The gist of an argument packed into a single concrete epigram will make a quicker and more lasting impression than ten times the number of colorless words. This was the merit of Lincoln's reply in the most trying days of the Civil War to those who urged a change of commanders. He said that he considered it poor policy "to swap horses while crossing a stream." Judge Peters summed up the argument for the small college in one telling epigram, when he said, "At the large college, the student may go through more college, but at the small college, more college goes through him." From these examples of the superiority of the concrete, we turn naturally to the broader subject of Illustration.

VIII. ILLUSTRATION

From the nature of the concrete and the specific, illustrations derive their force. For the same reason illustrations drawn from every-day life are most effective. When Burke says, "Your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the

feast of Magna Charta," he uses a figure which any civilized person can understand. The same is true of his declaration, "The public would not have patience to see us play the game out," and of the following: "It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they would have, are resolved to take nothing"; "I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble." Still more varied in figurative language is the single paragraph of the Speech on Conciliation-the sixty-sixth-in which he emphasizes his point by means of abrupt stops, hyperbole, climax, metaphor, antithesis, balance, rhetorical questions, and repetition.

An illustration must be apt in every particular. It must suggest the desired conclusion and no other. Unless a person has sufficient imagination to see an illustration as others will see it, he may have it turned against him. In a recent campaign, a newspaper employed this unfortunate illustration:

The trouble is that the ship of state has fallen into evil hands. She has an unruly, piratical crew in charge, who are recklessly steering her among the reefs and breakers of fraud, hypocrisy, and graft. Her hull is covered with barnacles that should be scraped off. She needs a thorough overhauling, with a new crew placed on board, who will take their orders from the people instead of from the cabal with headquarters in the state house.

The trouble with this illustration is that if the officers and crew of a ship took their orders from the passengers, the ship would certainly be in peril. The illustration leaves some readers to draw the conclusion that it would be equally unsafe for officers of state to take their orders from the people, which defeats the purpose of the argument. Emerson considered the orator to be necessarily, to a certain extent, a poet. "We are such imaginative creatures that nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civil, as a trope.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. They feel as if they already possessed some new right and power over a fact which they can detach, and so completely master in thought. It is a wonderful aid to the memory, which carries away the image and never loses it. A popular assembly, like the House of Commons, or the French Chamber, or the American Congress, is commanded by these two powers, first by a fact, then by skill of statement. Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, — some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.' Even in conviction imagination does important work, when it is harnessed to facts; for it directs the invention and discovery of arguments, and controls the selection of evidence, phrasing, and illustration. Without imagination - sometimes even with the most fertile imagination—a speaker has difficulty in foreseeing how the details of his work will affect a given audience under certain attendant circumstances.

A story introduced in argument for purposes of illustration is usually exceedingly effective or exceedingly flat. It is effective if it hits the point, directly and unmistakably, and if it is wholly subservient to its purpose. It is flat if it is vague or too long, and if it makes any pretensions at being the substance rather than the illumination of the argument.

All kinds of illustrations are merely aids to the effective presentation of arguments, not themselves of evidential force. A philosopher has been likened to a blind man in a dark cellar hunting for a black cat that is n't there. This simile apt, concrete, and amusing though it is proves nothing with regard to the philosopher. Care must be taken not to use any kind of illustrations in place of proof.

EXERCISES FOR THE TENTH CHAPTER

1. Write out Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, and underline every word that helps to indicate the logical sequence of thought. 2. Find in Burke's Speech ten transitional sentences and ten summarizing sentences other than those mentioned above.

3. Write out paragraph 14 of Burke's Speech, underlining the connectives.

4. Make note of effective uses of the concrete in the LincolnDouglas Debates (or in Appendix X).

5. Let the class consider various ways by which the formalism and rigidity might be removed from one of their own arguments, or from Appendix V.

ELEVENTH CHAPTER

AROUSING THE EMOTIONS: PERSUASION

"In the orator a wide range of knowledge is indispensable, for without knowledge mere fluency is empty and ridiculous, and the speech must be developed, not only by means of well-selected words, but by their harmonious arrangement. The orator must be acquainted with all the passions and emotions natural to mankind, for the resources and persuasive power of oratory are to be employed in either exciting or allaying the feelings of the auditors. To these qualities must be added a spice of sprightliness and wit, learning worthy of a well-bred man, quickness and conciseness both in retort and attack, with which are to be blended refined beauty of language and deliberate courtesy of manner." — CICERO.

CONVICTION AND PERSUASION

ANALYSIS, structure, reasoning, and evidence are agencies of conviction. Conviction addresses the understanding; it aims to establish belief on rational grounds. But so strong are the influences of inherited opinions, the pressure of the crowd, personal desires and feelings, that action is not often based on purely rational motives. "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still," and he acts accordingly. The volition must be secured through arousing the emotions. This is the work of persuasion.

A reasoning process as cold as a demonstration in Geometry, which utterly disregards the feelings, is pure conviction. But argument is commonly addressed to men and women with desires and emotions which conviction alone cannot use or overcome. Even men with trained minds find it difficult to act in accord with convictions when emotions pull the other way. They know that they should give no money indiscriminately to beggars; yet they oftener answer the appeal emotionally than rationally.

It is sometimes more important to get an emotion into a