Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L I \A-08> c-6b-\ ' tne 'a.t date stam ped beloyy SEP 2 5 1933^^ n-8.'oj 24 T H E SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE A RHETORIC FOR HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES ARNOLD TOMPKINS PK'.FESSOR OF PEDAGOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, AUTHOR OF " PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING," " PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOOL MANAGEMENT," AND " LITERARY INTERPRETATION " 34? J: Boston, U.S.A., and London GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS Cbe fttbnuram Press 1807 Dec. ie- 1&C l Copyright, 1889 By ARNOLD TOMPKINS Copyright, 1897 By ARNOLD TOMPKINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTRODUCTION. Kl" Man continually speaks or writes, reads or gives audi- ence. Rhetoric deals with all these universal and lifelong processes; hence, its practical importance is obvious and emphatic. This study, however, got its name from the one exercise of speaking — from the Greek rhetor, speaker — because, in the political life of the Greeks, so much depended on the art of public address. If this study should be named now, and after the most effective means of formal communication, the term would come from reading or writing; and it would not matter which, as each presupposes the other. But we care now nothing for the name except to insist, in obedience to the demands of both life and logic, on its extension over all phases of the discourse process. Until quite recently it has been customary to organize this subject under the literal meaning of the word, attaching it to the chair of oratory in college and confining its prac- tical value to those engaged in public address. Thus, as with the Greeks and Romans, it became the hidden art of the few by which fickle masses were to be swayed. But now it is not so much the swaying of masses that is needed as masses who can critically estimate and appreciate the utterances of others. And these utterances are compara- tively seldom made now in the form of public address, but in that of the book, the newspaper, and the magazine. IV INTRODUCTION. Practical life demands the art of discourse in every phase of its process, and the interest of logic as well as life is sub- served by the discussion in unity of all phases of the proc- ess. Guiding truth in any one can be found only in the unity of all. The distinction between speaking and writing, and also between reading and giving audience, is one of form and instrument, and involves no valid principle; and the four processes reduce to two, — the process of interpreting and that of constructing discourse. The principles controlling one of these processes control also the other. In fact, dis- course is grounded in the relation of constructer and inter- preter. He who makes discourse does so in conscious recognition of the process of interpretation, and he who interprets does so in conscious recognition of the process of construction. Discourse without both author and auditor is unthinkable. Hence, to treat one process to the exclusion of the other, as, for instance, to write a book on composition and then one on reading, would not only be bad economy, but would defeat the search for the highest guiding truth in either. It is hoped, therefore, to take care of both phases of the discourse process by a central movement in the proc- ess itself; the relation must take care of the terms related by including them. Holding, then, that the demands of life and logic must finally be the same, this book is formed under the twofold thought (i) that rhetoric is not a study for the special few who may chance to speak from the platform or at the bar, in the senate or in the pulpit, but for the mass of mankind who all need to communicate thought effectively and to interpret with accuracy and appreciation ; that whatever be the vocation or profession of the student, discourse in all phases of its process remains a constant necessity to him, INTRODUCTION. V however variable to his needs other subjects may be ; and (2) that the most practical results follow from holding the obverse phases of the discourse process into the unity of a single discussion, thus giving skill in all phases while reach- ing more deeply for the principle controlling each. If any one phase of discourse study should have promi- nence above another, it is that of literary interpretation. The school does not exist for what it can do for the pupil while he is simply a pupil, but for what it can influence him, by self-direction and self-propulsion, to do for himself after the days of formal tuition. And no opportunity of the teacher is, perhaps, so great as that of influencing the pupil through an appreciation of good literature to read through life to his soul's salvation. Rhetoric must influence strongly in this direction by making the pupil conscious of, and sensi- tive to, the elements of beauty in literary productions. Lit- erature is rapidly gaining its place in the high school course, and everywhere teachers are asking how to make the most of it. It is hoped that the following discussion may aid in the solution. To this end much attention has been given to the principles and practice of literary analysis, which is also theoretically, as well as practically, proper; for beauty, while an essential element in all discourse, is its highest out- come and crowning glory. While urging strongly that rhetoric should bear its fruit — that it should take possession of the pupil's life for the future and not be finished and put on the shelf as having no relation to life — it must not be supposed that the treatment is necessarily unscientific, a mere collection of rules and recipes, such as is generally found in so-called practical and elementary books on the subject. The more closely organ- ized becomes the discourse process in thought, the more efficient becomes the theory in practice. It would be strange VI INTRODUCTION. indeed if theory and practice, science and art, should prove mutually repellant, as so much talk which opposes theory and practice implies. The more perfect one's construction in thought, the more perfect may be his practice under guid- ance of that thought. While art precedes science, it is only through science that art maybe perfected; hence, art is made effective by perfecting the science. Besides, the scientific treatment is the only elementary one. The rule and recipe treatment cannot excuse itself on the plea of making the subject easy. A subject may be shunned successfully, but it cannot be simplified without scientific coordination. If the subject is to be made easy as well as practical, it must be reduced to an organized, coherent body of knowledge. And if this were not true, even the high-school pupil is not a child and must put away child- ish things. Not at all that I should expect or care that he be conscious of scientific experience, but that he should have the experience without reflecting on it. He must see, or see nothing, the relation of unity among the elements of his subject-matter. In studying rhetoric the pupil usually accepts obediently anything and everything in the serial order put down for him; would accept as many more or as many less in any order in which they might be served up. Discourse, real living discourse, is not such a hodge-podge, and the sooner he finds it out the better, both for ease in knowing and power in practice. What is needed is not dodging, but simple, full, concrete, and organic statement. This book is therefore an effort to enable the pupil to see discourse as it unfolds from a single principle, and to prac- tise constructing and interpreting it under that principle. He must become aware that all is determined from within, and not a mere matter of external legislation by some rheto- rician. Experience has proved that so much a high-school INTRODUCTION. Vll pupil can do, and it needs no argument to convince one that such organic grasp of, and specific insight into, the subject is the only economic way to an efficient practice in the con- struction or interpretation of discourse. Whatever the result, such is the earnest conviction which prompts the following treatment, and which accounts for the deviation from the beaten path of rhetorical discussion. *> PREFATORY NOTE. 3637 This book is based on a former publication by the author, under the same title. The former treatment was dominated by a pedagogical motive, which, for the present purpose, required so complete a rewriting that this work can scarcely be called a revision of the former. The spirit of scientific coordination, however, which prompted the old is the ruling spirit in the new, so that I can say now as I did then : — " Whatever the result of the effort, this book has been written under the conviction that a more strictly scientific treatment of discourse is possible than has yet been made, and which would, therefore, yield a higher discipline and a more fruitful application in the art than usually results from discourse study." Much valuable assistance has been received from the leading Rhetorics, and, when of a nature to permit, formal credit has been given in the text. Special credit should be given to C. C. Everett's " Science of Thought " and to Herbert Spencer's " Essay on the Philosophy of Style," the former having direct influence on my treatment of "The Thought in Discourse," and the latter on "The Language in Discourse." ARNOLD TOMPKINS. Department of Pedagogy; University of Illinois. Champaign, Illinois, Feb. 5, 1897. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION iii THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE i THE SUBJECT-MATTER BOUNDED .... I THE ORGANIC ELEMENTS 8 THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE 13 EFFICIENT MEANS TO A WORTHY END - "13 CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVENESS - - - - 19 The Author or the Interpreter Himself - 19 A Sincere Purpose ------ 24 A Definite Purpose - - - - • - 31 THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE 41 the theme 41 the discourse processes .... 53 Description - 61 attributive description - - - - 62 By Attributes of Relation ----- 62 By Means of its Properties - - - - - 70 PARTITIVE DESCRIPTION 75 THE PROCESS ILLUSTRATED 8 1 Construction - - ----- 81 Interpretation ------ 86 Xii CONTENTS. PAGE Narration 93 THE CHANGE AS A WHOLE 96 Purpose --------- 96 Time - - 96 Cause and Effect ------- 97 Likeness and Difference - - ... 97 THE CHANGE IN ITS PARTS 98 THE PROCESS ILLUSTRATED 103 Construction - - - - - - - - 103 Interpretation 106 Exposition 11 1 the content of the theme ii3 Definition - - - - - - - _II 3 Comparison and Contrast - - - - - 117 Exemplification - - - - - - -118 Idealization - ------ 120 THE EXTENT OF THE THEME 1 23 Division - - - - - - - - 124 THE PROCESS ILLUSTRATED 1 28 Construction - - - - - - -128 Definition - 128 Comparison and Contrast - - - -129 Exemplification - - - 130 Division - - 13° Interpretation - 132 Argumentation - 137 the relation of whole and part- - - - i3s Deduction 139 Law of Deductive Inference 140 Induction - - - - - - • - 14 1 Law of Inductive Inference 142 THE RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT - - - I46 A Priori Arguments - - - - - - 148 Law of Inference from Cause - - - 149 A Posteriori Arguments - - • - - - 152 Laws of I nferetice from Effect - - - - 154 CONTENTS. Xlll PAGE GENERAL LAWS OF ARGUMENTATION - - - l6o The Law of Purpose 160 The Law of Unity - - - - - 163 THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE - - - 171 ITS FUNDAMENTAL LAW - - - - - 17 1 QUALITIES REQUIRED BY THE LAW - - - 174 Clearness - - 177 Energy - ...... iyg Elegance 182 CONDITIONS FOR SECURING THE QUALITIES - - 185 Conditions for Securing Clearness - - 185 Conditions for Securing Energy - - 191 Conditions for Securing Elegance - - - 194 THE RHETORICAL QUALITIES SECURED - •- - I96 LANGUAGE AS AN OBJECT OF PERCEPTION - 1 98 Correctness - - - - - - - -199 Distinctness . . . . - - - 199 Brevity - - - 200 Euphony .... - - 202 Harmony ........ 207 Rhythm 211 THE DIRECT RELATION OF LANGUAGE TO THOUGHT 221 ASSOCIATION OF LANGUAGE FORM WITH IDEAS - 222 Eamiliarity - - - - - - -222 Concreteness - - - - 230 Precision ........ 234 ORGANIZATION OF THE IDEAS INTO THOUGHT - 24I Conciseness ----- - 241 The Proper Length of the Sentence - - - 249 The Proper Arrangement of the Sentence - - 255 Unity of Sentence Structure - 262 Unity in the Discourse Structure - 278 THE INDIRECT RELATION OF LANGUAGE TO THOUGHT 284 FIGURES OF SPEECH - ... 289 Figures of Spelling - - ... 290 Figures of Syntax • - 291 XIV CONTENTS. PAGE FIGURES OF THOUGHT 295 Figures of Association ...... 299 Synecdoche ........ 300 Metonymy - ...... 302 Figures of Comparison ...... 304 Expressed Comparison 307 Implied Comparisons - ... 309 Metaphor 309 Allegory 318 Figures of Contrast ...... 323 Expressed Contrast - - - - - - 323 Implied Contrast - - - - - - 325 EXERCISE IN CLASSIFYING AND TESTING FIGURES - 329 CONCLUSION --- - - - 335 UNIVERSAL OUTLINE OF DISCOURSE - 336 UNIVERSAL OUTLINE FOR PRACTICE - - - 337 ANALYSIS OF "THE RAINY DAY" - '33^ THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. The Subject-Matter Bounded. The science of discourse, or rhetoric, is one of a large group of language studies ; some of which are orthography, orthoepy, lexicography, grammar, composi- tion, reading, linguistics, and literature. In a general way these all have the same subject-matter — language ; but each is restricted to a given view or phase of it. Yes, view or phase, since each subject is not re- stricted to a part ; for each study covers the entire extent of language. Either spelling, pronunciation, or definition of words extends to the whole of language. Grammar is the grammar of the whole ; and all lan- guage is composed, and is supposed to be read. Lin- guistics includes the entire organized framework of language as an instrument of expressing thought ; and literature the whole of thought which animates such organized framework. Thus the entire territory of language is claimed by each language study. Rhetoric has no corner which it can call its own ; but must work the whole field over in its own way. What way ? 2 THE SCIENCE OE DISCOURSE. Language divides itself into the very obvious parts, words, sentences, and discourse. These are the lan- guage units ; and it would seem that language studies should be parted off to deal with each separately. And so they are, to a certain extent ; for we have word studies — orthography, orthoepy, and lexicography ; a sentence study — grammar; discourse studies — com- position, reading, rhetoric, and literature. But with- out naming all, we have several more studies than units ; and, what is worse, grammar and discourse studies deal with words and sentences. Any unit is not confined to one study, nor any study to one unit. This appears strange ; for the language studies can do nothing but deal with the language units. Why do they seesaw in this way ? The trouble arises from catching up the wrong language unit ; or rather, from seizing the unity at the wrong point. We are accustomed to think of words as parts which added together make sentences ; sentences as parts which added together make discourse ; and dis- courses as parts which added together make literature. This addition seems most proper; yet words may be added all day long without producing a sentence ; and sentences, without producing discourse. If literature is not produced before discourses are added, there will be none after the addition ; and if there is not a dis- course before sentences are added the addition will avail nothing. The difference between these language units is not primarily nor essentially that of length. If so we should be inclined to ask, How long must a language THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. 3 piece be made before it becomes a sentence or a dis- course ? If two sentences put together make a discourse, then, if addition of sentences be the test, one hundred sentences would make a superb oration, and one thousand an immortal poem. No ; men have made great speeches in single sentences, long or short ; and good sentences, yea, speeches out of single words. You remember this : "We have met the enemy and they are ours " ; and Caesar's famous effort, " Veni, vidi, vici " ; and " Peace, be still." And either " Peace " or " Vici " would have made a first-rate discourse by itself. The point is that these language units are not such with reference to each other, but with reference to what each expresses. They are the true language units ; not because they refer back and forth to each other as whole and part, but because each expresses a unit of consciousness, — a mental act or state. Each faces its own content and not its neighbor. The true parts of language cannot be obtained by cross-section- ing, but by a division between form and content, — between the letter and the spirit. To show the point exactly, suppose you are now, in your first recitation in rhetoric, laughing outright at the idea of beginning so delightful a study ; and the teacher, to restore proper class dignity, exclaims, " Hush ! " Is he using a word, a sentence, or a dis- course ? Look in the dictionary, and you will find it as a word ; grammar declares it to be a sentence ; while rhetoric maintains it to be a discourse, good or bad depending on whether you do what the word expresses. If the language-form "hush" is thought of simply in THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. relation to its idea, its action, it is a word ; if in relation to its thought, its triple unity of subject, predicate, and thinking act, it is a sentence ; if viewed in relation to its effect on the mind, causing to hush, then it is a dis- course — good if it accomplished the purpose ; bad if it further provoked the laughing. In each case it is the same material unit, but it becomes a different language unit as we turn it from an idea to a thought, or to an effect. The unity is not in the mere language form, but in the relation of the form and its spirit. If language were mere form, then the material juncture of parts would decide the question in any case ; but language is the relation of form and content, and the units are to be selected out of this relation. Since the same language form exists in more than one relation at the same time the same form may be classed differently, as attention is fixed on this or that relation. A man may be a governor, a churchman, a father, a mason, a merchant, etc., at the same time and without violence to his unity ; and when our attention is fixed on one of these relations he is a governor, or a father, etc. A language form considered in relation to an idea is called a word, if the parts are fixed ; if movable, a phrase. The very same language form put in relation to the three elements of a thought, subject, predicate, and copula, is classed as a sentence ; and if studied in relation to the change it is to make in the mind addressed, it becomes a discourse. In discourse there is always an auditor, a recipient, in relation to whom the language is to be considered ; but in the study of language as words, phrases, and sentences, the relation THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. 5 is within the language itself, between its outside and its inside. Discourse study does not separate between form and thought ; but holds both in unity to an end which lies beyond them. The primary law of words and sentences is that of correctness ; the form must be the established form for expressing a given idea or thought. But correct forms are not ends in themselves ; they are only means to effective utterance, in supplying the composer with all the possible ways of expression. Rhetoric selects out of the many forms the one which, under the circum- stances, will be most effective. While there are many ways of expressing the same thing, there is but one of them best suited to a specific end under specific conditions. Shakespeare had Macbeth say, when his conscience was stinging him after the murder of Duncan, " Duncan is in his grave ; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." This can be said in forty ways to the satisfaction of the dictionary and grammar ; but only one is adequate to Shakespeare's purpose. He might have had Macbeth say, " Duncan died recently ; I still live ; but he is better off than I, for he does not suffer so much " ; or " Duncan is dead and buried ; hav- ing passed the tribulations of life, nothing now annoys him, but my conscience hurts me terribly"; and so on without limit. The rules of spelling and syntax may find no fault in all these, but rhetoric would enter its protest, and challenge the right of all but one. If, in the pos- sibilities of language, an expression can be found better than Shakespeare's he must be tried in the court of rhetoric for flagrant violation of the law of his art. 6 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. We see at once how delicate and exacting is the art of rhetoric ; yet, in general estimation, one is held much more strictly accountable for violating rules of orthography, orthoepy, or syntax ; perhaps because such mistakes lie on the surface and are the more easily detected, and because it is comparatively easy to avoid the sins of formal language. Man may and should write correctly by habit and reflex action ; but none but the inspired artist can give the happy stroke ; and to apply the rhetorical test requires insight and reflection. Can we not thus account for the excessive amount of time given to the study of formal language as compared with that of living discourse ? We wish to be forewarned and forearmed against violations for which the merest schoolboy may arrest us. Yes, lan- guage ought to be correct, absolutely so ; but correct- ness is not the last word, and perhaps not the best word, which can be said about language. After being searched and quickened by a poem of Tennyson or charmed and convinced by the music and logic of Phillips, how impertinent to suggest that some long and involved sentence slipped in its syntax! Before closing up the boundary of our subject-matter, we must note that rhetoric is not the only discourse study, — that composition and reading fall within the same compass, using reading in the broad sense to include the study of literature. Composition is the art of constructing discourse ; and reading the art of inter- preting it. They are the reverse sides of the discourse process. Rhetoric investigates the principles which control in the process of constructing and interpreting THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. 7 discourse. Both processes are controlled by the same principles : in one case the principles operate in the direction of purpose or effect, through thought out to language ; in the other back from language, through thought, to the purpose or effect of the discourse, — the first as synthesis, the second as analysis. Composi- tion and reading are simply applied rhetoric ; and both subjects must be held together in a common principle throughout our discussion. Discourse is an interesting and profitable topic considered as mere theory, if this be possible ; but its practical value becomes imperative when we consider that we are constantly making or interpreting discourse, — talking, writing, or speaking; or listening or reading. Especially does its value appear in the higher processes of composing and of reading. One cannot write or speak with assurance and effect without a consciousness of guiding laws ; neither can he read with appreciation without a knowl- edge of the rhetorical elements constituting literary discourse. Since composing and reading are but rhetoric in practice, there is but one discourse study, having its two phases of science and art, or theory and practice. Hence rhetoric is not excluded from any part of the territory of discourse, that is, language in its adapta- tion to the purposes of utterance ; only this : rhetoric cannot practice while it is preaching, although it must practice what it is preaching. 8 the science of discourse. The Organic Elements. In getting our fingers firmly around the subject-mat- ter we have necessarily felt of the organic elements. Discourse, in producing an effect on another mind, uses ideas as a means, and language as a medium. We have already noticed that in words and sentences as such, there is the distinction between form and meaning ; and that in discourse this form and mean- ing are not consciously separated, but move together in producing the effect. If words may be defined as language forms expressing ideas, and sentences as lan- guage forms expressing thought, then a discourse may be defined as a language form expressing thought in the process of producing a definite change in some mind addressed. The ideas presented are the direct means to the end, while the language is chiefly means to the ideas, and therefore indirect means to the purpose. Such, then, are the organic elements. Discourse can- not exist without either, nor unless they cooperate in a definite order. In writing a discourse, the author is first prompted by a desire to put another mind in a certain condition ; then he orders his thoughts to that end ; after which he clothes them in language. This order cannot be reversed. Of course the impulse to produce the change is not dropped to work out the matter of the discourse and express it properly ; for all of this workmanship to the end sought must be done under the moving and shaping force of the desire to reach the end. In fact, in the stress of composition the author is not conscious that he uses language, THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. 9 being wholly occupied and moved as the recipient is to be occupied and moved. This explains what was said at the outset ; namely, that a language form has its unity in the fact that it expresses a unity of conscious- ness. The unity of consciousness in discourse is the moving impulse which shapes discourse to its end. While it has three elements, two are absorbed in the other, — in a consciousness of the end to be realized. In reading, the language element comes first, and then the thought appears ; after which the effect is produced. Yet they do not occur ' this way in an order of time but in an order in which each conditions the other. We cannot realize the thought except in and while perceiving the language, and no effect is produced except in and while gaining the thought. So far as time is concerned, language, thought, and effect move abreast as organically one. Language can- not be received before the thought, as its perception consists in conceiving the thought ; and the thought cannot precede the effect, for the effect is in receiving the thought. In reading, one cannot survey the lan- guage throughout, and then go back and review the thought, and finally receive the effect which the dis- course is to stand for. But after a reader has realized the change which the thought and language are adapted to produce in him, then, if he should turn to make a critical estimate of the discourse he surveys it in the order of its composi- tion. In coming upon a strange machine, the observer makes such a survey of it as will indicate to him its purpose, for instance, to sew with. His attention IO THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. now rests on the point at which the sewing is done, and from that point outward he reconstructs the ma- chine in the order of its invention. Thus the reader moves inward to the point that moved the writer, and then, if he make a critical estimate of the discourse, he must move outward with the author in the process of construction. And really in the ordinary process of reading for what the discourse contains, and not for purpose of estimating the discourse, — for instance, as a child would read, — the purpose, the motive, in the discourse first occupies the recipient. The child feels first, last, and all the time the life in what he reads or hears ; he does not know, if able to read with ease, that language is involved in the process. He lives in an immediate consciousness of what moved the writer to utterance. Survey the matter as. we please and we are driven at last to put down as the established order in the dis- course movement, the purpose or motive, the matter, and then the language. At least this is the only order in which a discussion of discourse can move ; no esti- mate or analysis can be made of thought and language until the specific aim is ascertained. But it must be remembered that the separation of elements and the order of discussion is a necessity for the purpose of discussion only; that in the actual discourse itself they move together as a unity of life, thought and language being gathered up and fused in an experience in the writer to be reproduced in the reader. The organic relation of the elements in discourse appears clearly in comparing discourse with other ob- THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. I I jects. Discourse is like all other objects in expressing thought. The tree, the mountain, the sky, the rain- bow, all say something to us when we look upon them. " To him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language." Likewise with the forms of man's creation ; the bridge, the engine, the statue, the cathedral speak a language to him who holds communion with them. But while all objects express thought, all do not exist for that purpose. The street car is the embodi- ment of thought and must express it ; but its work is to carry passengers. A house manifests the thought of the builder ; but its use is to live in. Some objects, however, are not only like discourse in expressing thought but in existing for that very end. The Angelus and the Statue of Liberty exist for the sole purpose of speaking to man. The ship expresses thought incidentally ; the flag that floats over it, on purpose. Thus discourse falls within a large number of things having for their purpose the expression of thought ; it expresses thought to com- municate it, as do all the fine-art forms, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. But discourse is cut out from all of these by the peculiar form through which its thought is expressed — language. In the other forms of expression there is some natural resemblance or symbolic property ; but language is purely arbitrary, which is both its loss and its gain. If one should express the thought of a house 12 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. by sculpture, drawing, or painting, the resemblance of these forms to the real house would express the thought, without previous preparation on the part of the observer. But if the word house should be pre- sented to one for the first time it would fail to com- municate the idea house ; there is nothing in its nature to do so. Hence we say that it is an arbitrary symbol. Of course printed language, being a degenerate form of picture writing, did in that form naturally express its object ; as perhaps did spoken language at one time. They no doubt lost their natural character and assumed the conventional in the effort of man to express his thought more effectively. Thus the purpose of dis- course has shaped its instrument through the ages, as it immediately shapes it in each particular discourse. Discourse, then, connects itself with every other object in the universe, words and sentences included, in the fact of expressing thought, or having meaning. It lifts itself out of the universe of objects, with the exception of a small group, by the fact of existing for the sole purpose of communicating thought. It now separates itself from the small group by communicating its thought through the arbitrary symbol of language. C Discourse may, therefore, be defined as the expression of \thought in language for the purpose of communication. Thus is bounded the field of our further study, with a guiding map of the territory, purpose in discourse ; thought in discourse ; language or style in discourse. Thus appears the organizing principle of our science ; nam el v, the effective expression of thought in language to a definite, worthy aim. THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. Efficient Means to a Worthy End. Discourse, like any other instrument, must be studied in its adaptation to the end sought ; and is estimated to have merit in proportion to its efficiency as a means to a worthy end. Hence purpose or effect in discourse is the only standard by which it can be measured, as well as the only motive by which it can be produced. Discourse, being a means to an end, stands between two minds, one of which produces the discourse while the other is affected by it. The effect of the discourse in the mind of the reader is the cause of the discourse .in the mind of the writer. While skating produces pleasure, pleasure produces skating ; that is, pleasure in idea produces the skating which brings the pleasure in reality. Pleasure is both cause and effect in the skat- ing. Exercise causes health, but health, in idea, causes the exercise. Speed in locomotion produces the train, and the train produces speed in locomotion. Thus everything man produces, as an engine, a palace, or a poem, moves in a circle from end in idea to end as reality. Likewise a discourse stands between the effect held in idea by the author and the effect produced in the reader or hearer. When one calls to his friend, " See 14 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the rainbow ! " it is because he wishes his friend to have the same rainbow delight which charms himself. This effect held in mind produces the discourse, " See the rainbow"; and this discourse realizes the delight in the one addressed. If one announce that the French President has resigned, it is because he desires the idea which he entertains to be entertained by others. The following lines stand between the heart- break which Tennyson held in mind and the heart- break which he desired to produce in the reader : — " And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill ; But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still ! " Thus a writer or a speaker idealizes an effect desired in another mind, -and under this guidance and impulse constructs the discourse which realizes the effect. The reader or hearer is also striving to make real the same effect. The end of constructing a discourse and of in- terpreting it are in a sense the same, — are to bring the two minds, through discourse, into the same idea, sentiment, or volition. This is suggested by the word interpretation, whose root meaning is to declare be- tween. An interpreter stands between the speaker and the hearer and aids in bringing their minds into unity. With the composer, the effort is to bring the interpreter into a given thought ; and with the inter- preter the effort is to bring himself into the same thought. Discourse is a means to the unity of two minds in the same thought ; which common thought is THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 1 5 the purpose of the discourse both to the author and to the interpreter. Hence discourse has it purpose to the reader or auditor as well as to the writer or speaker. It would be as vain to read as to write without a purpose ; in either case the discourse is used for a purpose. It is possible for the reader to use a discourse for another purpose than that for which the author intended it ; as an instrument designed for one purpose may often be serviceable for another. In fact it is sometimes claimed that a reader cannot know the purpose of an author ; but the reader can know what effect a given discourse produces on himself, and to him this effect is the purpose of the discourse, being that for which he uses the discourse. We attribute as purpose to the author what we find to be the effect of the discourse in ourselves. We should be much surprised to find the practical outcome of a discourse to be one thing, as tested by our experience in reading it, and to learn from the testimony of the author that he had intended something entirely different. But what is worse, it is claimed that in the case of a poet he has no purpose ; that he but sings as the linnet, and speaks in numbers because the numbers come. If the urgency to utter- ance is so strong as to obliterate consciousness of an objective effect, this does not prove that the composi- tion seeks no objective end ; that it has no use either to the author or the interpreter. And if in such cases the spontaneous outbreak adapts the. discourse without the usual course of patient planning, so much the more credit to the inspiration of purpose. l6 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. Be this as it may, all such self-forgetful frenzy of in- spiration is quite exceptional ; and the ordinary writer must still set up a definite aim to be realized, and use the most diligent care in adapting his discourse to the end set up. If this were not so every discourse would be a chance product, lawless and irresponsible ; quite apart from our ordinary experience of sequence in cause and effect and the adjustment of means to end. When it is claimed that there is no science of literary discourse, it must be assumed that there is no cer- tainty as to the effect produced in different minds ; and no necessary connection between design and ac- complishment. In such uncertainty the speaker be- fore an audience on the Fourth of July, designing to produce an inspiration of patriotism, might instead, by chance, arouse base passions of spoils and anarchy, or the delightful experience of an ocean voyage. The writer of a great poem designing to exalt religious faith might instead produce skepticism and despair, or the joy of moonlight scenery. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost," but to the reader it might happen to be " Para- dise Regained." Now, let any number of people read the "Psalm of Life," the "Barefoot Boy," " Ivanhoe," or the "Nineteenth Psalm," and all will report sub- stantially the same impression ; and the fuller and the more accurate the comprehension of the selection the more nearly will there be confessed unity of effect, and the more pronounced the conviction that the author knew what he was about in the writing. We are often warned of the danger of reading into a discourse more than the writer put into it ; and it is THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 1 7 possible, and sometimes indulged in, to strain after hidden meanings and subtle analogies quite apart from the main line of the author's movement ; yet the real danger lies in not reading out of the discourse the full meaning of the author. Some say that Shakespeare did not intend what people accredit to him ; but if so he must have credit still for a wonderful knack of sue:- gesting to other people what he himself did not think of. Admitting for the exceptional few the habit of outdoing Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, and the like, yet most need fear only limping behind their leader. In any case the reader must get out of the discourse all there is in it for him ; and an author may well re- ceive full credit, be it for good luck or wise design. If the reader can fairly read the universe out of the writing it is only fair to suppose that the universe somehow got into it by the hand of the writer. How- ever this may be, the reading world will continue to class certain writings as masterpieces on the basis of the breadth and depth of the effect produced ; and the authors of such writings as masters because, by con- scious or unconscious wisdom, they planned and execu- ted them. The highest effect is not always desired, and dis- course is good if it reach the end sought, whether it be the passing information of conversation or the most powerful influence in the field of thought, art, or elo- quence. So that while discourse is judged in effective- ness to the end sought, it cannot be indifferent to the kind of end sought. In the first place, the end must be a worthy one. A discourse may be well adapted 1 8 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. to produce a bad effect, which considered merely in its adaptation to the end desired is a good discourse, but a bad one when taken in its entirety. A boot- black can excel a prime minister in saying some things effectively, but might fall far below him in the value of the thing said and the change wrought in the mind addressed. To merit rhetorical consideration a dis- course must have good moral character. But within this scope, the value of the effect produced is the abso- lute standard of rhetorical criticism. Compare the Sermon on the Mount with, " It snowed yesterday, and to-day the sleighing is good." Both are well adapted to the end sought, but differ infinitely in the effect produced. Thus effectiveness may be considered merely as a quality of the means used, or as a quality of the change produced in the mind addressed. It is possible to approve and admire the finished oration and at the same time condemn its effect on the audience. In fact, the efficient and fascinating means may be the very instruments for beguiling unwary auditors into the acceptance of vicious theories and the adoption of an evil course of conduct. The demagogue needs to use more attractive and, in a sense, more effective means than does a statesman. But rhetorical laws must hold discourse responsible for more than mere efficiency to an indifferent or evil result. The effi- ciency of a discourse is measured by its real value to the mind addressed. If the tendency is evil, the greater the effectiveness the worse for the discourse. Hence effectiveness is measured both by the qua) THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 19 ity and the quantity of the change produced in the mind of the recipient. At least rhetorical skill which conflicts with ethical laws is to be reprobated rather than praised. Vile literature deserves no considera- tion from the rhetorician, further than a public scourg- ing from an outraged moral sense. Discourse, by efficient means, must seriously and honestly seek a worthy aim — must seek to produce a change in the mind addressed for the good of that mind. Hence effectiveness, announced at the outset as the ultimate law of discourse, when properly limited becomes an efficiency which includes the end, and as the law now stands it requires that discourse be an efficient means to a worthy end. It is not only a question of saying the thing well, but whether the thing said is worth saying and what degree of worth can it claim. Before dismissing this topic it would be well for the student, by way of further illustration and emphasis, to compare the value of a wide variety of discourses from the recent conversation and current newspaper topic to the sermon, the poem, and the political J oration. Conditions of Effectiveness. From the foregoing the prime condition of effective- ness is obvious at once as, — The Author or the Interpreter Himself. — No one can write beyond himself, — produce an effect deeper, truer, and more potent than his own life. The com- pass and power of a writer limit absolutely the com- 20 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. pass and power of the writing. To prepare to speak and write with influence involves the whole problem of character and culture, as Ouintilian well under- stood in relation to the orator ; for in his " Institutes of Oratory" he treats comprehensively the whole sub- ject of education, emphasizing continually that the orator is first a wise and virtuous man. As he keeps the man back of the orator, so must the man be kept back of effective speech of whatever purpose. Wealth of knowledge and conviction of duty are vastly more essential to purposes of effective utterance than are laws of syntax and rhetoric. One cannot become a journalist by studying rules of editorial style and journ- alism. This can be accomplished only by a long course of training to alert and comprehensive thought, and to the power of a quick application of a sound political and social philosophy to everyday life. It is charac- ter, wisdom, and wealth of life, and not homiletics, which fit for pulpit eloquence. The study of poetics cannot supply the inspiration and inner grasp of things necessary to poetic construction. Skill in speaking and writing come riot by application of rhetorical devices, but by a full, active, and versatile life. The metaphor is a good rhetorical instrument, but it must be born in the writing and not made and applied to it. In the stress of composition and in the exigency of the moment the figure springs forth winged for its flight and charged with its message. Weighty and forcible utterance cannot be gotten at from the outside, but spring from the weight and force of the life which makes the utterance. The THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 21 whole character and life are necessary to each fit word and sentence ; and to that finer rhetorical, stamp which gives them currency as universal as life. Milton said that for him to write an epic poem required that he make his life an epic poem. Not out of rhetorical maxims but out of the heart the mouth speaketh. The student must, therefore, not come to the task of seeking skill in discourse with any hope of reaching it by specific and short-cut methods ; but by that profound and universal preparation which takes care of all the issues of life. Often the young man with a meagre education, but with ambition for a literary career, seeks a special course in rhetoric and literature, expecting to be shown the knack of successful writing and speaking ; just as the illiterate novice in elocution seeks the tricks and finishing touches for pronounc- ing literary masterpieces by attendance on a school of oratory ; or as a barren soul vainly hopes, by a knowledge of notes and practice of nimble touches on the key-board, to compose symphonies and conduct orchestras. What is really needed is a deep, an all-sided culture. Mathematics, science, history, and the wealth of the world's literature must store the life and illumine the soul for any special literary task which the writer may undertake. Rhetorical study has its special function ; but that excessive faith in its precepts which leads to neglect of universal culture as the true source of rhetorical power will defeat the true aim of rhetoric itself. Quintilian says that Cicero " frequently de- clares that he owed less to the schools of the rhetori- 22 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. cians than to the gardens of the Academy." Let the pupil but consider how much and what kind of preparation it required to write one of Swing's or Beecher's sermons, Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, Washington's Farewell Address, Lowell's " Vision of Sir Launfal," or Wordsworth's " Ode on the Intima- tions of Immortality." Out of what rhetoric did these come ? They embody the culture and tension of the age, rather than the age's rhetorical maxims. Yes, " The orator is the good man skilled in speaking "; and skill itself is the man's speaking. In further descrip- tion of the orator Ouintilian speaks of him as "a man who, being possessed of the highest natural genius, stores his mind thoroughly with the most valuable kinds of knowledge ; a man sent by the gods to do honor to the world, and such as no preceding age has known ; a man in every way eminent and excel- lent, a thinker of the best thoughts and a speaker of the best words." No one can be a speaker of the best words who is not a thinker of the best thoughts. And just as discourse of worthy effect can spring only from a soul of wealth and worth, so it can be adequately interpreted and appreciated by the same general qualifications. The art of literary criticism, i.e. the art of estimating rather than fault-finding, is not the application of specific rules to a production, but the reception of its effect into the life of the critic, and its ideal reproduction from the standpoint and basis of life from which it was produced, with the added experience of its value. The problem is, how the production arises out of and returns to life, and THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 23 the consequent value of the process. Since the critic must speak to the value of the selection he must have the refinement and compass of life to reexperience the author's life embodied in the selection. The small critic can do no better than to attack details here and there, with this or that rhetorical weapon which he has learned to apply under the name of criticism ; but such is not the process of that discourse-inter- pretation which brings the value of the production home to the reader. Hence it is evident that all that has been said touching the prime condition of effect- ive discourse applies equally to the author and to the interpreter. Of course there is a difference in the capacity required for the details of execution in the two cases ; but the fundamental basis of operation in life is the same in each. Discourse cannot be effective without the adequate reception of its mes- sage, any more than without the adequate presentation of that message. Effective discourse implies some one susceptible to the effect. The writer demands qualified readers as strongly as the reader demands qualified writers. It must not be supposed that this general require- ment of culture on the part of both reader and writer makes discourse unnecessary, by rendering the writer unable to advance the interests of the reader. The help comes to the reader through the writer's ad- vanced position in the particular thought and sen- timent of the discourse under construction. In a particular case, the writer must keep in advance of his reader. He may have to raise himself to the full 24 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. height of his ability to do so ; or he may need, as when addressing the immature in thought, to lower himself within their reach ; but in all cases he must keep in advance on the particular line of his investiga- tion, and more elevated in any sentiment he would arouse. In fact the greater the inequality between the reader and the writer in any particular selection of discourse the better, so long as vain or wasteful effort is not required in the process of interpretation. There has grown up a sentimental prejudice against difficult books, giving preference to those which may be perused in the relaxed mood of the hammock. Real reading requires energy ; and the best books are those which challenge effort, and merit frequent and prolonged study. Yet the original proposition holds, that man, born into the world of literature, to receive the most of it, needs the most varied and thorough culture. As with the writer, the greater the reader's breadth and depth of culture the more effective does discourse become. Coming now to the task of a particular composition, with volume and force of life in general, the author must be moved in each production by A Sincere Purpose. — We have already observed that the effect in the mind addressed is the true cause of the discourse ; and sincerity of purpose re- quires that the effect to be produced in the mind addressed for the good of that mind be the sole impulse to the utterance. The motive must be un- alloyed with any feeling of self ; as when one is THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 25 moved to speak by a desire to appear before an audience, to display learning and power of language, to excel another speaker, or to call forth popular applause. The assumption is, from the very nature of discourse, that the purpose is the effect in the mind of the hearer, for the benefit of the hearer. The moment the reader or hearer feels that the author is making the discourse with reference to himself, the discourse at once loses its power. For this reason the pronoun I should be used warily and sparingly. It is bad taste for a speaker to play a part in illustrative incidents and stories, when his own personality is not essential to the illustration. He should not state, for instance, that he while visiting Rome found the Coliseum in such and such condition, assuming that the point of in- terest with his audience is not the condition of the Coliseum, but the fact that the speaker has traveled and has seen Rome and the Coliseum. He must not thrust himself in between his audience and the object he describes. This does not prevent a speaker or writer from presenting his own experience when that is the topic called for ; but the temptation to get into the foreground of the discussion must be silenced. It is a safe rule for the composer to keep himself out of the discourse altogether, assuming that the audience are interested only in the topic under discussion and not in him. Should he himself become the interesting topic, as when a famous man is called upon to give an account of himself, the case is different ; for then he is the theme of the discourse. But those who need to 26 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. guard themselves most are least apt to be called upon for self-explanation. Instead of uttering the thought for the mind ad- dressed, as the law of purpose requires, consciously or unconsciously, the language and the thought are frequently deformed into affectation of style, than which nothing is more offensive to good taste and to good morals. " Affectation creates caricatures of beauty ; these repel taste as they repel good sense. That cast of character which leads a young man to wear long hair and to part it in the middle often appears in literature in a straining after the feminine qualities of style when no beauty of thought underlies and demands them. This nauseates short-haired men and lends reason to their prejudice against the genuine because of the counterfeit elegance." 1 A natural style cannot be produced without an ab- sorbing interest in the aim of the discourse. Pretense will unconsciously leave its mark in some undue atten- tion to the details of style. Phelps quotes the follow- ing illustration of this offense from a speech of the elder Josiah Ouincy, delivered in the American Con- gress to secure the repeal of the embargo on our com- merce laid by Great Britain in the War of 1812: — An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea nymph. She was as free as air. She could swim or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came like a goddess of beauty from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her as she was spreading her nets on the rocks. 1 Phelps. THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 2J Phelps comments on the above thus : " In this strain the orator proceeds. Mark now the quality of this style as related to the professed aim of the whole speech. What was that aim ? The ships of the mer- chants of Boston and Salem and Newburyport and New London and New York were rotting in their harbors. The aim of the legislation advocated by Mr. Quincy was to remove the embargo, and send those ships to sea. Was his mind intent on that in the pas- sage here quoted ? Did this passage assist that aim, or could it naturally do so ? Not at all. The para- graph is vivacious ; its metaphors are novel ; its diction is compact and clear ; it is a specimen of what passed in those days for fine oratory. But it was quite too fine for the sober and rather rough work which the orator had before him. His interest just then, all the enthusiasm of his mind in the business, was expended on the embellishment of his style. He was thinking of it as a work of art. He was speaking to Harvard College and its environs, not to the Southern Con- gressmen whom it was his business to win over to the commercial interest of New England. If his own for- tunes had been embarked in one of these rotting ships, and he was intent with his whole soul on saving it by a vote of the Congress, he would have found some- thing to say more to the purpose than courting sea nymphs on the rocks." The practical object of the discourse should hold everything in control from beginning to end. What is known as natural eloquence arises from the speaker's being caught up by the inspiration, the power of an 28 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. aim. An intense aim is creative ; the result a natural growth, not mechanical contriving. Thought and lan- guage grow to and fit the striving soul within. Hence, sincerity is the secret of naturalness, the greatest charm of discourse. Thus always must the composer be controlled by the genuine impulse of the effect to be produced. The message to be delivered must be the all-absorbing con- sciousness in the delivery. One is not in condition to speak or write till he has an idea which disturbs him into utterance. The urgency of the idea — the end, the effect, the purpose — must be the informing power which orders and organizes every element of thought, and gives harmony and color to every feature of style. Every discourse, like a plant or an animal, is the prod- uct of a vital force ; and it cannot take the form of life by external carpentry. Composition is not prima- rily a putting together ; but the outgoing of a unitary impulse which divides itself into a multiplicity of ideas, thoughts, and language forms in the process of reach- ing unity again in the mind addressed. It begins and ends in unity. One cannot learn to compose by putting words together into sentences, and sentences together into paragraphs, and paragraphs together into discourse. The impelling idea creates and determines the elements and forms needed for its realization in the mind of the reader or hearer. Hence the most searching standard of criticism which can be applied to any discourse is whether it is pro- duced under the full and undivided impulse of the idea for which the discourse purports to stand. For instance, THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 20, al other standards for criticising a popular lecturer are rendered useless when it is observed that he is conscious of beautiful similes, superb gestures, of the fact that he is the lecturer of the evening, etc. Then nothing is to be expected of him but a performance, which is always disposed of by the single criticism that it is hollow and purposeless. Self-consciousness in some form, replac- ing the consciousness of the message, is a general source of weakness in all kinds of stage performers. There are plenty of exceptions to this ; but it is true to such an extent that lecture committees often avoid the employment of professionals, seeking those who are earnestly engaged in solving life's problems and in elevat- ing humanity. Efficient service comes, not from those who seem to think it a nice thing to speak in public from the stage and compose pieces for that purpose, but from those who are earnest seekers after living truth, and who are called and sent to the platform to say what needs to be said to fallen humanity. It is not strange that revolutionary and antislavery times produced or- ators. It was the rugged, earnest business in hand that made Patrick Henry and Wendell Phillips speak with tongues of fire. The secret of Moody's success lies not in any external elocution — for he has none of it — but in his simple, direct, and earnest effort to help his brother man. It is said that after Bishop Simpson had finished a sermon in Memorial Hall, London, a professor of elocution was asked by a friend what he thought of the Bishop's elocution. "Elocution," he re- plied, "that man doesn't need elocution; he's got the Holy Ghost." 30 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. This remark of the elocutionist suggests the applica- tion of the standard of genuine motive to his own art. In this there is decidedly too much reliance on ex- ternals ; and not enough, we may say, on the "Holy Ghost." Usually his choice selection is that which enables him to display his art ; and this is not the selec- tion which of itself produces the deepest and truest effect, but one which requires action, gesticulation, grimaces, contortions, and the full diapason of the vocal cords. For this purpose, the gravedigger's scene in Hamlet is much to be preferred to Portia's tribute to mercy ; and yet the latter has in it far more potency for good — more of genuine effect on the hearer; but we are most frequently favored with the former, because, perhaps, the reciter can best impress himself, if not the greater truth, upon the audience. The selection is to display his art ; not his art the selection. And such, again, is a reversal of means and end in discourse ; for what was presumably written to be a means to an end in the hearer, is used as a means to an end in the reciter. The true elocutionist understands this, and seeks artistic delivery through the merit and inspi- ration of what he delivers. His impelling motive is to make the thought and spirit of the selection go for all they are worth, not for his sake, but for their own. The musician's art is tested likewise. And thus it is in all fine-art and literary criticism ; the first standard to apply is that of a genuine motive in the production. In tracing the history of literature the student may thus part off productions into two great classes, differing more or less in the fundamental THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 3 1 requirement of discourse. Chaucer will be found to be hearty, genuine, sincere, — "so genuine that he need not ask whether he were genuine or no, so sincere as quite to forget his own sincerity." Lowell again pays Chaucer a great tribute when he says, "With Chaucer it is al- ways the thing itself and not the description of it that is the main object." Passing to Spenser, the accom- plished gentleman and scholar, a peculiar form of insincerity may be detected in his "Faery Queen." Spenser at heart was a poet, filled with fine emotions and beautiful imagery ; but in his day writings that did not carry on their face a distinct moral purpose were supposed to be idle and useless. Spenser yielded to this and tried to expound a system of ethics in a poem ; whereas, if he had been true to his own instincts and impulses his Faery Queen would have had living interest to the general reader, and not merely historic value to the antiquary. Pope said that Shakespeare did not write correctly ; and avowed his own purpose to be that of correct writing. He thus became conscious of his style and not his message ; while Shakespeare searched the heart, seemingly unconscious of his art ; yet in the mere matter of style he far excelled all the critical school which followed him, and which made style the conscious object of direct concern. Thus in all literary study, the student must make his first, most general, and most fundamental estimate in terms of the motive creating the selection. A Definite Purpose. — It has already been incident- ally stated that a composer must have, besides a sincere and worthy aim, a definite one. He must set before 32 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. himself just what he is to accomplish, and then keep the eye single to that end. And so, too, must the recip- ient come to a definite experience of the effect pro- duced ; not be satisfied with a blurred or vague general sense of what the discourse means. With the composer a definite and firm seizing of the end is absolutely essen- tial to direct and forcible movement to that end ; and unless the interpreter realize definitely and firmly what has been presented, he has missed so far the object of interpretation. Preparatory to any formal exercise the composer must test himself by such questions as : Just what end do I wish to accomplish? Exactly what impression do I wish to leave? or, Just what action do I wish to prompt? When a high-school pupil makes a choice of his graduating theme, he must be examined as to the ground of his choice. Should he choose, "Every Cloud has a Silvery Lining," or "Over the Alps lies Italy," he may find that he has been caught by something that sounds well, and that he really has no definite idea, sentiment, or conviction moving him to speech. If he does not settle this important matter at the outset he may be forced to learn as he proceeds that his "silvery lining" is only a thin film after all; and that his Italy, which lies beyond the Alps, is sure enough beyond the Alps, but what of that ? If he ex- pects to awaken only the bit of sentiment of "silvery lining" and " over the Alps," he can do no better than to announce his title on the program and retire. Like- wise the value to the interpreter must be tested by an effort to state precisely how he is affected by the selection. THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 33 The composer cannot state precisely the end sought till all the circumstances under which the effect is to be produced are known. Discourse will sometimes have to be adapted to the special experience of trades, pro- fessions, and social surroundings. Farmers, mechanics, merchants, lawyers, and teachers are each interested in and prepared to receive a special class of ideas, which would make no appeal to others. And under such limiting conditions the composer is restricted to aims in harmony with the special interests of the class addressed. But a still more widely controlling factor is the stage of mental development to be addressed. The writer may have to address children and the immature in thought, who can appreciate only the pictures of ob- jects, and these only when expressed in the simplest language ; or he may have to address those who can form classes of things and desire to find relations among objects ; or, still higher, he may have to address those who are able to search for the unity of all things, — the connection of things into a universe. That is, he may have to form popular discourse, scientific dis- course, or philosophic discourse. The composer must always mark the grade of minds addressed, and adjust himself to their experience. The farther he is removed from the grade of life addressed, the more difficult is it to make the required adaptation ; and this is impossible when he has to adapt to those above himself, — the composer can descend, but not as- cend. But adjusting to those of lower capacity is not so easily done as would appear. The difficulty of writ- 34 THE SCIENXE OF DISCOURSE. ing for children is clearly recognized ; and it arises from the distance to which the writer is necessarily removed from the experience addressed. As a rule, a philosopher cannot address a popular audience effectively. To do so he must be a pliable and skillful rhetorician, which means that he has the art of adaptation. But aside from the variable factors which limit and define the end according to circumstances, there is an invariable factor to be counted on in all audiences and under all circumstances, and which determines funda- mentally the aim and adaptation in discourse. This factor is the different powers of the mind to be affected — the intellect, the sensibility, and the will. To make any definite effect on the mind is to affect prominently one or another of these powers. This fact defines the end, making it threefold more definite than the mere idea of addressing the mind ; and gives rise to the three great classes of discourse, Prose, or didactic discourse ; Oratory, or persuasive discourse; Poetry, or literary discourse. Prose, or didactic discourse, seeks to inform the in- tellect, — to communicate to it knowledge for its own sake. This process involves the sensibility and the will, as the mind must be stimulated by desire to re- ceive the truth, and the will must make effort to appropriate it ; yet the end is the knowledge gained, and the other activities are only means thereto. Thus prose discourse is discourse adapted to the logical end of truth. It seeks to bring the mind into a knowledge of the objective world of fact ; to develop a knowl- THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 35 edge of things as they exist. Whatever the form, the discourse is didactic when it is adapted to inform the intellect as an end. Oratory, or persuasive discourse, seeks some end, through action, beyond the knowledge and feeling by which the action is stimulated. With oratory the object is not to bring the mind into conformity with the world, but to stimulate to reaction against the world, — to bring the world into conformity to some idea which the mind itself sets up. While prose seeks to give a knowledge of things as they are, oratory strives, through influencing the will, to make things what they ought to be. For instance, the composer may seek to give a knowledge of the state or of society as they at present exist ; or he may strive to give such knowledge and arouse such sentiments as will prompt to effort to make them what they should be. A writer may desire to give a knowledge of slavery for the sake of the knowl- edge ; or he may, through such knowledge, prompt to action against some form of oppression, as was once done against slavery. Railroads as they are, are not what they should be; and feeling the desirability of making them so, one may speak to prompt action to that end. In so doing, he would form an oration. An oration is based in the emotions, for these are the motives to action. No appeal can be made to the will directly. People will not choose to act by simply being asked to do so. The proper motives to action must be aroused, through the presentation of thought to the intellect. Hence, while it was stated that dis- course affects the intellect, the sensibility, and the 36 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. will, the direct effect is confined to the intellect and the sensibility ; the sensibility being addressed as means to some end reached through action, or for its own sake. Poetry, or literary discourse, awakens emotions for their own sake, and not to serve as motives to action. One may contemplate a waterfall or a landscape and find his reward in the contemplation. Hearing the song of a bird or viewing a gorgeous sunset, is justified by the emotions awakened. In all such cases the mind feels that the object is what it ought to be — that it is perfect. Poetry presents the object as if there were no collision between its ideal and its real nature. Such a view of an object awakens the esthetic emotions, rather than those emotions which prompt to effort, such as the feelings of injustice and oppression wielded by Pat- rick Henry to arouse the colonists to resist the mother country. Let it be emphasized that the distinction here drawn between the kinds of discourse is that of adaptation to an end and not that of form. Popularly speaking, an oration is something spoken, and poetry is that which is written in verse. But an oration is still an oration when printed, and a poem is still a poem when changed to the prose form, as often happens in the process of translation. A poem delivered orally does not become an oration ; and an argument for states' rights put in verse is at best only doggerel poetry. Note the fol- lowing stanzas, from a so-called poem on the discovery of America, "designed to convey instruction to the young " : — THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 37 " Till near the sixteenth century, To Europe was unknown This great land of America, So populous since grown. The people then believed the world To be so very small That Europe, Asia, Africa Were with some islands all." While this is written in verse, it cannot be called poetry in any fundamental sense, but readily falls under prose, because it is an effort to teach facts touching the discovery of America. In all cases the form is incidental to the spirit. By the spiritual standard Irv- ing's " Sketch Book " is a collection of poems ; and this view is justified by the dictionary and the encyclopae- dia ; while Whittier's war poems, designed to arouse the people against slavery, are oratorical, because they seek to change the existing order of things. Shakespeare and the Psalmist are poets in spite of the fact that they did not write in verse. When it is said that an expres- sion is poetic, the soul of the expression is hinted at, and not its form. It is true that the highest tension of feeling naturally seeks rhythmical expression ; yet all good prose is more or less rhythmical ; every oration should be musical. Undoubtedly discourse may be classified on the basis of form into prose and poetry, and this will be done at the proper place — in discuss- ing the language of discourse ; but here we are con- cerned with discourse in its entire spirit and compass. Every one is conscious of using language to each of 38 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the three ends above described. And these ends are fundamental, controlling, as we shall see, the organiza- tion of both the thought and the style of discourse. These kinds of discourse shade imperceptibly into each other ; and frequently a discourse defies exact classification. But this should not discourage us, for such is true everywhere. The dividing line between plants and animals has never been found ; yet we rec- ognize the working value of such a distinction. Every- where in the world of thought things blend and flow ; and we must not hope to draw lines of thought more sharply than they are found in things. It matters not that we are baffled in classifying a given piece of dis- course ; for this fact shows the nature of the discourse, and this is what is really sought. Classification is not an end, but a means. If it be found that a discourse is equally well adapted to each of the three ends, let it be so ; for this is its unique and fundamental fact, — the fact that regulates all further procedure in its study. Such a discovery might be a criticism on the discourse, but not a reflection on the critic. As a rule, however, the classification is readily made, for the types of each class are distinct and numerous. Classify, on the basis of purpose, the following : — " The founder of rhetoric as an art was Corax of Syracuse (c. 466 15. c). In 466 Thrasybulus, the despot of Syracuse, was overthrown, and a democracy was established. One of the im- mediate consequences was a mass of litigation on claims to prop- erty, urged by democratic exiles who had been dispossessed by Thrasybulus, Hiero, or Gelo. If, twenty years after the Crom- wellian settlement of Ireland, an opportunity had been afforded to aggrieved persons for contesting every possession taken under THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. 39 that settlement in the ten counties, such persons being required to plead by their own mouths, the demand for an " art " of forensic rhetoric in Ireland would have been similar to that which existed in Sicily at the moment when Corax appeared. If we would un- derstand the history of Greek rhetoric before Aristotle, we must always remember these circumstances of its origin. The new "art" was primarily intended to help the plain citizen who had to speak before a court of law." "It is estimated that from seventy-five to a hundred thousand wives and children of these soldiers are now held in slavery. It is a burning shame to this country. . . . Wasting diseases, weary marches, and bloody battles are now decimating our armies. The country needs soldiers, must have soldiers. Let the Senate, then, act now. Let us hasten the enactment of this beneficent measure, inspired by patriotism and hallowed by justice and hu- manity, so that, ere merry Christmas shall come, the intelligence shall be flashed over the land to cheer the hearts of the nation's defenders and arouse the manhood of the bondman, that, on the forehead of the soldier's wife and the soldier's child no man can write ' Slave.' " " Oh, there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience ; she will surrender every pleas- ure to his enjoyment ; she will glory in his fame, and exult in his prosperity ; and if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune ; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace ; and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him." Which of the foregoing confronts an actual with an ideal condition of things, for the purpose of changing the ideal into the actual ? Which presents simply an ideal for the mere sake of the joy awakened by con- 4-0 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. templating the ideal ? Which presents a fact for its merely intellectual value ? Which of the fore- going confines the attention to one aspect of the sub- ject, and which to two aspects ? In what respect are all of these alike, and in what respect is each peculiar ? Select many other examples, and classify them by applying the foregoing questions. And for further emphasis select some piece of land and pre- sent it, first, to give a clear notion of it ; second, to persuade some one to buy it or to improve it ; third, to awaken the feeling of beauty. To each of the three ends, how should a steam-engine be presented ? forest trees ? charity? the school ? the solar system ? rhetoric? THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. The Theme. To whatever end discourse is adapted, thought is presented as the means, through language as the medium. Hence, we are here concerned, not with the nature of thought, but with its adaptation to the ends of utterance, — with thought in the process of affecting the mind addressed. The same subject-matter may be used for different purposes, but in each case it must be differently organized. In logic thought is considered in its own nature, and organized about some center of its own ; while in discourse thought must be or- ganized to the requirements of the end sought, and in obedience to the conditions under which it is sought. The history of Greece might be so compacted and organized as to satisfy the sternest laws of logic ; but such an organization would not serve to instruct im- mature minds, nor to produce emotional or volitional effects. The nature of the theme determines the logi- cal organization; the particular end sought, and the conditions under which it is sought, the rhetorical organization. The latter may be identical with the former, — in fact, for some purposes it must be so ; but in most cases a modification is made by the laws imposed from without. 4 2 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. Therefore, thought in discourse is studied in the process of producing an effect on some mind addressed, and its organization varies in obedience to the differ- ent effects to be produced, and the circumstances and conditions under which the effect is to be pro- duced. To give instruction, the battle of Gettysburg should be organized in one way ; to arouse poetic emotions, it must be organized differently, and still differently to move the will. And each of these must be changed in a marked degree in adapting from a lower to a higher phase of mental development. A still further modification is required when the end is sought under the limitations of some particular time, or place, or .peculiar circumstances, or to minds of special experience. An address to citizens would not be adapted to the soldiers who were engaged in the battle, and what would be suitable for the Southern soldier would not be suitable for the Northern soldier. The poet and the astronomer do not present the same facts about the sun, the moon, and the stars. A didactic discourse on religion or ethics requires the selection of quite different phases and elements from that required in arousing people to religious and ethical conduct. The poet dare not give the mathematical position, form, and size of a landscape, but the surveyor must do so. To use the rainbow as a subject of instruction would require its analysis into the laws of light, but to awaken esthetic feelings the attention must be directed to other aspects, and if it is used to guide conduct in some specific way, still other views must be taken. Lowell, in saying of the dandelion : — THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 43 " Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold," does not select the same points that are given in the botany. The instructor in zoology would not say of the bird singing that he ..." lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer he receives." Thus always the subject considered must be plastic to the purpose. Thought in discourse is peculiar in being considered, not in itself, as in logic, but as a means to an end, and is, therefore, organized, not only by its own laws, but also by the laws of the mind in which the effect is to be produced. From the side of mind we have already deduced the fundamental law of discourse as that of Purpose, and we are now brought to the highest law from the side of thought ; namely, that of Unity of process to the end sought. If instruc- tion is to be given, the ideas must cooperate to that end ; if the will is to be moved, all the feelings aroused must prompt in that direction ; if the esthetic feelings are to be stimulated, there must be no discordant note. The thought must have unity in moving the mind to the end sought. Such is the supreme requirement which the purpose makes upon the thought. This thought unity is called the Theme of discourse. In every discourse there must be one idea which sums up the whole, and within which all the parts are organ- ized. Whether a discourse is a single sentence, a para- graph, or an entire book, there must be one all-inclusive 44 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. thought. The Declaration of Independence is a com- plex document, but it is designed to express a single truth, — the right of the American Colonies to free- dom. Many things are said in " Little Lord Faunt- leroy," but they are all included in the idea that kind- ness begets kindness. All the diversity of imagery and sentiment in the "Vision of Sir Launfal " have their unity in the feeling of true charity. No matter how elaborate the exposition, if it have organic unity, it must revolve about, or within, a single idea. Hence the theme is the total significance of the discourse. After purpose, a clear conception of the theme is the first requirement of the composer or the inter- preter. Reading or hearing a discourse is largely the art of grasping into unity the various elements and phases of thought as they are presented ; as the art of composition consists chiefly in giving wealth and diversity of life to some theme constantly kept in unity. Hence the very great value, in reading and literary work, of being required to state the one idea for which the given discourse stands. For practical purposes discourse has been quite thoroughly read when the reader can state its theme ; not its title, for this is quite generally not its theme, and per- haps always too indefinite to answer the requirement of interpretation. The required definiteness will be given to the theme by stating it in the form of a proposition, — by answering the question, What one thing can be affirmed by the reading of this selection ? Or, if a composer, What one thing do I wish to affirm vby writing on this theme ? THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 45 It will be observed that the composer and the in- terpreter move in reverse order in relation to the elements of the theme. The interpreter seizes the elements and features first, and progressively unifies them into the theme. The composer first grasps the theme, and then proceeds to analyze it into its elements, after which the elements are given the organic unity of the whole. The critic will take one step beyond the ordinary reader ; for, after ascertain- ing the theme from the elements, he will reconstruct the discourse from the standpoint of the author — from the theme to its elements. But the first, and for ^general purposes the last, movement in reading is the construction of the theme out of the elements pre- sented. Hence, to interpret with efficiency one must keep the imagination and the judgment intently active relating into one idea all the others. The difference between readers is great ; and it lies chiefly in the power of organizing details into unity. One tries to hold everything, and remembers nothing ; while another organizes the elements into unity as he proceeds, and reaches with certainty the one thought which holds for him all the others. As no habit of reading is so valuable as that of resting the attention on the main issue as it unfolds itself in the process of interpretation, so nothing steadies the nerve of the writer through the compli- cated details of his subject-matter like a firm grip on the organic unity of his theme. After the inspiration of a worthy purpose, a firm grasp of the theme is next of prime importance. In fact there is little distinction 46 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. between them ; for seizing a theme firmly and vividly is itself an inspiration to utterance. One cannot wield a subject till it becomes a part of his life, and is reenforced by his whole life. At this point the subject is transmuted into motive to utterance. Therefore when a composer chooses a theme by which to accomplish a certain end, his first concern is to so bring the theme into his life that it becomes the impelling force in speech. No merely external posting tip on a subject will meet the requirement ; the speaker or writer must be able to give original con- struction to the theme by the initiative force of his own life. Unless the theme be thoroughly possessed it cannot be wielded with precision and force to the end proposed ; it cannot be adapted and given organic unity under a dominant purpose. One staggering under the weight of his theme cannot move nimbly to varying ends, nor adjust the matter delicately to varying conditions. The theme will burden him, and constrain him to the same movement under all circumstances. Thus burdened he cannot move with that masterly progress through the subject, and with that harmony and proportion of treatment which gives symmetry and organic beauty to the whole. Here again it appears that the primary condition of effective speech is the man himself ; for the theme on which he discourses must have been fully assimilated to his own life --must be his life. Unity in discourse cannot be secured by patching things together in a mechanical and external way ; it must arise from a unitary life impulse which orders and organizes every- THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 47 thing to a supreme end. This principle is well illustrated in the practice of writing books. For in- stance, one decides to write a grammar, and not having mastered language by an intimate experience with it through its prolonged use and study, places before him the grammars already written ; and by a careful reading and comparison rewords the matter in new phrases and outlines. This is the best he can do, if his wealth of experience with the language itself does not move him to construct from an inward resource. In one case there is mechanism ; in the other, organic life. One may easily write a history of the United States by averaging and paraphrasing many texts on that subject ; but to produce a living history the United States must have so found its way into the writer that he can construct originally. None but an original work can be well written, — not one that an- nounces truth before undiscovered, for in this sense originality is a vain striving ; but one written by the self-assertive thought of the writer, — one actively and not passively determined. Everything is original to the man who makes it his own, — to the one who can originate it and reproduce it. Originality in this sense conditions all effective writing. When the theme so takes possession of the writer as to speak through him as its mouthpiece something will be said clearly and forcibly to the purpose. This firm holding of the theme by the composer requires first that the theme be definitely bounded. To this end it should be stated in as many definite ways as possible, and the boundary lines between it 48 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. and all adjacent territory of thought should be pre- cisely run by means of comparison and contrast. The " fingers of the mind " must be placed well and firmly around it, as a condition to wielding it to any definite end. After the theme as a whole has been grasped it must be inwardly explored and all its phases, and its elements selected out and organized into the theme as a whole. Whatever wealth of life there is in the theme must be taken possession of by the composer. The law of unity implies variety ; there can be no unity without difference, and the greater the variety the richer the unity, so long as unity is main- tained. The more complex any work of man, so long as the complexity is in obvious unity, the greater the power of art displayed. One of the greatest feats of composition is shown by Shakespeare's dramas, which display great profusion of life in unity. Many scenes move abreast without confusion, and in a way to sweep the diapason of human life. A great volume of life is gradually wrought up to the most intense climax, and then as gradually relieved in the peace and joy that follow the storm cloud. The chief labor of the composer is to give distinct feature and wealth of variety to the object of his discussion. The greater the diversity held in unity in an organism the higher the life of that organism. The egg passes into the diversity of the chick, and thus assumes greater unity and life force ; and so must a theme, by the mind's brooding on it, grow into diversity and higher unity, and thus become a living and active force in the world of speech. Every composer will THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 49 recall the fact that the greatest stress under which he labors is that of giving organic life to his subject ; and the striking weakness of compositions such as those prepared for high-school graduating exercises, is the lack of varied and conspicuous features given to the theme treated. Bare mathematical unity may be maintained; it may be a unit without variety, — a globe without air, land, or water, without valley, plateau, or mountain, without lake, river, or water- fall, — a monotonous surface, without height or depth, day or night, winter or summer. Thus while empha- sizing the unity of the theme, there is implied a wealth of diversity in the unity, and that the greater the diversity the stronger the unity. In fact the law might well be stated as diversity in unity. While emphasizing wealth of diversity, the law does not require all the elements of the theme to be pre- sented ; but only those necessary to the purpose under the circumstances. All elements which do not further the purpose must be strictly rejected ; but every element which will further the purpose must be included. To whatever end the subject may be presented, many elements and phases of the subject have to be rejected ; and the composer must often practice self-denial in withholding what he finds inter- esting to himself, yet irrelevant to his purpose. He may desire to give his theme unity and completeness in itself, but he must yield to the unity of the theme in relation to the proposed end. But while unity does not require all the attributes of the theme, yet care must be taken to emphasize 50 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the all which are necessary to produce the desired effect. Again, the necessity for the complete mastery of the theme appears. The composer has ample resources only through knowing all the possibilities of the theme. He cannot make the theme go for all it is worth to the auditor without knowing the wealth of thought which it contains. He must be able to dwell on it with cumulative power till the end is realized ; and this he cannot do without an all-sided view, and without having explored its inner constitution. The cumulative force in his movement is by the wealth of material which he is able to present. The composer is most conscious of the effort to expand and amplify. His greatest strain is that of pushing out his theme here and there in its varied and distinct features till it takes possession of the mind addressed. The mind must have time to grow into a new state. It is a great art to be able to hold the theme close to the mind long enough for its full reaction upon the theme, even though old elements have to be repeated ; yet in this case they would assume new aspects and relations. The time factor is most easily secured when the speaker or writer has a wealth of views and materials provided. The unity requires the action of the theme on the mind in ways varied and continuous till the mind grows into the state desired. Shakespeare, in bringing his audience up to the climax, illustrates this principle admirably. His wealth of invention enables him to hold the auditor in one movement for a great length of time. But care is needed, in seeking to gain time, to keep up a feeling of progress. The purpose THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 5 1 is defeated as soon as there is a feeling of delay. The auditor must feel that the thought is being developed as rapidly as possible ; and the only way to secure this feeling and gain the necessary time is to have the mind of the author in rich and varied touch with the subject being considered. But the effective movement to a mental change by means of a theme does not depend wholly on the selec- tion and number of phases and elements of the theme, but finally on the DietJiod of their presentation. In discourse the elements are seldom, if ever, pre- sented in the order in which they logically cohere; but in the order in which they can most easily be appro- priated by the recipient. The discourse order is the chronological rather than the logical order; the point needed by the mind first is not necessarily of first im- portance to the subject. To instruct children in the Civil War would require first its picture and moving panorama of events; but these logically follow the cause and the moving spirit of the war. The child must begin with the objective and picturable aspects; and it may be that these are all he can receive at the time. The different grades of ability addressed require different arrangements of subject-matter. Popular, scientific, and philosophic discourse employ different methods of presenting the same subject-matter. And the elements arranged for the purpose of instruction are not properly arranged for volitional or emotional ends. The orator does not use materials in the same order as does the poet ; and when audiences and cir- cumstances vary the arrangement varies with them. 52 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. In general, the discourse must move freely and smoothly onward. There must be no hitching back and forth; the thought must grow by easy and imper- ceptible gradations from point to point. Not that it must move in a straight line, — for rather there should be rise and fall, a rhythmical flow, for thought and feel- ing obey the universal law of rhythmical motion, — but that there must be no lunging ahead, or returning to pick up pieces left by the wayside. No one feature gives a discourse more power than a steady onward movement to the end set up. All hesitancy and eddy- ing about of the thought are prime sources of weakness. The points made must have a distinct and orderly suc- cession, or the receiving mind will be baffled in its effort to organize the material presented, and miss the object for which the discourse stands. We have seen that interpretation is primarily the process of bringing into unity the elements as rapidly as they are pre- sented, and nothing can assist the interpreting mind so much as the orderly arrangement of elements in their presentation. In order that a composer master a theme in its unity and diversity, so that he may wield it with precision and effect, and in order that one may interpret with appreciation and profit, the various ways in which a theme is organized must be traced out. The different methods of theme organization give rise to clearly defined discourse processes. the thought in discourse. 53 The Discourse Processes. Since themes are unities of elements, it follows that the two primary movements of thought in the prepara- tion and the presentation of any theme for any purpose are those of analysis and synthesis. The elements of the theme must first be discerned, and then integrated into the whole. Or better, perhaps, three steps may be distinguished : First, seizing the theme in its vague unity; second, analyzing the theme into its elements; third, organizing the elements into the theme, giving a definite organic whole instead of the vague one grasped at the outset. This analysis and synthesis takes definite character from the kinds of unities which constitute the theme, — from the kinds of relations which bind the parts into unity. The parts of an engine are bound together in co- operation to the end for which the engine is designed. The parts of a tree are parts in working together to carry on the life process of the tree as a whole. The parts of the human body contribute to one life process, and are not parts except in and through the whole; and the whole is not a whole except in and through the parts. The government is composed of parts working together to secure the ends of justice. The earth, the solar system, the universe have parts bound together in cooperation. Such a unit is called an organic unit. The lowest form of it, or the form in which it seems to vanish, is the unit whose parts have spatial unity, as in the case of a stone or a pile of material. Here the 54 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. parts are in touch, and bound together by physical force; yet in this case the parts cooperate to make the whole. In some of the other cases named, parts were separated in space, and the unity consists in functional cooperation rather than in spatial wholeness. But in both cases the wholes are bounded in space, and both have parts whose connection makes the whole; both are called individual objects. Gladstone is an individ- ual ; and so is the British nation, and for the same reason. The police force of a city is an individual police force, because the parts work together to keep order, as do the parts of one policeman. The reasons given for calling Jupiter an individual apply equally well to the solar system as an individual. Let it not be understood, therefore, that a theme to be individual must consist of parts touching in space ; yet every in- dividual, though it be a mental act or state, must be figured to the mind as bounded in space. Hence, such themes must first be presented to the imagination as pictured wholes; after which their deeper thought unity may be penetrated. Further guidance for presenting the individual is obtained from noting that each individual has parts which coexist in space and parts which succeed each other in time — space wholes and time wholes. The parts of this tree exist together now, but considering the life of this tree as a whole, in its growth from the seed, it has parts succeeding each other: as, first the sprout and then the shoot appearing above ground, then the shrub, etc. A battle may be caught up in one view at a given moment, as having coexisting parts THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 55 in space; but it is also a moving panorama, having parts in distinct succession. A complete view of the earth brings before the mind its successive stages of development, and also its parts as they at present work together side by side. Thus every individual is a space whole or a time whole — a simultaneous whole or a successive whole. While it requires both views of an individual to complete its organization, the two views cannot be taken at the same time. This will become evident by an attempt to think of an object as fixed and as chang- ing: at the same time. Since this is true, two distinct discourse processes arise in treating the individual. The process presenting the individual as a space, or coexisting, whole is called Description; the process presenting the individual as a time, or successive, whole is called Narration. Themes have quite a different kind of unity from the organic unity above described. A sewing-machine has its origin in an idea which creates all other sewing-ma- chines, and may create them infinitely, so far as the pos- sibility of the idea is concerned. All sewing-machines have their unity in the one originating idea, or type. The idea as an outgoing energy produces all sewing- machines, and thus gives unity to all. When one says simply ''sewing-machine" or "the sewing-machine" he is naming the type, or idea, which brings forth the individual sewing-machines. To think any given sew- ing-machine requires it to be viewed in connection with the common idea of all sewing-machines. A certain activity produces a triangle — an activity which goes 56 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. out and comes back to the place of starting by two pointed turns. This activity produces all triangles, and can produce them infinitely. All are one in this activity, and this is the essence of each one. The mind cannot grasp any one triangle without seizing upon the activity which produces triangles in general. Triangles may vary infinitely, but they are all alike in being produced by an activity returning to the place of starting by two pointed turns. There is an idea, a nature, a potency which produces oak trees, and which may produce them without limit. All trees formed under the impulse of this idea are one in that idea; and the study of each oak requires it to be viewed in connection with the all-producing idea. When we speak of the nature of anything we have reference to its producing idea; for the word nature means that which is about to appear. The nature of man is the energy, the potency which persists in producing men as distinguished from other objects. The nature of an Indian is the fixed idea or type which determines all individual Indians. Such a unit is called a class unit, or concept, as dis- tinguished from the organic unit. The class unit does not mean simply the common productive idea of a number of individuals, but the unity of the individuals in and through the idea. The parts of this unit are the individuals which spring from the same originating source. It differs from the organic unit, not in parts, but in the way the parts are unified. Thinking of the French people as a nation, as individuals working to- gether for a common good, we have an individual — THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 57 a nation ; but thinking of them as being Frenchmen, as having a common genesis, we have a class unit. In each case it is the same subject-matter, — the same whole and the same parts, — but in the former the parts are unified through cooperation, while in the latter through a common nature. Each triangle has sides which work together to make a triangle, but these sides have common nature, being produced by the same kind of movement, which makes the class units called sides. And so with the angles ; they help to form the triangle, but the same activity produces each ; by the former they are organized, and by the latter classified. Triangles might be placed together to form some figure, and would thus help one another to make the whole ; but the same parts, triangles, may be formed into a class by conceiving them in unity with the idea producing each and all. Thus the dis- tinction between the organic unit and the class unit is not that between different parts nor different wholes, but in the manner in which the parts are bound into wholes. It might be well to observe, however, that the class whole cannot be bounded in space, as can the organic whole ; hence it is not a space whole. This follows from the fact that the producing energy, the idea, the type, can create individuals infinitely. After making any conceivable number of engines from the idea engine, the idea remains as productive as ever. Hence the imagination is not required to bound the class unit, as it is required to do with the organic unit. As the organic unit has two aspects, so has the class unit. Class unity consists, as we have seen, in the 58 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. relation of the parts, the individuals, to the one princi- ple which produces the parts. The unity is that of the individuals with the general creating them. This unity can be taken as it exists at a given time, simply as a fixed thing, somewhat as the individual is viewed in description ; or the unity may be thought of in the process of being established under the influence of the active principle, somewhat as the individual is viewed in narration. Ocean currents may be considered as they are, — the individual currents as in unity with a physical principle which constitutes them what they are ; or the physical principle may be viewed in the active production of them, or, through them, of other phenomena. The distinction is simply that between individuals as already existing in the unity of a com- mon nature and individuals in the process of being produced by a common nature or of producing other individuals. From the side of mind, it is the distinction between concept and judgment. The concept is the grasping of the unity existing among individuals, while the judgment is the process of establishing in thought the unity between the subject and predicate of thought ; which interpreted means the unity between the indi- vidual and the general. When the subject and predi- cate of a judgment become identified the judgment vanishes into a new concept, and the desired unity is established, and may be taken in the future without affirming and arguing. However the matter may be turned the unity appears as that between the individual and the general, either THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 59 as fixed, as a fact, or in the process of becoming. The first kind of unity is set forth by the process of Expo- sition ; the second, by the process of Argumentation. These processes are distinct, because, as in the case of description and narration, unity cannot be viewed as established and in the process of being established at the same time. The four discourse processes are alike in that each deals with individual objects ; but they differ in that description deals with individual objects as fixed, as spatial wholes, as they stand organized at a given time ; narration, with individuals as changing in time, as time wholes, as organized wholes progressive in time ; exposition, with individuals as in fixed unity with a common productive energy ; argumentation, with individuals in the active process of unity under a general principle. In all cases the purpose is to pre- sent the theme in unity, and the different processes are only so many phases of a movement to that end, — phases depending on the kind of unity inherent in the subject-matter itself. All of the processes may be required in the same discourse, but the character of the discourse as a whole is determined by the kind of unity which the discourse seeks ultimately to estab- lish. The relation of the processes is not that of higher and lower, or that of simplicity and complexity, but that of the view taken of the subject-matter. For different purposes the same theme may be presented under one or the other of the different processes. Hence, the three ends of discourse are realized by four processes, and to the three kinds of discourse on 60 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the basis of the effect produced must be added the four kinds of discourse on the basis of the process by which the effect is produced. These processes, based on the nature of the theme, move forward under the law of purpose. It thus appears that the processes of discourse are controlled by two factors : (i) the rela- tions which constitute the theme, and (2) the laws im- posed by the mind addressed. These factors must now guide us in the detailed consideration of the dis- course processes. DESCRIPTION. Description is the process by which one mind presents to another, through language, an individual as consti- tuted of coexisting elements. If the real object or its picture could be presented to the eye, its attributes and parts would appear in their unity at once, — at least in their spatial unity. But by the limitation of language, when the several ideas are presented in discourse they must follow each other in an order of time. In this respect language is inferior to painting. Painting, which employs figures and colors in space, presents attributes and parts as they coexist ; thus freeing the mind from the neces- sity of unifying the constituent ideas, so far as the superficial unity is concerned. But in expressing the inner meaning of the object, as interpreted by the judgment and penetrative imagination, language has more than a compensating advantage. While it is possible to paint or to sculpture all parts of the human body, the functional relation of each to life, as inter- preted by the judgment, can be expressed in language only. Painting can express only the outer unity of an object, while language can express the inner unity of thought. The two facts — namely, that the object to be described consists of coexisting elements, and that, by the necessities of language, these elements must be presented in succession — make the law of unity in de- scription difficult to obey. The law requires the object 62 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. to be so presented that the interpreter will readily and correctly organize it into the unity it was before broken in the process of presentation. The first step in description is that of presenting the theme as a whole by means of its attributes. Attributive Description. The theme as a whole is presented by means of its attributes, and this process may be called attributive description. Any means by which this object is known not to be that is an attribute. Since attri- butes do not mutually exclude each other as do parts, they always distinguish objects as wholes. The odor, flavor, weight, and form of the orange are interfused throughout, and occupy the same space ; while the peel, pulp, and seeds must occupy different spaces. An object is first distinguished from other objects by its relations to them ; and the first step in this phase of description is to present the theme By Attributes of Relation. — This method presents the object under the relation of Purpose and Means, Cause and Effect, Time and Place, and Likeness and Difference. The use of each of these attributes involves some object other than the one under consideration. To think of the purpose of an object or of the object as means carries the thought directly to something be- yond the immediate object of thought. To think of the cause or the effect of anything involves more than the single thing. A second object is required THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 63 to locate anything in space or time ; and likeness or difference is clearly inconceivable without two objects. 1. Purpose is the highest distinguishing mark of an object ; and to state the purpose to which an object is means is to make the most comprehensive description of it possible by the use of a single term. Purpose calls the object into being, and unifies its other attri- butes and its parts. These are what they are because of the object's purpose, or end which it fills. There- fore purpose is the most fundamental truth, the most pervasive fact, that can be given in the description of an object. All thought would be thwarted without the ideas of design and adaptation. One cannot speak intelligently about a book, a bridge, a plant, an animal, or the earth, without employing in some form these conceptions. The whole question before us in this discussion of discourse is that of its construction or of its interpretation under the law of adaptation and design. In any field of labor man has only to design and adapt. All things are organized under ends sought ; and there is always assumed a supreme end which organizes all, — "one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves." And again : — " I see in part That all as in some piece of art, Is toil cooperant to an end." We should expect, therefore, the relation of purpose and means to permeate and control every description ; and yet one not accustomed to note the fact will be 64 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. surprised at the frequency and variety of terms used in a description to express this relation. They are not confined to those of direct expression, such as purpose, adaptation, aim, object, design, intent, motive, destination, in order to, the "be all and the end all," and the like ; but are found lurking in disguises of many forms, as in this : — "And what is so rare as a day in June ? Then, if ever, come perfect days ; Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays." The three expressions, "rare," "perfect," and "in tune," express the adaptation of the day to its life- giving purpose. A day is perfect in proportion as it nourishes life, for that is its purpose. To say that a day is rare is to say that it is exceptionally well fitted to the end of life. The earth is in tune when it can produce the song of life. Lowell's whole description of the day in June brings out in varied ways this one idea. And when he describes the mountain by saying, — " With our faint heart the mountain strives," he expresses, in the word "strives," the fact that the mountain seeks to influence our lives for the better. Note the same relation expressed in the following lines from the Spanish by Longfellow, describing the brook : — 41 Laugh of the mountain ! lyre of bird and tree ! Pomp of the meadow ! mirror of the morn I " THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 6$ This relation has two forms, — one in which the object is considered in adaptation to an end ; and the other in which the object itself is conceived as the purposer. This latter phase is known as descrip- tion by personification. Note its use in the following exquisite bit from Lowell's description of the brook, in " The Vision of Sir Launfal " : — " Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old ; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek ; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him winter-proof ; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams ; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars." In the description of the June day, occurring in the same poem as the foregoing, the author presents it as being adapted to a purpose ; but the wind and the brook are presented as purposing. 2. After an object has been purposed a cause must operate to produce it ; and when produced it acts and reacts on other objects, manifesting itself in effects. The relation of cause and effect produces changes in objects, and is more prominently employed in narration ; yet it is essential to description. In giving a full conception of the Andes Mountains it is necessary to state the force that upheaved them, and 66 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. their effects on climate, vegetable and animal life, and on the industries of man. The relation of cause and effect is the leading means of presenting a mental state. To bring a particular mental state fully into consciousness, it is necessary to present the conditions which produced the state ; and these may be further strengthened by giving the conduct of the person under the in- fluence of the state. To describe a state of fear is to present some object that produced the state ; as a tornado whirling aloft the ruined houses of a city, with the effect of the fear in the wild gesticulations and screams of the fleeing inhabitants. Longfellow, in describing his sadness in " The Day is Done," gives the cause of his condition in the falling darkness and the light gleaming through the rain and the mist, and also the effect in the fact that he is driven to seek relief. Under the same relation a person's physical appear- ance may be described to suggest his spiritual attri- butes, since the latter, to a certain extent, are causes to the former as effects. Chaucer, in the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," introduces the spiritual quali- ties of each character by means of his physical attri- butes. And thus Irving, in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," brings out the spiritual Ichabod Crane by means of the physical Ichabod. Physical objects are frequently presented, and in some of their phases can be presented only, by giving their effects on the observer. To speak of an object as awful, terrible, stupendous, sublime, picturesque, THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 6? grotesque, or beautiful is to present the object by means of the effect produced on the observer. Irving talks of sober and melancholy days, mournful magnifi- cence, gloomy remains, a picture of glory, amazing height, noiseless reverence, disastrous story, awful harmony, thrilling thunders, solemn concords ; and in so doing speaks in terms of the effect produced. 3. Relation in time is not so prominently used in description as in narration ; yet its use frequently facilitates the presentation of other attributes. Stat- ing the time of the day and of the year at which a landscape is observed is necessary in order to bring the picture briefly and fully before the mind. This relation has great power of suggestiveness. To in- troduce the description of a shipwreck by, " It was midnight on the waters," both arouses a vague sense of fear, which the fuller description is to make clear and strong, and fills the imagination at once with a general conception of the whole. To state that a man is old carries with it gray hairs, dim eyes, feeble voice, palsied limbs, and clouded memory. To know that a church has stood for a hundred years implies more than can be told in pages of descriptive detail. The location of an object in space corresponds to its location in time. A material object cannot be conceived without relation to other objects in space ; and the parts of an object can be conceived only in spatial relations to each other. And spiritual objects, such as mental activities and states, are figured under spatial relations. In treating one's moral character his virtues are placed side by side as if they had 68 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. spatial qualities. Thus space seems to be a universal form which the mind imposes on all objects in order to think them. The mind itself is figured under spatial relations ; as, large and small, high and low, few-sided and many-sided, and the like ; and character is spoken of as straight or crooked, erect or prostrate, etc. 4. The relation of Likeness and Difference gives rise to a distinct process of description called Com- parison and Contrast. All objects are known by means of likenesses and differences. An object can- not be grasped as an object were it not both alike and different from other objects. To bring these like- nesses and differences into consciousness is one of the most effective means at the composer's command of presenting the elements of an object effectively. Generally the process employs a well-known object as a means of presenting the one under consideration. It has been seen that the chief weakness of a verbal description is the limitation of language which pre- vents the writer or speaker from flashing all parts of the object on the mind at once. The more nearly this can be done, the better. Comparison and contrast is a most powerful means to this end. Often a detailed process of thought and a tediousness of ex- pression may be avoided by comparing and contrast- ing the object under discussion with some well-known object. This is not merely brevity in language, which comes from substituting a known object for words ; it econo- mizes the thought processes. Without requiring the THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 69 mind to trace the action of a valve in the heart, attention may be called to the action of a valve in a pump, if the latter be familiar to the audience. A strange fruit may be put before the mind at once, by comparing it to an apple, if it is essentially like an apple ; and thus save weariness of details in both language and thought. To refer a strange animal to its species saves a volume of descriptive detail and a useless repetition of thought processes. This implied comparison presents the essential characteristics of the object ; and if the special marks of the individual are required, a few points of contrast will fill the out- line. Of two objects equally well known, comparison and contrast is a strong means of presenting both at the same time. Often a vivid and sufficient descrip- tion may be made by presenting an object by its extreme opposite. Whether comparison or contrast shall be the leading method depends on whether likenesses or differences are assumed to be most prominent in the object. If two objects are supposed to be different, then it is most effective to present them in their likenesses ; and if they are assumed to be alike then the presenta- tion of differences will fix best the individuality of each. But usually likenesses and differences should be carried along together. In doing this the two methods should be kept distinct. A point of likeness may be given, and then a corresponding point of dif- ference, thus carrying the likenesses and differences in parallel lines. Or all the likenesses may be given by themselves, and then the differences by themselves. JO THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. The purpose being to abbreviate thought and language processes, the object chosen with which to compare the theme must (i) be a familiar object, and must (2) have the greatest number of points common to the theme. To select an object less familiar than the theme, or points of comparison that need explanation themselves, is to defeat the purpose of the comparison. In order that the object may have the greatest number of points common to the theme, it must not be chosen from a class more comprehensive than necessary. The comparison of a horse with a reptile would violate this law. Both belong to vertebrates, but it would be better to choose from mammals, as the bat ; better still to choose from quadrupeds, as the lion ; and still better to choose from the ungulata, as the ox. After presenting an object as a whole by means of its distinct relations to some other object, one other step in attributive description remains; namely, that of presenting the object By Means of its Properties. — Properties are attri- butes which inhere in the nature of the object. They determine it from within, while relations determine it from without. Properties are of two kinds, Primary and Secondary. 1. Primary qualities are essential to the existence of the object, and are involved in every conception of it. To think them away is to destroy all thought of the object. They fall into two general classes, Exten- sion and Resistance. a. Extension, which may be called the mathematical quality, gives rise to the two subordinate attributes of THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. J\ Form and Size ; the first resulting from the kind of extension, the second from the degree of extension. These relations unify the other attributes to the senses, as purpose does to thought. The weight, color, taste, and odor coincide within the same form and limit. These attributes give the empty form of the object, which the other attributes fill out. Position, form, and size are, after purpose, most commonly used to distinguish objects. They even serve to distinguish spiritual objects in a figurative sense. We speak of a large-minded man; of a man "four square to all the winds that blow " ; of a straight man ; of a right and a wrong headed man ; of men superior and inferior ; of high-minded men ; of men above or below a certain plane of conduct, etc. b. The other class of primary qualities, the different forms of resistance, add to the idea of a mere extended form that of a power which resists, either as an active or passive force. A resisting, as well as an extended, something is essential to our notion of an object, whether it be a conception of a material or a spiritual object. The general attribute of passive resistance manifests itself in particular objects as hard, soft, firm, fluid, tough, brittle, rigid, flexible, rough, smooth, light, heavy, compressible, incompressible, elastic, non-elastic, etc. — the physical properties of matter, as the others were the mathematical. It is obvious that these attributes are given primarily by the muscular sense, the lowest sense giving the most fundamental quality. This sense, through these primary qualities of resistance, brings us into a knowledge of external existence. 72 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. While the spatial relations condition the existence of matter as such, these are the inner forces which de- termine and distinguish all objects as objects. They are not determined from without, but are themselves the shaping and conditioning forces. These forces reveal themselves only in reaction against a force within ourselves, and with them we begin our struggle with the outer world. These physical attributes, which are manifested in the struggle with the material world, are the ones attributed to spirit in its struggle in the moral world, such as firm, rigid, resisting, flexible, stern, unyielding, stable, resolute, strong, lenient, persistent, austere, rigorous, etc. More important than passive resistance is the active outgoing of the object to en- counter the world about it, reaching its most significant form in self-activity and will. Objects reveal their true nature in action, and for this reason attributes of action must be employed in description. The river flows, the bird sings, the mind thinks; this is their nature. A man's character is always described by giving his actions. While the actions are fleeting, they point to some permanent quality from which they arise. In fact attributes of action often signify only the power to act; as when we say that a bird sings. This does not mean that it is in the active process of singing, but only that it has the power to sing. A spiritual object can be described only through attributes of action. The primary attribute of mind is activity. We infer its nature from its acts. A man's specific acts and utterances are the key to his inner life. To show that patriotism was one of the traits of THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 73 Washington's life, is to bring before the mind what he said and did. When the novelist or dramatist creates a character, he causes the character to reveal himself in speech and action. The writer endows him with some life principle at the outset, and then contrives occasions and opportunities for him to say and do what is in keeping with a man thus endowed. After the character has once in him the breath of life, a real controlling principle, he passes from under the control of his creator, doing those things which it is fitting for one thus constituted to do. The delineator has only to watch how his hero conducts himself under all the circumstances of life. " People think an author makes his characters and moves them at his will, like so many jumping-jacks, controlled by hidden strings. If that were so each character would be a repetition of the author himself, and nobody would read the book. An author's characters are beyond his control ; they do as they please, and if anybody thinks the men of Drum- tochty are to be easily handled he does not know them." 1 Biography, in setting forth the growth of character, is a most efficient means to character description. This in process is narration ; yet the narration, if the purpose be to arrive at the essential elements of the man's life as a completed product, is subordinate to the process of description. This, too, gives the best opportunity for showing the reaction of the environment on the character. While the individual moulds his age he is moulded by it. His traits and habits are partially accounted for in the life from which he sprang. 1 Ian Maclaren. 74 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. 2. The secondary attributes are less essential to the object. They are felt to be affections of the senses rather than qualities of the object. Sound is felt to be subjective, while firmness, given by the muscular sense, is felt to be in the object. The muscular sense gives an objective, resisting something, which as cause pro- duces a subjective effect on the sense of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight, giving rise to the various tactile sensations, tastes, odors, sounds, and colors. These senses cannot reveal to us the objective world, unless the sense of sight be an exception, cooperating with the muscular sense to give externality and form. With this exception, these secondary attributes produce their effect on the senses through an active condition of the body to which the attributes belong. The object to be tasted or smelt must be in a state of disso- lution, and to be heard, in a state of motion. Sight and touch are more nearly like the muscular sense, in that they present the body in its normal condition; yet here light is conveyed to the eye through the vibrations of the particles of the body, and the same is true of some form of tactile sensations. These attributes are secondary only in the sense that they are less essential to the existence of the object. If the basis were the effect on the mind, the order would seem reversed; for sight and hearing stand first, in that they minister to the wants of the soul, while taste and smell minister to the wants of the body; and the other attributes to the wants of the object. Thus the muscular sense stands at one extreme of the sense scale, giving that which is of first importance THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 75 to the object; and hearing and sight at the other, giving that which is of first importance to the mind. The terms used to name secondary physical qualities are freely used metaphorically to name spiritual quali- ties, as was found to be the case in primary qualities. In fact, all words descriptive of spiritual objects origi- nally signified physical attributes. Those that seem now to be applied literally, as calm, candid, pure, sincere, bright, dull, etc., have simply lost their physi- cal analogy by constant use. It thus appears that a copious vocabulary of words expressing physical quali- ties is essential to the description of spiritual objects. The presentation of an object as a whole under the relation of substance and attribute prepares the way for its presentation under the relation of whole and part. This process is called Partition, or Partitive Description. Whether it be a physical or a mental object, it can- not be conceived without parts. It must at least have a top and a bottom, a right and a left side, a beginning and an end, an inside and an outside. Whole and part are correlative, for neither can be conceived without the other. Thus grasping a whole is the grasping of attributes and parts. Without both of these ideas not even a start can be made in the description of an object; and a description can involve nothing else than the presentation of attributes and parts. Parts, as we have seen, differ from attributes in be- ing mutually exclusive. Each part must occupy a space ?6 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. of its own, and each part taken by itself constitutes a new individual. The old individual from which the new is derived is but a part of a larger whole. This fact further distinguishes parts from attributes, since an attribute cannot exist or be thought of as an attri- bute apart from the object to which it belongs. Each part has the same distinguishing attributes as the whole, and must be presented as if it itself were a whole, with the further step of unifying the parts in the whole. The attributes given of the parts must, therefore, be such as will unify them in the whole. What this means has already been largely indicated under the discussion of the organic unit as distin- guished from the class unity. The parts in the lowest phase of the organic unit are simply aggregated in space. In this, mere position is the unifying attribute; an object appears as a whole to the senses or to the im- agination. It is a mere external unity, and the whole is simply the sum of its parts. The parts cooperate simply by addition, as people collected make a multi- tude or a mass, or as a number of oranges make a pile of oranges. If the oranges were built into a pyramid they would then cooperate a little more definitely to form the whole; and other attributes of each individual besides mere aggregation must be given. Now it is not simply the fact of being together, but of being together in a specified way. And rising still higher in the scale of organic unity, as in the tree or a school in which the parts actively cooperate, still other and more complex attributes of each part are involved in showing the unity of each part with the THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. fj whole. This requires always a statement of the function of the part, together with the attributes of the part which adapt it to its function. But in all cases such attributes of a part must be given as make it a member of the whole. If the whole is a mere aggregate, it is necessary to give only the position of each part with reference to the whole; but. if there is active cooperation, the attributes which adapt the part in the cooperation must be given. Thus parts, as wholes, are presented through attributes, but only by means of those attributes which bind them into the unity of the whole. The law of unity in Partition requires that the parts be so presented that the receiving mind may readily and correctly organize them into the whole. This can be done only i. When the farts are made on the same basis of division. In dividing an individual there is choice of bases, permitted by the nature of the object, and determined by the purpose of the description. It may serve the purpose best to follow some accidental basis, as the order in which the parts appear to the eye, or the relative position in space. Such obvious and superficial bases are always used in the lower order of description — descriptions in which the sensuous phases of the object are made prominent. The more scientific the description the more fundamental the basis. This is a question of adaptation to a purpose. On the basis of separation in space, the child readily divides the human body into head, trunk, and limbs. 78 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. This is the best basis for the child, but the physiologist would insist on a basis more intimately connected with life processes. The ordinary description of a landscape would require the mention of such parts as appear at different places, or as occur at different moments of time. But for geographical purposes, the basis must have some -fundamental relation to life. Every change in the basis gives a new set of parts. Not only does this law require the basis to be chosen which is best adapted to the purpose of the writing, but it requires that all the parts be determined on the same basis. If a writer should present a tree as composed of roots, bark, trunk, woody substance, branches, and pith; or the human body as composed of flesh, blood, nerves, muscular tissue, vital organs, adipose tissue, bones, and the mechanical system, using two or more bases of division, utter confusion would arise in the mind of the interpreter. The division should be such as could be made of the actual object. The tree can be actually parted into root, trunk, and branches, and each part put in a different place. So with bark, woody sub- stance, and pith. But if one should attempt to make an actual division of the tree on both bases at once, he would have a practical illustration of what the law of unity means in requiring the division to be made on the same basis. And further, the mind can organize the parts into unity readily 2. When the parts are named in the order determined by the basis. THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 79 If ignorant of a tree, as the recipient in a description is supposed to be, to present the parts as roots, leaves, trunk, and branches would cause the mind to form an object wholly different from the one to be described. The basis of partition used determines the order of presenting the parts. It is not necessarily an order of nearness in space or succession in time. It may be an order of functional relation. When the basis of division is that of space, the parts must be named in spatial order. When the basis of division is the order of observation in time, the parts must be named in the order of occurrence. When the basis is some deter- mining principle, the parts must be named in their functional relation, without regard to their position or succession. Thus the parts of the eyeball may be named from without inward, or from within outward, following an order in space; or following the operation of the law of optics, there would be an entirely differ- ent method of procedure, — as first, the retina; second, the crystalline lens, with the parts about it which aid in refracting light; then those parts which regulate the light, followed by those which adjust and protect the image-forming parts. But after the proper basis is selected and adhered to, and the parts given in the order determined by the basis, the object cannot be readily and correctly unified except 3. When all the parts which determine the basis are named. To present a tree as composed of trunk, branches, and leaves, or a flower as composed of calyx, corolla, and 80 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. pistil, is to present the mind with an incomplete unit, and therefore a violation of the general law of unity. Thus the basis being determined by the purpose, if all such parts as the basis gives be presented in the order of their relation as determined by the basis, the mind will the most readily and correctly organize them into the unity they were in before their separa- tion in the process of presentation. The process of description may now be presented in one view by the following outline, which forms a general scheme for all descriptions. Not that a de- scription conforms to the outline, but every description moves within the outline as modified in adaptation to the end sought. The object to be described, — I. As a whole, by means of its attributes. 1. By means of relations. a. Purpose and means. b. Cause and effect. c. Time and space. d. Likeness and difference. 2. By means of properties. a. Primary. (i) Extension — form and size. (2) Resistance — passive and active. b. Secondary — color, sound, odor, taste, and touch. II. As made up of parts. 1. Analysis into parts by the laws of partition. 2. Synthesis of parts by the foregoing attributes. the thought in discourse. 8 1 The Process Illustrated. Construction. — Suppose we choose for our theme a particular human eye. i. The primary law requires that we fix at the out- set a definite aim. Let this be to instruct. More specifically, let it be to produce a full and accurate knowledge of the object chosen, — not a mere picture or general conception of it. This presupposes on the part of the hearer or reader a mind so fully developed that there need be but little concern about adapting to its method of thought, with the exception that the person addressed is supposed to have but a vague knowledge of the object. His knowledge of the eye, in the case assumed, is not sufficient to warrant a strictly logical method of procedure. 2. That the law of unity may be followed, the next step is a statement of the unifying idea. The purpose being to instruct under the conditions named, the uni- fying idea is found in the intellectual relations of the object. The aim stated above requires us to choose the highest bond of union, which is that of the purpose of the eye. 3. The third step is to present this eye as a whole by means of its attributes, under the laws of selection, completeness, and method. The attributes selected, their number, and their arrangement are determined by the purpose of the description already fixed, and also by the unifying idea chosen for the eye itself. The attributes must be united into the whole by showing how each adapts the eye to its purpose. 82 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. 4. The fourth step is the presentation of the parts of the eye, as they adapt it to its purpose. This involves two steps : — a. The basis on which the eye is to be divided must first be selected. This has already been determined by the unifying idea chosen for the eye, — namely, that of its purpose. The parts given must be made on their fundamental relation to the whole. The purpose of this eye is to form an image so as to produce the sensation of vision. The relation of the parts to this purpose must determine the parts selected, and the completeness and method of their presentation. b. The second step is the organization of the parts into the whole out of which they have just been made. This requires that the attributes of each part must be given according to the laws for presenting the attri- butes of the whole, — that is, that all those attributes be selected which adapt each part to its use in the object, and that they be presented according to the general law of presenting attributes of a whole. For the purpose of testing our description by the laws, the matter may be formulated as in the following outline. For the sake of brevity, much is omitted which can readily be supplied. Only two parts are given, leaving the others to be filled out by these ex- amples. The outline, however, is sufficiently full and accurate to illustrate what an outline of this eye should be, and what is better than a full description for test- ing the organization of the matter under the laws of thought. Purpose — an organ of vision. THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 83 I. Attributes of the whole adapting to the purpose. 1 . Position — In cavity of orbit in upper front part of head ; thus securing (1) range of vision, and (2) protection. 2. Form — spherical; thus securing (1) ease of adjust- ment, and (2) firmness. 3. Size — about one inch in diameter. (Why?) 4. Firm and hard, to maintain the proper adjustment of parts. II. Parts of the whole which adapt to the purpose. 1. The outer coat of the eye. a. Sclerotic coat. (1) Purpose — to give form and protection, and to furnish means of attachment for the muscles. (2) Attributes adapting to its purpose : (a) Position — external posterior part, thus enclosing the other organs and admit- ting light in front. (b) Form — a hollow sphere, with an ante- rior opening to admit light, and a posterior one for the optic nerve. (c) Size — five sixths of globe, as required by openings named ; and one twenty- fifth of an inch thick in posterior part, but thinner in middle portion. (d) Dense, hard, firm, and fibrous, to pre- serve form, support inner parts, and to furnish attachments for the muscles. (e) White and smooth on outer surface, ex- cept at point of insertion of muscles ; inner surface brown and grooved. b. Cornea. (1) Purpose — (a) with sclerotic coat, protect ; (b) but while protecting must transmit light ; (c) incidental to its other functions, to re- fract light. 84 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. (2) Attributes adapting to its purpose. («) Position — front part of eye continuous with sclerotic coat. (Why ?) (£) Form —circular, and concavo-convex. (Why ?) (c) Size — one sixth of outer surface of eye, one thirtieth of an inch in thickness. (Why ?) (*"*- ML, l60 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. greater the number of witnesses, the more effective is the testimony produced ; but one competent witness, as a physician testifying to some point of practice in medi- cine, would carry conviction against any number of illiterate and non-professional men. One able and honorable statesman is more competent to bear wit- ness on the value of a measure for general good than the mass of voters who may be called upon to testify at the ballot. Whatever the character, the number of witnesses has great force when, without the opportu- nity for collusion, they bear concurrent testimony. In this case their agreement could not be accounted for on any other ground than the truth of what they say. Authority is a kind of effect from which valuable arguments may be produced. It differs from testi- mony in that testimony respects a matter of fact, while authority, a matter of opinion. In authority we accept the conclusions others have reached after an investiga- tion of the question at issue. This is often the most forcible proof that can be produced, for the conclusions may be of an expert, or many such, involving a wider investigation of facts than would be possible for the immediate occasion. In law, opinions delivered by courts of justice are taken as unquestioned proof in cases which the opinion covers. General Laws of Argumentation. The Law of Purpose. - The practical value of an argument is not measured by its absolute logic, but by the progress from one mental condition to another, THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. l6l made in the mind of those addressed. Such progress may require the closest logical articulation of the sub- ject-matter; as, when the purpose is to present the logic of the subject for its own sake. In this case those addressed are supposed to be seeking the reason involved in the question for the sake of that reason. The mind desires the whys and the wherefores of things, and it appeals to argumentation to gratify this desire. In this case the argument has no end beyond the logic of the argument itself; hence, the logical con- tinuity in the argument measures the progress desired in the mind addressed. The arguments in geometry are of this class. It is possible to argue questions of free trade and protective tariff in the same spirit; that is, not as an advocate who has an ulterior end, but as one investigating truth for truth's sake. In such cases the mind addressed is supposed to be in search of the truth, and needs no rhetorical device to stimu- late it to active appropriation. Such arguments are supposed to fall outside the subject of rhetoric into that of logic; yet the strictest logical argument must form the basis of adaptation to minds in other con- ditions than that above described; just as the logical arrangement of subject-matter in description, narration, and exposition forms the basis of adaptation to the various conditions and changes to be produced by those processes of discourse. The rhetorical argument is called into exercise in the stress and art of producing volition and action; espe- cially when the mind is indifferent or hostile to the truth advocated. The will must be moved under one 1 62 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. or the other of three mental conditions, which must be taken into account as modifying factors of the logi- cal argument ; that is, the mind is open to instruction and disposed to the line of action when the truth is perceived, indifferent to a knowledge of duty and the line of action proposed, or actively opposed to the truth and measure proposed. When the mind is in the third condition named, a counter argument arises, and the two arguments con- stitute a debate. This fact modifies the procedure in the individual arguments, in the fact that the burden of proof rests on him who affirms, and that the pre- sumption of truth is in favor of the one who denies. In courts of law the one who charges another with guilt must prove the fact of guilt; the one who denies the charge has only to offset the argument. In consid- ering the case, the judge and the jury assume innocence until guilt is established. Likewise, a presumption of truth holds in favor of certain opinions, customs, and institutions which an argument seeks to change, since they are supposed to have been established for good reasons. This presumption has such weight in many cases as to support opinions, customs, and institutions long after the reasons that gave them birth have passed away. The one who argues to maintain established things has the sanction of ages on his side, and it requires all the patience and enthusiasm of a bold reformer to overcome precedents and usages. He who has presumption in his favor should not assume the burden of proof unnecessarily; for the one on whom the burden of proof rests must overcome all the proba- THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 1 63 bilities which gave rise to the presumption. It is much easier to offset an argument to prove crime than to assume the burden of proof and try to estab- lish innocence. The formal debate is not the most promising way of arriving at truth; and, therefore, not the most effective process of discourse. It is apt to weaken sincerity of purpose, in that it prompts stubborn adhesion to one- sided truth, and perverts the argument to personal victory as against a disinterested and universal good. The Law of Unity. — It has already been observed that the very nature of an argument is to establish the unity between the general principle and the individual fact which the principle determines. The different processes of argument are only so many forms of doing this; rather, all the processes taken together is one complex movement to this end; they are all organically one in the process of argument, and are all necessary to establish fully the desired connection. The a pos- teriori argument must support the probability raised by the a priori argument; and deduction must test the conclusions of induction which furnish the deductive premise. And further, the former pair of arguments must be carried on by means of the latter; induction and deduction are the means of establishing the causal connection sought by the a priori and a posteriori argu- ments. So that argumentation is a unified organic movement having various phases and parts. But such is only the logical unity inherent in the argument itself. The argument must have unity, not only in itself considered, but in relation to the mind 1 64 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. addressed, — must have rhetorical as well as logical unity. Everything must progressively tend to estab- lish belief in the truth asserted, and this is subject to other conditions than those imposed by the laws of thought alone; namely, by the capacity, beliefs, and prejudices of those in whom the new belief is to be established. The argument, to have unity, must be presented from the standpoint of the audience's present knowledge, interests, and desires. The most closely unified and logical argument in itself considered may have no unity with the mind addressed. A pro- gressive argument toward belief is the law of rhetorical unity in argumentative discourse. This law requires that no matter be chosen which does not bear on the proposition to be proved. Irrele- vant matter is often introduced to divert the attention from the real point at issue, or to ensnare by the belief that proof has been offered when there has been none. This certainly would be an effective rhetorical device if rhetoric did not have to square itself by ethical standards. Rhetorical art must not resort to logical fallacies. This law also requires that such proof shall be offered as can be grasped by the capacity of the hearer, and such as will assimilate readily with already exist- ing beliefs. The most valid proof that a youth should be obedient to his parents might completely lack unity with him, because of his incapacity to comprehend the ground of the argument. An effort to convert one from a belief in monarchy to a belief in democracy, although perfectly unified and logical in itself, would THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 1 65 have no effect in the monarchist's mind unless such argument should take its rise from the monarchist's present beliefs. Due regard must be had in this case, also, to the selection of proofs that will not antagonize by arousing inveterate prejudices. That the mind may yield itself to the line of proof, the argument must be conciliatory. When the mind is indifferent or opposed to the proposition to be argued, some preparatory statements must be made by way of arousing interest in the ques- tion or to conciliate the opposition. When the mind addressed is opposed, the first step of the speaker is to put himself in sympathy with the opposition. It may be necessary for the speaker to veil his purpose, even to the suppression of the proposition to be proved. The beginning of Mark Antony's oration is a fine example of this. On this point A. S. Hill has the following : — " We have already seen how important it is that a reasoner should himself, at the outset, clearly under- stand the- proposition he is to maintain; but it by no means follows that he should hasten to announce the proposition to those whom he would convince of its truth. His first object should be to secure their favor- able attention. " Now, to engage attention at all, it is desirable to appear to be saying something new. If then the prop- osition is a truism to the persons addressed, it will usually be judicious to awaken their attention by be- ginning with what is novel in the proof. Regarded from a new point of view, approached by a new path, 1 66 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the old conclusion will acquire a fresh interest, except, indeed, for those unfortunate persons whose minds are accessible to nothing but commonplace, and for whom, therefore, even a novelty must be presented in a com- monplace dress. " If the proposition, whether well known to the persons addressed or not, is likely to awaken their hostility, it should not be announced till steps have been taken to procure for it a favorable reception. Often the best course to this end is to state at the out- set the question at issue, but not espouse either side until after the arguments for each have been canvassed. It may also be possible to secure assent to general principles from which the conclusion can be logically deduced. In pursuing this course, the reasoner seems to invite his readers or hearers to join him in an inquiry for truth. This inquiry results, if it be suc- cessful, not so much in convincing them as in leading them to convince themselves of the justness of the conclusion, if he is successful in inducing them to give some weight to reasons which they would not have considered at all, had they known to what conclusions they led. " Another method of disarming hostility is for a speaker to establish pleasant relations with the audi- ence by adverting to opinions (irrelevant ones it may be) which they hold in common with him, before pro- ceeding to points of difference." Under ordinary circumstances, the proposition should be stated as soon as favorable attention is gained and before proofs have been examined. A clear statement THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 167 of the point at issue is essential to unity in the discus- sion; for the mind cannot follow the bearing of the proofs unless the point on which they bear is known. It would be useless to attempt to prove that Massa- chusetts contributed more to civilization in America than did Virginia unless it be made clear what meaning is put into the term civilization. By the explanation of the meaning attached to the terms of the propo- sition, and to the proposition as a whole, arguments are often rendered unnecessary. Debates sometimes run to great length and are carried on with great vehemence only to discover at last that the opponents hold substantially the same views. Hence, an exposi- tion of the proposition may be the first step in the argument. Whether or not the proposition is an- nounced and explained at the outset, a clear concep- tion of it is the first step in the preparation of the argument. The arrangement of the parts of the argument has much to do with its effectiveness. The law is that they should be so arranged that they will be cumulative in their effect. Each argument in its place should be such as to permit no rebound ; at least, from any posi- tion which had been gained by the preceding argument. From this view it may be inferred the weakest argu- ment should come first, and that the others follow in the order of strength. Yet the law of unity may not permit this; for sometimes a strong argument is needed at the outset to gain confidence in the line of argument. "The Nestorian arrangement of troops, with the weak- est in the middle, suggests an advantageous order of 1 68 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. arrangement. It avoids anti-climax, and at the same time opens the discussion with a strong argument. An inverse recapitulation of the arguments also obvi- ates the effect of anti-climax, when in the original order the weakest comes last. A mere mention of the weak arguments at the beginning, with the statement that you do not rely upon them or mean to use them, may often prove effective." * Exercises. — I. By the suggestions on page 140-1, test the following syllogisms from Jevons' " Primer of Logic." In doing so, train the imagination to image quickly the relations of the three terms involved; and from the relation of the major and minor to the middle, or connecting, term decide what may and what may not be affirmed: — 1. All English silver coins are coined at Tower Hill ; All sixpences are English coins ; Therefore, all sixpences are coined at Tower Hill. 2. All electors pay rates ; No paupers pay rates ; Therefore, no paupers are electors. 3. All animals consume oxygen ; Some animals are flesh-eating ; Therefore, some animals consume oxygen. 4. Some animals are flesh-eating ; Some animals have two stomachs ; Therefore, flesh-eating animals have two stomachs. 5. Brittle substances are not fit for coining ; Some metals are brittle substances : Therefore, no metals are fit for coining. ID. J. Hill. THE THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. l6g 6. Every city contains a cathedral ; Liverpool does not contain a cathedral ; Therefore, Liverpool is not a city. 7. All minerals are raised from mines ; All coals are raised from mines ; Therefore, all coals are minerals. II. I. Make several illustrations of induction. Analyze them. 2. Select several illustrations of induction. Ana- lyze them. 3. Select a theme and write an argument by anal- ogy. Show that the reasoning in Butler's " Analogy " is by analogy. III. Prove either the positive or the negative of the following by the a priori method : — 1. Free trade, or protection, is conducive to the general good. 2. Intemperance leads to misery. 3. Education lessens crime. 4. Faith in God is conducive to morality. 5. Games of chance are hurtful to morals. 6. Railroads threading the United States north and south would have prevented the Civil War. 7. Intellectual education tends to morality. 8. Science promotes Christianity. 9. The study of history is a more efficient means of culture than the study of Latin. IV. Prove either the positive or the negative of the following by the a posteriori method : — - 1. A prohibitory liquor law decreases drunkenness and crime. 2. Massachusetts has been a greater civilizing force in America than has Virginia. 3. Wealth is favorable to morality. I70 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. 4. Popularity is not a sure index to true worth. 5. The Crusades were beneficial to civilization. 6. The exile of the Acadians was not justifiable 7. Longfellow was a greater poet than Chaucer. 8. America has produced better orators than Greece. 9. Argumentation is a more common process of discourse than exposition. V. In a more complete way, using all the methods of argument necessary to the purpose, treat the follow- ing ; first having decided upon the exact state of mind supposed to be addressed, and whether the argument is to instruct, move to action, or rouse esthetic pleasure: — 1. The English language is a more perfect means of communi- cation than the Latin. 2. Capital punishment is, or is never, justifiable. 3. The relation between the North and the South are such as to warrant the continuance of peace and harmony. 4. Morality is essential to a high state of civilization. 5. The multiplication of religious sects has been favorable to Christianity. 6. The state should compel the education of children within its jurisdiction. 7. The state should support a university. 8. "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again. The eternal years of God are hers." 9. The banishment of Roger Williams was, or was not, justifi- able. 10. Should the right of suffrage be extended to women? i 1. Analyze Burke's speech on American Taxation. 12. Analyze Webster's reply to Hayne. 13. Analyze the argument of the Little Cottage Girl, in Words- worth's " We are Seven " ; or the argument in Tennyson's " Two Voices,'' or in " In Memoriam." THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. Its Fundamental Law. The first phase of discourse study is the purpose for which thought is uttered; the second, the thought as a means of securing the end sought; the third, the language conveying the thought to the mind in which the effect is to be produced. This chapter is, there- fore, a language study, but a language study in a restricted sense. A complete study of language requires it to be viewed from two opposite directions : the one as an organized means of communication, the other as organized in the process of communication. The first discusses the origin, the development, and the present structure of language as such, or language in itself; the second, language in living unity with thought, bearing its message to accomplish the end for which the thought in any given case is communicated. This is not a difference in the extent of the view taken, but a difference in the phase on which the attention rests. In both cases language is viewed in its entire extent, but not in its entire content. From this side we see the whole as a body of thought symbol, empty of con- tent, except in so far as necessary to explain the sym- bol; on that side, the whole as the living body of thought manifesting the soul of an author to the soul of the reader or hearer. In the one, thought is used I72 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. to explain the language symbol — thought the means, language the end; in the other, language is used to convey 'thought — language the means, thought the end: that is, language considered in the process of communicating thought. In order to make thought a means to gain a knowl- edge of language as an end, there is required a con- scious process of separation between the language form and the content. This conscious separation of form and content, in order to discern how language is adjusted to thought, is the characteristic feature of all true grammatical study. But language in discourse is necessarily viewed in 'living unity with the thought which it communicates. Neither the composer nor the interpreter is conscious of the relation of language to thought. Language and thought grow into one in the process of communication; and the words be- come so tinged and flushed with the life of thought that language itself includes, not merely language sym- bols as shown by grammatical dissection, but whatever life the thought imparts to them. Language as a means of expression includes the life, the richness, the fullness, and the power with which words are charged by the mind, stimulated and exalted into new and un- usual conceptions of the matter under consideration. When we speak of one's clearness, charm, and vigor of language, we include not merely choice of words and structure of sentences, but a certain illumination of the subject by the mind, — the grace and delicacy of its conceptions, and the striking forms and imagery with which it clothes its thought to make it effective. THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 73 Hence, it is not correctness of language form in rela- tion to thought, but effectiveness in securing the end sought which constitutes the rhetorical quality of language. That quality of language which makes it effective is called Style. As usually defined, style is the peculiar manner in which an individual author ex- presses himself. If this is style no science can be made of it; for then there are as many styles as speakers and writers. That individuality of an author which one readily detects in reading a new selection from a familiar author, and which constitutes a part of his charm, is for that author only, and can no more be explained and utilized by another than can the author's peculiar voice, bearing, and facial expression. What- ever the individual peculiarities of the writing, whether it be Tennysonian or Johnsonian, it must have those common properties which make language effective. Style, as here to be understood, is the common, essen- tial, and fundamental quality of language which adapts it to the ends for which language is uttered, — which makes it an instrument to the effective communication of thought. Hence, the fundamental law of language in discourse, which is the organizing principle throughout the fol- lowing discussion, may be formulated as follows: — That language,- or style, is best which communicates thought most effectively to the end sought by the dis- course. 174 the science of discourse. Qualities Required by the Law. Language must be adapted to the three ends of discourse; hence there must be three qualities of lan- guage, one quality adapting it to communicate thought to the intellect, one to present thought to the end of volition, and one to the end of esthetic pleasure. Since thought is presented in each case, there is one fundamental quality of style growing out of the rela- tion of language to thought in the process of language interpretation; namely, Clearness, or Perspicuity. This is the fundamental quality of all discourse, whatever its purpose, and the only quality uniformly required when the purpose is to instruct. But if the author seek to move the will or to impress the thought, he must add to Clearness, Energy ; and if to please or to touch the emotions for their own sake, he must add to Clearness, Elegance. The language of prose should be clear; of oratory, energetic; of poetry, elegant. Each should be clear as a condition of delivering the thought to the intellect; but oratory, to impress the truth, to stimu- late the indifferent, to convince the perverse, must be full of vigor and power; and poetry, to please the taste, must have beauty of conception and expression. In addition, therefore, to the fact that language must be clear in order to deliver its truth to the intellect, under some circumstances, it is required also to stimulate the energies of the mind to appropriate the truth presented, to enjoy it, or to live in obedience thereto. Thus style has not only its indifferent phase of passive transmission, but its active phase of stimulation. THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 75 While Clearness is the characteristic quality of prose, it may be necessary to stimulate it with beauty and force of diction and conception in order to dispose the mind to receive the truth, and that the truth may be impressed upon it. To instruct those of mature age and those who are active seekers of truth requires only the utmost Clearness; but to instruct children or those who are indifferent to the truth which the author wishes to convey requires a degree of Elegance in style to interest the attention, and a degree of Energy to impress the thought presented. Hence, Elegance and Energy do not belong exclusively to poetry and oratory. Elegance and Energy in prose, as in oratory, are a means. In poetry, Elegance is an end. The style constitutes the poem. Prose takes upon itself the qualities of poetry and oratory when it adds to its ordi- nary work of instruction that of influencing the mind to appropriate the instruction given. Prose influences to instruct; while oratory instructs to influence. To influence, however, is not the characteristic func- tion of prose, and Elegance and Energy are not the characteristic qualities of its language. Prose and poetry communicate truth and beauty for all time, and assume eager minds in search of them. There- fore, the language is not required to bear the burden of conveying thought or pleasing the taste, and at the same time of stimulating the reader or hearer. The scientist and the poet cast their books to the public, knowing that those will read who find there what the mind and the heart crave. The book of prose or poetry determines the reader; the audience determines the I76 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. oration. Given the audience with a definite change of will to be produced, and the orator assumes the aggres- sive. He cannot wait till they, desiring to change their opinion or conduct, search out motives to influ- ence themselves. This would remove the necessity for the oration. His thought and language cannot be passive, but must be energized to stir the indifferent, sluggish, or perverse wills to some definite course of action. While all these qualities of language are essential, under certain conditions, to each kind of discourse, yet, beyond a given degree, they are incompatible. Prose may gain such beauty and force of expression as to defeat perspicuity. Clearness, accuracy, and force of statement may be carried so far as to defeat poetic beauty; and the terse vigor essential to the oration is inconsistent with prosaic clearness or poetic finish. Each kind of production must be characterized by its own quality of language, or its identity will be lost and its purpose defeated. If it be necessary to infuse the clearness of prose with the life of poetry and oratory, it must be so tempered that the intellect will be stimu- lated only to seize the truth, not so as to be absorbed in the beauties of conception. Here, Clearness must prevail over Elegance and Energy. While poetry is marked by Elegance, yet Clearness and Energy are essential. That accuracy and fullness which are best adapted to the expression of thought are inconsistent with the finer workmanship of poetry; and so is the rigid tension of forcible utterance in oratory. The orator with due care must present his thoughts clearly THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 77 and elegantly; yet strength must be secured, even if the strokes be rough and sinewy. Thus effectiveness, the law of language in discourse, requires language to be clear, energetic, or elegant, accordingly as the purpose is to instruct, to move the will, or to gratify the taste. Clearness. — Clearness, then, is that quality of lan- guage which adapts it to instruct or to communicate thought to the intellect, whether in prose, oratory, or poetry. This quality is essential in prose. If mind could communicate directly with mind, the communication would be perfect, for nothing would be lost in the process. But language is necessarily an impediment. The receiving mind must not only think the speaker's or the writer's thought, but must, at the same time, interpret the medium through which the thought is transmitted. This divides the attention between the thought and the language, — the thought, which the author wishes the reader or hearer to attend to with all his energy that he may fully realize the con- tent, and the language, which the writer or speaker uses only as a means of causing him to think the content. Since the receiving mind has only a given amount of energy, so far as the attention is required to the medium of communication it is withdrawn from the thought to be conveyed. Hence, the chief problem of language in discourse is to reduce to the minimum the effort of the mind in the interpretation of the medium. The medium must be so transparent that the interpreting mind will not be conscious of its pres- iy8 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. ence, but will feel itself in immediate communication with the mind of the writer or speaker. While lan- guage necessarily requires some attention, it may be so perfect that the interpreter is unconscious of it ; so far, at least, as not to have a double consciousness in gain- ing the thought. In learning a foreign language, the student at first is conscious only of language form, and does not read. Later, he begins to interpret the thought of discourse, but realizes feebly the content, being painfully conscious of the language medium. Finally, after many years of study, when the language has passed into identity with thought, the student reads with only a consciousness of the thought and spirit of the author. Not that language and thought are identical, but that the mind in seeing the language immediately grasps the thought without a second act of attention. Effectiveness in communicating the thought has already been given as the fundamental law of language. The preceding prepares for the statement of the fun- damental law of effectiveness in terms of the law of Clearness. That language is most effective which) to the reader or hearer, is identical with the thought. Or, that language is most effective which requires the least possible amount of attention from the reader or hearer. Whatever be the end sought, whether instruction, pleasure, or volition, Clearness must be found in every word and in every sentence of every prose discourse, poem, or oration ; for if the author is not to be under- stood it were as well that he remain silent. Clearness THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 79 has been denned as that quality of expression by virtue of which it communicates the contained thought with- out diverting the attention from the thought to the symbol of thought. That language is clearest which requires the least attention in the process of its inter- pretation. A truly transparent medium through which reader and hearer meet without interruption, mind to mind with writer or speaker, is the standard of perspi- cuity in the expression of thought. Clearness is not a quality that can belong to language as such; it becomes a quality only when organized by thought in adaptation to a stated purpose to be accom- plished under given conditions. It is, therefore, a relative, not an absolute quality; a rhetorical rather than a grammatical quality. Language can be said to be clear or obscure only for those to whom it is addressed. Language must be as clear as the subject- matter permits and as the capacity of those addressed requires. The same language will not be clear to the man and to the child, to the literate and to the illiter- ate. That the reader does not understand what he reads may not, however, be the fault of the expression ; the difficulty may be in the thought itself. The ex- pression may be clear to those to whom such thought is addressed. Assuming that the matter is adapted to the level of the experience of the given audience, the expression should be such as to enable that audience to realize without effort, so far as the expression is concerned, the matter presented. Energy. — Energy is that quality of style which im- presses the matter of discourse. l80 THE SCTENCE OF DISCOURSE. Energy is an active, clearness a passive quality. So far as the medium is concerned, clearness permits the reader to gain the thought without effort. Clearness assumes an eager mind seeking the truth, — a mind already stored with the necessary stimulus for acquisi- tion. Energy has for its purpose the stimulation of mental activity; either to impress the truth on the intellect when the purpose is to instruct, or to excite the sensibilities when the purpose is to please as an end, or when it is desired to affect an action of the will. Hence, the quality of style now to be considered is common to all classes of discourse. But while it is secondary in prose and poetry, it is a primary quality in oratory. Prose and poetry may assume a mind active in seeking the truth or the pleasure communi- cated; but in the oration, the hearer is not already choosing in the line proposed. This would remove the condition which gave rise to the oration; and this condition requires Energy as the primary quality of style. That Energy is necessary in prose is obvious from the fact that a truth may be expressed clearly to the intellect, yet so feebly that it makes no lodgment in the mind addressed. Such a statement may often be infused with sufficient life and force to imbed the thought effectively. That is, the truth is not only expressed but impressed by the quality of the statement itself. When Lowell wishes not only to express but to impress the fact that a large number of authors be- gin their career with promise and even notoriety, but that only a few of this number have an enduring fame, THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. l8l he says: " Many a light, hailed by too careless observ- ers as a fixed star, has proved to be only a short-lived lantern at the tail of a newspaper kite." The same author, in speaking of the influence of Swift's humor on Carlyle, after it had filtered through Richter, says: " Unhappily, the bit of mother from Swift's vinegar barrel had strength to sour all the rest." These are not examples of clearness, for this could have been secured by ordinary language. They are not elegant, for they do not appeal to the taste. The purpose be- ing to instruct, the secured energy is not to move the will. When Chaucer, in speaking of the Clerk's horse, says, " As lene was his horse as is a rake," he did not express the truth more clearly nor more elegantly than he might otherwise have done, but he forcibly impressed the image of that horse. When we are told that a certain pastor was so faithful that he watched over his flock while they slept, we receive the plain truth that he preached sleep-producing sermons with multiplied power and lasting effect. Fortunate is that writer who not only can express his truth clearly, but can impress it by the power of the statement in which it is expressed. When emotions are presented, either to the end of esthetic pleasure or to new resolution, they must be made to have their full power in the mind addressed. If pity is the theme, the object awakening it must be made to stir the heart to its depths with that emotion; when grief is to be experienced, the feeling must be made as intense as the purpose requires and the truth permits. With reference to the effective handling of 1 82 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the emotion, we often speak of passages of literature as having great power. Such are well illustrated in many of Tennyson's poems; as, " Break, Break, Break," "Enoch Arden," " The May Queen," "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." Thus Energy, in whatever kind of discourse, has reference to the power with which the end is reached, — to whatever the writer adds to clearness of expres- sion to carry the matter with strength, force, or vigor to the end sought. Elegance. — Elegance is tliat quality of expression which adapts the discourse to please. It is the essen- tial quality in literary composition; but in prose, Ele- gance is subordinate to Clearness, being permissable only to stimulate and open the mind to receive the thought expressed; while in oratory, Elegance serves to charm and win assent to propositions of duty and action. As Clearness, while the characteristic quality of prose, is essential to poetry and oratory, so Ele- gance, while the characteristic quality of poetry, is essential, under certain conditions, to prose and to oratory. A degree of Elegance may be said to be essential to all prose and to all oratory. At least, the style of these must be in good taste to the degree of having nothing disagreeable or offensive in them. The elements of style thus mutually condition each other. Clearness economizes the intellectual effort of inter- pretation; Elegance economizes the energies of the mind in the feelings, or by exhilarating the faculties enables them to do the work with greater ease. Thus not only to the degree of avoiding offense, but THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 83 to that of giving buoyancy to the faculties, Elegance is required in all discourse, and truth presented in the oration is often most deeply impressed by being clothed in forms of beauty. In Clearness, the laws of style are deduced from the necessary intellectual acts of language interpretation. In Elegance we are to deduce the laws wholly from an appeal to the sensibilities; and to them as the sense of the beautiful. Elegance appeals to the esthetic sense, and its laws must be determined by the general laws of beauty. Here style, in the highest form of Elegance, becomes the end of expression; not style as mere language, but the complete embodiment of the thought. It is not the purpose for the attention to rest in the mere matter communicated, as in prose; but the attention is diverted to the conception of the matter; the emotions are enlisted by it. The method, not the matter, is the chief concern of the writer and the source of interest to the reader. This does not mean that Elegance arises from mere external work- manship; but rather that the matter itself becomes a part of the method —becomes one with the expres- sion. Matter and form coalesce into a new and living product, which- as a whole pleases the taste. Thus, while style is subordinate to the end of thought and volition in prose and in oratory, in poetry it becomes an end in itself, existing in and for itself, as does any other beautiful object. An object is said to be beautiful when it is felt that the idea, or energy, which it manifests has its free- dom. A moving train is beautiful when it is felt that 1 84 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. the energy which moves it is not in bondage to the train, — when the energy manifests itself with ease and freedom. When the observer is conscious, through the purring, straining, and slipping of wheels, that the energy is straining to move the train, he pronounces it ugly. The electric car is felt to be beautiful because it seems to be the free manifestation of its own inner life; while a car drawn by external force seems to be helpless and in bondage to its own nature, and hence felt to be ugly. A column is beautiful — well propor- tioned — when it supports its weight without effort, — when not so small that it seems in a strain to support weight above it, or when not so large that it has to support unnecessary weight in itself ; that is, when it is free in relation to the end it accomplishes. A tree is beautiful when the energy which creates it has fully and freely manifested itself. If the tree is lopped and twisted so that the creative energy suffers opposition and violence, the tree is felt to be ugly. Thus beauty is the manifestation of free, creative energy. Language is beautiful, therefore, when it gives free- dom to the energy which produces it ; and this in the twofold respect of its being the product of a physical force and of the idea which calls it forth. Such lan- guage causes esthetic pleasure in the process of inter- pretation. Clearness and Energy are also beautiful. One cannot help admiring perfectly transparent lan- guage, and this is because of the sense of freedom felt in coming directly in touch with the idea. Obscure language is necessarily ugly because it awakens a sense of bondage. Energetic language is felt to be THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 85 beautiful because tbe purpose of the speaker or writer is fully and freely realized. The reader cannot help rejoicing in the effective expression of a thought. In reading a good style of writing one often exclaims, That's the way to say it! because it brings to the reader an idealized sense of his own freedom of effort in giving his expression to thought. To put the case differently, every one has an abiding sense of bondage in expressing his thought so that it may produce the desired effect. When the reader reads an effective style of writing, his sense of bond- age is removed in a sense of freedom of expression awakened by the style. A writer may wish to arouse a feeling of sadness or of charity or of philanthropy, and his whole effort must be expended in producing the desired effect. When the language is fully ade- quate to the desired end, the reader rejoices in the idealized freedom of expression awakened in the proc- ess of interpretation. Thus in one sense Elegance is only the bloom of Clearness and Energy. It cannot be added to lan- guage; it is intrinsic and organic, and consists in what- ever awakens the sense of language freedom. Conditions for Securing the Qualities. Conditions for Securing Clearness. — Thought cannot be clearly embodied in language by any mere study of diction as such. Perspicuity of expression has its foundation in perspicuity of thought. The style grows out of the thought. The relation is an organic, a 1 86 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. vital one. Style is not mechanism; it is organism. It is built from the inside out, by the vital force which urges to expression. Thought is the soul; expression, the incarnate form, vitalized and moulded, not by ex- ternal pressure, but by the inner impulse of thought. True, Clearness depends on the right use of words and forms in which thought is embodied; but this must be ordered from within and not from without. Clearness of thought, therefore, with all that this implies of accurate discipline and thorough furnishing of the mind, is the general primary condition to clear- ness of expression. He who would seek this quality of style must subject himself to whatever discipline will secure power of distinct conception and clear insight, and the habit of methodical, thorough, and complete mental activity; to whatever will multiply the resources of his mind and increase the scope of his mental vision. Confused and obscure thinking cannot result in other than confused and obscure language, and only clearness of thinking can clothe itself in clearness of expression. It must not be understood that because the writer thinks clearly that he will necessarily write clearly. He is yet under the limi- tations of the laws of expression, to which he must render conscious obedience. There may be clear think- ing without clear expression, but not clear expression without clear thinking. It is here intended to empha- size only the fundamental importance of a mind trained to realize distinctly, vividly, and thoroughly, whatever it wishes to body forth in language form; and that to cultivate a perspicuous style implies not only the study THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 87 of the laws of expression, but a thorough culture of all the powers of the mind. Accordingly, a student who wishes to form a good style must not expect too much from direct means, but must rely chiefly on what- ever quickens intellectual life into thorough work. And not only is there needed thorough intellectual, but thorough moral habit as well. The attitude of the mind toward the truth to be presented may determine whether the truth be made obscure or obvious. If truth be presented in the interest of passion or preju- dice, it necessarily becomes partial, distorted, and blurred, and the phraseology can only disguise the truth which it should express. An earnest desire to present the truth for its own sake is the only impulse that can force the writer into obvious expression. Truth, sincerity, and simplicity in the writer are always transferred, consciously or unconsciously, to the writing, and the expression becomes true, simple, direct, and plain. Even when one writes with only a degree of self-consciousness, not yielding himself wholly to the thing he has to say, the unnatural fit of the expression to the thought betrays his insin- cerity, and impedes the reader. Whenever there is found a stilted, unnatural, pompous, high-sounding style as the garb of plain truth, it comes from the fact that the writer concerns himself more with the way in which he says it than with what he says. He wishes you to understand, not what he says, so much as that he is saying it, and saying it well. This desire to cultivate a style for its own sake leads to servile imitation of literary models. These should be used to 1 88 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. perfect one's expression; but to use them to form ex- pressions for the sake of the expression means hypoc- risy in the writer and weakness and obscurity in the writing. Let us, therefore, put down, in style as in morals, sincerity as the first desideratum. The general conditions of perspicuity, honesty and discipline, prepare for the more immediate conditions and special limitations of the writer's or the speaker's actual work of construction. In the first place, he must put himself under the limitations of a specific end, which his particular dis- course is to effect, and the means by which he is to reach the proposed end. The preceding chapters on Purpose and Thought have dealt with the ends and means with a view to effective expression. Since it is the province of rhetoric to treat of the effective utter- ance of thought, it must not omit the conditions to that end. It was stated in the chapter on Purpose that the first act of the mind in the construction of a discourse is the fixing of a definite aim. It now remains only to insist that a definite conception of the end, whether to instruct the intellect, please the emotions, or stimu- late to resolution, and of the specific character of each of these to be reached, is absolutely essential to Clear- ness. The end determines and organizes the means; and nothing less than a definite, vivid apprehension of the end can bring to bear suitable matter or embody it in intelligible forms. The end gives form to the composition, and the form must be clear in relation to that end. What is clear for one purpose may not be so for another. A thought presented clearly enough for THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 89 poetical purposes may be obscure for intellectual pur- poses; and matter presented clearly as individuals to the imagination may not be clear for purposes of thought. A definite aim rejects irrelevant ideas, puts in order confused ones, determines the right word and turn of phrase, and gives method, precision, and accuracy to all the movements of the mind. Without this special con- dition, it is impossible to give unity and symmetry to the theme — both essential to an easy and a correct understanding of the matter presented. After the writer has defined to himself the purpose and the special condition in the mind addressed under which the purpose is to be realized, a thorough mastery of the thought by means of which the purpose is to be realized is the last condition to clear expression. This is to be mastered under the relations and laws presented in the several chapters under thought — De- scription, Narration, Exposition, and Argumentation. To attempt to put in language what has not been clearly thought is the most prevalent source of ob- scurity. The first requirement under this head is that of a definite conception of the theme. The exact object, event, or thought must be so clearly apprehended as not only to give order and unity to the parts, and the mind free and easy movement in their arrangement, but that the mind may be so stimulated that it will clothe its thought in living forms. The theme should be studied till it becomes a part of the writer's being, and strives for utterance. Sidney Smith, in a criticism of Dr. Samuel Parr (quoted by Phelps), says: "He never seems hurried by his subject into obvious Ian- I9O THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. guage." And Phelps continues (speaking in reference to sermons): "This hits the mark of defect in many sermons. A preacher's subject, if he have one and has so mastered it as to have clear thought upon it, will force him into an obvious style. He cannot help it if the subject fall within the range of the hearer's compre- hension. He must speak the plain truth, as we call it, like a plain man talking to plain men." It is well to remember, then, that in order to have perspicuity the subject should be so definitely bounded and clearly conceived that the writer or speaker will be " hurried by his subject into obvious language." This thorough mastery of the theme essential to " obvious " expression includes its analysis and syn- thesis by means of all the relations involved in thinking it. This will require at the outset a classification of the theme — whether individual or general; and if indi- vidual, whether fixed or changing; if general, whether in itself considered or applied to test truth. After the classification of the theme follows its mastery under all the relations which define and constitute it. Such a mastery alone can secure for that particular theme that definite, accurate, methodical, complete, and or- ganic thought essential to the clear and truthful pre- sentation to the mind of another. We are led to observe again the unity of the three phases of discourse, — purpose, thought, language. Purpose is limited by the nature of thought and lan- guage; thought conditioned by the purpose and the means of its expression; and language conditioned by both purpose and thought. THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 191 Conditions for Securing Energy. - - 1 . Energy springs immediately from the desires and the will of the speaker. The force with which the speaker is urged on to the end he seeks measures the strength of his utterance. If he has truth which he wishes to commu- nicate, or if he feels deeply some soul-stirring senti- ment, or is restless under some ethical impulse, he will, without thought of his style, express himself with vigor and power. Truth which will not stay unsaid will be said forcibly. The more earnest the desire to plant a truth in another mind, for the sake of the other mind, the more strength will the speaker impart to the means he uses. Weakness is the most noticeable fea- ture of one's style who is not really in earnest. Energy in oratory requires of the speaker, more than anything else, a strong ethical impulse. Especially here does Energy spring from the desires and the will. The strength of these are the measure of the strength of the expression. So fundamental is this condition that often the speaker, without elegant or even correct expression, is thoroughly effective. Energy rests in the will's resolution to go forth and execute what the desires prompt. Much depends, however, on the de- sires which prompt to expression. A man's action is under the same law of energy as his style; but energy of action may result from special interests and private ends, while only the most disinterested and highest moral sentiment can impel to forcible utterance. Says Bascom : "The speaker who pursues private ends must either appeal to selfish impulses, which make a poor appearance, or he must go out of the range of his own I92 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. desires in finding the means of persuasion, and thus lose much of the zeal and energy with which the topic ought to be urged; or he must disguise and misrepre- sent the motives of action, and involve himself in all the tortuous, perplexing paths of evil. Those desires, therefore, which are fitted to infuse life into oratory, to inspire and impassion poetry even, must have breadth, philanthropy, and virtue in them, or they cannot address common interests or enkindle common feelings. The great ideas of justice, the public weal, liberty, and virtue must fully penetrate the mind, arouse the heart, and furnish the desires those objects fitted to call forth and nourish speech. According to the intensity of the desire with which common ends, the interest of public and private well-being, are pur- sued will be the energy of discourse. Virtue must rely chiefly on persuasion, and has ever at hand the means and also the motives to employ it. That training which deepens and strengthens virtuous desires and brings the will under its steady government gives to the man, in its most reliable form, all the working power of his nature, impresses all his words with his own life, his own energy." x A definite conception of the immediate end and of the relation of means to that end are essential to Energy. The discipline in thoroughness and accuracy and directness of thought, insisted on under Clearness, are equally important here. "While feeling impels, it cannot take the place of clear, explicit guidance. Nothing but a definite aim can arouse and concentrate 1 Bascom's "Philosophy of Rhetoric." THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 93 the mind; and nothing but a full knowledge of the thought to be presented and faculties trained to wield thought with rapidity, precision, and power can warrant a high degree of energy." 1 << Discourse which has an object — a palpable object, an object incessantly pres- ent to the speaker's thought, to which he hastens on for the hearer's sake — is sure in some degree to be energetic discourse." 2 2. The immediate condition for securing Energy is Clearness and Elegance. Obscure thought cannot be presented with force ; and without a certain degree of Elegance, the mind will not readily receive the truth presented. But when Elegance rises to esthetic ends, Energy is sacrificed. Much feeling and interest may be thus aroused, but of no avail to the purpose. "The imagination has free scope, the heart is feasted, but the will is not nerved. The emasculated oration does the work of the novel. This error of discourse arises from the vanity of the speaker, and nourishes the indo- lence of all parties. It becomes fatal according to the greatness and urgency of the end proposed. It is, therefore, in pulpit oratory especially, the most inex- cusable of faults." Elegance must subordinate itself to the purpose of the speaker. If it does not submit itself to the purpose and to the theme, it ceases to be elegant ; for an object not nicely adjusted to its end cannot be beautiful. Oratory must be in earnest ; and being so prevents all indulgence of poetic taste, all display of workmanship, all reveling in poetic delights. 1 Bascom's " Philosophy of Rhetoric." 2 Phelps' " English Style." 194 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. Conditions for Securing Elegance. — i . The first in order is culture on the part of the writer. As Clear- ness of style is conditioned by clearness of thinking, so Elegance is conditioned by richness and delicacy of feeling and beauty of conception. Rules of Elegance will avail little with a coarse and uncultivated writer. Longfellow is distinctively artistic in discourse, because, to a naturally refined soul and delicate taste, he added all the refinement of a rich and varied culture. Exces- sive faith in short processes, without the patience to wait the fruit of legitimate labor, often leads the youth to seek literary accomplishment by some special course in language training. Again, it must be insisted that style is not something externally formed, but the natu- ral growth of an inner impulse. The style of the man is the quality of the mind manifesting itself in external form ; and the form will necessarily assume the deli- cacy, grace, and color of the soul from which it receives its vitality. No painting can add to the cheek the crimson flush of life ; no mechanism can give to the artist's material the charm of life and beauty. " Noth- ing mounts into the region of art without undergoing some transformation, receiving buoyancy and color from the mind that wings it for its flight." Elegance results from the infused life and character of the artist. Accordingly, he who aspires to artistic merit in style or to the fullest appreciation of the beautiful in dis- course must discipline and enlighten the mind; purify, refine, and intensify the emotions, by the most thor- ough culture of which he is susceptible. Whatever, therefore, cultivates the taste, giving grace, buoyancy, THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 195 and delicacy of movement to the mind ; whatever makes the emotions sensitive and diversified ; what- ever gives the emotional chords tone, intensity, and harmony is an indispensable part of the composer's schooling in the art of elegant writing, and no less essential to appreciative reading. So much does Ele- gance depend on the quality of the mind that rules for securing it are almost worthless. Rules may do much toward securing Clearness, but Elegance is too diffused and volatile to be formulated. 2. The more immediate condition of Elegance is Clearness. In Elegance the language still remains a means of communicating the thought ; and imperfect adaptation to that end, as with any other instrument, clashes with the pleasant emotion of the beautiful. The obscure is necessarily the ugly. Clear expression gives perfect freedom to the idea which seeks to develop itself in an external form ; and such freedom is of the nature of beauty. Wherever there seems to be a struggle of the idea, the essence, the soul within an object, to free itself, we have the sense of the false and ugly. Expression which cramps the idea — obscure expression — is, therefore, inelegant. Tautology is not simply obscurity ; it is deformity. A series of long sentences means not only exhausted faculties in grasp- ing the ideas, but offended sense of harmony. Bun- gling work offends the taste, but that expression which so perfectly bodies forth the idea as to seem to be one with it is essentially elegant. This does not mean that Clearness can rise to the plane of positive pleas- ure ; it is only the negative side of beauty in expres- I96 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. sion, having rather the absence of offensive elements than positive sources of pleasure. The Rhetorical Qualities Secured. With such preparation as the preceding, — in general, through honesty and discipline ; in particular, some definite, specific aim fixed upon, and a thorough mas- tery of the thought which is to serve as a means to the end, — the writer comes to the immediate process of putting his thoughts in language. This process is controlled by the process of interpre- tation, for it is in this process that language appears clear, becomes impressive, and appeals to the taste. The process of giving the thought and that of receiv- ing it are opposite in method ; the first being by a process of analysis, the second by a process of syn- thesis. Before beginning to embody his thought, the writer must grasp his matter as an organic whole, in which act he analyzes and presents part by part in the light of the whole. But the reader receives part by part, and constructs the whole as he proceeds. The writer sees the whole from the beginning ; the reader not till the end. The reader begins where the writer quits — with individual ideas. But the writer must be conscious of the interpreting process of the reader ; else the writer cannot economize and stimulate the mental energies in that process. The first thing the writer needs to know, therefore, is the mental process of interpreting the language of discourse. Only such knowledge can enable the writer to move with ease THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 1 97 and self-assurance ; because it brings, instead of the bondage of dead arbitrary rules of style, the freedom of the reason that underlies them. All rules of style are based on laws of discourse interpretation — on the necessary activity of the mind in realizing thought from language. Yet they are too often studied as the arbitrary, abstract dicta of the rhetorician, and in such cases are of questionable utility. We are told that a short word is better than a long one ; that a Saxon word is better than a foreign one ; yet to follow these rules rather than the principles underlying them would frequently lead to serious error, and thus impede rather than help the writer. Language interpretation involves the activity of all the faculties, — sense-perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and reason; and also feeling and volition. The specific forms of these activities through which language becomes clear, strong, and beautiful is deter- mined by the nature of the language to be interpreted. This nature has a threefold aspect : — First, language may be viewed as a material thing, without reference to its content. As such it must be apprehended through sense-perception. The body, or vehicle, of thought must be matter of observation before it can have significance ; and this through the eye and ear, and most prominently the latter. Through this act of sense-perception certain language qualities are conducive to clearness, energy, or elegance; and frequently of all at once. Second, but language would not be language without expressing thought. And first it bears a direct rela- I98 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. tion to thought, which relation is twofold. There is the direct back-and-forth relation of words and phrases to the ideas expressed, and also the relation of the language parts to the organization of the ideas in the thought. This twofold direct relation of language to thought requires certain specific forms of interpreting activities — of memory, imagination, and judgment. It is in and through these activities that the writer makes his language efficient — clear, forcible, and beautiful. Third, language not only bears a direct relation to the thought in discourse, but also an indirect rela- tion. The thing directly expressed is a means, or language, for expressing something else. When Lowell speaks of opening the portals of the future with the blood-rusted key of the past, the objects presented by the words "portals" and "blood-rusted key" are not the objects of consideration, but only a more effective statement than could be secured by direct language. This indirect relation of language to thought requires peculiar interpreting activities, chiefly in the form of the creative imagination and the intuitive reason. The direct relation of language form to thought constitutes literal language ; while the indirect relation constitutes figurative language. Through figurative language, in addressing the creative power of the mind, language reaches its highest power of efficiency. LANGUAGE AS AN OBJECT OF PERCEPTION. Language as a mere object of perception must be such as not to arrest the attention in an act of sense- THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. I99 perception, and, with this negative mark, it may be such as to impress the thought or please the taste. The composer must take full advantage of these acts of sense-perception in order to secure the three phases of effective utterance. To this end his language must be (i) Correct, (2) Distinct, (3) Brief, (4) Euphonious, (5) Harmonious, and (6) Rhythmical. Correctness. — Misspelled words, not only by diver- sion of attention through the eye, but by the train of thought they suggest, are distracting. For the same reason typographical errors should be avoided. The correct pronunciation of a word attracts no attention ; at least, should not. In fact, the test of a speaker's pronunciation is that an educated audience do not notice how the words are pronounced. Any affectation or seeming effort to be correct is distract- ing to the hearer. Economy of effort in the process of interpretation is the reason for a uniform standard of pronunciation, as set forth in the dictionary. Ideas which now pass freely from mind to mind would be clogged in their passage by a multiplicity of strange forms for the same meaning. Accordingly, the speaker who aspires to effective utterance should see to it that he has a faultless pronunciation. Distinctness. — It requires an extra amount of effort to perceive a word that is not clearly written in itself or made to stand out distinctly from others. This may not be a question of style, for it lies beyond the control of the writer ; but if the printed discourse is to have its full effect, the size and clearness of the t'H- S . - .uul th. . a .-.■•.•.■ •• must '•. - • . . . minimum the . - .■ to . thf wvtds. - '. . • words should be dist h . '\ enu". • s . • > the w .- . •• \ It is that q f which if we . to > to the miud and . . e the tv.v >•• from stu> guish and se e . i the e .-. . - .- . • the » • . sei w '••'■• the) .. . ' l< . . . . . ' when thf \\ 9 -■ lot ■•-■ '. * . • &uffr ■. •• u ith I - eceh @ full) the ee bis i been « asted •■• $< -. the wea ds insl ..■ « i • .••-. •' i the hat the mind bed - - it. Often m well chosen we i so the sense ■• '•••.-. \ innd, This b es thf \ . « effort simp!) \ • eq\ •• .• a pi cm ess ■■• anal) syllabi • - distinguish it from < . words which it close!) resembles When, however, onf s s the • >i §e\ era! &h< ifs, thf use ••' thf ' ••• . woi d ctconom] >- tention Short the i -■■ . and e thus nied b\ a sense ol freedom and her. ->••• illei • slmplei thf Insti ument THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 201 which does a given piece of work, the greater our admiration for it. Passing to the sentence we find the thought en- veloped in a form which must be perceived part by- part. Whatever is unnecessary in this form occasions a waste of effort on the part of the recipient of the thought. The compression of the bulk without lessen- ing the weight of the content enables the composer to send the message with such precision and effect that the hearer is unconscious of effort to receive it. Just as words with the fewest letters and syllables reserve the full energy of the mind for the appropriation of the idea, so a sentence with the fewest words for a given thought does not divert the power of the mind into the channel of sense-perception, which should be reserved for the full realization of thought. Therefore, the sentence, for the sake of clearness, should contain the fewest words consistent with the other require- ments of sentential structure. And as secondary qualities energy and elegance are secured through such brevity. As in words and sentences, so in discourse taken as a whole ; the shorter in proportion to the content the greater is the economy of sense-perception. The com- poser's problem is to compress the bulk without dimin- ishing the weight. Lowell says that Shakespeare squeezes meaning into a phrase with an hydraulic press. This should be the composer's effort in the entire dis- course. This, however, is limited by the strength of the interpreter to appropriate concentrated food. Yet one must not speak an infinite deal of nothing which 202 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. requires the interpreter to search as if for a grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff, and which if found would scarcely be worth the search. Discourse which is especially offensive in this respect is called bombast, the remedy' for which lies beyond cautions in the use of language ; for an inflated style can be remedied only by removing the inflation of the writer. Eup ho ny.-- Euphony — literally sound and well — is that quality of a word which makes it pleasant to the ear. Strictly speaking, euphonious sounds are free sounds, — sounds made when nothing obstructs the emerging column of breath. Hence, euphony is more closely allied to elegance than to clearness or energy. All words difficult to speak are rough, harsh, and un- pleasant to the ear. This property belongs strictly to oral words ; yet by association, the written word sug- gests the sensation of its sound, and thus becomes a diverting and unpleasant element. Euphony depends on (i) the choice of the word and (2) on the way it is spoken. 1 . The pleasant sounds include the vowels and the liquid consonants /, m, n, r ; and the unpleasant sounds are especially the gutterals g and x and the sibilants s and s. This classification depends on the degree of freedom in the emergence of the sound, which strictly followed would not put letters in classes, but would mark each letter as differing from every other in respect to the beauty of its sound. Suppose that in the emergence of the column of breath every obstruction be removed as fully as possible, there will be produced the most THE LANGUAGE IN DISCOURSE. 2C»3 beautiful sound in language — long Italian a ; the first sound in every language. By slightly closing the mouth horizontally the modified as and «?'s and i's are produced, which are less beautiful because there is a sense of obstruction in the sound. By closing the mouth partially laterally the sound of o and kindred sounds are produced. The consonants are produced by completely shutting off the column of breath, and are ugly because their sound is obstructed. In the liquid consonants there is still an easy flow of the breath ; hence, liquid sounds. The different sounds in the alphabet are produced by different kinds and degrees of obstruction, and there is a constant increas- ing of bondage of sound from the long Italian a to the gutterals and sibilants. The chief fault in English is its hissing s and z sound, represented by five letters, — c before e and i ; s, z, x(= ks), and / before ion ; as, cessation, science, Xerxes, exactly. When all the individual sounds are pleasant only the right proportion of vowels and consonants will secure euphony. An excess of liquids or vowels is not euphonious ; as, " Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire." Harshness is produced by the union of too many consonants; as, form'dst, splutters, stretched, church, smoothedst, inextricableness, excogitation, twitches, sarcastical. Long words accented on the first syllable, as per- fectness, peremptorily, disciplinary, expiatory, are diffi- cult to utter and unpleasant to hear. Euphony is violated in words in which a syllable is immediately repeated; as, holily, lowlily, wilily. Vowels coming 204 THE SCIENCE OF DISCOURSE. together in the middle of a word or between two words, as hiatus, idea, idea of, you unto, produce an unpleas- ant effect. The same consonant ending one word and beginning the next, as, his son, keep people looking, is not euphonious. The repetition of the same word causes an unpleasant sensation; as, Whatever is, is right, How it was was not explained, He perceives that that sentence is not euphonious. It is obvious here, as in all the preceding, that the utterance is made with difficulty ; hence, the lack of beauty. Words impress the idea by means of the sound which they signify. Such words are called Onomato- poetic ; as, buzz, crackle, hiss, crash, rub-a-dub-dub. Hawthorne describes the rain thus: — - " All day long, and for a week together, the rain was drip-drip- dripping and splash-splash-splashing from the eaves into the tubs beneath the spouts." Milton, in describing the opening of hell's gate, uses this kind of energy with good effect: — " On a sudden open fly With impetuous coil, and jarring sound, The infernal doors ; and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder." Words not imitative, but whose sound is suggestive of the feeling to be expressed are impressive, as may be observed in the closing lines of each stanza of Poe's "Raven," which repeatedly employ the long sound of