Section 1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state_The ethics of rhetoric

_The ETHICS of_

Rhetoric

_The ETHICS of_

Rhetoric

_By_ RICHARD M. WEAVER

ὥστε συμβαίνει τὴν ρητορικὴν οἶον

παραφυές τι τῆς διαλεκτικῆς εἶναι καὶ

τῆς περὶ τὰ ἤθη πραγματείας

Thus it happens that rhetoric is an offshoot

of dialectic and also of ethical studies.

—ARISTOTLE, _Rhetoric_

[Illustration]

Chicago · HENRY REGNERY COMPANY · _1953_

International Copyright Union. Manufactured in the United

States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:

53-8796.

Second Printing, December, 1963

Table of Contents

PAGE

I. THE PHAEDRUS AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC 3

II. DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC AT DAYTON, TENNESSEE 27

III. EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE 55

IV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION 85

V. SOME RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 115

VI. MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE 143

VII. THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OLD RHETORIC 164

VIII. THE RHETORIC OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 186

IX. ULTIMATE TERMS IN CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC 211

INDEX 233

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments with thanks are due the following: Charles Scribner’s

Sons for the passage from Allen Tate’s “The Subway,” from _Poems

1922-1947_; Karl Shapiro and Random House, Inc., for the passage from

_Essay on Rime_; and the Viking Press, Inc., for the passage from

Sherwood Anderson’s _A Story Teller’s Story_.

_The ETHICS of_

Rhetoric

Chapter I

THE _PHAEDRUS_ AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC

Our subject begins with the threshold difficulty of defining the question

which Plato’s _Phaedrus_ was meant to answer. Students of this justly

celebrated dialogue have felt uncertain of its unity of theme, and the

tendency has been to designate it broadly as a discussion of the ethical

and the beautiful. The explicit topics of the dialogue are, in order:

love, the soul, speechmaking, and the spoken and written word, or what

is generally termed by us “composition.” The development looks random,

and some of the most interesting passages appear _jeux d’esprit_. The

richness of the literary art diverts attention from the substance of the

argument.

But a work of art which touches on many profound problems justifies

more than one kind of reading. Our difficulty with the _Phaedrus_ may

be that our interpretation has been too literal and too topical. If we

will bring to the reading of it even a portion of that imagination which

Plato habitually exercised, we should perceive surely enough that it is

consistently, and from beginning to end, about one thing, which is the

nature of rhetoric.[1] Again, that point may have been missed because

most readers conceive rhetoric to be a system of artifice rather than an

idea,[2] and the _Phaedrus_, for all its apparent divagation, keeps very

close to a single idea. A study of its rhetorical structure, especially,

may give us the insight which has been withheld, while making us feel

anew that Plato possessed the deepest divining rod among the ancients.

For the imaginative interpretation which we shall now undertake, we have

both general and specific warrant. First, it scarcely needs pointing

out that a Socratic dialogue is in itself an example of transcendence.

Beginning with something simple and topical, it passes to more general

levels of application; and not infrequently, it must make the leap into

allegory for the final utterance. This means, of course, that a Socratic

dialogue may be about its subject implicitly as well as explicitly. The

implicit rendering is usually through some kind of figuration because

it is the nature of this meaning to be ineffable in any other way. It

is necessary, therefore, to be alert for what takes place through the

analogical mode.

Second, it is a matter of curious interest that a warning against

literal reading occurs at an early stage of the _Phaedrus_. Here in the

opening pages, appearing as if to set the key of the theme, comes an

allusion to the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia. On the very spot where the

dialogue begins, Boreas is said to have carried off the maiden. Does

Socrates believe that this tale is really true? Or is he in favor of a

scientific explanation of what the myth alleges? Athens had scientific

experts, and the scientific explanation was that the north wind had

pushed her off some rocks where she was playing with a companion. In this

way the poetical story is provided with a factual basis. The answer of

Socrates is that many tales are open to this kind of rationalization,

but that the result is tedious and actually irrelevant. It is irrelevant

because our chief concern is with the nature of the man, and it is

beside the point to probe into such matters while we are yet ignorant

of ourselves. The scientific criticism of Greek mythology, which may

be likened to the scientific criticism of the myths of the Bible in

our own day, produces at best “a boorish sort of wisdom (ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ

σοφίᾳ).” It is a limitation to suppose that the truth of the story

lies in its historicity. The “boorish sort of wisdom” seeks to supplant

poetic allegation with fact, just as an archaeologist might look for the

foundations of the Garden of Eden. But while this sort of search goes

on the truth flies off, on wings of imagination, and is not recoverable

until the searcher attains a higher level of pursuit. Socrates is

satisfied with the parable, and we infer from numerous other passages

that he believed that some things are best told by parable and some

perhaps discoverable only by parable. Real investigation goes forward

with the help of analogy. “Freud without Sophocles is unthinkable,” a

modern writer has said.[3]

With these precepts in mind, we turn to that part of the _Phaedrus_

which has proved most puzzling: why is so much said about the absurd

relationship of the lover and the non-lover? Socrates encounters Phaedrus

outside the city wall. The latter has just come from hearing a discourse

by Lysias which enchanted him with its eloquence. He is prevailed upon to

repeat this discourse, and the two seek out a shady spot on the banks of

the Ilissus. Now the discourse is remarkable because although it was “in

a way, a love speech,” its argument was that people should grant favors

to non-lovers rather than to lovers. “This is just the clever thing

about it,” Phaedrus remarks. People are in the habit of preferring their

lovers, but it is much more intelligent, as the argument of Lysias runs,

to prefer a non-lover. Accordingly, the first major topic of the dialogue

is a eulogy of the non-lover. The speech provides good subject matter

for jesting on the part of Socrates, and looks like another exhibition

of the childlike ingeniousness which gives the Greeks their charm. Is it

merely a piece of literary trifling? Rather, it is Plato’s dramatistic

presentation of a major thesis. Beneath the surface of repartee and

mock seriousness, he is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form

of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and

provoking an expense of spirit.

Sophistications of theory cannot obscure the truth that there are but

three ways for language to affect us. It can move us toward what is good;

it can move us toward what is evil; or it can, in hypothetical third

place, fail to move us at all.[4] Of course there are numberless degrees

of effect under the first two heads, and the third, as will be shown, is

an approximate rather than an absolute zero of effect. But any utterance

is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can

avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of

the chief considerations of the _Phaedrus_, just as it is of contemporary

semantic theory. What Plato has succeeded in doing in this dialogue,

whether by a remarkably effaced design, or unconsciously through the

formal pressure of his conception, is to give us embodiments of the three

types of discourse. These are respectively the non-lover, the evil lover,

and the noble lover. We shall take up these figures in their sequence and

show their relevance to the problem of language.

The eulogy of the non-lover in the speech of Lysias, as we hear it

repeated to Socrates, stresses the fact that the non-lover follows a

policy of enlightened self-interest. First of all, the non-lover does

not neglect his affairs or commit extreme acts under the influence of

passion. Since he acts from calculation, he never has occasion for

remorse. No one ever says of him that he is not in his right mind,

because all of his acts are within prudential bounds. The first point

is, in sum, that the non-lover never sacrifices himself and therefore

never feels the vexation which overtakes lovers when they recover from

their passion and try to balance their pains with their profit. And the

non-lover is constant whereas the lover is inconstant. The first argument

then is that the non-lover demonstrates his superiority through prudence

and objectivity. The second point of superiority found in non-lovers is

that there are many more of them. If one is limited in one’s choice to

one’s lovers, the range is small; but as there are always more non-lovers

than lovers, one has a better chance in choosing among many of finding

something worthy of one’s affection. A third point of superiority is that

association with the non-lover does not excite public comment. If one is

seen going about with the object of one’s love, one is likely to provoke

gossip; but when one is seen conversing with the non-lover, people merely

realize that “everybody must converse with somebody.” Therefore this

kind of relationship does not affect one’s public standing, and one is

not disturbed by what the neighbors are saying. Finally, non-lovers are

not jealous of one’s associates. Accordingly they do not try to keep one

from companions of intellect or wealth for fear that they may be outshone

themselves. The lover, by contrast, tries to draw his beloved away from

such companionship and so deprives him of improving associations. The

argument is concluded with a generalization that one ought to grant

favors not to the needy or the importunate, but to those who are able to

repay. Such is the favorable account of the non-lover given by Lysias.

We must now observe how these points of superiority correspond to those

of “semantically purified” speech. By “semantically purified speech” we

mean the kind of speech approaching pure notation in the respect that

it communicates abstract intelligence without impulsion. It is a simple

instrumentality, showing no affection for the object of its symbolizing

and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer. In its ideal conception,

it would have less power to move than 2 + 2 = 4, since it is generally

admitted that mathematical equations may have the beauty of elegance, and

hence are not above suspicion where beauty is suspect. But this neuter

language will be an unqualified medium of transmission of meanings from

mind to mind, and by virtue of its minds can remain in an unprejudiced

relationship to the world and also to other minds.

Since the characteristic of this language is absence of anything like

affection, it exhibits toward the thing being represented merely a sober

fidelity, like that of the non-lover toward his companion. Instead of

passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity. Its “enlightened

self-interest” takes the form of an unvarying accuracy and regularity in

its symbolic references, most, if not all of which will be to verifiable

data in the extramental world. Like a thrifty burgher, it has no

romanticism about it; and it distrusts any departure from the literal

and prosaic. The burgher has his feet on the ground; and similarly the

language of pure notation has its point-by-point contact with objective

reality. As Stuart Chase, one of its modern proponents, says in _The

Tyranny of Words_: “_If we wish to understand the world and ourselves,

it follows that we should use a language whose structure corresponds to

physical structure_”[5] (italics his). So this language is married to the

world, and its marital fidelity contrasts with the extravagances of other

languages.

In second place, this language is far more “available.” Whereas

rhetorical language, or language which would persuade, must always be

particularized to suit the occasion, drawing its effectiveness from

many small nuances, a “utility” language is very general and one has

no difficulty putting his meaning into it if he is satisfied with a

paraphrase of that meaning. The 850 words recommended for Basic English,

for example, are highly available in the sense that all native users of

English have them instantly ready and learners of English can quickly

acquire them. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the availability

is a heavy tax upon all other qualities. Most of what we admire as

energy and fullness tends to disappear when mere verbal counters are

used. The conventional or public aspect of language can encroach upon the

suggestive or symbolical aspect, until the naming is vague or blurred. In

proportion as the medium is conventional in the widest sense and avoids

all individualizing, personalizing, and heightening terms, it is common,

and the commonness constitutes the negative virtue ascribed to the

non-lover.

Finally, with reference to the third qualification of the non-lover,

it is true that neuter language does not excite public opinion. This

fact follows from its character outlined above. Rhetorical language on

the other hand, for whatever purpose used, excites interest and with it

either pleasure or alarm. People listen instinctively to the man whose

speech betrays inclination. It does not matter what the inclination is

toward, but we may say that the greater the degree of inclination, the

greater the curiosity or response. Hence a “style” in speech always

causes one to be a marked man, and the public may not be so much

impressed—at least initially—by what the man is for or against as by the

fact that he has a style. The way therefore to avoid public comment is

to avoid the speech of affection and to use that of business, since, to

echo the original proposition of Lysias, everybody knows that one must do

business with others. From another standpoint, then, this is the language

of prudence. These are the features which give neuter discourse an appeal

to those who expect a scientific solution of human problems.

In summing up the trend of meaning, we note that Lysias has been praising

a disinterested kind of relationship which avoids all excesses and

irrationalities, all the dementia of love. It is a circumspect kind of

relationship, which is preferred by all men who wish to do well in the

world and avoid tempestuous courses. We have compared its detachment

with the kind of abstraction to be found in scientific notation. But as

an earnest of what is to come let us note, in taking leave of this part,

that Phaedrus expresses admiration for the eloquence, especially of

diction, with which the suit of the non-lover has been urged. This is our

warning of the dilemma of the non-lover.

Now we turn to the second major speech of the dialogue, which is made

by Socrates. Notwithstanding Phaedrus’ enthusiastic praise, Socrates is

dissatisfied with the speech of the non-lover. He remembers having heard

wiser things on the subject and feels that he can make a speech on the

same theme “different from this and quite as good.” After some playful

exchange, Socrates launches upon his own abuse of love, which centers

on the point that the lover is an exploiter. Love (ἔρως) is defined as

the kind of desire which overcomes rational opinion and moves toward

the enjoyment of personal or bodily beauty. The lover wishes to make

the object of his passion as pleasing to himself as possible; but to

those possessed by this frenzy, only that which is subject to their will

is pleasant. Accordingly, everything which is opposed, or is equal or

better, the lover views with hostility. He naturally therefore tries to

make the beloved inferior to himself in every respect. He is pleased if

the beloved has intellectual limitations because they have the effect of

making him manageable. For a similar reason he tries to keep him away

from all influences which might “make a man of him,” and of course the

greatest of these is divine philosophy. While he is working to keep him

intellectually immature, he works also to keep him weak and effeminate,

with such harmful result that the beloved is unable to play a man’s part

in crises. The lover is, moreover, jealous of the possession of property

because this gives the beloved an independence which he does not wish

him to have. Thus the lover in exercising an unremitting compulsion over

the beloved deprives him of all praiseworthy qualities, and this is the

price the beloved pays for accepting a lover who is “necessarily without

reason.” In brief, the lover is not motivated by benevolence toward the

beloved, but by selfish appetite; and Socrates can aptly close with the

quotation: “As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their loves.” The speech

is on the single theme of exploitation. It is important for us to keep

in mind the object of love as here described, because another kind of

love with a different object is later introduced into the dialogue, and

we shall discuss the counterpart of each.

As we look now for the parallel in language, we find ourselves

confronting the second of the three alternatives: speech which influences

us in the direction of what is evil. This we shall call base rhetoric

because its end is the exploitation which Socrates has been condemning.

We find that base rhetoric hates that which is opposed, or is equal

or better because all such things are impediments to its will, and

in the last analysis it knows only its will. Truth is the stubborn,

objective restraint which this will endeavors to overcome. Base rhetoric

is therefore always trying to keep its objects from the support which

personal courage, noble associations, and divine philosophy provide a man.

The base rhetorician, we may say, is a man who has yielded to the wrong

aspects of existence. He has allowed himself to succumb to the sights

and shows, to the physical pleasures which conspire against noble life.

He knows that the only way he can get a following in his pursuits (and

a following seems necessary to maximum enjoyment of the pursuits) is to

work against the true understanding of his followers. Consequently the

things which would elevate he keeps out of sight, and the things with

which he surrounds his “beloved” are those which minister immediately to

desire. The beloved is thus emasculated in understanding in order that

the lover may have his way. Or as Socrates expresses it, the selfish

lover contrives things so that the beloved will be “most agreeable to him

and most harmful to himself.”

Examples of this kind of contrivance occur on every hand in the

impassioned language of journalism and political pleading. In the

world of affairs which these seek to influence, the many are kept in a

state of pupillage so that they will be most docile to their “lovers.”

The techniques of the base lover, especially as exemplified in modern

journalism, would make a long catalogue, but in general it is accurate

to say that he seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by

never permitting an honest examination of alternatives. Nothing is more

feared by him than a true dialectic, for this not only endangers his

favored alternative, but also gives the “beloved”—how clearly here are

these the “lambs” of Socrates’ figure—some training in intellectual

independence. What he does therefore is dress up one alternative in all

the cheap finery of immediate hopes and fears, knowing that if he can

thus prevent a masculine exercise of imagination and will, he can have

his way. By discussing only one side of an issue, by mentioning cause

without consequence or consequence without cause, acts without agents or

agents without agency,[6] he often successfully blocks definition and

cause-and-effect reasoning. In this way his choices are arrayed in such

meretricious images that one can quickly infer the juvenile mind which

they would attract. Of course the base rhetorician today, with his vastly

augmented power of propagation, has means of deluding which no ancient

rhetor in forum or market place could have imagined.

Because Socrates has now made a speech against love, representing it

as an evil, the non-lover seems to survive in estimation. We observe,

however, that the non-lover, instead of being celebrated, is disposed of

dialectically. “So, in a word, I say that the non-lover possesses all the

advantages that are opposed to the disadvantages we found in the lover.”

This is not without bearing upon the subject matter of the important

third speech, to which we now turn.

At this point in the dialogue, Socrates is warned by his monitory spirit

that he has been engaging in a defamation of love despite the fact that

love is a divinity. “If love is, as indeed he is, a god or something

divine, he can be nothing evil; but the two speeches just now said that

he was evil.” These discourses were then an impiety—one representing

non-love as admirable and the other attacking love as base. Socrates

resolves to make amends, and the recantation which follows is one of the

most elaborate developments in the Platonic system. The account of love

which emerges from this new position may be summarized as follows.

Love is often censured as a form of madness, yet not all madness is evil.

There is a madness which is simple degeneracy, but on the other hand

there are kinds of madness which are really forms of inspiration, from

which come the greatest gifts conferred on man. Prophecy is a kind of

madness, and so too is poetry. “The poetry of the sane man vanishes into

nothingness before that of the inspired madman.” Mere sanity, which is

of human origin, is inferior to that madness which is inspired by the

gods and which is a condition for the highest kind of achievement. In

this category goes the madness of the true lover. His is a generous state

which confers blessings to the ignoring of self, whereas the conduct of

the non-lover displays all the selfishness of business: “the affection of

the non-lover, which is alloyed with mortal prudence and follows mortal

and parsimonious rules of conduct will beget in the beloved soul the

narrowness which common folk praise as virtue; it will cause the soul to

be a wanderer upon the earth for nine thousand years and a fool below the

earth at last.” It is the vulgar who do not realize that the madness of

the noble lover is an inspired madness because he has his thoughts turned

toward a beauty of divine origin.

Now the attitude of the noble lover toward the beloved is in direct

contrast with that of the evil lover, who, as we have seen, strives

to possess and victimize the object of his affections. For once the

noble lover has mastered the conflict within his own soul by conquering

appetite and fixing his attention upon the intelligible and the divine,

he conceives an exalted attitude toward the beloved. The noble lover now

“follows the beloved in reverence and awe.” So those who are filled with

this kind of love “exhibit no jealousy or meanness toward the loved one,

but endeavor by every means in their power to lead him to the likeness

of the god whom they honor.” Such is the conversion by which love turns

from the exploitative to the creative.

Here it becomes necessary to bring our concepts together and to think

of all speech having persuasive power as a kind of “love.”[7] Thus,

rhetorical speech is madness to the extent that it departs from the

line which mere sanity lays down. There is always in its statement a

kind of excess or deficiency which is immediately discernible when

the test of simple realism is applied. Simple realism operates on a

principle of equation or correspondence; one thing must match another,

or, representation must tally with thing represented, like items in

a tradesman’s account. Any excess or deficiency on the part of the

representation invokes the existence of the world of symbolism, which

simple realism must deny. This explains why there is an immortal feud

between men of business and the users of metaphor and metonymy, the poets

and the rhetoricians.[8] The man of business, the narrow and parsimonious

soul in the allusion of Socrates, desires a world which is a reliable

materiality. But this the poet and rhetorician will never let him have,

for each, with his own purpose, is trying to advance the borders of the

imaginative world. A primrose by the river’s brim will not remain that

in the poet’s account, but is promptly turned into something very much

larger and something highly implicative. He who is accustomed to record

the world with an abacus cannot follow these transfigurations; and

indeed the very occurrence of them subtly undermines the premise of his

business. It is the historic tendency of the tradesman, therefore, to

confine passion to quite narrow channels so that it will not upset the

decent business arrangements of the world. But if the poet, as the chief

transformer of our picture of the world, is the peculiar enemy of this

mentality, the rhetorician is also hostile when practicing the kind of

love proper to him. The “passion” in his speech is revolutionary, and it

has a practical end.

We have now indicated the significance of the three types of lovers; but

the remainder of the _Phaedrus_ has much more to say about the nature

of rhetoric, and we must return to one or more points to place our

subject in a wider context. The problem of rhetoric which occupied Plato

persistently, not only in the _Phaedrus_ but also in other dialogues

where this art is reviewed, may be best stated as a question: if truth

alone is not sufficient to persuade men, what else remains that can be

legitimately added? In one of the exchanges with Phaedrus, Socrates puts

the question in the mouth of a personified Rhetoric: “I do not compel

anyone to learn to speak without knowing the truth, but if my advice is

of any value, he learns that first and then acquires me. So what I claim

is this, that without my help the knowledge of the truth does not give

the art of persuasion.”

Now rhetoric as we have discussed it in relation to the lovers consists

of truth plus its artful presentation, and for this reason it becomes

necessary to say something more about the natural order of dialectic

and rhetoric. In any general characterization rhetoric will include

dialectic,[9] but for the study of method it is necessary to separate

the two. Dialectic is a method of investigation whose object is the

establishment of truth about doubtful propositions. Aristotle in the

_Topics_ gives a concise statement of its nature. “A dialectical problem

is a subject of inquiry that contributes either to choice or avoidance,

or to truth and knowledge, and that either by itself, or as a help to

the solution of some other such problem. It must, moreover, be something

on which either people hold no opinion either way, or the masses hold a

contrary opinion to the philosophers, or the philosophers to the masses,

or each of them among themselves.”[10] Plato is not perfectly clear

about the distinction between positive and dialectical terms. In one

passage[11] he contrasts the “positive” terms “iron” and “silver” with

the “dialectical” terms “justice” and “goodness”; yet in other passages

his “dialectical” terms seem to include categorizations of the external

world. Thus Socrates indicates that distinguishing the horse from the

ass is a dialectical operation;[12] and he tells us later that a good

dialectician is able to divide things by classes “where the natural

joints are” and will avoid breaking any part “after the manner of a bad

carver.”[13] Such, perhaps, is Aristotle’s dialectic which contributes to

truth and knowledge.

But there is a branch of dialectic which contributes to “choice or

avoidance,” and it is with this that rhetoric is regularly found joined.

Generally speaking, this is a rhetoric involving questions of policy, and

the dialectic which precedes it will determine not the application of

positive terms but that of terms which are subject to the contingency of

evaluation. Here dialectical inquiry will concern itself not with what

is “iron” but with what is “good.” It seeks to establish what belongs in

the category of the “just” rather than what belongs in the genus _Canis_.

As a general rule, simple object words such as “iron” and “house” have

no connotations of policy, although it is frequently possible to give

them these through speech situations in which there is added to their

referential function a kind of impulse. We should have to interpret in

this way “Fire!” or “Gold!” because these terms acquire something through

intonation and relationship which places them in the class of evaluative

expressions.

Any piece of persuasion, therefore, will contain as its first process a

dialectic establishing terms which have to do with policy. Now a term of

policy is essentially a term of motion, and here begins the congruence of

rhetoric with the soul which underlies the speculation of the _Phaedrus_.

In his myth of the charioteer, Socrates declares that every soul is

immortal because “that which is ever moving is immortal.” Motion, it

would appear from this definition, is part of the soul’s essence. And

just because the soul is ever tending, positive or indifferent terms

cannot partake of this congruence. But terms of tendency—goodness,

justice, divinity, and the like—are terms of motion and therefore may

be said to comport with the soul’s essence. The soul’s perception of

goodness, justice, and divinity will depend upon its proper tendency,

while at the same time contacts with these in discourse confirm and

direct that tendency. The education of the soul is not a process of

bringing it into correspondence with a physical structure like the

external world, but rather a process of rightly affecting its motion. By

this conception, a soul which is rightly affected calls that good which

is good; but a soul which is wrongly turned calls that good which is

evil. What Plato has prepared us to see is that the virtuous rhetorician,

who is a lover of truth, has a soul of such movement that its dialectical

perceptions are consonant with those of a divine mind. Or, in the

language of more technical philosophy, this soul is aware of axiological

systems which have ontic status. The good soul, consequently, will not

urge a perversion of justice as justice in order to impose upon the

commonwealth. Insofar as the soul has its impulse in the right direction,

its definitions will agree with the true nature of intelligible things.

There is, then, no true rhetoric without dialectic, for the dialectic

provides that basis of “high speculation about nature” without which

rhetoric in the narrower sense has nothing to work upon. Yet, when the

disputed terms have been established, we are at the limit of dialectic.

How does the noble rhetorician proceed from this point on? That the

clearest demonstration in terms of logical inclusion and exclusion often

fails to win assent we hardly need state; therefore, to what does the

rhetorician resort at this critical passage? It is the stage at which

he passes from the logical to the analogical, or it is where figuration

comes into rhetoric.

To look at this for a moment through a practical illustration, let us

suppose that a speaker has convinced his listeners that his position is

“true” as far as dialectical inquiry may be pushed. Now he sets about

moving the listeners toward that position, but there is no way to move

them except through the operation of analogy. The analogy proceeds by

showing that the position being urged resembles or partakes of something

greater and finer. It will be represented, in sum, as one of the steps

leading toward ultimate good. Let us further suppose our speaker to be

arguing for the payment of a just debt. The payment of the just debt is

not itself justice, but the payment of this particular debt is one of the

many things which would have to be done before this could be a completely

just world. It is just, then, because it partakes of the ideal justice,

or it is a small analogue of all justice (in practice it will be found

that the rhetorician makes extensive use of synecdoche, whereby the small

part is used as a vivid suggestion of the grandeur of the whole). It is

by bringing out these resemblances that the good rhetorician leads those

who listen in the direction of what is good. In effect, he performs a

cure of souls by giving impulse, chiefly through figuration, toward an

ideal good.

We now see the true rhetorician as a noble lover of the good, who works

through dialectic and through poetic or analogical association. However

he is compelled to modulate by the peculiar features of an occasion, this

is his method.

It may not be superfluous to draw attention to the fact that what we

have here outlined is the method of the _Phaedrus_ itself. The dialectic

appears in the dispute about love. The current thesis that love is

praiseworthy is countered by the antithesis that love is blameworthy.

This position is fully developed in the speech of Lysias and in the first

speech of Socrates. But this position is countered by a new thesis

that after all love is praiseworthy because it is a divine thing. Of

course, this is love on a higher level, or love re-defined. This is the

regular process of transcendence which we have noted before. Now, having

rescued love from the imputation of evil by excluding certain things

from its definition, what does Socrates do? Quite in accordance with our

analysis, he turns rhetorician. He tries to make this love as attractive

as possible by bringing in the splendid figure of the charioteer.[14] In

the narrower conception of this art, the allegory is the rhetoric, for

it excites and fills us with desire for this kind of love, depicted with

many terms having tendency toward the good. But in the broader conception

the art must include also the dialectic, which succeeded in placing love

in the category of divine things before filling our imaginations with

attributes of divinity.[15] It is so regularly the method of Plato to

follow a subtle analysis with a striking myth that it is not unreasonable

to call him the master rhetorician. This goes far to explain why those

who reject his philosophy sometimes remark his literary art with mingled

admiration and annoyance.

The objection sometimes made that rhetoric cannot be used by a lover

of truth because it indulges in “exaggerations” can be answered as

follows. There is an exaggeration which is mere wantonness, and with

this the true rhetorician has nothing to do. Such exaggeration is purely

impressionistic in aim. Like caricature, whose only object is to amuse,

it seizes upon any trait or aspect which could produce titillation

and exploits this without conscience. If all rhetoric were like this,

we should have to grant that rhetoricians are persons of very low

responsibility and their art a disreputable one. But the rhetorician we

have now defined is not interested in sensationalism.

The exaggeration which this rhetorician employs is not caricature but

prophecy; and it would be a fair formulation to say that true rhetoric is

concerned with the potency of things. The literalist, like the anti-poet

described earlier, is troubled by its failure to conform to a present

reality. What he fails to appreciate is that potentiality is a mode of

existence, and that all prophecy is about the tendency of things. The

discourse of the noble rhetorician, accordingly, will be about real

potentiality or possible actuality, whereas that of the mere exaggerator

is about unreal potentiality. Naturally this distinction rests upon a

supposal that the rhetorician has insight, and we could not defend him

in the absence of that condition. But given insight, he has the duty

to represent to us the as yet unactualized future. It would be, for

example, a misrepresentation of current facts but not of potential ones

to talk about the joys of peace in a time of war. During the Second World

War, at the depth of Britain’s political and military disaster, Winston

Churchill likened the future of Europe to “broad sunlit uplands.” Now if

one had regard only for the hour, this was a piece of mendacity such as

the worst charlatans are found committing; but if one took Churchill’s

premises and then considered the potentiality, the picture was within

bounds of actualization. His “exaggeration” was that the defeat of the

enemy would place Europe in a position for long and peaceful progress.

At the time the surface trends ran the other way; the actuality was a

valley of humiliation. Yet the hope which transfigured this to “broad

sunlit uplands” was not irresponsible, and we conclude by saying that the

rhetorician talks about both what exists simply and what exists by favor

of human imagination and effort.[16]

This interest in actualization is a further distinction between pure

dialectic and rhetoric. With its forecast of the actual possibility,

rhetoric passes from mere scientific demonstration of an idea to

its relation to prudential conduct. A dialectic must take place _in

vacuo_, and the fact alone that it contains contraries leaves it an

intellectual thing. Rhetoric, on the other hand, always espouses one of

the contraries. This espousal is followed by some attempt at impingement

upon actuality. That is why rhetoric, with its passion for the actual, is

more complete than mere dialectic with its dry understanding. It is more

complete on the premise that man is a creature of passion who must live

out that passion in the world. Pure contemplation does not suffice for

this end. As Jacques Maritain has expressed it: “love ... is not directed

at possibilities or pure essences; it is directed at what exists; one

does not love possibilities, one loves that which exists or is destined

to exist.”[17] The complete man, then, is the “lover” added to the

scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician. Understanding followed by

actualization seems to be the order of creation, and there is no need for

the role of rhetoric to be misconceived.

The pure dialectician is left in the theoretical position of the

non-lover, who can attain understanding but who cannot add impulse to

truth. We are compelled to say “theoretical position” because it is by

no means certain that in the world of actual speech the non-lover has

more than a putative existence. We have seen previously that his speech

would consist of strictly referential words which would serve only as

designata. Now the question arises: at what point is motive to come

into such language? Kenneth Burke in _A Grammar of Motives_ has pointed

to “the pattern of embarrassment behind the contemporary ideal of a

language that will best promote good action by entirely eliminating the

element of exhortation or command. Insofar as such a project succeeded,

its terms would involve a narrowing of circumference to a point where

the principle of personal action is eliminated from language, so that an

act would follow from it only as a non-sequitur, a kind of humanitarian

after-thought.”[18]

The fault of this conception of language is that scientific intention

turns out to be enclosed in artistic intention and not _vice versa_.

Let us test this by taking as an example one of those “fact-finding

committees” so favored by modern representative governments. A language

in which all else is suppressed in favor of nuclear meanings would be

an ideal instrumentality for the report of such a committee. But this

committee, if it lived up to the ideal of its conception, would have

to be followed by an “attitude-finding committee” to tell us what its

explorations really mean. In real practice the fact-finding committee

understands well enough that it is also an attitude-finding committee,

and where it cannot show inclination through language of tendency,

it usually manages to do so through selection and arrangement of the

otherwise inarticulate facts. To recur here to the original situation in

the dialogue, we recall that the eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover,

had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a

sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One

must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the

neutrality of their discourse. We cannot deny that there are degrees of

objectivity in the reference of speech. But this is not the same as an

assurance that a vocabulary of reduced meanings will solve the problems

of mankind. Many of those problems will have to be handled, as Socrates

well knew, by the student of souls, who must primarily make use of the

language of tendency. The soul is impulse, not simply cognition; and

finally one’s interest in rhetoric depends on how much poignancy one

senses in existence.[19]

Rhetoric moves the soul with a movement which cannot finally be justified

logically. It can only be valued analogically with reference to some

supreme image. Therefore when the rhetorician encounters some soul

“sinking beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice” he seeks

to re-animate it by holding up to its sight the order of presumptive

goods. This order is necessarily a hierarchy leading up to the ultimate

good. All of the terms in a rhetorical vocabulary are like links in a

chain stretching up to some master link which transmits its influence

down through the linkages. It is impossible to talk about rhetoric as

effective expression without having as a term giving intelligibility

to the whole discourse, the Good. Of course, inferior concepts of the

Good may be and often are placed in this ultimate position; and there

is nothing to keep a base lover from inverting the proper order and

saying, “Evil, be thou my good.” Yet the fact remains that in any

piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another

rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate.

There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily

an aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an

aristocracy of notions, to say nothing of supplementing his logical and

pathetic proofs with an ethical proof.

All things considered, rhetoric, noble or base, is a great power in the

world; and we note accordingly that at the center of the public life of

every people there is a fierce struggle over who shall control the means

of rhetorical propagation. Today we set up “offices of information,”

which like the sly lover in the dialogue, pose as non-lovers while

pushing their suits. But there is no reason to despair over the fact that

men will never give up seeking to influence one another. We would not

desire it to be otherwise; neuter discourse is a false idol, to worship

which is to commit the very offense for which Socrates made expiation in

his second speech.

Since we want not emancipation from impulse but clarification of impulse,

the duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into

a whole that is greater than scientific perception.[20] The realization

that just as no action is really indifferent, so no utterance is without

its responsibility introduces, it is true, a certain strenuousity into

life, produced by a consciousness that “nothing is lost.” Yet this is

preferable to that desolation which proceeds from an infinite dispersion

or feeling of unaccountability. Even so, the choice between them is

hardly ours to make; we did not create the order of things, but being

accountable for our impulses, we wish these to be just.

Thus when we finally divest rhetoric of all the notions of artifice

which have grown up around it, we are left with something very much

like Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God.” This is its essence and

the _fons et origo_ of its power. It is “intellectual” because, as we

have previously seen, there is no honest rhetoric without a preceding

dialectic. The kind of rhetoric which is justly condemned is utterance

in support of a position before that position has been adjudicated with

reference to the whole universe of discourse[21]—and of such the world

always produces more than enough. It is “love” because it is something in

addition to bare theoretical truth. That element in addition is a desire

to bring truth into a kind of existence, or to give it an actuality

to which theory is indifferent. Now what is to be said about our last

expression, “of God”? Echoes of theological warfare will cause many to

desire a substitute for this, and we should not object. As long as we

have in ultimate place the highest good man can intuit, the relationship

is made perfect. We shall be content with “intellectual love of the

Good.” It is still the intellectual love of good which causes the noble

lover to desire not to devour his beloved but to shape him according to

the gods as far as mortal power allows. So rhetoric at its truest seeks

to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in

that chain extending up toward the ideal, which only the intellect can

apprehend and only the soul have affection for. This is the justified

affection of which no one can be ashamed, and he who feels no influence

of it is truly outside the communion of minds. Rhetoric appears, finally,

as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.

It may be granted that in this essay we have gone some distance from

the banks of the Ilissus. What began as a simple account of passion

becomes by transcendence an allegory of all speech. No one would think of

suggesting that Plato had in mind every application which has here been

made, but that need not arise as an issue. The structure of the dialogue,

the way in which the judgments about speech concentre, and especially the

close association of the true, the beautiful, and the good, constitute a

unity of implication. The central idea is that all speech, which is the

means the gods have given man to express his soul, is a form of eros, in

the proper interpretation of the word. With that truth the rhetorician

will always be brought face to face as soon as he ventures beyond the

consideration of mere artifice and device.

Chapter II

DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC AT DAYTON, TENNESSEE

We have maintained that dialectic and rhetoric are distinguishable

stages of argumentation, although often they are not distinguished by

the professional mind, to say nothing of the popular mind. Dialectic is

that stage which defines the subject satisfactorily with regard to the

_logos_, or the set of propositions making up some coherent universe

of discourse; and we can therefore say that a dialectical position is

established when its relation to an opposite has been made clear and

it is thus rationally rather than empirically sustained. Despite the

inconclusiveness of Plato on this subject, we shall say that facts are

never dialectically determined—although they may be elaborated in a

dialectical system—and that the urgency of facts is never a dialectical

concern. For similar reasons Professor Adler, in his searching study of

dialectic, maintains the position that “Facts, that is non-discursive

elements, are never determinative of dialectic in a logical or

intellectual sense....”[22]

What a successful dialectic secures for any position therefore, as we

noted in the opening chapter, is not actuality but possibility; and what

rhetoric thereafter accomplishes is to take any dialectically secured

position (since positive positions, like the “position” that water

freezes at 32°F., are not matters for rhetorical appeal) and show its

relationship to the world of prudential conduct. This is tantamount to

saying that what the specifically rhetorical plea asks of us is belief,

which is a preliminary to action.

It may be helpful to state this relationship through an example less

complex than that of the Platonic dialogue. The speaker who in a

dialectical contest has taken the position that “magnanimity is a virtue”

has by his process of opposition and exclusion won our intellectual

assent, inasmuch as we see the abstract possibility of this position in

the world of discourse. He has not, however, produced in us a resolve to

practice magnanimity. To accomplish this he must pass from the realm of

possibility to that of actuality; it is not the logical invincibility

of “magnanimity” enclosed in the class “virtue” which wins our assent;

rather it is the contemplation of magnanimity _sub specie_ actuality.

Accordingly when we say that rhetoric instills belief and action, we are

saying that it intersects possibility with the plane of actuality and

hence of the imperative.[23]

A failure to appreciate this distinction is responsible for many lame

performances in our public controversies. The effects are, in outline,

that the dialectician cannot understand why his demonstration does not

win converts; and the rhetorician cannot understand why his appeal is

rejected as specious. The answer, as we have begun to indicate, is that

the dialectic has not made reference to reality, which men confronted

with problems of conduct require; and the rhetorician has not searched

the grounds of the position on which he has perhaps spent much eloquence.

True, the dialectician and the rhetorician are often one man, and the

two processes may not lie apart in his work; but no student of the art

of argumentation can doubt that some extraordinary confusions would

be prevented by a knowledge of the theory of this distinction. Beyond

this, representative government would receive a tonic effect from any

improvement of the ability of an electorate to distinguish logical

positions from the detail of rhetorical amplification. The British,

through their custom of putting questions to public speakers and to

officers of government in Parliament, probably come nearest to getting

some dialectical clarification from their public figures. In the United

States, where there is no such custom, it is up to each disputant

to force the other to reveal his grounds; and this, in the ardor of

shoring up his own position rhetorically, he often fails to do with

any thoroughness. It should therefore be profitable to try the kind of

analysis we have explained upon some celebrated public controversy, with

the object of showing how such grasp of rhetorical theory could have made

the issues clearer.

For this purpose, it would be hard to think of a better example than the

Scopes “evolution” trial of a generation ago. There is no denying that

this trial had many aspects of the farcical, and it might seem at first

glance not serious enough to warrant this type of examination. Yet at the

time it was considered serious enough to draw the most celebrated trial

lawyers of the country, as well as some of the most eminent scientists;

moreover, after one has cut through the sensationalism with which

journalism and a few of the principals clothed the encounter, one finds a

unique alignment of dialectical and rhetorical positions.

The background of the trial can be narrated briefly. On March 21, 1925,

the state of Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of the theory

of evolution in publicly supported schools. The language of the law was

as follows:

Section 1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state

of Tennessee, that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in

any of the universities, normals and all other public schools

of the state, which are supported in whole or in part by the

public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that

denies the story of the Divine creation of man as taught in the

Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower

order of animals.

That same spring John T. Scopes, a young instructor in biology in the

high school at Dayton, made an agreement with some local citizens to

teach such a theory and to cause himself to be indicted therefor with

the object of testing the validity of the law. The indictment was duly

returned, and the two sides prepared for the contest. The issue excited

the nation as a whole; and the trial drew as opposing counsel Clarence

Darrow, the celebrated Chicago lawyer, and William Jennings Bryan, the

former political leader and evangelical lecturer.

The remarkable aspect of this trial was that almost from the first the

defense, pleading the cause of science, was forced into the role of

rhetorician; whereas the prosecution, pleading the cause of the state,

clung stubbornly to a dialectical position. This development occurred

because the argument of the defense, once the legal technicalities were

got over, was that evolution is “true.” The argument of the prosecution

was that its teaching was unlawful. These two arguments depend upon

rhetoric and dialectic respectively. Because of this circumstance, the

famous trial turned into an argument about the orders of knowledge,

although this fact was never clearly expressed, if it was ever discerned,

by either side, and that is the main subject of our analysis. But before

going into the matter of the trial, a slight prologue may be in order.

It is only the first step beyond philosophic naïvete to realize that

there are different orders of knowledge, or that not all knowledge is of

the same kind of thing. Adler, whose analysis I am satisfied to accept

to some extent, distinguishes the orders as follows. First there is the

order of facts about existing physical entities. These constitute the

simple data of science. Next come the statements which are statements

about these facts; these are the propositions or theories of science.

Next there come the statements about these statements: “The propositions

which these last statements express form a partial universe of discourse

which is the body of philosophical opinion.”[24]

To illustrate in sequence: the anatomical measurements of

_Pithecanthropus erectus_ would be knowledge of the first order. A

theory based on these measurements which placed him in a certain group

of related organisms would be knowledge of the second order. A statement

about the value or the implications of the theory of this placement would

be knowledge of the third order; it would be the judgment of a scientific

theory from a dialectical position.

It is at once apparent that the Tennessee “anti-evolution” law was a

statement of the third class. That is to say, it was neither a collection

of scientific facts, nor a statement about those facts (_i.e._, a

theory or a generalization); it was a statement about a statement (the

scientists’ statement) purporting to be based on those facts. It was,

to use Adler’s phrase, a philosophical opinion, though expressed in the

language of law. Now since the body of philosophical opinion is on a

level which surmounts the partial universe of science, how is it possible

for the latter ever to refute the former? In short, is there any number

of facts, together with generalizations based on facts, which would be

sufficient to overcome a dialectical position?

Throughout the trial the defense tended to take the view that science

could carry the day just by being scientific. But in doing this, one

assumes that there are no points outside the empirical realm from which

one can form judgments about science. Science, by this conception, must

contain not only its facts, but also the means of its own evaluation, so

that the statements about the statements of science are science too.

The published record of the trial runs to approximately three hundred

pages, and it would obviously be difficult to present a digest of all

that was said. But through a carefully selected series of excerpts, it

may be possible to show how blows were traded back and forth from the

two positions. The following passages, though not continuous, afford the

clearest picture of the dialectical-rhetorical conflict which underlay

the entire trial.

THE COURT (_in charging the grand jury_)

You will bear in mind that in this investigation you are not

interested to inquire into the policy of this legislation.[25]

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Darrow_: I don’t suppose the court has considered the

question of competency of evidence. My associates and myself

have fairly definite ideas as to it, but I don’t know how

the counsel on the other side feel about it. I think that

scientists are competent evidence—or competent witnesses here,

to explain what evolution is, and that they are competent on

both sides.

THE PROSECUTION

_Attorney-General Stewart_: If the Court please, in this

case, as Mr. Darrow stated, the defense is going to insist on

introducing scientists and Bible students to give their ideas

on certain views of this law, and that, I am frank to state,

will be resisted by the state as vigorously as we know how to

resist it. We have had a conference or two about the matter,

and we think that it isn’t competent evidence; that is, it is

not competent to bring into this case scientists who testify as

to what the theory of evolution is or interpret the Bible or

anything of that sort.

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Neal_: The defendant moves the court to quash the

indictment in this case for the following reasons: In

that it violates Sec. 12, Art. XI, of the Constitution of

Tennessee: “It shall be the duty of the general assembly in

all future periods of the government to cherish literature

and science....” I want to say that our main contention after

all, may it please your honor, is that this is not a proper

thing for any legislature, the legislature of Tennessee or

the legislature of the United States, to attempt to make and

assign a rule in regard to. In this law there is an attempt to

pronounce a judgment and a conclusion in the realm of science

and in the realm of religion.

THE PROSECUTION

_Mr. McKenzie_: Under the law you cannot teach in the common

schools the Bible. Why should it be improper to provide that

you cannot teach this other theory?

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Darrow_: Can a legislative body say, “You cannot read

a book or take a lesson or make a talk on science until you

first find out whether you are saying against Genesis”? It can

unless that constitutional provision protects me. It can. Can

it say to the astronomer, you cannot turn your telescope upon

the infinite planets and suns and stars that fill space, lest

you find that the earth is not the center of the universe and

that there is not any firmament between us and the heaven? Can

it? It could—except for the work of Thomas Jefferson, which

has been woven into every state constitution in the Union, and

has stayed there like a flaming sword to protect the rights of

man against ignorance and bigotry, and when it is permitted to

overwhelm them then we are taken in a sea of blood and ruin

that all the miseries and tortures and carrion of the middle

ages would be as nothing.... If today you can take a thing

like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public

schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the

private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to

teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session

you may ban books and the newspapers.

_Mr. Dudley Field Malone_: So that there shall be no

misunderstanding and that no one shall be able to misinterpret

or misrepresent our position we wish to state at the beginning

of the case that the defense believes that there is a direct

conflict between the theory of evolution and the theories of

creation as set forth in the Book of Genesis.

Neither do we believe that the stories of creation as set forth

in the Bible are reconcilable or scientifically correct.

_Mr. Arthur Garfield Hays_: Our whole case depends upon proving

that evolution is a reasonable scientific theory.

THE PROSECUTION

_Mr. William Jennings Bryan, Jr._ (in support of a motion to

exclude expert testimony): It is, I think, apparent to all that

we have now reached the heart of this case, upon your honor’s

ruling, as to whether this expert testimony will be admitted

largely determines the question of whether this trial from now

on will be an orderly effort to try the case upon the issues,

raised by the indictment and by the plea or whether it will

degenerate into a joint debate upon the merits or demerits

of someone’s views upon evolution.... To permit an expert to

testify upon this issue would be to substitute trial by experts

for trial by jury....

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Hays_: Are we entitled to show what evolution is? We are

entitled to show that, if for no other reason than to determine

whether the title is germane to the act.

THE PROSECUTION

_Mr. William Jennings Bryan_: An expert cannot be permitted

to come in here and try to defeat the enforcement of a law by

testifying that it isn’t a bad law and it isn’t—I mean a bad

doctrine—no matter how these people phrase the doctrine—no

matter how they eulogize it. This is not the place to prove

that the law ought never to have been passed. The place to

prove that, or teach that, was to the state legislature....

The people of this state passed this law, the people of the

state knew what they were doing when they passed the law, and

they knew the dangers of the doctrine—that they did not want it

taught to their children, and my friends, it isn’t—your honor,

it isn’t proper to bring experts in here and try to defeat the

purpose of the people of this state by trying to show that

this thing they denounce and outlaw is a beautiful thing that

everybody ought to believe in.... It is this doctrine that

gives us Nietzsche, the only great author who tried to carry

this to its logical conclusion, and we have the testimony of

my distinguished friend from Chicago in his speech in the Loeb

and Leopold case that 50,000 volumes have been written about

Nietzsche, and he is the greatest philosopher in the last

hundred years, and have him pleading that because Leopold read

Nietzsche and adopted Nietzsche’s philosophy of the super-man,

that he is not responsible for the taking of human life. We

have the doctrine—I should not characterize it as I should

like to characterize it—the doctrine that the universities

that had it taught, and the professors who taught it, are much

more responsible for the crime that Leopold committed than

Leopold himself. That is the doctrine, my friends, that they

have tried to bring into existence, they commence in the high

schools with their foundation of evolutionary theory, and we

have the word of the distinguished lawyer that this is more

read than any other in a hundred years, and the statement of

that distinguished man that the teachings of Nietzsche made

Leopold a murderer.... (_Mr. Bryan reading from a book by

Darrow_) “I will guarantee that you can go to the University of

Chicago today—into its big library and find over 1,000 volumes

of Nietzsche, and I am sure I speak moderately. If this boy

is to blame for this, where did he get it? Is there any blame

attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously

and fashioned his life on it? And there is no question in

this case but what it is true. Then who is to blame? The

university would be more to blame than he is. The scholars of

the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers

of the world—and Nietzsche’s books are published by one of

the biggest publishers in the world—are more to blame than he

is. Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy

for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”...

Your honor, we first pointed out that we do not need any

experts in science. Here is one plain fact, and the statute

defines itself, and it tells the kind of evolution it does not

want taught, and the evidence says that this is the kind of

evolution that was taught, and no number of scientists could

come in here, my friends, and override that statute or take

from the jury its right to decide this question, so that all

the experts they could bring would mean nothing. And when it

comes to Bible experts, every member of the jury is as good an

expert on the Bible as any man they could bring, or that we

could bring.

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Malone_: Are we to have our children know nothing about

science except what the church says they shall know? I

have never seen any harm in learning and understanding, in

humility and open-mindedness, and I have never seen clearer

the need of that learning than when I see the attitude of the

prosecution, who attack and refuse to accept the information

and intelligence, which expert witnesses will give them.

THE PROSECUTION

_Mr. Stewart_: Now what could these scientists testify to?

They could only say as an expert, qualified as an expert upon

this subject, I have made a study of these things and from my

standpoint as such an expert, I say that this does not deny the

story of divine creation. That is what they would testify to,

isn’t it? That is all they could testify about.

Now, then, I say under the correct construction of the act,

that they cannot testify as to that. Why? Because in the

wording of this act the legislature itself construed the

instrument according to their intention.... What was the

general purpose of the legislature here? It was to prevent

teaching in the public schools of any county in Tennessee that

theory which says that man is descended from a lower order of

animals. That is the intent and nobody can dispute it under the

shining sun of this day.

THE COURT

Now upon these issues as brought up it becomes the duty of the

Court to determine the question of the admissibility of this

expert testimony offered by the defendant.

It is not within the province of the Court under these issues

to decide and determine which is true, the story of divine

creation as taught in the Bible, or the story of the creation

of man as taught by evolution.

If the state is correct in its insistence, it is immaterial,

so far as the results of this case are concerned, as to

which theory is true; because it is within the province of

the legislative branch, and not the judicial branch of the

government to pass upon the policy of a statute; and the policy

of this statute having been passed upon by that department of

the government, this court is not further concerned as to its

policy; but is interested only in its proper interpretation

and, if valid, its enforcement.... Therefore the court is

content to sustain the motion of the attorney-general to

exclude expert testimony.

THE PROSECUTION

_Mr. Stewart_ (during Mr. Darrow’s cross-examination of Mr.

Bryan): I want to interpose another objection. What is the

purpose of this examination?

_Mr. Bryan_: The purpose is to cast ridicule upon everybody

who believes in the Bible, and I am perfectly willing that the

world shall know that these gentlemen have no other purpose

than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible.

THE DEFENSE

_Mr. Darrow_: We have the purpose of preventing bigots and

ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United

States, and you know it, and that is all.

Statements of Noted Scientists as Filed into Record by Defense

Counsel

_Charles H. Judd, Director of School of Education, University

of Chicago_: It will be impossible, in my judgment, in the

state university, as well as in the normal schools, to teach

adequately psychology or the science of education without

making constant reference to all the facts of mental

development which are included in the general doctrine of

evolution.... Whatever may be the constitutional rights of

legislatures to prescribe the general course of study of public

schools it will, in my judgment, be a serious national disaster

if the attempt is successful to determine the details to be

taught in the schools through the vote of legislatures rather

than as a result of scientific investigation.

_Jacob G. Lipman, Dean of the College of Agriculture, State

University of New Jersey_: With these facts and interpretations

of organic evolution left out, the agricultural colleges and

experimental stations could not render effective service to our

great agricultural industry.

_Wilbur A. Nelson, State Geologist of Tennessee_: It,

therefore, appears that it would be impossible to study or

teach geology in Tennessee or elsewhere, without using the

theory of evolution.

_Kirtley F. Mather, Chairman of the Department of Geology,

Harvard University_: Science has not even a guess as to the

original source or sources of matter. It deals with immediate

causes and effects.... Men of science have as their aim the

discovery of facts. They seek with open eyes, willing to

recognize it, as Huxley said, even if it “sears the eyeballs.”

After they have discovered truth, and not till then, do they

consider what its moral implications may be. Thus far, and

presumably always, truth when found is also found to be right,

in the moral sense of the word.... As Henry Ward Beecher said,

forty years ago, “If to reject God’s revelation in the book is

infidelity, what is it to reject God’s revelation of himself in

the structure of the whole globe?”

_Maynard M. Metcalf, Research Specialist in Zoology, Johns

Hopkins University_: Intelligent teaching of biology or

intelligent approach to any biological science is impossible if

the established fact of evolution is omitted.

_Horatio Hackett Newman, Professor of Zoology, University

of Chicago_: Evolution has been tried and tested in every

conceivable way for considerably over half a century. Vast

numbers of biological facts have been examined in the light of

this principle and without a single exception they have been

entirely compatible with it.... The evolution principle is thus

a great unifying and integrating scientific conception. Any

conception that is so far-reaching, so consistent, and that has

led to so much advance in the understanding of nature, is at

least an extremely valuable idea and one not lightly to be cast

aside in case it fails to agree with one’s prejudices.

Thus the two sides lined up as dialectical truth and empirical fact. The

state legislature of Tennessee, acting in its sovereign capacity, had

passed a measure which made it unlawful to teach that man is connatural

with the animals through asserting that he is descended from a “lower

order” of them. (There was some sparring over the meaning of the

technical language of the act, but this was the general consensus.) The

legal question was whether John T. Scopes had violated the measure. The

philosophical question, which was the real focus of interest, was the

right of a state to make this prescription.

We have referred to the kind of truth which can be dialectically

established, and here we must develop further the dialectical nature of

the state’s case. As long as it maintained this dialectical position, it

did not have to go into the “factual” truth of evolution, despite the

outcry from the other side. The following considerations, then, enter

into this “dialectical” prosecution.

By definition the legislature is the supreme arbiter of education within

the state. It is charged with the duty of promoting enlightenment and

morality, and to these ends it may establish common schools, require

attendance, and review curricula either by itself or through its agents.

The state of Tennessee had exercised this kind of authority when it

had forbidden the teaching of the Bible in the public schools. Now if

the legislature could take a position that the publicly subsidized

teaching of the Bible was socially undesirable, it could, from the same

authority, take the same position with regard to a body of science. Some

people might feel that the legislature was morally bound to encourage

the propagation of the Bible, just as some of those participating in

the trial seemed to think that it was morally bound to encourage the

propagation of science. But here again the legislature is the highest

tribunal, and no body of religious or scientific doctrine comes to it

with a compulsive authority. In brief, both the Ten Commandments and the

theory of evolution belonged in the class of things which it could elect

or reject, depending on the systematic import of propositions underlying

the philosophy of the state.

The policy of the anti-evolution law was the same type of policy which

Darrow had by inference commended only a year earlier in the famous trial

of Loeb and Leopold. This clash is perhaps the most direct in the Scopes

case and deserves pointing out here. Darrow had served as defense counsel

for the two brilliant university graduates who had conceived the idea

of committing a murder as a kind of intellectual exploit, to prove that

their powers of foresight and care could prevent detection. The essence

of Darrow’s plea at their trial was that the two young men could not be

held culpable—at least in the degree the state claimed—because of the

influences to which they had been exposed. They had been readers of a

system of philosophy of allegedly anti-social tendency, and they were

not to be blamed if they translated that philosophy into a sanction of

their deed. The effect of this plea obviously was to transfer guilt from

the two young men to society as a whole, acting through its laws, its

schools, its publications, etc.

Now the key thing to be observed in this plea was that Darrow was not

asking the jury to inspect the philosophy of Nietzsche for the purpose

either of passing upon its internal consistency or its contact with

reality. He was asking precisely what Bryan was asking of the jury at

Dayton, namely that they take a strictly dialectical position outside it,

viewing it as a partial universe of discourse with consequences which

could be adjudged good or bad. The point to be especially noted is that

Darrow did not raise the question of whether the philosophy of Nietzsche

expresses necessary truth, or whether, let us say, it is essential to an

understanding of the world. He was satisfied to point out that the state

had not been a sufficiently vigilant guardian of the forces molding the

character of its youth.

But the prosecution at Dayton could use this line of argument without

change. If the philosophy of Nietzsche were sufficient to instigate young

men to criminal actions, it might be claimed with even greater force that

the philosophy of evolution, which in the popular mind equated man with

the animals, would do the same. The state’s dialectic here simply used

one of Darrow’s earlier definitions to place the anti-evolution law in a

favorable or benevolent category. In sum: to Darrow’s previous position

that the doctrine of Nietzsche is capable of immoral influence, Bryan

responded that the doctrine of evolution is likewise capable of immoral

influence, and this of course was the dialectical countering of the

defense’s position in the trial.

There remains yet a third dialectical maneuver for the prosecution. On

the second day of the trial Attorney-General Stewart, in reviewing the

duties of the legislature, posed the following problem: “Supposing then

that there should come within the minds of the people a conflict between

literature and science. Then what would the legislature do? Wouldn’t

they have to interpret?... Wouldn’t they have to interpret their

construction of this conflict which one should be recognized or higher or