—Henry V., Shakespeare
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.—Address at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln.
From an address delivered in the Auditorium, at Chicago, on the afternoon of February 22, 1902, on the occasion of the celebration of Washington's Birthday.
The meaning of Washington in American history is discipline. The message of Washington's life to the American people is discipline. The need of American character is discipline.
Washington did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage. That quality was and is in the American blood. He did not even give them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. But Washington gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was the genius of order. He was poise personified. He was the spirit of discipline. He was the first Great Conservative. It was this quality in him that made all other elements of the Revolution effective. It was this that organized our nebulous independence into a nation of liberty. The parts of a machine are useless until assembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. Washington was the master mechanic of our nation; so it is that we are a people.
But we are not yet a perfect people. We are still in the making. It is a glorious circumstance. Youth is the noblest of God's gifts. The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of Washington—he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed passions of riotous youth.—Conservatism; the Spirit of National Self-Restraint, Albert Beveridge.
We have noted in our introduction the close analogy which exists between the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal expression. Let us not fail to follow this analogy through the various studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?
Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English composition, called The Forms of Prose Literature,[1] discusses these forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-titles which all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not find the exact parallel for our study in direct appeal under these subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of exposition, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression corresponding to the question of vitality in thinking, which is our first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary study" in composition.
In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument must move its reader, we begin to pass from the realm of pure thought, in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a necessary preliminary to action. How large a part feelings play in argument you can see if you have ever heard the speech of a demagogue to an excited crowd. It is simply a crass appeal to their lower passions, aided by all the devices of oratory, often, perhaps, also by a moving presence. A better example is Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech, in which he won a hearing from a hostile mob by an appeal to their sense of fair play. Such cases show how far argument may get from the simple appeal to the understanding, how little it may be confined to the element of thought. The prime quality, therefore, of argument is persuasiveness."