are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Although the use of words may be abused and the fight for their
honour may at times seem hopeless, we must never give up the struggle
to use them solely in the service of truth. Let us aim at meaning
what we say, and saying what we mean. The price man has to pay for
the good things he enjoys is constant watchfulness lest they be
employed for evil. Has not this been the case from the dawn of
history with drink, language, and liberty? Let us--in the language
of _Leviathan_--use perspicuous words, having first snuffed and
purged them from ambiguity and made them luminous. Let us take our
stand on public right and a law of nations with Grotius rather than
with Machiavelli; let us seek to moralise our public intercourse and
reduce the area of casuistry and duplicity. That is not only the
accepted principle of the best amongst us, but it is, I am sure, in
harmony with a widespread instinct in the British people. It
asserted itself in August 1914 when it was made plain that ethics was
not a branch of politics, but the reverse. It is at the root of our
support of the League of Nations at Geneva--a city with which
Scotland has had spiritual ties for centuries, and from which your
Churches derive their system of regulated freedom. It is truth alone
that will "destroy the face of the covering cast over all people and
the veil that is spread over all nations" (Isaiah xxv. 7). There is
much that is profoundly wrong and remediable in our civilisation, but
let us not lightly discard the gains so hardly won from the savagery
which so readily besets us. In stretching forth our hands to the
farther shore, let us realise that civilisation itself is but the ice
formed in process of ages on the turbulent stream of unbridled human
passions, and while this ice seemed to our fathers secure and
permanent, it has rotted and cracked during the agony of the Great
War, and in places the submerged torrent has broken through, leaving
fragments in constant collision threatening by their attrition to
diminish and ultimately disappear. The more need for you, the
lampbearers of your generation, to guide your own steps by the truth,
and to light the way for the wandering people of the world.
[1] _Leviathan_, I, iv.
[2] _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_, Book III, Chapter XI,
Par. 4.
[3] _On Evidence_, Book III, Chapter I.
[4] Bertrand Russell: _Introduction to Philosophy_, p. 320.
[5] _Ibid._, p. 121.
[6] Figgis: _From Gerson to Grotius_.
[7] Machiavelli: _Treatise on Livy_.
[8] G. M. Trevelyan: _Garibaldi and the Making of Italy_, Chap. I.
[9] _Tractatus Politicus_, quoted in Pollock's life, p. 300; cf. Von
Hügel, _The German Soul_, p. 67, and Acton, _Historical Essays and
Studies_, p. 479.
[10] C. Cornewall Lewis: _Use and Abuse of Political Terms_, p. 12.
[11] Acton: _Historical Essays and Studies_, p. 474.
RHETORIC
AT THE CAMBRIDGE UNION
_March_, 1924
I sometimes think that possibly a man's views of rhetoric may be
coloured according to whether he possesses it or is without it; this
may be the reason why Mr. Mitchell Banks, who has made such an
eloquent plea, finds himself in opposition to me. I have never been
a rhetorician or an orator. I attribute this largely to the fact
that, much as I used to enjoy reading speeches, I was greatly struck
when I was about eighteen, at coming across a phrase in Froude,
"Oratory is the harlot of the arts," illustrated, as Froude could
illustrate it, with a wealth of eloquence! There is nothing odd
about that, because you will remember that there was no one who
fulminated more against rhetoric than Carlyle, probably the greatest
rhetorician who ever put pen to paper. I was reading in him only the
other day that the best thing man could do was to doom himself to
eternal silence, which Carlyle never could do, except when he was
smoking a pipe with Tennyson.
Mr. Theobald (the mover of the resolution) made a most characteristic
remark in his definition of rhetoric, a definition on which a good
deal depends. He defined it as a marshalling of facts which were
likely to persuade people. I entirely agree with him, except that he
has left out the other half of the sentence, which is the essence of
my case: "Concealing the facts which are likely to dissuade people."
There is a good deal more in rhetoric than the marshalling of facts,
otherwise the _Origin of Species_ would have been the greatest work
of rhetoric the world has produced.
To tell the truth needs no art at all, and that is why I always
believe in it. We have each attempted our own definition of
rhetoric. I would rather define it by illustrations of what I mean
by rhetoric, which I regard as one of the greatest dangers of modern
civilization. I am going to give you two or three phrases which I
call rhetorical phrases, and each of them, to my mind, is pregnant
with darkness and confusion. Consider this one of three words from
one of the greatest rhetoricians of the ages: "Bulging corn bins."
"The democratic control of the means of production" is another. I
tried in the House of Commons to get that last phrase translated from
rhetorical English into English that I could understand, and the only
answer I got was that it was impossible to produce rabbits from a top
hat. "Self-determination" is another rhetorical term that may some
day lead the nations into a bloody war. That is what rhetoric does.
"Homes fit for heroes to live in," and "A world safe for democracy!"
These, to my mind, are the quintessence of rhetoric, and it is
against rhetoric in this sense that I am going to vote to-night.
I suppose every one will admit that a great rhetorician was Charles
Fox, who said something which illustrates my point very clearly: "If
a speech reads well it must be a damned bad speech." I mean by this
that Mr. Mitchell Banks will read his speech to-morrow morning with
less pleasure than that with which he heard the cheers for it
to-night. Rhetoric is meant to get the vote of a division or at an
election, but God help the man who tries to think on it!
Such speeches as have been quoted in support of rhetoric could not be
delivered nowadays. The character and temper of the audience and the
people have so changed that what may have been possible for Macaulay
is impossible to-day. The rhetoric of to-day, the rhetoric we have
to consider, is the rhetoric of the "Bulging corn bins." I suppose
that this gift has been responsible for more bloodshed on this earth
than all the guns and explosives that have ever been invented. If we
look back only over the last century, was there anything more
responsible for the French Revolution than the literary rhetoric of
Rousseau, fanned by the verbal rhetoric of Robespierre and others,
just as the Russian Revolution was due to the rhetoric of
Kerensky--flatulent rhetoric which filled the bellies of his people
with the east wind?
That appalling twopenny-ha'penny gift of fluency, with the addition
of a certain amount of training and of imagination in word-spinning,
is the kind of rhetoric which stirs the emotions of the ignorant mob
and sets it moving. It is because such forces can be set in motion
by rhetoric that I have no regard for it, but a positive horror.
Very rarely do we find the gift given to men who have wisdom and
constructive power, and for the time being it would seem that it was
in this world a force far beyond its merits, although in the more
advanced countries I sometimes hope that it is past its prime. At
least I believe that in England and Scotland at any rate rhetoric of
the kind I have tried to describe no longer makes that appeal to the
people.
I think it may be that the people of this country are getting just
the least bit suspicious of the literary rhetoric of our Sunday
Press, and of our daily Press, and that this very wholesome dread,
this wholesome nervousness, is being transferred from the Press to
the platform. I think that throughout this country there is to-day a
far greater desire than there has ever been before to hear plain,
unadorned statements of cases. I believe that anyone who has taken
part in recent elections--a few constituencies excepted--will agree
with me that one of the most remarkable features is the way in which
large audiences all over the country will listen to a statement of a
case, whether they agree with it or not, provided they feel that the
statement is made honestly and fairly, and with due consideration for
the opposite view.
Let us always remember this: when we come to big things we do not
need rhetoric. Truth, we have always been told, is naked. She
requires very little clothing. After all, St. Paul was no orator,
and yet his speeches and his teaching seem to have spread and to have
lasted a long time. I cannot help feeling that if we were to go back
two thousand years I would back St. Paul and the results of his
teaching against all the rhetoric of a Sunday paper or of the leading
orators of the age.
If there is one thing which those who have been in any other
profession than the Bar distrust more than another it is the eloquent
man. In the business world, other things being equal, the man who
has the power of talking is not the man who gets promotion. To be
able to express oneself in business is always to be written down as
being not quite first-class, and it is a joyous fact that in most of
the towns of the kingdom we find that the men of business who talk
most in such places as Chambers of Commerce are not the men who are
making a success of the big businesses in the country. From this I
argue that it is not necessarily the man most fluent of speech to
whom we should entrust the destinies of the country.
_ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS_
THE CLASSICS
TO THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION
8_th January_, 1926
The Classical Association flings its boundaries far and wide,
embracing as it does the learned and the simple, the just and the
unjust, the half-timers, the whole-timers and the over-timers, the
leisured, the wealthy and the poor. All that is asked of a
prospective member is that he should love the Classics. Love does
not necessarily imply comprehension, or which of us could say that he
loved a woman?--but it does mean love of the beautiful, love of the
best, love of the ideal. Such love is not rare, and it is well that
those who have it should join together and gather strength and
refreshment by such communion as the present. I can speak of these
things with understanding, for I am an original member of the
Association, and I well remember the pleasure with which I sent my
first subscription from the depths of the country in which I was then
living and received in due course the annual volume of the
_Proceedings_, together with the President's Address for the year.
It seems to me now, as it seemed to me then, that there could be no
greater honour than to be invited to give the Presidential Address.
It never occurred to me that that honour was to be mine. I certainly
had no qualifications for it, nor indeed have I now. But I take
heart from the thought that though the lamp of classical learning
must be trimmed and kept burning by the scholars, yet the light which
is diffused depends to some extent on the fuel, and that is provided
by an army of plain folk with conviction and enthusiasm in their
hearts.
The Classics will never perish out of the land so long as they are
cherished by ordinary people. And so it seems to me good that you
should have a President occasionally who is not a scholar, who is not
particularly distinguished, but who can speak for the common folk as
an ordinary man.
I wonder how many of you remember your Eginhard? I have always had
in mind a passage of his which I read forty years ago. Charlemagne
was a statesman, but not a scholar. He acquired such knowledge of
Latin that he used to repeat his prayers in that language as well as
in his own. Greek he could understand better than he could
pronounce. But he was an ardent admirer of the liberal arts, and
greatly revered their professors, whom he promoted to high honours.
He also tried to write, and used to keep his tablets and writing-book
under the pillow of his couch that when he had leisure he might
practise his hand in forming letters; but he made little progress in
a task too long deferred and begun too late in life. _Absit omen_!
And since I have alluded to the weakness of so great a man in his
pronunciation of Greek, perhaps I may take advantage of this
opportunity to seek on my own behalf your indulgence if, in the few
Latin words that I may use hereafter, I pronounce Latin as it was
taught to me fifty years ago. I have lived for many years in a
backwater, and the flood of culture has swept forward far away from
me. I speak not as the man in the street even, but as a man in a
field-path, a much simpler person steeped in tradition and impervious
to new ideas. To pronounce Latin as our Association has decreed may
be to Professor Postgate the breaking of an adhesion; to me it is to
convert it at once into a foreign language. And I have been the more
impressed that my experience is not void of truth because I noticed
with interest, when my own University did me the high honour of
conferring a doctor's degree upon me, each learned man who had
occasion to speak the Latin tongue spoke it with a different accent.
Is my apology accepted?
Before I attempt to tell you what I conceive to be the debt of the
ordinary man to the Classics, may I, as one whose work has for many
years past been given in the field of politics, pause a few moments
to inquire what help our studies may bring to the ordinary man who is
attempting the task of government?
To be an Englishman, native of a country which was an integral part
of the Roman Empire for a period as long as from the Reformation
until this present night, and to be ignorant of the history of that
Empire, is to be without that sense of perspective in viewing both
the change of events and their day-to-day reactions which is
essential to see our national life and to see it whole.
_Ne sutor supra crepidam_ may be true for the cobbler, but the
statesman must endeavour, like the sculptor, to envisage the whole
figure, and he must be steeped to the lips in the historical sense.
It was not for nothing that Western Europe was forged on the anvil of
Rome, and who can say how much we owe to those long years of Roman
law, Roman discipline, Roman faith, and partnership in a common
Empire?
During the first four centuries of the present era Roman thought and
Roman manners imposed themselves upon our island and made themselves
a home here. Rome must have seemed very real and present to the
children of the near-by hamlets as they saw the great roads creeping
towards them, past them, and ever onwards in ruthless and undeviating
course, making the farthest ends of the island pervious to the
legions' tread. Shy traffickers coming from wild fastnesses as they
chanced upon a Roman highway and, shading their eyes with their
hands, saw it pass into the horizon, must have been awed at the
thought of the great heart that beat at the end of that giant artery.
Beautiful buildings, kindly plants and flowers now so familiar came
in the wake of the eagles and sank their foundations and their roots
in English soil. It may well be that subconscious memories of those
days and the mingling of blood for four centuries played their part
no less than the arrival of the Normans in modifying certain
characteristics of our Teutonic invaders and saved us from becoming
what Carlyle called "A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable
of no grand combinations, lumbering about in pot-bellied equanimity;
not dreaming of heroic toil, and silence and endurance, such as leads
to the higher places of this universe and the golden mountain-tops
where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn."
Only a few short centuries before the age of Pericles, only a few
short centuries after the fall of Troy, there was but a settlement of
shepherds on the Palatine Hill. Yet within a thousand years the
tramp of the Roman sentinel was heard along the Wall; his watch-fires
illuminated the waters of Euphrates; the hand of Rome reached from
the Biscay to the Euxine, from the Danube to the Nile.
Here is the greatest, most fascinating problem in all history for the
scholar and the statesman. Why did the Empire come into existence at
all, and why, having come into existence, did it perish? Volumes
have been written on the subject and will continue to appear; but is
it not allowed to the statesman whose material is human nature to
dwell on one aspect of the story to the exclusion of others, equally
obvious and equally true? Surely the character of the Roman played
as great a part in the rise of the Empire as his character played in
the fall? I can imagine no historian of the British Empire
neglecting the study of the character of the Englishman, as shown,
for example, in the Elizabethan age and through the period of the
Rebellion. And to me the outstanding and peculiar strength of the
Roman character lies in the words _pietas_ and _gravitas_. These
were the foundations of a patriotism which alone could carry the
burden of Empire, a patriotism innate, a motive force of incalculable
power, yet something at its best so holy that it was never paraded,
sought no reward, was taken for granted, and had no single word to
express it.
Bounded at first by the confines of the city, it differed from Greek
patriotism in that it had in it the seeds of life and growth, and it
expanded with the spread of the Roman name. Such patriotism is not
unknown amongst us, and so long as it exists it will leaven much. As
has been well pointed out, the highest gifts devoted to public
service were expected; to dedicate and employ them for the sake of
the Republic was merely your duty. Aristides would not have been
called the Just in Rome, and in what country in the Ancient World but
Rome would a Fabricius have refused all rewards, or a Cincinnatus
have returned to his farm? Again, a character founded on pietas and
gravitas had its roots in truth, and I am proud to think that the
English word has been held in no less honour than the Roman. It
would be an interesting study to trace the changes in the Roman
character which accompanied the social developments through the
chequered history of the Empire. This is the happy task of the
historian, and it must suffice for me in these few minutes to pause
before certain salient facts. It is from Ammian, who wrote while the
legions were leaving Britain, that we learn that the Roman word could
no longer be trusted. That is to me a far more significant portent
than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury,
and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which
combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was
necessary for the life of the State. We hear through these later
centuries cries with which we are only too familiar to-day, cries
against the burden of armaments and the weight of taxation. But
above and beyond these things, dangerous and symptomatic as they are,
we detect a greater cause for anxiety. It would almost appear that
the human stock is like the stock of fruit-trees where the best kinds
tend to work themselves out after many generations of useful and
productive service. Mr. Mackail, in one of his recent Essays, has
laid fresh stress on this point when he says there were not enough
Romans left to carry on the work of Rome. A gradual atrophy of
intellectual energy and public spirit spread over the body politic,
and the instinct of self-government was lost. There are fears
amongst those who are responsible for government to-day, fears not
yet gripping us by the throat but taking grisly shape in the
twilight, that the Great War, by the destruction of our best lives in
such numbers, has not left enough of the breed to carry on the work
of Empire. Our task is hard enough, but it will be accomplished; yet
who in Europe does not know that one more war in the West, and the
civilisation of the ages will fall with as great a shock as that of
Rome? She has left danger-signals along the road; it is for us to
read them.
And as we do so we may look, as she did, at another history. That
Roman Empire, of which we were once a part, embraced all the
countries occupied by people of Hellenic blood. Less in the direct
historical succession, though more in the spiritual, the statesman
has much to learn from Greece. Her history, as has often been
pointed out, is one long failure to create an Empire. Her problem
was nearer ours in kind than that of Rome, for her solution, had it
been effected, would have resulted in a Commonwealth of Nations
rather than an Empire on the Roman model. There was no experiment
she did not try to win organic unity, but she was defeated by those
very characteristics of intellect and temperament which raised her to
such heights in poetry, art, and philosophy. Civic unity she could
never achieve, and her attempts to weld together people of the blood
were foiled on the very threshold. Failure is in many ways a more
potent teacher than success, and the tragedy of her history only
throws into more radiant relief the debt we owe her in those arts
wherein she was supreme. She spoke the last word in beauty of speech
and of form; her creations are the touchstone to-day as they were two
thousand years ago, and it is a comforting thought, in these days
particularly, that whatever fails to pass this test must ultimately
perish from among us as barbarous and exotic.
And here, perhaps, we may take two thoughts to heart which come to my
mind as I try to look forward. Believing as I do that much of the
civilisation and culture of the world is bound up with the life of
Western Europe, it is good for us to remember that we Western
Europeans have been in historical times members together of a great
Empire, and that we share in common, though in differing degrees,
language, law, and tradition. That there should be wars between
nations who learned their first lessons in citizenship from the same
mother seems to me fratricidal insanity. It should rather be our
endeavour to help ourselves and to help each other to recover those
qualities of character so peculiar to the Romans, the _pietas_, the
_gravitas_, and the truth of the spoken word. On such foundations
alone can civilisation be built; on such foundations alone can
civilisation stand.
But what of us, the _ultimi Britanni_, the youngest member of the
great family? I like to feel that the fortune of the youngest son is
ours. I like to picture the procession of the nations through the
ages as a great relay race of heroes. Over a course infinitely hard,
with little experience to guide her, Rome ran her mighty race bearing
her torch on high. Of those who came before, of those who followed
after, none ran so far, none so surely. And when her course was run
the torch came into other hands who bore it forward according to the
strength and guidance that was in them, until after many centuries it
was passed to us, the youngest son. Our race is not yet run. But we
shall run more worthily so long as we base our lives on the stern
virtues of the Roman character and take to ourselves the warnings
that Rome left for our guidance.
Here I feel these modest reflections may well be brought to an end.
I can imagine you saying, "Well, there may be an element of truth in
what you have said, but it is all rather jejune and second-hand.
What we want to know is, the impression the small amount of Latin and
Greek which you possess has made upon you; what you think you have
derived from it, whether you are in any way richer than you would
have been had you been nursed on the Loves of the Triangles." A
perfectly fair question, and I will bid the statesman fly away and
the ordinary man step forward.