ULTIMATE TERMS IN CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC
We have shown that rhetorical force must be conceived as a power
transmitted through the links of a chain that extends upward toward
some ultimate source. The higher links of that chain must always be of
unique interest to the student of rhetoric, pointing, as they do, to some
prime mover of human impulse. Here I propose to turn away from general
considerations and to make an empirical study of the terms on these
higher levels of force which are seen to be operating in our age.
We shall define term simply here as a name capable of entering into a
proposition. In our treatment of rhetorical sources, we have regarded the
full predication consisting of a proposition as the true validator. But
a single term is an incipient proposition, awaiting only the necessary
coupling with another term; and it cannot be denied that single names
set up expectancies of propositional embodiment. This causes everyone
to realize the critical nature of the process of naming. Given the name
“patriot,” for example, we might expect to see coupled with it “Brutus,”
or “Washington,” or “Parnell”; given the term “hot,” we might expect to
see “sun,” “stove,” and so on. In sum, single terms have their potencies,
this being part of the phenomenon of names, and we shall here present
a few of the most noteworthy in our time, with some remarks upon their
etiology.
Naturally this survey will include the “bad” terms as well as the “good”
terms, since we are interested to record historically those expressions
to which the populace, in its actual usage and response, appears to
attribute the greatest sanction. A prescriptive rhetoric may specify
those terms which, in all seasons, ought to carry the greatest potency,
but since the affections of one age are frequently a source of wonder to
another, the most we can do under the caption “contemporary rhetoric” is
to give a descriptive account and withhold the moral until the end. For
despite the variations of fashion, an age which is not simply distraught
manages to achieve some system of relationship among the attractive and
among the repulsive terms, so that we can work out an order of weight
and precedence in the prevailing rhetoric once we have discerned the
“rhetorical absolutes”—the terms to which the very highest respect is
paid.
It is best to begin boldly by asking ourselves, what is the “god term” of
the present age? By “god term” we mean that expression about which all
other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and
powers. Its force imparts to the others their lesser degree of force,
and fixes the scale by which degrees of comparison are understood. In
the absence of a strong and evenly diffused religion, there may be
several terms competing for this primacy, so that the question is not
always capable of definite answer. Yet if one has to select the one term
which in our day carries the greatest blessing, and—to apply a useful
test—whose antonym carries the greatest rebuke, one will not go far
wrong in naming “progress.” This seems to be the ultimate generator of
force flowing down through many links of ancillary terms. If one can
“make it stick,” it will validate almost anything. It would be difficult
to think of any type of person or of any institution which could not
be recommended to the public through the enhancing power of this word.
A politician is urged upon the voters as a “progressive leader”; a
community is proud to style itself “progressive”; technologies and
methodologies claim to the “progressive”; a peculiar kind of emphasis in
modern education calls itself “progressive,” and so on without limit.
There is no word whose power to move is more implicitly trusted than
“progressive.” But unlike some other words we shall examine in the course
of this chapter, its rise to supreme position is not obscure, and it
possesses some intelligible referents.
Before going into the story of its elevation, we must prepare ground by
noting that it is the nature of the conscious life of man to revolve
around some concept of value. So true is this that when the concept is
withdrawn, or when it is forced into competition with another concept,
the human being suffers an almost intolerable sense of being lost. He has
to know where he is in the ideological cosmos in order to coordinate his
activities. Probably the greatest cruelty which can be inflicted upon
the psychic man is this deprivation of a sense of tendency. Accordingly
every age, including those of rudest cultivation, sets up some kind of
sign post. In highly cultivated ages, with individuals of exceptional
intellectual strength, this may take the form of a metaphysic. But with
the ordinary man, even in such advanced ages, it is likely to be some
idea abstracted from religion or historical speculation, and made to
inhere in a few sensible and immediate examples.
Since the sixteenth century we have tended to accept as inevitable an
historical development that takes the form of a changing relationship
between ourselves and nature, in which we pass increasingly into the
role of master of nature. When I say that this seems inevitable to us,
I mean that it seems something so close to what our more religious
forebears considered the working of providence that we regard as impiety
any disposition to challenge or even suspect it. By a transposition
of terms, “progress” becomes the salvation man is placed on earth to
work out; and just as there can be no achievement more important than
salvation, so there can be no activity more justified in enlisting our
sympathy and support than “progress.” As our historical sketch would
imply, the term began to be used in the sixteenth century in the sense
of continuous development or improvement; it reached an apogee in
the nineteenth century, amid noisy demonstrations of man’s mastery of
nature, and now in the twentieth century it keeps its place as one of the
least assailable of the “uncontested terms,” despite critical doubts in
certain philosophic quarters. It is probably the only term which gives
to the average American or West European of today a concept of something
bigger than himself, which he is socially impelled to accept and even to
sacrifice for. This capacity to demand sacrifice is probably the surest
indicator of the “god term,” for when a term is so sacrosanct that the
material goods of this life must be mysteriously rendered up for it, then
we feel justified in saying that it is in some sense ultimate. Today
no one is startled to hear of a man’s sacrificing health or wealth for
the “progress” of the community, whereas such sacrifices for other ends
may be regarded as self-indulgent or even treasonable. And this is just
because “progress” is the coordinator of all socially respectable effort.
Perhaps these observations will help the speaker who would speak against
the stream of “progress,” or who, on the other hand, would parry some
blow aimed at him through the potency of the word, to realize what a
momentum he is opposing.
Another word of great rhetorical force which owes its origin to the
same historical transformation is “fact.” Today’s speaker says “It is
a fact” with all the gravity and air of finality with which his less
secular-minded ancestor would have said “It is the truth.”[176] “These
are facts”; “Facts tend to show”; and “He knows the facts” will be
recognized as common locutions drawing upon the rhetorical resource
of this word. The word “fact” went into the ascendent when our system
of verification changed during the Renaissance. Prior to that time,
the type of conclusion that men felt obligated to accept came either
through divine revelation, or through dialectic, which obeys logical
law. But these were displaced by the system of verification through
correspondence with physical reality. Since then things have been
true only when measurably true, or when susceptible to some kind of
quantification. Quite simply, “fact” came to be the touchstone after the
truth of speculative inquiry had been replaced by the truth of empirical
investigation. Today when the average citizen says “It is a fact” or says
that he “knows the facts in the case,” he means that he has the kind of
knowledge to which all other knowledges must defer. Possibly it should
be pointed out that his “facts” are frequently not facts at all in the
etymological sense; often they will be deductions several steps removed
from simply factual data. Yet the “facts” of his case carry with them
this aura of scientific irrefragability, and he will likely regard any
questioning of them as sophistry. In his vocabulary a fact is a fact, and
all evidence so denominated has the prestige of science.
These last remarks will remind us at once of the strongly rhetorical
character of the word “science” itself. If there is good reason for
placing “progress” rather than “science” at the top of our series, it is
only that the former has more scope, “science” being the methodological
tool of “progress.” It seems clear, moreover, that “science” owes its
present status to an hypostatization. The hypostatized term is one
which treats as a substance or a concrete reality that which has only
conceptual existence; and every reader will be able to supply numberless
illustrations of how “science” is used without any specific referent.
Any utterance beginning “Science says” provides one: “Science says there
is no difference in brain capacity between the races”; “Science now
knows the cause of encephalitis”; “Science says that smoking does not
harm the throat.” Science is not, as here it would seem to be, a single
concrete entity speaking with one authoritative voice. Behind these large
abstractions (and this is not an argument against abstractions as such)
there are many scientists holding many different theories and employing
many different methods of investigation. The whole force of the word
nevertheless depends upon a bland assumption that all scientists meet
periodically in synod and there decide and publish what science believes.
Yet anyone with the slightest scientific training knows that this is very
far from a possibility. Let us consider therefore the changed quality
of the utterance when it is amended to read “A majority of scientists
say”; or “Many scientists believe”; or “Some scientific experiments have
indicated.” The change will not do. There has to be a creature called
“science”; and its creation has as a matter of practice been easy,
because modern man has been conditioned to believe that the powers and
processes which have transformed his material world represent a very
sure form of knowledge, and that there must be a way of identifying that
knowledge. Obviously the rhetorical aggrandizement of “science” here
parallels that of “fact,” the one representing generally and the other
specifically the whole subject matter of trustworthy perception.
Furthermore, the term “science” like “progress” seems to satisfy a primal
need. Man feels lost without a touchstone of knowledge just as he feels
lost without the direction-finder provided by progress. It is curious
to note that actually the word is only another name for knowledge (L.
_scientia_), so that if we should go by strict etymology, we should
insist that the expression “science knows” (_i.e._, “knowledge knows”)
is pure tautology. But our rhetoric seems to get around this by implying
that science is _the_ knowledge. Other knowledges may contain elements of
quackery, and may reflect the selfish aims of the knower; but “science,”
once we have given the word its incorporation, is the undiluted essence
of knowledge. The word as it comes to us then is a little pathetic in its
appeal, inasmuch as it reflects the deeply human feeling that somewhere
somehow there must be people who know things “as they are.” Once God or
his ministry was the depository of such knowledge, but now, with the
general decay of religious faith, it is the scientists who must speak _ex
cathedra_, whether they wish to or not.
The term “modern” shares in the rhetorical forces of the others thus far
discussed, and stands not far below the top. Its place in the general
ordering is intelligible through the same history. Where progress is
real, there is a natural presumption that the latest will be the best.
Hence it is generally thought that to describe anything as “modern” is
to credit it with all the improvements which have been made up to now.
Then by a transference the term is applied to realms where valuation is,
or ought to be, of a different source. In consequence, we have “modern
living” urged upon us as an ideal; “the modern mind” is mentioned as
something superior to previous minds; sometimes the modifier stands alone
as an epithet of approval: “to become modern” or “to sound modern” are
expressions that carry valuation. It is of course idle not to expect an
age to feel that some of its ways and habits of mind are the best; but
the extensive transformations of the past hundred years seem to have
given “modern” a much more decisive meaning. It is as if a difference of
degree had changed into a difference of kind. But the very fact that a
word is not used very analytically may increase its rhetorical potency,
as we shall see later in connection with a special group of terms.
Another word definitely high up in the hierarchy we have outlined is
“efficient.” It seems to have acquired its force through a kind of
no-nonsense connotation. If a thing is efficient, it is a good adaptation
of means to ends, with small loss through friction. Thus as a word
expressing a good understanding and management of cause and effect, it
may have a fairly definite referent; but when it is lifted above this
and made to serve as a term of general endorsement, we have to be on our
guard against the stratagems of evil rhetoric. When we find, to cite a
familiar example, the phrase “efficiency apartments” used to give an
attractive aspect to inadequate dwellings, we may suspect the motive
behind such juxtaposition. In many similar cases, “efficient,” which is
a term above reproach in engineering and physics, is made to hold our
attention where ethical and aesthetic considerations are entitled to
priority. Certain notorious forms of government and certain brutal forms
of warfare are undeniably efficient; but here the featuring of efficiency
unfairly narrows the question.
Another term which might seem to have a different provenance but which
participates in the impulse we have been studying is “American.” One must
first recognize the element of national egotism which makes this a word
of approval with us, but there are reasons for saying that the force of
“American” is much more broadly based than this. “This is the American
way” or “It is the American thing to do” are expressions whose intent
will not seem at all curious to the average American. Now the peculiar
effect that is intended here comes from the circumstance that “American”
and “progressive” have an area of synonymity. The Western World has long
stood as a symbol for the future; and accordingly there has been a very
wide tendency in this country, and also I believe among many people in
Europe, to identify that which is American with that which is destined
to be. And this is much the same as identifying it with the achievements
of “progress.” The typical American is quite fatuous in this regard: to
him America is the goal toward which all creation moves; and he judges
a country’s civilization by its resemblance to the American model. The
matter of changing nationalities brings out this point very well. For a
citizen of a European country to become a citizen of the United States
is considered natural and right, and I have known those so transferring
their nationality to be congratulated upon their good sense and their
anticipated good fortune. On the contrary, when an American takes out
British citizenship (French or German would be worse), this transference
is felt to be a little scandalous. It is regarded as somehow perverse,
or as going against the stream of things. Even some of our intellectuals
grow uneasy over the action of Henry James and T. S. Eliot, and the
masses cannot comprehend it at all. Their adoption of British citizenship
is not mere defection from a country; it is treason to history. If
Americans wish to become Europeans, what has happened to the hope of
the world? is, I imagine, the question at the back of their minds. The
tremendous spread of American fashions in behavior and entertainment must
add something to the impetus, but I believe the original source to be
this prior idea that America, typifying “progress,” is what the remainder
of the world is trying to be like.
It follows naturally that in the popular consciousness of this country,
“un-American” is the ultimate in negation. An anecdote will serve to
illustrate this. Several years ago a leading cigarette manufacturer
in this country had reason to believe that very damaging reports were
being circulated about his product. The reports were such that had
they not been stopped, the sale of this brand of cigarettes might
have been reduced. The company thereupon inaugurated an extensive
advertising campaign, the object of which was to halt these rumors in
the most effective way possible. The concocters of the advertising copy
evidently concluded after due deliberation that the strongest term of
condemnation which could be conceived was “un-American,” for this was
the term employed in the campaign. Soon the newspapers were filled with
advertising rebuking this “un-American” type of depreciation which
had injured their sales. From examples such as this we may infer that
“American” stands not only for what is forward in history, but also for
what is ethically superior, or at least for a standard of fairness not
matched by other nations.
And as long as the popular mind carries this impression, it will be
futile to protest against such titles as “The Committee on un-American
activities.” While “American” and “un-American” continue to stand for
these polar distinctions, the average citizen is not going to find much
wrong with a group set up to investigate what is “un-American” and
therefore reprehensible. At the same time, however, it would strike him
as most droll if the British were to set up a “Committee on un-British
Activities” or the French a “Committee on un-French Activities.” The
American, like other nationals, is not apt to be much better than he has
been taught, and he has been taught systematically that his country is
a special creation. That is why some of his ultimate terms seem to the
general view provincial, and why he may be moved to polarities which
represent only local poles.
If we look within the area covered by “American,” however, we find
significant changes in the position of terms which are reflections
of cultural and ideological changes. Among the once powerful but now
waning terms are those expressive of the pioneer ideal of ruggedness and
self-sufficiency. In the space of fifty years or less we have seen the
phrase “two-fisted American” pass from the category of highly effective
images to that of comic anachronisms. Generally, whoever talks the older
language of strenuosity is regarded as a reactionary, it being assumed
by social democrats that a socially organized world is one in which
cooperation removes the necessity for struggle. Even the rhetorical trump
cards of the 1920’s, which Sinclair Lewis treated with such satire, are
comparatively impotent today, as the new social consciousness causes
terms of centrally planned living to move toward the head of the series.
Other terms not necessarily connected with the American story have
passed a zenith of influence and are in decline; of these perhaps
the once effective “history” is the most interesting example. It is
still to be met in such expressions as “History proves” and “History
teaches”; yet one feels that it has lost the force it possessed in the
previous century. Then it was easy for Byron—“the orator in poetry”—to
write, “History with all her volumes vast has but one page”; or for the
commemorative speaker to deduce profound lessons from history. But people
today seem not to find history so eloquent. A likely explanation is that
history, taken as whole, is conceptual rather than factual, and therefore
a skepticism has developed as to what it teaches. Moreover, since the
teachings of history are principally moral, ethical, or religious, they
must encounter today that threshold resentment of anything which savors
of the prescriptive. Since “history” is inseparable from judgment of
historical fact, there has to be a considerable community of mind
before history can be allowed to have a voice. Did the overthrow of
Napoleon represent “progress” in history or the reverse? I should say
that the most common rhetorical uses of “history” at the present are by
intellectuals, whose personal philosophy can provide it with some kind of
definition, and by journalists, who seem to use it unreflectively. For
the contemporary masses it is substantially true that “history is bunk.”
An instructive example of how a coveted term can be monopolized may be
seen in “allies.” Three times within the memory of those still young,
“allies” (often capitalized) has been used to distinguish those fighting
on our side from the enemy. During the First World War it was a supreme
term; during the Second World War it was again used with effect; and
at the time of the present writing it is being used to designate that
nondescript combination fighting in the name of the United Nations in
Korea. The curious fact about the use of this term is that in each case
the enemy also has been constituted of “allies.” In the First World
War Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were “allies”; in the Second,
Germany and Italy; and in the present conflict the North Koreans and the
Chinese and perhaps the Russians are “allies.” But in the rhetorical
situation it is not possible to refer to them as “allies,” since we
reserve that term for the alliance representing our side. The reason
for such restriction is that when men or nations are “allied,” it is
implied that they are united on some sound principle or for some good
cause. Lying at the source of this feeling is the principle discussed
by Plato, that friendship can exist only among the good, since good
is an integrating force and evil a disintegrating one. We do not, for
example, refer to a band of thieves as “the allies” because that term
would impute laudable motives. By confining the term to our side we make
an evaluation in our favor. We thus style ourselves the group joined for
purposes of good. If we should allow it to be felt for a moment that the
opposed combination is also made up of allies, we should concede that
they are united by a principle, which in war is never done. So as the
usage goes, we are always allies in war and the enemy is just the enemy,
regardless of how many nations he has been able to confederate. Here is
clearly another instance of how tendencies may exist in even the most
innocent-seeming language.
Now let us turn to the terms of repulsion. Some terms of repulsion are
also ultimate in the sense of standing at the end of the series, and
no survey of the vocabulary can ignore these prime repellants. The
counterpart of the “god term” is the “devil term,” and it has already
been suggested that with us “un-American” comes nearest to filling that
role. Sometimes, however, currents of politics and popular feeling cause
something more specific to be placed in that position. There seems indeed
to be some obscure psychic law which compels every nation to have in
its national imagination an enemy. Perhaps this is but a version of the
tribal need for a scapegoat, or for something which will personify “the
adversary.” If a nation did not have an enemy, an enemy would have to be
invented to take care of those expressions of scorn and hatred to which
peoples must give vent. When another political state is not available
to receive the discharge of such emotions, then a class will be chosen,
or a race, or a type, or a political faction, and this will be held up
to a practically standardized form of repudiation. Perhaps the truth
is that we need the enemy in order to define ourselves, but I will not
here venture further into psychological complexities. In this type of
study it will be enough to recall that during the first half century
of our nation’s existence, “Tory” was such a devil term. In the period
following our Civil War, “rebel” took its place in the Northern section
and “Yankee” in the Southern, although in the previous epoch both of
these had been terms of esteem. Most readers will remember that during
the First World War “pro-German” was a term of destructive force. During
the Second World War “Nazi” and “Fascist” carried about equal power
to condemn, and then, following the breach with Russia, “Communist”
displaced them both. Now “Communist” is beyond any rival the devil term,
and as such it is employed even by the American president when he feels
the need of a strong rhetorical point.
A singular truth about these terms is that, unlike several which were
examined in our favorable list, they defy any real analysis. That is
to say, one cannot explain how they generate their peculiar force of
repudiation. One only recognizes them as publicly-agreed-upon devil
terms. It is the same with all. “Tory” persists in use, though it has
long lost any connection with redcoats and British domination. Analysis
of “rebel” and “Yankee” only turns up embarrassing contradictions of
position. Similarly we have all seen “Nazi” and “Fascist” used without
rational perception; and we see this now, in even greater degree,
with “Communist.” However one might like to reject such usage as mere
ignorance, to do so would only evade a very important problem. Most
likely these are instances of the “charismatic term,” which will be
discussed in detail presently.
No student of contemporary usage can be unmindful of the curious
reprobative force which has been acquired by the term “prejudice.”
Etymologically it signifies nothing more than a prejudgment, or a
judgment before all the facts are in; and since all of us have to
proceed to a great extent on judgments of that kind, the word should
not be any more exciting than “hypothesis.” But in its rhetorical
applications “prejudice” presumes far beyond that. It is used, as a
matter of fact, to characterize unfavorably any value judgment whatever.
If “blue” is said to be a better color than “red,” that is prejudice.
If people of outstanding cultural achievement are praised through
contrast with another people, that is prejudice. If one mode of life is
presented as superior to another, that is prejudice. And behind all is
the implication, if not the declaration, that it is un-American to be
prejudiced.
I suspect that what the users of this term are attempting, whether
consciously or not, is to sneak “prejudiced” forward as an uncontested
term, and in this way to disarm the opposition by making all positional
judgments reprehensible. It must be observed in passing that no people
are so prejudiced in the sense of being committed to valuations as those
who are engaged in castigating others for prejudice. What they expect
is that they can nullify the prejudices of those who oppose them, and
then get their own installed in the guise of the _sensus communis_. Mark
Twain’s statement, “I know that I am prejudiced in this matter, but I
would be ashamed of myself if I weren’t” is a therapeutic insight into
the process; but it will take more than a witticism to make headway
against the repulsive force gathered behind “prejudice.”
If the rhetorical use of the term has any rational content, this probably
comes through a chain of deductions from the nature of democracy; and
we know that in controversies centered about the meaning of democracy,
the air is usually filled with cries of “prejudice.” If democracy is
taken crudely to mean equality, as it very frequently is, it is then
a contradiction of democracy to assign inferiority and superiority on
whatever grounds. But since the whole process of evaluation is a process
of such assignment, the various inequalities which are left when it
has done its work are contradictions of this root notion and hence are
“prejudice”—the assumption of course being that when all the facts are
in, these inequalities will be found illusory. The man who dislikes a
certain class or race or style has merely not taken pains to learn that
it is just as good as any other. If all inequality is deception, then
superiorities must be accounted the products of immature judgment. This
affords plausible ground, as we have suggested, for the coupling of
“prejudice” and “ignorance.”
Before leaving the subject of the ordered series of good and bad terms,
one feels obliged to say something about the way in which hierarchies can
be inverted. Under the impulse of strong frustration there is a natural
tendency to institute a pretense that the best is the worst and the worst
is the best—an inversion sometimes encountered in literature and in
social deportment. The best illustration for purpose of study here comes
from a department of speech which I shall call “GI rhetoric.” The average
American youth, put into uniform, translated to a new and usually barren
environment, and imbued from many sources with a mission of killing, has
undergone a pretty severe dislocation. All of this runs counter to the
benevolent platitudes on which he was brought up, and there is little
ground for wonder if he adopts the inverted pose. This is made doubly
likely by the facts that he is at a passionate age and that he is thrust
into an atmosphere of superinduced excitement. It would be unnatural
for him not to acquire a rhetoric of strong impulse and of contumacious
tendency.
What he does is to make an almost complete inversion. In this special
world of his he recoils from those terms used by politicians and other
civilians and by the “top brass” when they are enunciating public
sentiments. Dropping the conventional terms of attraction, this uprooted
and specially focussed young man puts in their place terms of repulsion.
To be more specific, where the others use terms reflecting love, hope,
and charity, he uses almost exclusively terms connected with the
excretory and reproductive functions. Such terms comprise what Kenneth
Burke has ingeniously called “the imagery of killing.” By an apparently
universal psychological law, faeces and the act of defecation are linked
with the idea of killing, of destruction, of total repudiation—perhaps
the word “elimination” would comprise the whole body of notions. The
reproductive act is associated especially with the idea of aggressive
exploitation. Consequently when the GI feels that he must give his speech
a proper show of spirit, he places the symbols for these things in places
which would normally be filled by prestige terms from the “regular” list.
For specimens of such language presented in literature, the reader is
referred to the fiction of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer.
Anyone who has been compelled to listen to such rhetoric will recall
the monotony of the vocabulary and the vehemence of the delivery. From
these two characteristics we may infer a great need and a narrow means
of satisfaction, together with the tension which must result from
maintaining so arduous an inversion. Whereas previously the aim had been
to love (in the broad sense) it is now to kill; whereas it had been
freedom and individuality, it is now restriction and brutalization. In
taking revenge for a change which so contradicts his upbringing he is
quite capable, as the evidence has already proved, of defiantly placing
the lower level above the higher. Sometimes a clever GI will invent
combinations and will effect metaphorical departures, but the ordinary
ones are limited to a reiteration of the stock terms—to a reiteration,
with emphasis of intonation, upon “the imagery of killing.”[177] Taken as
a whole, this rhetoric is a clear if limited example of how the machine
may be put in reverse—of how, consequently, a sort of devil worship may
get into language.
A similar inversion of hierarchy is to be seen in the world of
competitive sports, although to a lesser extent. The great majority of
us in the Western world have been brought up under the influence, direct
or indirect, of Christianity, which is a religion of extreme altruism.
Its terms of value all derive from a law of self-effacement and of
consideration for others, and these terms tend to appear whenever we try
to rationalize or vindicate our conduct. But in the world of competitive
sports, the direction is opposite: there one is applauded for egotistic
display and for success at the expense of others—should one mention in
particular American professional baseball? Thus the terms with which an
athlete is commended will generally point away from the direction of
Christian passivity, although when an athlete’s character is described
for the benefit of the general public, some way is usually found to place
him in the other ethos, as by calling attention to his natural kindness,
his interest in children, or his readiness to share his money.
Certainly many of the contradictions of our conduct may be explained
through the presence of these small inverted hierarchies. When, to
cite one further familiar example, the acquisitive, hard-driving local
capitalist is made the chief lay official of a Christian church, one
knows that in a definite area there has been a transvaluation of values.
Earlier in the chapter we referred to terms of considerable potency whose
referents it is virtually impossible to discover or to construct through
imagination. I shall approach this group by calling them “charismatic
terms.” It is the nature of the charismatic term to have a power which is
not derived, but which is in some mysterious way given. By this I mean
to say that we cannot explain their compulsiveness through referents
of objectively known character and tendency. We normally “understand”
a rhetorical term’s appeal through its connection with something we
apprehend, even when we object morally to the source of the impulse.
Now “progress” is an understandable term in this sense, since it rests
upon certain observable if not always commendable aspects of our world.
Likewise the referential support of “fact” needs no demonstrating.
These derive their force from a reading of palpable circumstance. But
in charismatic terms we are confronted with a different creation: these
terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently
of referential connections (although in some instances an earlier
history of referential connection may be made out). Their meaning seems
inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds
out of a popular will that they _shall_ mean something. In effect, they
are rhetorical by common consent, or by “charisma.” As is the case with
charismatic authority, where the populace gives the leader a power which
can by no means be explained through his personal attributes, and
permits him to use it effectively and even arrogantly, the charismatic
term is given its load of impulsion without reference, and it functions
by convention. The number of such terms is small in any one period, but
they are perhaps the most efficacious terms of all.
Such rhetorical sensibility as I have leads me to believe that one of
the principal charismatic terms of our age is “freedom.” The greatest
sacrifices that contemporary man is called upon to make are demanded in
the name of “freedom”; yet the referent which the average man attaches
to this word is most obscure. Burke’s dictum that “freedom inheres
in something sensible” has not prevented its breaking loose from all
anchorages. And the evident truth that the average man, given a choice
between exemption from responsibility and responsibility, will choose
the latter, makes no impression against its power. The fact, moreover,
that the most extensive use of the term is made by modern politicians
and statesmen in an effort to get men to assume more responsibility (in
the form of military service, increased taxes, abridgement of rights,
etc.) seems to carry no weight either.[178] The fact that what the
American pioneer considered freedom has become wholly impossible to
the modern apartment-dwelling metropolitan seems not to have damaged
its potency. Unless we accept some philosophical interpretation, such
as the proposition that freedom consists only in the discharge of
responsibility, there seems no possibility of a correlation between the
use of the word and circumstantial reality. Yet “freedom” remains an
ultimate term, for which people are asked to yield up their first-born.
There is plenty of evidence that “democracy” is becoming the same kind of
term. The variety of things it is used to symbolize is too weird and too
contradictory for one to find even a core meaning in present-day usages.
More important than this for us is the fact, noted by George Orwell,
that people resist any attempt to define democracy, as if to connect it
with a clear and fixed referent were to vitiate it. It may well be that
such resistance to definition of democracy arises from a subconscious
fear that a term defined in the usual manner has its charisma taken away.
The situation then is that “democracy” means “be democratic,” and that
means exhibit a certain attitude which you can learn by imitating your
fellows.
If rationality is measured by correlations and by analyzable content,
then these terms are irrational; and there is one further modern
development in the creation of such terms which is strongly suggestive
of irrational impulse. This is the increasing tendency to employ in the
place of the term itself an abbreviated or telescoped form—which form is
nearly always used with even more reckless assumption of authority. I
seldom read the abbreviation “U S” in the newspapers without wincing at
the complete arrogance of its rhetorical tone. Daily we see “U S Cracks
Down on Communists”; “U S Gives OK to Atomic Weapons”; “U S Shocked by
Death of Official.” Who or what is this “U S”? It is clear that “U S”
does not suggest a union of forty-eight states having republican forms
of government and held together by a constitution of expressly delimited
authority. It suggests rather an abstract force out of a new world of
forces, whose will is law and whom the individual citizen has no way to
placate. Consider the individual citizen confronted by “U S” or “FBI.” As
long as terms stand for identifiable organs of government, the citizen
feels that he knows the world he moves around in, but when the forces of
government are referred to by these bloodless abstractions, he cannot
avoid feeling that they are one thing and he another. Let us note while
dealing with this subject the enormous proliferation of such forms
during the past twenty years or so. If “U S” is the most powerful and
prepossessing of the group, it drags behind it in train the previously
mentioned “FBI,” and “NPA,” “ERP,” “FDIC,” “WPA,” “HOLC,” and “OSS,” to
take a few at random. It is a fact of ominous significance that this use
of foreshortened forms is preferred by totalitarians, both the professed
and the disguised. Americans were hearing the terms “OGPU,” “AMTORG” and
“NEP” before their own government turned to large-scale state planning.
Since then we have spawned them ourselves, and, it is to be feared, out
of similar impulse. George Orwell, one of the truest humanists of our
age, has described the phenomenon thus: “Even in the early decades of
the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the
characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed
that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in
totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such
words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecor, Agitprop.”[179]
I venture to suggest that what this whole trend indicates is an
attempt by the government, as distinguished from the people, to confer
charismatic authority. In the earlier specimens of charismatic terms we
were examining, we beheld something like the creation of a spontaneous
general will. But these later ones of truncated form are handed down from
above, and their potency is by fiat of whatever group is administering
in the name of democracy. Actually the process is no more anomalous than
the issuing of pamphlets to soldiers telling them whom they shall hate
and whom they shall like (or try to like), but the whole business of
switching impulse on and off from a central headquarters has very much
the meaning of _Gleichschaltung_ as that word has been interpreted for
me by a native German. Yet it is a disturbing fact that such process
should increase in times of peace, because the persistent use of such
abbreviations can only mean a serious divorce between rhetorical impulse
and rational thought. When the ultimate terms become a series of bare
abstractions, the understanding of power is supplanted by a worship of
power, and in our condition this can mean only state worship.
It is easy to see, however, that a group determined upon control will
have as one of its first objectives the appropriation of sources of
charismatic authority. Probably the surest way to detect the fabricated
charismatic term is to identify those terms ordinarily of limited power
which are being moved up to the front line. That is to say, we may
suspect the act of fabrication when terms of secondary or even tertiary
rhetorical rank are pushed forward by unnatural pressure into ultimate
positions. This process can nearly always be observed in times of
crisis. During the last war, for example, “defense” and “war effort”
were certainly regarded as culminative terms. We may say this because
almost no one thinks of these terms as the natural sanctions of his
mode of life. He may think thus of “progress” or “happiness” or even
“freedom”; but “defense” and “war effort” are ultimate sanctions only
when measured against an emergency situation. When the United States was
preparing for entry into that conflict, every departure from our normal
way of life could be justified as a “defense” measure. Plants making
bombs to be dropped on other continents were called “defense” plants.
Correspondingly, once the conflict had been entered, everything that
was done in military or civilian areas was judged by its contribution
to the “war effort.” This last became for a period of years the supreme
term: not God or Heaven or happiness, but successful effort in the war.
It was a term to end all other terms or a rhetoric to silence all other
rhetoric. No one was able to make his claim heard against “the war
effort.”
It is most important to realize, therefore, that under the stress of
feeling or preoccupation, quite secondary terms can be moved up to the
position of ultimate terms, where they will remain until reflection
is allowed to resume sway. There are many signs to show that the term
“aggressor” is now undergoing such manipulation. Despite the fact that
almost no term is more difficult to correlate with objective phenomena,
it is being rapidly promoted to ultimate “bad” term. The likelihood is
that “aggressor” will soon become a depository for all the resentments
and fears which naturally arise in a people. As such, it will function as
did “infidel” in the mediaeval period and as “reactionary” has functioned
in the recent past. Manifestly it is of great advantage to a nation
bent upon organizing its power to be able to stigmatize some neighbor as
“aggressor,” so that the term’s capacity for irrational assumption is a
great temptation for those who are not moral in their use of rhetoric.
This passage from natural or popular to state-engendered charisma
produces one of the most dangerous lesions of modern society.
An ethics of rhetoric requires that ultimate terms be ultimate in some
rational sense. The only way to achieve that objective is through
an ordering of our own minds and our own passions. Every one of
psychological sophistication knows that there is a pleasure in willed
perversity, and the setting up of perverse shibboleths is a fairly common
source of that pleasure. War cries, school slogans, coterie passwords,
and all similar expressions are examples of such creation. There may
be areas of play in which these are nothing more than a diversion; but
there are other areas in which such expressions lure us down the roads
of hatred and tragedy. That is the tendency of all words of false or
“engineered” charisma. They often sound like the very gospel of one’s
society, but in fact they betray us; they get us to do what the adversary
of the human being wants us to do. It is worth considering whether the
real civil disobedience must not begin with our language.
Lastly, the student of rhetoric must realize that in the contemporary
world he is confronted not only by evil practitioners, but also, and
probably to an unprecedented degree, by men who are conditioned by the
evil created by others. The machinery of propagation and inculcation is
today so immense that no one avoids entirely the assimilation and use
of some terms which have a downward tendency. It is especially easy to
pick up a tone without realizing its trend. Perhaps the best that any
of us can do is to hold a dialectic with himself to see what the wider
circumferences of his terms of persuasion are. This process will not
only improve the consistency of one’s thinking but it will also, if the
foregoing analysis is sound, prevent his becoming a creature of evil
public forces and a victim of his own thoughtless rhetoric.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. A. E. Taylor, _Plato: the Man and his Work_ (New York, 1936), p.
300.
[2] Cf. P. Albert Duhamel, “The Concept of Rhetoric as Effective
Expression,” _Journal of the History of Ideas_, X, No. 3 (June, 1949),
344-56 _passim_.
[3] James Blish, “Rituals on Ezra Pound,” _Sewanee Review_, LVIII
(Spring, 1950), 223.
[4] The various aesthetic approaches to language offer refinements of
perception, but all of them can be finally subsumed under the first head
above.
[5] _The Tyranny of Words_ (New York, 1938), p. 80. T. H. Huxley in Lay
Sermons (New York, 1883), p. 112, outlined a noticeably similar ideal
of scientific communication: “Therefore, the great business of the
scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of
his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions
upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student in so complete a manner,
that every term used, or law enunciated should afterwards call up vivid
images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the
demonstration of the law, or illustration of the term.”
[6] That is, by mentioning only parts of the total situation.
[7] It is worth recalling that in the Christian New Testament, with its
heavy Platonic influence, God is identified both with _logos_, “word,
speech” (_John_ 1:1); and with _agape_, “love” (2 _John_ 4:8).
[8] The users of metaphor and metonymy who are in the hire of businessmen
of course constitute a special case.
[9] Cf. 277 b: “A man must know the truth about all the particular things
of which he speaks or writes, and must be able to define everything
separately; then when he has defined them, he must know how to divide
them by classes until further division is impossible; and in the same way
he must understand the nature of the soul, must find out the class of
speech adapted to each nature, and must arrange and adorn his discourse
accordingly, offering to the complex soul elaborate and harmonious
discourses, and simple talks to the simple soul.”
[10] 104 b.
[11] 263 a.
[12] 260 b.
[13] 265 a.
[14] In the passage extending from 246 a to 256 d.
[15] Cf. 263 d ff.
[16] Indeed, in this particular rhetorical duel we see the two types of
lovers opposed as clearly as illustration could desire. More than this,
we see the third type, the non-lover, committing his ignominious failure.
Britain and France had come to prefer as leaders the rhetoricless
businessman type. And while they had thus emasculated themselves, there
appeared an evil lover to whom Europe all but succumbed before the
mistake was seen and rectified. For while the world must move, evil
rhetoric is of more force than no rhetoric at all; and Herr Hitler,
employing images which rested on no true dialectic, had persuaded
multitudes that his order was the “new order,” _i.e._, the true
potentiality. Britain was losing and could only lose until, reaching
back in her traditional past, she found a voice which could match his
accents with a truer grasp of the potentiality of things. Thus two men
conspicuous for passion fought a contest for souls, which the nobler won.
But the contest could have been lost by default.
[17] “Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” _Sewanee Review_, LVI
(Winter, 1948), 3.
[18] _A Grammar of Motives_ (New York, 1945), p. 90.
[19] Without rhetoric there seems no possibility of tragedy, and in
turn, without the sense of tragedy, no possibility of taking an elevated
view of life. The role of tragedy is to keep the human lot from being
rendered as history. The cultivation of tragedy and a deep interest
in the value-conferring power of language always occur together. The
_Phaedrus_, the _Gorgias_, and the _Cratylus_, not to mention the works
of many teachers of rhetoric, appear at the close of the great age of
Greek tragedy. The Elizabethan age teemed with treatises on the use of
language. The essentially tragic Christian view of life begins the long
tradition of homiletics. Tragedy and the practice of rhetoric seem to
find common sustenance in preoccupation with value, and then rhetoric
follows as an analyzed art.
[20] Cf. Maritain, _op. cit._, pp. 3-4: “The truth of practical intellect
is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity
to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring
into existence that which is not yet; further, the act of moral choice
is so individualized, both by the singularity of the person from which
it proceeds and the context of the contingent circumstances in which it
takes place, that the practical judgment in which it is expressed and by
which I declare to myself: this is what I must do, can be right only if,
_hic et nunc_, the dynamism of my will is right, and tends towards the
true goods of human life.
That is why practical wisdom, _prudentia_, is a virtue indivisibly moral
and intellectual at the same time, and why, like the judgment of the
conscience itself, it cannot be replaced by any sort of theoretical
knowledge or science.”
[21] Socrates’ criticism of the speech of Lysias (263 d ff.) is that the
latter defended a position without having submitted it to the discipline
of dialectic.
[22] Mortimer J. Adler, _Dialectic_ (New York, 1927), p. 75.
[23] Cf. Adler, _op. cit._, pp. 243-44: Dialectic “is a kind of thinking
which satisfies these two values: in the essential inconclusiveness of
its process, it avoids ever resting in belief, or in the assertion of
truth; through its utter restriction to the universe of discourse and its
disregard for whatever reference discourse may have toward actuality, it
is barren of any practical issue. It can make no difference in the way of
conduct.”
[24] Adler, _op. cit._, p. 224.
[25] All quotations are given verbatim from _The World’s Most Famous
Court Trial_ (National Book Company, Cincinnati, 1925), a complete
transcript.
[26] Hosea 12:10 “I have also spoken unto the prophets, and have
multiplied visions, and by the ministry of the prophets I have used
similitudes.”
[27] _Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke_ (London, 1855-64), VI,
18-19. Hereafter referred to as _Works_.
[28] _Loc. cit._
[29] _Works_, II, 155.
[30] _Works_, III, 315.
[31] _Works_, III, 317.
[32] _Works_, VI, 52.
[33] _Loc. cit._
[34] _Works_, VI, 57.
[35] _Works_, VI, 88.
[36] _Works_, I, 476.
[37] It is interesting to compare this with his statement in _An Appeal
from the New to the Old Whigs_ (_Works_, III, 77): “The number engaged
in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the
quantity and intensity of the guilt.”
[38] _Works_, I, 479.
[39] _Works_, I, 509.
[40] _Works_, I, 462.
[41] _Works_, I, 469.
[42] _Works_, I, 480.
[43] _Works_, II, 335.
[44] _Works_, II, 179-80.
[45] _Works_, II, 180.
[46] _Works_, VII, 23.
[47] _Works_, VII, 99-100.
[48] John Morley, _Burke_ (New York, 1879), p. 127.
[49] _Ibid._, p. 129.
[50] If further evidence of Burke’s respect for circumstance were needed,
one could not do better than cite his sentence from the _Reflections_
depicting the “circumstance” of Bourbon France (_Works_, II, 402).
“Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the multitude
and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious
high roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and
navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a
continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous
works of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus,
whether for war or trade; when I bring before my view the number of
her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly skill, and
made and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed
front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies upon every side; when I
recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without
cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many of the
best productions of the earth have been brought in France; when I reflect
on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but
ours, and in some particulars not second; when I contemplate the grand
foundations of charity, public and private; when I survey the state of
all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I reckon the men she has
bred for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude
of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics,
her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and
profane: I behold in all this something which awes and commands the
imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of precipitate and
undiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriously
examine, what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize us
at once to level so spacious a fabric with the ground.”
[51] _Works_, II, 282.
[52] _Works_, II, 551.
[53] _Works_, II, 348-49.
[54] _Works_, I, 432.
[55] _Works_, II, 335.
[56] _Works_, III, 317-18.
[57] _Works_, III, 16.
[58] _Works_, II, 334.
[59] _Works_, VII, 60.
[60] _Works_, VI, 34.
[61] _A Life of Edmund Burke_ (London, 1891), p. 523.
[62] _Democracy in America_ (Cambridge [Mass.], 1873), I, 226.
[63] _Works_, III, 109.
[64] _Loc. cit._
[65] _Works_, III, 36.
[66] Quoted in Marquis James, _Life of Andrew Jackson_ (Indianapolis,
1937), p. 740.
[67] _Origins of the Whig Party_ (Durham, N. C., 1925), p. 227.
[68] _The Whig Party in Georgia_, 1825-1853 (Chapel Hill, 1948), p. 192.
[69] _Ibid._
[70] _Op. cit._, p. 206.
[71] Most of Lincoln’s associates in Illinois—including David Davis,
Orville H. Browning, John M. Palmer, Lyman Trumbull, Leonard Swett, and
Ward Hill Lamon—who had been ardent Republicans before the war, left the
party in the years following. See David Donald, _Lincoln’s Herndon_ (New
York, 1948), p. 263.
[72] _Op. cit._, p. 203.
[73] _Abraham Lincoln_ (Boston and New York, 1928), II, 549.
[74] John G. Nicolay and John Hay, _Abraham Lincoln: A History_ (New
York, 1904), II, 46.
[75] _Herndon’s Lincoln_ (Springfield, Ill., 1921), III, 594.
[76] _Ibid._, p. 595.
[77] _The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln_, ed. Philip van Doren
Stern (New York, 1940), p. 239. This source, hereafter referred to as
_Writings_, is the most complete one-volume edition of Lincoln’s works.
[78] _Loc. cit._
[79] _Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln_, ed. Marion Mills Miller (New
York, 1907), II, 41. This speech is not included in Stern’s _Writings_.
[80] This may impress some as an unduly cynical reading of human nature,
but it will be found much closer to Lincoln’s settled belief than many
representations made with the object of eulogy. Herndon, for example,
reports that he and Lincoln sometimes discussed the question of whether
there are any unselfish human actions, and that Lincoln always maintained
the negative. Cf. Herndon, _op. cit._, III, 597.
[81] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 263-64.
[82] _Ibid._, p. 330.
[83] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 359-60.
[84] _Ibid._, pp. 360-61.
[85] Stern, _Writings_, p. 361.
[86] _Ibid._, p. 362.
[87] Stern, _Writings_, p. 375.
[88] _Ibid._, p. 427.
[89] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 549-50.
[90] Cf. the remark in “Notes for Speeches” (_Ibid._, pp. 497-98):
“Suppose it is true that the Negro is inferior to the white in the gifts
of nature; is it not the exact reverse of justice that the white should
for that reason take from the Negro any of the little which he has had
given to him?”
[91] Stern, _Writings_, p. 422.
[92] Stern, _Writings_, p. 241.
[93] _Ibid._, p. 649.
[94] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 652-53.
[95] Stern, _Writings_, p. 656.
[96] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 667-68.
[97] Stern, _Writings_, p. 671.
[98] _Ibid._, p. 736.
[99] Stern, _Writings_, p. 737.
[100] Stern, _Writings_, p. 682.
[101] _Ibid._, p. 740.
[102] Stern, _Writings_, p. 669.
[103] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 810-11.
[104] Stern, _Writings_, p. 429.
[105] Stern, _Writings_, pp. 529-30.
[106] _Ibid._, p. 558.
[107] _Ibid._, p. 591.
[108] _Ibid._, p. 728.
[109] The homeric fits of abstraction, which almost every contemporary
reports, are highly suggestive of the mind which dwells with essences.
[110] Stern, _Writings_, p. 231.
[111] Stern, _Writings_, p. 728.
[112] _Ibid._, p. 710.
[113] _Op. cit._, III, 610.
[114] Stern, _Writings_, p. 423.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 649.
[116] Stern, _Writings_, p. 452.
[117] To mention a simple example, the sarcasm uttered as a pleasantry
sometimes leaves a wound because its formal signification is not entirely
removed by the intonation of the user or by the speech situation.
[118] _The Wings of the Dove_ (Modern Library ed., New York, 1937), p. 53.
[119] “On the Physical Basis of Life,” _Lay Sermons, Addresses and
Reviews_ (New York, 1883), pp. 123-24.
[120] On this point it is pertinent to cite Huxley’s remark in another
lay sermon, “On the Study of Zoology” (_ibid._, p. 110): “I have a strong
impression that the better a discourse is, as an oration, the worse it is
as a lecture.”
[121] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury’s ed., London, 1900),
I, 28.
[122] Cf. Kenneth Burke, _Attitudes Toward History_ (New York, 1937), I,
82-83: “Looking over the titles of books written by Huysmans, who went
_from_ naturalism, _through_ Satanism, _to_ Catholicism, we find that
his titles of the naturalistic period are with one exception nouns, all
those of the transitional period are prepositions actually or in quality
(“A-Vau-l’Eau,” “En Rade,” “A Rebours,” “La Bas,” “En Route”) and all in
his period of Catholic realism are nouns.”
[123] In German all nouns are regularly capitalized, and the German word
for noun substantive is _Hauptwort_ or “head word.” In this grammatical
vision the noun becomes a sort of “captain” in the sentence.
[124] Cf. Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, 1410 b: “And let this be our fundamental
principle: for the receiving of information with ease, is naturally
pleasing to all; and nouns are significant of something; so that all
those nouns whatsoever which produce knowledge in the mind, are most
pleasing.”
[125] Compare the following passage by Carl Sandburg in “Trying to
Write,” _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 186, No. 3 (September, 1950), p. 33: “I
am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am
more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.”
[126] _Essay on Rime_ (New York, 1945), p. 43, ll. 1224-1227.
[127] _Life on the Mississippi_ (New York, 1903), p. 73.
[128] “Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton,” _The Works
of William E. Channing, D.D._ (Boston, 1894), p. 503.
[129] Some correlation appears to exist between the mentality of an era
and the average length of sentence in use. The seventeenth century, the
most introspective, philosophical, and “revolutionary” era of English
history, wrote the longest sentence in English literature. The next era,
broadly recognized as the eighteenth century, swung in the opposite
direction, with a shorter and much more modelled or contrived sentence.
The nineteenth century, again turned a little solemn and introspective,
wrote a somewhat long and loose one. Now comes the twentieth century,
with its journalism and its syncopated tempo, to write the shortest
sentence of all.
[130] _The Prose Works of John Milton_, ed. J. A. St. John (London,
1909-14), II, 364-65. Hereafter referred to as _Works_.
[131] _Works_, III, 194.
[132] _Works_, II, 78-79.
[133] _Works_, II, 364.
[134] See her _Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery_ (Chicago, 1947), pp.
284-99.
[135] _Works_, II, 89.
[136] _Works_, II, 93-94.
[137] _Works_, II, 446.
[138] _Works_, III, 172.
[139] _Works_, II, 382.
[140] _Works_, II, 377-78.
[141] _Works_, II, 418-19.
[142] _Works_, II, 94.
[143] _Works_, II, 401.
[144] _Works_, III, 175.
[145] _Works_, III, 42-43.
[146] _The Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First Session
(June 21, 1850), p. 1250.
[147] _Where the Battle Was Fought_ (Boston and New York, 1900), p. 4.
[148] _Address Delivered by Hon. Charles J. Faulkner before the Valley
Agricultural Society of Virginia, at their Fair Grounds near Winchester,
October 21, 1858_ (Washington, 1858), pp. 3-4.
[149] _On Style_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 321.
[150] See Norman J. DeWitt, “The Humanist Should Look to the Law,”
_Journal of General Education_, IV (January, 1950), 149. Although it
is not our concern here, it probably could be shown that the essential
requirements of oratory themselves depend upon a certain organization
of society, such as an aristocratic republicanism. When Burke declares
that a true natural aristocracy “is formed out of a class of legitimate
presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual
truths” (_Works_ [London, 1853-64], III, 85-86) my impression is that he
has in mind something resembling our “uncontested term.” The “legitimate
presumptions” are the settled things which afford the plane of maneuver.
[151] _Address Preceding the Removal of the Senate from the Old to the
New Chamber: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 4,
1859_ (Washington, 1859), (Printed at the Office of the Congressional
Globe), pp. 5, 7.
[152] There is commentary in the fact that the long commemorative
address, with its assembled memories, was a distinctive institution of
nineteenth-century America. Generalizations and “distance” were on such
occasions the main resources.
[153] _The Position and Function of the American Bar, as an Element of
Conservatism in the State: An Address Delivered before the Law School in
Cambridge_, July 3, 1845. From _Addresses and Orations of Rufus Choate_
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1891), pp. 141-43.
[154] A distinction must be made between “uncontested terms” and slogans.
The former are parts of the general mosaic of belief; the latter are
uncritical aspirations, or at the worst, shibboleths.
[155] _E.g._, Samuel T. Williamson, “How to Write Like a Social
Scientist,” _Saturday Review of Literature_, XXX, No. 40 (October 4,
1947), 17.
[156] See Bertrand Russell, “The Postulate of Natural Kinds or of Limited
Variety,” _Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits_ (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1948), pp. 438-44.
[157] (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939), p. 349.
[158] Melvin Seeman, “An Evaluation of Current Approaches to Personality
Differences in Folk and Urban Societies,” _Social Forces_, XXV (December,
1946), 165.
[159] _Identification and Analysis of Attribute-Cluster-Blocs_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1931), p. 214.
[160] Donald L. Taylor, “Courtship as a Social Institution in the United
States, 1930-1945,” _Social Forces_, XXV (October, 1946), 68.
[161] For example: “id,” “ion,” “alga.”
[162] Samuel H. Jameson, “Social Nearness among Welfare Institutions,”
_Sociology and Social Research_, XV (March-April, 1931), 322.
[163] The natural scientists, too, use many Latinate terms, but these are
chiefly “name” words, for which there are no real substitutes.
[164] See J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, _Words and Their Ways in
English Speech_ (New York, 1931), pp. 94-99.
[165] James R. Masterson and Wendell Brooks Phillips, _Federal Prose:
How to Write in and/or for Washington_ (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1948), p. 10.
[166] Cf., for example, Madison in No. 10.
[167] It is possible that there exists also a concrete understanding,
which differs qualitatively from abstract or scientific understanding and
is needed to supplement it, particularly when we are dealing with moral
phenomena (see Andrew Bongiorno, “Poetry as an Educational Instrument,”
_Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors_, XXXIII
[Autumn, 1947], 508-9).
[168] Cf. Aristotle, ‘_Rhetoric_, 1410 b: “... for when the poet calls
old age ‘stubble,’ he produces in us a knowledge and information by means
of a common genus; for both are past their prime.”
[169] _International Encyclopedia of Unified Science_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1941), II, No. 8, 7.
[170] _Op. cit._, p. 487.
[171] _Foundations of Sociology_ (New York: Macmillan, 1939), p. 383.
[172] “The Nature of Human Nature,” _American Journal of Sociology_,
XXXII (July, 1926), 17.
[173] “The Limitations of the Expert,” _Harper’s_, CLXII (December,
1930), 102-3.
[174] “The Sad Estate of Scientific Publication,” _American Journal of
Sociology_, XLVII (January, 1942), 600.
[175] (2 vols.; New York, 1933.)
[176] It is surely worth observing that nowhere in the King James Version
of the Bible does the word “fact” occur.
[177] Compare Sherwood Anderson’s analysis of the same phenomenon in
_A Story Teller’s Story_ (New York, 1928), p. 198: “There was in the
factories where I worked and where the efficient Ford type of man was
just beginning his dull reign this strange and futile outpouring of men’s
lives in vileness through their lips. Ennui was at work. The talk of the
men about me was not Rabelaisian. In old Rabelais there was the salt of
infinite wit and I have no doubt that the Rabelaisian flashes that came
from our own Lincoln, Washington, and others had point and a flare to
them.
But in the factories and in army camps!”
[178] One is inevitably reminded of the slogan of Oceania in Orwell’s
_Nineteen Eighty-four_: “Freedom is Slavery.”
[179] “Principles of Newspeak,” _Nineteen Eighty-four_ (New York, 1949),
p. 310.
Index
Abbreviated names, 229-30
_Address Preceding the Removal of the Senate from the Old to the New
Chamber_, 176-77
Adler, Mortimer J., 27, 30-31
Aesthetic distance, 175-79
“aggressor,” 231-32
“allies,” 221-22
“American,” 218-20
Anderson, Sherwood, 226
_Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence against Smectymnuus_,
160
_Areopagitica_, 147, 150, 159
Aristotle
definition of dialectical problem, 15-16
cited, 128, 203
Beveridge, Albert, 85
Beyle, Herman C., 192
_Bible_, 14, 214
Bishop, John Peale, 161, 201
Blish, James, 5
Bongiorno, Andrew, 203
Breckinridge, John C., 176
Bryan, William Jennings, 36-39, 41
Bryan, William Jennings, Jr., 35
Burke, Edmund
on the Catholic question, 58-62
policy toward American colonies, 62-65
policy toward India, 65-68
policy toward the French Revolution, 68-72
on metaphysics, 72-73
Burke, Kenneth, 22, 128, 225
Carlyle, Thomas, 133
Carroll, E. Malcolm, 79
Caste spirit, 206-8
Channing, W. E., 143
Charismatic terms, 227-32
Chase, Stuart, 8
Choate, Rufus, 179
Churchill, Winston, 20
Cicero, 174
Circumstance, argument from, defined, 57
“Communist,” 222-23
Craddock, Charles Egbert, 165
Darrow, Clarence, 32, 34-35, 41
Demetrius, _On Style_, 173
“democracy,” 228-29
_Democracy in America_, Tocqueville’s, 76
DeWitt, Norman J., 174
Dialectical terms, 48, 52-53, 187-88;
Plato on, 16
_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 146, 153
Duhamel, P. Albert, 3
“efficient,” 217-18
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 81
Epistemology, in relation to oratory, 178-82
Ewing, Representative Andrew, 164-65
“fact,” 214-15
Faris, Ellsworth, 205
Faulkner, Charles J., 168
_Federal Prose_, 199-200
“freedom,” 228
Genus, argument from, defined, 56
GI rhetoric, 225-26
Greek language, 140
Harding, T. Swann, 208
Hay, John, 85
Hays, Arthur Garfield, 35-36
Henley, W. E., 131
Herndon, W. H., 85, 89, 111-12
“history,” 220-21
Huxley, T. H., 8, 122-23
Inverted hierarchies, 224-27
Jackson, Andrew, 78
James, Henry, 121-22, 123, 133-34
Jameson, Samuel H., 197
Laski, Harold, 207
Latinate terms, 196-201
Lincoln, Abraham
argument from genus “man,” 87-95
_First Inaugural Address_, 96-100
on definition, 104-5
and the excluded middle, 105-7
his perspective, 108-11
Lundberg, George, 204
Lysias, speech of, 5-7
Malone, Dudley Field, 35, 39, 47-48
Maritain, Jacques, 21, 24
Mather, Kirtley F., 42-43, 51
Melioristic bias, 195-201
Metaphor, attitude of social scientists toward, 202-6
Metcalf, Maynard, 49
Milton, John
primacy of the concept, 144-52
extended metaphor, use of, 150-52
antithetical expressions, use of, 152-55
superlative mode, 155-58
systematic collocation, use of, 158-61
“modern,” 217
Morley, John, 67
Murray, Paul, 79, 80, 81
Nicolay, John G., 85
_Of Reformation in England_, 145, 148, 154, 156
Orwell, George, 228, 229, 230
Parts of speech
noun, 127-28
adjective, 129-33
adverb, 133-34
verb, 135-36
conjunction, 137-38
preposition, 138-39
Pedantic empiricism, 191-95
Phrases, 139-41
Plato
method of transcendence, 4-5, 18-19
on madness as a form of inspiration, 13
definition of positive and dialectical terms, 16
on the nature of the soul, 17
_Position and Function of the American Bar, as an Element of
Conservatism in the State, The_, 179-81
“prejudice,” 223-24
Primary equivocation, 187-91
Prior, James, 75-76
“progress,” 212-14
_Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty_, 151
Rhetorical syllogism, 173
Right of assumption, 169
Russell, Bertrand, 191, 204
Sandburg, Carl, 129
Santillana, George de, 203-4
“science,” 215-16
Seeman, Melvin, 192
“semantically purified” speech, 7-10
Sentence
defined, 117-18
grammatical types of, 119-27
Shapiro, Karl, 130
Similitude, argument from, defined, 56-57
Spinoza, B., 25
Stewart, Attorney-general of Tennessee, 32, 33, 39, 41, 46-47
Stylization, 182-83
Tate, Allen, 118
Taylor, A. E., 3
Taylor, Donald J., 194
Tennessee anti-evolution law, 29-30
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 76
Tuve, Rosemund, 150
Twain, Mark, 136, 224
Uncontested terms, 166-71, 184
_Where the Battle Was Fought_, 165
Whig political philosophy, 76-80
Williamson, Samuel T., 186