heroism, patriotism; those connected with moral or religious duty, toleration, kindness, service, submission, love, reverence, praise, worship. But this does not exhaust the list of even worthy motives, and omits such baser motives as selfishness, hate, anger, revenge, sensual desires, vanity, and greed. To know whether to present considerations of happiness, or duty, or generosity; whether to arouse emotion, then guide it to action; whether to complete the work of persuasion at once or return to it later; to know how successfully to present any considerations, implies a careful study of human nature under the most varied circumstances. It implies such a thorough knowledge of men and of expedients as is obtained only by long experience in dealing with practical affairs. To prescribe specific rules for persuasion, therefore, is impossible; the most that can be done is to suggest a few general principles which good sense, insight, sympathy, and a grasp of the situation, will apply to any case.

Appeal to
Highest
Motive.

Other things being equal, it is best to offer the highest motive which will be effective. Men are induced to contribute to a charity by various appeals, to the brotherhood of man, to sympathy for those benefited, to a hope of reward, to mere vanity a desire of being paraded in public as a benefactor. If motives of different rank are put for ward the higher should come after the lower, unless the speaker, relying upon the higher, sees that to have failed. Webster first shows at the White murder trial that the conviction of the criminal will secure safety to innocent people, the jury included. His closing appeal is of a higher mood, — fidelity to a trust, duty to man

and to God. Burke appeals in the Speech on Conciliation, to British cupidity, to admiration for colonial enterprise, to fear of losing the Colonies, to a sense of justice, and last to national interest, combined with national duty toward a great part of the colonial population.

There is no surer mark of distinction between the statesman and the demagogue than the motives offered in public addresses. Hardly a greater con- Statesmen trast can be imagined than that between the and Demaappeals of Webster on questions of national gogues. finance1 and those of some popular political speakers of this generation:

"We are the greatest nation on earth. I am a candidate for the greatest office on earth. You are the people of the greatest nation on earth. Your President is merely your hired man. Your wisdom is inexhaustible and infallible. You alone are capable of deciding all questions, economic, moral, and other, in the best manner. They say that you cannot solve the financial question without the aid of the rest of the world. I tell you that you are so great that you can ignore the rest of the world. The issue is drawn. Shall we have an American financial system for the American people, or an English financial system for the English aristocracy and American goldbugs?" 2

Low Appeal.

An appeal to motives so low or selfish as to seem unworthy, usually thwarts itself. "Virtue assigns the law of successful persuasion. The orator who avails himself of the ignorance and passions of men incurs the risk, that, in wiser and calmer moments, the fact may be discerned, and prove henceforth the occasion of distrust and separation. The grounds of influence are confidence and sympathy. Without these, the

1 Page 104, 216. 2 The Nation.

mind holds itself aloof, and the emotions sought for are not aroused. Nothing more excites men of ordinary intelligence to resistance, to close all the avenues of the heart, than the discovery that they have been deceived and designedly misled." 1

Motive
Adapted to

Those

A motive is more likely to be effective if it is in accord with the habitual state of mind of the audience. It is of little use to appeal to a spendthrift's love of money, or a scoffer's reverence. A prohibition agitator would find difficulties in Germany. An Addressed. appeal to patriotism will reach many in any country and under any form of government; but an appeal to a sacred reverence for the authority of monarchs would be more successful elsewhere than in America.

Use of More
Than a
Single
Motive.

The use of a single motive to stir a mixed audience or even to move an individual, is rarely successful. Men have different interests. They look upon enterprises from a different point of view. They see different consequences from the same act or course of conduct. From their modes of thought and the subjects with which they are familiar, they must be approached in a different way.

"Persuasion implies that some course of conduct shall be so described, or expressed, as to coincide, or be identified, with the active impulses of the individuals addressed, and thereby command their adoption of it by the force of their own natural dispositions. A leader of banditti has to deal with a class of persons whose ruling impulse is plunder; and it becomes his business to show that any scheme of his proposing will lead to this end. A people with an intense, overpowering patriotism, as the old Romans, can be acted on by proving that the

1 Bascom, Philosophy of Rhetoric, 57.

interests of country are at stake.

The fertile oratorical mind

is one that can identify a case in hand with a great number of the strongest beliefs of an audience; and more especially with those that seem, at first sight, to have no connection with the point to be carried. The discovery of identity in diversity is never more called for, than in the attempts to move men to adopt some unwonted course of proceeding." 1

The appeal through the presentation of motive is more or less direct. The feelings may, however, be reached in another way, and then made an impelling force in the desired direction. When Antony addressed the mob, he did not even suggest that it would be to their interest to "Revenge, about,

Directing

Aroused

Feeling.

seek,burn, kill, - slay, let not a traitor live!" He inflamed their passions, which must find vent in some way; and his knowledge of human nature was such that he foresaw their action. Napoleon's, "Forty centuries look down upon you from these pyramids," with the few stirring words that followed, was more effective than a long array of motives for doing a soldier's duty. The preacher by various devices - picturing death-bed scenes, the torments of the damned, the joys of the redeemed, arouses the emotions of his congregation, working upon his hearers so strongly that they must find relief in action; then he places the desired course of action vividly before them, and they find relief in its adoption. The lawyer works in the same way upon the jury. He pictures the horrors of the crime, the suffering it inflicts, the outrage upon humanity. He shows how the crime touches the jury as citizens, as protectors of their wives and little ones; and then as Webster so often does, he leaves them to "do their duty." Some1 Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, 452.

times he urges them to do their duty and punish the murderer as in the following speech of General Breckinridge in the Buford case:

"O gentlemen, give us one more crowning proof that the trial by jury is not a farce and show, but that justice can be enforced by a Kentucky jury according to the law and evidence, and with a full sense of the solemn value of that duty to be performed.

"This is not my voice, but that of my brother, who pleads with you by the side of this dead judge and this living prisoner. I have no right to do more than pray that God will give you strength to do your duty, your whole duty, so that in His sight you can stand upright. And if the verdict which your consciences require, deprives him of his life, he will owe to you what he refused before his blameless visitation, to make peace with that God who will judge each of us for the just verdict in this trial." 1

The indirect method is often preferable to this more direct. Men are suspicious of direct appeals, and often arm themselves against them. To arouse and influence

Indirect
Method
Preferable.

feeling with no seeming intent to do so, avoids that prejudice. No man can feel joy or grief, love or hate, merely by being told to do so or by wishing to do so. Even the actor must work upon himself, take himself to the source of feeling, and arouse feeling in himself, before he is able successfully to represent it to his audience. The speaker having always present the cause of feeling, may exhibit its effect upon himself, that is, he may exhibit his own feelings to the audience; or he may present to them in detail what arouses the feeling in himself.

To excite feeling by the exhibition of feeling, the ora

1 Modern Jury Trials, 683.