Many of the persons who accuse themselves of a lack of words mistake the nature of their difficulty. It is easy to bring the matter to a decisive test. If you are really very deficient in the faculty of language, you cannot tell an ordinary story, with the details of which you are perfectly acquainted, in a prompt and intelligent manner. Try the experiment. Read over two or three times a newspaper account of a wreck, a murder, or some other common occurrence; then lay down the paper and in your own way tell your friend what has happened. If you can do this easily, you need never complain of the lack of words. Equal familiarity with any other subject will produce the same results. Neither the preacher nor the farmer referred to could have successfully passed this test. The preacher would have told the story badly, and in an incredibly long space of time; the farmer would not have told it at all.
We have now considered the most serious disqualifications for the orator’s vocation. Many things which are constantly assigned by candidates as the reasons for confining themselves to the use of manuscript in public address have not been included, for most of these, as will appear in a subsequent chapter, are susceptible of easy remedy. Here we have only mentioned those which cannot be cured. If a man concludes, after due trial and consultation, that these defects, or any part of them, prevail in his own case, it will be prudent for him to select some other life-work to which he is better adapted than he can ever hope to be for public speaking.
We sum up the following disqualifications for oratory: incurable defects of voice, extreme timidity, feebleness of mind, certain forms of bodily disease, and great deficiency in the faculty of language.
CHAPTER II.
Thought and Emotion.
Two kinds of preparation contribute to the production of eloquence. One is the preparation of the speaker, the other of the speech. The first is fully as important as the second. In ordinary cases both are indispensable. Some “born orators” speak well without appearing to pay any attention to the improvement of their faculties. Others are occasionally eloquent on a topic without special preparation. Yet these cases when closely examined will be found apparent rather than real exceptions to the rule above stated. The man who seems never to have cultivated the power of speech, and is yet able to blaze into fervid eloquence at will, has usually concealed his preparation or carried it on in such uncommon methods that they have not been recognized as preparations. On the other hand, a man who speaks well without a moment’s warning can do so only when the subject is thoroughly familiar to him. A ready and self-possessed speaker may grasp thoughts which have been long maturing in his mind, and give them forth to an audience in obedience to an unexpected summons, but if he is called upon when he knows nothing whatever of his subject, failure is inevitable, though he may possibly veil it more or less in a stream of platitudes. Ask a man at a moment’s warning to give an astronomical lecture. If he is perfectly familiar with the subject in general, and is also a practical orator, he may succeed well without preparing a special speech. But if he is ignorant of Astronomy, what kind of an address can he make? If he is the most eloquent man in the nation that faculty will avail him nothing, for he cannot extemporize the names of the planets, the laws which govern their motions, or any of the facts out of which his lecture must be woven. Precisely the same necessity of adequate information exists in every other field of intelligence. The ignorant man cannot possibly tell that which he does not know, although he may make a great show of knowledge out of small material; but even to do that with certainty requires careful premeditation and arrangement.
In this and following chapters we wish to treat of the kind of cultivation which makes a man ready to speak. The field is here very wide and some general considerations must be introduced, but we hope also to give valuable practical directions, especially to those who are yet at the beginning of their career.
In considering man as a speaker, we may classify his faculties into two broad divisions; those which furnish the materials of communication with his fellows; and those which furnish the means of such communication. The first class gives rise to thoughts and emotions in man’s own breast; the second enables him to arouse similar thoughts and emotions in the breasts of others. Our course, therefore, will be to consider, first, thought and emotion, and afterward those powers of body and mind by which we express, that is, press out from ourselves toward the receptive faculties of our fellow beings.
Thought, in the broad sense here given, embraces the knowledge of all facts, and all the reasoning that may be based upon those facts. Emotion is the mental feeling or response to knowledge, and comprises love, hate, joy, fear, sorrow, and hope. These two elements are the broad basis of all eloquence. Keen, profound, far-reaching thought—in other words, thought raised to its highest terms—and quick, sensitive, powerful emotion, are necessary to the highest eloquence. Compared with them, mere verbal fluency is less than dust in the balance. But such a combination—the highest degree of both thought and emotion—is rare, and many degrees less than the highest of either is available for genuine eloquence. To increase either or both, if it can be done without any corresponding sacrifice, is to increase eloquence in precisely the same proportion.
Education in the popular sense is the cultivation of thought with the added faculty of language. But we prefer to consider the latter power separately as one among the means of communicating thought.
How, then, shall thought-power be increased? There is no royal road. Every one of the faculties by which knowledge is accumulated and arranged or digested into new forms grows stronger by being employed upon its own appropriate objects. Exercise is then the means by which the material of knowledge is gathered, and all faculties strengthened for future gathering. Each fact gained adds to the treasury of thought. A broad and liberal education is of exceeding advantage. This may or may not be of the schools. Indeed, they too often substitute a knowledge of words for a knowledge of things. That fault is very serious to the orator, for the only way by which even language can be effectively taught, is by giving terms to objects, the nature of which has been previously learned.