RHETORIC.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL EXPRESSION OF THOUGHT AND FEELING.

1. Definitions.-RHETORIC is the science and art of expressing thought and feeling by language in the best possible manner.

Aristotle defined Rhetoric to be "the faculty of perceiving all the possible means of persuasion on every subject." The object of a speaker or writer is sometimes, however, not to persuade, but to instruct or to amuse. Quintilian describes Rhetoric as the "science of speaking well;" a concise and beautiful definition, if it be understood also to include writing.

Speech is primarily uttered, but much is now written to be printed and read, perhaps silently, and Rhetoric embraces the rules by which language, whether uttered or written, may be the most effective. It is immaterial, generally, whether, in the discussion of these rules, the primary attention be directed to speaking or writing. When the nature of the subject

allows, both are included, though but one is mentioned.

2. Natural Language.—Thought and emotion may be communicated by one person to another by signs, such as motions of the hands; by inarticulate sounds, such as groans, shouts, sighs, and by touch. Many animals thus communicate with each other. This is called Natural Language.

Some of the methods of natural language are highly cultivated by men, and the use of some kinds of communication without language is often employed to add efficiency to uttered speech. The practice of impressing other minds by motions of the limbs, the eyes, and the countenance, has been so perfected as to become a good substitute for language in the transaction of important business.

Navigators are guided into proper channels, and warned against unseen rocks and other dangers, by lights of different colors and shape. The movement and size and intention of armies are communicated by the waving of flags of different form or color, as previously agreed upon. Trumpets, steam-whistles, and whatever makes a noise, may be used to convey thought. Telegraphy may exist without the use of words.

3. Thought independent of Language. — From the above, it is evident that thought and emotion can exist without language. Those who have asserted that man can not think without the use of language either have not comprehended the subject, or they have given to the term language a meaning more than proply belongs to it, and made it embrace all signs of

THOUGHT WITHOUT LANGUAGE.

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thought and feeling. The very brutes feel and think. Mankind can not be inferior to them.*

4. Language necessary to thorough and comprehensive Thought. But without articulate language the thoughts of men would be scanty and imperfect, and their emotions would be undeveloped and untrained. This is clearly ascertained from facts.

The deaf and dumb (speechless because they can

*

* Lord Bacon thus presents his view of the possibility of thought without language: "The notes of things, then, which carry a signification without the help or intervention of words, are of two kinds: one, ex congruo, where the note has some congruity with the motion, the other, ad placitum, where it is adopted and agreed upon at pleasure. Of the former kind are hieroglyphics and gestures, of the latter, the real characters above mentioned. The use of hieroglyphics is very old. * * When Periander, being consulted how to preserve a tyranny, bade the messenger follow him, and went into his garden and topped the highest flowers, hinting at the cutting off of the nobility, he made use of a hieroglyphic just as much as if he had drawn it on paper. In the mean time it is plain that hieroglyphics and gestures have always some similitude to the thing signified, and are a kind of emblems-whence I have called them notes of things by congruity" (Advancement of Learning, book iv. chap. i.).

Sir William Hamilton styles the assertion that man can not think without language "a psychological hypothesis in regard to the absolute dependence of the mental faculties on language, once and again refuted" (Ed. Rev. vol. cxv. p. 208).

The art of pantomime, or of expressing character, thought, and action by attitudes, gestures, and motions, was highly cultivated by the Romans in their theatres. Some of the thought thus conveyed was instructive and ennobling, but often it was degrading and indecent, and therefore public pantomimic performances were severely denounced by the early Christian preachers. Macrobius, who lived in the early part of the fifth century after Christ, relates that Cicero, the famous orator, and Roscius, a famous actor, would often try together to ascertain which could express a thought the more eloquently, the one by words, and the other by gestures and motions.

not hear), however advanced in years, never have many thoughts till they learn language. They have no idea of life and death, of cause and effect, of reward and punishment. That beautiful system of instructing them, devised in modern times, and which itself is a great honor both to modern science and to Christianity, shows how indispensable words are, as the instruments of thought; for those mutes, who have never heard a sound, must learn words before they can possibly receive abstract ideas, such, for instance, as are expressed in the Lord's Prayer, or in the Constitution of the United States. These words they learn, as they learn to think, not imperceptibly, as hearing persons do, through articulate language, but slowly and laboriously.

No instance has yet been known in the whole history of the world of a human being who was taught to equal the average of children of ten years of age, in thought and emotion, without a knowledge of words. There have been poets and orators, learned mathematicians, astronomers, land-surveyors, and machinists without sight, skillful artists without hands, but no men of thought who could not understand and use words. Well did Quintilian exclaim, "How little does man's divine mind avail him if speech is denied !"*

Words are the signs of thought. We learn the thoughts of others by words. We store up thoughts by the memory of words, or by writing them, to be compared, analyzed, and classified at our leisure. The basis of Rhetoric is a knowledge of words.

*De Institutione Oratoria, lib. ii. cap. xvi.