After the clergyman has decided on his text, or the speaker on any
subject he has selected for his special topic, the next step is to
_think it out_--to make his plan--his mode of development of his
ideas--their order and sequence, illustrations, &c. All this will
constitute an outline--the SKELETON OF THE DISCOURSE. This should
usually be _committed to paper_. If he possesses the requisite command
of language to enable him to express his views, all he now requires to
do is to _thoroughly memorise_ this Skeleton.
When this is done, the orator will have no occasion to have any notes
_before him to refer to_, and thereby to remind his audience that he is
merely rehearsing fervour a week or more old; but, having the exact
order of ideas in his memory, he can proceed to speak on each
_successive_ topic until he has exhausted all the points and
illustrations that he had intended to use.
A young clergyman is very apt to imagine that he will correlate together
20 to 100 propositions in every discourse--a theoretical conjecture
never verified in fact. In _practice_, he will find that he will very
rarely correlate more than ten propositions together, and he will
correlate sub-propositions, citations, or illustrations to the
respective propositions to which they belong. Instead of correlations,
_he may unite his propositions together by analysis_. Each person will
manage this matter as he finds most convenient to himself; or, if he
desires to literally memorise his discourses, he can do so in the manner
pointed out in learning sentences, or by two or three careful perusals.
But, by one who speaks without notes is generally understood one who has
only memorised his leading ideas, and it is always a judicious practice
for a beginner to rehearse his leading topics and their amplifications
in private, _that he may test his memory_, and then _become familiar_
with a procedure _in private_ in order to be sure to be _perfect in it
before the public_. This private discipline is all the more necessary in
the early stages of extempore speaking--if the speaker is at all
troubled by nervous anxieties or mind-wandering.
Suppose a teacher of the Art of Expression has studied Moses True
Brown's [see his Synthetic Philosophy of Expression] reduction
of Delsarte's Nine Laws of Gesture to Brown's One Law of
Correspondence--and suppose this teacher wishes to explain to his class,
or to an audience, how Mr. Brown proceeded. If he desires to do this
without notes, he must memorise the order of those Nine Laws; they are
abstractly stated and difficult to correlate, but it can be done. The
Laws are as follows:--
Motion,
Velocity,
Direction or Extension,
Re-action,
Form,
Personality,
Opposition of Agents,
Priority, or Sequence,
Rhythm.
The teacher must correlate these heads or topics of his discourse
together, and so memorise his correlations that he can recall the series
in the exact order. Perhaps he may proceed thus:
MOTION.
[Rate of motion.]
VELOCITY.
[Relation of motion to time and _space_--.]
DIRECTION or Extension.
[Direction reversed.]
RE-ACTION.
[Mould of Action.]
FORM.
[Form of the Human.]
PERSONALITY.
[Its extremes.]
OPPOSITION OF AGENTS.
[First opponent.]
PRIORITY or Sequence.
[Periodicity of Sequence.]
RHYTHM.
Knowing these Nine Laws in the above _order_, he can discuss them one
after the other. When he has finished his explanation of the reduction
of the three Forms of Motion [Concentric, Poise, and Eccentric] to the
Law of Correspondence, he can proceed to the consideration of the
sub-topics under Velocity, and so on. When he has fixed the other of his
topics in mind, he has a mental chart or map to guide him in his
exposition, and similarly in other cases.