Despite the allusions to geographical localities, does not the speaker seem to be speaking in vacuo? His words do not impinge upon a circumambient reality; his concepts seem not to have definite correspondences, but to be general, and as it were, mobile. “Spread-eagle” and “high-flown” are two modifiers with which people have sought to catch the quality of such speech.
In this work we are interested both in causes and the moral quality of causes, and when an orator appears to speak of subjects without an immediate apperception of them, we become curious about the kind of world he is living in. Was this type of orator sick, as some have inferred? Was he suffering from some kind of auto-intoxication which produces insulation from reality? Charles Egbert Craddock in her novel Where the Battle Was Fought has left a satirical picture of the type. Its personification is General Vayne, who holds everything up to a “moral magnifying glass.” “Through this unique lens life loomed up as a rather large affair. In the rickety courthouse in the village of Chattalla, five miles out there to the south, General Vayne beheld a temple of justice. He translated an office-holder as the sworn servant of the people. The State was this great commonwealth, and its seal a proud escutcheon. A fall in cotton struck him as a blow to the commerce of the world. From an adverse political fortune he augured the swift ruin of the country.”[147] There is the possibility that this type was sick with a kind of vanity and egocentricity, and that has frequently been offered as a diagnosis. But on the other hand, there is the possibility that such men were larger than we, with our petty and contentious style, and because larger more exposed in those limitations which they had. The heroes in tragedies also talk bigger than life. Perhaps the source of our discomfort is that this kind of speech comes to us as an admonition that there were giants in the earth before us, mighty men, men of renown. But before we are ready for any conclusion, we must isolate the cause of our intimation.
As we scan the old oratory for the chief offender against modern sensibility, we are certain to rank in high position, if not first, the uncontested term. By this we mean the term which seems to invite a contest, but which apparently is not so regarded in its own context. Most of these are terms which scandalize the modern reader with their generality, so that he wonders how the speaker ever took the risk of using them. No experienced speaker interlards his discourse with terms which are themselves controversial. He may build his case on one or two such terms, after giving them ad hoc definitions, but to multiply them is to create a force of resistance which almost no speech can overcome. Yet in this period we have speeches which seem made up almost from beginning to end of phrases loose in scope and but weakly defensible. Yet the old orator who employed these terms of sweeping generality knew something of his audience’s state of mind and was confident of his effect. And the public generally responded by putting him in the genus “great man.” This brings us to the rhetorical situation, which must be described in some detail.
We have said that this orator of the old-fashioned mold, who is using the uncontested term, passes on his collection of generalities in full expectation that they will be received as legal tender. He is taking a very advanced position, which could be undermined easily, were the will to do so present. But the will was not present, and this is the most significant fact in our explanation. The orator had, in any typical audience, not only a previously indoctrinated group, but a group of quite similar indoctrination. Of course, we are using such phrases for purposes of comparison with today. It is now a truism that the homogeneity of belief which obtained three generations ago has largely disappeared. Such belief was, in a manner of conceiving it, the old orator’s capital. And it was, if we may trust the figure further, an initial asset which made further operations possible.
If we knew how this capital is accumulated, we would possess one of the secrets of civilization. All we know is that whatever spells the essential unity of a people in belief and attachment contains the answer. The best we can do at this stage is look into the mechanism of relationship between this level of generality and the effectiveness of a speech.
We must keep in mind that “general” is itself a relative modifier, and that the degree of generality with which one may express one’s thoughts is very wide. One may refer, for example, to a certain event as a murder, a crime, an act, or an occurrence. We assume that none of these terms is inherently falsifying, because none of them is in any prior sense required. Levels of generality do not contradict one another; they supplement one another by bringing out different foci of interest. Every level of generality has its uses: the Bible can tell the story of creation in a few hundred words, and it is doubtless well that it should be told there in that way. Let us therefore take a guarded position here and claim only that one’s level of generality tells something of one’s approach to a subject. We shall find certain refinements of application possible as we go on.
With this as a starting point, we should be prepared for a more intensive look at the diction of the old school. For purposes of this analysis I shall choose something that is historically obscure. Great occasions sometimes deflect our judgment by their special circumstances. The passage below is from a speech made by the Honorable Charles J. Faulkner at an agricultural fair in Virginia in 1858. Both speaker and event have passed into relative oblivion, and we can therefore view this as a fairly stock specimen of the oratory in vogue a hundred years ago to grace local celebrations. Let us attend to it carefully for its references.
If we look to the past or to the present we shall find that the permanent power of any nation has always been in proportion to its cultivation of the soil—those republics which during the earlier and middle ages, were indebted for their growth mainly to commerce, did for a moment, indeed, cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time; but they soon passed from among the powers of the earth, leaving behind them not a memorial of their proud and ephemeral destiny whilst other nations, which looked to the products of the soil for the elements of their strength, found in each successive year the unfailing sources of national aggrandizement and power. Of all the nations of antiquity, the Romans were most persistently devoted to agriculture, and many of the maxims taught by their experience, and transmitted to us by their distinguished writers, are not unworthy, even at this time, of the notice of the intelligent farmers of this valley. It was in their schools of country life—a vita rustica—as their own great orator informs us, that they imbibed those noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more illustrious than all their famous victories, and there, that they acquired those habits of labor, frugality, justice and that high standard of moral virtue which made them the easy masters of their race.[148]
A modern mind trained in the habit of analysis will be horrified by the number of large and unexamined phrases passing by in even this brief excerpt. “Permanent power of any nation”; “earlier and middle ages”; “cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time”; “proud and ephemeral destiny”; “noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more illustrious”; and “high standards of moral virtue” are but a selection. Comparatively speaking, the tone of this oration is fairly subdued, but it is in the grand style, and these phrases are the medium. With this passage before us for reference, I wish to discuss one matter of effect, and one of cause or enabling condition.
It will be quickly perceived that the phrases in question have resonances, both historical and literary, and that this resonance is what we have been calling spaciousness. Instead of the single note (prized for purposes of analysis) they are widths of sound and meaning; they tend to echo over broad areas and to call up generalized associations. This resonance is the interstice between what is said and the thing signified. In this way then the generality of the phrase may be definitely linked with an effect.