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.