sibly be led to error; but if he err in his conclusions, he must of necessity either err in his principles, or commit some error in his discourse; that is, indeed, not discourse, but seem to do so." The use of the term to denote the product of this faculty is too familiar to require exemplification. But these uses of the term as so far indicated respect thought rather as internal and unexpressed. The term very naturally has come to denote also objective thought, thought as uttered, as communicated. Such, indeed, is the more common use of the term at present. And as the natural embodiment of human thought is in language, we ordinarily understand now by the term discourse, thought communicated in language. The more particular determination and development of this general notion of Rhetoric will be presented in the chapters that immediately follow. THE ART OF DISCOURSE. CHAPTER II. OF THE PROVINCE AND RELATIONS OF RHETORIC. § 2. THE proper province of Rhetoric, as also its specific relations to other arts and sciences, are determined at once by the faculty which it immediately and exclusively respects, the faculty of discourse, or the capacity in man of communicating his mental states to other minds by means of language. As has been already stated, every art immediately regards a faculty which it is its proper aim and object to develop and train. The art of vocal music fastens thus on the faculty of song; the art of computation, on the faculty of computing by numbers. Rhetoric, as the art of Discourse, in like manner, fastens on the faculty of discourse. im This term - discourse in its more strict and proper port, denotes only the discursive, the reflective faculty of intelligence. It excludes in this stricter import the perceptive and the intuitive faculties, as well as the exercises of the sensibilities and of the will. And it is in a certain sense correct to say that Rhetoric concerns itself only with this faculty - the faculty of comparison, of thought in its narrower import, which is the more recently accepted use of the word. For human speech is properly and strictly the embodiment of thought of the exercises of the discursive faculty. The feelings and the dispositions of the will find expression in speech only through the thought. So in all spoken or written discourse, feeling and purpose, passion and determination, appear only through modifications of the thought. This is true also of all those states of the intelligence, all those cognitions which are attained through the faculties of original knowledge - those of perception and intuition. They appear only as modifying proper thought - proper discursive cognitions. But in loose, rude, popular expression, discourse as embodied in language is correctly represented as comprehending the utterances alike of all forms of the intelligence, however modified by the various feelings and states of the will. Rhetoric is thus correctly represented by Dr. Campbell to be "the grand art of communication, not of ideas only, but of sentiments, passions, dispositions, and purposes." Further, human speech has originated not in a mere desire to utter mental states, but rather in the instinctive impulse to communicate to another mind. All language is thus shaped and colored in its essential peculiarities by this reference to another mind to which the thought it embodies is to be imparted. It is essentially an imparting medium, not merely an uttering or expressing body of thought. Of the various names by which the art is designated, one, oratory, expresses this notion of imparting, communicating, implied in all normal discourse, as it points directly to the minds addressed as its object, and at once suggests the idea of an effect to be produced in them. This is, therefore, the more full and proper designation of the art. The name eloquence drops this idea of effect on another mind implied in proper rational discourse, and points only to the source the uttering or communicating mind. Although eloquence is thus distinguished from oratory, and we apply the term to those forms of discourse in which the speaker abandons himself more to the mere outpouring of thought and feeling with seeming forgetfulness of the minds he is addressing, and of any effect he is to produce in them, yet all true ra tional discourse must ever be communication, not mere objectless utterance. In like manner, the name rhetoric, properly and originally held to denote the art of the speaker, and to limit its view to mere speaking, with no reference to source or to effect, and so specifically differing both from eloquence and oratory, is yet not to be regarded as excluding either. All rational discourse, by whatever name designated, implies a communication from one mind to another. It involves ever the three essential elements, of a subject, object, and a relation between them; in other words, of a mind addressing, a mind addressed, and the act itself of addressing. § 3. Discourse, as the communication of one's own thoughts, feelings, and dispositions to another by means of language, and under the regulation of the faculty of thought, stands in a vital relation to each of the three great mental sciences of Logic, Esthetics, and Ethics, and also to Grammar. All discourse should be at the same time logical, æsthetical, and moral, as well as grammatical. But Rhetoric, or the art of Discourse, is not properly to be regarded as a department of either of these sciences. It only presupposes them, assumes them, and develops itself in conformity to their principles. These sciences are hence to be regarded as sciences conditional to Rhetoric. ics -- The three mental sciences - Logic, Esthetics, and Eth- have been fitly called by Sir William Hamilton the nomological sciences, inasmuch as their proper object is to present the laws, in other words, the necessary or universal characteristics, of mental phenomena in these several departments. Discourse, as communication of mental states generally, should found itself immediately on these nomological sciences rather than on proper phenomenal psychology. It should take the general forms of these various mental phenomena as determined in respect of their necessary charac It is ters and conditions by these sciences respectively. plain that Rhetoric must found itself on all — not on one to the exclusion of the others. This mistake or defect in founding Rhetoric on one to the exclusion of the other nomological sciences has singularly marked leading rhetorical treatises. Dr. Whately thus has regarded Rhetoric as an offshoot of Logic. He accordingly restricts its province to argumentative composition, excluding from it all consideration of judgments and concepts, and admitting only reasonings - in fact, only one and the less important class of reasonings, although all are equally logical products. Dr. Blair, on the other hand, in his extensive work on Rhetoric, treats it throughout as a mere department of Æsa purely critical art, lying wholly within the domain - thetics Still further, to limit exemplifications to single authors, the able German rhetorician, Theremin, makes the art a purely ethical procedure. Eloquence, he claims, is a virtue. These views are all of them partially correct. They are, however, all imperfect and one-sided. The more exact relations of Rhetoric to these sciences respectively will be exhibited in the sections that immediately follow. § 4. In respect of the matter of discourse, Rhetoric derives its regulative principles more immediately from Logic; in respect of the form of discourse, from Esthetics; and in respect of the end or object of discourse, from Ethics. Every rational procedure contains these three elements: matter or content, form, and end. In discourse, the matter or content is thought; and it is the especial function of logical science to prescribe the conditions and forms of thought. But, in discourse, thought is uttered, expressed. It takes a form; and it is the proper function of æsthetical science to prescribe the conditions and elements of form. |