'Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant and obedient to reason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions and injunctions to the will, more than of naked propositions and proofs; but in regard of the continual mutinies and seditions of the affections,
Video meliora proboque
Deteriora sequor;
'Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions did not practise and win the imagination from the affections part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and the imagination, against the affections; for the affections themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth. The difference is'—mark it—'the difference is, that the affection beholdeth merely the present; reason beholdeth the future and sum of time. And therefore the present filling the imagination most, reason is commonly vanquished; but after that force of eloquence and persuasion hath made things future and remote, appear as present, then, upon the revolt of the imagination reason prevaileth.' Not less important than that is this art in his scheme of learning. No wonder that the department of learning which he refers to the imagination should take that prime place in his grand division of it, and be preferred deliberately and on principle to the two others.
'Logic differeth from Rhetoric chiefly in this, that logic handleth reason exact and in truth, and rhetoric handleth it as it is planted in popular opinions and manners. And therefore Aristotle doth wisely place rhetoric as between logic on the one side, and moral or civil knowledge on the other, (and when we come to put together the works of this author, we shall find that that and none other is the place it takes in his system, that that is just the bridge it makes in his plan of operations.)' The proofs and demonstrations of logic are towards all men indifferent and the same: but the proofs and persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors.
Orpheus in sylvis inter delphinas Arion.
Which application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to several persons, he should speak to them all respectively, and several ways; and there was a great folio written on this plan which came out in those days dedicated 'to the Great Variety of Readers. From the most able to him that can but spell'; (this is just the doctrine, too, which the Continental philosopher sets forth we see);—though this 'politic part of eloquence in private speech,' he goes on to say here, 'it is easy for the greatest orators to want; whilst by observing their well graced forms of speech, they lose the volubility of APPLICATION; and therefore it shall not be amiss to recommend this to better inquiry, not being curious whether we place it here, or in that part which concerneth policy.'
Certainly one would not be apt to infer from that decided preference which the author himself manifests here for those stately and well-graced forms of speech, judging merely from the style of this performance at least, one would not be inclined to suspect that he himself had ever been concerned in any literary enterprises, or was like to be, in which that volubility of application which he appears to think desirable, was successfully put in practice. But we must remember, that he was just the man who was capable of conceiving of a variety of styles adapted to different exigencies, if we would have the key to this style in particular.
But we must look a little at these labours and studies themselves, which required such elaborate and splendid arts of delivery, if we would fully satisfy ourselves, as to whether this author really had any purpose after all in bringing them in here beyond that of mere ostentation, and for the sake of completing his muster-roll of the sciences. Above, we see an intimation, that the divisions of the subject are, after all, not so 'curious' but that the inquiry might possibly be resumed again in other connections, and in the particular connection specified, namely, in that part which concerneth Policy.
In that which follows, the new science of human nature and human life—which is the end and term of this treatise, we are told—is brought out under the two heads of Morality and Policy; and it is necessary to look into both these departments in order to find what application he was proposing to make of this art and science of Tradition and Delivery, and in order to see what place—what vital place it occupied in his system.