THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OLD RHETORIC
Few species of composition seem so antiquated, so little available for
any practical purpose today, as the oratory in which the generation
of our grandparents delighted. The type of discourse which they would
ride miles in wagons to hear, or would regard as the special treat of
some festive occasion, fills most people today with an acute sense of
discomfort. Somehow, it makes them embarrassed. They become conscious
of themselves, conscious of pretensions in it, and they think it well
consigned to the museum. But its very ability to inspire antipathy, as
distinguished from indifference, suggests the presence of something
interesting.
The student of rhetoric should accordingly sense here the chance for a
discovery, and as he begins to listen for its revealing quality, the
first thing he becomes aware of is a “spaciousness.” This is, of course,
a broad impression, which requires its own analysis. As we listen more
carefully, then, it seems that between the speech itself and the things
it is meant to signify, something stands—perhaps it is only an empty
space—but something is there to prevent immediate realizations and
references. For an experience of the sensation, let us for a moment go
back to 1850 and attune our ears to an address by Representative Andrew
Ewing, on the subject of the sale of the public lands.
We have afforded a refuge to the down-trodden nations of the
Old World, and organized system of internal improvement and
public education, which have no parallel in the history of
mankind. Why should we not continue and enlarge the system
which has so much contributed to these results? If our Pacific
Coast should be lined with its hundred cities, extending from
the northern boundary of Oregon down to San Diego; if the vast
interior hills and valleys could be filled with lowing herds
and fruitful fields of a thriving and industrious people; and
if the busy hum of ten thousand workshops could be daily heard
over the placid waters of the Pacific, would our government be
poorer or our country less able to meet her obligations than at
present?[146]
Despite the allusions to geographical localities, does not the
speaker seem to be speaking _in vacuo_? His words do not impinge
upon a circumambient reality; his concepts seem not to have definite
correspondences, but to be general, and as it were, mobile.
“Spread-eagle” and “high-flown” are two modifiers with which people have
sought to catch the quality of such speech.
In this work we are interested both in causes and the moral quality
of causes, and when an orator appears to speak of subjects without an
immediate apperception of them, we become curious about the kind of world
he is living in. Was this type of orator sick, as some have inferred?
Was he suffering from some kind of auto-intoxication which produces
insulation from reality? Charles Egbert Craddock in her novel _Where
the Battle Was Fought_ has left a satirical picture of the type. Its
personification is General Vayne, who holds everything up to a “moral
magnifying glass.” “Through this unique lens life loomed up as a rather
large affair. In the rickety courthouse in the village of Chattalla,
five miles out there to the south, General Vayne beheld a temple of
justice. He translated an office-holder as the sworn servant of the
people. The State was this great commonwealth, and its seal a proud
escutcheon. A fall in cotton struck him as a blow to the commerce of
the world. From an adverse political fortune he augured the swift ruin
of the country.”[147] There is the possibility that this type was sick
with a kind of vanity and egocentricity, and that has frequently been
offered as a diagnosis. But on the other hand, there is the possibility
that such men were larger than we, with our petty and contentious style,
and because larger more exposed in those limitations which they had. The
heroes in tragedies also talk bigger than life. Perhaps the source of our
discomfort is that this kind of speech comes to us as an admonition that
there were giants in the earth before us, mighty men, men of renown. But
before we are ready for any conclusion, we must isolate the cause of our
intimation.
As we scan the old oratory for the chief offender against modern
sensibility, we are certain to rank in high position, if not first,
_the uncontested term_. By this we mean the term which seems to invite
a contest, but which apparently is not so regarded in its own context.
Most of these are terms which scandalize the modern reader with their
generality, so that he wonders how the speaker ever took the risk of
using them. No experienced speaker interlards his discourse with terms
which are themselves controversial. He may build his case on one or two
such terms, after giving them _ad hoc_ definitions, but to multiply them
is to create a force of resistance which almost no speech can overcome.
Yet in this period we have speeches which seem made up almost from
beginning to end of phrases loose in scope and but weakly defensible.
Yet the old orator who employed these terms of sweeping generality knew
something of his audience’s state of mind and was confident of his
effect. And the public generally responded by putting him in the genus
“great man.” This brings us to the rhetorical situation, which must be
described in some detail.
We have said that this orator of the old-fashioned mold, who is using
the uncontested term, passes on his collection of generalities in full
expectation that they will be received as legal tender. He is taking a
very advanced position, which could be undermined easily, were the will
to do so present. But the will was not present, and this is the most
significant fact in our explanation. The orator had, in any typical
audience, not only a previously indoctrinated group, but a group of quite
similar indoctrination. Of course, we are using such phrases for purposes
of comparison with today. It is now a truism that the homogeneity of
belief which obtained three generations ago has largely disappeared. Such
belief was, in a manner of conceiving it, the old orator’s capital. And
it was, if we may trust the figure further, an initial asset which made
further operations possible.
If we knew how this capital is accumulated, we would possess one of
the secrets of civilization. All we know is that whatever spells the
essential unity of a people in belief and attachment contains the
answer. The best we can do at this stage is look into the mechanism of
relationship between this level of generality and the effectiveness of a
speech.
We must keep in mind that “general” is itself a relative modifier, and
that the degree of generality with which one may express one’s thoughts
is very wide. One may refer, for example, to a certain event as a
_murder_, a _crime_, an _act_, or an _occurrence_. We assume that none
of these terms is inherently falsifying, because none of them is in any
prior sense required. Levels of generality do not contradict one another;
they supplement one another by bringing out different foci of interest.
Every level of generality has its uses: the Bible can tell the story of
creation in a few hundred words, and it is doubtless well that it should
be told there in that way. Let us therefore take a guarded position here
and claim only that one’s level of generality tells something of one’s
approach to a subject. We shall find certain refinements of application
possible as we go on.
With this as a starting point, we should be prepared for a more intensive
look at the diction of the old school. For purposes of this analysis
I shall choose something that is historically obscure. Great occasions
sometimes deflect our judgment by their special circumstances. The
passage below is from a speech made by the Honorable Charles J. Faulkner
at an agricultural fair in Virginia in 1858. Both speaker and event have
passed into relative oblivion, and we can therefore view this as a fairly
stock specimen of the oratory in vogue a hundred years ago to grace local
celebrations. Let us attend to it carefully for its references.
If we look to the past or to the present we shall find that the
permanent power of any nation has always been in proportion to
its cultivation of the soil—those republics which during the
earlier and middle ages, were indebted for their growth mainly
to commerce, did for a moment, indeed, cast a dazzling splendor
across the pathway of time; but they soon passed from among
the powers of the earth, leaving behind them not a memorial of
their proud and ephemeral destiny whilst other nations, which
looked to the products of the soil for the elements of their
strength, found in each successive year the unfailing sources
of national aggrandizement and power. Of all the nations
of antiquity, the Romans were most persistently devoted to
agriculture, and many of the maxims taught by their experience,
and transmitted to us by their distinguished writers, are not
unworthy, even at this time, of the notice of the intelligent
farmers of this valley. It was in their schools of country
life—a _vita rustica_—as their own great orator informs us,
that they imbibed those noble sentiments which rendered the
Roman name more illustrious than all their famous victories,
and there, that they acquired those habits of labor, frugality,
justice and that high standard of moral virtue which made them
the easy masters of their race.[148]
A modern mind trained in the habit of analysis will be horrified by the
number of large and unexamined phrases passing by in even this brief
excerpt. “Permanent power of any nation”; “earlier and middle ages”;
“cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time”; “proud and
ephemeral destiny”; “noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more
illustrious”; and “high standards of moral virtue” are but a selection.
Comparatively speaking, the tone of this oration is fairly subdued, but
it is in the grand style, and these phrases are the medium. With this
passage before us for reference, I wish to discuss one matter of effect,
and one of cause or enabling condition.
It will be quickly perceived that the phrases in question have
resonances, both historical and literary, and that this resonance is what
we have been calling spaciousness. Instead of the single note (prized for
purposes of analysis) they are widths of sound and meaning; they tend
to echo over broad areas and to call up generalized associations. This
resonance is the interstice between what is said and the thing signified.
In this way then the generality of the phrase may be definitely linked
with an effect.
But the second question is our principal interest: how was the orator
able to use them with full public consent when he cannot do so today?
I am going to suggest that the orator then enjoyed a privilege which
can be compared to the lawyer’s “right of assumption.” This is the
right to assume that precedents are valid, that forms will persist, and
that in general one may build today on what was created yesterday. What
mankind has sanctified with usage has a presumption in its favor. Such
presumption, it was felt, instead of being an obstacle to progress,
furnishes the ground for progress. More simply, yesterday’s achievements
are also contributions to progress. It is he who insists upon beginning
every day _de novo_ who denies the reality of progress. Accordingly,
consider the American orator in the intellectual climate of this time. He
was comfortably circumstanced with reference to things he could “know”
and presume everyone else to know in the same way. Freedom and morality
were constants; the Constitution was the codification of all that was
politically feasible; Christianity of all that was morally authorized.
Rome stood as an exemplum of what may happen to nations; the American
and French Revolutions had taught rulers their necessary limitations.
Civilization has thought over its thousands of years of history and has
made some generalizations which are the premises of other arguments but
which are not issues themselves. When one asserts that the Romans had
a “high standard of moral virtue which made them the easy masters of
their race,” one is affirming a doctrine of causality in a sweeping way.
If one had to stop and “prove” that moral virtue makes one master, one
obviously would have to start farther down the ladder of assumption.
But these things were not in the area of argument because progress was
positive and that meant that some things have to be assimilated as
truths. Men were not condemned to repeat history, because they remembered
its lessons. To the extent that the mind had made its summations, it was
free to go forward, and forward meant in the direction of more inclusive
conceptions. The orator who pauses along the way to argue a point which
no one challenges only demeans the occasion. Therefore the orator of the
period we have defined did not feel that he had to argue the significance
of everything to which he attached significance. Some things were fixed
by universal enlightened consensus; and they could be used as steps for
getting at matters which were less settled and hence were proper subjects
for deliberation. Deliberation is good only because it decreases the
number of things it is necessary to deliberate about.
Consequently when we wonder how he could use such expressions without
trace of compunction, we forget that the expressions did not need
apology. The speaker of the present who used like terms would, on the
contrary, meet a contest at every step of the way. His audience would not
swallow such clusters of related meanings. But at that time a number of
unities, including the unity of past and present, the unity of moral sets
and of causal sets, furnished the ground for discourse in “uncontested
terms.” Only such substratum of agreement makes possible the panoramic
treatment.
We can infer important conclusions about a civilization when we know that
its debates and controversies occur at outpost positions rather than
within the citadel itself. If these occur at a very elementary level, we
suspect that the culture has not defined itself, or that it is decayed
and threatened with dissolution. Where the chief subject of debate
is the relative validity of Homoiousianism and Homoousianism, or the
conventions of courtly love, we feel confident that a great deal has been
cached away in the form of settled conclusions, and that such shaking
as proceeds from controversies of this kind, although they may agitate
the superstructure, will hardly be felt as far down as the foundations.
I would say the same is suggested by the great American debate over
whether the Constitution was a “constitution” or a “compact,” despite its
unfortunate sequel.
At this stage of cultural development the commonplaces of opinion and
conduct form a sort of _textus receptus_, and the emendations are
confined to minor matters. Conversely, when the disagreement is over
extremely elementary matters, survival itself may be at stake. It seems
to me that modern debates over the validity of the law of contradiction
may be a disagreement of this kind. The soundness of a culture may
well be measured by this ability to recognize what is extraneous. One
knows what to do with the extraneous, even if one decides upon a policy
of temporary accommodation. It is when the line dividing us from the
extraneous begins to fade that we are assailed with destructive doubts.
Disagreements over the most fundamental subjects leave us puzzled as to
“where we are” if not as to “what we are.” The speaker whom we have been
characterizing felt sure of the demarcation. That gave him his freedom,
and was the source of his simplicity.
When we reflect further that the old oratory had a certain judicial
flavor about it, we are prompted to ask whether thinking as then
conceived did not have a different status from today’s thinking. One is
led to make this query by the suggestion that when the most fundamental
propositions of a culture are under attack, then it becomes a duty to
“think for one’s self.” Not that it is a bad thing to think; yet when the
whole emphasis is upon “thinking for one’s self,” it is hard to avoid a
feeling that certain postulates have broken down, and the most courage
we can muster is to ask people, not to “think in a certain direction,”
but to “think for themselves.” Where the primary directive of thinking is
known, the object of thinking will not be mere cerebral motion (as some
exponents of the policy of thinking for one’s self leave us to infer),
but rather the object of such thinking, or knowledge. This is a very
rudimentary proposition, but it deserves attention because the modern
tendency has reversed a previous order. From the position that only
propositions are interesting because they alone make judgments, we are
passing to a position in which only evidence is interesting because it
alone is uncontaminated by propositions. In brief, interest has shifted
from inference to reportage, and this has had a demonstrable effect
upon the tone of oratory. The large resonant phrase is itself a kind of
condensed proposition; as propositions begin to sink with the general
sagging of the substructure, the phrases must do the same. Obviously we
are pointing here to a profound cultural change, and the same shifts can
be seen in literature; the poet or novelist may feel that the content
of his consciousness is more valid (and this will be true even of those
who have not formulated the belief) than the formal arrangement which
would be produced by selection, abstraction, and arrangement. Or viewed
in another respect, experiential order has taken precedence over logical
order.
The object of an oration made on the conditions obtained a hundred years
ago was not so much to “make people think” as to remind them of what they
already thought (and again we are speaking comparatively). The oratorical
rostrum, like the church, was less of a place for fresh instruction
than for steady inculcation. And the orator, like the minister, was
one who spoke from an eminent degree of conviction. Paradoxically, the
speaker of this vanished period had more freedom to maneuver than has his
emancipated successor. Man is free in proportion as his surroundings have
a determinate nature, and he can plan his course with perfect reliance
upon that determinateness. It is an admitted axiom that we have rules in
one place so that we can have liberty in another; we put certain things
in charge of habit so as to be free in areas where we prize freedom.
Manifestly one is not “free” when one has to battle for one’s position at
every moment of time. This interrelationship of freedom and organization
is one of the permanent conditions of existence, so that it has been said
even that perfect freedom is perfect compliance (“one commands nature by
obeying her”).
In the province we are considering, man is free to the extent that he
knows that nature is, what God expects, what he himself is capable of.
Freedom moves on a set of presuppositions just as a machine moves on a
set of ball bearings which themselves preserve definite locus. It is
when these presuppositions are tampered with that men begin to grow
concerned about their freedom. One can well imagine that the tremendous
self-consciousness about freedom today, which we note in almost every
utterance of public men, is evidence that this crucial general belief
is threatened. It is no mere paradox to say that when they cry liberty,
they mean belief—the belief that sets one free from prior concerns. A
corroborating evidence is that fact that nearly all large pleas for
liberty heard today conclude with more or less direct appeals for unity.
We may now return to our more direct concern with rhetoric. Since
according to this demonstration oratory speaks from an eminence and
has a freedom of purview, its syllogism is the “rhetorical syllogism”
mentioned by Demetrius—the enthymeme.[149] It may not hurt to state that
this is the syllogism with one of the three propositions missing. Such a
syllogism can be used only when the audience is willing to supply the
missing proposition. The missing proposition will be “in their hearts,”
as it were; it will be their agreement upon some fundamental aspect of
the issue being discussed. If it is there, the orator does not have to
supply it; if it is not there, he may not be able to get it in any way—at
least not as orator. Therefore the use of the rhetorical syllogism is
good concrete evidence that the old orator relied upon the existence of
uncontested terms or fixations of belief in the minds of his hearers.
The orator was logical, but he could dispense with being a pure logician
because that third proposition had been established for him.
These two related considerations, the accepted term and the conception
of oratory as a body of judicious conclusions upon common evidence, go
far toward explaining the quality of spaciousness. Indeed, to say that
oratory has “spaciousness” is to risk redundancy once the nature of
oratory is understood. Oratory is “spacious” in the same way that liberal
education is liberal; and a correlation can be shown between the decline
of liberal education (the education of a freeman) and the decline of
oratory. It was one of Cicero’s observations that the orator performs at
“the focal point at which all human activity is ultimately reviewed”; and
Cicero is, for connected reasons, a chief source of our theory of liberal
education.[150]
Thus far we have rested our explanation on the utility of the generalized
style, but this is probably much too narrow an account. There is also an
aesthetic of the generalization, which we must now proceed to explore.
Let us pause here momentarily to re-define our impression upon hearing
the old orator. The feature which we have been describing as spaciousness
may be translated, with perhaps a slight shift of viewpoint, as opacity.
The passages we have inspected, to recur to our examples, are opaque
in that we cannot see through them with any sharpness. And it was no
doubt the intention of the orator that we should not see through them
in this way. The “moral magnifying glass” of Craddock’s General Vayne
made objects larger, but it did not make them clearer. It rather had the
effect of blurring lines and obscuring details.
We are now in position to suggest that another factor in the choice of
the generalized phrase was aesthetic distance. There is an aesthetic, as
well as a moral, limit to how close one may approach an object; and the
forensic artists of the epoch we describe seem to have been guided by
this principle of artistic decorum. Aesthetic distance is, of course, an
essential of aesthetic treatment. If one sees an object from too close,
one sees only its irregularities and protuberances. To see an object
rightly or to see it as a whole, one has to have a proportioned distance
from it. Then the parts fall into a meaningful pattern, the dominant
effect emerges, and one sees it “as it really is.” A prurient interest in
closeness and a great remoteness will both spoil the view. To recall a
famous example in literature, neither Lilliputian nor Brobdingnagian is
man as we think we know him.
Thus it can be a sign not only of philosophical ignorance but also
of artistic bad taste to treat an object familiarly or from a near
proximity. At the risk of appearing fanciful we shall say that objects
have not only their natures but their rights, which the orator is bound
to respect, since he is in large measure the ethical teacher of society.
By maintaining this distance with regard to objects, art manages to
“idealize” them in a very special sense. One does not mean by this that
it necessarily elevates them or transfigures them, but it certainly does
keep out a kind of officious detail which would only lower the general
effect. What the artistic procedure tends to do, then, is to give us
a “generic” picture, and much the same can be said about oratory. The
true orator has little concern with singularity—or, to recall again a
famous instance, with the wart on Cromwell’s face—because the singular
is the impertinent. Only the generic belongs, and by obvious connection
the language of the generic is a general language. In the old style,
presentation kept distances which had, as one of their purposes, the
obscuring of details. It would then have appeared the extreme of bad
taste to particularize in the manner which has since, especially in
certain areas of journalism, become a literary vogue. It would have been
beyond the pale to refer, in anything intended for the public view, to
a certain cabinet minister’s false teeth or a certain congressman’s
shiny dome. Aesthetically, this was not the angle of vision from which
one takes in the man, and there is even the question of epistemological
truthfulness. Portrait painters know that still, and journalists knew it
a hundred years ago.
It will be best to illustrate the effect of aesthetic distance. I have
chosen a passage from the address delivered by John C. Breckinridge,
Vice-President of the United States, on the occasion of the removal of
the Senate from the Old to the New Chamber, January 4, 1859. The moment
was regarded as solemn, and the speaker expressed himself as follows:
And now the strifes and uncertainties of the past are finished.
We see around us on every side the proofs of stability and
improvement. This Capitol is worthy of the Republic. Noble
public buildings meet the view on every hand. Treasures of
science and the arts begin to accumulate. As this flourishing
city enlarges, it testifies to the wisdom and forecast that
dictated the plan of it. Future generations will not be
disturbed with questions concerning the center of population
or of territory, since the steamboat, the railroad and the
telegraph have made communication almost instantaneous. The
spot is sacred by a thousand memories, which are so many
pledges that the city of Washington, founded by him and
bearing his revered name, with its beautiful site, bounded
by picturesque eminences, and the broad Potomac, and lying
within view of his home and his tomb, shall remain forever the
political capital of the United States.
At the close of the address, he said:
And now, Senators, we leave this memorable chamber, bearing
with us, unimpaired, the Constitution received from our
forefathers. Let us cherish it with grateful acknowledgments
of the Divine Power who controls the destinies of empires
and whose goodness we adore. The structures reared by man
yield to the corroding tooth of time. These marble walls
must molder into ruin; but the principles of constitutional
liberty, guarded by wisdom and virtue, unlike material
elements, do not decay. Let us devoutly trust that another
Senate in another age shall bear to a new and larger Chamber,
the Constitution vigorous and inviolate, and that the last
generations of posterity shall witness the deliberations of the
Representatives of American States still united, prosperous,
and free.[151]
We shall hardly help noting the prominence of “opaque” phrases. “Proofs
of stability and improvement”; “noble public buildings”; “treasures of
science and the arts”; “this flourishing city”; “a thousand memories”;
“this beautiful site”; and “structures reared by man” seem outstanding
examples. These all express objects which can be seen only at a distance
of time or space. In three instances, it is true, the speaker mentions
things of which his hearers might have been immediately and physically
conscious, but they receive an appropriately generalized reference. The
passage admits not a single intrusive detail, nor is anything there
supposed to have a superior validity or probativeness because it is
present visibly or tangibly. The speech is addressed to the mind, and
correspondingly to the memory.[152] The fact that the inclusiveness
was temporal as well as spatial has perhaps special significance for
us. This “continuity of the past with the present” gave a dimension
which our world seems largely to have lost; and this dimension made
possible a different pattern of selection. It is not experiential data
which creates a sense of the oneness of experience. It is rather an
act of mind; and the practice of periodically bringing the past into a
meditative relationship with the present betokens an attitude toward
history. In the chapter on Lincoln we have shown that an even greater
degree of remoteness is discernible in the First and Second Inaugural
Addresses, delivered at a time when war was an ugly present reality. And
furthermore, at Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke in terms so “generic” that it
is almost impossible to show that the speech is not a eulogy of the men
in gray as well as the men in blue, inasmuch as both made up “those who
struggled here.” Lincoln’s faculty of transcending an occasion is in fact
only this ability to view it from the right distance, or to be wisely
generic about it.
We are talking here about things capable of extremes, and there is a
degree of abstraction which results in imperception; but barring those
cases which everyone recognizes as beyond bounds, we should reconsider
the idea that such generalization is a sign of impotence. The distinction
does not lie between those who are near life and those who are remote
from it, but between pertinence and impertinence. The intrusive detail so
prized by modern realists does not belong in a picture which is a picture
of something. One of the senses of “seeing” is metaphorical, and if one
gets too close to the object, one can no longer in this sense “see.” It
is the _theoria_ of the mind as well as the work of the senses which
creates the final picture.
One can show this through an instructive contrast with modern journalism,
particularly that of the _Time_ magazine variety. A considerable part of
its material, and nearly all of its captions, are made up of what we have
defined as “impertinences.” What our forensic artist of a century ago
would have regarded as lacking significance is in these media presented
as the pertinent because it is very near the physical manifestation of
the event. And the reversal has been complete, because what for this
artist would have been pertinent is there treated as impertinent since
it involves matter which the average man does not care to reflect upon,
especially under the conditions of newspaper reading. Thus even the
epistemology which made the old oratory possible is being relegated.
We must take notice in this connection that the lavish use of detail is
sometimes defended on the ground that it is illustration. The argument
runs that illustration is a visual aid to education, and therefore
an increased use of illustration contributes to that informing of
the public which journals acknowledge as their duty. But a little
reflection about the nature of illustration will show where this idea is
treacherous. Illustration, as already indicated, implies that something
is being illustrated, so that in the true illustration we will have a
conjunction of mind and pictorial manifestation. But now, with brilliant
technological means, the tendency is for manifestation to outrun the
idea, so that the illustrations are vivid rather than meaningful or
communicative. Thus, whereas today the illustration is looking for an
idea to express, formerly the idea was the original; and it was looking,
often rather fastidiously, for some palpable means of representation.
The idea condescended, one might say, from an empyrean, to suffer
illustrative embodiment.
To make this difference more real, let us study an example of the older
method of illustration. The passage below examined is from an address
by Rufus Choate on “The Position and Function of the American Bar as an
Element of Conservatism in the State,” delivered before the Law School
in Cambridge, July 3, 1845.
But with us the age of this mode and degree of reform is over;
its work is done. The passage of the sea; the occupation and
culture of a new world, the conquest of independence—these were
our eras, these our agency of reform. In our jurisprudence of
liberty, which guards our person from violence and our goods
from plunder, and which forbids the whole power of the state
itself to take the ewe lamb, or to trample on a blade of grass
of the humblest citizen without adequate remuneration: which
makes every dwelling large enough to shelter a human life
its owner’s castle which winds and rain may enter, but which
the government cannot,—in our written constitution, whereby
the people, exercising an act of sublime self-restraint,
have intended to put it out of their power forever to be
passionate, tumultuous, unwise, unjust, whereby they have
intended, by means of a system of representation, by means of
the distribution of government into departments independent,
coordinate for checks and balances; by a double chamber
of legislation, by the establishment of a fundamental and
permanent organic law; by the organization of a judiciary whose
function, whose loftiest function it is to test the legislation
of the day by the standard of all time,—constitutions, whereby
all these means they have intended to secure a government of
laws, not of men, of reason, not of will; of justice, not of
fraud,—in that grand dogma of equality,—equality of right, of
burthens, of duty, of privileges, and of chances, which is the
very mystery of our social being—to the Jews a stumbling block;
to the Greeks foolishness,—our strength, our glory,—in that
liberty which we value not solely because it is a natural right
of man; not solely because it is a principle of individual
energy and a guaranty of national renown; not at all because it
attracts a procession and lights a bonfire, but because, when
blended with order, attended by law, tempered by virtue, graced
by culture, it is a great practical good; because in her right
hand are riches and honor and peace, because she has come down
from her golden and purple cloud to walk in brightness by the
weary ploughman’s side, and whisper in his ear as he casts his
seed with tears, that the harvest which frost and mildew and
cankerworm shall spare, the government shall spare also; in
our distribution into separate and kindred states, not wholly
independent, not quite identical, in “the wide arch of ranged
empire” above—these are they in which the fruits of our age and
our agency of reform are embodied; and these are they by which,
if we are wise,—if we understand the things that belong to our
peace—they may be perpetuated.[153]
We note in passing the now familiar panorama. One must view matters
from a height to speak without pause of such things as “occupation and
culture of a new world,” “conquest of independence,” and “fundamental and
permanent organic law.” Then we note that when the orator feels that he
must illustrate, the illustration is not through the impertinent concrete
case, but through the poeticized figment. At the close of the passage,
where the personification of liberty is encountered, we see in clearest
form the conventionalized image which is the traditional illustration.
Liberty, sitting up in her golden and purple cloud, descends “to walk in
brightness by the weary ploughman’s side.” In this flatulent utterance
there is something so typical of method (as well as indicative of the
philosophy of the method) that one can scarcely avoid recalling that
this is how the gods of classical mythology came down to hold discourse
with mortals; it is how the god of the Christian religion came into
the world for the redemption of mankind; it is how the _logos_ is made
incarnate. In other words, this kind of manifestation from above is, in
our Western tradition, an archetypal process, which the orators of that
tradition are likely to follow implicitly. The idea is supernal; it may
be brought down for representation; but casual, fortuitous, individual
representations are an affront to it. Consequently the representations
are conventionalized images, and work with general efficacy.
This thought carries us back to our original point, which is that
standards of pertinence and impertinence have very deep foundations,
and that one may reveal one’s whole system of philosophy by the stand
one takes on what is pertinent. We have observed that a powerful trend
today is toward the unique detail and the illustration of photographic
realism, and this tendency claims to be more knowledgeable about reality.
In the older tradition which we set out to examine, the abstracted truth
and the illustration which is essentially a construct held a like favor.
It was not said, because there was no contrary style to make the saying
necessary, but it was certainly felt that these came as near the truth
as one gets, if one admits the existence of non-factual kinds of truth.
The two sides do not speak to one another very well across the gulf, but
it is certainly possible to find, and it would seem to be incumbent upon
scholars to find, a conception broad enough to define the difference.
One further clue we have as to how the orator thought and how he
saw himself. There will be observed in most speeches of this era a
stylization of utterance. It is this stylization which largely produces
their declamatory quality. At the same time, as we begin to infer causes,
we discover the source of its propriety; the orator felt that he was
speaking for corporate humanity. He had a sense of stewardship which
would today appear one of the presumptions earlier referred to. The
individual orator was not, except perhaps in certain postures, offering
an individual testimonial. He was the mouthpiece for a collective brand
of wisdom which was not to be delivered in individual accents. We may
suppose that the people did not resent the stylizations of the orator any
more than now they resent the stylizations of the Bible. “That is the
way God talks.” The deity should be above mere novelties of expression,
transparent devices of rhetoric, or importunate appeals for attention. It
is enough for him to be earnest and truthful; we will rise to whatever
patterns of expression it has pleased him to use. Stylization indicates
an attitude which will not concede too much, or certainly will not
concede weakly or complacently. As in point of historical sequence
the language of political discourse succeeded that of the sermon, some
of the latter’s dignity and self-confidence persisted in the way of
formalization. Thus when the orator made gestures toward the occasion,
they were likely to be ceremonious rather than personal or spontaneous,
the oration itself being an occasion of “style.” The modern listener is
very quick to detect a pattern of locution, but he is prone to ascribe it
to situations of weakness rather than of strength.
Of course oratory of the broadly ruminative kind is acceptable only when
we accredit someone with the ability to review our conduct, our destiny,
and the causes of things in general. If we reach a condition in which no
man is believed to have this power, we will accordingly be impatient with
that kind of discourse. It should not be overlooked that although the
masses in any society are comparatively ill-trained and ignorant, they
are very quick to sense attitudes, through their native capacity as human
beings. When attitudes change at the top of society, they are able to
see that change long before they are able to describe it in any language
of their own, and in fact they can see it without ever doing that. The
masses thus follow intellectual styles, and more quickly than is often
supposed, so that, in this particular case, when a general skepticism of
predication sets in among the leaders of thought, the lower ranks are
soon infected with the same thing (though one must make allowance here
for certain barriers to cultural transmission constituted by geography
and language). This principle will explain why there is no more appetite
for the broadly reflective discourse among the general public of today
than among the _élite_. The stewardship of man has been hurt rather than
helped by the attacks upon natural right, and at present nobody knows
who the custodians (in the old sense of “watchers”) are. Consequently
it is not easy for a man to assume the ground requisite for such a
discourse. Speeches today either are made for entertainment, or they
are political speeches for political ends. And the chief characteristic
of the speech for political ends is that it is made for immediate
effect, with the smallest regard for what is politically true. Whereas
formerly its burden was what the people believed or had experienced, the
burden now tends to be what they wish to hear. The increased reliance
upon slogans and catchwords, and the increased use of the argument from
contraries (_e.g._, “the thing my opponent is doing will be welcomed by
the Russians”) are prominent evidences of the trend.[154]
Lastly, the old style may be called, in comparison with what has
succeeded, a polite style. Its very diffuseness conceals a respect for
the powers and limitations of the audience. Bishop Whatley has observed
that highly concentrated expression may be ill suited to persuasion
because the majority of the people are not capable of assimilating
concentrated thought. The principle can be shown through an analogy
with nutrition. It is known that diet must contain a certain amount
of roughage. This roughage is not food in the sense of nutriment; its
function is to dilute or distend the real food in such a way that it
can be most readily assimilated. A concentrate of food is, therefore,
not enough, for there has to be a certain amount of inert matter to
furnish bulk. Something of a very similar nature operates in discourse.
When a piece of oratory intended for a public occasion impresses us as
distended, which is to say, filled up with repetition, periphrasis,
long grammatical forms, and other impediments to directness, we should
recall that the diffuseness all this produces may have a purpose. The
orator may have made a close calculation of the receptive powers of his
audience and have ordered his style to meet that, while continuing to
“sound good” at every point. This represents a form of consideration for
the audience. There exists quite commonly today, at the opposite pole,
a syncopated style. This style, with its suppression of beats and its
consequent effect of hurrying over things, does not show that type of
consideration. It does not give the listener the roughage of verbiage
to chew on while meditating the progress of the thought. Here again
“spaciousness” has a quite rational function in enforcing a measure, so
that the mind and the sentiments too can keep up with the orator in his
course.
Perhaps this is as far as we can go in explaining the one age to another.
We are now in position to realize that the archaic formalism of the old
orator was a structure imparted to his speech by a logic, an aesthetic,
and an epistemology. As a logician he believed in the deduced term, or
the term whose empirical support is not at the moment visible. As an
aesthetician he believed in distance, and that not merely to soften
outline but also to evoke the true picture, which could be obscured by
an injudicious and prying nearness. As an epistemologist he believed, in
addition to the foregoing, that true knowledge somehow had its source
in the mind of minds, for which we are on occasion permitted to speak a
part. All this gave him a peculiar sense of stature. He always talked
like a big man. Our resentment comes from a feeling that with all his
air of confidence he could not have known half as much as we know. But
everything depends on what we mean by knowing; and the age or the man who
has the true conception of that will have, as the terms of the case make
apparent, the key to every other question.