The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

It may be useful to review briefly the argument from definition. The argument from definition, in the sense we shall employ here, includes all arguments from the nature of the thing. Whether the genus is an already recognized convention, or whether it is defined at the moment by the orator, or whether it is left to be inferred from the aggregate of its species, the argument has a single postulate. The postulate is that there exist classes which are determinate and therefore predicable. In the ancient proposition of the schoolroom, “Socrates is mortal,” the class of mortal beings is invoked as a predicable. Whatever is a member of the class will accordingly have the class attributes. This might seem a very easy admission to gain, but it is not so from those who believe that genera are only figments of the imagination and have no self-subsistence. Such persons hold, in the extreme application of their doctrine, that all deduction is unwarranted assumption; or that attributes cannot be transferred by imputation from genus to species. The issue here is very deep, going back to the immemorial quarrel over universals, and we shall not here explore it further than to say that the argument from definition or genus involves a philosophy of being, which has divided and probably will continue to divide mankind. There are those who seem to feel that genera are imprisoning bonds which serve only to hold the mind in confinement. To others, such genera appear the very organon of truth. Without going into that question here, it seems safe to assert that those who believe in the validity of the argument from genus are idealists, roughly, if not very philosophically, defined. The evidence that Lincoln held such belief is overwhelming; it characterizes his thinking from an early age; and the greatest of his utterances (excepting the Gettysburg Address, which is based upon similitude) are chiefly arguments from definition.

In most of the questions which concerned him from the time he was a struggling young lawyer until the time when he was charged with the guidance of the nation, Lincoln saw opportunity to argue from the nature of man. In fact, not since the Federalist papers of James Madison had there been in American political life such candid recourse to this term. I shall treat his use of it under the two heads of argument from a concept of human nature and argument from a definition of man.

Lincoln came early to the conclusion that human nature is a fixed and knowable thing. Many of his early judgments of policy are based on a theory of what the human being qua human being will do in a given situation. Whether he had arrived at this concept through inductive study—for which he had varied opportunity—or through intuition is, of course, not the question here; our interest is in the reasoning which the concept made possible. It appears a fact that Lincoln trusted in a uniform predictability of human nature.

In 1838, when he was only twenty-nine years old, he was invited to address the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield on the topic “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” In this instance, the young orator read the danger to perpetuation in the inherent evil of human nature. His argument was that the importance of a nation or the sacredness of a political dogma could not withstand the hunger of men for personal distinction. Now the founders of the Union had won distinction through that very role, and so satisfied themselves. But oncoming men of the same breed would be looking for similar opportunity for distinction, and possibly would not find it in tasks of peaceful construction. It seemed to him quite possible that in the future bold natures would appear who would seek to gain distinction by pulling down what their predecessors had erected. To a man of this nature it matters little whether distinction is won “at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.”[77] The fact remains that “Distinction will be his paramount object,” and “nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”[78] In this way Lincoln held personal ambition to be distinctive of human nature, and he was willing to predict it of his fellow citizens, should their political institutions endure “fifty times” as long as they had.

Another excellent example of the use of this source appears in a speech which Lincoln made during the Van Buren administration. Agitation over the National Bank question was still lively, and a bill had been put forward which would have required the depositing of Federal funds in five regional subtreasuries, rather than in a National Bank, until they were needed for use. At a political discussion held in the Illinois House of Representatives, Lincoln made a long speech against the proposal in which he drew extensively from the topic of the nature of human nature. His reasoning was that if public funds are placed in the custody of subtreasurers, the duty and the personal interest of the custodians may conflict. “And who that knows anything of human nature doubts that in many instances interest will prevail over duty, and that the subtreasurer will prefer opulent knavery in a foreign land to honest poverty at home.”[79] If on the other hand the funds were placed with a National Bank, which would have the privilege of using the funds, upon payment of interest, until they are needed, the duty and interest of the custodian would coincide. The Bank plan was preferable because we always find the best performance where duty and self-interest thus run together.[80] Here we see him basing his case again on the infallible tendency of human nature to be itself.

A few years later Lincoln was called upon to address the Washingtonian Temperance Society, which was an organization of reformed drink addicts. This speech is strikingly independent in approach, and as such is prophetic of the manner he was to adopt in wrestling with the great problems of union and slavery. Instead of following the usual line of the temperance advocate, with its tone of superiority and condemnation, he attacked all such approaches as not suited to the nature of man. He impressed upon his hearers the fact that their problem was the problem of human nature, “which is God’s decree and can never be reversed.” He then went on to say that people with a weakness for drink are not inferior specimens of the race but have heads and hearts that “will bear advantageous comparison with those of any other class.” The appeal to drink addicts was to be addressed to men, and it could not take the form of denunciation “because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business.” When one seeks to change the conduct of a being of this nature, “persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion should ever be adopted.” He then summed up his point: “Such is man and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests.”[81]

One further instance of this argument may be cited. About 1850 Lincoln compiled notes for an address to young men on the subject of the profession of law. Here again we find a refreshingly candid approach, looking without pretense at the creature man. One piece of advice which Lincoln urged upon young lawyers was that they never take their whole fee in advance. To do so would place too great a strain upon human nature, which would then lack the needful spur to industry. “When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.”[82] As in the case of the subtreasury bill, Lincoln saw the yoking of duty and self-interest as a necessity of our nature.

These and other passages which could be produced indicate that he viewed human nature as a constant, by which one could determine policy without much fear of surprise. Everything peripheral Lincoln referred to this center. His arguments consequently were the most fundamental seen since a group of realists framed the American government with such visible regard for human passion and weakness. Lincoln’s theory of human nature was completely unsentimental; it was the creation of one who had taken many buffetings and who, from early bitterness and later indifference, never affiliated with any religious denomination. But it furnished the means of wisdom and prophecy.

With this habit of reasoning established, Lincoln was ideally equipped to deal with the great issue of slavery. The American civil conflict of the last century, when all its superficial excitements have been stripped aside, appears another debate about the nature of man. Yet while other political leaders were looking to the law, to American history, and to this or that political contingency, Lincoln looked—as it was his habit already to do—to the center; that is, to the definition of man. Was the negro a man or was he not? It can be shown that his answer to this question never varied, despite willingness to recognize some temporary and perhaps even some permanent minority on the part of the African race. The answer was a clear “Yes,” and he used it on many occasions during the fifties to impale his opponents.

The South was peculiarly vulnerable to this argument, for if we look at its position, not through the terms of legal and religious argument, often ingeniously worked out, but through its actual treatment of the negro, that position is seen to be equivocal. To illustrate: in the Southern case he was not a man as far as the “inalienable rights” go, and the Dred Scott decision was to class him as a chattel. Yet on the contrary the negro was very much a man when it came to such matters as understanding orders, performing work, and, as the presence of the mulatto testified, helping to procreate the human species. All of the arguments that the pro-slavery group was able to muster broke against the stubborn fact, which Lincoln persistently thrust in their way, that the negro was somehow and in some degree a man.