LECTURE XVI.

EXCITATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE PASSIONS.

IN delineating the qualities of the heart, of the understanding, and of the temper, which must. combine to constitute an orator worthy of a station in the memory of ages, I reserved, as the closing and highly important consideration, the necessity, that he should possess a steady and unvarying command over his own passions. The course of my subject naturally leads me next to inquire how far and by what means he will find it expedient to exercise an influence over those of his hearers.

The rhetorical theories of this age must differ very materially from those of ancient times on this part of the science. Among them the man

agement of the passions was considered as including almost the whole art of oratory.

Each of the three great writers, who have hitherto been our instructers, appears to consider this as by far the most arduous task, and the most effectual power of a public speaker; and each of them has treated it in his peculiar characteristic manner. One entire book of the three, which contain the rhetorical system of Aristotle, is devoted to the passions. He selects from the whole mass of habits and affections, which hold dominion over the hearts of men, a certain number, which he comprises under the general denomination of oratorical passions, or passions which are peculiarly susceptible of being operated upon by a public speaker. To each of these he allots a distinct chapter, in which he successively analyzes the passion itself, the classes of men, who are most liable to be stimulated by it, and the manner in which it may be excited. This book is one of the profoundest and most ingenious treatises upon human nature, that ever issued from the pen of man. It searches the issues of the heart with a keenness of penetration, which nothing can surpass, unless it be its severity. There is nothing satirical in his manner, and his obvious intention is merely as an artist to

expose the mechanism of man; to discover the moral nerves and sinews, which are the peculiar organs of sensation; to dissect the internal structure, and expose the most hidden chambers of the tenement to our view. Cicero insists also much upon the management of the passions. Not by anatomizing the passions themselves, but by showing how they are to be handled. His example is followed by Quinctilian, whose sentiments on this chapter it may be proper to cite, as explained by himself, in order to mark distinctly how far they can be applicable to present times.

"There is," says he, "perhaps nothing so important as this in the whole art of oratory. An inferior genius, with the aid of instruction and experience, may succeed, and appear to great advantage in all the other parts. You can easily find men able to invent arguments and proofs, and even to link them together in a chain of deduction. These men are not to be despised. They are well qualified to inform the judges; to give them a perfect insight into the cause; nay to be the patterns and teachers of all your learned orators. But the talent of delighting, of overpowering the judge himself, of ruling at pleasure his very will, of inflaming him with anger, of melting him to

tears, that is the rare endowment indeed. Yet therein consists the true dominion of the orator; therein consists the empire of eloquence over the heart. As for arguments, they generally proceed from the bosom of the cause itself, and are always the strongest on the right side. To obtain the victory by means of them is merely the success of a common lawyer; but to sway the judge in spite of himself, to divert his observation from the truth, when it is unpropitious to our cause, this is the real triumph of an orator. This is what you never can learn from the parties;

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reasonings serve indeed to convince the judge, that our cause is the best. But by means of his passions he is made to wish it such; and he will soon believe what he once wishes. No sooner does he begin to catch our passions and to share in our hatreds and friendships, indignations and fears, than he makes our cause his own. And as lovers are ill qualified to judge of beauty, because blinded by their passion, in like manner the judge, amidst his perturbation, loses the discernment of truth. The torrent hurries him along, and he gives himself up to its violence. Nothing but the sentence itself can indicate the effect of the

arguments and witnesses upon his mind. But if he warmly feels the passions excited in him, you can easily discover his sentence before he leaves the bench; nay without his rising from it. When he bursts into tears, as sometimes happens at those admirable perorations, which must move the hardest of hearts, is not the decree already pronounced? Let the orator then direct all his exertions to this point; let him fasten most obstinately upon it, without which every thing else is slender, feeble, and ungracious. So true it is, that the strength and the soul of a pleader's discourse centres in the passions."

Let us here remark, that in this passage, which contains the whole substance of the ancient doctrine respecting the excitation and management of the passions, Quinctilian applies his observations exclusively to judicial eloquence. The ends, for which these energetic machines are to be worked, have no relation to demonstrative discourses. There is no judge to be deceived, no sentence to be falsified. The ideas apply only by a weak and imperfect analogy to deliberative eloquence; and indeed it was a received maxim among all the rhetoricians, that the great field for operating upon the passions was at the bar.

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