The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

One consequence of this is that although English intonation and normal word order tend to make the last part of a sentence the most emphatic, unskillful writers sometimes lose this emphasis by concluding a sentence with a participial phrase. We may take as examples “He returned home in September, having been gone for a year”; and “Having been gone for a year, he returned home in September.” The second of these puts the weightier construction in the emphatic position. Of course the matter of their relative merit cannot be separated from their purpose; there are sentences whose total meanings are best served by a retardo or diminuendo effect at the end, and for such closes the participial phrase is well suited for reasons already given. But in the majority of utterances it contributes best by modifying at some internal position, or by expressing some detail or some condition at the beginning of the sentence. The latter use may be quite effective in climactic orderings, and it will be found that journalists have virtually stereotyped this opening for their “lead” sentences: “Threatened with an exhausted food supply by the strike, hospitals today made special arrangements for the delivery of essentials”; “Reaching a new high for seven weeks, the stock market yesterday pushed into new territory.” This form is a successful if often crude result of effort toward compact and dramatic presentation.

But to summarize our observations on the participial phrase in English: It is formally a weak member of the grammatical family; but it is useful for economy, for shaded effects, and sometimes the phrase will contain words whose semantic force makes us forget that they are in a secondary construction. Perhaps it is enough to say that the mature writer has learned more things that can be done with the participle, but has also learned to respect its limitations.

In Conclusion

I can imagine being told that this chapter is nothing more than an exposition of prejudices, and that every principle discussed here can be defied. I would not be surprised if that were proved through single examples, or small sets of examples. But I would still hazard that if these show certain tendencies, my examples show stronger ones, and we have to remember that there is such a thing as a vector of forces in language too. Even though an effect may sometimes be obtained by crowding or even breaking a rule, the lines of force are still there, to be used by the skillful writer scientifically, and grammar is a kind of scientific nomenclature. Beyond this, of course, he will use them according to art, where he will be guided by his artistic intuition, and by the residual cautions of his experience.

In the long view a due respect for the canons of grammar seems a part of one’s citizenship? One does not remain uncritical; but one does “go along.” It has proved impossible to show that grammar is determined by the “best people,” or by the pedants, or by any other presumptive authority, and this is more reason for saying that it incorporates the people as a whole. Therefore the attitude of unthinking adoption and the attitude of personal defiance are both dubious, because they look away from the point where issues, whenever they appear, will be decided. That point seems to be some communal sense about the fitness of a word or a construction for what has communal importance, and this indicates at least some suprapersonal basis. Much evidence could be offered to show that language is something which is born psychological but is ever striving to become logical. At this task of making it more logical everybody works more or less. Like the political citizenship defined by Aristotle, language citizenship makes one a potential magistrate, or one empowered to decide. The work is best carried on, however, by those who are aware that language must have some connection with the intelligential world, and that is why one must think about the rhetorical nature even of grammatical categories.

Chapter VI
MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE

There are many who have wished that Milton were living at this hour, but not all have taken into account the fact that his great polemical writings demand an heroic kind of attention which modern education does not discipline the majority of our citizens to give. Even in the last century W. E. Channing was moved to lament “the fastidiousness and effeminacy of modern readers” when faced with Milton’s prose writings. He went on to say, in a passage which may serve to introduce our topic, “To be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of common passive readers.” It is wrong therefore to expect it to sacrifice great qualities “that the multitude may keep pace with it.”[128]

The situation which gave rise to Channing’s complaint has grown measurably worse by our day, when the common passive reader determines the level of most publications. The mere pursuance of Milton’s meaning requires an enforcement of attention, and the perception of his judgments requires an active sensibility incompatible with a state of relaxation. There is nothing in Milton for the reader who must be put at ease and treated only to the quickly apprehensible. But along with this turning away from the difficult, there is another cause at work, a feeling, quite truly grounded, that Milton’s very arduousness of spirit calls for elevation on the part of the reader. Milton assumes an heroic stance, and he demands a similar stance of those who would meet him. An age which has come to suspect this as evidence of aristocratic tendency will then avoid Milton also for a moral reason, preferring, even when it agrees with him, to have the case stated in more plebeian fashion. Therefore the reading of Milton is more than a problem in communication; it is a problem also of gaining insight, or even of developing sympathy with the aristocratic intellectualism which breathes through all he wrote.