just that degree unrhetorical. Rhetoric, while making its sentence grammatical as a matter of course, inquires in addition by what choice and arrangement of words it can best work its intended effect. Nor does its inquiry stop with the In every stage and form of composition, wherever the problem of adaptation may be involved, the art of rhetoric has its principles and procedures.

sentence.

Logic, which deals with the laws of thinking, aims to determine what sequences of thought are sound and self-consistent. In so doing it works for the sake of its subject alone, not for the convenience of a reader. A passage whose logic is quite unassailable may be severe, abstruse, forbidding, and there fore unrhetorical. Rhetoric, while its expression must of necessity conform to the laws of sound thinking, aims to bring its thought home to men by making it attractive, vivid, or otherwise easier to apprehend.

Lines of Rhetorical Adaptation. The requirements of a reader or hearer are determined not by his mental capacities alone, but by his whole nature; which, in one way or another, as subject and occasion dictate, is to be acted upon by the power of language. The common psychological division of man's spiritual powers will indicate broadly three main lines of adaptation.

There is first the power of intellect, by which a man knows, thinks, reasons. Discourse that addresses itself to this power aims merely to impart information or convince of truth; and its adaptation consists in giving the reader facilities to see and understand. This practical aim is what gives substance and seriousness to all literary endeavor; but its sole or predominating presence gives rise to the great body of everyday writing, news, criticism, science, history, discussion, all that deals with the common facts and interests of life; which may be included under the general name of Matter-of-fact Prose.

Secondly, there is the power of emotion, by which a man feels and imagines. Discourse that addresses itself to this power aims to make men not only understand a truth but realize it vividly and have a glow of interest in it; and the adaptation is effected by using language that stimulates and thrills. This aim has a large part in the more literary forms of prose; but it appears most unmixedly in Poetry.

Thirdly, there is the power of will, by which a man ventures life and action on what he believes or thinks. Discourse that addresses itself to this power must make men both understand clearly and realize intensely; it must therefore work with both intellect and emotion; but through these it must effect some definite decision in men's sympathies or conduct. Its adaptation consists in making its thought a power on motive and principle; and the aim results in the most complex literary type, Oratory.

From the consideration of these human powers and capacities, with the countless limitations that culture, occupation, and original character impose upon them, it will easily be seen how broad is the field of rhetorical adaptation, and how comprehensive must be the art that masters and applies its

resources.

II.

Rhetoric as Art. - In the adapting of discourse to the requirements of reader or hearer, under the various conditions that call for such work, it is evident that there must be all the fine choice of means and fitting of these to ends, all the intimate conversance with material and working-tools, that we associate with any art, fine or useful.

Rhetoric, here called an art, is sometimes defined as a science. Both designations are true; they merely regard the subject in two different aspects. Science is systematized knowledge: if then the laws and principles of discourse are

exhibited in an ordered and interrelated system, they appear in the character of a science. Art is knowledge made efficient by skill; if then rhetorical laws and principles are applied in the actual construction of discourse, they become the working-rules of an art.

From both points of view rhetoric has great practical value in liberal culture. Studied as a science or theory, in which aspect it may be called critical rhetoric, it promotes understanding and appreciation of literature, and thereby not only aids those who have natural literary aptitude but deepens and enriches the reading of those to whom such gift is denied. Cultivated for practical ends, as an art, in which aspect it may be called constructive rhetoric, the study, while it can set up no pretensions to confer the power to write, can do much to steady and discipline powers already present, and keep them from blundering and feeble ways. And each mode of approach so helps the other that in practice the two, science and art, cannot attain their best disjoined.

NOTE. The present manual, because it regards the student always as in the attitude of constructing, of weighing means and procedures not for their mere scientific or curious interest but as adapted to produce practical results, starts from the definition of rhetoric as an art.

Analogies with Other Arts. - What is true of other arts, such as painting, music, sculpture, handicraft, is so exactly paralleled in the art of rhetoric, that it will be useful to trace some of the analogies.

1. Aptitude for masterful expression, like an ear for music or an eye for color and proportion, is an inborn gift. Existing in infinitely various degrees, this aptitude may sometimes be so great as to discover the secret of good writing almost by intuition; while sometimes it may lie dormant and unsuspected, needing the proper impulse of culture to awaken it. In the great majority of cases it exists merely in such moder

ate degree as to suffice for useful and common-sense work in the ordinary occasions of writing. So much aptitude may be taken for granted; and if the higher degree is present it will according to its insight find the higher ranges of the art congenial.

2. Just as in these other arts one does not think of stopping with mere native aptitude, but develops and disciplines all his powers so that they may be employed wisely and steadily; so in the art of expression one needs by faithful study and practice to get beyond the point where he only happens to write well, or where brilliancy and crudeness are equally uncontrolled, and attain that conscious power over thought and language which makes every part of his work the result of unerring skill and calculation.

3. Like other arts, this art of rhetoric has its besetting faults, which it requires watchfulness, conscientiousness, and natural taste to avoid. The most prevalent of these, perhaps, is the fault of falling idly into conventional and stereotyped ways of expression, without troubling to think how much or how little they mean. This is at bottom insincerity; it is taking up with something that has embodied another man's thought and passing it off for one's own, thus pretending to think or feel what one does not. A second fault is trusting too much to one's cleverness and fluency, and not having patience and application in the exercises necessary to deepen and steady one's powers; in other words, neglecting the technic of the art. This is especially the tendency of those to whom writing comes easily; they think their native aptitude will make up for discipline, always a fatal mistake. — A third fault is being so taken with tricks, vogues, mannerisms of expression as to think more of the dress one gives the thought than of the thought itself; thus making rhetoric the manipulation of devices of language for their own sake. It must be borne in mind that this art of rhetoric does not

exist for itself, but only as the handmaid of the truth which it seeks to make living in the minds and hearts of men.'

4. As in the mastering of other arts, so in this, there is an initial stage during which the submitting of one's work to severe artistic standards seems to spoil it; the powers that when running wild produced results uneven and uncertain indeed but full of native vigor and audacity become, as dominated by art, labored, wooden, self-conscious. This, however, is merely a temporary period in the necessary process of changing artistic power from arbitrary rules to second nature. To discard rhetorical discipline on this account, as many do, does not help the matter; it is merely to abandon what experience has contributed to a difficult art and set one's self to evolve one's own modes of procedure, with all the risks of mannerism and blundering. The wiser way is to work up through that self-conscious stage to the eminence where the art becomes at once artistic, uniform in quality, and full of the spontaneousness of nature.

Fine Art and Mechanical Art. The distinction ordinarily made between mechanical or useful art and fine art has its application to rhetoric; which may be classed with either, according as its results are merely practical, as in journalism and matters of everyday information, or more distinctively literary, as in poetry, oratory, romance. Nor is it either easy or desirable to define the point where one kind of art passes into the other. Both the sense of the practical and the sense of the beautiful may each in its way control the same work; and thus the composition may be at once masterful contrivance and fine art, with each quality reinforced by the other.

1 The above remarks on the faults of the rhetorical art are suggested by a sentence from Ruskin's Introduction to "Roadside Songs of Tuscany": "All fatal faults in art that might have been otherwise good, arise from one of these three things: either from the pretence to feel what we do not; the indolence in exercises necessary to obtain the power of expressing the truth; or the presumptuous insistence upon, and indulgence in, our own powers and delights, and with no care or wish that they should be useful to other people, so only they may be admired by them."