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Title: The ethics of rhetoric
Author: Weaver, Richard M.
Language: English
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_The ETHICS of_
Rhetoric
_The ETHICS of_
Rhetoric
_By_ RICHARD M. WEAVER
ὥστε συμβαίνει τὴν ρητορικὴν οἶον
παραφυές τι τῆς διαλεκτικῆς εἶναι καὶ
τῆς περὶ τὰ ἤθη πραγματείας
Thus it happens that rhetoric is an offshoot
of dialectic and also of ethical studies.
—ARISTOTLE, _Rhetoric_
[Illustration]
Chicago · HENRY REGNERY COMPANY · _1953_
Copyright 1953 by Henry Regnery Company. Copyright under
International Copyright Union. Manufactured in the United
States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
53-8796.
Second Printing, December, 1963
Table of Contents
PAGE
I. THE PHAEDRUS AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC 3
II. DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC AT DAYTON, TENNESSEE 27
III. EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE 55
IV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION 85
V. SOME RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 115
VI. MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE 143
VII. THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OLD RHETORIC 164
VIII. THE RHETORIC OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 186
IX. ULTIMATE TERMS IN CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC 211
INDEX 233
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments with thanks are due the following: Charles Scribner’s
Sons for the passage from Allen Tate’s “The Subway,” from _Poems
1922-1947_; Karl Shapiro and Random House, Inc., for the passage from
_Essay on Rime_; and the Viking Press, Inc., for the passage from
Sherwood Anderson’s _A Story Teller’s Story_.
_The ETHICS of_
Rhetoric
Chapter I
THE _PHAEDRUS_ AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC
Our subject begins with the threshold difficulty of defining the question
which Plato’s _Phaedrus_ was meant to answer. Students of this justly
celebrated dialogue have felt uncertain of its unity of theme, and the
tendency has been to designate it broadly as a discussion of the ethical
and the beautiful. The explicit topics of the dialogue are, in order:
love, the soul, speechmaking, and the spoken and written word, or what
is generally termed by us “composition.” The development looks random,
and some of the most interesting passages appear _jeux d’esprit_. The
richness of the literary art diverts attention from the substance of the
argument.
But a work of art which touches on many profound problems justifies
more than one kind of reading. Our difficulty with the _Phaedrus_ may
be that our interpretation has been too literal and too topical. If we
will bring to the reading of it even a portion of that imagination which
Plato habitually exercised, we should perceive surely enough that it is
consistently, and from beginning to end, about one thing, which is the
nature of rhetoric.[1] Again, that point may have been missed because
most readers conceive rhetoric to be a system of artifice rather than an
idea,[2] and the _Phaedrus_, for all its apparent divagation, keeps very
close to a single idea. A study of its rhetorical structure, especially,
may give us the insight which has been withheld, while making us feel
anew that Plato possessed the deepest divining rod among the ancients.
For the imaginative interpretation which we shall now undertake, we have
both general and specific warrant. First, it scarcely needs pointing
out that a Socratic dialogue is in itself an example of transcendence.
Beginning with something simple and topical, it passes to more general
levels of application; and not infrequently, it must make the leap into
allegory for the final utterance. This means, of course, that a Socratic
dialogue may be about its subject implicitly as well as explicitly. The
implicit rendering is usually through some kind of figuration because
it is the nature of this meaning to be ineffable in any other way. It
is necessary, therefore, to be alert for what takes place through the
analogical mode.
Second, it is a matter of curious interest that a warning against
literal reading occurs at an early stage of the _Phaedrus_. Here in the
opening pages, appearing as if to set the key of the theme, comes an
allusion to the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia. On the very spot where the
dialogue begins, Boreas is said to have carried off the maiden. Does
Socrates believe that this tale is really true? Or is he in favor of a
scientific explanation of what the myth alleges? Athens had scientific
experts, and the scientific explanation was that the north wind had
pushed her off some rocks where she was playing with a companion. In this
way the poetical story is provided with a factual basis. The answer of
Socrates is that many tales are open to this kind of rationalization,
but that the result is tedious and actually irrelevant. It is irrelevant
because our chief concern is with the nature of the man, and it is
beside the point to probe into such matters while we are yet ignorant
of ourselves. The scientific criticism of Greek mythology, which may
be likened to the scientific criticism of the myths of the Bible in
our own day, produces at best “a boorish sort of wisdom (ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ
σοφίᾳ).” It is a limitation to suppose that the truth of the story
lies in its historicity. The “boorish sort of wisdom” seeks to supplant
poetic allegation with fact, just as an archaeologist might look for the
foundations of the Garden of Eden. But while this sort of search goes
on the truth flies off, on wings of imagination, and is not recoverable
until the searcher attains a higher level of pursuit. Socrates is
satisfied with the parable, and we infer from numerous other passages
that he believed that some things are best told by parable and some
perhaps discoverable only by parable. Real investigation goes forward
with the help of analogy. “Freud without Sophocles is unthinkable,” a
modern writer has said.[3]
With these precepts in mind, we turn to that part of the _Phaedrus_
which has proved most puzzling: why is so much said about the absurd
relationship of the lover and the non-lover? Socrates encounters Phaedrus
outside the city wall. The latter has just come from hearing a discourse
by Lysias which enchanted him with its eloquence. He is prevailed upon to
repeat this discourse, and the two seek out a shady spot on the banks of
the Ilissus. Now the discourse is remarkable because although it was “in
a way, a love speech,” its argument was that people should grant favors
to non-lovers rather than to lovers. “This is just the clever thing
about it,” Phaedrus remarks. People are in the habit of preferring their
lovers, but it is much more intelligent, as the argument of Lysias runs,
to prefer a non-lover. Accordingly, the first major topic of the dialogue
is a eulogy of the non-lover. The speech provides good subject matter
for jesting on the part of Socrates, and looks like another exhibition
of the childlike ingeniousness which gives the Greeks their charm. Is it
merely a piece of literary trifling? Rather, it is Plato’s dramatistic
presentation of a major thesis. Beneath the surface of repartee and
mock seriousness, he is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form
of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and
provoking an expense of spirit.
Sophistications of theory cannot obscure the truth that there are but
three ways for language to affect us. It can move us toward what is good;
it can move us toward what is evil; or it can, in hypothetical third
place, fail to move us at all.[4] Of course there are numberless degrees
of effect under the first two heads, and the third, as will be shown, is
an approximate rather than an absolute zero of effect. But any utterance
is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can
avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of
the chief considerations of the _Phaedrus_, just as it is of contemporary
semantic theory. What Plato has succeeded in doing in this dialogue,
whether by a remarkably effaced design, or unconsciously through the
formal pressure of his conception, is to give us embodiments of the three
types of discourse. These are respectively the non-lover, the evil lover,
and the noble lover. We shall take up these figures in their sequence and
show their relevance to the problem of language.
The eulogy of the non-lover in the speech of Lysias, as we hear it
repeated to Socrates, stresses the fact that the non-lover follows a
policy of enlightened self-interest. First of all, the non-lover does
not neglect his affairs or commit extreme acts under the influence of
passion. Since he acts from calculation, he never has occasion for
remorse. No one ever says of him that he is not in his right mind,
because all of his acts are within prudential bounds. The first point
is, in sum, that the non-lover never sacrifices himself and therefore
never feels the vexation which overtakes lovers when they recover from
their passion and try to balance their pains with their profit. And the
non-lover is constant whereas the lover is inconstant. The first argument
then is that the non-lover demonstrates his superiority through prudence
and objectivity. The second point of superiority found in non-lovers is
that there are many more of them. If one is limited in one’s choice to
one’s lovers, the range is small; but as there are always more non-lovers
than lovers, one has a better chance in choosing among many of finding
something worthy of one’s affection. A third point of superiority is that
association with the non-lover does not excite public comment. If one is
seen going about with the object of one’s love, one is likely to provoke
gossip; but when one is seen conversing with the non-lover, people merely
realize that “everybody must converse with somebody.” Therefore this
kind of relationship does not affect one’s public standing, and one is
not disturbed by what the neighbors are saying. Finally, non-lovers are
not jealous of one’s associates. Accordingly they do not try to keep one
from companions of intellect or wealth for fear that they may be outshone
themselves. The lover, by contrast, tries to draw his beloved away from
such companionship and so deprives him of improving associations. The
argument is concluded with a generalization that one ought to grant
favors not to the needy or the importunate, but to those who are able to
repay. Such is the favorable account of the non-lover given by Lysias.
We must now observe how these points of superiority correspond to those
of “semantically purified” speech. By “semantically purified speech” we
mean the kind of speech approaching pure notation in the respect that
it communicates abstract intelligence without impulsion. It is a simple
instrumentality, showing no affection for the object of its symbolizing
and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer. In its ideal conception,
it would have less power to move than 2 + 2 = 4, since it is generally
admitted that mathematical equations may have the beauty of elegance, and
hence are not above suspicion where beauty is suspect. But this neuter
language will be an unqualified medium of transmission of meanings from
mind to mind, and by virtue of its minds can remain in an unprejudiced
relationship to the world and also to other minds.
Since the characteristic of this language is absence of anything like
affection, it exhibits toward the thing being represented merely a sober
fidelity, like that of the non-lover toward his companion. Instead of
passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity. Its “enlightened
self-interest” takes the form of an unvarying accuracy and regularity in
its symbolic references, most, if not all of which will be to verifiable
data in the extramental world. Like a thrifty burgher, it has no
romanticism about it; and it distrusts any departure from the literal
and prosaic. The burgher has his feet on the ground; and similarly the
language of pure notation has its point-by-point contact with objective
reality. As Stuart Chase, one of its modern proponents, says in _The
Tyranny of Words_: “_If we wish to understand the world and ourselves,
it follows that we should use a language whose structure corresponds to
physical structure_”[5] (italics his). So this language is married to the
world, and its marital fidelity contrasts with the extravagances of other
languages.
In second place, this language is far more “available.” Whereas
rhetorical language, or language which would persuade, must always be
particularized to suit the occasion, drawing its effectiveness from
many small nuances, a “utility” language is very general and one has
no difficulty putting his meaning into it if he is satisfied with a
paraphrase of that meaning. The 850 words recommended for Basic English,
for example, are highly available in the sense that all native users of
English have them instantly ready and learners of English can quickly
acquire them. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the availability
is a heavy tax upon all other qualities. Most of what we admire as
energy and fullness tends to disappear when mere verbal counters are
used. The conventional or public aspect of language can encroach upon the
suggestive or symbolical aspect, until the naming is vague or blurred. In
proportion as the medium is conventional in the widest sense and avoids
all individualizing, personalizing, and heightening terms, it is common,
and the commonness constitutes the negative virtue ascribed to the
non-lover.
Finally, with reference to the third qualification of the non-lover,
it is true that neuter language does not excite public opinion. This
fact follows from its character outlined above. Rhetorical language on
the other hand, for whatever purpose used, excites interest and with it
either pleasure or alarm. People listen instinctively to the man whose
speech betrays inclination. It does not matter what the inclination is
toward, but we may say that the greater the degree of inclination, the
greater the curiosity or response. Hence a “style” in speech always
causes one to be a marked man, and the public may not be so much
impressed—at least initially—by what the man is for or against as by the
fact that he has a style. The way therefore to avoid public comment is
to avoid the speech of affection and to use that of business, since, to
echo the original proposition of Lysias, everybody knows that one must do
business with others. From another standpoint, then, this is the language
of prudence. These are the features which give neuter discourse an appeal
to those who expect a scientific solution of human problems.
In summing up the trend of meaning, we note that Lysias has been praising
a disinterested kind of relationship which avoids all excesses and
irrationalities, all the dementia of love. It is a circumspect kind of
relationship, which is preferred by all men who wish to do well in the
world and avoid tempestuous courses. We have compared its detachment
with the kind of abstraction to be found in scientific notation. But as
an earnest of what is to come let us note, in taking leave of this part,
that Phaedrus expresses admiration for the eloquence, especially of
diction, with which the suit of the non-lover has been urged. This is our
warning of the dilemma of the non-lover.
Now we turn to the second major speech of the dialogue, which is made
by Socrates. Notwithstanding Phaedrus’ enthusiastic praise, Socrates is
dissatisfied with the speech of the non-lover. He remembers having heard
wiser things on the subject and feels that he can make a speech on the
same theme “different from this and quite as good.” After some playful
exchange, Socrates launches upon his own abuse of love, which centers
on the point that the lover is an exploiter. Love (ἔρως) is defined as
the kind of desire which overcomes rational opinion and moves toward
the enjoyment of personal or bodily beauty. The lover wishes to make
the object of his passion as pleasing to himself as possible; but to
those possessed by this frenzy, only that which is subject to their will
is pleasant. Accordingly, everything which is opposed, or is equal or
better, the lover views with hostility. He naturally therefore tries to
make the beloved inferior to himself in every respect. He is pleased if
the beloved has intellectual limitations because they have the effect of
making him manageable. For a similar reason he tries to keep him away
from all influences which might “make a man of him,” and of course the
greatest of these is divine philosophy. While he is working to keep him
intellectually immature, he works also to keep him weak and effeminate,
with such harmful result that the beloved is unable to play a man’s part
in crises. The lover is, moreover, jealous of the possession of property
because this gives the beloved an independence which he does not wish
him to have. Thus the lover in exercising an unremitting compulsion over
the beloved deprives him of all praiseworthy qualities, and this is the
price the beloved pays for accepting a lover who is “necessarily without
reason.” In brief, the lover is not motivated by benevolence toward the
beloved, but by selfish appetite; and Socrates can aptly close with the
quotation: “As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their loves.” The speech
is on the single theme of exploitation. It is important for us to keep
in mind the object of love as here described, because another kind of
love with a different object is later introduced into the dialogue, and
we shall discuss the counterpart of each.
As we look now for the parallel in language, we find ourselves
confronting the second of the three alternatives: speech which influences
us in the direction of what is evil. This we shall call base rhetoric
because its end is the exploitation which Socrates has been condemning.
We find that base rhetoric hates that which is opposed, or is equal
or better because all such things are impediments to its will, and
in the last analysis it knows only its will. Truth is the stubborn,
objective restraint which this will endeavors to overcome. Base rhetoric
is therefore always trying to keep its objects from the support which
personal courage, noble associations, and divine philosophy provide a man.
The base rhetorician, we may say, is a man who has yielded to the wrong
aspects of existence. He has allowed himself to succumb to the sights
and shows, to the physical pleasures which conspire against noble life.
He knows that the only way he can get a following in his pursuits (and
a following seems necessary to maximum enjoyment of the pursuits) is to
work against the true understanding of his followers. Consequently the
things which would elevate he keeps out of sight, and the things with
which he surrounds his “beloved” are those which minister immediately to
desire. The beloved is thus emasculated in understanding in order that
the lover may have his way. Or as Socrates expresses it, the selfish
lover contrives things so that the beloved will be “most agreeable to him
and most harmful to himself.”
Examples of this kind of contrivance occur on every hand in the
impassioned language of journalism and political pleading. In the
world of affairs which these seek to influence, the many are kept in a
state of pupillage so that they will be most docile to their “lovers.”
The techniques of the base lover, especially as exemplified in modern
journalism, would make a long catalogue, but in general it is accurate
to say that he seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by
never permitting an honest examination of alternatives. Nothing is more
feared by him than a true dialectic, for this not only endangers his
favored alternative, but also gives the “beloved”—how clearly here are
these the “lambs” of Socrates’ figure—some training in intellectual
independence. What he does therefore is dress up one alternative in all
the cheap finery of immediate hopes and fears, knowing that if he can
thus prevent a masculine exercise of imagination and will, he can have
his way. By discussing only one side of an issue, by mentioning cause
without consequence or consequence without cause, acts without agents or
agents without agency,[6] he often successfully blocks definition and
cause-and-effect reasoning. In this way his choices are arrayed in such
meretricious images that one can quickly infer the juvenile mind which
they would attract. Of course the base rhetorician today, with his vastly
augmented power of propagation, has means of deluding which no ancient
rhetor in forum or market place could have imagined.
Because Socrates has now made a speech against love, representing it
as an evil, the non-lover seems to survive in estimation. We observe,
however, that the non-lover, instead of being celebrated, is disposed of
dialectically. “So, in a word, I say that the non-lover possesses all the
advantages that are opposed to the disadvantages we found in the lover.”
This is not without bearing upon the subject matter of the important
third speech, to which we now turn.
At this point in the dialogue, Socrates is warned by his monitory spirit
that he has been engaging in a defamation of love despite the fact that
love is a divinity. “If love is, as indeed he is, a god or something
divine, he can be nothing evil; but the two speeches just now said that
he was evil.” These discourses were then an impiety—one representing
non-love as admirable and the other attacking love as base. Socrates
resolves to make amends, and the recantation which follows is one of the
most elaborate developments in the Platonic system. The account of love
which emerges from this new position may be summarized as follows.
Love is often censured as a form of madness, yet not all madness is evil.
There is a madness which is simple degeneracy, but on the other hand
there are kinds of madness which are really forms of inspiration, from
which come the greatest gifts conferred on man. Prophecy is a kind of
madness, and so too is poetry. “The poetry of the sane man vanishes into
nothingness before that of the inspired madman.” Mere sanity, which is
of human origin, is inferior to that madness which is inspired by the
gods and which is a condition for the highest kind of achievement. In
this category goes the madness of the true lover. His is a generous state
which confers blessings to the ignoring of self, whereas the conduct of
the non-lover displays all the selfishness of business: “the affection of
the non-lover, which is alloyed with mortal prudence and follows mortal
and parsimonious rules of conduct will beget in the beloved soul the
narrowness which common folk praise as virtue; it will cause the soul to
be a wanderer upon the earth for nine thousand years and a fool below the
earth at last.” It is the vulgar who do not realize that the madness of
the noble lover is an inspired madness because he has his thoughts turned
toward a beauty of divine origin.
Now the attitude of the noble lover toward the beloved is in direct
contrast with that of the evil lover, who, as we have seen, strives
to possess and victimize the object of his affections. For once the
noble lover has mastered the conflict within his own soul by conquering
appetite and fixing his attention upon the intelligible and the divine,
he conceives an exalted attitude toward the beloved. The noble lover now
“follows the beloved in reverence and awe.” So those who are filled with
this kind of love “exhibit no jealousy or meanness toward the loved one,
but endeavor by every means in their power to lead him to the likeness
of the god whom they honor.” Such is the conversion by which love turns
from the exploitative to the creative.
Here it becomes necessary to bring our concepts together and to think
of all speech having persuasive power as a kind of “love.”[7] Thus,
rhetorical speech is madness to the extent that it departs from the
line which mere sanity lays down. There is always in its statement a
kind of excess or deficiency which is immediately discernible when
the test of simple realism is applied. Simple realism operates on a
principle of equation or correspondence; one thing must match another,
or, representation must tally with thing represented, like items in
a tradesman’s account. Any excess or deficiency on the part of the
representation invokes the existence of the world of symbolism, which
simple realism must deny. This explains why there is an immortal feud
between men of business and the users of metaphor and metonymy, the poets
and the rhetoricians.[8] The man of business, the narrow and parsimonious
soul in the allusion of Socrates, desires a world which is a reliable
materiality. But this the poet and rhetorician will never let him have,
for each, with his own purpose, is trying to advance the borders of the
imaginative world. A primrose by the river’s brim will not remain that
in the poet’s account, but is promptly turned into something very much
larger and something highly implicative. He who is accustomed to record
the world with an abacus cannot follow these transfigurations; and
indeed the very occurrence of them subtly undermines the premise of his
business. It is the historic tendency of the tradesman, therefore, to
confine passion to quite narrow channels so that it will not upset the
decent business arrangements of the world. But if the poet, as the chief
transformer of our picture of the world, is the peculiar enemy of this
mentality, the rhetorician is also hostile when practicing the kind of
love proper to him. The “passion” in his speech is revolutionary, and it
has a practical end.
We have now indicated the significance of the three types of lovers; but
the remainder of the _Phaedrus_ has much more to say about the nature
of rhetoric, and we must return to one or more points to place our
subject in a wider context. The problem of rhetoric which occupied Plato
persistently, not only in the _Phaedrus_ but also in other dialogues
where this art is reviewed, may be best stated as a question: if truth
alone is not sufficient to persuade men, what else remains that can be
legitimately added? In one of the exchanges with Phaedrus, Socrates puts
the question in the mouth of a personified Rhetoric: “I do not compel
anyone to learn to speak without knowing the truth, but if my advice is
of any value, he learns that first and then acquires me. So what I claim
is this, that without my help the knowledge of the truth does not give
the art of persuasion.”
Now rhetoric as we have discussed it in relation to the lovers consists
of truth plus its artful presentation, and for this reason it becomes
necessary to say something more about the natural order of dialectic
and rhetoric. In any general characterization rhetoric will include
dialectic,[9] but for the study of method it is necessary to separate
the two. Dialectic is a method of investigation whose object is the
establishment of truth about doubtful propositions. Aristotle in the
_Topics_ gives a concise statement of its nature. “A dialectical problem
is a subject of inquiry that contributes either to choice or avoidance,
or to truth and knowledge, and that either by itself, or as a help to
the solution of some other such problem. It must, moreover, be something
on which either people hold no opinion either way, or the masses hold a
contrary opinion to the philosophers, or the philosophers to the masses,
or each of them among themselves.”[10] Plato is not perfectly clear
about the distinction between positive and dialectical terms. In one
passage[11] he contrasts the “positive” terms “iron” and “silver” with
the “dialectical” terms “justice” and “goodness”; yet in other passages
his “dialectical” terms seem to include categorizations of the external
world. Thus Socrates indicates that distinguishing the horse from the
ass is a dialectical operation;[12] and he tells us later that a good
dialectician is able to divide things by classes “where the natural
joints are” and will avoid breaking any part “after the manner of a bad
carver.”[13] Such, perhaps, is Aristotle’s dialectic which contributes to
truth and knowledge.
But there is a branch of dialectic which contributes to “choice or
avoidance,” and it is with this that rhetoric is regularly found joined.
Generally speaking, this is a rhetoric involving questions of policy, and
the dialectic which precedes it will determine not the application of
positive terms but that of terms which are subject to the contingency of
evaluation. Here dialectical inquiry will concern itself not with what
is “iron” but with what is “good.” It seeks to establish what belongs in
the category of the “just” rather than what belongs in the genus _Canis_.
As a general rule, simple object words such as “iron” and “house” have
no connotations of policy, although it is frequently possible to give
them these through speech situations in which there is added to their
referential function a kind of impulse. We should have to interpret in
this way “Fire!” or “Gold!” because these terms acquire something through
intonation and relationship which places them in the class of evaluative
expressions.
Any piece of persuasion, therefore, will contain as its first process a
dialectic establishing terms which have to do with policy. Now a term of
policy is essentially a term of motion, and here begins the congruence of
rhetoric with the soul which underlies the speculation of the _Phaedrus_.
In his myth of the charioteer, Socrates declares that every soul is
immortal because “that which is ever moving is immortal.” Motion, it
would appear from this definition, is part of the soul’s essence. And
just because the soul is ever tending, positive or indifferent terms
cannot partake of this congruence. But terms of tendency—goodness,
justice, divinity, and the like—are terms of motion and therefore may
be said to comport with the soul’s essence. The soul’s perception of
goodness, justice, and divinity will depend upon its proper tendency,
while at the same time contacts with these in discourse confirm and
direct that tendency. The education of the soul is not a process of
bringing it into correspondence with a physical structure like the
external world, but rather a process of rightly affecting its motion. By
this conception, a soul which is rightly affected calls that good which
is good; but a soul which is wrongly turned calls that good which is
evil. What Plato has prepared us to see is that the virtuous rhetorician,
who is a lover of truth, has a soul of such movement that its dialectical
perceptions are consonant with those of a divine mind. Or, in the
language of more technical philosophy, this soul is aware of axiological
systems which have ontic status. The good soul, consequently, will not
urge a perversion of justice as justice in order to impose upon the
commonwealth. Insofar as the soul has its impulse in the right direction,
its definitions will agree with the true nature of intelligible things.
There is, then, no true rhetoric without dialectic, for the dialectic
provides that basis of “high speculation about nature” without which
rhetoric in the narrower sense has nothing to work upon. Yet, when the
disputed terms have been established, we are at the limit of dialectic.
How does the noble rhetorician proceed from this point on? That the
clearest demonstration in terms of logical inclusion and exclusion often
fails to win assent we hardly need state; therefore, to what does the
rhetorician resort at this critical passage? It is the stage at which
he passes from the logical to the analogical, or it is where figuration
comes into rhetoric.
To look at this for a moment through a practical illustration, let us
suppose that a speaker has convinced his listeners that his position is
“true” as far as dialectical inquiry may be pushed. Now he sets about
moving the listeners toward that position, but there is no way to move
them except through the operation of analogy. The analogy proceeds by
showing that the position being urged resembles or partakes of something
greater and finer. It will be represented, in sum, as one of the steps
leading toward ultimate good. Let us further suppose our speaker to be
arguing for the payment of a just debt. The payment of the just debt is
not itself justice, but the payment of this particular debt is one of the
many things which would have to be done before this could be a completely
just world. It is just, then, because it partakes of the ideal justice,
or it is a small analogue of all justice (in practice it will be found
that the rhetorician makes extensive use of synecdoche, whereby the small
part is used as a vivid suggestion of the grandeur of the whole). It is
by bringing out these resemblances that the good rhetorician leads those
who listen in the direction of what is good. In effect, he performs a
cure of souls by giving impulse, chiefly through figuration, toward an
ideal good.
We now see the true rhetorician as a noble lover of the good, who works
through dialectic and through poetic or analogical association. However
he is compelled to modulate by the peculiar features of an occasion, this
is his method.
It may not be superfluous to draw attention to the fact that what we
have here outlined is the method of the _Phaedrus_ itself. The dialectic
appears in the dispute about love. The current thesis that love is
praiseworthy is countered by the antithesis that love is blameworthy.
This position is fully developed in the speech of Lysias and in the first
speech of Socrates. But this position is countered by a new thesis
that after all love is praiseworthy because it is a divine thing. Of
course, this is love on a higher level, or love re-defined. This is the
regular process of transcendence which we have noted before. Now, having
rescued love from the imputation of evil by excluding certain things
from its definition, what does Socrates do? Quite in accordance with our
analysis, he turns rhetorician. He tries to make this love as attractive
as possible by bringing in the splendid figure of the charioteer.[14] In
the narrower conception of this art, the allegory is the rhetoric, for
it excites and fills us with desire for this kind of love, depicted with
many terms having tendency toward the good. But in the broader conception
the art must include also the dialectic, which succeeded in placing love
in the category of divine things before filling our imaginations with
attributes of divinity.[15] It is so regularly the method of Plato to
follow a subtle analysis with a striking myth that it is not unreasonable
to call him the master rhetorician. This goes far to explain why those
who reject his philosophy sometimes remark his literary art with mingled
admiration and annoyance.
The objection sometimes made that rhetoric cannot be used by a lover
of truth because it indulges in “exaggerations” can be answered as
follows. There is an exaggeration which is mere wantonness, and with
this the true rhetorician has nothing to do. Such exaggeration is purely
impressionistic in aim. Like caricature, whose only object is to amuse,
it seizes upon any trait or aspect which could produce titillation
and exploits this without conscience. If all rhetoric were like this,
we should have to grant that rhetoricians are persons of very low
responsibility and their art a disreputable one. But the rhetorician we
have now defined is not interested in sensationalism.
The exaggeration which this rhetorician employs is not caricature but
prophecy; and it would be a fair formulation to say that true rhetoric is
concerned with the potency of things. The literalist, like the anti-poet
described earlier, is troubled by its failure to conform to a present
reality. What he fails to appreciate is that potentiality is a mode of
existence, and that all prophecy is about the tendency of things. The
discourse of the noble rhetorician, accordingly, will be about real
potentiality or possible actuality, whereas that of the mere exaggerator
is about unreal potentiality. Naturally this distinction rests upon a
supposal that the rhetorician has insight, and we could not defend him
in the absence of that condition. But given insight, he has the duty
to represent to us the as yet unactualized future. It would be, for
example, a misrepresentation of current facts but not of potential ones
to talk about the joys of peace in a time of war. During the Second World
War, at the depth of Britain’s political and military disaster, Winston
Churchill likened the future of Europe to “broad sunlit uplands.” Now if
one had regard only for the hour, this was a piece of mendacity such as
the worst charlatans are found committing; but if one took Churchill’s
premises and then considered the potentiality, the picture was within
bounds of actualization. His “exaggeration” was that the defeat of the
enemy would place Europe in a position for long and peaceful progress.
At the time the surface trends ran the other way; the actuality was a
valley of humiliation. Yet the hope which transfigured this to “broad
sunlit uplands” was not irresponsible, and we conclude by saying that the
rhetorician talks about both what exists simply and what exists by favor
of human imagination and effort.[16]
This interest in actualization is a further distinction between pure
dialectic and rhetoric. With its forecast of the actual possibility,
rhetoric passes from mere scientific demonstration of an idea to
its relation to prudential conduct. A dialectic must take place _in
vacuo_, and the fact alone that it contains contraries leaves it an
intellectual thing. Rhetoric, on the other hand, always espouses one of
the contraries. This espousal is followed by some attempt at impingement
upon actuality. That is why rhetoric, with its passion for the actual, is
more complete than mere dialectic with its dry understanding. It is more
complete on the premise that man is a creature of passion who must live
out that passion in the world. Pure contemplation does not suffice for
this end. As Jacques Maritain has expressed it: “love ... is not directed
at possibilities or pure essences; it is directed at what exists; one
does not love possibilities, one loves that which exists or is destined
to exist.”[17] The complete man, then, is the “lover” added to the
scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician. Understanding followed by
actualization seems to be the order of creation, and there is no need for
the role of rhetoric to be misconceived.
The pure dialectician is left in the theoretical position of the
non-lover, who can attain understanding but who cannot add impulse to
truth. We are compelled to say “theoretical position” because it is by
no means certain that in the world of actual speech the non-lover has
more than a putative existence. We have seen previously that his speech
would consist of strictly referential words which would serve only as
designata. Now the question arises: at what point is motive to come
into such language? Kenneth Burke in _A Grammar of Motives_ has pointed
to “the pattern of embarrassment behind the contemporary ideal of a
language that will best promote good action by entirely eliminating the
element of exhortation or command. Insofar as such a project succeeded,
its terms would involve a narrowing of circumference to a point where
the principle of personal action is eliminated from language, so that an
act would follow from it only as a non-sequitur, a kind of humanitarian
after-thought.”[18]
The fault of this conception of language is that scientific intention
turns out to be enclosed in artistic intention and not _vice versa_.
Let us test this by taking as an example one of those “fact-finding
committees” so favored by modern representative governments. A language
in which all else is suppressed in favor of nuclear meanings would be
an ideal instrumentality for the report of such a committee. But this
committee, if it lived up to the ideal of its conception, would have
to be followed by an “attitude-finding committee” to tell us what its
explorations really mean. In real practice the fact-finding committee
understands well enough that it is also an attitude-finding committee,
and where it cannot show inclination through language of tendency,
it usually manages to do so through selection and arrangement of the
otherwise inarticulate facts. To recur here to the original situation in
the dialogue, we recall that the eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover,
had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a
sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One
must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the
neutrality of their discourse. We cannot deny that there are degrees of
objectivity in the reference of speech. But this is not the same as an
assurance that a vocabulary of reduced meanings will solve the problems
of mankind. Many of those problems will have to be handled, as Socrates
well knew, by the student of souls, who must primarily make use of the
language of tendency. The soul is impulse, not simply cognition; and
finally one’s interest in rhetoric depends on how much poignancy one
senses in existence.[19]
Rhetoric moves the soul with a movement which cannot finally be justified
logically. It can only be valued analogically with reference to some
supreme image. Therefore when the rhetorician encounters some soul
“sinking beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice” he seeks
to re-animate it by holding up to its sight the order of presumptive
goods. This order is necessarily a hierarchy leading up to the ultimate
good. All of the terms in a rhetorical vocabulary are like links in a
chain stretching up to some master link which transmits its influence
down through the linkages. It is impossible to talk about rhetoric as
effective expression without having as a term giving intelligibility
to the whole discourse, the Good. Of course, inferior concepts of the
Good may be and often are placed in this ultimate position; and there
is nothing to keep a base lover from inverting the proper order and
saying, “Evil, be thou my good.” Yet the fact remains that in any
piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another
rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate.
There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily
an aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an
aristocracy of notions, to say nothing of supplementing his logical and
pathetic proofs with an ethical proof.
All things considered, rhetoric, noble or base, is a great power in the
world; and we note accordingly that at the center of the public life of
every people there is a fierce struggle over who shall control the means
of rhetorical propagation. Today we set up “offices of information,”
which like the sly lover in the dialogue, pose as non-lovers while
pushing their suits. But there is no reason to despair over the fact that
men will never give up seeking to influence one another. We would not
desire it to be otherwise; neuter discourse is a false idol, to worship
which is to commit the very offense for which Socrates made expiation in
his second speech.
Since we want not emancipation from impulse but clarification of impulse,
the duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into
a whole that is greater than scientific perception.[20] The realization
that just as no action is really indifferent, so no utterance is without
its responsibility introduces, it is true, a certain strenuousity into
life, produced by a consciousness that “nothing is lost.” Yet this is
preferable to that desolation which proceeds from an infinite dispersion
or feeling of unaccountability. Even so, the choice between them is
hardly ours to make; we did not create the order of things, but being
accountable for our impulses, we wish these to be just.
Thus when we finally divest rhetoric of all the notions of artifice
which have grown up around it, we are left with something very much
like Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God.” This is its essence and
the _fons et origo_ of its power. It is “intellectual” because, as we
have previously seen, there is no honest rhetoric without a preceding
dialectic. The kind of rhetoric which is justly condemned is utterance
in support of a position before that position has been adjudicated with
reference to the whole universe of discourse[21]—and of such the world
always produces more than enough. It is “love” because it is something in
addition to bare theoretical truth. That element in addition is a desire
to bring truth into a kind of existence, or to give it an actuality
to which theory is indifferent. Now what is to be said about our last
expression, “of God”? Echoes of theological warfare will cause many to
desire a substitute for this, and we should not object. As long as we
have in ultimate place the highest good man can intuit, the relationship
is made perfect. We shall be content with “intellectual love of the
Good.” It is still the intellectual love of good which causes the noble
lover to desire not to devour his beloved but to shape him according to
the gods as far as mortal power allows. So rhetoric at its truest seeks
to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in
that chain extending up toward the ideal, which only the intellect can
apprehend and only the soul have affection for. This is the justified
affection of which no one can be ashamed, and he who feels no influence
of it is truly outside the communion of minds. Rhetoric appears, finally,
as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.
It may be granted that in this essay we have gone some distance from
the banks of the Ilissus. What began as a simple account of passion
becomes by transcendence an allegory of all speech. No one would think of
suggesting that Plato had in mind every application which has here been
made, but that need not arise as an issue. The structure of the dialogue,
the way in which the judgments about speech concentre, and especially the
close association of the true, the beautiful, and the good, constitute a
unity of implication. The central idea is that all speech, which is the
means the gods have given man to express his soul, is a form of eros, in
the proper interpretation of the word. With that truth the rhetorician
will always be brought face to face as soon as he ventures beyond the
consideration of mere artifice and device.
Chapter II
DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC AT DAYTON, TENNESSEE
We have maintained that dialectic and rhetoric are distinguishable
stages of argumentation, although often they are not distinguished by
the professional mind, to say nothing of the popular mind. Dialectic is
that stage which defines the subject satisfactorily with regard to the
_logos_, or the set of propositions making up some coherent universe
of discourse; and we can therefore say that a dialectical position is
established when its relation to an opposite has been made clear and
it is thus rationally rather than empirically sustained. Despite the
inconclusiveness of Plato on this subject, we shall say that facts are
never dialectically determined—although they may be elaborated in a
dialectical system—and that the urgency of facts is never a dialectical
concern. For similar reasons Professor Adler, in his searching study of
dialectic, maintains the position that “Facts, that is non-discursive
elements, are never determinative of dialectic in a logical or
intellectual sense....”[22]
What a successful dialectic secures for any position therefore, as we
noted in the opening chapter, is not actuality but possibility; and what
rhetoric thereafter accomplishes is to take any dialectically secured
position (since positive positions, like the “position” that water
freezes at 32°F., are not matters for rhetorical appeal) and show its
relationship to the world of prudential conduct. This is tantamount to
saying that what the specifically rhetorical plea asks of us is belief,
which is a preliminary to action.
It may be helpful to state this relationship through an example less
complex than that of the Platonic dialogue. The speaker who in a
dialectical contest has taken the position that “magnanimity is a virtue”
has by his process of opposition and exclusion won our intellectual
assent, inasmuch as we see the abstract possibility of this position in
the world of discourse. He has not, however, produced in us a resolve to
practice magnanimity. To accomplish this he must pass from the realm of
possibility to that of actuality; it is not the logical invincibility
of “magnanimity” enclosed in the class “virtue” which wins our assent;
rather it is the contemplation of magnanimity _sub specie_ actuality.
Accordingly when we say that rhetoric instills belief and action, we are
saying that it intersects possibility with the plane of actuality and
hence of the imperative.[23]
A failure to appreciate this distinction is responsible for many lame
performances in our public controversies. The effects are, in outline,
that the dialectician cannot understand why his demonstration does not
win converts; and the rhetorician cannot understand why his appeal is
rejected as specious. The answer, as we have begun to indicate, is that
the dialectic has not made reference to reality, which men confronted
with problems of conduct require; and the rhetorician has not searched
the grounds of the position on which he has perhaps spent much eloquence.
True, the dialectician and the rhetorician are often one man, and the
two processes may not lie apart in his work; but no student of the art
of argumentation can doubt that some extraordinary confusions would
be prevented by a knowledge of the theory of this distinction. Beyond
this, representative government would receive a tonic effect from any
improvement of the ability of an electorate to distinguish logical
positions from the detail of rhetorical amplification. The British,
through their custom of putting questions to public speakers and to
officers of government in Parliament, probably come nearest to getting
some dialectical clarification from their public figures. In the United
States, where there is no such custom, it is up to each disputant
to force the other to reveal his grounds; and this, in the ardor of
shoring up his own position rhetorically, he often fails to do with
any thoroughness. It should therefore be profitable to try the kind of
analysis we have explained upon some celebrated public controversy, with
the object of showing how such grasp of rhetorical theory could have made
the issues clearer.
For this purpose, it would be hard to think of a better example than the
Scopes “evolution” trial of a generation ago. There is no denying that
this trial had many aspects of the farcical, and it might seem at first
glance not serious enough to warrant this type of examination. Yet at the
time it was considered serious enough to draw the most celebrated trial
lawyers of the country, as well as some of the most eminent scientists;
moreover, after one has cut through the sensationalism with which
journalism and a few of the principals clothed the encounter, one finds a
unique alignment of dialectical and rhetorical positions.
The background of the trial can be narrated briefly. On March 21, 1925,
the state of Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of the theory
of evolution in publicly supported schools. The language of the law was
as follows:
Section 1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state
of Tennessee, that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in
any of the universities, normals and all other public schools
of the state, which are supported in whole or in part by the
public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that
denies the story of the Divine creation of man as taught in the
Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower
order of animals.
That same spring John T. Scopes, a young instructor in biology in the
high school at Dayton, made an agreement with some local citizens to
teach such a theory and to cause himself to be indicted therefor with
the object of testing the validity of the law. The indictment was duly
returned, and the two sides prepared for the contest. The issue excited
the nation as a whole; and the trial drew as opposing counsel Clarence
Darrow, the celebrated Chicago lawyer, and William Jennings Bryan, the
former political leader and evangelical lecturer.
The remarkable aspect of this trial was that almost from the first the
defense, pleading the cause of science, was forced into the role of
rhetorician; whereas the prosecution, pleading the cause of the state,
clung stubbornly to a dialectical position. This development occurred
because the argument of the defense, once the legal technicalities were
got over, was that evolution is “true.” The argument of the prosecution
was that its teaching was unlawful. These two arguments depend upon
rhetoric and dialectic respectively. Because of this circumstance, the
famous trial turned into an argument about the orders of knowledge,
although this fact was never clearly expressed, if it was ever discerned,
by either side, and that is the main subject of our analysis. But before
going into the matter of the trial, a slight prologue may be in order.
It is only the first step beyond philosophic naïvete to realize that
there are different orders of knowledge, or that not all knowledge is of
the same kind of thing. Adler, whose analysis I am satisfied to accept
to some extent, distinguishes the orders as follows. First there is the
order of facts about existing physical entities. These constitute the
simple data of science. Next come the statements which are statements
about these facts; these are the propositions or theories of science.
Next there come the statements about these statements: “The propositions
which these last statements express form a partial universe of discourse
which is the body of philosophical opinion.”[24]
To illustrate in sequence: the anatomical measurements of
_Pithecanthropus erectus_ would be knowledge of the first order. A
theory based on these measurements which placed him in a certain group
of related organisms would be knowledge of the second order. A statement
about the value or the implications of the theory of this placement would
be knowledge of the third order; it would be the judgment of a scientific
theory from a dialectical position.
It is at once apparent that the Tennessee “anti-evolution” law was a
statement of the third class. That is to say, it was neither a collection
of scientific facts, nor a statement about those facts (_i.e._, a
theory or a generalization); it was a statement about a statement (the
scientists’ statement) purporting to be based on those facts. It was,
to use Adler’s phrase, a philosophical opinion, though expressed in the
language of law. Now since the body of philosophical opinion is on a
level which surmounts the partial universe of science, how is it possible
for the latter ever to refute the former? In short, is there any number
of facts, together with generalizations based on facts, which would be
sufficient to overcome a dialectical position?
Throughout the trial the defense tended to take the view that science
could carry the day just by being scientific. But in doing this, one
assumes that there are no points outside the empirical realm from which
one can form judgments about science. Science, by this conception, must
contain not only its facts, but also the means of its own evaluation, so
that the statements about the statements of science are science too.
The published record of the trial runs to approximately three hundred
pages, and it would obviously be difficult to present a digest of all
that was said. But through a carefully selected series of excerpts, it
may be possible to show how blows were traded back and forth from the
two positions. The following passages, though not continuous, afford the
clearest picture of the dialectical-rhetorical conflict which underlay
the entire trial.
THE COURT (_in charging the grand jury_)
You will bear in mind that in this investigation you are not
interested to inquire into the policy of this legislation.[25]
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Darrow_: I don’t suppose the court has considered the
question of competency of evidence. My associates and myself
have fairly definite ideas as to it, but I don’t know how
the counsel on the other side feel about it. I think that
scientists are competent evidence—or competent witnesses here,
to explain what evolution is, and that they are competent on
both sides.
THE PROSECUTION
_Attorney-General Stewart_: If the Court please, in this
case, as Mr. Darrow stated, the defense is going to insist on
introducing scientists and Bible students to give their ideas
on certain views of this law, and that, I am frank to state,
will be resisted by the state as vigorously as we know how to
resist it. We have had a conference or two about the matter,
and we think that it isn’t competent evidence; that is, it is
not competent to bring into this case scientists who testify as
to what the theory of evolution is or interpret the Bible or
anything of that sort.
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Neal_: The defendant moves the court to quash the
indictment in this case for the following reasons: In
that it violates Sec. 12, Art. XI, of the Constitution of
Tennessee: “It shall be the duty of the general assembly in
all future periods of the government to cherish literature
and science....” I want to say that our main contention after
all, may it please your honor, is that this is not a proper
thing for any legislature, the legislature of Tennessee or
the legislature of the United States, to attempt to make and
assign a rule in regard to. In this law there is an attempt to
pronounce a judgment and a conclusion in the realm of science
and in the realm of religion.
THE PROSECUTION
_Mr. McKenzie_: Under the law you cannot teach in the common
schools the Bible. Why should it be improper to provide that
you cannot teach this other theory?
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Darrow_: Can a legislative body say, “You cannot read
a book or take a lesson or make a talk on science until you
first find out whether you are saying against Genesis”? It can
unless that constitutional provision protects me. It can. Can
it say to the astronomer, you cannot turn your telescope upon
the infinite planets and suns and stars that fill space, lest
you find that the earth is not the center of the universe and
that there is not any firmament between us and the heaven? Can
it? It could—except for the work of Thomas Jefferson, which
has been woven into every state constitution in the Union, and
has stayed there like a flaming sword to protect the rights of
man against ignorance and bigotry, and when it is permitted to
overwhelm them then we are taken in a sea of blood and ruin
that all the miseries and tortures and carrion of the middle
ages would be as nothing.... If today you can take a thing
like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public
schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the
private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to
teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session
you may ban books and the newspapers.
_Mr. Dudley Field Malone_: So that there shall be no
misunderstanding and that no one shall be able to misinterpret
or misrepresent our position we wish to state at the beginning
of the case that the defense believes that there is a direct
conflict between the theory of evolution and the theories of
creation as set forth in the Book of Genesis.
Neither do we believe that the stories of creation as set forth
in the Bible are reconcilable or scientifically correct.
_Mr. Arthur Garfield Hays_: Our whole case depends upon proving
that evolution is a reasonable scientific theory.
THE PROSECUTION
_Mr. William Jennings Bryan, Jr._ (in support of a motion to
exclude expert testimony): It is, I think, apparent to all that
we have now reached the heart of this case, upon your honor’s
ruling, as to whether this expert testimony will be admitted
largely determines the question of whether this trial from now
on will be an orderly effort to try the case upon the issues,
raised by the indictment and by the plea or whether it will
degenerate into a joint debate upon the merits or demerits
of someone’s views upon evolution.... To permit an expert to
testify upon this issue would be to substitute trial by experts
for trial by jury....
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Hays_: Are we entitled to show what evolution is? We are
entitled to show that, if for no other reason than to determine
whether the title is germane to the act.
THE PROSECUTION
_Mr. William Jennings Bryan_: An expert cannot be permitted
to come in here and try to defeat the enforcement of a law by
testifying that it isn’t a bad law and it isn’t—I mean a bad
doctrine—no matter how these people phrase the doctrine—no
matter how they eulogize it. This is not the place to prove
that the law ought never to have been passed. The place to
prove that, or teach that, was to the state legislature....
The people of this state passed this law, the people of the
state knew what they were doing when they passed the law, and
they knew the dangers of the doctrine—that they did not want it
taught to their children, and my friends, it isn’t—your honor,
it isn’t proper to bring experts in here and try to defeat the
purpose of the people of this state by trying to show that
this thing they denounce and outlaw is a beautiful thing that
everybody ought to believe in.... It is this doctrine that
gives us Nietzsche, the only great author who tried to carry
this to its logical conclusion, and we have the testimony of
my distinguished friend from Chicago in his speech in the Loeb
and Leopold case that 50,000 volumes have been written about
Nietzsche, and he is the greatest philosopher in the last
hundred years, and have him pleading that because Leopold read
Nietzsche and adopted Nietzsche’s philosophy of the super-man,
that he is not responsible for the taking of human life. We
have the doctrine—I should not characterize it as I should
like to characterize it—the doctrine that the universities
that had it taught, and the professors who taught it, are much
more responsible for the crime that Leopold committed than
Leopold himself. That is the doctrine, my friends, that they
have tried to bring into existence, they commence in the high
schools with their foundation of evolutionary theory, and we
have the word of the distinguished lawyer that this is more
read than any other in a hundred years, and the statement of
that distinguished man that the teachings of Nietzsche made
Leopold a murderer.... (_Mr. Bryan reading from a book by
Darrow_) “I will guarantee that you can go to the University of
Chicago today—into its big library and find over 1,000 volumes
of Nietzsche, and I am sure I speak moderately. If this boy
is to blame for this, where did he get it? Is there any blame
attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously
and fashioned his life on it? And there is no question in
this case but what it is true. Then who is to blame? The
university would be more to blame than he is. The scholars of
the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers
of the world—and Nietzsche’s books are published by one of
the biggest publishers in the world—are more to blame than he
is. Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy
for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”...
Your honor, we first pointed out that we do not need any
experts in science. Here is one plain fact, and the statute
defines itself, and it tells the kind of evolution it does not
want taught, and the evidence says that this is the kind of
evolution that was taught, and no number of scientists could
come in here, my friends, and override that statute or take
from the jury its right to decide this question, so that all
the experts they could bring would mean nothing. And when it
comes to Bible experts, every member of the jury is as good an
expert on the Bible as any man they could bring, or that we
could bring.
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Malone_: Are we to have our children know nothing about
science except what the church says they shall know? I
have never seen any harm in learning and understanding, in
humility and open-mindedness, and I have never seen clearer
the need of that learning than when I see the attitude of the
prosecution, who attack and refuse to accept the information
and intelligence, which expert witnesses will give them.
THE PROSECUTION
_Mr. Stewart_: Now what could these scientists testify to?
They could only say as an expert, qualified as an expert upon
this subject, I have made a study of these things and from my
standpoint as such an expert, I say that this does not deny the
story of divine creation. That is what they would testify to,
isn’t it? That is all they could testify about.
Now, then, I say under the correct construction of the act,
that they cannot testify as to that. Why? Because in the
wording of this act the legislature itself construed the
instrument according to their intention.... What was the
general purpose of the legislature here? It was to prevent
teaching in the public schools of any county in Tennessee that
theory which says that man is descended from a lower order of
animals. That is the intent and nobody can dispute it under the
shining sun of this day.
THE COURT
Now upon these issues as brought up it becomes the duty of the
Court to determine the question of the admissibility of this
expert testimony offered by the defendant.
It is not within the province of the Court under these issues
to decide and determine which is true, the story of divine
creation as taught in the Bible, or the story of the creation
of man as taught by evolution.
If the state is correct in its insistence, it is immaterial,
so far as the results of this case are concerned, as to
which theory is true; because it is within the province of
the legislative branch, and not the judicial branch of the
government to pass upon the policy of a statute; and the policy
of this statute having been passed upon by that department of
the government, this court is not further concerned as to its
policy; but is interested only in its proper interpretation
and, if valid, its enforcement.... Therefore the court is
content to sustain the motion of the attorney-general to
exclude expert testimony.
THE PROSECUTION
_Mr. Stewart_ (during Mr. Darrow’s cross-examination of Mr.
Bryan): I want to interpose another objection. What is the
purpose of this examination?
_Mr. Bryan_: The purpose is to cast ridicule upon everybody
who believes in the Bible, and I am perfectly willing that the
world shall know that these gentlemen have no other purpose
than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible.
THE DEFENSE
_Mr. Darrow_: We have the purpose of preventing bigots and
ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United
States, and you know it, and that is all.
Statements of Noted Scientists as Filed into Record by Defense
Counsel
_Charles H. Judd, Director of School of Education, University
of Chicago_: It will be impossible, in my judgment, in the
state university, as well as in the normal schools, to teach
adequately psychology or the science of education without
making constant reference to all the facts of mental
development which are included in the general doctrine of
evolution.... Whatever may be the constitutional rights of
legislatures to prescribe the general course of study of public
schools it will, in my judgment, be a serious national disaster
if the attempt is successful to determine the details to be
taught in the schools through the vote of legislatures rather
than as a result of scientific investigation.
_Jacob G. Lipman, Dean of the College of Agriculture, State
University of New Jersey_: With these facts and interpretations
of organic evolution left out, the agricultural colleges and
experimental stations could not render effective service to our
great agricultural industry.
_Wilbur A. Nelson, State Geologist of Tennessee_: It,
therefore, appears that it would be impossible to study or
teach geology in Tennessee or elsewhere, without using the
theory of evolution.
_Kirtley F. Mather, Chairman of the Department of Geology,
Harvard University_: Science has not even a guess as to the
original source or sources of matter. It deals with immediate
causes and effects.... Men of science have as their aim the
discovery of facts. They seek with open eyes, willing to
recognize it, as Huxley said, even if it “sears the eyeballs.”
After they have discovered truth, and not till then, do they
consider what its moral implications may be. Thus far, and
presumably always, truth when found is also found to be right,
in the moral sense of the word.... As Henry Ward Beecher said,
forty years ago, “If to reject God’s revelation in the book is
infidelity, what is it to reject God’s revelation of himself in
the structure of the whole globe?”
_Maynard M. Metcalf, Research Specialist in Zoology, Johns
Hopkins University_: Intelligent teaching of biology or
intelligent approach to any biological science is impossible if
the established fact of evolution is omitted.
_Horatio Hackett Newman, Professor of Zoology, University
of Chicago_: Evolution has been tried and tested in every
conceivable way for considerably over half a century. Vast
numbers of biological facts have been examined in the light of
this principle and without a single exception they have been
entirely compatible with it.... The evolution principle is thus
a great unifying and integrating scientific conception. Any
conception that is so far-reaching, so consistent, and that has
led to so much advance in the understanding of nature, is at
least an extremely valuable idea and one not lightly to be cast
aside in case it fails to agree with one’s prejudices.
Thus the two sides lined up as dialectical truth and empirical fact. The
state legislature of Tennessee, acting in its sovereign capacity, had
passed a measure which made it unlawful to teach that man is connatural
with the animals through asserting that he is descended from a “lower
order” of them. (There was some sparring over the meaning of the
technical language of the act, but this was the general consensus.) The
legal question was whether John T. Scopes had violated the measure. The
philosophical question, which was the real focus of interest, was the
right of a state to make this prescription.
We have referred to the kind of truth which can be dialectically
established, and here we must develop further the dialectical nature of
the state’s case. As long as it maintained this dialectical position, it
did not have to go into the “factual” truth of evolution, despite the
outcry from the other side. The following considerations, then, enter
into this “dialectical” prosecution.
By definition the legislature is the supreme arbiter of education within
the state. It is charged with the duty of promoting enlightenment and
morality, and to these ends it may establish common schools, require
attendance, and review curricula either by itself or through its agents.
The state of Tennessee had exercised this kind of authority when it
had forbidden the teaching of the Bible in the public schools. Now if
the legislature could take a position that the publicly subsidized
teaching of the Bible was socially undesirable, it could, from the same
authority, take the same position with regard to a body of science. Some
people might feel that the legislature was morally bound to encourage
the propagation of the Bible, just as some of those participating in
the trial seemed to think that it was morally bound to encourage the
propagation of science. But here again the legislature is the highest
tribunal, and no body of religious or scientific doctrine comes to it
with a compulsive authority. In brief, both the Ten Commandments and the
theory of evolution belonged in the class of things which it could elect
or reject, depending on the systematic import of propositions underlying
the philosophy of the state.
The policy of the anti-evolution law was the same type of policy which
Darrow had by inference commended only a year earlier in the famous trial
of Loeb and Leopold. This clash is perhaps the most direct in the Scopes
case and deserves pointing out here. Darrow had served as defense counsel
for the two brilliant university graduates who had conceived the idea
of committing a murder as a kind of intellectual exploit, to prove that
their powers of foresight and care could prevent detection. The essence
of Darrow’s plea at their trial was that the two young men could not be
held culpable—at least in the degree the state claimed—because of the
influences to which they had been exposed. They had been readers of a
system of philosophy of allegedly anti-social tendency, and they were
not to be blamed if they translated that philosophy into a sanction of
their deed. The effect of this plea obviously was to transfer guilt from
the two young men to society as a whole, acting through its laws, its
schools, its publications, etc.
Now the key thing to be observed in this plea was that Darrow was not
asking the jury to inspect the philosophy of Nietzsche for the purpose
either of passing upon its internal consistency or its contact with
reality. He was asking precisely what Bryan was asking of the jury at
Dayton, namely that they take a strictly dialectical position outside it,
viewing it as a partial universe of discourse with consequences which
could be adjudged good or bad. The point to be especially noted is that
Darrow did not raise the question of whether the philosophy of Nietzsche
expresses necessary truth, or whether, let us say, it is essential to an
understanding of the world. He was satisfied to point out that the state
had not been a sufficiently vigilant guardian of the forces molding the
character of its youth.
But the prosecution at Dayton could use this line of argument without
change. If the philosophy of Nietzsche were sufficient to instigate young
men to criminal actions, it might be claimed with even greater force that
the philosophy of evolution, which in the popular mind equated man with
the animals, would do the same. The state’s dialectic here simply used
one of Darrow’s earlier definitions to place the anti-evolution law in a
favorable or benevolent category. In sum: to Darrow’s previous position
that the doctrine of Nietzsche is capable of immoral influence, Bryan
responded that the doctrine of evolution is likewise capable of immoral
influence, and this of course was the dialectical countering of the
defense’s position in the trial.
There remains yet a third dialectical maneuver for the prosecution. On
the second day of the trial Attorney-General Stewart, in reviewing the
duties of the legislature, posed the following problem: “Supposing then
that there should come within the minds of the people a conflict between
literature and science. Then what would the legislature do? Wouldn’t
they have to interpret?... Wouldn’t they have to interpret their
construction of this conflict which one should be recognized or higher or
more in the public schools?”
This point was not exploited as fully as its importance might seem to
warrant; but what the counsel was here declaring is that the legislature
is necessarily the umpire in all disputes between partial universes.
Therefore if literature and science should fall into a conflict, it would
again be up to the legislature to assign the priority. It is not bound
to recognize the claims of either of these exclusively because, as we
saw earlier, it operates in a universe with reference to which these are
partial bodies of discourse. The legislature is the disposer of partial
universes. Accordingly when the Attorney-General took this stand, he came
the nearest of any of the participants in the trial to clarifying the
state’s position, and by this we mean to showing that for the state it
was a matter of legal dialectic.
There is little evidence to indicate that the defense understood the
kind of case it was up against, though naturally this is said in a
philosophical rather than a legal sense. After the questions of law were
settled, its argument assumed the substance of a plea for the truth of
evolution, which subject was not within the scope of the indictment. We
have, for example, the statement of Mr. Hays already cited that the whole
case of the defense depended on proving that evolution is a “reasonable
scientific theory.” Of those who spoke for the defense, Mr. Dudley Field
Malone seems to have had the poorest conception of the nature of the
contest. I must cite further from his plea because it shows most clearly
the trap from which the defense was never able to extricate itself.
On the fifth day of the trial Mr. Malone was chosen to reply to Mr.
Bryan, and in the course of his speech he made the following revealing
utterance: “Your honor, there is a difference between theological and
scientific men. Theology deals with something that is established and
revealed; it seeks to gather material which they claim should not be
changed. It is the Word of God and that cannot be changed; it is
literal, it is not to be interpreted. That is the theological mind. It
deals with theology. The scientific mind is a modern thing, your honor.
I am not sure Galileo was the one who brought relief to the scientific
mind; because, theretofore, Aristotle and Plato had reached their
conclusions and processes, by metaphysical reasoning, because they had no
telescope and no microscope.” The part of this passage which gives his
case away is the distinction made at the end. Mr. Malone was asserting
that Aristotle and Plato got no further than they did because they lacked
the telescope and the microscope. To a slight extent perhaps Aristotle
was what we would today call a “research scientist,” but the conclusions
and processes arrived at by the metaphysical reasoning of the two are
dialectical, and the test of a dialectical position is logic and not
ocular visibility. At the risk of making Mr. Malone a scapegoat we must
say that this is an abysmal confusion of two different kinds of inquiry
which the Greeks were well cognizant of. But the same confusion, if it
did not produce this trial, certainly helped to draw it out to its length
of eight days. It is the assumption that human laws stand in wait upon
what the scientists see in their telescopes and microscopes. But harking
back to Professor Adler: facts are never determinative of dialectic in
the sense presumed by this counsel.
Exactly the same confusion appeared in a rhetorical plea for truth which
Mr. Malone made shortly later in the same speech. Then he said: “There is
never a duel with truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid of
it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth
does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr.
Bryan. The truth is imperishable, eternal and immortal and needs no human
agency to support it. We are ready to tell the truth as we understand it
and we do not fear all the truth that they can present as facts.” It is
instantly apparent that this presents truth in an ambiguous sense. Malone
begins with the simplistic assumption that there is a “standard” truth,
a kind of universal, objective, operative truth which it is heinous to
oppose. That might be well enough if the meaning were highly generic,
but before he is through this short passage he has equated truth with
facts—the identical confusion which we noted in his utterance about Plato
and Aristotle. Now since the truth which dialectic arrives at is not a
truth of facts, this peroration either becomes irrelevant, or it lends
itself to the other side, where, minus the concluding phrase, it could
serve as a eulogium of dialectical truth.
Such was the dilemma by which the defense was impaled from the beginning.
To some extent it appears even in the expert testimony. On the day
preceding this speech by Malone, Professor Maynard Metcalf had presented
testimony in court regarding the theory of evolution (this was on the
fourth day of the trial; Judge Raulston did not make his ruling excluding
such testimony until the sixth day) in which he made some statements
which could have been of curious interest to the prosecution. They are
effectually summarized in the following excerpt: “Evolution and the
theories of evolution are fundamentally different things. The fact of
evolution is a thing that is perfectly and absolutely clear.... The
series of evidences is so convincing that I think it would be entirely
impossible for any normal human being who was conversant with the
phenomena to have even for a moment the least doubt even for the fact of
evolution, but he might have tremendous doubts as to the truth of any
hypothesis....”
We first notice here a clear recognition of the kinds of truth
distinguished by Adler, with the “fact” of evolution belonging to the
first order and theories of evolution belonging to the second. The
second, which is referred to by the term “hypothesis,” consists of facts
in an elaboration. We note furthermore that this scientist has called
them fundamentally different things—so different that one is entitled
to have not merely doubts but “tremendous doubts” about the second.
Now let us imagine the dialecticians of the opposite side approaching
him with the following. You have said, Professor Metcalf, that the
fact of evolution and the various theories of evolution are two quite
different things. You have also said that the theories of evolution are
so debatable or questionable that you can conceive of much difference
of opinion about them. Now if there is an order of knowledge above this
order of theories, which order you admit to be somewhat speculative,
a further order of knowledge which is philosophical or evaluative, is
it not likely that there would be in this realm still more alternative
positions, still more room for doubt or difference of opinion? And if all
this is so, would you expect people to assent to a proposition of this
order in the same way you expect them to assent to, say, the proposition
that a monkey has vertebrae? And if you do make these admissions, can
you any longer maintain that people of opposite views on the teaching of
evolution are simply defiers of the truth? This is how the argument might
have progressed had some Greek Darwin thrown Athens into an uproar; but
this argument was, after all, in an American court of law.
It should now be apparent from these analyses that the defense was
never able to meet the state’s case on dialectical grounds. Even if it
had boldly accepted the contest on this level, it is difficult to see
how it could have won, for the dialectic must probably have followed
this course: First Proposition, All teaching of evolution is harmful.
Counter Proposition, No teaching of evolution is harmful. Resolution,
Some teaching of evolution is harmful. Now the resolution was exactly
the position taken by the law, which was that some teaching of evolution
(i.e., the teaching of it in state-supported schools) was an anti-social
measure. Logically speaking, the proposition that “Some teaching of
evolution is harmful,” does not exclude the proposition that “Some
teaching of evolution is not harmful,” but there was the fact that the
law permitted some teaching of evolution (e.g., the teaching of it in
schools not supported by the public funds). In this situation there
seemed nothing for the defense to do but stick by the second proposition
and plead for that proposition rhetorically. So science entered the
juridical arena and argued for the value of science. In this argument the
chief topic was consequence. There was Malone’s statement that without
the theory of evolution Burbank would not have been able to produce his
results. There was Lipman’s statement that without an understanding of
the theory of evolution the agricultural colleges could not carry on
their work. There were the statements of Judd and Nelson that large
areas of education depended upon a knowledge of evolution. There was
the argument brought out by Professor Mather of Harvard: “When men are
offered their choice between science, with its confident and unanimous
acceptance of the evolutionary principle, on the one hand, and religion,
with its necessary appeal to things unseen and improvable, on the other,
they are much more likely to abandon religion than to abandon science.
If such a choice is forced upon us, the churches will lose many of their
best educated young people, the very ones upon whom they must depend for
leadership in coming years.”
We noted at the beginning of this chapter that rhetoric deals with
subjects at the point where they touch upon actuality or prudential
conduct. Here the defense looks at the policy of teaching evolution and
points to beneficial results. The argument then becomes: these important
benefits imply an important beneficial cause. This is why we can say that
the pleaders for science were forced into the non-scientific role of the
rhetorician.
The prosecution incidentally also had an argument from consequences,
although it was never employed directly. When Bryan maintained that the
philosophy of evolution might lead to the same results as the philosophy
of Nietzsche had led with Loeb and Leopold, he was opening a subject
which could have supplied such an argument, say in the form of a concrete
instance of moral beliefs weakened by someone’s having been indoctrinated
with evolution. But there was really no need: as we have sought to show
all along, the state had an immense strategic advantage in the fact that
laws belong to the category of dialectical determinations, and it clung
firmly to this advantage.
An irascible exchange which Darrow had with the judge gives an idea of
the frustration which the defense felt at this stage. There had been an
argument about the propriety of a cross-examination.
_The Court_: Colonel [Darrow], what is the purpose of
cross-examination?
_Mr. Darrow_: The purpose of cross-examination is to be used on
trial.
_The Court_: Well, isn’t that an effort to ascertain the truth?
_Mr. Darrow_: No, it is an effort to show prejudice. Nothing
else. Has there been any effort to ascertain the truth in this
case? Why not bring in the jury and let us prove it?
The truth referred to by the judge was whether the action of Scopes
fell within the definition of the law; the truth referred to by Darrow
was the facts of evolution (not submitted to the jury as evidence);
and “prejudice” was a crystallized opinion of the theory of evolution,
expressed now as law.
If we have appeared here to assign too complete a forensic victory to the
prosecution, let us return, by way of recapitulating the issues, to the
relationship between positive science and dialectic. Many people, perhaps
a majority in this country, have felt that the position of the State
of Tennessee was absurd because they are unable to see how a logical
position can be taken without reference to empirical situations. But it
is just the nature of logic and dialectic to be a science without any
content as it is the nature of biology or any positive science to be a
science of empirical content.
We see the nature of this distinction when we realize that there is never
an argument, in the true sense of the term, about facts. When facts are
disputed, the argument must be suspended until the facts are settled.
Not until then may it be resumed, for all true argument is about the
meaning of established or admitted facts. And since this meaning is
always expressed in propositions, we can say further that all argument
is about the systematic import of propositions. While that remains so,
the truth of the theory of evolution or of any scientific theory can
never be settled in a court of law. The court could admit the facts into
the record, but the process of legal determination would deal with the
meaning of the facts, and it could not go beyond saying that the facts
comport, or do not comport, with the meanings of other propositions.
Thus its task is to determine their place in a system of discourse and
if possible to effect a resolution in accordance with the movement of
dialectic. It is necessary that logic in its position as ultimate arbiter
preserve this indifference toward that actuality which is the touchstone
of scientific fact.
It is plain that those who either expected or hoped that science would
win a sweeping victory in the Tennessee courtroom were the same people
who believe that science can take the place of speculative wisdom.
The only consolation they had in the course of the trial was the
embarrassment to which Darrow brought Bryan in questioning him about the
Bible and the theory of evolution (during which Darrow did lead Bryan
into some dialectical traps). But in strict consideration all of this
was outside the bounds of the case because both the facts of evolution
and the facts of the Bible were “items not in discourse,” to borrow a
phrase employed by Professor Adler. That is to say, their correctness had
to be determined by scientific means of investigation, if at all; but
the relationship between the law and theories of man’s origin could be
determined only by legal casuistry, in the non-pejorative sense of that
phrase.
As we intimated at the beginning, a sufficient grasp of what the case
was about would have resulted in there being no case, or in there being
quite a different case. As the events turned out science received, in
the popular estimation, a check in the trial but a moral victory, and
this only led to more misunderstanding of the province of science in
human affairs. The law of the State of Tennessee won a victory which was
regarded as pyrrhic because it was generally felt to have made the law
and the lawmakers look foolish. This also was a disservice to the common
weal. Both of these results could have been prevented if it had been
understood that science is one thing and law another. An understanding of
that truth would seem to require some general dissemination throughout
our educated classes of a _Summa Dialectica_. This means that the
educated people of our country would have to be so trained that they
could see the dialectical possibility of the opposites of the beliefs
they possess. And that is a very large order for education in any age.
Chapter III
EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE
We are now in position to affirm that the rhetorical study of an argument
begins with a study of the sources. But since almost any extended
argument will draw upon more than one source we must look, to answer the
inquiry we are now starting, at the prevailing source, or the source
which is most frequently called upon in the total persuasive effort.
We shall say that this predominating source gives to the argument an
aspect, and our present question is, what can be inferred from the
aspect of any argument or body of arguments about the philosophy of its
maker? All men argue alike when they argue validly because the modes
of inference are formulas, from which deviation is error. Therefore
we characterize inference only as valid or invalid. But the reasoner
reveals his philosophical position by the source of argument which
appears most often in his major premise because the major premise tells
us how he is thinking about the world. In other words, the rhetorical
content of the major premise which the speaker habitually uses is the
key to his primary view of existence. We are of course excluding artful
choices which have in view only _ad hoc_ persuasions. Putting the matter
now figuratively, we may say that no man escapes being branded by the
premise that he regards as most efficacious in an argument. The general
importance of this is that major premises, in addition to their logical
function as part of a deductive argument, are expressive of values, and
a characteristic major premise characterizes the user.
To see this principle in application, let us take three of the chief
sources of argument recognized by the classical rhetoricians. We may
look first at the source which is _genus_. All arguments made through
genus are arguments based on the nature of the thing which is said
to constitute the genus. What the argument from genus then says is
that “generic” classes have a nature which can be predicated of their
species. Thus _man_ has a nature including _mortality_, which quality
can therefore be predicated of the man Socrates and the man John Smith.
The underlying postulate here, that things have a nature, is of course a
disputable view of the world, for it involves the acceptance of a realm
of essence. Yet anyone who uses such source of argument is committed to
this wider assumption. Now it follows that those who habitually argue
from genus are in their personal philosophy idealists. To them the idea
of genus is a reflection of existence. We are saying, accordingly, that
arguments which make predominant use of genus have an aspect through
this source, and that the aspect may be employed to distinguish the
philosophy of the author. It will be found, to cite a concrete example,
that John Henry Newman regularly argues from genus; he begins with the
nature of the thing and then makes the application. The question of what
a university is like is answered by applying the idea of a university.
The question of what man ought to study is answered by working out a
conception of the nature of man. And we shall find in a succeeding essay
that Abraham Lincoln, although he has become a patron for liberals and
pragmatists, was a consistent user of the argument from genus. His
refusal to hedge on the principle of slavery is referable to a fixed
concept of the nature of man. This, then, will serve to characterize the
argument from genus.
Another important source of argument is _similitude_. Whereas those
who argue from genus argue from a fixed class, those who argue from
similitude invoke essential (though not exhaustive) correspondences.
If one were to say, for example, that whatever has the divine attribute
of reason is likely to have also the divine attribute of immortality,
one would be using similitude to establish a probability. Thinkers
of the analogical sort use this argument chiefly. If required to
characterize the outlook it implies, we should say that it expresses
belief in a oneness of the world, which causes all correspondence to have
probative value. Proponents of this view tend to look toward some final,
transcendental unity, and as we might expect, this type of argument
is used widely by poets and religionists.[26] John Bunyan used it
constantly; so did Emerson.
A third type we shall mention, the type which provides our access
to Burke, is the argument from _circumstance_. The argument from
circumstance is, as the name suggests, the nearest of all arguments to
purest expediency. This argument merely reads the circumstances—the
“facts standing around”—and accepts them as coercive, or allows them to
dictate the decision. If one should say, “The city must be surrendered
because the besiegers are so numerous,” one would be arguing not from
genus, or similitude, but from a present circumstance. The expression
“In view of the situation, what else are you going to do?” constitutes a
sort of proposition-form for this type of argument. Such argument savors
of urgency rather than of perspicacity; and it seems to be preferred
by those who are easily impressed by existing tangibles. Whereas the
argument from consequence attempts a forecast of results, the argument
from circumstance attempts only an estimate of current conditions
or pressures. By thus making present circumstance the overbearing
consideration, it keeps from sight even the nexus of cause and effect.
It is the least philosophical of all the sources of argument, since
theoretically it stops at the level of perception of fact.
Burke is widely respected as a conservative who was intelligent enough
to provide solid philosophical foundations for his conservatism. It
is perfectly true that many of his observations upon society have a
conservative basis; but if one studies the kind of argument which Burke
regularly employed when at grips with concrete policies, one discovers a
strong addiction to the argument from circumstance. Now for reasons which
will be set forth in detail later, the argument from circumstance is the
argument philosophically appropriate to the liberal. Indeed, one can
go much further and say that it is the argument fatal to conservatism.
However much Burke eulogized tradition and fulminated against the
French Revolution, he was, when judged by what we are calling aspect of
argument, very far from being a conservative; and we suggest here that
a man’s method of argument is a truer index in his beliefs than his
explicit profession of principles. Here is a means whereby he is revealed
in his work. Burke’s voluminous controversies give us ample opportunity
to test him by this rule.
There is some point in beginning with Burke’s treatment of the existing
Catholic question, an issue which drew forth one of his earliest
political compositions and continued to engage his attention throughout
his life. As early as 1765 he had become concerned with the extraordinary
legal disabilities imposed upon Catholics in Ireland, and about this time
he undertook a treatise entitled _Tract on the Popery Laws_. Despite the
fact that in this treatise Burke professes belief in natural law, going
so far as to assert that all human laws are but declaratory, the type
of argument he uses chiefly is the secular argument from circumstance.
After a review of the laws and penalties, he introduces his “capital
consideration.”
The first and most capital consideration with regard to this,
as to every object, is the extent of it. And here it is
necessary to premise: this system of penalty and incapacity
has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very
numerous body of men—a body which comprehends at least two
thirds of the whole nation: it amounts to 2,800,000 souls,
a number sufficient for the materials constituent of a great
people.[27]
He then gave his reason for placing the circumstance first.
This consideration of the magnitude of the object ought to
attend us through the whole inquiry: if it does not always
affect the reason, it is always decisive on the importance of
the question. It not only makes itself a more leading point,
but complicates itself with every other part of the matter,
giving every error, minute in itself, a character and a
significance from its application. It is therefore not to be
wondered at, if we perpetually recur to it in the course of
this essay.[28]
The _Tract_ was planned in such a way as to continue this thought, while
accompanying it with discussion of the impediment to national prosperity,
and of “the impolicy of those laws, as they affect the national
security.” This early effort established the tenor of his thinking on the
subject.
While representing Bristol in Parliament, Burke alienated a part of
his constituency by supporting Sir George Savile’s measure to ease
the restraints upon Catholics. In the famous _Speech to the Electors
of Bristol_ he devoted a large portion of his time to a justification
of that course, and here, it is true, he made principal use of the
argument from genus (“justice”) and from consequence. The argument from
circumstance is not forgotten, but is tucked away at the end to persuade
the “bigoted enemies to liberty.” There, using again his criterion of the
“magnitude of the object,” he said:
Gentlemen, it is possible you may not know that the people
of that persuasion in Ireland amount to at least sixteen or
seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all exaggerate
the number. A nation to be _persecuted_! Whilst we were masters
of the sea, embodied with America and in alliance with half
the powers of the continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote
corner of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there
is a revolution in our affairs which makes it prudent for us to
be just.[29]
During the last decade of his life, Burke wrote a series of letters
upon the Catholic question and upon Irish affairs, in which, of
course, this question figured largely. In 1792 came _A Letter to Sir
Hercules Langrishe, M.P._, upon the propriety of admitting Catholics
to the elective franchise. Here we find him taking a pragmatic view
of liberality toward Catholics. He reasoned as follows regarding the
restoration of the franchise:
If such means can with any probability be shown, from
circumstances, rather to add strength to our mixed
ecclesiastical and secular constitution, than to weaken it;
surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to penalties,
incapacities, and proscriptions continued from generation to
generation.[30]
In this instance the consideration of magnitude took a more extended form:
How much more, certainly, ought they [the disqualifying laws]
to give way, when, as in our case, they affect, not here and
there, in some particular point or in their consequence,
but universally, collectively and directly, the fundamental
franchises of a people, equal to the whole inhabitants of
several respectable kingdoms and states, equal to the subjects
of the kings of Sardinia or of Denmark; equal to those of the
United Netherlands, and more than are to be found in all the
states of Switzerland. This way of proscribing men by whole
nations, as it were, from all the benefits of the constitution
to which they were born, I never can believe to be politic or
expedient, much less necessary for the existence of any state
or church in the world.[31]
Greatly exercised over events in France, Burke came to think of
Christianity as the one force with enough cohesion to check the spread
of the Revolution. Then in 1795 he wrote the _Letter to William Smith,
Esq._ Here he described Christianity as “the grand prejudice ... which
holds all the other prejudices together”;[32] and such prejudices, as
he visualized them, were essential to the fabric of society. He told
his correspondent candidly: “My whole politics, at present, center in
one point; and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me)
is referable; that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of
Jacobinism.”[33] In a second letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, written in
the same year, he could say: “In the Catholic Question I considered only
one point. Was it at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which
tended to promote the concord of the citizens.”[34]
Only once did Burke approach the question of religion through what may be
properly termed an argument from definition. In the last year of his life
he composed _A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland_, one passage of which
considers religion not in its bearing upon some practical measure, but
with reference to its essential nature.
Let every man be as pious as he pleases, and in the way that he
pleases; but it is agreeable neither to piety nor to policy to
give exclusively all manner of civil privileges and advantages
to a _negative_ religion—such is the Protestant without a
certain creed; and at the same time to deny those privileges to
men whom we know to agree to an iota in every one _positive_
doctrine, which all of us, who profess religion authoritatively
taught in England, hold ourselves, according to our faculties,
bound to believe.[35]
It is not purely an argument from definition, but it contains such an
argument, and so contrasts with his dominant position on a subject which
engaged much of his thought and seems to have filled him with sincere
feeling.
We shall examine him now on another major subject to engage his
statesmanship, the rebellion of the North American Colonies against Great
Britain. By common admission today, Burke’s masterpiece of forensic
eloquence is the speech moving his resolutions for conciliation with that
disaffected part of the Empire, delivered in the House of Commons on
March 22, 1775. In admiring the felicities with which this great oration
undoubtedly abounds, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is from
beginning to end an argument from circumstance. It is not an argument
about rights or definitions, as Burke explicitly says at two or three
points; it is an argument about policy as dictated by circumstances.
Its burden is a plea to conciliate the colonies because they are waxing
great. No subtlety of interpretation is required to establish this truth,
because we can substantially establish it in the express language of
Burke himself.
To see the aspect of this argument, it is useful to begin by looking
at the large alternatives which the orator enumerates for Parliament
in the exigency. The first of these is to change the spirit of the
Colonies by rendering it more submissive. Circumventing the theory of
the relationship of ruler and ruled, Burke sets aside this alternative
as impractical. He admits that an effort to bring about submission would
be “radical in its principle” (_i.e._, would have a root in principle);
but he sees too many obstacles in geography, ethnology, and other
circumstances to warrant the trial.
The second alternative is to prosecute the Colonists as criminal. At this
point, the “magnitude of the object” again enters his equation, and he
would distinguish between the indictment of a single individual and the
indictment of a whole people as things different in kind. The number and
vigor of the Americans constitute an embarrassing circumstance. Therefore
his thought issues in the oft-quoted statement “I do not know the method
of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.”[36] This was said,
it should be recalled, despite the fact that history is replete with
proceedings against rebellious subjects.[37] But Burke had been an agent
for the colony of New York; he had studied the geography and history of
the Colonies with his usual industry; and we may suppose him to have had
a much clearer idea than his colleagues in Parliament of their power to
support a conflict.
It is understandable, by this view, that his third alternative should
be “to comply with the American spirit as necessary.” He told his
fellow Commoners plainly that his proposal had nothing to do with the
legal right of taxation. “My consideration is narrow, confined, and
wholly limited to the policy of the question.”[38] This policy he
later characterizes as “systematic indulgence.” The outcome of this
disjunctive argument is then a measure to accommodate a circumstance.
The circumstance is that America is a growing country, of awesome
potentiality, whose strength, both actual and imminent, makes it
advisable for the Mother Country to overlook abstract rights. In a
peroration, the topic of abstract rights is assigned to those “vulgar and
mechanical politicians,” who are “not fit to turn a wheel in the machine”
of Empire.[39]
With this conclusion in mind, it will be instructive to see how the
orator prepared the way for his proposal. The entire first part of his
discourse may be described as a depiction of the circumstance which
is to be his source of argument. After a circumspect beginning, in
which he calls attention to the signs of rebellion and derides the
notion of “paper government,” he devotes a long and brilliant passage
to simple characterization of the Colonies and their inhabitants. The
unavoidable effect of this passage is to impress upon his hearers the
size and resources of this portion of the Empire. First he takes up the
rapidly growing population, then the extensive trade, then the spirit
of enterprise, and finally the personal character of the Colonists
themselves. Outstanding even in this colorful passage is his account of
the New England whaling industry.
Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice,
and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses
of Hudson’s Bay and Davis’s Straits, whilst we are looking
for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have
pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they
are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent
of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and
romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but
a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious
industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to
them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know
that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon
on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue
their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what
is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness
to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the
activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of
English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard
industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this
recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the
gristle; and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.[40]
It is the spectacle of this enterprise which induces Burke to “pardon
something to the spirit of liberty.”
The long recital is closed with an appeal which may be fitly regarded
as the _locus classicus_ of the argument from circumstance. For with
this impressive review of the fierce spirit of the colonists before
his audience, Burke declares: “The question is, not whether the spirit
deserves praise or blame, but—what, in the name of God, shall we do with
it?”[41] The question then is not what is right or wrong, or what accords
with our idea of justice or our scheme of duty; it is, how can we meet
this circumstance? “I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring
tranquillity.”[42] The circumstance becomes the cue of the policy. We
must remind ourselves that our concern here is not to pass upon the
merits of a particular controversy, but to note the term which Burke
evidently considered most efficacious in moving his hearers. “Political
reason,” he says, elsewhere, “is a computing principle.”[43] Where does
political reason in this instance leave him? It leaves him inevitably in
the middle, keeping the Colonies, but not as taxable parts of the Empire,
allowing them to pay their own charge by voluntary grants. In Burke’s
characteristic view, the theoretic relationship has been altered by the
medium until the thirteen (by his count fourteen) colonies of British
North America are left halfway between colonial and national status. The
position of the Tories meant that either the Colonies would be colonies
or they would terminate their relationship with the Empire. Burke’s case
was that by concession to circumstance they could be retained in some
form, and this would be a victory for policy. Philosophers of starker
principle, like Tom Paine, held that a compromise of the Burkean type
would have been unacceptable in the long run even to the Americans, and
the subsequent crystallization of American nationality seems to support
this view. But Burke thought he saw a way to preserve an institution by
making way for a large corporeal fact.
It must be confessed that Burke’s interest in the affairs of India,
and more specifically in the conduct of the East India Company, is not
reconcilable in quite the same way with the thesis of this chapter.
Certainly there is nothing in mean motives or contracted views to explain
why he should have labored over a period of fourteen years to benefit
a people with whom he had no contact and from whom he could expect no
direct token of appreciation. But it must be emphasized that the subject
of this essay is methods, and even in this famous case Burke found some
opportunity to utilize his favorite source.
In 1783, years before the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he made a long
speech in Parliament attacking Fox’s East India Bill. He was by then
deeply impressed by the wrongs done the Indians by British adventurers,
yet it will be observed that his _habitus_ reveals itself in the
following passages. He said of the East India Company:
I do not presume to condemn those who argue _a priori_ against
the propriety of leaving such extensive political power in the
hands of a company of merchants. I know much is, and much more
may be, said against such a system. But, with my particular
ideas and sentiments, I cannot go that way to work. I feel
an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any
established institution of government, upon a theory, however
plausible it may be.[44]
Then shortly he continued:
To justify us in taking the administration of their affairs
out of the hands of the East India Company, as my principles,
I must see several conditions. 1st, the object affected by the
abuse must be great and important. 2nd, the abuse affecting
the great object ought to be a great abuse. 3rd, it ought to
be habitual and not accidental. 4th, it ought to be utterly
incurable in the body as it now stands constituted.[45]
It is pertinent to observe that Burke’s first condition here is exactly
the first condition raised with reference to the Irish Catholics and
with reference to the American Colonies. It is further characteristic of
his method that the passages cited above are followed immediately by a
description of the extent and wealth and civilization of India, just as
the plea for approaching the Colonies with reconciliation was followed
by a vivid advertisement of their extent and wealth and enterprise. The
argument is for justice, but it is conditioned upon a circumstance.
When Burke undertook the prosecution of Hastings in 1788, these
considerations seemed far from his mind. The splendid opening charge
contains arguments strictly from genus, despite the renunciation of
such arguments which we see above. He attacked the charter of the East
India Company by showing that it violated the idea of a charter.[46]
He affirmed the natural rights of man, and held that they had been
criminally denied in India.[47] He scorned the notion of geographical
morality. These sound like the utterances of a man committed to abstract
right. Lord Morley has some observations on Burke which may contain
the explanation. His study of Burke’s career led him to feel that
“direct moral or philanthropic apostleship was not his function.”[48]
Of his interest in India, he remarked: “It was reverence rather
than sensibility, a noble and philosophic conservatism rather than
philanthropy, which raised the storm in Burke’s breast against the
rapacity of English adventurers in India, and the imperial crimes of
Hastings.”[49] If it is true that Burke acted out of reverence rather
than out of sensibility or philanthropy, what was the reverence of? It
was, likely, for storied India, for an ancient and opulent civilization
which had brought religion and the arts to a high point of development
while his ancestors were yet “in the woods.” There is just enough of
deference for the established and going concern, for panoply, for that
which has prestige, to make us feel that Burke was again impressed—with
an intended consequence which was noble, of course; but it is only fair
to record this component of the situation.
The noble and philosophic conservatism next translated itself into a
violent opposition to the French Revolution, which was threatening to
bring down a still greater structure of rights and dignities, though in
this instance in the name of reform and emancipation.
The French Revolution was the touchstone of Burke. Those who have
regarded his position on this event as a reversal, or a sign of fatigue
and senescence, have not sufficiently analyzed his methods and his
sources. Burke would have had to become a new man to take any other stand
than he did on the French Revolution. It was an event perfectly suited to
mark off those who argue from circumstance, for it was one of the most
radical revolutions on record, and it was the work of a people fond of
logical rigor and clear demonstration.
Why Burke, who had championed the Irish Catholics, the American
colonists, and the Indians should have championed on this occasion the
nobility and the propertied classes of Europe is easy to explain. For him
Europe, with all its settlements and usages, was the circumstance; and
the Revolution was the challenge to it. From first to last Burke saw the
grand upheaval as a contest between inherited condition and speculative
insight. The circumstance said that Europe should go on; the Revolution
said that it should cease and begin anew.[50] Burke’s position was not
selfish; it was prudential within the philosophy we have seen him to hold.
Actually his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ divides itself
into two parts. The first is an attempt, made with a zeal which seems
almost excessive, to prove that the British government was the product
of slow accretion of precedent, that it is for that reason a beneficent
and stable government, and that the British have renounced, through their
choice of methods in the past, any theoretical right to change their
government by revolution. The second part is a miscellany of remarks on
the proceedings in France, in which many shrewd observations of human
nature are mingled with eloquent appeals on behalf of the _ancien régime_.
Burke appears terrified by the thought that the ultimate sources and
sanctions of government should be brought out into broad daylight for the
inspection of everyone, and the first effort was to clothe the British
government with a kind of concealment against this sort of inspection,
which could, of course, result in the testing of that government by
what might have been or might yet be. The second effort was to show
that France, instead of embarking on a career of progress through her
daring revolution, “had abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute
her virtue.” It will be observed that in both of these, a presumed
well-being is the source of his argument. Therefore we have the familiar
recourse to concrete situation.
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen, pass for nothing)
give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing
color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what
render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious
to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as
liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago,
have felicitated France upon her enjoyment of a government (for
she then had a government) without inquiring what the nature
of the government was, or how it was administered? Can I now
congratulate the same nation on its freedom?[51]
In his _Letter to a Member of the National Assembly_ (1791) he said:
What a number of faults have led to this multitude of
misfortunes, and almost all from this one source—that of
considering certain general maxims, without attending to
circumstances, to times, to places, to conjectures, and to
actors! If we do not attend scrupulously to all of these, the
medicine of today becomes the poison of tomorrow.[52]
This was the gist of such advice as Burke had for the French. That they
should build on what they had instead of attempting to found _de novo_,
that they should adapt necessary changes to existing conditions, and
above all that they should not sacrifice the sources of dignity and
continuity in the state—these made up a sort of gospel of precedent and
gradualism which he preached to the deaf ears across the Channel. We
behold him here in his characteristic political position, but forced to
dig a little deeper, to give his theorems a more general application,
and, it is hardly unjust to say, to make what really constitutes a
denial of philosophy take on some semblance of philosophy. Yet Burke was
certainly never at a greater height rhetorically in defending a reigning
circumstance. Let us listen to him for a moment on the virtues of old
Europe.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we
behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud
submission, that dignified obedience, the subordination of
the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the
spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the
cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment, is
gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity
of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired
courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever
it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by
losing all its grossness.
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in
the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its
appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and
influenced through a long succession of generations, even to
the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished,
the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its
character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished
it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it
to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from
those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods
of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding
ranks, has produced a noble equality and handed it down through
all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which
mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be
fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the
fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit
to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority
to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws
to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which
made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the
different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation,
incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify
and soften private society, are to be dissolved by the new
conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery
of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas,
furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the imagination ratifies, as necessary to cover
the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to
dignity in our own estimation, are to be exposed as ridiculous,
absurd, and antiquated fashions.[53]
With the writings on French affairs, Burke’s argument from circumstance
came full flower.
These citations are enough to show a partiality toward argument of
this aspect. But a rehearsal of his general observations on politics
and administration will show it in even clearer light. Burke had an
obsessive dislike of metaphysics and the methods of the metaphysician.
There is scarcely a peroration or passage of appeal in his works which
does not contain a gibe, direct or indirect, at this subject. In the
_Speech On American Taxation_ he said, “I do not enter into these
metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.”[54] This
science he regarded as wholly incompatible with politics, yet capable of
deluding a certain type of politician with its niceties and exactitudes.
Whenever Burke introduced the subject of metaphysics, he was in effect
arguing from contraries; that is to say, he was asserting that what
is metaphysically true is politically false or unfeasible. For him,
metaphysical clarity was at the opposite pole from political prudence. As
he observed in the _Reflections_, “The pretended rights of these theories
are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true,
they are morally and politically false.”[55] In the first letter to Sir
Hercules Langrishe, he ridiculed “the metaphysicians of our times, who
are the most foolish of men, and who, dealing in universals and essences,
see no difference between more and less.”[56] It will be noted that
this last is a philosophical justification for his regular practice of
weighing a principle by the scale of magnitude of situation. The “more
and less” thus becomes determinative of the good. “Metaphysics cannot
live without definition, but prudence is cautious how she defines,”[57]
he said in the _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_. And again in the
_Reflections_, “These metaphysic rights, entering into common life, like
rays of light which pierce into a dense medium are by the laws of nature
refracted from a straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of man undergo
such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to
talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original
direction.”[58] Finally, there is his clear confession, “Whenever I speak
against a theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded
theory, and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is
by comparing it with practice.” This is the philosophical explanation of
the source in circumstance of Burke’s characteristic argument.
In a brilliant passage on the American character, he had observed that
the Americans were in the habit of judging the pressure of a grievance
by the badness of the principle rather than _vice versa_. Burke’s own
habit, we now see, was fairly consistently the reverse: he judged the
badness of the principle by the pressure of the grievance; and hence we
are compelled to suppose that he believed politics ought to be decided
empirically and not dialectically. Yet a consequence of this position is
that whoever says he is going to give equal consideration to circumstance
and to ideals (or principles) almost inevitably finds himself following
circumstances while preserving a mere decorous respect for ideals.
Burke’s doctrine of precedent, which constitutes a central part of his
political thought, is directly related with the above position. If one
is unwilling to define political aims with reference to philosophic
absolutes, one tries to find guidance in precedent. We have now seen that
a principal topic of the _Reflections_ is a defense of custom against
insight. Burke tried with all his eloquence to show that the “manly”
freedom of the English was something inherited from ancestors, like a
valuable piece of property, increased or otherwise modified slightly to
meet the needs of the present generation, and then reverently passed on.
He did not want to know the precise origin of the title to it, nor did
he want philosophical definition of it. In fact, the statement of Burke
which so angered Thomas Paine—that Englishmen were ready to take up arms
to prove that they had no right to change their government—however brash
or paradoxical seeming, was quite in keeping with such conviction. Since
he scorned that freedom which did not have the stamp of generations of
approval upon it, he attempted to show that freedom too was a matter of
precedent.
Yet this is an evasion rather than an answer to the real question which
is lying in wait for Burke’s political philosophy. It is essential to see
that government either moves with something in view or it does not, and
to say that people may be governed merely by following precedent begs the
question. What line do the precedents mark out for us? How may we know
that this particular act is in conformity with the body of precedents
unless we can abstract the essence of the precedents? And if one extracts
the essence of a body of precedents, does not one have a “speculative
idea”? However one turns, one cannot evade the truth that there is no
practice without theory, and no government without some science of
government. Burke’s statement that a man’s situation is the preceptor of
his duty cannot be taken seriously unless one can isolate the precept.
This dilemma grows out of Burke’s own reluctance to speculate about
the origin and ultimate end of government. “There is a sacred veil to
be drawn over the beginnings of all governments,” he declared in his
second day’s speech at the trial of Warren Hastings.[59] To the abstract
doctrines of the French Revolution, he responded with a “philosophic
analogy,” by which governments are made to come into being with
something like the indistinct remoteness of the animal organism. This
political organism is a “mysterious incorporation,” never wholly young
or middle-aged or old, but partly each at every period, and capable,
like the animal organism, of regenerating itself through renewal of
tissue. It is therefore modified only through the slow forces that
produce evolution. But to the question of what brings on the changes
in society, Burke was never able to give an answer. He had faced the
problem briefly in the _Tract on the Popery Laws_, where he wrote: “Is,
then, no improvement to be brought into society? Undoubtedly, but not by
compulsion—but by encouragement, but by countenance, favor, privileges,
which are powerful and are lawful instruments.”[60] These, however, are
the passive forces which admit change, not the active ones which initiate
it. The prime mover is still to seek. If such social changes are brought
about by immanent evolutionary forces, they are hardly voluntary; if on
the other hand they are voluntary, they must be identifiable with some
point in time and with some agency of initiation. It quickly becomes
obvious that if one is to talk about the beginnings of things, about the
nisus of growth or of accumulation of precedents, and about final ends,
one must shift from empirical to speculative ground. Burke’s attachment
to what was _de facto_ prevented him from doing this in political theory
and made him a pleader from circumstance at many crucial points in his
speeches. One can scarcely do better than quote the judgment of Sir James
Prior in his summation of Burke’s career: “His aim therefore in our
domestic policy, was to preserve all our institutions in the main as they
stood for the simple reason that under them the nation had become great,
and prosperous, and happy.”[61] This is but a generalized translation of
the position “If it exists, there is something to be said in its favor,”
which we have determined as the aspect of the great orator’s case.
That position is, moreover, the essential position of Whiggism as a
political philosophy. It turns out to be, on examination, a position
which is defined by other positions because it will not conceive ultimate
goals, and it will not display on occasion a sovereign contempt for
circumstances as radical parties of both right and left are capable of
doing. The other parties take their bearing from some philosophy of
man and society; the Whigs take their bearings from the other parties.
Whatever a party of left or right proposes, they propose (or oppose) in
tempered measure. Its politics is then cautionary, instinctive, trusting
more to safety and to present success than to imagination and dramatic
boldness of principle. It is, to make the estimate candid, a politics
without vision and consequently without the capacity to survive.
“The political parties which I call great,” Tocqueville wrote in
_Democracy in America_, “are those which cling to principles rather
than to their consequences, to general and not to special cases, to
ideas and not to men.”[62] Manifestly the Whig Party is contrary to this
on each point. The Whigs do not argue from principles (_i.e._, genera
and definitions); they are awed not merely by consequences but also by
circumstances; and as for the general and the special, we have now heard
Burke testify on a dozen occasions to his disregard of the former and
his veneration of the latter. There is indeed ground for saying that
Burke was more Whig than the British Whigs of his own day themselves,
because at the one time when the British Whig Party took a turn in the
direction of radical principle, Burke found himself out of sympathy with
it and, before long, was excluded from it. This occurred in 1791, when
the electrifying influence of the French Revolution produced among the
liberals of the age a strong trend toward the philosophic left. It was
this trend which drew from Burke the _Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs_, with its final scornful paragraph in which he refused to take his
principles “from a French die.” This writing was largely taken up with
a defense of his recently published _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_, and it is here relevant to note how Burke defines his doctrine
as a middle course. “The opinions maintained in that book,” he said,
“never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an
opposition to extremes.”[63] “These doctrines do of themselves gravitate
to a middle point, or to some point near a middle.”[64] “The author of
that book is supposed to have passed from extreme to extreme; but he has
always actually kept himself in a medium.”[65]
Actually the course of events which caused this separation was the same
as that which led to the ultimate extinction of the Whig point of view
in British political life. In the early twentieth century, when a world
conflict involving the Empire demanded of parties a profound basis in
principle, the heirs of the Whig party passed from the scene, leaving
two coherent parties, one of the right and one of the left. That is
part of our evidence for saying that a party which bases itself upon
circumstance cannot outlast that circumstance very long; that its claim
to make smaller mistakes (and to have smaller triumphs) than the extreme
parties will not win it enduring allegiance; and that when the necessity
arises, as it always does at some time, to look at the foundations of the
commonwealth, Burke’s wish will be disregarded, and only deeply founded
theories will be held worthy. A party does not become great by feasting
on the leavings of other parties, and Whiggism’s bid for even temporary
success is often rejected. A party must have its own principle of
movement and must not be content to serve as a brake on the movements of
others. Thus there is indication that Whiggism is a recipe for political
failure, but before affirming this as a conclusion, let us extend our
examination further to see how other parties have fared with circumstance
as the decisive argument.
The American Whig Party showed all the defects of this position in an
arena where such defects were bound to be more promptly fatal. It is just
to say that this party never had a set of principles. Lineal descendants
of the old Federalists, the American Whigs were simply the party of
opposition to that militant democracy which received its most aggressive
leadership from Andrew Jackson. It was, generally speaking, the party of
the “best people”; that is to say, the people who showed the greatest
respect for industry and integrity, the people in whose eyes Jackson was
“that wicked man and vulgar hero.” Yet because it had no philosophical
position, it was bound to take its position from that of the other party,
as we have seen that Whiggism is doomed to do. During most of its short
life it was conspicuously a party of “outs” arrayed against “ins.”
It revealed the characteristic impotence in two obvious ways. First, it
pinned its hopes for victory on brilliant personalities rather than on
dialectically secured positions. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, who between
them represented the best statesmanship of the generation, were among its
leaders, but none of them ever reached the White House. The beau ideal of
the party was Clay, whose title “the Great Compromiser” seems to mark him
as the archetypal Whig. Finally it discovered a politically “practical”
candidate in William Henry Harrison, soldier and Indian fighter, and
through a campaign of noise and irrelevancies, put him in the Presidency.
But this success was short, and before long the Whigs were back battling
under their native handicaps.
Second, frustrated by its series of reverses, it decided that what the
patient needed was more of the disease. Whereas at the beginning it had
been only relatively pragmatic in program and had preserved dignity in
method, it now resolved to become completely pragmatic in program and as
pragmatic as its rivals the Democrats in method. Of the latter step, the
“coonskin and hard-cider” campaign on behalf of Harrison was the proof.
We may cite as special evidence the advice given to Harrison’s campaign
manager by Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia. “Let him [the candidate] say
not a single word about his principles or his creed—let him say nothing,
promise nothing. Let the use of pen and ink be wholly forbidden.”[66] E.
Malcolm Carroll in his _Origins of the Whig Party_ has thus summed up
the policy of the Whig leaders after their round with Jackson: “The most
active of the Whig politicians and editors after 1836, men like Weed,
Greeley, Ewing of Ohio, Thaddeus Stevens, and Richard Houghton of Boston,
preferred success to a consistent position and, therefore, influenced
the party to make its campaign in the form of appeal to popular emotion
and, for this purpose, to copy the methods of the Democratic Party.”[67]
This verdict is supported by Paul Murray in his study of Whig operations
in Georgia: “The compelling aim of the party was to get control of the
existing machinery of government, to maintain that control, and, in some
cases, to change the form of government the better to serve the dominant
interest of the group.”[68] Murray found that the Whigs of Georgia
“naturally had a respect for the past that approached at times the
unreasonable reverence of Edmund Burke for eighteenth century political
institutions.”[69]
But a party whose only program is an endorsement of the _status quo_ is
destined to go to pieces whenever the course of events brings a principle
strongly to the fore. The American Union was moving toward a civil
conflict in which ideological differences, as deep as any that have
appeared in modern revolutions, were to divide men. As always occurs in
such crises, the compromisers are regarded as unreliable by both sides
and are soon ejected from the scene. It now seems impossible that the
Whig Party, with its political history, could have survived the fifties.
But the interesting fact from the standpoint of theoretical discussion
is that the Democratic Party, because it was a radically based party,
was able to take over and defend certain of the defensible earlier Whig
positions. Murray points out the paradoxical fact that the Democratic
Party “purloined the leadership of conservative property interests in
Georgia and the South.”[70] It is no less paradoxical that it should have
purloined the defense of the states’ rights doctrine thirty years after
Jackson had threatened to hang disunionists.
The paradox can be resolved only by seeing that the Whig position was one
of self-stultification; and this is why a rising young political leader
in Illinois of Whig affiliation left the party to lead a re-conceived
Republican Party. The evidence of Lincoln’s life greatly favors the
supposition that he was a conservative. But he saw that conservatism to
be politically effective cannot be Whiggism, that it cannot perpetually
argue from circumstance. He saw that to be politically effective
conservatism must have something more than a temperamental love of
quietude or a relish for success. It must have some ideal objective. He
found objectives in the moral idea of freedom and the political idea of
union.
The political party which Abraham Lincoln carried to victory in 1860 was
a party with these moral objectives. The Whigs had disintegrated from
their own lack of principle, and the Republicans emerged with a program
capable of rallying men to effort and sacrifice—which are in the long
run psychologically more compelling than the stasis of security. But
after the war and the death of the party’s unique leader, all moral
idealism speedily fell away.[71] Of the passion of revenge there was
more than enough, so that some of the victor’s measures look like the
measures of a radical party. But the elevation of Grant to the presidency
and the party’s conduct during and after the Gilded Age show clearly
the declining interest in reform. Before the end of the century the
Republican Party had been reduced in its source of appeal to the Whig
argument from circumstance (or in the case of the tariff to a wholly
dishonest argument from consequences). For thirty or forty years its case
came to little more than this: we are the richest nation on earth with
the most widely distributed prosperity; therefore this party advocates
the _status quo_. The argument, whether embodied in the phrase “the full
dinner pail” or “two cars in every garage” has the same source. Murray’s
judgment of the Whig party in Georgia a hundred years ago: “Many facts in
the history of the party might impel one to say that its members regarded
the promotion of prosperity as the supreme aim of government,”[72] can
be applied without the slightest change to the Republican Party of the
1920’s. But when the circumstance of this _status quo_ disappeared about
1930, the party’s source of argument disappeared too, and no other has
been found since. It became the party of frustration and hatred, and like
the Whig Party earlier, it clung to personalities in the hope that they
would be sufficient to carry it to victory. First there was the grass
roots Middle Westerner Alf Landon; then the glamorous new convert to
internationalism Wendell Willkie; then the gang-buster and Empire State
governor Thomas Dewey. Finally, to make the parallel complete, there came
the military hero General Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower can be called the
William Henry Harrison of the Republican Party. He is “against” what the
Democrats are doing, and he is admired by the “best” people. All this
is well suited to take minds off real issues through an outpouring of
national vanity and the enjoyment of sensation.
The Republican charge against the incumbent administration has been
consistently the charge of “bungling,” while those Republicans who have
based their dissent on something more profound and clear-sighted have
generally drawn the suspicion and disapproval of the party’s supposedly
practical leaders. Of this the outstanding proof is the defeat of the
leadership of Taft. To look at the whole matter in an historical frame
of reference, there has been so violent a swing toward the left that the
Democrats today occupy the position once occupied by the Socialists; and
the Republicans, having to take their bearings from this, now occupy
the center position, which is historically reserved for liberals.
Their series of defeats comes from a failure to see that there is an
intellectually defensible position on the right. They persist with the
argument from circumstance, which never wins any major issues, and
sometimes, as we have noted, they are left without the circumstance.
I shall suggest that this story has more than an academic interest for
an age which has seen parliamentary government exposed to insults, some
open and vicious, some concealed and insidious. There are in existence
many technological factors which themselves constitute an argument from
circumstance for one-party political rule. Indeed, if the trend of
circumstances were our master term, we should almost certainly have to
favor the one-party efficiency system lately flourishing in Europe. The
centralization of power, the technification of means of communication,
the extreme peril of political divisiveness in the face of modern weapons
of war, all combine to put the question, “What is the function of a party
of opposition in this streamlined world anyhow?” Its proper function is
to talk, but talking, unless it concerns some opposition of principles,
is but the wearisome contention of “ins” and “outs.” Democracy is a
dialectical process, and unless society can produce a group sufficiently
indifferent to success to oppose the ruling group on principle rather
than according to opportunity for success, the idea of opposition becomes
discredited. A party which can argue only from success has no rhetorical
topic against the party presently enjoying success.
The proper aim of a political party is to persuade, and to persuade
it must have a rhetoric. As far as mere methods go, there is nothing
to object to in the argument from circumstance, for undeniably it has
a power to move. Yet it has this power through a widely shared human
weakness, which turns out on examination to be shortsightedness. This
shortsightedness leads a party to positions where it has no policy, or
only the policy of opposing an incumbent. When all the criteria are
brought to bear, then, this is an inferior source of argument, which
reflects adversely upon any habitual user and generally punishes with
failure. Since, as we have seen, it is grounded in the nature of a
situation rather than in the nature of things, its opposition will
not be a dialectically opposed opposition, any more than was Burke’s
opposition to the French Revolution. And here, in substance, I would
say, is the great reason why Burke should not be taken as prophet by the
political conservatives. True, he has left many wonderful materials which
they should assimilate. His insights into human nature are quite solid
propositions to build with, and his eloquence is a lesson for all time in
the effective power of energy and imagery. Yet these are the auxiliary
rhetorical appeals. For the rhetorical appeal on which it will stake its
life, a cause must have some primary source of argument which will not
be embarrassed by abstractions or even by absolutes—the general ideas
mentioned by Tocqueville. Burke was magnificent at embellishment, but of
clear rational principle he had a mortal distrust. It could almost be
said that he raised “muddling through” to the height of a science, though
in actuality it can never be a science. In the most critical undertaking
of all, the choice of one’s source of argument, it would be blindness
to take him as mentor. To find what Burke lacked, we now turn to the
American Abraham Lincoln, who despite an imperfect education, discovered
that political arguments must ultimately be based on genus or definition.
Chapter IV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION
Although most readers of Lincoln sense the prevailing aspect of his
arguments, there has been no thoughtful treatment of this interesting
subject. Albert Beveridge merely alludes to it in his observation
that “In trials in circuit courts Lincoln depended but little on
precedents; he argued largely from first principles.”[73] Nicolay and
Hay, in describing Lincoln’s speech before the Republican Banquet in
Chicago, December 10, 1856, report as follows: “Though these fragments
of addresses give us only an imperfect reflection of the style of
Mr. Lincoln’s oratory during this period, they nevertheless show its
essential characteristics, a pervading clearness of analysis, and that
strong tendency toward axiomatic definition which gives so many of his
sentences their convincing force and durable value.”[74] W. H. Herndon,
who had the opportunity of closest personal observation, was perhaps
the most analytical of all when he wrote: “Not only were nature, man,
and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln; not only had he accurate and
exact perceptions, but he was causative; his mind apparently with an
automatic movement, ran back behind facts, principles, and all things to
their origin and first cause—to the point where forces act at once as
effect and cause.”[75] He observed further in connection with Lincoln’s
practice before the bar: “All opponents dreaded his originality, his
condensation, definition, and force of expression....”[76]
Our feeling that he is a father of the nation even more convincingly than
Washington, and that his words are words of wisdom when compared with
those of the more intellectual Jefferson and the more academic Wilson
strengthen the supposition that he argued from some very fundamental
source. And when we find opinion on the point harmonious, despite the
wide variety of description his character has undergone, we have enough
initial confirmation to go forward with the study—a study which is
important not alone as showing the man in clearer light but also as
showing upon what terms conservatism is possible.
It may be useful to review briefly the argument from definition. The
argument from definition, in the sense we shall employ here, includes all
arguments from the nature of the thing. Whether the genus is an already
recognized convention, or whether it is defined at the moment by the
orator, or whether it is left to be inferred from the aggregate of its
species, the argument has a single postulate. The postulate is that there
exist classes which are determinate and therefore predicable. In the
ancient proposition of the schoolroom, “Socrates is mortal,” the class
of mortal beings is invoked as a predicable. Whatever is a member of the
class will accordingly have the class attributes. This might seem a very
easy admission to gain, but it is not so from those who believe that
genera are only figments of the imagination and have no self-subsistence.
Such persons hold, in the extreme application of their doctrine, that
all deduction is unwarranted assumption; or that attributes cannot be
transferred by imputation from genus to species. The issue here is very
deep, going back to the immemorial quarrel over universals, and we
shall not here explore it further than to say that the argument from
definition or genus involves a philosophy of being, which has divided and
probably will continue to divide mankind. There are those who seem to
feel that genera are imprisoning bonds which serve only to hold the mind
in confinement. To others, such genera appear the very organon of truth.
Without going into that question here, it seems safe to assert that those
who believe in the validity of the argument from genus are idealists,
roughly, if not very philosophically, defined. The evidence that Lincoln
held such belief is overwhelming; it characterizes his thinking from an
early age; and the greatest of his utterances (excepting the Gettysburg
Address, which is based upon similitude) are chiefly arguments from
definition.
In most of the questions which concerned him from the time he was a
struggling young lawyer until the time when he was charged with the
guidance of the nation, Lincoln saw opportunity to argue from the nature
of man. In fact, not since the Federalist papers of James Madison had
there been in American political life such candid recourse to this term.
I shall treat his use of it under the two heads of argument from a
concept of human nature and argument from a definition of man.
Lincoln came early to the conclusion that human nature is a fixed and
knowable thing. Many of his early judgments of policy are based on a
theory of what the human being _qua_ human being will do in a given
situation. Whether he had arrived at this concept through inductive
study—for which he had varied opportunity—or through intuition is, of
course, not the question here; our interest is in the reasoning which
the concept made possible. It appears a fact that Lincoln trusted in a
uniform predictability of human nature.
In 1838, when he was only twenty-nine years old, he was invited to
address the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield on the topic “The
Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” In this instance, the
young orator read the danger to perpetuation in the inherent evil of
human nature. His argument was that the importance of a nation or
the sacredness of a political dogma could not withstand the hunger of
men for personal distinction. Now the founders of the Union had won
distinction through that very role, and so satisfied themselves. But
oncoming men of the same breed would be looking for similar opportunity
for distinction, and possibly would not find it in tasks of peaceful
construction. It seemed to him quite possible that in the future bold
natures would appear who would seek to gain distinction by pulling down
what their predecessors had erected. To a man of this nature it matters
little whether distinction is won “at the expense of emancipating slaves
or enslaving freemen.”[77] The fact remains that “Distinction will be his
paramount object,” and “nothing left to be done in the way of building
up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”[78] In this way
Lincoln held personal ambition to be distinctive of human nature, and he
was willing to predict it of his fellow citizens, should their political
institutions endure “fifty times” as long as they had.
Another excellent example of the use of this source appears in a speech
which Lincoln made during the Van Buren administration. Agitation over
the National Bank question was still lively, and a bill had been put
forward which would have required the depositing of Federal funds in five
regional subtreasuries, rather than in a National Bank, until they were
needed for use. At a political discussion held in the Illinois House
of Representatives, Lincoln made a long speech against the proposal in
which he drew extensively from the topic of the nature of human nature.
His reasoning was that if public funds are placed in the custody of
subtreasurers, the duty and the personal interest of the custodians
may conflict. “And who that knows anything of human nature doubts
that in many instances interest will prevail over duty, and that the
subtreasurer will prefer opulent knavery in a foreign land to honest
poverty at home.”[79] If on the other hand the funds were placed with a
National Bank, which would have the privilege of using the funds, upon
payment of interest, until they are needed, the duty and interest of
the custodian would coincide. The Bank plan was preferable because we
always find the best performance where duty and self-interest thus run
together.[80] Here we see him basing his case again on the infallible
tendency of human nature to be itself.
A few years later Lincoln was called upon to address the Washingtonian
Temperance Society, which was an organization of reformed drink addicts.
This speech is strikingly independent in approach, and as such is
prophetic of the manner he was to adopt in wrestling with the great
problems of union and slavery. Instead of following the usual line of
the temperance advocate, with its tone of superiority and condemnation,
he attacked all such approaches as not suited to the nature of man. He
impressed upon his hearers the fact that their problem was the problem
of human nature, “which is God’s decree and can never be reversed.”
He then went on to say that people with a weakness for drink are not
inferior specimens of the race but have heads and hearts that “will
bear advantageous comparison with those of any other class.” The appeal
to drink addicts was to be addressed to men, and it could not take
the form of denunciation “because it is not much in the nature of man
to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that which is
exclusively his own business.” When one seeks to change the conduct of a
being of this nature, “persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion should
ever be adopted.” He then summed up his point: “Such is man and so must
he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best
interests.”[81]
One further instance of this argument may be cited. About 1850 Lincoln
compiled notes for an address to young men on the subject of the
profession of law. Here again we find a refreshingly candid approach,
looking without pretense at the creature man. One piece of advice which
Lincoln urged upon young lawyers was that they never take their whole fee
in advance. To do so would place too great a strain upon human nature,
which would then lack the needful spur to industry. “When fully paid
beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same
interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as
well as for your client.”[82] As in the case of the subtreasury bill,
Lincoln saw the yoking of duty and self-interest as a necessity of our
nature.
These and other passages which could be produced indicate that he viewed
human nature as a constant, by which one could determine policy without
much fear of surprise. Everything peripheral Lincoln referred to this
center. His arguments consequently were the most fundamental seen since a
group of realists framed the American government with such visible regard
for human passion and weakness. Lincoln’s theory of human nature was
completely unsentimental; it was the creation of one who had taken many
buffetings and who, from early bitterness and later indifference, never
affiliated with any religious denomination. But it furnished the means of
wisdom and prophecy.
With this habit of reasoning established, Lincoln was ideally equipped to
deal with the great issue of slavery. The American civil conflict of the
last century, when all its superficial excitements have been stripped
aside, appears another debate about the nature of man. Yet while other
political leaders were looking to the law, to American history, and to
this or that political contingency, Lincoln looked—as it was his habit
already to do—to the center; that is, to the definition of man. Was
the negro a man or was he not? It can be shown that his answer to this
question never varied, despite willingness to recognize some temporary
and perhaps even some permanent minority on the part of the African race.
The answer was a clear “Yes,” and he used it on many occasions during the
fifties to impale his opponents.
The South was peculiarly vulnerable to this argument, for if we look at
its position, not through the terms of legal and religious argument,
often ingeniously worked out, but through its actual treatment of the
negro, that position is seen to be equivocal. To illustrate: in the
Southern case he was not a man as far as the “inalienable rights” go,
and the Dred Scott decision was to class him as a chattel. Yet on the
contrary the negro was very much a man when it came to such matters
as understanding orders, performing work, and, as the presence of the
mulatto testified, helping to procreate the human species. All of the
arguments that the pro-slavery group was able to muster broke against the
stubborn fact, which Lincoln persistently thrust in their way, that the
negro was somehow and in some degree a man.
For our first examination of this argument, we turn to the justly
celebrated speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854. Lincoln had actually begun
to lose interest in politics when the passage of the highly controversial
Kansas-Nebraska Bill in May, 1854, reawakened him. It was as if his moral
nature had received a fresh shock from the tendencies present in this
bill; and he began in that year the battle which he waged with remarkable
consistency of position until he won the presidency of the Union six
years later. The Speech at Peoria can be regarded as the opening gun of
this campaign.
The speech itself is a rich study in logic and rhetoric, wherein one
finds the now mature Lincoln showing his gift for discovering the
essentials of a question. After promising the audience to confine himself
to the “naked merits” of the issue and to be “no less than national in
all the positions” he took, he turned at once to the topic of domestic
slavery. Here arguments from the genus “man” follow one after another.
Lincoln uses them to confront the Southern people with their dilemma.
Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent
to the extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say,
inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska,
therefore I must not object to your taking your slave. Now, I
admit that this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference
between hogs and Negroes. But while you thus require me to deny
the humanity of the Negro, I wish to ask whether you of the
South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much?[83]
If the Southern people regard the Negro only as an animal, how do they
explain their attitude toward the slave dealer?
You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend,
or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his;
they may rollick freely with the little Negroes, but not with
the slave dealer’s children. If you are obliged to deal with
him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching
him. It is common with you to join hands with men you meet,
but with the slave dealer you avoid the ceremony—instinctively
shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires
from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the
ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now why is
this? You do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, or
tobacco?[84]
Moreover, if the Negro is merely property, and is incapable of any
sort of classification, what category is there to accommodate the free
Negroes?
And yet again. There are in the United States and Territories,
including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At
five hundred dollars per head, they are worth over two hundred
millions of dollars. How comes this vast amount of property
to be running about without owners? We do not see free horses
or free cattle running at large. How is this? All these free
blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves
themselves; and they would be slaves now but for something
which has operated on their white owners, inducing them at vast
pecuniary sacrifice to liberate them. What is that something?
Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it is your sense
of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that the
poor Negro has some natural right to himself—that those who
deny it and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings,
contempt, and death.[85]
The argument is clinched with a passage which puts the Negro’s case
in the most explicit terms one can well conceive of. “Man” and
“self-government,” Lincoln argues, cannot be defined without respect to
one another.
The doctrine of self-government is right—absolutely and
eternally right—but it has no just application as here
attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has
such application depends upon whether a Negro is not or is a
man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may as a
matter of self-government do just what he pleases with him.
But if the Negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total
destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not
govern himself? When the white man governs himself, that
is self-government; but when he governs himself and also
governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is
despotism. If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith
teaches me that “all men are created equal,” and that there can
be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave
of another.[86]
Lincoln knew the type of argument he had to oppose, and he correctly
gauged its force. It was the argument from circumstance, which he
treated as such argument requires to be treated. “Let us turn slavery
from its claims of ‘moral right’ back upon its existing legal rights and
its argument of ‘necessity.’”[87] He did not deny the “necessity”; he
regarded it as something that could be taken care of in course of time.
After the formation of the Republican Party, he often utilized his source
in definition to point out the salient difference between Republicans and
Democrats. The Democrats were playing up circumstance (the “necessity”
alluded to in the above quotation) and to consequence (the saving of the
Union through the placating of all sections) while the Republicans stood,
at first a little forlornly, upon principle. As he put it during a speech
at Springfield in 1857:
The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can,
that the Negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and
that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The
Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance,
the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible crush all sympathy
for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against
him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and
call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage “a sacred right
of self-government.”[88]
In the long contest with Douglas and the party of “popular sovereignty,”
Lincoln’s principal charge was that his opponents, by straddling issues
and through deviousness, were breaking down the essential definition of
man. Repeatedly he referred to “this gradual and steady debauching of
public opinion.” He made this charge because those who advocated local
option in the matter of slavery were working unremittingly to change the
Negro “from the rank of a man to that of a brute.” “They are taking him
down,” he declared, “and placing him, when spoken of, among reptiles and
crocodiles, as Judge Douglas himself expresses it.
“Is not this change wrought in your minds a very important change? Public
opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like ours this popular
sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already wrought a change in the
public mind to the extent I have already stated. There is no man in this
crowd who can contradict it.
“Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, I ask you to note that
fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on, layer after
layer, until very soon you are prepared to deal with the Negro everywhere
as with a brute.”[89]
We feel that the morality of intellectual integrity lay behind such
resistance to the breaking down of genera. Lincoln realized that the
price of honesty, as well as of success in the long run, is to stay out
of the excluded middle.
In sum, we see that Lincoln could never be dislodged from his position
that there is one genus of human beings; and early in his career as
lawyer he had learned that it is better to base an argument upon one
incontrovertible point than to try to make an impressive case through a
whole array of points. Through the years he clung tenaciously to this
concept of genus, from which he could draw the proposition that what
is fundamentally true of the family will be true also of the branches
of the family.[90] Therefore since the Declaration of Independence had
interdicted slavery for man, slavery was interdicted for the negro in
principle. Here is a good place to point out that whereas for Burke
circumstance was often a deciding factor, for Lincoln it was never more
than a retarding factor. He marked the right to equality affirmed by
the signers of the Declaration of Independence: “They meant simply to
declare the right, so that enforcement of it might follow as fast as
circumstances would permit.”[91] And he recognized the stubborn fact of
the institution of American slavery. But he did not argue any degree of
rightness from the fact. The strategy of his whole anti-slavery campaign
was that slavery should be restricted to the states in which it then
existed and in this way “put in course of ultimate extinction”—a phrase
which he found expressive enough to use on several occasions.
There is quite possibly concealed here another argument from definition,
expressible in the proposition that which cannot grow must perish. To
fix limits for an institution with the understanding that it shall never
exceed these is in effect to pass sentence of death. The slavery party
seems to have apprehended early that if slavery could not wax, it would
wane, and hence their support of the Mexican War and the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill. Lincoln’s inflexible defense of the terms of the old Northwest
Ordinance served notice that he represented the true opposition. In this
way his definitive stand drew clear lines for the approaching conflict.
To gain now a clearer view of Lincoln’s mastery of this rhetoric, it
will be useful to see how he used various arguments from definition
within the scope of a single speech, and for this purpose we may choose
the First Inaugural Address, surely from the standpoint of topical
organization one of the most notable American state papers. The long
political contest, in which he had displayed acumen along with tenacity,
had ended in victory, and this was the juncture at which he had to lay
down his policy for the American Union. For some men it would have been
an occasion for description mainly; but Lincoln seems to have taken
the advice he had given many years before to the Young Men’s Lyceum of
Springfield: “Passion has helped us but can do so no more.... Reason,
cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials
for our future support and defense....”[92] Without being cold, the
speech is severely logical, and much of the tone is contributed by the
type of argument preferred.
Of the fourteen distinguishable arguments in this address, eight are
arguments from definition or genus. Of the six remaining, two are from
consequences, two from circumstances, one from contraries, and one from
similitude. The proportion tells its own story. Now let us see how the
eight are employed:
1. _Argument from the nature of all government._ All governments have a
fundamental duty of self-preservation. “Perpetuity is implied, if not
expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.”[93]
This means of course that whatever is recognized as a government has
the obligation to defend itself from without and from within, and
whatever menaces the government must be treated as a hostile force. This
argument was offered to meet the contention of the secessionists that the
Constitution nowhere authorized the Federal government to take forcible
measures against the withdrawing states. Here Lincoln fell back upon the
broader genus “all government.”
2. _Argument from the nature of contract._ Here Lincoln met the argument
that the association of the states is “in the nature of a contract
merely.” His answer was that the rescinding of a contract requires the
assent of all parties to it. When one party alone ceases to observe it,
the contract is merely violated, and violation affects the material
interests of all parties. By this interpretation of the law of contract,
the Southern states could not leave the Union without a general consent.
3. _Argument from the nature of the American Union._ Here Lincoln
began with the proposition that the American Union is older than
the Constitution. Now since the Constitution was formed “to make a
more perfect union,” it must have had in view the “vital element of
perpetuity,” since the omission of this element would have left a less
perfect union than before. The intent of the Constitution was that “no
State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.”
Therefore the American Union, as an instrument of government, had in its
legal nature protection against this kind of disintegration.
4. _Argument from the nature of the chief magistrate’s office._ Having
thus defined the Union, Lincoln next looked at the duties which its
nature imposed upon the chief magistrate. He defined it as “simple duty”
on the chief magistrate’s part to see that the laws of this unbroken
union “be faithfully executed in all the states.” Obviously the argument
was to justify active measures in defense of the Union. As Lincoln
conceived the definition, it was not the duty of the chief magistrate
to preside over the disintegration of the Union, but to carry on the
executive office just as if no possibility of disintegration threatened.
Thus far, it will be observed, the speech is a series of deductions, each
one deriving from the preceding definition.
5. _Argument from the nature of majority rule._ This argument, with
its fine axiomatic statements, was used by Lincoln to indicate how
the government should proceed in cases not expressly envisaged by the
Constitution. Popular government demands acquiescence by minorities
in all such cases. “If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority
must, or the government will cease. There is no other alternative; for
continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other.
“If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make
a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority
of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be
controlled by such a minority.”[94] The difficulty of the Confederacy
with states’ rights within its own house was to attest to the soundness
of this argument.
6. _Argument from the nature of the sovereignty of the people._ Here
Lincoln conceded the right of the whole people to change its government
by constitutional reform or by revolutionary action. But he saw this
right vested in the people as a whole, and he insisted that any change
be carried out by the modes prescribed. The institutions of the country
were finally the creations of the sovereign will of the people. But
until a will on this issue was properly expressed, the government had a
commission to endure as before.
7. _Second argument from the nature of the office of chief magistrate._
This argument followed the preceding because Lincoln had to make it clear
that whereas the people, as the source of sovereign power, had the right
to alter or abolish their government, the chief magistrate, as an elected
servant, had no such right. He was chosen to conduct the government
then in existence. “His duty is to administer the present government as
it came into his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his
successor.”[95]
8. _Second argument from the nature of the sovereignty of the people._
In this Lincoln reminds his audience that the American government does
not give its officials much power to do mischief, and that it provides a
return of power to the people at short intervals. In effect, the argument
defines the American type of government and a tyranny as incompatible
from the fact that the governors are up for review by the people at
regular periods.
It can hardly be overlooked that this concentration upon definition
produces a strongly legalistic speech, if we may conceive law as a
process of defining actions. Every important policy of which explanation
is made is referred to some widely accepted American political theory.
It has been said that Lincoln’s advantage over his opponent Jefferson
Davis lay in a flexible-minded pragmatism capable of dealing with issues
on their own terms, unhampered by metaphysical abstractions. There may
be an element of truth in this if reference is made to the more confined
and superficial matters—to procedural and administrative detail. But
one would go far to find a speech more respectful toward the established
principles of American government—to defined and agreed upon things—than
the First Inaugural Address.
Although no other speech by Lincoln exhibits so high a proportion of
arguments from definition, the First Message to Congress (July 4, 1861)
makes a noteworthy use of this source. The withdrawal of still other
states from the Union, the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter, and
ensuing military events compelled Lincoln to develop more fully his
anti-secessionist doctrine. This he did in a passage remarkable for its
treatment of the age-old problem of freedom and authority. What had to be
made determinate, as he saw it, was the nature of free government.
And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United
States. It presents to the whole family of man the question of
whether a constitutional republic or democracy—a government
of the people by the same people—can or cannot maintain its
territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It
presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few
in numbers to control administration according to organic law
in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case,
or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense,
break up their government, and thus practically put an end to
free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: “Is there,
in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?” “Must a
government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of
its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”[96]
Then looking at the doctrine of secession as a question of the whole and
its parts, he went on to say:
This relative matter of national power and State rights, as a
principle, is no other than the principle of generality and
locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confined to the
whole—to the General Government; while whatever concerns only
the State should be left exclusively to the State. This is all
there is of original principle about it. Whether the National
Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has applied
the principle with exact accuracy is not to be questioned. We
are all bound by that defining without question.[97]
One further argument, occurring in a later speech, deserves special
attention because of the clear way in which it reveals Lincoln’s method.
When he delivered his Second Annual Message to Congress on December
1, 1862, he devoted himself primarily to the subject of compensated
emancipation of the slaves. This was a critical moment of the war for
the people of the border states, who were not fully committed either
way, and who were sensitive on the subject of slavery. Lincoln hoped
to gain the great political and military advantage of their adherence.
The way in which he approaches the subject should be of the highest
interest to students of rhetoric, for the opening part of the speech is
virtually a copybook exercise in definition. There he faces the question
of what constitutes a nation. “A nation may be said to consist of its
territory, its people, and its laws.” Here we see in scholarly order
the genus particularized by the differentiae. Next he enters into a
critical discussion of the differentiae. The notion may strike us as
curious, but Lincoln proceeds to cite the territory as the enduring
part. “The territory is the only part which is of a certain durability.
‘One generation passeth away and another cometh, but the earth abideth
forever.’ It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate
this ever-enduring part.”[98] Now, Lincoln goes on to say, our present
strife arises “not from our permanent part, not from the land we
inhabit, not from our national homestead.” It is rather the case that
“Our strife pertains to ourselves—to the passing generations of men; and
it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one
generation.”[99] The present generation will soon disappear, and our
laws can be modified by our will. Therefore he offers a plan whereby all
owners will be indemnified and all slaves will be free by the year 1900.
Seen in another way, what Lincoln here does is define “nation” and then
divide the differentiae into the permanent and the transitory; finally
he accommodates his measure both to the permanent part (a territory to
be wholly free after 1900) and the transitory part (present men and
institutions, which are to be “paid off”).
It is the utterance of an American political leader; yet it is veritably
Scholastic in its method and in the clearness of its lines of reasoning.
It is, at the same time, a fine illustration of pressing toward the ideal
goal while respecting, but not being deflected by, circumstances.
It seems pertinent to say after the foregoing that one consequence of
Lincoln’s love of definition was a war-time policy toward slavery which
looked to some like temporizing. We have encountered in an earlier speech
his view that the Negro could not be classified merely as property. Yet
it must be remembered that in the eyes of the law Negro slaves were
property; and Lincoln was, after all, a lawyer. Morally he believed them
not to be property, but legally they were property; and the necessity
of walking a line between the moral imperative and the law will explain
some of his actions which seem not to agree with the popular conception
of the Great Emancipator. The first serious clash came in the late
summer of 1861, when General Fremont, operating in Missouri, issued a
proclamation freeing all slaves there belonging to citizens in rebellion
against the United States. Lincoln first rebuked General Fremont and then
countermanded his order. To O. H. Browning, of Quincy, Illinois, who had
written him in support of Fremont’s action, he responded as follows:
You speak of it as the only means of saving the government. On
the contrary, it is itself the surrender of the government. Can
it be pretended that it is any longer the Government of the
United States—any government of constitution and laws—wherein a
general or a president may make permanent rules of property by
proclamation?[100]
This was the doctrine of the legal aspect of slavery which was to be
amplified in the Second Annual Message to Congress:
Doubtless some of those who are to pay, and not to receive,
will object. Yet the measure is both just and economical. In a
certain sense the liberation of the slaves is the destruction
of property—property acquired by descent or by purchase, the
same as any other property.... If, then, for a common object
this property is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be
done at a common charge?[101]
It is a truism that as a war progresses, the basis of the war changes,
and our civil conflict was no exception. It appears to have become
increasingly clear to Lincoln that slavery was not only the fomenting
cause but also the chief factor of support of the secessionist
movement, and finally he came to the conclusion that the “destruction”
of this form of property was an indispensable military proceeding.
Even here though—and contrary to the general knowledge of Americans
today—definitions were carefully made. The final document was not a
proclamation to emancipate slaves, but a proclamation to confiscate the
property of citizens in rebellion “as a fit and necessary measure for
suppressing said rebellion.” Its terms did not emancipate all slaves, and
as a matter of fact slavery was legal in the District of Columbia until
some time after Lincoln’s death.
In view of Lincoln’s frequent reliance upon the argument from
definition, it becomes a matter of interest to inquire whether he appears
to have realized that many of his problems were problems of definition.
One can of course employ a type of argument without being aware of much
more than its _ad hoc_ success, but we should expect a reflective mind
like Lincoln’s to ponder at times the abstract nature of his method.
Furthermore, the extraordinary accuracy with which he used words is
evidence pointing in the same direction. Sensitivity on the score of
definitions is tantamount to sensitivity on the score of names, and we
find the following in the First Message to Congress:
It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference
whether the present movement at the South be called “secession”
or “rebellion.” The movers, however, well understand the
difference. At the beginning they knew they could never raise
their reason to any respectable magnitude by any name which
implies violation of law.[102]
Lincoln must at times have viewed his whole career as a battle against
the “miners and sappers” of those names which expressed the national
ideals. His chief charge against Douglas and the equivocal upholders
of “squatter sovereignty” was that they were trying to circumvent
definitions, and during the war period he had to meet the same sort of
attempts. Lincoln’s most explicit statement by far on the problem appears
in a short talk made at one of the “Sanitary Fairs” it was his practice
to attend. Speaking this time at Baltimore in the spring of 1864, he gave
one of those timeless little lessons which have made such an impression
on men’s minds.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,
and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.
We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do
not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may
mean for each man to do as he pleases, with himself, and with
the product of his labor; while with others the same word may
mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the
product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different,
but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty.
And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective
parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty
and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which
the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty,
especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and
the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty;
and precisely the same difference prevails today among us
human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love
liberty.[103]
So the difficulty appeared in his time, and it should hardly be necessary
to point out that no period of modern history has been more in need of
this little homily on the subject of definition than the first half of
the twentieth century.
The relationship between words and essences did then occur to Lincoln as
a problem, and we can show how he was influenced in one highly important
particular by his attention to this relationship.
Fairly early in his struggle against Douglas and others whom he
conceived to be the foes of the Union, Lincoln became convinced that
the perdurability of laws and other institutions is bound up with the
acceptance of the principle of contradiction. Or, if that seems an unduly
abstract way of putting the matter, let us say that he came to repudiate,
as firmly as anyone in practical politics may do, those people who try by
relativistic interpretations and other sophistries to evade the force of
some basic principles. The heart of Lincoln’s statesmanship, indeed, lay
in his perception that on some matters one has to say “Yes” or “No,” that
one has to accept an alternative to the total exclusion of the other,
and that any weakness in being thus bold is a betrayal. Let us examine
some of the stages by which this conviction grew upon him.
It seems not generally appreciated that this position comprises the
essence of the celebrated “House Divided” speech, delivered before the
Republican State Convention at Springfield, June 16, 1858. There he said:
“‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other.”[104] How manifest it is that Lincoln’s position was not one of
“tolerance,” as that word is vulgarly understood today. It was a definite
insistence upon right, with no regard for latitude and longitude in moral
questions. For Lincoln such questions could neither be relativistically
decided nor held in abeyance. There was no middle ground. In the light of
American political tradition the stand is curiously absolute, but it is
there—and it is genuinely expressive of Lincoln’s matured view.
Douglas had made the fatal mistake of looking for a position in the
excluded middle. He had been trying to get slavery admitted into the
territories by feigning that the institution was morally indifferent. His
platform declaration had been that he did not care “whether it is voted
up or voted down” in the territories. That statement made a fine opening
for Lincoln, which he used as follows in his reply at Alton:
Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong
in it; because no man can logically say he don’t care whether
a wrong is voted up or down. He may say he don’t care whether
an indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically
have a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He
contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to
have them. So they have if it is not a wrong. But if it is a
wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do a wrong.[105]
In a speech at Cincinnati the following year, he used a figure from the
Bible to express his opposition to compromise. “The good old maxims of
the Bible are applicable, and truly applicable, to human affairs, and in
this, as in other things, we may say here that he who is not for us is
against us; he who gathereth not with us scattereth.”[106] In the Address
at Cooper Union Institute, February 27, 1860, Lincoln took long enough
to describe the methodology of this dodge by Douglas and his supporters.
It was, as we have indicated, an attempt to squeeze into the excluded
middle. “Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances
wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such
as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain
as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead
man; such as a policy of ‘don’t care’ on a question about which all
true men do care....”[107] Finally, and most eloquently of all, there
is the brief passage from his “Meditation on the Divine Will,” composed
sometime in 1862. “The will of God prevails. In great contests each party
claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one
must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same
time.”[108] God too is a rational being and will not be found embracing
both sides of a contradictory. Where mutual negation exists, God must be
found on one side, and Lincoln hopes, though he does not here claim, that
God is in the Union’s corner of this square of opposition.
The fact that Lincoln’s thought became increasingly logical under the
pressure of events is proof of great depths in the man.
Now as we take a general view of Lincoln’s habit of defining in its
relation to his political thought, we see that it gave him one quality
in which he is unrivalled by any other American leader—the quality of
perspective. The connection of the two is a necessary one. To define is
to assume perspective; that is the method of definition. Since nothing
can be defined until it is placed in a category and distinguished from
its near relatives, it is obvious that definition involves the taking
of a general view. Definition must see the thing in relation to other
things, as that relation is expressible through substance, magnitude,
kind, cause, effect, and other particularities. It is merely different
expression to say that this is a view which transcends: perspective,
detachment, and capacity to transcend are all requisites of him who would
define, and we know that Lincoln evidenced these qualities quite early
in life,[109] and that he employed them with consummate success when the
future of the nation depended on his judgment.
Let us remember that Lincoln was a leader in the most bitter partisan
trial in our history; yet within short decades after his death he had
achieved sanctuary. His name is now immune against partisan rancor, and
he has long ceased to be a mere sectional hero. The lesson of these
facts is that greatness is found out and appreciated just as littleness
is found out and scorned, and Lincoln proved his greatness through his
habit of transcending and defining his objects. The American scene of his
time invites the colloquial adjective “messy”—with human slavery dividing
men geographically and spiritually, with a fluid frontier, and with the
problems of labor and capital and of immigration already beginning to
exert their pressures—but Lincoln looked at these things in perspective
and refused to look at them in any other way.
For an early example of this characteristic vision of his, we may go
back to the speech delivered before the Young Men’s Lyceum in 1838. The
opening is significant. “In the great journal of things happening under
the sun, we the American people, find our account running under date
of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in
the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards
extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.”[110]
So Lincoln takes as his point of perspective all time, of which the
Christian era is but a portion; and the entire earth, of which the United
States can be viewed as a specially favored part. This habit of viewing
things from an Olympian height never left him. We might cite also the
opening of the Speech at Peoria, and that of the Speech at the Cooper
Union Institute; but let us pass on twenty-five years and re-read the
first sentence of the Gettysburg Address. “Fourscore and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Again tremendous perspective, suggesting almost that Lincoln was looking
at the little act from some ultimate point in space and time. “Fourscore
and seven years ago” carries the listener back to the beginning of the
nation. “This continent” again takes the whole world into purview. “Our
fathers” is an auxiliary suggestion of the continuum of time. The phrase
following defines American political philosophy in the most general terms
possible. The entire opening sentence, with its sustained detachment,
sounds like an account of the action to be rendered at Judgment Day.
It is not Abe Lincoln who is speaking the utterance, but the voice of
mankind, as it were, to whom the American Civil War is but the passing
vexation of a generation. And as for the “brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here,” it takes two to make a struggle, and is there anything
to indicate that the men in gray are excluded? There is nothing explicit,
and therefore we may say that Lincoln looked as far ahead as he looked
behind in commemorating the event of Gettysburg.
This habit of perspective led Lincoln at times to take an extraordinarily
objective view of his own actions—more frequently perhaps as he neared
the end of his career. It was as if he projected a view in which history
was the duration, the world the stage, and himself a transitory actor
upon it. Of all his utterances the Second Inaugural is in this way the
most objective and remote. Its tone even seems that of an actor about
to quit the stage. His self-effacement goes to the extent of impersonal
constructions, so that in places Lincoln appears to be talking about
another person. “At this second appearing to take the oath of the
Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at the first.” “At this second appearing”! Is there any way of
gathering, except from our knowledge of the total situation, who is thus
appearing? Then after a generalized review of the military situation,
he declares: “With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard
to it is ventured.” Why “is ventured” rather than “I venture”? Lincoln
had taught himself to view the war as one of God’s processes worked out
through human agents, and the impersonality of tone of this last and most
deeply meditative address may arise from that habit. Only once, in the
modest qualifying phrase “I trust,” does the pronoun “I” appear; and the
final classic paragraph is spoken in the name of “us.” There have been
few men whose processes of mind so well deserve the epithet _sub specie
aeternitatis_ as Lincoln’s.
It goes without further demonstration that Lincoln transcended the
passions of the war. How easy it is for a leader whose political and
personal prestige are at stake to be carried along with the tide of
hatred of a people at war, we have, unhappily, seen many times. No other
victor in a civil conflict has conducted himself with more humanity, and
this not in some fine gesture after victory was secured—although there
was that too—but during the struggle, while the issue was still in doubt
and maximum strain was placed upon the feelings. Without losing sight of
his ultimate goal, he treated everyone with personal kindness, including
people who went out of their way in attempts to wound him. And probably
it was his habit of looking at things through objective definitions which
kept him from confusing being logically right with being personally
right. In the “Meditation on the Divine Will” he wrote, “In the present
civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different
from the purpose of either party....”[111] That could be written only
by one who has attained the highest level of self-discipline. It
explains too why he should write, in his letter to Cuthbert Bullitt: “I
shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious
dealing.”[112] Lastly, there is the extraordinary confession of common
guilt in the Second Inaugural Address, which, if it had been honored by
the government he led, would have constituted a step without precedent in
history in the achievement of reconciliation after war. It is supposable,
Lincoln said, that God has given “to both North and South this terrible
war.” Hardly seventy-five years later we were to see nations falling
into the ancient habit of claiming exclusive right in their quarrels and
even of demanding unconditional surrender. As late as February, 1865,
Lincoln stood ready to negotiate, and his offer, far from requiring
“unconditional surrender,” required but one condition—return of the
seceded states to the Union.
There is, when we reflect upon the matter, a certain morality in clarity
of thought, and the man who had learned to define with Euclid and who had
kept his opponents in argument out of the excluded middle, could not be
pushed into a settlement which satisfied only passion. The settlement had
to be objectively right. Between his world view and his mode of argument
and his response to great occasions there is a relationship so close that
to speak of any one apart is to leave the exposition incomplete.
With the full career in view, there seems no reason to differ with
Herndon’s judgment that Lincoln displayed a high order of “conservative
statesmanship.”[113] It is true that Lincoln has been placed in almost
every position, from right to left, on the political arc. Our most
radical parties have put forward programs in his name; and Professor
J. G. Randall has written an unconvincing book on “Lincoln the Liberal
Statesman.” Such variety of estimate underlines the necessity of
looking for some more satisfactory criterion by which to place the man
politically. It will not do to look simply at the specific measures he
has supported. If these were the standard, George Washington would have
to be regarded as a great progressive; Imperial Germany would have to
be regarded as liberal, or even as radical, by the token of its social
reforms. It seems right to assume that a much surer index to a man’s
political philosophy is his characteristic way of thinking, inevitably
expressed in the type of argument he prefers. In reality, the type of
argument a man chooses gives us the profoundest look we get at his
principle of integration. By this method Burke, who was partial to the
argument from circumstance, must be described as a liberal, whose blast
against the French Revolution was, even in his own words, an attack
from center against an extreme. Those who argue from consequence tend
to go all out for action; they are the “radicals.” Those who prefer
the argument from definition, as Lincoln did, are conservatives in the
legitimate sense of the word. It is no accident that Lincoln became the
founder of the greatest American conservative party, even if that party
was debauched soon after his career ended. He did so because his method
was that of the conservative.
The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of
essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing
approximation. Or, to put this in another way, he sees it as a set
of definitions which are struggling to get themselves defined in the
real world. As Lincoln remarked of the Framers of the Declaration of
Independence: “They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society,
which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly
looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading
and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of
life to all people of all colors everywhere.”[114] This paradigm acts
both as an inspiration to action and as a constraint upon over-action,
since there is always a possibility of going beyond the schemata into
an excess. Lincoln opposed both slavery and the Abolitionists (the
Abolitionists constituted a kind of “action” party); yet he was not
a middle-of-the-roader. Indeed, for one who grew up a Whig, he is
astonishingly free from tendency to assume that “the truth lies somewhere
in between.” The truth lay where intellect and logic found it, and he was
not abashed by clearness of outline.
This type of conservative is sometimes found fighting quite briskly
for change; but if there is one thing by which he is distinguished,
it is a trust in the methods of law. For him law is the embodiment of
abstract justice; it is not “what the courts will decide tomorrow,” or a
calculation of the forces at work in society. A sentence from the First
Inaugural Address will give us the conservative’s view of pragmatic
jurisprudence: “I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in
official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts
which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find
impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.”[115] The essence of
Lincoln’s doctrine was not the seeking of a middle, but reform according
to law; that is, reform according to definition. True conservatism can be
intellectual in the same way as true classicism. It is one of the polar
positions; and it deserves an able exponent as well as does its vivifying
opposite, true radicalism.
After Lincoln had left the scene, the Republican Party, as we have
noted, was unable to meet the test of victory. It turned quickly to the
worship of Mammon, and with the exception of the ambiguous Theodore
Roosevelt, it never found another leader. No one understood better than
Lincoln that the party would have to succeed upon principle. He told his
followers during the campaign of 1858: “nobody has ever expected me to
be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has even seen that any
cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken together,
that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon
principle and upon principle alone.”[116] For two generations this party
lived upon the moral capital amassed during the anti-slavery campaign,
but after that had been expended, and terrible issues had to be faced,
it possessed nothing. It was less successful than the British Tories
because it was either ignorant or ashamed of the good things it had to
offer. Today it shows in advanced form that affliction which has overcome
the “good elements” in all modern nations in the face of the bold and
enterprising bad ones.
Let it be offered as a parting counsel that parties bethink themselves
of how their chieftains speak. This is a world in which one often gets
what one asks for more directly or more literally than one expects. If
a leader asks only consequences, he will find himself involved in naked
competition of forces. If he asks only circumstance, he will find himself
intimidated against all vision. But if he asks for principle, he may
get that, all tied up and complete, and though purchased at a price,
paid for. Therefore it is of first importance whether a leader has the
courage to define. Nowhere does a man’s rhetoric catch up with him more
completely than in the topics he chooses to win other men’s assent.
Chapter V
SOME RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
In an earlier part of this work we defined rhetoric as something which
creates an informed appetition for the good. Such definition must
recognize the rhetorical force of things existing outside the realm of
speech; but since our concern is primarily with spoken rhetoric, which
cannot be disengaged from certain patterns or regularities of language,
we now turn our attention to the pressure of these formal patterns.
All students of language concede to it a certain public character.
Insofar as it serves in communication, it is a publicly-agreed-upon
thing; and when one passes the outer limits of the agreement, one
abandons comprehensibility. Now rhetoric affects us primarily by setting
forth images which inform and attract. Yet because this setting forth is
accomplished through a public instrumentality, it is not free; it is tied
more or less closely to the formalizations of usage. The more general and
rigid of these formalizations we recognize as grammar, and we shall here
speak of grammar as a system of forms of public speech. In the larger
aspect, discourse is at once bound and free, and we are here interested
to discover how the bound character affects our ability to teach and to
persuade.
We soon realize that different ways of saying a thing denote different
interests in saying it, or to take this in reverse as we do when we
become conscious users of language, different interests in a matter will
dictate different patterns of expression. Rhetoric in its practice is a
matter of selection and arrangement, but conventional grammar imposes
restraints upon both of these. All this amounts to saying what every
sensitive user of language has sometimes felt; namely, that language
is not a purely passive instrument, but that, owing to this public
acceptance, while you are doing something with it, it is doing something
with you, or with your intention.[117] It does not exactly fight back;
rather it has a set of postures and balances which somehow modify your
thrusts and holds. The sentence form is certainly one of these. You pour
into it your meaning, and it deflects, and molds into certain shapes.
The user of language must know how this counterpressure can be turned
to the advantage of his general purpose. The failure of those who are
careless, or insensitive, to the rhetoric of grammar is that they allow
the counter force to impede their design, whereas a perspicacious use
of it will forward the design. One cannot, for example, employ just any
modifier to stand for a substantive or just any substantive to express a
quality, or change a stabilized pattern of arrangement without a change
in net effect, although some of these changes register but faintly. But
style shows through an accumulation of small particulars, and the artist
in language may ponder a long while, as Conrad is said to have done, over
whether to describe a character as “penniless” or “without a penny.”
In this approach, then, we are regarding language as a standard objective
reality, analyzable into categories which have inherent potentialities. A
knowledge of these objective potentialities can prevent a loss of force
through friction. The friction we refer to occurs whenever a given unit
of the system of grammar is tending to say one thing while the semantic
meaning and the general organization are tending to say another. A
language has certain abilities or even inclinations which the wise user
can draw into the service of his own rhetorical effort. Using a language
may be compared to riding a horse; much of one’s success depends upon an
understanding of what it _can_ and _will_ do. Or to employ a different
figure in illustration, there is a kind of use of language which goes
against the grain as that grain is constituted by the categories, and
there is a kind which facilitates the speaker’s projection by going with
it. Our task is an exploration of the congruence between well understood
rhetorical objectives and the inherent character of major elements in
modern English.
The problem of which category to begin with raises some questions. It
is arguable that the rhetoric of any piece is dependent upon its total
intention, and that consequently no single sentence can be appraised
apart from the tendency of the whole discourse. Our position does not
deny that, since we are assuming merely that within the greater effect
there are lesser effects, cooperating well or ill. Having accepted that
limitation, it seems permissible for us to begin with the largest unit of
grammar, which is the sentence. We shall take up first the sentence as
such and then discriminate between formal types of sentences.
Because a sentence form exists in most if not all languages, there
is some ground to suppose that it reflects a necessary operation of
the mind, and this means not simply of the mind as psychologically
constituted but also as logically constrained.
It is evident that when the mind frames a sentence, it performs the
basic intellectual operation of analysis and re-synthesis. In this
complete operation the mind is taking two or more classes and uniting
them at least to the extent at which they share in a formal unity. The
unity itself, built up through many such associations, comes to have an
existence all its own, as we shall see. It is the repeated congruence
in experience or in the imagination of such classes as “sun-heat,”
“snow-cold,” which establishes the pattern, but our point is that the
pattern once established can become disciplinary in itself and compel us
to look for meaning within the formal unity it imposes. So it is natural
for us to perceive through a primitive analysis the compresence of sun
and hot weather, and to combine these into the unity “the sun is hot”;
but the articulation represented by this joining now becomes a thing in
itself, which can be grasped before the meaning of its component parts
is evident. Accordingly, although sentences are supposed to grow out of
meanings, we can have sentences before meanings are apparent, and this
is indeed the central point of our rhetoric of grammar. When we thus
grasp the scope of the pattern before we interpret the meaning of the
components, we are being affected by grammatical system.
I should like to put this principle to a supreme sort of test by using a
few lines of highly modern verse. In Allen Tate’s poem “The Subway” we
find the following:
I am become geometries, and glut
Expansions like a blind astronomer
Dazed, while the wordless heavens bulge and reel
In the cold reverie of an idiot.
I do not propose to interpret this further than to say that the features
present of word classification and word position cause us to look for
meaning along certain lines. It seems highly probable that we shall have
to exercise much imagination to fit our classes together with meaning
as they are fitted by formal classification and sentence order (“I am
become geometries”); yet it remains true that we take in the first line
as a formal predication; and I do not think that this formal character
could ever be separated entirely from the substance in an interpretation.
Once we gain admission of that point with regard to a sentence, some
rhetorical status for grammar has been definitely secured.
In total rhetorical effect the sentence seems to be peculiarly “the thing
said,” whereas all other elements are “the things named.” And accordingly
the right to utter a sentence is one of the very greatest liberties; and
we are entitled to little wonder that freedom of utterance should be, in
every society, one of the most contentious and ill-defined rights. The
liberty to impose this formal unity is a liberty to handle the world, to
remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape which
may influence their actions. It is interesting to speculate whether the
Greeks did not, for this very reason, describe the man clever at speech
as δεινός, an epithet meaning, in addition to “clever,” “fearful” and
“terrible.” The sentence through its office of assertion is a force
adding itself to the forces of the world, and therefore the man clever
with his sentences—which is to say with his combinations—was regarded
with that uneasiness which we feel in the presence of power. The changes
wrought by sentences are changes in the world rather than in the physical
earth, but it is to be remembered that changes in the world bring about
changes in the earth. Thus this practice of yoking together classes of
the world, of saying “Charles is King” or “My country is God’s country”
is a unique rhetorical fact which we have to take into account, although
it stands somewhat prior to our main discussion.
As we turn now to the different formal types of sentences, we shall
follow the traditional grammatical classification and discuss the
rhetorical inclination of each in turn.
Through its form, the simple sentence tends to emphasize the discreteness
of phenomena within the structural unity. To be more specific, its
pattern of subject-verb-object or complement, without major competing
elements, leaves our attention fixed upon the classes involved: “Charles
is King.” The effect remains when the simple sentence compounds its
subject and predicate: “Peaches and cantaloupes grew in abundance”; “Men
and boys hunted and fished.” The single subject-predicate frame has
the broad sense of listing or itemizing, and the list becomes what the
sentence is about semantically.
Sentences of this kind are often the unconscious style of one who sees
the world as a conglomerate of things, like the child; sometimes they
are the conscious style of one who seeks to present certain things as
eminent against a background of matter uniform or flat. One can imagine,
for example, the simple sentence “He never worked” coming after a long
and tedious recital which it is supposed to highlight. Or one can imagine
the sentence “The world is round” leaping out of a context with which it
contrasts in meaning, in brevity, or in sententiousness.
There is some descriptive value in saying that the simple sentence is
the most “logical” type of sentence because, like the simple categorical
proposition, it has this function of relating two classes. This fact,
combined with its usual brevity and its structural simplicity, makes it a
useful sentence for beginnings and endings (of important meaning-groups,
not so much of formal introductions and conclusions). It is a sentence
of unclouded perspective, so to speak. Nothing could be more beautifully
anticipatory than Burke’s “The proposition is peace.”
At the very minimum, we can affirm that the simple sentence tends to
throw subject and predicate classes into relief by the structure it
presents them in; that the two-part categorical form of its copulation
indicates a positive mood on the part of the user, and that its brevity
often induces a generality of approach, which is an aid to perspicuous
style. These opportunities are found out by the speaker or writer who
senses the need for some synoptic or dramatic spot in his discourse. Thus
when he selects the simple sentence, he is going “with the grain”; he is
putting the objective form to work for him.
The complex sentence has a different potentiality. Whereas the simple
sentence emphasizes through its form the co-existence of classes (and it
must be already apparent that we regard “things existing or occurring”
as a class where the predicate consists only of a verb), the complex
sentence emphasizes a more complex relationship; that is to say, it
reflects another kind of discriminating activity, which does not
stop with seeing discrete classes as co-existing, but distinguishes
them according to rank or value, or places them in an order of cause
and effect. “Rome fell because valor declined” is the utterance of a
reflective mind because the conjunction of parts depends on something
ascertainable by the intellect but not by simple perception. This is
evidence that the complex sentence does not appear until experience has
undergone some refinement by the mind. Then, because it goes beyond
simple observation and begins to perceive things like causal principle,
or begins to grade things according to a standard of interest, it brings
in the notion of dependence to supplement that of simple togetherness.
And consequently the complex sentence will be found nearly always to
express some sort of hierarchy, whether spatial, moral, or causal, with
its subordinate members describing the lower orders. In simple-sentence
style we would write: “Tragedy began in Greece. It is the highest form
of literary art.” There is no disputing that these sentences, in this
sequence, could have a place in mature expression. But they do not have
the same effect as “Tragedy, which is the highest form of literary art,
began in Greece” or “Tragedy, which began in Greece, is the highest
form of literary art.” What has occurred is the critical process of
subordination. The two ideas have been transferred from a conglomerate to
an articulated unity, and the very fact of subordination makes inevitable
the emergence of a focus of interest. Is our passage about the highest
form of literary art or about the cultural history of Greece? The form of
the complex sentence makes it unnecessary to waste any words in explicit
assertion of that. Here it is plain that grammatical form is capital upon
which we can draw, provided that other necessities have been taken care
of.
To see how a writer of consummate sensibility toward expression-forms
proceeded, let us take a fairly typical sentence from Henry James:
Merton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the
office of his newspaper, had at times, during the day, a sense,
or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with
which he was not infrequently to be met, in different parts of
the town, at moments when men of business were hidden from the
public eye.[118]
Leaving aside the phrases, which are employed by James in extension and
refinement of the same effect, we see here three dependent clauses used
to explain the contingencies of “Merton Densher had an appearance of
leisure.” These clauses have the function of surrounding the central
statement in such a fashion that we have an intricate design of thought
characterized by involution, or the emergence of one detail out of
another. James’ famous practice of using the dependent clause not only
for qualification, but for the qualification of qualification, and in
some cases for the qualification of qualification of qualification,
indicates a persistent sorting out of experience expressive of the
highly civilized mind. Perhaps the leading quality of the civilized
mind is that it is sophisticated as to causes and effects (also as to
other contiguities); and the complex sentence, required to give these a
scrupulous ordering, is its natural vehicle.
At the same time the spatial form of ordering to which the complex
sentence lends itself makes it a useful tool in scientific analysis, and
one can find brilliant examples of it in the work of scientists who have
been skillful in communication. When T. H. Huxley, for instance, explains
a piece of anatomy, the complex sentence is the frame of explanation. In
almost every sentence it will be observed that he is focussing interest
upon one part while keeping its relationship—spatial or causal—clear with
reference to surrounding parts. In Huxley’s expository prose, therefore,
one finds the dominant sentence type to consist of a main clause at the
beginning followed by a series of dependent clauses which fill in these
facts of relationship. We may follow the pattern of the sentences in his
account of the protoplasm of the common nettle:
Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender
summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such
microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off
in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer
case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which
is a layer of semi-fluid matter full of innumerable granules
of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm,
which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of limpid liquid,
and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair
which it fills.[119]
This is, of course, the “loose” sentence of traditional rhetorical
analysis, and it has no dramatic force; yet it is for this very reason
adapted to the scientist’s purpose.[120] The rhetorical adaptation shows
in the accommodation of a little hierarchy of details.
This appears to be the sentence of a developed mentality also, because it
is created through a patient, disciplined observation, and not through
impression, as the simple sentence can be. To the infant’s mind, as
William James observed in a now famous passage, the world is a “buzzing,
blooming confusion,” and to the immature mind much older it often appears
something done in broad, uniform strokes. But to the mind of a trained
scientist it has to appear a cosmos—else, no science. So in Huxley the
objective world is presented as a series of details, each of which has
its own cluster of satellites in the form of minor clauses. This is the
way the world has to be reported when our objective is maximum perception
and minimum desire to obtrude or influence.
Henry James was explaining with a somewhat comparable interest a
different kind of world, in which all sorts of human and non-material
forces are at work, and he tried with extreme conscientiousness to
measure them. In that process of quantification and qualification the
complex sentence was often brought by him to an extraordinary height of
ramification.
In summation, then, the complex sentence is the branching sentence, or
the sentence with parts growing off other parts. Those who have used
it most properly have performed a second act of analysis, in which the
objects of perception, after being seen discretely, are put into a ranked
structure. This type of sentence imposes the greatest demand upon the
reader because it carries him farthest into the reality existing outside
self. This point will take on importance as we turn to the compound
sentence.
The structure of the compound sentence often reflects a simple
artlessness—the uncritical pouring together of simple sentences, as in
the speech of Huckleberry Finn. The child who is relating an adventure
is likely to make it a flat recital of conjoined simple predications,
because to him the important fact is that the things were, not that
they can be read to signify this or that. His even juxtapositions
are therefore sometimes amusing, for now and then he will produce a
coordination that unintentionally illuminates. This would, of course, be
a result of lack of control over the rhetoric of grammar.
On the other hand, the compound sentence can be a very “mature” sentence
when its structure conforms with a settled view of the world. The latter
possibility will be seen as we think of the balance it presents. When
a sentence consists of two main clauses we have two predications of
similar structure bidding for our attention. Our first supposal is that
this produces a sentence of unusual tension, with two equal parts (and
of course sometimes more than two equal parts) in a sort of competition.
Yet it appears on fuller acquaintance that this tension is a tension of
stasis, and that the compound sentence has, in practice, been markedly
favored by periods of repose like that of the Eighteenth century. There
is congeniality between its internal balance and a concept of the
world as an equilibrium of forces. As a general rule, it appears that
whereas the complex sentence favors the presentation of the world as
a system of facts or as a dynamism, the compound sentence favors the
presentation of it in a more or less philosophical picture. This world as
a philosophical cosmos will have to be a sort of compensatory system. We
know from other evidences that the Eighteenth century loved to see things
in balance; in fact, it required the idea of balance as a foundation
for its institutions. Quite naturally then, since motives of this kind
reach into expression-forms, this was the age of masters of the balanced
sentence—Dryden, Johnson, Gibbon, and others, the _genre_ of whose style
derives largely from this practice of compounding. Often the balance
which they achieved was more intricate than simple conjunction of main
clauses because they balanced lesser elements too, but the informing
impulse was the same. That impulse was the desire for counterpoise, which
was one of the powerful motives of their culture.
In this pattern of balance, various elements are used in the offsettings.
Thus when one attends closely to the meanings of the balanced parts,
one finds these compounds recurring: an abstract statement is balanced
(in a second independent clause) by a more concrete expression of the
same thing; a fact is balanced by its causal explanation; a statement of
positive mode is balanced by one of negative mode; a clause of praise
is balanced by a clause of qualified censure; a description of one part
is balanced by a description of a contrasting part, and so on through
a good many conventional pairings. Now in these collocations cause and
effect and other relationships are presented, yet the attempt seems not
so much to explore reality as to clothe it in decent form. Culture is a
delicate reconciliation of opposites, and consequently a man who sees
the world through the eyes of a culture makes effort in this direction.
We know that the world of Eighteenth century culture was a rationalist
world, and in a rationalist world everything must be “accounted for.”
The virtue of the compound sentence is that its second part gives “the
other half,” so to speak. As the pattern works out, every fact has its
cause; every virtue is compensated for by a vice; every excursion into
generality must be made up for by attention to concrete circumstances
and vice versa. The perfection of this art form is found in Johnson and
Gibbon, where such pairings occur with a frequency which has given rise
to the phrase “the balanced style.” When Gibbon, for example, writes of
religion in the Age of the Antonines: “The superstition of the people was
not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined
by the chains of any speculative system,”[121] we have almost the feeling
that the case of religion has been settled by this neat artifice of
expression. This is a “just” view of affairs, which sees both sides and
leaves a kind of balanced account. It looks somewhat subjective, or
at least humanized; it gives us the gross world a little tidied up by
thought. Often, moreover, this balance of structure together with the
act of saying a thing equivocally—in the narrower etymological sense of
that word—suggests the finality of art. This will be found true of many
of the poetical passages of the King James Bible, although these come
from an earlier date. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth his handiwork”; “Man cometh forth as a flower and is
cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.” By thus stating
the matter in two ways, through balanced clauses, the sentence achieves a
degree of formal completeness missing in sentences where the interest is
in mere assertion. Generally speaking the balanced compound sentence, by
the very contrivedness of its structure, suggests something formed above
the welter of experience, and this form, as we have by now substantially
said, transfers something of itself to the meaning. In declaring that
the compound sentence may seem subjective, we are not saying that it is
arbitrary, its correspondence being with the philosophical interpretation
rather than with the factual reality. Thus if the complex sentence is
about the world, the compound sentence is about our idea about the world,
into which some notion of compensation forces itself. One notices that
even Huxley, when he draws away from his simple expositions of fact and
seeks play for his great powers of persuasion, begins to compound his
sentences. On the whole, the compound sentence conveys that completeness
and symmetry which the world _ought_ to have, and which we manage to
get, in some measure, into our most satisfactory explanations of it.
It is most agreeable to those ages and those individuals who feel that
they have come to terms with the world, and are masters in a domain. But
understandably enough, in a world which has come to be centrifugal and
infinite, as ours has become since the great revolutions, it tends to
seem artificial and mechanical in its containment.
Since the difference between sentence and clause is negligible as far as
the issues of this subject are concerned, we shall next look at the word,
and conclude with a few remarks on some lesser combinations. This brings
up at once the convention of parts of speech. Here again I shall follow
the traditional classification, on the supposition that categories to
which usage is referred for correction have accumulated some rhetorical
force, whatever may be said for the merits of some other and more
scientific classification.
_The Noun_
It is difficult not to feel that both usage and speculation agree on the
rhetorical quality of nouns. The noun derives its special dignity from
being a _name_ word, and names persist, in spite of all the cautions of
modern semanticists, in being thought of as words for substances. We
apprehend the significance of that when we realize that in the ancient
philosophical regimen to which the West is heir, and which influences
our thought far more than we are aware at any one moment, substances
are assigned a higher degree of being than actions or qualities.
Substance is that which primordially _is_, and one may doubt whether
recent attempts to revolutionize both ontology and grammar have made any
impression at all against this feeling. For that reason a substantive
comes to us as something that is peculiarly fulfilled;[122] or it is like
a piece in a game which has superior powers of movement and capture. The
fact that a substantive is the word in a sentence which the other words
are “about” in various relationships gives it a superior status.[123]
Nouns then express things whose being is completed, not whose being
is in process, or whose being depends upon some other being. And that
no doubt accounts for the feeling that when one is using nouns, one
is manipulating the symbols of a self-subsistent reality.[124] There
seems little doubt that an ancient metaphysical system, grown to be an
_habitus_ of the mind through long acceptance, gives the substantive word
a prime status, and this fact has importance when we come to compare the
noun with the adjective in power to convince by making real. Suffice it
to say here that the noun, whether it be a pointer to things that one
can touch and see, as _apple_, _bird_, _sky_, or to the more or less
hypothetical substances such as _fairness_, _spook_, _nothingness_, by
rule stands at the head of things and is ministered to by the other parts
of speech and by combinations.
_The Adjective_
The adjective is, by the principle of determination just reviewed, a word
of secondary status and force. Its burden is an attribute, or something
added. In the order of being to which reference has been made, the noun
can exist without the adjective, but not the adjective without the noun.
Thus we can have “men” without having “excellent men”; but we cannot have
“excellent” without having something (if only something understood) to
receive the attribution. There are very practical rhetorical lessons to
be drawn from this truth. Since adjectives express attributes which are
conceptually dispensable to the substances wherein they are present, the
adjective tends to be a supernumerary. Long before we are aware of this
fact through analysis, we sense it through our resentment of any attempt
to gain maximum effect through the adjective. Our intuition of speech
seems to tell us that the adjective is question-begging; that is to
say, if the thing to be expressed is real, it will be expressed through
a substantive; if it is expressed mainly through adjectives, there is
something defective in its reality, since it has gone for secondary
support.[125] If someone should say to us, “Have some white milk,” we
must suppose either that the situation is curious, other kinds of milk
being available, or that the speaker is trying to impose upon us by a
piece of persiflage. Again, a mountain is a mountain without being called
“huge”; if we have to call it huge, there is some defect in the original
image which is being made up. Of course there are speech situations in
which such modifiers do make a useful contribution, but as a general
rule, to be applied with discretion, a style is stronger when it depends
mainly upon substantives sharp enough to convey their own attributes.
Furthermore, because the class of the adjective contains so many
terms of dialectical import, such as _good_, _evil_, _noble_, _base_,
_useful_, _useless_, there is bound to exist an initial suspicion of
all adjectives. (Even when they are the positive kind, as is true with
most limiting adjectives, there lurk the questions “Who made up the
statistics?” and “How were they gathered?”) The dialectical adjective
is too often a “fighting word” to be used casually. Because in its very
origin it is the product of disputation, one is far from being certain in
advance of assent to it. How would you wish to characterize the world?
If you wish to characterize it as “round,” you will win a very general
assent, although not a universal one. But if you wish, with the poet, to
characterize it as “sorry,” you take a position in respect to which there
are all sorts of contrary positions. In strictest thought one might say
that every noun contains its own analysis, but an adjective applied to
a noun is apparatus brought in from the outside; and the result is the
object slightly “fictionized.” Since adjectives thus initiate changes in
the more widely received substantive words, one has to have permission
of his audience to talk in adjectives. Karl Shapiro seems to have had
something like this in mind in the following passage from his _Essay on
Rime_:
for the tyrannical epithet
Relies upon the adjective to produce
The image; and no serious construction
In rime can build upon the modifier.[126]
One of the common mistakes of the inexperienced writer, in prose as
well as poetry, is to suppose that the adjective can set the key of a
discourse. Later he learns what Shapiro indicates, that nearly always
the adjective has to have the way prepared for it. Otherwise, the
adjective introduced before its noun collapses for want of support.
There is a perceptible difference between “the irresponsible conduct of
the opposition with regard to the Smith bill” and “the conduct of the
opposition with regard to the Smith bill has been irresponsible,” which
is accounted for in part by the fact that the adjective comes after the
substantive has made its firm impression. In like manner we are prepared
to receive Henley’s
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
because “night” has preceded “black.” I submit that if the poem had begun
“Black as ...” it would have lost a great deal of its rhetorical force
because of the inherent character of the opening word. The adjective
would have been felt presumptuous, as it were, and probably no amount of
supplementation could have overcome this unfortunate effect.
I shall offer one more example to show that costly mistakes in emphasis
may result from supposing that the adjective can compete with the
noun. This one came under my observation, and has remained with me as
a classical instance of rhetorical ineptitude. On a certain university
campus “Peace Week” was being observed, and a prominent part of the
program was a series of talks. The object of these talks was to draw
attention to those forces which seemed to be leading mankind toward a
third world war. One of the speakers undertook to point out the extent
to which the Western nations, and especially the United States, were
at fault. He declared that a chief source of the bellicose tendency of
the United States was its “proud rectitude,” and it is this expression
which I wish to examine critically. The fault of the phrase is that it
makes “rectitude” the villain of the piece, whereas sense calls for
making “pride.” If we are correct in assigning the substantive a greater
intrinsic weight, then it follows that “rectitude” exerts the greater
force here. But rectitude is not an inciter of wars; it is rather that
rectitude which is made rigid or unreasonable by pride which may be a
factor in the starting of wars, and pride is really the provoking agent.
For the most fortunate effect, then, the grammatical relationship should
be reversed, and we should have “rectitude” modifying “pride.” But since
the accident of linguistic development has not provided it with an
adjective form of equivalent meaning, let us try “pride of rectitude.”
This is not the best expression imaginable, but it is somewhat better
since it turns “proud” into a substantive and demotes “rectitude” to
a place in a prepositional phrase. The weightings are now more in
accordance with meaning: what grammar had anomalously made the chief word
is now properly tributary, and we have a closer delineation of reality.
As it was, the audience went away confused and uninspired, and I have
thought of this ever since as a situation in which a little awareness
of the rhetoric of grammar—there were other instances of imperceptive
usage—could have turned a merely well-intentioned speech into an
effective one.
Having laid down this relationship between adjective and substantive
as a principle, we must not ignore the real or seeming exceptions. For
the alert reader will likely ask, what about such combinations as “new
potatoes,” “drunk men,” “a warlike nation”? Are we prepared to say that
in each of these the substantive gets the major attention, that we are
more interested in “potatoes” than in their being “new,” in “men” than
their being “drunk,” and so forth? Is that not too complacent a rule
about the priority of the substantive over the adjective?
We have to admit that there are certain examples in which the adjective
may eclipse the substantive. This may occur (1) when one’s intonation (or
italics) directs attention to the modifier: “_white_ horses”; “_five_
dollars, not four.” (2) when there is a striking clash of meaning between
the adjective and the substantive, such that one gives a second thought
to the modifier: “a murderous smile”; “a gentleman gambler.” (3) when the
adjective is naturally of such exciting associations that it has become a
sort of traditional introduction to matter of moment: “a warlike nation”;
“a desperate deed”; etc. Having admitted these possibilities of departure
from the rule, we still feel right in saying that the rule has some
force. It will be found useful in cases which are doubtful, which are the
cases where no strong semantic or phonetic considerations override the
grammatical pattern. In brief, when the immediate act of our mind does
not tell us whether an expression should be in this form or the other,
the principle of the relationship of adjective and substantive may settle
the matter with an insight which the particular instance has not called
forth.
_The Adverb_
The adverb is distinguished from the other parts of speech by its
superior mobility; roughly speaking, it can locate itself anywhere in
the sentence, and this affords a clue to its character. “Certainly the
day is warm”; “The day certainly is warm”; “The day is certainly warm”;
“The day is warm certainly” are all “normal” utterances. This superior
mobility, amounting to a kind of detachment, makes the adverb peculiarly
a word of judgment. Here the distinction between the adverb and the
adjective seems to be that the latter depends more upon public agreement
and less upon private intention in its applications. It is a matter of
common observation that the adverb is used frequently to express an
attitude which is the speaker’s projection of himself. “Surely the war
will end soon” is not, for example, a piece of objective reporting but
an expression of subjective feeling. We of course recognize degrees of
difference in the personal or subjective element. Thomas Carlyle is
much given to the use of the adverb, and when we study his adverbs in
context, we discover that they are often little more than explosions of
feeling. They are employed to make more positive, abrupt, sensational,
or intense whatever his sentence is otherwise saying. Indeed, take from
Carlyle his adverbs and one robs him of that great hortatory sweep which
makes him one of the great preachers in English literature. On the other
hand Henry James, although given to this use to comparable extent, gets
a different effect from his adverbs. With him they are the exponents
of scrupulous or meticulous feeling; they are often in fact words of
definite measure. When James says “fully” or “quickly” or “bravely” he
is usually expressing a definite perception, and sometimes the adverb
will have its own phrasal modifier to give it the proper direction or
limitation of sense. Therefore James’ adverbs, instead of having a merely
expletive force, as do many of Carlyle’s, tend to integrate themselves
with his more objective description. All this amounts to saying that
adverbial “judgments” can be differently based; and the use of the adverb
will affect a style accordingly.
The caution against presumptuous use of the adjective can be repeated
with somewhat greater force for the adverb. It is the most tempting
of all the parts of speech to question-beg with. It costs little, for
instance, to say “certainly,” “surely,” or even “terribly,” “awfully,”
“undoubtedly”; but it often costs a great deal to create the picture
upon which these words are a justifiable verdict. Asking the reader
to accept them upon the strength of simple assertion is obviously a
form of taking without earning. We realize that a significant part of
every speech situation is the character of the speaker; and there are
characters who can risk an unproved “certainly” or “undoubtedly.” They
bring to the speech situation a kind of ethical proof which accentuates
their language. Carlyle’s reflective life was so intense, as we know from
_Sartor Resartus_ and other sources, that it wins for him a certain right
to this asseverative style. As a general rule, though, it will be found
that those who are most entitled to this credit use it least, which is to
say, they prefer to make their demonstrations. We point out in summary
that the adverb is frequently dependent upon the character of its user,
and that, since it is often the qualifier of a qualifier, it may stand
at one more remove from what we have defined as the primary symbol. This
is why beginners should use it least—should use it only after they have
demonstrated that they can get their results by other means.
_The Verb_
The verb is regularly ranked with the noun in force, and it seems
that these two parts of speech express the two aspects under which we
habitually see phenomena, that of determinate things and that of actions
or states of being. Between them the two divide up the world at a pretty
fundamental depth; and it is a commonplace of rhetorical instruction
that a style made up predominantly of nouns and verbs will be a vigorous
style. These are the symbols of the prime entities, words of stasis and
words of movement (even when the verb is said to express a “state of
being,” we accept that as a kind of modal action, a process of going on,
or having existential quality), which set forth the broad circumstances
of any subject of discussion. This truth is supported by the facts that
the substantive is the heart of a grammatical subject and the verb of a
grammatical predicate.
When we pass beyond the matter of broad categorization to look at the
verb’s possibilities, we find the greatest need of instruction to lie
in the verb epithet. It may be needless to impress any literate person
with the verb’s relative importance, but it is necessary to point out,
even to some practiced writers, that the verb itself can modify the
action it asserts, or, so to put it, can carry its own epithet. Looking
at the copious supply of verbs in English, we often find it possible to
choose one so selective in meaning that no adverb is needed to accompany
it. If we wish to assert that “the man moves _quickly_,” we can say,
depending on the tone of our passage and the general signification,
that he hastens, _rushes_, _flies_, _scrambles_, _speeds_, _tears_,
_races_, _bolts_, to name only a few. If we wish to assert that a man
is not telling the truth, we have the choice of _lies_, _prevaricates_,
_falsifies_, _distorts_, _exaggerates_, and some others. As this may seem
to treat the matter at too didactic a level, let us generalize by saying
that there is such a thing as the characterizing verb, and that there is
no telling how many words could have been saved, how many passages could
have dispensed with a lumbering and perhaps inaccurate adverb, if this
simple truth about the verb were better appreciated. The best writers
of description and narration know it. Mark Twain’s most vivid passages
are created largely through a frequent and perceptive use of the verb
epithet. Turn to almost any page of _Life on the Mississippi_:
Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, and therefore it is
a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run them;
clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels
very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once;
but piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast
streams like the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial
banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are always
hunting up new quarters, whose sand-bars are never at rest,
whose channels are forever dodging and shirking, and whose
obstructions must be confronted in all nights and all weathers
without the aid of a single lighthouse or a single buoy, for
there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all
this three or four thousand miles of villainous river.[127]
Here there occurs not just action, but expressive action, to which
something is contributed by Twain’s subtle appreciation of modal
variations in the verb.
There is a rough parallelism between the use of the complex sentence,
with its detail put away in subordinate constructions, and the use of
the verb epithet. In both instances the user has learned to dispense
with a second member of equal or nearly equal weight in order to get an
effect. As the adverbial qualification is fused with the verb, so in
lesser degree, of course, is the detail of the complex sentence fused
with its principal assertion. These devices of economy and compression,
although they may be carried to a point at which the style seems forced
and unnatural, are among the most important means of rhetoric.
_The Conjunction_
The conjunction, in its simple role as joiner, seems not to have much
character, yet its use expresses of relatedness of things, which is bound
to have signification. As either coordinator or subordinator of entities,
it puts the world into a condition of mutual relationship through which
a large variety of ideas may be suggested. From the different ways in
which this relationship is expressed, the reader will consciously and
even unconsciously infer different things. Sometimes the simple “and
... and” coordination is the expression of childlike mentality, as we
saw in our discussion of the compound sentence. On the other hand, in
a different speech situation it can produce a quite different effect:
readers of the King James version of the Bible are aware of how the “and”
which joins long sequences of verses sets up a kind of expectancy which
is peculiarly in keeping with sacred text. One gets the feeling from the
reiteration of “and” that the story is confirmed and inevitable; there
are no contingencies, and everything happens with the double assurance of
something foretold. When this pattern is dropped, as it is in a recent
“American” version of the Bible, the text collapses into a kind of news
story.
The frequent use of “but” to join the parts of a compound sentence seems
to indicate a habit of mind. It is found congenial by those who take a
“balanced view,” or who are uneasy over an assertion until it has been
qualified or until some recognition has been made of its negative. Its
influence is in the direction of the cautious or pedantic style because
it makes this sort of disjunction, whereas “and” generously joins
everything up.
Since conjunctions are usually interpreted as giving the plot of one’s
thought, it is essential to realize that they have implicit meanings.
They usually come at points where a pause is natural, and there is a
temptation, if one may judge by indulgence in the habit, to lean upon
the first one that comes to mind without reflecting critically upon its
significance, so that although the conjunction may formally connect at
this point, its semantic meaning does not aid in making the connection
precise. A common instance of this fault is the casual interchange of
“therefore” and “thus.” “Therefore” means “in consequence of,” but “thus”
means “in this manner” and so indicates that some manner has already
been described. “Hence” may take the place of “therefore” but “thus” may
not. “Also” is a connective used with unimaginative regularity by poor
speakers and writers, for whom it seems to signalize the next thought
coming. Yet in precise meaning “also” signifies only a mechanical sort of
addition such as we have in listing one item after another. To signalize
the extension of an idea, “moreover” is usually more appropriate than
“also.” Although “while” is often used in place of “whereas” to mean “on
the other hand,” it has its other duty of signifying “at the same time.”
“Whereas,” despite its pedantic or legalistic overtone, will be preferred
in passages where precise relationship is the governing consideration.
On the whole it would seem that the average writer suffers, in the
department, from nothing more than poverty of vocabulary. What he does
(what every writer does to some extent) is to keep on hand a small set
of conjunctions and to use them in a sort of rotation without giving
attention to how their distinctive meanings could further his purpose.
_The Preposition_
The preposition too is a word expressing relationships, but this
definition gives only a faint idea of its great resources. When the false
rules about the preposition have been set aside, it is seen that this
is a tremendously inventive word. Like the adverb, it is a free rover,
standing almost anywhere; it is constantly entering into combinations
with verbs and nouns, in which it may direct, qualify, intensify, or even
add something quite new to the meaning; at other times it combines with
some other preposition to produce an indispensable idiom. It has given us
“get out,” “put over,” “come across,” “eat up,” “butt in,” “off of,” “in
between,” and many other expressions without which English, especially
on the vital colloquial level, would be poorer indeed. Thornton Wilder
maintains that it is in this extremely free use of the preposition that
modern American English shows its superiority over British English.
Such bold use of prepositional combinations gives to American English
a certain flavor of the grand style, which British English has not had
since the seventeenth century. Melville, an author working peculiarly
on his own, is characterized in style by this imaginative use of the
preposition.
Considered with reference to principle, the preposition seems to do
what the adverb does, but to do it with a kind of substantive force.
“Groundward,” for example, seems weak beside “toward the ground,”
“lengthwise” beside “along the length of,” or “centrally” beside “in
the center of.” The explanation may well lie in the preposition’s
characteristic position; as a regular orderer of nouns and of verbs, it
takes upon itself something of their solidity of meaning. “What is that
for?” and “Where did you send it to?” lose none of their force through
being terminated by these brief words of relationship.
_The Phrase_
It will not be necessary to say much about the phrase because its
possibilities have been fairly well covered by our discussion of the noun
and adjective. One qualifying remark about the force of the prepositional
phrase, however, deserves making. The strength normally found in the
preposition can be greatly diminished by connection with an abstract
noun. That is to say, when the terminus of the preposition is lacking in
vigor or concreteness, the whole expression may succumb to vagueness,
in which cases the single adjective or adverb will be stronger by
comparison. Thus the idea conveyed by “lazy” is largely frustrated by “of
a lazy disposition”; that of “mercenary” by “of a mercenary character”;
that of “deep” by “of depth,” and so on.
After the prepositional phrase, the most important phrasal combination
to examine, from the standpoint of rhetorical usages, is the participial
phrase. We could infer this truth from the fact alone that the Greeks
made a very extensive use of the participle, as every student of that
marvellous language knows. Greek will frequently use a participle where
English employs a dependent clause or even a full sentence, so that the
English expression “the man who is carrying a spear” would be in Greek
“the spear carrying man”; “the one who spoke” would be “the one having
spoken” and further accordingly, with even more economy of language
than these examples indicate. I am disposed to think that the Greeks
developed this habit because they were very quick to see opportunities of
subordination. The clarity and subtlety of the Greek language derives in
no small part from this highly “organized” character, in which auxiliary
thoughts are compactly placed in auxiliary structures, where they permit
the central thought to emerge more readily. In English the auxiliary
status of the participle (recognized formally through its classification
as an adjective) is not always used to like advantage.
One consequence of this is that although English intonation and normal
word order tend to make the last part of a sentence the most emphatic,
unskillful writers sometimes lose this emphasis by concluding a sentence
with a participial phrase. We may take as examples “He returned home
in September, having been gone for a year”; and “Having been gone for
a year, he returned home in September.” The second of these puts the
weightier construction in the emphatic position. Of course the matter
of their relative merit cannot be separated from their purpose; there
are sentences whose total meanings are best served by a _retardo_ or
_diminuendo_ effect at the end, and for such closes the participial
phrase is well suited for reasons already given. But in the majority of
utterances it contributes best by modifying at some internal position,
or by expressing some detail or some condition at the beginning of the
sentence. The latter use may be quite effective in climactic orderings,
and it will be found that journalists have virtually stereotyped this
opening for their “lead” sentences: “Threatened with an exhausted food
supply by the strike, hospitals today made special arrangements for the
delivery of essentials”; “Reaching a new high for seven weeks, the stock
market yesterday pushed into new territory.” This form is a successful if
often crude result of effort toward compact and dramatic presentation.
But to summarize our observations on the participial phrase in English:
It is formally a weak member of the grammatical family; but it is useful
for economy, for shaded effects, and sometimes the phrase will contain
words whose semantic force makes us forget that they are in a secondary
construction. Perhaps it is enough to say that the mature writer has
learned more things that can be done with the participle, but has also
learned to respect its limitations.
_In Conclusion_
I can imagine being told that this chapter is nothing more than an
exposition of prejudices, and that every principle discussed here can
be defied. I would not be surprised if that were proved through single
examples, or small sets of examples. But I would still hazard that if
these show certain tendencies, my examples show stronger ones, and
we have to remember that there is such a thing as a vector of forces
in language too. Even though an effect may sometimes be obtained by
crowding or even breaking a rule, the lines of force are still there,
to be used by the skillful writer scientifically, and grammar is a kind
of scientific nomenclature. Beyond this, of course, he will use them
according to art, where he will be guided by his artistic intuition, and
by the residual cautions of his experience.
In the long view a due respect for the canons of grammar seems a part
of one’s citizenship? One does not remain uncritical; but one does “go
along.” It has proved impossible to show that grammar is determined
by the “best people,” or by the pedants, or by any other presumptive
authority, and this is more reason for saying that it incorporates the
people as a whole. Therefore the attitude of unthinking adoption and
the attitude of personal defiance are both dubious, because they look
away from the point where issues, whenever they appear, will be decided.
That point seems to be some communal sense about the fitness of a word
or a construction for what has communal importance, and this indicates
at least some suprapersonal basis. Much evidence could be offered to
show that language is something which is born psychological but is ever
striving to become logical. At this task of making it more logical
everybody works more or less. Like the political citizenship defined by
Aristotle, language citizenship makes one a potential magistrate, or one
empowered to decide. The work is best carried on, however, by those who
are aware that language must have some connection with the intelligential
world, and that is why one must think about the rhetorical nature even of
grammatical categories.
Chapter VI
MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE
There are many who have wished that Milton were living at this hour,
but not all have taken into account the fact that his great polemical
writings demand an heroic kind of attention which modern education does
not discipline the majority of our citizens to give. Even in the last
century W. E. Channing was moved to lament “the fastidiousness and
effeminacy of modern readers” when faced with Milton’s prose writings.
He went on to say, in a passage which may serve to introduce our topic,
“To be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind
cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of
common passive readers.” It is wrong therefore to expect it to sacrifice
great qualities “that the multitude may keep pace with it.”[128]
The situation which gave rise to Channing’s complaint has grown
measurably worse by our day, when the common passive reader determines
the level of most publications. The mere pursuance of Milton’s meaning
requires an enforcement of attention, and the perception of his judgments
requires an active sensibility incompatible with a state of relaxation.
There is nothing in Milton for the reader who must be put at ease and
treated only to the quickly apprehensible. But along with this turning
away from the difficult, there is another cause at work, a feeling,
quite truly grounded, that Milton’s very arduousness of spirit calls for
elevation on the part of the reader. Milton assumes an heroic stance, and
he demands a similar stance of those who would meet him. An age which
has come to suspect this as evidence of aristocratic tendency will then
avoid Milton also for a moral reason, preferring, even when it agrees
with him, to have the case stated in more plebeian fashion. Therefore
the reading of Milton is more than a problem in communication; it is a
problem also of gaining insight, or even of developing sympathy with the
aristocratic intellectualism which breathes through all he wrote.
It can be shown that all of the features which make up Milton’s arduous
style proceed from three or four sources. The first of these is the
primacy of the concept. What this primacy signifies is that in his prose
Milton wrote primarily as a thinker and not as an artificer. That is
to say, his units of composition are built upon concepts and not upon
conventionalized expository patterns. For him the linguistic sentence was
a means, to be expanded and shaped as the driving force of the thought
required. Or perhaps it would be more meaningful to say that for him the
sentence was an accommodation-form. He will put into it as much or as
little as he needs, and often, as we shall see presently, he needed a
great deal. This use of the sentence as an accommodation-form produces
what is perhaps the most obvious feature of his style, the long period.
What length must a sentence have to be called “long”? Of course our usual
standard is the sentence we are accustomed to, and in present-day writing
that sentence will run 20-30 words, to cite an average range for serious
writing. Milton’s sentences very frequently run 60-80 words, and many
will exceed 100, the length of an average paragraph today.[129]
To examine Milton’s method with the lengthy period, we may well begin
with the second sentence of _Of Reformation in England_, an outstanding
specimen of 373 words.
Sad it is to think how that doctrine of the gospel, planted by
teachers divinely inspired, and by them winnowed and sifted
from the chaff of overdated ceremonies, and refined to such a
spiritual height and temper of purity, and knowledge of the
Creator, that the body, with all the circumstances of time
and place, were purified by the affections of the regenerate
soul, and nothing left impure but sin; faith needing not the
weak and fallible office of the senses, to be either the
ushers or interpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our
Lord himself in his sacraments ordained; that such a doctrine
should, through the grossness and blindness of her professors,
and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as
to backslide into the Jewish beggary of old cast rudiments,
and stumble forward another way into the new-vomited paganism
of sensual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things
indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of the
spirit to the outward and customary eye-service of the body,
as if they could make God earthly and fleshly, because they
could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual; they began to
draw down all the divine intercourse between God and the soul,
yea, the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily
form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining
the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they
hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked
it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with
other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres,
gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron’s old wardrobe, or the
flamins vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and
his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by
this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly
delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease
she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in
performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and
flagging, shifted off from herself the labor of high soaring
any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and
droiling carcase to plod in the old road, and drudging trade of
outward conformity.[130]
With reference to accommodation, let us attend to the scope of this
sentence. It contains nothing less than a history of Christianity
from the Protestant reformer’s point of view. Four stages are given
in this history: the early revelation of true Christianity; its later
misinterpretation through the “grossness and blindness” of its followers;
the growth of institutionalism; and finally the atrophy of true religion
produced by undue attention to outward circumstance. It is, as we see,
a complete narration, dressed out with many illuminating details. We
shall discover that Milton habitually prolongs a sentence thus until it
has covered the unit of its subject. He feels no compulsion to close the
period out of regard for some established norm, since he has his eye on
a different criterion of completeness. In line with the same practice,
some of his sentences are so fitted that they contain complete arguments,
or even an argument preceded by its expository narration. As an example
of the sentence containing a unit of argument, we may note the following
from _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_.
_And yet there follows upon this a worse temptation: for if he be such
as hath spent his youth unblameably, and laid up his chiefest earthly
comforts in the enjoyments of a contented marriage, nor did neglect that
furtherance which was to be obtained therein by constant prayers; when he
shall find himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as
it often happens, to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked
to be the copartner of a sweet and gladsome society, and sees withal
that his bondage is now inevitable; though he be almost the strongest
Christian, he will be ready to despair in virtue, and mutiny against
Divine Providence; and this doubtless is the reason of those lapses, and
that melancholy despair, which we see in many wedded persons, though
they understand it not, or pretend other causes, because they know no
remedy; and is of extreme danger: therefore when human frailty surcharged
is at such a loss, charity ought to venture much, lest an overtossed
faith endanger to shipwreck.[131]_ This sentence contains a complete
hypothetical syllogism, which can be abstracted as follows:
If the rigidity of the marriage relationship is not relaxed by
charity, Christians will despair of finding their solace in
that relationship.
The rigidity of the marriage relationship is not at present
relaxed by charity.
Christians do despair of finding solace within that
relationship (as shown by “those lapses and that melancholy
despair, which we see in many wedded persons”).
Thus the argument prescribes the content of the sentence and marshals it.
Let us look next at a specimen from the _Areopagitica_ embodying not only
the full syllogism but also a preparatory exposition.
When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason
and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is
industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious
friends; after all which done, he takes himself to be informed
in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him; if
in this most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no
years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring
him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted
and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence,
all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to
the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his
younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who
never knew the labor of bookwriting; and if he be not repulsed,
or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his
guardian, and his censor’s hand on the back of his title to be
his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot
be but a dishonor and derogation the author, to the book, to
the privilege and dignity of learning.[132]
In this utterance of 197 words, every detail pertains to the one concept
of the responsibility and dignity of learning; yet closer inspection
reveals that a two-part structure is accommodated. First there is the
“narration,” a regular part of the classical oration, here setting forth
the industry and conscientiousness of authors. This is followed by a
hypothetical argument saying, in effect, that if all these guarantees
of sober and honest performance are not enough to entitle authors to
liberty, there can be no respect for learning or learned men in the
commonwealth. Thus the sentence is prolonged, one might say, until
the speech is made, and the speech is not a series of loosely related
assertions but a structure defined by standard principles of logic and
rhetoric.
Apart from mere length, which as Whatley and other writers on style
observe, imposes a burden upon the memory too great to be expected of
everyone, there is in the longer Miltonic sentence the additional tax of
complexity. Of course Milton was somewhat influenced by Latin grammar,
but here we are less interested in measuring literary influences than in
analyzing the reading problem which he presents in our day. That problem
is created largely by his intricate elaboration within the long period.
For an especially apt illustration of this I should like to return to _Of
Reformation in England_ and follow the sentence which introduces that
work.
Amidst those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man
Christianly instructed, ought to be most frequent, of God and
of his miraculous ways and works among men, and of our religion
and works, to be performed to him; after the story of our
Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the
flesh, and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory
in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in both be
united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, I do not know
of anything more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity
on the one side, and joy on the other, than to consider first
the foul and sudden corruption, and then, after many a tedious
age, the long deferred, but much more wonderful and happy
reformation of the church in these latter days.[133]
It will be agreed, I feel, that the following features require a more
than ordinary effort of attention and memory: (1) The rhetorical
interruptions, whereby _which_ is separated from its verb _ought to be_,
and _thoughts_ is separated from its prepositional modifier _of God
and of his miraculous works and ways among men_.—(2) The progressive
particularization of _our Saviour Christ_, wherein the substantive is
modified by two participial constructions, _suffering to the lowest
bent of weakness in the flesh_ and _triumphing to the highest pitch
of glory in the spirit_; wherein again the substantive _spirit_ takes
a modifier in the clause _which drew up his body also_, and the verb
_drew up_ of the clause is qualified by the adverbial clause _till we in
both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom_. This is a type
of elaboration in which, as the account unfolds, each detail seems to
require a gloss, which is offered in a construction of some weight or
length.—(3) The extensive parallelism of the last part, beginning with
_the whole passion of pity on the one side_.—(4) The suspended structure
which withholds the topic phrase of the tract, _happy reformation of the
church_, until almost the end of the sentence.
All of these qualities of length, scope, and complexity made the Miltonic
sentence a formidable construction, and we are curious to know why he
was able to use it with public success. The first circumstance we must
take into account is that he lived in a tough-minded period of Western
culture. It was a time when the foundations of the state were being
searched out; when the relationship between religion and political
authority was being re-defined, to the disregard of old customs; and
when sermons were powerful arguments, beginning with first principles
and moving down through a long chain of deductions. It was a time in
which every thinking man virtually had to be either a revolutionary or
a counter-revolutionary; and there is something in such intellectual
climate which scorns prettification and mincing measure. The public
therefore met Milton’s impassioned interest with an equal passion. But by
public we do not mean here the half-educated masses of today; Milton’s
public was rather a sternly educated minority, which had been taught to
recognize an argument when it saw one, and even to analyze its source.
Further evidence of the absorbing interest in the argumentative burden
of prose expression may be seen in the way he employs the extended
metaphor. Milton grew up in the age of the metaphysical conceit. We
now understand that for Elizabethans and Jacobeans a metaphor went far
beyond mere ornamentation to enter into the very heart of a predication.
Rosemund Tuve in particular has shown that for the poets of the period an
image was an argument, so understood and so used.[134] We would hardly
expect it to be any less so in prose. When Milton brings in a metaphor,
he makes full use of its probative value, and this involved, along with
confidence in the architectonic power of the image, a belief that it
affirmed something about the case in point. Thus the metaphor was not
idle or decorative merely, and it dominated the passage to the eclipse of
sentence units. This will explain why, when Milton begins a metaphor, he
will scarcely abandon it until the last appropriate application has been
made and the similitude established beyond reasonable question.
The _Areopagitica_ teems with brilliant extended figures, of which two
will be cited. Here is an image of truth, carried through three sentences.
Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master,
and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he
had ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep,
then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that
story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how
they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed
her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to
the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends
of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search
that Isis made after the body of Osiris, went up and down
gathering limb by limb still as they could find them. We have
not found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till
her master’s second coming; he shall bring together every
joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature
of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing
prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding
and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do
our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.[135]
And here is Milton’s defense of the intellectually free community,
rendered in a military metaphor.
First, when a city shall be as it were besieged and blocked
about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions
round, defiance and battle oft rumored to be marching up,
even to her walls and suburb trenches; that then the people,
or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken
up with the study of highest and most important matters to be
reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing,
discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before
discoursed or written of, argues first a singular good will,
contentedness, and confidence in your prudent foresight, and
safe government, lords and commons; and from thence derives
itself to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of
their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great
spirits among us, as was his who, when Rome was nigh besieged
by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground
at no cheap rate, whereupon Hannibal himself encamped his own
regiment.[136]
Milton’s concept of church government according to Scripture is thus
presented in _The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty_:
Did God take such delight in measuring out the pillars,
arches, and doors of a material temple? Was he so punctual and
circumspect in lavers, altars and sacrifices soon after to be
abrogated, lest any of these should have been made contrary to
his mind? Is not a far more perfect work, more agreeable to his
perfections, in the most perfect state of the church militant,
the new alliance to God to man? Should not he rather now by his
own prescribed discipline have cast his line and level upon the
soul of man, which is his rational temple, and, by the divine
square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us the
lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to edify and
accomplish that immortal stature of Christ’s body, which is his
church, in all her glorious lineaments and proportions?[137]
What we are especially called upon to note in these examples is the
boldness of figuration, by which the concept survives the pressure of
many, and sometimes rather concrete, tests of correspondence, as the
analogy enlarges. The author’s faith in the figure as an organizing
principle is likely evidence that he sees the world as form, the more
of which can be drawn out the better. To a later day, any figure
carried beyond modest length runs the danger of turning into an ironic
commentary upon its analogue, but to Milton, as to the seventeenth
century generally, it was a window to look through. Now quite literally
the conceit is a concept, and we have found it to be another organizing
medium of this intellectual prose, and a second proof that some texture
of thought precedes the mere linguistic expression, and holds itself
superior to it.
While the primacy of the concept is responsible for these formal features
of style, we must look elsewhere for the source of its vigor. Certainly
another reason that Milton is a taxing author to read is the restless
energy that permeates his substance. He never allows the reader to
remain inert, and this is because there were few things toward which
Milton himself was indifferent. One revelation of the active mind is
the zeal and completeness with which it sorts things according to some
scale of values; and judged by that standard Milton’s mind is active
in the extreme. To approach this a little more systematically, what
one discovers with one’s first reading of the prose is that Milton
is constantly attentive to the degrees of things, and his range of
valuations, extending from those things which can be described only
through his elegant curses to those which require the language of
religious or poetic eulogy, is very great. Indeed, “things indifferent,”
to employ a phrase used by Milton himself, play a very small part in his
writing, which rather tends to be juridical in the highest measure. And
the vitality contributed by this awareness of difference he increased
by widening the gulf between the bad and the good. These contrarieties
are managed in various ways: sometimes they are made up of single nouns
of opposed meaning; sometimes of other parts of speech or of phrases;
but always it would take a dull reader to miss the opposed valuations.
A sentence from The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce will afford some
good examples.
Hence it is, that error supports custom, custom countenances
error: and these two between them would persecute and chase
away all truth and solid wisdom out of human life, were it not
that God, rather than man, once in many ages calls together
the prudent and religious counsels of men, deputed to repress
the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and
obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating
of error and custom; who, with the numerous and vulgar train
of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry
down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of humor
and innovation; as if the womb of teeming truth were to be
closed up, if she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not
with their unchewed notions and suppositions.[138]
The vigor of this passage arises from a continuing series of contrasts,
comprising the following: _error and custom_ with _truth and solid
wisdom; God_ with _man_; _prudent and religious counsels_ with
_encroachments_ and also with _inveterate blots and obscurities; subtle
insinuating of error and custom_ with _industry of free reasoning_; and
_womb of teeming truth_ with _unchewed notions and suppositions_.
Here is another passage, from _Of Reformation in England_.
So that in this manner the prelates, both then and ever since,
coming from a mean and plebeian life on a sudden to be lords of
stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare, and princely
attendance, thought the plain and homespun verity of Christ’s
gospel unfit any longer to hold their lordships’ acquaintance,
unless the poor threadbare matron were put into better clothes;
her chaste and modest vail, surrounded with celestial beams,
they overlaid with wanton tresses, and in a staring tire
bespeckled her with all the gaudy allurements of a whore.[139]
In this the clash is between _plebeian life_ and _stately palaces_,
_rich furniture_, etc.; _homespun verity_ and _lordship’s acquaintance_;
_threadbare matron_ and _better clothes_; _chaste and modest vail_ and
_wanton tresses_, _staring tire_, and _gaudy allurements of a whore_.
Lastly I should like to take a sentence from the same work, which has
been admired by Aldous Huxley for its energy.
Thus then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and
animate every joint and sinew of the mystical body; but now
the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his
fold, shall be reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only
canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight paltry companion:
and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Christ’s blood,
and dignified with so many glorious titles of saints and sons
in the gospel, are now no better reputed than impure ethnics
and lay dogs; stones, pillars, and crucifixes, have now the
honour and the alms due to Christ’s living members; the table
of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like
an exalted platform on the brow of the quire, fortified with
bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the
laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not
to paw and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his
tavern biscuit.[140]
In this typical specimen of Milton’s vehemence, _gravest and worthiest
minister, a true bishop_ contrasts with _insulting and only canon-wise
prelate_ and with _slight paltry companion_; _the people of God, redeemed
and washed with Christ’s blood, and dignified with so many glorious
titles of saints and sons in the gospel_ with _impure ethnics_ and _lay
dogs_; _stones, pillars, and crucifixes_ with _Christ’s living members_;
_communion_ with _separation_; _fortified with bulwark and barricado_
with the earlier _unity and meekness_; _obscene_, _surfeited_, _paw_, and
_mammock_ with _priest_; and _sacramental bread_ with _tavern biscuit_.
The effect of such sustained contrast is to produce a high degree of
tonicity, and here in a word is why Milton’s prose seems never relaxed.
His pervading consciousness of the combat of good and evil caused him to
engage in constant projections of that combat. In a manner of speaking,
Milton always writes from a “prejudice,” which proves to be on inspection
his conviction as a Christian and as a political and moral preacher,
that, as the good has been judged, the duty of a publicist is to show
it separated with the utmost clearness of distinction from the bad.
Accordingly Milton’s expositions, if one follows them intently, cause one
to accept one thing and reprobate another unceasingly.
In consequence there appears in many passages a quality of style which
I shall call the superlative mode. His very reaching out toward the two
extremes of a gauge of value drives him to couch expression in terms
raised to their highest degree. Often we see this in the superlative
form of the adjective. But we see it also in his employment of words
which even in their grammatically positive forms have acquired a kind
of superlative sense. Finally we see it on occasion in a pattern
of incremental repetition which he uses to impress us with his most
impassioned thoughts. The wonderful closing prayer from _Of Reformation
in England_ contains examples of all of these superlatives. Here are the
closing paragraphs.
And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence,
that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of
the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad
intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines
of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that
have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together,
and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do thou cancel
it; let them gather themselves, and be scattered; let them
embattle themselves, and be broken, for thou art with us.
Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one
may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and
lofty measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and
marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby
this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the
fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness,
and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may
press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found
the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day,
when thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open
the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and
distributing national honours and rewards to religious and
just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labors, counsels
and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion
and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of
the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions,
and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence
of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble
circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and
bliss, in overmeasure, for ever.
But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country,
aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, after a
shameful end in this life (which God grant them), shall be
thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of
hell, where under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn
of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture,
shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial
tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall
remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost,
the most dejected, most underfoot, and downtrodden vassals of
perdition.[141]
Let us mark the bristling superlatives. Of adjectives in superlative
form we find _most certain_, _soberest_, _wisest_, _most Christian_,
_darkest_, _deepest_, _basest_, _lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most
underfoot_, and _[most] downtrodden_. Of those words which have a
superlative force or meaning, I would list—allowing that this must be a
matter of judgment—_naught_, _cancel_, _broken_, _marvellous_, _fervent_,
_eternal_, _universal_, _undoubtedly_, _supereminence_, _beatific_,
_dateless_, _irrevoluble_, _eternity_, _inseparable_, _overmeasure_, _for
ever_, and _eternally_. But the most interesting form of the superlative
mode is the pattern of repetition by which Milton, through a progressive
accumulation of substantives and adjectives, builds up a crescendo.
First there will be one or more groups of two, then perhaps a group of
three, and finally, for the supreme effect, a breathtaking collocation of
five. Such a pattern appears in the concluding sentence of the prayer:
_impairing_ and _diminution_; _distresses_ and _servitude_; _dignity_,
_rule_, and _promotion_; _darkest_ and _deepest_; _control_, _trample_,
and _spurn_; _raving_ and _bestial_; _slaves_ and _negroes_; _basest_,
_lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most underfoot and downtrodden_. Here, it
will be noticed, the sequence is 2-2-3-2-3-2-2-5. The pattern in itself
is revealing. First there are two pairs which ready us for attaining the
group of three; then another pair to rest upon before we attain the group
of three again; then two more pairs for a longer respite while we ready
ourselves for the supreme effort of the group of five.
The prayer is not, of course, an ordinary passage; yet what is seen here
is discoverable in some measure in all of Milton’s prose. He wrote in
this superlative vein because his principal aim was the divorcement of
good and evil. To show these wide apart, he had to talk in terms of best
and worst, and being a rhetorician of vast resources, he found ways of
making the superlative even more eminent than our regular grammatical
forms make it, which naturally marks him as a great creative user of the
language.
The topic of grouping appropriately introduces another aspect of Milton’s
style which I shall refer to more specifically as systematic collocation.
No one can read him with the object of forming some descriptive image of
his prose without being impressed by his frequent use of pairs of words
similar in meaning to express a single object or idea. These pairs will
be comprised, in a roughly equal number of instances, of nouns and of
adjectives, though fairly often two verbs will make up the collocation
and occasionally two adverbs. It seems probable that these pairs, more
than any other single feature of the style, give the impression of
thickness, which is in turn the source of the impression of strength. Or
to present this in another way, what the pairs create is the effect of
dimension. It needs no proving at this stage that Milton had too well
stored a mind and too genuine a passion to coast along on mere fluency.
If he used two words where another author would use one, that fact
affords presumption that his second word had its margin of meaningful
addition to contribute. And so we find it: these pairs of substantives
give his prose a dimensional quality, because this one will show one
aspect of the thing named and that one another. It would require a rather
long list to include the variety of aspects which Milton will bring out
by his practice of double naming; sometimes it is in form and substance,
or the conceptual and the material nature of the thing; sometimes it is
appearance and meaning; sometimes process and tendency; sometimes one
modifier will express the active and another the passive nature of the
thing described. Always the practice causes his subject matter to convey
this sensation of depth and realness, which is a principal factor in the
vitality of his style.
We shall look at some examples of this highly interesting method. The
first is from the _Areopagitica_. I have italicized the pairs.
Methinks I see in my mind a _noble_ and _puissant_ nation
rousing herself like a strong man after a sleep, and shaking
her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing
her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full
midday beam, _purging_ and _unscaling_ her long abused sight at
the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise
of _timorous_ and _flocking_ birds, with those also that love
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in
their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of _sects_ and
_schisms_.[142]
_Noble_ and _puissant_ direct attention to ethical and to physical
attributes; _purging_ and _scaling_ do not form so complementary a
pair but perhaps denote two distinct phases of a process; _timorous_
and _flocking_ is an excellent pair to show inward nature and outward
behavior, and must be accounted one of the most successful uses of
the method; _sects_ and _schisms_ would seem to refer to social or
ecclesiastical and to theological aspects of division.
In a sentence from _Of Reformation in England_, he says: “But what do I
stand reckoning upon _advantages_ and _gains_ lost by the _misrule_ and
_turbulency_ of the prelates?”[143] _Advantages_ and _gains_ stand for
two sorts of progress made prior to the _misrule_ and _turbulency_ of the
prelates, which in turn signify the formal outward policies and the inner
spirit of ambition and presumption. From the _Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce_: “The _ignorance_ and _mistake_ of this high point hath heaped
up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam.”[144] Here
_ignorance_ would seem to describe a passive lack of awareness, whereas
_mistake_ describes active misapprehension or misapplication. Finally
here are examples from _Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence
Against Smectymnuus_.
We all know that in _private_ or _personal_ injuries, yea,
in public sufferings for the cause of Christ, his _rule_ and
_example_ teaches us to be so far from a readiness to speak
evil, as not to answer the reviler in his language, though
never so much provoked: yet in the _detecting_ and _convincing_
of any notorious enemy to _truth_ and his _country’s peace_,
especially that is conceited to have a _voluble_ and _smart_
fluence of tongue, and in the vain confidence of that, and out
of a more tenacious cling to worldly respects, stands up for
all the rest to justify a _long usurpation_ and _convicted
pseudepiscopy_ of prelates, with all their ceremonies,
liturgies and tyrannies, which _God_ and _man_ are now ready to
_explode_ and _hiss out of the land_: I suppose, and more than
suppose, it will be nothing disagreeing from Christian meekness
to handle such a one in a rougher accent, and to send home his
haughtiness well bespurted with his own holy water.[145]
Here _private_ and _personal_ may be taken as giving us two aspects of
the individual; _rule_ and _example_ differ as abstract and concrete;
_detecting_ and _convincing_ (the latter apparently in the older sense of
“overcoming”) denote two stages of a process; _truth_ and _his country’s
peace_ may be taken to express the metaphysical and the embodied forms
of the same thing; _voluble_ and _smart_ seem to refer to what is
perceivable by the senses and by the intellect respectively; _long
usurpation_ and _convicted pseudepiscopy_ differ as simple action and
action which has been judged: _God_ and _man_ bring together the divine
and the human; _explode_ and _hiss out of the land_ again express two
stages of a process.
In the manner here indicated, these collocations serve to give the style
a wonderful richness of thought. The reader feels that he is being shown
both the _esse_ and the _potesse_ of the object named. At least, he gets
a look at its manifold nature. The way in which Milton fills out the
subject for his reader is at once lavish and perspicuous. Just as his
figures were seen to have a prolonged correspondence, beyond what the
casual or unthinking writer would bring to view, so his substantives and
predicates are assembled upon a principle of penetration or depth of
description.
Our general impression of Milton—an impression we get in some degree
of all the great writers of his period and of the Elizabethan period
before it—is that his thought dominates the medium. While the distinction
between what is said and the form of saying it can never be drawn
absolutely, it is yet to be remarked that some writers seem to compose
with an awareness of how their matter will look upon the page, or how
it will sound in the parlor; others seem to keep their main attention
upon currently preferred terms and idioms. Again, some writers seem to
accept the risk of suspension, transposition, and involution out of
conscious elegance; Milton seems rather to require them out of strength
of purpose. He was not a writer of writing, but consistently a writer of
substance, and the language was his instrumentality, which he used with
the familiar boldness of a master. One would go far to find a better
illustration of the saying of John Peale Bishop that the English language
is like a woman; it is most likely to yield after one has shown it a
little violence. All of the great prose writers of the Elizabethan age
and the Seventeenth century were perfectly capable of showing it that
violence, and I believe this is the true reason that a lover of eloquence
today reacts their works with irrepressible admiration. The tremendous
suspensions and ramifications they were willing to create; their
readiness to make function the test of grammar and to coin according
to need, through all of which a rational, though not always a formal
or codified syntax survives—these things bespeak a sort of magisterial
attitude toward language which has been lost in the intervening centuries.
It is quite possible that long years of accumulated usage tend to act
as a deterrent to a free and imaginative use of language. So many
stereotypes have had time to form themselves, and so many manuals
of usage have been issued that the choice would seem to lie between
simple compliance and open rebellion. Either one uses the language as
the leaders of one’s social and business world use it, or one makes a
decisive break and uses it in open defiance of the conventionalized
patterns. We may remember in this connection that when the new movement
in modern literature got underway in the second decade of this century,
its leaders proved themselves the most defiant and brash kind of rebels
as they embarked upon the work of resuscitation and refurbishment, and
it was to the Elizabethans especially that they looked for sanction and
guidance. But the rebel with this program faces a dilemma: he cannot
infuse life into the old forms that he knows are depriving expression of
all vitality, and he exhausts himself in the campaign to smash and get
rid of them.
That is partly an historical observation, and our interest is in laying
bare the movement of a great eloquence. Yet if we had to answer whether
some heroic style like that of Milton cannot be formed for our own day,
when millions might rejoice to hear a sonorous voice speaking out of a
deep learning in our traditions, our answer would surely be, yes. And if
asked how, we would begin our counsel by telling the writer to heed the
advice in Emerson’s _American Scholar_—better indeed than Emerson heeded
it himself—to look upon himself not as a writer but as a man writing, and
to try to live in that character. As long as one does that, it is most
likely that the concept will dominate the medium, and that one will use,
with inventive freedom, such conventionality as is necessary to language.
A timid correctness, like perfect lucidity, sometimes shows that more
attention has been devoted to the form than to the thought, and this may
give the writing a kind of hard surface which impedes sympathy between
writer and reader. Finally, one should remember that people like to feel
they are hearing of the solid fact and substance of the world, and those
epithets which give us glimpses of its concreteness and contingency
are the best guarantors of that. The regular balancing of abstract and
concrete modifiers, which we meet regularly in Shakespeare, mirrors,
indeed, the situation all of us face in daily living, where general
principles are clear in theory but are conditioned in their application
to the concrete world. The man of eloquence must be a lover of “the
world’s body” to the extent of being able to give it a fond description.
With these conditions practically realized, we might again have orators
of the heroic mold. But the change would have to include the public also,
for, on a second thought suggested by Whitman, to have great orators
there must be great audiences too.
Chapter VII
THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OLD RHETORIC
Few species of composition seem so antiquated, so little available for
any practical purpose today, as the oratory in which the generation
of our grandparents delighted. The type of discourse which they would
ride miles in wagons to hear, or would regard as the special treat of
some festive occasion, fills most people today with an acute sense of
discomfort. Somehow, it makes them embarrassed. They become conscious
of themselves, conscious of pretensions in it, and they think it well
consigned to the museum. But its very ability to inspire antipathy, as
distinguished from indifference, suggests the presence of something
interesting.
The student of rhetoric should accordingly sense here the chance for a
discovery, and as he begins to listen for its revealing quality, the
first thing he becomes aware of is a “spaciousness.” This is, of course,
a broad impression, which requires its own analysis. As we listen more
carefully, then, it seems that between the speech itself and the things
it is meant to signify, something stands—perhaps it is only an empty
space—but something is there to prevent immediate realizations and
references. For an experience of the sensation, let us for a moment go
back to 1850 and attune our ears to an address by Representative Andrew
Ewing, on the subject of the sale of the public lands.
We have afforded a refuge to the down-trodden nations of the
Old World, and organized system of internal improvement and
public education, which have no parallel in the history of
mankind. Why should we not continue and enlarge the system
which has so much contributed to these results? If our Pacific
Coast should be lined with its hundred cities, extending from
the northern boundary of Oregon down to San Diego; if the vast
interior hills and valleys could be filled with lowing herds
and fruitful fields of a thriving and industrious people; and
if the busy hum of ten thousand workshops could be daily heard
over the placid waters of the Pacific, would our government be
poorer or our country less able to meet her obligations than at
present?[146]
Despite the allusions to geographical localities, does not the
speaker seem to be speaking _in vacuo_? His words do not impinge
upon a circumambient reality; his concepts seem not to have definite
correspondences, but to be general, and as it were, mobile.
“Spread-eagle” and “high-flown” are two modifiers with which people have
sought to catch the quality of such speech.
In this work we are interested both in causes and the moral quality
of causes, and when an orator appears to speak of subjects without an
immediate apperception of them, we become curious about the kind of world
he is living in. Was this type of orator sick, as some have inferred?
Was he suffering from some kind of auto-intoxication which produces
insulation from reality? Charles Egbert Craddock in her novel _Where
the Battle Was Fought_ has left a satirical picture of the type. Its
personification is General Vayne, who holds everything up to a “moral
magnifying glass.” “Through this unique lens life loomed up as a rather
large affair. In the rickety courthouse in the village of Chattalla,
five miles out there to the south, General Vayne beheld a temple of
justice. He translated an office-holder as the sworn servant of the
people. The State was this great commonwealth, and its seal a proud
escutcheon. A fall in cotton struck him as a blow to the commerce of
the world. From an adverse political fortune he augured the swift ruin
of the country.”[147] There is the possibility that this type was sick
with a kind of vanity and egocentricity, and that has frequently been
offered as a diagnosis. But on the other hand, there is the possibility
that such men were larger than we, with our petty and contentious style,
and because larger more exposed in those limitations which they had. The
heroes in tragedies also talk bigger than life. Perhaps the source of our
discomfort is that this kind of speech comes to us as an admonition that
there were giants in the earth before us, mighty men, men of renown. But
before we are ready for any conclusion, we must isolate the cause of our
intimation.
As we scan the old oratory for the chief offender against modern
sensibility, we are certain to rank in high position, if not first,
_the uncontested term_. By this we mean the term which seems to invite
a contest, but which apparently is not so regarded in its own context.
Most of these are terms which scandalize the modern reader with their
generality, so that he wonders how the speaker ever took the risk of
using them. No experienced speaker interlards his discourse with terms
which are themselves controversial. He may build his case on one or two
such terms, after giving them _ad hoc_ definitions, but to multiply them
is to create a force of resistance which almost no speech can overcome.
Yet in this period we have speeches which seem made up almost from
beginning to end of phrases loose in scope and but weakly defensible.
Yet the old orator who employed these terms of sweeping generality knew
something of his audience’s state of mind and was confident of his
effect. And the public generally responded by putting him in the genus
“great man.” This brings us to the rhetorical situation, which must be
described in some detail.
We have said that this orator of the old-fashioned mold, who is using
the uncontested term, passes on his collection of generalities in full
expectation that they will be received as legal tender. He is taking a
very advanced position, which could be undermined easily, were the will
to do so present. But the will was not present, and this is the most
significant fact in our explanation. The orator had, in any typical
audience, not only a previously indoctrinated group, but a group of quite
similar indoctrination. Of course, we are using such phrases for purposes
of comparison with today. It is now a truism that the homogeneity of
belief which obtained three generations ago has largely disappeared. Such
belief was, in a manner of conceiving it, the old orator’s capital. And
it was, if we may trust the figure further, an initial asset which made
further operations possible.
If we knew how this capital is accumulated, we would possess one of
the secrets of civilization. All we know is that whatever spells the
essential unity of a people in belief and attachment contains the
answer. The best we can do at this stage is look into the mechanism of
relationship between this level of generality and the effectiveness of a
speech.
We must keep in mind that “general” is itself a relative modifier, and
that the degree of generality with which one may express one’s thoughts
is very wide. One may refer, for example, to a certain event as a
_murder_, a _crime_, an _act_, or an _occurrence_. We assume that none
of these terms is inherently falsifying, because none of them is in any
prior sense required. Levels of generality do not contradict one another;
they supplement one another by bringing out different foci of interest.
Every level of generality has its uses: the Bible can tell the story of
creation in a few hundred words, and it is doubtless well that it should
be told there in that way. Let us therefore take a guarded position here
and claim only that one’s level of generality tells something of one’s
approach to a subject. We shall find certain refinements of application
possible as we go on.
With this as a starting point, we should be prepared for a more intensive
look at the diction of the old school. For purposes of this analysis
I shall choose something that is historically obscure. Great occasions
sometimes deflect our judgment by their special circumstances. The
passage below is from a speech made by the Honorable Charles J. Faulkner
at an agricultural fair in Virginia in 1858. Both speaker and event have
passed into relative oblivion, and we can therefore view this as a fairly
stock specimen of the oratory in vogue a hundred years ago to grace local
celebrations. Let us attend to it carefully for its references.
If we look to the past or to the present we shall find that the
permanent power of any nation has always been in proportion to
its cultivation of the soil—those republics which during the
earlier and middle ages, were indebted for their growth mainly
to commerce, did for a moment, indeed, cast a dazzling splendor
across the pathway of time; but they soon passed from among
the powers of the earth, leaving behind them not a memorial of
their proud and ephemeral destiny whilst other nations, which
looked to the products of the soil for the elements of their
strength, found in each successive year the unfailing sources
of national aggrandizement and power. Of all the nations
of antiquity, the Romans were most persistently devoted to
agriculture, and many of the maxims taught by their experience,
and transmitted to us by their distinguished writers, are not
unworthy, even at this time, of the notice of the intelligent
farmers of this valley. It was in their schools of country
life—a _vita rustica_—as their own great orator informs us,
that they imbibed those noble sentiments which rendered the
Roman name more illustrious than all their famous victories,
and there, that they acquired those habits of labor, frugality,
justice and that high standard of moral virtue which made them
the easy masters of their race.[148]
A modern mind trained in the habit of analysis will be horrified by the
number of large and unexamined phrases passing by in even this brief
excerpt. “Permanent power of any nation”; “earlier and middle ages”;
“cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time”; “proud and
ephemeral destiny”; “noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more
illustrious”; and “high standards of moral virtue” are but a selection.
Comparatively speaking, the tone of this oration is fairly subdued, but
it is in the grand style, and these phrases are the medium. With this
passage before us for reference, I wish to discuss one matter of effect,
and one of cause or enabling condition.
It will be quickly perceived that the phrases in question have
resonances, both historical and literary, and that this resonance is what
we have been calling spaciousness. Instead of the single note (prized for
purposes of analysis) they are widths of sound and meaning; they tend
to echo over broad areas and to call up generalized associations. This
resonance is the interstice between what is said and the thing signified.
In this way then the generality of the phrase may be definitely linked
with an effect.
But the second question is our principal interest: how was the orator
able to use them with full public consent when he cannot do so today?
I am going to suggest that the orator then enjoyed a privilege which
can be compared to the lawyer’s “right of assumption.” This is the
right to assume that precedents are valid, that forms will persist, and
that in general one may build today on what was created yesterday. What
mankind has sanctified with usage has a presumption in its favor. Such
presumption, it was felt, instead of being an obstacle to progress,
furnishes the ground for progress. More simply, yesterday’s achievements
are also contributions to progress. It is he who insists upon beginning
every day _de novo_ who denies the reality of progress. Accordingly,
consider the American orator in the intellectual climate of this time. He
was comfortably circumstanced with reference to things he could “know”
and presume everyone else to know in the same way. Freedom and morality
were constants; the Constitution was the codification of all that was
politically feasible; Christianity of all that was morally authorized.
Rome stood as an exemplum of what may happen to nations; the American
and French Revolutions had taught rulers their necessary limitations.
Civilization has thought over its thousands of years of history and has
made some generalizations which are the premises of other arguments but
which are not issues themselves. When one asserts that the Romans had
a “high standard of moral virtue which made them the easy masters of
their race,” one is affirming a doctrine of causality in a sweeping way.
If one had to stop and “prove” that moral virtue makes one master, one
obviously would have to start farther down the ladder of assumption.
But these things were not in the area of argument because progress was
positive and that meant that some things have to be assimilated as
truths. Men were not condemned to repeat history, because they remembered
its lessons. To the extent that the mind had made its summations, it was
free to go forward, and forward meant in the direction of more inclusive
conceptions. The orator who pauses along the way to argue a point which
no one challenges only demeans the occasion. Therefore the orator of the
period we have defined did not feel that he had to argue the significance
of everything to which he attached significance. Some things were fixed
by universal enlightened consensus; and they could be used as steps for
getting at matters which were less settled and hence were proper subjects
for deliberation. Deliberation is good only because it decreases the
number of things it is necessary to deliberate about.
Consequently when we wonder how he could use such expressions without
trace of compunction, we forget that the expressions did not need
apology. The speaker of the present who used like terms would, on the
contrary, meet a contest at every step of the way. His audience would not
swallow such clusters of related meanings. But at that time a number of
unities, including the unity of past and present, the unity of moral sets
and of causal sets, furnished the ground for discourse in “uncontested
terms.” Only such substratum of agreement makes possible the panoramic
treatment.
We can infer important conclusions about a civilization when we know that
its debates and controversies occur at outpost positions rather than
within the citadel itself. If these occur at a very elementary level, we
suspect that the culture has not defined itself, or that it is decayed
and threatened with dissolution. Where the chief subject of debate
is the relative validity of Homoiousianism and Homoousianism, or the
conventions of courtly love, we feel confident that a great deal has been
cached away in the form of settled conclusions, and that such shaking
as proceeds from controversies of this kind, although they may agitate
the superstructure, will hardly be felt as far down as the foundations.
I would say the same is suggested by the great American debate over
whether the Constitution was a “constitution” or a “compact,” despite its
unfortunate sequel.
At this stage of cultural development the commonplaces of opinion and
conduct form a sort of _textus receptus_, and the emendations are
confined to minor matters. Conversely, when the disagreement is over
extremely elementary matters, survival itself may be at stake. It seems
to me that modern debates over the validity of the law of contradiction
may be a disagreement of this kind. The soundness of a culture may
well be measured by this ability to recognize what is extraneous. One
knows what to do with the extraneous, even if one decides upon a policy
of temporary accommodation. It is when the line dividing us from the
extraneous begins to fade that we are assailed with destructive doubts.
Disagreements over the most fundamental subjects leave us puzzled as to
“where we are” if not as to “what we are.” The speaker whom we have been
characterizing felt sure of the demarcation. That gave him his freedom,
and was the source of his simplicity.
When we reflect further that the old oratory had a certain judicial
flavor about it, we are prompted to ask whether thinking as then
conceived did not have a different status from today’s thinking. One is
led to make this query by the suggestion that when the most fundamental
propositions of a culture are under attack, then it becomes a duty to
“think for one’s self.” Not that it is a bad thing to think; yet when the
whole emphasis is upon “thinking for one’s self,” it is hard to avoid a
feeling that certain postulates have broken down, and the most courage
we can muster is to ask people, not to “think in a certain direction,”
but to “think for themselves.” Where the primary directive of thinking is
known, the object of thinking will not be mere cerebral motion (as some
exponents of the policy of thinking for one’s self leave us to infer),
but rather the object of such thinking, or knowledge. This is a very
rudimentary proposition, but it deserves attention because the modern
tendency has reversed a previous order. From the position that only
propositions are interesting because they alone make judgments, we are
passing to a position in which only evidence is interesting because it
alone is uncontaminated by propositions. In brief, interest has shifted
from inference to reportage, and this has had a demonstrable effect
upon the tone of oratory. The large resonant phrase is itself a kind of
condensed proposition; as propositions begin to sink with the general
sagging of the substructure, the phrases must do the same. Obviously we
are pointing here to a profound cultural change, and the same shifts can
be seen in literature; the poet or novelist may feel that the content
of his consciousness is more valid (and this will be true even of those
who have not formulated the belief) than the formal arrangement which
would be produced by selection, abstraction, and arrangement. Or viewed
in another respect, experiential order has taken precedence over logical
order.
The object of an oration made on the conditions obtained a hundred years
ago was not so much to “make people think” as to remind them of what they
already thought (and again we are speaking comparatively). The oratorical
rostrum, like the church, was less of a place for fresh instruction
than for steady inculcation. And the orator, like the minister, was
one who spoke from an eminent degree of conviction. Paradoxically, the
speaker of this vanished period had more freedom to maneuver than has his
emancipated successor. Man is free in proportion as his surroundings have
a determinate nature, and he can plan his course with perfect reliance
upon that determinateness. It is an admitted axiom that we have rules in
one place so that we can have liberty in another; we put certain things
in charge of habit so as to be free in areas where we prize freedom.
Manifestly one is not “free” when one has to battle for one’s position at
every moment of time. This interrelationship of freedom and organization
is one of the permanent conditions of existence, so that it has been said
even that perfect freedom is perfect compliance (“one commands nature by
obeying her”).
In the province we are considering, man is free to the extent that he
knows that nature is, what God expects, what he himself is capable of.
Freedom moves on a set of presuppositions just as a machine moves on a
set of ball bearings which themselves preserve definite locus. It is
when these presuppositions are tampered with that men begin to grow
concerned about their freedom. One can well imagine that the tremendous
self-consciousness about freedom today, which we note in almost every
utterance of public men, is evidence that this crucial general belief
is threatened. It is no mere paradox to say that when they cry liberty,
they mean belief—the belief that sets one free from prior concerns. A
corroborating evidence is that fact that nearly all large pleas for
liberty heard today conclude with more or less direct appeals for unity.
We may now return to our more direct concern with rhetoric. Since
according to this demonstration oratory speaks from an eminence and
has a freedom of purview, its syllogism is the “rhetorical syllogism”
mentioned by Demetrius—the enthymeme.[149] It may not hurt to state that
this is the syllogism with one of the three propositions missing. Such a
syllogism can be used only when the audience is willing to supply the
missing proposition. The missing proposition will be “in their hearts,”
as it were; it will be their agreement upon some fundamental aspect of
the issue being discussed. If it is there, the orator does not have to
supply it; if it is not there, he may not be able to get it in any way—at
least not as orator. Therefore the use of the rhetorical syllogism is
good concrete evidence that the old orator relied upon the existence of
uncontested terms or fixations of belief in the minds of his hearers.
The orator was logical, but he could dispense with being a pure logician
because that third proposition had been established for him.
These two related considerations, the accepted term and the conception
of oratory as a body of judicious conclusions upon common evidence, go
far toward explaining the quality of spaciousness. Indeed, to say that
oratory has “spaciousness” is to risk redundancy once the nature of
oratory is understood. Oratory is “spacious” in the same way that liberal
education is liberal; and a correlation can be shown between the decline
of liberal education (the education of a freeman) and the decline of
oratory. It was one of Cicero’s observations that the orator performs at
“the focal point at which all human activity is ultimately reviewed”; and
Cicero is, for connected reasons, a chief source of our theory of liberal
education.[150]
Thus far we have rested our explanation on the utility of the generalized
style, but this is probably much too narrow an account. There is also an
aesthetic of the generalization, which we must now proceed to explore.
Let us pause here momentarily to re-define our impression upon hearing
the old orator. The feature which we have been describing as spaciousness
may be translated, with perhaps a slight shift of viewpoint, as opacity.
The passages we have inspected, to recur to our examples, are opaque
in that we cannot see through them with any sharpness. And it was no
doubt the intention of the orator that we should not see through them
in this way. The “moral magnifying glass” of Craddock’s General Vayne
made objects larger, but it did not make them clearer. It rather had the
effect of blurring lines and obscuring details.
We are now in position to suggest that another factor in the choice of
the generalized phrase was aesthetic distance. There is an aesthetic, as
well as a moral, limit to how close one may approach an object; and the
forensic artists of the epoch we describe seem to have been guided by
this principle of artistic decorum. Aesthetic distance is, of course, an
essential of aesthetic treatment. If one sees an object from too close,
one sees only its irregularities and protuberances. To see an object
rightly or to see it as a whole, one has to have a proportioned distance
from it. Then the parts fall into a meaningful pattern, the dominant
effect emerges, and one sees it “as it really is.” A prurient interest in
closeness and a great remoteness will both spoil the view. To recall a
famous example in literature, neither Lilliputian nor Brobdingnagian is
man as we think we know him.
Thus it can be a sign not only of philosophical ignorance but also
of artistic bad taste to treat an object familiarly or from a near
proximity. At the risk of appearing fanciful we shall say that objects
have not only their natures but their rights, which the orator is bound
to respect, since he is in large measure the ethical teacher of society.
By maintaining this distance with regard to objects, art manages to
“idealize” them in a very special sense. One does not mean by this that
it necessarily elevates them or transfigures them, but it certainly does
keep out a kind of officious detail which would only lower the general
effect. What the artistic procedure tends to do, then, is to give us
a “generic” picture, and much the same can be said about oratory. The
true orator has little concern with singularity—or, to recall again a
famous instance, with the wart on Cromwell’s face—because the singular
is the impertinent. Only the generic belongs, and by obvious connection
the language of the generic is a general language. In the old style,
presentation kept distances which had, as one of their purposes, the
obscuring of details. It would then have appeared the extreme of bad
taste to particularize in the manner which has since, especially in
certain areas of journalism, become a literary vogue. It would have been
beyond the pale to refer, in anything intended for the public view, to
a certain cabinet minister’s false teeth or a certain congressman’s
shiny dome. Aesthetically, this was not the angle of vision from which
one takes in the man, and there is even the question of epistemological
truthfulness. Portrait painters know that still, and journalists knew it
a hundred years ago.
It will be best to illustrate the effect of aesthetic distance. I have
chosen a passage from the address delivered by John C. Breckinridge,
Vice-President of the United States, on the occasion of the removal of
the Senate from the Old to the New Chamber, January 4, 1859. The moment
was regarded as solemn, and the speaker expressed himself as follows:
And now the strifes and uncertainties of the past are finished.
We see around us on every side the proofs of stability and
improvement. This Capitol is worthy of the Republic. Noble
public buildings meet the view on every hand. Treasures of
science and the arts begin to accumulate. As this flourishing
city enlarges, it testifies to the wisdom and forecast that
dictated the plan of it. Future generations will not be
disturbed with questions concerning the center of population
or of territory, since the steamboat, the railroad and the
telegraph have made communication almost instantaneous. The
spot is sacred by a thousand memories, which are so many
pledges that the city of Washington, founded by him and
bearing his revered name, with its beautiful site, bounded
by picturesque eminences, and the broad Potomac, and lying
within view of his home and his tomb, shall remain forever the
political capital of the United States.
At the close of the address, he said:
And now, Senators, we leave this memorable chamber, bearing
with us, unimpaired, the Constitution received from our
forefathers. Let us cherish it with grateful acknowledgments
of the Divine Power who controls the destinies of empires
and whose goodness we adore. The structures reared by man
yield to the corroding tooth of time. These marble walls
must molder into ruin; but the principles of constitutional
liberty, guarded by wisdom and virtue, unlike material
elements, do not decay. Let us devoutly trust that another
Senate in another age shall bear to a new and larger Chamber,
the Constitution vigorous and inviolate, and that the last
generations of posterity shall witness the deliberations of the
Representatives of American States still united, prosperous,
and free.[151]
We shall hardly help noting the prominence of “opaque” phrases. “Proofs
of stability and improvement”; “noble public buildings”; “treasures of
science and the arts”; “this flourishing city”; “a thousand memories”;
“this beautiful site”; and “structures reared by man” seem outstanding
examples. These all express objects which can be seen only at a distance
of time or space. In three instances, it is true, the speaker mentions
things of which his hearers might have been immediately and physically
conscious, but they receive an appropriately generalized reference. The
passage admits not a single intrusive detail, nor is anything there
supposed to have a superior validity or probativeness because it is
present visibly or tangibly. The speech is addressed to the mind, and
correspondingly to the memory.[152] The fact that the inclusiveness
was temporal as well as spatial has perhaps special significance for
us. This “continuity of the past with the present” gave a dimension
which our world seems largely to have lost; and this dimension made
possible a different pattern of selection. It is not experiential data
which creates a sense of the oneness of experience. It is rather an
act of mind; and the practice of periodically bringing the past into a
meditative relationship with the present betokens an attitude toward
history. In the chapter on Lincoln we have shown that an even greater
degree of remoteness is discernible in the First and Second Inaugural
Addresses, delivered at a time when war was an ugly present reality. And
furthermore, at Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke in terms so “generic” that it
is almost impossible to show that the speech is not a eulogy of the men
in gray as well as the men in blue, inasmuch as both made up “those who
struggled here.” Lincoln’s faculty of transcending an occasion is in fact
only this ability to view it from the right distance, or to be wisely
generic about it.
We are talking here about things capable of extremes, and there is a
degree of abstraction which results in imperception; but barring those
cases which everyone recognizes as beyond bounds, we should reconsider
the idea that such generalization is a sign of impotence. The distinction
does not lie between those who are near life and those who are remote
from it, but between pertinence and impertinence. The intrusive detail so
prized by modern realists does not belong in a picture which is a picture
of something. One of the senses of “seeing” is metaphorical, and if one
gets too close to the object, one can no longer in this sense “see.” It
is the _theoria_ of the mind as well as the work of the senses which
creates the final picture.
One can show this through an instructive contrast with modern journalism,
particularly that of the _Time_ magazine variety. A considerable part of
its material, and nearly all of its captions, are made up of what we have
defined as “impertinences.” What our forensic artist of a century ago
would have regarded as lacking significance is in these media presented
as the pertinent because it is very near the physical manifestation of
the event. And the reversal has been complete, because what for this
artist would have been pertinent is there treated as impertinent since
it involves matter which the average man does not care to reflect upon,
especially under the conditions of newspaper reading. Thus even the
epistemology which made the old oratory possible is being relegated.
We must take notice in this connection that the lavish use of detail is
sometimes defended on the ground that it is illustration. The argument
runs that illustration is a visual aid to education, and therefore
an increased use of illustration contributes to that informing of
the public which journals acknowledge as their duty. But a little
reflection about the nature of illustration will show where this idea is
treacherous. Illustration, as already indicated, implies that something
is being illustrated, so that in the true illustration we will have a
conjunction of mind and pictorial manifestation. But now, with brilliant
technological means, the tendency is for manifestation to outrun the
idea, so that the illustrations are vivid rather than meaningful or
communicative. Thus, whereas today the illustration is looking for an
idea to express, formerly the idea was the original; and it was looking,
often rather fastidiously, for some palpable means of representation.
The idea condescended, one might say, from an empyrean, to suffer
illustrative embodiment.
To make this difference more real, let us study an example of the older
method of illustration. The passage below examined is from an address
by Rufus Choate on “The Position and Function of the American Bar as an
Element of Conservatism in the State,” delivered before the Law School
in Cambridge, July 3, 1845.
But with us the age of this mode and degree of reform is over;
its work is done. The passage of the sea; the occupation and
culture of a new world, the conquest of independence—these were
our eras, these our agency of reform. In our jurisprudence of
liberty, which guards our person from violence and our goods
from plunder, and which forbids the whole power of the state
itself to take the ewe lamb, or to trample on a blade of grass
of the humblest citizen without adequate remuneration: which
makes every dwelling large enough to shelter a human life
its owner’s castle which winds and rain may enter, but which
the government cannot,—in our written constitution, whereby
the people, exercising an act of sublime self-restraint,
have intended to put it out of their power forever to be
passionate, tumultuous, unwise, unjust, whereby they have
intended, by means of a system of representation, by means of
the distribution of government into departments independent,
coordinate for checks and balances; by a double chamber
of legislation, by the establishment of a fundamental and
permanent organic law; by the organization of a judiciary whose
function, whose loftiest function it is to test the legislation
of the day by the standard of all time,—constitutions, whereby
all these means they have intended to secure a government of
laws, not of men, of reason, not of will; of justice, not of
fraud,—in that grand dogma of equality,—equality of right, of
burthens, of duty, of privileges, and of chances, which is the
very mystery of our social being—to the Jews a stumbling block;
to the Greeks foolishness,—our strength, our glory,—in that
liberty which we value not solely because it is a natural right
of man; not solely because it is a principle of individual
energy and a guaranty of national renown; not at all because it
attracts a procession and lights a bonfire, but because, when
blended with order, attended by law, tempered by virtue, graced
by culture, it is a great practical good; because in her right
hand are riches and honor and peace, because she has come down
from her golden and purple cloud to walk in brightness by the
weary ploughman’s side, and whisper in his ear as he casts his
seed with tears, that the harvest which frost and mildew and
cankerworm shall spare, the government shall spare also; in
our distribution into separate and kindred states, not wholly
independent, not quite identical, in “the wide arch of ranged
empire” above—these are they in which the fruits of our age and
our agency of reform are embodied; and these are they by which,
if we are wise,—if we understand the things that belong to our
peace—they may be perpetuated.[153]
We note in passing the now familiar panorama. One must view matters
from a height to speak without pause of such things as “occupation and
culture of a new world,” “conquest of independence,” and “fundamental and
permanent organic law.” Then we note that when the orator feels that he
must illustrate, the illustration is not through the impertinent concrete
case, but through the poeticized figment. At the close of the passage,
where the personification of liberty is encountered, we see in clearest
form the conventionalized image which is the traditional illustration.
Liberty, sitting up in her golden and purple cloud, descends “to walk in
brightness by the weary ploughman’s side.” In this flatulent utterance
there is something so typical of method (as well as indicative of the
philosophy of the method) that one can scarcely avoid recalling that
this is how the gods of classical mythology came down to hold discourse
with mortals; it is how the god of the Christian religion came into
the world for the redemption of mankind; it is how the _logos_ is made
incarnate. In other words, this kind of manifestation from above is, in
our Western tradition, an archetypal process, which the orators of that
tradition are likely to follow implicitly. The idea is supernal; it may
be brought down for representation; but casual, fortuitous, individual
representations are an affront to it. Consequently the representations
are conventionalized images, and work with general efficacy.
This thought carries us back to our original point, which is that
standards of pertinence and impertinence have very deep foundations,
and that one may reveal one’s whole system of philosophy by the stand
one takes on what is pertinent. We have observed that a powerful trend
today is toward the unique detail and the illustration of photographic
realism, and this tendency claims to be more knowledgeable about reality.
In the older tradition which we set out to examine, the abstracted truth
and the illustration which is essentially a construct held a like favor.
It was not said, because there was no contrary style to make the saying
necessary, but it was certainly felt that these came as near the truth
as one gets, if one admits the existence of non-factual kinds of truth.
The two sides do not speak to one another very well across the gulf, but
it is certainly possible to find, and it would seem to be incumbent upon
scholars to find, a conception broad enough to define the difference.
One further clue we have as to how the orator thought and how he
saw himself. There will be observed in most speeches of this era a
stylization of utterance. It is this stylization which largely produces
their declamatory quality. At the same time, as we begin to infer causes,
we discover the source of its propriety; the orator felt that he was
speaking for corporate humanity. He had a sense of stewardship which
would today appear one of the presumptions earlier referred to. The
individual orator was not, except perhaps in certain postures, offering
an individual testimonial. He was the mouthpiece for a collective brand
of wisdom which was not to be delivered in individual accents. We may
suppose that the people did not resent the stylizations of the orator any
more than now they resent the stylizations of the Bible. “That is the
way God talks.” The deity should be above mere novelties of expression,
transparent devices of rhetoric, or importunate appeals for attention. It
is enough for him to be earnest and truthful; we will rise to whatever
patterns of expression it has pleased him to use. Stylization indicates
an attitude which will not concede too much, or certainly will not
concede weakly or complacently. As in point of historical sequence
the language of political discourse succeeded that of the sermon, some
of the latter’s dignity and self-confidence persisted in the way of
formalization. Thus when the orator made gestures toward the occasion,
they were likely to be ceremonious rather than personal or spontaneous,
the oration itself being an occasion of “style.” The modern listener is
very quick to detect a pattern of locution, but he is prone to ascribe it
to situations of weakness rather than of strength.
Of course oratory of the broadly ruminative kind is acceptable only when
we accredit someone with the ability to review our conduct, our destiny,
and the causes of things in general. If we reach a condition in which no
man is believed to have this power, we will accordingly be impatient with
that kind of discourse. It should not be overlooked that although the
masses in any society are comparatively ill-trained and ignorant, they
are very quick to sense attitudes, through their native capacity as human
beings. When attitudes change at the top of society, they are able to
see that change long before they are able to describe it in any language
of their own, and in fact they can see it without ever doing that. The
masses thus follow intellectual styles, and more quickly than is often
supposed, so that, in this particular case, when a general skepticism of
predication sets in among the leaders of thought, the lower ranks are
soon infected with the same thing (though one must make allowance here
for certain barriers to cultural transmission constituted by geography
and language). This principle will explain why there is no more appetite
for the broadly reflective discourse among the general public of today
than among the _élite_. The stewardship of man has been hurt rather than
helped by the attacks upon natural right, and at present nobody knows
who the custodians (in the old sense of “watchers”) are. Consequently
it is not easy for a man to assume the ground requisite for such a
discourse. Speeches today either are made for entertainment, or they
are political speeches for political ends. And the chief characteristic
of the speech for political ends is that it is made for immediate
effect, with the smallest regard for what is politically true. Whereas
formerly its burden was what the people believed or had experienced, the
burden now tends to be what they wish to hear. The increased reliance
upon slogans and catchwords, and the increased use of the argument from
contraries (_e.g._, “the thing my opponent is doing will be welcomed by
the Russians”) are prominent evidences of the trend.[154]
Lastly, the old style may be called, in comparison with what has
succeeded, a polite style. Its very diffuseness conceals a respect for
the powers and limitations of the audience. Bishop Whatley has observed
that highly concentrated expression may be ill suited to persuasion
because the majority of the people are not capable of assimilating
concentrated thought. The principle can be shown through an analogy
with nutrition. It is known that diet must contain a certain amount
of roughage. This roughage is not food in the sense of nutriment; its
function is to dilute or distend the real food in such a way that it
can be most readily assimilated. A concentrate of food is, therefore,
not enough, for there has to be a certain amount of inert matter to
furnish bulk. Something of a very similar nature operates in discourse.
When a piece of oratory intended for a public occasion impresses us as
distended, which is to say, filled up with repetition, periphrasis,
long grammatical forms, and other impediments to directness, we should
recall that the diffuseness all this produces may have a purpose. The
orator may have made a close calculation of the receptive powers of his
audience and have ordered his style to meet that, while continuing to
“sound good” at every point. This represents a form of consideration for
the audience. There exists quite commonly today, at the opposite pole,
a syncopated style. This style, with its suppression of beats and its
consequent effect of hurrying over things, does not show that type of
consideration. It does not give the listener the roughage of verbiage
to chew on while meditating the progress of the thought. Here again
“spaciousness” has a quite rational function in enforcing a measure, so
that the mind and the sentiments too can keep up with the orator in his
course.
Perhaps this is as far as we can go in explaining the one age to another.
We are now in position to realize that the archaic formalism of the old
orator was a structure imparted to his speech by a logic, an aesthetic,
and an epistemology. As a logician he believed in the deduced term, or
the term whose empirical support is not at the moment visible. As an
aesthetician he believed in distance, and that not merely to soften
outline but also to evoke the true picture, which could be obscured by
an injudicious and prying nearness. As an epistemologist he believed, in
addition to the foregoing, that true knowledge somehow had its source
in the mind of minds, for which we are on occasion permitted to speak a
part. All this gave him a peculiar sense of stature. He always talked
like a big man. Our resentment comes from a feeling that with all his
air of confidence he could not have known half as much as we know. But
everything depends on what we mean by knowing; and the age or the man who
has the true conception of that will have, as the terms of the case make
apparent, the key to every other question.
Chapter VIII
THE RHETORIC OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
One of the serious problems of our age is the question of how
scientific information, which is largely the product of special tools
of investigation, shall be communicated to the non-specialist world.
A few sciences operate in fields of theory so abstract that they can
create their own symbology, and most of what they transmit to the public
will be in the form of highly generalized translation. But there are
other sciences whose very success depends upon some public understanding
of what they are trying to solve, and these are faced with peculiar
problems of communication. None are in so difficult a position as social
science. The social sciences have been, since their institution, jealous
of their status as science, and that is perhaps understandable. But
their data is the everyday life of man in society, and naturally if
there is an area of scientific discovery upon which the general public
should be posted, it is just this one of the laws of social phenomena.
Caught between this desire to remain scientific and the necessity of
public expression, most social scientists are in a dilemma. They have
not devised (and possibly they cannot devise) their own symbology to
rival that of the mathematician and physicist. On the other hand, they
have not set themselves to learn the principles of sound rhetorical
exposition. The result is that the publications of social scientists
contain a large amount of conspicuously poor writing, which is now under
growing attack.[155] Some of these attacks have been perceptive as well
as witty; but I feel that no one has yet made the point which most needs
making, which is that the social scientists will never write much better
until they make terms with some of the traditional rules of rhetoric.
I propose in the study which follows to ignore the isolated small faults
and instead to analyze the sources of pervasive vices. I shall put the
inquiry in the form of a series of questions, which lead to cardinal
principles of conception and of choice.
I
_Does the writing of social scientists suffer from a primary
equivocation?_ The charge against social science writing which would be
most widely granted is that it fails to convince us that it deals clearly
with realities. This impression may lead to the question of whether the
social scientist knows what he is talking about. Now this is a serious,
not a frivolous, question, involving matters of logic and epistemology;
it is a question, furthermore, that one finds the social scientists
constantly putting to themselves and answering in a variety of ways. Any
field of study is liable to a similar interrogation; in this instance it
merely asks whether those who interpret social behavior in scientific
terms are aware of the kind of data they are handling. Are they dealing
with facts, or concepts, or evaluations, or all three? The answer given
to this question will have a definite bearing upon their problem of
expression, and let us see how this can happen in a concrete instance.
We have had much to say in preceding chapters about the distinction
between positive and dialectical terms; and nowhere has the ignoring
of this distinction had worse results than in the literature of social
science. We have seen, to review briefly, that the positive term
designates something existing simply in the objective world: the chair,
the tree, the farm. Arguments over positive terms are not arguments in
the true sense, since the point at issue is capable of immediate and
public settlement, just as one might settle an “argument” over the width
of a room by bringing in a publicly-agreed-upon yardstick. Consequently
a rhetoric of positive terms is a rhetoric of simple description, which
requires only powers of accurate observation and reporting.
It is otherwise with dialectical terms. These are terms standing for
concepts, which are defined by their negatives or their privations.
“Justice” is a dialectical term which is defined by “injustice”; “social
improvement” is made meaningful by the use of “privation of social
improvement.” To say that a family has an income of $800.00 a year is
positive; to say that the same family is underprivileged is dialectical.
It can be underprivileged only with reference to families which have
more privileges. So it goes with the whole range of terms which reflect
judgments of value; “unjust,” “poor,” “underpaid,” “undesirable” are all
terms which depend on something more than the external world for their
significance.
Now here is where the social scientist crosses a divide that he seldom
acknowledges and often seems unaware of. One cannot use the dialectical
term in the same manner as one uses the positive term because the
dialectical term always leaves one committed to something. It is a
truth easily seen that all dialectical terms make presumptions from the
plain fact that they are “positional” terms. A writer no sooner employs
one than he is engaged in an argument. To say that the universe is
purposeless is to join in argument with all who say it is purposeful.
To say that a certain social condition is inequitable is to ally
oneself with the reformers and against the standpatters. In all such
cases the presumption has to do with the scope of the term and with its
relationship to its opposite, and these can be worked out only through
the dialectical method we have analyzed in other chapters. When the
reader of social science comes to such terms, he is baffled because he
has not been warned of the presumptions on which they rest. Or, to be
more exact, he has not been prepared for presumptions at all. He finds
himself reading at a level where the facts have been subsumed, and where
the exposition is a process of adjusting categories. The writer has
passed with indifference from what is objectively true to what is morally
or imaginatively true. The reader’s uneasiness comes from a feeling that
the categories themselves are the things which should have been examined.
Just here, however, may lie the crux of the difficulty.
It begins to look as though the social scientist working with his regular
habits is actually a dialectician without a dialectical basis. His
dilemma is that he can neither use his terms with the simple directness
of the natural scientist pointing to physical factors, nor with the
assurance of a philosopher who has some source for their meaning in the
system from which he begins his deduction. Or, the social scientist
is trying to characterize the world positively in terms which can be
made good only dialectically. He can never make them good dialectically
as long as he is by theory entirely committed to empiricism. This
explains why to the ordinary beholder there seem to be so many smuggled
assumptions in the literature of social science. It will explain,
moreover, why so much of its expression is characterized by diffuseness
and by that verbosity which is certain to afflict a dialectic without a
metaphysic or an ontology. This uncertainty of the social scientist about
the nature of his datum often leads him to treat empirical situations as
if they carried moral sanction, and then to turn around and treat some
point of contemporary mores—which is by definition a “moral” question—as
if it had only empirical aspects. In direct consequence, when the
social scientist should be writing “positively,” like a crack newspaper
reporter, one finds him writing like Hegel, and, when the stage of his
exposition might warrant his writing more or less like Hegel, one finds
him employing dialectical terms as if they had positive designations.
Paradoxically, his very reverence for facts may tend to make him sound
like Hegel or some other master of categorical thinking. Anyone sampling
the literature of social science cannot fail to be impressed with the
proportion of space given to definition. Indeed, one of the most
convincing claims of the science is that our present-day knowledge of
man is defective because our definitions are simplistic. His behavior is
much more varied than the unscientific suppose; and therefore a central
objective of social study is definition, which will take this variety
into account and supplant our present “prejudiced” definitions. With this
in mind, the social scientist toils in library or office to prepare the
best definitions he can of human nature, of society, and of psychosocial
environment.
The danger for him in this laudable endeavor seems twofold. First, one
must remark that the language of definition is inevitably the language
of generality because only the generalizable is definable. Singulars and
individuals can be described but not defined; _e.g._, one can define
man, but one can only describe Abraham Lincoln. The greater, then, his
solicitude for the factual and the concrete, the more irresistibly is he
borne in the direction of abstract language, which alone will encompass
his collected facts. His dissertations on human society begin with
obeisance to facts, but the logic of his being a scientist condemns
him to abstraction. He is forced toward the position of the proverbial
revolutionary, who loves mankind but has little charity for those
particular specimens of it with whom he must associate.
In the second place and more importantly, the definition of non-empirical
terms is itself a dialectical process. All such definition takes the form
of an argument which must prove that the _definiendum_ is one thing and
not another thing. The limits of the definition are thus the boundary
between the things and the not-thing. Someone might inquire at this stage
of our account whether the natural scientists, who must also define, are
not equally liable under this point of the argument. The distinction
is that definitions in natural science have a different ontological
basis. The properties about which they generalize exist not in logical
connection but in empirical conjunction, as when “mammal,” “vertebrate,”
and “quadruped” are used to distinguish the genus _Felis_. The doctrine
of “natural kinds” thus remains an empirical classification, as does
the traditional classification of elements.[156] Consequently the genus
_Felis_ has a reality in the form of compresent positive attributes
which “slum” cannot have. The establishment of the genus is not a
matter of negating or depriving other classes, but of naming what is
there. On the other hand one could never arrive positivistically at a
definition of “slum” because its meaning is contingent upon judgment (and
theoretically our standard of living might move up to where Westchester,
Grosse Point, and Winnetka are regarded as slums). Thus “slum” no more
exists objectively than does “bad weather.” There are collections of
sticks and stones which the dialectician may call “slums,” just as there
are processions of the elements which he may call “bad.” But these are
positive things only in a reductionist equation. Of course, the natural
scientist works always with reductionist equations; but the social
scientist, unless he is an extreme materialist, must work with the full
equation.
It is a grave imputation, but at the heart of the social scientist’s
unsatisfactory expression lies this equivocation. Remedy here can come
only with a clearer defining of province and of responsibility.
II
_Is social science writing marred by “pedantic empiricism”?_ The natural
desire of everyone to carry away something from his reading encounters
in this literature curious obstacles. Its authors often seem unduly
coy about their conclusions. After the reader has been escorted on an
extensive tour of facts and definitions, he is likely to be told that
little can be affirmed at this stage of the inquiry. So it is that,
however much we read, we are made to feel that what we are reading is
preliminary. We come almost to look for a formula at the close of a
social science monograph which takes an excessively modest view of its
achievement while expressing the hope that someone else may come along
and do something with the data there offered. Burgess and Cottrell’s
_Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage_ provides an illustration.
After presenting their case, the authors say: “In this study, as in many
others, the most significant contribution is not to be found in any
one finding but in the degree to which the study opens up a new field
to further research.”[157] Again, from an article appearing in _Social
Forces_: “The findings here mentioned are merely suggestive; and they are
offered in no sense as proof of our hypothesis of folk-urban personality
differences. The implementation of the analysis given here would demand
a field project incorporating the type of methodological consciousness
advocated above. Thus we need to utilize standard projective devices,
but must be prepared to develop, in terms of situational demands,
additional analytic instruments.”[158] And Herman C. Beyle in a chapter
on the data and method of political science, which constitute the
underpinning of his whole study, can only say that “the foregoing
comments on the data and technology of political science have been
offered as most tentative statements intended to provide a background
for the testing and application of the technique here proposed, that
of attribute-cluster-bloc identification and analysis.”[159] “Most
tentative” becomes a sort of leitmotiv. Everything sounds like a
prolegomenon to the real thing. Exclamations that social scientists are
taking in one another’s washing or are only trying to make work for
themselves are inspired by this kind of performance.
But, even after one has made allowance for the fact that social science
is not one of the exact sciences and that its disciples work in a field
where induction is far from complete, their fear of commitment still
seems obsessive. They could at least have the courage of the facts which
they have accumulated. Virtually everyone who is seeking scientific
enlightenment on this level knows that conclusions are given in the
light of evidence available, and that hypothesis always extends some
distance beyond what is directly observable. Indeed, everyone makes use
of the method of scientific investigation, as T. H. Huxley liked to
assure his audiences, but not everyone finds necessary such an armor of
qualifications as is likely to appear here: “On the basis of available
evidence, it is not unreasonable to suppose”; “It may not be improbable
in view of these findings”; “The present survey would seem to indicate.”
All these rhetorical contortions are forms of needless hedging.
It would be a different matter if such formulas of reservation made the
conclusion more precise. But in the majority of cases it could be shown
that the conclusion is obvious enough in terms of the discussion itself,
and they serve only to make it sound timid. These scholars move to a
tune of “induction never ends,” and their scholarship often turns into a
pedantic empiricism. They seem to be waiting for the fact that will bring
with it the revelation. But that fact will never arrive; experience does
not tell us what we are experiencing, and at some point they are going
to have to give names to their findings—even at the expense of becoming
dialecticians.
If the needlessly hedged statement is one result of pedantic empiricism,
another occurs in what might be called “pedantic analysis.” This is
analysis for analysis’ sake, with no real thought of relevance or
application or, indeed, of a resynthesis which might redeem the whole
undertaking. Just as it is assumed that an endless collection of data
will necessarily yield fruits, so it is assumed that a remorseless
partitioning will illuminate. But analysis can be carried so far that it
seems to lose all bearing upon points at issue. The writer shows himself
a sort of _virtuoso_ at analysis, and one feels that his real interest
lies in demonstrating how thoroughly a method can be followed. Let us
look, for example, at a passage from an article entitled “Courtship as a
Social Institution in the United States, 1930-1945.” The author has said
that activities of courtship show different patterns and that sometimes
the patterns need to be harmonized:
To be compatible, patterns should be adapted to the following
components: (1) the _hominid component_, which is the
biological human being; (2) the _social component_, which
includes the potentialities for social relations as they are
affected by “the number of human beings in the situation, their
distribution in space, their ages, their sex, their native
ability to interstimulate and interact, the interference of
environmental hindrances or helps, and the presence and amount
of certain types of social equipment”; (3) the _environmental
component_, or all the “natural” features of the situation
except the hominid, the social, the psychological and
artifactual components; it includes topography, physiography,
flora, fauna, weather, geology, soil, etc.; (4) the
_psychological component_, defined as the principles involving
the acquisition and performance of human customs not adequately
explained on purely biological principles; (5) the _artifactual
component_, which consists collectively of the material results
and adjuncts of human customary activities.[160]
It is not always safe for the layman to generalize about the value of
specific sociological findings, but I am inclined to think that this is
verbiage, resulting from analysis pushed beyond any useful purpose. There
is a real if obscure relationship between the vitality of what one is
saying and the palatability of one’s rhetoric. No rhythm, no _tournure_
of phrase, no architecture of the sentences could make this a good piece
of writing, for its content lies on the outer fringe of significance. It
is the nature of such pedantry to habit itself in a harsh and crabbed
style.
The primary step in literary composition is _invention_, or the
discovering of something to talk about. No writer is finally able to
make good the claim that his subject matter is one thing and his style
of expression another; the subject matter enters into the expression
inevitably and extensively, although sometimes in ways too subtle for
elucidation. What of the invention of this passage? If we take the word
in its etymological sense of “finding,” are not these distinctions
“findings” for findings’ sake? Analysis carried to such a humorless
extreme reflects discredit upon the very principle of division which was
employed.
It may appear contradictory to call the social scientist a “tendentious
dialectician” and a “pedantic empiricist” at the same time. But the
contradiction is inherent in his situation and merely expresses the
equivocation found earlier. In all likelihood the empiricism is an
attempt to compensate for the dialectic. If a writer feels guilty about
his dialectic exercises (his definitions), he may seek to counterweight
them with long empirical inquiries. The object of the empirical analysis
is primarily to give the work a scientific aspect and only secondarily to
prove something. In fact, this is almost the pattern of inferior social
science literature.
III
_Does social science writing suffer from a melioristic bias?_ This
question directs our attention to the matter of vocabulary. There is
danger in criticising any writer’s vocabulary through application of
simple principles, because demands vary widely. For some purposes a small
vocabulary of denotative terms will be satisfactory. Other purposes
cannot be adequately met without a large and learned vocabulary which
may, incidentally, sound pretentious. Our question then becomes whether
the ends of social science are being well served by the means employed.
For example, social scientists are often charged with addiction to
polysyllabic vocabulary. Other men of learning show the same addiction,
but there are special reasons for weighing critically the polysyllabic
diction of social scientists.
Of course, when one faces the issue concretely, one discovers that there
is no single standard by which a word is classified “big.” Some words
are called “big” because they actually have four or five syllables and
hence are measurably so; other words of one or two syllables are called
“big” because, coming out of technical or scientific vocabularies, they
are unfamiliar to the average man;[161] others, actually no longer, are
called “big” because of the company they keep; that is to say, they are
words of learned or dignified association. Sometimes a word seems big
when it is simply too pretentious for the kind of thing it is describing.
Readers of H. L. Mencken will recall that he obtained many of his best
satirical effects by describing what was essentially picayune or tawdry
in a vocabulary of grandiloquence.
A cursory inspection will show that social scientists are given to words
which are “big” in yet another respect: they have a Latin origin. Even
in analysis of simple phenomenon the reader comes to expect a parade of
terms which seem to go by on stilts, as if it were important to keep from
touching the ground. Without raising questions of semantic theory, one
inclines to wonder about their relationship to their referents. In course
of time one may come to suspect that the words employed are not dictated
by the subject matter, but by some active principle out of sociological
theory. To see whether that suspicion has a foundation, let us try a test
on a specimen of this language.
The passage which will be used is fairly representative of the ordinary
social science prose to be encountered in articles and reports. The
subject is expressed in the title “Social Nearness among Welfare
Institutions”:
It was noticed in the preceding sections that the social
welfare organizational milieu presents an interdependence,
a formal solidarity, a coerced feeling of unity. However
divergent the specific objectives of each organization,
theoretically they all have a common purpose, the care of the
so-called underprivileged. Whether they execute what they
profess or not is a different question and one which does not
fall within the confines of these pages.[162]
There occur in this short excerpt about a dozen words of Latin origin
for which equivalents of Anglo-Saxon (or old English, if the name is
preferred) origin are available, and this without giving up presumably
operational terms like “organizational” and “milieu.”[163] In place of
“noticed,” why not “seen”? In place of “divergent,” why not “unlike”?
In place of “objective,” why not “goal”? Instead of “execute what they
profess,” why not “do what they say”? Did these terms not suggest
themselves to the writer, or were they deliberately passed by?
It might be arbitrary to insist that any one of these substitutes is
better than the original, but the piling-up of such terms causes language
to take on a special aspect. There are, of course, margins within which
preference in terminology means little, but a preference for Latinate
terms as marked as this must be, to employ one of their customary
expressions, “significant.”
That significance lies in the kind of attitude that social scientists
must have in order to practice social science. It seems beyond dispute
that all social science rests upon the assumption that man and society
are improvable. That is its origin and its guiding impulse. The man
who does not feel that social behavior and social institutions can be
bettered through the application of scientific laws, or through some
philosophy finding its basic support in them, is surely out of place in
sociology. There would really be nothing for him to do. He could only sit
on the sidelines and speculate dourly, like Nietzsche, or ironically,
like Santayana. The very profession which the true social scientist
adopts compels him to be a kind of a priori optimist. This is why a large
part of social science writing displays a _melioristic bias_. It is under
compulsion, often unconsciously felt, I am sure, to picture things a
little better than they are. Such expression provides a kind of proof
that its theories are “working.”
An indubitable connection exists between the melioristic bias and a
Latinate vocabulary. Even a moderate sensitivity to the overtones of
language will tell one that diction of Latin derivation tends to be
euphemistic. For this there seem to be both extrinsic and intrinsic
causes. It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that after the Norman
Conquest the Anglo-Saxons were forced into a servile role. They were sent
into the fields to do chores for the Norman overlords, and Anglo-Saxon
names have clung to the things with which they worked. Thus to the
Anglo-Saxon in the field the animal was “cow”; to the Norman, when the
same animal was served at his table, it was “beef” (L. _bos_, _bovis_).
So “calf” is translated “veal”; “thegn” becomes “servant”; “folk” becomes
“people,” and so on. This distinction of common and elegant terms
persists in an area of our vocabulary today. Another circumstance was
that Latin for centuries constituted the language of learning and of the
professions throughout Europe, and from the fourteenth century onward,
there occurred a large amount of “learned borrowing.”[164] This reflects
the fact that those cultures which carried civility and _politesse_ to
highest perfection drew from a Latin source. Finally, I would suggest
that the greater number of syllables in many Latinate terms is a factor
in the effect. Whatever the complete explanation, the truth remains that
to give a thing a Latinate name is to couple it with social prestige and
with the world of ideas, whereas to give it a name out of Anglo-Saxon
is to forgo such dignifying associations. Thus “combat” sounds more
dignified than “fight”; “labor” has resonances which “work” does not
have; “impecunious” seems to indicate a more hopeful condition than
“needy” or “penniless”; “involuntary separation” sounds less painful than
“getting fired.” The list could be extended indefinitely. With exceptions
too few to make a difference, the Anglo-Saxon word is plain and workaday,
whereas the word of Latin derivation seems to invest whatever it
describes with a certain upward tendency. Of course, the Anglo-Saxon word
has its potencies, but they are not those of the other. It seems to cling
to the brute empirical fact, while its Latinate counterpart seems at once
to become ideological, with perhaps a slight aura of hortation about it.
Whenever one hears the average man condemning a piece of discourse as
“flowery,” it is most likely that he is pointing, with the only term at
his command, to an excess of Latinate diction.
In the same connection, let us remember that the last few years have
seen much newspaper wit at the expense of the language of government
bureaucracy, which is even more responsive to the melioristic bias. The
bureaucrat lives in a world where nothing is incorrigible; the solution
to every contemporary difficulty waits only for the devising of some
appropriate administrative machinery. Compared with him, the social
scientist is a realist, for social science at least begins by admitting
that many situations leave something to be desired. The bureaucrat’s
world is prim and proper and aseptic, and his language reflects it
(perhaps one could say that the discourse of the bureaucrat is social
science “politicalized”). At any rate, here we might profitably look
at a specimen of bureaucratic parlance from Masterson and Phillips’
_Federal Prose_, a recently published burlesque of official language.
The authors posed for themselves as one exercise the problem of how a
bureaucrat would express the ancient adage “Too many cooks spoil the
broth.” Their translation is a caricature, but, like caricature, it
brings out the dominant features of the subject: “Undue multiplicity
of personnel assigned either concurrently or consecutively to a single
function involves deterioration of quality in the resultant product
as compared with the product of the labor of an exact sufficiency of
personnel.”[165] One notices, first of all, the leap into polysyllabic
diction, along with the total disappearance of those homely entities
“cooks” and “broth.” “Personnel,” for example, is an abstract dignifier,
and “resultant product” is safe, since it does not leave the writer on
record as affirming that the concoction in question actually is broth.
He is further protected by the expunging of “spoil,” with its positive
assertion, and he can hide behind the relativity of “deterioration of
quality ... as compared with....”
Such language, when used to express the phenomenology of social and
political behavior, gives a curious impression of being foreign to
its subject matter. The impression of foreignness may be explained as
follows. In all writing which has come to be regarded as wisdom about the
human being, there is an undertone of the sardonic. Man at his best is a
sort of caricature of himself, and even when we are eulogizing him for
his finer attributes, there has to be a minor theme of depreciation, much
as a vein of comedy weaves in and out of a great tragedy. The “great”
actions of history appear either sublime or ridiculous, depending on
one’s standpoint, and it may be the part of sagacity to regard them as
both at the same time. This note of the sardonic is found in biblical
wisdom, in Plato’s realism of situations, and even in Aristotle’s
dry categorizing. It appears in the _Federalist_ papers,[166] as the
authors, while debating political theory in high terms, kept a cagey eye
upon economic man. Man is neither an angel nor any kind of disembodied
spirit, and the attempt to treat him as such only arouses our sense of
the ridiculous. The comic animal must be there before we can grant that
the representation is “true.” The typical social science report, even
when it discusses situations in which baseness and irrationality figure
prominently, does not get in this ingredient. Every social fact may be
serious, but not every social action is serious because action is not
fully explainable without motive. It is this abstract man which causes
some of us to wonder about the predications of an unhumanistic social
science.
The remedy might be to employ, except where the necessity of
conceptualizing makes it difficult, something nearer the language of
the biblical parable (one shudders to think how our bureaucrat would
render “A sower went forth to sow”), or the language of the best British
journalism. I have often felt that writers on social science might learn
a valuable lesson from the limpid prose of the _Manchester Guardian_.
There one usually finds statement without eulogistic or dyslogistic
tendency, adequacy without turgidity. It is perhaps the nearest thing
we have in practice to that supposititious reality, objective language.
There is some truth in the observation of John Peale Bishop that, whereas
American English is more vigorous, English English is far more accurate.
A good reportorial medium will be, to a considerable extent, an English
English, and it will reflect something of the English genius for fact.
To sum up, the melioristic bias is a deflection toward language which
glosses over reality without necessarily giving us a philosophic
vocabulary. One could go so far as to say that such language is
comparatively lacking in responsibility. It is the language that one
expects from those who have become insulated or daintified. It carries
a slight suggestion of denial of evil, which in lay circles, as in
some ecclesiastical ones, is among the greatest heresies. Perhaps the
sociologist would inspire more confidence as a social physician if his
language had more of the candor described above, and almost certainly he
would get a better understanding of his diagnosis.
IV
_Do the social scientists lose more than they gain by a distrust of
metaphor?_ Dr. Johnson once remarked of Swift, “The rogue never hazards
a metaphor,” and that may well be the reaction of anyone who has plowed
through the drab pages of a contemporary sociologist. It has long
been suspected that sociologists and poets have little confidence in
one another, and here their respective procedures come into complete
contrast. The poet works mainly with metaphor, and the sociologist will
have none of it. Which is right? Or, if each is doing instinctively the
thing that is right for him, must we affirm that the works they produce
are of very unequal importance?
One can readily see how the social scientist might be guided by the
simple impression that, since metaphor characterizes the language of
poetry, it has, for that very reason, no place in the language of
science. Or, if he should become more analytical, he might conclude
that metaphor, through its very operation of analogy or transference,
implies the existence of a realm which positivistic study denies. To use
metaphor, then, would be to pass over to the enemy. But he would be a
very limited kind of sociologist, a sort of doctrinaire mechanist, not
fully posted on all the resources open to scientific inquiry.
There are two more or less familiar theories of the nature of metaphor.
One holds that metaphor is mere decoration. It is like the colored lights
and gewgaws one hangs on a Christmas tree; the tree is an integral tree
without them, but they do add sparkle and novelty and so are good things
for such occasions. So the metaphors used in language are pleasurable
accessories, which give it a certain charm and lift but which are
supererogatory when one comes down to the business of understanding what
is said. This theory has been fully discredited not only by those who
have analyzed the language of poetry, but also by those who have gone
furthest into the psychology of language itself and have explored the
“meaning of meaning.”
A second theory holds that metaphor is a useful concession to our feeble
imagination. We are all children of Adam to the extent that we crave
material embodiments. Even the most highly trained of us are wearied by
long continuance of abstract communication; we want the thing brought
down to earth so that we can see it. For the same reason that principles
have to be put into fables for children, the abstract conceptions of
modern science require figures for their popular expression. Thus the
universe of Einstein is represented as “like” the surface of an orange;
or the theory of entropy is illustrated by the figure of a desert
on which Arabs are riding their camels hither and thither. From the
standpoint of rhetoric, this theory has some validity. Visualization is
an aid to seeing relationships, and there are rhetorical situations which
demand some kind of picturization. Many skilled expositors will follow
an abstract proposition with some easy figure which lets us down to
earth or enables us to get a bearing. There is some value, then, in the
“incarnation” of concepts. On this ground alone one could defend the use
of metaphors in communication.[167]
There is yet another theory, now receiving serious attention, that
metaphor is itself a means of discovery. Of course, metaphor is intended
here in the broadest sense, requiring only some form of parallelism.[168]
But when its essential nature is understood, it is hard to resist the
thought that metaphor is one of the most important heuristic devices,
leading us from a known to an unknown, but subsequently verifiable,
fact of principle. Thus George de Santillana, writing on “Aspects of
Scientific Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century,” can declare, “There
is never a ‘strict induction’ but contains a considerable amount of
deduction, starting from points chosen analogically.”[169] In other
words, analogy formulates and to some extent directs the inquiry. Any
investigation must start from certain minimal likenesses, and that may
conceal the truth that some analogy lies at the heart of all assertion.
Even Bertrand Russell is compelled to accept analogy as one of the
postulates required to validate the scientific method because it provides
the antecedent probability necessary to justify an induction.[170]
We might go so far as to admit the point of George Lundberg, who has
given attention to the underlying theory of social science, that
artists and philosophers make only “allegations” about the world, which
scientists must put to the test.[171] For the inquiry may go from
allegation to allegation, through a series of metaphorical constructs.
This in no wise diminishes the role of metaphor but rather recognizes the
role it has always had. If we should speak, for example, of the “dance of
life,” we would be using a metaphor of considerable illuminating power,
in that it rests upon a number of resemblances, some of which are hidden
or profound. If we push it vigorously, we may be surprised at some of
the insights which will turn up. Our naïve question, “What is it like?”
which we ask of anything we are confronting for the first time, is the
intellect’s cry for help. Unless it is like something in some measure, we
shall never get to understand it.
The usual student of literature is prone to feel that there is more
social psychology in _Hamlet_ than in a dozen volumes on the theory of
the subject. Hamlet is a category, a kind of concrete universal; why
would he yield less as a factor in an analysis than some operational
definition? At least one social psychologist has felt no hesitation about
employing this kind of factor, the only difference being that his is
Babbitt, of more recent creation. Ellsworth Faris, in developing a thesis
that every person has several selves, presents his meaning as follows:
Moreover, whatever the list of personalities or roles may be,
there is always room for one more, and indeed for many more.
When war comes, Babbitt will probably be a member of the
committee for public defense. He may become a member of a law
enforcement league yet to be formed. He may divorce his wife
or elope with his stenographer or misuse the mails and become
a Federal prisoner in Leavenworth. Each experience will mean
a new role with new personal attitudes and a new axiological
conception of himself.[172]
This is none the less illuminating because Babbitt is not the product of
a controlled scientific induction. He is a sort of “alleged” symbol which
works very well in a psychological equation. Surely, it is enlightening
to know that some men are like Babbitt and others like Hamlet, or
that we all have our Babbitt and Hamlet phases. But here we should be
primarily interested in the fact that the Lynds’ _Middletown_ (1929)
followed rather than preceded Lewis’s _Main Street_ (1920). In the best
of literary and sociological worlds, _Main Street_ directs attention to
Middletown, and _Middletown_ reduces Main Street to an operable entity.
The task of taking language away from poetry is a larger operation than
appears at first, and in the eyes of some students an impossible one,
even if it were desirable. We are all like Emerson’s scholar in that the
ordinary affairs of life come to us business and go from us poetry—at
least as soon as we start expressing them in speech. Many words which
we think of as prosaic literalisms can be shown to have their origin in
long-forgotten comparisons. The word “depend” analogizes the action
of hanging from; “contact” analogizes a relationship. “Discoverer” and
“detect” stand for the literal operation of taking off a covering,
hence exposing to view. A “profound study” apparently goes back to our
perception of physical depth. In this way the meaning which we attach
to these words is transferred from their analogues; and, of course,
the process is more obvious in language that is more consciously
metaphorical. It thus becomes plain that somewhere one has to come to
terms with metaphor anyhow, and there is a way to turn the necessity into
a victory.
V
_Is the expression of social science affected by a caste spirit?_ The
fact that social scientists are, in general, dedicated to the removal of
caste, or at least to a refutation of caste presumptions, unfortunately
does not prevent their becoming a caste. Circumstances exist all the
while to make them an _élite_. For one thing, the scientific method of
procedure sets them off pretty severely from the average man, with his
common-sense approach to social problems. Not only is he likely to be
nonplussed by techniques and terminologies; he is also likely to be
repelled by what scientists consider one of their greatest virtues—their
detachment. Finally, it has to be admitted that social scientists’
extensive patronage by universities, foundations, and governments serves
to give them a protected status while they work. Every other group
so situated has tended to create a jargon, and thus far the social
scientists have not been an exception. Their jargon is a product partly
of imitation and partly of defense-mindedness.
Naturally one of the first steps in entering a profession is to master
the professional language. A display of familiarity with the language is
popularly taken as a sign of orthodoxy and acceptance; and thus there
arises a temptation to use the special nomenclature freely even when one
has doubts about its aptness. This condition affects especially the young
ones who are seeking recognition and establishment—the graduate students
and the instructors—in general, the probationers in the field. Departure
from orthodoxy can be interpreted as a sign of ignorance or as a sign of
independence, and, in the case of those who have not passed probation,
we usually interpret it as the former. Accordingly, there is a degree
of risk involved in changing the pattern of speech laid down by one’s
colleagues. So the problem of what one has to do to show that one belongs
can be a problem of style. It is entirely possible that many young social
scientists do not write so well as they could because of this inhibition.
They are in the position of having to satisfy teachers and critics, and
they produce what is expected or what they think is expected. In this
way a natural gift for the direct phrase and the lucid arrangement can
be swallowed up in tortuosities. The pattern can be broken only by some
gifted revolutionary or by someone invested with all the honors of the
guild.
It is, moreover, true, as Harold Laski has pointed out, that every
profession builds up a distrust of innovation, and especially of
innovation from the outside.[173] It requires an unusual degree of
humility to see that the solution to our problem may have to come
from someone outside our number, perhaps from some naïve person
whose advantage is that he can see the matter only in broad outline.
Professions and bureaucracies are on guard against this sort of person,
and one of the barriers they unconsciously set up is just this one of
jargon. If certain government policies were announced in the language of
the barbershop, their absurdity might become overwhelmingly apparent.
If certain projects in social science research (or in language and
literature research, for that matter) were explained in the language
of the daily news report, their futility might become embarrassingly
clear. One can only surmise how an experienced political reporter
would phrase the findings in Beyle’s _Identification and Analysis of
Attribute-Cluster-Blocs_, but one has a notion that his account would
sound very little like the original. Would it be unfair? The reply that
such language would destroy essential meanings in the original would
have to be weighed along with the alternative possibility that the
language was used in the first place because it was euphemistic, in
the sense we have outlined, or protective. A user of such language may
feel safe because the definition of terms is, in a way, his possession.
And so technical language, as sometimes employed, may be Pickwickian,
inasmuch as it serves not just scientifically but also pragmatically. The
average citizen, faced with sociological explanations and bureaucratic
communiques, may feel as poor culprits used to feel when confronted with
law Latin.
VI
The rhetorical obligation of the scientists has been aptly expressed by
T. Swann Harding in a discussion of the general character of scientific
writing. “Scientists,” he says, “gain nothing by showing off, and the
simpler they can make their reports the better. Even their technical
reports can be made very much simpler without loss of accuracy or
precision. Nor is there really any valid substitute for a good working
knowledge of English composition and rhetoric.”[174] The last statement
is true with certain qualifications, which ought to be made explicit.
In a final estimate of the problem it has to be recognized that social
science writing cannot be judged altogether by literary standards. It
is expression with a definite assignment of duty; and those who have
made a comparative study of methods and styles know that every formula
of expression incurs its penalty. It is a rule in the realm of writing
that one pays for the choice one makes. The payment is exacted when the
form of expression becomes too exclusively what it is. In course of use
a defined style becomes its own enemy. If one’s writing is abstract,
it will accommodate ideas, but it will fatigue the reader. If it is
concrete, it will divert and relieve; but it may become cloying, and it
will have difficulty in encompassing ideas. If it is spare, it will come
to seem abrupt; if it practices a degree of circumlocution, it will first
seem elegant but will come to seem inflated. The lucid style is suspected
of oversimplifying. And so the dilemma goes.
Now the social scientist has to write about a kind of thing, and,
notwithstanding his uncertain allocation of facts and concepts, he may
as well accept his penalty at the beginning. He can never make it a
primary goal to be “pleasing,” and for this reason the purely literary
performance is not for him. Dramatistic presentation, a leading source
of interest in all literary production, is largely, if not entirely,
out of his reach. The only kind of writing that gets people emotionally
involved contains some form of dramatic conflict, which requires a
dichotomy of opposites. Yet the only dichotomy that social science (as a
science) contemplates is that of the norm and the deviate, and these two
are supposed to exist in an empirical rather than in a moral context,
and the injunction is implicit that all we shall do is observe. The
work, then, is going to be either purely descriptive, or critical with
reference to the norm-deviate opposition. Not many people are going to
develop a sense of poignant concern over such presentations. To a certain
extent _Middletown_ did catch the popular imagination, but the contrast
developed here was between what the American observably was through the
eyes of detached social scientists and his picture of himself, with its
compound of self-esteem, aspiration, and social mythology. The community
empirically found was put on the stage to challenge the community
sentimentally and otherwise conceived. The same will hardly hold for the
typical case of scientific norm and empirically discovered deviate, for
no such ideas are involved in the contrast. _Recent Social Trends in the
United States_,[175] for example, the monumental report of President
Hoover’s Research Committee on Social Trends, could not look to this
kind of interest for its appeal. Unless, therefore, we regard metaphor as
a means of dramatistic presentation, this resource is not ordinarily open
to social science.
Yet within the purpose which the social scientist sets himself there
is a considerable range of rhetorical possibility, which he ignores
at needless expense. Rhetoric is, among other things, a process of
coordination and subordination which is very close to the essential
thought process. That is to say, in any coherent piece of discourse there
occur promotion and demotion of thoughts, and this is accomplished not
solely through logical outlining and subsumation. It involves matters
of sequence, of quantity, and some understanding of the rhetorical
aspects of grammatical categories. These are means to clear and effective
expression, and the failure to see and use them as means can produce
a condition in which means and ends seem not discriminated, or even a
subversion in which means seem to manipulate ends. That condition is
one which social science, along with every other instrumentality of
education, should be combating in the interest of a reasonable world.
Chapter IX
ULTIMATE TERMS IN CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC
We have shown that rhetorical force must be conceived as a power
transmitted through the links of a chain that extends upward toward
some ultimate source. The higher links of that chain must always be of
unique interest to the student of rhetoric, pointing, as they do, to some
prime mover of human impulse. Here I propose to turn away from general
considerations and to make an empirical study of the terms on these
higher levels of force which are seen to be operating in our age.
We shall define term simply here as a name capable of entering into a
proposition. In our treatment of rhetorical sources, we have regarded the
full predication consisting of a proposition as the true validator. But
a single term is an incipient proposition, awaiting only the necessary
coupling with another term; and it cannot be denied that single names
set up expectancies of propositional embodiment. This causes everyone
to realize the critical nature of the process of naming. Given the name
“patriot,” for example, we might expect to see coupled with it “Brutus,”
or “Washington,” or “Parnell”; given the term “hot,” we might expect to
see “sun,” “stove,” and so on. In sum, single terms have their potencies,
this being part of the phenomenon of names, and we shall here present
a few of the most noteworthy in our time, with some remarks upon their
etiology.
Naturally this survey will include the “bad” terms as well as the “good”
terms, since we are interested to record historically those expressions
to which the populace, in its actual usage and response, appears to
attribute the greatest sanction. A prescriptive rhetoric may specify
those terms which, in all seasons, ought to carry the greatest potency,
but since the affections of one age are frequently a source of wonder to
another, the most we can do under the caption “contemporary rhetoric” is
to give a descriptive account and withhold the moral until the end. For
despite the variations of fashion, an age which is not simply distraught
manages to achieve some system of relationship among the attractive and
among the repulsive terms, so that we can work out an order of weight
and precedence in the prevailing rhetoric once we have discerned the
“rhetorical absolutes”—the terms to which the very highest respect is
paid.
It is best to begin boldly by asking ourselves, what is the “god term” of
the present age? By “god term” we mean that expression about which all
other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and
powers. Its force imparts to the others their lesser degree of force,
and fixes the scale by which degrees of comparison are understood. In
the absence of a strong and evenly diffused religion, there may be
several terms competing for this primacy, so that the question is not
always capable of definite answer. Yet if one has to select the one term
which in our day carries the greatest blessing, and—to apply a useful
test—whose antonym carries the greatest rebuke, one will not go far
wrong in naming “progress.” This seems to be the ultimate generator of
force flowing down through many links of ancillary terms. If one can
“make it stick,” it will validate almost anything. It would be difficult
to think of any type of person or of any institution which could not
be recommended to the public through the enhancing power of this word.
A politician is urged upon the voters as a “progressive leader”; a
community is proud to style itself “progressive”; technologies and
methodologies claim to the “progressive”; a peculiar kind of emphasis in
modern education calls itself “progressive,” and so on without limit.
There is no word whose power to move is more implicitly trusted than
“progressive.” But unlike some other words we shall examine in the course
of this chapter, its rise to supreme position is not obscure, and it
possesses some intelligible referents.
Before going into the story of its elevation, we must prepare ground by
noting that it is the nature of the conscious life of man to revolve
around some concept of value. So true is this that when the concept is
withdrawn, or when it is forced into competition with another concept,
the human being suffers an almost intolerable sense of being lost. He has
to know where he is in the ideological cosmos in order to coordinate his
activities. Probably the greatest cruelty which can be inflicted upon
the psychic man is this deprivation of a sense of tendency. Accordingly
every age, including those of rudest cultivation, sets up some kind of
sign post. In highly cultivated ages, with individuals of exceptional
intellectual strength, this may take the form of a metaphysic. But with
the ordinary man, even in such advanced ages, it is likely to be some
idea abstracted from religion or historical speculation, and made to
inhere in a few sensible and immediate examples.
Since the sixteenth century we have tended to accept as inevitable an
historical development that takes the form of a changing relationship
between ourselves and nature, in which we pass increasingly into the
role of master of nature. When I say that this seems inevitable to us,
I mean that it seems something so close to what our more religious
forebears considered the working of providence that we regard as impiety
any disposition to challenge or even suspect it. By a transposition
of terms, “progress” becomes the salvation man is placed on earth to
work out; and just as there can be no achievement more important than
salvation, so there can be no activity more justified in enlisting our
sympathy and support than “progress.” As our historical sketch would
imply, the term began to be used in the sixteenth century in the sense
of continuous development or improvement; it reached an apogee in
the nineteenth century, amid noisy demonstrations of man’s mastery of
nature, and now in the twentieth century it keeps its place as one of the
least assailable of the “uncontested terms,” despite critical doubts in
certain philosophic quarters. It is probably the only term which gives
to the average American or West European of today a concept of something
bigger than himself, which he is socially impelled to accept and even to
sacrifice for. This capacity to demand sacrifice is probably the surest
indicator of the “god term,” for when a term is so sacrosanct that the
material goods of this life must be mysteriously rendered up for it, then
we feel justified in saying that it is in some sense ultimate. Today
no one is startled to hear of a man’s sacrificing health or wealth for
the “progress” of the community, whereas such sacrifices for other ends
may be regarded as self-indulgent or even treasonable. And this is just
because “progress” is the coordinator of all socially respectable effort.
Perhaps these observations will help the speaker who would speak against
the stream of “progress,” or who, on the other hand, would parry some
blow aimed at him through the potency of the word, to realize what a
momentum he is opposing.
Another word of great rhetorical force which owes its origin to the
same historical transformation is “fact.” Today’s speaker says “It is
a fact” with all the gravity and air of finality with which his less
secular-minded ancestor would have said “It is the truth.”[176] “These
are facts”; “Facts tend to show”; and “He knows the facts” will be
recognized as common locutions drawing upon the rhetorical resource
of this word. The word “fact” went into the ascendent when our system
of verification changed during the Renaissance. Prior to that time,
the type of conclusion that men felt obligated to accept came either
through divine revelation, or through dialectic, which obeys logical
law. But these were displaced by the system of verification through
correspondence with physical reality. Since then things have been
true only when measurably true, or when susceptible to some kind of
quantification. Quite simply, “fact” came to be the touchstone after the
truth of speculative inquiry had been replaced by the truth of empirical
investigation. Today when the average citizen says “It is a fact” or says
that he “knows the facts in the case,” he means that he has the kind of
knowledge to which all other knowledges must defer. Possibly it should
be pointed out that his “facts” are frequently not facts at all in the
etymological sense; often they will be deductions several steps removed
from simply factual data. Yet the “facts” of his case carry with them
this aura of scientific irrefragability, and he will likely regard any
questioning of them as sophistry. In his vocabulary a fact is a fact, and
all evidence so denominated has the prestige of science.
These last remarks will remind us at once of the strongly rhetorical
character of the word “science” itself. If there is good reason for
placing “progress” rather than “science” at the top of our series, it is
only that the former has more scope, “science” being the methodological
tool of “progress.” It seems clear, moreover, that “science” owes its
present status to an hypostatization. The hypostatized term is one
which treats as a substance or a concrete reality that which has only
conceptual existence; and every reader will be able to supply numberless
illustrations of how “science” is used without any specific referent.
Any utterance beginning “Science says” provides one: “Science says there
is no difference in brain capacity between the races”; “Science now
knows the cause of encephalitis”; “Science says that smoking does not
harm the throat.” Science is not, as here it would seem to be, a single
concrete entity speaking with one authoritative voice. Behind these large
abstractions (and this is not an argument against abstractions as such)
there are many scientists holding many different theories and employing
many different methods of investigation. The whole force of the word
nevertheless depends upon a bland assumption that all scientists meet
periodically in synod and there decide and publish what science believes.
Yet anyone with the slightest scientific training knows that this is very
far from a possibility. Let us consider therefore the changed quality
of the utterance when it is amended to read “A majority of scientists
say”; or “Many scientists believe”; or “Some scientific experiments have
indicated.” The change will not do. There has to be a creature called
“science”; and its creation has as a matter of practice been easy,
because modern man has been conditioned to believe that the powers and
processes which have transformed his material world represent a very
sure form of knowledge, and that there must be a way of identifying that
knowledge. Obviously the rhetorical aggrandizement of “science” here
parallels that of “fact,” the one representing generally and the other
specifically the whole subject matter of trustworthy perception.
Furthermore, the term “science” like “progress” seems to satisfy a primal
need. Man feels lost without a touchstone of knowledge just as he feels
lost without the direction-finder provided by progress. It is curious
to note that actually the word is only another name for knowledge (L.
_scientia_), so that if we should go by strict etymology, we should
insist that the expression “science knows” (_i.e._, “knowledge knows”)
is pure tautology. But our rhetoric seems to get around this by implying
that science is _the_ knowledge. Other knowledges may contain elements of
quackery, and may reflect the selfish aims of the knower; but “science,”
once we have given the word its incorporation, is the undiluted essence
of knowledge. The word as it comes to us then is a little pathetic in its
appeal, inasmuch as it reflects the deeply human feeling that somewhere
somehow there must be people who know things “as they are.” Once God or
his ministry was the depository of such knowledge, but now, with the
general decay of religious faith, it is the scientists who must speak _ex
cathedra_, whether they wish to or not.
The term “modern” shares in the rhetorical forces of the others thus far
discussed, and stands not far below the top. Its place in the general
ordering is intelligible through the same history. Where progress is
real, there is a natural presumption that the latest will be the best.
Hence it is generally thought that to describe anything as “modern” is
to credit it with all the improvements which have been made up to now.
Then by a transference the term is applied to realms where valuation is,
or ought to be, of a different source. In consequence, we have “modern
living” urged upon us as an ideal; “the modern mind” is mentioned as
something superior to previous minds; sometimes the modifier stands alone
as an epithet of approval: “to become modern” or “to sound modern” are
expressions that carry valuation. It is of course idle not to expect an
age to feel that some of its ways and habits of mind are the best; but
the extensive transformations of the past hundred years seem to have
given “modern” a much more decisive meaning. It is as if a difference of
degree had changed into a difference of kind. But the very fact that a
word is not used very analytically may increase its rhetorical potency,
as we shall see later in connection with a special group of terms.
Another word definitely high up in the hierarchy we have outlined is
“efficient.” It seems to have acquired its force through a kind of
no-nonsense connotation. If a thing is efficient, it is a good adaptation
of means to ends, with small loss through friction. Thus as a word
expressing a good understanding and management of cause and effect, it
may have a fairly definite referent; but when it is lifted above this
and made to serve as a term of general endorsement, we have to be on our
guard against the stratagems of evil rhetoric. When we find, to cite a
familiar example, the phrase “efficiency apartments” used to give an
attractive aspect to inadequate dwellings, we may suspect the motive
behind such juxtaposition. In many similar cases, “efficient,” which is
a term above reproach in engineering and physics, is made to hold our
attention where ethical and aesthetic considerations are entitled to
priority. Certain notorious forms of government and certain brutal forms
of warfare are undeniably efficient; but here the featuring of efficiency
unfairly narrows the question.
Another term which might seem to have a different provenance but which
participates in the impulse we have been studying is “American.” One must
first recognize the element of national egotism which makes this a word
of approval with us, but there are reasons for saying that the force of
“American” is much more broadly based than this. “This is the American
way” or “It is the American thing to do” are expressions whose intent
will not seem at all curious to the average American. Now the peculiar
effect that is intended here comes from the circumstance that “American”
and “progressive” have an area of synonymity. The Western World has long
stood as a symbol for the future; and accordingly there has been a very
wide tendency in this country, and also I believe among many people in
Europe, to identify that which is American with that which is destined
to be. And this is much the same as identifying it with the achievements
of “progress.” The typical American is quite fatuous in this regard: to
him America is the goal toward which all creation moves; and he judges
a country’s civilization by its resemblance to the American model. The
matter of changing nationalities brings out this point very well. For a
citizen of a European country to become a citizen of the United States
is considered natural and right, and I have known those so transferring
their nationality to be congratulated upon their good sense and their
anticipated good fortune. On the contrary, when an American takes out
British citizenship (French or German would be worse), this transference
is felt to be a little scandalous. It is regarded as somehow perverse,
or as going against the stream of things. Even some of our intellectuals
grow uneasy over the action of Henry James and T. S. Eliot, and the
masses cannot comprehend it at all. Their adoption of British citizenship
is not mere defection from a country; it is treason to history. If
Americans wish to become Europeans, what has happened to the hope of
the world? is, I imagine, the question at the back of their minds. The
tremendous spread of American fashions in behavior and entertainment must
add something to the impetus, but I believe the original source to be
this prior idea that America, typifying “progress,” is what the remainder
of the world is trying to be like.
It follows naturally that in the popular consciousness of this country,
“un-American” is the ultimate in negation. An anecdote will serve to
illustrate this. Several years ago a leading cigarette manufacturer
in this country had reason to believe that very damaging reports were
being circulated about his product. The reports were such that had
they not been stopped, the sale of this brand of cigarettes might
have been reduced. The company thereupon inaugurated an extensive
advertising campaign, the object of which was to halt these rumors in
the most effective way possible. The concocters of the advertising copy
evidently concluded after due deliberation that the strongest term of
condemnation which could be conceived was “un-American,” for this was
the term employed in the campaign. Soon the newspapers were filled with
advertising rebuking this “un-American” type of depreciation which
had injured their sales. From examples such as this we may infer that
“American” stands not only for what is forward in history, but also for
what is ethically superior, or at least for a standard of fairness not
matched by other nations.
And as long as the popular mind carries this impression, it will be
futile to protest against such titles as “The Committee on un-American
activities.” While “American” and “un-American” continue to stand for
these polar distinctions, the average citizen is not going to find much
wrong with a group set up to investigate what is “un-American” and
therefore reprehensible. At the same time, however, it would strike him
as most droll if the British were to set up a “Committee on un-British
Activities” or the French a “Committee on un-French Activities.” The
American, like other nationals, is not apt to be much better than he has
been taught, and he has been taught systematically that his country is
a special creation. That is why some of his ultimate terms seem to the
general view provincial, and why he may be moved to polarities which
represent only local poles.
If we look within the area covered by “American,” however, we find
significant changes in the position of terms which are reflections
of cultural and ideological changes. Among the once powerful but now
waning terms are those expressive of the pioneer ideal of ruggedness and
self-sufficiency. In the space of fifty years or less we have seen the
phrase “two-fisted American” pass from the category of highly effective
images to that of comic anachronisms. Generally, whoever talks the older
language of strenuosity is regarded as a reactionary, it being assumed
by social democrats that a socially organized world is one in which
cooperation removes the necessity for struggle. Even the rhetorical trump
cards of the 1920’s, which Sinclair Lewis treated with such satire, are
comparatively impotent today, as the new social consciousness causes
terms of centrally planned living to move toward the head of the series.
Other terms not necessarily connected with the American story have
passed a zenith of influence and are in decline; of these perhaps
the once effective “history” is the most interesting example. It is
still to be met in such expressions as “History proves” and “History
teaches”; yet one feels that it has lost the force it possessed in the
previous century. Then it was easy for Byron—“the orator in poetry”—to
write, “History with all her volumes vast has but one page”; or for the
commemorative speaker to deduce profound lessons from history. But people
today seem not to find history so eloquent. A likely explanation is that
history, taken as whole, is conceptual rather than factual, and therefore
a skepticism has developed as to what it teaches. Moreover, since the
teachings of history are principally moral, ethical, or religious, they
must encounter today that threshold resentment of anything which savors
of the prescriptive. Since “history” is inseparable from judgment of
historical fact, there has to be a considerable community of mind
before history can be allowed to have a voice. Did the overthrow of
Napoleon represent “progress” in history or the reverse? I should say
that the most common rhetorical uses of “history” at the present are by
intellectuals, whose personal philosophy can provide it with some kind of
definition, and by journalists, who seem to use it unreflectively. For
the contemporary masses it is substantially true that “history is bunk.”
An instructive example of how a coveted term can be monopolized may be
seen in “allies.” Three times within the memory of those still young,
“allies” (often capitalized) has been used to distinguish those fighting
on our side from the enemy. During the First World War it was a supreme
term; during the Second World War it was again used with effect; and
at the time of the present writing it is being used to designate that
nondescript combination fighting in the name of the United Nations in
Korea. The curious fact about the use of this term is that in each case
the enemy also has been constituted of “allies.” In the First World
War Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were “allies”; in the Second,
Germany and Italy; and in the present conflict the North Koreans and the
Chinese and perhaps the Russians are “allies.” But in the rhetorical
situation it is not possible to refer to them as “allies,” since we
reserve that term for the alliance representing our side. The reason
for such restriction is that when men or nations are “allied,” it is
implied that they are united on some sound principle or for some good
cause. Lying at the source of this feeling is the principle discussed
by Plato, that friendship can exist only among the good, since good
is an integrating force and evil a disintegrating one. We do not, for
example, refer to a band of thieves as “the allies” because that term
would impute laudable motives. By confining the term to our side we make
an evaluation in our favor. We thus style ourselves the group joined for
purposes of good. If we should allow it to be felt for a moment that the
opposed combination is also made up of allies, we should concede that
they are united by a principle, which in war is never done. So as the
usage goes, we are always allies in war and the enemy is just the enemy,
regardless of how many nations he has been able to confederate. Here is
clearly another instance of how tendencies may exist in even the most
innocent-seeming language.
Now let us turn to the terms of repulsion. Some terms of repulsion are
also ultimate in the sense of standing at the end of the series, and
no survey of the vocabulary can ignore these prime repellants. The
counterpart of the “god term” is the “devil term,” and it has already
been suggested that with us “un-American” comes nearest to filling that
role. Sometimes, however, currents of politics and popular feeling cause
something more specific to be placed in that position. There seems indeed
to be some obscure psychic law which compels every nation to have in
its national imagination an enemy. Perhaps this is but a version of the
tribal need for a scapegoat, or for something which will personify “the
adversary.” If a nation did not have an enemy, an enemy would have to be
invented to take care of those expressions of scorn and hatred to which
peoples must give vent. When another political state is not available
to receive the discharge of such emotions, then a class will be chosen,
or a race, or a type, or a political faction, and this will be held up
to a practically standardized form of repudiation. Perhaps the truth
is that we need the enemy in order to define ourselves, but I will not
here venture further into psychological complexities. In this type of
study it will be enough to recall that during the first half century
of our nation’s existence, “Tory” was such a devil term. In the period
following our Civil War, “rebel” took its place in the Northern section
and “Yankee” in the Southern, although in the previous epoch both of
these had been terms of esteem. Most readers will remember that during
the First World War “pro-German” was a term of destructive force. During
the Second World War “Nazi” and “Fascist” carried about equal power
to condemn, and then, following the breach with Russia, “Communist”
displaced them both. Now “Communist” is beyond any rival the devil term,
and as such it is employed even by the American president when he feels
the need of a strong rhetorical point.
A singular truth about these terms is that, unlike several which were
examined in our favorable list, they defy any real analysis. That is
to say, one cannot explain how they generate their peculiar force of
repudiation. One only recognizes them as publicly-agreed-upon devil
terms. It is the same with all. “Tory” persists in use, though it has
long lost any connection with redcoats and British domination. Analysis
of “rebel” and “Yankee” only turns up embarrassing contradictions of
position. Similarly we have all seen “Nazi” and “Fascist” used without
rational perception; and we see this now, in even greater degree,
with “Communist.” However one might like to reject such usage as mere
ignorance, to do so would only evade a very important problem. Most
likely these are instances of the “charismatic term,” which will be
discussed in detail presently.
No student of contemporary usage can be unmindful of the curious
reprobative force which has been acquired by the term “prejudice.”
Etymologically it signifies nothing more than a prejudgment, or a
judgment before all the facts are in; and since all of us have to
proceed to a great extent on judgments of that kind, the word should
not be any more exciting than “hypothesis.” But in its rhetorical
applications “prejudice” presumes far beyond that. It is used, as a
matter of fact, to characterize unfavorably any value judgment whatever.
If “blue” is said to be a better color than “red,” that is prejudice.
If people of outstanding cultural achievement are praised through
contrast with another people, that is prejudice. If one mode of life is
presented as superior to another, that is prejudice. And behind all is
the implication, if not the declaration, that it is un-American to be
prejudiced.
I suspect that what the users of this term are attempting, whether
consciously or not, is to sneak “prejudiced” forward as an uncontested
term, and in this way to disarm the opposition by making all positional
judgments reprehensible. It must be observed in passing that no people
are so prejudiced in the sense of being committed to valuations as those
who are engaged in castigating others for prejudice. What they expect
is that they can nullify the prejudices of those who oppose them, and
then get their own installed in the guise of the _sensus communis_. Mark
Twain’s statement, “I know that I am prejudiced in this matter, but I
would be ashamed of myself if I weren’t” is a therapeutic insight into
the process; but it will take more than a witticism to make headway
against the repulsive force gathered behind “prejudice.”
If the rhetorical use of the term has any rational content, this probably
comes through a chain of deductions from the nature of democracy; and
we know that in controversies centered about the meaning of democracy,
the air is usually filled with cries of “prejudice.” If democracy is
taken crudely to mean equality, as it very frequently is, it is then
a contradiction of democracy to assign inferiority and superiority on
whatever grounds. But since the whole process of evaluation is a process
of such assignment, the various inequalities which are left when it
has done its work are contradictions of this root notion and hence are
“prejudice”—the assumption of course being that when all the facts are
in, these inequalities will be found illusory. The man who dislikes a
certain class or race or style has merely not taken pains to learn that
it is just as good as any other. If all inequality is deception, then
superiorities must be accounted the products of immature judgment. This
affords plausible ground, as we have suggested, for the coupling of
“prejudice” and “ignorance.”
Before leaving the subject of the ordered series of good and bad terms,
one feels obliged to say something about the way in which hierarchies can
be inverted. Under the impulse of strong frustration there is a natural
tendency to institute a pretense that the best is the worst and the worst
is the best—an inversion sometimes encountered in literature and in
social deportment. The best illustration for purpose of study here comes
from a department of speech which I shall call “GI rhetoric.” The average
American youth, put into uniform, translated to a new and usually barren
environment, and imbued from many sources with a mission of killing, has
undergone a pretty severe dislocation. All of this runs counter to the
benevolent platitudes on which he was brought up, and there is little
ground for wonder if he adopts the inverted pose. This is made doubly
likely by the facts that he is at a passionate age and that he is thrust
into an atmosphere of superinduced excitement. It would be unnatural
for him not to acquire a rhetoric of strong impulse and of contumacious
tendency.
What he does is to make an almost complete inversion. In this special
world of his he recoils from those terms used by politicians and other
civilians and by the “top brass” when they are enunciating public
sentiments. Dropping the conventional terms of attraction, this uprooted
and specially focussed young man puts in their place terms of repulsion.
To be more specific, where the others use terms reflecting love, hope,
and charity, he uses almost exclusively terms connected with the
excretory and reproductive functions. Such terms comprise what Kenneth
Burke has ingeniously called “the imagery of killing.” By an apparently
universal psychological law, faeces and the act of defecation are linked
with the idea of killing, of destruction, of total repudiation—perhaps
the word “elimination” would comprise the whole body of notions. The
reproductive act is associated especially with the idea of aggressive
exploitation. Consequently when the GI feels that he must give his speech
a proper show of spirit, he places the symbols for these things in places
which would normally be filled by prestige terms from the “regular” list.
For specimens of such language presented in literature, the reader is
referred to the fiction of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer.
Anyone who has been compelled to listen to such rhetoric will recall
the monotony of the vocabulary and the vehemence of the delivery. From
these two characteristics we may infer a great need and a narrow means
of satisfaction, together with the tension which must result from
maintaining so arduous an inversion. Whereas previously the aim had been
to love (in the broad sense) it is now to kill; whereas it had been
freedom and individuality, it is now restriction and brutalization. In
taking revenge for a change which so contradicts his upbringing he is
quite capable, as the evidence has already proved, of defiantly placing
the lower level above the higher. Sometimes a clever GI will invent
combinations and will effect metaphorical departures, but the ordinary
ones are limited to a reiteration of the stock terms—to a reiteration,
with emphasis of intonation, upon “the imagery of killing.”[177] Taken as
a whole, this rhetoric is a clear if limited example of how the machine
may be put in reverse—of how, consequently, a sort of devil worship may
get into language.
A similar inversion of hierarchy is to be seen in the world of
competitive sports, although to a lesser extent. The great majority of
us in the Western world have been brought up under the influence, direct
or indirect, of Christianity, which is a religion of extreme altruism.
Its terms of value all derive from a law of self-effacement and of
consideration for others, and these terms tend to appear whenever we try
to rationalize or vindicate our conduct. But in the world of competitive
sports, the direction is opposite: there one is applauded for egotistic
display and for success at the expense of others—should one mention in
particular American professional baseball? Thus the terms with which an
athlete is commended will generally point away from the direction of
Christian passivity, although when an athlete’s character is described
for the benefit of the general public, some way is usually found to place
him in the other ethos, as by calling attention to his natural kindness,
his interest in children, or his readiness to share his money.
Certainly many of the contradictions of our conduct may be explained
through the presence of these small inverted hierarchies. When, to
cite one further familiar example, the acquisitive, hard-driving local
capitalist is made the chief lay official of a Christian church, one
knows that in a definite area there has been a transvaluation of values.
Earlier in the chapter we referred to terms of considerable potency whose
referents it is virtually impossible to discover or to construct through
imagination. I shall approach this group by calling them “charismatic
terms.” It is the nature of the charismatic term to have a power which is
not derived, but which is in some mysterious way given. By this I mean
to say that we cannot explain their compulsiveness through referents
of objectively known character and tendency. We normally “understand”
a rhetorical term’s appeal through its connection with something we
apprehend, even when we object morally to the source of the impulse.
Now “progress” is an understandable term in this sense, since it rests
upon certain observable if not always commendable aspects of our world.
Likewise the referential support of “fact” needs no demonstrating.
These derive their force from a reading of palpable circumstance. But
in charismatic terms we are confronted with a different creation: these
terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently
of referential connections (although in some instances an earlier
history of referential connection may be made out). Their meaning seems
inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds
out of a popular will that they _shall_ mean something. In effect, they
are rhetorical by common consent, or by “charisma.” As is the case with
charismatic authority, where the populace gives the leader a power which
can by no means be explained through his personal attributes, and
permits him to use it effectively and even arrogantly, the charismatic
term is given its load of impulsion without reference, and it functions
by convention. The number of such terms is small in any one period, but
they are perhaps the most efficacious terms of all.
Such rhetorical sensibility as I have leads me to believe that one of
the principal charismatic terms of our age is “freedom.” The greatest
sacrifices that contemporary man is called upon to make are demanded in
the name of “freedom”; yet the referent which the average man attaches
to this word is most obscure. Burke’s dictum that “freedom inheres
in something sensible” has not prevented its breaking loose from all
anchorages. And the evident truth that the average man, given a choice
between exemption from responsibility and responsibility, will choose
the latter, makes no impression against its power. The fact, moreover,
that the most extensive use of the term is made by modern politicians
and statesmen in an effort to get men to assume more responsibility (in
the form of military service, increased taxes, abridgement of rights,
etc.) seems to carry no weight either.[178] The fact that what the
American pioneer considered freedom has become wholly impossible to
the modern apartment-dwelling metropolitan seems not to have damaged
its potency. Unless we accept some philosophical interpretation, such
as the proposition that freedom consists only in the discharge of
responsibility, there seems no possibility of a correlation between the
use of the word and circumstantial reality. Yet “freedom” remains an
ultimate term, for which people are asked to yield up their first-born.
There is plenty of evidence that “democracy” is becoming the same kind of
term. The variety of things it is used to symbolize is too weird and too
contradictory for one to find even a core meaning in present-day usages.
More important than this for us is the fact, noted by George Orwell,
that people resist any attempt to define democracy, as if to connect it
with a clear and fixed referent were to vitiate it. It may well be that
such resistance to definition of democracy arises from a subconscious
fear that a term defined in the usual manner has its charisma taken away.
The situation then is that “democracy” means “be democratic,” and that
means exhibit a certain attitude which you can learn by imitating your
fellows.
If rationality is measured by correlations and by analyzable content,
then these terms are irrational; and there is one further modern
development in the creation of such terms which is strongly suggestive
of irrational impulse. This is the increasing tendency to employ in the
place of the term itself an abbreviated or telescoped form—which form is
nearly always used with even more reckless assumption of authority. I
seldom read the abbreviation “U S” in the newspapers without wincing at
the complete arrogance of its rhetorical tone. Daily we see “U S Cracks
Down on Communists”; “U S Gives OK to Atomic Weapons”; “U S Shocked by
Death of Official.” Who or what is this “U S”? It is clear that “U S”
does not suggest a union of forty-eight states having republican forms
of government and held together by a constitution of expressly delimited
authority. It suggests rather an abstract force out of a new world of
forces, whose will is law and whom the individual citizen has no way to
placate. Consider the individual citizen confronted by “U S” or “FBI.” As
long as terms stand for identifiable organs of government, the citizen
feels that he knows the world he moves around in, but when the forces of
government are referred to by these bloodless abstractions, he cannot
avoid feeling that they are one thing and he another. Let us note while
dealing with this subject the enormous proliferation of such forms
during the past twenty years or so. If “U S” is the most powerful and
prepossessing of the group, it drags behind it in train the previously
mentioned “FBI,” and “NPA,” “ERP,” “FDIC,” “WPA,” “HOLC,” and “OSS,” to
take a few at random. It is a fact of ominous significance that this use
of foreshortened forms is preferred by totalitarians, both the professed
and the disguised. Americans were hearing the terms “OGPU,” “AMTORG” and
“NEP” before their own government turned to large-scale state planning.
Since then we have spawned them ourselves, and, it is to be feared, out
of similar impulse. George Orwell, one of the truest humanists of our
age, has described the phenomenon thus: “Even in the early decades of
the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the
characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed
that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in
totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such
words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecor, Agitprop.”[179]
I venture to suggest that what this whole trend indicates is an
attempt by the government, as distinguished from the people, to confer
charismatic authority. In the earlier specimens of charismatic terms we
were examining, we beheld something like the creation of a spontaneous
general will. But these later ones of truncated form are handed down from
above, and their potency is by fiat of whatever group is administering
in the name of democracy. Actually the process is no more anomalous than
the issuing of pamphlets to soldiers telling them whom they shall hate
and whom they shall like (or try to like), but the whole business of
switching impulse on and off from a central headquarters has very much
the meaning of _Gleichschaltung_ as that word has been interpreted for
me by a native German. Yet it is a disturbing fact that such process
should increase in times of peace, because the persistent use of such
abbreviations can only mean a serious divorce between rhetorical impulse
and rational thought. When the ultimate terms become a series of bare
abstractions, the understanding of power is supplanted by a worship of
power, and in our condition this can mean only state worship.
It is easy to see, however, that a group determined upon control will
have as one of its first objectives the appropriation of sources of
charismatic authority. Probably the surest way to detect the fabricated
charismatic term is to identify those terms ordinarily of limited power
which are being moved up to the front line. That is to say, we may
suspect the act of fabrication when terms of secondary or even tertiary
rhetorical rank are pushed forward by unnatural pressure into ultimate
positions. This process can nearly always be observed in times of
crisis. During the last war, for example, “defense” and “war effort”
were certainly regarded as culminative terms. We may say this because
almost no one thinks of these terms as the natural sanctions of his
mode of life. He may think thus of “progress” or “happiness” or even
“freedom”; but “defense” and “war effort” are ultimate sanctions only
when measured against an emergency situation. When the United States was
preparing for entry into that conflict, every departure from our normal
way of life could be justified as a “defense” measure. Plants making
bombs to be dropped on other continents were called “defense” plants.
Correspondingly, once the conflict had been entered, everything that
was done in military or civilian areas was judged by its contribution
to the “war effort.” This last became for a period of years the supreme
term: not God or Heaven or happiness, but successful effort in the war.
It was a term to end all other terms or a rhetoric to silence all other
rhetoric. No one was able to make his claim heard against “the war
effort.”
It is most important to realize, therefore, that under the stress of
feeling or preoccupation, quite secondary terms can be moved up to the
position of ultimate terms, where they will remain until reflection
is allowed to resume sway. There are many signs to show that the term
“aggressor” is now undergoing such manipulation. Despite the fact that
almost no term is more difficult to correlate with objective phenomena,
it is being rapidly promoted to ultimate “bad” term. The likelihood is
that “aggressor” will soon become a depository for all the resentments
and fears which naturally arise in a people. As such, it will function as
did “infidel” in the mediaeval period and as “reactionary” has functioned
in the recent past. Manifestly it is of great advantage to a nation
bent upon organizing its power to be able to stigmatize some neighbor as
“aggressor,” so that the term’s capacity for irrational assumption is a
great temptation for those who are not moral in their use of rhetoric.
This passage from natural or popular to state-engendered charisma
produces one of the most dangerous lesions of modern society.
An ethics of rhetoric requires that ultimate terms be ultimate in some
rational sense. The only way to achieve that objective is through
an ordering of our own minds and our own passions. Every one of
psychological sophistication knows that there is a pleasure in willed
perversity, and the setting up of perverse shibboleths is a fairly common
source of that pleasure. War cries, school slogans, coterie passwords,
and all similar expressions are examples of such creation. There may
be areas of play in which these are nothing more than a diversion; but
there are other areas in which such expressions lure us down the roads
of hatred and tragedy. That is the tendency of all words of false or
“engineered” charisma. They often sound like the very gospel of one’s
society, but in fact they betray us; they get us to do what the adversary
of the human being wants us to do. It is worth considering whether the
real civil disobedience must not begin with our language.
Lastly, the student of rhetoric must realize that in the contemporary
world he is confronted not only by evil practitioners, but also, and
probably to an unprecedented degree, by men who are conditioned by the
evil created by others. The machinery of propagation and inculcation is
today so immense that no one avoids entirely the assimilation and use
of some terms which have a downward tendency. It is especially easy to
pick up a tone without realizing its trend. Perhaps the best that any
of us can do is to hold a dialectic with himself to see what the wider
circumferences of his terms of persuasion are. This process will not
only improve the consistency of one’s thinking but it will also, if the
foregoing analysis is sound, prevent his becoming a creature of evil
public forces and a victim of his own thoughtless rhetoric.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. A. E. Taylor, _Plato: the Man and his Work_ (New York, 1936), p.
300.
[2] Cf. P. Albert Duhamel, “The Concept of Rhetoric as Effective
Expression,” _Journal of the History of Ideas_, X, No. 3 (June, 1949),
344-56 _passim_.
[3] James Blish, “Rituals on Ezra Pound,” _Sewanee Review_, LVIII
(Spring, 1950), 223.
[4] The various aesthetic approaches to language offer refinements of
perception, but all of them can be finally subsumed under the first head
above.
[5] _The Tyranny of Words_ (New York, 1938), p. 80. T. H. Huxley in Lay
Sermons (New York, 1883), p. 112, outlined a noticeably similar ideal
of scientific communication: “Therefore, the great business of the
scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of
his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions
upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student in so complete a manner,
that every term used, or law enunciated should afterwards call up vivid
images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the
demonstration of the law, or illustration of the term.”
[6] That is, by mentioning only parts of the total situation.
[7] It is worth recalling that in the Christian New Testament, with its
heavy Platonic influence, God is identified both with _logos_, “word,
speech” (_John_ 1:1); and with _agape_, “love” (2 _John_ 4:8).
[8] The users of metaphor and metonymy who are in the hire of businessmen
of course constitute a special case.
[9] Cf. 277 b: “A man must know the truth about all the particular things
of which he speaks or writes, and must be able to define everything
separately; then when he has defined them, he must know how to divide
them by classes until further division is impossible; and in the same way
he must understand the nature of the soul, must find out the class of
speech adapted to each nature, and must arrange and adorn his discourse
accordingly, offering to the complex soul elaborate and harmonious
discourses, and simple talks to the simple soul.”
[10] 104 b.
[11] 263 a.
[12] 260 b.
[13] 265 a.
[14] In the passage extending from 246 a to 256 d.
[15] Cf. 263 d ff.
[16] Indeed, in this particular rhetorical duel we see the two types of
lovers opposed as clearly as illustration could desire. More than this,
we see the third type, the non-lover, committing his ignominious failure.
Britain and France had come to prefer as leaders the rhetoricless
businessman type. And while they had thus emasculated themselves, there
appeared an evil lover to whom Europe all but succumbed before the
mistake was seen and rectified. For while the world must move, evil
rhetoric is of more force than no rhetoric at all; and Herr Hitler,
employing images which rested on no true dialectic, had persuaded
multitudes that his order was the “new order,” _i.e._, the true
potentiality. Britain was losing and could only lose until, reaching
back in her traditional past, she found a voice which could match his
accents with a truer grasp of the potentiality of things. Thus two men
conspicuous for passion fought a contest for souls, which the nobler won.
But the contest could have been lost by default.
[17] “Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” _Sewanee Review_, LVI
(Winter, 1948), 3.
[18] _A Grammar of Motives_ (New York, 1945), p. 90.
[19] Without rhetoric there seems no possibility of tragedy, and in
turn, without the sense of tragedy, no possibility of taking an elevated
view of life. The role of tragedy is to keep the human lot from being
rendered as history. The cultivation of tragedy and a deep interest
in the value-conferring power of language always occur together. The
_Phaedrus_, the _Gorgias_, and the _Cratylus_, not to mention the works
of many teachers of rhetoric, appear at the close of the great age of
Greek tragedy. The Elizabethan age teemed with treatises on the use of
language. The essentially tragic Christian view of life begins the long
tradition of homiletics. Tragedy and the practice of rhetoric seem to
find common sustenance in preoccupation with value, and then rhetoric
follows as an analyzed art.
[20] Cf. Maritain, _op. cit._, pp. 3-4: “The truth of practical intellect
is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity
to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring
into existence that which is not yet; further, the act of moral choice
is so individualized, both by the singularity of the person from which
it proceeds and the context of the contingent circumstances in which it
takes place, that the practical judgment in which it is expressed and by
which I declare to myself: this is what I must do, can be right only if,
_hic et nunc_, the dynamism of my will is right, and tends towards the
true goods of human life.
That is why practical wisdom, _prudentia_, is a virtue indivisibly moral
and intellectual at the same time, and why, like the judgment of the
conscience itself, it cannot be replaced by any sort of theoretical
knowledge or science.”
[21] Socrates’ criticism of the speech of Lysias (263 d ff.) is that the
latter defended a position without having submitted it to the discipline
of dialectic.
[22] Mortimer J. Adler, _Dialectic_ (New York, 1927), p. 75.
[23] Cf. Adler, _op. cit._, pp. 243-44: Dialectic “is a kind of thinking
which satisfies these two values: in the essential inconclusiveness of
its process, it avoids ever resting in belief, or in the assertion of
truth; through its utter restriction to the universe of discourse and its
disregard for whatever reference discourse may have toward actuality, it
is barren of any practical issue. It can make no difference in the way of
conduct.”
[24] Adler, _op. cit._, p. 224.
[25] All quotations are given verbatim from _The World’s Most Famous
Court Trial_ (National Book Company, Cincinnati, 1925), a complete
transcript.
[26] Hosea 12:10 “I have also spoken unto the prophets, and have
multiplied visions, and by the ministry of the prophets I have used
similitudes.”
[27] _Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke_ (London, 1855-64), VI,
18-19. Hereafter referred to as _Works_.
[28] _Loc. cit._
[29] _Works_, II, 155.
[30] _Works_, III, 315.
[31] _Works_, III, 317.
[32] _Works_, VI, 52.
[33] _Loc. cit._
[34] _Works_, VI, 57.
[35] _Works_, VI, 88.
[36] _Works_, I, 476.
[37] It is interesting to compare this with his statement in _An Appeal
from the New to the Old Whigs_ (_Works_, III, 77): “The number engaged
in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the
quantity and intensity of the guilt.”
[38] _Works_, I, 479.
[39] _Works_, I, 509.
[40] _Works_, I, 462.
[41] _Works_, I, 469.
[42] _Works_, I, 480.
[43] _Works_, II, 335.
[44] _Works_, II, 179-80.
[45] _Works_, II, 180.
[46] _Works_, VII, 23.
[47] _Works_, VII, 99-100.
[48] John Morley, _Burke_ (New York, 1879), p. 127.
[49] _Ibid._, p. 129.
[50] If further evidence of Burke’s respect for circumstance were needed,
one could not do better than cite his sentence from the _Reflections_
depicting the “circumstance” of Bourbon France (_Works_, II, 402).
“Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the multitude
and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious
high roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and
navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a
continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous
works of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus,
whether for war or trade; when I bring before my view the number of
her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly skill, and
made and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed
front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies upon every side; when I
recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without
cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many of the
best productions of the earth have been brought in France; when I reflect
on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but
ours, and in some particulars not second; when I contemplate the grand
foundations of charity, public and private; when I survey the state of
all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I reckon the men she has
bred for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude
of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics,
her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and
profane: I behold in all this something which awes and commands the
imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of precipitate and
undiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriously
examine, what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize us
at once to level so spacious a fabric with the ground.”
[51] _Works_, II, 282.
[52] _Works_, II, 551.
[53] _Works_, II, 348-49.
[54] _Works_, I, 432.
[55] _Works_, II, 335.
[56] _Works_, III, 317-18.
[57] _Works_, III, 16.
[58] _Works_, II, 334.
[59] _Works_, VII, 60.
[60] _Works_, VI, 34.
[61] _A Life of Edmund Burke_ (London, 1891), p. 523.
[62] _Democracy in America_ (Cambridge [Mass.], 1873), I, 226.
[63] _Works_, III, 109.
[64] _Loc. cit._
[65] _Works_, III, 36.
[66] Quoted in Marquis James, _Life of Andrew Jackson_ (Indianapolis,
1937), p. 740.
[67] _Origins of the Whig Party_ (Durham, N. C., 1925), p. 227.
[68] _The Whig Party in Georgia_, 1825-1853 (Chapel Hill, 1948), p. 192.
[69] _Ibid._
[70] _Op. cit._, p. 206.
[71] Most of Lincoln’s associates in Illinois—including David Davis,
Orville H. Browning, John M. Palmer, Lyman Trumbull, Leonard Swett, and
Ward Hill Lamon—who had been ardent Republicans before the war, left the
party in the years following. See David Donald, _Lincoln’s Herndon_ (New
York, 1948), p. 263.
[72] _Op. cit._, p. 203.
[73] _Abraham Lincoln_ (Boston and New York, 1928), II, 549.
[74] John G. Nicolay and John Hay, _Abraham Lincoln: A History_ (New
York, 1904), II, 46.
[75] _Herndon’s Lincoln_ (Springfield, Ill., 1921), III, 594.
[76] _Ibid._, p. 595.
[77] _The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln_, ed. Philip van Doren
Stern (New York, 1940), p. 239. This source, hereafter referred to as
_Writings_, is the most complete one-volume edition of Lincoln’s works.
[78] _Loc. cit._
[79] _Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln_, ed. Marion Mills Miller (New
York, 1907), II, 41. This speech is not included in Stern’s _Writings_.
[80] This may impress some as an unduly cynical reading of human nature,
but it will be found much closer to Lincoln’s settled belief than many
representations made with the object of eulogy. Herndon, for example,
reports that he and Lincoln sometimes discussed the question of whether
there are any unselfish human actions, and that Lincoln always maintained
the negative. Cf. Herndon, _op. cit._, III, 597.
[81] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 263-64.
[82] _Ibid._, p. 330.
[83] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 359-60.
[84] _Ibid._, pp. 360-61.
[85] Stern, _Writings_, p. 361.
[86] _Ibid._, p. 362.
[87] Stern, _Writings_, p. 375.
[88] _Ibid._, p. 427.
[89] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 549-50.
[90] Cf. the remark in “Notes for Speeches” (_Ibid._, pp. 497-98):
“Suppose it is true that the Negro is inferior to the white in the gifts
of nature; is it not the exact reverse of justice that the white should
for that reason take from the Negro any of the little which he has had
given to him?”
[91] Stern, _Writings_, p. 422.
[92] Stern, _Writings_, p. 241.
[93] _Ibid._, p. 649.
[94] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 652-53.
[95] Stern, _Writings_, p. 656.
[96] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 667-68.
[97] Stern, _Writings_, p. 671.
[98] _Ibid._, p. 736.
[99] Stern, _Writings_, p. 737.
[100] Stern, _Writings_, p. 682.
[101] _Ibid._, p. 740.
[102] Stern, _Writings_, p. 669.
[103] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 810-11.
[104] Stern, _Writings_, p. 429.
[105] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 529-30.
[106] _Ibid._, p. 558.
[107] _Ibid._, p. 591.
[108] _Ibid._, p. 728.
[109] The homeric fits of abstraction, which almost every contemporary
reports, are highly suggestive of the mind which dwells with essences.
[110] Stern, _Writings_, p. 231.
[111] Stern, _Writings_, p. 728.
[112] _Ibid._, p. 710.
[113] _Op. cit._, III, 610.
[114] Stern, _Writings_, p. 423.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 649.
[116] Stern, _Writings_, p. 452.
[117] To mention a simple example, the sarcasm uttered as a pleasantry
sometimes leaves a wound because its formal signification is not entirely
removed by the intonation of the user or by the speech situation.
[118] _The Wings of the Dove_ (Modern Library ed., New York, 1937), p. 53.
[119] “On the Physical Basis of Life,” _Lay Sermons, Addresses and
Reviews_ (New York, 1883), pp. 123-24.
[120] On this point it is pertinent to cite Huxley’s remark in another
lay sermon, “On the Study of Zoology” (_ibid._, p. 110): “I have a strong
impression that the better a discourse is, as an oration, the worse it is
as a lecture.”
[121] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury’s ed., London, 1900),
I, 28.
[122] Cf. Kenneth Burke, _Attitudes Toward History_ (New York, 1937), I,
82-83: “Looking over the titles of books written by Huysmans, who went
_from_ naturalism, _through_ Satanism, _to_ Catholicism, we find that
his titles of the naturalistic period are with one exception nouns, all
those of the transitional period are prepositions actually or in quality
(“A-Vau-l’Eau,” “En Rade,” “A Rebours,” “La Bas,” “En Route”) and all in
his period of Catholic realism are nouns.”
[123] In German all nouns are regularly capitalized, and the German word
for noun substantive is _Hauptwort_ or “head word.” In this grammatical
vision the noun becomes a sort of “captain” in the sentence.
[124] Cf. Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, 1410 b: “And let this be our fundamental
principle: for the receiving of information with ease, is naturally
pleasing to all; and nouns are significant of something; so that all
those nouns whatsoever which produce knowledge in the mind, are most
pleasing.”
[125] Compare the following passage by Carl Sandburg in “Trying to
Write,” _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 186, No. 3 (September, 1950), p. 33: “I
am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am
more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.”
[126] _Essay on Rime_ (New York, 1945), p. 43, ll. 1224-1227.
[127] _Life on the Mississippi_ (New York, 1903), p. 73.
[128] “Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton,” _The Works
of William E. Channing, D.D._ (Boston, 1894), p. 503.
[129] Some correlation appears to exist between the mentality of an era
and the average length of sentence in use. The seventeenth century, the
most introspective, philosophical, and “revolutionary” era of English
history, wrote the longest sentence in English literature. The next era,
broadly recognized as the eighteenth century, swung in the opposite
direction, with a shorter and much more modelled or contrived sentence.
The nineteenth century, again turned a little solemn and introspective,
wrote a somewhat long and loose one. Now comes the twentieth century,
with its journalism and its syncopated tempo, to write the shortest
sentence of all.
[130] _The Prose Works of John Milton_, ed. J. A. St. John (London,
1909-14), II, 364-65. Hereafter referred to as _Works_.
[131] _Works_, III, 194.
[132] _Works_, II, 78-79.
[133] _Works_, II, 364.
[134] See her _Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery_ (Chicago, 1947), pp.
284-99.
[135] _Works_, II, 89.
[136] _Works_, II, 93-94.
[137] _Works_, II, 446.
[138] _Works_, III, 172.
[139] _Works_, II, 382.
[140] _Works_, II, 377-78.
[141] _Works_, II, 418-19.
[142] _Works_, II, 94.
[143] _Works_, II, 401.
[144] _Works_, III, 175.
[145] _Works_, III, 42-43.
[146] _The Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First Session
(June 21, 1850), p. 1250.
[147] _Where the Battle Was Fought_ (Boston and New York, 1900), p. 4.
[148] _Address Delivered by Hon. Charles J. Faulkner before the Valley
Agricultural Society of Virginia, at their Fair Grounds near Winchester,
October 21, 1858_ (Washington, 1858), pp. 3-4.
[149] _On Style_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 321.
[150] See Norman J. DeWitt, “The Humanist Should Look to the Law,”
_Journal of General Education_, IV (January, 1950), 149. Although it
is not our concern here, it probably could be shown that the essential
requirements of oratory themselves depend upon a certain organization
of society, such as an aristocratic republicanism. When Burke declares
that a true natural aristocracy “is formed out of a class of legitimate
presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual
truths” (_Works_ [London, 1853-64], III, 85-86) my impression is that he
has in mind something resembling our “uncontested term.” The “legitimate
presumptions” are the settled things which afford the plane of maneuver.
[151] _Address Preceding the Removal of the Senate from the Old to the
New Chamber: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 4,
1859_ (Washington, 1859), (Printed at the Office of the Congressional
Globe), pp. 5, 7.
[152] There is commentary in the fact that the long commemorative
address, with its assembled memories, was a distinctive institution of
nineteenth-century America. Generalizations and “distance” were on such
occasions the main resources.
[153] _The Position and Function of the American Bar, as an Element of
Conservatism in the State: An Address Delivered before the Law School in
Cambridge_, July 3, 1845. From _Addresses and Orations of Rufus Choate_
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1891), pp. 141-43.
[154] A distinction must be made between “uncontested terms” and slogans.
The former are parts of the general mosaic of belief; the latter are
uncritical aspirations, or at the worst, shibboleths.
[155] _E.g._, Samuel T. Williamson, “How to Write Like a Social
Scientist,” _Saturday Review of Literature_, XXX, No. 40 (October 4,
1947), 17.
[156] See Bertrand Russell, “The Postulate of Natural Kinds or of Limited
Variety,” _Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits_ (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1948), pp. 438-44.
[157] (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939), p. 349.
[158] Melvin Seeman, “An Evaluation of Current Approaches to Personality
Differences in Folk and Urban Societies,” _Social Forces_, XXV (December,
1946), 165.
[159] _Identification and Analysis of Attribute-Cluster-Blocs_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1931), p. 214.
[160] Donald L. Taylor, “Courtship as a Social Institution in the United
States, 1930-1945,” _Social Forces_, XXV (October, 1946), 68.
[161] For example: “id,” “ion,” “alga.”
[162] Samuel H. Jameson, “Social Nearness among Welfare Institutions,”
_Sociology and Social Research_, XV (March-April, 1931), 322.
[163] The natural scientists, too, use many Latinate terms, but these are
chiefly “name” words, for which there are no real substitutes.
[164] See J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, _Words and Their Ways in
English Speech_ (New York, 1931), pp. 94-99.
[165] James R. Masterson and Wendell Brooks Phillips, _Federal Prose:
How to Write in and/or for Washington_ (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1948), p. 10.
[166] Cf., for example, Madison in No. 10.
[167] It is possible that there exists also a concrete understanding,
which differs qualitatively from abstract or scientific understanding and
is needed to supplement it, particularly when we are dealing with moral
phenomena (see Andrew Bongiorno, “Poetry as an Educational Instrument,”
_Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors_, XXXIII
[Autumn, 1947], 508-9).
[168] Cf. Aristotle, ‘_Rhetoric_, 1410 b: “... for when the poet calls
old age ‘stubble,’ he produces in us a knowledge and information by means
of a common genus; for both are past their prime.”
[169] _International Encyclopedia of Unified Science_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1941), II, No. 8, 7.
[170] _Op. cit._, p. 487.
[171] _Foundations of Sociology_ (New York: Macmillan, 1939), p. 383.
[172] “The Nature of Human Nature,” _American Journal of Sociology_,
XXXII (July, 1926), 17.
[173] “The Limitations of the Expert,” _Harper’s_, CLXII (December,
1930), 102-3.
[174] “The Sad Estate of Scientific Publication,” _American Journal of
Sociology_, XLVII (January, 1942), 600.
[175] (2 vols.; New York, 1933.)
[176] It is surely worth observing that nowhere in the King James Version
of the Bible does the word “fact” occur.
[177] Compare Sherwood Anderson’s analysis of the same phenomenon in
_A Story Teller’s Story_ (New York, 1928), p. 198: “There was in the
factories where I worked and where the efficient Ford type of man was
just beginning his dull reign this strange and futile outpouring of men’s
lives in vileness through their lips. Ennui was at work. The talk of the
men about me was not Rabelaisian. In old Rabelais there was the salt of
infinite wit and I have no doubt that the Rabelaisian flashes that came
from our own Lincoln, Washington, and others had point and a flare to
them.
But in the factories and in army camps!”
[178] One is inevitably reminded of the slogan of Oceania in Orwell’s
_Nineteen Eighty-four_: “Freedom is Slavery.”
[179] “Principles of Newspeak,” _Nineteen Eighty-four_ (New York, 1949),
p. 310.
Index
Abbreviated names, 229-30
_Address Preceding the Removal of the Senate from the Old to the New
Chamber_, 176-77
Adler, Mortimer J., 27, 30-31
Aesthetic distance, 175-79
“aggressor,” 231-32
“allies,” 221-22
“American,” 218-20
Anderson, Sherwood, 226
_Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence against Smectymnuus_,
160
_Areopagitica_, 147, 150, 159
Aristotle
definition of dialectical problem, 15-16
cited, 128, 203
Beveridge, Albert, 85
Beyle, Herman C., 192
_Bible_, 14, 214
Bishop, John Peale, 161, 201
Blish, James, 5
Bongiorno, Andrew, 203
Breckinridge, John C., 176
Bryan, William Jennings, 36-39, 41
Bryan, William Jennings, Jr., 35
Burke, Edmund
on the Catholic question, 58-62
policy toward American colonies, 62-65
policy toward India, 65-68
policy toward the French Revolution, 68-72
on metaphysics, 72-73
Burke, Kenneth, 22, 128, 225
Carlyle, Thomas, 133
Carroll, E. Malcolm, 79
Caste spirit, 206-8
Channing, W. E., 143
Charismatic terms, 227-32
Chase, Stuart, 8
Choate, Rufus, 179
Churchill, Winston, 20
Cicero, 174
Circumstance, argument from, defined, 57
“Communist,” 222-23
Craddock, Charles Egbert, 165
Darrow, Clarence, 32, 34-35, 41
Demetrius, _On Style_, 173
“democracy,” 228-29
_Democracy in America_, Tocqueville’s, 76
DeWitt, Norman J., 174
Dialectical terms, 48, 52-53, 187-88;
Plato on, 16
_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 146, 153
Duhamel, P. Albert, 3
“efficient,” 217-18
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 81
Epistemology, in relation to oratory, 178-82
Ewing, Representative Andrew, 164-65
“fact,” 214-15
Faris, Ellsworth, 205
Faulkner, Charles J., 168
_Federal Prose_, 199-200
“freedom,” 228
Genus, argument from, defined, 56
GI rhetoric, 225-26
Greek language, 140
Harding, T. Swann, 208
Hay, John, 85
Hays, Arthur Garfield, 35-36
Henley, W. E., 131
Herndon, W. H., 85, 89, 111-12
“history,” 220-21
Huxley, T. H., 8, 122-23
Inverted hierarchies, 224-27
Jackson, Andrew, 78
James, Henry, 121-22, 123, 133-34
Jameson, Samuel H., 197
Laski, Harold, 207
Latinate terms, 196-201
Lincoln, Abraham
argument from genus “man,” 87-95
_First Inaugural Address_, 96-100
on definition, 104-5
and the excluded middle, 105-7
his perspective, 108-11
Lundberg, George, 204
Lysias, speech of, 5-7
Malone, Dudley Field, 35, 39, 47-48
Maritain, Jacques, 21, 24
Mather, Kirtley F., 42-43, 51
Melioristic bias, 195-201
Metaphor, attitude of social scientists toward, 202-6
Metcalf, Maynard, 49
Milton, John
primacy of the concept, 144-52
extended metaphor, use of, 150-52
antithetical expressions, use of, 152-55
superlative mode, 155-58
systematic collocation, use of, 158-61
“modern,” 217
Morley, John, 67
Murray, Paul, 79, 80, 81
Nicolay, John G., 85
_Of Reformation in England_, 145, 148, 154, 156
Orwell, George, 228, 229, 230
Parts of speech
noun, 127-28
adjective, 129-33
adverb, 133-34
verb, 135-36
conjunction, 137-38
preposition, 138-39
Pedantic empiricism, 191-95
Phrases, 139-41
Plato
method of transcendence, 4-5, 18-19
on madness as a form of inspiration, 13
definition of positive and dialectical terms, 16
on the nature of the soul, 17
_Position and Function of the American Bar, as an Element of
Conservatism in the State, The_, 179-81
“prejudice,” 223-24
Primary equivocation, 187-91
Prior, James, 75-76
“progress,” 212-14
_Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty_, 151
Rhetorical syllogism, 173
Right of assumption, 169
Russell, Bertrand, 191, 204
Sandburg, Carl, 129
Santillana, George de, 203-4
“science,” 215-16
Seeman, Melvin, 192
“semantically purified” speech, 7-10
Sentence
defined, 117-18
grammatical types of, 119-27
Shapiro, Karl, 130
Similitude, argument from, defined, 56-57
Spinoza, B., 25
Stewart, Attorney-general of Tennessee, 32, 33, 39, 41, 46-47
Stylization, 182-83
Tate, Allen, 118
Taylor, A. E., 3
Taylor, Donald J., 194
Tennessee anti-evolution law, 29-30
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 76
Tuve, Rosemund, 150
Twain, Mark, 136, 224
Uncontested terms, 166-71, 184
_Where the Battle Was Fought_, 165
Whig political philosophy, 76-80
Williamson, Samuel T., 186
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