1

master most brilliantly, it must be observed that his treatment is only a popular and inexact discussion of the external manifestations of character and emotions, and not the sort of treatment he would have given the doctrine of the affections, had he developed it in his De Anima. It is also to be noted that while the classification of the emotions is as complete as the rhetorician would desire, Aristotle did not share Plato's notion that a true art of rhetoric would enable a speaker to adapt himself to each of the persons of an audience as the dialectician adjusts himself to one deuteragonist. He expressly disclaims such a belief.

The theory of rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a given individual like Socrates or Hippias, but with what seems probable to men of a given type.1

Nor does Aristotle suppose that even the best of rhetoricians will always succeed with his audience. The function of rhetoric is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow.2

Style and delivery, Plato stated, were necessary preliminaries to the art of rhetoric. An elevated style, however, was to be attained, not by technique, but by contemplation of lofty subjects. Aristotle seems to have shared his master's feeling that style and delivery should be subordinate matters, as spectacle was the least artistic element of the drama. His classifying mind, however, was much better able than Plato's to resist the tendency to place all subjects in a hierarchical order of moral dignity and to slight all the lower orders. He dismisses delivery briefly with the explanation that not enough is yet known about it to treat it scientifically; but he does regard both delivery and diction as means of persuasive discourse.

Plato's dislike for writing, which in our day would so limit the province of rhetoric, does not seem to have disturbed Aristotle. He wrote several times as much as Plato, and upon subjects which Plato would probably have regarded as unsuitable for literary presentation. It is only on the heights of learning that truth and beauty are always compatible, and for the most part Plato kept to the heights. Aristotle saw his own writing, not as moral truth to be graven on the soul of

a reader, but as an instrument by which his thought was systematized and preserved. Had he agreed with the Socrates of the Phædrus, he would not have devoted twelve chapters of the Rhetoric to style.

XIV

In comparing Aristotle with Plato, we have seen that the Rhetoric discusses most of the questions of rhetorical theory raised by Plato in the Gorgias,, it agrees with the rhetoricians that rhetoric is an art, that the universality of its applications does not mean that it has no subject matter of its own, that the evils arising from rhetoric are no greater than the evils that arise from the abuse of all good things, that truth and righteousness are, on the whole, more prevalent because of a general knowledge of rhetoric, and that the persuasion of multitudes of relatively ignorant people, instead of being merely a vulgar task, fit only for demagogues, is a necessary part of education and government in a stable society.

A contrast of the Rhetoric with the Phædrus makes it evident that even here Aristotle is closer to the rhetoricians than to Plato. Rhetoric is an art of appearance; and this fact neither prevents it from being an art, nor from serving the ends of truth and righteousness. Rhetoric, instead of being a sham dialectic, is the counterpart of dialectic, a dialectic fundamentally different from the Platonic conception of it. The analysis of the emotions, which seems to follow Plato, is, after all, of a loose, inexact, and external character, as Aristotle thought was suitable for rhetoric. Aristotle agreed with Plato that the rhetorician should be virtuous and intelligent, that he should be a keen logician, that he should understand the ordering and arranging of material, and that he should know many things beyond the principles of rhetoric. They were also agreed that contemporary rhetoricians fell far short of these ideals. But the fact that Aristotle and Plato agreed upon the deficiencies of Athenian rhetoricians seems to have blinded us to the equally significant fact that Aristotle's rhetorical theory bears more resemblance to that of Protagoras and Gorgias than to that of Plato.)

XV

The significance of a study of rhetoric in Athens is not entirely historical. However indifferent we may be to Protagoras and

L..

Gorgias, we live in a world of journalists, publicists, advertisers, politicians, diplomats, propagandists, reformers, educators, salesmen, preachers, lecturers, and popularizers. When in Platonic mood we condemn them all as sophists and rhetoricians. And the Platonic attitude is supported by the growth of specialization and "research." To large classes of specialists the rest of mankind is made up of ignorant laymen. These scholars and experts share Plato's contempt for the masses; they apparently are as blind as he to the limitations of the academic mind; they dwell so securely in the well-mapped areas of knowledge that they decline to venture into the uncharted realms of opinion and probability. The modern sophists may justly be reproached for their habit of offering mere opinion when knowledge is obtainable; but it may be questioned whether theirs is a greater error than the specialists' habit of mistaking knowledge for wisdom. In the problem of the relation of Plato to Protagoras, of philosopher to sophist and rhetorician, are involved the issues which we debate when we discuss the aims of a liberal education, the desirability of government by experts, the relation of a university to the state, the duty of a scholar in a democracy, the function of public opinion in a popular government, the difference between a conventional and a rational morality, to say nothing of more speculative questions.

We cannot agree with Bishop Welldon's statement that Aristotle's Rhetoric is "a solitary instance of a book which not only begins a science, but completes it," but we do not regard the Rhetoric as of merely historical interest. It is the one treatment of the subject which raises clearly the problem of the relation of rhetoric to psychology, ethics, politics, jurisprudence, and literary criticism. If we have made any progress in these subjects since Aristotle, in so far his Rhetoric may be inadequate for modern needs. But for a sense of proportion and a grasp of relations, we do well to acquaint ourselves with the survey of the subject made by the great classifier of knowledge.

A LATE MEDIEVAL TRACTATE ON PREACHING

HARRY CAPLAN

I

N The Decay of Modern Preaching, Mahaffy bewails the lack of attention in courses of Homiletics to the rhetoric of theological

IN

learning. He declares that without it the learning is dead and, as it were, sealed in a tomb.1 Pleading for the establishment of more chairs of Rhetoric in modern theological schools, he yet warns against naming them chairs in Sacred Rhetoric, since the appellation would rest on the false assumption that sacred rhetoric differs from any other rhetoric. On the other hand Phillips Brooks, equally concerned for the good training of the preacher, with excellent use of the oratorical device of prætermissio, asserts: "Of oratory, and all the marvelous mysterious ways of those who teach it, I dare say nothing. I believe in the true elocution teacher, as I believe in the existence of Halley's comet, which comes into sight of this earth once in about seventy-six years." Involved, of course, in this difference of opinion is the ancient question of a definition of oratory and of rhetoric. Obvious in the statement of Brooks is a distrust not only for a type of instruction which, one now readily admits, was not always effective, but also for overembellishment of style, for display, and for inappropriate pulpit devices of delivery. Indeed, Brooks's Lectures on Preaching deal largely with the rhetoric of preaching, with invention and disposition and persuasion, and the preacher's personality. Patently, he was led into an erroneous divorcement of rhetoric from oratory, and into the false identification of oratory with delivery, or rather, with bad delivery.

The suspicion which Brooks avowed, as against the more discerning penetration of Mahaffy, was largely shared by preachers of the Middle Ages. To be sure, the pagan rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian

'J. P. Mahaffy, New York, 1882, p. 73.

Ibid., p. 141.

'Lectures on Preaching, New York, 1888, p. 178. For a similar position, cf. A. S. Hoyt, The Work of Preaching, New York, 1909, p. 43.

was well known, and used, by Cyprian, Augustine (who had taught it in the secular schools), Gregory, and many others. Yet Augustine finds it necessary to defend the use of rhetoric by a Christian teacher.1 No doubt the frequent condemnation of eloquence by the medieval teachers, as by Brooks, arose from zeal to avoid ostentation and a style ill fitting the elevated tone of the preacher's calling. St. Thomas Aquinas says: "He who has to preach must make use of both eloquence and secular learning." 2 "The use of secular eloquence in Sacred Scripture is in one way commendable and in another reprehensible. It is the latter when one uses it for display or when one aims mainly at eloquence. He who strives mainly for eloquence does not intend that men should admire what he says, but rather tries to gain admiration for himself. Eloquence is commendable when the speaker has no desire to display himself, but wishes only to use. it as a means of benefiting his hearers, and out of reverence for Holy Scripture." "It is laudable in preaching to make use of a harmonious and learned style, if it be not done from motives of display, but for the instruction of hearers and the persuasion of opponents.' This is sound rhetoric. Gregory of Nazianzen's censure of preachers who used the eloquence of the theatre was a reproof of bad rhetoric. Of course the belief of medieval teachers that pagan books generally should be handled with care, against the contingency of exposure to impiety, did have an effect on the use of classical rhetorical works. But though secular learning was subordinated to sacred, it was by no means neglected.5

3

By the thirteenth century, the name Rhetoric had almost disappeared from teaching in the schools. The sermons, however, and the homiletical textbooks of the late medieval period show a highly developed rhetoric of invention, particularly in the application of the ancient rhetorical commonplaces, an organic system of disposition, and a shrewd attention to delivery. The uniqueness of the subjectmatter of the sermon and the peculiar differentiation of the preacher's function should not misdirect us to the conclusion that there was an absence, in theory and practice, of the same broad rhetorical prin1 On Christian Doctrine, IV, ch. I and II.

'For these quotations from St. Thomas, see J. Walsh, "St. Thomas on Preaching," Dominicana, V (1921), 6-14.

4

See P. A. Beecher, art. "Homiletics," Cath. Encyc.

See A. L. de la Marche, La Chaire Française au Moyen Age, Paris, 1886, P. 476.

See L. Bourgain, La Chaire Française au XII Siècle, Paris, 1879, p. 251.