that these deep-rooted and final differences of temperament have not become active: that, as is always true, there is a large part of your audience, whose minds, either through indifference or from ignorance of the subject, are still open. Then you must, as in questions of fact, again trust to your sagacity. Here its task is to find every fact and every aspect of the case which will link themselves to their interest, or which will make the other policy seem useless or dangerous, and then to harp on them. until their force is decisive. This exercise of your sagacity has so much more to do with feelings than with thoughts, however, that I will leave further discussion of it until I come to persuasion.

23. Finally, in discussing this element of argument that is called persuasion, I shall divide it into two parts: (1) that which is separable from the rest of the argument, the illustrations, examples, and supposititious cases which directly stimulate the feelings of the audience; and (2) that more subtle appeal to the feelings of the audience which lies in the kindling of the style, in the expression of the interest and strong emotion of the writer by the swifter, more agitated rhythm and fuller resonance of his speech. In whichever way it works, this element of persuasion belongs to that aspect of literature which has to do with the feelings; and, as depending on the personal equation of the writer, it is much less easy than the intellectual element to catch and generalize from, and almost impossible to teach. All that I can do is to

examine it in good examples, and then make very tentatively a few suggestions based on these examples. For it cannot be too often written down in such a treatise as this that the teacher of writing can no more make a great writer than a teacher of painting can turn out a new Rembrandt or Millet; in either case, the most that the teacher can do is to furnish honest and illuminating criticism, and to save his pupil unnecessary and tedious steps by showing him. the methods and devices which have been worked out by the masters of the craft.

To begin then with the explicit devices of the art of persuasion. In the arguments of the Income Tax Cases, they are separated for us impersonally and very conveniently by the difference between the stenographic report and the condensed form of the official United States Report. The latter prints only the actual indispensable substance of the arguments of counsel. By subtracting this report from the full stenographic report of the arguments as delivered, we get that part of the argument which makes it interesting and moving as distinguished from that which had to do with the more abstract and impersonal body of reasoning. In that part of Mr. Choate's argument which I print, I have enclosed these subtractions in brackets so that they can easily be studied by themselves.

All these passages which are omitted in the official report, you will notice, are aimed at the practical interests of the judges, both as judges and as citizens. This fact opens up the essential nature of persuasion.

Professor James points out 1 that all reasoning depends on the way in which our attention and our action are determined by either practical or æsthetic interests; that from the mass of sensations which make up any object we pick out the one quality which decides our opinion because something in that quality is for the moment important to our physical welfare or to our intellectual instincts or to our tastes. Just so in this argument of Mr. Choate's with all its mingling of abstract and legal thoughts with the appeal to the practical interests of the judges: it brought its legal principles closely and directly into touch with their instinctive desires for a fixed government. It is this chance to work quietly and subtly on the prejudices and temperaments of the judges who at any time happen to be sitting on the Bench that maintains the practice of oral arguments in court. Many private cases could undoubtedly just as well be submitted on briefs but in all larger questions, especially if they are constitutional, the tact of the counsel, and his knowledge of the judges will count for almost as much as his brief. It will be his emphasis, his illustrations, his arguments on the effects of the decision, that, when either view would be legal and just, will incline the judges to take his rather than the other. In Mr. Choate's argument President Hayes' prediction — "You will probably live to see the day when in the case of the death of any man of large wealth, the State will take for itself all above a prescribed limit of his fortune and divide it, or apply it to the equal use of the

1 "Psychology," vol. ii. p. 345.

people, so as to punish the rich man for his wealth, and to divide it among those who, whatever may have been their sins, at least have not committed that

must have attracted the attention and serious thought of men who in Washington lived in an atmosphere which is more and more an atmosphere of wealthy leisure, and it must have strengthened their solicitude for the protection of private property; it could not, therefore, have been without influence on their minds. when the law was so doubtful and so conflicting.

This example displays the function of persuasion so far at any rate as it depends on these separable parts of argumentative writing. By carefully touching — remember the figure implied in the word tact the practical interests of the people you are addressing, you can keep their attention fixed on the view you want them to take; and the longer you can hold this view before their attention, and the more vividly and warmly you can connect it with their experience, the more chance there is that it will stick and be accepted by them as the most satisfying solution. Insensibly the facts which lead to your conclusion will loom up larger in their view of the case, and those which you wish to stand in the background will dwindle. The best argument you can make will be that which will grow into such warm and intimate touch with the thoughts and interest of your reader that it becomes a natural part of his mental furniture, part of the framework by which he rationalizes his universe. In every case, then, use examples and supposititious cases which will merge your view into

the experience and the interest of your reader at as many points as you can. If your audience is quick, a hint will be enough. Mr. Choate, for instance, would have wasted time as well as committed a contempt of court if he had tried to excite the judges by any such denunciatory eloquence as he would undoubtedly have used in the House of Representatives; such a hint as he gave was all that was necessary to call their attention to the possible consequences of the decision. Henry Ward Beecher, on the other hand, talking to a hostile audience of English operatives, had to put the appeal to their interests into crass and literal form; he had an audience who were unused to picking out the hidden meanings and consequences of facts. In each case you have to judge for yourself, and trust to your instinctive or acquired knowledge of what will move your readers or hearers and will graft your view into their interests and experiences. If your argument does thus reach their feelings, it has the power of persuasion; if it does not, it may be intellectually convincing, but it will hardly stir them to action.

In treating the power of pure style, the other division of the art of persuasion, we shall find ourselves still more concerned with that side of literature where power is a gift inborn, and the teacher must draw himself to the rear and confine himself to criticism and encouragement. For this gift is like that of a sweet voice, or of great muscular strength : it may be nourished and increased by wise practice and criticism, but unless there is the heaven-born endowment the striving of man is but vain. It is a