will, for no one really wills to do evil; he only makes a
mistake in the art of measuring. The Socratic belief that no man
errs voluntarily is again the basis of the argument. The minor
premise, that rhetoricians have not the philosophical insight to know
what is really good for them, Plato believes may safely be assumed.
The third and fourth assertions about rhetoric which Socrates
established against Polus gain significance when considered in rela-
tion to the conditions of Athenian court procedure. With a jury of
five hundred-somewhat predisposed to convict any wealthy man,
since his goods would be at the disposal of the state-innocent per-
sons were liable to be convicted on the flimsiest of charges. The
size of the jury made oratory a much more important matter than
evidence. This would make it quite as possible for the guilty to
escape punishment, as for an innocent man to suffer at the hands of
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
29
his enemies. Any practical-minded person would therefore con-
clude that rhetoric. was of great importance to the innocent as a
protection against injury, and to the guilty as a means of avoiding
a just penalty. Socrates, however, denies both of these claims, and
advances his famous paradoxes in support of his argument. Rhetoric
is not of great importance as a protection against suffering wrong;
the really important thing is to keep oneself from doing wrong,
for doing wrong is a greater evil than suffering wrong. The dialectic
by which Socrates establishes this is hardly as noble as the conclusion
which he reaches, but Polus is not able to offer any effective opposi-
tion. Again, rhetoric as a means of escaping punishment is of no
great service, for the man who is punished for his injustice is happier
than he who is not punished. This Socratic thesis is a matter of
feeling and belief rather than of logical proof, but against Polus it
was not difficult to establish dialectically. If it is honorable to inflict
punishment on a guilty person, then it must be honorable to receive
it. Punishment, as a deliverance of the soul from evil, should be
welcomed by the guilty as a medicine.
When Polus seems to be hopelessly defeated, Callicles takes up
the argument. In the discussion with him the argument turns more
directly to the contrast of philosophy and rhetoric as ways of life.
In the words of Socrates:
We are arguing about the way of human life; and what question can be
more serious than this to a man who has any sense at all: whether he should
follow after that way of life to which you exhort me, and truly fulfill what
you call the manly part of speaking in the assembly, and cultivating rhetoric,
and engaging in public affairs, after your manner; or whether he should
pursue the life of philosophy, and in what this differs from the other.¹
Callicles vigorously attacks philosophy, upholds rhetoric, and offers
in its support the doctrine that might makes right, that justice is but
an artificial convention invented by the many weak to protect them-
selves against the few strong, that the law of nature decrees that
the strong should take what they can get, and that in a society full
of conventions, rhetoric offers the strong man the means of getting
what he wants. The Socratic argument in reply to this passes into
the realm of ethics, and deals with the self-seeker as such, rather
than merely with the rhetorician.
Socrates is disposed to admit that there might conceivably be a
1 Gorgias, 500.
30
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
true and noble art of rhetoric. The true rhetorician would attempt
to improve the people, rather than to please them. He would attempt
this, not only for the moral benefit of the people, but also because
any process which does not improve souls is not really an art; it is
an ignoble flattery. Among such flatteries are music, poetry, drama,
and painting. They may occasionally improve the people, but for
the most part they are to be viewed with distrust.
1
Although there might be a noble rhetoric, and true rhetoricians,
none such have ever existed. All statesmen and rhetoricians of the
past, even the best, such as Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and
Pericles, have failed to make the citizens any better. The proof
of this is that the citizens treated these men very ungratefully and
unjustly, which they would not have done if they had been taught
justice by the statesmen. The professional teachers of rhetoric, even
though the teaching of justice should be a part of the instruction in
rhetoric, dare not trust their own pupils to treat them justly, for they
exact a fee instead of leaving it to the pupil's sense of honor.
Socrates is further offended at the pretentiousness of rhetoric
and rhetoricians. If rhetoric occasionally saves a life in courts of
law, there are other life-saving arts which are equally important, and
much more modest. A swimmer may save many lives, but he is not
likely to boast that he practises the greatest of the arts. Or a pilot,
if swimming seems to be a contemptible example, is also a great life-
saver. But he keeps his modesty. If he has any philosophy in him,
he knows that some of the lives he has saved were probably not
worth saving; but a rhetorician never seems to indulge himself in
such sobering reflections.
Rhetoric destroys the integrity of a man's soul, for it involves
conformity to the ways of the multitude. The philosopher, on the
other hand, sees further:
The noble and the good may possibly be something different from saving
and being saved, and that he who is truly a man ought not to care about
living a certain time; he knows, as women say, that none can escape the day
of destiny, and therefore he is not fond of life; he leaves all that with God,
and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term.2
1
¹ Ælius Aristides, a sophist of the second century A.D., replied to the
charges made against rhetoric in the Gorgias. One of his discourses is
devoted to a defense of the four statesmen here attacked. For a discussion
of this see André Boulanger, Elius Aristide et la sophistique dans la province
d'Asie au IIe siècle de nôtre ère, Paris, 1923.
2
Gorgias, 512.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
31
The dialogue closes with a myth of the after-world, in which the
judgment that bestows rewards and punishments is not based upon
appearances, as are the judgments won by the rhetoricians, but upon
the true nature of the soul. The myth sums up the whole argument
of the dialogue. The fundamental contrast is between appearances
and reality; the rhetorician deals with appearances, the philosopher
with reality.
In the Gorgias, the rhetoricians appear to be men bent upon get-
ting on in the world. They seem to believe that an unjust man who
escapes punishment, and practises his injustice on such a large scale
that he is conspicuously successful, is a man to be envied and imi-
tated. It is easy for us, made familiar with the doctrine that injus-
tice is an evil, through the teachings of Plato, of the Stoics, and of
Christianity, and accustomed at least to pay lip-service to it as a
truism, to suppose that Plato was upholding the traditional righteous-
ness against a peculiarly corrupt set of public teachers, the sophists.
and rhetoricians. It should be remembered, however, that public
opinion in Athens was not with Plato. Instead of regarding Gorgias
and Polus and Callicles as especially corrupt, we should regard Plato
as the reforming philosopher, attacking public opinion through its
prominent representatives. That Plato himself took this view is
shown by his remark in the Republic that the youth are not corrupted
by individual sophists, but by the public.¹
It is also worthy of note that this attack upon rhetoric is itself
a rhetorical triumph. The rhetoricians are ridiculed for their in-
ability to reason closely, and to defend themselves against the
dialectic of Socrates; but the triumph of the Platonic Socrates is
not a triumph of logic over oratory. John Stuart Mill has put this
clearly:
This great dialogue, full of just thoughts and fine observations on human
nature, is, in mere argument, one of the weakest of Plato's works. It is not
by its logic, but by its los that it produces its effects; not by instructing
the understanding, but by working on the feelings and imagination. Nor is
this strange; for the disinterested love of virtue is an affair of feeling. It
is impossible to prove to any one Plato's thesis, that justice is supreme hap-
piness, unless he can be made to feel it as such The external inducements
which recommend it he may be taught to appreciate; the favorable regards
and good offices of other people, and the rewards of another life. These
considerations, however, though Plato has recourse to them in other places,
1
¹ Republic, 493.
:
32
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
are not available in the Gorgias. . . . It is the picture of the moral hero,
still tenax propositi against the hostility and contempt of the world, which
makes the splendor and power of the Gorgias. The Socrates of the dialogue
makes us feel all other evils to be more tolerable than injustice in the soul,
not by proving it, but by the sympathy he calls forth with his own intense
feeling of it. He inspires heroism because he shows himself a hero. And
his failures in logic do not prevent the step marked by the Gorgias from being
one of the greatest ever made in moral culture.¹
VII
The Phædrus, which has been described as a dramatized treatise
on rhetoric, contains three speeches upon the general subject of
love; one of which Plato introduces as the work of Lysias, a noted
rhetorician of the day, and two of which are put into the mouth of
Socrates. It is in a comparison of these speeches that Plato's ideas
about rhetoric are expressed. At the close of the final speech upon
love, delivered by Socrates, Phædrus expresses his admiring ap-
proval; he fears that Lysias, whose speech he had just read to
Socrates, could not produce anything as good; 2 indeed, he had
already been reproached for his speech writing. Socrates remarks
that it is not writing speeches, but writing them badly, that is dis-
graceful. This opens the way for a discussion of the entire practice
of speaking and writing.
Socrates enunciates as the first rule of good speaking:
The mind of the speaker should know the truth of what he is going to
say. . . . There never is nor ever will be a real art of speaking which is
unconnected with the truth."
This rule of Socrates is contrasted with the prevalent conception of
rhetoric. Rhetoric is usually considered to be an "art of enchanting
the mind by arguments"; it has no concern with the nature of truth
or justice, but only with opinions about them. Rhetoric draws its.
persuasive power, not from truth, but from harmony with public
opinion. This conception of rhetoric, however, Plato thinks inade-
quate. The objection here is not, as is often stated, from high
moral motives. In the Gorgias and elsewhere it is stated that the
¹Op. cit., IV, 291, 292.
2 Plato had no doubt that a philosopher could easily outdo a rhetorician
at his own art. He wrote the Menexenus in order to satirize the conventional
funeral oration and to show how easily a philosopher could dash off such a
speech.
Phædrus, 259.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
33
genuine rhetorician must be a true and just man. And from many
sources we know how Plato abhorred the "lie in the soul." But here
the ground is simple expediency. The art of persuasion is the art
of winning the mind by resemblances. The speaker goes by degrees
from that which is accepted to that which he wishes accepted, pro-
ceeding from one resemblance to another. If the difference between
two resemblances is small, there is an excellent opportunity for
making the audience believe that one is the other.
This rule that "the mind of the speaker should know the truth
of what he is going to say" and not "catch at appearances," may
seem to be a commonplace. But it is not mere faithfulness to fact
that Plato has in mind; it is that Truth which only philosophers
know. All others dwell in a darkened cave.¹ The moving figures
they behold are not realities; they are shadows, phantoms. Only the
philosopher has ascended into the clear light of day. Only he has
beheld Ideas in their Absolute form. Only he it is who is able to see
“unity and plurality in nature." Hence the exclamation of Socrates:
Come out, children of my soul, and convince Phædrus, who is the father
of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about anything unless
he be trained in philosophy."
These Platonic conceptions are not new to Phædrus, and no time is
wasted in explaining them. Having secured acceptance of the first
rule of good speaking, Socrates proceeds to lay down two corolla-
ries. First, rhetoric has greater power in discussions where men
disagree and are most likely to be deceived. The rhetorician ought
therefore to have in mind a clear distinction between debatable and
nondebatable subjects. Secondly, particulars must be carefully ob-
served, so that they may be properly classified. In other words,
careful definitions must be drawn, and mere matters of opinion
separated from matters of scientific knowledge.
A lack of any definition of the subject of love is the first criticism
of the speech of Lysias. This is particularly reprehensible as love
is used in two different senses. Socrates, however, was careful in
both speeches to start from a definition of the love he was treating.
Again, there is no principle of order in the speech of Lysias. He
is accused of beginning at the end, and his topics follow one another
in a random fashion.
1
¹ Republic, VII, 515.
2 Phædrus, 261.
34
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
I cannot help fancying that he wrote off freely just what came into his
head. . . . Every discourse ought to be a living creature, having its own
body and head and feet; there ought to be a middle, beginning, and end, which
are in a manner agreeable to one another and to the whole.¹
From this study of the speeches on love, two fundamental prin-
ciples of composition emerge:
First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; the speaker
defines his several notions in order that he may make his meaning clear. . . .
Secondly, there is the faculty of division according to the natural ideas or
members, not breaking any part as a bad carver might.²
But these processes of generalization and division, which the
speech of the famous rhetorician failed to employ, are principles
that Socrates has hitherto held to belong to dialectic, and not to
rhetoric.
I am a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they
help me to speak and think. And if I find any man who is able to see unity
and plurality in nature, him I follow, and walk in his steps as if he were a
god. And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of
calling dialecticians.³
Phædrus acknowledges that these principles rightly belong to the
dialecticians, but persists in inquiring about the principles of rhetoric;
he mentions a number of prominent rhetoricians together with some
characteristic elements of their systems. Socrates admits that in
addition to the really fundamental principles of composition to be
found in dialectic, there may be in rhetoric some "niceties of the
art." Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Polus,
Protagoras, and the other rhetoricians spend much time upon proems,
statements of fact, witnesses, proofs, probabilities, confirmations,
superconfirmations, refutations, diplasiology, gnomology, and other
technicalities. These theories and practices of the rhetoricians, how-
ever, are not really principles of the art of rhetoric. They are mere
preliminaries, as the tuning of strings is preliminary to playing upon
an instrument. But no one would call the tuning of strings the art
of music. • The contemporary rhetoricians have no more real claim
to be practitioners of the art than a man who knows a few drugs,
but does not know how to use them, could claim to be a physician.
1
¹ Phædrus, 264.
2 Phædrus, 265.
3
Phædrus, 266.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
35
Since all these teachings of the rhetoricians are not true principles
of the art, and are altogether useless except when used in conjunc-
tion with the principles of dialectic, Socrates proceeds to give what
might be called an outline of a true art of rhetoric.
MTARI DAN KITA NA DEVONDE
Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be
an orator has to learn the differences of human souls they are of so many
and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and
man. He will then proceed to divide speeches into their several different
classes. Such and such persons, he will say, are affected by this or that kind
of speech in this or that way, and he will tell you why; he must have a
theoretical notion of them first, and then he must see them in action, and be
able to follow them with all his senses about him, or he will never get beyond
the precepts of his masters. But when he is able to say what persons are
persuaded by what arguments and recognize the individual about whom he
used to theorize as actually present to himself, This is he and this is the
sort of man who ought to have that argument applied to him in order to
convince him of this; when he has attained the knowledge of all this, and
knows also when he should speak and when he should abstain from speaking,
when he should make use of pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, aggravated
effects, and all the other figures of speech, when, I say, he knows the times
and seasons of all these things, then, and not until then, is he perfect and a
consummate master of his art.¹
2
Such an outline of rhetoric, Socrates feels, may be discouraging
to the young Phædrus. The road to the mastery of such an art is
obviously long and hard. The sophists, on the other hand, are repre-
sented by Plato as offering promises to impart culture quickly and
easily. Here, then, is an opportunity for Socrates to compare the
true way of mastering the art of rhetoric with the sophistic short
cut. The rhetoricians succeed in imparting a certain skill in making
plausible speeches because they content themselves with creating an
appearance of probability. They teach that "in speaking the orator
should run after probability and say good-by to truth." The teach-
ing of Tisias on the topic of probability, which enabled a man
quickly to make a case either for the defense or the prosecution,
regardless of the evidence, is cited as typical of the rhetoricians. To
show the superiority of the true rhetoric over such trickery, Socrates
repeats his former statement:
1
¹ Phædrus, 271.
'For a later, satirical development of this idea, see Lucian, "The Rhetori-
cian's Vade Mecum," Works of Lucian, tr. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Oxford,
1905, III.
Phædrus, 273.
36
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Probability is engendered in the minds of the many by the likeness of the
truth, and he who knows the truth will always know best how to discover
the resemblance of the truth.2
The rhetoric of Tisias, then, is deficient in two respects. First, it
is not even effective, for it is not quick at perceiving likenesses of
truth; and secondly, such a rhetorician is as likely to deceive himself
as his audience. Further, the true rhetorician masters his art after
much labor:
Not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in order that he
may be able to say what is acceptable to God and in all things to act
acceptably to Him so far as in him lies.2
Rhetoric, then, like all the arts, is to be an instrument of righteousness.
After stating that enough has been said of the true and false art of
rhetoric, Socrates feels that something remains to be said of the
propriety and impropriety of writing. He proceeds to speak of
writing, but only to condemn the practice. Concerning the inven-
¹ Phædrus, 273.
2 Phædrus, 273.
3
Scholars have commented variously and at length on this attitude of
Plato toward the art of writing. Schleiermacher (Introduction to the Dia-
logues of Plato, tr. William Dobson, London, 1836, p. 67) argues from
this attitude that the Phædrus was written in Plato's early youth. Such con-
tempt for writing, he thinks, is inconceivable in a man who has already written
very much. Lutoslawski (Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic, London, 1897,
ch. 6) insists that Plato did not despise writing in general, but only bad
writing, and the cult of mere literary erudition which substitutes opinion for
knowledge, and leads men to put all their attention on the form, making it
impossible to have a clear view of general ideas. Lutoslawski has an in-
genious explanation of the passages which at the close of so wonderful a
piece of writing seem to condemn writing. In Plato's time, and in his own
opinion, oral teaching stood very much higher than written handbooks. Plato
was very proud of his own eloquence. The purpose of these passages, there-
fore, is to raise the reader's expectation to the highest pitch by announcing
that this beautiful sample of written eloquence is nothing compared with his
oral teaching.
A different view is taken by S. H. Butcher in an essay entitled "The
Written and Spoken Word" (Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, London,
1893). He cites the Phædrus in asserting that the Greek dislike for writing
was general. In proof of this thesis he offers arguments which may be sum-
marized as follows: (1) The Greeks gave a very cold reception to the dis-
covery of letters; for centuries they employed it, not as a vehicle of thought,
but almost wholly for memorial purposes, such as registering treaties and
commercial contracts, preserving the names of Olympic victors, and fixing
boundaries. (2) They shrank from formulæ; unvarying rules petrified action.
To reduce laws to writing was to kill the spirit and exalt the letter. (3)
Writing was inartistic, as the letters conveyed no images. (4) The Greeks
had a high conception of the dignity of knowledge. True knowledge is not
among the marketable wares, that can be carried about in a portable shape in
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
37
tion of letters he cites a myth in which the prophecy is made that
the art of writing will create forgetfulness and a pretense of wisdom.
Contrasted with this futility of writing is "an intelligent writing
which is graven in the soul of him who has learned, and can defend
itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.”1 This
expression of opinion about writing concludes Plato's theory of
rhetoric as found in the Phædrus.
That these suggestions of Plato for the organization of rhetoric
into a scientific body of knowledge may be more clearly in mind
when we come to contrast the Phædrus with Aristotle's Rhetoric, we
shall here summarize them.
I. "The first rule of good speaking is that the mind of the speaker should
know the truth of what he is going to say." This cannot be interpreted as
an injunction to speak the truth at all times. It is rather to know the truth
in order (a) to be persuasive by presenting to the audience something which
at least resembles truth, and (b) to avoid being oneself deceived by prob-
abilities. In order to know the truth, the rhetorician must be a philosopher.
12. The rhetorician must define his terms, and see clearly what subjects
are debatable and what are not. He must also be able to classify particulars
under a general head, or to break up universals into particulars. The
rhetorician, then, must be a logician.
3. Principles of order and arrangement must be introduced. "Every
discourse ought to be a living creature, having its own body and head and
feet; there ought to be a-middle, beginning, and end, which are in a manner
agreeable to one another and to the whole."
4. The nature of the soul must be shown, and after having "arranged
men and speeches, and their modes and affections in different classes, and fitted
them into one another, he will point out the connection between them-he will
show why one is naturally persuaded by a particular form of argument, and
another not." In other words, the rhetorician must be a psychologist.
5. The rhetorician must "speak of the instruments by which the soul acts
or is affected in any way." Here we have the division under which comes
practically all of rhetoric when viewed more narrowly and technically. The
"instruments" by which rhetoric affects the soul are style and delivery. Plato
believed style to be acquired, however, as Pericles acquired it, by "much dis-
cussion and lofty contemplation of nature."
6. The art of writing will not be highly regarded; nor will continuous
and uninterrupted discourse be regarded as equal to cross-examination as a
books, and emptied from them into the mind of the learner. True knowledge
is a hard-won possession, personable and inalienable. "Much learning does
not teach wisdom," was a saying of Heraclitus, and even Aristotle declared
that "much learning produces confusion."
For a further account of Plato's aversion to writing see Grote's Plato,
I, 358.
Phædrus, 276.
Z
styl
38
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
No
means of instruction. This is Plato's way of saying that any method of
attempting to persuade multitudes must suffer from the very fact that it
is a multitude which is addressed, and that the best of rhetoric is unequal
to philosophic discussion.
+
7. The rhetorician will have such a high moral purpose in all his work
that he will ever be chiefly concerned about saying that which is "acceptable
to God." Rhetoric, then, is not an instrument for the determination of scien-
tific truth, nor for mere persuasion regardless of the cause; it is an instru-
ment for making the will of God prevail. The perfect rhetorician, as a
philosopher, knows the will of God.
VIII
De Quincey says that rhetoric has, in general, two connotations:
one of ostentatious ornament, and the other of fallacious argument.
That part of Plato's attack upon rhetoric which we have considered,
largely concerns itself with rhetoric as "ostentatious ornament"
(although the two aspects can seldom be completely separated).
And it was this attack which led Plato to the constructive theory of
the Phædrus: But there was a later assault upon the sophists which
concerned rhetoric as an art of fallacious argument.¹ The sophists.
of Plato's earlier dialogues are declaimers and rhetoricians who can
overwhelm opponents with long speeches, but they are tyros in the
art of argumentation. In the Euthydemus, Sophist, and Statesman,
Plato caricatures the imitators of Socrates, who practise argumenta-
tion by question and answer, but who resemble Socrates as the wolf
does the dog.
The Euthydemus is the earliest known attempt to exhibit a variety
of fallacies. In it Plato desired to make clear the distinction between
truly philosophical argumentation and that eristical disputation which
served no purpose except to display a certain type of cleverness. A
young man, Cleinias, is cross-examined by two sophistical teachers
of argument, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. They conduct their
examination in a spirit of horse-play, and soon have the youth hope-
lessly confused. Socrates then rebukes them, and offers to examine
Cleinias in a truly philosophical fashion. His kindly questions
(much more kindly here than in other dialogues, but they serve
Plato's purpose in emphasizing the contrast), which lead Cleinias to
the conclusion that wisdom is the only good, and ignorance the only
'Henry Sidgwick in his essays on the sophists was the first to point out
this distinction. See his Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and other
Philosophical Lectures and Essays. For a discussion of Sidgwick's essays,
see Sir A. Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle, Essay 2.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
39
evil, are an example of the way in which a philosopher conducts an
argument-for the enlightenment, and not the confusion, of youth.
Having distinguished the philosopher from the sophistical teachers
of fallacious argument, Plato in an epilogue contrasts the philoso-
pher and the orator-statesman. Here Plato is probably thinking of
Isocrates and his "philosophy," which was a mixture of rhetoric and
politics. Philosopher-politicians and speech writers, Socrates is made.
to say, imagine themselves to be a superior sort; they think they
have a certain amount of philosophy, and a certain amount of political
insight; thus they keep out of the way of all risks and conflicts and
reap the fruit of their wisdom. Socrates asserts, however, that
philosophy and political action tend to such different ends that one
who participates in both achieves little in either. The Isocratean
ideal of the orator-statesman, which had so great an influence upon
Cicero, was objectionable to Plato for at least three reasons. In the
first place, the true statesman was a philosopher rather than an
orator; he ruled arbitrarily through his wisdom rather than through
persuasion. Secondly, if the statesman was forced to stoop to the
use of oratory, it was to be clearly understood that oratory was a
subordinate instrument. The ideal of the orator-statesman only
helped to confuse the superior art of politics with rhetoric. Thirdly,
the orator-statesman falsely imagined that the ideas which he used in
the persuasion of the public constituted his philosophy; whereas in
reality he was so tied to particulars in all his speaking and thinking
that he never approached the wisdom of the true philosopher.
In the Euthydemus, then, we have pictured a later development
of the older sophists. Imitators of Socrates had appeared who taught
the art of argumentation for pay: Isocrates had enlarged and digni-
fied the instruction of the rhetoricians by allying it more closely with
pan-Hellenic politics, and had become much more popular -and suc-
cessful than Plato. Plato insists that true philosophy is a different
sort of thing, and indulges in caricature and satire to make it evident.
In the Sophist, we have an abstract and methodical discussion of
that which is dramatically pictured in the Euthydemus. Plato
planned a trilogy of dialogues, the Sophist, the Statesman, and the
Philosopher, in which the man of the world and the man of wisdom
should be contrasted. The Philosopher was never written, but from
the Sophist and the Statesman we get the Platonic discussion of the
false art of argumentation known as eristic.
40
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
The sophist, in the dialogue of that name, is discovered by a pre-
liminary study of the angler, which suggests a method of search, and
also furnishes an implied analogy, for the sophist is found to be a
fisher of men who finally destroys them. By a series of homely
figures the sophist is revealed in his various aspects. He is (1) a
paid hunter after youth and wealth, (2) a retail merchant or trader
in the goods of the soul, (3) he himself manufactures the learned
wares which he sells, (4) he is a hero of dispute, having distinctly
the character of a disputant, (5) he is a purger of souls who clears
away notions obstructive to knowledge. In the last-named character-
istic, Plato seems about to admit that the sophist serves a great edu-
cational purpose, for he has previously admitted that "refutation is
the greatest and chiefest purification." But the sophist, as the sup-
posed minister of refutation, is related to the real purger of souls
as "a wolf, who is the fiercest of animals, is to the dog, who is the
gentlest.'
Here Plato does not seem to see that a given logical
procedure is as a method essentially the same, whether used by a
sophist or a philosopher. For Plato, even the logical nature of cross-
examination seems to be changed by the moral nature of the ex-
aminer. No sophist ever employed greater fallacies than the Socrates
of the Platonic dialogues; yet fallacies in the arguments of a phi-
losopher seemed somehow elevated by their moral purpose. Aristotle
followed Plato in this error. Probably no fallacy is more persistent
than the judgment of logical method by the standard of moral
purpose.
"" 1
780
The eristical sophists, as the rhetorical, profess a knowledge
which they do not have. They profess that the art of disputation.
is a power of disputing about all things. Plato puts the sophists in
the position of teaching that a mastery of form gives also a mastery
of substance. The sophists delight in the discovery that a certain
facility in logical method, accompanied by entire unscrupulousness,
can make almost any proposition appear to be plausible. With no
standard of consistency looking farther than the immediate discus-
sion, method can so arrange any small group of facts, or alleged
facts, that any thesis may be made to appear tenable. The sophists
seem to teach young men to argue about all things because "they
make young men believe in their own supreme and universal wis-
dom." They are enabled to do this by their readiness in offering
¹ Sophist, 231.
1
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
4I
"conjectural or apparent knowledge of all things," as a substitute
for truth. They are like painters who profess "by one art to make
all things." What the sophist makes is a resemblance, but it is
easy to deceive the less intelligent children, by showing his pictures
at a distance, into believing that he has the absolute power of making
what he likes. In the same way there is an imitative art of reason-
ing, and by the use of this art, the sophist passes himself off as a
philosopher. There are two types of these imitators: the popular
orator, who makes long speeches to the multitude and who appears
to be a statesman, and the sophist, who teaches argumentation and
pretends to be a philosopher.
The Statesman is an attempt, by the same method of division
used in the Sophist, to discover the true statesman. Here we have
an introductory analogy concerning the weaver. As the weaver has
the auxiliary arts of the fuller, the carder, and the maker of the
warp and woof, so the statesman has the auxiliary arts of the rhetori-
cian, the general, and the judge. There is always the danger, how-
ever, that the rhetorician may be mistaken for the statesman. Poli-
tics is the science that tells us when to persuade, and of what;
rhetoric merely tells how to persuade. If the rhetoric be a noble.
rhetoric, however, and does really persuade men to love justice, it
may be regarded as a useful instrument in our second-best state,
where persuasion is an unfortunate necessity in government. Rhet-
oric, however, should never lose its instrumental character, and
should never aspire to be more than one of the several subordinate
arts which the statesman weaves together into the whole which is
the state.
In these two dialogues, then, the Sophist and the Statesman, we
are warned against the rhetorician, who appears in different guises.
In the Sophist, he appears as the dialectician who purges the soul of
false knowledge, but he is really an eristical disputant. In the
Statesman, he appears as the persuader of the public who is quick
to seize power as a demagogue unless he be kept strictly under the
direction of the true statesman.
IX
To summarize briefly our whole discussion of Plato: we have
shown that his treatment of rhetoric is based upon his feelings
¹Sophist, 233, 234.
42
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
toward certain rhetoricians, and upon his dislike of the rhetorical
tendency of all Athenian life. Plato never viewed rhetoric ab-
stractly, as an art of composition, as an instrument that might be
used or abused; he always considered it a false impulse in human
thought. He therefore attacked in published dialogues the more
prominent contemporary teachers and the art they professed to
teach. The evidence seems to show that the sophists of the earlier
attacks were intellectually respectable, and that they made significant
contributions to the thought of their time. At the conclusion of his
earlier attacks (if we may trust the attempts to arrange Plato's dia-
logues in approximately chronological order) Plato offers an out-
line of a reconstructed rhetoric. Here, too, he shows his inability
to conceive of rhetoric as a tool; the ideal rhetoric sketched in the
Phædrus is as far from the possibilities of mankind as his Republic
was from Athens. In later life, a new generation of teachers that
patterned its methods after Socrates, aroused the wrath of Plato,
and he wrote other dialogues to distinguish the false art of argu-
mentation from the dialectical processes of the true philosopher.
X
In turning to Aristotle,¹ we shall be chiefly interested in his rela-
tion to Plato. To explain the relation of any one of Aristotle's
treatises to Plato is, according to Sir Alexander Grant, almost a
sufficient account of what it contains. Familiarity with the Platonic
dialogues and their Athenian background, makes it possible to pro-
ceed more rapidly with the systematic work of Aristotle upon any
particular subject under investigation. It is not our purpose here
to present an exposition of the Rhetoric,² and the preceding discus-
sion should make it possible to condense the account of Aristotle,
although his contribution to rhetoric is greater than that of Plato
or the sophists.
It is obvious that as Plato's pupil, Aristotle must have had
his attention called to those aspects of Athenian life which interested
¹ For translations of Aristotle's Rhetoric, see those by Welldon, London,
1886; Jebb, Cambridge, 1909; and Roberts, in The Works of Aristotle, vol.
XI, Oxford, 1924. Citations of the Rhetoric in this study are taken from
Roberts.
2
For expositions of the Rhetoric, see E. M. Cope, An Introduction to
Aristotle's Rhetoric, London, 1867; Gomperz, op. cit., IV; Zeller, Aristotle
and the Earlier Peripatetics, London 1897; and Baldwin, Ancient Rhetoric
and Poetic, New York, 1924.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
43
his master. As a reader of Plato's dialogues, Aristotle found a
wealth of concretely pictured material ready for classification into
various compartments of knowledge. Aside from the magnificent
gesture of the Phædrus, Plato apparently gave little constructive
thought to rhetoric. He did not teach its practice, nor lecture upon
its theory. Aristotle, however, during the first period of residence
at Athens, and while still a pupil of Plato at the Academy, opened
a school of rhetoric in competition with Isocrates. We have here àn
instance of the way in which rhetoric in Athens, as in other times
and places, has offered men whose minds could not be confined to
a single field, an opportunity to establish themselves as teachers and
thinkers. The works upon rhetoric which have been lost were prob-
ably composed during this earlier period. There seem to be adequate
grounds for attributing three such works to Aristotle: a history of
rhetoric, a dialogue upon the subject, named for Gryllus, a son of
Xenophon, and the Theodectea, mainly devoted to style, composition,
and arrangement, and which probably contained in greater detail the
subject matter of the third book of the extant Rhetoric.¹ It is not
known when the Rhetoric was composed, but it was not published
until Aristotle's second period of residence and teaching in Athens
(336 B.C. is the most generally accepted date of publication). It
is believed that the third book, which deals with style and arrange-
ment, was not written until some time after the first two books.
The Poetics was written before the third book of the Rhetoric, but
probably after the earlier books. From this it is sometimes inferred
that Aristotle's interest in style as a part of rhetoric was of late
development. This is hardly consistent with his earlier treatment of
the subject in the Theodectea. A more probable explanation of the
greater interest which Aristotle seems to have felt in the subject of
proofs and their sources is that this part of rhetoric represented
most distinctly his own contribution to the subject. In writing of
style and arrangement he was dealing with questions already fully
treated by many writers, for most of whom he had little regard. In
the first two books, however, he was organizing a new unity out of
material drawn from logic, psychology, ethics, and politics. It may
have been an additional source of pleasure to him to be able to draw
from his own treatment of these special fields such material as was
¹ See Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, section entitled "Aris-
totle's Lost Works on Rhetoric."
44
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
needed to give rhetoric a more philosophical character. It is signifi-
cant that Aristotle, having taught rhetoric in his early youth, and
having waged war with both preceding and contemporary rhetori-
cians, should, in his age, after having surveyed all the fields of
knowledge, return to the treatment of the same subject. It seems
to be one of the ironies of history that that portion of rhetoric which
was most particularly his own, and which owed most to his previous
work in other fields, should be forever slipping back into its com-
ponent parts of logic, psychology, ethics, and politics; and that style
and arrangement, regarded by both himself and Plato as mere pre-
liminaries to the art, rather than the art itself, should fix more
permanently the character of rhetoric.
XI
While Aristotle agreed with Plato in his contempt for the unsci-
entific nature of the instruction given by other teachers of rhetoric,¹
and in applying the term sophist to false pretenders to knowledge,2
his approach to rhetoric was affected by certain philosophical and
temperamental divergences from Plato. It is an oft-quoted remark
of Friedrich Schlegel's that every man is born either a Platonist or
an Aristotelian This is generally interpreted to mean that the tribe
of Platonists are poets and mystics, seeking a truth above the truth
of scientific knowledge, while the Aristotelians rely upon methodical
experience and classified observations. It cannot be said that Aris-
totle paid greater attention than Plato to the facts of experience in
the creation of a philosophical rhetoric, for he constructed the entire
art from the general principles of dialectic, psychology, and ethics,
referring to any existing examples of eloquence only most casually
for the sake of illustration. But it is, perhaps, a safe generalization
to say that Plato sought to reform life, while Aristotle was more
interested in reorganizing theory about life. For this reason Aris-
totle's Rhetoric is largely detached from both morality and peda-
gogy. It is neither a manual of rules nor a collection of injunctions.
It is an unmoral and scientific analysis of the means of persuasion.
We have seen that Plato was predisposed to feel a contempt for
rhetoric and rhetoricians by certain of his political ideas-his belief
1
¹ See the concluding section of the Sophistici Elenchi; also the first chapter
of the Rhetoric.
Sophistici Elenchi, ch. 1; and ch. I of the Rhetoric.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
45
2
in a government of philosophers, administered by experts; his desire
for a permanent stratification of society, free from attempts of men
to rise out of their class; and his profound contempt for public
opinion. Aristotle had no enthusiasm for what has been called
Plato's "pedantocracy." He realized that expert knowledge and pro-
fessional training have their limitations, and that in political matters
the judgment of the people may be superior to that of those who
have special knowledge.¹ Although Aristotle shared Plato's belief
that a laborer could hardly possess a virtue which should entitle him
to citizenship, he never expected ranks and classes to be permanently
fixed, as in the Republic. In the Politics he suggests that final power
should rest with the multitude, which, of course, would make rhetoric
a universal political instrument. And Aristotle's attitude toward
public opinion—the common sense of the majority—is distinctly dif-
ferent from that of Plato. This is most marked, perhaps, in his
Ethics, although it is difficult to distinguish ethical from political
thinking in the speculation of the period. But one impulse which set
Plato to writing was his intense dissatisfaction with the empirical and
prudential morality of his countrymen. The constant contrast in his
dialogues is between unreflective, chaotic public opinion, and reasoned,
philosophic knowledge. He did not care to organize public opinion,
subject it to definitions, and extract from it its modicum of truth.
The mind must not only reason about the good; it must contemplate
the Idea of the Good in the heavens above until conformed to it.
Aristotle attacked the Platonic doctrine of ideas, separated ethics
from metaphysics, and took as his guiding principle a practical good,
happiness. In discussing happiness, Aristotle did not limit himself
to the doctrines of the philosophers; he often accepted generally
received opinions, and where he rejected them he at least paid them.
the honor of refutation. The lists and divisions of goods presented
in the Ethics were largely derived from current Athenian discussion,
and many ideas which Aristotle accepts as authoritative were common
property. In the Topics, when he discusses the uses of dialectic, he
explicitly recognizes the value of a wide acquaintance with public
1
¹ Politics, 1282.
2
3
For the contribution of public opinion to Aristotle's Ethics, see Burnet's
introduction to his edition of the work, London, 1900. See also L. H.' G.
Greenwood's essay, “Dialectic Method in the Sixth Book," in his edition of the
sixth book of the Ethics, Cambridge, 1909. Sir A. Grant's Ethics of Aristotle
is also useful in this connection.
8
See Grote's Aristotle, London, 1872, for an exposition of the Topics.
46
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
opinion. There was little danger that a Socrates, discoursing freely
in the market place with any one he chanced upon, would be un-
familiar with the beliefs of "the man in the street." But the growth
of schools, the habit of scientific study, and the production of written
compositions tended to make of the philosopher a man apart. Aris-
totle recognized the dangerous effect of this upon the public influence
of the learned; he recommended the practice of dialectical discussion
as a means of keeping in touch with the opinions of men. He him-
self drew up a collection of current proverbs. Even his more scien-
tific works have been criticized for his willingness to accept common
opinion where accurate observation was called for. We may say,
then, that Aristotle approached the subject of rhetoric with a belief
in its necessity as a political instrument, and a conviction that both
the trained thinker and the multitude would benefit by making a
common stock of their wisdom for the guidance of the state.
XII
The effect of these philosophical divergences upon the treatment
of rhetoric becomes clearly evident when we compare the Platonic
discussion between Gorgias and Socrates on the nature and functions
of rhetoric with the statements upon the same subject in the early
part of Aristotle's Rhetoric., Aristotle states clearly what Gorgias
seemed to be groping for, and unmistakably sides with Gorgias
against Plato in practically all controverted points. In the Gorgias,
Socrates asserts that teachers of rhetoric know nothing of justice,
and that the art of rhetoric is inimical to justice. Aristotle, in the
first chapter of the Rhetoric, expresses his belief that rhetoric makes
for the prevalence of truth and righteousness.
Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just
have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites, so that if the decisions
of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the
speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly. . . . Further, we
must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed,
on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ
it both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in
order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man
argues unfairly, we may on our part be able to confute him. No other of
the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this.
Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the
underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well to the contrary views.
}
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
47
No; things that are true and things that are better are, by their nature,
practically always easier to believe in.¹
It is worthy of note that Aristotle, although he does remark paren-
thetically that the rhetorician should not make people believe what is
wrong, does not base his faith in the benefits of rhetoric upon the
moral training of the rhetorician, but rather upon the nature of
things. Rhetorical effectiveness does not add equally to the strength
of a just and an unjust cause. To use an imperfect analogy, we may
say, perhaps, that skilful presentation of a just cause strengthens its
appeal geometrically, while an unjust cause is aided only arithmeti-
cally. The inherent superiority of just and true things is thus in-
creased by the universal use of rhetoric. This is a broader and
sounder view than Plato was able to take. As à reformer Plato had
no patience with the evils which inevitably accompany all good things.
Aristotle is quite cognizant of the evils of rhetoric, but is content that
the good shall, on the whole, outweigh it.
And if it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly
might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against
all good things except virtue, and above all against the things that are most
useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship.²
In the Gorgias, Socrates establishes the point that the power of
rhetoric is only an apparent power, because it rests upon the ignor-
ance of the multitude addressed. The persuasion of the ignorant
many is a rather unseemly occupation for a philosopher. As to the
essentially popular function of rhetoric, Aristotle agrees, but without
condescension.
Moreover, before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest
knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For
argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom
one cannot instruct. Here, then, we must use, as our modes of persuasion
and argument, notions possessed by everybody, as we observed in the Topics
when dealing with the way to handle a popular audience.
The Platonic Socrates argued against Gorgias and Polus that the
persuasion of multitudes was not properly an art at all, but only a
knack or routine or experience. The first claim that Aristotle makes
for rhetoric is that it may properly be considered as an art.
Rhetoric, 1355a.
¹ Rhetoric, 1355b.
8
Rhetoric, 1355a.
48
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
لی
All men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend
themselves and attack others. Ordinary people do this at random or through
practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the subject can
plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why
some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every
one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.¹
One of the Platonic reasons for refusing to admit that rhetoric
was properly an art was the difficulty of discovering its proper sub-
ject matter Gorgias is exhibited to us as struggling with this ques-
tion, and as insisting that persuasive discourse is the proper subject-
matter of rhetoric; but when Socrates presses him with analogies.
from the other arts, and asks him if instruction in music and geome-
try and arithmetic is not persuasive discourse, Gorgias is unable to
make a satisfactory statement. This interested Aristotle; it led him
to distinguish between rhetoric and the special sciences, but it did not
lead him to deny that rhetoric was a discipline in itself.
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case
the available means of persuasion. This is not the function of any other art.
Every other subject can instruct or persuade about its own particular sub-
ject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy,
geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and
the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon
as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject
presented to us; and that is why we say that, in its technical character, it is
not concerned with any special or definite class of subjects. . . . The duty of
rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate on without arts or
systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a
glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning. . . .
But the more we try to make either dialectic or rhetoric not, what they really
are, practical faculties, but sciences, the more we shall inadvertently be
destroying their true nature; for we shall be refashioning them and shall
be passing into the region of sciences dealing with definite subjects rather
than simply with words and forms of reasoning.
The argumentative purpose of the Socratic thesis in the Gorgias,
that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, was to disparage the
claim made for rhetoric that it was useful for purposes of defense.
Aristotle agrees that a man may well be eulogized for choosing to
suffer wrong rather than to do it. Such a choice, however, is a
moral problem for the individual, and is quite irrelevant to a con-
3
1
¹Rhetoric, 1354a.
Rhetoric, 1355b, 1357a, 1359b.
3
Rhetoric, 1364b.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
49
sideration of the uses of any art-rhetoric or boxing or generalship.
Aristotle insists that the use of speech and reason as a method of
protection against injustice is distinctively human.
XIII
It is not surprising that Aristotle, as a writer on rhetoric, should
disagree with the passionately hostile treatment of his subject in the
Gorgias. Most writers who have compared the Rhetoric with Plato's
sketch in the Phædrus, content themselves with indicating the simi-
larities of the two works.2 Aristotle's indebtedness to Plato is
pointed out, and it is suggested that Plato, in lectures or conversa-
tion, may have given Aristotle a pretty complete outline for his work.
When we consider the specific suggestions of the Phædrus for a
philosophical rhetoric, however, the differences between the Platonic
and the Aristotelian conception of the subject are at least as manifest
as the likenesses.
Taking up first the relationship of rhetoric to Truth, we note a,
wide divergence. Plato held that the rhetorician must know the
Truth, because probability was engendered by a likeness to Truth.
Here Plato seems hardly consistent with himself, for a public so
depraved as Plato felt all multitudes to be, would never care so
much for a resemblance to Truth, as for a probability based upon a
consonance with its own interests and tastes. Such a probability,
however, could not, according to Plato, form the basis for any art.
For Aristotle, however, probability forms the very groundwork
of rhetoric. Rhetoric is frankly an art of appearances. Its function
is to enable a man to see quickly what are the available means of
persuasion on either side of any proposition. The whole plan of the
Rhetoric bears out this conclusion. Consider first the topics, or com-
monplaces, or, as Roberts translates the term, lines of argument. The
topics, according to some critics, represent Aristotle's determined.
effort to classify the essentially unclassifiable. Aristotle himself
Rhetoric, 1355b.
3
See Lutoslawski, Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic, p. 344. Also
Gomperz, op. cit., IV, 421. W. H. Thompson, in the introduction to his
edition of the Phædrus, London, 1868, compares it with the Rhetoric, and
emphasizes the likenesses of the two works. E. M. Cope recognizes the
fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle on the matter of prob-
ability. See the introduction to his edition of the Gorgias, London, 1883.
For discussions of the topics, see Grote's Aristotle; Edward Poste's
essays in his translations of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Oxford, 1850, and
50
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
seems hardly clear in his own mind whether the topics were to be
regarded as premises or methods of argument, whether they were
indicative or imperative. At any rate, they were collections of brief
statements with which the rhetorician was to be familiar in order to
call to mind immediately all the available arguments for either side
of the case. If, for example, a written law is adverse to one's case,
one can impugn its authority by an appeal to a higher and more uni-
versal law. On the other hand, if the law favors one's case, it can
be urged that the attempt to be wiser than the law increases the bad
habit of disobeying authority. It is noteworthy that as aids to
invention the topics were not axioms, propositions universally true,
but were often less than half-truths. For almost any Aristotelian
topic, which was to serve as a reminder of or a basis for an argu-
ment, another topic could be found which would serve equally well
for a contrary argument. The topics, then, constituted a sort of
rhetoricians' first aid. They were to assist him in producing immedi-
ately, and perhaps without any special knowledge of the subject, a
plausible argument upon either side of a debatable proposition.
Additional evidence of the merely contingent and probable nature
of rhetoric, as opposed to the Platonic conception, is to be seen in
the distinct method of reasoning which Aristotle elaborated for
popular persuasion. Realizing, with Plato, that a general audience
cannot be instructed by close reasoning, but must be persuaded by
an easier procedure, he substitutes in rhetoric the enthymeme for the
syllogism, and the example for the more careful induction of scien-
tific reasoning. The enthymeme was a rhetorical syllogism; that is,
a syllogism drawn, not from universal principles belonging to a par-
ticular science, but from probabilities in the sphere of human affairs.
In proceeding hastily with a subject before an audience, it would
usually happen that one of the three members of the formal syllogism
would be omitted. Whether or not the essential distinction between
the enthymeme and the syllogism is in the merely probable nature of
the premises or in the suppression of one of the parts,¹ the enthymeme
is to be regarded as the principal method of popular presentation of
thought. For the persuasive use of examples (less conclusive but
Sophistici Elenchi; and Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric. See
also Hoyt H. Hudson, "Can We Modernize the Theory of Invention ?"
Quarterly Journal of Speech Education, VII (1921), 325.
¹ On this controverted point, see Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric,
p. 103 and note. See also De Quincey's essay on Rhetoric.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
51
more persuasive than a logical induction) Aristotle offers the astute
advice, "If you put examples first, you must use many; if at the end,
even one is enough.” 1
A study of the topics, of enthymemes and examples, makes it
evident that the rhetorical processes of invention and logical formula-
tion were designed for quick plausibility. Turning from processes
to content, this impression is heightened. For each of the three
branches of rhetoric-deliberative, epideictic, and forensic-an out-
line of the usual subject-matter treated by the speaker is offered. A
student of each of the special sciences represented would probably
say that Aristotle has given us as the subject-matter of deliberative
rhetoric a superficial political science; for epideictic rhetoric a con-
ventional ethics; and for forensic rhetoric a very loose and inexact
criminal jurisprudence.
The subjects suggested as the content of deliberative speeches are
all much more fully treated in the Politics. The Rhetoric takes from
the Politics a brief sketch of political matters upon which speakers
must be persuasive. The rhetorician should be familiar with the
various forms of government-democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy,
monarchy-not that he shall determine which is best, or shall speak
as a political philosopher, but in order that he may gain persuasive-
ness by being able to adapt himself to the political beliefs of his audi-
ence. It is, of course, perfectly possible for the student of rhetoric
to be a political scientist, as Aristotle himself was, but as a rhetorician
his task is to use whatever political commonplaces are most likely to
win approval. That Aristotle was fully conscious of the differences
between his scientific and his rhetorical treatment of the same sub-
ject, is indicated by the statement with which he concludes his section
on the forms of government in the Rhetoric:
We have also briefly considered the means and methods by which we
shall gain a good knowledge of the moral qualities and institutions peculiar
to the various forms of government-only, however, to the extent demanded
by the present occasion; a detailed account of the subject has been given in
the Politics.2
The epideictic speaker, as his function is to praise or blame, finds
that his subject-matter lies largely in the field of ethics. We have in
1
¹ Rhetoric, 1394a.
2
Rhetoric, 1366a.
52
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the Rhetoric, therefore, a summary view of the needed ethical mate-
rial-happiness, goods, virtue and vice, wrong-doing and injustice,
pleasure, equity, laws, and friendship. These subjects are given a
much fuller exposition in the Ethics, and some of the rhetorical
definitions, notably that of pleasure, are there repudiated. While
neither ethics nor politics were exact sciences in Aristotle's eyes, and
while he repeatedly insisted that the exactness of the physical sciences.
should not be expected in them, he nevertheless put forth a much
greater effort in those fields than in rhetoric to arrive at conceptions
that would bear searching criticism. The ethical conceptions of the
Rhetoric are the conceptions of the man in the street—current
popular notions that would supply the most plausible premises for
persuasive speeches.
Aristotle remarks in the opening of the Rhetoric that forensic
oratory, more than political, is given to unscrupulous practices.
But the oratorical jurisprudence which he offers as the material of
the forensic speaker would not go far to elevate the argumentation
of the courtroom. This section of the rhetoric most clearly indicates
that Aristotle's was a scientific and not a moral earnestness; the
dialectician is here in the ascendant.
In dealing with the evidence of witnesses, the following are useful argu-
ments. If you have no witnesses on your side, you will argue that the judges
must decide from what is probable; that this is meant by "giving a verdict in
accordance with one's honest opinion"; that probabilities cannot be bribed to
mislead the court; and that probabilities are never convicted of perjury. If
you have witnesses, and the other man has not, you will argue that prob-
abilities cannot be put on their trial, and that we could do without the evidence
of witnesses altogether if we need do no more than balance the pleas ad-
vanced on either side. . . . So, clearly, we need never be at a loss for useful
evidence.¹
The entire section on forensic rhetoric recognizes that each
pleader's loyalty is to his case, and that as a skilful rhetorician he
must be quick to discern all the persuasive possibilities of any situa-
tion. Aristotle professed a dislike for the business, but once engaged
in the classification of arguments he is concerned with rhetorical
effectiveness and not with moral justifiability.
The explicit statement which shows that Aristotle regarded
rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion quite detached from the
1 ¹ Rhetoric, 1376a.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
53
moral nature of the rhetorician, occurs in the third book, in connection
with the discussion of delivery.
Besides, delivery is-very properly-not regarded as an elevated subject of
inquiry. Still, the whole business of rhetoric being concerned with appear-
ances, we must pay attention to the subject of delivery, unworthy though it
is, because we cannot do without it.¹
1
Turning now from the general problem of the relationship of the
Rhetoric to Platonic Truth, we take up the second of Plato's sugges-
tions in the Phædrus, that the rhetorician must be a dialectician, a
man who can distinguish between particulars and universals, who
can define his terms, and who can distinguish debatable from un-
debatable questions. With this Aristotle seems to be in agreement.
He opens his Rhetoric by declaring that it is the counterpart of
dialectic. Elsewhere he refers to rhetoric as parallel to, an offshoot
or branch of, dialectic. He also says that the master of dialectic
will be the true master of rhetoric. But it is impossible to make
clear the relation between dialectic and rhetoric without explaining
the Platonic contrast between the two, and the great advance made
by Aristotle in relating both of them to demonstrative science.
2
After all, the sum and substance of Plato's suggestions for
rhetoric is that rhetoric, if it is really to be an art, must coincide.
with philosophy. When Plato said that the rhetorician must be a
dialectician, he meant that he must be a philosopher. So far as he
differs from the philosopher, he is an impostor; so far as he coincides
with him, his art of rhetoric is superseded. But Aristotle gave to
the term dialectic such a different significance that it is another thing
entirely to say that the rhetorician should be a dialectician. For
Plato, dialectic was the whole process of rational analysis by which
the soul was led into the knowledge of Ideas. It had both a positive.
and a negative aspect. In the earlier dialogues the negative function
was most prominent, and the principal contribution which the Socratic
dialectic made to the wisdom of those who underwent his cross-
examination was to disabuse them of their false knowledge. As
Plato developed his own doctrine of Ideas, dialectic became the
instrument of awakening by which the soul recollected the eternal
Rhetoric, 1404a. See the translation of this passage by C. S. Baldwin
in his Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic, p. 23. Professor Baldwin denies that
Aristotle had a "philosophic contempt" for delivery.
2
Rhetoric, 1355 and 1356.
54
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Ideas which it had known in a preëxistent state. Dialectic became a
means of positive instruction, as well as of refutation. As Plato
grew old and became more dogmatic in exposition, he found the
dialectical form somewhat inconvenient, but he did not develop a new
form for didactic procedure. The teachings implanted by dialectic
represented reasoned and tested conclusions, carrying with them the
certainty of philosophical knowledge, as opposed to the superficial
opinions which constituted the material of rhetoric, and which per-
suaded without giving any real instruction. In Plato's later life,
mathematical reasoning came to represent the type of demonstrated
knowledge, but at the time of the attacks upon the sophists and
rhetoricians, certainty and exactitude were to be found through the
dialectical process.
Aristotle had even more clearly in mind the antithesis between
opinion or common sense, and scientific knowledge or real instruc-
tion. He had, however, no sympathy with the Platonic doctrine of
Ideas, and was free from any sense of a mystical significance for
dialectic. Observing the didactic elements of the Platonic dialectic,
he perfected the syllogism as the instrument of scientific knowledge
and teaching. In the two books of the Analytica Priora he devel-
oped the functions and varieties of the syllogism and suggested that
it could be applied both to scientific demonstration and to the process
of argumentation in the realm of opinion. There is, however, such
a difference of matter and purpose in scientific and nonscientific
discussion that the use of the syllogism in the one and in the other
is to be governed by a distinct body of theory. The Analytica Pos-
teriora develops the use of the syllogism for demonstrative reasoning,
and the Topica, together with the Sophistici Elenchi, for dialectic.
The material for the Topica and the Sophistici Elenchi which is
really the last book of the Topica-is drawn from that type of argu-
mentation pilloried by Plato in the Euthydemus, Sophist, and States-
man. Aristotle in his classification of fallacies cites the Euthydemus
frequently. Plato drew a vivid picture of the fallacious disputers
and excited the feelings of the reader against such arguments without
really analyzing the fallacies. But Aristotle, in the Sophistici
Elenchi, analyzed and classified fallacies with the purpose of enabling
the reader to use them more skilfully. That type of disputation which
Plato made a variety of false rhetoric, the very antithesis of true
dialectic, is for Aristotle an integral part of dialectic. Thus it is
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
55
evident that Aristotle has allowed dialectic to descend into that realm
of opinion inhabited by sophists and rhetoricians. Where Plato had
been chiefly impressed by the contrast between rhetoric and dialectic,
Aristotle noticed the similarities. The realm of opinion, which Plato
had regarded as unworthy the attention of the philosopher, is thus
accorded by Aristotle two distinct disciplines, dialectic and rhetoric.
There are differences between the two, but the more fundamental con-
trast is between rhetoric and dialectic on the one hand, and scientific
reasoning, on the other.1
Scientific procedure, for Aristotle, starts with universal or neces-
sary principles and proceeds to universal and necessary conclusions.
Both dialectic and rhetoric, however, take as their premises current
popular opinions, or perhaps the opinions of dissenters. Any prob-
able or plausible assertion will serve. The fundamental principles of
a science cannot be proved within the bounds of that science; they
are therefore assumed. The only way of questioning them is in
dialectical debate. A few fundamental principles, as axioms, are
common to all or to several of the sciences; but by far the larger
part of the principles employed are special to the sciences concerned.
As against this, rhetoric and dialectic are not limited to the proposi-
tions of any particular field. They may regard the ultimate assump-
tions of any science as mere probabilities and discuss them as such.
In dialectic, the number of special propositions, corresponding to
scientific laws peculiar to one field, is small. On the other hand, the
number of general propositions, called topics (corresponding to the
comparatively few axioms of science), is large. In science, again,
we do not have matter to be settled by debate, but rather by impar-
tial investigation. Dialectic and rhetoric can argue as easily upon one
side of the question as another. They may employ any material con-
ceded by an opponent. They may be indifferent to the truth of a
conclusion if the form and method have been accurately followed.
From all this it is evident that as contrasted with scientific
knowledge, dialectic and rhetoric are much alike. There are certain
differences, however, which Aristotle regarded as sufficiently funda-
mental to justify their treatment as separate disciplines. The most
obvious difference, and one which accounts for several others, is that
'For the relations of science, dialectic, and rhetoric, see Cope's Introduc-
tion to Aristotle's Rhetoric, p. 67; Poste's introduction to his translation of
Aristotle's Analytica Posteriora; Appendix D in his translation of the Sophis-
tici Elenchi; and Grote's Aristotle.
56
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
dialectic is an argument conducted by two speakers with a small
audience of interested listeners who will see that the argument is
fairly conducted. Such a method of argument is best fitted for
speculative questions, although it can be applied to anything. It will
be concerned with logical processes and not with the feelings of an
audience. It is aimed not so much at persuading the opponent as at
defeating him by involving him in contradictions. The method of
reasoning employed is the syllogistic or inductive, the only difference
from genuinely scientific reasoning being that the materials are taken.
from the realm of the merely probable. Rhetoric, on the other hand,
because of the fact that one speaker is continuously addressing a
large audience of untrained hearers, cannot use the form of scientific
reasoning. In place of the syllogism and induction it uses the
enthymeme and example. Since the feelings of the hearers will
probably be more influential than the logic of the speaker, rhetoric
must include an account of the emotions and characters of men.
While rhetoric is not necessary to the dialectician, the rhetorician will
be better for a thorough knowledge of dialectic.
One additional contrast between rhetoric and dialectic is of sig-
nificance. Theoretically, Aristotle regarded rhetoric and dialectic
as applicable to the same range of subjects. Theoretically, anything
could be discussed by either method. But practically, as we see when
we compare the topics of the Topics and the Rhetoric,¹ rhetorical
discussion is limited to human actions and characters. The subject-
matter of rhetoric is for practical purposes limited to ethics and poli-
tics. There is a mention of the popular exposition of scientific sub-
jects as one of the uses of rhetoric, but the system as Aristotle
develops it, is much more limited than the system of dialectical
argument.
Analytics (logic), dialectic, and rhetoric form the organon of
thought and expression for the ancient world. Aristotle, as much
indebted to the Platonic dialogues, perhaps, as to his own observa-
tions of Athenian life, observed scientific thought, systematized it,
and gave us logic; observing the sport dear to all Athenians-argu-
mentation by question and answer-and systematizing it, he gave us
dialectic; observing and systematizing the art of persuading crowds,
¹For a comparison of the Rhetoric with the Topics, and with all the other
works of Aristotle with which it comes in contact, see C. A. Brandis,
"Über Aristoteles' rhetorik und die griechischen ausleger derselben," in
Schneidewin's Philologus, IV (1849), I.
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
57
he gave us rhetoric. Thus, although Aristotle agrees with Plato that
the rhetorician should also be a dialectician, it is evident that the
dictum has a very different meaning for the two writers.
Another suggestion in the Phædrus concerned order and arrange-
ment. This suggestion is developed by Aristotle in the second half
of the third book of the Rhetoric. He attacks as unnecessarily com-
plex the numerous divisions of the contemporary rhetoricians, and
treats arrangement under the heads of Proem, Narrative, Proofs,
and Epilogue. As our purpose is to compare Aristotle with Plato,
rather than to give an exposition of his Rhetoric, we need observe
only that this Platonic suggestion is carried out by Aristotle, although
he was probably much more indebted to other rhetoricians than to
Plato for his discussion of arrangement.
The Platonic requirement that the nature of the soul must be
shown, and arguments adapted to the different kinds of people
addressed by the speaker, is the basis of the oft-repeated assertion.
that the Rhetoric is an expanded Phædrus. There are two reasons
for this. In the first place, that part of the second book of the
Rhetoric which treats of the emotions and characters of men is the
part which has the greatest interest and significance for the modern
reader.¹ Secondly, it is, perhaps, the most distinct addition Aristotle
made to the work of his predecessors in the field. But even here,
where Aristotle has apparently carried out the suggestions of his
1
Gomperz, in his Greek Thinkers, IV, 435, seems to feel that those sections
of the Rhetoric which are genuinely a part of the subject are of relatively
little significance for a philosopher, while the parts for which he professes
admiration are really out of place in rhetoric. Referring to the treatment of
the emotions and characters of men, he says: "It is surprising to find this
subject, which seems to belong much more properly to psychology or descrip-
tive ethics, imported into a work on rhetoric, and there treated with an
exhaustiveness that goes far beyond the end in view. That which moved
Aristotle to this procedure was probably, in the first place, the Platonic ideal
of the art as set forth in the Phædrus; and secondly, the wish, cherished no
less warmly by him than by his master, to separate the new exposition of
rhetoric as widely as possible from the old empirical methods and routine.
wisdom. It so comes about that we have before us foundations of much
greater strength and depth than is justified by the superstructure which rests
upon them.
We shall, perhaps, be not far wrong in conjecturing that
Aristotle was glad of the opportunity to raise the tone of that initiation into
rhetorical fencing tricks which practical considerations forced upon him.
Another cause operating in the same direction may have been a recollection
of the fact that at the beginning of the work he had been unwilling to allow
emotional effects any place at all in oratory. Now that he felt constrained to
descend from that ideal height, he preferred to do so in such a manner that
the subject proscribed at first might appear in strictly scientific garb, not as
merely auxiliary to rhetorical success.
58
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
master most brilliantly, it must be observed that his treatment is only
a popular and inexact discussion of the external manifestations of
character and emotions, and not the sort of treatment he would have
given the doctrine of the affections, had he developed it in his De
Anima. It is also to be noted that while the classification of the
emotions is as complete as the rhetorician would desire, Aristotle did
not share Plato's notion that a true art of rhetoric would enable a
speaker to adapt himself to each of the persons of an audience as
the dialectician adjusts himself to one deuteragonist. He expressly
disclaims such a belief.
The theory of rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a
given individual like Socrates or Hippias, but with what seems probable to
men of a given type.¹
Nor does Aristotle suppose that even the best of rhetoricians will
always succeed with his audience. The function of rhetoric is not
simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means
of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular
case allow.2
Style and delivery, Plato stated, were necessary preliminaries to
the art of rhetoric. An elevated style, however, was to be attained,
not by technique, but by contemplation of lofty subjects. Aristotle
seems to have shared his master's feeling that style and delivery
should be subordinate matters, as spectacle was the least artistic
element of the drama. His classifying mind, however, was much
better able than Plato's to resist the tendency to place all subjects in
a hierarchical order of moral dignity and to slight all the lower
orders. He dismisses delivery briefly with the explanation that not
enough is yet known about it to treat it scientifically; but he does
regard both delivery and diction as means of persuasive discourse.
•
Plato's dislike for writing, which in our day would so limit the
province of rhetoric, does not seem to have disturbed Aristotle. He
wrote several times as much as Plato, and upon subjects which Plato
would probably have regarded as unsuitable for literary presentation.
It is only on the heights of learning that truth and beauty are always
compatible, and for the most part Plato kept to the heights. Aristotle
saw his own writing, not as moral truth to be graven on the soul of
Rhetoric, 1356b.
2 Rhetoric, 1355b.
>
PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC
59
a reader, but as an instrument by which his thought was systema-
tized and preserved. Had he agreed with the Socrates of the
Phædrus, he would not have devoted twelve chapters of the Rhetoric
to style.
XIV
In comparing Aristotle with Plato, we have seen that the
Rhetoric discusses most of the questions of rhetorical theory raised
by Plato in the Gorgias; it agrees with the rhetoricians that rhetoric
is an art, that the universality of its applications does not mean that
it has no subject matter of its own, that the evils arising from
rhetoric are no greater than the evils that arise from the abuse of
all good things, that truth and righteousness are, on the whole, more
prevalent because of a general knowledge of rhetoric, and that the
persuasion of multitudes of relatively ignorant people, instead of
being merely a vulgar task, fit only for demagogues, is a necessary
part of education and government in a stable society.
A contrast of the Rhetoric with the Phædrus makes it evident
that even here Aristotle is closer to the rhetoricians than to Plato.
Rhetoric is an art of appearance; and this fact neither prevents it
from being an art, nor from serving the ends of truth and righteous-
ness. Rhetoric, instead of being a sham dialectic, is the counterpart
of dialectic, a dialectic fundamentally different from the Platonic
conception of it. The analysis of the emotions, which seems to follow
Plato, is, after all, of a loose, inexact, and external character, as
Aristotle thought was suitable for rhetoric. Aristotle agreed with
Plato that the rhetorician should be virtuous and intelligent, that he
should be a keen logician, that he should understand the ordering and
arranging of material, and that he should know many things beyond
the principles of rhetoric. They were also agreed that contemporary
rhetoricians fell far short of these ideals. But the fact that Aristotle
and Plato agreed upon the deficiencies of Athenian rhetoricians seems
to have blinded us to the equally significant fact that Aristotle's
rhetorical theory bears more resemblance to that of Protagoras and
Gorgias than to that of Plato.
XV
The significance of a study of rhetoric in Athens is not entirely
historical. However indifferent we may be to Protagoras and
60
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Gorgias, we live in a world of journalists, publicists, advertisers,
politicians, diplomats, propagandists, reformers, educators, salesmen,
preachers, lecturers, and popularizers. When in Platonic mood we
condemn them all as sophists and rhetoricians. And the Platonic
attitude is supported by the growth of specialization and "research."
To large classes of specialists the rest of mankind is made up of
ignorant laymen. These scholars and experts share Plato's contempt
for the masses; they apparently are as blind as he to the limitations
of the academic mind; they dwell so securely in the well-mapped
areas of knowledge that they decline to venture into the uncharted
realms of opinion and probability. The modern sophists may justly
be reproached for their habit of offering mere opinion when knowl-
edge is obtainable; but it may be questioned whether theirs is a
greater error than the specialists' habit of mistaking knowledge for
wisdom. In the problem of the relation of Plato to Protagoras, of
philosopher to sophist and rhetorician, are involved the issues which
we debate when we discuss the aims of a liberal education, the desir-
ability of government by experts, the relation of a university to the
state, the duty of a scholar in a democracy, the function of public
opinion in a popular government, the difference between a conven-
tional and a rational morality, to say nothing of more speculative
questions.
We cannot agree with Bishop Welldon's statement that Aris-
totle's Rhetoric is "a solitary instance of a book which not only
begins a science, but completes it," but we do not regard the Rhetoric
as of merely historical interest. It is the one treatment of the sub-
ject which raises clearly the problem of the relation of rhetoric to
psychology, ethics, politics, jurisprudence, and literary criticism. If
we have made any progress in these subjects since Aristotle, in so
far his Rhetoric may be inadequate for modern needs. But for a
sense of proportion and a grasp of relations, we do well to acquaint
ourselves with the survey of the subject made by the great classifier
of knowledge.
IN
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING
2
HARRY CAPLAN
I
N The Decay of Modern Preaching, Mahaffy bewails the lack of
attention in courses of Homiletics to the rhetoric of theological
learning. He declares that without it the learning is dead
and, as it were, sealed in a tomb.¹ Pleading for the establishment of
more chairs of Rhetoric in modern theological schools, he yet warns
against naming them chairs in Sacred Rhetoric, since the appellation
would rest on the false assumption that sacred rhetoric differs from
any other rhetoric. On the other hand Phillips Brooks, equally
concerned for the good training of the preacher, with excellent use of
the oratorical device of prætermissio, asserts: "Of oratory, and all
the marvelous mysterious ways of those who teach it, I dare say
nothing. I believe in the true elocution teacher, as I believe in the
existence of Halley's comet, which comes into sight of this earth.
once in about seventy-six years." Involved, of course, in this dif-
ference of opinion is the ancient question of a definition of oratory
and of rhetoric. Obvious in the statement of Brooks is a distrust not
only for a type of instruction which, one now readily admits, was not
always effective, but also for overembellishment of style, for display,
and for inappropriate pulpit devices of delivery. Indeed, Brooks's
Lectures on Preaching deal largely with the rhetoric of preaching,
with invention and disposition and persuasion, and the preacher's
personality. Patently, he was led into an erroneous divorcement of
rhetoric from oratory, and into the false identification of oratory.
with delivery, or rather, with bad delivery.
The suspicion which Brooks avowed, as against the more discern-
ing penetration of Mahaffy, was largely shared by preachers of the
Middle Ages. To be sure, the pagan rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian
¹J. P. Mahaffy, New York, 1882, p. 73.
2
Ibid., p. 141.
Lectures on Preaching, New York, 1888, p. 178. For a similar position,
cf. A. S. Hoyt, The Work of Preaching, New York, 1909, p. 43.
61
62
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
was well known, and used, by Cyprian, Augustine (who had taught
it in the secular schools), Gregory, and many others. Yet Augustine
finds it necessary to defend the use of rhetoric by a Christian teacher.¹
No doubt the frequent condemnation of eloquence by the medieval
teachers, as by Brooks, arose from zeal to avoid ostentation and a
style ill fitting the elevated tone of the preacher's calling. St. Thomas
Aquinas says: "He who has to preach must make use of both elo-
quence and secular learning." 2 "The use of secular eloquence in
Sacred Scripture is in one way commendable and in another repre-
hensible. It is the latter when one uses it for display or when one
aims mainly at eloquence. He who strives mainly for eloquence
does not intend that men should admire what he says, but rather tries
to gain admiration for himself. Eloquence is commendable when
the speaker has no desire to display himself, but wishes only to use
it as a means of benefiting his hearers, and out of reverence for Holy
Scripture." "It is laudable in preaching to make use of a har-
monious and learned style, if it be not done from motives of display,
but for the instruction of hearers and the persuasion of opponents."
This is sound rhetoric. Gregory of Nazianzen's censure of preach-
ers who used the eloquence of the theatre was a reproof of bad
rhetoric. Of course the belief of medieval teachers that pagan books
generally should be handled with care, against the contingency of
exposure to impiety,* did have an effect on the use of classical rhetori-
cal works. But though secular learning was subordinated to sacred,
it was by no means neglected.5
3
By the thirteenth century, the name Rhetoric had almost dis-
appeared from teaching in the schools. The sermons, however, and
the homiletical textbooks of the late medieval period show a highly
developed rhetoric of invention, particularly in the application of the
ancient rhetorical commonplaces, an organic system of disposition,
and a shrewd attention to delivery. The uniqueness of the subject-
matter of the sermon and the peculiar differentiation of the preach-
er's function should not misdirect us to the conclusion that there was
an absence, in theory and practice, of the same broad rhetorical prin-
¹ On Christian Doctrine, IV, ch. I and II.
2 For these quotations from St. Thomas, see J. Walsh, "St. Thomas on.
Preaching," Dominicana, V (1921), 6-14.
3
* See P. A. Beecher, art. "Homiletics," Cath. Encyc.
* See A. L. de la Marche, La Chaire Française au Moyen Age, Paris, 1886,
p. 476.
See L. Bourgain, La Chaire Française au XIIe Siècle, Paris, 1879, p. 251.
1.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 63
ciples which operate equally in ancient or modern public speaking of
any kind.
A late medieval treatise on preaching, representing a method of
the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, should give us in-
sight into a very important period in the history of oratory, and par-
ticularly in the history of the oratory of the pulpit, since preaching
had then, after a long development, risen almost to perfection. The
rise of new orders, the spread of mysticism, the growth of scholas-
ticism, and the high general culture of the time affected both the
extent and method of preaching. I may not here attempt the
hazardous task of reviewing the vast field of medieval preaching and
preachers;¹ but suffice it to say that in the development of the ser-
mon form, the time from the apostolic age to the twelfth century
represents one period-that of the inorganic form. The sermon
grew out of the custom of improvising a brief exposition of the
Biblical passage for the day, following the order of the verses. It
was an exegetical abstract, worked over, or it was a patristic homily.
The homily was an informal discourse, a "conversation" (in Latin,
tractatus popularis), a doctrinal interpretation of Scripture in a
familiar way, without formal introduction or divisions. It might
be treated sentence by sentence, or by concentrating the entire Gos-
pel on one idea, or by selecting a virtue or vice from the Gospel to
discuss, or by paraphrasing and applying the whole Gospel. Bede,
Gregory, and Origen used homilies. Naturally the sermons of the
period of conversion of the barbarians, those of Boniface and Cæsar
of Arles, for example, attained to a high degree of energy and color.
After the great missionary epoch, during the time when the clergy
were recruited from the barbarians, there followed one of compara-
tive decadence in preaching; then, with the age of Charlemagne, a
gradual renascence. By the twelfth century in France, and the
thirteenth in the rest of Europe, pulpit eloquence was at its height of
excellence. One greatly regrets, for instance, that the harangues
of Bernard, which aroused such multitudes to enthusiasm, are not
extant.
1
As distinguished from the method of the homily, the preachers
¹See E. C. Dargan, A History of Preaching, New York, 1905; R. Cruel,
Geschichte der deutschen Predigt im Mittelalter, Detmold, 1879; A. Linsen-
mayer, Geschichte der Predigt in Deutschland, Munich, 1886; J. S. Maury,
Essai sur l'Eloquence de la Chaire, Paris, 1877; A. L. de la Marche, op. cit.;
L. Bourgain, op. cit.; J. M. Neale, Mediaval Preachers and Medieval Preach-
ing, London, 1856.
64
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
of this later phase-Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas
-used sermons (sermones) in expounding the Gospel, following a
systematic method. In the tractate to be presented, the strictly
\systematic scheme will be apparent.
The method of the thirteenth century, it will be seen, was to un-
fold the sermon from the internal essence of the truth with which
it was concerned, by explaining the text and by deducing associated
lines of thought, with strong dependence on what Bossuet later
called, perhaps properly, the "banal" art of amplification.¹ But the
analytical design of organization was at times so good, that it could
easily sustain attention. The diversification of each member must.
not have presented difficulties to the attainment of clearness and
orderly sequence. The scholastic influence appears in the resemblance
which the sermons bear to philosophical discussions-in definitions,
distinctions, dialectical inquiries, and argumentation. When allied to
talent, the methodical spirit must have been highly efficacious, even
though the sermons may in many cases have been too replete with
divisions and trivial comparisons. Since the people had complete
faith, it was instruction which they sought. Nor were the teachings
always devoid of feeling. Sometimes majesty and great religious
power were achieved. The principle of amplification it was probably
necessary to use against the failure of inspiration. To be sure, they
abused the habit of drawing too much out of one word. Eckhart gave
a sermon devoted only to the word "and." Always the sermon
rested on Scripture, whereof the preachers' knowledge seemed intui-
tive, on the Fathers, and on the liturgical books, but often the
severity was relieved by embellishment, and the discourse made
lively by physical action. The mysticism in symbolical interpretation
was profound and at times obscure. Moral points were not usually
developed to their full extent, but merely proposed and applied by
、a figurative interpretation.
3
192
Response to preaching was on occasions exciting. Often the
preachers were heckled. Often they were so popular that they left
town secretly in the dead of night lest their departure be prevented
by their devotees. Jacques de Vitry tells that Foulque de Neuilly
1
4
St. Bonaventure, De Arte Concionandi, Part III, discusses the expansion
of sermons.
2
Linsenmayer, op. cit., p. 159.
'De la Marche, op. cit., p. 216.
'S. Baring-Gould, Post-Mediaval Preachers, London, 1865, p. 11.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 65
needed a new cassock each day, to replace that usually torn by the
crowds, who came from distant countries to hear the holy man and
share with him some of his sanctified possessions. In their efforts to
amuse, some preachers were condemned for yielding to extravagance.
Jacques de Vitry himself would suddenly lift his voice to shout:
"That man sleeping there in the corner will never learn my secret." 1
An abbé, in the midst of his talk, awakened his sleeping flock by a
swift change of subject: "There was once a king called Arthur."
They started from their doze only to be chastised for lack of atten-
tion. Still one does not read of excesses in this period comparable
to Oliver Maillard's reminders on the margin of a manuscript of a
sermon of the year 1500: "Sit down-stand up mop yourself-
ahem! ahem!-now shriek like a devil." 2 Every method of prepara-
tion for delivery was employed. Some preachers, like Bede, spoke
extempore, from prepared outline; some, like Anthony of Padua, read
from notes. The author of the tractate before us has interesting
observations on delivery.
3
The preachers studied their audiences. Gregory the Great de-
votes a whole chapter ³ to the mere enumeration of the different
types to be admonished by the preacher. The discourses of Jacques
de Vitry cover one hundred and twenty categories of auditors. They
preached to all and everywhere; men and women, rich and poor, day
and night, in public places and streets and fields. Perhaps their
greatest skill was shown in adjustment, in matter and diction,
to illiterate audiences. Nothing was taken for granted; every
thought was put in the most vivid and intelligible language, often
with striking stories and homely proverbs. Were space allotted me,
I should here clearly illustrate this by introducing an entire sermon.
Thereby the characteristic unity of the medieval sermon might also
be apparent. But something of the spirit of direct communicative-
ness with a simple audience may be caught from the following trans-
lation of an excerpt from a thirteenth century sermon. It is entitled
"On the Angels," and was delivered by the great Francis-
can, Berthold von Regensburg, in the German vernacular of his
day.5
1
De la 'Marche, op. cit., p. 214.
Baring-Gould, op. cit., p. 12.
³ Pastoral Rule, Part III, i.
* In Pfeiffer and Strobl, Berthold von Regensburg, Vienna, 1880, pp. 174 ff.
5 It is safe to say that after the tenth century, Latin was not understood
by the common people of Europe.
66
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
We celebrate to-day the feast of the Great Princes, the Holy Angels, who
are to the whole world a great miracle, and in whom Almighty God has
created many great miracles. And if a man did not wish for any other reason
to go to Heaven, he might nevertheless easily go to Heaven for this reason:
merely to see what wonders and wonders are there. And of the wonders
there is no end, the wonders which God has brought to light in the Holy
Angels. And they are the messengers of our Lord-for angel means, in
Greek, a messenger. Our Lord had great joy, for He was without beginning,
just as He is also without end. I speak of Divinity, of the Crown. Before
He created anything such as we are, He had great delight within Himself
and of Himself. Then He planned to create. He wished to create two
creatures, two kinds of creatures, so that these might be sharers of His joy—
but that He Himself because of them should have not less joy. And how-
ever much joy and delight He gave to them, on that account no less joy
had He just like the sunshine. However much of its light the sun gives us
He-just
day by day, itself has no less light. So God made two creatures; they were
man and angel. Then God made a thing. And it was the very best thing
of all things that God had ever made. And He never made a thing so well
among all the things which God made in order that man and angel should
share in His joy; so good and so useful was it. And so God brought it
about that men and angels should have therefrom more and more joy. And
however useful was the thing, and however much honor and blessedness lie
therein, still were there some angels in heaven who wished not to retain the
thing. And they were shut out from the eternal joys, and thrown into
eternal torture. And all the people who retained the thing, they remained
with Almighty God in eternal joys, because they retained the thing which is
so good, among all things the best [virtue] . .
And so we celebrate to-day the Feast of the Angels who remained with
God, and did not fall. And so we celebrate to-day the Feast of St. Michael
and the Holy Angels; and that we do not celebrate the Feast of the Holy
Angels often in the year, therein our Lord did wisely and well. However
easy it would be that we should celebrate their feast three times yearly, our
Lord did well and wisely therein, and it is better that we do not celebrate
their feast often. Why? See, for this reason. If we should celebrate their
feast with singing and with reading, we should also have to preach about
them, and if we had to preach often about the angels, perhaps a blasphemer
would come along, and perhaps be so blasphemous, that he might preach of
the heresy of the Holy Angels. For Our Lord has wrought so many wonders
in the angels that we do not know them all for sure. He has done some
miracles or wonders in the angels of which we do not know exactly, but
And
only guess. And whoever guesses a thing, does not know it for sure.
so Our Lord has done many a thing in them that we well know. Whoever,
therefore, might wish to preach the things which we guess, he might possibly
preach heresy. And so no one should preach anything except that which we
know for sure!
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 67
1
St. Thomas Aquinas' own preaching, and advice collected from
his writings, appear consistent with the doctrine of our treatise, the
author of which claims adherence to the Thomistic school.
Vaughan's biography discusses the Angelic Doctor's simple style,
the strong intellectual element in his sermons, and his great powers
of delivery. One of his sermons was greeted with such lamentation
that he could not for a time continue. On another occasion he was
applauded an experience which Chrysostom of the fourth century
often enjoyed, but which in the thirteenth was rare. His preserved 2
sermons are either bare sketches as reported by pupils and listeners,
or perhaps the final recapitulations, such recapitulations as the author
of our tractate refers to. Leo XIII thought so highly of Thomas'
method as to commend it to all preachers.³
Some of his precepts relate to the subject-matter of sermons,
the preacher's function, and his ethical qualities as preacher. "The
matter of preaching is twofold; what is useful for the present life,
as concerns God, or our neighbors, or ourselves; and what we hope
to have in the next life." "All preaching should be directed to two
purposes: demonstrating God's Greatness by preaching the faith;
and showing forth His Goodness by elucidating the truth." "A
preacher must have three qualities: stability, to ward him from
error; clearness, to avoid obscurity in his teaching; utility, to seek
God's Glory rather than his own. "A preacher must have three
powers: that he be endowed with a fulness of knowledge of things
sacred, to prove to others; that he be able to prove what he says;
that he fitly put forth to his audience the things he conceives."
"Two things are necessary for preachers, that they may lead to
Christ. The first is an orderly discourse; the second is the virtue
of good works.”
""
Another injunction of Thomas warns against the telling of
stories or fables. This advice, consistent with the omission from
1
¹See Fr. O'Daniel, "Thomas Aquinas as Preacher," Ecclesiastical Re-
view, XLII (1910), 26-37; and especially J. Walsh, op. cit.
2 Divi Thomatis Aquinatis_Doctoris Angelici Sermones et Opuscula Con-
cionatoria, ed. A. J. Raulx, Paris, 1881.
3
See the Encyclical Letter on the Restoration of Christian Philosophy,
prefixed to the Dominican Fathers' translation of the Summa Theologica.
*For these passages from St. Thomas, see J. Walsh, op. cit. With the
✓ last injunction, compare Dante's complaint of the use of fables in the
preaching of his day, Paradiso, XXIX, 103-120. The medieval tractate of
Humbert de Romans encourages the use of exempla: de la Marche, op. cit.,
\p. 277.
68
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
our treatise of any discussion of the exemplum, is an interesting
divergence from a favorite practice of thirteenth century preachers,
even among the Dominicans.¹ Some preachers, notably Jacques de
Vitry 2 and Cæsar of Heisterbach, realizing that many listeners who
were not moved by bare doctrine could be stirred by illustrative
stories with pointed morals, used such exempla with great effective-
ness. Some of these tales were of the Saints; many concerned the
Devil. Almost all were full of superstition, but great numbers were
characterized by genuine morality, shrewd knowledge of the world,
and fancy and humor. Great collections of fables, bestiaries, and
exempla were available for the preacher and were used throughout
Europe.
3
4
As is to be expected, the theory of preaching, in point of time,
succeeded the practice. In France, Guibert de Nogent's Liber Quo
Ordine Sermo Fieri Debet appeared at the beginning, and Alain de
Lille's Summa De Arte Prædicatoria at the end, of the twelfth
century. The De Instructione Religiosorum of Humbert de Romans
—who promises to teach a way of immediately producing a sermon
for any set of men and for every diversity of circumstance be-
longs to the beginning of the thirteenth. Even before the twelfth
century, the preacher could have recourse to collections of homilies
(some as early as the eighth century), collections of text-materials.
for sermons, of sermons for each day, of commentaries, glosses,
Biblical alphabeted vocabularies, and homiletical lexicons. Such
preachers' anthologies, "The Garden of Delight," "The Flower of
the Apostles," "The Book of Sparkling Points" were common in the
European libraries. This apparatus, although it made for a general
high level of preaching, must have smothered independent work in
the less competent preachers.
The treatise which we are considering, and that attributed to
Henry of Hesse, the Tractatus De Arte Prædicandi, were the first
homiletical texts to appear in Germany.5
1
2
3
It would require special linguistic training in the vulgar tongues
E.g., the famous collection of Stephen of Bourbon.
See T. F. Crane, The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, London, 1890.
See T. F. Crane, Medieval Sermon Books and Stories, Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society, XXI, 114 G, May, 1883; Id., Medieval
Sermon Books and Stories and their Study since 1883, ibid., LVI, No. 5,
1917.
5
Bk. II.
Cruel, op. cit., p. 596.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING
69
of medieval Europe to make a substantial study of the influence of
the sermon on the history of the period, or its influence particularly
upon the development of the modern tongues. As the almost exclu-
sive source of knowledge for the common people, the sermon was
´undoubtedly a great instrument of civilization. But a more practical
and more promising inquiry for the student of rhetoric would be
a comparison of the medieval sermon in content, form, methods, and
function, with that of the Renaissance. The preaching of the
Renaissance, in theory, marked a return to greater dependence on
the Greek and Roman rhetoricians, and, in practice, specialized in
long exordia and an interest in the civil law. Reuchlin's Liber
Congestorum De Arte Prædicandi is largely a repetition of Cicero
and Quintilian. In his Ecclesiastes, Erasmus glances back with ridi-
cule at medieval preaching. Or an examination of the sermons of
a John Donne of the seventeenth century would yield surprising dis-
coveries of spiritual similarity with the sermons of the Middle Ages.
Surely it was a far cry from the thirteenth-century sermons—tools
in an instrumental art, serving the humble and illiterate-to those
of the period of Louis XIV, when the eloquent divine preached in
the drawing-rooms of fine ladies, and sceptics of the nobility were
offered the entertainment of the latest fad in preachers. The eight-
eenth century had very little esteem for the thirteenth, condemning it
for bad taste, dryness, a barbarous scholasticism, overcredulity, and
complete lack of eloquence—this at a time when, in England, Doctors
of Divinity were delivering before criminals awaiting execution ser-
mons prepared for University audiences.¹ And perhaps most useful
would be to contrast the medieval preacher with the Brookses and
Beechers, or the present-day preacher, who sermonizes on social
and political questions, uses longer texts, and opposes formalism.
It is to be hoped that students of the history of rhetorical theory will
be encouraged to make such necessary and illuminating studies.
II
The copy of the tractate used by the translator is found in the
library of Cornell University, bound together with other, unrelated,
ecclesiastical works, in a quarto volume of incunabula. The treatise
covers nineteen pages. No date or place of publication is indicated.
1 Neale, op. cit., p. xv.
70
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
Most probably it was printed in the last decade of the fifteenth
'century. The abundance of obscure contractions, suspensions, and
special symbols make the reading difficult. Nor is the thought
always clear. And the bad and anacoluthic Latin in some places
makes translation even more difficult. In translating, I have at-
tempted to give the reader some impression of the style of the
original.
We do not know the Dominican author-compiler; neither do we
know of any such tractate of Thomas 2 as that referred to by the
compiler in the title.
The reader will observe that the author frequently quotes from
memory. Steeped though he is in Scriptural lore, he is often guilty
of false quotation. His fondness for the rhetorical principle of
accumulation is evident. His use of the various senses of explica-
tion illustrates the influence of the Alexandrian philosophy on the
thought of the Middle Ages. Almost every idea in this logical, de-
tailed, precise exposition of the ancient method of invention is
shrewly developed by authoritative passages; the author practises
the art of which he is expositor.
3
III
A Brief Religious Tract on the Art and True Method of Preach-
ing, Compiled from Divers Writings of Holy Men of Learning, and
chiefly from a certain short treatise of the Most Holy Doctor of the
Christian Church, Thomas Aquinas, in which he proceeds in the
manner and form of the material here presented.
AS I wish to communicate to my best beloved the following mate-
rial on the method of popular preaching, after my many labors
vouchsafed me by the All-Highest (who gives every good but never
1
See L. Hain, Reportorium Bibliographicum, No. 1354; J. McGovern, “A
Medieval Manual for Preachers," Ecclesiastical Review, March, 1924, 70,
299 ff. The earliest copy known is a Nürnberg edition of 1477, according to
Linsenmayer, op. cit., p. 102.
2
No reference is found either in P. Mandonnet, Des Ecrits Authentiques
de St. Thomas d'Aquin, Fribourg, 1910, or in M. Grabmann, Die Echten
Schriften des Heiligen Thomas von Aquin, Münster in Westphalia, 1920.
We are helped to understand why in the Convivio, tract. II. i, Dante
makes so much of this method in his own creative activity.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING
71
1
the ox ¹ by the horns), I am therefore submitting to them an abridged
tractate on this art, laboriously compiled from sundry books of holy
men of learning.
4
3
It does not suffice to possess learning or command of the mate-
rials of preaching in order to preach correctly and vitally, but art
and method also are required. So Gregory in the introduction of his
Pastoral Rule 2 tells us that art has its place in the Word of God.
The appropriate method of preaching may be a gift of God, who
gives to preachers of the Gospel the Word, with abundant virtue,
art, and therefore learning. As St. Augustine says, this gift is to
be assisted in many ways, for nothing is more presumptuous than
to teach before having learned the method of teaching. According
to Tully, in the second book of his Rhetoric, it is not enough to
have something to say, but there is required the very business of
speaking as the quality of the hearer demands and exacts. For how
can anyone speak, if he know not the means of knowing how he
should speak? Likewise St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, em-
phasizes not only what is said, but the way in which it is said. Pri-
marily he, who penetrates the hearts of his audience present, kindles
and inflames his hearers, for as Gregory says, the way of the Lord is
directed toward the heart when the doctrine of Truth is heard. The
hearing of God's Word is the way of conversion from sin. A ser-
mon of the Lord is the food of the mind. For of such great virtue
is preaching that it recalls men from error to truth, from vices to
virtues, it changes depravity to rectitude and turns rough to smooth,
it provides faith, raises hope, enkindles charity, it dislodges the in-
jurious, implants the useful, and fosters the honorable. For it is the
way of life, the ladder of the virtues, and the door of Paradise. It is
therefore not only art, but the art of arts, and the science of the
sciences. William of Paris in approving and recommending the art
of preaching says: "Since so many volumes of Rhetoric have been
written by the band of rhetoricians, is it not much more just and
worthy that their own art and doctrine should enjoy treatment by
¹ Can this be a pun on the nickname St. Thomas bore among his fellow
students-the Dumb Ox? See R. B. Vaughan, Life and Labours of St.
Thomas of Aquin, London, 1871-72, 1, 316.
1
5
* The compiler is in the habit of quoting generally rather than literally
or accurately. In this and some of the subsequent quotations it has not
been possible to discover the exact references.
3
4
Possibly a general reference to On Christian Doctrine, IV, ch. I and II.
The reference may apply to the general implications of De Oratore, II.
Cf. Gregory, Pastoral Rule, ch. I.
72
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the band of preachers, so that they will be divine rhetoricians ?"
Especially so, since, in its profit and utility, the rhetoric of oratory
cannot compare with this Crown of Preaching.
Preaching, then, is the fitting and suitable dispensation of the
Word of God.
Now, three kinds of preaching seem to have been used together.
One is by the oral discussion of the Word of God-"Preach the
Gospel to every creature.” 1 Another kind is by writing. Hence
the Apostle is said to have preached to the Corinthians when he
wrote them the Epistles containing God's Word. The third kind is
by deeds. So Gregory says every act of Christ is instruction for us.
For He, the Supreme Master, our Lord Jesus, in order that nothing
should be wanting in His teaching, took most diligent care to instruct
in each kind, by works and by sermon, as it is written of Him in the
first chapter of the Acts. Jesus undertook to do and to teach, or
rather, first to do and then to teach. To denote this, each faithful
preacher today is held to preaching first by deed and then by ser-
mon. Would indeed that each preacher were to become such a dili-
gent imitator of Christ Jesus, that he should preach not with the
word alone but also with works! Whence Pope Leo:2 "Teaching
is more complete by deed than by voice, for the efficacious method
of preaching is the agreement of life with doctrine." Gregory: "It
follows that his preaching is condemned whose life is contemned.”
Aristotle, in the Ethics, says that they whose works are at variance.
with their speech will be despised. Bernard, in a sermon: "For
the seed of God easily germinates when the preacher's piety strength-
ens these truths in the heart of the hearer." Unless I err in my
judgment, the preacher must live justly and rightly. "Let him not
render his words null by contradicting deeds," said Paul. "I hear
them say nothing of those things which they do not perform through
me," said Christ, deeming it shameful to preach or teach what he
neglected to do.
3
Thus preaching is verbal or vocal, as we have said. It is open
and public instruction in faith and morals, devoted to the informing
of men, and proceeding from the path of convictions and from the
source of authorities. It will be open preaching, since, if it were
1 Mark xvi, 15.
Possibly iv, 14, on boasters and humbugs, or x, 10, on sophists.
Probably Leo I, the Great.
8
4
These two quotations are not Biblical.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 73
secret, it would be subject to suspicion and would seem to let loose
heretical dogmas. It will be public, because it is to be set before the
many, not one individual. If it were set before the one, it would
properly be not preaching, but doctrine. In this way preaching is
instruction in faith and morals.
Two aspects of theology, whereof use is to be made in preaching,
are involved the rational, which pursues knowledge in things divine,
and the moral, which offers information in morals. For preaching is
instruction now in divine truth, now in conduct. This is imaged
forth by the angels descending and ascending on the ladder which
Jacob saw.¹ Mystically, the angels are those learned men who
ascend when they preach heavenly things. They descend when they
conform to things mortal.
In fact the efficient cause of a sermon is twofold: principal, and
instrumental. The principal cause of every sermon is the Lord of
Glory. That He may be moved by the preacher's tongue as agent,
prayer is made to Him. Thus the preacher acts as an instrumental
cause.
Also, the art of preaching is the science which teaches address
on some subject. The subject of this art is the Word of God. The
subject of the sermon, on the other hand, is the preacher's purpose,
and so forth.
The preacher's principles of action can be used as follows. If
the sermon delivered is from some authority of the Bible or the
Saints, he must preach vigorously in order that his utterance may
leave his mouth vigorously and abide in the listener's heart. Hence
the preacher must sometimes try to speak with wonder, as at the
passage: “I was not in safety, neither had I rest.” 2 Sometimes he
must speak with grief and lamentation, as at: "O my son, Absalom!
my son, my son Absalom!” 3 Often with horror and emotion, as at:
"Except ye be converted." At times with irony and derision, as at:
"Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die." 5
Sometimes with gracious countenance and drawing together of the
hands, as at: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.” With a certain elation, as at: "From a
¹ Gen. xxviii, 12.
*Job iii, 26.
3 II Sam. xviii, 33.
5
Matt. xviii, 3.
Job ii, 9.
6 Matt. xi, 28.
4
74
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
far country have they come to me.” 1 At times with impatience and
indignation, as at: "Let us make a captain."2 At other times with
joy and elevation, and lifting up of the hands, as at: "Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world." Often with hate and turning away
of the face, as at: "Depart from me, ye cursed." 4 Thus the preacher
should conform to the gesture which he must believe Christ used when
he said: "Destroy this temple," 5 by placing his hand above his heart
and looking at the temple.
From these and following suggestions the preacher can easily
collect and acquire gestures-the true art and method, which are, so
to speak, the instruments guiding him in his activity. One is not
hindered by learning to know many other gestures; and to know many
other things—for example, that it is possible to be ignorant of method.
Very few are the things we know in proportion to those we do
not.
The theme is the beginning of the sermon. In regard to it there
are many considerations: first, that it is taken from the Bible; that
it has a clearly perceived meaning-not incongruous; that it is not
too long nor too short; that it is expressed in terms well suited to
preaching-in all its verbs, participles, and so forth.
Again, the theme is the prelocution, made for the proof of the
terms of preaching present in the theme, through authoritative pas-
sages of the Bible and learned men, and by bringing in the authori-
ties of philosophy through some simile, moral point, proverb, or
natural truth.
Likewise what is said in the theme and its division is called the
theme, since the division of the theme is the very theme itself. For
from the theme the divisions proceed as from a root (as is clear in
our tree below). That is why the division is called the theme.
Note that there are four parts of a sermon: the theme, the pro-
theme or prelocution, the division or distinction, the subdivision or
subdistinction. To them two principles apply: the deduction of
those parts preached-through proofs and exhortations on the vir-
tues-and the avoidance of faults.
¹ Joshua, ix, 6 and 9.
2
4
Num. xiv, 4.
Matt. xxv, 34.
• Matt. xxv, 41.
5 John ii, 19.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 75
FAULTS IN SERMONS
Ignorance of the preacher
Lack of fluency
Excessive noisiness
Sleepy delivery
Finger pointings
Frequent motion of the head
Remote digression
The prelocution, too, can be formed by adducing authorities with
reference to the theme. For illustration, let this theme be assumed:
"O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee."1 Now the pre-
locution of this theme can be taken from definite authorities: the
Psalmist, "Death is the worst of the sins"; 2 Kings, "Surely the bit-
terness of death is past"; Ecclesiasticus, "Remember thy last end
and thou shalt never do amiss"; Solomon, "Nothing is surer than
death, nothing less sure than the hour of death"; 5 Augustine, “Of
all terrible things death is most terrible"; " and also the authority of a
philosopher. So the wise man says, "O death, how bitter is the re-
membrance of thee." These were the words of the theme taken up
in the first place.
4
Next let the theme be posited with its divisions and subdivisions.
After that comes the invocation of the Holy Spirit through angelic
prayer-Ave Maria and so forth.
Then it is developed by arranging the parts after one another, by
dividing and subdividing.
FIRST DIVISION
Death is twofold, spiritual and corporeal. Of things spiritual
some are virtuous, some vicious. This is the subdivision of the first
member. On the first is said: "For ye are dead, and your life is
hid with Christ in God." On the second, the verse of the Apostle:
"Blessed is he who hath been freed from a second death." 8
¹ Ecclus. xli, 1.
'Vulg. Ps. xxxiv, 21.
7
Auth. Vers. I Sam. xv, 32.
• vii, 36.
This quotation is not Biblical.
"Cf. Aristotle, Ethics iii, 9.
8
Col. iii, 3.
Rev. xx, 6.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
SUBDIVISION OF THE SECOND MEMBER
Of deaths corporeal, some are natural, some violent. On the
former the passage from Kings is quoted: "We must needs die,
and are as water spilt on the ground."¹ On the latter, the verse
from Jeremiah: "Let us condemn him to a shameful death." 2
This theme fits our purpose because the prelocution is formed
by distributing Gospel passages therein.
After the prelocution comes the division of the theme, then the
subdivision of the principal parts of the theme, as is clear from
examples.
As the theme, prelocution, division, and subdivision of the theme
now stand, the sermon is not yet complete unless some principal
part is amplified through other materials, to wit, through adduced
authorities. Otherwise the sermon becomes too short and simple.
Therefore certain methods should be used through which the whole.
sermon is to be expanded as conveniently as possible.
Likewise observe how the main material of all sermons, yes, rather
of all of Sacred Scripture is comprised of these ten topics: God,
the Devil, the Heavenly City, Inferno, the world, the soul, the body,
sin, penitence, virtue. Very few indeed are these in proportion to
the multitude of sermons. But even they, expanded according to the
need of the hearers, grow as if into infinity.
The amplification of sermons is to be accomplished in nine ways:
first, through agreements of authorities; second, through discussion
of words; third, through the properties of things; fourth, through
a manifold exposition or a variety of senses; fifth, through similes
and natural truths; sixth, through marking of the opposite, to wit,
correction; seventh, through comparisons; eighth, through inter-
pretation of a name; ninth, through multiplication of synonyms.
These means have been clarified in their order on the tree sketched
at the end of the present treatise. After I successively expound
each single method, together with its materials and examples, there
will be an end to the present task.
First, accordingly, the sermon is expanded through agreements
of authorities. Such agreements are threefold: of the Bible, of
1
¹ Auth. Vers. II Sam. xiv, 14.
2 Wisd. of Sol. ii, 20. Erroneously ascribed to Jer.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 77
sacred authorities, and of the moral philosophers. So also they
are taken up in three ways: from a same, from a like, and from a
contrary. Take the passage: "The righteous shall flourish like
the palm tree.” 1 From a same: "The righteous shall flourish like
the lily." From a like: "The righteous has these blessings: he is
brave and prudent. And since he performs good works, he shall be
rewarded." From a contrary: "The unrighteous, however, doth evil
and so shall be punished."
Secondly, a sermon is expanded through discussion of words,
and the like. There should be a discussion of the words both in
the theme and in the authorities adduced. When the preacher wishes
to discuss the words of Christ from some authority, he should first
consider how many clausule the authority has, and the order of
the clauses or of the words. For when the authority has several
clausula, the preacher should consider whether he can adapt some
one of them to the number of virtues and vices, or to the parts
of penitence. This discussion of words can also be performed
through definitions or descriptions of the term taken up in the theme.
Take for illustration the Psalmist's, "The righteous shall flourish
like the palm tree in the home of the Lord." In discussing, I can
inquire, who is the righteous? and can answer, he who returns to
each what is his-to God, to prelates, to masters, and to men. To
God, acts of Grace; to masters, due reverence; and to men,
obedience.
Again I can discuss the words alternately, and ask, why the
home? why the palm? why the Lord? why the home of the Lord?
In the same way, what is good? what is honorable? and so with
other words. These apply in the discussion of all themes or of
other authoritative passages adduced in a sermon.
So let this theme (Luke xxi, 19) be used: "In your patience
ye possess your souls." Now in discussing, I can ask, who is
patient? and, what is patience? I can answer, patience is the dis-
regarding of hostility; and the disregarding is forbearance of the
mouth from murmurings and dark speech, and is the peace of the
heart from hate and rancor. Likewise take the passage: "All men
are liars,"² and: "Every one of them is gone back." ³ In dis-
2
1 Ps. xcii, 12.
2 Ps. cvi, II.
See Ps. xiii, 3, and liii, 3.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
cussing, I can ask, who are they? I can answer: lay monks, pre-
lates, subordinates, cloistered monks, the secular, and so forth. The
discussion can be made entirely quantitative, that is, by enumeration
of the whole authority into parts, as above: laics, prelates, sub-
ordinates, cloistered monks, and so on.
Words can also be discussed through argumentation-for ex-
ample, through reasoning from a major or minor analogy; from
opposites, as contrast, affirmation, or denial; or from relation, as
privation or possession. Similarly, from praise or blame, and from
all the dialectical and rhetorical commonplaces which obtain in under-
taking a sermon. For an example of reasoning from a major
analogy, take the passage: "God spared not the angels that sinned." 1
Therefore He does not spare sinful men, the greater ingrates. Again,
He did not spare Adam and Eve, whom He made with His own
hand, nor Judas, His apostle and disciple. Therefore neither will
He spare others who sin in their own way. For if that which
seems greater is not really greater, neither will that which seems
less be less.
In the same way from a discussion of words he can bring out
for himself the effects of the terms taken up in the theme. Take
this theme (Luke xviii, 14): "He that humbleth himself shall be
exalted." In discussing the effects of the terms of this authority,
I can say: The causes of humility are many. "Man that is born
of woman"-thus, with guilt-"is of few days"-thus, in motion
-"and full of trouble" 2-thus, of weeping.
Likewise through the effects of vices and virtues can sermons
be developed and expanded. For example, man is exalted through
humility. So we should humble ourselves. Conversely, the oppo-
site applies. So we should beware of exalting ourselves.
The words of some authority can also be discussed through the
fourfold combination of copulative and disjunctive parts in the
theme-from the part of subject and predicate. For example, take
this passage: "The voice of rejoicing and salvation in the tabernacles
of the righteous," and so forth. I can discuss it as follows. Voice
is manifold in the hearts and consciences of different people. There
is the voice of rejoicing, and not of salvation but of damnation,
II Pet. ii, 4.
2
Job xiii, 1 (Vulg. xiv, 1).
³ Ps. cviii, 15.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 79
in the tabernacles of the sinners, who here have your consolation.
And there is the voice of salvation, not of rejoicing, in the taber-
nacles of the penitent. And there is a third voice, neither of re-
joicing nor of salvation, in the tabernacles of the damned. And
there is a fourth voice of both rejoicing and salvation in the taber-
nacles of the saved. In the same way discuss: "I have done
judgment and justice."1 Some do judgment and not justice; others,
the opposite; some, both; others, neither. Or this: "I will sing
So
of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing." 2
discuss other themes, almost infinite in number.
The third kind of expansion can be made through the prop-
erties of things. A sermon can be prolonged and amplified through
the properties of things with reference to the praises of the conduct
of someone. For example, in the Psalms it is written: "God, thy
God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."
This may be discussed as follows. Grace is conveniently denoted
by oil, for oil has a sanative virtue. Thus Grace cures the wounds
of the soul by destroying sins. This method the Saviour used (Matt.
xxii and Mark xii). In the parable of the husbandmen who slew
the heir, this way was also used; and by the prophet Nathan,5 and
in Romans xii. Let punishment be administered them whom the
oil of Grace does not avail. Similarly, "As the lily among thorns," 6
for a lily is white and fragrant, whereas to man a thorn is such
and such. Such exposition can be made on both good things and
、evil—for instance of evil things, hypocrites and man.
4
Fourthly, a sermon is expanded through a multiplication of ex-
planations. If the passage has a number of meanings, the preacher
should examine how through them the sermon can be expanded. It
should be noted that these meanings are fourfold, and that the
Old Testament constitutes a figurative outline of the New, because
the New Testament is explained of itself.
(1) According to the historical or literal sense. Of it Jerome
speaks. It is the simple explanation of the words, as when we
explain a thing as it was seen or done. In the Gesta Romanorum
¹ Ps. cxix, 121.
2 Ps. ci, I.
3
Ps. xlv, 7.
"Matt. xxi.
II Sam. xii.
6
Song of Sol. ii, 2.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
A
it is said: "David ruled in Jerusalem." Following that sense, we
explain according as the words sound.
(2) According to the tropological or moral sense. Of it
Gregory speaks. We use this sense when we speak of a matter
from the moral point of view, looking to instruction or correction of
morals. We use it mystically or openly. Mystically, as: "Let thy
garments be always white," that is, at all times let thy deeds be
clean. Openly, as: "John, my little son, aspire to the name of son
not only by word and tongue, but also by deed and truth." Or we
explain tropologically when we convert what has been done into
what should be done, as: "Just as David conquered Goliath, so
ought humility to conquer pride." In another way this sense is
the moral sense, because it regards the habits of men, to wit, virtues.
and vices. In the use of the tropological or moral sense, the ways
of the world should be introduced, vices dissuaded against, and
habits corrected, and the conclusion ought to be made with the
authority from which the theme has derived. There are three parts
of men: the spiritual, the noble, and the vulgar. Hence correction
should be made one way in regard to the spiritual, and otherwise
in regard to the noble.
sense.
(3) A sermon can be expanded according to the allegorical
About it Ambrose speaks. Exposition by the allegorical
sense is exposition by a sense other than the literal one. David
reigns in Jerusalem, means that Christ, who is signified through
David, reigns in Jerusalem, that is, in the Church Militant. In the
use of this sense, exemplification should always be made by a
simile, as when there is introduced the life of Christ, the Blessed
Virgin, or another Saint. Always their virtues are wanting in us.
So we should attempt to act like to them. Since every act of Christ
is our instruction, and since, likewise, whatever good the Saints.
have done and whatever ill have borne, have been entirely for our
improvement and example, let us follow their footsteps.
sense.
(4) A sermon can be expanded according to the anagogical
It is the anagogical sense when we speak of Those on High,
mystically or openly. Mystically, as: "Blessed are they that wash
their gowns in the blood of the Lamb that they may have right to
the tree of life." 2 That is, Blesssed are they who purify their
¹ Eccles. ix, 8.
2 Vulg. Rev. xxii, 14.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 81
thoughts so that they may see Jesus Christ, who says: "I am the
way, the truth, and the life."1 Openly, as in saying: "Blesssed are
they of clean heart, since they see God." With this sense the minds
of the hearers are to be stirred and exhorted to the contemplation
of heavenly things. Make the conclusion with the authority from
which the theme derived.
Fifthly, a sermon is expanded through analogies and natural
truths. For illustration, posited that in the theme or in some other
authority of the sermon the discussion is upon the love of God,
why God is to be loved. Then the preacher can expand his
sermon through some natural truth like the following. It is natural
for every creature to love its parents. How much the more ought
we to love God, from Whom it becomes natural for us to love our
parents. Then a fortiori, we should love Him from Whom our
parents and we come. Amplification of the sermon can be accom-
plished also through analogies. For example, posited that in some
part of the sermon the discussion is upon the love of kin and the
providing for them. Then I can make an analogy with irrational
beings, let us say, sows. When one sow squeals, all rush together
for mutual aid. If irrational animals act thus, then a fortiori,
we rational beings ought to provide for and help our kin in the
time of necessity. So in a like manner can a sermon be expanded
by other analogies.
Sixthly, the sermon is expanded through marking of an oppo-
site, to wit, correction.
Let the marking of an opposite be used when some people act
in a way contrary to that in which a thing should rightly be done.
The Lord God, on account of His Goodness, which He reveals
to us in creation, revocation, and redemption, is to us like a good
father to his sons, in that He provides for us in all necessary things,
and recalls us to Himself through many and diverse happenings, so
that we can approach to Him and possess eternal life. This He
does not for His own sake, since He is sufficient unto Himself, but
from pure goodness. For this reason deservedly should the acts
of Grace be performed. Nothing displeases the Lord God more.
than ingratitude. Where there is ingratitude, Grace does not find
or footing, because ingratitude dissipates merit, destroys
access
1
¹ John xiv, 6.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
rewards, dries the fount of Divine pity, and obstructs the days of
Grace.
The opposite meaning is in the form of correction. It should
be used in every sermon in order that evils committed may not be
deemed other than evil, and not be defended as though they were
lawful.
Two principles through which a sermon can be expanded apply
in the marking of an opposite: confirmation and refutation.
In confirmation there should be mentioned the extrinsic utility
which accrues to the possessor of a thing, or which can accrue if
the thing is good in itself. If the thing is bad, the utility which
accrues to its opposite should be mentioned, to wit, by setting forth.
various virtues and aptitudes for good works. But in the contrary
method of refutation, there should be set forth the evil losses which
follow or can follow the possessor of a thing, or follow the thing,
if it is evil in itself. But if it is a good thing, what will follow its
opposite should be declared; to wit, the various inclinations to evil
and the different vices caused by evil in a man. Finally, conclude
by explaining how good or how bad the things become and which
of them are the things by which people may be rendered blamable
or praiseworthy.
Seventhly, the sermon is expanded through comparisons.
1
Expansion of sermons by comparisons occurs when an adjective
is used in some authority. Then it of itself can become a discourse
through its positive, comparative, and superlative, and conversely,
from its superlative to the other grades of comparison. For ex-
ample, the Psalmist writes: "Thou art great and doest wondrous
things." It may be discussed as follows. Great has God ap-
peared in the creation of things, greater in the re-creation of man,
but greatest in the glorification of the Saints. In Matthew xix,²
it is written: "He that delivered me unto thee hath the greater
sin." Continue as follows. Judas was guilty of a great sin, because
from greed he coveted a great reward; of a greater sin, because he
betrayed his Master; of the greatest sin, because he despaired of
the mercy of God.
2
Note, too, an example from the superlative: Be ye imitators.
of God, because ye are dear on account of the image of creation,
1
¹ Ps. lxxxvi, 10.
Wrong reference. John xix, 11.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 83
"1
dearer on account of the reward of redemption, dearest on account
of the inheritance of Heavenly Bliss. So on Ephesians ii, 4: "But
God, who is rich in mercy, with His great love for which He loved
us," say: "The Charity of God was great for us in creation,
greater in guidance, greatest in redemption. But it will be ex-
ceeding in glorification." Similarly, on the Psalmist's: "Gird thy
sword upon thy thigh, O most Mighty," the discourse may run
like the following. They girt themselves, mighty in guarding their
husbands, more mighty as continent widows, most mighty as con-
tinent virgins. Likewise, Wisdom xxxix: 2 "But mighty men shall
be searched out mightily." Thus the mightier more mightily, the
mightiest most mightily, and so on. Also Galatians vi, 10: "As we
have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.' So do
good to subordinates, peers, and superiors. And many things of this
kind.
""
In the same fashion the discourse can be developed with regard
to different things. Take for example Romans xxiii: "These are
the names of the heroes of David. Seated in the seat, the wisest
captain among three," and so forth. Declare who the wise are-
they who have experience; the wiser, they who have wisdom in
things human; the wisest, they who have wisdom in things divine.
So the discourse can be carried on through various kinds of recep-
tion, as with: "Then took he (Simon) him up in his arms.
Discuss it thus. Simon received Him into his arms; Mary con-
ceived Him in the womb; Martha received Him into her home; the
Father received Him into Heaven. In the second book of Matthew 5
it is written: "And show yourselves men in behalf of the law."
Some strive in behalf of the understanding of God through contem-
plation, some through anxious care, some through 'emulation. Ob-
serve how much finer this method is in Latin than in the vulgar
tongue.
6
The sermon can also be developed through various aspects.
For instance in John viii, 26, it is written: "I have many things to
say to and judge of you." Christ speaks to us as a judge, as an
xlv, 3.
1
2
Actually vi, 6.
3
Wrong reference. Vulg. II Reg. xxiii, 8.
* Luke ii, 28.
5
6
Wrong reference. I Mac. ii, 68.
I have omitted a phrase here: Quidam per simultationem contemnunt.
Its inclusion violates sense.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
advocate. He speaks in us as an inspirer. He speaks with us
as a learned man. And the like. In this method things which are
"for an end" are often multiplied. For illustration, "for that end"
which is remaining in sin, different people conduct themselves dif-
ferently. Some propose to remove the sin. Some seem partly to
confess their sins, and partly not. Some beware of committing sins
but do no penance for sins committed. Some repent of having com-
mitted sins but do not beware of committing sin. Take up the
authority of Romans vi, 1: "What shall we say then?
Shall we
continue in sin that grace may abound?" Then say: some remain in
sin, and so forth.
Eighthly, the sermon is expanded through interpretation of a
name. For example, when a name in some authority needs interpre-
tation, this can be so accomplished that the material will be better
understood and received. Just as God is explained as giving eternal
life to His own, so Israel is interpreted as man seeing God, or as a
prince or hero with God. Whoever wishes to expand a sermon
through this means assumes the interpretation which he sees is useful
for achieving his end. If in some authority this name, Israel,
appears, and the preacher is preaching on bravery, let him supply
a meaning to some Saint in accordance with this interpretation,
especially if he uses definition or description. Take the passage:
"Blessed are they that dwell in thy House, O Lord!" 1 The definition
of blesssedness is made the subject, as follows: "Blessedness is the
state of all good congregations." Then show to whom in the House
of Heaven blessedness is bestowed-to him in whose vision there is
truth. Then, the state of blessedness is brought about through the
fruition of supreme goodness. Finally, the desire for all wishing and
yearning will be calmed. Thus the sermon is expanded through
interpretation and definition.
Ninthly, the sermon is expanded through a multiplication of
synonyms, particularly when the matter in hand is reproving, lauda-
tory, or exhortative. The reproving, thus: "It is the word of
blesssed Job 2 that man that is born of woman is of few days and
full of trouble." Amplify by synonyms. Man is filled with woes.
in that he is oppressed with cares, surrounded by worries, irritated
by adversity, choked by perils, and the like.
1 ¹ Ps. 1xxxiv, 4.
2 xiv, I.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 85
Also so expand in eulogy: "Truly was he a light to the erring,
a torch to the unknowing, a lamp to the wandering." Or if in
someone's praise we speak of virtue, we may say: "This virtue
decorates the mind, adorns the soul, honors conversion, and mag-
nifies Grace."
Likewise in exhorting to emulation, our ancestors are thus used
for exemplification: "Let us imitate the good Saints, let us follow
the righteous, let us consider the examples of our fathers." This
use is clear in the passage of the Psalms: "O come, let us sing unto
the Lord, let us make a joyful noise." 1 A similar expression of
good will is: "We praise you and glorify you," 2 and the like.
If you commit to memory, retain, and resort frequently to, the
nine ways just treated, you will find no themes, or very few, in
which two or three or more of the methods do not apply. You
should select that method which is most convenient to time, place,
and audience. "Let us think of these circumstances," says the
Apostle to Timothy. All divinely inspired Scripture is useful for
teaching, arguing, educating, and arresting injustice, so that man is
perfected by instruction in every good work of God.
Now finally we must see what precautions the foresighted
preacher should maintain in the pulpit.
First precaution: No preacher should fear to show reverence
of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Glorious Virgin Mary, His
Mother. Thus, for example, do the ambassadors and the household
of princes make salutation by saying: "Our Master and Glorious
Prince," and bowing. Also thus do the people of the court. And
when the canons of churches and cathedrals receive papal bulls, they
lay down their birettas and reverently kiss the feet of the Most
Holy. For much greater reason, and a fortiori, should we show
reverence to our Lord, Jesus Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, and
the Glorious Virgin, His Mother.
Second precaution: A preacher should never utter hastily the
name of God, the Blessed Virgin, or another Saint, without using
an adjective. Thus, say: "Our Lord, Jesus Christ, His Glorious
Mother, the Virgin Mary," and so forth.
1
XCV, I.
2 Cf. Luke ii, 20.
This does not appear in the Vulgate.
86
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Third precaution: The preacher should never conduct himself
frivolously or presumptuously in the pulpit, as, for example, with
reference to the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, and the like.
Some people say she was conceived in original sin, some the con-
trary. On this subject it must be said that it better befits the honor
and praise of the Glorious Virgin piously to believe she was not
conceived in such sin, than to defend her frivolously. Since every-
thing is possible with God, it was possible for Him to choose the
Holy and Immaculate Womb in which He wished to be incarnated.
Scholars may often disagree on questions which relate to man, in
which case it is not contrary to faith. But where it is a matter of
faith, no one disagrees with another.
Fourth precaution: When the preacher gives occasion for doubts
and questionings in the pulpit, he should not retire without solving
the point. For the people, being simple, and ignorant how to dis-
tinguish ordinary writings from Sacred Scripture, may doubt, and
even commit offense. So they should by no means be left unsatisfied.
Therefore let the preacher solve the point, or rather not propose it.
Fifth precaution: He should take extreme care to express the
last syllable of each utterance as clearly and completely and fitly
as the first, that is, he should end a phrase as vigorously as he
begins it. In this way the matter becomes more understandable.
You will perceive this more clearly in the ensuing precaution.
Sixth precaution: The preacher should speak complete words,
intelligibly, and slowly. And especially he should not repeat one
thing two or three times, or change the words. Multiplying words.
thus does not sound well; rather it often creates tedium and laughter
in the hearers, unless for the sake of better impressing difficult or
unusual material, it is at times necessary to reiterate or repeat.
Seventh precaution: The preacher should conduct himself and
speak with as great gravity as he should have in speaking of Christ
in His presence, and in that of other princes and kings. So the
preacher should show love, for in it do the guidance and care of
souls through preaching consist. He should show love in the pres-
ence of the simple as in the presence of princes. Indeed with the
sheep intrusted to him, the care of souls is equal, since a prince's
soul is no better than a pauper's. Hence the preacher should show
himself quite solicitous and diligent in caring for God's souls. From
concern of this sort great merit accrues to him.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 87
Eighth precaution: Above all, the preacher should beware of
passing on too hastily to things beyond-as is the spirit compelling
men to haste. It impedes the speaker and confounds the gravity
and meaning of the discourse.
The ninth precaution is restraint in looking about. This is very
important in preaching, because objects disturb the senses, and
through an object the natural memory is scattered and thus the order
of memory confused.
Tenth precaution: That in grave matters of correction, the
preacher should not resort to specific allusion. As a wounded horse
does not willingly permit touching his wound, so, by nature, sinners
dread being corrected, since every virtue is natural and every vice is
against nature, according to the Blessed Bernard. Everyone shrinks
from a fault committed, because nature, from which it is at variance,
by ordination of God attests what evil should not be done. So,
conversely, no one shrinks from virtue. Therefore every virtue is
natural and every vice unnatural. In this connection the preacher
should also note that correction has a threefold state. The correc-
tion of the spiritual is one thing, that of the noble another, that of
the common still another.
Eleventh precaution: The preacher should carefully avoid pro-
lixity in a sermon, lest the people weary and henceforth shun other
sermons. Wherefore the preacher should zealously collect more
useful and fruitful material, and reduce it to a brief and compendious.
summary, in order that the people may be better able to remember
it when he ends. If the preacher leaves them, so to speak, unsated,
quite willingly will they hear more of the same substance. If any
of his material remains unsaid, let it be for the next ensuing Holy
Day. So let the preacher watch his hour, and when it is over, cease
his sermon.
Twelfth precaution: In the method of using the vulgar tongue,
the preacher should not shackle himself to its difficulties, as for
example, that of translating the words in the same order and
separately, as they stand in the Latin. Let him translate in a
better and clearer way. He must at times help his material, that is,
express it otherwise than through the exact order of the words.
Often he must use circumlocution. Take the passage which defines
male as that "that openeth the matrix." 1 It is not fitting thus
1 Exod. xiii, 15.
88
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
grossly to express the female organ or gate of birth. And so with
other matters concerning women.
In bringing to an end the materials prescribed, dear brethren,
to earn eternal life the Word of God is not enough, unless each
studies to fill his mind therewith, in order to be able to escape the
horrible peril of the unprofitable servant.¹ Our Saviour orders him
to be cast into the outer darkness with hands and feet bound. For
a servant who knows the will of his Master and does not fulfil it,
will be flogged with many blows. Through the holy apostles and
other learned men the Lord God gave us the Sacred Scriptures, in
which He teaches us His Will and the True Way by which we can
come into the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ in the
Gospels instructs us like a schoolmaster how to arrive at eternal
life. Therefore let us in deed fulfil what we are shown we must
do and emulate.
This is the end of the Art and True Method of Preaching, com-
posed by St. Thomas Aquinas, and illustrated by the works of other
Holy Doctors. If one diligently studies it, surely he will be great
in the art.
It remains only to form a tree, together with a declaration of its
meaning. Preaching is like a real tree. As a real tree develops from
root to trunk, and the trunk grows into main branches, and the
main branches multiply into other branches, so in preaching the
theme develops into the protheme or prelocution as root into trunk.
Then the prelocution or protheme grows into the principal divi-
sions of the theme as the trunk into the main branches. And the
principal branches should, beyond, multiply into secondary divisions,
that is, subdivisions and subdistinctions, and finally expand as the
example in the tree below shows. Its theme is divided into three
parts; each part is divided into three members; each member can be
amplified by several of the nine methods above described, as will
stand out more clearly on the tree below.
Now note that the method of preaching is threefold.
In the first kind, the preacher takes up his theme, says the
prayer, and proceeds to the consummation of his sermon. The first
1 Matt. xxv, 30.
A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING 89
method then is by explaining the Gospel. It is the ancient method,
well exemplified by the homilies of Gregory and other holy doctors.
After the exposition of the Gospel, the preacher should advance to
the division and subdivision of his theme and the main substance
of his sermon. Such, in effect, is the whole sermon. Then he
should make invocation of the Holy Spirit, since without divine
help he could not express such lofty thoughts. And he implores the
Virgin Mary by the Salutantes together with the Ave Maria, or
through some other invocation. This method is the lay, popular,
or beautiful method. The decrees prescribe the elucidation of the
Gospel to the humble on Sundays.
In the second method, the preacher pronounces the theme, says
the prayer, and proceeds to the development of his sermon-to the
division, or to the distinction, when there is no division of the theme.
For example, take this theme on the dead, "O death, how bitter is
the remembrance of thee." The preacher would subjoin: "We
should know the remembrance of death is bitter to lovers of the
world for three reasons: first, on account of the world which they
leave; secondly, on account of the future punishment they receive;
thirdly, on account of the delights of the flesh which they lose."
See how it advances to distinction when no division develops from
the theme. This method is the light and simple method. No pre-
locution is made from the theme; the exposition of the Gospel is not
introduced; nor is there a division of the words of the theme.
The third method is our plan. First the preacher should pro-
nounce his theme in Latin in a low voice, then introduce one prayer
in the vulgar tongue, to wit: "May Our Lord, Jesus Christ, give to
men and living things Grace and mercy, to His church peace, and to
us sinners after this life eternal life." Now he should resume his
theme, using the vulgar tongue for expression. And after this he
can draw or elicit one prelocution through similes, moralizations,
proverbs, or natural truths, or sometimes even by adducing definite
authorities. Another name for the prelocution is the protheme, be-
cause it is expressed before the division of the theme and the main
substance of the sermon. Mark that in the prelocution or protheme
there should be no prolixity, so that the theme with its chief material
of the sermon can have place for expression. When the prelocution
has been premised, resume the theme and its division. After this
comes the invocation of the Holy Spirit, just as above. Next comes
90
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the treatment of the members in order: first, the first main part
of the theme with its divisions; next, the second main part of the
theme with its divisions; and so with the third. And when all the
members, main and subordinate, have been discussed, the preacher
can make a practical recapitulation of his sermon, so that if they
have neglected the beginning, the people may know on what the
sermon and its conclusions are based. Thus, with other considera-
tions, the material of the sermon can be better grasped.
This method is the more common one among modern preachers
and is as useful to intelligent preachers as to hearers. As was
above mentioned, an example of it appears in the tree below.
Unfortunately, the tree, or diagrammatic chart of contents, with
which the Tractate ends, is missing from the Cornell
University copy of the text.
F
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
ROBERT HANNAH
I
RANCIS BACON'S is a name familiar to students of history,
law, philosophy, literature, science, and politics. It is no
exaggeration to state that few men ever lived possessed of
such various titles to the respect and admiration of posterity. For
Bacon was a distinguished lawyer, philosopher, scientist, statesman,
and man of letters.
The essayist who ventures to write of Lord Bacon must ever
remember that he is only a borrower. His work can be to a very
small extent the product of original research. James Spedding finally
established the text of Bacon's works, and gave us a monumental
biography;¹ his successors must be content for the most part to act
as commentators on the results of his labors. But it is a wide field
that the office of commentator opens to the Baconian student and
investigator. There are many labyrinths in Spedding's vast store-
house which warrant and entice further investigation.
Before Spedding published his biography of Francis Bacon, and
in the years which have intervened since, the man and his works
have received the attention of critics and scholars the world over.
Certain phases of his life have been made the subject of special
studies; and the Essays, the Advancement of Learning, and many
others of his separate works have been edited and reëdited with
varying degrees of thoroughness. Much that is informing has been
recorded on Bacon as a philosopher, a statesman, a scientist, a lawyer,
an essayist.
In the whole body of judgments passed upon the life and achieve-
ments of a distinguished man, it frequently happens that some quality
1
The Works of Francis Bacon, collected and edited by James Spedding,
R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, Boston, 1860-64. For Spedding's The Life
and the Letters, I have used the London edition (included in The Works)
assigned to the same editors, 1862-74.
91
92
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING.
1
in his work and character is consistently but unduly emphasized,
while other equally interesting attributes are ignored almost com-
pletely. Francis Bacon is among the geniuses who have suffered
this fate. Bacon's moral character is not one of the neglected aspects
of the man. His morals have been written about, again and again.
His weaknesses of character stirred the periodical writers of the
nineteenth century, who magnified out of all proportion the moral
side of Bacon's life and activities. In the hands of Macaulay ¹ and
other essayists the controversy was carried on; Bacon became either
a saint or a sinner, for these critics seemed to find no happy medium.
As a consequence, many of Bacon's acts have been criticized on a
moral rather than a political basis. It is true that morals and politics
cannot be entirely separated in considering a figure like Francis
Bacon, but the biographers and critics have rather tended to argue
the moral issues involved in terms of the ethics of their own times,
than to comprehend Bacon's public life in relation to the standards
and customs of his day. The reason is suggested in an essay of
M. André Chevrillon's 2 on Shakespeare: Of Shakespeare we know
hardly anything, for his person has disappeared in his work; this
almost complete eclipse of the individual counts for a good deal in
the national worship of the poet. A hero is more easily defined when
nothing remains of his human personality, and his life work also
becomes more unaccountable. If this be true of Shakespeare, cer-
tainly the reverse is found in Lord Bacon's case. It would seem
that too much has been passed on to us about Bacon: too many
fables about his character; too much that has been colored by
In Bacon's
prejudice, or by a failure to understand the facts.
case the man has not been lost in the works; the works have tended
to be lost in the man.
Because Bacon's moral character has received undue consideration
from his biographers and critics, other aspects of his career have not
been tendered the particular care which they deserve. What, for
example, is known about Bacon the political orator? This question
has been neglected by many commentators, and those who have
touched upon it at all have dismissed the problem in a word or two.
Francis Bacon took an active part in the political life of the con-
¹Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Montague, London, 1903, II, 177-235.
2 "Shakespeare and the English Soul," an essay, reprinted in Three Studies
in English Literature, New York, 1923.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 93
cluding years of Elizabeth's reign, and became one of the most
prominent members of Parliament during the first quarter of the
seventeenth century. Historians who have written of this period
testify to Bacon's ability as a political speaker. Naturally, these
writers¹ are concerned primarily with the historical significance of
the orations, which are used as illustrative data in the story of the
struggle for parliamentary reform, and of other vital movements
of that time. But though the historian recognizes that Bacon's
speeches were notable factors in molding the political events of his
day, he is interested only in their causes and effects; he says little
of their rhetorical qualities; he barely mentions their author as
orator and debater per se.
Those of his own works in science and philosophy for which
Bacon had the highest regard he either wrote in Latin, or had
translated into "the universal language." For his compositions in
his native tongue he expressed little less than contempt.2 All that
Bacon thought best in his scientific researches is now almost unani-
mously rejected as worthless for our present-day uses. It is not too
bold to say that the Latin works upon which he rested his fame
with future ages, will very shortly be little more than waste paper.
One voices the opinion of even the most sympathetic of Bacon's
critics and biographers when he asserts that it will be the Advance-
ment of Learning, the English Essays, and the professional writ-
ings, legal and political, that will sustain his reputation as a master
of wisdom and of style as long as the English language shall last.
Whatever Bacon may have thought of the literary or rhetorical
value of his own speeches, we know that he took care to preserve
them for the reading public. Copies of the speeches, written and
corrected in Bacon's own hand, have come down to us. Most of
the speeches accredited to him are pronounced genuine by Spedding.³
It is an interesting fact that Bacon not only preserved his own
¹F. L. von Ranke, A History of England, Oxford, 1875, I, 441, 455-9,
501; S. R. Gardiner, A History of England from the Accession of James
I to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke, 1603-1616, London, 1863 (in-
numerable references to Bacon's speeches); A. F. Pollard, The History of
England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth,
1547-1603, London, 1910; F. C. Montague, The History of England from the
Accession of James I to the Restoration, 1603-1660, London, 1907; G. M.
Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, London, 1922. See also J. R.
Green, History of the English_People, London and New York, 1900-3; A.
D. Innes, England under the Tudors, London, 1905.
Innes, England under the Tudors, p. 404.
'Spedding, Letters, III, v-vi.
94
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
speeches, but was sufficiently interested in other orators of the
House of Commons to keep a record of their utterances.¹
No one has supplied anything like a complete discussion of
Bacon as a political speaker. Again and again, modern critics
assure us that he possessed the power to sway audiences. In classi-
fying Bacon's works, Steeves expresses what has been the general
attitude towards the speeches:
Many speeches and legal papers come under this heading [Professional
Works], but the consideration of these must be left until the more important
literary works have our attention."
Steeves's consideration of the speeches is brief and superficial. Other
writers dismiss the subject of Bacon as speaker by telling us that
he was "an orator of approved eloquence," or that "to his literary
studies and attainments, he added a reputation as a statesman and
orator," or that he was foremost among all the orators of his day.³
In very few instances do the recent commentators have anything
more definite or informing on Bacon's speeches, or on his method
of preparing and delivering them. They admit that he was an
eloquent orator, and when this statement is expanded, the testimony
employed takes the form of the celebrated commendation from his
friend Ben Jonson:
There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity
in his speaking; his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was
nobly censorious. No man
ever spake more neatly, more presly, more
weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No
member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. He commanded
where he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. No
man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man who
heard him was lest he should make an end.*
•
With this quotation, most of the commentators make an end.
The same is true of the lesser biographers. Even Spedding, in his
1
5
¹ An interesting report of one of Salisbury's speeches was made by Bacon:
Spedding, Letters, IV, 228 ff. For Bacon's reports of speeches, found in the
Commons' Journals, see Spedding, Letters, III, 345.
2 G. Walter Steeves, Francis Bacon, London, 1910, p. 54.
³ F. E. Schelling, English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare,
New York, 1910, p. 337; Edward Everett, North American Review, XVÍ
(1823), 301; J. J. Jusserand, Literary History of the English People,
London, 1909, II, 514.
4
5
Ben Jonson, Timber or Discoveries, ed. Schelling, Boston, 1892, p. 30.
John, Lord Campbell, Life of Lord Bacon, London, 1853; Charles de
Remusat, Bacon, sa Vie, son Temps, et son Influence jusqu'à nos Jours,
Paris, 1857; W. Hepworth Dixon, Personal History of Lord Bacon, Boston,
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
95
exhaustive biography, gives no connected account of Bacon's elo-
quence, though he has a number of scattered comments on the
speeches and the speaking. Thus, when Bacon's name is mentioned,
one usually thinks of the author of the Advancement of Learning
and the Essays, not of the learned counsel, the astute politician,
the discerning maker of speeches in Parliament. The student is
left in the realm of speculation as to why Ben Jonson wrote so
enthusiastically of Bacon's oratory. Why did Bacon have this
fascination for his hearers? Were his speeches unique in their
themes, structure, or content? In short, why was Bacon a great
political orator? This is the question of the present essay.
Every orator must be studied in relation not only to the events
but to the civilization of his time. In order to interpret more
readily the rhetorical character of Bacon's speeches in Parliament,
it may be well to mention, if only in a cursory manner, something
of their general historical background. The spirit of the age in
which Bacon was born has been described as one of aspiration:
It was an "experiencing" age. It loved sensation with the greediness of
childhood; it intoxicated itself with Rabelais and Titian, with the gold of
Peru and with the spices of the Orient. It was a daring age. Men stood
bravely with Luther for spiritual liberty, or they gave their lives with
Magellan to compass the earth or with Bruno to span the heavens. It was
an age of aspiration. It dreamed with Erasmus of the time when men should
be Christ-like, or with More of the place where they should be just; or
with Michelangelo it pondered the meaning of sorrow, or with Montaigne it
stored up daily wisdom. And of this time, bone of its bone and flesh of its
flesh, was born the world's supreme poet with an eye to see the deepest and
a tongue to tell the most of the human heart. Truly such a generation was
not a poor, nor a backward one. Rather it was great in what it achieved,
sublime in what it dreamed; abounding in ripe wisdom and in heroic deeds;
full of light and of beauty and of life!¹
Such a picture stirs the imagination, conveys something of the fire
and pulsating life of the sixteenth century.
What was the tenor of English political life during Bacon's youth,
and his early years as a parliamentarian? Historians emphasize the
absolutism of the Tudor sovereigns, their independence of Parlia-
ment, their direct control of the nation; and they point out that
1861; J. F. Foard, The Life and Correspondence of Francis Bacon, London,
1861; R. W. Church, Life of Bacon, New York, 1884; E. A. Abbott,
Francis Bacon, London, 1885; John Nichol, Francis Bacon, His Life and
Philosophy, Philadelphia, 1888.
1
¹ Preserved Smith, The Age of the Reformation, New York, 1920, p. 698.
96
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the practice of absolutism, though not the theory of divine-right
monarchy, had been gaining ground ever since the accession of
Henry VII in 1485. Elizabeth had been the reigning sovereign for
over a quarter of a century when Francis Bacon first became a
member of the House of Commons. The Queen, even as the other
Tudor monarchs, was popular with the rapidly increasing and
powerful middle class. Occasionally, she humored the notions and
fancies of her people; England was enjoying a period of unusual
prosperity and national greatness; during her reign the English
seamen drove back the Spanish Armada. A generous degree of
calm and harmony prevailed in the world of politics, for Elizabeth
was sufficiently strong to overcome sedition and other offences
against the state. In 1576-just eight years before Bacon threw
himself actively into the combat of the political field-Elizabeth's
anger had been aroused by the utterances of one of her subjects.
Peter Wentworth, a member of the Lower House, had delivered
one of the earliest speeches recorded in behalf of the liberties of
Parliament and had been sent to the Tower. But such sentiments
were rarely expressed in an environment where they might reach
the ears of her Majesty.
Notwithstanding the tradition of absolutism which had flourished
for more than a hundred years, England became in the seventeenth
century the scene of a long and bitter contest. On one side were
arrayed the forces of the king, the champions of the royal preroga-
tive; while opposing them were the rapidly growing parliamentary
factions. This is well explained by Professor Hayes:
The conflict between Parliament and the king, which had been avoided
by the tactful Tudors, soon began in earnest when James I ascended the
throne in 1603, with his exaggerated notion of his own authority. James I
was an extravagant monarch, and needed parliamentary subsidies, yet his own
pedantic principles prevented him from humoring Parliament in any dream
of power. The inevitable result was a conflict for political supremacy be-
tween Parliament and king. When Parliament refused him money, James
resorted to imposition of customs duties, grants of monopolies, sale of
peerages, and the solicitation of "benevolences" (forced loans). Parliament
promptly protested against such practices, as well as against his foreign
and religious policies and against his absolute control of the appointment and
operation of the judiciary. Parliament's protests only increased the wrath
of the king.¹
¹C. J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, New
York, 1921, I, 267.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
97
An age of aspiration; a period of monarchical absolutism; a
populace including a powerful and wealthy middle class; and, finally,
a vigorous and protracted conflict between the sovereign and his
parliament here is presented a glimpse of the historical background
of the England into which Bacon was born, lived, and performed
his duties as a statesman, and exerted his influence as an eminent
political orator.
One of the sources of Elizabeth's strength as a monarch lay in
her ability to use not only nobles but commons as well in her gov-
ernment.¹ Elizabeth's closing years, and the first half-century of
the Stuart régime, are remarkable for the birth of parliamentary
personalities.
Indomitable audacity and an eminently practical shrewdness were charac-
teristic of the men who were the hand and heart of England. Other qual-
ities were needed for the brains which had to direct her policy; the patient
common sense of Burghley, the keen penetration of Walsingham, the solid
shrewdness of Nicholas Bacon, vir pietate gravis. The craftiness of the
younger Cecil . . . marks a lower type of politician; not rare perhaps in Eliza-
beth's time, but not generally characteristic among her servants.
2
These were the political figures who dominated the public life of
England during Bacon's youth. In 1548 Burghley entered the arena
as secretary to Somerset, and his service to the nation lasted for
half a century. Especially distinguished was that part of his career
from 1572 until his death in 1598, when he acted as the Queen's
Lord High Treasurer. To exterminate Roman Catholicism was one
of the central aims of Burghley's service to Elizabeth. When the
Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, he collaborated with the
Queen in their policy, not to destroy, but rather to humiliate the
Spanish power in Europe; for it was Burghley's purpose to have
Spain continue as a factor in continental affairs, and thus to act as
a counterpoise to France. Never did Burghley dominate Elizabeth;
still, to the end of his life he remained her most trusted adviser.
The Queen was confident that her minister's wisdom and loyalty,
coupled with her own dexterity, would save the English nation from
disaster.
Peace was his [Burghley's] object, and, if possible, the maintenance of the
old Spanish alliance. For he always dreaded and distrusted France; and so
in the latter part of the reign he is always the drag on the coach, and the
Innes, England under the Tudors, pp. 5-6.
1
2
Ibid., p. 426.
·98
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
enemy of the "rising generation," which came to regard him as a cynical old
fogey.¹
Another important personality of Bacon's early life was Sir
Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State from 1573 to 1590.
Walsingham was instrumental in bringing about the trial and execu-
tion of Mary Queen of Scots. He was an ardent Puritan, who did
much to encourage colonization in America.
Walsingham-a sincere Puritan, a man who never soiled his hands for
private gain, who by his outspoken opposition to her political double-dealing
provoked Elizabeth's anger more frequently than any other of her many
outspoken advisers, of whom more than any other statesman of the day it
might be said that he loved righteousness and hated iniquity-had yet the
fault of the Puritan character, a certain remorselessness in dealing with
the servants of the Scarlet Woman. . . . He more than any one else approved
and fostered the revival of the illegal application of torture as a means of
extorting information from recalcitrant prisoners. In this iniquity, however,
it is fair to recognize that the rack and the boot were not employed wan-
tonly but, as it would seem, honestly: with the single intention of obtaining
true information for the unravelment of plots which endangered the public
weal, and only on persons who were known to possess that information.²
Bacon's own father must have exerted a permanent effect on
his son's public career. Sir Nicholas Bacon was a statesman who
was known for his shrewdness and sagacity. He was the most
prominent member of Elizabeth's first Parliament, and held the high
post of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal from 1558 to his death
in 1579. His influence in the government was second only to that of
Burghley. Queen Elizabeth frequently visited him at his mansion
at Gorhambury; and it is said that "she regarded him as the oracle.
of the laws, and, also, he amused her by many a witty word."
Mention has been made of Sir Robert Cecil, later Earl of
Salisbury. Scarcely can it be said that he is to be included as
one of the outstanding political personages of Bacon's youth. A
cousin to Francis Bacon, he was some four years his junior. As
the younger son of Lord Burghley, he was trained by his father
for the business of politics and diplomacy, becoming Secretary of
State in 1596. He succeeded his father as chief adviser to Queen
Elizabeth, and early won the confidence of James the First. His
¹ C. R. L. Fletcher, An Introductory History of England, London, 1912,
II, 146.
2 Innes, England under the Tudors, pp. 324-5.
³ Von Ranke, History of England, I, 338.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
99
rapid and almost premature rise as a parliamentary personality and
a powerful statesman, forms an interesting contrast with the slow
and depressing struggle which Francis Bacon experienced in order
to win a place of distinction and influence in the state. In this
sense, Robert Cecil was a national figure long before his cousin
achieved any substantial recognition from his sovereign.
Though far from great, Robert Cecil was by no means an unworthy man.
Though far from scrupulous, he was absolutely honest to his cause.
In everything he maintained the Elizabethan tradition, hostile to Spain with-
out and to the Catholics within, but desirous of peace and unfavorable to
the Puritans. This had been the school founded by his father, William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, and to this the son would still have adhered though
he had lived to be a hundred.¹
Another man who made his presence felt at this time was Sir
Edward Coke. No study of Bacon's activities as a politician can
be complete without making some mention of this acute, if on
occasions unprincipled, legal mind. Less than ten years Bacon's
senior, Coke owed his phenomenal rise to a position of national
esteem to Burghley, who early looked with favor upon the great
lawyer. In 1592 and 1593 Coke was Speaker of the House of
Commons, and exerted his influence on the side of the Government
in the very debate in which Francis Bacon took the more popular
point of view. This was the question of subsidies, in the session
of 1593. Bacon's speech on this occasion displeased the Queen, and
thus gave to Coke the office of Attorney-General, an appointment
which Bacon had been eager to obtain. This was the first event in
a bitter and lifelong struggle between the two men.
In the early
years of James I's reign, Coke, as Chief Justice of the Court of
Common Pleas, opposed the attempt on the part of the Chuch of
England to free itself of the law of its own ecclesiastical courts.
He attacked the King for his exaggerated notion of the royal
prerogative, and negatived James's demand to legislate by procla-
mations. This battle with the Crown ended in Coke's losing the
Chief Justiceship in 1616. Coke did not drop from public view,
however, for as a member of Parliament, he closed his political
life as a distinguished advocate of the liberties of the House of
Commons.
1
In these brief sketches of Lord Burghley, Walsingham, Sir
Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, pp. 110-11.
100
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Nicholas Bacon, Sir Robert Cecil, and Sir Edward Coke, the
reader will catch a glimpse of the political aims and national spirit
of the great parliamentary personalities of England during Francis
Bacon's youth, and of some of his contemporaries in the Lower
House. One might refer again to the heroic pugnacity of Peter
Wentworth, who championed the cause of parliamentary liberty in
the session of 1576, and who may be thought of as the representative
of a domestic issue which was to increase in importance.
After the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the professions
into which the sons of the nobility and the wealthy upper class
might enter, were increasing in number. In addition to the life
of the soldier, the young noble could prepare himself for the pursuit
of courtier, or a career of diplomacy. Again, the church and the
law attracted men of rank and breeding.
One sign of the break-up of the old medieval castes was the new classifi-
cation of men by calling, or profession. It is true that two of the pro-
fessions, the higher offices in army and church, became appanages of the
nobility, and the other liberal vocations were almost as completely monopo-
lized by the children of the moneyed middle class; nevertheless it is signifi-
cant that there were new roads by which men might rise. No class has
profited more by the evolution of ideas than has the intelligentsia.¹
Francis Bacon was born to unusual opportunities. His father
was a keen lawyer, an ardent supporter of and believer in sound
education, and a man high in the councils of the Queen. His mother
was a woman of exceptional ability and intelligence. She was the
daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, tutor to King Edward the Sixth.
His uncle, Lord Burghley, was the chief minister of the crown.
Dr. Rawley, Bacon's first biographer, has made this observation:
His birth and other capacities qualified him above others of his pro-
fession to have ordinary accesses at court, and to come frequently into the
Queen's eye, who would often grace him with private and free communica-
tion, not only about matters of his profession or business in law, but also
about the arduous affairs of state; from whom she received from time to
time great satisfaction.²
When Sir Nicholas Bacon died in 1579, Francis was compelled
to turn to a profession which would afford him a chance to earn
a living. A young man of eighteen, he was perplexed for the
Preserved Smith, The Age of the Reformation, PP. 492-3.
'Rawley's Life, reprinted in A. S. Cook's edition of Bacon's Advancement
of Learning, Book I, Boston and London, 1904, p. xiv.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
ΙΟΙ
moment.
He had wished to fit himself for the life of a courtier
and diplomat, but lack of financial support necessitated that he
cast this idea aside for the time at least. He might have hoped
that political preferment would be secured for him by the influence
of his powerful uncle and cousin; but the Cecils did little to aid
their kinsman in gaining the good will and bounty of the reigning
monarch. This seems especially strange in the case of a man of
Francis Bacon's intellectual prowess. Burghley may well have
distrusted Bacon for his very affluence of ideas, which, to the
seasoned statesman, may have conveyed the impression of scholastic
pedantry. Bacon always believed that Robert Cecil was envious of
his talents. It is not improbable that the latter shared Burghley's
mental attitude, and regarded his cousin as a visionary.¹ For what-
He set
ever reasons, Bacon had little aid from his relatives.
himself to the practical business of the study of the law. It is clear
from Dr. Rawley's account, that Bacon looked on this as an accessory
to the wider vocation of politics.2 He professed the law, although
his heart and soul were bound up in the affairs of state.
In Francis Bacon were united qualities which rarely assert them-
selves in any single person. He was a true son of the Renaissance;
he longed for power, for adventure, for a wide variety of experience.
There were periods in his life when he seems to have been the typical
student, the enthusiastic investigator, who finds his solace in pure
research. An accomplished scholar, he could write in Latin, French,
and Italian as well as he could in English; and his intellectual
interests were manifold. However, his restless soul could never
have obtained complete satisfaction in the cloister of academic calm
and speculation. He was eager for the truth at all costs; and,
endowed with a glorious intellect, he was confident that knowledge
is power. The relation between the two elements in Bacon's character
has been well expressed by Professor Skemp:
The ultimate aim of his philosophy was to govern Nature; and the gov-
erning temper, fostered by a boyhood passed among statesmen, could not
turn away from practical affairs. "Only the dull are modest," and Bacon
knew his own powers. He wished to use them in the service of his country
and of mankind, but he wanted more than the mere joy of service. His
desire not only for power, but also for the pomp and circumstance of power,
was instinctive and unappeasable.³
1
Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1616, I, 182-3.
Rawley's Life, p. xiii.
A. R. Skemp, Francis Bacon, London, no date, pp. 12-13.
102
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
With this view of Bacon's cast of mind, of his family fortunes,
and of the political life of his day, we may turn to the stages of
his career. In 1584, as a young lawyer, Bacon was first elected a
member of the House of Commons. Altogether, he was elected.
to Parliament eight times, and his career in the Lower House
covered the thirty years between 1584 and 1614-the last nineteen.
years of Elizabeth's reign and the first eleven years of James the
First. Bacon had attained prominence at the bar and in the House
before he rose to important position in the government. His
political preferment he owed to James, who first bestowed a knight-
hood (1603), then made him successively Solicitor-General (1607),
Attorney-General (1613), Keeper of the Great Seal (1617), and
finally Lord High Chancellor and a peer of the realm (1618). And
at various intervals of this busy public life, Bacon published his
works in literature, history, science, and philosophy, as well as
numerous pamphlets and letters on political questions.
It is with but one aspect of this career that we are to concern
ourselves—Bacon's art as a rhetorician: his skill in influencing men
by speech. Professor Mair has written epigrammatically: "Bacon
could well count himself a master in the art of managing men, and
Human Nature and How to Manage It would be a good title for
his book of Essays."1 Bacon did more than speculate on the
mysterious motives that move men; he did more than produce a
textbook in psychology; he was what Carlyle would term an active
practitioner. His mastery over his colleagues in the House, as
committeeman, framer of state papers, skilled speaker and dialec-
tician, was unanimously acknowledged. As testimony we have the
impression made upon a great contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh.
The quotation is taken from Dr. Rawley's Life of Bacon:
I will only set down what I heard Sir Walter Raleigh once speak of him
by way of comparison (whose judgment may well be trusted), That the
Earl of Salisbury [Bacon's cousin, Sir Robert Cecil], was an excellent
speaker, but no good penman; that the Earl of Northampton (the Lord Henry
Howard), was an excellent penman, but no good speaker; but that Sir
Francis Bacon was eminent in both.2
1
¹G. H. Mair, History of English Literature, London and New York,
1911, p. 100.
2
Rawley's Life, p. xvii.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
103
II
Of the speeches which necessarily accompanied such a career
as Francis Bacon's, we have a considerable body of material. The
forensic arguments of which a record survives outnumber the
deliberative; but with the former we are not here directly concerned.
Of the deliberative speeches, it is impossible to say without qualifi-
cation that any survive to us exactly as delivered, for Bacon's
practice in general, and especially in his later years, was to write
out the full speech only after its delivery. This he did either for
his own records or for his friends. The authenticity of the speeches
is vouched for by Spedding, who printed them either from manu-
scripts in Bacon's hand or else from manuscripts bearing corrections
in Bacon's hand. In addition to the speeches which survive in
manuscript, the Parliamentary Journals give fragmentary reports
of a still larger number; these indicate at least the occasions on
which Bacon spoke, and, sometimes, his line of argument. But a
sufficient number of the manuscript speeches bear internal evidence
of essential completeness to make the rhetorical study of them
profitable.
1
"2
It has been said that there are two conditions, apart from mere
superficial display, which are essential to the production of great
oratory: "There must be, first, the stir of popular life associated
with free institutions; and there must be, second, some kind of moral
question at issue. Pure democracy is not necessary to oratory.”
The reader has seen that when Bacon entered the arena of public
affairs, national institutions were beginning to feel the pulse of life
and freedom. This opened the way for new discussions. Vital
issues came to the fore. The individual began to realize certain
"These are so disjointed and fragmentary that it will be a question with
many, whether they ought to have been included in a work of this kind. It
was a question with myself. But as I believe them to be genuine fragments
of his speeches, taken down at the time as fast as a not very ready writer could
follow; and as the proceedings of Parliament were so important a part of
the business of the time, and Bacon so important an actor in them; and as I
have myself learned from these fragmentary and disjointed notes so much
about his political life which I could not have learned either from summary
accounts or extracts; I thought it better to print all that there are, and so
bring the whole of the evidence within reach of everybody.” Spedding,
Letters, III, v-vi.
William Clarke, Political Orations, London and Toronto, no date,
preface.
I04
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
duties to himself, the state, and his fellowmen. It is apparent that
Bacon's speeches owe much of their greatness to this new impetus
behind the social, economic, and political life of the English people.
What is to be said of the second of our requirements, "some kind
of moral question at issue"? Do these speeches deal with any
important moral problems?
Bacon possessed the virtues of tolerance and real charity, but,
as Nichol suggests, "He was never disposed to stretch abstractions
against a present good to the State." 1 As an advocate of the
Union of Scotland with England, Bacon's arguments had less to
do with the immediate wishes of the peoples of the two countries,
than with the desirability of strengthening the kingdom, so that
Great Britain might ever be a force to be reckoned with in the
progress of the world. Although Utility plays a leading part in
most of his arguments on all public questions, yet there are constant
appeals to Honor, Justice, and Conscience.2 In his eyes, the sov-
ereignty of the monarch and the liberties of Parliament actually
became moral issues. Note the tone of only one of his speeches:
That private men should undertake for the Commons of England! Why a
man mought as well undertake for the four elements. It is a thing so giddy
and so vast, as cannot enter into the brain of a sober man.
3
This passage is taken from the introduction; in the remainder
of the speech Bacon reduces this whole matter of undertaking to an
ethical basis. That the English House of Commons should be
"packed" by a body of selfish persons, who expected to ingratiate
themselves with the King by seeing that his Majesty's business
passed the House-all of this was, to Bacon, more than an offence
against the state, it was a keen ethical problem; in fact, for him,
any crime directed against the Throne or the Parliament was a
violation of the moral code.
If we turn to his legal arguments and Star Chamber Charges,
we are impressed again and again, that the fountainhead of these
discourses is some kind of moral issue. This is demonstrated in
Bacon's Charge against Oliver St. John, for scandalizing and tra-
¹ John Nichol, Francis Bacon, His Life and Philosophy, p. 79.
E.g., Speech on Behalf of the Commons to the Lords, Urging the Upper
House to Unite with the Lower House in Order to Petition the King for
Wards and Tenures, March 8, 1610, Spedding, Letters, IV, 163-7.
3
Speech in the Lower House, When the House was in Great Heat about
the Undertakers, April, 1614, Spedding, Letters, V, 42-8.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 105
ducing in the Public Sessions letters sent from the Lords of the
Council touching the King's Benevolence.¹ Here the speaker points
out that St. John had publicly, in the face of the King's ministers
and justices, maliciously slandered the King; the law of the land;
the Parliament; and infinite particulars of the subjects of the King.
Nay, the slander was of that nature, that it might seem to interest.
the people in grief and discontent against the State. Although a
legal argument, it has deliberative significance. With ethical fire,
Bacon tells us that the King has certain obligations to his subjects;
the subjects, in turn, owe certain debts to the Sovereign; and any
person or circumstance which tends to break down this mutual
relationship and confidence, is traitorous in the extreme. Grounded
in philosophy as Bacon was, and trained in the law, it was natural
for him to emphasize the ethical aspect of constitutional questions.
What did Bacon discuss when he spoke in Parliament? Had
he any favorite ideas which appear regularly throughout the speeches?
What political policy did he champion? Bacon spoke in public for
thirty years-did his topics change during that time?
In the debates in the House of Commons in the later years of
Elizabeth's reign, Bacon spoke on the question of Supply, 1593;
Subsidies, 1593 and 1598; Against Abuses in Weights and Measures,
1601; In Favor of Repealing Superfluous Laws, 1601; Against the
Repeal of an Act Relating to Charitable Trusts, 1601. When James
the First ascended the throne, Bacon's activity in the House debates
and other parliamentary matters increased. We have his speeches
Touching Purveyors, 1604; On the Union of England and Scotland,
1604 to 1607; For Wards and Tenures, 1610; Advising the Commons
Not to Dispute the King's Right to Lay Impositions upon Merchan-
dises, 1610; On Behalf of the Commons, Presenting to his Majesty
a Written Copy of their Grievances, 1610; Persuading Supply for
his Majesty, 1610 and 1614; Against the Undertakers, 1614; In
Reply to the Speaker's Oration, 1621; In Favor of a War with
Spain, 1624.
In the Rhetoric, Aristotle speaks of the ends of the deliberative
orator as expediency or injury:
For if he exhorts to a particular line of action, he recommends it as
being better, i.e., more advantageous, if he dissuades from it, he does so on
the ground that it is worse, and every other consideration, whether justice
1
¹ Charge against Oliver St. John, Delivered in the Star Chamber, 1615,
Spedding, Letters, V, 136-46.
106
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
or injustice, honor or disgrace, he embraces merely as something secondary
and subservient to this.¹
This presents the best statement of the aims of Bacon's political
speeches. Likewise, a glance at the matter discussed shows the
reader that Bacon spoke upon those subjects which Aristotle enumer-
ates as being the most important subjects of general deliberation
and deliberative oratory. These include finance, war and peace,
the defense of the country, imports and exports.2 The greater
number of these speeches have to do with the economic complexities
of exporting and importing, finance, and the subjects of legislation
in their broadest aspects. War and peace, and national defense,
Bacon approaches with the lawyer's precision, his love for order
and precedent. In fact, those speeches which have been preserved
for us in toto deal with parliamentary bills and measures which
would attract the speaker with a legal mind and training. Many
of these speeches could have been made only by such a person, for
they demanded the substantial logic and reasoning power of the
politician whose education is fundamentally based upon a knowledge
of law and jurisprudence.
3
It is not our intention here to make a detailed exposition of
Bacon's "topics" in the classical sense. A thorough analysis of the
speeches will show that Bacon used rhetorical "commonplaces," both
general and particular. Furthermore, whether or not he consciously
followed Aristotle's treatment of topics, one feels that here, too,
he owed much to the rhetorical principles so admirably set down by
the ancient Greek scholar. The common topics of degree, possibility
or impossibility, occur throughout the speeches, whether they be
epideictic, forensic, or deliberative in character.
Had Bacon any favorite ideas which appear regularly throughout
his speeches? This is the next question which we shall try to answer.
Throughout his speeches in Parliament, both early and late in life,
Bacon insists that no greater benefit could be conferred on the
Commonwealth than a general revision in the whole body of laws,
1
¹ Rhetoric, tr. Welldon, London, 1886, p. 23. On the subject of Expe-
diency, see especially Bacon's Speeches on the Union of Scotland with
England; Spedding, Letters, III, 191-2; 201-2; 307-25; 318; 335-41. This
is dealt with very clearly in the Speech Concerning the Article of Naturali-
zation, the topic of the speech being one of policy, conveniency, and expedi-
ency (Spedding, Letters, III, 307-25). See also the speech on the policy
towards Ireland, Spedding, Letters, VI, 205-6.
2
Rhetoric, p. 27.
8
Rhetoric, pp. 20-1, 175-80.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 107
and the reduction of them into one consistent and manageable code.
During Elizabeth's reign, he made a speech in the Lower House,
in Favor of Repealing Superfluous Laws:
Laws are like pills all gilt over, which if they be easily and well swallowed
down are neither bitter in digestion nor hurtful to the body. Every man
knows that time is the true controller of laws. . . . I could therefore wish
... that there might be a committee for the repeal of divers statutes, and
for divers superfluous branches of statutes. And that every particular member
of this House would give information to the Committees what statutes he
thinketh fitting to be repealed, or what branch to be superfluous; lest, as he
sayeth. . . . the more laws we make the more snares we lay to entrap
ourselves.¹
Six years later, Bacon spoke against a motion Concerning the
Union of Laws, saying in effect: It will be necessary to recompile
and review our own laws; this reviewing and recompiling of the
laws is the most politic, most honorable, and most beneficial work
his Majesty could perform for his subjects for all ages. In the
course of the same speech, he observed, "This continual heaping
of laws without digesting them, maketh a chaos and confusion, and
turneth the laws many times to become but snares for the people."
In 1621, Bacon as Lord Chancellor made a speech in Parliament,
in Reply to the Speaker's Oration. The old question comes to the
fore:
"2
Laws are things proper for Parliament; and therefore therein ye are
rather to lead, than to be led. Do not multiply or accumulate laws more
than ye need. A multiplicity of laws do but ensnare and entangle the people.
Rather, ye should revive good laws that are fallen and discontinued, or pro-
vide against the slack execution of laws which are already in force.³
It has already been suggested that Bacon had the virtues of a
sound charity and tolerance. In his speeches, he made an effort
to conciliate and reconcile conflicting parties in the State. This
forms an equally characteristic note of the political addresses. When
the merchants were discontented, a bill was brought forward in
the Lower House, on behalf of a Policy of Assurance of the Safety
Spedding, Letters, III, 19 ff.
1
2
Spedding, Letters, III, 335-41.
9
Spedding, Letters, VII, 174-9. Not alone did Bacon speak in favor of
fewer new laws, and a careful revision of the old; he also wrote letters and
pamphlets around the same theme. One of the most interesting of the latter
is An Offer to the King of a Digest to Be Made of the Laws of England,
1622. Spedding, Letters, VII, 358 ff.
108
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
of Goods for Merchants, 1601. Bacon vigorously championed this
bill: "The Bill will tend to the comfort of the merchant, who is
the stomach of the realm." 1 In the same year, he vigorously
opposed the Repeal of an Act Relating to Charitable Trusts: "We
should do a most uncharitable action to repeal and subvert such a
mount of charity."2 As Lord Keeper, Bacon in 1617 made an
address to Sir William Jones, upon his Calling to be Lord Chief
Justice of Ireland. This speech affords some inkling of the foreign
policy which Bacon would have adopted towards that unfortunate
island:
Most important of all, proceed regularly and constantly, and yet with
temperance and equality, in matters of religion. Otherwise, Ireland civil
will become more dangerous to us than Ireland savage.³
Bacon advocated tolerance in judicial matters when speaking, as
Lord Chancellor, to Mr. Whitelocke, when the latter became Chief
Justice of Chester, June 29, 1620. He urged resolution to accomplish
the mission, but "resolution tempered by moderation." This plea
for conciliation, moderation, and temperance is a marked charac-
teristic of those pamphlets and letters dealing with the dispute
between the High Churchmen and the Puritans, as well as a recurring
idea in Bacon's forensic and deliberative orations.
Bacon played an important rôle in the political problems aggra-
vated by the talk of the Union of Scotland with England. When
James Stuart came to the English throne, this became a vexing issue
for several years. No man saw sooner or more clearly than Bacon,
that Scotland, well united with England, had all natural require-
ments for becoming one of the greatest monarchies in the world.
To quote Spedding's words:
But Bacon knew that things would not unite by being merely put together,
and that perfect mixture required many conditions, of which time was one of
the most indispensable.5
To mollify the King's impatience, and to develop the sympathy of
Parliament, Bacon discussed the issues in several tracts and speeches,
which are among his most scholarly productions.
1
Spedding, Letters, III, 34 ff.
2
Spedding, Letters, III, 38-9.
Spedding, Letters, VI, 205-6.
4
Spedding, Letters, VII, 104 ff.
5
Spedding, Letters, III, 89.
*See note 1, p. 106, above.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
109
As mediator between the Crown and the Commons, Bacon dis-
played unusual political acuteness. He had notions of his own of
the relations which existed between the Sovereign and the Parliament
in a monarchy. He believed it to be the first purpose of Parliament
to make laws and provide for the machinery of government, not
merely to vote money to the Crown. This resulted in his estrange-
ment from Elizabeth; it also provoked one of his most direct
criticisms of King James. The King was not to look upon Parlia-
ment as a money-voting body only, which could be made to please
the royal whims. This pungent passage is found in a letter written
to his Majesty, early in the year 1614: "If your Majesty be
resolved not to buy and sell this Parliament, but to perform the part
of a King, and not of a merchant or contractor.
""
Bacon held it for a point of constitutional doctrine that between the
sovereign and the people in a monarchy there was a tie of mutual obligation;
the sovereign by advice and consent of Parliament making laws for the benefit
of the people, and the people by their representatives in Parliament supplying
the wants of the sovereign; therefore the voting of money should never be
the sole cause of calling Parliament, but always accompanied with some
other business of state tending to the good of the commonwealth.'
•
This comment from the pen of Mr. Spedding was suggested
specifically by one of Bacon's earliest recorded utterances in the
House of Commons, a speech in the debate on Supply, 1593.³
Although he favored a Supply to the Queen, yet Bacon proceeded
to discuss laws. If the House voted Supply, the Sovereign, in turn,
should remember the laws. The cause of the assembling of all
Parliaments hath been heretofore for laws or money. Money should
not be granted unless the laws receive attention.
The prerogative of the Sovereign, the liberties of Parliament, and
the interrelation of the two-this topic is considered in at least one-
half of Bacon's speeches which have been passed down to us. A
few examples will serve for illustration.
For the Prerogative royal of the Prince, for my own part I ever allowed
of it; and it is such as I hope I shall never see discussed. The Queen, as
she is our Sovereign, hath both an enlarging and restraining liberty of her
Prerogative.*
1
Spedding, Letters, V, 1-2.
2
Spedding, Letters, I, 213.
8
Spedding, Letters, 1, 213-14.
4
Speech against a Bill for the Explanations of the Common Law in Cer-
tain Cases of Letters Patents, 1601, Spedding, Letters, III, 26-7.
ΙΙΟ
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Although a remedy is desired, yet we do not intend to derogate in any way
from your Majesty's Prerogative, nor to touch or question any of your
Majesty's regalities or rights. We seek only the reformation of abuses, and
the execution of former laws whereunto we are born.¹
The King's Sovereignty and the Liberty of Parliament are as the two
elements and principles of this estate. . . . They do not cross or destroy the
one the other, but they strengthen and maintain the one the other. . . . Take
away Liberty of Parliament, the griefs of the subject will bleed inwards;
and this may endanger the Sovereignty itself. . . . If the King's Sovereignty
receive any degree of contempt with us who are born under an hereditary
monarchy, we shall come speedily to confusion and dissolution.²
As a final example of this recurring theme in Bacon's political
speeches, we may offer a statement of the sense of a passage in
the Lord Chancellor's Reply to the Speaker's Oration, 1621 ³:
It is well to commend the institution of Parliament. Although Monarchy
is the more ancient form of government; and although it be independent,
yet by the advice and assistance of Parliament it is the stronger and surer
built. When the King sits in Parliament, and his Prelates, Peers and
Commons attend him, he is in the exaltation of his orb.
Of Bacon's political theory and policy, we shall write briefly.
The explanatory excerpts from his speeches justify certain deduc-
tions. In the contacts between the monarch and the legislative
assembly, anything that savored of a mercenary character was to
be wholly avoided. As we perceived, the word "supply" displeased
him because of its unfortunate connotation. As Abbott suggests,
Bacon preferred to speak "of the King's need of treasure." For
Bacon, the various classes forming the body politic-Clergy, Peers,
and Commons should be called together at regular intervals by
the Sovereign, so that all might learn and graciously consider the
royal plans for the benefit and progress of the kingdom. It would
be the privilege of the Commons, in turn, to present their own
desires and grievances. Bacon was an ardent supporter of the
King's prerogative, and the liberties of Parliament, but only in so
1
This is a paraphrase of the opening of Bacon's Speech (On Behalf of
the Commons), when he presented a Petition Touching Purveyors, made to
the King in the Withdrawing Chamber at Whitehall, April 27, 1604, Spedding,
Letters, III, 181-7.
2
Speech in the Lower House, Persuading the House to Desist from
Farther Question of Receiving the King's Messages by Their Speaker, etc.,
1610, Spedding, Letters, IV, 177-9.
8
Spedding, Letters, VII, 174-9.
4
Essays, ed. E. A. Abbott, London, 1886, I, cxviii.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
III
far as the one counterbalanced the other. He concerned himself
with the degree to which the Sovereign and the higher executive
officials might safely go in the direction of self-interest, and to
what degree the principle of self-interest must be subordinated to
the wider interests of the people ruled. It is sufficiently evident
that Cromwellian democracy finds very little to foretell it in the
speeches of Francis Bacon. It has been well observed:
A state of things in which the Commons should be supreme would have
been to Bacon a revelation of political chaos, a confusion worse confounded.
To Bacon the idea that the affairs of a great nation should be controlled,
and its policy dictated, by a miscellaneous collection of country gentlemen,
lawyers, and merchants, would have been ridiculous.¹
In the New Atlantis, Bacon pictures for us his utopia. In this
vision of the ideal state, the general end of human happiness can
best be attained in three different ways: good laws, good morality,
and mechanical inventions. As a philosopher, Bacon was a utilitarian,
and one would judge that his highest good was the greatest happiness
of the greatest number. So in his political theory and practice,
Bacon aimed to make England a better state in which to live. To
the writer, it would seem that this is the keynote of all his political
utterances. Fewer and better laws, well enforced; a happy Union
of Scotland with England; the civilization of Ireland; the abolition
of the last remnants of feudal oppression: these were among the
causes to which he devoted his life as a statesman. In his essay,
"Of Great Place," we are told that the only legitimate object of
aspiration is "power to do good." To quote from Professor
Macmillan :
It is evident that Bacon regarded human happiness as the great end to
which all human effort ought to be directed. The ultimate end of all
knowledge was, he taught, "the benefit and use of man" and "the relief of
man's estate," by which he meant the diminution of human misery, the pro-
motion of human happiness.2
And Professor Gardiner, in writing of Bacon's political thought and
action, speaks to the same effect: "The object which he set before
him was the benefit of mankind." 3
'Professor James Rowley in The Living Age, CXXXIX (1878), 91 ff.
The lecture is reprinted from Fraser's Magazine XCVIII (1878).
2 M. Macmillan, International Journal of Ethics, XVII (1906-7), 60-1.
8
S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1616, II, 114-27. The historian
here furnishes an admirable commentary on Bacon's political theory and its
II2
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Bacon sat in Parliament for over thirty years, as a member
of the House of Commons, or of the Lords. Did the topics of his
speeches alter very markedly during that time? Are there any radical
changes of policy? We know that when Elizabeth was on the throne,
he made it his purpose to bring the Commons from a state of stag-
nation to a higher level, where they became something more than a
machine for voting revenue.
He did much to awaken the Lower
House to a sense of its real significance, and to assert its position
as a legislative body. Most of his political speeches are colored with
this idea.
Parliament grew stronger and stronger, realizing its power to
control subsidies and supply. This alarmed Bacon; he feared for
the King's prerogative. He showed himself a more ardent supporter
of the Crown. This change of policy is apparent in the speeches
which he delivered during the session of 1610, and in the years
which followed. The explanation is not difficult. Bacon was no
democrat, as we understand the term; he believed in the liberties
of Parliament, but he believed, also, in the prerogative of the
Sovereign. From the day when he first entered the House of
Commons, he appears to have made it his policy to steer a middle.
course in things political; to have attempted to mediate between
the Parliament and the Throne. The opinion that his change of
position was not inconsistent with his principles, and was no evidence
of insincerity, has been confirmed by Professor Nichol:
He assumed the attitude he always, with modifications, steadfastly in the
main preserved, that of a moderate reformer in secular matters, in religious
an advocate of modified tolerance to both extremes-Puritan and Romanist—
on either side of the Via Media. Doubtless he leant more to the former at
the beginning than towards the close of his career; the change may be
accounted for by the waning influence of family ties, the increasingly difficult
demands of the Nonconformists, and Bacon's own, sincere as well as politic,
increasing attachment to the Court.¹
Bacon has been censured for fawning on the Court, because he
sought material recognition for his own abilities at a time when
the monarch was disposed in his favor. The charge must rest on
his language to the King rather than on his justifiable defense of a
relation to the events of the time. The same subject is considered by
J. M. Robertson, Contemporary Review, CII (1912), 338-49; F. J. C. Hearn-
shaw, Contemporary Review, CXXIII (1923), 606-14. See also: Fraser's
Magazine, LXXIX (1869), 749 ff.; Saturday Review, LIX (1885), 761-2.
John Nichol, Francis Bacon, His Life and Philosophy, p. 36.
1
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 113
weakened prerogative. In the first book of the Advancement of
Learning,¹ Bacon writes of an ardent student of philosophy, who
reproved Aristippus that he would offer the profession of philosophy
such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at a tyrant's feet;
but he answered, "It was not his fault, but it was the fault of
Dionysius, that had his ears in his feet." If, in his later speeches,
Bacon seems to flatter the King, and fawn upon the Royal House,
one feels that he appreciated the truth that James's ears were in
his feet.
Furthermore, Bacon feared for the consequences, when he beheld
the growth of parliamentary independence. He saw the handwriting
on the wall; he must have guessed at the impending doom of the
monarchy. Whether he thought of civil war and the execution of
a sovereign, is open to conjecture. Still, his speeches indicate that
it was just such a state of affairs which he wished to prevent.
It was for this reason that he urged a foreign war. It would
divert the attention of the Commons, and perhaps bring them into
fuller sympathy with the ruling house. In some ways, it would
appear that he regarded war as an essential in national life; at least
it had advantages. On these grounds, he had favored a Motion
of Subsidy to Queen Elizabeth in 1598.2 In one of his essays,
he writes:
No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor
politic and certainly to a kingdom or an estate a just and honorable war is
the true exercise. A civil war, indeed, is like the heat of a fever; but a
foreign war is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to keep the body in
health; for in a slothful peace both courages will effeminate and manners
corrupt.3
4
And the notes of his last political speech, prepared for delivery
in Parliament, March 1, 1624, explain his views Concerning a
War with Spain. It is not hard to read between the lines, and
catch the significance of the content. A war with Spain might
tend to bring the Commons and the Sovereign together in mutual
obligation; war might heal the growing dissensions festering among
Parliamentarians and Royalists; in other words, war with Spain
¹Works, VI, 116. The same fable is included as number 86 of the
Apothegms New and Old, ibid., XIII, 348.
Spedding, Letters, II, 85 ff.
"Of Kingdoms and Estates."
* Spedding, Letters, VII, 460-5.
114
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
might bring to the citizens of England, the greatest good to the
greatest number.
If the tone of Bacon's speeches changes, during the closing
years of his life in Parliament, it does not indicate a weakness of
character or an inconsistency in his political theory and practice.
There never was a time when he did not believe in the royal
prerogative. His speeches clearly show that he approved a powerful
monarchy resting on the support of the people, serving the popular
good, and informed and advised by a loyal Parliament.
III
Critics have had much to say about the style of Bacon's literary
works in general, and the Essays in particular. One might easily
devote many pages to the style of the political speeches as examples
of the English of the period. It was a period which did not yet
completely recognize English prose as a literary vehicle, although
it had advanced to a point at which the ornamented style typified by
Euphues had captured the fancy of many-and repelled others.
As between the relatively simple prose of Ascham and Hooker and
the ornate style of Lyly, Bacon chose the former. He subscribed
to Thomas Wilson's severe attack on the euphuistic habits of speech -
which flourished at the time. Wilson condemned the prevalent
impurities of style, such as an excess of alliteration, and the custom
of throwing prose into metre, "making their talk rather to appear
rhymed metre than serene plaine speache.
99 1
"But it was not for the sake of style that Bacon studied style,”
points out Professor Grierson. "He recognized how frequently 'the
greatest orators . . . by observing their well-graced forms of speech,
lose the volubility of application.' He condemned the Ciceronians
of the Renaissance who 'began to hunt more after words than
matter, and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round
and clear composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of
clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes
and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject,
soundness of argument, life of invention, and depth of judgment.'
¹ Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique 1560, ed. G. H. Mair, Oxford, 1909, pp.
xxviii-xxx, 2, 106, 203.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 115
Style to Bacon is an instrument of power-a means by which to
commend his policy to statesmen and sovereigns." 1
One cannot read Bacon's speeches without feeling that he was
an orator who accounted words but subservient and auxiliary to
matter. He never plays on words; neither does one find highly
ornate sentences and phrases. One would judge that he considered
these only to be digressions which interfere with the clarity of the
expression and the inner truth of the subject at hand. Here is
a typical passage from one of Bacon's own speeches; we may readily
conclude what he thought of the euphuists:
And this I shall do, my Lords, in verbis masculis; no flourishing or
painted words, but such words as are fit to go before deeds.2
Distaste for "flourishing or painted words" is to be expected in
one who found in the Bible the animating influence which filled all
of his speeches and writings. Bacon was saturated with Holy Writ;
literally every page of his orations has quotations from the Vulgate
and the English Bible. Hear what he wrote in a Prayer or Psalm,
about April 18, 1621:
Heavenly Father, Thy creatures have been my books,
But Thy Scriptures much more.³
Sophistical subtleties are absent from Bacon's speeches. True
enough, he knew, as no other writer in English, how to take up
the material of a flowing style and condense it into a few apothegms,
whose sharp and vigorous brevity seems to strike the intellect with
the force of an arrow. This is well shown in the following
aphoristic sentences, which occur in the political speeches :
4
There is never a gentleman that hath overreached himself in expense,
and thereby must abate his countenance, but he will rather travel, and do it
abroad, than at home.
The time past is a pattern of the time to come.
For Nemo subito fingitur: the conversations of minds are not so swift as
the conversations of times.
1
H. J. C. Grierson, The First Half of the Seventeenth Century, Edinburgh
and London, 1906, p. 205.
2
Speech on Taking His Seat in Chancery, When He Received the Great
Seal of England, May 7, 1617, Spedding, Letters, VI, 183.
3
Spedding, Letters, VII, 229-30. See the opening of Bacon's Charge
against Sir John Wentworth, in the Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615 (Ibid.,
V, 214).
Spedding, Letters, III, 311; 311; 340; IV, 179; III, 19; 18; 19; IV, 292.
116
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
It is one use of wit to make clear things doubtful. But it is a much
better use of wit to make doubtful things clear; and to that I would men
would bend themselves.
The more laws we make the more snares we lay to entrap ourselves.
I take it far better to scour a stream than turn a stream.
Better it is to venture a man's credit by speaking than to stretch a man's
conscience by silence.
All passions are assuaged with time: love, hatred, grief, all; fire itself
burns out with time, if no new fuel be put to it.
A glance at the contexts will show that each of these sentences,
by its epigrammatic point, enforces the meaning Bacon seeks to
convey. But they do more than please the ear and vivify the argu-
ment. When they are broken open, these passages will be found
to overflow with truth and wisdom. One feels that in every instance,
Bacon uses no word without a distinct idea of what it means to
himself, and also, of the impression which it will convey to the
persons addressed. In the opening chapter of his Poetics, Scaliger
continually emphasizes the thought that a modicum of wisdom far
excels the best skill in speaking. This admirably characterizes
Bacon's personal attitude towards oratorical style:
•
The soul of persuasion is truth, truth either fixed and absolute, or sus-
ceptible of question. Truth, in turn, is agreement between that which is
said about a thing and the thing itself. By no means are we to accept the
popular idea that eloquent speaking, rather than persuasion, is the end of
oratory, for the arguments of the grammarians on this point are not valid.
One uses eloquence that he may persuade.¹
Not alone did Bacon use the aphorism as a rhetorical device
in his own speaking; but he laid it down as a good principle for
others to follow:
The aphorism trieth the writer, whether he be superficial or solid: for
aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith
and heart of sciences: for discourse of illustration is cut off. . . . No man
will attempt to write aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded.*
It is altogether likely that the pithy sayings and epigrams which
occur so frequently in Bacon's speeches find their source, if not
1
¹F. M. Padelford, Select Translations from Scaliger's Poetics, New York,
1905, pp. 3-4.
Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, Works, VI, 291.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 117
entirely, at least in part, in Greek and Latin originals. Few English
orators have exhibited more enthusiasm for collecting sentences from
the classic writers than did Bacon. With him it was a hobby to
gather proverbs, quotations, apt sayings, examples, illustrations, and
anecdotes. And, as Dean Church observes,¹ it would seem that Bacon
must have read sometimes for the sheer joy of bringing together
effective words and suitable phrases. This suggests another patent
quality of Bacon's oratorical style. Not only do his speeches abound
in epigrammatic passages; they also contain a vast number of quota-
tions, used with force as rhetorical authorities. But these quota-
tions are always brief and pointed, and thus in harmony with Bacon's
own style.
To what degree have the orators of any age been influenced by
the poets and dramatists of their own period? The question is an
interesting one, and especially interesting with regard to the orators
of the later Elizabethan period. Here we may deal with it only as
it affects Bacon. For upwards of a quarter of a century both Bacon
and Shakespeare walked the streets of the English capital, and it is
probable that each was personally unknown to the other.2 Bacon
was by no means a Puritanical person, but actors had no social posi-
tion; hence it is not strange that he-the nephew of Lord Burghley,
and later himself the Keeper of the Great Seal of England-should
have few friends among the players.
In Bacon's speeches, there is not only an absence of quotation
from the Elizabethan dramatists; there is likewise little theatrical
color in his metaphors and analogies. He was fond of figurative
language; his speech is constantly clothed in it. Still, in the whole
body of his orations, there are but two or three figures drawn from
the life of the playhouses; nor are these very complimentary:
Ye [Members of Parliament] are to represent the people: ye are not to
personate them.³
8
A popular judge is a deformed thing: and Plaudite's are fitter for players
than for magistrates.*
When we read Shakespeare's plays, we know that their author must
have been an actor, for his metaphors and comparisons reflect the
¹R. W. Church, Life of Bacon, p. 21.
Bacon's Essays, ed. M. A. Scott, New York, 1908, p. lxxxii.
2
8
Spedding, Letters, VII, 178.
4 Spedding, Letters, VI, 211.
118
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
stage and its people. So with Bacon, his quotations and analogies
show the image of his reading and his life as a parliamentarian. Such
passages as the following are plentiful:
His Majesty hath shewed himself to be lex loquens, and to sit upon the
throne, not as a dumb statue, but as a speaking oracle.¹
Bacon was a devoted reader of the classics, and if his speeches
contain few marks of the drama being acted about him, they are satu-
rated with the Greek and Latin writers, and there is scarcely a page
which is not crowded with ample excerpts from the Scriptures, both
from the Vulgate and the English Bible.2 Probably these citations, as
rhetorical authorities, would bring him more quickly on to common.
ground with his audience than similar passages from popular plays.3
Deep feeling and emotion scarcely ever, if at all, are to be found
in Bacon's speeches. He gave intellect the first place. To quote his
own words:
A man is but what he knoweth. Are not the pleasures of the affections
greater than the pleasures of the senses? And are not the pleasures of the
intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections?*
5
Aristotle characterizes old men by saying that they follow the
advice of Bias, the last of the "Seven Wise Men," and love as though
they would some day hate and hate as though they would some day
love. One cannot help feeling that this cynical advice supplies the
index to Bacon's actions when he occupied a seat in the House of
Commons. It further explains the absence of any outbursts of rage
or passages of human tenderness in his political speeches. If there
was any love or hatred in his soul, he succeeded full well in hiding
this trait of character. How very different from the passionate
1
Spedding, Letters, VII, 176.
2 Bacon may have used Biblical quotations in abundance owing to their
familiarity. His audiences would have known the commonplace books (such
as those of Peter the Martyr), and the paraphrase books, which had been
common since the time of Henry VIII.
3
The Elizabethan drama may not have exerted any influence on Bacon's
speeches, but it is conceivable that the movement was in the other direction.
The writer is indebted to Professor H. J. C. Grierson of the University of
Edinburgh for this observation. Professor Grierson thinks that Ben Jonson
learned much from Bacon's speeches and may have modeled many of the
speeches of Sejanus, in his tragedy, The Fall of Sejanus, produced at the
Globe Theatre, 1603, after those of Francis Bacon, whom he greatly admired
as an orator.
* Advancement of Learning, bk. i, Works, VI, 167.
5 Rhetoric, II, 13.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
119
utterances of Edmund Burke! The reader should not gain the im-
pression that Bacon's speaking was dull, or solely matter-of-fact. On
the contrary, there have been few English orators with a finer genius.
for presenting interesting ideas and clear thought on important poli-
tical issues. He had the added gift of dressing his utterances in virile
and figurative language. Yet there is always an academic calm, a
peculiar restraint, which appears to act as a rein to hold in check any
emotion. There is something of the human icicle about Bacon: his
humanity is never absent, but it is glazed over with a frigid surface,
which chills the expression of the speaker's deeper feelings. Greater
warmth is to be found in some of his forensic speeches. In his
Charge at the Trial of Lord Sanquhar¹ especially, Bacon displays
unwonted passion.
There were other instances, in debates in the House, and argu-
ments in the law courts, when Bacon became very much impassioned,
if only for brief spaces, but these occasions were not frequent. An
illustration is of interest. This is a passage from one of Bacon's
speeches in the Parliamentary debates of 1601:
I speak out of the very strings of my heart; which doth alter my ordinary
form of speech; for I speak not now out of the fervency of my brain.
3
As Spedding observes, this unusual remark has a personal inter-
est, as giving a glimpse of Bacon in a state of excitement, to which
he did not often give way in public. Professor Grierson holds that
Burke reasoned better when he was highly impassioned; the emotions
of that orator seemed to govern his logic. Certainly, if this be true.
of Burke, it does not apply to Bacon. When Bacon became over-
wrought emotionally, his thought seemed to weaken; he indulged in
raillery and sarcasm to the extent of being ridiculous. At least, this
is the impression one gains from reading such few excerpts as have
come to our notice.4
In writing of Bacon's apparent emotional reserve, one is reminded
of another stylistic quality, which may arise therefrom. As in his
Essays, the thought in Bacon's speeches is frequently so condensed
that it leads to ambiguity. At times, one finds it difficult to catch the
1
¹ Spedding, Letters, IV, 291-3.
2
Townshend's Journal, p. 291. In Spedding, Letters, III, 38.
3 Cambridge History of English Literature, XI, 35.
This may be the sort of thing Ben Jonson meant, when he said: “Bacon's
language, when he could spare or pass by a jest..
120
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
speaker's meaning, for Bacon indulges very little in restatement,
although clarity in oral style demands the repetition of the idea.¹ An-
other and related weakness in Bacon's oral style is his tendency to
pack too much material into some of his paragraphs. What De
Quincey criticized in Bacon's prose, may be set down here as equally
applicable to certain sections of his political speeches:
Another unfavorable circumstance, arising in fact out of the plethoric
fulness of Lord Bacon's mind, is the shorthand style of his composition, in
which the connexions are seldom fully developed. It was the lively mot of a
great modern poet, speaking of Lord Bacon's Essays, "that they are not
plants, but seeds; not oaks, but acorns.'
It is not unusual to find men of Bacon's temperament devoting
care to the structure and plan of their speeches. Bacon was no excep-
tion. Most of the speeches appear to fall into a fourfold division:
introduction, narration, proof, and conclusion. Bacon, further, fol-
lows the rhetorical custom of outlining his chief points, before he
proceeds to develop them:
Now, my Lords, I beseech you give me favor and attention to set forth
and observe unto you five points. I will number them, because other men
may note them; and I will but touch them, because they shall not be drowned
or lost in discourse.3
And yet, to avoid confusion, which evermore followeth of [upon] too much
generality, it is necessary for me (before I proceed to persuasion) to use
some distribution of the points or parts of Naturalization, which certainly can
be no better, nor none other, than the ancient distinction [distribution] of
Jus Civitatis, Jus Suffragii vel Tribus, and Jus Petitionis sive Honorum.
For all ability and capacity is either of private interest of meum and tuum,
or of public service.¹
And therefore the matter which I shall set forth unto you will naturally
receive this distribution of three parts.
5
These illustrations from Bacon's rhetorical practice will explain
his custom of outlining his points in advance; they will further show
Bacon's habit of compressing his thought to the point of ambiguity is
shown in the Speech Concerning Deer-Stealing, Oct. 23, 1614, Spedding,
Letters, V, 87-9. The connecting links are not clear; there is an overuse
of the pronoun.
"The Collected Writings of Thomas DeQuincey, ed. Masson, Edinburgh,
1890, X, 109 n.
4
Spedding, Letters, V, 138.
Speech in the Lower House, on Scottish Naturalization, 1607, Spedding,
Letters, III, 309.
。 Ibid.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
121
that he believed in this rhetorical method. In addition to this quality
in his speech structure, the reader of Bacon's speeches is immediately
impressed with the directness of his introductions. He wastes no
words in order to present his subject and to get on to common ground
with his audience. Again, his conclusions are concise summaries of
the points covered; there are no extended perorations.
IV
The mere reading of Bacon's speeches shows that they were
pointed, unemotional, businesslike. We must turn to evidence out-
side the speeches themselves for some idea as to how Bacon im-
pressed those who saw and heard him.
In his youth Bacon's appearance is said to have been singularly frank and
engaging, but his features were much furrowed and darkened by the contests
of political life, and the misfortunes of his later years. His severe habits
of study early impressed upon him the marks of age, bent his shoulders,
and gave him the stooping gait of a philosopher. His stature was of the
middle size, with features rather oblong than round. His forehead was
spacious and open, his eye lively and penetrating, and his whole aspect ven-
erably pleasing; so that the beholder was insensibly drawn to love, before
he knew how much reason there was to admire, him. In this respect we
may apply to him what Tacitus says of Agricola, "Bonum virum facile
crederes, magnum libenter.”1
, 2
This seems fairly to synthesize much that has been set down by
writers with regard to Bacon's physical features. Perhaps the most
striking characteristic of all is the acute magnetism of the eyes. It
was Dr. Harvey who told John Aubrey: "Bacon had a delicate, lively
hazel eie; it was like the eie of a viper." When one surveys Peter
Oliver's miniature, or the portrait from the brush of Paulus Van
Somer, one feels that the artists must have experienced, and have
sought to convey, the peculiar fascination of Bacon's eyes. It may
not be an exaggeration to attribute much of Bacon's charm and attrac-
tiveness, in delivering his speeches, to this power of the eye to gain
and hold the attention of his audience. For Ben Jonson affirmed,
¹ Joseph Davey, The Moral and Historical Works of Lord Bacon, London,
1894, p. xxix.
1
2
John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, Oxford, 1898, I, 70-2. See
Arthur Wilson's contemporary account of Bacon's person, reprinted in
Kennet's Complete History of England, London, 1706, II, 736; David Lloyd,
State Worthies, ed. Charles Whitworth, London, 1766, II, 121: "Bacon's make
and port was stately."
122
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
"He commanded where he spoke." But the speeches themselves indi-
cate that Bacon made a conscious effort to keep in touch with his
hearers. In the political speeches, he frequently interjects such
phrases as: "Mr. Speaker," "It is a truth, Mr. Speaker," "Note,
Mr. Speaker." He is ever alert to the presence of his hearers.
To indicate the reception of Bacon's speeches by his audiences,
we have the criticisms of his contemporaries. It is evident that
Bacon's first two or three speeches in the House of Commons were
received with that incredulous disdain with which the English public
greets every beginner who dares to display his views before an
audience, or to proclaim his cause in the open. Recorder Fleetwood
noted these speeches, and apparently was not very favorably dis-
posed towards the new member of the House. Mr. Spedding has re-
printed Fleetwood's caustic comments on the speeches,¹ and one con-
cludes that Bacon's first speeches were by no means triumphs. The
situation quickly changed, and Bacon became one of the most
popular talkers in the Lower House.
We find that Sir Henry Wotton, in his commonplace book, Table
Talk, refers to Bacon as "a very fair speaker."2 Three other opin-
ions, by as many different writers, are of interest:
My Lord Chancellor Bacon is lately dead of a long languishing weakness;
he died so poor that he scarce left money to bury him. . . . I have read,
that it had been the fortunes of all Poets commonly to die beggars; but for
an Orator, a Lawyer, and Philosopher, as he was, to die so, 'tis rare. . . . A
rare man; a man Reconditae scientiae, et ad salutem literarum natus, and I
think the eloquentest that was born in this Isle.³
Bacon was a creature of incomparable abilities of mind, of a sharp and
catching apprehension, large and faithful memory, plentifull and sprouting
invention, deep and solid judgment, for as much as might concern the under-
standing part. A man so rare in knowledge, of so many severall kinds,
endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all, in so elegant,
significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of
metaphors, and allusions, as perhaps the world hath not seen, since it was a
world."
1
¹ Spedding, Letters, I, 42 ff.
2
Logan Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Oxford,
1907, II, 497.
Epistola Ho-Eliane, The Familiar Letters of James Howell, ed. Joseph
Jacobs, London, 1890, bk. i, sect. 4, Letter VIII to Dr. Prichard, dated 6 Jan.
1626 (our dating), pp. 218-19.
"Sir Tobie Matthew, in his Preface to the Collection of Letters, edited by
Dr. John Donne (son of the Dean), and published in 1660; the quotation is
found in A. H. Matthew and A. Calthrop, Life of Sir Tobie Matthew,
London, 1907, pp. 358-9.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
123
Bacon was so excellent, so agreeable a speaker, that all who heard him
were uneasy if he was interrupted, and sorry when he concluded. . . . Now
this general knowledge he had in all things husbanded by his wit, and dignified
by so majestic a carriage, he was known to own, struck such an awful
reverence in those he questioned, that they durst not conceal the most intrinsic
part of their mysteries from him, for fear of appearing ignorant or saucy:
all of which rendered him no less necessary than admirable at the Council-
table.¹
These excerpts deal with Bacon's eloquence, and with him as a
public figure. We may add a friend's tender word of affection:
My conceit of Bacon's person was never increased toward him by his
place or honors. But I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was
only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of
the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many
ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for
greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable
for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help
to make it manifest.²
Here are some of the tributes that have been paid to Bacon's
power as a speaker, a political adviser, and, above all, as a mighty
personality. These are the opinions of the men who knew him as an
individual; who heard him move and command his audiences; who
saw him in action in the arena of national politics. What deductions
are we justified in making?
He must have been popular and persuasive as a speaker: at least,
he interested his hearers; they were glad to have his advice on the
questions of the hour. His speeches were always listened to with
respect, consequently he must have done the government a great deal
of excellent service. In the House of Commons, he had a personality
that demanded respect and attention. In no single instance which
the writer has been able to discover, did the Lower House exhibit
any apparent displeasure with Bacon's decisions or public speeches.
So much confidence had they in his fair-mindedness and good judg-
ment, so persuasive was he in his manner of speech, that, time after
time, he was placed as chairman of committees authorized to carry
out objects that he had definitely opposed during the debates. More
than once he was appointed to search for precedents, argue before
¹ Francis Osborn in his Miscellaneous Works, found in The Library of
Literary Criticism, ed. C. W. Moulton, I, 640. Note also Francis Osborn,
Traditional Memoirs of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, passim.
2 Ben Jonson, Timber or Discoveries, ed. Schelling, p. 31.
124
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the Lords, or address the Sovereign, in favor of ideas that ran some-
what counter to his own. He had never made a cause of the gov-
ernment unpopular by his way of handling it, and from the praise
bestowed upon him by his contemporaries, one is inclined to believe
that as a man in politics, and as a political orator, Bacon shared a
degree of admiration from his colleagues, which it has been the lot
of very few public men to enjoy.¹
Bacon must have spoken with dignity and composure, with a
sort of reverend seriousness, for Jonson says: "He was full of
gravity in his speaking. . . . No member of his speech but consisted
of his own graces." In brief, the various divisions of his subject
must have been presented with a degree of charm, an ease and refine-
ment of expression. He seldom uttered an intemperate word when
addressing the Commons: "No man ever spake more neatly, more
presly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in
what he uttered." His remarks were free of triviality, of any inepti-
tude; his points were covered with brevity, concisely, with exactness
and precision. "His language . . . was nobly censorious," which, in
the Elizabethan sense, meant grave and severe, befitting a censor.
And again, “He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges
angry or pleased at his devotion," which shows that his hearers were
impressed with Bacon's enthusiasm and earnestness for his topic
while speaking. It is clear, too, that he held the good will of his
audience, for he had their affections "in his power"; and, as the
New English Dictionary points out, in this passage the word "affec-
tions" does not have the somewhat cheap connotation which was
usual in Elizabethan times.
""
Ben Jonson is less complimentary when he writes, "His language,
where he could spare or pass by a jest. In his essay, "Of Dis-
course," Bacon uses "jest" in the sense of ridicule, laughter, and
goes on to state: "Some things are privileged from jest, namely Re-
ligion, matters of State, great persons . . and any cause that de-
serveth pittie." Are we to conclude, therefore, that Bacon violated
one of his own rhetorical tenets? Did he actually indulge in raillery
and witticisms at the expense of others? Were taunts and jeers
part of his stock in trade? Abbott offers this commentary:
¹In asking the reader to accept these conclusions, one would make refer-
ence to Spedding, Letters, VII, 571; S. R. Gardiner, History of England,
1603-1616, 1, 181-3; Edward Foss, The Judges of England, London, 1848-64,
VI, 79.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
125
Jonson hints at one of Bacon's defects. Compare what the faithful
Yelverton reports to Bacon himself: "It is too common in every man's mouth
in Court that your greatness shall be abated; and, as your tongue hath been
a razor to some, so shall theirs be to you.”
There is little in the political speeches which have come down to
us to warrant such prominence for this criticism. Some of the legal
arguments contain more in the manner of caustic attack and sarcastic
raillery. All the evidence leads one to believe that Bacon's attitude
towards his adversaries, in the debates in the House of Commons,
may have been at times a bit vitriolic, although none of these speeches
has been preserved for our examination in Spedding's collection.
After considering other contemporary opinions, and after an inten-
sive examination of the speeches, one is convinced that Ben Jonson's
description of Bacon's speaking, both in content and in delivery, was
an excellently clear and fair estimate.²
V
When a man of genius is accorded unstinted praise for his accom-
plishments, the public is inclined to take for granted that his achieve-
ments have come to him with the minimum of effort on his own part.
Perhaps this is truer in the case of the orator than in that of most
other persons. Frequently, the effectiveness of his speech is judged
on the basis of what he actually does at the moment of its delivery,
and the greater his facility of expression, the more we are apt to say:
"How charming! How delightful! He's a born orator!" So, when
we read that Bacon's colleagues commended his ease of manner, his
quiet dignity of delivery, his poise and composure before his
audiences in the Houses of Parliament and in the law courts, we are
quite ready to jump at conclusions, to assume that he was endowed
¹E. A. Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 452 n.
1
The writer is inclined to agree with De Quincey's observation on this
part of Ben Jonson's encomium: "Bacon attained the chief object of all
oratory, if what Ben Jonson reports of him be true. But Jonson was, per-
haps, too scholastic a judge to be a fair representative judge; and, whatever
he might choose to say or to think, Lord Bacon was certainly too weighty-
too massy with the bullion of original thought-ever to have realized the idea
of a great popular orator, one who 'Wielded at will a fierce democratie.'"
(The Collected Writings of Thomas DeQuincey, X, 336.) For further com-
mentaries on Ben Jonson's estimate of Bacon's speaking consult: Arthur
James (Earl) Balfour, Essays Speculative and Political, New York, 1921,
P. 149; A. C. Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson, London, 1889, p. 148; T. B.
Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Montague, II, 140.
126
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
by nature with these rare qualities of oral expression. On the con-
trary, Bacon was by nature temperamental, possessed of an exceed-
ingly nervous and sensitive disposition. He unquestionably attained
facility and ease in delivery only after a rigid self-training in speech.
Those writers who have investigated this phase of the subject at all,
agree unanimously that Bacon underwent a rigorous form of prepara-
tion and personal discipline in order to talk effectively in public.¹
Many of Bacon's writings on the subject of rhetoric and public
speaking took the form of advice to himself on the matter of speech
preparation and delivery. Here are a few examples:
To suppress at once my speaking with panting and labor of breath and
voyce. Not to fall upon the mayne to soudayne but to induce and intermingle
speach of good fashion.
To use at once upon entrance gyven of speach though abrupt to compose
and draw in myself. To free myself at once from payment of formality and
complement though with some shew of carelessness pride and rudeness.2
Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both of uttering his conceit,
and understanding what is propounded unto him; wherefore it is good to
press himself forwards with discretion, both in speech and company of the
better sort.
It is necessary to use a steadfast countenance, not wavering with action,
as in moving the head or hand too much, which sheweth a fantastical, light,
and fickle operation of the spirit, and consequently like mind as gesture: only
it is sufficient, with leisure, to use a modest action in either.
In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe, or ordinary, it is
convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawingly, than hastily; because
hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides unseemliness,
drives a man either to a nonplus or unseemly stammering, harping upon that
which should follow; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth
a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and
countenance.3
1
:
¹J. M. Robertson, Contemporary Review, CII (1912), 347.
See also
H. J. C. Grierson, The First Half of the Seventeenth Century, p. 205: “Francis
Bacon was as careful a student of the art of clear, dignified, and persuasive
utterance as of any other of the many fields of inquiry his restless mind
surveyed. The Colors of Good and Evil (1597)—which, with the first draft
of the Essays, was his earliest literary publication-and the Promus of Formu-
laries and Elegancies, show, what is equally clear from everything he wrote,
how consciously he studied to speak and write effectively."
2 This, and the preceding quotation, occur in the essay, "Fit Habits for
the Individual,” in Spedding, Letters, IV, 93 ff.
3
This, with the two preceding passages, is taken from the essay, "Short"
Notes for Civil Conversation," Works, XIII, 309 ff.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
127
These passages indicate with what effort Bacon must have con-
quered his natural reticence and inhibitions that he might speak with
composure and power. He was a great orator; his hearers placed
him above the famous speakers of his own time: Sidney, Coke,
Salisbury, and the others; but even to the close of his political career,
Bacon had to fight in order to overcome some of his mannerisms of
speech. It was William Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded:
"My Lord Chancellor of England wringeth his speeches from the
strings of his band." Bacon admired a quiet and dignified manner
of speaking, both for himself and for others. We find him, as Lord
Keeper, in the Court of Common Pleas, advocating: "That your
speech be with gravity, as one of the sages of the Law; and not
talkative, nor with impertinent flying out to shew learning." 2
1
What course did Bacon adopt in the preparation of his speeches?
Little is certainly known of his methods. There is no evidence that
he spoke from memory. Indeed, the fact that no copies of the earlier
speeches survive, and that the later copies were written out after the
speeches had been made, suggests that Bacon's practice was always to
speak from notes. The earliest speech that has come down to us in
full is one on a Motion of Subsidy made in 1597. Of this Spedding
says :
3
Whether this and other speeches similarly preserved were taken from the
draft prepared beforehand of what Bacon intended to say, or from recol-
lection set down afterwards of what he had said, we have I believe no means
of knowing. In his later life it is known that he seldom did more than
set down a few notes, from which he spoke extempore. And the fact that
of the many speeches in Parliament which he made during Elizabeth's reign,
many of them on subjects equally important, this is the only one of which he
left a copy, makes me think that at this time he rarely prepared them in
writing, and had not yet begun to take the trouble of setting them down from
memory; but that this, being a kind of opening speech, and the occasion
being important and delicate, he had written out at large, though he probably
varied it in delivery.*
It is possible, of course, that Bacon's earlier practice was to
write out a draft as a means of arranging his thoughts even if
¹ William Drummond of Hawthornden, Conversations with Ben Jonson,
ed. Philip Sidney, London, 1906 (Number XIV), p. 39.
2
Speech to Justice Hutton, when he was called to be one of the Judges of
the Common Pleas, May 19, 1617, Spedding, Letters, VI, 202 ff.
3
Spedding, Letters, II, 85-9.
4
Spedding, Letters, II, 84.
128
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
not as a means of storing his memory. It is certain that in later
life he spoke regularly from notes and an outline, though he often
had occasion to dictate a speech (after its public delivery) to his
secretary, Bushell.¹ This method was especially used in giving his
speeches in court, and in presenting his legal arguments in general.
Even his great forensic oration at the trial of Somerset was not
completely written out, but spoken from notes-full, it is true-
and written later.2
In disposing of this phase of the subject, one cannot do better
than afford the reader the benefit of Bacon's own words:
I meant well also; and because my information was the ground, having
spoken out of a few heads which I had gathered (for I seldom do more), I
set down as soon as I came home cursorily a frame of that I said; though
I persuade myself I spake it with more life.³
It is outside the scope of this essay to examine in full detail the
sources of Bacon's rhetorical theory, or to give a complete account
of his writings on rhetoric by citing further examples from his
theory and practice. Sufficient illustrations have been introduced to
show that Bacon formulated a definite theory of persuasion; this
theory grew out of his own personal need for self-discipline and
training in the art of speech making. He set down his theory in a
number of special pamphlets and letters. Chief among these is
The Colors of Good and Evil, which is described by their author as
"a table of colors or appearances of good and evil, and their degrees,
as places of persuasion and dissuasion, etc." Added to this, the
following works contain much of his rhetorical theory: Formularies
and Elegancies, "Short Notes for Civil Conversation," "Discourse
touching Helps for the Intellectual Powers," the memoranda en-
titled "Fit Habits for the Individual," and, among the Essays,
¹ John Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, 83.
2
Spedding, Letters, V, 307.
4
"Bacon's Letter to the King, reporting the day of hearing of Oliver St.
John's Cause in the Star Chamber, April 29, 1615, Spedding, Letters, V, 135.
* Works, XIII, 270. Here is a comment on this essay: "Here again
appears Aristotle, the model and source of the Baconian theory. In fact
those things which Bacon called 'popular signs of good and evil'.
nothing else than those topics called in Greek edn, which refer to the
deliberative genus, and which Aristotle noted and classified in the first book
of his Rhetoric." P. Jacquinet, Francisci Baconi De Re Litteraria Judicia,
Paris, 1863, p. 56.
are
These works are found, in order, in Works, XIV, 11 ff., XIII, 309 ff.,
Spedding, Letters, IV, 93 ff.
297 ff.
6
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR 129
especially “Of Discourse," "Of Negotiations," and "Of Counsel.”*
Scattered throughout the Advancement of Learning, the De Aug-
mentis, and the Apothegms New and Old, there is much to be found
on the subject of the written and the spoken word.
1
What shall one write of the sources of Bacon's rhetorical theory?
One cannot afford to be too dogmatic or arbitrary. He unquestion-
ably knew and studied Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, and
Roger Ascham's Scholemaster; and as these scholars were saturated
with Cicero and Quintilian, their rhetorics owe their base and sub-
stance to the Latin teachers. Of course, Bacon's knowledge of the
classics was not obtained from secondary sources; he possessed a
first-hand acquaintance with the works of the ancient rhetoricians.
There are many references to Tacitus in the works of Bacon, and
it is highly likely that he learned much from the latter's Dialogue on
Oratory. Seneca, too, is mentioned with favor:
Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence, Nocet illis eloquentia,
quibus non rerum cupiditatem facit, sed sui: (eloquence does mischief when
it draws men's attention away from the matter to fix it on itself).²
Although the influence of Cicero on Bacon has been exaggerated
by those who forget the wide difference in mind and temper be-
tween the two, there is no doubt that Bacon acquired part of his
rhetorical theory from the De Oratore. But it is probable that
Bacon's theory and practice of the art of persuasion owed more
to Aristotle than critics are generally inclined to concede. There
are constant references to the Greek scholar in all of Bacon's writ-
ings; and it was with Aristotle's science, not with his Rhetoric, that
Bacon had his quarrel. But for evidence as to the sources of
Bacon's rhetorical theory, we need not delay over the critics; it is
better to go to the fountainhead; let the reader ponder Bacon's
own acknowledgement:
And yet perchance some that shall compare my lines with Aristotle's lines,
will muse by what art, or rather by what revelation, I could draw these con-
ceits out of that place. But I, that should know best, do freely acknowledge
that I had my light from him; for where he gave me not matter to perfect,
at the least he gave me the occasion to invent.
3
¹Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique 1560, ed. G. H. 'Mair, pp. xix-xx.
2
Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, Works, VI, 310.
8
Preface to the Colors of Good and Evil, Works, XIII, 263. See also
Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, Works, VI, 269; 297; 300.
130
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
For his rhetorical theory, Bacon received much of his inspiration
from Aristotle, but he added to the work of his master. Bacon made
little pretense to conceal the authority upon which he had worked
out his own theory of eloquence. In the Colors of Good and Evil,
for example, he desired most earnestly that the work which Aristotle
had begun so well, but had left another to finish, should be taken up
again as a whole, and that it should be carried on to a successful
completion by the careful labor of some wise and competent man.
He himself, in the work named, undertook such a labor, to the ex-
tent of compiling a partial table of topical proofs (or better, perhaps,
lines of argument), worked out more systematically than the similar
schemes in Aristotle's Rhetoric. In the case of the probable proofs
which Bacon advances, he brings each one to the test and shows
The
its fallacies, a thing which Aristotle did in very few cases.
idea which Bacon had in mind when attempting to compile his
Colors of Good and Evil may be inferred from the following pas-
sage found in the De Augmentis:
The second Collection, which belongs to the Promptuary or Preparatory
Store, is that to which Cicero alludes . . . where he recommends the orator
to have commonplaces ready at hand, in which the question is argued and
handled on either side. . . . But I extend this precept to other cases; applying
it not only to the judicial kind of oratory, but also to the deliberative and
demonstrative. I would have in short all topics which there is frequent
occasion to handle (whether they relate to proofs and refutations, or to per-
suasions and dissuasions, or to praise and blame) studied and prepared
beforehand; and not only so, but the case exaggerated both ways with the
utmost force of the wit, and urged unfairly, as it were, and quite beyond
the truth. And the best way of making such a collection, with a view to use
as well as brevity, would be to contract those commonplaces into certain
acute and concise sentences; to be as skeins or bottoms of thread which may
be unwinded at large when they are wanted.¹
VI
What shall one set down in conclusion? If the essayist has
had one aim more than another it is a desire that, in future, the
reader will think of Lord Bacon, not only as the author of the
Advancement of Learning, and the English Essays, but as one
of the really great political speakers who have graced the Eng-
lish Parliament. He was not only a philosopher, a scientist, and
¹Works, IX, 155. Italics mine.
FRANCIS BACON, THE POLITICAL ORATOR
131
a man of letters. He was a public man, with statecraft half
his stock in trade, rhetoric the other. Examining his speeches, it
is evident that he had a well-defined theory of government which
he was not ashamed to express. He lived in strenuous times, when
the new balance of power between King and Parliament was being
brought about. To the solution of this problem, as of lesser govern-
mental problems of his time, he brought not only an acute and well-
trained mind, but a definite philosophy, a consistent outlook on
human life. He has been called a utilitarian; that only means that
his deepest interests were centered on the workings and welfare of
human society-on the relief of man's estate. In the consummation
of his purposes as a statesman, his abilities as an orator played a
leading part, were indeed the principal instrument. He could not
have contributed to the cause of better government, had he not
been a powerful speaker. His speeches form the seed-plot of
parliamentary oratory in the English language; they rank with those
of Eliot, Chatham, and Burke. Bacon was a successful orator
both in the House of Commons and in the law courts. He pleased
his hearers, and drew enormous audiences to hear him. We know
that he attracted the members of Parliament; we know that crowds
flocked to listen to his Legal Charges. Read his own words:
Of myself I will not nor cannot say anything, but that my voice served
me well for two hours and a half; and that those that understood nothing
could tell me that I lost not one auditor that was present in the beginning,
but staid till the later end. If I should say more, there were too many wit-
nesses (for I never saw the Court more full) that mought disprove me.
'My Lord Cook [Edward Coke] was pleased to say that it was a famous
argument.¹
Bacon's speeches at the trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset,
in May, 1616, are comparable with those famous orations delivered
by Edmund Burke and Sheridan at the impeachment of Warren
Hastings. Even as Burke and Sheridan, Bacon addressed enormous
audiences in Westminster Hall. We are told that the Countess of
Somerset was brought to answer the charge before a crowded and
eager audience. Places to hear, says Chamberlain, a contemporary,
"were grown to so extraordinary a rate that four or five pieces (as
1
¹ On the 25th January, 1615, Bacon made a great speech on the question
of the Rege Inconsulto. In his Letter to the King, touching this matter, the
above words occur. See Spedding, Letters, V, 235.
132
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
they call them) was an ordinary price; and I know a lawyer that
had agreed to give ten pounds for himself and his wife for the
two days; and fifty pounds were given for a corner that could hardly
contain a dozen." 1 The throng was as great and the audience as
distinguished on the second day of the proceedings: "More ladies
and great personages," says Chamberlain, "than ever I think were
seen at a trial." 2 Of course, one must admit that the personages
of the trial were prominent socially; the case had a great deal of
interest in itself. Still, the speeches which Bacon delivered on these
occasions attracted the assembly, and remain among the famous
legal arguments of England.
If the instrument of Bacon's statesmanship was his oratory, the
instrument of his oratory was his carefully formulated rhetorical
theory. He was a conscious artist, a student of the classical theories
of rhetoric, and a theorist on his own account. But his theory was
constructed, essentially, to meet his own needs as a speaker. With
Bacon, theory and practice were never completely dissociated. It
is the intimate connection of theory and practice which makes the
study of his works interesting, and which accounts in large part,
we believe, for his great success as a speaker.
3
In the De Oratore, Cicero portrays the orator as a man who loved
art and literature; one who understood and enjoyed life and the world
about him; one who knew a variety of subjects—statecraft, science,
and philosophy; in short, the orator was a man of action who reflected
the spirit of his age. And here, we find Lord Bacon an orator
in the Ciceronian sense. Even Macaulay grants him this: "Scarcely
any man has led a more stirring life than that which Bacon led
from sixteen to sixty. Scarcely any man has been better entitled
to be called a thorough man of the world." 4
3
1
Spedding, Letters, V, 297.
2 Spedding, Letters, V, 306.
Perhaps there is no place where Bacon has so effectively applied his
theory of Rhetoric as he has done in the First Book of the Advancement of
Learning. This First Book is a rhetorical study. Here Bacon appears to have
used all of the popular views for a persuasive discourse in favor of learning.
It is a plea for what follows in Book II.
Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Montague, II, 238.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
W
HOYT H. HUDSON
HEN the schoolmaster at Bath said of thirteen-year-old
Thomas De Quincey, "That boy could harangue an Athenian
mob better than you or I could address an English one,"
he singled out one of the interests which De Quincey maintained
throughout his long life of study-an interest in public speaking
and rhetoric, rooted in a knowledge of the Greek masters. True,
he never himself faced the perils or sought the prizes of public ad-
dress; and in scattered passages he attacks, or at least discounts,
wielders of rhetoric. Those familiar with the criticism of oratory
need not be told that it is contemporary orators he discounts, in favor
of the "giants" of a generation or two previous, and that he uses
a skilful rhetoric to make his attack upon the art.
One or two of De Quincey's reminiscent anecdotes relate to
quelled orators. "Ah! what a beautiful idea occurs to me at this
point," he exclaims on one page of his burlesque novel, The Spanish
Military Nun. "Once, on a hustings at Liverpool, I saw a mob
orator, whose brawling mouth, open to its widest expansion, suddenly
some larking sailor, by the most dexterous of shots, plugged up with
a paving-stone." At this point the veil is drawn.
More revealing, perhaps, is an incident of his childhood.
Thomas's elder brother had taken it upon himself to give lectures.
in physics to the other children of the family and their playmates.
His "habit of lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious
condescension to the presumed level" of his hearers' understandings,
however, so irked his sister Mary that she planned an insurrection.
When the speaker came to say, as was his custom, that he flattered
himself he had made the point under discussion tolerably clear,
gratuitously adding "to the meanest of capacities," and then, in an
exuberance of verbosity, capping all with the phrase, "clear to the
most excruciatingly mean of capacities," there was a feminine voice
raised protesting, "No, you haven't; it's as dark as sin." This was
133
134
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
followed by a second voice-Thomas's we may presume-saying,
"Dark as night," and still another with, "Dark as midnight," "and
so the peal," writes De Quincey, "continued to come round like a
catch, the whole being so well concerted, and the rolling fire so well
maintained, that it was impossible to make head against it." The
disconcerted lecturer finally fell back upon a phrase of Burke's, then
current, and addressed his audience as a "swinish multitude," add-
ing something about pearls.
Alert observation, multifarious knowledge, and critical acumen,
together with the lively interest already noticed, served to make De
Quincey a keen student of the oratory of all ages, including his
own. He was one of those who rediscovered, as someone in each
generation must, it appears, rediscover, that literary prose had its
origins in public speaking; that the persuasive impulse-that is, an
impulse not only to communicate but also to attract and influence a
more or less clearly defined audience-underlies stylistic devices
and effects; and that by taking into account the factors of changing
methods of publication, changing polities, and changing standards of
taste, the story of literary prose can be written in terms of speaker
and audience.
,, 1 an
Such are the important and inescapable conclusions left in one's
mind after reading De Quincey's "Elements of Rhetoric," 1
excursive review suggested by Whately's book of that title, together
with his essay entitled "Style," and the section on orators in his
"Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its Foremost Pre-
tensions," 2 Yet when one attempts to go further and to ascertain
De Quincey's concepts of rhetoric, eloquence, and style, and the
interrelation of these, one is baffled by the author's continual dis-
cursiveness and occasional inconsistency. Such an ambitious attempt
was originally the purpose of this study. Let it now be stated that
the writer has rather chosen from the teeming mass of De Quincey's
1
¹ Appearing originally in Blackwood's Magazine for December, 1828, and
reprinted in the Collective edition (1859) under the title "Rhetoric." I have
used Masson's edition, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey
(London, 1897), wherein the essays on literary theory and criticism are col-
lected in Volumes X and XI; and Professor Fred Newton Scott's edition,
De Quincey's Essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language (Boston, 1893).
Style" appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in four parts, 1840-41; the
study of Greek literature in Tait's Magazine, December, 1838, and June,
1839. Nor should one overlook the essay, "Conversation," published in Tait's
All are
Magazine, October, 1847, and enlarged for the Collective edition.
to be found in Masson, X.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 135
ideas a few which appear specially significant, considered in relation
to rhetorical tradition and recent stylistic theory and practice; and
illustrations from our author's own practice of the salient points of
his theory. After these major considerations were decided upon, a
number of additional observations and suggestions from De Quincey's
overflowing bounty were found to be too valuable or too interesting
to omit.
I
What, for example, are we to make of such a statement as this,
set down early and prominently in De Quincey's essay on rhetoric:
"And, in fact, amongst the greater orators of Greece there is not
a solitary gleam of rhetoric"?1 It follows upon an accurate and
important distinction between rhetoric as an ars docens, or theoreti-
cal study, and as an ars utens, or practical accomplishment; with
the admission that "the theory, or ars docens, was taught with a
fulness and an accuracy by the Grecian masters not afterwards ap-
proached." 2 The statement cited, then, has to do with rhetoric in
practice. But why such a gap between theory and practice? The
Greeks were the greatest of all teachers of rhetoric, the science; but
in their best rhetorical discourse there is to be found no application
of the principles of this science. Such is De Quincey's argument.
Rhetoric, says Aristotle, is "the faculty of finding, in any subject,
all the available means of persuasion." Granting that such is the
ars docens, one must say that rhetorical discourse, the ars utens,
consists in the employment of all available means of persuasion in
speech. Yet, says De Quincey, "there is not a solitary gleam of
rhetoric" in the orations of Demosthenes or Lysias or Eschines,
though a little of it may be found in the unspoken ones composed
by Isocrates.
The truth is that De Quincey, heeding his private genius, is for
the moment disregarding every previous concept of rhetorical dis-
course in favor of one which apparently has just swum into his
1
Masson, X, 94.
Masson, X, 93. De Quincey goes on: "In particular, it was so taught by
Aristotle: whose system we are disposed to agree with Dr. Whately in
pronouncing the best as regards the primary purpose of a teacher; though
otherwise, for elegance and as a practical model in the art he was expound-
ing, neither Aristotle, nor any less austere among the Greek rhetoricians,
has any pretensions to measure himself with Quintilian."
136
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
consciousness, with all the dazzle of novelty playing about it. To
be sure, he had made a show, at the beginning of his essay, of dis-
posing of previous explanations of rhetoric. But so ill-considered is
his treatment of them that Professor Masson finds it necessary to
write a fifteen-hundred-word note designed to set the reader right,
a note beginning with the suggestion that De Quincey suffers from
"an imperfect recollection of the contents and substance of Aris-
totle's Treatise on Rhetoric." But De Quincey is in a hurry to set
down his own delightful ideas-his bombshell theory concerning
rhetorical enthymemes and his touchstones of rhetorical discourse—
so that he has not time enough to be wholly fair to his predecessors.
And what is his own conception of rhetoric? Here is something
like a definition (p. 92²):
1
But Rhetoric is the art of aggrandizing and bringing out into strong
relief, by means of various and striking thoughts, some aspect of truth which
is of itself supported by no spontaneous feelings and therefore rests upon
artificial aids.
This alone does not appear to be strikingly different from the
Aristotelian conception, and certainly does not justify the statement
concerning Greek orators with which we began. It is from various
comments, and from his illustrative material, that we learn what De
Quincey is driving at. We find, for instance (p. 93), that rhetoric
“aims at an elaborate form of beauty which shrinks from the strife
of business, and could neither arise nor make itself felt in a
tumultuous assembly." Again it appears that the essence of rhetoric
is (p. 97) "to hang upon one's own thoughts as an object of con-
scious interest, to play with them, to watch and pursue them through
a maze of inversions, evolutions, and harlequin changes." The
modern French writers are found to be "never rhetorical" because in
their work (p. 121) "there is no eddying about their own thoughts;
no motion of fancy self-sustained from its own activities; no flux
and reflux of thought, half-meditative, half-capricious." From these
passages a fairly consistent definition emerges, a definition worded
by the indispensable Masson (p. 92n.) as "the art of intellectual and
fantastic play with any subject to its utmost capabilities, or the
Masson, X, 82-5. This note contains a clear and authoritative summary
of the classical concept of rhetoric and of the various permutations of that
concept which have prevailed in various periods.
2
Page references in the text are to Masson, X.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 137
arf of enriching any main truth or idea by inweaving with it the
largest possible amount of subsidiary and illustrative thought and
fancy."
Now if we allow ourselves to dwell upon the elements of "play"
and "fancy" in this conception, and to draw from these the sugges-
tion of a love for ornament, we are likely to conclude that, in classical
terms, De Quincey limits rhetoric to the epideictic, or demonstrative,
branch, and this only in its decadent phases. He favors the Asiatic
against the Attic. He makes it a game rather than a business. It
belongs, as he says more than once, to ages of leisure rather than
to those of stress and turmoil. It is the maneuvering of troops for
display, in the gold braid of dress uniforms, rather than their mobili-
zation for warfare or their deploying for battle. And to say that
there is not a solitary gleam of rhetoric in the best Greek orators
is somewhat like saying that there was not a solitary gleam of soccer
football in the battle of the Marne.
One must be aware that De Quincey's taste favored this playing
with ideas, this "eddying about one's own thoughts," and with the
sure instincts of a gourmet he went through the literatures of the
world, smacking his lips over the choicest morsels. He would him-
self have admitted that his taste in this was a cultivated, a highly
civilized, taste; perhaps an exotic taste. But it is a legitimate one,
and it is not strange that he hastened to exhibit it, just as one who
possesses a discriminaing taste for artichokes or even an undis-
criminating taste for daily cold baths rarely attempts to conceal
the possession. De Quincey's defense is sound (p. 101): "The
artifice and machinery of rhetoric furnishes in its degree as legitimate
a basis for intellectual pleasure as any other; that the pleasure is
of an inferior order, can no more attaint the idea or model of the
composition than it can impeach the excellence of an epigram that
it is not a tragedy."
But to leave De Quincey here, thinking of rhetoric as a game,
its end-product the "intellectual pleasure" of a few connoisseurs,
and pointing to Ovid, Petronius Arbiter, the Senecas, Sir Thomas
Browne, and Jeremy Taylor as its greatest players, would be to do
him injustice and to miss the best part of his contribution upon the
subject. We can appeal from De Quincey drunk with the heady
rhythms of rhetoriqueurs to De Quincey the sober critic and crafts-
man; from the De Quincey who says (p. 94), "All great rhetori-
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cians in selecting their subject have shunned the determinate causes
of real life,"¹ to the De Quincey who honors Edmund Burke as
supreme-if not supreme as a "pure rhetorician," then as something
unnamed (an impure rhetorician, perhaps), but of a higher order.
The soldier who plays at sham battles and who parades in review
may also fight, even without changing his uniform; and though there
may not have been any soccer at the battle of the Marne, we have
it upon good authority that there were some gleams of cricket at
Waterloo.
What is needed to convert rhetorical play into earnest is a
persuasive purpose. Given this, De Quincey's art of play becomes
Aristotle's art of war. It is a matter of taking the buttons off the
rapiers. True, the presence of the persuasive impulse will tend
to rein a bit the rhetorician's fancy; he will not eddy about his
thoughts so freely, he will be less capricious; he will not, to refer
to Masson's interpretation of De Quincey, necessarily inweave with
his idea "the largest possible amount of subsidiary and illustrative -
thought and fancy," but rather such amount as serves his purpose
and suits his audience. Yet the general tactics remain the same.
And upon these tactics, which we know as rhetorical invention and
rhetorical style, De Quincey is sound and helpful. "Like boys who
are throwing the sun's rays into the eyes of a mob by means of a
mirror," he writes in "Style," "you must shift your lights and
¹On this point we take De Quincey in flagrante delicto, as witness the
following passages:
"Rhetoric, in its finest and most absolute burnish, may be called an
eloquentia umbratica; that is, it aims at an elaborate form of beauty which
shrinks from the strife of business, and could neither arise nor make itself
felt in a tumultuous assembly."
"My reason, however, for noticing this peculiarity [rhythm] in Isocrates
is by way of fixing the attention upon the superiority, even for artificial
ornaments, of downright practical business and the realities of political strife
over the torpid atmosphere of a study or a school. Cicero, long after, had
the same passion for numerositas, and the full, pompous rotundity of cadence.
But in Cicero all habits and all faculties were nursed by the daily practice of
life and its impassioned realities in the forum or in the senate. What is the
consequence? Why this that, whereas in the most laboured performance
of Isocrates few modern ears are sensible of any striking art, or any
great result of harmony, in Cicero, on the other hand, the fine, sonorous modu-
lations of his periodic style are delightful to the dullest ear of any European.
Such are the advantages from real campaigns, from unsimulated strife of
actual stormy life, over the torpid dreams of what the Romans called an
umbratic experience."
•
The first is from "Rhetoric," written in 1828; the second from "A Brief
Appraisal of the Greek Literature," written ten years later. (Masson, X,
93, 324.)
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 139
vibrate your reflections at every possible angle, if you would agitate
the popular mind extensively." Here are the "inversions, evolu-
tions, and harlequin changes," beloved by the rhetorician, carried on
not for their own sake, but for the sake of producing a certain de-
sired result in the minds of hearers. Still more explicit is this
passage (p. 140):
Time must be given for the intellect to eddy about a truth, and to
appropriate its bearings. There is a sort of previous lubrication, such as
the boa-constrictor applies to any subject of digestion, which is requisite to
familiarize the mind with a startling or a complex novelty. And this is
obtained for the intellect by varying the modes of presenting it-now putting
it directly before the eye, now obliquely, now in an abstract shape, now in
the concrete; all which, being the proper technical discipline for dealing
with such cases, ought no longer to be viewed as a licentious mode of style,
but as the just style in respect of those licentious circumstances. And the
true art for such popular display is to contrive the best forms for appearing
to say something new when in reality you are but echoing yourself; to break
up massy chords into running variations; and to mask, by slight differences
in the manner, a virtual identity in the substance.
Here is a fair synopsis of two branches of rhetoric, invention and
style; and here, as elsewhere in De Quincey, we are made to see
that invention and style are two phases—an inner and an outer
phase of the same process.
One heresy into which De Quincey never fell is that rhetoric
has to do primarily with the disposition of words or the applica-
tion of verbal embellishment. Even when he thought of it as
fanciful play, the objects played with, as may be seen in passages
already quoted, were ideas. He contrives to make clear throughout
that the process of rhetorical invention is a mode of thinking. In his
tribute to Burke the climax is capped in this sentence: "His great
and peculiar distinction was that he viewed all objects of the under-
standing under more relations than other men, and under more com-
plex relations." What is this but a tribute to Burke's powers of
rhetorical invention and incidentally to rhetorical invention as
mental discipline?
We have just gone over De Quincey's prescriptions for handling
an idea which is to be presented rhetorically: "varying the modes
of presenting it-now putting it directly before the eye, now
obliquely, now in an abstract shape, now in the concrete." Readers
familiar with Winans' Public Speaking will recall the many pages of
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that book which treat of this process,¹ for which Professor Winans
finds a psychological basis in such statements as these, which he
quotes from Angell and James:
"To keep a thought alive . . . keep turning it over and over, keep doing
something with it"; "roll it over and over incessantly and consider different
aspects of it in turn." "Ask questions of it; examine it from all sides."
(P. 79.)
And readers familiar with Aristotle's Rhetoric may see in that
author's formidable lists of "topics" an ambitious attempt to pro-
vide a complete technique for this process of examining from all
sides an idea "up" for rhetorical treatment.
Newman, in his address entitled "Literature," 2 quotes from
Macbeth:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart?
""
and then proceeds, "Here a simple idea, by a process which belongs to
the orator rather than to the poet.
Yes, this process which
Aristotle examined so acutely and so minutely, this process which
arose in the "licentious circumstances" of the public assembly, is
one of the contributions of rhetoric to poetry. We meet it in Shake-
speare and Milton and Shelley; we see a bravura exhibition of it
when Cyrano heaps up a cumulation of possible jests about his nose;
but what we are likely to forget, unless a De Quincey comes along
to remind us, is that the place of its nativity and early culture was
the law court, the bema, or the forum; or, perhaps better, the
battlefield where the prehistoric general harangued the drawn lines
of his troops. Rhetorical invention is a mode of thinking; and if
the school rhetorics of the nineteenth century had followed De
Quincey, Whately, and Newman, instead of Blair and Bain, we
should not now find rhetoric so far from the minds of educators
1
¹A. E. Phillips, in his Effective Speaking (Chicago, 1910), also analyzes
this process helpfully, with Cumulation, Specific Instance, General Illustra-
tion, and Restatement as some of the main headings in his analysis. It is
significant, in view of what is said below with reference to rhetorical in-
vention in poetry, that most of Phillips' illustrative material is drawn from
Shakespeare.
"In The Idea of a University.
•
1
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 141
when they are looking about for "some way to make students
think."
It is almost unnecessary to enforce the point by calling atten-
tion to our author's insistence that a speaker's or writer's diction,
sentence structure, and figures (in short, what is loosely called his
style) constitute the incarnation, not the clothing or dressing, of
his thought. A less obvious wing of the main position here de-
scribed is to be found in De Quincey's theory of the rhetorical
enthymeme as treated in Aristotle's Rhetoric. Although at first
sight the passage dealing with this subject may seem to be merely
the facetious stirring up of a mare's nest, there is more in it than
that. Briefly, De Quincey called attention to the idea, advanced
before him by Facciolati (and before him by one Pacio), that the
rhetorical enthymeme, as treated by Aristotle, is not, like the logical
enthymeme, merely a syllogism with one part omitted. A rhetorical
enthymeme, in this view, is a syllogism (whether completely or
partially expressed, it does not matter) of which the premises are
drawn from probable rather than from demonstrated knowledge.
In the light of this theory, which a close study of the Rhetoric
seems to support, we see that the difference between rhetorical
and other forms of discourse is an essential rather than a super-
ficial one. It is in the subject matter itself. The mode of thinking
which is rhetorical invention demands a methodology of inference
different from that of rigorously logical thinking. And whether or
not this difference is recognized by Aristotle, every working rhetori-
cian, whether statesman or writer of advertisements for tooth paste,
utilizes it. This it is that makes the scientist fight shy of rhetoric,
or of a "popular" presentation of his science; and conversely, this
it is that makes the lay audience dread the scientist. No matter how
lucidly and intelligibly the scientist may speak, we do not feel
that he has made a speech-unless perchance he has used an
abundance of analogy, a form of inference unsatisfactory to logic
but honored by rhetoric.
To sum up our observations thus far: De Quincey teaches that
the rhetorical process, the process of presenting an idea attractively,
whether as a display of power, in play, in poetic exuberance, or for
a persuasive purpose, involves an inner and an outer activity. The
inner activity we may call rhetorical invention; the outer, rhetorical
style. The first is a mode of thinking about one's subject, turning
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the subject over in one's mind, and viewing it in as many relations
as possible. The second is the incarnation in speech of the thoughts
(or of a selection from the thoughts) engendered by the preceding
mental activity. No one has shown so well the organic union of
these two.
1
II
Let us turn briefly to De Quincey's rhetorical practice. Here
again we have a bewildering variety from which to choose. We
shall be on safest ground, perhaps, if we avoid the heights, where
De Quincey produces something sui generis, and confine our exam-
ination to such writing as we find in his book reviews and literary
essays. Here he is aiming primarily at interest that favorable
interest, we might say, which is persuasion in the first degree.
How does he attain it? A specimen or two will show that he attains
it precisely by that process which we have already found him
analyzing.
2
Suppose we turn to a paragraph of his review of Schlosser's
History of the Eighteenth Century. Reduced to the headings of a
brief, this paragraph would appear:
A. Schlosser's statement that Pope's translation of the "Odyssey" was the
work of hired help is an exaggeration, for
1. Pope translated twelve books of the "Odyssey" himself.
Now let us choose from De Quincey's paragraph the clauses which
embody this minimum of idea—the logical or factual skeleton. These
are the "massy chords" which he must break up into "running
variations":
Of Pope's "Homer" Schlosser thinks fit to say "that Pope pocketed
the subscription of the 'Odyssey,' and then left the work to be done by under-
strappers." Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. . . . Pope personally translated one-
half of the "Odyssey." . . . This is the truth of the matter.
1 Readers familiar with the classical division of rhetoric into the steps of
inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio, will see that De
Quincey is most full upon inventio and elocutio. The last two he virtually
omits, as they have no application to written discourse. His slighting of
dispositio, or arrangement, is a defect alike of his theory and of his practice.
Another defect of his theory (attributable, perhaps, to the fact that in prac-
tice he never actually faced his audience) is his incomplete recognition of the
audience as one of the determining factors in the rhetorical situation, and
especially as a source of inventive topics.
2
The passage chosen appears in Masson, XI, 32.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 143
But that is not enough to satisfy the rhetorically minded De Quincey:
if he is to think this thought at all, he must think it in more rela-
tions than appear in this skeleton; and if the reader is to be interested,
the thought must be exhibited from more angles and must be
related to other interesting ideas. So with the addition of conces-
sions, analogies, and repetitions, the paragraph appears as follows:
Of Pope's "Homer" Schlosser thinks fit to say,-amongst other evil
things, which it really does deserve (though hardly in comparison with the
German hexametrical "Homer" of the ear-splitting Voss),-"that Pope pocketed
the subscription of the 'Odyssey,' and left the work to be done by his under-
strappers." Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do that any more. True it is,
and disgraceful enough in itself without lying, that Pope (like modern con-
tractors for a railway or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions
of the undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his con-
tracts. At least I know of people now-a-days (much better artists) that
would execute such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping time,
at thirty per cent less. But navvies and bill-brokers, that are in excess now,
then were scarce. Still the affair, though not mercenary, was illiberal in a
higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more pointedly Pope's sense of
the mechanic fashion in which his own previous share of the Homeric labour
had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and needs no exaggeration.
Let it, therefore, be reported truly. Pope personally translated one-half of
the “Odyssey”—a dozen books he turned out of his own oven; and if you add
the "Batrachomyomachia," his dozen was a baker's dozen. The journeymen
did the other twelve; were regularly paid; regularly turned off when the
job was out of hand; and never once had to "strike for wages." How much
beer was allowed I cannot say. This is the truth of the matter.
So no
more fibbing, Schlosser, if you please.
Anyone interested may find it an instructive pastime to analyze
De Quincey's method in detail, noticing at what points the analogies
are applied, to what degree they are elaborated, and how often some
phases of the thought are repeated. By my count, the idea "Schlosser
is exaggerating (or fibbing)" is stated or broadly implied no less
than six times. Well, it is the main idea of the paragraph, and
hence the axis, or point of reference, of the whole. Yet the ques-
tion may be raised, is the rhetorical process overdone in this
paragraph? For a reader whose sole purpose is to learn the exact
truth about Pope's share of the translation, yes. But for the
reader to whom it is addressed, the reader who must be kept
interested, no. Let anyone begin reading, without prejudice, the
review from which this is taken; he is likely to continue to the end
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of its forty-five pages and lay it down with the prayer that all book
reviews might be as interesting and as cogent. He may decide,
incidentally, that H. L. Mencken has learned something from De
Quincey.
Is there any gain, besides interest, resulting from the process
exemplified in De Quincey's paragraph? There is some casual in-
formation, such as that concerning Voss's German translation of
Homer. But more than that, the finished paragraph leaves us with
some rather definite emotional attitudes-slight scorn for Schlosser,
somewhat lessened respect for Pope, and perhaps grateful confidence.
in De Quincey who has set us right. None of all this appears in
the brief; and it is such disparity between the content of a speech
or argument, as briefed, and its content as spoken or written, that
encourages some observers to emphasize the separation of matter and
manner. The emotional attitudes conveyed result from the manner,
they argue. And with that we are back again in the doctrine that
rhetorical style is something added to the thought of a speaker or
writer. But such a view assigns too essential a value to that portion.
of one's subject matter which can be briefed. Is it not true that
the brief, far from being the skeleton of the finished argument, is
likely to be something less than a picture of the skeleton? We have
perfected no instrument for reducing to heads the matter of rhetori-
cal discourse that complex of ideas, images, and emotional atti-
tudes associated under stress of impulses from the audience and
occasion and under the curb of the speaker's purpose.
The second paragraph chosen for illustrative purposes, I find,
is likewise one of refutation. It may be interesting to compare
this with our first, noticing that while some additional methods of
rhetorical invention are utilized, the general structure is similar and
the maneuver of making a concession and then returning strongly
to the attack reappears. The argument may be briefed thus:¹
A. Gilfillan's charge that Dr. Johnson was indolent is obviously a mistaken
one, for
1. Johnson's voluminous and painstaking literary work refutes it.
De Quincey's paragraph follows:
Another paradox of Mr. Gilfillan's under this head is that he classes
Dr. Johnson as indolent; and it is the more startling because he does not
¹The paragraph is from De Quincey's notes on Gilfillan's Literary Por-
traits, Masson, XI, 380.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 145
utter it as a careless opinion upon which he might have been thrown by incon-
sideration, but as a concession extorted from him reluctantly: he had sought
to evade it, but could not. Now, that Dr. Johnson had a morbid predisposition
to decline labour from his scrofulous habit of body is probable. The question
for us, however, is not what nature prompted him to do, but what he did.
If he had an extra difficulty to fight with in attempting to labour, the more was
his merit in the known result, that he did fight with that difficulty and that
he conquered it. This is undeniable. And the attempt to deny it presents
itself in a comic shape when one imagines some ancient shelf in a library,
that has groaned for nearly a century under the weight of the doctor's works,
demanding "How say you? Is this Sam Johnson, whose Dictionary alone is
a load for a camel, one of those authors whom you call idle? Then Heaven
preserve us poor oppressed book-shelves from such as you will consider
active." George III, in a compliment as happily turned as any one of those
ascribed to Louis XIV, expressed his opinion upon this question of the
Doctor's industry by saying that he also should join in thinking Johnson too
voluminous a contributor to literature were it not for the extraordinary merit
of the contributions. Now, it would be an odd way of turning the royal
praise into a reproach if we should say: "Sam, had you been a pretty good
writer, we, your countrymen, should have held you to be also an industrious
writer; but, because you are a very good writer, therefore we pronounce you
a lazy vagabond."
Now a teacher of rhetoric can hardly make as an assignment to
a student: "Present the facts concerning Pope's own share in
the translation of the 'Odyssey,' relating these facts with railway
contractors, bill-brokers, navvies, an oven, beer, and striking for
wages"; or, "Refute the charge against Johnson of indolence,
bringing in book-shelves and making them talk, comparing the wit
of George III with that of Louis XIV, and ending with a jocular
apostrophe to Johnson, addressing him as 'Sam.'" Yet is it not
the ability to do just that sort of thing which the teacher tries-by
hook or crook, by fair means or foul, by pleas to "use your imagina-
tion" and to "make it concrete" to develop? As to actual means
of instruction, our precious pedagogical devices, we can hardly look
for them in De Quincey. He gives us some models and helps to
clarify our aims. And he does more: he points us away from that
sort of rhetoric which is largely an ex post facto critical apparatus,
emphasizing nomenclature, classification, and theme correction, to
the older discipline (never wholly extinct, but certainly under a
cloud for some generations) which was largely a mode of procedure
for the preparation of a theme or speech.
Our suggestion that De Quincey gives us models needs some
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qualification. His faults are obvious-and they are the faults
resulting from an excess of the very faculty we have noticed in
him. Or perhaps we may say that he has one fault-that of
digression.¹ Such pleasure does he take in turning an idea over
and over and relating it to other interesting ideas, that he frequently
extends the process beyond use or reason. "De Quincey, however,
offends beyond the possibility of justification," writes Professor
Minto, "overloading his sentences in a gossiping kind of way with
particulars that have no relevance whatever to the main statement."
It is the fault of the rhetorician who forgets the limits set by the
patience and docility of his audience, and who, in the elaboration of
minutiæ, even forgets his theme. Such a one is a familiar figure:
he was familiar in Rome, as is evidenced by Martial's epigram to the
lawyer Postumus (VI, xix), which has been translated thus:
My action is not for assault, or wounding, or poisoning: it concerns my
three she-goats; I complain that they are lost by my neighbor's theft; this is
the fact which the judge prescribes to be proved to him. You, with a mighty
voice and every gesture you know, make the court ring with Cannæ, and
the Mithridatic war, and insensate Punic perjuries, and Sullas, and Mariuses,
and Muciuses. Now mention, Postumus, my three she-goats.
And Martial was only rewriting, in terms of Roman history, an
older epigram of the Greek Anthology.
So with De Quincey. When, in the midst of "Style," we find
ourselves involved in a long discussion of the hypothesis that great
men appear in galaxies, with quotations from C. Velleius Paterculus
and comparisons of the age of Leo X with that of Louis XIV and
that of Shakespeare, we feel like saying, "Now mention, De Quincey,
style." As we have seen, De Quincey in one of his moods made a
virtue of fanciful vagaries. He thought that one was only a pure
rhetorician when he gave his fancy free rein to wander where it
would. But we can hardly grant that one is a good rhetorician,
or even a mediocre one, when he forgets his audience and his theme
and his purpose, prime factors, all of them, in the rhetorical equation.
1
¹H. M. Paull, in "De Quincey-and Style" (Fortnightly Review, CXII
(1922), 152) argues that De Quincey does not live up to the precepts of
his essay, "Style." He condemns the colloquialism of Greek writers, for
instance, and yet is himself colloquial. He ridiculed the long, involved sen-
tences of German prose, but himself writes sentences of great length and
involution. The first of these points is a small one; and I think De Quincey's
practice is to be preferred, in this case, to his precept. His long, involved
sentences are a manifestation of that exuberant power of invention which we
have discussed.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 147
Perhaps this one defect was all that barred De Quincey from being
supreme in persuasive art-the lack of that will, always manifest in
great orators, which sternly subordinates means to ends, making
the speaker forego indulgence in fanciful or playful or even eloquent
digressions in the interest of the persuasive victory to be won. Yet
when all is said, we can still go to him for models of rhetorical
invention, as a process in itself, regardless of his use or abuse of the
process. He is among the greatest tacticians, however weak he
may be in major strategy.
III
But we have not exhausted so much as a tithe of De Quincey's
ideas on rhetoric and public speaking. So fertile is his thinking and
so voluminous his information that many an unconsidered fragment,
thrown in by the way, is worth gathering into our basket. We
cannot gather them all, for there are more than twelve baskets full.
We have said nothing of his treatment of the influence of national
or racial characteristics, as present in audiences, upon rhetorical
style. Under this heading his description of the Athenian audience,
and its effect upon the style of Demosthenes is probably most
suggestive. But it should be read only in connection with his
similar treatment of the Roman audiences addressed by Cicero and
of the audience of Fox and Burke in the House of Commons.
Perhaps still more striking, as more original, is De Quincey's
thesis concerning the effects upon style of methods of publication.
"Did the reader ever happen to reflect on the great idea of publi-
cation?” he asks, and is off for a dozen pages. And there is more
in these pages than a clever "botanico-mechanical interpretation [of
Greek style] in the lack of linen rags in the ash barrels of ancient
Greece." 1 Here are clues to a whole branch of rhetorical study, a
branch dealing with the technique of publicity in its relation to the
rhetorical and literary expression of a given period. Sporadic
attempts at such investigations have been made by literary critics
and by sociologists, but there is much to be done. Literary tendencies
are usually analyzed in terms of earlier literary tendencies, with
historical events, such as wars and revolutions, coming in for a
vague share; such factors as freedom or censorship of speech and
the press, the rise of cheap printing, the convenience of assembly or
1
¹ The phrase is Professor Brewster's, in the Introduction to his Representa-
tive Essays on the Theory of Style, New York, 1911.
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communication, are too often overlooked. The oration and the
drama reached a high degree of perfection in Greece, says De
Quincey, because the chief means of publication were oral. He
might have added that the Greeks were also rather fond of carving
inscriptions on stone or metal and hence perfected the epigram to
an equal degree. Could not one, following such clues, explain why
the modern novel was developed when and as it was? In such light,
is there not added significance in the fact that the great stories of
the world survived the Middle Ages chiefly in the form of exempla
used in sermons? Or in the renascence of drama in the same period
in connection with services of the church? To follow De Quincey's
clue, one would have to take into account the size and architecture
of auditoriums, stages, theatres, and pulpits. Or coming to recent
phenomena, one might study the vogue of pamphleteering, the rise
of the newspaper, and the significance of radio broadcasting as a
means of publication. Is there a “Chautauqua style," and if so, is
it determined largely by the audience, or are both audience and
style controlled by the physical aspects of Chautauqua? Will the
English of headlines and the devices of billboard advertising invade
poetry and uncommercial rhetoric? What of the appalling multipli-
cation of pictures in recent publicity, and of pictorial communication
-will all this have its effect upon the speaker and writer? These are
a few of the questions suggested by De Quincey's twelve pages.
In another section of De Quincey's "Style" we find the following
passage, thrown in by way of illustration, which embodies a sug-
gestive application of a principle drawn from such study as we have
been considering:
Punctuation, trivial as such an innovation may seem, was the product
of typography; and it is interesting to trace the effects upon style even of
that one slight addition to the resources of logic. Previously a man was
driven to depend for his security against misunderstanding upon the pure
virtue of his syntax. Miscollocation or dislocation of related words dis-
turbed the whole sense; its least effect was to give no sense,-often it gave
a dangerous sense. Now, punctuation was an artificial machinery for main-
taining the integrity of the sense against all mistakes of the writer; and, as
one consequence, it withdrew the energy of men's anxieties from the natural
machinery, which lay in just and careful arrangement.¹
The passage is reinforced by a footnote too extended for quotation.
Incidentally, the point of this passage supports the position of those
¹ Masson, X, 164-5.
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 149
of us who hold that the norm of good writing is good speaking. And
it is to be observed that never does one realize the artificiality of
punctuation so much as when one attempts by reading aloud to
translate writing into speaking.
Nothing De Quincey has to say directly about the organic
nature of style is so convincing as is his treatment of the styles
of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato. His discussion of Herodotus
may be said to set a model for the most fruitful type of rhetorical
criticism. He considers the character of the historian, his audience,
and his method of publication. With reference to the audience,
De Quincey is most full on the topic of the state of mind of the
Greek public at the time when the work of Herodotus appeared.
But he enters still more thoroughly into the subject matter of his
author, evidently considering that the controlling factor. The result
of it all is that, without De Quincey's having directly characterized or
described the style of Herodotus, the reader finds himself, at the
end of three pages, thoroughly familiar with it. And in connection
with this, or elsewhere in the essays we are considering, one may
find sketches, at least, for similar treatments of Plato and Isocrates,
of Francis Bacon, Fox, Sheridan, Burke, and others.
We are reduced to cataloguing. That discerning injunction to
listen to the speech and read the letters of cultivated women, in
order to apprehend the best possibilities of a living language—
who will gainsay it? The several pages, scattered here and there, on
French eloquence where is there better criticism of its kind? And
that part of a paragraph which contrasts the forensic with the
deliberative speaker-how well it says what many of us grope for
when we attempt to contrast English and American debating! And
how many of our most important recent developments of rhetorical
theory are to be found, in germ, in the following passage at the
end of "Conversation":
Many other suggestions for the improvement of conversation might be
brought forward within ampler limits; and especially for that class of con-
versation which moves by discussion a whole code of regulations might be
proposed that would equally promote the interests of the individual speakers
and the public interests of the truth involved in the question discussed.
Meantime nobody is more aware than we are that no style of conversation is
more essentially vulgar than that which moves by disputation. This is the
vice of the young and the inexperienced, but especially of those amongst them
who are fresh from academic life. But discussion is not necessarily dispu-
:
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
150
tation; and the two orders of conversation-that, on the one hand, which
contemplates an interest of knowledge and of the self-developing intellect;
that, on the other hand, which forms one and the widest amongst the gay
embellishments of life-will always advance together. Whatever there may
remain of illiberal in the first (for, according to the remark of Burke, there
is always something illiberal in the severer aspects of study until balanced
by the influence of social amenities) will correct itself, or will tend to correct
itself, by the model held up in the second, and thus the great organ of social
intercourse by means of speech, which hitherto has done little for man, except
through the channel of its ministrations to the direct business of daily
necessities, will at length rise into a rivalship with books, and become fixed
amongst the alliances of intellectual progress, not less than amongst the
ornamental accomplishments of convivial life.
1
Strange indeed is the fate that has made generally known, of
all De Quincey's fertile and prophetic ideas in literary criticism,
only that questionable distinction between literature of knowledge
and literature of power. And it is sad to reflect that, copious as
we find his "Style," the essay is but a fragment. The enticing
prospectus placed near the middle of it, in which the author promises
to mark out "for subsequent cultivation and development all the
possible subdivisions and sections amongst the resources of the
rhetorician, all the powers which he can employ, and therefore all
the difficulties which he needs to study"-this is never fulfilled.
"Were this done," says De Quincey, "we should no longer see those
incoherent sketches which are now circulating in the world upon
questions of taste, of science, of practical address, as applied to the
management of style and rhetoric; the public ear would no longer
be occupied by feeble Frenchmen-Rollin, Rapin, Batteux, Bouhours,
Du Bos, and id genus omne; nor by the elegant but desultory Blair;
nor by scores of others who bring an occasional acuteness or casual
information to this or that subsection of their duty, whilst (taken
as general guides) they are universally insufficient." "Were this
done"-alas, it was not done; and his description of rhetorical
instruction (with the addition of the numbing system of dryasdust
Bain) holds good for the latter half of the nineteenth century as
well as for the earlier. Yet, as has been suggested on another page,
¹The present writer finds himself in full accord with the judgment of
J. H. Fowler, De Quincey as a Literary Critic, Pamphlet 52 of The English
Association (July, 1922): "There is indeed one definition or distinction of
his which has been widely quoted and accepted, but which, I am bound to
confess, does not seem to me really profound or valuable-I mean his famous
distinction between literature of knowledge and literature of power."
DE QUINCEY ON RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING 151
in reading De Quincey, fragmentary and desultory as he is, we catch
a spirit which, allowed to operate, would transform all this; we hear
echoes of a great past, and prophetic whispers of a return, in educa-
tion, to that rhetoric which can be and should be "the organon of
all studies."
IV
So the last word is, read De Quincey. For an eloquent enuncia-
tion of this word I am turning to a page in one of those little volumes
which treasure up for us "the life-blood of a master spirit," Hiram
Corson. To this writer all who in recent years have concerned
themselves with the oral expression of literary content, felt deeply
and mastered thoroughly, owe a great debt. Corson says:
For range of power, for great diversity of subject, for poetic, philosophic,
and logical cast of mind, for depth of feeling, for an inspiring vitality of
thinking, for periodic and impassioned prose which, running through the
whole gamut of expression, is unequalled in English Literature, no more
educating author could be selected for advanced students than Thomas De
Quincey. A good education in the language as a living organism, could be
got through his writings alone; and his wealth and vitality of thought and
feeling could hardly fail, unless opposed by extraordinary obtuseness, to
excite and enliven, and strengthen the best faculties of thought and feeling
in any reader. How much a student might do for himself, by loyally reading
all of De Quincey's Works, as they are presented in Dr. Masson's edition!'
¹The Aims of Literary Study, New York, 1906, pp. 60-1. The italics are
Corson's.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
THEODORE T. STENBERG
"Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to
bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense." ¹
A
I
MERICA'S greatest thinker was also a lifelong and assiduous
student and practitioner of the art of oral discourse. More-
over, he entertained some hope of becoming a teacher of
the art. At the age of fifty-eight, he wrote these significant words:
"Why has never the poorest country college offered me a professor-
ship of rhetoric? I think I could have taught an orator, though
I am none."2 The first sentence quoted is manifestly an expression
of disappointment.
No one who reads Emerson's Journals can fail to note that a
good deal of space is devoted to comment on eloquence and on
orators. The present writer, in taking notes on the Journals prepara-
tory to the writing of this account, has jotted down the word
eloquence in a hundred and three different contexts. As regards
orators, these notes contain a hundred and forty-two references
to Webster, sixty-one to Everett, fifty-two to Channing, forty-six to
Burke, nineteen to Choate, sixteen to Phillips, fifteen to Demos-
thenes, six to Chatham. In addition, the names of many other
speakers appear one or more times. This interest in public speaking,
as the Journals make sufficiently evident, was continuous throughout
Emerson's long career. It is also of significance, in this connection,
that the first lecture on Eloquence was written twenty years before
the second, the date of the first being 1847 and that of the second
1867.3
1 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. E. W. Emerson,
Boston and New York, 1903-4 (Centenary Edition), VIII, 92.
ª Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations, ed. E. W. Emerson
and W. E. Forbes, Boston and New York,1909-14, IX, 413.
3 Works, VII, 364, 366.
153
154
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Emerson descended from an almost unbroken line of clergymen.
That this circumstance had an important bearing on his preoccupa-
tion with oratory can hardly be doubted. At the age of twenty,
he expressed his own view of the matter in these words: "I inherit
from my sire a formality of manner and speech, but I derive from
him, or from his patriotic parent, a passionate love for the strains
of eloquence. I burn after the aliquid immensum infinitumque
which Cicero desired." 1
As a boy, Emerson naturally manifested this "passionate love
for the strains of eloquence" mainly in declamation. His son, Dr.
Edward Waldo Emerson, relates the following: "A gentleman,
who in his youth was clerk in Deacon White's store, tells us that
he used to love to hear the small Ralph declaim, and would capture
him when he came on an errand and set him, nothing loath, on a
sugar barrel whence he would entertain his earliest Concord audience,
the chance frequenters of the grocery, with recitations of poetry,
very likely Campbell's 'Glenara' or the Kosciuski passage, or
statelier verses from Milton." 2 Emerson himself also has something
to offer on this point: "I was a little chubby boy trundling a hoop
in Chauncy Place, and spouting poetry from Scott and Campbell at
the Latin School." 3
Nor did this interest in declamation die out as he grew older.
Dr. Emerson says: "He took the greatest interest in our recitation
of poetry, and pleased himself that no one of us could sing, for he
said he thought that he had observed that the two gifts of singing
and oratory did not go together. Good declamation he highly prized,
and used to imitate for us the recitation of certain demigods of
the college in those days when all the undergraduates went with
interest to hear the Seniors declaim.
"On our return from school after 'Speaking Afternoon' he
always asked, 'Did you do well?' 'I don't know.' 'Did the boys
study or play, or did they sit still and look at you?' 'Several of
them didn't attend.' 'But you must oblige them to. If the orator
doesn't command his audience they will command him.'
"4
Emerson was not, however, blind to the dangers of declamation
in the opprobrious sense, and of empty rhetoric. Referring to the
¹ Journals, I, 363.
2
Emerson in Concord, Boston, 1895, p. 17.
8
Journals, VI, 305.
Emerson in Concord, p. 173.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
155
college declamations and rhetorical exhibitions of his young manhood,
he exclaims: "What fools a few sounding sentences and verses
made of me and my mates!" 1 In another context he says: "There
is nevertheless a foolish belief among teachers that the multitude
are not wise enough to discern between good manner and good
matter, and that voice and rhetoric will stand, instead of truth.
They can tell well enough whether they have been convinced or no.
The multitude suppose often that great talents are necessary to
produce the elaborate harangues which they hear without emotion
of consequence, and so they say, What a fine speaker, What a
good discourse; but they will not leave any agreeable employment to
go again, and never will do a single thing in consequence of having
heard the discourse. But let them hear one of these God-taught
teachers and they will surrender to him. They leave their work
to come again; they go home and think and talk and act as he said.
Men know truth as quick as they see it." 2
3
4
While a student at Harvard, Emerson one year took the Boylston
prize for declamation. The mere externals of public speaking still
seem to have attracted him rather more than the substance. The
editors of the Journals say: "The florid oratory then in vogue,
especially of the young Southerners, had, for a time, a great attrac-
tion for the New England boy." While a sophomore, he helped
to organize a literary society, the rules and regulations of which
were drawn up by him and two other members. These rules contain
two sentences which throw some light on his views at this stage:
"The great design of public education is to qualify men for useful-
ness in active life, and the principal arts by which we can be useful
are those of writing and speaking. . . . We are told by those from
whose decision there is no appeal that by constant, unwearied practice
only can facility and excellence in these arts be attained.” 5
But his greatest Harvard experience was his coming under the
spell of Everett. The Journals furnish abundant evidence of the
importance of this influence. Two years after his graduation, when
the spell had to some extent been broken, he writes these words
concerning one of Everett's lectures: "Though the lecture contained
nothing original, and no very remarkable views, yet it was an account
1
¹ Works, III, 295.
¹ Journals, II, 296-7.
8
15
Works, VII, 365.
Journals, I, 120-1.
* Journals, I, 35.
156
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
of antiquities bearing everywhere that 'fine Roman hand,' and pre-
sented in the inimitable style of our Cicero." 1 That this influence
had lasting results is made plain in a statement written eighteen
years after graduation: "Everett has put more stories, sentences,
verses, names in amber for me than any other person." Four
years later he records a detailed estimate, only a part of which
follows: "There was an influence on the young people from Everett's
genius which was almost comparable to that of Pericles in Athens.
That man had an inspiration that did not go beyond his head, but
which made him the genius of elegance. He had a radiant beauty
of person, of a classic style, a heavy, large eye, marble lids, which
gave the impression of mass which the slightness of his form needed,
sculptured lips, a voice of such rich tones, such precise and perfect
utterance that, although slightly nasal, it was the most mellow and
beautiful and correct of all the instruments of the time. The word
that he spoke, in the manner in which he spoke it, became current
and classical in New England." But Everett's limitations are very
clear to him: "Meantime all this was a pure triumph of Rhetoric.
This man had neither intellectual nor moral principles to teach. He
had no thoughts. It was early asked . . . what truths he had
thrown into circulation, and how he had enriched the general mind,
and agreed that only in graces of manner, only in a new perception
of Grecian beauty, had he opened our eyes."
" 3
" 4
Shortly after his graduation, Emerson heard one of Channing's
sermons, and expresses his admiration in these words: "The language
was a transparent medium, conveying with the utmost distinctness
the pictures in his mind to the mind of the hearers." 5 And when
Webster was chosen representative to Congress in 1822, Emerson
writes the following semiprophetic sentence: "A victory is achieved
today for one whose name perchance is written highest in the
volume of futurity." Webster was soon to become his ideal in
the realm of American oratory. Says John Burroughs: "Emerson's
description and praise and criticism of Webster form some of the
most notable pages in his Journal.”
¹ Journals, I, 207.
Journals, IV, 471.
3
Journals, VI, 255.
196
Journals, VI, 256-7.
5
Journals, I, 290.
в
Journals, I, 175.
The Last Harvest, Boston, 1922, p. 61.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
157
As a young clergyman and lecturer he glories in his opportunity:
"The high prize of eloquence may be mine, the joy of uttering what
no other can utter, and what all must receive." 1 Little by little he
drifted away from the pulpit; and during the latter half of his life
the lecture was his sole medium for public address. At the age of
thirty-six, he says: "I look upon the Lecture-room as the true church
of today and as the home of a richer eloquence than Faneuil Hall
or the Capitol ever knew." 2 Again: "A lecture is a new literature,
which leaves aside all tradition, time, place, circumstance, and
addresses an assembly as mere human beings, no more. It has never
yet been done well. It is an organ of sublime power, a panharmon-
icon for variety of note." Professor Bliss Perry's judgment is
correct: "The oral impulse was strong in this descendant of eloquent
sires, the admiring auditor of Everett and Webster, the unwearied
searcher and practitioner of the mysteries of the spoken word."4
Perhaps it is not amiss to end this account of the development
of Emerson's interest in oral discourse with two glowing tributes
to the art. At the age of nineteen, two years after graduation from
college, he writes what purports to be the glorious history of elo-
quence: "The new capacities and desires which burned in the human
breast, demanded a correspondent perfection in speech,-to body
them forth. Then a voice was heard in the assemblies of men,
which sounded like the language of the gods; it rolled like music
on the ear, and filled the mind with indefinable longings; it was per-
emptory as the word of kings; or mournful as a widow wailing; or
enkindling as the martial clarion. That voice men called Eloquence,
and he that had it unlocked their hearts, or turned their actions
whithersoever he would. Like sea-waves to the shore, like mountain
sheep to their shepherd, so men crowded around this commander of
their hearts to drink in his accents, and to mould their passions to
his will. The contagion of new desires and improvements went
abroad,—and tribe after tribe of barbarians uplifted the banner of
Refinement. This spirit-stirring art was propagated also, and
although its light sunk often in the socket, it was never put out.
Time rolled, and successive ages rapidly developed the mixed and
mighty drama of human society, and among the instruments em-
1
¹ Journals, III, 345.
Journals, V, 298.
8
Journals, V, 234.
The Praise of Folly and Other Papers, Boston, 1923, p. 117.
158
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
ployed therein, this splendid art was often and actively used. And
who that has witnessed its strength, and opened every chamber of
his soul to the matchless enchanter, does not venerate it as the
noblest agent that God works with in human hearts? My Muse,
it is the idol of thy homage, and deserves the dedication of thine
outpourings." Sixteen years later, he records how he was affected
by the words of an orator whom he does not name (one feels tempted
to venture the guess that it was Webster): "I thought I saw the sun
and moon fall into his head, as seeds fall into the ground, that they
might quicken and bring forth new worlds to fill nature." 2
1
II
Before proceeding to examine what this devotee of eloquence has
to offer on the theory and practice of the art, it is well to cast a glance
at his influence as an orator. And in this matter the judgment of his
contemporaries is of prime importance.
Says Lowell: "It is a singular fact that Mr. Emerson is the most
steadily attractive lecturer in America. . . . A lecturer now for
something like a third of a century, one of the pioneers of the lec-
turing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter
has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually
winds new ones into its enchanting meshes. . . . No doubt, Emer-
son, like all original men, has his peculiar audience, and yet I know
none that can hold a promiscuous crowd in pleased attention so
long as he. As in all original men, there is something for every
palate. . . For us the whole life of the man is distilled in the clear
drop of every sentence, and behind each word we divine the force of
a noble character, the weight of a large capital of thinking and
being." Says Holmes: "As to the charm of his lectures all are
agreed." And Alcott: "Emerson has triumphed, . . . the large
hall in the Temple was filled; and the audience the choicest that
could be gathered in New England." 5
"' 3
"94
195
As to Emerson's influence on the young minds of the time, Lowell
Journals, I, 233-4.
Journals, V, 80.
3 The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry (Riverside
Edition), Boston, 1897, I, 349-53.
4
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1897, p. 379.
'Journals, V, 159.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
159
again speaks for himself and for the rest: "The delight and the benefit
were that he put us in communication with a larger style of thought,
sharpened our wits with a more pungent phrase, gave us ravishing
glimpses of an ideal under the dry husk of our New England; made
us conscious of the supreme and everlasting originality of whatever
bit of soul might be in any of us; freed us, in short, from the stocks
of prose in which we had sat so long that we had grown wellnigh
contented in our cramps.' "" 1
Nor is it necessary to restrict oneself to the testimony of Emer-
son's countrymen for evidence concerning the power of his speech.
Alexander Ireland writes the following: "On Sunday, the 18th of
August, 1833, I heard him deliver a discourse in the Unitarian
Chapel, Young Street, Edinburgh, and I remember distinctly the
effect which it produced on his hearers. It is almost needless to
say that nothing like it had ever been heard by them before, and
many of them did not know what to make of it. The originality of
his thoughts, the consummate beauty of the language in which they
were clothed, the calm dignity of his bearing, the absence of all
oratorical effort, and the singular directness and simplicity of his
manner, free from the least shadow of dogmatic assumption, made a
deep impression on me. Not long before this I had listened to a
wonderful sermon by Dr. Chalmers, whose force, and energy, and
vehement, but rather turgid, eloquence carried, for the moment, all
before them. . . . But I must confess that the pregnant thoughts and
serene self-possession of the young Boston minister had a greater
charm for me than all the rhetorical splendors of Chalmers." 2
Two events in Emerson's career as a public speaker deserve
separate mention; namely, his oration "The American Scholar" and
the "Divinity School Address." The importance of the former has
perhaps been fixed in our memory by a sentence from Holmes: "This
grand Oration was our intellectual Declaration of Independence." ³
The profound influence of the "Divinity School Address" as an
expression of religious liberty, has been emphasized, in like manner,
by Professor Woodberry, who maintains that "both the academic.
and the religious proclamation went forth from his lips, in the Phi
Beta Kappa oration and the 'Divinity School Address.'" 4
1 The Writings in Prose and Poetry, I, 354-5.
2
3
Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 65.
Ibid.,
P. 115.
America in Literature, New York, 1903, p. 86.
160
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Emerson's own estimate of his oratorical powers is misleading.
He was too modest to be a just critic of himself. For example, in
the first paragraph of this article there is a clause which shows that
he does not wish to call himself an orator. It must be remembered,
too, that he was very exacting as a judge of his own efforts. The
following quotation from a letter written shortly after the delivery
of a course of lectures, is an illustration in point: "But now unhap-
pily the lectures are ended. Ten decorous speeches and not one
ecstasy, not one rapture, not one thunderbolt. Eloquence, there-
fore, there was none." But Parker, after hearing the first of these
lectures, says that it was "splendid" and that "Bancroft was in
ecstasies." 2
1
The present generation, judging Emerson almost exclusively by
his Essays, finds it difficult to understand the widespread popular
appeal of his lectures. The Essays are, however, much more con-
densed and abstract than were most of the lectures which served as
their bases. Says Dr. Emerson: "When the lectures were recast into
essays, the final revision was severe; he cut out and condensed heroic-
ally." 3
Often he drew upon several lectures for one essay. As
instances of this practice one has but to call attention to the origin
of two of his most popular essays, namely "Self-Reliance" and
"The Over-Soul"; each of these contains material from four different
lectures. Perhaps Emerson's subject-matter sometimes made too
heavy demands on the intelligence of average humanity. It was his
practice, however, to be as simple and concrete as the subject-matter
would permit. To quote Dr. Emerson again: "He would not write
down to his audience, but had faith in the perception of humble
people. On the other hand, he wrote strong English in short sen-
tences, and in delivery introduced frequent anecdotes which would
appeal to them, as they always did to him. Many of these were
omitted in the severe pruning of the essays for publication." 5
4
Nor did Emerson's mysticism stand in the way of his popularity.
It may even be questioned whether he should be called a mystic,
except in the sense in which almost every poet or idealist can be
called so. Holmes is probably near the truth when he says: "Too
1
¹J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1887, II, 399.
Ibid., II, 400.
3 Emerson in Concord, p. 219.
4 Works, II, 389-90, 426-7.
•Works, I, 433.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
161
1
much has been made of Emerson's mysticism. He was an intel-
lectual rather than an emotional mystic, and withal a cautious one.
He never let go the string of his balloon." And concerning Emer-
son's idealism Holmes says: "Emerson was eminently sane for an
idealist. He carried the same sagacity into the ideal world that
Franklin showed in the affairs of common life." 2 The Journals fur-
nish the following pertinent definition: "We are idealists whenever
we prefer an idea to a sensation.” 3 In fact, his exalted vision seems
to have been one of the main sources of his power. Says Henry
James (Senior): "Incontestably the main thing about him, however,
as I have already said, was that he brought you face to face with
the infinite in humanity." And J. E. Cabot: "What gave Emerson
his position among those who influence thought was not so much
what he said, or how he said it, as what made him say it, the open
vision of things spiritual across the disfigurements and contradictions
of the actual." 5
"96
In the matter of voice Emerson was adequately equipped. Holmes
says: "Emerson's voice had a great charm in conversation, as in the
lecture-room. It was never loud, never shrill, but singularly pene-
trating." This statement agrees with those of Dr. Emerson and
Alcott: "His own voice in reading or speaking was agreeable, flexible
and varied, with power unexpected from a man of his slender chest.
His friend Mr. Alcott said of him 'that some of his organs were free,
some fated: the voice was entirely liberated, and his poems and
essays were not rightly published until he read them.'” 7 And these
are the words of Alexander Ireland: “His voice was the sweetest, the
most winning and penetrating of any I ever heard; nothing like it
have I listened to since." 8
As regards Emerson's diction, Lowell has this to say: "A diction
at once so rich and so homely as his I know not where to match in
these days of writing by the page; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold.” ⁹
As to the style in general, Holmes says: "Emerson's style is epigram-
matic, incisive, authoritative, sometimes quaint, never obscure, except
Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 396.
1
Ibid., p. 366.
³ Journals, IV, 11.
6
7
Literary Remains, Boston, 1885, p. 301.
A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 627.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 363.
Emerson in Concord, p. 165.
• Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 65.
The Writings in Prose and Poetry, I, 351.
162
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
when he is handling nebulous subjects."1 A few examples will make
the matter clearer. One of the lectures bore the realistic title "Civili-
zation at a Pinch." 2 For epigrammatic and imaginative force the two
following sentences will serve: "Language is fosssil poetry," 3 "In-
spiration is like yeast." For simple majesty and swift climax :
"Speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous," "
“Great is the soul, and plain." For beauty of rhythm and elaborate
climax: “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it
easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who
in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the inde-
pendence of solitude." For epigrammatic balance: "The only re-
ward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.'
For figurative elaboration: "The history of persecution is a history
of the endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist
a rope of sand.” 9
Small wonder that language like this cast a spell
over Emerson's contemporaries.
is
For Emerson extempore speech was always difficult. But that
his manuscript did not, necessarily, hamper him seriously appears
plain from the following passage by Lowell, which passage may also
serve as the final word of Emerson's contemporaries on his genius as
a lecturer: "I have heard some great speakers and some accomplished
orators, but never any that so moved and persuaded men as he.
There is a kind of undertow in that rich baritone of his that sweeps
our minds from their foothold into deeper waters with a drift we
cannot and would not resist. And how artfully (for Emerson is a
long-studied artist in these things) does the deliberate utterance, that
seems waiting for the fit word, appear to admit us partners in the
labor of thought and make us feel as if the glance of humor were
a sudden suggestion, as if the perfect phrase lying written there on
the desk were as unexpected to him as to us! In that closely-filed
speech of his at the Burns centenary dinner, every word seemed to
have just dropped down to him from the clouds. He looked far
away over the heads of his hearers, with a vague kind of expectation,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 403.
1
3
Journals, I, xv.
³ Works, III, 22.
¹ Works, VIII, 271.
5
в
Works, II, 275.
• Works, II, 295.
7 Works, II, 53-4.
8 Works, II, 212.
* Works, II, 119.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
163
as into some private heaven of invention, and the winged period came
at last obedient to his spell. 'My dainty Ariel!' he seemed murmuring
to himself as he cast down his eyes as if in deprecation of the frenzy
of approval and caught another sentence from the Sibylline leaves
that lay before him, ambushed behind a dish of fruit and seen only
by nearest neighbors. Every sentence brought down the house, as I
never saw one brought down before,—and it is not so easy to hit
Scotsmen with a sentiment that has no hint of native brogue in it. I
watched, for it was an interesting study, how the quick sympathy ran
flashing from face to face down the long tables, like an electric spark
thrilling as it went, and then exploded in a thunder of plaudits. I
watched till tables and faces vanished, for I, too, found myself
caught up in the common enthusiasm, and my excited fancy set me
under the bema listening to him who fulmined over Greece. I can
never help applying to him what Ben Jonson said of Bacon: 'There
happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in
No man ever
his speaking. His language was nobly censorious.
spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less
emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his
speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough,
or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he
spoke.'" 1
III
Now, what has Emerson to contribute to the study and practice
of public speaking? Aside from the two lectures on Eloquence, he
has left an abundance of material bearing on the subject in his other
lectures, in his essays, and in his Journals. Since the last-mentioned
source is the fullest, the most intimate, and the least known, it will
in large part be made the basis of the following compendium. And
Emerson's own practice will also be made to contribute to the whole;
for he was preeminently a man who practised what he preached.
Emerson believed that public speaking is a great matter. It is not
something unnatural or merely conventional. "On the contrary, what
an inextinguishable thirst for eloquence, however rude, exists in every
breast!" 2 "The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the
1 The Writings in Prose and Poetry, I, 359-60.
2 Journals, I, 167.
164
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
"9 1
human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness,
truth, or courage.' "Go to hear a great orator, to see how pre-
sentable truth and right are, and how presentable are common.
facts." 2
"Eloquence washes the ears into which it flows.” ³ "One
writes on air, if he speaks; but no, he writes on mind more durable
than marble, and is like him that begets a son, that is, originates a
begetter of nations. The maker of a sentence . . . launches out into
the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is fol-
lowed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative
delight. "The dear old Plutarch assures me that the lamp of
Demosthenes never went out; that King Philip called his orations
soldiers, and in a moment of enthusiasm . . . exclaimed, 'Had I
been there, I too should have declared war against myself.'" 5
" 4
"96
Eloquence is powerful because it is based on the universal. "Elo-
quence is the universal speech." "A contrast is seen in the effect of
eloquence, the power which one man in an age possesses of uniting
men by addressing the common soul of them all.”7
"Trust your
nature, the common mind; fear not to sound its depths, to ejaculate
its grander emotions. Fear not how men shall take it. See you not
they are following your thought and emotion because it leads them
deeper into their own? I see with joy I am speaking their word,
fulfilling their nature, when I thought the word and nature most
my own." "Whatever I say that is good on the Sundays, I speak
with fervour and authority,-surely not feeling that it rests on my
word, or has only the warrant of my faulty character, but that I got
it from a deeper and common source, and it is as much addressed to
me as to those I speak to." "In perfect eloquence, the hearer would
lose the sense of dualism, of hearing from another; would cease to
distinguish between the orator and himself; would have the sense
only of high activity and progress." 10
9
And the appeal of the orator is wide, reaching even into the
future. “Address your rede to the young American, and know that
¹ Works, II, 365.
Journals, VI, 521.
Journals, IV, 265.
4 Journals, III, 395.
5 Journals, III, 386-7.
• Journals, II, 324.
'Works, VII, 370.
8 Journals, IV, 211.
› Journals, II, 515.
1º Journals, V, 21.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
165
" 1 (6
you hook to you all like minds far and near, whether you shall know
them or not." Another thing: a man that can speak well belongs
to the new era as well as to the old.”
³
To be successful in public speaking one must feel the spur of a
worthy cause. "The only friend that can persuade the soul to speak
is a good and great cause." "Literary accomplishments, skill in
grammar, logic and rhetoric can never countervail the want of things
that demand voice." "I have seen the adoption of a principle
transform a proser into an orator."
4
It is necessary to have convictions. "The most prodigious genius,
a seraph's eloquence, will shamefully defeat its own end if it has not
first won the defender to the cause he defends." • "Nothing can
compensate for want of belief; no accomplishments, no talents.”7
"That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say, though we
may repeat the words never so often.” 8 "Yet if you have not faith
in you, how can I have faith in you?" "The eloquent man is he
who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately
drunk with a certain belief." 10 "To believe your own thought, that
is Genius." 11
9
"Eloquence
12 "A
Emotion and inspiration are also indispensable.
wants anthracite coal. Coldness is the most fatal quality."
preacher should be a live coal to kindle all the church." 13 "I will
agitate men, being agitated myself." 14 "A word warm from the
heart, that enriches me.” 15 "But only then is the orator successful
when he himself is agitated, and is as much a hearer as any of the
assembly."
"16 "Also, I believe that nothing can be done except by
inspiration." 17 "Every great and commanding moment in the annals
1 Journals, III, 481.
3
Journals, IV, 461.
Journals, II, 509.
4 Journals, V, 334.
Journals, III, 516.
• Journals, I, 363-4.
Journals, III, 374.
8 Works, II, 157.
⁹ Journals, V, 494.
Journals, VII, 105.
"Journals, IV, 55.
10
12 Journals, VII, 152.
13 Journals, IV, 170.
14 J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 399.
15 Journals, V, 564.
16 Journals, V, 234.
17 Journals, VIII, 223.
166
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
レ
​of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.” 1 That emotion
and inspiration were not (and are not) lacking in Emerson himself,
is attested by Lowell: "Search for his eloquence in his books and
you will perchance miss it, but meanwhile you will find that it has
kindled all your thoughts." 2
""
7
"Sincerity is
magic of sin-
"" "The secret
Speak from your inmost soul. "The true preacher can be known
by this, that he deals out to the people his life,-life passed through
the fire of thought." 3 "What we say, however trifling, must have
its root in ourselves, or it will not move others." 4
always holy and always strong.' "I am to try the
cerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets.
of eloquence is to realize all you say. Do not give us counters of
base coin, but every word a real value." "Nothing bizarre, nothing
whimsical will endure. Nature is ever interfering with Art." 8
"It is of no use to preach to me from without."9
"The young
preacher preached from his ears and his memory, and never a word
from his soul. His sermon was loud and hollow." 10 "He weakens
who means to confirm his speech by vehemence, feminine vehe-
mence.” 11
"Forever more let him say what he thinks, instead of
being a brute echo, as Webster is Webster in passing conversation." 12
"When I attended church on the other half of a Sunday, and the
image in the pulpit was all clay, and not tunable metal, I said to
myself that if men would avoid that general language and general
manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would
say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own
individual manner, every man would be interesting.' "Eloquence
is the art of speaking what you mean and are.” 14
" 13
The moral sentiment is very important. "Bonus orator, bonus
vir." "True elevation which nothing can bring down is that of
,, 15
¹ Works, I, 251.
2 The Complete Works (Fireside Edition), Boston, 1910, I, 351.
³ Works, X, 216.
5
Journals, II, 505.
* Journals, II, 362.
J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 398.
7 Journals, VIII, 138.
8
Journals, IV, 56.
9
Works, II, 287.
10 Journals, IV, 300.
11 Journals, III, 484.
12 Journals, IV, 437.
13
Jour.
A
J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I, 133.
14 Journals, IX, 342.
15 Journals, II, 488.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
167
""
moral sentiment." 1 "I told them that a preacher should be a poet
smit with the love of the harmonies of moral nature. "It is
in the nature of things that the highest originality must be moral." 3
"Milton, Burke, and Webster get most of their wisdom from the
heart." "In Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes it is quoted from the
philosopher that through all his orations runs one idea, that Virtue
secures its own success. Burroughs has written: "Emerson is the
4
knight errant of the moral sentiment." 6
8
Emerson's own practice emphasized idealism and optimism. "I
only aim to speak for the great soul; to speak for the sovereignty
of Ideas." 7
"I am to celebrate the spiritual powers, in their infinite
contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of
the time. I am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end
they cannot see, by appeals to the great Optimism self-affirmed in
all bosoms." "If there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and
in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow
with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I am primarily engaged to
myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all
men that there is intelligence and good will at the heart of things."
Matthew Arnold has fittingly said of Emerson: "He is the friend and
aider of those who would live in the spirit.10
Personality and character are essentials. Emerson quotes the
following sentence from Jones Very with approval: "Use what
language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
"It makes a great difference as to the force of any sentence whether
there be a man behind it or no. " 12 "Talent without character is friski-
ness. "I like to see a man or a woman who does not palter or
dodge, whose eyes look straight forward, and who throws the wisdom
he or she has attained into the address and demeanor." 14 "Buck-
13
1 Journals, III, 188.
Works, I, 421.
Journals, V, 334.
Journals, II, 362.
Б
Journals, VI, 45.
• Birds and Poets, Boston, 1895, p. 181.
8
Journals, IV, 32.
J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 398.
• Works, I, 324.
Discourses in America, London, 1885, p. 179.
12 Journals, V, 430.
11
Journals, VI, 132.
13
Journals, V, 419.
14
Journals, V, 442.
168
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
minster went into his pulpit on days of deepest affliction in his parish.
for the loss of excellent persons, with an alacrity and cheerfulness
in his countenance that would have been revolting levity in another
man, and read psalms and scriptures of praise. Yet no one was
offended, but all felt that the intensity of his emotion was such, and
the principle on which it was founded was such, as to overmaster
their private thoughts, and the mourner was carried away by the
infection of his sublime joy, from the consideration of his petty
griefs."1 "When Chatham leads the debate, men may well listen,
because they must listen." 2 "I have read that those who listened to
Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than
anything which he said." 3 "Mr. Webster had a natural ascendancy
of aspect and carriage which distinguished him over all his con-
temporaries. His countenance, his figure, and his manners were all
in so grand a style, that he was, without effort, as superior to his
most eminent rivals as they were to the humblest; so that his arrival
in any place was an event which drew crowds of people, who went
to satisfy their eyes, and could not see him enough." As regards
Emerson himself, Burroughs says: "The flavor of character is over
all; the features of the man are stamped upon every word."
6
4
8
An orator should have natural dignity. "Let not a man guard
his dignity, but let his dignity guard him." "Potentissimus est qui
se habet in potestate (Seneca)." "Calmness is always Godlike." &
"All that frees Talent without increasing self-command is noxious."9
"Character is that reserved force which acts only by Presence, and
not by visible or analyzable methods." 10 "Wendell Phillips gives no
intimation of his perfect eloquence in casual intercourse. How
easily he wears his power, quite free and disengaged, nowise absorbed
in any care or thought of the thunderbolt he carries concealed. I
think he has more culture than his own, is debtor to generations of
gentlemen behind him.” 11 "There was Webster, the great cannon
¹ Journals, II, 304-5.
2
Works, I, 207.
3
Works, III, 89.
4
5
6
* Works, XI, 221.
* Journals, IV, 16.
Journals, II, 508.
8 Journals, V, 490.
9
Journals, IV, 34.
10 Journals, VI, 43.
¹¹ Journals, IX, 455.
Indoor Studies, Boston, 1895, p. 149.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
169
•
loaded to the lips. The natural grandeur of his face and man-
ners always satisfies; easily great; there is no strut in his voice or
behavior, as in the others." 1
Reserve power is closely allied to dignity, and is equally neces-
sary. "Beecher at Exeter Hall is superb:-his consciousness of
power shown in his jocular good humour and entire presence of
mind; the instant surrender of the English audience, as soon as they
found their master; he steers the Behemoth,-sits astride his very
snout, strokes his fur, tickles his ear, and rules him; secures the
English by the method of circumstantiality of statement which they
love, by figures, and then by downright homely illustration of im-
portant statements.' "Webster in his speech does but half engage
himself." "But I think Phillips is entirely resolved into his talent.
There is not an immense residium left as in Webster." 4
Without losing "touch," one must speak from a higher level.
"You must speak always from higher ground. Webster does." "
As regards Emerson himself, his son says: "Emerson honored
his hearers, however humble, by not 'coming down to them,' but
reached them by his assuming their virtue, and speaking to the
'common soul' in them." 6
"" 8
Knowledge and intellectual power are necessary. "Knowledge is
the only elegance." "Strong thinking makes strong language; cor-
rect thinking, correct speech.' And yet, “In this world, if a man
sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has the headache." 9
"Do, dear, when you come to write Lyceum lectures, remember that
you are not to say, What must be said in a Lyceum? but, What dis-
coveries or stimulating thoughts have I to impart to a thousand
persons? not what they will expect to hear, but what is fit for me
to say." 10 "He only is a good writer who keeps but one eye on his
page, and with the other sweeps over things; so that every sentence
brings us a new contribution of observation.” 11 "The manner of
1
¹ Journals, VII, 87.
3
4
Journals, IX, 570.
Journals, IV, 224.
* Journals, IX, 455.
5
8
Journals, VII, 152.
• Works, II, 429.
7 Journals, IX, 63.
8
9
³ Journals, II, 522.
10
Journals, III, 207.
Journals, III, 409.
Journals, IV, 33-4.
170
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
using language is surely the most decisive test of intellectual power,
and he who has intellectual force of any kind will be sure to show
it there."1 "I had observed long since that, to give the thought a
just and full expression, I must not prematurely utter it." 2 "I will
say at public lectures, and the like, those things which I have medi-
tated for their own sake, and not for the first time with a view to
that occasion. If, otherwise, you select a new subject, and labor to
make a good appearance on the appointed day, it is so much lost
time to you, and lost time to your hearers." ³ S. M. Crothers says,
using the well-known phrase from "The American Scholar":
'Emerson was a man thinking.'
"4
The orator should speak things, not words. "At church today I
felt how unequal is the match of words against things. Cease, O thou
unauthorized talker, to prate of consolation, and resignation, and
spiritual joys in neat and balanced sentences. For I know these men
who sit below and on hearing of these words look up. Hush quickly!
for care and calamity are things to them. . . . O speak things then,
or hold thy tongue." 5 "In good writing, words become one with
things." "I wish that Webster and Everett and also the young
political aspirants of Massachusetts should hear Wendell Phillips
speak, were it only for the capital lesson in eloquence they might
learn of him. This, namely, that the first and the second and the
third part of the art is, to keep your feet always firm on a fact.”7
Concerning Emerson himself, Cabot says: "Study, with him, was
mainly the study of expression; not the rounding of periods, but the
effort to reproduce the impression precisely as it was received. . .
His chief, one may almost say his sole, aim was to write in close
contact with life and reality."8 Says Burroughs: "Emerson loves
facts, things, objects, as the workman his tools." 9
For Emerson, as for Flaubert, there is a right word, and no other
will do. "No man can write well who thinks there is any choice of
words for him. The laws of composition are as strict as those of
sculpture and architecture. . . . So in writing, there is always a right
Journals, II, 449.
1
2
Journals, III, 273.
5
³ Journals, III, 361.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Indianapolis, 1921, p. II.
• Works, VII, 372.
Journals, II, 401.
¹ Journals, VI, 542.
8 A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I, 293.
• Birds and Poets, p. 164.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
171
word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in
words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word
misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a
human head."1 "It is a rule of Rhetoric, always to have an eye to
the primary sense of the words we use." 2 "In your Rhetoric, notice
that only once or twice in history can the words 'dire' and ‘tremen-
dous' fit." 3 "Don't affect the use of an adverb or an epithet more
than belongs to the feeling you have." 4 "I have been making war
against the superlative degree in the rhetoric of my fair visitor.”5
Holmes says of Emerson: "He was apt to hesitate in the course of a
sentence, so as to be sure of the exact word he wanted; picking his
way through his vocabulary, to get at the best expression of his
thought, as a well-dressed woman crosses the muddy pavement.” 6
(6
One's diction should be strong, simple, concise, and imaginative.
"He can toil terribly,' said Cecil of Sir Walter Raleigh. Is there
any sermon on Industry that will exhort me like these few words?
These sting and bite and kick me. I will get out of the way of their
blows by making them true of myself." "The language of the
street is always strong. What can describe the folly and emptiness.
of scolding like the word jawing? . . . And I confess to some
pleasure from the stinging rhetoric of a rattling oath in the mouth
of truckmen and teamsters. . . . Cut these words and they bleed;
they are vascular and alive; they walk and run." s "Cannot the
stinging dialect of the sailors be domesticated? It is the best rhetoric,
and for a hundred occasions those forbidden words are the only
good ones." "What argument, what eloquence can avail against the
power of that one word niggers? The man of the world annihilates
the whole combined force of all the anti-slavery societies of the
world by pronouncing it." 10 "Classifying words outvalue many argu-
ments; upstart, cockney, granny, pedant, prig, precisian, rowdy, nig-
gers.'
"11 "Language is made up of the spoils of all actions, trades,
Journals, II, 401.
2 Journals, IV, 23.
Journals, III, 484.
Journals, II, 427.
Journals, IV, 162.
7
Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 363-4.
Journals, V, 460.
8 Journals, V, 419-20.
9
* Journals, V, 484.
10
Journals, VII, 38.
11
Journals, VI, 514.
172
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
arts, games, of men. Every word is a metaphor borrowed from some
natural or mechanical, agricultural or nautical process."1 "Burke's
imagery is, much of it, got from books, and so is a secondary forma-
tion. Webster's is all primary. Let a man make the woods and
fields his books; then at the hour of passion his thoughts will invest
themselves spontaneously with natural imagery."2 "Give me initia-
tive, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words." 3 Concerning
Emerson's own remarkable diction, W. C. Brownell writes the fol-
lowing: "His vocabulary is a marvel of eclecticism-drawn from all
fields, from poetry to science, from the country of the imagination
to that of every day existence, ranging from the most exotic to the
most familiar, the most ornate to the most ordinary, and excluding
nothing but the pedantic and the mediocre." 4
99 5
Our speech should have compression, relevancy, and concreteness.
"Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use a short and positive
speech. They are never off their centres. As soon as they swell and
paint and find truth not enough for them, softening of the brain has
already begun.” "The Spartan is respectable and strong who speaks
what must be spoken; but these gay Athenians that go up and down
the world making all talk a Recitation, talking for display, disgust."
"Look at the orations of Demosthenes and Burke, and how many
irrelevant things, sentences, words, letters, are there? Not one.
"I cannot hear a sermon without being struck by the fact that amid
drowsy series of sentences what a sensation a historical fact, a
biographical name, a sharply objective illustration makes!" 8
دو
Language should be classic. "What is the classic? Classic art is
the art of necessity; organic; modern or romantic bears the stamp of
caprice or chance. One is the product of inclination, of caprice, of
haphazard; the other carries its law and necessity within itself. .
The classic unfolds, the romantic adds. The classic should, the
modern would. The classic is healthy, the romantic is sick." 9
The orator's style should have an element of beauty. "Whatever
¹ Journals, V, 213.
3
2 Journals, III, 567.
Journals, VI, 133.
4 American Prose Masters, New York, 1909, 181-2.
• Journals, IV, 5.
5
Works, X, 169.
в
7
Journals, III, 549.
8 Journals, IV, 169.
9
Works, XII, 303-4.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
173
4
"" 1
is dreary and repels is not power but the lack of power." "Fault
of Theodore Parker, that there was no beauty. What he said as
mere fact almost offended you, so bald and detached.” ² "I think
now that the very finest and sweetest closes and falls are not in our
metres, but in the measures of eloquence, which have greater variety
and richness than verse." 3 “Burke is a rhetoric, a robe to be always
admired for the beauty with which he drapes facts, as we love light,
or rather colour, which clothes all things. What rich temperance,
what costly textures, what flowing variety!" But this attractiveness.
should not be weak: "Dr. Osgood said of P's sermon that it was
patty cake." 5 On the contrary, Emerson could find attractiveness.
even in the rugged speech of men like Garrison and the sailor
preacher, "Father" Taylor. "Garrison is a virile speaker; he lacks
the feminine element which we find in men of genius. He has great
body to his discourse, so that he can well afford occasional flourishes
and eloquence. He is a man in his place. He brings his whole his-
tory with him, wherever he goes, and there is no falsehood or patch-
work, but sincerity and unity." "Edward Taylor came last night
and gave us in the old church a Lecture on Temperance. A won-
derful man; I had almost said, a perfect orator. The utter want and
loss of all method, the ridicule of all method, the bright chaos come
again of his bewildering oratory, certainly bereaves it of power,-
but what splendor! what sweetness! what richness! what depth!
what cheer! How he conciliates, how he humanizes! how he exhila-
rates and ennobles! Beautiful philanthropist! Godly poet! the Shak-
speare of the sailor and the poor. God has found one harp of
divine melody to ring and sigh sweet music amidst caves and cel-
lars." 7
To what an extent the element of beauty may be present
in Emerson's own speech, can be made apparent by the following
passage from his oration "The Method of Nature": "How silent,
how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an
atom;-in graceful succession, in equal fitness, in balanced beauty,
the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense,
like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It
1
¹ Journals, IX, 342.
2
3
Journals, IX, 272.
³ Journals, VI, 75.
5
Journals, V, 243-4.
* Journals, VI, 45.
• Journals, VII, 97.
Journals, IV, 191.
6
174
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shown. Away, profane
philosopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? This refers to that,
and that to the next, and the next to the third, and everything refers.
Thou must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou
must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, ere
thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but gladly beloved
and enjoyed." 1
The matter of structure is also of the first importance. "I see
these truths chiefly in that architecture which I study and practice,
namely, Rhetoric, or the Building of Discourse. Profoundest
thoughts, sublime images, dazzling figures are squandered and lost
in an immethodical harangue. We are fatigued, and glad when it is
done.. But let the same number of thoughts be dealt with by a
natural rhetoric, let the question be asked-What is said? How
many things? Which are they? Count and number them: put
together those that belong together. Now say what your subject is,
for now first you know: and now state your inference or peroration
in what calm or inflammatory temper you must, and behold! out of
the quarry you have erected a temple, soaring in due gradation,
turret over tower, to heaven, cheerful with thorough-lights, majestic
with strength, desired of all eyes." 2 Owing to his epigrammatic
quality and his almost total lack of connectives and transitions, hasty
critics are wont to adjudge Emerson himself as wanting in coherence.
That the sentence, as a unit of thought and feeling, meant exceed-
ingly much to him can hardly be questioned; but this does not neces-
sarily imply that he is lacking in sequence and unity of tone.
In
his elaborate and discriminating study of Emerson, Professor O. W.
Firkins sums up what seems to be the truth of the matter: "While
due allowance, therefore, should be made for Emerson's reluctance
to advertise or even sometimes to announce the articulation of
successive sentences, it is time surely to bury the legend that he
worked in pellicles, that his composition is a fall of snowflakes. The
whole fascination of life for him lay in the disclosure of identity in
variety, that is, in the concurrence, the running together, of several
distinct images or ideas. It would be suggestive, and not wholly
inaccurate, to aver that he thought in paragraphs." And says W. C.
Brownell: "No writer ever had in more opulent measure the uni-
1 Works, I, 200.
2 Journals, IV, 336.
3
8
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1915, p. 237.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
175
versal power of maintaining throughout varied thematic modulation
a single tone, a central thought, until the expression of its strict impli
cations was complete, and one after another of its phrasings apt for
echo in eloquent unison." 1
Voice and gesture are for Emerson very largely matters of per-
sonality, and therefore receive comparatively little separate comment.
They are not, however, entirely ignored. "The lower tone you take,
the more flexible your voice is."2 "Eloquence, as far as it is a fine
art, is modified how much by the material organization of the orator,
the tone of the voice, the physical strength, the play of the eye and
countenance.'
"93
4
Both extempore and written speeches may be acceptable. "Ex-
tempore speaking can be good, and written discourses can be good.
A tent is a good thing, but so is a cathedral." "How trifling to
insist on ex tempore speech, or spontaneous conversation, and decry
the written poem or dissertation, or the debating club. A man's deep
conviction lies too far down in nature to be much affected by these
trifles. Do what we can, your genius will speak from you, and mine
from me.” 5 And yet, Emerson sometimes felt the limitations of
being dependent on a manuscript. "When I address a large assembly,
as last Wednesday, I am always apprised what an opportunity is
there: not for reading to them, as I do, lively miscellanies, but for
painting in fire my thought, and being agitated to agitate. One must
dedicate himself to it and think with his audience in his mind, so as
to keep the perspective and symmetry of the oration, and enter into
all the easily forgotten secrets of a great nocturnal assembly and
their relation to the speaker."
But whether written or not, the
speech must be in the oral style. ""Tis the worst praise you can
give a speech that it is as if written.” 7 No student of Emerson can
fail to notice that his own style is prevailingly oral. Says Professor
Bliss Perry: "The oral method thus predominates: a series of
oracular thoughts has been shaped for oratorical utterance, not
oratorical in the bombastic, popular American sense, but cunningly
designed, by a master of rhetoric, to capture the ear and then the
American Prose Masters, p. 183.
Journals, III, 303.
Works, VII, 44.
Journals, V, 236.
5
Journals, V, 257-8.
Journals, VI, 492-3.
"Works, XII, 292.
176
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
mind of the auditor." 1 And W. C. Brownell speaks to the same
effect: "At all events in Emerson's case, his early ideals and his sub-
sequent practice in the lyceum pulpit, are undoubtedly largely respon-
sible for what is the salient merit of his style-for the fact that what
he wrote has the vitality of the spoken word." 2 Again: "Eloquence,
in fact, either of word, phrase or passage, pervades his style as a
flavor; it is present as a distinct, and, indeed, dominant element and
governs the entire technic, already germinant in its inspiration." 3
Stump oratory also has a legitimate place. "It is of great worth,
this stump-oratory (though much decried by Carlyle and others),
and very rare. There have been millions and millions of men, and
a good stump-orator only once in an age. There have been but a few
since history began; Demosthenes and Chatham and Daniel Webster
and Cobden,—and yet all the human race are competitors in the art.
Of course the writers prefer their own art. Stump-oratory requires
presence of mind, heat, spunk, continuity, humanity."
4 دو
Emerson was a close student of audiences. After attending the
New York Caucus, he writes: "There is, however, great unity in the
audience. What pleases the audience very much, pleases every indi-
vidual in it. What tires me, tires all." 5 Concerning the difference
between conversing in private and addressing an audience he says:
"The man that just now chatted at your side of trifles, rises in the
assembly to speak, and speaks to them collectively in a tone and with
a series of thoughts he would never think of assuming to any one of
them alone. Because man's universal nature is his inmost nature." •
Emerson would observe the effect his lectures produced, and would
change them from time to time, so as to adapt them to his audience.
"When I tell a country Lyceum committee that I will read a new
lecture, they are pleased-poor men! They do not know that 'the
barber learns his trade on the orphan's chin.' By the time that lec-
ture, after long trying on, is given in New York or Philadelphia, it
will be a very different matter.'
In addressing an audience, directness or communicativeness is
necessary. Dr. Emerson says: "When Mr. Emerson, a young divin-
1
¹ The American Spirit in Literature, New Haven, 1920, p. 126.
2 American Prose Masters, p. 181.
Works, VIII, 384.
3
Ibid., p. 183.
5
Journals, III, 350.
6
Journals, III, 495.
'Journals, VIII, 94.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
177
1
ity student, was writing his first sermon, he thus cautioned himself:
"Take care that your sermon is not a recitation; that it is a sermon
to Mr. A and Mr. B and Mr. C.'"¹ We may suspect that Emerson
was glad to be able to make the following entry in his diary: "Some-
body said of me after the lecture at Amory Hall, within hearing of
A. W., 'The secret of his popularity is, that he has a damn for
everybody.'
,"2
Emerson had faith in the average intelligence of audiences.
"Don't you deceive yourself, say I, the great mass understand what's
what, as well as the little mass." "Nothing is more melancholy
than to treat men as pawns and ninepins. If I leave out their heart,
they take out mine. But speak to the soul, and always the soul will
reply." "Truth is never crammed down your throat, but is to be
understood." 5 "And eloquence is the power to translate truth into
language intelligible to the persons to whom you speak." "
"4
997
Do not say too much. "More is understood than is expressed in
the most diffuse discourse. It is the unsaid part of every lecture
that does the most good. "If you desire to arrest attention, to
surprise, do not give me facts in the order of cause and effect, but
drop one or two links in the chain, and give me with a cause, an
effect two or three times removed." 8 "The good rain, like a bad
preacher, does not know when to leave off." "The silences, pauses,
of an orator are as telling as his words." 10. "I have known a pause
in speech do more than a harangue." 11
Speak the affirmative. "Omit all the negative propositions." 12
"An affirmative talent is always safe. The critics may do their
worst; it is victory." 13 "Though your views are in straight antago-
nism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are
saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love
roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a
1
¹ Works, VII, 371-2.
2 Journals, VI, 497.
3
4
5
6
Journals, IV, 143.
ª Journals, IV, 172.
Journals, II, 421.
* Journals, VIII, 313.
'Journals, II, 444.
8 Journals, V, 63-4.
Journals, III, 282.
10 Works, XII, 290.
"Journals, II, 243.
Journals, IX, 85.
Journals, VIII, 69.
12
13
178
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. . . . But
assume a consent and it shall be granted, since really and under-
neath their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind." 1
"Speak the affirmative; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of
all that you reject; seeing that opinions are temporary, but convic-
tions uniform and eternal,-seeing that a sentiment never loses pathos
or persuasion, but is youthful after a thousand years." 2
Aim to create in your hearer independence of mind rather than
dependence. "I have been writing and speaking what were once
called novelties, for twenty-five or thirty years, and have not now one
disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has
not found intelligent receivers; but because it did not go from any
wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in
driving them from me. What could I do if they came to me?—they
would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no
school follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of
insight, if it did not create independence.” ³
Take the occasion into account. "In eloquence, the great tri-
umphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when
consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and
the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term aban-
donment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator. Not his will,
but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and
crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd." 4 "I remember
his appearance at Bunker's Hill. There was the Monument, and
here was Webster. He knew that a little more or less of rhetoric
signified nothing: he was only to say plain things and equal things,—
grand things if he had them, and, if he had them not, only to abstain.
from saying unfit things, and the whole occasion was answered by
his presence. It was a place for behavior more than for speech, and
Mr. Webster walked through his part with entire success.” 5
Practice what you preach. "The argument which has not power
to reach my own practice, I may well fear has not power to reach
yours." " "The only speech will at last be action." 7
1
Works, II, 239.
3
Journals, IX, 188-9.
Works, X, 235.
* Works, VII, 49.
5
Works, XI, 221.
Journals, II, 308.
J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 392.
EMERSON AND ORAL DISCOURSE
179
Remember that the career of orator requires long preparation.
"The orator is nowise equal to the evoking on a new substance of
this brilliant chain of sentiments, facts, illustrations, whereby he now
fires himself and you. Every link in this living chain he found sepa-
rate; one, ten years ago; one, last week; some of them he found in
his father's house, or at school when a boy; some of them by his
losses; some of them by his sickness; some by his sins. The Webster
with whom you talk admires the oration almost as much as you do,
and knows himself to be nowise equal, unarmed, that is, without the
tool of Synthesis, to the splendid effect which he is yet well pleased
you should impute to him."1 "I pitied for his ill speaking, until
I found him not at all disheartened, not at all curious concerning the
effect of his speech, but eager to speak again, and speak better on a
new matter. Then I see him destined to move society."
Do not expect to be always understood or appreciated. "It is a
luxury to be understood.” 3 "Those who live to the future must
always appear selfish to those who live to the present.'
"Man was
""
2
made for conflict, not for rest. "The true and finished man is ever
alone." "Magnanimity consists in scorning circumstance.” 7 "God
is not in a hurry." 8
6
As Emerson found most of his ideals of public speaking em-
bodied in Webster, this account may fittingly end with the following
tribute: "His excellent organization, the perfection of his elocution
and all that thereto belongs,-voice, accent, intonation, attitude,
manner, we shall not soon find again. Then he was so thoroughly
simple and wise in his rhetoric; he saw through his matter, hugged
his fact so close, went to the principle or essential, and never in-
dulged in a weak flourish, though he knew perfectly well how to
make such exordiums, episodes and perorations as might give per-
spective to his harangues without in the least embarrassing his march
or confounding his transitions. In his statements things lay in day-
light; we saw them in order as they were. Though he knew very
well how to present his own personal claims, yet in his argument he
1
2
3
¹Journals, III, 478.
Journals, IV, 25.
³ Journals, II, 368.
4 Works, III, 103.
* Works, XII, 60.
6
Journals, III, 322.
Journals, IV, 26.
8 Journals, II, 427.
180
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
was intellectual,-stated his fact pure of all personality, so that his
splendid wrath, when his eyes became lamps, was the wrath of the
fact and the cause he stood for." 1
'Works, XI, 221-2.
S
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
HERBERT A. WICHELNS
I
AMUEL JOHNSON once projected a history of criticism "as
it relates to judging of authors." Had the great eighteenth-
century critic ever carried out his intention, he would have
included some interesting comments on the orators and their judges.
Histories of criticism, in whole or in part, we now have, and histories
of orators. But that section of the history of criticism which deals
with judging of orators is still unwritten. Yet the problem is an
interesting one, and one which involves some important conceptions.
Oratory-the waning influence of which is often discussed in cur-
rent periodicals-has definitely lost the established place in literature
that it once had. Demosthenes and Cicero, Bossuet and Burke, all
hold their places in literary histories. But Webster inspires more
than one modern critic to ponder the question whether oratory is
literature; and if we may judge by the emphasis of literary historians
generally, both in England and in America, oratory is either an out-
cast or a poor relation. What are the reasons for this change? It
is a question not easily answered. Involved in it is some shift in the
conception of oratory or of literature, or of both; nor can these con-
ceptions have changed except in response to the life of which oratory,
as well as literature, is part.
This essay, it should be said, is merely an attempt to spy out the
land, to see what some critics have said of some orators, to discover
what their mode of criticism has been. The discussion is limited in
the main to Burke and a few nineteenth-century figures-Webster,
Lincoln, Gladstone, Bright, Cobden and to the verdicts on these
found in the surveys of literary history, in critical essays, in histories.
of oratory, and in biographies.
Of course, we are not here concerned with the disparagement of
oratory. With that, John Morley once dealt in a phrase: "Yet,
181
182
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
after all, to disparage eloquence is to depreciate mankind."1 Nor is
the praise of eloquence of moment here. What interests us is the
method of the critic: his standards, his categories of judgment, what
he regards as important. These will show, not so much what he
thinks of a great and ancient literary type, as how he thinks in
dealing with that type. The chief aim is to know how critics have
spoken of orators.
We have not much serious criticism of oratory. The reasons are
patent. Oratory is intimately associated with statecraft; it is bound
up with the things of the moment; its occasion, its terms, its back-
ground, can often be understood only by the careful student of his-
tory. Again, the publication of orations as pamphlets leaves us free
to regard any speech merely as an essay, as a literary effort deposited
at the shrine of the muses in hope of being blessed with immortality.
This view is encouraged by the difficulty of reconstructing the condi-
tions under which the speech was delivered; by the doubt, often,
whether the printed text of the speech represents what was actually
said, or what the orator elaborated afterwards. Burke's corrections
are said to have been the despair of his printers.2 Some of Chatham's
speeches, by a paradox of fate, have been reported to us by Samuel
Johnson, whose style is as remote as possible from that of the Great
Commoner, and who wrote without even having heard the speeches
pronounced. Only in comparatively recent times has parliamentary
reporting pretended to give full records of what was actually said;
and even now speeches are published for literary or political purposes
which justify the corrector's pencil in changes both great and small.
Under such conditions the historical study of speech making is far
from easy.
3
Yet the conditions of democracy necessitate both the making of
speeches and the study of the art. It is true that other ways of
influencing opinion have long been practised, that oratory is no longer
the chief means of communicating ideas to the masses. And the
change is emphasized by the fact that the newer methods are now
beginning to be investigated, sometimes from the point of view of
the political student, sometimes from that of the "publicity expert."
But, human nature being what it is, there is no likelihood that face.
1
¹ Life of William Ewart Gladstone, New York, 1903, II, 593.
2
Select Works, ed. E. J. Payne, Oxford, 1892, I, xxxviii.
8
Basil Williams, Life of William Pitt, New York, 1913, II, 335-337.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
183
to face persuasion will cease to be a principal mode of exerting influ-
ence, whether in courts, in senate-houses, or on the platform. It
follows that the critical study of oratorical method is the study, not
of a mode outworn, but of a permanent and important human
activity.
Upon the great figures of the past who have used the art of
public address, countless judgments have been given. These judg-
ments have varied with the bias and preoccupation of the critics, who
have been historians, biographers, or literary men, and have written
accordingly. The context in which we find criticism of speeches, we
must, for the purposes of this essay at least, both note and set aside.
For though the aim of the critic conditions his approach to our more
limited problem-the method of dealing with oratory-still we find
that an historian may view an orator in the same light as does a
biographer or an essayist. The literary form in which criticism of
oratory is set does not afford a classification of the critics.
"There are," says a critic of literary critics, "three definite points,
on one of which, or all of which, criticism must base itself. There
is the date, and the author, and the work." 1 The points on which
writers base their judgments of orators do afford a classification.
The man, his work, his times, are the necessary common topics of
criticism; no one of them can be wholly disregarded by any critic.
But mere difference in emphasis on one or another of them is
important enough to suggest a rough grouping. The writers with
whom this essay deals give but a subordinate position to the date;
they are interested chiefly in the man or in his works. Accordingly,
we have as the first type of criticism that which is predominantly
personal or biographical, is occupied with the character and the
mind of the orator, goes behind the work to the man. The second
type attempts to hold the scales even between the biographical and
the literary interest. The third is occupied with the work and tends
to ignore the man. These three classes, then, seem to represent the
practice of modern writers in dealing with orators. Each merits a
more detailed examination.
II
We may begin with that type of critic whose interest is in per-
sonality, who seeks the man behind the work. Critics of this type
¹D. Nichol Smith, Functions of Criticism, Oxford, 1909, p. 15.
184
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
furnish forth the appreciative essays and the occasional addresses on
the orators. They are as the sands of the sea. Lord Rosebery's
two speeches on Burke, Whitelaw Reid's on Lincoln and on Burke,
may stand as examples of the character sketch.¹ The second part of
Birrell's essay on Burke will serve for the mental character sketch
(the first half of the essay is biographical); other examples are Sir
Walter Raleigh's essay on Burke and that by Robert Lynd.2 All
these emphasize the concrete nature of Burke's thought, the realism
of his imagination, his peculiar combination of breadth of vision with
intensity; they pass to the guiding principles of his thought: his
hatred of abstraction, his love of order and of settled ways. But
they do not occupy themselves with Burke as a speaker, nor even
with him as a writer; their first and their last concern is with the man
rather than with his works; and their method is to fuse into a single
impression whatever of knowledge or opinion they may have of the
orator's life and works. These critics, in dealing with the public
speaker, think of him as something other than a speaker. Since this
type of writing makes but an indirect contribution to our judgment
of the orator, there is no need of a more extended account of the
method, except as we find it combined with a discussion of the orator's
works.
III
Embedded in biographies and histories of literature, we find an-
other type of criticism, that which combines the sketch of mind and
character with some discussion of style. Of the general interest of
such essays there can be no doubt. Nine-tenths of so-called literary
criticism deals with the lives and personalities of authors, and for the
obvious reason, that every one is interested in them, whereas few will
follow a technical study, however broadly based. At its best, the
type of study that starts with the orator's mind and character is
justified by the fact that nothing can better illuminate his work as
a persuader of men. But when not at its best, the description of a
man's general cast of mind stands utterly unrelated to his art: the
critic fails to fuse his comment on the individual with his comment
See Rosebery, Appreciations and Addresses, London, 1899, and Whitelaw
Reid, American and English Studies, New York, 1913, II.
1
2
See Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, New York, 1887, II; Walter
Raleigh, Some Authors, Oxford, 1923; Robert Lynd, Books and Authors.
London, 1922.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
185
on the artist; and as a result we get some statements about the man,
and some statements about the orator, but neither casts light on the
other. Almost any of the literary histories will supply examples of
the gulf that may yawn between a stylistic study and a study of
personality.
The best example of the successful combination of the two strains
is Grierson's essay on Burke in the Cambridge History of English
Literature. In this, Burke's style, though in largest outline only, is
seen to emerge from the essential nature of the man. Yet of this
essay, too, it must be said that the analysis of the orator is incom-
plete, being overshadowed by the treatment of Burke as a writer,
though, as we shall see, the passages on style have the rare virtue of
keeping to the high road of criticism. The majority of critics who
use the mixed method, however, do not make their study of person-
ality fruitful for a study of style, do not separate literary style from
oratorical style even to the extent that Grierson does, and do con-
ceive of literary style as a matter of details. In fact, most of the
critics of this group tend to supply a discussion of style by jotting
down what has occurred to them about the author's management of
words; and in the main, they notice the lesser strokes of literary art,
but not its broader aspects. They have an eye for tactics, but not
for strategy. This is the more strange, as these same writers habit-
ually take large views of the orator himself, considered as a person-
ality, and because they often remark the speaker's great themes and
his leading ideas. The management of ideas-what the Romans
called invention and disposition-the critics do not observe; their
practice is the salto mortale from the largest to the smallest considera、
tions. And it needs no mention that a critic who does not observe the
management of ideas even from the point of view of structure and
arrangement can have nothing to say of the adaptation of ideas to
the orator's audience.
It is thus with Professor McLaughlin in his chapter in the Cam-
bridge History of American Literature on Clay and Calhoun and
some lesser lights. The pages are covered with such expressions as
diffuse, florid, diction restrained and strong, neatly phrased, power of
attack, invective, gracious persuasiveness. Of the structure of the
speeches by which Clay and Calhoun exercised their influence-
nothing. The drive of ideas is not represented. The background of
habitual feeling which the orators at times appealed to and at times.
186
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
modified, is hinted at in a passage about Clay's awakening the spirit
of nationalism, and in another passage contrasting the full-blooded
oratory of Benton with the more polished speech of Quincy and
Everett; but these are the merest hints. In the main, style for Mc-
Laughlin is neither the expression of personality nor the order
and
movement given to thought, but a thing of shreds and patches. It
is thus, too, with Morley's pages on Burke's style in his life of the
orator, and with Lodge's treatment of Webster in his life of the great
American. A rather better analysis, though on the same plane of
detail, may be used as an example. Oliver Elton says of Burke:
He embodies, more powerfully than any one, the mental tendencies and
changes that are seen gathering force through the eighteenth century. A
volume of positive knowledge, critically sifted and ascertained; a constructive
vision of the past and its institutions; the imagination, under this guidance,
everywhere at play; all these elements unite in Burke. His main field is
political philosophy. . . . His favorite form is oratory, uttered or written.
His medium is prose, and the work of his later years, alone, outweighs all
contemporary prose in power. ... His whole body of production has the
unity of some large cathedral, whose successive accretions reveal the natural
growth of a single mind, without any change or essential break. . . .
Already [in the Thoughts and in the Observations] the characteristics of
Burke's thought and style appear, as well as his profound conversance with
constitutional history, finance, and affairs. There is a constant reference to
general principles, as in the famous defence of Party. The maxims that
come into play go far beyond the occasion. There
There is a perpetual ground-
swell of passion, embanked and held in check, but ever breaking out into
sombre irony and sometimes into figure; but metaphors and other tropes are
not yet very frequent.
In the art of unfolding and amplifying, Burke is the rival of the
ancients..
In the speech on Conciliation the [oft-repeated] key-word is peace.
This iteration makes us see the stubborn faces on the opposite benches.
There is contempt in it; their ears must be dinned, they must remember the
word peace through the long intricate survey that is to follow. . . .
Often he has a turn that would have aroused the fervor of the great
appreciator known to us by the name of Longinus. In his speech on Econom-
ical Reform (1780) Burke risks an appeal, in the face of the Commons, to
the example of the enemy. He has described . . . the reforms of the French
revenue. He says: "The French have imitated us; let us, through them,
imitate ourselves, ourselves in our better and happier days." A speaker who
was willing to offend for the sake of startling, and to defeat his purpose,
would simply have said, "The French have imitated us; let us imitate them."
Burke comes to the verge of this imprudence, but he sees the outcry on the
lips of the adversary, and silences them by the word ourselves; and then,
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
187
seizing the moment of bewilderment, repeats it and explains it by the noble
past; he does not say when those days were; the days of Elizabeth or of
Cromwell? Let the House choose! This is true oratory, honest diplomacy.*
Here, in some twenty pages, we have but two hints that Burke
had to put his ideas in a form adapted to his audience; only the
reiterated peace in all Burke's writings reminds the critic of Burke's
hearers; only one stroke of tact draws his attention. Most of his
account is devoted to Burke's style in the limited use of the term:
to his power of amplification—his conduct of the paragraph, his use
of clauses now long, now short-to his figures, comparisons, and
metaphors, to his management of the sentence pattern, and to his
rhythms. For Professor Elton, evidently, Burke was a man, and a
mind, and an artist in prose; but he was not an orator. Interest
in the minutiae of style has kept Elton from bringing his view of
Burke the man to bear on his view of Burke's writings. The fusing
point evidently is in the strategic purpose of the works, in their func-
tion as speeches. By holding steadily to the conception of Burke as
a public man, one could make the analysis of mind and the analysis
of art more illuminating for each other than Elton does.
It cannot be said that in all respects Stephenson's chapter on
Lincoln in the Cambridge History of American Literature is more
successful than Elton's treatment of Burke; but it is a better inter-
weaving of the biographical and the literary strands of interest.
Stephenson's study of the personality of Lincoln is directly and
persistently used in the study of Lincoln's style.
Is it fanciful to find a connection between the way in which his mysticism
develops-its atmospheric, non-dogmatic pervasiveness-and the way in which
his style develops? Certainly the literary part of him works into all the
portions of his utterance with the gradualness of daylight through a shadowy
wood. . . . And it is to be noted that the literary quality . . . is of the whole,
not of the detail. It does not appear as a gift of phrases. Rather it is the
slow unfolding of those two original characteristics, taste and rhythm. What
is growing is the degree of both things. The man is becoming deeper, and
as he does so he imposes himself, in this atmospheric way, more steadily on
his language.2
The psychology of mystical experience may appear a poor sup-
port for the study of style. It is but one factor of many, and
1
¹ Oliver Elton, Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, I, 234-53.
Cambridge History of American Literature, New York, 1921, III, 374-5.
188
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Stephenson may justly be reproached for leaning too heavily upon
it. Compared to Grierson's subtler analysis of Burke's mind and
art, the essay of Stephenson seems forced and one-sided. Yet he
illuminates his subject more than many of the writers so far men-
tioned, because he begins with a vigorous effort to bring his knowl-
edge of the man to bear upon his interpretation of the work. But
though we find in Stephenson's pages a suggestive study of Lincoln
as literary man, we find no special regard for Lincoln as orator.
The qualities of style that Stephenson mentions are the qualities of
prose generally:
At last he has his second manner, a manner quite his own. It is not his
final manner, the one that was to give him his assured place in literature.
However, in a wonderful blend of simplicity, directness, candor, joined with
a clearness beyond praise, and a delightful cadence, it has outstripped every
other politician of the hour. And back of its words, subtly affecting its
phrases, . . . is that brooding sadness which was to be with him to the end.¹
The final manner, it appears, is a sublimation of the qualities of the
earlier, which was "keen, powerful, full of character, melodious, im-
pressive"; 2 and it is a sublimation which has the power to awaken
the imagination by its flexibility, directness, pregnancy, wealth.
In this we have nothing new, unless it be the choice of stylistic
categories that emphasize the larger pattern of ideas rather than
the minute pattern of grammatical units, such as we have found in
Elton and to some extent shall find in Saintsbury; it must be granted,
too, that Stephenson has dispensed with detail and gained his larger
view at the cost of no little vagueness. "Two things," says Stephen-
son of the Lincoln of 1849-1858, "grew upon him. The first was his
understanding of men, the generality of men. . . . The other thing
that grew upon him was his power to reach and influence them
through words." We have here the text for any study of Lincoln
as orator; but the study itself this critic does not give us.
Elton's characterization of Burke's style stands out from the
usual run of superficial comment by the closeness of its analysis
and its regard for the architectonic element. Stephenson's character-
ization of Lincoln's style is distinguished by a vigorous if forced
effort to unite the study of the man and of the work. With both we
1
¹ Cambridge History of American Literature, III, 378.
'Ibid., pp. 381-2.
Ibid., p. 377.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
189
may contrast a better essay, by a critic of greater insight. Grierson
says of Burke:
What Burke has of the deeper spirit of that movement [the romantic
revival] is seen not so much in the poetic imagery of his finest prose as in the
philosophical imagination which informs his conception of the state, in
virtue of which he transcends the rationalism of the century. . . . This temper
of Burke's mind is reflected in his prose. . . . To the direct, conversational prose
of Dryden and Swift, changed social circumstances and the influence of
Johnson had given a more oratorical cast, more dignity and weight, but,
also, more of heaviness and conventional elegance. From the latter faults,
Burke is saved by his passionate temperament, his ardent imagination, and
the fact that he was a speaker conscious always of his audience. . . . [Burke]
could delight, astound, and convince an audience. He did not easily con-
ciliate and win them over. He lacked the first essential and index of the
conciliatory speaker, lenitas vocis; his voice was harsh and unmusical, his
gesture ungainly. . . . And, even in the text of his speeches there is a strain
of irony and scorn which is not well fitted to conciliate. . . . We have evi-
dence that he could do both things on which Cicero lays stress-move his
audience to tears and delight them by his wit. . . . Yet, neither pathos nor
humor is Burke's forte. . . . Burke's unique power as an orator lies in the
peculiar interpenetration of thought and passion. Like the poet and the
prophet, he thinks most profoundly when he thinks most passionately. When
he is not deeply moved, his oratory verges toward the turgid; when he
indulges feeling for his own sake, as in parts of Letters on a Regicide Peace,
it becomes hysterical. But, in his greatest speeches and pamphlets, the
passion of Burke's mind shows itself in the luminous thoughts which it emits,
in the imagery which at once moves and teaches, throwing a flood of light not
only on the point in question, but on the whole neighboring sphere of man's
moral and political nature.¹
The most notable feature of these passages is not their recognition
that Burke was a speaker, but their recognition that his being a
speaker conditioned his style, and that he is to be judged in part at
least as one who attempted to influence men by the spoken word.
Grierson, like Elton, attends to the element of structure and has
something to say of the nature of Burke's prose; but, unlike Elton,
he distinguishes this from the description of Burke's oratory—
although without maintaining the distinction: he illustrates Burke's
peculiar oratorical power from a pamphlet as readily as from a
speech. His categories seem less mechanical than those of Elton, who
is more concerned with the development of the paragraph than with
the general cast of Burke's style; nor is his judgment warped, as is
1
¹ Cambridge History of English Literature, New York, 1914, XI, 30-5.
190
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Stephenson's, by having a theory to market. Each has suffered from
the necessity of compression. Yet, all told, Grierson realizes better
than the others that Burke's task was not merely to express his
thoughts and his feelings in distinguished prose, but to communicate
his thoughts and his feelings effectively. It is hardly true, however,
that Grierson has in mind the actual audience of Burke; the audience.
of Grierson's vision seems to be universalized, to consist of the
judicious listeners or readers of any age. Those judicious listeners
have no practical interest in the situation; they have only a philosophi-
cal and æsthetic interest.
Of Taine in his description of Burke it cannot be said that he
descends to the minutiae of style. He deals with his author's char-
acter and ideas, as do all the critics of this group, but his comments
on style are simply a single impression, vivid and picturesque :
Burke had one of those fertile and precise imaginations which believe
that finished knowledge is an inner view, which never quits a subject without
having clothed it in its colors and forms. . . . To all these powers of mind,
which constitute a man of system, he added all those energies of heart which
constitute an enthusiast. . . . He brought to politics a horror of crime, a
vivacity and sincerity of conscience, a sensibility, which seem suitable only
to a young man.
The vast amount of his works rolls impetuously in a current of elo-
quence. Sometimes a spoken or written discourse needs a whole volume to
unfold the train of his multiplied proofs and courageous anger. It is either
the exposé of a ministry, or the whole history of British India, or the com-
plete theory of revolutions . . . which comes down like a vast overflowing
stream. . . .
Doubtless there is foam on its eddies, mud in its bed; thousands
of strange creatures sport wildly on its surface: he does not select, he
lavishes. Nothing strikes him as in excess. He continues half a
barbarian, battening in exaggeration and violence; but his fire is so sustained,
his conviction so strong, his emotion so warm and abundant, that we suffer
him to go on, forget our repugnance, see in his irregularities and his tres-
passes only the outpourings of a great heart and a deep mind, too open and
too full.¹
•
•
•
•
•
This is brilliant writing, unencumbered by the subaltern's inter-
est in tactics, but it is strategy as described by a war-correspondent,
not by a general. We get from it little light on how Burke solved
the problem that confronts every orator: so to present ideas as to
bring them into the consciousness of his hearers.
Where the critic divides his interest between the man and the
¹H. A. Taine, History of English Literature, tr. H. Van Laun, London,
1878, II, 81-3.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
191
work, without allowing either interest to predominate, he is often
compelled to consider the work in toto, and we get only observations
so generalized as not to include consideration of the form of the
work. The speech is not thought of as essentially a means of in-
fluence; it is regarded as a specimen of prose, or as an example of
philosophic thought. The date, the historical interest, the orator's
own intention, are often lost from view; and criticism suffers in
consequence.
IV
We have seen that the critic who is occupied chiefly with the
orator as a man can contribute, although indirectly, to the study of
the orator as such, and that the critic who divides his attention be-
tween the man and the work must effect a fusion of the two interests
if he is to help materially in the understanding of the orator. We
come now to critics more distinctly literary in aim. Within this
group several classes may be discriminated: the first comprises the
judicial critics; the second includes the interpretative critics who
take the point of view of literary style generally, regarding the speech.
as an essay, or as a specimen of prose; the third and last group is
composed of the writers who tend to regard the speech as a special
literary form.
The type of criticism that attempts a judicial evaluation of the
literary merits of the work-of the orator's "literary remains"-tends
to center the inquiry on the question: Is this literature? The futility
of the question appears equally in the affirmative and in the negative
replies to it. The fault is less with the query, however, than with
the hastiness of the answers generally given. For the most part, the
critics who raise this problem are not disposed really to consider it:
they formulate no conception either of literature or of oratory; they
will not consider their own literary standards critically and compre-
hensively. In short, the question is employed as a way to dispose
briefly of the subject of a lecture or of a short essay in a survey of
a national literature.
Thus Phelps, in his treatment of Webster and Lincoln in Some
Makers of American Literature,¹ tells us that they have a place in
literature by virtue of their style, gives us. some excerpts from Lin-
1 ¹ Boston, 1923.
192
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
coln and some comments on Webster's politics, but offers no reasoned
criticism. St. Peter swings wide the gates of the literary heaven,
but does not explain his action. We may suspect that the solemn
award of a "place in literature" sometimes conceals the absence of any
real principle of judgment.
Professor Trent is less easily satisfied that Webster deserves a
"place in literature." He grants Webster's power to stimulate patriot-
ism, his sonorous dignity and massiveness, his clearness and strength
of style, his powers of dramatic description. But he finds only occa-
sional splendor of imagination, discovers no soaring quality of intelli-
gence, and is not dazzled by his philosophy or his grasp of history.
Mr. Trent would like more vivacity and humor and color in Webster's
style.¹ This mode of deciding Webster's place in or out of literature
is important to us only as it reveals the critic's method of judging.
Trent looks for clearness and strength, imagination, philosophic
grasp, vivacity, humor, color in style. This is excellent so far as it
goes, but goes no further than to suggest some qualities which are to
be sought in any and all works of literary art: in dramas, in essays,
in lyric poems, as well as in speeches.
Let us take a third judge. Gosse will not allow Burke to be a
complete master of English prose: "Notwithstanding all its mag-
nificence, it appears to me that the prose of Burke lacks the variety,
the delicacy, the modulated music of the very finest writers." 2 Gosse
adds that Burke lacks flexibility, humor, and pathos. As critical
method, this is one with that of Trent.
Gosse, with his question about mastery of prose, does not di-
rectly ask, "Is this literature?" Henry Cabot Lodge does, and his
treatment of Webster (in the Cambridge History of American Liter-
ature) is curious. Lodge is concerned to show that Webster belongs
to literature, and to explain the quality in his work that gives him a
place among the best makers of literature. The test applied is perma-
nence: Is Webster still read? The answer is, yes, for he is part of
every schoolboy's education, and is the most quoted author in Con-
gress. The sight of a literary critic resigning the judicial bench to
the schoolmaster and the Congressman is an enjoyable one; as enjoy-
able as Mr. H. L. Mencken's reaction to it would be; but one could
¹W. P. Trent, History of American Literature, 1607-1865, New York,
1917, pp. 576-7.
1
Edmund Gosse, History of Eighteenth Century English Literature, 1660-
1780, London, 1889, pp. 365-6.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
193
wish for grounds more relative than this. Mr. Lodge goes on to
account for Webster's permanence: it lies in his power to impart to
rhetoric the literary touch. The distinction between rhetoric and
literature is not explained, but apparently the matter lies thus:
rhetorical verse may be poetry; Byron is an example. Rhetorical
prose is not literature until there is added the literary touch. We
get a clue as to how the literary touch may be added: put in some-
thing imaginative, something that strikes the hearer at once. The
example chosen by Lodge is a passage from Webster in which the
imaginative or literary touch is given by the single word "mildew." 1
This method of criticism, too, we may reduce to that of Trent, with
the exception that only one quality-imagination-is requisite for
admission to the literary Valhalla.
Whether the critic's standard be imagination, or this together
with other qualities such as intelligence, vivacity, humor, or whether
it be merely "style," undefined and unexplained, the point of view is
always that of the printed page. The oration is lost from view, and
becomes an exercise in prose, musical, colorful, varied, and delicate,
but, so far as the critic is concerned, formless and purposeless. Dis-
tinctions of literary type or kind are erased; the architectonic ele-
ment is neglected; and the speech is regarded as a musical meditation
might be regarded: as a kind of harmonious musing that drifts pleas-
antly along, with little of inner form and nothing of objective pur-
pose. This, it should be recognized, is not the result of judicial criti-
cism so much as the result of the attempt to decide too hastily
whether a given work is to be admitted into the canon of literature.
V
It is, perhaps, natural for the historian of literature to reduce all
literary production to one standard, and thus to discuss only the
common elements in all prose. One can understand also that the
biographer, when in the course of his task he must turn literary
critic, finds himself often inadequately equipped and his judgment
of little value, except on the scale of literature generally rather than
of oratory or of any given type. More is to be expected, however, of
those who set up as literary critics in the first instance: those who
deal directly with Webster's style, or with Lincoln as man of letters.
1
¹ Cambridge History of American Literature, New York, 1918, II, 101.
194
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
We shall find such critics as Whipple, Hazlitt, and Saintsbury devot-
ing themselves to the description of literary style in the orators whom
they discuss. Like the summary judicial critics we have mentioned,
their center of interest is the work; but they are less hurried than
Gosse and Lodge and Phelps and Trent; and their aim is not judg-
ment so much as understanding. Yet their interpretations, in the
main, take the point of view of the printed page, of the prose essay.
Only to a slight degree is there a shift to another point of view, that
of the orator in relation to the audience on whom he exerts his in-
fluence; the immediate public begins to loom a little larger; the essen-
tial nature of the oration as a type begins to be suggested.
Saintsbury has a procedure which much resembles that of Elton,
though we must note the fact that the former omits consideration of
Burke as a personality and centers attention on his work. ` We saw
that Elton, in his passages on Burke's style, attends both to the
larger elements of structure and to such relatively minute points as
the management of the sentence and the clause. In Saintsbury the
range of considerations is the same. At times, indeed, the juxtaposi-
tion of large and small ideas is ludicrous, as when one sentence ends
by awarding to Burke literary immortality, and the next describes.
the sentences of an early work as "short and crisp, arranged with
succinct antithetic parallels, which seldom exceed a single pair ´of
clauses." 1 The award of immortality is not, it should be said, based
entirely on the shortness of Burke's sentences in his earliest works.
Indeed much of Saintsbury's comment is of decided interest:
The style of Burke is necessarily to be considered throughout as condi-
tioned by oratory. . . . In other words, he was first of all a rhetorician, and
probably the greatest that modern times have ever produced. But his rhetoric
always inclined much more to the written than to the spoken form, with
results annoying perhaps to him at the time, but even to him satisfactory
afterwards, and an inestimable gain to the world. . . .
The most important of these properties of Burke's style, in so far as it is
possible to enumerate them here, are as follows. First of all, and most
distinctive, so much so as to have escaped no competent critic, is a very
curious and, until his example made it imitable, nearly unique faculty of
building up an argument or a picture by a succession of complementary
strokes, not added at haphazard but growing out of and onto one another.
No one has ever been such a master of the best and grandest kind of the
figure called . . . Amplification, and this
Amplification, and this . . . is the direct implement by
which he achieves his greatest effects.
1
¹ G. E. B. Saintsbury, Short History of English Literature, New York, 1915,
p. 630.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
195
•
The piece [Present Discontents] may be said to consist of a certain
number of specially labored paragraphs in which the arguments or pictures
just spoken of are put as forcibly as the author can put them, and as a rule
in a succession of shortish sentences, built up and glued together with the
strength and flexibility of a newly fashioned fishing-rod. In the intervals the
texts thus given are turned about, commented on, justified, or discussed in
detail, in a rhetoric for the most part, though not always, rather less serried,
less evidently burnished, and in less full dress. And this general arrange-
ment proceeds through the rest of his works.¹
•
•
3
After a number of comments on Burke's skill in handling various
kinds of ornament, such as humor, epigram, simile, Saintsbury re-
turns to the idea that Burke's special and definite weapon was “im-
aginative argument, and the marshalling of vast masses of complicated
detail into properly rhetorical battalions or (to alter the image)
mosaic pictures of enduring beauty."2 Saintsbury's attitude toward
the communicative, impulsive nature of the orator's task is indicated
in a passage on the well-known description of Windsor Castle. This
description the critic terms "at once a perfect harmonic chord,
a complete visual picture, and a forcible argument." It is significant
that he adds, "The minor rhetoric, the suasive purpose [presumably
the argumentative intent] must be kept in view; if it be left out the
thing loses"; and holds Burke "far below Browne, who had no need
of purpose." It is less important that a critic think well of the
suasive purpose than that he reckon with it, and of Saintsbury at
least it must be said that he recognizes it, although grudgingly; but
it cannot be said that Saintsbury has a clear conception of rhetoric as
the art of communication: sometimes it means the art of prose, some-
times that of suasion.
"4
Hazlitt's method of dealing with Burke resembles Taine's as
Saintsbury's resembles that of Elton. In Hazlitt we have a critic
who deals with style in the large; details of rhythm, of sentence
pattern, of imagery, are ignored. His principal criticism of
Burke as orator is contained in the well-known contrast with Chat-
ham, really a contrast of mind and temperament in relation to oratori-
cal style. He follows this with some excellent comment on Burke's
prose style; nothing more is said of his oratory; only in a few pas-
sages do we get a flash of light on the relation of Burke to his
1
¹Ibid., pp. 629-30.
2
Ibid., p. 631.
8 Ibid.
¹ Ibid.
196
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
audience, as in the remark about his eagerness to impress his reader,
and in the description of his conversational quality. It is notable
too that Hazlitt finds those works which never had the form of
speeches the most significant and most typical of Burke's style.
Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, that he was one
of the severest writers we have. His words are the most like things; his
style is the most strictly limited to the subject. He unites every extreme
and every variety of composition; the lowest and the meanest words and
descriptions with the highest. . . . He had no other object but to produce
the strongest impression on his reader, by giving the truest, the most char-
acteristic, the fullest, and most forcible description of things, trusting to the
power of his own mind to mold them into grace and beauty. . . . Burke
most frequently produced an effect by the remoteness and novelty of his com-
binations, by the force of contrast, by the striking manner in which the most
opposite and unpromising materials were harmoniously blended together;
not by laying his hands on all the fine things he could think of, but by
bringing together those things which he knew would blaze out into glorious
light by their collision.¹
Twelve years after writing the essay from which we have quoted,
Hazlitt had occasion to revise his estimate of Burke as a statesman;
but his sketch of Burke's style is essentially unaltered.2 In Hazlitt
we find a sense of style as an instrument of communication; that sense
is no stronger in dealing with Burke's speeches than in dealing with
his pamphlets, but it gives to Hazlitt's criticisms a reality not often
found. What is lacking is a clear sense of Burke's communicative
impulse, of his persuasive purpose, as operating in a concrete situa-
tion. Hazlitt does not suggest the background of Burke's speeches,
ignores the events that called them forth. He views his subject, in a
sense, as Grierson does: as speaking to the judicious but disinterested
hearer of any age other than Burke's own. But the problem of the
speaker, as well as of the pamphleteer, is to interest men here and
now; the understanding of that problem requires, on the part of the
critic, a strong historical sense for the ideas and attitudes of the
people (not merely of their leaders), and a full knowledge of the
public opinion of the times in which the orator spoke. This we do
not find in Hazlitt.
Two recent writers on Lincoln commit the opposite error: they
devote themselves so completely to description of the situation in
1 Sketches and Essays, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, London, 1872, II, 420-1.
2 Political Essays with Sketches of Public Characters, London, 1819, pp.
264-79.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
197
1
which Lincoln wrote as to leave no room for criticism. L. E. Robin-
son's Lincoln as Man of Letters ¹ is a biography rewritten around
Lincoln's writings. It is nothing more. Instead of giving us a criti-
cism, Professor Robinson has furnished us with some of the mate-
rials of the critic; his own judgments are too largely laudatory to
cast much light. The book, therefore, is not all that its title implies.
A single chapter of accurate summary and evaluation would do much
to increase our understanding of Lincoln as man of letters, even
though it said nothing of Lincoln as speaker. A chapter or two on
Lincoln's work in various kinds-letters, state papers, speeches-
would help us to a finer discrimination than Professor Robinson's
book offers. Again, the proper estimate of style in any satisfactory
sense requires us to do more than to weigh the soundness of an au-
thor's thought and to notice the isolated beauties of his expression.
Something should be said of structure, something of adaptation to the
immediate audience, whose convictions and habits of thought, whose
literary usages, and whose general cultural background all condition
the work both of writer and speaker. Mr. Robinson has given us
the political situation as a problem in controlling political forces,
with little regard to the force even of public opinion, and with almost
none to the cultural background. Lincoln's works, therefore, emerge
as items in a political sequence, but not as resultants of the life of his
time.
Some of the deficiencies of Robinson's volume are supplied by
Dodge's essay, Lincoln as Master of Words.2 Dodge considers, more
definitely than Robinson, the types in which Lincoln worked: he sepa-
rates messages from campaign speeches, letters from occasional ad-
dresses. He has an eye on Lincoln's relation to his audience, but this
manifests itself chiefly in an account of the immediate reception of a
work. Reports of newspaper comments on the speeches may be a
notable addition to Lincolniana; supported by more political informa-
tion and more insight than Mr. Dodge's short book reveals, they
might become an aid to the critical evaluation of the speeches. But
in themselves they are neither a criticism nor an interpretation of
Lincoln's mastery of words.
Robinson and Dodge, then, stand at opposite poles to Saintsbury
and Hazlitt. The date is put in opposition to the work as a center of
New York, 1923.
2 New York, 1924.
198
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
critical interest. If the two writers on Lincoln lack a full perception.
of their author's background, they do not lack a sense of its impor-
tance. If the critics of Burke do not produce a complete and rounded
criticism, neither do they lose themselves in preparatory studies. Each
method is incomplete; each should supplement the other.
We turn now to a critic who neglects the contribution of history
to the study of oratory, but who has two compensating merits: the
merit of recognizing the types in which his subject worked, and the
merit of remembering that an orator has as his audience, not posterity,
but certain classes of his own contemporaries. Whipple's essay on
Webster is open to attack from various directions: it is padded, it
"dates," it is overlaudatory, it is overpatriotic, it lacks distinction of
style. But there is wheat in the chaff. Scattered through the cus-
tomary discussion of Webster's choice of words, his power of epithet,
his compactness of statement, his images, the development of his
style, are definite suggestions of a new point of view. It is the point
of view of the actual audience. To Whipple, at times at least, Web-
ster was not a writer, but a speaker; the critic tries to imagine the
man, and also his hearers; he thinks of the speech as a communica-
tion to a certain body of auditors. A phrase often betrays a mental
attitude; Whipple alone of the critics we have mentioned would have
written of "the eloquence, the moral power, he infused into his rea-
soning, so as to make the dullest citation of legal authority tell on
the minds he addressed."1 Nor would any other writer of this group
have attempted to distinguish the types of audience Webster met.
That Whipple's effort is a rambling and incoherent one, is not here
in point. Nor is it pertinent that the critic goes completely astray in
explaining why Webster's speeches have the nature of "organic for-
mations, or at least of skilful engineering or architectural construc-
tions"; though to say that the art of giving objective reality to a
speech consists only of "a happy collocation and combination of
words" 2 is certainly as far as possible from explaining Webster's
sense of structure. What is significant in Whipple's essay is the
occasional indication of a point of view that includes the audience.
Such an indication is the passage in which the critic explains the
source of Webster's influence:
1
¹E. P. Whipple, "Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style," in
American Literature, Boston, 1887, p. 157.
'Ibid., p. 208.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
199
What gave Webster his immense influence over the opinions of the people
of New England, was first, his power of so "putting things" that everybody
could understand his statements; secondly, his power of so framing his
arguments that all the steps, from one point to another, in a logical series,
could be clearly apprehended by every intelligent farmer or mechanic who
had a thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country; and thirdly, his
power of inflaming the sentiment of patriotism in all honest and well-
intentioned men by overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that after
convincing their understandings, he clinched the matter by sweeping away
their wills.
Perhaps to these sources of influence may be added . . . a genuine respect
for the intellect, as well as for the manhood, of average men.
In various ways the descriptive critics recognize the orator's
function. In some, that recognition takes the form of a regard to
the background of the speeches; in others, it takes the form of a
regard to the effectiveness of the work, though that effectiveness is
often construed as for the reader rather than for the listener. The
"minor rhetoric, the suasive purpose" is beginning to be felt, though
not always recognized and never fully taken into account.
VI
The distinction involved in the presence of a persuasive purpose
is clearly recognized by some of those who have written on oratory,
and by some biographers and historians. The writers now to be men-
tioned are aware, more keenly than any of those we have so far met,
of the speech as a literary form or if not as a literary form, then
as a form of power; they tend accordingly to deal with the orator's
work as limited by the conditions of the platform and the occasion,
and to summon history to the aid of criticism.
The method of approach of the critics of oratory as oratory is
well put by Lord Curzon at the beginning of his essay, Modern Par-
liamentary Eloquence:
In dealing with the Parliamentary speakers of our time I shall, accordingly,
confine myself to those whom I have myself heard, or for whom I can quote
the testimony of others who heard them; and I shall not regard them as
prose writers or literary men, still less as purveyors of instruction to their
own or to future generations, but as men who produced, by the exercise of
certain talents of speech, a definite impression upon contemporary audiences,
and whose reputation for eloquence must be judged by that test, and that test
alone.2
1 Ibid., p. 144.
2 London, 1914, P. 7.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
The last phrase, "that test alone," would be scanned; the judgment
of orators is not solely to be determined by the impression of con-
temporary audiences. For the present it will be enough to note the
topics touched in Curzon's anecdotes and reminiscences-his lecture
is far from a systematic or searching inquiry into the subject, and is
of interest rather for its method of approach than for any considered
study of an orator or of a period. We value him for his promises
rather than for his performance. Curzon deals with the relative rank
of speakers, with the comparative value of various speeches by a sin-
gle man, with the orator's appearance and demeanor, with his mode
of preparation and of delivery, with his mastery of epigram or image.
Skill in seizing upon the dominant characteristics of each of his sub-
jects saves the author from the worst triviality of reminiscence.
Throughout, the point of view is that of the man experienced in pub-
lic life discussing the eloquence of other public men, most of whom
he had known and actually heard. That this is not the point of view.
of criticism in any strict sense, is of course true; but the naïveté and
directness of this observer correct forcibly some of the extravagances
we have been examining.
The lecture on Chatham as an orator by H. M. Butler exemplifies
a very different method arising from a different subject and purpose.
The lecturer is thinking, he tells us, "of Oratory partly as an art,
partly as a branch of literature, partly as a power of making his-
tory." His method is first to touch lightly upon Chatham's early
training and upon his mode of preparing and delivering his speeches;
next, to present some of the general judgments upon the Great Com-
moner, whether of contemporaries or of later historians; then to
re-create a few of the most important speeches, partly by picturing
the historical setting, partly by quotation, partly by the comments of
contemporary writers. The purpose of the essay is "to reawaken,
however faintly, some echoes of the kingly voice of a genuine Patriot,
of whom his country is still justly proud."2 The patriotic purpose we
may ignore, but the wish to reconstruct the mise en scène of Chat-
ham's speeches, to put the modern Oxford audience at the point of
view of those who listened to the voice of Pitt, saw the flash of his
eye and felt the force of his noble bearing, this is a purpose different
from that of the critics whom we have examined. It may be objected
¹ Lord Chatham as an Orator, Oxford, 1912, p. 5.
2
Ibid., pp. 39-40.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
201
that Butler's lecture has the defects of its method: the amenities
observed by a Cambridge don delivering a formal lecture at Oxford
keep us from getting on with the subject; the brevity of the dis-
course prevents anything like a full treatment; the aim, revivification
of the past, must be very broadly interpreted if it is to be really
critical. Let us admit these things; it still is true that in a few pages
the essential features of Pitt's eloquence are brought vividly before
us, and that this is accomplished by thinking of the speech as orig-
inally delivered to its first audience rather than as read by the mod-
ern reader.
The same sense of the speaker in his relation to his audience ap-
pears in Lecky's account of Burke. This account, too, is marked by
the use of contemporary witnesses, and of comparisons with Burke's
great rivals. But let Lecky's method speak in part for itself :
He spoke too often, too vehemently, and much too long; and his eloquence,
though in the highest degree intellectual, powerful, various, and original, was
not well adapted to a popular audience. He had little or nothing of that fire
and majesty of declamation with which Chatham thrilled his hearers, and
often almost overawed opposition; and as a parliamentary debater he was far
inferior to Charles Fox. . . . Burke was not inferior to Fox in readiness,
and in the power of clear and cogent reasoning. His wit, though not of
the highest order, was only equalled by that of Townshend, Sheridan, and
perhaps North, and it rarely failed in its effect upon the House. He far
surpassed every other speaker in the copiousness and correctness of his
diction, in the range of knowledge he brought to bear on every subject of
debate, in the richness and variety of his imagination, in the gorgeous beauty
of his descriptive passages, in the depth of the philosophical reflections and
the felicity of the personal sketches which he delighted in scattering over his
speeches. But these gifts were frequently marred by a strange want of
judgment, measure, and self-control. His speeches were full of episodes and
digressions, of excessive ornamentation and illustration, of dissertations on
general principles of politics, which were invaluable in themselves, but very
unpalatable to a tired or excited House waiting eagerly for a division.¹
These sentences suggest, and the pages from which they are ex-
cerpted show, that historical imagination has led Lecky to regard
Burke as primarily a speaker, both limited and formed by the condi-
tions of his platform; and they exemplify, too, a happier use of
stylistic categories than do the essays of Curzon and Butler. The
requirements of the historian's art have fused the character sketch
1
¹W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, New
York, 1888, III, 203-4.
202
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
and the literary criticism; the fusing agent has been the conception
of Burke as a public man, and of his work as public address. Both
Lecky's biographical interpretation and his literary criticism are less
subtle than that of Grierson; but Lecky is more definitely guided in
his treatment of Burke by the conception of oratory as a special form
of the literature of power and as a form molded always by the pres-
sure of the time.
The merits of Lecky are contained, in ampler form, in Morley's
biography of Gladstone. The long and varied career of the great
parliamentarian makes a general summary and final judgment diffi-
cult and perhaps inadvisable; Morley does not attempt them. But
his running account of Gladstone as orator, if assembled from his
thousand pages, is an admirable example of what can be done by one
who has the point of view of the public man, sympathy with his
subject, and understanding of the speaker's art. Morley gives us
much contemporary reporting: the descriptions and judgments of
journalists at various stages in Gladstone's career, the impression
made by the speeches upon delivery, comparison with other speakers
of the time. Here history is contemporary: the biographer was him-
self the witness of much that he describes, and has the experienced
parliamentarian's flair for the scene and the situation. Gladstone's
temperament and physical equipment for the platform, his training
in the art of speaking, the nature of his chief appeals, the factor of
character and personality, these are some of the topics repeatedly
touched. There is added a sense for the permanent results of Glad-
stone's speaking: not the votes in the House merely, but the changed
state of public opinion brought about by the speeches.
Mr. Gladstone conquered the House, because he was saturated with a
subject and its arguments; because he could state and enforce his case;
because he plainly believed every word he said, and earnestly wished to
press the same belief into the minds of his hearers; finally because he was
from the first an eager and a powerful athlete. . . . Yet with this inborn
readiness for combat, nobody was less addicted to aggression or provoca-
tion.
•
In finance, the most important of all the many fields of his activity, Mr.
Gladstone had the signal distinction of creating the public opinion by which
he worked, and warming the climate in which his projects throve.
Nobody denies that he was often declamatory and discursive, that he often
overargued and overrefined; [but] he nowhere exerted greater influence
than in that department of affairs where words out of relation to fact are
most surely exposed. If he often carried the proper rhetorical arts of ampli-
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
203
fication and development to excess, yet the basis of fact was both sound
and clear. . . . Just as Macaulay made thousands read history, who before
had turned from it as dry and repulsive, so Mr. Gladstone made thousands
eager to follow the public balance-sheet, and the whole nation became his
audience. . .
[In the Midlothian campaign] it was the orator of concrete detail, of
inductive instances, of energetic and immediate object; the orator confidently
and by sure touch startling into watchfulness the whole spirit of civil duty
in man; elastic and supple, pressing fact and figure with a fervid insistence
that was known from his career and character to be neither forced nor
feigned, but to be himself. In a word, it was a man-a man impressing him-
self upon the kindled throngs by the breadth of his survey of great affairs of
life and nations, by the depth of his vision, by the power of his stroke.¹
Objections may be made to Morley's method, chiefly on the
ground of omissions. Though much is done to re-create the scene,
though ample use is made of the date and the man, there is little
formal analysis of the work. It is as if one had come from the
House of Commons after hearing the speeches, stirred to enthusiasm
but a little confused by the wealth of argument; not as if one came
from a calm study of the speeches; not even as if one had corrected
personal impressions by such a study. Of the structure of the
speeches, little is said; but a few perorations are quoted; the details
of style, one feels, although noticed at too great length by some
critics, might well receive a modicum of attention here.
Although these deficiencies of Morley's treatment are not sup-
plied by Bryce in his short and popular sketch of Gladstone, there
is a summary which well supplements the running account offered
by Morley. It has the merit of dealing explicitly with the orator as
orator, and it offers more analysis and an adequate judgment by a
qualified critic.
Twenty years hence Mr. Gladstone's [speeches] will not be read, except
of course by historians. They are too long, too diffuse, too minute in their
handling of details, too elaborately qualified in their enunciation of general
principles. They contain few epigrams and few . . . weighty thoughts put
into telling phrases. . . . The style, in short, is not sufficiently rich or finished
to give a perpetual interest to matters whose practical importance has
vanished. . . .
If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he
made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. . . . His
oratory had many conspicuous merits. There was a lively imagination, which
enabled him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together with a
1
¹ Life of William Ewart Gladstone, I, 193-4; II, 54-5, 593.
204
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
large command of quotations and illustrations. . . . There was admirable
lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was great skill in the disposition
and marshalling of his arguments, and finally . . . there was a wonderful
variety and grace of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond everything
else which enthralled the listener, there were four qualities, two specially
conspicuous in the substance of his eloquence-inventiveness and elevation;
two not less remarkable in his manner-force in the delivery, expressive
modulation in the voice.¹
One is tempted to say that Morley has provided the historical
setting, Bryce the critical verdict. The statement would be only
partially true, for Morley does much more than set the scene. He
enacts the drama; and thus he conveys his judgment-not, it is true,
in the form of a critical estimate, but in the course of his narrative.
The difference between these two excellent accounts is a difference
in emphasis. The one lays stress on the setting; the other takes it
for granted. The one tries to suggest his judgment by description;
the other employs the formal categories of criticism.
Less full and rounded than either of these descriptions of an
orator's style is Trevelyan's estimate of Bright. Yet in a few pages.
the biographer has indicated clearly the two distinguishing features
of Bright's eloquence-the moral weight he carried with his audi-
ence, the persuasiveness of his visible earnestness and of his reputa-
tion for integrity, and his "sense for the value of words and for the
rhythm of words and sentences"; 2 has drawn a contrast between
Bright and Gladstone; and has added a description of Bright's mode
of work, together with some comments on the permanence of the
speeches and various examples of details of his style. Only the
mass and weight of that style are not represented.
3
4
If we leave the biographers and return to those who, like Curzon
and Butler, have written directly upon eloquence, we find little of
importance. Of the two general histories of oratory that we have
in English, Hardwicke's ³ is so ill organized and so ill written as to be
negligible; that by Sears may deserve mention. It is uneven and in-
accurate. It is rather a popular handbook which strings together the
great names than a history: the author does not seriously consider
the evolution of oratory. His sketches are of unequal merit; some
¹ Gladstone, his Characteristics as Man and Statesman, New York, 1898,
pp. 41-4.
2
3
G. M. Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, Boston, 1913, P. 384.
Henry Hardwicke, History of Oratory and Orators, New York, 1896.
Lorenzo Sears, History of Oratory, Chicago, 1896.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
205
give way to the interest in mere anecdote; some yield too large a
place to biographical detail; others are given over to moralizing.
Sears touches most of the topics of rhetorical criticism without mak-
ing the point of view of public address dominant; his work is too
episodic for that. And any given criticism shows marked defects
in execution. It would not be fair to compare Sears's show-piece,
his chapter on Webster, with Morley or Bryce on Gladstone; but
compare it with Trevelyan's few pages on Bright. With far greater
economy, Trevelyan tells us more of Bright as a speaker than Sears
can of Webster. The History of Oratory gives us little more than
hints and suggestions of a good method.
1
With a single exception, the collections of eloquence have no
critical significance. The exception is Select British Eloquence,¹
edited by Chauncey A. Goodrich, who prefaced the works of each
of his orators with a sketch partly biographical and partly critical.
The criticisms of Goodrich, like those of Sears, are of unequal
value; some are slight, yet none descends to mere anecdote, and at
his best, as in the characterizations of the eloquence of Chatham,
Fox, and Burke, Goodrich reveals a more powerful grasp and a more
comprehensive view of his problem than does Sears, as well as a
more consistent view of his subject as a speaker. Sears at times
takes the point of view of the printed page; Goodrich consistently
thinks of the speeches he discusses as intended for oral delivery.
Goodrich's topics of criticism are: the orator's training, mode of
work, personal (physical) qualifications, character as known to his
audience, range of powers, dominant traits as a speaker. He deals
too, of course, with those topics to which certain of the critics we
have noticed confine themselves: illustration, ornament, gift of phrase,
diction, wit, imagination, arrangement. But these he does not over-
emphasize, nor view as independent of their effect upon an audience.
Thus he can say of Chatham's sentence structure: "The sentences
are not rounded or balanced periods, but are made up of short
clauses, which flash themselves upon the mind with all the vividness.
of distinct ideas, and yet are closely connected together as tending
to the same point, and uniting to form larger masses of thought."
Perhaps the best brief indication of Goodrich's quality is his state-
ment of Fox's "leading peculiarities." According to Goodrich, Fox
New York, 1852.
2 P. 75.
'P. 461.
2
206
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
had a luminous simplicity, which combined unity of impression with
irregular arrangement; he took everything in the concrete; he struck
instantly at the heart of his subject, going to the issue at once; he
did not amplify, he repeated; he rarely employed a preconceived
order of argument; reasoning was his forte, but it was the reasoning
of the debater; he abounded in hits-abrupt and startling turns of
thought—and in side-blows delivered in passing; he was often dra-
matic; he had astonishing skill in turning the course of debate to
his own advantage. Here is the point of view of public address,
expressed as clearly as in Morley or in Curzon, though in a different
idiom, and without the biographer's fulness of treatment.
But probably the best single specimen of the kind of criticism now.
under discussion is Morley's chapter on Cobden as an agitator. This
is as admirable a summary sketch as the same writer's account of
Gladstone is a detailed historical picture. Bryce's brief essay on
Gladstone is inferior to it both in the range of its technical criticisms
and in the extent to which the critic realizes the situation in which
his subject was an actor. In a few pages Morley has drawn the
physical characteristics of his subject, his bent of mind, tempera-
ment, idiosyncrasies; has compared and contrasted Cobden with his
great associate, Bright; has given us contemporary judgments; has
sketched out the dominant quality of his style, its variety and range;
has noted Cobden's attitude to his hearers, his view of human nature;
and has dealt with the impression given by Cobden's printed speeches
and the total impression of his personality on the platform. The
method, the angle of approach, the categories of description or of
criticism, are the same as those employed in the great life of Glad-
stone; but we find them here condensed into twenty pages. It will
be worth while to present the most interesing parts of Morley's
criticism, if only for comparison with some of the passages already
given :
I have asked many scores of those who knew him, Conservatives as well
as Liberals, what this secret [of his oratorical success] was, and in no single
case did my interlocutor fail to begin, and in nearly every case he ended
as he had begun, with the word persuasiveness. Cobden made his way to
men's hearts by the union which they saw in him of simplicity, earnestness,
and conviction, with a singular facility of exposition. This facility consisted
in a remarkable power of apt and homely illustration, and a curious ingenuity
in framing the argument that happened to be wanted. Besides his skill in thus
hitting on the right argument, Cobden had the oratorical art of presenting
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
207
it in the way that made its admission to the understanding of a listener easy
and undenied. He always seemed to have made exactly the right degree of
allowance for the difficulty with which men follow a speech, as compared with
the ease of following the same argument on a printed page.
Though he abounded in matter, Cobden can hardly be described as
copious. He is neat and pointed, nor is his argument ever left unclinched;
but he permits himself no large excursions. What he was thinking of was
the matter immediately in hand, the audience before his eyes, the point that
would tell best then and there, and would be most likely to remain in men's
recollections. . . . What is remarkable is, that while he kept close to the
matter and substance of his case, and resorted comparatively little to sarcasm,
humor, invective, pathos, or the other elements that are catalogued in
manuals of rhetoric, yet no speaker was ever further removed from prosiness,
or came into more real and sympathetic contact with his audience.
•
After all, it is not tropes and perorations that make the popular speaker;
it is the whole impression of his personality. We who only read them can
discern certain admirable qualities in Cobden's speeches; aptness in choosing
topics, lucidity in presenting them, buoyant confidence in pressing them home.
But those who listened to them felt much more than all this. They were
delighted by mingled vivacity and ease, by directness, by spontaneousness and
reality, by the charm. . . of personal friendliness and undisguised cordiality.¹
These passages are written in the spirit of the critic of public
speaking. They have the point of view that is but faintly suggested
in Elton and Grierson, that Saintsbury recognizes but does not use,
and Hazlitt uses but does not recognize, and that Whipple, however
irregularly, both understands and employs. But such critics as
Curzon and Butler, Sears and Goodrich, Trevelyan and Bryce, think
differently of their problem; they take the point of view of public
address consistently and without question. Morley's superiority is
not in conception, but in execution. In all the writers of this group,
whether historians, biographers, or professed students of oratory,
there is a consciousness that oratory is partly an art, partly a power
of making history, and occasionally a branch of literature. Style is
less considered for its own sake than for its effect in a given situa-
tion. The question of literary immortality is regarded as beside the
mark, or else, as in Bryce, as a separate question requiring separate
consideration. There are, of course, differences of emphasis. Some
of the biographers may be thought to deal too lightly with style.
Sears perhaps thinks too little of the time, of the drama of the situa-
tion, and too much of style. But we have arrived at a different atti-
tude towards the orator; his function is recognized for what it is:
¹ Life of Richard Cobden, Boston, 1881, pp. 130-2.
208
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the art of influencing men in some concrete situation. Neither the
personal nor the literary evaluation is the primary object. The
critic speaks of the orator as a public man whose function it is to
exert his influence by speech.
VII
Any attempt to sum up the results of this casual survey of what
some writers have said of some public speakers must deal with the
differences between literary criticism as represented by Gosse and
Trent, by Elton and Grierson, and rhetorical criticism as represented.
by Curzon, Morley, Bryce, and Trevelyan. The literary critics seem
at first to have no common point of view and no agreement as to the
categories of judgment or description. But by reading between their
lines and searching for the main endeavor of these critics, one can
discover at least a unity of purpose. Different in method as are
Gosse, Elton, Saintsbury, Whipple, Hazlitt, the ends they have in
view are not different.
Coupled with almost every description of the excellences of prose
and with every attempt to describe the man in connection with his
work, is the same effort as we find clearly and even arbitrarily ex-
pressed by those whom we have termed judicial critics. All the
literary critics unite in the attempt to interpret the permanent value
that they find in the work under consideration. That permanent
value is not precisely indicated by the term beauty, but the two
strands of æsthetic excellence and permanence are clearly found,
not only in the avowed judicial criticism but in those writers who
emphasize description rather than judgment. Thus Grierson says
of Burke:
His preoccupation at every juncture with the fundamental issues of wise
government, and the splendor of the eloquence in which he set forth these
principles, an eloquence in which the wisdom of his thought and the felicity
of his language and imagery seem inseparable from one another . . . have
made his speeches and pamphlets a source of perennial freshness and interest.¹
Perhaps a critic of temper different from Grierson's-Saintsbury,
for example-would turn from the wisdom of Burke's thought to
the felicity of his language and imagery. But always there is implicit
1
¹ Cambridge History of English Literature, New York, 1914, XI, 8.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
209
in the critic's mind the absolute standard of a timeless world: the
wisdom of Burke's thought (found in the principles to which his
mind always gravitates rather than in his decisions on points of
policy) and the felicity of his language are not considered as of an
age, but for all time. Whether the critic considers the technical
excellence merely, or both technique and substance, his preoccupa-
tion is with that which age cannot wither nor custom stale. (From
this point of view, the distinction between the speech and the pamphlet
is of no moment, and Elton wisely speaks of Burke's favorite form
as "oratory, uttered or written"; ¹ for a speech cannot be the subject
of a permanent evaluation unless it is preserved in print.)
This is the implied attitude of all the literary critics. On this
common ground their differences disappear or become merely differ-
ences of method or of competence. They are all, in various ways,
interpreters of the permanent and universal values they find in the
works of which they treat. Nor can there be any quarrel with this
attitude—unless all standards be swept away. The impressionist
and the historian of the evolution of literature as a self-contained
activity may deny the utility or the possibility of a truly judicial
criticism. But the human mind insists upon judgment sub specie
æternitatis. The motive often appears as a merely practical one: the
reader wishes to be apprised of the best that has been said and
thought in all ages; he is less concerned with the descent of literary
species or with the critic's adventures among masterpieces than with
the perennial freshness and interest those masterpieces may hold for
him. There is, of course, much more than a practical motive to
justify the interest in permanent values; but this is not the place to
raise a moot question of general critical theory. We wished only
to note the common ground of literary criticism in its preoccupation
with the thought and the eloquence which is permanent.
If now we turn to rhetorical criticism as we found it exemplified
in the preceding section, we find that its point of view is patently
single. It is not concerned with permanence, nor yet with beauty.
It is concerned with effect. It regards a speech as a communication
to a specific audience, and holds its business to be the analysis and
appreciation of the orator's method of imparting his ideas to his
hearers.
1 Oliver Elton, Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, London, 1912,
I, 234.
210
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
¹
Rhetoric, however, is a word that requires explanation; its use
in connection with criticism is neither general nor consistent. The
merely depreciatory sense in which it is often applied to bombast or
false ornament need not delay us. The limited meaning which con-
fines the term to the devices of a correct and even of an elegant prose
style-in the sense of manner of writing and speaking-may also be
eliminated, as likewise the broad interpretation which makes rhetoric
inclusive of all style whether in prose or in poetry. There remain
some definitions which have greater promise. We may mention first
that of Aristotle: "the faculty of observing in any given case the
available means of persuasion"; this readily turns into the art of
persuasion, as the editors of the New English Dictionary recognize
when they define rhetoric as "the art of using language so as to per-
suade or influence others." The gloss on "persuade" afforded by
the additional term "influence" is worthy of note. Jebb achieves
the same result by defining rhetoric as "the art of using language
in such a way as to produce a desired impression upon the hearer
or reader.' There is yet a fourth definition, one which serves to
illuminate the others as well as to emphasize their essential agree-
ment: "taken broadly [rhetoric is] the science and art of communica-
tion in language"; the framers of this definition add that to throw
the emphasis on communication is to emphasize prose, poetry being
regarded as more distinctly expressive than communicative. A Ger-
man writer has made a similar distinction between poetic as the art
of poetry and rhetoric as the art of prose, but rather on the basis
that prose is of the intellect, poetry of the imagination. Wacker-
nagel's basis for the distinction will hardly stand in face of the
attitude of modern psychology to the "faculties"; yet the distinction.
itself is suggestive, and it does not contravene the more significant
opposition of expression and communication. That opposition has
been well stated, though with some exaggeration, by Professor
Hudson:
"12
3
The writer in pure literature has his eye on his subject; his subject has
filled his mind and engaged his interest, and he must tell about it; his task is
¹Rhetoric, ii, 2, tr. W. Rhys Roberts in The Works of Aristotle, XI,
Oxford, 1924.
Article "Rhetoric" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th and 11th editions.
J. L. Gerig and F. N. Scott, article "Rhetoric" in the New International
Encyclopædia.
K. H. W. Wackernagel, Poetik, Rhetorik und Stilistik, ed. L. Sieber,
Halle, 1873, p. II.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
211
expression; his form and style are organic with his subject. The writer
of rhetorical discourse has his eye upon the audience and occasion; his task
is persuasion; his form and style are organic with the occasion.¹
The element of the author's personality should not be lost from sight
in the case of the writer of pure literature; nor may the critic think
of the audience and the occasion as alone conditioning the work of the
composer of rhetorical discourse, unless indeed he include in the
occasion both the personality of the speaker and the subject. The
distinction is better put by Professor Baldwin:
Rhetoric meant to the ancient world the art of instructing and moving
men in their affairs; poetic the art of sharpening and expanding their
vision. . . .
The one is composition of ideas; the other, composition of images.
In the one field life is discussed; in the other it is presented. The type of
the one is a public address, moving us to assent and action; the type of the
other is a play, showing us [an] action moving to an end of character. The
one argues and urges; the other represents. Though both appeal to imagina-
tion, the method of rhetoric is logical; the method of poetic, as well as its
detail, is imaginative.²
It is noteworthy that in this passage there is nothing to oppose
poetry, in its common acceptation of verse, to prose. Indeed, in dis-
cussing the four forms of discourse usually treated in textbooks,
Baldwin explicitly classes exposition and argument under rhetoric,
leaving narrative and description to the other field. But rhetoric has
been applied to the art of prose by some who include under the term
even nonmetrical works of fiction. This is the attitude of Wacker-
nagel, already mentioned, and of Saintsbury, who observes that
Aristotle's Rhetoric holds, "if not intentionally, yet actually, some-
thing of the same position towards Prose as that which the Poetics
holds towards verse." In Saintsbury's view, the Rhetoric achieves
this position in virtue of its third book, that on style and arrange-
ment: the first two books contain "a great deal of matter which has
either the faintest connection with literary criticism or else no con-
nection with it at all." Saintsbury finds it objectionable in Aristotle
that to him, "prose as prose is merely and avowedly a secondary con-
4
¹H. H. Hudson, "The Field of Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal of Speech
Education, IX (1923), 177. See also the same writer's "Rhetoric and Poetry,"
ibid., X (1924), 143 ff.
2 C. S. Baldwin, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic, New York, 1924, p. 134.
G. E. B. Saintsbury, History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe,
New York, 1900, I, 39.
4 Ibid., p. 42.
212
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
sideration it is always in the main, and sometimes wholly, a mere
necessary instrument of divers practical purposes," 1 and that "he
does not wish to consider a piece of prose as a work of art destined,
first of all, if not finally, to fulfil its own laws on the one hand, and
to give pleasure on the other." 2 The distinction between verse and
prose has often troubled the waters of criticism. The explanation is
probably that the outer form of a work is more easily understood
and more constantly present to the mind than is the real form. Yet
it is strange that those who find the distinction between verse and
prose important should parallel this with a distinction between
imagination and intellect, as if a novel had more affinities with a
speech than with an epic. It is strange, too, that Saintsbury's own
phrase about the right way to consider a "piece of prose"-as a work
of art destined "to fulfil its own laws"-did not suggest to him the
fundamental importance of a distinction between what he terms the
minor or suasive rhetoric on the one hand, and on the other poetic,
whether or not in verse. For poetry always is free to fulfil its own
law, but the writer of rhetorical discourse is, in a sense, perpetually
in bondage to the occasion and the audience; and in that fact we find
the line of cleavage between rhetoric and poetic.
The distinction between rhetoric as theory of public address and
poetic as theory of pure literature, says Professor Baldwin, "seems
not to have controlled any consecutive movement of modern criti-
cism." 3
That it has not controlled the procedure of critics in deal-
ing with orators is indicated in the foregoing pages; yet we have
found, too, many suggestions of a better method, and some few
critical performances against which the only charge is overcondensa-
tion.
Rhetorical criticism is necessarily analytical. The scheme of a
rhetorical study includes the element of the speaker's personality as
a conditioning factor; it includes also the public character of the man
-not what he was, but what he was thought to be. It requires a
description of the speaker's audience, and of the leading ideas with
which he plied his hearers-his topics, the motives to which he ap-
pealed, the nature of the proofs he offered. These will reveal his own
judgment of human nature in his audiences, and also his judgment
¹ History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, p. 48.
2 Ibid., p. 52.
³ Op. cit., p. 4.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
213
on the questions which he discussed. Attention must be paid, too, to
the relation of the surviving texts to what was actually uttered: in
case the nature of the changes is known, there may be occasion to
consider adaptation to two audiences-that which heard and that
which read. Nor can rhetorical criticism omit the speaker's mode
of arrangement and his mode of expression, nor his habit of prepara-
tion and his manner of delivery from the platform; though the last
two are perhaps less significant. "Style"-in the sense which corre-
sponds to diction and sentence movement-must receive attention,
but only as one among various means that secure for the speaker
ready access to the minds of his auditors. Finally, the effect of the
discourse on its immediate hearers is not to be ignored, either in the
testimony of witnesses, nor in the record of events. And through-
out such a study one must conceive of the public man as influencing
the men of his own times by the power of his discourse.
VIII
What is the relation of rhetorical criticism, so understood, to lit-
erary criticism? The latter is at once broader and more limited than
rhetorical criticism. It is broader because of its concern with per-
manent values: because it takes no account of special purpose nor of
immediate effect; because it views a literary work as the voice of a
human spirit addressing itself to men of all ages and times; because
the critic speaks as the spectator of all time and all existence. But
this universalizing of attitude brings its own limits with it: the in-
fluence of the period is necessarily relegated to the background; inter-
pretation in the light of the writer's intention and of his situation may
be ignored or slighted; and the speaker who directed his words to a
definite and limited group of hearers may be made to address a uni-
versal audience. The result can only be confusion. In short, the
point of view of literary criticism is proper only to its own objects,
the permanent works. Upon such as are found to lie without the
pale, the verdict of literary criticism is of negative value merely, and
its interpretation is false and misleading because it proceeds upon a
wrong assumption. If Henry Clay and Charles Fox are to be dealt
with at all, it must not be on the assumption that their works, in re-
spect of wisdom and eloquence, are or ought to be sources of perennial
freshness and interest. Morley has put the matter well:
214
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
The statesman who makes or dominates a crisis, who has to rouse and
mold the mind of senate or nation, has something else to think about than
the production of literary masterpieces. The great political speech, which
for that matter is a sort of drama, is not made by passages for elegant
extract or anthologies, but by personality, movement, climax, spectacle, and
the action of the time.¹
But we cannot always divorce rhetorical criticism from literary.
In the case of Fox or Clay or Cobden, as opposed to Fielding or
Addison or De Quincey, it is proper to do so; the fact that language is
a common medium to the writer of rhetorical discourse and to the
writer in pure literature will give to the critics of each a common
vocabulary of stylistic terms, but not a common standard. In the
case of Burke the relation of the two points of view is more complex.
Burke belongs to literature; but in all his important works he was
a practitioner of public address written or uttered. Since his ap-
proach to belles-lettres was through rhetoric, it follows that rhetorical
criticism is at least a preliminary to literary criticism, for it will
erect the factual basis for the understanding of the works will not
merely explain allusions and establish dates, but recall the setting,
reconstruct the author's own intention, and analyze his method. But
the rhetorical inquiry is more than a mere preliminary; it permeates
and governs all subsequent interpretation and criticism. For the
statesman in letters is a statesman still: compare Burke to Charles
Lamb, or even to Montaigne, and it is clear that the public man is in
a sense inseparable from his audience. A statesman's wisdom and
eloquence are not to be read without some share of his own sense of
the body politic, and of the body politic not merely as a construct of
thought, but as a living human society. A speech, like a satire, like
a comedy of manners, grows directly out of a social situation; it is
a man's response to a condition in human affairs. However broadly
typical the situation may be when its essential elements are laid bare,
it never appears without its coverings. On no plane of thought-
philosophical, literary, political-is Burke to be understood without
reference to the great events in America, India, France, which
evoked his eloquence; nor is he to be understood without reference
to the state of English society. (It is this last that is lacking in
Grierson's essay: the page of comment on Burke's qualities in actual
debate wants its supplement in some account of the House of Com-
¹Life of William Ewart Gladstone, II, 589-90.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF ORATORY
215
mons and the national life it represented. Perhaps the latter is the
more needful to a full understanding of the abiding excellence in
Burke's pages.) Something of the spirit of Morley's chapter on Cob-
den, and more of the spirit of the social historian (which Morley
has in other parts of the biography) is necessary to the literary critic
in dealing with the statesman who is also a man of letters.
In the case of Burke, then, one of the functions of rhetorical
criticism is as a preliminary, but an essential and governing prelimi-
nary, to the literary criticism which occupies itself with the perma-
nent values of wisdom and of eloquence, of thought and of beauty,
that are found in the works of the orator.
Rhetorical criticism may also be regarded as an end in itself.
Even Burke may be studied from that point of view alone. Fox
and Cobden and the majority of public speakers are not to be re-
garded from any other. No one will offer Cobden's works a place
in pure literature. Yet the method of the great agitator has a place
in the history of his times. That place is not in the history of belles-
lettres; nor is it in the literary history which is a "survey of the
life of a people as expressed in their writings." The idea of "writ-
ings" is a merely mechanical one; it does not really provide a point
of view or a method; it is a book-maker's cloak for many and diverse
points of view. Such a compilation as the Cambridge History of
American Literature, for example, in spite of the excellence of sin-
gle essays, may not unjustly be characterized as an uneven commen-
tary on the literary life of the country and as a still more uneven
commentary on its social and political life. It may be questioned
whether the scant treatment of public men in such a compilation
throws light either on the creators of pure literature, or on the makers
of rhetorical discourse, or on the life of the times.
Rhetorical criticism lies at the boundary of politics (in the broad-
est sense) and literature; its atmosphere is that of the public life,¹
its tools are those of literature, its concern is with the ideas of the
people as influenced by their leaders. The effective wielder of pub-
lic discourse, like the military man, belongs to social and political
history because he is one of its makers. Like the soldier, he has an
art of his own which is the source of his power; but the soldier's art
is distinct from the life which his conquests affect. The rhetorician's
¹For a popular but suggestive presentation of the background of rhetorical
discourse, see J. A. Spender, The Public Life, New York, 1925.
216
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
art represents a natural and normal process within that life. It in-
cludes the work of the speaker, of the pamphleteer, of the writer of
editorials, and of the sermon maker. It is to be thought of as the
art of popularization. Its practitioners are the Huxleys, not the Dar-
wins, of science; the Jeffersons, not the Lockes and the Rousseaus,
of politics.
Of late years the art of popularization has received a degree of
attention: propaganda and publicity have been words much used; the
influence of the press has been discussed; there have been some
studies of public opinion. Professor Robinson's Humanizing of
Knowledge¹ is a cogent statement of the need for popularization by
the instructed element in the state, and of the need for a technique.
in doing so. But the book indicates, too, how little is known of the
methods its author so earnestly desires to see put to use.
Yet ever
since Homer's day men have woven the web of words and counsel
in the face of all. And ever since Aristotle's day there has been a
mode of analysis of public address. Perhaps the preoccupation of
literary criticism with "style" rather than with composition in the
large has diverted interest from the more significant problem. Per-
haps the conventional categories of historical thought have helped to
obscure the problem: the history of thought, for example, is gen-
erally interpreted as the history of invention and discovery, both
physical and intellectual. Yet the history of the thought of the peo-
ple is at least as potent a factor in the progress of the race. True,
the popular thought may often represent a resisting force, and we
need not marvel that the many movements of a poet's mind more
readily capture the critic's attention than the few and uncertain
movements of that Leviathan, the public mind. Nor is it surprising
that the historians tend to be occupied with the acts and the motives
of leaders. But those historians who find the spirit of an age in the
total mass of its literary productions, as well as all who would tame
Leviathan to the end that he shall not threaten civilization, must
examine more thoroughly than they as yet have done the interactions
of the inventive genius, the popularizing talent, and the public mind.
1 New York, 1923.
T
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
WAYLAND MAXFIELD PARRISH
HE rhythm of spoken and written prose has received atten-
tion from students in several different fields. First, there are
the ancient critics and rhetoricians, principally Aristotle,
Quintilian, Cicero, and Longinus, who attempted to analyze the
sonorous roll of ancient oratory. Second, there is a host of modern
literary critics-Bulwer-Lytton, Stevenson, Saintsbury, Quiller-
Couch, and many more-who have tried to give an account of the
elusive beauty of English essay style, as found, chiefly, in the writ-
ings of such masters as Pater, De Quincey, and Browne. Third, there
is a considerable number of philologists, notably Sievers and Zielin-
ski in Germany, Elton and Clark in England, and Croll in America,
who are concerned largely with tracing the origin and determining
the structure of prose cadences or clause endings. Fourth, several
modern physicists have recorded and measured the voice in reading,
to discover what it actually does. Fifth, the psychologists have tried
to define and measure the effect of rhythm on the ears of trained
auditors. Sixth, there are the teachers of elocution and reading, who
generally find rhythm an aid to both perspicuity and beauty. And
there is a miscellaneous group of dabblers whose contributions are
often amusing but seldom enlightening. This paper will attempt to
synthesize from these varied materials and viewpoints a coherent
explanation of the nature and function of rhythm in spoken
discourse.
One condition of this study must be noted. Since oratory is
addressed to the public, our interest is in the sounds of words as
they are heard by a public gathering. It is not in those fine and deli-
cate rhythms (if any such exist) that are caught only by the sensitive
ear of the cultivated. It is not in the appeal that rhythm makes to the
inner ear of the reader of a manuscript. And it is not in what rhythm
is as determined objectively by the scientist's measurements. Says
Bliss Perry: "For that sonority and cadence and balance which con-
217
218
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
stitute a harmonious prose sentence cannot be adequately felt by a
possibly illiterate scientist in his laboratory for acoustics." 1 Our
interest is in what rhythm seems to be, as it is caught by the common
ear.
One cannot go far into the literature of rhythm without meeting
widely divergent opinions as to its nature and function. Prose
rhythm is said by one to be essentially regular and by another essen-
tially various. According to one the laws by which it is governed
are the same as those for poetry; according to another it has a set of
laws all its own. Some writers find it highly pleasing to the ear,
others consider it a decided fault in composition. Some say it is
governed by definite discoverable laws; others that it obeys no law
but to be lawless. Two reasons may be hazarded for this divergence
of opinion. First, the writers may lack a distinct sense of rhythm.
It is a well-established fact that people vary in their ability to per-
ceive rhythm. Some cannot march or dance to music, and many can-
not scan poetry. It is reasonable to suppose that some critics who are
disturbed with the joy (or pain) of subtle and elusive harmonies are
really confused (or annoyed) by a blurred conception of what be-
cause of their constitutional defect they never can feel distinctly. It
would be interesting to know what scores some of our modern critics
would make in the Seashore test for rhythmic sense. Certainly the
ability to pass such a test is necessary in one who is to do intelligent
work in this field. Second, the disagreements among the investi-
gators may be due to the fact that when they write of rhythm they
do not all have the same thing in mind. In writings on this subject.
definitions are rare. By most literary writers prose rhythm is a term
used loosely to cover any effect which is found to be pleasing to the
ear. In dictionaries it is defined as "harmony of language," a "har-
monious flow of words." This is characteristically vague. The ele-
ment of rhythm which is least distinct in the mind of the literary critic
is the element which the physicist and the psychologist recognize as
the very essence of rhythm. To them rhythm is a recurrence of
effects or perceptions at regular intervals, and it is especially impor-
tant for us to understand that the recurrence be regular. The mere
recurrence of accents in verse or prose means nothing.
Since we
speak an accented language accents must recur. It is their recurrence
at regular intervals that makes rhythm. Furthermore, in oratory we
¹A Study of Poetry, Boston, 1920, p. 158.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
219
can consider only regularity in time. Some forms of verse make
an appeal to the eye through a regularity in arrangement on the
page, but the appeal of oratorical prose rhythm is to the ear only and
hence to be considered as a regularity in time. Let us say, then, that
for this essay oratorical prose rhythm is defined as a rhetorical de-
vice which consists of effects repeated at regular intervals in time,
and is intended to give distinction to style or pleasure to the audience.
This helps to clear the ground. There are legitimate rhetorical
devices for giving pleasure or distinction which do not come under
this definition. For instance, the combination of euphonious words
of poetic connotation such as "gorgeous ensign" gives us a pleasure
which we are apt to attribute mistakenly to rhythm. In the analysis
of his favorite prose passages Saintsbury ¹ repeatedly refers to beau-
tiful syllables, beautiful letters, vowel music, contrast, balance, apt
epithets, adaptation of sound to sense-all as contributing to rhythmic
effect. All these things do contribute to "harmony of language,"
but not to rhythm as here defined; unless, of course, they are repeated
at sensibly regular intervals in time.
1
Nor are alliteration and assonance to be considered rhythmical
unless they conform to this principle of regularity. For instance, in
the passage from Isaiah quoted by Saintsbury, “Arise, shine, for thy
light is come," the repetition of the long i is rhythmical only if in the
process of reading the sound recurs after equal intervals of time.
So, too, asyndeton may or may not embody rhythm. There is obvious
advantage in isolating regularity as one feature of prosodic harmony
in order to determine if possible its nature and function.
The reproductions in English of the cadence patterns of the Latin
cursus will be considered rhythmical only in so far as they conform
to this requirement of regularity. They have, for the most part, a
"trochaic roll" which entitles them to be considered, as they will be
later, as forms of metre. Cadences, or clause endings, seem to have
received more attention from scholars than any other form of prose
rhythm. They receive no special treatment in this paper because
their possibilities seem to the writer to have been exhausted by the
studies of Clark, Croll, and Elton. Croll 2 attempts to find the pat-
terns of the cursus in English prose, but he allows so many varia-
1
A History of English Prose Rhythms, London, 1912.
2 "The Cadence of English Oratorical Prose," Studies in Philology, XVI
(1919), I.
220
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
tions that the original patterns become obscured. Elton ¹ attempts to
chart the "native" cadences but admits that "their number becomes
hardly manageable." It is significant, moreover, that none of the
examples cited by these writers is taken from oratory.
It should be noted, also, that mere mechanical repetition which
is accidental or unnoticed, and mere monotony and singsong are
eliminated by our definition because they do not give pleasure or
distinction.
In the light of this definition we may now examine more closely
some of the controversial points mentioned above. Most writers,
ancient and modern, treat rhythm as syllabic, as a matter of the
arrangement of heavy and light syllables, but there is marked dis-
agreement among them as to whether this arrangement is regular
or metrical, as in verse. Representative opinions will be quoted-
first of those who contend that the rhythm of prose is not the same
as the rhythm of poetry:
Aristotle, Rhetoric III, viii: "Prose must therefore have rhythm but not
metre; for then it will be poetry. This rhythm however must not be precise;
and precision will be avoided if it is carried only to a certain point.
Metrical prose has an artificial air and distracts the attention."
Cicero, De Oratore III, xliv: "On this head it is remarkable that if a
verse is formed by the composition of words it is a fault."
Quintilian, Institutes IX, iv: "Prose will not stoop to be measured by
taps of the finger. . . . Verse is always in some degree uniform and flows in
one stream, while the language of prose unless it be varied, offends by
monotony, and convicts itself of affectation. . . . We must avoid what is
metrical. . . . To lay down one law for every species of composition is a
sort of versification (the very suspicion of which ought to be avoided) and
produces weariness and satiety."
Saintsbury, A History of English Prose Rhythm, p. 478: "The great
principle of foot arrangement in prose, and of prose rhythm, is variety."
Stevenson, On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature: "Each
phrase of each sentence should be so artfully compounded out of long and
short . . . as to gratify the sensual ear. And of this the ear is the sole
judge. It is impossible to lay down laws. [Prose phrases] obey no law but
to be lawless and yet to please."
19 2
Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing: "I define verse to be a record in
metre and rhythm, prose to be a record which, dispensing with metre (ab-
1
"English Prose Numbers," Essays and Studies by Members of the
English Association, IV (1913), 29.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, New York, 1897-98, XXII, 252-3.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
221
horring it indeed) uses rhythm laxly, preferring it to be various and uncon-
strained, so always that it convey a certain pleasure to the ear."¹
Opposed to such authorities as these are the following, who hold
that prose rhythm is essentially the same as verse rhythm, in that it
consists of a regular recurrence of accented syllables.
•
Of Zielinski,¹ Kirby Smith says: "The fundamental idea of his system,
I take it, is the axiom. that in so far as conscious rhythm exists in
prose, the general laws by which it is governed are those which apply to
poetry."
"³ Zielinski finds that 92% of Cicero's clause endings follow a definite
metric pattern.
A. C. Clark, Prose Rhythm in English: "The essence, however, of rhythm
both in prose and poetry is regularity of beat. . . . In English the trochaic
movement pervades the whole sentence and frequently produces the effect of
blank verse."
4
P. Fijn van Draat, Rhythm in English Prose: "After a long period of
iambs, succeeded by some words in which no rhythm is to be found, we
may very well expect to get a dactylic period, to see the iambic measure
return a moment later."
Croll (Op. cit., p. 46) finds the set pattern of the cursus in clause endings,
and speaks of their "trochaic movement.”
Elton (Op. cit., p. 53) also finds "bursts of actual metre" in prose as one
of the constituents of prose rhythm.
D. S. MacColl, "Rhythm in English Verse, Prose, and Speech," Essays
and Studies by Members of the English Association, V (1914), 39: "A little
investigation will prove that a great deal of prose is written in short stretches
of metre."
Here is a very plain contradiction, and there is on both sides opin-
ion that is entitled to the highest respect. Metrical rhythm is defi-
nite and measured. It may be generally perceived and communicated.
Have those who deny to it a place in prose anything to substitute.
that is equally definite and equally communicable? Have they any
different definition of the rhythm of prose that is acceptable? Some
of them despair of ever finding a satisfactory definition. Quiller-
Couch says that the rhythms of prose are so lax and various that
¹ New York, 1916, p. 64.
3
Das Clauselgesetz in Ciceros Reden, Leipzig, 1904.
American Journal of Philology, XXV (1904), 460.
4 Oxford, 1913, pp. 8, 18.
'Heidelberg, 1910, p. 5.
222
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
he questions whether any explanation is possible. After reading
Saintsbury's History of English Prose Rhythm he is left doubting.
He says, "What madman, then, will say, 'Thus, or thus far shalt thou
go, to a prose thus invented and thus, with its free rhythms, after
three hundred years working on the imagination of Englishmen? Or
who shall determine its range, whether of thought or of music?"
Stevenson says, "It is impossible to lay down laws."
Others, not so hopeless, have attempted a variety of schemes and
measurements. Aristotle recommends the pæon; and this has the
highly desired merit of being both regular and various, for while it
consists always of four syllables, the long syllable is not confined to
one place within the foot. But obviously rhythmic English prose
does not and cannot consist of pæons. Quintilian is somewhat in-
coherent, and finally seems inclined to give up the problem when he
says, “A person . . . may act better under the guidance of nature
than of art." Cicero contributes nothing helpful except his idea of
"strokes at equal intervals," which will be mentioned later. Saints-
bury groups syllables arbitrarily into twenty-nine varieties of feet,
but this grouping has no law or principle except his own caprice.
Joshua Steele 2 worked out an elaborate system of scansion for both
prose and poetry, making liberal use of the rests employed to aid
rhythm in music; but his method was highly artificial and purely
arbitrary, as he learned to his chagrin when he compared his scan-
sion of Hamlet's soliloquy with David Garrick's reading of the
lines. Lipsky counts the number of accents per phrase and the
number of syllables between accents, but he announces no conclu-
sions that aid in determining the nature of rhythm.3 Patterson feels
a definite throbbing underneath the flow of syllables, but it seems to
have nothing to do with the arrangement or accent of the syllables.
His ideas of retardation and syncopation would seem to be valuable
contributions, but he does not make them contribute anything of
much value toward an explanation of prose rhythm.* It seems safe
to conclude that if prose rhythm is to be considered syllabic but not
metrical, there has not yet been evolved any method of analysis or
scansion that is generally accepted or generally acceptable.
1
3
4
On the other hand, Zielinski found that Cicero's orations do
¹ Op. cit., p. 66.
2 Prosodia Rationalis, London, 1779.
Rhythm as a Distinguishing Characteristic of Prose Style, New York, 1907.
The Rhythm of Prose, New York, 1916.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
223
have in the clausula the regularity of verse. And Clark points out
that Cicero and Quintilian failed to grasp the principles by which they
were themselves influenced. He says the essence of rhythm in both
prose and poetry is regularity of beat. Regularity and variety are
contradictory terms. If prose rhythm is "various" and "lawless"
then surely it is hardly rhythm. If, as Saintsbury says, in the famous
opening sentence of the finale of Browne's Urn Burial "no two identi-
cal feet ever follow each other, not so much as on a single occasion,”
then this "finest phrase in English prose" owes its charm to some-
thing other than rhythm. Prose does, as Elton points out, contain
"bursts of actual metre" which is the same metre that is found in
poetry. The difference is not of quality but of quantity. As Van
Draat says, "In prose we have iambic and dactylic periods alter-
nating with nonrhythmical periods." And MacColl says, "A little
investigation will prove that a great deal of prose is written in short
stretches of metre.'
Examples of such metre in standard oratorical selections are not
difficult to find:
You may . . . traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince
that sells and sends/ his sub/jects to the sham/bles of a foreign prince.
(Chatham, Address to the Throne.)
Then/ ensued/ a scene of woe/ the like/ of which/ no eye/ had
seen no heart/ conceived/ and which/ no tongue/ can ad/equately tell.
(Burke, Nabob of Arcot's Debts.)
Thus the law. . . goes up to the fountain of human agency, and arraigns/
the lurk/ing mis/chief of/ the soul. (Erskine, In Behalf of Lord George
Gordon.)
Do we mean to submit/ to the meas/ures of Par/liament, Boston Port bill
and all? (Webster, Supposed Speech of John Adams.)
In such a land he is doubly and trebly guilty who, except in some extreme
case, disturbs/ the so/ber rule of law/ and or/der. (Wendell Phillips,
Scholar in a Republic.)
Many writers who insist that prose rhythm must be various admit
that lines of metre may occur in prose, but find them highly objec-
tionable. Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian have already been quoted
on this point. W. D. Scott says, "It is æsthetically displeasing to
have too much made of rhythm in reading prose and poetry."1 Wil-
¹The Psychology of Public Speaking, Philadelphia, 1907, p. 145.
224
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
liam Thompson is quoted by Omond as saying, "Metre may occur
in prose but it must not be perceptible as in verse."1 Longinus found
metre particularly obnoxious. He says, "Such abuse of rhythm is
sure to savor of coxcombry and petty affectation, and grows tiresome
in the highest degree by a monotonous sameness of tone." Yet
Longinus points the answer to this objection when he says that "when
sublimity sheds its light all round the sophistries of rhetoric they be-
come invisible." Perhaps the offensiveness of metre in prose is due
to the bareness of the thought that accompanies it. Rhythm or metre
may be accidental. It may be present in any piece of plain prose.
These phrases occurred in the news items of a college daily:
Today/ it was/ report/ed that/ machine/ guns had been brought.
Chairmen of the canvassing committees/ expressed themselves/ as
high/ly grat/ified.
,"2
It is doubtful if such metre is noticed by one reader in a hundred.
Such passages do not impress us as rhythmical because they lack the
concomitants which lift rhythm into the realm of eloquence, or poetry,
or what Longinus called "sublimity." These necessary concomitants
are such things as poetic diction, grandeur of thought, intense feeling,
rhetorical excellence. "It is the elevation of ideas," says Bliss
Perry, "the nobility and beauty of feeling, as discerned by the trained
literary sense, which makes the final difference between enduring
prose harmonies and the mere tinkling of the 'musical glasses.'
Omond in reviewing William Thompson's Basis of English Rhythm
says, "he well knows that æsthetic effects depend partly on non-
rhythmical factors-on warmth and color, the qualities of vowels
and consonants, the instinctive modulations of tone." Coleridge said
the pleasure of metre was conditional, since it was dependent on the
appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions to which the form
was superadded. We do not want poetic form unless we have poetic
thought. And we do not look for or find poetic form ordinarily
unless poetic thought or diction or imagery suggests its presence.
Metre occurring alone, then, is either unnoticed, or, if noticed, offen-
sive or silly. Whether noticed or not, it does not, of course, give
pleasure or distinction, and hence fails in the true function of
rhythm.
¹ Metrical Rhythms, Tunbridge Wells, 1905, p. 6.
2
² Op. cit., p. 158.
3
Op. cit., p. 14.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
225
Further light is thrown on the cause of the tiresomeness of metre
by Ruckmich's studies in the Cornell psychological laboratory.¹ One
of his conclusions is: "There is usually a marked change in the affec-
tive tone throughout a typical period of rhythmical perception, from
slight unpleasantness before the rhythm is grasped through pleas-
antness when it is thoroughly perceived, to unpleasantness when it
continues without change." If rhythm is to be pleasing, then, it
must be broken at frequent intervals. It should occur in snatches.
If the application of this principle be looked for in passages of ora-
torical prose, it will be found that very rarely is there so continuous
a run as this from President Lowell's address at the inauguration of
Livingston Farrand as president of Cornell University:
There is an ever rushing, ever growing stream of youth which in these
halls comes upward to the light. It never ceases. Always bright with
youthful hope it flows away to gladden and enrich our commonwealth.
Much more typical of oratorical practice is this passage from
Burke's Conciliation:
It will take its perpét/ual tén/or, it will recéive/ its fí/nal imprés/sion,
from the stamp of thís véry hoúr.
A different form of syllabic rhythm will next be considered.
Many writers reject Aristotle's recommendation of the pæon but
heartily endorse his principle of diversity in uniformity-rhythm
without metre. However, few if any have made a practical concrete
application of the principle. Leigh Hunt points the way to a pos-
sible method when he shows how Coleridge, in his "Christabel," broke
the monotonous singsong of iambic tetrameter verse by "calling to
mind the liberties allowed its old musical professors, the minstrels,
and dividing it by time instead of by syllables-by the beat of four
into which you might get as many syllables as you could, instead of
allotting eight syllables to the poor line whatever it might have to
say." 2 In this case "as many syllables as you could" means either two
or three for each time beat. That is, the feet of "Christabel" are
iambics and anapests indiscriminately mixed. That such freedom.
does not interfere with rhythm is further evidenced by such highly
rhythmical poems as Shelley's "The Cloud" and Kipling's "Dedica-
1"The Rôle of Kinesthesis in the Perception of Rhythm," American Jour-
nal of Psychology, XXIV (1913), 305.
2 What is Poetry? ed. A. S. Cook, Boston, 1893, p. 58.
226
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
tion" to Barrack Room Ballads. What happens if four syllables be
crowded into a foot occasionally instead of two or three? If Vachel
Lindsay's "Congo" be examined it is plain that the occasional use of
this longer foot certainly does not decrease rhythmic effect. He
mixes freely feet of two, three, and four syllables, as in the line,
With a silk/ umbrel/la and the han/dle of a broom.
May we carry this principle farther? Llewellyn Jones says that in
these lines from Robert Bridges' "London Snow" (I use his scan-
In large white/ flakes/ falling on the/ city/ brown
Stealthily and per/petually/ settling and/ loosely/ lying,
sion), some of the feet have five syllables and some have one. Such
lines are rhythmical, he says, because "the accents are at equal inter-
vals of time apart." 1 Gummere agrees that the foundation of rhythm
is a regular succession of equal time intervals.2 Poetic rhythm is
aided by line length and by rhyme. If we eliminate these, there re-
mains a rhythm of "time beats," of heavy syllables at equal intervals
of time, separated from each other by varying numbers of light sylla-
bles, which is common to both prose and poetry (of the “London
Snow" type). There seems to be no reasonable doubt that this
rhythm does occur in spoken prose, even in very ordinary prose. It
is heard, for instance, in the speeches of college debaters, and it is
often reinforced by strokes of the hand or fist. These phrases were
spoken by students in public contests with the marked syllables at
sensibly equal intervals of time:
The government has been able and willing
There should bé no suggéstion of an entángling alliance
Has proven its ability to stimulate such initiative.
It is apparent at once that there is little in these phrases when
written to suggest the rhythm which the speakers put into them. Can
we be sure then, in reading the speeches of Burke and Webster, that
we are reproducing from the printed page the "time beat" rhythms
of voices long silent? We cannot, of course, be sure; we can only
guess. Examples of fairly probable rhythms are rather frequent.
The following are typical:
1"A Poet's Prosody," The Freeman, IV (1921-22), 499.
"Handbook of Poetics, Boston, 1885, p. 134.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
227
It réconciles superiórity of pówer with the féelings of mén and estáblishes
sólid cónfidence on the foundations of afféction and grátitude. (Chatham, on
Removing Troops from Boston.)
The fréeholders of England are redúced to a condition báser than the
peasantry of Póland. (Chatham, on the Case of John Wilkes.)
Have sháken the pillars of a commércial émpire that círcled the whole
glóbe. (Burke, on American Taxation.)
2
1
A third variety of rhythm in prose is that of longer periods-
phrases, clauses, or whole sentences. Cicero and Quintilian both
mention "periods" in prose but it is doubtful if they had in mind a
regular recurrence of similar periods. Bulwer-Lytton speaks of the
pauses which aid the thought by serving as checks to compress words.¹
Professor F. N. Scott makes an interesting contribution in his "up-
ward and downward glide" of the thought. Lipsky speaks of a
rhythm of thought distinguishable if not separable from that of lan-
guage (phonetic rhythm), and cities the parallelisms of the Hebrew
Bible. He suggests as another form of "thought rhythm" the "repe-
tition of the same form of phrase with different but allied meanings,"
and cites this example with its succession of prepositional phrases,
"distant field in the pale dusk of a brilliant day of early June." 3
Sapir has something of the kind in mind when he speaks of periods.
determined by pause, by rising and falling of the voice, by alliteration,
etc., though he clouds his meaning somewhat by the invention of such
terms as "intercrossing rhythms," "non-synchronous verse patterns,"
and "rhyme-sectioning." 4
No one seems to have described clearly what very plainly occurs
in oratory, namely, a repetition of rhetorically similar phrases, clauses,
or sentences, sometimes accompanied by asyndeton. Here is an ex-
ample from Chatham's speech on an Address to the Throne.
I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your
reputation, the pollution of your discipline, the contamination of your morals,
the complication of calamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelms your
sinking country.
1"Rhythm in Prose," Caxtonia, Leipzig, 1864, p. 107.
2 "The Scansion of Prose Rhythm," Publications of the Modern Language
Association, XX (1905), 707.
3 Op. cit.
"The Musical Foundations of Verse," Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, XX (1921), 213.
228
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Sometimes such a passage will have also one or both types of
syllabic rhythm discussed above, as in this passage in Burke's speech
on Mr. Fox's East India bill:
They are stamped/ by the faith/ of the Kings;/ they are stamped/ by
the faith of Parl/iament; they have been bought for money, for money
hónestly and fáirly páid; they have been bought for váluable considerátions,
over and over again.
Doubtless there are other rhythms in oratory-rhythms of melodic
phrases, rhythms of larger thought units, rhythms of recurring words
or sounds or ideas. But the three types here discussed are submitted
as the most common and most easily measurable of oratorical rhythms.
These may be recapitulated as (1) metrical rhythm, in regular feet
as in verse, but rarely continued for more than three or four suc-
cessive feet; (2) syllabic stress-rhythm, in which syllables are heavily
stressed at regular time-intervals, with a varying number of un-
stressed or lightly stressed syllables between; (3) rhythm of gram-
matical units, in which recurring phrase-patterns or sentence-patterns
give the effect of regularity.
Ruckmich found, it will be recalled, that our greatest pleasure in
the perception of rhythm comes just at the moment when we feel that
a rhythm has been established; that is, after the unit has been per-
ceived two or three times. And Van Draat pointed out that metric
runs seldom continue long but change from iambic to anapest, or
are broken by phrases without rhythm, or, we might add, by sections
of "time beat" rhythm. It is in these considerations, perhaps, that
we may best seek an explanation for those "elusive harmonies" which
puzzle some critics of beautiful prose, so far, that is, as those har-
monies are really due to rhythm. If the rhythm ceases just as we are.
about to grasp it, if the pattern disappears just as we are about to
recognize it and attune ourselves to it, or if it changes quickly to a
different pattern, there is indeed created a teasing elusiveness that
might well be said to defy analysis.
And this is just what does happen. Let us take the passage from
De Quincey which Saintsbury says still charms him after fifty years
of close familiarity with it, "a magazine of the secrets of rhythm,"
which "illustrates supereminently that doctrine of Variety.”
And her eyes/ if they were e/ver seen/ would be nei/ther sweet/ nor
subtle;/ no man/ could read/ their story;/ they would be found/ filled with
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
229
perishing/ dreams/ and with wrecks/ of forgotten/ delirium. (Saintsbury's
scansion.)
Here, it is true, "there is not so much as a blank verse," but there is
metre, as Clark points out. A whole pentameter is not necessary to
establish rhythm. It is possible to point out in this sentence four
rhythmic groups, two of three accents each and two of four:
her eyes/ if they were ev/er seen
would pass as acceptable iambic tetrameter;
would be neith/er sweet/ nor sub/tle
might be the next line in the same stanza of verse;
found filled with périshing dreams
would probably be read by most people with the four heavy syllables
approximately equidistant in time;
and with wrecks/ of forgot/ten delir/ium
contains three successive anapests. With scansion thus suggested,
these rhythms are plainly evident-too evident perhaps for a full
enjoyment of the beauty of the passage. But to one who has not
had the patterns pointed out, may not their presence, dimly felt but
not clearly apprehended, bring a teasing sense of haunting elusiveness?
It is said that oratorical rhythms are more obvious than those
in other prose. Nevertheless, instances of subtly changing rhythmic
patterns are to be found occasionally in some of the best speeches.
Here are sentences from one paragraph of Burke's Speech on Con-
ciliation with America; the metric groups as the writer hears them
are enclosed in brackets, and the heavy "time beat" accents marked:
My hold on the colonies is in the close affection [which grows/ from
com/mon names/, from com/mon blood,] from símilar privileges and équal
protéction. [These are ties/ which though light/ as air/ are as strong/ as
links/ of iron.] Slavery they can have anywhere-it is [a weed/ that grows/
in ev/ery soil.] [They may have/ it from Spain;/ they may have/ it from
Prus/sia.] But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest
and your natural dignity, freédom they can háve from nóne but you.
Here is another example, from Webster's Reply to Hayne:
[When mine eyes/ shall be turned/ to behold/ for the last/] time the sun
in heaven, may I not see him shining on the bróken and dishónored frag-
ments of a ónce glórious únion; on Státes dissévered, discórdant, belligerent;
on a land rént with cívil féuds, [or drenched,/ it may be,/ in frater/nal
blood!]
230
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
A final word may be added concerning the place and function of
rhythm in prose. Herbert Spencer says rhythmical structure is an
idealization of the language of emotion, which is known to be more.
or less metrical. Since speech rhythm is almost universally associated
with expression of the speaker's emotion, and with the arousing or
soothing of the emotions of the audience, it is therefore appropriate
and natural in eulogies, occasional addresses, and perorations, where
the aim is to stir or soothe the emotions. On the other hand, it is
inappropriate and frequently a cause for suspicion in a speech whose
aim is the communication of ideas. Longinus warns us that an
"over-rhythmical passage does not affect the hearer by the meaning
of the words but merely by their cadence." True, Herbert Spencer
says the pleasure we receive from verse "is ascribable to the com-
parative ease with which words metrically arranged can be recog-
nized" (Does he mean understood?), and "if the syllables be rhyth-
mically arranged, the mind may economize its energies by anticipating
the attention required for each syllable." Lipsky says experiments
show that much rhythm conduces to speed in reading, that it indicates
that a writer has possession of a complex thought, and that there is
little rhythm in the writings of one whose thoughts come in driblets.
And Bulwer-Lytton thought that rhythm should be cultivated not
only for embellishment but also for perspicuity. Still, Longinus's
warning is worth noting, and Professor Cabot in his What Men Live
By has some significant remarks on the "thought-quenching power"
of rhythm. Writers on elocution and expression who commend
rhythm as an aid to intelligibility do not mean rhythm as here de-
fined; they generally confuse it with rate of utterance or distribution
of pauses.
It was pointed out above that rhythm occurring in plain flat
prose was either unnoticed or offensive. Just as metre alone does
not make poetry, so rhythm alone does not make distinguished prose.
What, then, is the function of rhythm in prose? It will scarcely be
questioned that a style may have distinction or beauty without rhythm.
Saintsbury's History of English Prose Rhythm contains a large as-
sortment of beautiful prose which, he claims, is not regular but
"various," and hence not rhythmical in the sense here meant. Many
of his passages do not seem scannable by the methods here discussed.
Metaphor, poetic diction, euphony, rhetorical structure, emotion, lofty
¹The Philosophy of Style, ed. F. N. Scott, Boston, 1892, p. 33.
THE RHYTHM OF ORATORICAL PROSE
231
thought—all may give distinction without the aid of rhythm. Rhythm
alone without the aid of one or more of these accompaniments does
not give distinction. Its only use is in conjunction with other devices,
its only value to add somewhat to their effect. But in this purely
auxiliary capacity it does add greatly to distinction in style, much
more to spoken than to written style. To break into rhythmic utter-
ance, especially of the time beat variety, is an almost universal ten-
dency among speakers whenever they are moved by strong but con-
trolled feeling. As Gummere says, "Rhythm is not artificial, not an
invention; it lies at the heart of things, and in rhythm the noblest
emotions find their noblest expression." 1
¹Op. cit., p. 135.
IT
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
LEE S. HUltzén
F we accept the New English Dictionary definition of elocution,
"the art of public speaking so far as it regards delivery, pro-
nunciation, tones, and gestures; manner or style of oral delivery,"
the science of phonetics may be said to fall completely within the field
of elocution. The materials of phonetics are speech sounds, the
sounds of more or less formal or public speaking as well as the sounds
of informal conversation. The sounds of public speech, whether de-
livered extemporaneously or from memory, are the immediate mate-
rials of elocution. And since, as Sweet observes, "nothing can shake
the fundamental principle that all elocution, however, far it may be
removed from the language of ordinary life, must be based ultimately
on it," any study of the sounds of any kind of speech is significant
for elocution.
1
2
But this natural kinship of elocution and phonetics has not been
apparent in the publishers' lists. Except for the philological investi-
gations not designed for any special application, most of the present
body of the science of phonetics has been supplied by those engaged
in teaching foreign languages and, to a lesser extent, by physicists.
and engineers interested in problems of acoustics or of long distance
communication. The greater number of books on English phonetics.
are specially adapted to the teaching of English to foreigners.
As a consequence of this well-nigh complete monopoly of the
field of phonetics by those whose special interests lie elsewhere,
almost nothing has been done to correlate phonetics and elocution,
however obvious the close interrelation of the two subjects must
be. Yet much of the phonetic investigation undertaken with some.
Henry Sweet, The Sounds of English, Oxford, 1910, p. 80.
1
"Of the more than 250 titles mentioned in the Liste des Principaux
Ouvrages dans lesquels est employé L'Alphabet Phonétique Internationale,
published by the International Phonetic Association in 1922, one only was
listed under the classification "Elocution." This book, on voice training, has
only one short chapter on phonetics and the use which it makes elsewhere of
the international alphabet is quite incidental.
233
234
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
quite different end in view contains material of importance to the
student of elocution, and from a consideration of this material and
of the correlating principles may be determined many of the needs.
for further study. Account must also be taken of less recent obser-
vations by elocutionists and others-studies which, while never so
labeled, must properly be classed as phonetic. Some of these were
fully as "scientific" as much of the research of the last forty years.
Although elocution may be considered as including the whole of
phonetics, there are two fairly distinct relationships to be kept in mind.
That portion of phonetics which is concerned with the analysis of
the individual sounds and their combination as occurring in all oral
discourse has the same relation to elocution that conversation has to
more formal discourse-it is properly an antecedent study or practice.
This includes the study of the formation of sounds, questions of
pronunciation, standards of pronunciation and deviations from the
standard, the analysis and synthesis of the individual sounds, syllabic
stress, assimilation, quantity, and such special problems as the theory
of plosive consonants. A discussion of this general division of
phonetics will not further the special purposes of this essay.
There are, however, certain other aspects of phonetic investiga-
tion which have an added significance in their relation to delivery.
To be sure, all the phenomena to be observed in public discourse
occur also in the casual utterance of language; the difference is largely
one of degree. But the difference in degree is quite sufficient to make
apparent a special problem in the adaptation of phonetics to the uses
of the public speaker. This problem includes various matters not in
themselves considered by the phoneticians as constituting a unified
portion of the science; the three here to be mentiond are brought
together only because of their bearing on elocution. They are:
(1) the grouping of sounds in speech, (2) the selection of significant,
and the subordination of auxiliary sounds, and (3) intonation.
I
The grouping of sounds in units larger than the word is a char-
acteristic of all spoken language. It is apparent in the most casual
utterance, in extemporaneous discourse, and in the most studied inter-
pretation of the masterpieces. Different phoneticians have made use
of different principles in analyzing the grouping of sounds and have
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
235
used various names for the groups, such as: breath-groups, stress-
groups, intonation-groups, etc.,¹ but they are all agreed that the
actual phonetic unit is a group of sounds representing one or several,
usually several, words. When further distinction is not necessary,
the term word-group, a literal translation of the much used German
wortgruppe, will serve to indicate some kind of grouping without
limiting us to any particular theory.
The first significant point is that in speaking we always divide
our language into word-groups, not into words. The speaker
does not consistently separate each word from the preceding and fol-
lowing words by any physical manifestation.2 Because we have been
accustomed to hear such speech and have a fairly extensive knowl-
edge of the grammar and vocabulary of our language, we are able
readily and easily to distinguish the separate words in conversation.
or speech; and we do this to the extent that such a distinction is neces-
sary for our comprehension of the thought. If the speaker uses a
language with which we are not acquainted, particularly one which
does not rely mainly on sounds and constructions similar to those of
our language, it is quite impossible to distinguish the words.³ The
word may be a unit of meaning; it is not a phonetic unit. The
only division actually made in language is that into word-groups.*
1
¹ Perhaps the most generally used term is breath-group. See Henry Sweet,
op. cit., p. 49; Daniel Jones, The Pronunciation of English, Cambridge, 1919,
pp. 58-9; Paul Passy, The Sounds of the French Language, Oxford, 1913,
pp. 23-8; Walter Ripman, The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of
English, New York, 1924, p. 128; et al. Ripman, in his Elements of Phonetics,
adapted from Viëtor's Kleine Phonetik, New York, 1918, p. 102, discusses
both breath-groups and stress-groups as being divisions according to different
principles and more or less independent of each other. Passy, op. cit., pp.
28-31, considers the stress-group a subdivision of the breath-group. Sievers,
Grundzüge der Phonetik, Leipzig, 1893, pp. 232 ff., uses the word Takte,
as do other German writers, implying a similarity to musical bars; his basis
of division is stress, and he refers to the stress-groups of Sweet's Primer of
Phonetics, Oxford, 1890. E. W. Scripture, The Elements of Experimental
Phonetics, New York, 1902, ch. 10, speaks of phonetic units, or auditory
ideas, basing the division on the density "of the speech-current in conscious-
ness. H. Klinghardt, in Klinghardt und Klemm, Übungen im englischen
Tonfall, Cöthen, 1920, pp. 24 ff., rejects both the stress- and breath-group
theories and proposes the intonatorische sinntakt, a grouping according to
the meaning, marked in speaking by the intonation. See also Klinghardt's
pamphlet, Sprechmelodie und Sprechtakt, Marburg in Hessen, [1924].
""
Sweet, The Sounds of English, p. 49; Passy, op. cit., p. 25; Ripman, The
Sounds of Spoken English, p. 128.
3
Passy, op. cit., pp. 25-8; Sweet, Primer of Phonetics, p. 42.
'Sweet, Primer of Phonetics, p. 42; et al. Passy, op. cit., p. 28, says that,
although the division of sentences into words may correspond to a phonetic
phenomenon, "it is impossible to define phonetically the unit of meaning
1
236
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
One such group usually corresponds to several words. Sometimes a
group contains only one word; or, on the other hand, a whole sen-
tence, or even more than a sentence, may be contained in one group.¹
The point of division between successive groups is marked in
speaking by a pause of longer or shorter duration, or in some other
way.2
An example given by Sweet is sufficient to show that there is no
division between words in a group. "In such a sentence as put on
your hat, we hear clearly the recoil or final breath-glide which follows
the final t of hat, but the t of put runs on to the following vowel
without any recoil, exactly as in the single word putting." It is also
clear, as has been often noticed, that New York can no more be sepa-
rated phonetically into two parts than can Boston or Philadelphia.
3
That a careful separation of words in connected speech, if indeed
possible, is unnatural, no matter what the style of the discourse,
is so well recognized as scarcely to deserve mention. The corollary,
that the fault which is commonly known as "running the words to-
gether" is actually due to the omission or careless enunciation of
sounds at the ends or beginnings of words, is as readily apparent.
The way in which words are grouped, the factors which determine
the length of the group, are, however, significant for the study of
elocution as well as for phonetics.
4
Pauses occur at frequent intervals in speaking. They are made
(1) for the purpose of taking breath, (2) for the purpose of making
the meaning of the words clearer. The physiological limitation of
the length of breath-groups, imposed upon the speaker by his effective
lung capacity, need never interfere with his grouping the words "for
the purpose of making the meaning clearer," and so need not be fur-
known as a word." Jespersen, Lehrbuch der Phonetik, Leipzig, 1904, p. 202,
says, "The word is indeed not a phonetic concept."
1
Passy, op. cit., p. 24:
it frequently happens that two or three
simple sentences are united in a single breath-group.
.. On the contrary, in
formal speech, in teaching, etc., a single elementary sentence may be divided
into several groups." According to the theory, "one stress one group,"
it is, of course, impossible to include several sentences in one stress-group.
Breath-groups are separated by pauses, stress-groups not necessarily so.
Klinghardt, Übungen im englischen Tonfall, pp. 29 ff., says that we fre-
quently distinguish groups of words, not stress-groups, when listening to a
speaker who never pauses until he runs out of breath, the grouping being
indicated by the intonation.
2
2
Sweet, Primer of Phonetics, p. 42.
'Jones, op. cit., p. 58. Pauses, of course, refers to breath-groups. This
statement is sufficiently accurate whether or not we are committed to the
theory of breath-groups.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
237
ther considered. "Pauses for breath should always be made at
points where pauses are necessary or permissible from the point of
view of meaning."¹ Practically, then, the length and content of
the word-groups must be determined solely by the purpose of making
the meaning clearer; the purpose of grouping is to enable the hearer
to apprehend the meaning more easily. Passy says we stop, or pause,
"because we speak to be understood, and we should not be understood
if we did not stop."
"2
The speaker may not, then, group his words haphazardly, may not
stop at any chance place to take a breath. The word-groups must
correspond with the division of the sense content. The words in any
bit of connected discourse contain a succession of ideas, each of
which must make an impression upon the auditor. Sometimes there
are many words for the expression of a single idea or of a portion
of the idea which is sufficiently definite to make an impression; some-
times there is only one word. But in every case each group should
contain those words which belong to such a portion of the thought as
the mind of the hearer is to grasp at one time. Such a grouping will
make understanding easy. In writing, the proper divisions between
groups may be, and often are, indicated by punctuation. This is by
no means always true; frequently there should be more groups than
marks of punctuation, almost as frequently fewer. Moreover the
same written words may often be arranged into quite different groups
by different speakers under different circumstances. But any one
group should always correspond with the expression of a single idea
or such a portion of the idea as the mind of the hearer may seize
upon.
3
It was because groupings according to stress very frequently do
not correspond with groupings according to the meaning and because
breath-groups do not necessarily so correspond (although Passy says
that they should), that Klinghardt considered both these theories un-
satisfactory and called the word-group a sinntakt, a sense-group,
which, he says, is marked in speaking by the intonation.* Similarly,
Jones, op. cit., p. 59.
1
2
Passy, op. cit., p. 23.
3 Jones, op. cit., p. 59; Passy, op. cit., p. 24: “A breath-group corresponds
with the expression of a single idea, or, in other words, with a simple
sentence." Passy immediately modifies this statement, V. supra, p. 236 n.
Probably sentences which, not being altogether simple in idea even though
grammatically so, are divided into two or more groups are the rule rather than
the exception.
4 Klinghardt und Klemm, op. cit., pp. 24 ff.
238
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Scripture used the term auditory idea as synonymous with his pho-
netic unit.¹ So, too, Professsor Winans, considering the problem as a
teacher of public speaking rather than as a phonetician, uses the term
phrase to indicate a group of words expressing one idea, and em-
phasizes the fact that, in any given case, the action of the mind de-
termines the limits of the phrase or word-group.²
In ordinary conversation such grouping as is necessary-of course
the less important the ideas expressed, the less necessary is any accu-
rate grouping-more or less takes care of itself. But even in the
most informal speaking that might be included in elocution, it can-
not be assumed that there will naturally be good grouping. As Jones
says, "Untrained speakers often arrange their breath-groups badly,
taking breath and making other pauses in wrong places." 3 Perhaps
a speaker can best make sure of accurate divisions of his thought by
retaining upon the platform what Professor Winans calls "these
elements of the mental state of live conversation: (1) Full realization
of the content of your words as you utter them, and (2) a lively
sense of communication.” 4
5
Elocution is also undoubtedly concerned with the manner in
which this grouping of words is manifested physically: by stress or
by breath, that is by pauses, or by intonation or in some other way;
for, as Klinghardt says, only such a division of sentences into groups
as is actually audible can be approved. This problem is far from
being settled. Jespersen's statement in 1904, "The idea of the word
group is something with which phonetics of the future will have to be
concerned; but until now the investigation of this matter has scarcely
begun and a serviceable theory has not yet been proposed," was in-
dorsed by Klinghardt in 1920. It does not seem unreasonable to sug-
gest that the matter is also of concern to elocution, or at least that
it is one of the more important phonetic problems which have a direct
bearing on elocution.
1
8
¹ Scripture, op. cit., pp. 126 ff.
"J. A. Winans, Public Speaking, New York, 1917, p. 425.
Jones, op. cit., p. 59.
• Winans, op. cit., p. 31.
"Klinghardt und Klemm, op. cit., p. 32.
6
Jespersen, op. cit., p. 203; quoted by Klinghardt, Übungen im englischen
Tonfall, p. 24.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
239
II
One of the more important matters which should be included
in that portion of phonetics properly prerequisite to elocution is
gradation. Henry Sweet found fault with elocutionists because
"They are seldom content with attacking vulgarisms and provin-
cialisms; they make war on principle on all colloquialisms, although,
of course, they find it impossible to get rid of them in practice.
They ignore gradation and the obscuration of unstressed vowels;
the general result of which is that the pupil is forced to acquire an
artificial elocutionary language distinct from that of everyday life." 1
Whether or not this accusation is justified, the implication that grada-
tion has some meaning in elocution is of considerable moment.
That vowels are less distinctly pronounced in some places than
in others; that unstressed vowels tend to become the neutral e; that
the careful pronunciation of the original vowel in such a position
cannot add distinctness to the speech and is sure to result at best
in giving it an appearance of artificiality, at worst in complete mis-
understanding this from the phoneticians 2 is only a scientific con-
firmation of what is constantly brought to the attention of anyone
concerned with elocution. In all speaking, however formal it may be,
there must be no such attempt to be careful as will ignore this phe-
nomenon of gradation, which is characteristic of our spoken language.
Distinct and careful utterance does not mean pronouncing the
strong forms, a or o, where the good usage of conversation pre-
scribes the indefinite vowel e. This is another corollary of Sweet's
dictum that all elocution must be based ultimately on the language
of ordinary life, or, as he expresses it in the same chapter, "The
truth is that we cannot make words more distinct by disguising
them."
The observance of gradation, or of strong and weak forms, is
important if a speaker wishes to avoid the appearance of artificiality,
yet the study of this aspect of speech sounds belongs rather with
those problems of pronunciation with which we are not here specially
concerned. However true it may be that attention to this particular
1
Sweet, The Sounds of English, pp. 77-8.
2 Sweet, The Sounds of English, pp. 65 ff., also pp. 76 ff.; Ripman, The
Sounds of Spoken English, pp. 106 ff.; J. S. Kenyon, American Pronunciation,
Ann Arbor, Mich., 1924, pp. 144-59; et al.
240
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
characteristic of our language is an ever present need of elocution, it
is mentioned here chiefly as an introduction to an important phase
of elocution which is analogous, but for which there seems to be
no accepted term. Not only are there many weak forms of words
and unstressed vowel sounds, the strengthening of which results in
obscuring the meaning; there are also throughout all speaking less
significant portions of the flow of speech sound which cannot be
made as prominent as the significant portions without upsetting the
sense pattern of the discourse.
We may say generally that almost all the meaning of a speech
is carried by a comparatively few significant portions of the flow
of sound. An auditor is able to reconstruct an idea which is
actually represented by many successive sounds, if he hears only
those sounds which carry the meaning and hears them in their
proper relation to each other. Further, even if he hears all the
sounds, his comprehension of the idea is greatly facilitated when
the significant sounds are made prominent.
Again to take advantage of the investigations of a phonetician
who has not been primarily interested in elocution, we find this
matter treated by Professor Liddell in a work designed to assist
telephone engineers.¹ He finds that speech audition is so selective
that the hearer will consciously perceive only a part of the speech
gesture and will himself supply a portion of the image.
This selective process is especially active in audition. For instance, if
one intent on writing, is sitting in a room containing a clock ticking seconds,
he will not hear the clock ticks unless a time idea turns his attention to
the clock; then he will hear the sound waves made by the successive ticks
clearly and strongly. But all the while his ear has been receiving these sound
sensations over and over again. So it is with speech-sound waves; when
we listen to them as a means of understanding the conceptual processes of
the speaker, we focus those elements which are like the constant speech-
gesture images we habitually associate with the conceptual process which
the context leads us to expect is in the speaker's mind, and pay little attention
to the others.2
Scripture states that, "In all probability the most prominent
features of a phonetic unit are first perceived and the details are
gradually filled in." 3 We select the words of the speaker from the
1
¹ Mark H. Liddell, The Physical Characteristics of Speech Sound, Bulletin
No. 16 of The Engineering Experiment Station, Purdue University, 1924.
2 Ibid., p. 22.
Scripture, op. cit., p. 132.
3
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
241
1
number of sounds making a claim upon our attention; we pay
attention to only a portion of the characteristics of the sounds he
is uttering; we perceive fairly quickly the most prominent sounds;
only after perceiving the prominent sounds of a word-group do we
fill in the details-and probably as a rule do not fill in all the
least significant details actually represented by sounds. Thus if a
speaker says something about the man where the context would lead
us to expect the man and not a man or any man, it is probable that
we perceive at once the idea man and do not much take into account
the modification of that idea represented by the. So, to various.
degrees, with other less significant sounds. It may easily be ob-
served that incorrect pronunciations are not nearly so noticeable.
in the less significant words as in those which carry most of the
meaning. That it is possible to fill in as much of the subordinate
detail as is necessary from a perception of the important sounds
in proper relation to each other, we notice whenever we listen to
a play or a speech under such difficulties that we can hear only
the emphasized parts of what is said but are able to reconstruct
for ourselves almost the whole. We do this more easily and ac-
curately when the speaker makes the really significant parts of his
speech prominent.
2
Professor Liddell has more to say about the modification of the
sounds of words permissible in speaking:
Again, if the heard constants of a given speech-sound wave train are
only similar to and not identical with those expected by the hearer, he will
focus the like series of speech-gesture images which he habitually associates.
with the expected concept series and ignore the difference.
Speech audition, therefore, is a peculiar form of selective auditory sensa-
tion which separates from the actual sensational experience certain constant
elements of the impinging sound-waves and associates them with conceptual
meaning. The multitudinous variations characteristic of individual voices
are only focused when the hearer is identifying the personality of the speaker;
that end once accomplished they are largely ignored. Moreover, these con-
* See Scripture, op. cit., Part 2, especially ch. 10, on the perception of
speech. It would seem impossible to separate the consideration of the sound
of a word from the consideration of its idea, so far as the relation of the
word to speaker or hearer is concerned. (Ch. 10, p. 132.)
2
Scripture, op. cit., pp. 131-2, cites some experiments with mutilated
words, which, although not bearing directly on the point, seem to support
this view, e.g., "5. The position most favorable for correct perception
is at the end of the sentence," that is, when the idea of the sentence is already
almost completely in mind.
242
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
•
stants often vary,
owing to carelessness or peculiar speech habits. The
question then arises, how far can these constants vary without destroying
the intelligibility of the speech sound?
This question can be answered only by a series of physical experiments
based upon a knowledge of the standard forms of a given language, as spoken
by the majority of the persons who employ it for the higher forms of
conceptual thinking.
The history of language development, however, points to the conclusion
that as a rule the admissible variations of vowel tones do not exceed two
bands of our vowel-tone spectrum [i.e., two adjacent sounds on the com-
mon "vowel triangle"].' And this conclusion is borne out by everyday ex-
perience.2
It is, then, really necessary for the speaker to transmit to his
audience only a certain portion, the significant portion, of the sound
of the words he is uttering in order that the audience shall apprehend
the idea he wishes to convey to them. These sounds may vary,
but only within narrow limits, from the standard expected by the
audience. And moreover, the idea will be more easily grasped if
the significant sounds stand out from the context, even when every
sound is heard.
The whole subject of emphasis is bound up with this matter
of subordination. To impress the chief idea of a speech upon the
audience it must be made to stand out from the subordinate ideas.
To convey the full and exact meaning of a sentence the sounds
which are most important for the expression of that meaning must
stand out from the auxiliary sounds. The problem is as much one
of subordinating the auxiliary sounds, the words which are neces-
sary for the grammatical construction and the coherence of the
sentence but which have comparatively little significance in the
progress of the thought, as of making prominent the significant
sounds.
The principles which govern the selection of what is important
probably form as appropriate a subject for scientific study as do the
methods of showing that it is so; such guides as we yet have seem
¹ Professor Liddell's vowel-tone spectrum, op. cit., p. 20, is an arrangement
of the vowel sounds according to the frequencies of their characteristically
reinforced partials. The resulting order, although based on a decidedly
different principle, corresponds very closely to that of the vowel triangle
or trapezoid of most phoneticians.
2 Op. cit., pp. 22-3. Examples of the variation of vowel sounds are given
by Liddell: the Indiana beryl for usual barrel, and the New England been to
rhyme with seen rather than sin.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
243
to be scattered in various places, for the most part not associated with
elocution or phonetics.¹ Again keeping in mind the natural selection
found in conversation, we may say that in the practice of elocution,
selection, like grouping, may best be assured by the speaker's think-
ing of what he is saying when he is saying it.
III
Fully as important as the proper grouping of sounds and the
selection of significant sounds for the transmission of ideas by
speech is the intonation or inflection. Although most phonetic tran-
scriptions ignore this element, its importance in determining the idea
content and emotional coloring as well as in showing national and
dialectical characteristics is generally admitted. As Professor Fred
N. Scott remarked at a recent meeting of the National Council of
Teachers of English, it is the speech melody more than any other
one factor which distinguishes English from American speech.²
"That the melody," says Jespersen, "has the greatest significance
for the full comprehension of what is said, we are made aware every
hour of the day; an invective may by a change in inflection alone be
turned into a caress, an assertion into a question, an expression of
congratulation into biting sarcasm, etc.”³ Some years ago Pro-
fessor Grandgent said, "Perhaps the most striking and characteristic
element of a spoken tongue-the one by which we guess the nation-
ality of a stranger without understanding a word he says-is intona-
tion, the varied sequence of pitch"; and later, "Intonations deserve
more study. Although they form the most important element of
what is called 'a good accent,' they are scarcely ever mentioned in
guides to pronunciation. No matter how correct one's production
of individual units, the whole thing sounds bad if the tune is
wrong."
"4
Almost any work on phonetics will be found to contain a note
¹H. O. Coleman's Intonation and Emphasis, in Miscellanea Phonetica
published by the International Phonetic Association in 1914, bears on this
point, particularly in the discussion of the emphasis of prominence.
"Improving the English of America," address at the fourteenth annua:
meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, St. Louis, Mo..
Nov. 28, 1924.
3
4
Jespersen, Elementarbuch der Phonetik, Leipzig, 1912, p. 171.
Grandgent, Old and New, Cambridge, Mass., 1920, papers on "Modern
Language Teaching," p. 90, and on "New England Pronunciation," p. 124.
244
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
to the effect that there is a difference between singing and speaking
in that the singer usually utters at least a whole syllable on one
pitch and then abruptly changes to another pitch, whereas the speaker
is constantly gliding rapidly up and down the scale, almost never
dwelling on one pitch for an appreciable length of time; and an-
other note explaining that there is about as much range in pitch
in the speaking as in the singing voice.¹ But these observations,
however much they should be borne in mind by elocutionists, do not
carry us far in the study of speech melody as affecting or being
affected by elocution. And most phoneticians give very little further
attention to this point. Probably the chief reason why so little has
been done in recording the intonations of actual speech is that there
is great difficulty in determining the melody with any exactness
and further difficulty in recording the melody when it has been
determined.2
The investigation of melody in speech is not, however, an inno-
vation of recent years. In 1775, Joshua Steele published An essay
towards establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech, to be ex-
pressed and perpetuated by certain Symbols. Steele did not have
the laboratory equipment of modern investigators, but he did have
that which may have been of as great value, a well-trained and dis-
criminating ear. His observations anticipated some of the very
recent conclusions of phoneticians.
One of the first things we notice in the consideration of intona-
tion is the conviction of most people that there is no melody in our
own speech. As Steele said, "The extreme familiarity existing be-
tween a man and his own language makes him lose all sense of its
features, of its deformities, and of its beauties.” ³
This is par-
1
¹ Ripman (Viëtor), Elements of Phonetics, pp. 123-5; Jones, op. cit., pp.
59-60; Passy, op. cit., pp. 48-9; Scripture, op. cit., pp. 472, 478; Jespersen,
Lehrbuch der Phonetik, p. 235 ff.; et al.
'The apparatus used by Scripture, op. cit., and Researches in Experimental
Phonetics, Washington, 1906, was very complicated and not altogether satis-
factory though accurate enough to show a melody plot. The method of
lifting a phonograph needle at intervals and determining the pitch by ear
is, of course, much less accurate, although perhaps sufficiently so to show
the general pitch pattern. As Scripture says, "The pitch of short speech
sounds is hard to catch by the ear not only because each sound contains
many tones that influence the total impression, but especially because the
pitch is always changing."
3
Steele, Prosodia Rationalis (the second, emended and enlarged edition
of the Essay on the Melody and Measure of Speech), London, 1779, p. 35.
Steele suggested as proof this experiment: "Take three common men; one
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
245
ticularly true of the intonation. Everyone is familiar with the
rising inflection which indicates incompleted sense and the falling
inflection which indicates completed sense, but this rough and not
infrequently inaccurate guide does not explain any of the subtle
differences of meaning which may be given to the same set of
speech sounds by only slightly varying the direction or extent of the
inflection. There is intonation not merely at the ends of sentences,
at places where there is definite suspension of thought, or where
the most important words indicate a turn in the thought, but through-
out all speech.
Consequently the very elaborate scheme to correlate the inflec-
tion with the grammatical construction of sentences made by
Mandeville in the middle of the last century, although designed for
use in connection with elocution, was not altogether satisfactory.¹
It was not sufficiently flexible or accurate and, being based essen-
tially on the punctuation, did not attempt to account for such varia-
tions of inflection as may occur within similar grammatical units.
Moreover, although mention was made of the effect of emotion,
this system did not take into consideration the emotional context,
the background of feeling which probably has fully as much in-
fluence upon the intonation as the sense or idea content. Neverthe-
less, Mandeville's work does indicate one kind of investigation which
is needed, and many of his schemes agree with the intonation pat-
terns obtained by recent phonetic analysis.
We are all aware that the range of inflection is ordinarily in-
creased by excitement, particularly toward its upper limit. Thus
Steele, analyzing his own practice, decided that in common dis-
course his "slides," or intonations, "went about a fifth above the
level or key-note and a seventh below it; but if empassioned, it run
a native of Aberdeenshire, another of Tipperary, and the third of Somerset-
shire; and let them converse in the English language in the presence of any
gentleman of the courtly tone of the metropolis; his ears will soon inform
him, that every one of them talks in a tune very different from his own,
and from each other; and that their difference of tone is not owing merely
to loud and soft, but to a variety both of melody and of measure. .. Every
one of the four persons will perceive the other three have very distinct tones
from each other, and that the tone is plainly distinguished by the alto and
basso, though each in particular may fancy his own tone to be quite uniform,
and in the unison with itself." (Pp. 34-5.)
1
¹ Henry Mandeville, The Elements of Reading and Oratory, New York,
1845. The whole scheme is concerned with inflection; the subject of modu-
lation is explained in chapter 3.
246
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
two whole tones higher, which made in the whole extent a compass
of 13 notes, or octave and sixth.” 1
The next step in analysis which must naturally follow is much
more complex. We are confronted by the question: What is the
significance of any particular inflection of a given pattern and extent?
Or by what pattern do we express a certain kind of idea or emo-
tion? Steele's essay did not include any attempt to determine the
relation of the "slides" which he found in all speech to the meaning,
for he felt "that the marks of quantity, pausing, and emphasis
alone were so sufficient that a native needed scarce any further help
to read with surprising correctness of expression; though I must
acknowledge the meaning of a sentence may often be entirely altered,
by changing the accent from acute to grave, or vice versa.
"2 This
reservation seems to have more weight than the preceding state-
ment; that Steele considered intonation very important is apparent
from his use of the word melody in the subtitle of his book. The
general plan of Mandeville's work again indicates the kind of inves-
tigation necessary for the study of the meaning of inflection.
Recently several phoneticians have attempted to study intonation
more carefully. From experiments with phonograph records, Scrip-
ture has reached certain conclusions which are not only interesting.
in themselves, but which also very clearly indicate a large field for
research.
The fundamental form for the American sentence is the convex melody,
beginning low, rising steadily to a maximum, and then steadily falling. This
form is varied for purposes of expression. For example, an interrogative
sentence requiring the answer "yes" or "no" does not fall at the end, but
rises higher than at the middle. Other interrogative sentences keep the
convex form, unless there is some special change to produce expression.
Exclamatory sentences retain in general the convex form. Religious speech is
characterized by comparative evenness of melody, by small convexity, and by
general low pitch. In conversation, characteristic variations are introduced to
express irritation, sarcasm, solemnity, etc.³
Of course, it is the nature of these "special changes" and "character-
istic variations" which it is very important for elocution to discover.
Commenting on a melody plot of the opening words of Depew's
“Speech on Forefathers' Day," Scripture says:
1
Steele, op. cit., p. 37.
2
Ibid., p. 30.
8
Scripture, Researches in Experimental Phonetics, pp. 69-70.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
247
•
Confining ourselves on the present occasion to the general features of the
melody, we note that in the first phrase the melody rises somewhat suddenly
at the start according to the typical convex form for the American sentence.
Instead, however, of completing the convexity it rises suddenly at the end.
The average tone is rather low. This form of melody gives a special emo-
tional character to the phrase, for which no appropriate terms exist.
We can define the expressive character of the melody here only by saying
that it is the one appropriate for a solemn statement in an oration. The
evenness of the melody gives it solemnity, the steady rise through the phrase
gives it pomposity, the sudden rise at the end makes it somewhat brusque
and challenging. As only a few researches on speech melody have been
made, little can be said concerning the change in emotional effect which
such a phrase would undergo with changes in the melody. We know, however,
that if the even melody had not the sudden rise and had fallen at the end,
the phrase would have had a religious intonation. If the evenness had been
replaced by fluctuations, the melody would have lost its solemnity, even if
it had retained the other characteristic of solemnity, namely, the general low
pitch. . . . The last two phrases are in contrast to the first four. The even-
ness is replaced by great flexibility, the rise at the end is replaced by an
exaggerated fall. The entire effect of such a melody is distinctly humorous-
an effect that is increased by the very low tones employed, especially at the
end. . . . Here the effect is that of a staid humor of a mild degree. Both
these phrases might have been spoken with rising closure without destroying
the general tenor of the impression, but the humorous turn and the contrast
would have been lacking. Throughout the record the melody is one that is
appropriate to ceremonial oration with a constant humorous twist to it.¹
This is something of a guidepost, pointing the direction towards
a goal though by no means marking the end of the journey. Most
of the statements are a bit too general and vague to have definitive
value, but they do suggest possibilities.
Another noteworthy study of intonation has been made by
Harold E. Palmer. One of the most noticeable characteristics of
Palmer's work which is disadvantageous for Americans, is that he is
writing of English intonation, and, as has been suggested, it is in the
melody that we find the most marked difference between English
and American speech. The whole scheme is designed for the use.
of foreign students of English, though the author says the book
should be of equal, or even greater, service to teachers of spoker.
English--perhaps for elocution. There is no explanation of the
method of research, but, assuming the observation of phenomena
to be scientifically satisfactory, the "synoptic summary of the
1
¹ Scripture, Researches in Experimental Phonetics, pp. 70-2.
248
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
"¹
semantic functions of the tone-groups" 1 is very illuminating. In
this summary we find, and elsewhere there are illustrations and ex-
planations, thirty-one kinds of statements, questions, commands, etc.,
classified in eight subdivisions and these in turn arranged under
four chief varieties of tone-groups. The melody patterns are, how-
ever, only very general approximations, perhaps as definite as may
be possible. There seems to be much that is vague in the classifica-
tion; for example, "Special Questions" appears in six subdivisions,
the only difference between two of these being, "when repeated"
and "echoed." Certain emotions are taken into consideration, but
very few.
As to the sequences of these tone-groups, Palmer says:
In the present state of our knowledge (or rather ignorance) concerning
the functions of tonetic phenomena, we can do little but collect typical
examples of the various sorts of sequences, endeavour to specify their more
obvious semantic functions and trust that these collections will serve as a
starting point for further research. . . . The association of tone-groups in
sequences has certainly a great bearing on problems of semantic expression;
we unconsciously observe these unwritten laws of English intonation, and
in so doing ensure the right connection or balance between the different
parts of the sentence.2
For elocution it may be suggested that we need some conscious
knowledge of the way in which we "unconsciously observe these
unwritten laws of English intonation."
Daniel Jones, who uses a curved line, as does Scripture, to rep-
resent intonation-seemingly a more satisfactory method than
Palmer's dots-repeats in his later work the statement already made
in his Pronunciation of English, that "intonation is most important
for indicating shades of meaning." His emphasis on this aspect of
phonetics is apparent in the increased amount of space accorded it
in the Outline of English Phonetics, thirty-four pages in place of
five.³ The seven rules of 1914 have been expanded to ten rules with
numerous exceptions. These rules are based upon the usage of the
Palmer, English Intonation with Systematic Exercises, Cambridge, 1922,
Ibid., p. 87.
P. 86.
2
3
Jones, op. cit., pp. 59-64; An Outline of English Phonetics, New York,
1922, pp. 135-68. To be sure the latter work is larger than the other, but
the increase in the proportion of the chapter on intonation to the rest of the
book is significant. Jones's Intonation Curves, Leipzig, 1909, provides ex-
amples, without rules or other comment.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
249
South of England and consequently, like Palmer's, are not of much
use to Americans. The great amount of illustrative material, par-
ticularly that showing how different meanings can be attached to
the same phrases by different intonations, is very valuable for the
study of English speech. A similar study of American speech is
needed.
A much more detailed discussion of one of the aspects of in-
tonation is that by H. O. Coleman. He is in accord with other
writers in saying: "One reason for indicating relative pitch in
preference to absolute pitch is that the effect of any given intona-
tion will be found to depend on its internal relationships. The size
of the intervals and their position in the musical scale may often
vary according to external circumstances, such as states of mind or
nerves .. without altering the meaning of the words.' This
statement applies, of course, only to the meaning of the words, not
to the emotional context. So Coleman distinguishes between an
"emphasis of prominence," such as attaches to "the last word that
one would sacrifice to save a halfpenny on a telegram,” and an
emphasis of "intensity," which is "that manner of utterance which
imparts an added degree of intensity to some part of the idea rep-
resented by a word." 2
As to the first, Coleman states that, "prominence is invariably
accompanied by a sudden turn (rise or fall) in the intonation.
It is this intonation turn that gives the prominence, while the stress
merely serves to mark where the turn begins. The emphasized
syllable may begin lower or higher than the preceding one, but there
must occur, either during this syllable, or from it to the next, a
sudden fall or a sudden rise." 3 As to the second, "For intensifica-
tion a distinctive intonation is probably never absent. . . Intona-
tion cannot, however, be regarded as the essential of intensifying
expression. There enter into it a number of other factors-special
stress, extra slowness, extra quickness, length of word. .
pauses. " And as a general statement on the former practice,
"The generally accepted view (which regards the choice of rising
or falling intonation as having some bearing on the distinction be-
•
4
Coleman, op. cit., p. 7.
2
Ibid., pp. 8-1I.
8 Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 15.
250
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
tween question and statement), must be considerably modified-
perhaps entirely rejected. . . in fact the choice is governed by
rules of emphasis possessing a much more general application." 1
The contributions of Klinghardt to the study of English in-
tonations offer us even more definite suggestions.2 His treatment
of word-groups, already mentioned, as being determined by the
sense and manifested by the intonation, seems to be more reasonable
than any of the other theories, if not conclusive. But Klinghardt is
chiefly concerned with the correlation of inflection and meaning.
In the introduction to the Übungen he says:
We have two ways of speaking: the strictly logical, which is used for
simple communication with others and is addressed to their understanding;
and the sentimental or emotional, which expresses the feeling of the speaker
and is intended to influence the feelings of the one addressed. Aids for the
former are: the force of the voice, stress, and rising and falling inflections,
intonation. . . . Aids for the latter are, in connection with those cited for
the logical: on the one hand peculiarity or coloring, such as occasional ex-
traordinary stress, and also extraordinarily high pitch for whole groups;
on the other hand the tempo of the speech.³
Having suggested the significance of intonation for both the
logical and the emotional aspects of speaking, he discusses both at
great length and with many illustrations. Inasmuch as Klinghardt
discusses the intonations of various kinds of expressions rather than
the meanings of various kinds of intonations, he has no such
schematic chart as Palmer. But the treatment seems more satis-
factory, although, like Palmer, he uses a method of indicating the
melody by dots, and, like Palmer and Jones, he is concerned with
English melody, which is not at all American. Klinghardt's ex-
planation of logical intonation patterns is not merely practical for
pedagogical purposes, but contains suggestions for a scientific method.
None of these investigators of intonation has taken into account
the special problems of elocution, so that their findings are only
indirectly valuable. Observation and recording of the intonation of
extemporaneous speaking, and of any public speaking at the time
of delivery, are obviously most difficult. It is only at the time of
actual delivery on a real occasion and with a real audience that the
characteristics of intonation which are of particular significance to
1
3
Coleman, op. cit., p. 19.
2 Klinghardt und Klemm, op. cit., and Klinghardt, op. cit.
* Klinghardt und Klemm, op. cit., p. I.
PHONETICS AND ELOCUTION
251
elocution can be observed. The nearest approach, not very near,
seems to have been made by Scripture in his analysis of the record
of Depew's speech. The effect of occasion and audience upon the
speaker as manifested by his intonation is a field of research which
the phoneticians have not preëmpted and one in which all investiga-
tion must be more significant for elocution than for phonetics in
general.
Of the points upon which I have been able briefly to touch
as being contacts of the special studies of phonetics and elocution,
the matter of grouping the sounds according to the sense content of
the words seems to be pretty well agreed upon by phoneticians,
though there may still be some dispute as to how this is accomplished,
and though one may say with Jespersen and Klinghardt that investi-
gation of word-groups has scarcely begun. The matter of gradation
is settled as a phonetic question, but there is still much to be done
with the analogous problem of determining just how much of the
flow of sound and in particular cases just what portion must be
perceived by the auditor in order that he may reconstruct in his
own mind the idea that was in the mind of the speaker. The third
problem, that of intonation or melody, is probably of greater sig-
nificance than either of the others and as yet has scarcely been
touched. In all cases the special applications to elocution have yet
to be investigated.
There are many other problems that fall within the field where
the specialist in phonetics and the specialist in elocution work
together, notably perhaps the significance of loudness and stress
and the rate of speaking, particularly variations in rate. It is re-
markable that Joshua Steele seems to have contributed as much toward
the solution of these problems as anyone in the century and a half
since his time.
I
STUTTERING
SMILEY BLANTON
T was while working with Professor James Albert Winans at
Cornell University that I first undertook investigations of the
causes and treatment of stuttering. Both as head of the Depart-
ment of Public Speaking, and personally, Professor Winans en-
couraged and helped me in my study of stuttering and of other speech
difficulties. This work was begun in 1907. At that time the general
opinion among physicians in the country was that stuttering was
caused by some weakness of the tongue or some abnormality of the
nervous system.
I soon became convinced that stuttering was caused primarily
by psychological factors; and subsequent studies by myself and
others have strengthened this theory. Stuttering is now regarded
by the medical profession as a neuropsychiatric problem, to be
treated primarily by psychotherapeutic means.
For a long time past, the prevailing treatment of stuttering was
by phonetic exercises and vocal drill. Stutterers were given such
exercises as "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," and
other tongue-twisters. The stutterer was considered more or less.
fair game. Neglected by the medical profession, he turned to the
quack stuttering school whose alluring advertisements in the maga-
zines urged the stutterer to come with the hope of being perma-
nently cured.
Stuttering, under which term we include stammering, may be
defined from a descriptive standpoint as a break in the rhythm of
speech due to a blocking or inhibiting of the coördinating nerve im-
pulses resulting in an incoördination and tension.) Stuttering is a
symptom just as fever is a symptom and must not be considered
as a disease in itself. The cause of stuttering must be sought
through a study of the emotional life, conscious and subconscious.
253
254
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
To treat the symptom successfully the various causes back of the
symptom must be understood.
Stuttering is common enough to constitute a very serious prob-
lem. A personal survey of six thousand school children of Madison,
Wisconsin, revealed that eight out of one thousand stuttered. Dr.
Wallin found, in a survey of the school children of St. Louis, that
seven out of one thousand stuttered. Surveys generally, in this
country and abroad, show that about nine children out of every
thousand stutter.
Not infrequently we hear it claimed that children who stutter
will overcome the defect in time. In order to determine the num-
ber of boys and girls who reach the age of eighteen and still stutter,
a personal survey was made of fourteen hundred members of the
freshman class at the University of Wisconsin. It was found that
one per cent of the students had a marked stutter and one per cent
had a mild stutter. It will be seen from these figures that stuttering
cannot be left to time for remedy. Even though the defect itself
disappears in some cases, the cause may remain—an undue sen-
sitiveness, a feeling of inferiority which interferes with the devel-
opment and progress of the individual.
There is apparently very little relationship between the severity
of the symptoms and the severity of the emotional difficulty which
gives rise to them. Many people have a very slight stutter, so slight
that it is not easily noticed, but they feel severely handicapped;
as one boy expressed it, he never knew when he was going to
have trouble with a word, and, even though he stuttered very
rarely, meeting people and adjusting himself to groups was a ter-
rible strain.
The distribution of stuttering between boys and girls is very
disproportionate. There is from four to six times as much stutter-
ing among boys as among girls. Just why, is not known. When
a girl does stutter, however, it is just as difficult to overcome the
defect as it is in the case of a boy.
We do not find any explanation of the cause of stuttering through
the examination of the bodily organs. Of course, such conditions
as malnutrition, diseased tonsils, carious teeth, and nasal obstruc-
tions, may cause an increase in the natural irritability of the nervous
system, but these conditions are not the cause of stuttering. More-
over, stuttering is not inherited. A sensitive nervous system may
STUTTERING
255
be inherited, it is true, and on the basis of it stuttering is likely to
develop unless there is proper discipline and training.
He would like
would like, if
Speech is one of the chief ways by which we adjust ourselves
to the group. Stuttering is caused by fear, partly conscious and
partly subconscious, of meeting the group. The child fears to
meet the group, but he also has a desire to do so.
to flee from the situation altogether, but also he
possible, to meet the situation. These tendencies to flee from and
to meet the situation come into conflict and there is a compro-
mise in which there is neither good speech nor absence of speech,
but broken, inhibited, stuttering speech.
A search into the emotional life of stuttering children always
reveals some of these emotional attitudes and conflicts-timidity,
strong feeling of inferiority, overdependence on the parents, and a
feeling of general inadequacy. In some cases we notice a marked
rigidity towards life, an unwillingness to change food and sleep
habits; or an oversuggestibility, a chronic fear of meeting certain
groups of people or situations, a marked sensitiveness.
Some have claimed that these emotional conditions are the result
of stuttering and have nothing to do with its cause. A study of
the personality of stutterers, however, shows that their emotional
attitudes are primary and are the cause of the speech defect.
Stuttering may accentuate the emotional condition, but it does not
cause it.
The essential characteristic of the temperament of the stuttering
child is a marked sensitiveness to social situations. This sensitive-
ness is really a great virtue if properly trained and controlled. In
my own experience with stutterers I have come to feel that they
have the most pleasing and delightful personalities of any group
with which I have come in contact. Their quick responses to social
situations, their marked sensitiveness, and their keenness of per-
ception of social relationships give them an insight and develop
a type of personality that is pleasing and appealing. Stuttering
should not be thought of as something that is wholly bad. It should
be thought of more as a danger signal which indicates that the
child requires very careful training in order that he may properly
utilize a sensitive, overreacting nervous system.
A study of the temperaments of two hundred unselected stutter-
ing children revealed the following facts: fourteen per cent seemed
256
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
to have normal temperaments; forty-eight per cent had marked
feelings of inferiority; fourteen per cent overcompensated for this
inferiority by being bumptious and forward; fifteen per cent showed
marked swings of mood beyond the average-happy and excitable
one day, moody and depressed the next; and nine per cent were
overexcitable and overactive.
A psychological study of stutterers enables us to divide them into
several clearly marked groups:
1. The Hysterical Type
a. Conversion hysteria
b. Fixation hysteria
2. The Anxiety Type
3. The Hypomanic Type
4. The Organic or Motor Type
Case 1. Illustrating conversion hysteria. Mary, age eleven, was
born on a farm. She was in good physical condition, with good
intelligence, and no abnormalities of the articulatory organs. She
walked about four or five months later than the average child; she
did not begin to talk until about the age of twenty-two to twenty-
four months, which is almost a year late. This slowness in walking
and talking probably indicated an innate inability to coördinate the
muscles easily. (A predisposition to speech disorders seems to run
in the family: an uncle and an aunt, whom the child never saw,
stuttered.) Under emotional strain we should expect this child to
show some speech symptom.
When the girl started to school she began to stutter. Speech is
an adaptive mechanism and very often children are unable to make
the adaptations required at school. After about a year the stutter-
ing tended to disappear, so that it was scarcely noticeable except
at times of stress. Her mother died when the child was five years
old. After that time, her two aunts and three grown brothers
looked after her. She was very happy on the farm, and her speech
defect seemed to be entirely eliminated. Then the father, who had
been living in town, married again, and brought the little daughter
in to live at his new home. The child heartily disliked this change,
although her stepmother made a good mother. Mary yearned to
be back on the farm where she was petted by her brothers and
humored by her aunts.
STUTTERING
257
When she started to school in town it was found that she
could not talk. For several weeks she was mute. Later, she began
to talk in a whisper. She was given training and after some weeks
was able to speak in a tone loud enough to be heard. This mutism
was of an hysterical nature.
She reëntered school in the autumn and was able to talk very
well. She had practically no speech difficulty until the spring, when
the desire to go on the farm probably grew more intense; and the
emotional struggle gave rise to severe symptoms of stuttering.
The treatment consisted primarily in training the child to meet
the situations of life adequately, in training her to understand that
the attempt to gain her ends by hysteria was not wise. The speech
training consisted of a few simple exercises in tone production,
without mention of breathing.
Often the symptom of stuttering is an hysterical mechanism.
The physical symptom is caused by a mental conflict. In one form
there is direct conversion of a mental conflict into a physical symp-
tom. It was so in the case of this girl. There was a conflict in
her mind between her desire to stay in town with her father, and
the desire to go back to the farm with her brothers and her aunts.
This conflict was carried over into a physical symptom which at-
tacked the speech mechanism because there was some inherent dis-
ability there. It should be noted that when this girl was allowed
to go back to the farm she had no trouble whatsoever with her
speech.
Case 2. Illustrating fixation hysteria. Ella, age eleven, was asked
to recite a poem at the Commencement exercises in her school.
She was expected to have a flower in her hand to illustrate one
of the passages of the poem. Her mother, however, was too poor
to buy her the flower. The little girl, not realizing her mother's pov-
erty, felt very much aggrieved; an emotional conflict was set up.
She felt that she was neglected, that no one loved her. The day
came when she was to recite, and she forgot her piece and stuttered.
This stuttering was a transitory symptom of the disturbance caused
by the forgetting. Curiously enough, however, the stuttering con-
tinued; the next day the child was unable to recite in class without
stuttering, and she began to stutter at home.
This was a case of fixation hysteria. The symptom was fixed
258
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
and carried on by the mental conflict, resulting from the feeling
that she was not loved, that no one cared for her, and that her
mother was not giving her a "square deal." The stuttering con-
tinued until the child was fully grown. Through an analysis of her
emotional life the patient was shown the cause of her speech de-
fect—and the speech defect disappeared. No speech training what-
soever was given in this case. There was, presumably, no organic
inferiority of the speech mechanism.
There are some workers in the field of speech correction who
say that the breathing mechanism is at fault in stuttering and
that the cure for it is to train the breathing. Breathing is, of course,
interfered with in all cases of stuttering. Every emotional dis-
turbance breaks up the rhythm of breathing. Training the breath-
ing then is dealing with an effect and not a cause. In many of these
hysterical cases training the breathing calls the attention to this.
function of speech of which the patient was not conscious and
"sets" the symptom. That is, the patient says, "Oh, yes, I know
what's wrong; my breathing is all wrong. Professor So-and-So
said so." It is often found that the difficulty increases and that the
speech is made worse by calling the patient's attention to his faulty
breathing and by giving him exercises intended to correct it.
Case 3. Illustrating the anxiety type. Jane, age eight, physically
well developed, with no malnutrition; nervous, high-strung; articu-
latory organs negative. Her mother was a high-strung, nervous
woman who worried most of the time. There was a history of speech
defects in the family. Jane walked and talked at the usual time.
When she entered school she began to stutter; she was timid and
fearful; she worried constantly and was very anxious. She worried
if she missed a point in recitation; she worried if her grades were
not always excellent; she worried because she was late for school..
In fact, the nervousness and anxiety of the mother had been exactly
imitated by the child. There was a constant emotional disturbance
in her mind, so great that it amounted to an anxiety-neurosis. This
anxiety-neurosis affected the speech mechanism and the girl be-
came a chronic stutterer. No poor speech was noticed in this case;
she talked smoothly and clearly when she was not under emotional
strain.
STUTTERING
259
The training consisted entirely in emotional reëducation. Neither
breathing exercises nor training of the articulatory organs were
given. This girl's speech defect was arrested entirely after one
semester's training by the teacher of speech correction.
Case 4. Illustrating the hypomanic type. John, age five, well de-
veloped, well nourished, in splendid physical shape. Both parents
were very nervous and high-strung. The child was overactive,
never quiet; his attention flighty, and his general control poor.
There is a type of nervous breakdown characterized by such over-
activity of mind and body. There are persons, however, who have
this same overactivity but in a much milder form; they are called
hypomanics. When this condition is found in children there is
overexcitability and extreme emotional pitch, so that when the
child tries to talk he blocks and is unable to proceed.
The training for this boy consisted of emotional reëducation.
He was taught to relax, to adjust slowly and easily. Above all, the
mother and father were instructed to modify their own behavior so
that they would not, in turn, excite the child.
The organic or motor type. The motor type is best seen in cases
of children who have had encephalitis. We have noted at least two
cases of children who, after this brain disease, have shown a marked
stutter. In these cases there is a definite organic factor.
A THEORY OF STUTTERING
The physical characteristics of stuttering have been accounted
for in many ways: they have been attributed to organic injuries
of the brain, injuries and defects of the nerves running from the
brain to the speech organs, pressure by enlarged glands on the nerve
supplying the diaphragm, muscular defects of the tongue, defective
auditory or visual imagery, congestion of the brain, and a reduction of
the alkali content of the blood. These are but a few of the numerous
conditions that have been pointed to as explaining the baffling and
curious blockings and incoördinations that characterize stuttering.
A consideration of the function and development of the nervous
system will throw much light upon the physical symptoms of stutter-
ing, and, we believe, will adequately explain those symptoms.
260
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
In the earlier stages of the development of the nervous system,
it was segmental in formation. In these stages each segment was
practically independent of the other segments, and only a very
simple type of behavior was possible. The sensory stimuli were
transmitted into motor impulses without delay. The resultant type
of behavior from such a nervous system therefore was quite fixed
and limited. Under the segmental type of nervous system the
sensory impulses from the nose, from the eye, and from the ear,
discharged immediately into the motor cells, and action occurred
without delay.
A more flexible type of behavior was possible only when certain
nerve cells were developed whose function it was to coördinate all
of the segments of the nervous system into one whole. The im-
mediate type of response which had formerly been present was
inhibited by these newly formed cells. Certain of the crude and the
primitive actions hitherto carried on by the lower segmental nerve
cells were entirely inhibited and the whole was fused together, re-
sulting in a more complicated type of motor response.
It is quite clear that with the segmental type there was a con-
flict between the various sensory impulses, so that a series of supra-
segmental nerve cells called the thalamus was developed, whose
chief function it was to receive the sensory impulses from different
parts of the body and to modify and to analyze these crude, con-
flicting sensory impulses before they reached the motor nerve
centers.
There was also developed a series of suprasegmental motor
nerve centers whose chief function it was to coördinate the motor
impulses set up by the sensory stimuli from the thalamus, so that
only one motor impulse would reach the lower segmental nerve
centers. While most of the thalamus represents the suprasegmental
nerve center on the sensory side, a part of these nerve cells are also
In addition, there are other suprasegmental motor centers
such as the caudate and lenticular nuclei.
motor.
Later on in the development of the animal, there developed a
series of nerve cells whose chief function it was to coördinate and
control these suprasegmental cells. These nerve cells are in the
covering of the great brain itself, called the cortex.
All sensory impulses, with the exception of those of the nose,
pass through the thalamus before they reach the cortex. Before
STUTTERING
261
the cortex was developed there was a very simple type of activity
much more violent and much more immediate than that which occurs
after the development of the cortex. One of the chief functions of
the cortex of the brain is the inhibition of the overactivity of these
lower nerve centers. As Head and Holmes point out, "The chief
aim of human evolution is the domination of feeling and instinct
by discriminative mental capacities. This struggle on the highest
plane of mental life is begun at the lowest sensory level and the
issue becomes more clearly defined the nearer the sensory impulses
approach the field of consciousness."
Speech uses only muscle groups whose primary function is other
than that of speech. These muscle groups, whose function it is to
perform very definite acts such as chewing, or sucking, or the tongue
movements in mastication, or coughing, or breathing, are called in-
tegrative synergic units. These integrative units are made up of
simple synergic units. All of these muscle groups are controlled by
nerve cells in the lower part of the brain or spinal cord. These
various muscle groups and their controlling nerve centers are co-
ordinated by the nerve cells in the cortex into complicated move-
ments which cause speech. This is made possible only through the
inhibition of certain tendencies of the lower nerve cells to act inde-
pendently of each other as they did in the early segmental stage.
This is prevented through the inhibitory and discriminative func-
tion of the cortex of the brain.
Under the influence of the mild state of fear that we know as
embarrassment or anxiety, this inhibitory and discriminative func-
tion of the cortex is partially or wholly blocked. It is probable that
under the influence of embarrassment or fear there is a diffusion of
blood throughout the lower nerve cells because of the contraction
of the blood vessels in the body, and this accentuates the affective
tone of the thalamus which is the center for our crude emotions.
As a result of this increase of affective tone in the thalamus and
the resulting loss of discriminative and inhibitory function of the
cortex, various muscle groups involved in speaking lose their co-
ordinated relationships and each group acts under the influence of
its own lower nerve centers. In stuttering there are such crude,
primitive, and fundamental movements as sucking, chewing, masti-
cating, coughing, and vomitive sounds. Sometimes these move-
ments are almost complete in their primitive forms. At other times
262
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
they are only partially complete. There is not a complete suckling
movement but a suggestion of a suckling movement. It may be
asked why the stutterer does not go completely back to the primi-
tive suckling form. The use of the suckling movement has been
inhibited by social training, and the association centers detect this
effort on the part of the individual to return to an infantile type of
behavior.
The stutterer's choice of a particular type of primitive movement
to return to might be determined by one of a number of different
things. He might have experienced a fear while he was using
some particular speech movement, so that the total primitive move-
ment came out under stress and there developed a conditioned re-
sponse. Or it might be that some synergic unit was so satisfactory
in infancy that the individual with a psychoneurotic tendency is
unable to forego it as the majority do, and returns to this primi-
tive movement under emotional conflict.
When we analyze the various physical symptoms found in stutter-
ing we find just these movements: the suckling movements, chew-
ing movements, masticating movements, vomiting movements, and
spasmodic movements of the diaphragm.
In brief then, it may be said that the physical symptoms of
stuttering are due to the blocking of the inhibitory and discrimina-
tive control of the cortex over the lower nerve cells, caused by
emotions of embarrassment and fear, conscious and unconscious,
allowing the primitive muscle groups each to tend to return to its
own primitive function.
THE USE OF GRAPHS IN THE STUDY OF STUTTERING
It has been the custom in our clinic to chart every speech case
so that we have a graphic representation of its variations. Ver-
tically, the chart is divided into ten equal portions. The patient
is requested to consider ten as indicating the maximum severity of his
stuttering. At zero the speech is normal. The horizontal line of the
chart represents the age of the patient. The chart on the opposite.
page shows the facts obtained by one such graphic representation.
This patient was twenty-eight years of age. In 1920, he was in
a hospital for psychoneurotic war veterans. His speech defect ap-
STUTTERING
263
peared at the age of seven. At that time his stuttering was four.
It did not vary until he graduated from high school at the age of
seventeen. At this time he showed marked improvement and his
stuttering was only one. For a year, while he was working in a
hardware store as a clerk, his speech continued unchanged. Then
the work grew irksome and the speech defect began to get worse,
going from one to six. He received treatment for his speech at this

10
9
8
7
Co
5
Degree of severity.
First noticed defect.
3
2
8 9
10
Admitted to hospital.
Sent back
to U.S.A.
Treatment by Speech Teacher
Division marching into Germany
In speech clinic - Veterans hospital
Return of defect after leaving hospital
Drayman
Left school to work
=
Station Agent
Working, hardware
Service in France
12
13
14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21
22
23
23 24 25 26
Discharged
as "Improved"
June 1920.
27 28 29 30
Age in years
time from a careful and sympathetic teacher, and the defect went
down to one. He became a station agent and as this work caused
a great deal of strain his speech defect went up to four.
For two years while he worked as a drayman his stuttering re-
mained the same. When the war came he was denied enlistment
because of his speech defect; but in three months his speech became
entirely normal. He joined the army at the age of twenty-five, and
was sent to France where he was a runner carrying messages from
one company to another. For six months he served much of the
time under fire without any speech trouble at all. Then his divi-
264
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
sion moved into Germany and the patient's speech defect began to
get worse. He was bored and homesick. His speech defect got
so bad that he could not carry on his army duties and it reached its
maximum amount of continuousness at ten.
The patient was admitted to the hospital, sent back to the
United States, and placed in a veterans' hospital. He was treated
for a year by psychotherapy and his speech defect dropped back to
one. He was discharged as very much improved. Six months after
leaving the hospital his speech defect had gone up again to five,
but at the end of a year he wrote and said that his speech was
perfectly normal. He is now successfully employed.
TREATMENT Of StutterinG
In general, the treatment of stuttering may be divided into the
following heads: (1) physical hygiene; (2) mental hygiene; and
(3) speech training.
To begin with the third of these, it may be said that the work
in speech training is quite simple. Articulatory exercises should
never be used, as they are not only useless but also harmful. Some
teachers find vocal and breathing exercises helpful, but we have
stopped using them altogether. Exercises for relaxation are given
whereby the control of the cortex of the brain is established over
the lower nerve centers. While the individual is in this relaxed
state he is asked to talk naturally; and through physiological train-
ing and through suggestion is built up a new set of speech habits
and a new attitude of confidence toward his speech. Later on, as
the individual improves he is placed in classes where the members
talk informally, carry on discussions, and act in plays. Drawling,
queer tones, waving the hands, and such devices are never used.
As to physical hygiene, the child's sleeping conditions are so
arranged that he sleeps alone, that he gets fresh air, and that he
gets sufficient hours of sleep. In the case of the nervous child we
also have him relax after luncheon and after dinner. In very ner-
vous cases we have other periods of the day set aside for rest and
relaxation. The diet of the child is important. The majority of
children who stutter require special attention as to their food. Out
of three hundred cases of stuttering one hundred and ninety-three
STUTTERING
265
were found to be finicky about their food, and two cases were
neurotic vomiters. Finickiness about food in most cases means
finickiness about other things. Moreover, a child who is finicky
about his food is likely to be poorly nourished. Children who do
not eat enough green vegetables may have a vitamine deficiency,
which may make for irritability of the nervous system. For these
reasons, then, great stress is laid on developing normal appetites in
these children. Care is taken to see that they get the proper amount
and kind of exercise. If there are any physical conditions which
make for irritation, such as diseased tonsils or infected sinuses, they
are corrected. Tonsils should not be removed unless they are
diseased. Sometimes operations are performed only because the
physician believes that removal of the tonsils will cure stuttering.
The work in mental hygiene falls under two heads: (1) re-
education of the individual's emotional life, and (2) reorganization
of the individual's home and school life.
In the case of the stutterer we find feelings of timidity, fear,
anxiety, and sometimes specific mental conflicts that give rise to
the hysterical type of stuttering. These difficulties are discussed
with the child in such a way that he can understand them; and ways
are pointed out to him whereby he can win success and find a
healthy outlet for his normal desire to make friends. We especially
try to see that the child gains some success at home, in the school,
and on the playground.
The home life is studied to see if the parents treat the child
with too much tenderness or too much harshness. The parents
are urged to maintain consistent discipline, to teach obedience, but
to avoid unnecessarily suppressing the child's natural instinctive.
urges. The child must be taught to play; to get along with other
boys and girls. He must be allowed to rough it and must not be
"babied" too much. In the school, the teacher should be asked to
stimulate, and to praise the child when he deserves it, but not to
permit him to get out of things because of his stuttering.
The problem of stuttering can best be met in public schools by
properly trained teachers of speech correction. These teachers
should be social workers with training in psychiatry, and having a
special knowledge of the mechanism of speech and the ability to
reëducate children with emotional difficulties. The teachers should be
supervised by a psychiatrist.
266
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
The best type of organization maintains a child guidance clinic
in the school system, from which the work of the teachers of speech
may be coördinated. The children who stutter should be taken in
small groups and given treatment daily. Part of the time each day
should be devoted to individual work and part to group work. In
the group work the children should be asked to tell stories, and to
have games requiring speech, such as playing store and selling
tickets. The object of this work is not to train in public speaking
nor in speech, but is to teach the children to adjust themselves to
the group. The teachers of speech should not confine their work
to the schools, but should visit the homes and arrange the child's
life in such a way that he will develop the emotional poise and
confidence necessary for correct, smooth speech.
A great deal of the efficiency in the speech training depends upon
the personality of the worker. Sometimes people with good per-
sonalities cure stutterers of their symptoms solely through the
suggestible influence of their personalities. This explains why people
with such various methods or no methods at all get results in certain
cases. The results in such cases are always unsatisfactory, because
the emotional attitudes are likely to remain, and under strain the
symptoms of stuttering return.
Sure results can be obtained only through complete reëducation
of the stutterer's emotional life so that he understands himself and
is able to meet life without fear and without anxiety. When this
emotional reëducation has been accomplished, the speech defect will
take care of itself.
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING
T
MARGARET GRAY BLANTON 1
HE speech surveys of a number of years ago not only con-
tained a large number of names for the various disorders of
speech, names which seemed to be overlapping, but these
names were so lacking in descriptive quality that it was impossible
to tell from the terms used what defects of speech were meant.
"Poor speech," for instance, might mean any defect, including dia-
lectal speech, or bad grammar. In connection with our own survey,
therefore, we undertook to formulate a descriptive terminology,
stating that our proposed terminology was tentative and on trial.
We have, in fact, found it very serviceable, with the exception of
the term "letter substitution" which has been changed to "letter-
sound substitution." 2
This classification is: (1) delayed speech; (2) stuttering, which
includes stammering; (3) letter-sound substitution; (4) oral inactivi-
ties; and (5) vocal difficulties.
For the purpose of classification, it is necessary to divide the
disorders into clear-cut and distinct groups, though a speech defect
in which some other speech defect does not play at least a secondary
part is very uncommon. Oral inactivity often accompanies stutter-
ing, and letter-sound substitution often accompanies oral inactivity.
But, for purposes of study and with this reservation, the defects
may well be classified as above.
As Dr. Blanton's article is a study of stuttering, I will not discuss
that disorder except in so far as it is sometimes a complication of the
other disorders. Nor will this article attempt to deal with the
speech disorders resulting from paralysis and aphasia.
This work was done in collaboration with Dr. Smiley Blanton at the
Speech Clinic of the University of Wisconsin.
For this modification we are indebted to Miss Sophie A. Pray of
New York City.
267
268
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
DELAYED SPEECH
The development of speech begins with the specializing of the
earliest infant cries. At first the cries of the child are all very
much alike with the exceptions of the cry due to colic and the cry
of so-called anger, stimulated by pressure or scrubbing or rough
handling of any sort. Even this cry of anger is not easily distin-
guished from the cries of extreme hunger or pain. At about eight
months, the normal child has achieved not only a certain specializa-
tion of the cries, but also certain definite specialization of the bab-
bling sounds. "Ma-ma" begins to be associated with the mother,
and "pa-pa" with the father. This change is, of course, the result
of training. In the study of the development both of speech and of
its abnormalities, it must always be remembered that there is no
demonstrable speech center at birth. We cannot postulate the in-
heritance of speech itself, but only of the capacity for speech. If
speech were inherited, the totally deaf would talk without train-
ing, and an English child taken into a French family would speak
English and not French. In other words, the capacity for speech
is present, but not the speech form. The entire process of develop-
ing speech is, then, a phase of the definite learning processes, and
must, of course, be treated as associative rather than as deliberate
and analytical.
At the age of two, the child should be able to communicate his
comparatively simple needs and wishes. He should be using a
certain amount of organized language, that is, words in simple sen-
tence formation, and he should understand a very considerable
amount of complex and highly organized speech. Speech develops
somewhat earlier in girls than in boys-a fact which has stimulated
much facetiousness and pseudophilosophy. Actually the acquiring
of all the small muscular movements seems somewhat easier for
girls than for boys. But the date of attaining clear-cut, full speech
is usually very difficult to determine. It may be safely stated, how-
ever, that a child should be able to communicate at two years, and
that at four years the speech should be clear and phonetically correct.
For many reasons speech is not always acquired in a regular
and normal way. Some of the causes of delay may be briefly stated.
The first cause is poor intelligence. The low-grade idiot is
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 269
often defined as a person who cannot acquire speech. Here the
fundamental defect may be an undeveloped brain. In the higher
grades of intelligence, the speech is correspondingly better developed,
and is quite fully developed in the moron, though the superior in-
telligence will show a higher grade of speech, with a larger vocabu-
lary and more involved and complex language forms.
A second cause for the delay in the development of speech is
injury to the brain, due to hemorrhage in the brain at birth, or to
mechanical injuries of one sort or another, or to diseases such as
encephalitis. These cases of delayed speech frequently present a
very puzzling picture, sometimes having the appearance of the ex-
tremely low-grade intelligence. They often prove very responsive
to systematic training both in speech and in general behavior. Many
other kinds of injury to the brain in infancy may delay the acquisi-
tion of speech, paralysis, in its various forms, being one of these.
A third cause of delayed speech may be roughly described as
"glandular anomalies." In these cases the glands of internal secre-
tion seem to be undeveloped or to lack the activity necessary for
the rounded development of the child. Such children often present
the appearance and symptoms of dwarfism, with all the peculiar ten-
dencies and gestures associated in our minds with the jester and
the court fool. They are by no means to be classed as untrainable,
although very often the inculcation of any habit in them is a diffi-
cult and slow process, due to the fact that their lives have been
more or less self-directed and their definite organized training has
not been undertaken from their birth. Very often the giving of the
simplest speech to these children is the means of "unlocking" their
intelligence, and making possible those contacts which lead to a gen-
eral development.
A fourth cause of delayed speech is bad training. This is the
most common and most confusing cause. The majority of persons
assume that speech is an inherited process, and so make no effort to
train the child. Even the intelligent and the well-informed often
remark of a child of two, or even of three, who has very little
speech, perhaps none, that its state is not at all abnormal and will
be outgrown.
In the majority of cases where the child is intelligent and comes
into contact with children and adults outside of the family, it learns
that speech is a necessity; but such children have learned an expen-
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
sive lesson, as their speech often develops unnaturally and the emo-
tional overload under which they learn leads to a rather faulty
speech. It is also true that the home conditions which delay the
ordinary child's acquisition of speech are the conditions most likely
to cause stuttering and oral inactivities.
For example, a child of six was brought to us with no speech.
(This is not literally true as the child did have one word, which was
"no." We have seen a large number of children who have developed
speech late, but we have yet to see an intelligent child of two who
does not have some way of indicating the negative wish.) This
particular child was escorted by his mother and father, his grand-
mother and grandfather on the mother's side, and his grandmother
and grandfather on the father's side, and he himself was riding in
a go-cart pushed by a negro "mammy." The second nurse had re-
mained at home. This meant that there were eight adults waiting
on and serving this boy of six. When asked why her child did
not talk, the negro "mammy" replied that he was so rich he didn't
have to talk; and we felt that her solution was probably the cor-
rect one. There was no need in his life which could not be supplied
by some member of the family, if they used a bit of initiative in
figuring out what it was he wanted. He was, however, developing
violent spells of temper under this system of "training" and bad
handling, and it was mainly for this that he was brought to us for
study. Two months' proper attention sufficed to give this boy fairly
good speech, thus showing that he had been "thinking" in English
a good while; but his phonation was slovenly and a great many letter-
sound substitutions persisted for some time. Another child of this
type was a little girl of two, of an upper middle class family, who
had been assiduously attended by her mother and an aunt. One
day when this child had been opposed in some small way, she had
suddenly stiffened and become white and quite rigid. After that,
of course, she was never thwarted in any wish, and developed the
habit of going into these semispasmodic states at the slightest hint
of opposition. She had not been permitted to crawl-clothes would
get dirty-and had not learned to walk. In two months this child
was taught to walk and to speak. In less than that time she was
making efforts at sentence construction and elaborate compound
words.
There is another type of delayed speech due also to bad training,
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 271
but much more subtle, more serious, and less amenable to reëduca-
tion. Sometime during early infancy the child has had one of the
more serious diseases-very often whooping cough—which seemed
gravely to threaten the child's development. The parents have been
told that they must never cross the child and as this advice falls
in very well with their own way of thinking, it is usually followed
absolutely. Such children, of course, dominate their environment,
selecting only very poor and infantile diets, usually composed of
milk and the simplest gruels. They are usually markedly rachitic,
and their muscle movement is spastic and faulty. They often have
several types of pseudolanguage consisting of half a dozen to a
dozen sounds, and are usually classed among the cases of oral inac-
tivity on account of the faultiness of their speech sounds. But they
are essentially cases of delayed speech and must first be treated as
such.
A fifth type is a combination of any of the first three conditions
with bad training. Low intelligence, or brain injury, or glandular
anomaly, unless of the severest order, may not prevent a certain
amount of effective speech; but low intelligence, or brain injury, or
glandular anomaly, plus parents who are untrained or indifferent or
inclined in difficult situations to offer excuses for their own failures,
is a very unfortunate combination for the child. The parent will
very often assert that the lack of speech is due to poor intelligence
or brain injury or glandular condition. But when you see a child of
five, assisting with her own dressing, and having sufficient intelli-
gence to go to the ice chest, open the ice chest door, and select her
favorite foods, you may safely infer that her lack of speech is not
so much due to low intelligence as to lack of proper training for
speech. It is extremely common to find parents justifying their own
incapability for training by "rationalizing" from a real illness or
disability of the child. It is also not uncommon to find parents
“rationalizing” from a purely fictitious condition—a supposedly weak
heart or tendency to spasms or something of that sort.
The fundamental training for speech is not phonetic training,
but the systematic and diplomatic giving of motives for attaining
speech. Having given the child experience of speech, plus an active
impulse for acquiring it, the child will, even if mentally below par,
almost invariably be the strongest ally in the struggle to develop
speech.
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
LETTER-SOUND SUBSTITUTION
The letter-sound substitutions are those in which one speech
sound is substituted for another speech sound-whatever the cause
of this substitution may be. The most common of these, known as a
lisp, is the substitution of th in its voiced or voiceless form for s
or for z. After the lisp comes, probably, the substitution of voice-
less l for s. This is usually called a lateral lisp. The difficulty
known as lallation is classified in this group; it is usually the sub-
stitution in which one of the sounds or w is substituted for r.
Miss Ida C. Ward of the University of London discusses in her lec-
tures the following substitutions, giving them not as a complete list,
but as the commonest forms of substitution :
s becomes th or sh or voiceless or voiceless n or voiceless r,
or the glottal stop;
sh becomes voiceless 1;
r becomes w or v;
I becomes w;
th voiced becomes w or d;
th voiceless becòmes y;
y becomes r.
The most common causes of letter-sound substitution are: (1)
infantilism, and (2) confusion in training.
Infantilism. This type of letter-sound substitution was first partially
described by Dr. Edward Scripture under the name of neuritic
lisping. The individual does not wish to detach himself from his
infantile surroundings. He retains the speech or some of the forms
of speech which he could legitimately retain up to, perhaps, three
years of age, and this infantile speech is persisted in as a bond
between him and his early environment. To illustrate: A woman of
thirty came to us with a simple substitution of th for s, an ex-
tremely common type of infantile substitution. She wished to enter
the work of speech correction. In conferring about her qualifica-
tions for the course and her training, we discovered that she was
already doing platform reading of a high order. When we asked
her to read for us in order that we might see how much her
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 273
letter-sound substitution interfered with her platform work, we dis-
covered that she read without a trace of this substitution. We asked
her why in platform work she should throw off this substitution and
retain it in her everyday speech. Her answer, with a distinct lisp
was: "My father likes me to talk this way; he says it is sweet
and that I am still his little girl." This attitude, while more frankly
stated and more conscious with this woman than is usual, is the cus-
tomary, conscious or unconscious, attitude of the lisper or of the
person who makes the simpler substitutions. This clinging to early
childhood and the unwillingness, in at least this one respect, to grow
up is the fault; rarely is there any lack of ability to make the sound.
Every person of good intelligence who retains a faultily made
simple English consonant in adult speech certainly suggests infantil-
ism, and especially is this true if he minimizes the importance of
eradicating the defect. This one point is of great importance to
teachers of public speaking and platform work in general, as it is
not at all uncommon to have college students and even older persons
say, "I did lisp when I was younger, but have gotten over it,"
whereas the lisp is still present, but not perceived by the lisper.
Confusion in Training. This is mainly due to parents' and teachers'
ignorance of phonetics. In this connection, it is necessary to re-
member that speech is a learned process. The prevalance of dis-
orders resulting from confused training indicates the necessity for
a knowledge of phonetics; and this knowledge of phonetics is needed
not only by parents and grade teachers, but also by teachers of pub-
lic speaking, who are training the speech of future parents and
teachers. Many persons who are educated above the use of "fine
language" are still guilty of "fine phonetics," at least in theory.
Either they speak always in exaggerated strong forms, attempting
to give full value to the consonants and vowels, or their speech is
normal but they labor under the delusion that they are giving full
value to consonants and vowels. This fallacy of giving full value
to consonants and vowels is due, I believe, mainly to our confused
English spelling, which is but a poor and always very misleading
guide to correct pronunciation.
For the purpose of study, the flow of speech-sound has been
analyzed into quite arbitrary units. Actually there is no division of
speech smaller than the phrase. The word is an arbitrary unit,
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the syllable is an arbitrary unit, the separate sound is an arbitrary
unit. The correction of a child's speech, if based on these arbitrary
and misunderstood units, causes great confusion. Take, for in-
stance, the phrase "that is exactly why." The phrase is spoken in
one breath. It contains four words, six syllables, and sixteen.
letters. The first two letters are t and h. These stand neither for t
nor for h, but for th, which is a voiced consonant. The a in "that"
fairly follows the spelling. The i in "is," in the phrase as spoken,
is silent. The word "eks-akt-li" is actually "igzakli." The initial
e becomes i. x is commonly understood and thought of as repre-
senting ks. The k and s represented by x become gz. The t is
silent. In the final word, "why," w and h are used to represent the
voiceless w. y represents the diphthong composed of a as in "past"
in careful American speech, and i as in "sit." The symbol h is
thrown in to indicate the voiceless quality of w. Now, if this phrase
is spoken rapidly, it will be observed that these omissions and
changes belong to the correct sounding of this speech unit. If in
answer to the question "Is that exactly what you intend to do?”
the response "exactly" is given, the word may even be so shortened
that the e is omitted entirely. The word "exactly" then stands as
"gzakli." Thus we have:
1
"That is exactly why."
th
a
t i S e X
th
a t
Z
i
g z
a k
a k
t 1 y
W h
y
1i
W
a i
(voiceless)
It is obvious that confusion in the child's mind is bound to be the
result of teaching him language on such false assumptions as this
of a quite imaginary "correct" pronunciation of "exactly." The
mother says to the child, "Don't say 'gzakli,' say 'eksaktly." The
child attempts to pronounce it in that fashion, and adds: "Is that
right?" The mother says: "gzakli." The child feels that the
whole process is confused, some trick is not being explained to him;
and when this fiction is presented to a sensitive child of keen per-
ception, the confusion is great. It is very common to hear the
These two pronunciations of "exactly" are taken from Daniel Jones's
English Pronouncing Dictionary, London, 1917.
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 275
statement, "My child cannot spell and yet he has the most accurate
ear." When you inquire how the child is taught to spell, you find
that it is by some system of sounds, not by rote memory. If taught
to spell by sound, it is to be expected that the more accurate the
child's perception of sound and the keener his intelligence, the
greater will be his confusion-when twenty-six letters of the alpha-
bet are made to stand for between twenty-one and twenty-three
consonant sounds, thirteen pure vowel sounds, five standard diph-
thongs, five to seven non-standard diphthongs, and about three to
five triphthongs, making in all between fifty and fifty-five separate
combinations and movements. And in addition to this, all these
vowel sounds are represented by "a-e-i-o-u and sometimes w and
y"; while the diphthongs are often represented by single symbols,
as the diphthong which is our first person singular I, and the diph-
thong which is our name for the first letter of the alphabet a, and
the diphthong which is the name of the letter usually written o.
Still another source of confusion is the representation of many of
these sounds by several different letters; this in addition to the fact
that many of the sounds have no representation at all in a great
number of words. For instance, our very common sound y, which
is occasionally written thus, occurs in the words, "William” and
"onion" represented by i, and in the word "union" represented by
both u and i, but in a few words is not represented at all. Such
complete confusion in sounds and spellings cannot but lead to
poor spelling unless spelling is taught as a matter of rote memory;
and any pronunciation based on a theory that our spelling is an
accurate transcription of speech sounds is bound to lead to funda-
mentally incorrect pronunciations and hence to speech difficulties of
a most unnecessary but disabling kind.
One of the causes most commonly assigned for letter-sound sub-
stitution is malocclusion of the teeth and poor dental arch. Yet it
is our experience that a very large percentage of persons who have
poor arch and malocclusion experience no difficulty whatsoever
with the sounds of the English language. With the exception of one
single condition of malocclusion, a marked protrusion of the lower
jaw, we feel that none of these conditions entitles the possessor to
a speech difficulty. A careful study of a number of cases of malocclu-
sion will show that a high percentage have good speech. Careful
276
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
study of a large number of cases of letter-sound substitution will
show that a large percentage have good arch and occlusion.
must, therefore, seek the cause of this speech disorder elsewhere.
ORAL INACTIVITIES
When an attempt was made to describe and then to classify the
speech defects remaining after the letter-sound substitutions had been
subtracted, it was found that in a large number of cases the word
"inactivity" occurred as a descriptive term. This term was modified
by naming the parts involved, and so the term "oral inactivities" was
used to cover this entire group, with such subdivisions as, oral
inactivity-lips, oral inactivity-jaw, oral inactivity-soft palate, oral
inactivity-tongue; and in the last named subdivision the tongue
inactivity was further classified into back and front.
Very comprehensive case histories were made of a large number
of persons with this defect, and some interesting facts came to light.
One of the particularly interesting discoveries was that in the entire
group of cases those showing true oral inactivity of the front of the
tongue gave a history of having had severe nutritional disorders,
usually during the second or third years of life. Uniformly they
showed anomalies of diet lasting over a number of years.
The diagnosis of oral inactivity is made somewhat complicated by
the fact that the weakness of one part of the tongue or of one muscle
group makes it mechanically easy to make a clear-cut letter-sound
substitution. To illustrate: In a letter-sound substitution the substitu-
tion may be th for s. The same muscle group is involved. The
substitution quite obviously is not due to weakness of that muscle
group, for in oral inactivity the front of the tongue would definitely
remain inactive. However, if the word "cat" be undertaken, k, the
first sound, is made by the back of the tongue, a has the tongue flat
in the mouth, but t is made by raising the tongue at the front. Where
the front of the tongue is weak, the individual will attempt to substi-
tute some sound which does not involve the use of the front of the
tongue. This may be k, or it may be p, which is made with the lips;
but it will not be a sound made by a movement of the same muscle
group. Oral inactivity of the jaw deserves a special treatment. It is
apparently very closely related to the psychological defects, such as
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 277
stuttering, and is rarely amenable to practice or drill with the jaw
itself, but is often ameliorated by an analysis of the emotions.
Oral inactivity bears some close relation to stuttering. Just what
the circle of relationshp is, is not yet entirely clear, but it is evident
to those working with defects of speech that it is relatively easy to
throw a person suffering with oral inactivity over into stuttering, if
the treatment is not judicious. A child suffering with oral inactivity
cannot with safety be given direct phonetic treatment. By direct
phonetic treatment is meant the teaching of the exact positions for
and the practice of the disconnected sounds. For the young child,
the sounds must be put into plays and games, while the emphasis is,
of course, put on the manner in which the games or plays are exe-
cuted. Children with oral inactivity of the tongue often present a
rather typical picture, showing mild symptoms of rickets, mildly
spastic gait, "bleached" effect in coloring, and with behavior usually
either markedly timid or representing an overcompensated timidity
in the form of boldness. Of course, with this temperament, injudi-
cious handling might conceivably develop stuttering, even though oral
inactivity were not present. But in addition to the temperamental
difficulties, the child suffers from correction by all the adults in his
environment and by his disorder is handicapped in his contact with
other children.
VOCAL DIFFICULTIES
Vocal difficulties present possibly the greatest diversity found in
any of the classifications of defects of speech. It may safely be said
that there are as many causes as there are persons with difficulties.
Weak voice, a very common complaint, will have not one common
cause, but a different cause in each of the half-dozen cases that you
may be studying. One is more convinced of the absolute necessity
of a complete and thorough physical examination for vocal difficul-
ties than for almost any other defects. In no other field of speech
correction may so much harm be done by slapdash methods. Cer-
tain of these difficulties are distinctly due to defects of personality.
Others of them are due to general physical disabilities. Very few
are due to actual difficulties with the vocal cords themselves.
Nasal Voice. Nasality may be correctly classed with the phonetic
difficulties. The soft palate should be open in three of the English
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
sounds, m, n, and ng. Due to the laws of assimilation of sounds, a
certain amount of nasality is present in any sound in juxtaposition
to m, n, or ng. In making all other sounds the soft palate is closed
in such a way as to separate the mouth and the nasal chamber.
Nasality occurs when the soft palate is relaxed and dropped into an
open position during the other sounds of speech. It is, therefore,
correctly classed as an oral inactivity under the subhead of soft
palate, and treated as a phonetic disability. The nasal voice, how-
ever, seems to belong to a recognizable personal type. It is typical
of a certain bumptious personality, and also it is the essence of the
whine that characterizes other individuals. These findings suggest
at once the necessity for general modification of the personality in
order to relieve the vocal defect, for although one may by phonetic
treatment mitigate the difficulty, unless the underlying cause in the
personality is changed, a relapse is almost certain.
Negative Nasality. Negative nasality is the opposition of nasal
voice and is caused by the closing of the soft palate when the nasal
consonant should be made. It results in the substitution of b for
m, d for n, and g for ng-giving the effect of a cold in the head. As
it commonly accompanies enlarged adenoids, negative nasality is also
commonly called the "adenoid type" of speech.
Harsh Voice. The defect commonly classified as a harsh voice is
usually due to extreme psychological tension. It often belongs to what
is called the "hypormanic type" of personality, the person whose
power and push and "pep" are excessive. Its exaggerated form is
seen in the insane patient whose flow of activity is extreme and whose
voice is harsh, high pitched, and usually somewhat hoarse from exces-
sive use. Harsh voice, in a mild form, is found in the Northwest and
Middlewest in a great many speakers who use the inverted vowel,
commonly thought by the users to be a form of the consonant r. In
English the consonant r is correctly used only when followed by a
vowel. An attempt to add the so-called final r to words which are
not followed by a vowel, or to insert the r in words where it is fol-
lowed by a consonant, results in what is known to phoneticians as
the inverted vowel, or vowel r. The tongue takes a position of great
tension, the throat is tensed, and the whole vocalization is greatly
modified. The vowel r is a very distinct voice deformity in the speech
of many persons using this widespread dialectal form. A large
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 279
number of freshmen in a university of the Middlewest, in answer-
ing a questionnaire on their speech, complained that they could not
pronounce the final r; and instructors and other well-educated people
sent a surprising number of students to have this "defect" remedied.
Flat Tonal Quality. This peculiar flat quality of the voice usually
has one of two causes. The first is a marked inactivity of the jaw.
As the jaw is held rigid, the resonating chambers are not correctly
used. For a time we attempted to modify this disorder by direct
work on the relaxation of the jaw. After a series of failures, and
further observation, we concluded that all of these individuals suf-
fered from a certain type of timidity and that treatment based on
that finding might legitimately be undertaken. Working on the diffi-
culty in personality, we were able to obtain a modification of the tone
quality in a limited number of educable cases.
The second cause of flat tonal quality is poor hearing. Sometimes
this poor hearing is a thing of the past, having prevailed during early
childhood or early adolescence. But more often, it is still present
or is in a progressive condition, and while the patient is more or less
conscious of some disability in speech, he does not know exactly what
the difficulty is. Flat tonal quality is very likely to accompany middle
ear involvement. The condition is quite amenable to treatment if the
difficulty with hearing has not progressed so far that the patient's
capacity for self-criticism is impaired. Work with this disorder is
worth while as the deaf are so often cut off from active social and
professional life quite needlessly by the secondary characteristics of
deafness.
The Loud Voice. The loud voice with a certain booming over-
resistant quality is usually present in the individual whose keen sense
of timidity or inferiority has caused a marked overcompensation.
This sort of camouflage for a real feeling of fear is most often an
unconscious mechanism. Something can be done by convincing such
an individual that this type of voice is ineffectual, but little perma-
nent improvement is likely to be made without modifying the under-
lying difficulty of personality and without some insight into causes.
The Soft Breathy Inadequate Voice. This voice is often the direct
result of some malady involving the lungs, and is very common in
the tubercular. Vocal drill or breathing exercises should never
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
be given until a competent physician has made a thorough examina-
tion. A person with a mild tubercular lesion that is holding and
building up its own protective tissue might be very seriously injured
by deep breathing and other exercises requiring vigorous use of the
lungs. If the physician finds the lungs sound, the slow reeducation
of the individual, both for his personality and for the actual vocal
disability, should be begun. Certain types of introverted, timid per-
sons also commonly have this voice. The correction of this con-
dition requires longer training than for any of the other vocal dis-
abilities; two years should be considered a very moderate require-
ment.
The Hoarse Voice. The underlying cause of an extremely hoarse
voice may be a mechanical difficulty in the vocal cords themselves.
We have seen one case caused by direct pressure on one cord from a
tumor on the other cord. As this could not be modified it was felt
that treatment was inadvisable. Rest and avoidance of all unneces-
sary talking and singing were recommended. Note that this patient
did not show hoarse voice until an occasion of extreme emotional
tenseness. At the death of a member of the family she cried out;
on next attempting to speak the voice had disappeared entirely, and
she could only whisper. Very slowly a certain amount of voice was
regained. This patient had a slowly developing bronchiectasis, of
which she died sixteen years later. Even had the vocal cords per-
mitted training, it might have been fatal to undertake any vocal re-
education with the lung involvement present.
1
However, the majority of hoarse voices are caused by wrong use.
"Speaker's sore throat" is usually caused by using the voice at its
maximum capacity during strong emotion, and the hoarse voice of
rage, the hoarse voice of fear, the hoarse voice of anxiety, and of the
chronic states of fear are commonplace phenomena. The young
public speaker who experiences any degree of stage fright, should be
instructed in the mechanism of stage fright and its control, and should
not be permitted to use his voice at full strength until the period of
stage fright has passed, even if this proves a long time. We have
been accustomed to think of stage fright as amusing, whereas it is,
of all influences, perhaps the most destructive of the proper use of
the voice. Another cause of hoarse voice arises from mistaken at-
tempts to obtain emphasis by loudness and softness, whereas em-
SPEECH DEFECTS OTHER THAN STUTTERING 281
phasis should ordinarily be obtained through the use of strong and
weak forms of pronunciation. These problems of public speaking
have been neglected to a degree unfortunate for good voice as well
as for good delivery.
THE SINGING VOICE
The singing voice is rarely considered from the point of view
of voice and speech correction. But the assistance which the
phonetician and expert in the correction of defective speech can give
the singer is gradually being recognized. The singing voice of nasal
quality presents an entirely phonetic problem, as does also the singing
voice with the negative nasal. The "inverted or vowel r used dia-
lectally" is a constant cause of difficulties in singing as well as in
speech, and the attempt to use the consonant r before consonants is
very conducive to trouble. In addition to this fault, emotional inter-
ference and lack of insight on the part of singers, frequently cause
loss of voice. It is generally assumed that certain privileges of
behavior must be allowed the fine singer. The public realizes that
the inhibited singer does not sing with freedom and ease, but seems
ignorant of the fact that entire "freedom" of behavior is not neces-
sary in order to avoid inhibition. An understanding of the mech-
anism of the emotions may give a freedom which in no way con-
flicts with the social tabus and with accepted social behavior. The
singer, dealing as he does with emotional expression, needs the free-
dom that comes with knowledge of the mechanism of the emotions.
SUMMARY
After a study of the various types of speech disorders, the investi-
gator is most impressed with the following facts and conditions:
1. The necessity of considering first the personality of the indi-
vidual, not only in the nervous cases of stuttering and the rate cases,
but in all cases of defective speech. No program of reeducation
should be undertaken without first considering the psychological slant
and the emotional life of the patient. No work from the point of
view of phonetics or voice placing is of permanent value where the
underlying abnormality in personality has not been relieved, or at
least modified.
282
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
2. The almost universal ignorance of correct phonetic forms, and
the resulting harm of attempts to give phonetics and pronunciation
without definite knowledge of what actually is occurring in speech.
3. The confusion in infancy and early childhood, resulting from
the general belief that speech is inherited. This belief results in
ignorance of the proper methods of training, and prevents a right
understanding of speech as only one series of specialized movements
which cannot be separated from the general bodily movements and
general postural tensions.
After a number of years spent in the work of speech correction
we are more than ever firmly convinced that the study of speech must
include not only a detailed study of the sounds of speech as they
actually occur in the act of speaking (not in some theoretical and
idealized variation), but also a study of the formation of habits and
of the development and normalizing of personality.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION
H
WILLIAM E. UTTERBACK
ERBERT SPENCER opened the argument of his essay on
the philosophy of Style with this observation :
•
No general theory of expression seems yet to have been enunciated.
The maxims contained in works on composition and rhetoric are presented
in an unorganized form. Standing as isolated dogmas-as empirical general-
izations, they are neither so clearly apprehended, nor so much respected, as
they would be were they deduced from some simple first principle.
In this, as in other cases, conviction will be greatly strengthened when we
understand the why. And we may be sure that a comprehension of the
general principle from which the rules of composition result, will not only
bring them home to us with greater force, but will discover to us other rules
of like origin.¹
This obvious utility of rhetorical theory has twice in the history of
rhetoric prompted the formulation of a body of psychological prin-
ciples to systematize and explain the rules of the art, both occasions
marking an important step in its development. The history of
rhetoric, like that of many another science, begins with Aristotle.
He constructed out of Aristotelian psychology the theoretical
foundation which first elevated rhetoric from the status of a craft
to the dignity of a science. After Aristotle no substantial advance
was made in the science of psychology for twenty-one centuries, and
it was accordingly not until the advent in the eighteenth century of
the "faculty" psychology of Wolff and Tetons that rhetoricians felt
the need of reconstruction. Tetons' tripartite division of the mind.
into the independent "faculties," emotion, reason, and will, then be-
came the basis of a new rhetorical structure developed by Whately
and others.
In spite of the enormous strides which psychology has made since
the eighteenth century the theory of rhetoric formulated at that time
has continued in vogue up to the present day. There is, however, a
growing conviction that recent developments in psychology make it
The Philosophy of Style, New York, 1920, p. 10.
283
284
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
1
possible and desirable to undertake again the restatement of basic
rhetorical theory. Several students, notably James A. Winans ¹ and
C. H. Woolbert,2 have already addressed themselves to this task of
reconstruction. This paper represents an attempt to contribute to
the solution of the problem by examining the psychological basis of
that portion of rhetoric usually discussed under the head of "argu-
mentation."
I
Argumentation is ordinarily defined as "the art of convincing
others by reasoned discourse." We must here emphasize "reasoned"
because the use of suggestion and emotional appeal will often con-
vince, at least temporarily, and we wish to exclude these rhetorical
methods from the scope of this paper. We are concerned here only
with spoken or written discourse which attempts to convince and
which does so by proposing "reasons" why the hearer or reader
should accept a proposition as true. When we speak of "convincing
others," we may mean either one of two quite different things. A
speaker may desire to induce in his hearer that momentary state of
mind with reference to an idea which leads the hearer to accept it at
the time as true, to say, while the idea is in his conscious mind, "I
believe, I accept your proposition." On the other hand, the speaker
may desire so to affect his hearer's thinking that if his proposition
should enter the hearer's mind at some time in the future, it will
bring with it that state of mind which constitutes acceptance of the
idea. This distinction between the two purposes of argumentation is
so useful that it will be worth while to designate each by a separate
term. Such words as belief, conviction, acceptance, assent, etc., which
might be expected to serve us here, have been worn so smooth by
careless and long-continued use that they are used almost inter-
changeably in ordinary speech. Suppose, therefore, that we some-
what arbitrarily say, let belief be the momentary acceptance of an
idea which is at the time in the field of consciousness; and let convic-
tion be that predisposition which determines that when a given idea
enters the mind it will bring with it the state of belief. A conviction
is thus a potential, or quiescent, belief.
1
¹ See James A. Winans, Public Speaking, New York, 1920, ch. VIII, IX.
See C. H. Woolbert, "Persuasion: Principles and Methods," Quarterly
Journal of Speech Education, V (1919), 12-25, 101-19, 212-38.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION
285
Belief and conviction are psychological phenomena. It is in
terms of psychology that they may be most fully understood. If
psychology can explain the nature of belief and conviction, and more
especially if it can tell us the conditions necessary to produce them in
another, we will have a basis upon which to erect a theory of argu-
mentation. First, then, let us examine the nature of belief and the
conditions necessary to produce it.
Viewed psychologically, belief is an aspect of attention. That is,
any idea which prevails stably in the focus of attention is believed.
If the reader could hold steadily in the center of attention the idea
that the world is flat, he would, for the time at least, believe as im-
plicitly in that doctrine as do Voliva and his followers at Zion City.
As James says, "The most compendious possible formula perhaps
would be that our belief and attention are the same fact. For the
moment, what we attend to is reality."1 And Pillsbury agrees:
"Personally I can discover in a moment of belief nothing but the
stable persistence of the idea or state that is believed." 2
When put thus baldly the proposition does not at first appear
plausible. Someone objects: by an effort of the Will I can concen-
trate my attention for a few seconds upon any idea, however absurd,
for example, that my name is Napoleon; but I do not therefore
believe that I am Napoleon. No, but the idea that you are Napoleon
does not prevail stably in the focus of attention; you are holding it
there precariously by an effort of the Will. Relax your effort for
the fraction of a second and the idea will disappear from the focus
of attention. A slightly different objection may be illustrated as fol-
lows: I believe that this is the month of December, and yet at
the same time I have in mind the idea that it may possibly be May.
I am giving my attention to both ideas at the same time, but I cannot
believe in both at the same time for they are contradictory. True,
the idea that this is May is in your mind, but it is not in the focus of
attention. The field of attention may be likened to the circle of
light thrown on the ground by a street lamp. The brightly illumined
center, corresponding to the focus of attention, shades off imper-
ceptibly into darkness in every direction. It is quite possible for
an idea to exist in this twilight fringe while an opposing idea occupies
the focus of attention, though this may not often happen under
1
¹ William James, Psychology, New York, 1890, p. 322 n.
'W. B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning, New York, 1910, p. 57.
+
286
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
normal conditions. It is only while in the focus of attention that an
idea gives rise to that state of mind we call belief. This objection
suggests another: is it possible for two mutually contradictory ideas
to occupy the focus of attention at the same time?
A ten minute introspection will convince one that contradictory
ideas cannot prevail stably in the focus of attention at the same time.
Either one is in the focus and the other in the fringe of attention, or
the two alternate in the focus of attention. One other objection may
be worth noticing. It may be argued that one can for a few seconds
force into the focus of attention an entirely colorless idea, which is
neither believed nor disbelieved, as for example, that this coin will
fall heads up. Is this really belief? No, but here again the idea
that the coin will fall heads up does not prevail stably in the focus
of attention. Relax the Will and it will quickly flicker out, not, in
this case, due to the competition of opposing ideas, but because it
lacks the emotional intensity necessary to maintain it in the focus
of attention. As James says, "The idea to be consented to must be
kept from flickering and going out. It must be held steadily before
the mind until it fills the mind. Such filling of the mind by an idea,
with its congruous associates, is consent to the idea and to the fact
which the idea represents." ¹
The mere definition of belief in terms of attention does not throw
much light on rhetorical method. The rhetorician is concerned, not
with the phenomenon of attention itself, but with the means of induc-
ing it. The conditions of attention then are what we must seek to
understand.
Obviously the first condition of attention is the initial entrance
into consciousness of the idea attended to. This may take place in
any one of three ways. (a) An idea already in the focus of attention
arouses a dormant idea with which it is connected, and the idea thus
awakened succeeds the first in consciousness. This is the familiar
phenomenon of association. (b) As the result of little understood
subconscious processes an idea may be precipitated abruptly into con-
sciousness, putting to rout any ideas which it may find there. (c) An
idea may be called to the surface of consciousness by an external
stimulus, i.e., by the perception of an object in the physical environ-
ment or by spoken or written speech. This last condition, the per-
ception of the spoken or written word, is the only one over which the
¹ Op. cit., p. 564.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION
287
rhetorician can exercise control and is consequently the only one with
which we are here concerned.
When an idea has been called into the conscious field, two condi-
tions determine whether it will quickly lapse from attention or will
"fill the mind" with that persistent stability which constitutes belief.
The first condition is that the idea must possess a very considerable
emotional intensity. An emotionally colorless idea will not prevail
stably in the focus of attention. If the idea of the desirability of a
protective tariff on steel occurs to, or is brought to the attention of, an
illiterate farm laborer, belief in the desirability of a tariff will not
result. The idea lacks the emotional energy necessary to maintain
it in the focus of attention. The laborer may humor you by con-
centrating his mind on the idea for a few seconds, but leave him to
his own devices and almost at once "tariff" slips from his attention.
But when the same idea enters the conscious mind of a stockholder
in the United States Steel Corporation, it is highly charged with emo-
tional energy and will hold a secure place in the center of attention.
If we were permitted to pry into the mind of the investor in steel,
we would find that the idea of the desirability of a protective tariff
forms a part of a complex system of ideas built up around the con-
cept of private gain. The mental elements composing this system,
including perhaps such diverse ideas as those of the desirability of
voting the Republican ticket and the undesirability of balloon tires,
are united more or less perfectly by the bond of logical consistency.
All of its elements have a bearing on the central theme, private gain.
But the system is also united by the bond of emotional congruity.
Each element in the system shares to at least some degree in the
affective tone, or emotional charge, if we may call it so, of the entire
system. The amount of energy possessed by any element will depend
upon the closeness of its connection with the core of the complex.
Our conception of the structure of the mind then must be that of an
intricate reticular structure, roughly organized into systems on the
basis of logical consistency and drawing from the primitive instincts,
about which the systems are built up, a supply of emotional energy, or
"psychic energy," as Tansley prefers to call it. When an element
of one of these emotionally charged systems enters consciousness it
possesses, by virtue of its logical connection with the system, the emo-
tional intensity necessary to its maintenance in the focus of attention.
The desirability of a protective tariff on steel does not form a
288
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
part of any active system of ideas in the mind of the illiterate farm
laborer. Neither does the idea of free trade on steel. But suppose
that we point out to him that free trade on steel would lower the
price of farm implements, which in turn would enable his employer
to raise the wages of his hired help. The idea of the desirability of
free trade on steel, which has now been incorporated into that active
system of ideas centering about personal gain, henceforth shares the
emotional energy of that system; for the emotional content of the
system may be conceived of as a charge of energy capable of being
transmitted from one element to another over the connecting path-
ways of the mental structure somewhat as electrical energy is trans-
mitted from cell to cell in a circuit. Hume's picturesque figure ex-
presses the same thought: "The vividness of the first conception
diffuses itself along the relations and is conveyed, as by so many
pipes or channels, to every idea that has any communication with the
primary one." 1
We may lay down then as the second condition of attention a
logical connection between the idea attended to and supporting sys-
tems of ideas from which it can draw the emotional energy necessary
to its maintenance in the focus of attention.
The degree of emotional intensity possessed by an idea in the
focus of attention of course varies greatly, and with it varies the
intensity of the resultant belief. One may readily observe that of
two beliefs one is believed more, or, as James would say, has a
greater "sting of reality" than the other. Most college students, for
example, believe both that molecules exist and that the varsity foot-
ball team should be loyally supported; but the latter belief is a much
more real and vivid one. It would be fair to say that in a sense the
student believes the latter belief more than the first. The difference
between the two ideas (in our terms) is that the one is more highly
charged with emotional energy than the other. James recognized this
significance of the emotional content of an idea in determining degree
of belief. "The more a conceived object excites us, the more reality
it has. . . . Moral and religious truths come 'home' to us far more on
some occasions than on others. . . . The 'depth' [heightened belief]
is partly, no doubt, the insight into wider systems of unified relation,
but far more often than that it is the emotional thrill." 2
¹ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, London, 1882, p. 420.
² Op. cit., p. 307.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 289
To the conditions of attention already enumerated (the initial
presence in consciousness of the idea attended to and its connection
with supporting systems from which it can draw emotional energy)
we must add a third; namely, freedom from competing or inhibitory
ideas. It has been frequently pointed out by Tansley and others that
an emotionally charged idea in the focus of attention tends to call
into consciousness other ideas sharing its characteristic emotional
tone. But this tendency of the dominant idea to invite the appear-
ance in consciousness of emotionally congruous ideas is no more sig-
nificant than its corresponding tendency to inhibit the emotionally
incongruous idea. This obverse aspect of the truth Tansley does not
seem to have sufficiently noticed. The earlier psychologists, how-
ever, have frequently pointed it out. Speaking of the emotional state
generated by the presence in consciousness of an emotionally charged
idea, Bain says, "In a state of strong excitement, no thoughts are
allowed to present themselves except such as concur in the present
mood; the links of association are paralyzed as regards everything
that conflicts with the ascendant influence." ¹ And later, ".
whenever a feeling strongly occupies the mind, the objects in har-
mony with it are maintained in the view, and all others repelled and
ignored." 2 James, likewise, states that "When any strong emotional
state whatever is upon us, the tendency is for no images but such as
are congruous with it to come up. If others by chance offer them-
selves, they are instantly smothered and crowded out.” ³ Since each
of the great systems of the mind has its characteristic affective tone,
it commonly happens that logical incompatibility between two ideas is
accompanied by emotional incongruity. The practical consequence is
that a highly charged idea in the focus of attention inhibits less
robust contradictory ideas which might dispute its possession of the
conscious field. This fact may be abundantly illustrated from com-
mon experience. During the war the evidence against German
atrocities in Belgium simply did not occur to the "hundred per cent
American." When objections to his cherished belief in the atrocities.
were forcibly brought to his attention, they seemed pale and unim-
portant and quickly dropped from sight.
1
If the supremacy of an idea in the focus of attention is challenged
¹ Alexander Bain, The Emotions and the Will, London, 1880, p. 20.
2
Ibid., p. 523.
8
³ Op. cit., p. 563.
290
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
by the appearance of an inhibitory idea which enjoys equally good or
better support than the first, i.e., which is connected with a more
active system of ideas or by better established channels, a struggle
between the two ideas ensues. Belief gives way to doubt. When
two or more conflicting ideas compete for exclusive possession of
the field of attention, first one and then the other enjoying temporary
possession, we "deliberate." This state of doubt and vacillation con-
tinues until one idea succeeds in displacing the other or a third
appears capable of resolving the contradiction. Speaking of the
oscillation of the mind between two incompatible interpretations or
solutions of a problem, Pillsbury says, ". . . as different systems
come into prominence successively, the attitude toward the construct
will vary and with this variation the interpretation fluctuates and the
consequent doubt supervenes."1 "Again, one may believe in social-
ism if one considers the evident disparity between the rewards of
different individuals who may be regarded as of the same ability or
as of the same degree of desert. One is firmly opposed to socialism
when men are regarded as essentially very different in ability, and
ability and desert are identified, or it is assumed that men differ in
their deserts as completely as they do in ability. Just so long as the
two sets of experience fluctuate before the mind, one will be in doubt
as to which of the abstract principles is the more desirable. When
one persists, it is by that very fact believed." 2 In a case of this kind
one system may triumph for a time only to be displaced at last by
the other. The individual's belief at a given moment depends upon
which system is in the ascendancy: ". . . belief grows from harmony
of a particular interpretation with the total experience active at the
moment.” 3
Complete freedom from inhibitory ideas of course seldom occurs
in one's thinking about practical affairs. The most earnest believer
in States' rights is aware of objections to that doctrine. While these
objections are not sufficiently strong to dislodge the idea, they do
weaken his belief somewhat. The intensity of a belief varies in-
directly with the number and intensity of the inhibitory ideas which
oppose it.
1
If we had begun our discussion of the conditions of attention
¹ Op. cit., p. 42.
* Ibid., p. 38.
"W. B. Pillsbury, Attention, New York, 1908, p. 169.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 291
by assuming the existence in the focus of attention of an emotionally
charged idea, freedom from inhibitory ideas would have appeared the
only indispensable condition of attention and, therefore, of belief.
This conclusion is confirmed by James's, Scott's, and Pillsbury's
analyses of belief. The state of belief, according to these psycholo-
gists, is passive. Any idea of which we may conceive, i.e., which is
sufficiently active to remain in consciousness, is by that very fact
believed unless contradicted by another idea. According to Scott,
"Every idea that is suggested to the mind is held as truth, unless
inhibited by some contradictory idea."1 "The sense that anything
we think of is unreal," says James, "can only come, then, when that
thing is contradicted by some other thing of which we think. Any
object which remains uncontradicted is ipso facto believed and
posited as absolute reality." And again, " all propositions,
whether attributive or existential, are believed through the very fact
of being conceived, unless they clash with other propositions believed
at the same time." Pillsbury says, “Anything that enters the mind
is normally at once accepted as true." 4
2
•
This analysis of belief may be summed up in the following set
of conclusions. (1) Belief is an aspect of attention. (2) The con-
ditions of attention are (a) the initial entrance into consciousness of
the idea believed, (b) a connection between this idea and supporting
ideational systems from which it can draw the emotional energy
necessary for its maintenance in the focus of attention, (c) freedom
from inhibitory ideas. (3) The intensity of a belief varies directly
with the degree of emotional intensity which it possesses and in-
directly with the number and intensity of the inhibitory ideas which
oppose it.
It now becomes necessary to return to the distinction between
belief (the momentary acceptance of an idea which is at the time in
the focus of attention) and conviction (the predisposition to accept
a given idea whenever it may appear in consciousness). In what
does conviction consist and what are the conditions necessary to pro-
duce it? The first half of this question has already been answered.
A conviction is a potential belief, a predisposition which determines
¹W. D. Scott, The Psychology of Public Speaking, Philadelphia, 1907,
p. 154.
་་
Op. cit., p. 288.
Ibid., p. 290.
* The Psychology of Reasoning, p. 31.
292
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
that when a given idea enters the conscious mind it will enjoy that
stable position in the focus of attention which constitutes belief. But
what is this predisposition? What do we really mean when we refer
to a person's conviction in favor of the World Court? We mean
that the mental elements composing the conceptual systems of his
mind are so organized that whenever the idea of the World Court
enters his conscious mind it will be unimpeded by inhibitory ideas
and will be connected with systems of ideas from which it can draw
the emotional support necessary to its maintenance in the focus of
attention; in other words, we mean that when the idea of the World
Court enters his mind it will enjoy that undivided attention which
constitutes belief. Argumentation is the process of reorganizing the
hearer's conceptual systems to insure a given idea freedom from
inhibitory ideas and connection with supporting conceptual systems.
This process of reorganization not only results immediately in accept-
ance of the idea supported by the argument, but "sets the stage” for
the future triumph of the same idea. In other words, an argumenta-
tive speech which produces belief will at the same time produce con-
viction; and only new argument tending to reestablish the old system
of concepts can destroy it. It is true that a belief accepted in the
presence of the speaker may lose intensity when the personal influ-
ence is withdrawn; but this is merely a case in which two conceptual
systems are of almost equal strength, and the persuasive power of
personality becomes the decisive factor; hence this case points to no
real difference between the process of securing belief and the process
of securing conviction. Since this is true, the three conditions of
attention may be safely taken as a basis for a theory of argumentation.
II
Corresponding to the three conditions of attention there are three
steps in the total process of inducing belief or conviction: (a) calling
the idea to be accepted into the conscious mind of the hearer, (b)
connecting that idea with conceptual systems from which it can
derive sufficient emotional energy to maintain it in the field of atten-
fion, and (c) the disposal of inhibitory ideas; or, in the rhetorician's
terms, the statement of the speaker's proposition, constructive argu-
ment, and refutation. An analysis of the subject-audience situation
will in each case determine which of these processes must be em-
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 293
ployed. For example, a speaker desiring to convince an under-
graduate audience of the value of following a daily schedule of
study would probably employ all three. A plain statement of the
speaker's proposition would suffice to call to mind the idea of adher-
ence to a daily schedule; it would then be necessary to connect this
idea with some strong system of ideas in the hearer's mind, perhaps
that of extracurricular activity or scholastic standing; and finally,
the speaker must satisfactorily dispose of such objections as may
arise in the hearer's mind; for example, the inconvenience of rigid
daily schedules, interference with pleasure, etc. If it were desired
to convince the same audience of the desirability of a vacation in
Europe, constructive argument might possibly be dispensed with
entirely; for the idea of a trip to Europe is, for the average student,
sufficiently vivid to hold his attention if uninhibited by contradictory
ideas. The speaker's problem would lie rather in the refutation of
such objections as the expense of the trip, etc. The typical sermon,
on the other hand, is usually addressed to hearers who entertain no
specific objections to the speaker's proposition. The preacher accord-
ingly devotes his time to connecting his idea with as many sources of
emotional energy as possible; his problem is solely one of vivification.
Little need be said of the first step in the argumentative process.
If the idea to be presented by the speaker is one already familiar to
his hearers, a simple statement will suffice to call it to mind. In
what may be called the "direct" mode of speech construction the
speaker plainly announces his proposition early in the address and
then proceeds to a discussion of the arguments in support of it; i.e.,
he turns his attention first to the idea which he wishes his hearers to
accept and then to the system or systems of ideas with which he
wishes to connect it. However this method may be, and frequently
is, reversed. The speaker may first discuss the systems, connecting
them at the end of the address with his own idea, which is deduced
as a conclusion from the preceding argument. If the speaker's
proposition is unfamiliar to the audience, the argumentative process
must be preceded by exposition.
Constructive argument, or the process of connecting the speaker's
proposition with ideational systems from which it can draw the emo-
tional energy necessary to its maintenance in the field of attention,
calls for a more detailed discussion. Suppose, for the sake of
illustration, that an advocate of free trade, in addressing an audi-
294
RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
ence of western farmers, presents an argument to the following gen-
eral effect: free trade would result in freer competition between local
and foreign manufacturers, and freer competition would lower prices.
The purpose of the argument is to establish a connection between
the idea of free trade and that very active system of ideas built up
around the desire for personal gain. The particular part of this
system with which the connection can most easily be established is
the idea of lower prices. But it is impossible to establish a direct
connection between "free trade" and "lower prices." The speaker
must make the connection indirectly through the idea "freer competi-
tion." As a result of the argument, "free trade" is incorporated into
the "personal gain" system and henceforth shares whatever emo-
tional energy that system may possess. In the course of his address
the speaker will connect "free trade" with as many other systems as
possible with the intention of draining into the idea sufficient energy
to induce a state of belief. In selecting the systems with which to
connect his idea the speaker will be guided by two considerations :
(a) which of the systems available for connection carry the highest
charge of energy? and (b) with which systems can he make the
surest, i.e., the most logical, connections?
So far as it concerns the rhetorician, logic is the science of con-
necting two or more ideas for the purpose of intensifying one of
them. The three types of argument discussed in texts on logic-
deduction, induction, and analogy—are three methods of connect-
ing an idea with a conceptual system. The simple deductive
argument cited in the preceding paragraph, when cast into syllogistic
form, would run as follows:
Freer competition will cause lower prices;
Free trade will cause freer competition;
Therefore, free trade will result in lower prices.
In psychological terms, this syllogism intensifies the idea of free
trade by connecting it with the idea of lower prices through the idea
of freer competition. The major premise (freer competition will
cause lower prices) establishes a connection between the idea "freer
competition" (middle term) and the idea "lower prices" (major
term), which is a part of the "personal gain" system. The minor
premise (free trade will cause freer competition) establishes a con-
nection between the ideas "freer competition" (middle term) and
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 295
"free trade" (minor term). The connection thus established between
"free trade" and "lower prices" is expressed in the conclusion of
the argument.
The following will serve as an example of inductive argument:
The city manager form of government lowers taxes, for at Dayton,
Cleveland, and Buffalo, where the city manager form of government is in
operation, taxes are low.
The argument connects "Dayton," "Cleveland," and "Buffalo" first
with "city manager government" and then with "lower taxes," thus
establishing an indirect connection between "city manager govern-
ment" and "lower taxes."
We may take as an example of analogical argument:
A city manager form of government at Manchester would lower taxes,
for the Dayton city manager government has lowered taxes and the operation
of the city manager plan would be similar in the two cities.
The first premise (the Dayton city manager government has lowered
taxes) connects the middle and major terms of the syllogism; the
second premise (city manager government would operate similarly
in the two cities) connects the middle and minor terms. And again
the connection thus established between the minor and major terms.
is expressed in the conclusion of the argument. The only difference
between the deductive and the analogical syllogism is that in the
former the relation between the minor and middle terms is an "in-
cluded within" relation, while in the latter it is a "similar to" relation.
The actual process of argument is of course seldom so simple as
the preceding discussion might seem to imply. The speaker's idea
is usually supported, not by one, but by many syllogisms, either in
the form of a chain or a series; and the three types of argument
occur in innumerable combinations. In every case, however, the
process will be found to consist in the connection of the speaker's
idea with one or more conceptual systems from which it can draw
the emotional energy necessary to its maintenance in the field of
attention. A further complication arises from the fact that many of
the premises in an argument are implied rather than expressed. The
connections involved in the implication, of course, contribute to the
final result quite as surely as do the expressed premises. If the con-
nection between two ideas is already well established, it is unneces-
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sary to bring it into consciousness; it operates quite as well sub-
consciously.
Before leaving the subject of constructive argument, it may be
of interest to observe that the process of connecting two ideas for
the purpose of intensifying one of them is identical with the process
employed in exposition. To explain a new idea is to relate it to
ideas or conceptual systems already familiar to the hearer. Sup-
pose, for example, that we wish to explain the term "mullah" to an
individual for whom "mullah" has no meaning whatever. The image
(visual or auditory) of the word "mullah" constitutes an imagal
center about which we will attempt to build up a group of meanings.
We begin our explanation with the statement that a mullah is a
teacher, thus connecting the imagal center with the familiar idea
"teacher." If we continue with the statement, a mullah is a Moham-
medan teacher, we have connected the new concept with another
familiar idea. If we add, a mullah teaches the laws and dogmas of
the Mohammedan religion, we will have established still another con-
nection, and the hearer will by this time have acquired at least some
understanding of the new idea; we have built up a rudimentary con-
cept in his mind. The process has been precisely that employed in
constructive argument to connect two ideas for the purpose of inten-
sifying one of them. In both cases the new idea has been incorpor-
ated into old conceptual systems and shares whatever emotional
energy those systems may possess. In constructive argument the
speaker is interested primarily in this resultant vivification of the
new idea; in exposition he is interested primarily in the incorporation
of the new idea into existing systems. Exposition and argument are
thus two aspects of the same process; the only difference between
them lies in the speaker's purpose. Attempts to distinguish sharply
between the methods of exposition and argument will never be more
successful than that of the orthodox theologian who, when challenged
to an argument on the immortality of the soul by his young son,
fresh from college, exclaimed, "Young man, the immortality of the
soul is not a subject upon which intelligent people argue, but I will
explain to you how we know the soul is immortal.”
Let us turn now to the third step in the argumentative process,
the disposal of inhibitory ideas. The most obvious way of disposing
of such a competing idea is by cutting it off from the system from
which it draws its emotional strength. Suppose that a campaign
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 297
speaker, urging the qualifications of Governor X for the presidency
of the United States, encounters the objection, "Senator Y is well
qualified for the presidency for he is a successful business man."
The speaker may attack the minor premise of this syllogism by
attempting to convince his audience that Senator Y has not had a
successful business career, thus severing the connection between the
minor and middle terms; or he may attack the implied major premise
by arguing that a successful business career is not a necessary quali-
fication for the presidency, severing the connection between the
middle and major terms. In either case he will, if successful, cut
off the hostile idea from its supporting system, and it will disappear
as a competitor for the hearer's attention.
The second method of disposing of an inhibitory idea consists in
accepting it "for the sake of argument," and building upon it an
argument in support of another idea which conflicts sharply with
one of the hearer's conceptual systems, it being assumed by the
speaker that the system thus attacked will prove stronger than the
inhibitory idea and the argument built up around it, and will quickly
put the latter to rout in the internal struggle which ensues. Robert
Ingersoll's reductio ad absurdum, employed in a debate with Cardinal
Manning, is the classic example of this method. The Cardinal had
argued: "Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution,
therefore Catholicism is of divine origin." Attacking the implied
major premise of this syllogism (that which withstands persecution
must be of divine origin), Ingersoll replied: "Let us make an appli-
cation of this logic. Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by per-
secution, therefore Catholicism is of divine origin. Catholicism
failed to destroy Protestantism by persecution, therefore Protes-
tantism is of divine origin. Catholicism and Protestantism combined
failed to destroy Infidelity, therefore Infidelity is of divine origin.”
Here Ingersoll took the inhibitory idea presented by his opponent
and built upon it an argument leading to a conclusion (Infidelity is
of divine origin) which conflicts violently with the strong system of
ideas built up around the orthodox Catholic's conception of the
Deity. This deeply rooted system of ideas was doubtless strong
enough to put to rout the newly created system composed of
Manning's inhibitory idea and Ingersoll's reductio of it.
But this method of refutation may be, and usually is, reversed.
That is, the speaker starts with a conceptual system well rooted in
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RHETORIC AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
the minds of his hearers and builds upon it an argument supporting
the antithesis of the inhibitory idea. In the ensuing struggle between
the enlarged system and the poorly supported inhibitory idea the
latter is quickly vanquished. Suppose, for example, that the speaker
urging the qualifications of Governor X for president and encoun-
tering the hostile idea "Senator Y would make a desirable president”
decides to employ this method. Ignoring the argument supporting
the inhibitory idea, he opens his attack with a discussion of the neces-
sity of moral integrity in public officials. Proceeding next to the
point that Senator Y's relation to certain corrupt influences has been
such as seriously to compromise his integrity, he draws the conclusion
that Senator Y would be an undesirable president. The speaker has
built upon one of the hearer's conceptual systems an argument sup-
porting a proposition which is antithetical to the inhibitory idea. In
the struggle which ensues between the two contradictory ideas the
idea of Senator Y's undesirability will, if the speaker has been suc-
cessful, be sufficiently more intense than the other to drive it from
the field. This is the process Pillsbury has in mind when he says,
"One can change the belief of any individual . . . by so presenting
a statement that it shall arouse a different set of experiences to pass
upon the statement.
"" 1
SUMMARY
Belief is an aspect of attention; i.e., any idea which prevails
stably in the focus of attention is by that very fact believed. The
conditions of attention are the initial presence in consciousness of
the idea attended to, a connection between the idea and supporting
conceptual systems from which it can draw the emotional energy
necessary to maintain it in the focus of attention, and freedom from
inhibitory ideas. Corresponding to these three conditions of atten-
tion there are three steps in the total process of inducing belief or
conviction—namely, the statement of the speaker's proposition, con-
structive argument, and refutation. The statement of the speaker's
proposition calls into the hearer's mind the idea which the speaker
desires him to accept; constructive argument connects this idea with
supporting conceptual systems by the use of deduction, induction,
or analogy; refutation disposes of inhibitory ideas by severing them
¹ The Psychology of Reasoning, p. 53.
1
A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARGUMENTATION 299
from their supporting conceptual systems, by revealing a contradic-
tion between the idea and a conceptual system, or by building upon
a conceptual system an argument supporting the antithesis of the
inhibitory idea.
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