Swift, Jonathan - University of Arizona
The History of Literacy and Literacy Studies in American Colleges Course Packet
1. Table of Contents of Thomas Miller and Jenn Fishman’s “Part V: Writing and Rhetoric in the Age of Revolutions” NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF RHETORIC AND WRITING. [Includes full citations for entries.]
2. Shifting Definitions of Rhetoric
3. Joseph Addison Spectator #1 and #10.
4. Benjamin Franklin Autobiography excerpts on efforts to refine his style in imitation of the Spectator
5. Frederick Douglass Excerpts on his efforts to learn to read and on his first oratorical efforts.
6. Elizabeth Cady Stanton “School Years” from Eighty Years and More
7. George Campbell Philosophy of Rhetoric
8. Hugh Blair Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
9. George Jardine Outlines of a Philosophical Education.
10. Horace Mann On Education and National Welfare
11. Samuel Newman A Practical System of Rhetoric
12. Almira Hart Phelps “Rhetoric, Criticism, Composition,” Lectures to Young Ladies,
13. J. Hamilton Moore. The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Monitor and English Teacher's Assistant
14. Sarah J. Hale Ladies’ Magazine
15. Elias Boudinot An Address to the Whites
16. About the Cherokee Phoenix. Cherokee Phoenix
17. Preamble to US Constitution and Constitution of the Cherokee
18. “Extract from the closing part of an address,” delivered in New Orleans. . . by a young Cherokee
19. Richard Allen “An Address,” The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of Richard Allen”
20. Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a Woman?" and Address to the 1st Annual American Equal Rights Association
21. Frederick Douglass “The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro”
22. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
23. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Address to the National Woman Suffrage Convention
24. Susan B. Anthony. “Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?”
25. Elizabeth Cady Stanton “Solitude of Self,” Address before the US Senate”
26. Margaret Fuller Ossoli Woman in the Nineteenth Century,
27. Adams Sherman Hill “ An Answer to the Cry for More English”
NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF RHETORIC AND WRITING
Part V: Writing and Rhetoric in the Age of Revolutions
Thomas Miller and Jenn Fishman
Mediating Literacies
This section examines how the spread of print literacy redefined conceptions of rhetoric by expanding access to learning and transforming public discourse. The increasing numbers of readers and writers gave rise to blurred genres such as the essay and popularized new forms of narrative. To underscore the impact these changes had on both public and private experience, particularly in England and the United States, this section includes several essays that helped set the standard for belletristic tastes along with literacy acquisition narratives and self-expressive addresses by three broadly representative figures—an indentured servant, a freed slave, and a leading suffragist.
1. Shifting Definitions of Rhetoric:
o Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Advancement of Learning. 1605; New York: American Dome, 1902. 268-9.
o John Locke (1632-1704). Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690; New York: Macmillan, 1894. 2:146-7.
o Richard Whately (1787-1863). Elements of Rhetoric. 1828; New York, William Jackson, 1834.
o Adams Sherman Hill (1833-1910). Principles of Rhetoric. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1893.
o Gertrude Buck (1871-1922). “Recent Tendencies in the Teaching of English Composition.” Educational Review (November 1901).
These definitions document how the identification of rhetoric with public address was redefined as the reading public became rhetoricians' primary audience. Bacon looks to rhetoric to move readers' passions, while Locke identifies it with impassioned appeals to the less literate. Whately looks past such traditional concerns to focus on how print had expanded rhetorical studies, while Hill and Buck identify those studies with modern conceptions of literature and efficiency.
2. Joseph Addison (1672-1719). Spectator #1 and #10. 1710; NY: E.P. Dutton, 1915. 3-7, 38-41.
The essays of the Spectator were among the most widely anthologized and imitated models of the refined style and sensibility. They set standards of taste and usage in handbooks, and in the literary societies that were modeled on the Spectator Club. Such texts and forums circulated the literate culture among those with limited access to education.
3. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Autobiography. 1793; Bedford, MA: Applegate, 2008. 14-20.
Franklin’s literacy narrative recounts how he taught himself to write with self-restraint by imitating the style and sentiments of the Spectator in a writing group with other working-class youth that was modeled upon the Spectator Club.
4. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845; Cambridge: Harvard, 2009. 43-53.
---. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881. New York: Cosimo, 2008. 151-54.
As an enslaved youth, Douglass taught himself to read and write in the spaces left in his master’s discarded textbooks. Later, Douglass mastered the art of public speaking by studying the neoclassical models included in the Columbian Orator, which was the first book he bought for himself.
5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). “School Years.” Eighty Years and More. 1897; New York: European, 1898. 20-3, 31-4, and 35.
Stanton developed her rhetorical skills by debating her male schoolmates and studying her father’s law books. When she was denied access to an established university and had to attend a female seminary, she became an unabashed proponent of women’s rights.
6. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). “Self-Made Men.” 1859; The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One. Vol. 5. Ed. John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan. New Haven: Yale, 1992. 545-51, 554-59, 562-75.
The speech on self-improvement that Douglass delivered at the Carlyle Indian School was his most popular “essay-lecture,” a term that Emerson used to characterize the blurred genre that gained popularity with the popularity of lecture circuits and magazines that suffragists, abolitionists, and other reformers depended upon to earn an independent living.
7. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). “Solitude of Self.” Address before the US Senate, February 20, 1892; Concise History of Woman Suffrage. Ed. Jary Jo and Paul Buhle. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1978. 325-8.
Stanton argued for “woman suffrage” on the bases of “individual citizenship.” This argument differs from how Douglass represented himself. Stanton’s sense of self is imbued with the individualist ethos of middle-class readers and reformers.
Theory and Education: The Articulation of Rhetoric through Composition
Print provided the model and means for standardizing usage. Proliferating numbers of grammars, dictionaries, handbooks, and rhetorics established principles for moderating behavior, judgment, and feelings along with norms for written and spoken communication. With rhetoric’s traditional concern for articulation as a point of departure, the works in this section document the circulation of ideas through print to both expanding reading publics and the student bodies who encountered rhetoric through composition in formal school settings between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.
8. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Preface. A Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1755.
While Johnson had hoped to find a patron to sponsor his dictionary, he ultimately had to rely on the social aspirations and commercial power of the reading public for support. Through its systematic organization and broadly representative examples, Johnson's provided a model for the dictionaries and grammars that would standardize the tastes and usage of the expanding reading public.
9. Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788). A Course of Lectures on Elocution. London: Strahan, 1762. 1-18.
Elocutionary manuals drew upon theories of sensibility to teach readers how to express themselves with sympathetic gestures and intonations. Revitalizing orality for in an era when print literacy became the model for public discourse, Sheridan's published lectures taught readers to perform sympathetic self-restraint.
10. George Campbell (1719-1796). Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776; NY: Harper, 1849. 22-9, 54-7, 92-103.
Often credited with reconceptualizing rhetoric according to Bacon's theory of knowledge and Hume’s “science of human nature,” Campbell championed inductive models of reasoning and applied them to grammatical studies by calling for empirical surveys of actual usage. As such, Campbell is pivotal to the transition from neoclassical to modern conceptions of the three language arts.
11. Hugh Blair (1718-1800). Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. 1783; Philadelphia: Elwood Zell, 1866. 9-25, 27-37.
Blair’s Lectures were more widely reprinted and excerpted than any other textbook in the history of English studies. His attention to polite taste, sentiment, and style made cultural literacy accessible to readers eager to access the power and privilege associated with rhetoric and writing. Blair’s Lectures provide a broadly influential point of departure for examining how English literature, rhetoric, and composition became constituted as an academic discipline.
12. George Jardine (1742-1827). Outlines of a Philosophical Education. 1818. Second Edition. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 1825. 1-17.
Jardine's work shows how the new learning gave rise to a new pedagogy. Responding to the political and educational trends that were expanding access to literacy and education, Jardine developed an experiential and reflective writing pedagogy that prefigures the student-centered focus of rhetoric and composition in later centuries.
13. Sarah J Hale (1788-1879). Ladies’ Magazine 2.1 (January, 1829): 2-5, 30-35.
The Ladies Magazine was one of the popular magazines and anthologies that helped expanded access to the literate culture, in part by expanding opportunities to earn a living by writing. These opportunities increased dramatically in the U.S. with the appearance of state-mandated schooling and the spread of lecture circuits that enabled women and others to gain public standing as writers, teachers, and lecturers.
14. Samuel Newman (1797-1842). A Practical System of Rhetoric. 1832; London: John R. Priestley, 1837. Iii-xi.
Newman was one of the host of textbook writers, teachers, and essayists who popularized a belletristic stance on rhetoric. This popular standpoint was pivotal to the departure from neoclassicism that shaped the introduction of studies of English.
15. Almira Hart Phelps (1793-1884). “Rhetoric, Criticism, Composition.” Lectures to Young Ladies, Comprising Outlines and Applications of the Different Branches of Female Education. Boston: Carter, Hendee, 1833. 249-64.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, women gained access to higher education with the spread of female seminaries and teachers’ academies. In the general education curriculum at such schools, English courses were substituted for studies of classical literature in order to educate students who were less prepared because they lacked a Latin grammar school education.
16. Adams Sherman Hill (1833-1910). The Principles of Rhetoric and Their Application. 1878; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893. Iii-iv, 1-10, 65-6, 67-9, 70, 84-6.
---. “An Answer to the Cry for More English.” 1879; Twenty Years of School and College English. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1896. 6-16.
Hill’s widely influential textbook and his survey of the field of high school and college English studies document how rhetoric became consigned to a gate-keeping position in basic composition courses at the turn of the twentieth century. As a result, rhetorical studies lost their broader role as a capstone for the liberal arts and became defined by functionalist qualities such as clarity and efficiency.
17. Gertrude Buck (1849-1919). “What Does Rhetoric Mean?” Educational Review 22 (1901): 197-200.
---. “Recent Tendencies in the Teaching of English Composition,” Educational Review 22 (1901): 371-82.
The creative capacities of basic composition studies are evident in the writings of Gertrude Buck. Her scholarship advanced the Progressive movement's emphasis on self-realization and collaborative learning that built on the experiential orientation of the new pedagogy in a manner that highlights the creative and political potentials of learning to articulate one’s experience and identify with others.
Case Study: World Englishes
These selections show how “English” as a field of study evolved under colonial conditions. It includes arguments over British colonialism and the purposes of higher education in India, an excerpt from a textbook, and samples of student writing. Together, these sources document how composition, literature, and rhetoric shaped the cultural and political assumptions of educated Indians in the era when English became India's national language and Indians began to use it to rebel against British rule.
18. Edmund Burke. Speech on Fox's East India Bill. December 1, 1783.
In one of speeches that has been studied as a model of deliberative oratory by students of eloquence ranging from Samuel Johnson to Frederick Douglass, Burke argues that British colonialism had a more debilitating impact than the “ferocity” of “Asiatic conquerors” because British occupiers failed to engage with Indian society.
19. Raja Rammohun Roy. A Letter on English Education.1823; The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy. Calcutta: Srikanta Roy, 1901. Vol. 2: 32-8.
An early proponent of Indian nationalism and a founder of Hindu College, Rammohun Roy appealed to the British government to shift funding from instruction in Sanskrit to provide access to English education to help advance social progress.
20. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). "Minute on Indian Education." 1835; Macaulay, Prose and Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1957. 721-24,729.
While “orientalist” studies had been supported as a means to show respect for indigenous elites, Macaulay argued for shifting Indian higher education to emphasize English studies because English was a world language that provided access to all literate culture and learned traditions.
21. Robert Demaus (1829-1874). English Literature and Composition: A Guide to Candidates in Those Departments of Indian Civil Service with Examination-Papers and Specimens of Answers. Longmans, Green, 1866. 153-63.
English literature and composition were used to assess whether candidates for civil service positions had the self-restraint and deference to tradition essential to colonial administrators. This emphasis on character formation highlights how English studies were used to instill a cosmopolitan sensibility in colonial administrators.
22. J. Murdoch (1819-1904). Indian Student’s Manual: Hints on Studies, Moral Conduct, Religious Duties, and Success in Life. Madras: C. Foster, 1875. 21-2, 44-56.
These textbook excerpts document how enterprising Indian students were taught to respect the literature of their “mother-tongue” and look down on the “language of the masses” in a manner that is notably congruent with traditional English courses.
23. Rajnarian Bose. "Questions on Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments."
Nobinchunder Dass, "The Effects upon India of the New Communication with Europe by means of Steam." Hindoo College. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. (1852-53). Vol 32: 590-95.
These student essays and essay assignments from Hindoo College document how Scottish theories of moral philosophy and rhetoric provided transcultural opportunities for indigenous elites to develop nationalist sentiments that bridged regional differences in language, culture, and religion.
24. Bal Gangadhar Tilak. “National Education.” [1908] Writings and Speeches. Madras: Ganesh, 1918.
Tilak promoted Indian independence by espousing swaraj or “self-rule.” In his essays in his native Marathi, he called for a national system of education based in studies of the literatures and languages of the Indian subcontinent to provide “a knowledge of our ancestors.”
Rhetorics of Self-Representation
The conjunction between personal and political expression can be not only rhetorically powerful but also culturally impossible to ignore. Such was the case throughout the age of revolutions when a diversity of rhetors argued with equal eloquence and exigence for self-determination. In different forms of public address, including the essays and speeches in this section, both men and women marshaled available means of communication along with available political processes to advocate for social change. Their rhetorical acts drew attention to fundamental inequalities at the same time they called people to action, framing negotiations that had great immediate impact as well as substantial influence on generations to follow.
25. James Madison (1751-1836). Federalist No. 10. 1788; Washington: Gideon, 1818. 57-65.
James Madison coauthored the Federalist essays to persuade the reading public to support the U.S. Constitution. While the essays show Madison’s debts to the style and sentiments of the Spectator, the essays also document the broader rhetorical continuities between that sensibility and the representative forms of self-governance embodied in the US Constitution.
26. Sagoyewatha (Red Jacket) (ca 1758-1830). Address to White Missionaries and Iroquois Six Nations 1805; American Eloquence: A Collection of Speeches and Addresses. Ed. Frank Moore. 1858; American Indian Literature: An Anthology. Ed. Alan R. Velie. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1991. 137-9;
---, "Speech of the Celebrated Red Jacket.” Poulson's Daily Advertizer; rptd. Cherokee Phoenix and Indians' Advocate 2.47 (March 10, 1830).
The Seneca chief and orator Saqoyewatha played a critical role in negotiating alliances among Indian nations to address the encroachment of Christian missionaries and the expanding U.S. government. Sagoyewatha famously urged missionaries to reassess their cultural imperialism, and he challenged white political leaders to practice tolerance and justice toward Indians and other races.
27. Elias Boudinot (1803-1839). An Address to the Whites. 1826. The Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. Ed. Theda Perdue. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1996. 68-83.
Born Gallegina Uwati, Boudinot was known as the Buck or Buck Watie until he adopted the name of his early benefactor, American Bible Society president Elias Boudinot. His Address to the Whites, like his name and his career as the founder and editor of the first Cherokee newspaper, presents an argument for Cherokee self-determination through the adoption and adaptation of available models and tools for education, print-mediated deliberations, and representative self-governance.
28. Richard Allen (1760-1831). “An Address.” 1830. The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. Philadelphia: Martin & Boden, 1833.
Allen converted to Methodism and began preaching nearly a decade before he purchased his freedom. As a leading contributor to the Second Great Awakening, he challenged church segregation before breaking away to help found the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In this address to the first national convention of black Americans, Allen drew on his slave experience to argue for collective self-determination of African Americans.
29. Sojourner Truth (1797-1883). "Ain't I a Woman?" 1851; Voices of a People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. 2nd ed. New York: Seven Stories, 2009. 128-9.
---. “Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association.” 1867; Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections of Stanton, Anthony, Gage, and Harper. Ed. Jary Jo and Paul Buhle. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1978. 235-6.
Isabella Baumfree took the name Sojourner Truth as part of her own spiritual awakening, but she challenged Christian doctrines that denied women self-determination. Against such doctrines, Truth argued for the rights of women and African Americans on basis of the moral imperatives of human experience. Although Truth herself did not read or write, her oratory circulated widely in print along with descriptions of her powerful presence.
30. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). “The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro” (1852). The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One. Vol. 2. Ed. John W. Blassingame. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. 359-88.
Douglass underlined the conflicted ideologies at the heart of Americans’ celebrations of a nation founded upon freedom—and slavery. Douglass pointedly questioned the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society to reflect upon their presumptions about what he represented. Douglass directly challenged his auditors, and his readers, to reassess the contradictory assumptions about the politics of self-governance.
31. Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850). Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman. Ed. Arthur B. Fuller. New York: The Tribute Association, 1869.
As a teacher, lecturer, journalist, and editor of the transcendentalist journal the Dial, Fuller followed a career pattern followed by rising numbers of literate white women reformers to become one of the most noted feminists of her time. The combination of her wide-ranging social and political engagements shaped her arguments for the rights of women and slaves in Woman in the Nineteenth Century.
32. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911). “We Are All Bound Up Together.” Proceedings of the Eleventh Women's Rights Convention (1866); Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers: An Anthology. Ed. Karen L. Kilcup. Madden, MA: Blackwell, 1997. 156-58.
Harper composed poetry and fiction as well as abolitionist and suffragist speeches. An African American born to free parents, she belonged to one of the first generation of women from diverse backgrounds who were able to earn an independent living as teachers, lecturers, and writers. In this speech, she appealed to such women to work together to advance the rights of women and African Americans.
33. Victoria Earle Matthews (1861-1907). “The Value of Race Literature: An Address Delivered at the First Congress of Colored Women of the United States” (1895); With Pen And Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women. Ed. Shirley Wilson Logan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1995. 126-48.
Throughout her lifetime, Matthews championed justice, education, and political equity. A largely self-educated journalist, fiction-writer, and activist, she organized African American women's clubs and rallied voters. In this address to the first national conference of black women, Matthews called on her audience to recognize and marshal the rhetorical power of literary representation for self-determination.
Inventing Rights and Republics
This section includes several noted eighteenth and nineteenth statements on human rights along with three examples of efforts to translate those revolutionary doctrines into declarations of independence and constitutions of national identities. Each of the three sets of documents founded a republic in the Americas, and each was shaped by the print literacies and oral traditions of the peoples being represented. In structure and intent, these texts document the distinctive forms of rhetoric involved in mediating divisive conflicts to articulate collective identities and constitute representative forms of governance. Grouped together and organized chronologically, these texts show some of the rhetorical confluences between revolutionary doctrines and contemporary efforts to claim the rights to self-representation and determination.
34. Declaration of Independence. 1776; An Essay on Elocution. Ed. J.H. Dwyer. 2nd Ed. New York, 1828.
The Declaration that was signed by the Second Continental Congress set out a philosophical basis for unalienable human rights and founded a national identity upon that basis. The rhetorical strategies that Jefferson set out were shaped by the courses in Scottish moral philosophy and rhetoric that he and other figures such as Hamilton and Madison had taken from Scottish college graduates.
35. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. August 26, 1789.
A key document of the French Revolution, the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen denied the validity of rule according to sovereign will. The National Assembly founded the purpose and authority of government on upholding citizens' natural, inalienable, and sacred rights. The Declaration of the Rights of Man served as a point of departure for subsequent discussions of democratic self-governance and international human rights.
36. Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790. Ed., E. J. Payne. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1990.
Reflections on the Revolution in France takes the form of a letter intended for publication that offers a conservative critique of the French Revolution and its implications for the welfare of other nations, including England. Burke’s stylistic bravado garnered as much attention as his arguments, which drew quick responses from Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine and others.
37. Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Men. 2nd edition. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1790.
Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men is as much an indictment of Burke's rhetoric as it is a defense of the human rights and human beings he fails to consider in Reflections on the Revolution on France. Addressing Burke directly, Wollstonecraft sets out an opposing vision of social reform by highlighting how gender and poverty play into concerns for social justice.
38. Thomas Paine. Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution. London, 1791.
Paine responded to Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution not with a counter-attack but with an extended mediation on the ideas and beliefs championed by revolutionaries in both America and France. Distinguishing natural and civil rights, Paine connected the concepts of liberty and equality with politics and specific social policies, including taxation, voting, and welfare.
39. Constituting Haiti.
a. Thomas Jefferson to Marquis de Lafayette, June 16, 1792.
b. The Constitution of St. Domingue. 1801.
c. The Haitian Declaration of Independence. 1804.
d. The Constitution of Hayti. The New York Evening Post, 15 July 1805.
Modern Haiti did not emerge from a unified struggle for nationhood. Instead the constituting events that stretched from 1791 to 1804 were concerned with abolishing slavery and gaining self-determination for people of color. While landed individuals such as Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette viewed unrest in the French colony of St. Domingue as a threat to cross-Atlantic trade, the authors of Haitian independence set about declaring self-determination and constituting the world's first black republic.
40. Constituting the Cherokee Nation.
a. Treaty with the Cherokee. 1785.
b. Constitution of the Cherokee. Cherokee Phoenix & Indians’ Advocate (1828).
c. Treaty with the Cherokee, 1835.
d. Constitution of the Cherokee Nation. 1839.
Cherokee constitutions and treaties were shaped by the interrelated evolution of two American nations. Negotiations with American colonists and the US government shaped the efforts of the Cherokee to develop their own written language, schools, and print media and genres. The Cherokee enlisted these resources in the cause of self-determination, as in the opening of the Cherokee’s first constitution, which begins with, "We the Representatives of the people of the Cherokee Nation . . . .”
41. Constituting Mexico
a. The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States. 1857.
b. Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913). Plan of San Luis Potosi. 1910.
c. Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919). Plan de Ayala. 1911.
d. The Political Constitution of the United Mexican States. 1917.
Separated by sixty years and numerous efforts to articulate an independent national identity, Mexico's 1857 and 1917 Constitutions echo republican commonplaces of self-determination, but Mexico's constituting texts and revolutions differ from their North American and European counterparts. The Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos de 1857 includes a bill of rights that abolishes slavery, and the 1917 Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos specifies land rights and labor reforms that diverge from the individualist ethos of the US constitution.
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Francis Bacon. The Advancement of Learning. 1605; New York: American Dome, 1902. 268, 269.
We next proceed to the doctrine of ornament in speech, called by the name of rhetoric or oratory. This, in itself, is certainly an excellent science, and has been laudably cultivated by writers. But to form a just estimate, eloquence is certainly inferior to wisdom. [. . .]
But in our manner to open and stir the earth a little about the roots of this science, certainly rhetoric is subservient to the imagination, as logic is to the understanding. And if the thing be well considered, the office and use of this art, is but to apply and recommend the dictates of reason to the imagination, in order to excite the affections and will. For the administration of reason is disturbed three ways; viz. 1. either by the ensnaring of sophistry, which belongs to logic; 2. the delusion of words, which belongs to rhetoric ; or 3. by the violence of the affections, which belongs to ethics. [. . .]
The end of logic is to teach the form of arguments, for defending and not for ensnaring the understanding. The end of ethics is so to compose the affections: that they may co-operate with reason, and not insult it. And lastly, the end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination with such observations and images, as may assist reason, and not over-throw it.
John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690; Alexander Campbell Fraser. New York: Macmillan, 1894. 2:146-7.
Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided. [. . .] It is evident how much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation: and I doubt not but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality, in me to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived
Richard Whately. Elements of Rhetoric. 1828; New York: William Jackson, 1834.
It is evident that in its primary signification, Rhetoric had reference to public Speaking alone, as its etymology implies: but as most of the rules for speaking are of course applicable equally to Writing, an extension of the term naturally took place; and we find even Aristotle, the earliest systematic writer on the subject whose works have come down to us, including in his Treatise rules for such compositions as were not intended to be publicly recited.[1] And even as far as relates to Speeches, properly so called, he takes, in the same Treatise, at one time, a wider, and at another, a more restricted view of the subject; including under the term Rhetoric, in the opening of his work, nothing beyond the finding of topics of Persuasion, as far as regards the matter of what is spoken; and afterwards embracing the consideration of Style, Arrangement, and Delivery.
The invention of Printing,[2] by extending the sphere of operation of the Writer, has of course contributed to the extension of those terms which, in their primary signification, had reference to Speaking alone. Many objects are now accomplished through the medium of the Press, which formerly came under the exclusive province of the Orator; and the qualifications requisite for success are so much the same in both cases, that we apply the term "Eloquent" as readily to a Writer as to a Speaker; though, etymologically considered, it could only belong to the latter. Indeed "Eloquence " is often attributed even to such compositions, e. g. Historical works, as have in view an object entirely different from any that could be proposed by an Orator; because some part of the rules to be observed in Oratory, or rules analogous to these, are applicable to such compositions. Conformably to this view therefore, some writers have spoken of Rhetoric as the Art of Composition, universally; or, with the exclusion of Poetry alone, as embracing all Prose-composition.
Adams Sherman Hill, Principles of Rhetoric
For the purposes of this treatise, Rhetoric may be defined as the art of efficient communication by language. It is not one of several arts out of which a choice may be made; it is the art to the principles of which, consciously or unconsciously, a good writer or speaker must conform. It is an art, not a science: for it neither observes, nor discovers, nor classifies; but it shows how to convey from one mind to another the results of observation, discovery, or classification; it uses knowledge, not as knowledge, but as power.”
Gertrude Buck “Recent Tendencies in the Teaching of English Composition” (Educational Review, November 1901)
By the philosophy of rhetoric, I here refer to those principles in the science of the philosophy of mind, and in the philosophy of language, on which are founded those conclusions and directions which are applicable to literary criticism, and to the formation of style.”
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Joseph Addison. Spectator No. 1 (March, 1, 1710).
I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.
I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son, whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and at the time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream: for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral until they had taken away the bells from it.
As for the rest of my infancy, their being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find, that during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say, that my parts were solid, and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for, during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of a hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself with so much diligence to my studies, that there are very few celebrated books, either in the learned or the modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with.
Upon the death of my father I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the university with the character of an odd unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I would but show it. An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Europe, in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that, having read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid; and, as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction.
I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance: sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences; sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and, while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St James's coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.
Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind, than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the whigs and tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper.
I have given the reader just so much of my history and character, as to let him see I am not altogether unqualified for the business I have undertaken. As for other particulars in my life and adventures, I shall insert them in following papers, as I shall see occasion. In the mean time, when I consider how much I have seen, read, and heard, I begin to blame my own taciturnity; and since I have neither time nor inclination to communicate the fulness of my heart and speech, I am resolved to do it in writing, and to print myself out, if possible, before I die. I have been often told by my friends, that it is a pity so many useful discoveries which I have made should be in the possession of a silent man. For this reason, therefore, I shall publish a sheet full of thoughts every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries; and if I can any way contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.
There are three very material points which I have not spoken to in this paper; and which, for several important reasons, I must keep to myself, at least for some time; I mean an account of my name, my age, and my lodgings. I must confess, I would gratify my reader in anything that is reasonable; but as for these three particulars, though I am sensible they might tend very much to the embellishment of my paper, I cannot yet come to a resolution of communicating them to the public. They would indeed draw me out of that obscurity which I have enjoyed for many years, and expose me in public places to several salutes and civilities, which have been always very disagreeable to me; for the greatest pain I can suffer, is the being talked to, and being stared at. It is for this reason, likewise, that I keep my complexion and dress as very great secrets; though it is not impossible but I may make discoveries of both in the progress of the work I have undertaken.
After having been thus particular upon myself, I shall in to-morrow's paper give an account of those gentlemen who are concerned with me in this work; for, as I have before intimated, a plan of it is laid and concerted (as all other matters of importance are) in a club. However, as my friends have engaged me to stand in the front, those who have a mind to correspond with me may direct their letters to the Spectator, at Mr Buckley's, in Little Britain: for I must further acquaint the reader, that though our club meets only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have appointed a committee to sit every night for the inspection of all such papers as may contribute to the advancement of the public weal.
Spectator. No. 10 (March 12, 1710).
It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city inquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me, that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day: So that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and inattentive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly, into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day, sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates, that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.
I would therefore in a very particular manner recommend these my speculations to all well regulated families, that set apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good, to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.
Sir Francis Bacon observes, that a well written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses's serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as to think, that where the Spectator appears, the other public prints will vanish; but shall leave it to my reader's consideration, whether it is not much better to be let into the knowledge of one's self, than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland; and to amuse ourselves with such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame hatreds, and make enmities irreconcilable.
In the next place, I would recommend this paper to the daily perusal of those gentlemen whom I cannot but consider as my good brothers and allies, I mean the fraternity of Spectators, who live in the world without having any thing to do in it; and either by the affluence of their fortunes, or laziness of their dispositions, have no other business with the rest of mankind, but to look upon them. Under this class of men are comprehended all contemplative tradesmen, titular physicians, fellows of the royal society, templars that are not given to be contentious, and statesmen that are out of business; in short, every one that considers the world as a theatre, and desires to form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it.
There is another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to, whom I have lately called the blanks of society, as being altogether unfurnished with ideas, till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration, when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with, whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of, till about twelve o'clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sits, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper, and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments, as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours.
But there are none to whom this paper will be more useful, than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the species.
The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for any thing else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as love into their male-beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means at least divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles. At the same time, as I would fain give some finishing touches to those which are already the most beautiful pieces in human nature, I shall endeavour to point out all those imperfections that are the blemishes, as well as those virtues which are the embellishments of the sex. In the mean while, I hope these my gentle readers, who have so much time on their hands, will not grudge throwing away a quarter of an hour in a day on this paper, since they may do it without any hinderance to business.
I know several of my friends and well-wishers are in great pain for me, lest I should not be able to keep up the spirit of a paper which I oblige myself to furnish every day: but to make them easy in this particular, I will promise them faithfully to give it over as soon as I grow dull. This I know will be matter of great raillery to the small wits; who will frequently put me in mind of my promise, desire me to keep my word, assure me that it is high time to give over, with many other little pleasantries of the like nature, which men of a little smart genius cannot forbear throwing1 out against their best friends, when they have such an handle given them of being witty. But let them remember that I do hereby enter my caveat against this piece of raillery.
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Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life.
This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession. In 1717 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business, and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented our printing-house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces; my brother, thinking it might turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional ballads. One was called The Lighthouse Tragedy, and contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the Grub-street-ballad style; and when they were printed he sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one; but as prose writing bad been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired what little ability I have in that way.
There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and, perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.
A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I ow'd to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement.
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact on me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practice it.
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Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself (1845).
My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,--a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.
But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.
Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy." These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.
I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave. Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have it known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say, that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat. There are, however, some painful exceptions to this rule. Directly opposite to us, on Philpot Street, lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and Mary. Henrietta was about twenty-two years of age, Mary was about fourteen; and of all the mangled and emaciated creatures I ever looked upon, these two were the most so. His heart must be harder than stone, that could look upon these unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces. I have frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered with festering sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do not know that her master ever whipped her, but I have been an eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton. I used to be in Mr. Hamilton's house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by the blood of one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without her saying, "Move faster, you black gip!" at the same time giving them a blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the blood. She would then say, "Take that, you black gip!"-- continuing, "If you don't move faster, I'll move you!" Added to the cruel lashings to which these slaves were subjected, they were kept nearly half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal. I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener called "pecked" than by her name. [. . .]
I LIVED in Master Hugh's family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute.
My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband's precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.
From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.
The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;--not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. "You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?" These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.
I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator." Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master--things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of abolition. Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was "the act of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the words abolition and abolitionist, and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to bear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, "Are ye a slave for life?" I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved to run away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.
The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked thus--"L." When a piece was for the starboard side, it would be marked thus-- "S." A piece for the larboard side forward, would be marked thus--"L. F." When a piece was for starboard side forward, it would be marked thus--"S. F." For larboard aft, it would be marked thus--"L. A." For starboard aft, it would be marked thus--"S. A." I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster's Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and had written over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown to some of our near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at the Wilk Street meeting house every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas's copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.
Frederick Douglass. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881)
IN the summer of 1841 a grand anti-slavery convention was held in Nantucket, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his friends. I had taken no holiday since establishing myself in New Bedford, and feeling the need of a little rest, I determined on attending the meeting, though I had no thought of taking part in any of its proceedings. Indeed, I was not aware that any one connected with the convention so much as knew my name. Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent abolitionist in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my colored friends in the little school-house on Second street, where we worshiped. He sought me out in the crowd and invited me to say a few words to the convention. Thus sought out, and thus invited, I was induced to express the feelings inspired by the occasion, and the fresh recollection of the scenes through which I had passed as a slave. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb. I am not sure that my embarrassment was not the most effective part of my speech, if speech it could be called. At any rate, this is about the only part of my performance that I now distinctly remember. The audience sympathized with me at once, and from having been remarkably quiet, became much excited. Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text, and now, whether I had made an eloquent plea in behalf of freedom, or not, his was one, never to be forgotten. Those who had heard him oftenest and had known him longest, were astonished at his masterly effort. For the time he possessed that almost fabulous inspiration often referred to, but seldom attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a single individuality, the orator swaying a thousand heads and hearts at once and, by the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought, converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That night there were at least a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!
At the close of this great meeting I was duly waited on by Mr. John A. Collins, then the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and urgently solicited by him to become an agent of that society and publicly advocate its principles. I was reluctant to take the proffered position. I had not been quite three years from slavery and was honestly distrustful of my ability, and I wished to be excused. Besides, publicity might discover me to my master, and many other objections presented themselves. But Mr. Collins was not to be refused, and I finally consented to go out for three months, supposing I should in that length of time come to the end of my story and my consequent usefulness.
Here opened for me a new life--a life for which I had had no preparation. Mr. Collins used to say when introducing me to an audience, I was a "graduate from the peculiar institution, with my diploma written on my back." The three years of my freedom had been spent in the hard school of adversity. My hands seemed to be furnished with something like a leather coating, and I had marked out for myself a life of rough labor, suited to the hardness of my hands, as a means of supporting my family and rearing my children.
Young, ardent and hopeful, I entered upon this new life in the full gush of unsuspecting enthusiasm. The cause was good, the men engaged in it were good, the means to attain its triumph, good. Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the millions pining under a ruthless bondage. My whole heart went with the holy cause, and my most fervent prayer to the Almighty Disposer of the hearts of men was continually offered for its early triumph. In this enthusiastic spirit I dropped into the ranks of freedom's friends and went forth to the battle. For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped. For a time I regretted that I could not have shared the hardships and dangers endured by the earlier workers for the slave's release. I found, however, full soon that my enthusiasm had been extravagant, that hardships and dangers were not all over, and that the life now before me had its shadows also, as well as its sunbeams.
Among the first duties assigned me on entering the ranks was to travel in company with Mr. George Foster to secure subscribers to the Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberator. With him I traveled and lectured through the eastern counties of Massachusetts. Much interest was awakened--large meetings assembled. Many came, no doubt from curiosity to hear what a negro could say in his own cause. I was generally introduced as a "chattel"--a "thing"--a piece of southern property--the chairman assuring the audience that it could speak Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being a "bran new fact"--the first one out. Up to that time, a colored man was deemed a fool who confessed himself a runaway slave, not only because of the danger to which he exposed himself of being retaken, but because it was a confession of a very low origin. Some of my colored friends in New Bedford thought very badly of my wisdom in thus exposing and degrading myself. The only precaution I took at the beginning, to prevent Master Thomas from knowing where I was and what I was about, was the withholding my former name, my master's name, and the name of the State and county from which I came. During the first three or four months my speeches were almost exclusively made up of narrations of my own personal experience as a slave. "Let us have the facts," said the people. So also said Friend George Foster, who always wished to pin me down to a simple narrative. "Give us the facts," said Collins, "we will take care of the philosophy." Just here arose some embarrassment. It was impossible for me to repeat the same old story month after month and keep up my interest in it. It was new to the people, it is true, but it was an old story to me; and to go through with it night after night was a task altogether too mechanical for my nature. "Tell your story, Frederick," would whisper my revered friend, Mr. Garrison, as I stepped upon the platform. I could not always follow the injunction, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were being presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost sure everybody must know. Besides, I was growing and needed room. "People won't believe you ever were a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way," said friend Foster. "Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." "Better have a little of the plantation speech than not," was said to me; "it is not best that you seem too learned." These excellent friends were actuated by the best of motives and were not altogether wrong in their advice; and still I must speak just the word that seemed to me the word to be spoken by me.
At last the apprehended trouble came. People doubted if I had ever been a slave. They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, or act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of Mason and Dixon's line. "He don't tell us where he came from, what his master's name was, or how he got away; besides, he is educated, and is in this a contradiction of all the facts we have concerning the ignorance of the slaves." Thus I was in a pretty fair way to be denounced as an impostor. The committee of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society knew all the facts in my case and agreed with me thus far in the prudence of keeping them private; but going down the aisles of the churches in which my meetings were held, and hearing the outspoken Yankees repeatedly saying, "He's never been a slave, I'll warrant you," I resolved that at no distant day, and by such a revelation of facts as could not be made by any other than a genuine fugitive, I would dispel all doubt. In a little less than four years, therefore, after becoming a public lecturer, I was induced to write out the leading facts connected with my experience in slavery, giving names of persons, places, and dates, thus putting it in the power of any who doubted, to ascertain the truth or falsehood of my story. This statement soon became known in Maryland, and I had reason to believe that an effort would be made to recapture me.
It is not probable that any open attempt to secure me as a slave could have succeeded further than the obtainment by my master of the money value of my bones and sinews. Fortunately for me, in the four years of my labors in the abolition cause I had gained many friends who would have suffered themselves to be taxed to almost any extent to save me from slavery. It was felt that I had committed the double offense of running away and exposing the secrets and crimes of slavery and slaveholders. There was a double motive for seeking my re-enslavement--avarice and vengeance; and while, as I have said, there was little probability of successful recapture, if attempted openly, I was constantly in danger of being spirited away at a moment when my friends could render me no assistance. In traveling about from place to place, often alone, I was much exposed to this sort of attack. Any one cherishing the desire to betray me could easily do so by simply tracing my whereabouts through the anti-slavery journals, for my movements and meetings were made through these in advance. My friends Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips had no faith in the power of Massachusetts to protect me in my right to liberty. Public sentiment and the law, in their opinion, would hand me over to the tormentors. Mr. Phillips especially considered me in danger, and said, when I showed him the manuscript of my story, if in my place he would "throw it into the fire." Thus the reader will observe that the overcoming of one difficulty only opened the way for another, and that though I had reached a free State, and had attained a position for public usefulness, I was still under the liability of losing all I had gained.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “School Years.” Eighty Years and More (1897).
WHEN I was eleven years old, two events occurred which changed considerably the current of my life. My only brother, who had just graduated from Union College, came home to die. A young man of great talent and promise, he was the pride of my father's heart. We early felt that this son filled a larger place in our father's affections and Suture plans than the five daughters together. Well do I remember how tenderly he watched my brother in his last illness, the sighs and tears he gave vent to as he slowly walked up and down the hall, and, when the last sad moment came, and we were all assembled to say farewell in the silent chamber of death, how broken were his utterances as he knelt and prayed for comfort and support. I still recall, too, going into the large darkened parlor to see my brother, and finding the casket, mirrors, and pictures all draped in white, and my father seated by his side, pale and immovable. As he took no notice of me, after standing a long while, I climbed upon his knee, when he mechanically put his arm about me and, with my head resting against his beating heart, we both sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of a dear son, and I . wondering what could be said or done to fill the void in his breast. At length he heaved a deep sigh and said: "Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy! Throwing my arms about his neck, I replied: "I will try to be all my brother was."
Then and there I resolved that I would not give so much time as heretofore to play, but would study and strive to be at the head of all my classes and thus delight my father's heart. All that day and far into the night I pondered the problem of boyhood. I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse. Having formed this conclusion I fell asleep. My resolutions, unlike many such made at night, did not vanish with the coming light. I arose early and hastened to put them into execution. They were resolutions never to be forgotten-destined to mold my character anew. As soon as I was dressed I haStened to our good pastor, Rev. Simon Hosack, who was always early at work in his garden.
"Doctor," said I, "which do you like best, boys or girls?" "Why, girls, to be sure; I would not give you for all the boys in Christendom."
"My father," I replied, "prefers boys; he wishes I was one, and I intend to be as near like one as possible. I am going to ride on horseback and study Greek. Will you give me a Greek lesson now, doctor? I want to begin at once."
"Yes, child," said he, throwing down his hoe," come into my library and we will begin without delay."
He entered fully into the feeling of suffering and sorrow which took possession of me when I discovered that a girl weighed less in the scale of being than a boy, and he praised my determination to prove the contrary. The old grammar which he had studied in the University of Glasgow was soon in my hands, and the Greek article was learned before breakfast. [. . .]
Soon after this I began to study Latin, Greek, and mathematics with a class of boys in the Academy, many of whom were much older than I. For three years one boy kept his place at the head of the class, and I always stood next. Two prizes were offered in Greek. I strove for one and took the second. How well I remember my joy in receiving that prize. There was no sentiment of ambition, rivalry, or triumph over my companions, nor feeling of satisfaction in receiving this honor in the presence of those assembled on the day of the exhibition. One thought alone filled my mind. "Now," said I, "my father will be satisfied with me." So, as soon as we were dismissed, I ran down the hilI, rushed breathless into his office, laid the new Greek Testament, which was my prize, on his table and exclaimed: "There, I got it I " He took up the book, asked me some questions about the class, the teachers, the spectators, and, evidently pleased, handed it back to me. Then, while I stood looking and waiting for him to say something which would show that he recognized the equality of the daughter with the son, he kissed me on the forehead and exclaimed, with a sigh, “Ah, you should have been a boy!" [. . .]
As my father's office joined the house, I spent there much of my time, when out of school, listening to the clients stating their cases, talking with the students, and reading the laws in regard to woman. In our Scotch neighborhood many men still retained the old feudal ideas of women and property. Fathers, at their death, would will the bulk of their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was to have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my father's business, I could not exactly understand why he could not alleviate the sufferings of these women. So, in order to enlighten me, he would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by turns.
One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them, among other of my presents, a new coral necklace and bracelets. They all admired the jewelry and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases of future ownership. "Now," said Henry Bayard, "" if in due time you should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine; I could take them and lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I could even exchange them for a box of cigars, and you could watch them evaporate in smoke."
With this constant bantering from students and the sad complaints of the women, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time, my attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the beginning and the end of the law. However, this mutilation of his volumes was never accomplished, for dear old Flora Campbell, to whom I confided my plan for the amelioration of the wrongs of my unhappy sex, warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that he had discovered my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws were made, the large number of lawyers and libraries there were all over the State, and that if his library should burn up it would make no difference i.n woman's condition. " When you are grown up, and able to prepare a speech," said he, "you must go down to Albany and talk to the legislators; tell them all you have seen in this office--the sufferings of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the old ones will be a dead letter." Thus was the future object of my life foreshadowed and my duty plainly outlined by him who was most opposed to my public career when, in due time, I entered upon it.
Until I was sixteen years old, I was a faithful student in the Johnstown Academy with a class of boys. Though I was the only girl in the higher classes of mathematics and the languages, yet, in our plays, all the girls and boys mingled freety together. In running races, sliding downhill, and snowballing, we made no distinction of sex. True, the boys would carry the school books and pull the sleighs up hill for their favorite girls, but equality was the general basis of our school relations. I dare say the boys did not make their snowballs quite so hard when pelting the girls, nor wash their faces with the same vehemence as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of partiality. However, if any boy was too rough or took advantage of a girl smaller than himself, he was promptly thrashed by his fellows. There was an unwritten law and public sentiment in that little Academy world that enabled us to study and play together with the greatest freedom and harmony.
From the academy the boys of my class went to Union College at Schenectady. When those with whom I had studied and contended for prizes for five years came to bid me good-by, and I learned of the barrier that prevented me from following in their footsteps—“no girls admitted here”—my vexation and mortification knew no bounds. I remember, now, how proud and handsome the boys looked in their new clothes, as they jumped into the old stage coach and drove off, and lonely I felt when, they were gone and I had nothing to do, for the plans for my future were yet undetermined. Again I felt more keenly than ever the humiliation of the distinctions made on the ground of sex. [. . .]
Mrs. Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other girls, I found myself an active participant in all the joys and sorrows of that institution. When in family council it was decided to send me to that intellectual Mecca, I did not receive the announcement with unmixed satisfaction, as I had fixed my mind on Union College. The thought of a school without boys, who had been to me such a stimulus both in study and play, seemed to my imagination dreary and profitless.
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George Campbell. Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776).
BOOK I
THE NATURE AND FOUNDATIONS OF ELOQUENCE
CHAPTER I
Eloquence in the largest acceptation defined, its more general forms exhibited, with their different objects, ends, and characters.
In speaking there is always some end proposed, or some effect which the speaker intends to produce on the hearer. The word eloquence in its greatest latitude denotes, "That art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end."
All the ends of speaking are reducible to four; every speech being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will.
Any one discourse admits only one of these ends as the principal. Nevertheless, in discoursing on a subject, many things may be introduced, which are more immediately and apparently directed to some of the other ends of speaking, and not to that which is the chief intent of the whole. But then these other and immediate ends are in effect but means, and must be rendered conducive to that which is the primary intention. Accordingly, the propriety or the impropriety of the introduction of such secondary ends, will always be inferred from their subservience or want of subservience to that end, which is, in respect of them, the ultimate. For example, a discourse addressed to the understanding, and calculated to illustrate or evince some point purely speculative, may borrow aid from the imagination, and admit metaphor and comparison, but not the bolder and more striking figures, as that called vision or fiction, prosopopoeia, and the like, which are not so much intended to elucidate a subject, as to excite admiration. Still less will it admit an address to the passions, which, as it never fails to disturb the operation of the intellectual faculty, must be regarded by every intelligent hearer as foreign at least,if not insidious. It is obvious, that either of these, far from being subservient to the main design, would distract the attention from it.
There is indeed one kind of address to the understanding, and only one, which, it may not be improper to observe, disdains all assistance whatever from the fancy. The address I mean is mathematical demonstration. As this does not, like moral reasoning, admit degrees of evidence, its perfection, in point of eloquence, if so uncommon an application of the term may be allowed, consists in perspicuity. Perspicuity here results entirely from propriety and simplicity of diction, and from accuracy of method, where the mind is regularly, step by step, conducted forwards in the same track, the attention no way diverted, nothing left to be supplied, no one unnecessary word or idea introduced. On the contrary, an harangue framed for affecting the hearts or influencing the resolves of an assembly, needs greatly the assistance both of intellect and of imagination.
In general it may be asserted, that each preceding species, in the order above exhibited, is preparatory to the subsequent; that each subsequent species is founded on the preceding; and that thus they ascend in a regular progression. Knowledge, the object of the intellect, furnishes materials for the fancy; the fancy culls, compounds, and, by her mimic art, disposes these materials so as to affect the passions; the passions are the natural spurs to volition or action, and so need only to be right directed. This connection and dependency will better appear from the following observations.
When a speaker addressed himself to the understanding, he proposes the instruction of his hearers, and that, either by explaining some doctrine unknown, or not distinctly comprehended by them, or by proving some position disbelieved or doubted by them.-In other words, he proposes either to dispel ignorance or to vanquish error. In the one, his aim is their information; in the other, their conviction. Accordingly the predominant quality of the former is perspicuity; of the latter, argument. By that we are made to know, by this to believe.
The imagination is addressed by exhibiting to it a lively and beautiful representation of a suitable object. As in this exhibition, the task of the orator may, in some sort, be said, like that of the painter, to consist in imitation, the merit of the work results entirely from these two sources; dignity, as well in the subject or thing imitated, as in the manner of imitation; and resemblance, in the portrait or performance. Now the principal scope for this class being in narration and description, poetry, which is one mode of oratory, especially epic poetry, must be ranked under it. The effect of the dramatic, at least of tragedy, being upon the passions, the drama falls under another species, to be explained afterwards. But that kind of address of which I am now treating, attains the summit of perfection in the sublime, or those great and noble images, which, when in suitable coloring presented to the mind, do, as it were, distend the imagination with some vast conception, and quite ravish the soul.
The sublime, it may be urged, as it raised admiration, should be considered as one species of address to the passions. But this objection, when examined, will appear superficial. There are few words in any language (particularly such as relate to the operations and feelings of the mind) which are strictly univocal. Thus admiration, when persons are the object, is commonly used for a high degree of esteem; but when otherwise applied, it denotes solely an internal taste. It is that pleasurable sensation which instantly arose on the perception of magnitude, or of whatever is great and stupendous in its kind. For there is a greatness in the degrees of quality in spiritual subjects, analagous to that which subsists in the degrees of quantity in material things. Accordingly, in all tongues, perhaps without exception, the ordinary terms, which are considered as literally expressive of the latter, are also used promiscuously to denote the former. Now admiration, when thus applied, doth not require to its production, as the passions generally do, any reflex view of motives or tendencies, or of any relation either to private interest, or to the good of others; and ought therefore to be numbered among those original feelings of the mind, which are denominated by some the reflex senses, being of the same class with a taste for beauty, an ear for music, or our moral sentiments. Now, the immediate view of whatever is directed to the imagination (whether the subject be things inanimate or animal forms, whether characters, actions, incidents, or manner, terminates in the gratification of some internal taste: as a taste for the wonderful, the fair, the good; for elegance, for novelty, or for grandeur.
But it is evident, that this creative faculty, the fancy, frequently lends her aid in promoting still nobler ends. From her exuberant stores most of those tropes and figures are extracted, which, when properly employed, have such a marvelous efficacy in rousing the passions, and by some secret, sudden, and inexplicable association, awakening all the tenderest emotions of the heart. In this case, the address of the orator is not ultimately intended to astonish by the loftiness of his images, or to delight by the beauteous resemblance which his painting bears to nature; nay, it will not permit the hearers even a moment's leisure for making the comparison, but as it were by some magical spell, hurries them, ere they are aware, into love, pity, grief, terror, desire, aversion, fury, or hatred. It therefore assumes the denomination of pathetic[3] which is the characteristic of the third species of discourse, that addressed to the passions.
Finally, as that kind, the most complex of all, which is calculated to influence the will, and persuade to a certain conduct, is in reality an artful mixture of that which proposes to convince the judgment, and that which interests the passions, its distinguished excellence results from these two, the argumentative and the pathetic incorporated together. These acting with united force, and, if I may so express myself, in concert, constitute that passionate eviction, that vehemence of contention, which is admirably fitted for persuasion, and hath always been regarded as the supreme qualification in an orator. It is this which bears down every obstacle, and procures the speaker an irresistible power over the thoughts and purposes of his audience. It is this which hath been so justly celebrated as giving one man an ascendant over others, superior even to what despotism itself can bestow; since by the latter the more ignoble part only, the body and its members are enslaved; whereas from the dominion of the former, nothing is exempted, neither judgment nor affection, not even the inmost recesses, the most latent movements of the soul. What opposition is he not prepared to conquer, on whose arms reason hath conferred solidity and weight, and passion such a sharpness as enables them, in defiance of every obstruction, to open a speedy passage to the heart?
It is not, however, every kind of pathos, which will give the orator so great an ascendancy over the minds of his hearers. All passions are not alike capable of producing this effect. Some are naturally inert and torpid; they deject the mind, and indispose it for enterprise. Of this kind are sorrow, fear, shame, humility. Others, on the contrary, elevate the soul, and stimulate to action. Such are hope, patriotism, ambition, emulation, anger. These, with the greatest facility, are made to concur in direction with arguments exciting to resolution and activity: and are, consequently, the fittest for producing, what for want of a better term in our language, I shall henceforth denominate the vehement. There is, besides, an intermediate kind of passions, which do not so congenially and directly either restrain us from acting, or incite us to act; but, by the art of the speaker, can, in an oblique manner, be made conducive to either. Such are joy, love, esteem, compassion. Nevertheless, all these kinds may find a place in suasory discourses, or such as are intended to operate on the will. The first is the most proper for dissuading; the second, as hath been already hinted, for persuading; the third is equally accommodated to both.
Guided by the above reflections, we may easily trace that connection in the various forms of eloquence, which was remarked on, distinguishing them by their several objects. The imagination is charmed by a finished picture, wherein even drapery and ornament are not neglected; for here the end is pleasure. Would we penetrate further, and agitate the soul, we must exhibit only some vivid strokes, some expressive features, not decorated as for show (all ostentation being both despicable and hurtful here), but such as appear the natural exposition of those bright and deep impressions, made by the subject upon the speaker's mind; for here the end is not pleasure, but emotion. Would we not only touch the heart, but win it entirely to cooperate with our views, those affecting lineaments must be so interwoven with our argument, as that, from the passion excited our reasoning may derive importance, and so be fitted for commanding attention; and by the justness of the reasoning the passion may be more deeply rooted and enforced; and that thus both may be made to conspire in effectuating that persuasion which is the end proposed. For here, if I may adopt the schoolmen's language, we do not argue to gain barely the assent of the understanding, but, which is infinitely more important, the consent of the will. . . .
CHAPTER IV.
Of the relation which eloquence bears to logic and to grammar.
IN contemplating a human creature, the most natural division of the subject is the common division into soul and body, or into the living principle of perception and of action, and that system of material organs by which the other receives information from without, and is enabled to exert its powers, both for its own benefit and for that of the species. Analogous to this, there are two things in every discourse which principally claim our attention, the sense and the expression; or in other words, the thought and the symbol by which it is communicated. These may be said to constitute the soul and the body of an oration, or indeed of whatever is signified to another by language. For, as in man, each of these constituent parts hath its distinctive attributes, and as the perfection of the latter consists in its fitness for serving the purposes of the former, so it is precisely with those two essential parts of every speech, the sense and the expression. Now, it is by the sense that rhetoric holds of logic, and by the expression that she holds of grammar.
The sole and ultimate end of logic is the eviction of truth; one important end of eloquence, though, as appears from the first chapter, neither the sole, nor always the ultimate, is the conviction of the hearers. Pure logic regards only the subject, which is examined solely for the sake of information. Truth, as such, is the proper aim of the examiner. Eloquence not only considers the subject, but also the speaker and the hearers, and both the subject and the speaker for the sake of the hearers, or rather for the sake of the effect intended to be produced in them. Now, to convince the hearers is always either proposed by the orator, as his end in addressing them, or supposed to accompany the accomplishment of his end. Of the five sorts of discourses above mentioned, there are only two wherein conviction is the avowed purpose. One is that addressed to the understanding, in which the speaker proposes to prove some position disbelieved or doubted by the hearers; the other is that which is calculated to influence the will, and persuade to a certain conduct; for it is by convincing the judgment that he proposeth to interest the passions and fix the resolution. As to the three other kinds of discourses enumerated, which address the understanding, the imagination, and the passions, conviction, though not the end, ought ever to accompany the accomplishment of the end. It is never formally proposed as an end where there are not supposed to be previous doubts or errors to conquer. But when due attention is not paid to it, by a proper management of the subject, doubts, disbelief, and mistake will be raised by the discourse itself, where there were none before, and these will not fail to obstruct the speaker's end, whatever it be. In explanatory discourses, which are of all kinds the simplest, there is a certain precision of manner which ought to pervade the whole, and which, though not in the form of argument, is not the less satisfactory, since it carries internal evidence along with it. In harangues pathetic or panegyric, in order that the hearers may be moved or pleased, it is of great consequence to impress them with the belief of the reality of the subject. Nay, even in those performances where truth, in regard to the individual facts related, is neither sought nor expected, as in some sorts of poetry, and in romance, truth still is an object to the mind, the general truths regarding character, manners, and incidents. When these are preserved, the piece may justly be denominated true, considered as a picture of life; though false, considered as a narrative of particular events. And even these untrue events must be counterfeits of truth, and bear its image; for in cases wherein the proposed end can be rendered consistent with unbelief, it cannot be rendered compatible with incredibility. Thus, in order to satisfy the mind, in most cases, truth, and in every case, what bears the semblance of truth, must be presented to it. This holds equally, whatever be the declared aim of the speaker. I need scarcely add, that to prove a particular point is often occasionally necessary in every sort of discourse, as a subordinate end conducive to the advancement of the principal. If then it is the business of logic to evince the truth, to convince an auditory, which is the province of eloquence, is but a particular application of the logician's art. As logic therefore forges the arms which eloquence teacheth us to wield, we must first have recourse to the former, that being made acquainted with the materials of which her weapons and armour are severally made, we may know their respective strength and temper, and when and how each is to be used.
Now, if it be by the sense or soul of the discourse that rhetoric holds of logic, or the art of thinking and reasoning, it is by the expression or body of the discourse that she holds of grammar, or the art of conveying our thoughts in the words of a particular language. The observation of one analogy naturally suggests another. As the soul is of heavenly extraction and the body of earthly, so the sense of the discourse ought to have its source in the invariable nature of truth and right, whereas the expression can derive its energy only from the arbitrary conventions of men, sources as unlike, or rather as widely different, as the breath of the Almighty and the dust of the earth. In every region of the globe we may soon discover, that people feel and argue in much the same manner, but the speech of one nation is quite unintelligible to another. The art of the logician is accordingly, in some sense, universal; the art of the grammarian is always particular and local. The rules of argumentation laid down by Aristotle, in his Analytics, are of as much use for the discovery of truth in Britain or China as they were in Greece; but Priscian's rules of inflection and construction can assist us in learning no language but Latin. In propriety there cannot be such a thing as an universal grammar, unless there were such a thing as an universal language. The term hath sometimes, indeed, been applied to a collection of observations on the similar analogies that have been discovered in all tongues, ancient and modern, known to the authors of such collections. I do not mention this liberty in the use of the term with a view to censure it. In the application of technical or learned words, an author hath greater scope than in the application of those which are in more frequent use, and is only then thought censurable when he exposeth himself to be misunderstood. But it is to my purpose to observe that, as such collections convey the knowledge of no tongue whatever, the name grammar, when applied to them, is used in a sense quite different from that which it has in the common acceptation; perhaps as different, though the subject be language, as when it is applied to a system of geography.
Now, the grammatical art hath its completion in syntax; the oratorical, as far as the body or expression is concerned, in style. Syntax regards only the composition of many words into one sentence; style, at the same time that it attends to this, regards further the composition of many sentences into one discourse. Nor is this the only difference; the grammarian, with respect to what the two arts have in common, the structure of sentences, requires only purity; that is, that the words employed belong to the language, and that they be construed in the manner, and used in the signification, which custom hath rendered necessary for conveying the sense. The orator requires also beauty and strength. The highest aim of the former is the lowest aim of the latter; where grammar ends eloquence begins. . . .
So much for the connection that subsists between rhetoric and these parent arts, logic and grammar.
CHAPTER VII
Of the Consideration which the Speaker ought to have of the Hearers, as men in general.
RHETORIC, as was observed already, not only considers the subject, but also the hearers and the speaker. The hearers must be considered in a twofold view, as men in general, and as such men in particular.
As men in general, it must be allowed there are certain principles in our nature, which, when properly addressed and managed, give no inconsiderable aid to reason in promoting belief. Nor is it just to conclude from this concession, as some have hastily done, that oratory may be defined, "The art of deception." The use of such helps will be found, on a stricter examination, to be in most cases quite legitimate, and even necessary, if we would give reason herself that influence which is certainly her due. In order to evince the truth considered by itself, conclusive arguments alone are requisite; but in order to convince me by these arguments, it is moreover requisite that they be understood, that they be attended tothat they be remembered by me; and in order to persuade me by them to any particular action or conduct, it is further requisite, that by interesting me in the subject, they may, as it were, be felt. It is not therefore the understanding alone that is here concerned. If the orator would prove successful, it is necessary that he engage in his service all these different powers of the mind, the imagination, the memory, and the passions. These are not the supplanters of reason, or even rivals in her sway; they are her handmaids, by whose ministry she is enabled to usher truth into the heart, and procure it there a favourable reception. As handmaids they are liable to be seduced by sophistry in the garb of reason, and sometimes are made ignorantly to lend their aid in the introduction of falsehood. But their service is not on this account to be dispensed with; there is even a necessity of employing it, founded on our nature. Our eyes and hands and feet will give us the same assistance in doing mischief as in doing good; but it would not therefore be better for the world, that all mankind were blind and lame. Arms are not to be laid aside by honest men, because carried by assassins and ruffians; they are to be used the rather for this very reason. Nor are those mental powers, of which eloquence so much avails herself, like the art of war or other human arts, perfectly indifferent to good and evil, and only beneficial as they are rightly employed. On the contrary, they are by nature, as will perhaps appear afterwards, more friendly to truth than to falsehood, and more easily retained in the cause of virtue, than in that of vice.
SECTION I. Men considered as endowed with Understanding.
But to descend to particulars; the first thing to be studied by the speaker is, that his arguments may be understood. If they be unintelligible, the cause must be either in the sense or in the expression. It lies in the sense if the mediums of proof be such as the hearers are unacquainted with; that is, if the ideas introduced be either without the sphere of their knowledge, or too abstract for their apprehension and habits of thinking. It lies in the sense likewise, if the train of reasoning (though no unusual ideas should be introduced) be longer, or more complex, or more intricate, than they are accustomed to. But as the fitness of the arguments, in these respects, depends on the capacity, education, and attainments of the hearers, which in different orders of men are different, this properly belongs to the consideration which the speaker ought to have of his audience, not as men in general, but as men in particular. The obscurity which ariseth from the expression will come in course to be considered in the sequel.
SECTION II. Men considered as endowed with Imagination.
The second thing requisite is that his reasoning be attended to; for this purpose the imagination must be engaged. Attention is prerequisite to every effect of speaking, and without some gratification in hearing, there will be no attention, at least of any continuance. Those qualities in ideas which principally gratify the fancy, are vivacity, beauty, sublimity, novelty. Nothing contributes more to vivacity than striking resemblances in the imagery, which convey, besides, an additional pleasure of their own.
But there is still a further end to be served by pleasing the imagination, than that of awakening and preserving the attention, however important this purpose alone ought to be accounted. I will not say with a late subtle metaphysician,[4] that "Belief consisteth in the liveliness of our ideas." That this doctrine is erroneous, it would be quite foreign to my purpose to attempt here to evince. [5] Thus much however is indubitable, that belief commonly enlivens our ideas; and that lively ideas have a stronger influence than faint ideas to induce belief. But so far are these two from being coincident, that even this connexion between them, though common, is not necessary. Vivacity of ideas is not always accompanied with faith, nor is faith always able to produce vivacity. The ideas raised in my mind by the OEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, or the Lear of Shakespeare, are incomparably more lively than those excited by a cold but faithful historiographer. Yet I may give full credit to the languid narrative of the latter, though I believe not a single sentence in those tragedies. If a proof were asked ofthe greater vivacity in the one case than in the other (which, by the way, must be finally determined by consciousness), let these effects serve for arguments. The ideas of the poet give greater pleasure, command closer attention, operate more strongly on the passions, and are longer remembered. If these be not sufficient evidences of greater vivacity, I own I have no apprehension of the meaning which that author affixes to the term. The connection, however, that generally subsists between vivacity and belief will appear less marvelous, if we reflect that there is not so great a difference between argument and illustration as is usually imagined. The same ingenious writer says, concerning moral reasoning, that it is but a kind of comparison. The truth of this assertion any one will easily be convinced of, who considers the preceding observations on that subject.
Where then lies the difference between addressing the judgment and addressing the fancy? and what hath given rise to the distinction between ratiocination and imagery? The following observations will serve for an answer to this query. It is evident, that though the mind receives a considerable pleasure from the discovery of resemblance, no pleasure is received when the resemblance is of such a nature as is familiar to everybody. Such are those resemblances which result from the specific and generic qualities of ordinary objects. What gives the principal delight to the imagination, is the exhibition of a strong likeness, which escapes the notice of the generality of people. The similitude of man to man, eagle to eagle, sea to sea, or in brief, of one individual to another individual of the same species, affects not the fancy in the least. What poet would ever think of comparing a combat between two of his heroes to a combat between other two? Yet nowhere else will he find so strong a resemblance. Indeed, to the faculty of imagination, this resemblance appears rather under the notion of identity; although it be the foundation of the strongest reasoning from experience. Again, the similarity of one species to another of the same genus, as of the lion to the tiger, of the alder to the oak, though this too be a considerable fund of argumentation, hardly strikes the fancy more than the preceding, inasmuch as the generical properties, whereof every species participates, are also obvious. But if from the experimental reasoning we descend to the analogical, we may be said to come upon a common to which reason and fancy have an equal claim. "A comparison," says Quintilian, "hath almost the effect of an example." But what are rhetorical comparisons, when brought to illustrate any point inculcated on the hearers,-what are they, I say, but arguments from analogy? In proof ofthis let us borrow an instance from the aforementioned rhetorician, "Would you be convinced of the necessity of education for the mind, consider of what importance culture is to the ground: the field which, cultivated, produced a plentiful crop of useful fruits, if neglected, will be overrun with briars and brambles, and other useless or noxious weeds." It would be no better than trifling to point out the argument couched in this passage. Now if comparison, which is the chief, hath so great an influence upon conviction, it is no wonder that all those other oratorical tropes and figures addressed to the imagination, which are more or less nearly related to comparison, should derive hence both life and efficacy. Even antithesis implies comparison. Simile is a comparison in epitome. Metaphor is an allegory in miniature. Allegory and prosopopeia are comparisons conveyed under a particular form.
SECTION III. Men considered as endowed with Memory.
Further, vivid ideas are not only more powerful than languid ideas in commanding and preserving attention, they are not only more efficacious in producing conviction, but they are also more easily retained. Those several powers, understanding, imagination, memory, and passion, are mutually subservient. That it is necessary for the orator to engage the help of memory, will appear from many reasons, particularly from what was remarked above, on the fourth difference between moral reasoning and demonstrative. [6] It was there observed, that in the former the credibility of the fact is the sum of the evidence of all the arguments, often independent of one another, brought to support it. And though it was shown that demonstration itself, without the assistance of this faculty, could never produce conviction; yet here it must be owned, that the natural connexion of the several links in the chain renders the remembrance easier. Now, as nothing can operate on the mind which is not in some respect present to it, care must be taken by the orator that, in introducing new topics, the vestiges left by the former on the minds of the hearers may not be effaced. It is the sense of this necessity which hath given rise to the rules of composition.
Some will perhaps consider it as irregular, that I speak hereof addressing the memory, of which no mention at all was made in the first chapter, wherein I considered the different forms of eloquence, classing them by the different faculties of the mind addressed. But this apparent irregularity will vanish, when it is observed, that, with regard to the faculties there mentioned, each of them may not only be the direct, but even the ultimate object of what is spoken. The whole scope may be at one time to inform or convince the understanding, at another to delight the imagination, at a third to agitate the passions, and at a fourth to determine the will. But it is never the ultimate end of speaking to be remembered, when what is spoken tends neither to instruct, to please, to move, nor to persuade. This therefore is of necessity no more on any occasion than a subordinate end; or, which is precisely the same thing, the means to some further end; and as such, it is more or less necessary on every occasion. The speaker's attention to this subserviency of memory is always so much the more requisite, the greater the difficulty of remembrance is, and the more important the being remembered is to the attainment of the ultimate end. On both accounts, it is of more consequence in those discourses whose aim is either instruction or persuasion, than in those whose design is solely to please the fancy, or to move the passions. And if there are any which answer none of those ends, it were better to learn to forget them than to teach the method of making them to be retained.
The author of the treatise above quoted hath divided the principles of association in ideas into resemblance, contiguity, and causation. I do not here inquire into all the defects of this enumeration, but only observe that, even on his own system, order both in space and time ought to have been included. It appears at least to have an equal title with causation, which, according to him, is but a particular modification and combination of the other two. Causation, considered as an associating principle, is, in his theory, no more than the contiguous succession of two ideas, which is more deeply imprinted on the mind by its experience of a similar contiguity and succession of the impressions from which they are copied. This therefore is the result of resemblance and vicinity united. Order in place is likewise a mode of vicinity, where this last tie is strengthened by the regularity and simplicity of figure; which qualities arise solely from the resemblance of the corresponding parts of the figure; or the parts similarly situated. Regular figures, besides the advantages they derive from simplicity and uniformity, have this also, that they are more familiar to the mind than irregular figures, and are therefore more easily conceived. Hence the influence which order in place hath upon the memory. If any person question this influence, let him but reflect, how much easier it is to remember a considerable number of persons,whom one hath seen ranged on benches or chairs, round a hall, than the same number seen standing promiscuously in a crowd: and how natural it is, for assisting the memory in recollecting the persons, to recur to the order wherein they were placed.
As to order in time, which in composition is properly styled Method, it consisteth principally in connecting the parts in such a manner as to give vicinity to things in the discourse which have an affinity; that is, resemblance, causality, or other relation in nature; and thus making their customary association and resemblance, as in the former case, co-operate with their contiguity in duration, or immediate succession in the delivery. The utility of method for aiding the memory, all the world knows. But besides this, there are some parts of the discourse, as well as figures of speech, peculiarly adapted to this end. Such are the division of the subject, the rhetorical repetitions of every kind, the different modes of transition and recapitulation.
SECTION IV. Men considered as endowed with Passions.
To conclude; when persuasion is the end, passion also must be engaged. If it is fancy which bestows brilliancy on our ideas, if it is memory which gives them stability, passion doth more, it animates them. Hence they derive spirit and energy. To say that it is possible to persuade without speaking to the passions, is but at best a kind of specious nonsense. The coolest reasoner always in persuading addresseth himself to the passions some way or other. This he cannot avoid doing, if he speak to the purpose. To make me believe it is enough to show me that things are so; to make me act, it is necessary to show that the action will answer some end. That can never be an end to me which gratifies no passion or affection in my nature. You assure me, "It is for my honour." Now you solicit my pride, without which I had never been able to understand the word. You say, "It is for my interest." Now you bespeak my self-love. "It is for the public good." Now you rouse my patriotism. "It will relieve the miserable." Now you touch my pity. So far therefore it is from being an unfair method of persuasion to move the passions, that there is no persuasion without moving them.
But if so much depend on passion, where is the scope for argument? Before I answer this question, let it be observed that, in order to persuade, there are two things which must be carefully studied by the orator. The first is, to excite some desire or passion in the hearers; the second is to satisfy their judgment that there is a connexion between the action to which he would persuade them, and the gratification of the desire orpassion which he excites. This is the analysis of persuasion. The former is effected by communicating lively and glowing ideas of the object; the latter, unless so evident of itself as to supersede the necessity, by presenting the best and most forcible arguments which the nature of the subject admits. In the one lies the pathetic, in the other the argumentative. These incorporated together (as was observed in the first chapter) constitute that vehemence of contention, to which the greatest exploits of eloquence ought doubtless to be ascribed. Here then is the principal scope for argument, but not the only scope, at will appear in the sequel. When the first end alone is attained, the pathetic without the rational, the passions are indeed roused from a disagreeable languor by the help of the imagination, and the mind is thrown into a state which, though accompanied with some painful emotions, rarely fails, upon the whole, to affect it with pleasure. But, if the hearers are judicious, no practical effect is produced. They cannot by such declamation be influenced to a particular action, because not convinced that that action will conduce to the gratifying of the passion raised. Your eloquence hath fired my ambition, and makes me burn with public zeal. The consequence is, there is nothing which at present I would not attempt for the sake of fame, and the interest of my country. You advise me to such a conduct; but you have not shown me how that can contribute to gratify either passion. Satisfy me in this, and I am instantly at your command. Indeed, when the hearers are rude and ignorant, nothing more is necessary in the speaker than to inflame their passions. They will not require that the connexion between the conduct he urges and the end proposed be evinced to them. His word will satisfy. And therefore bold affirmations are made to supply the place of reasons. Hence it is that the rabble are ever the prey of quacks and impudent pretenders of every denomination.
On the contrary, when the other end alone is attained, the rational without the pathetic, the speaker is as far from his purpose as before. You have proved, beyond contradiction, that acting thus is the sure way to procure such an object. I perceive that your reasoning is conclusive: but I am not affected by it. Why? I have no passion for the object. I am indifferent whether I procure it or not. You have demonstrated that such a step will mortify my enemy. I believe it; but I have no resentment, and will not trouble myself to give pain to another. Your arguments evince that it would gratify my vanity. But I prefer my ease. Thus passion is the mover to action, reason is the guide. Good is the object of the will, truth is the object of the understanding.
It may be thought that when the motive is the equity, the generosity, or the intrinsic merit of the action recommended, argument may be employed to evince the reasonableness of the end, as well as the fitness of the means. But this way of speaking suits better the popular dialect than the philosophical. The term reasonableness, when used in this manner, means nothing but the goodness, the amiableness, or moral excellence. If therefore the hearer hath no love of justice, no benevolence, no regard to right, although he were endowed with the perspicacity of a cherub, your harangue could never have any influence on his mind. The reason is, when you speak of the fitness of the means, you address yourself only to the head; when you speak of the goodness of the end, you address yourself to the heart, of which we supposed him destitute. Are we then to class the virtues among the passions? By no means. But without entering into a discussion of the difference, which would be foreign to our purpose, let it suffice to observe, that they have this in common with passion. They necessarily imply an habitual propensity to a certain species of conduct, an habitual aversion to the contrary: a veneration for such a character, an abhorrence of such another. They are, therefore, though not passions, so closely related to them, that they are properly considered as motives to action, being equally capable of giving an impulse to the will. The difference is akin to that, if not the same, which rhetoricians observe between pathos and ethos, passion and disposition. Accordingly, what is addressed solely to the moral powers of the mind, is not so properly denominated the pathetic, as the sentimental. The term, I own, is rather modern, but is nevertheless convenient, as it fills a vacant room, and doth not, like most of our new-fangled words, justle out older and worthier occupants, to the no small detriment of the language. It occupies, so to speak, the middle place between the pathetic and that which is addressed to the imagination, and partakes of both, adding to the warmth of the former the grace and attractions of the latter.
Now, the principal questions on this subject are these two:-How is a passion or disposition that is favorable to the design of the orator, to be excited in the hearers? How is an unfavorable passion or disposition to be calmed? As to the first it was said already in general, that passion must be awakened by communicating livery ideas of the object. The reason will be obvious from the following remarks: A passion is most strongly excited by sensation. The sight of danger, immediate or near, instantly rouseth fear; the feeling of an injury, and the presence of the injurer, in a moment kindle anger. Next to the influence of sense is that of memory, the effect of which upon passion, if the fact be recent, and remembered distinctly and circumstantially, is almost equal. Next to the influence of memory is that of imagination; by which is here solely meant the faculty of apprehending what is neither perceived by the senses, nor remembered. Now, as it is this power of which the orator must chiefly avail himself, it is proper to inquire what those circumstances are, which will make the ideas he summons up in the imaginations of his hearers, resemble, in lustre and steadiness, those of sensation and remembrance. For the same circumstances will infallibly make them resemble also in their effects; that is, in the influence they will have upon the passions and affections of the heart.
CHAPTER X. SECTION V. In regard to the End in view.
The fifth and last particular mentioned, and indeed the most important of them all, is the effect in each species intended to be produced. The primary intention of preaching is the reformation of mankind. "The grace of God, that brings salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world."[7] Reformation of life and manners-of all things that which is the most difficult by any means whatever to effectuate; I may add, of all tasks ever attempted by persuasion, that which has the most frequently baffled its power.
What is the task of any other orator compared with this? It is really as nothing at all, and hardly deserves to be named. An unjust judge, gradually worked on by the resistless force of human eloquence, may be persuaded, against his inclination, perhaps against a previous resolution, to pronounce an equitable sentence. All the effect on him, intended by the pleader, was merely momentary. The orator hath had the address to employ the time allowed him in such a manner as to secure the happy moment. Notwithstanding this, there may be no real change wrought upon the judge. He may continue the same obdurate wretch he was before. Nay, if the sentence had been delayed but a single day after hearing the cause, he would perhaps have given a very different award.
Is it to be wondered at, that when the passions of the people were agitated by the persuasive powers of a Demosthenes, whilst the thunder of his eloquence was yet sounding in their ears, the orator should be absolute master of their resolves? But an apostle or evangelist (for there is no anachronism in a bare supposition) might have thus addressed the celebrated Athenian, "You do, indeed, succeed to admiration, and the address and genius which you display in speaking justly entitle you to our praise. But however great the consequences may be of the measures to which, by your eloquence, they are determined, the change produced in the people is nothing, or next to nothing. If you would be ascertained of the truth of this, allow the assembly to disperse immediately after hearing you; give them time to cool, and then collect their votes, and it is a thousand to one you shall find that the charm is dissolved."
But very different is the purpose of the Christian orator. It is not a momentary, but a permanent effect at which he aims. It is not an immediate and favorable suffrage, but a thorough change of heart and disposition, that will satisfy his view. That man would need to be possessed of oratory superior to human, who would effectually persuade him that stole to steal no more, the sensualist to forego his pleasures, and the miser his hoards, the insolent and haughty to become meek and humble, the vindictive forgiving, the cruel and unfeeling merciful and humane.
I may add to these considerations, that the difficulty lies not only in the permanency, but in the very nature of the change to be effected. It is wonderful, but it is too well vouched to admit of a doubt, that by the powers of rhetoric you may produce in mankind almost any change more easily than this. It is not unprecedented that one should persuade a multitude, from mistaken motives of religion, to act the part of ruffians, fools, or madmen; to perpetrate the most extravagant, nay, the most flagitious actions; to steel their hearts against humanity, and the loudest calls of affection: but where is the eloquence that will gain such an ascendant over a multitude, as to persuade them, for the love of God, to be wise, and just, and good? Happy the preacher whose sermons, by the blessing of Heaven, have been instrumental in producing even a few such instances! Do but look into the annals of church history, and you will soon be convinced of the surprising difference there is in the two cases mentioned-the amazing facility of the one, and the almost impossibility of the other.
As to the foolish or mad extravagances, hurtful only to themselves, to which numbers may be excited by the powers of persuasion, the history of the flagellants, and even the history of monarchy, afford many unquestionable examples. But what is much worse, at one time you see Europe nearly depopulated at the persuasion of a fanatical monk, its inhabitants rushing armed into Asia, in order to fight for Jesus Christ, as they termed it, but as it proved in fact, to disgrace, as far as lay in them, the name of Christ and of Christian amongst infidels; to butcher those who never injured them, and to whose lands they had at least no better title than those whom they intended, by all possible means, to dispossess; and to give the world a melancholy proof, that there is no pitch of brutality and rapacity to which the passions of avarice and ambition, consecrated and inflamed by religious enthusiasm, will not drive mankind. At another time you see multitudes, by the like methods, worked up into a fury against innocent countrymen, neighbors, friends, and kinsmen, glorying in being most active in cutting the throats of those who were formerly held dear to them. [ . . .]
I am sensible that some will imagine that this account itself throws an insuperable obstacle in our way, as from it one will naturally infer, that oratory must be one of the most dangerous things in the world, and much more capable of doing ill than good. It needs but some reflection to make this mighty obstacle entirely vanish.-Very little eloquence is necessary for persuading people to a conduct to which their own depravity hath previously given them a bias. How soothing is it to them not only to have their minds made easy under the indulged malignity of their disposition, but to have that very malignity sanctified with a good name! So little of the oratorical talent is required here, that those who court popular applause, and look upon it as the pinnacle of human glory to be blindly followed by the multitude, commonly recur to defamation, especially of superiors and brethren, not so much for a subject on which they may display their eloquence, as for a succedaneum to supply their want of eloquence, a succedaneum which never yet was found to fail. I knew a preacher who, from this expedient alone, from being long the aversion of the populace, on account of his dullness, awkwardness, and coldness, all of a sudden became their idol. Little force is necessary to push down heavy bodies placed on the verge of a declivity, but much force is requisite to stop them in their progress, and push them up.
If a man should say, that because the first is more frequently effected than the last, it is the best trial of strength, and the only suitable use to which it can be applied, we should at least not think him remarkable for distinctness in his ideas. Popularity alone, therefore, is no test at all of the eloquence of the speaker, no more than velocity alone would be of the force of the external impulse originally given to the body moving. As in this the direction of the body, and other circumstances, must be taken into the account; so in that, you must consider the tendency of the teaching, whether it favors or opposes the vices of the hearers. To head a sect, to infuse party-spirit, to make men arrogant, uncharitable, and malevolent, is the easiest task imaginable, and to which almost any blockhead is fully equal. But to produce the contrary effect, to subdue the spirit of faction, and that monster spiritual pride, with which it is invariably accompanied, to inspire equity, moderation, and charity into men's sentiments and conduct with regard to others, is the genuine test of eloquence. Here its triumph is truly glorious, and in its application to this end lies its great utility. [. . .]
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Hugh Blair. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, (1783)
INTRODUCTION
ONE of the most distinguished privileges which Providence has conferred upon mankind, is the power of communicating their thoughts to one another. Destitute of this power, Reason would be a solitary, and, in some measure, an unavailing principle. Speech is the great instrument by which man becomes beneficial to man: and it is to the intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself. Small are the advances which a single unassisted individual can make towards perfecting any of his powers. What we call human reason, is not the effort or ability of one, so much as it is the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually com municated, in consequence of discourse and writing.
It is obvious, then, that writing and discourse are objects entitled to the highest attention. Whether the influence of the speaker, or the entertainment of the hearer, be consulted; whether utility or pleasure be the principal aim in view, we are prompted, by the strongest motives, to study how we may communicate our thoughts to one another with most advantage. Accordingly we find, that in almost every nation, as soon as language had extended itself beyond that scanty communication which was requisite for the supply of men's necessities, the improvement of discourse began to attract regard. In the language even of rude uncultivated tribes, we eari trace some attention to the grace and force of those expressions which they used, when they fought to persuade or to affect. They were early sensible of a beauty in discourse, and endeavoured to give it certain decorations which experience had taught them it was capable of receiving, long before the study of those decorations was formed into a regular art.
But, among nations in a civilized state, no art has been cultivated with more care, than that of language, style, and composition. The attention paid to it may, indeed, be assumed as one mark of the progress of society towards its most improved period. For, according as society improves and flourishes, men acquire more influence over one another by means of reasoning and discourse; and in proportion as that influence is felt to enlarge, it must follow, as a natural consequence, that they will bestow more care upon the methods of expressing their conceptions with propriety and eloquence. Hence we And, that, in all the polished nations of Europe, this study has been treated as highly important, and has possessed a considerable place in every plan of liberal education.
Indeed, when the arts of speech and Writing are mentioned, I am sensible that prejudices against them are apt to rise in the minds of many. A sort of art is immediately thought of, that is ostentatious and deceitful; the minute and trifling study of words alone; the pomp of expression; the studied fallacies of rhetoric; ornament substituted in the room of use. We need not wonder, that, under such imputations, all study of discourse as an art, should have suffered in the opinion of men of understanding: and I am far from denying, that rhetoric and criticism have sometimes been so managed as to tend to the corruption, rather than to the improvement, of good taste and true eloquence. But sure it is equally possible to apply the principles of reason and good sense to this art, as to any other that is cultivated among men. If the following Lectures have any merit, it will consist in an endeavour to substitute the application of these principles in the place of artificial and scholastic rhetoric; in an endeavour to explode false ornament, to direct attention more towards substance than show, to recommend good sense as the foundation of all good composition, and simplicity as essential to all true ornament.
When entering on the subject, I may be allowed, on this occasion, to suggest a few thoughts concerning the importance and advantages of such studies, and the rank they are entitled to possess in academical education.[8] I am under no temptation, for this purpose, of extolling their importance at the expence of any other department of science. On the contrary, the study of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres supposes and requires a proper acquaintance with the rest of the liberal arts.
It embraces them all within its circle, and recommends them to the highest regard. The first care of all such as wish either to write with reputation, or to speak in public so as to command attention, must be, to extend their knowledge; to lay in a rich store of ideas relating to those subjects of which the occasions of life may call them to discourse or to write, Hence, among the ancients, it was a fundamental principle, and frequently inculcated, "Quod omnibus disciplinis et artibus debet esse instructus orator;" that the orator ought to be an accomplished scholar, and conversant in every part of learning. It is indeed impossible to contrive an art, and very pernicious it were if it could be contrived, which should give the stamp of merit to any composition rich or splendid in expression, but barren or erroneous in thought. They are the wretched attempts towards an art of this kind which have so often disgraced oratory, and debased it below its true standard. The graces of composition have been employed to disguise or to supply the want of matter; and the temporary applause of the ignorant has been courted, instead of the lasting approbation of the discerning. But such imposture can never maintain its ground long. Knowledge and science must furnish the materials that form the body and substance of any valuable composition. Rhetoric serves to add the polish; and we know that none but firm and solid bodies can be polished well.
Of those who peruse the following Lectures, some, in consequence either of their profession, or of their prevailing inclination, may have the view of being employed in composition, Or in public speaking. Others, without any prospect of this kind, may wish only to improve their taste with respect to writing and discourse, and to acquire principles which will enable them to judge for themselves in that part of literature called the Belles Lettres.
With respect to the former, such as may have occasion to communicate their sentiments to the Public, it is abundantly clear that some preparation of study is requisite for the end which they have in view. To speak or to write perspicuously and agreeably, with purity, with grace and strength, are attainments of the utmost consequence to all who purpose, either by speech or writing, to address the Public. For without being master of those attainments, no man can do justice to his own conceptions; but how rich soever he may be in knowledge and in good sense, will be able to avail himself less of those treasures, than such as possess not half his store, but who can display what they possess with more propriety. Neither are these attainments of that kind for which we are indebted to nature merely. Nature has, indeed, conferred upon u ' j some a very favourable distinction in this respect, beyond others. But in these, as in most other talents she bestows, she has left much to be wrought out by every man's own industry. So conspicuous have been the efsects of study and improvement in every part of eloquence; such remarkable examples have appeared of persons surmounting, by their diligence, the disadvantages of the most untoward nature, that among the learned it has long been a contested, and remains still an undecided point, whether nature or art confer most towards excelling in writing and discourse.
With respect to the manner in which art can most effectually furnish assistance for such a purpose, there may be diversity of opinions. I by no means pretend to say that mere rhetorical rules, how just soever, arc sufficient to form an orator. Supposing natural genius to be favourable, more by a great deal will depend upon private application and study, than upon any. system of instruction that is capable of being publicly communicated. But at the same time, though rules and instructions cannot do all that is requisite, they may, however, do much that is of real use. They cannot, it is true, inspire genius; but they can direct and assist it. They cannot remedy barrenness; but they may correct redundancy. They point out proper models for imitation. They bring into view the chief beauties that ought to be studied, and the principal faults that ought to be avoided; and thereby tend to enlighten taste, and to lead genius from unnatural deviations, into its proper channel. What would not avail for the production of great excellencies, may at least serve to prevent the commission of considerable errors.
All that regards the study of eloquence and composition, merits the higher attention upon this account, that it is intimately connected with the improvement of our intellectual powers. For I must be allowed to say, that when we are employed, aster a proper manner, in the study of composition, we are cultivating reason itself. True rhetoric and sound logic are very nearly allied. The study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches to think, as well as to speak, accurately. By putting our sentiments into words, we always conceive them more distinctly. Everyone who has the (lightest acquaintance with composition knows, that when he expresses himself ill on any subject, when his arrangement is loose, and his sentences become feeble, the defects of his style can, almost on every occasion, be traced back to his indistinct conception of the subject: so close is the connection between thoughts and the words in which they are clothed.
The study of composition, important in itself at all times, has acquired additional importance from the taste and manners of the present age. It is an age wherein improvements, in every part of science, have been prosecuted with ardour. To all the liberal arts much attention has been paid; and to none more than to the beauty of language, and the grace and elegance of every kind of writing. The public ear is become refined. It will not easily bear what is slovenly and incorrect. Every author must aspire to some merit in expression, as well as in sentiment, if he would not incur the danger of being neglected and despised.
I Will not deny that the love of minute elegance, and attention to inferior ornaments of composition, may at present have engrossed too great a degree of the public regard. It is indeed my opinion, that we lean to this extreme; often more careful of polishing style, than of storing it with thought. Yet hence arises a new reason for the study of just and proper composition. If it be requisite not to be deficient in elegance or ornament in times when they are in such high estimation, it is still more requisite to attain the power of distinguishing false ornament from true, in order to prevent our being carried away by that torrent of false and frivolous taste, which never fails, when it is prevalent, to sweep along with it the raw and the ignorant. They who have never studied eloquence in its principles, nor have been trained to attend to the genuine and manly beauties of good writing, are always ready to be caught by the mere glare of language; and when they come to speak in public, or to compose, have no other standard on which to form themselves, except what chances to be fashionable a.nd popular, how corrupted soever, or erroneous, that may be.
But as there are many who have no such objects as either composition or public speaking in view, let us next consider what advantages may be derived by them, from such studies as form the subject of these Lectures. To them, rhetoric is not so much a practical art as a speculative science; and the same instructions which assist others in composing, will assist, them in discerning, and relishing, the beauties of composition. Whatever enables genius to execute well, will enable taste to criticise justly.
When we name criticising, prejudices may perhaps arise, of the same kind with those which I mentioned before with respect to rhetoric. As rhetoric has been sometimes thought to signify nothing more than the scholastic study of words and phrases, and tropes, so criticism has been considered as merely the art of finding faults; as the frigid application of certain technical terms, by means of which persons are taught to cavil and censure in a learned manner. But this is the criticism os pedants only. True criticism is a liberal and humane art. It is the offspring of good sense and refined taste. It aims at acquiring a just discernment of the real merit of authors. It promotes a lively relish of their beauties, while it preserves us from that blind and implicit veneration which would confound their beauties and faults in our esteem. It teaches us, in a word, to admire and to blame with judgment, and not to follow the crowd blindly.
In an age when works of genius and literature are so frequently the subjects of discourse, when every one erects himself into a judge, and when we can hardly mingle in polite society without bearing some share in such discussions; studies of this kind, it is not to be doubted, will appear to derive part of their importance from the use to which they may may be applied in furnishing materials for those fashionable topics of discourse, and thereby enabling us to support a proper rank in social life.
But I should be sorry if we could not rest the merit of such studies on somewhat of solid and intrinsical use, independent of appearance and show. The exercise of taste and of sound criticism, is in truth one of the most improving employments of the understanding. To apply the principles of good sense to composition and discourse; to examine what is beautiful, and why it is so; to employ ourselves in distinguishing accurately between the specious and the solid, between affected and natural ornament, must certainly improve us not a little in the most valuable part of all philosophy, the philosophy of human nature. For such disquisitions are very intimately connected with the knowledge of ourselves. They necessarily lead us to reflect on the operations of the imagination, and the movements of the heart; and increase our acquaintance with some of the most refined feelings which belong to our frame.
Logical and Ethical disquisitions move in a higher sphere; and are conversant with objects of a more severe kind; the progress of the understanding in its search aster knowledge, and the direction of the will in the proper pursuit of good. They point out to man the improvement of his nature as an intelligent being; and his duties as the subject of moral obligation. Belles Lettres and criticism chiefly consider him as a Being endowed with those powers of taste and imagination, which were intended to embellish his mind, and to supply him with rational and useful entertainment. They open a field of investigation peculiar to themselves. All that relates to beauty, harmony, grandeur, and elegance; all that cast sooth the mind, gratify the fancy, or move the affections, belongs to their province. They present human nature under a different aspect from that which it assumes when viewed by other sciences. They bring to light various springs of action, which, without their aid, might have pasted unobserved; and which, though of a delicate nature, frequently exert a powerful influence on several departments of human life.
Such studies have also this peculiar advantage that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to enquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry nor abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science; and while they keep the mind bent, in some degree, and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisition of necessary erudition, or the investigation of abstract truth.
The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man, in the most active sphere, cannot be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How then shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which, more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him scorn the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence.
Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of fense, and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind aster the toils of the intellect, and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue.
So consonant is this to experience, that, in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important io wife men, than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be entertained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favourable to many virtues. Whereas, to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, -poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to be an unpromising symptom of youth; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life.
There are indeed few good dispositions of any kind with which the improvement of taste is not more or less connected. A cultivated taste increases sensibility to all the tender and humane passions, by giving them frequent exercise; while it tends to weaken the more violent and fierce emotions. —Ingenuas didicisse sideliter artes Emollit mores, nee sinit esie seros (These polifh'd arts have humaniz'd mankind, Soften'd the rude, and calm'd the boist'rous mind).
The elevated sentiments and high examples which poetry, eloquence and history are often bringing under our view, naturally tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, the love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and the admiration of what is truly illustrious and great.
I Will not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply, are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, and I shall hereafter have occasion to illustrate it more fully, that, without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move, or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and public spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling.
On these general topics I shall dwell no I longer; but proceed directly to the consideration of the subjects which are to employ the following Lectures. They divide themselves into five parts. First, some introductory dissertations on the Nature of Taste, and upon the sources of its pleasures. Secondly, the consideration of Language: Thirdly, of Style: Fourthly, of Eloquence properly so called, or Public Speaking in its different kinds. Lastly, a critical examination of the most distinguished Species of Composition, both in prose and 'verse.
LECTURE II
TASTE
THE nature of the present undertaking Lect, leads me to begin with some enquiries concerning Taste, as it is this faculty which is always appealed to in disquisitions concerning the merit of discourse and writing.
There are sew subjects on which men talk more loosely and indistinctly than on Taste; sew which it is more difficult to explain with, precision; and none which in this Course of Lectures will appear more dry or abstract. What I have to say on the subject shall be in the following order. I shall first explain the Nature of Taste as a power or faculty in the human mind. I shall next consider how far it is an improveable faculty. I shall show the sources of its improvement, and the characters of Taste in its most perfect state. I shall then examine the various fluctuations to which it is liable, and enquire whether there be any standard to which we can bring the different tastes of men, in order to distinguish the corrupted from the true.
Taste may be defined "The power, of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and of art." The first question that occurs concerning it is, whether it is to be considered as an internal sense, or as an exertion of reason? Reason is a very general term; but if we understand by it, that power of the mind which in speculative matters discovers truth, and in practical matters judges, of the fitness of means to an end, I apprehend the question may be easily answered. For nothing can be more clear, than that Taste is not resolvable into any such operation of Reason. It is not merely through a discovery of the understanding, or a deduction of argument, that the mind receives pleasure from a beautiful prospect or a fine poem. Such objects often strike us intuitively, and make a strong impression, when we are unable to assign the reasons of our being pleased. They sometimes strike in the fame manner the philosopher and the peasant; the boy and the man. Hence the faculty by which we relish such beauties, seems more nearly allied to a feeling of sense, than to a process of the understanding: and accordingly from an external sense it has borrowed its name; that sense by which we receive and distinguish the pleasures of food having, in several languages, given rise to the word Taste in the metaphorical meaning under which we now consider it. However, as, in all subjects which regard the operations of the mind, the inaccurate use of words is to be carefully avoided, it must not be inferred from what I have said, that Reason is entirely excluded from the exertions of Taste. Though Taste, beyond doubt, be ultimately founded on a certain natural and instinctive sensibility to beauty, yet Reason, as I shall show hereafter, assists Taste in many of its operations, and serves to enlarge its power.[9]
Taste, in the sense in which I have explained it, is a faculty common in some degree to all men. Nothing that belongs to human nature is more general than the relish of beauty of one kind or other; of what is orderly, proportioned, grand, harmonious, new, or sprightly. In children, the rudiments of Taste discover themselves very early in a thousand instances; in their fondness for regular bodies, their admiration of pictures and statues, and imitations of all kinds; and their strong attachment to whatever is new or marvellous. The most ignorant peasants are delighted with ballads and tales, and are struck with the beautiful appearances of nature in the earth and heavens. Even in the deserts of America, where human nature shows itself in its most uncultivated state, the savages have their ornaments of dress, their war and their death songs, their harangues, and their orators. We must therefore conclude the principles of Taste to be deeply founded in the human mind. It is no less essential to man to have some discernment of beauty, than it is to possess the attributes of reason and of speech.'[10]
But although none be wholly devoid of this faculty, yet the degrees in which it is possessed are widely different. In some men only the feeble glimmerings of Taste appear; the beauties which they relish are of the coarsest kind; and of these they have but a weak and confused impression: while in others, Taste rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of the most refined beauties. In general, we may observe, that in the powers and pleasures of Taste, there is a more remarkable inequality among men, than is usually found, in point of common senses reason, and judgment. The constitution of our nature in this, as in all other respects, discovers admirable wisdom. In the distribution of those talents which are necessary for man's well being, Nature hath made less distinction among her children. But in the distribution of those which belong only to the ornamental part of life, she hath bestowed her favours with more frugality. She hath both sown the seeds more sparingly; and rendered a higher culture requisite for bringing them to perfection.
This inequality of Taste among men is owing, without doubt, in part, to the different frame of their natures; to nicer organs, and finer internal powers, with which some are endowed beyond others. But, if it be owing in part to nature, it is owing to education and culture still more. The illustration of this leads to my next remark on this subject, that Taste is a most improvable faculty, if there be any such in human nature a remark which gives great encouragement to such a course of study as we are now proposing to pursue. Of the truth of this assertion we may easily be convinced, by only reflecting on that immense superiority which education and improvement give to civilized, above barbarous nations, in refinement of Taste; and on the superiority which they give in the same nation to those who have studied the liberal arts, above the rude and untaught vulgar. The difference is so great, that there is perhaps no one particular in which these two classes of men are so far removed from each other, as m respect of the powers and the pleasures of Taste: and assuredly for this difference no other general cause can be assigned, but culture and education.—I shall now proceed to show what the means are, by which Taste becomes so remarkably susceptible of cultivation and progress.
Reflect first upon that great law of our nature, that exercise is the chief source of improvement in all our faculties. This holds both in our bodily, and in our mental powers. It holds even in our external senses; although these be less the subject of cultivation than any of Our other faculties. We fee how acute the senses become in persons whose trade or business leads to nice exertions of them. Touch, for instance, becomes infinitely more exquisite in men whose employment requires them to examine the polish of bodies, than it is in Others. They who deal in microscopical observations, or are accustomed to engrave on precious stones, acquire surprising accuracy of fight in discerning the minutest objects; and practice in attending to different flavours and tastes of liquors, wonderfully improves the power of distinguishing them, and of tracing their composition. Placing internal Taste therefore on the footing of a simple sense, it cannot be doubted that frequent exercise, and curious attention to its proper objects, must greatly heighten its power. Of this we have one clear proof in that part of Taste, which is called an ear for music. Experience every day shows, that nothing is more improvable. Only the simplest and plainest compositions are relished at first; use and practice extend our pleasure; teach us to relish finer melody, and by degrees enable us to enter into the intricate and compounded pleasures of harmony. So an eye for the beauties of painting is never all at once acquired. It is gradually formed by being conversant among pictures, and studying the works of the best masters.
Precisely in the fame manner, with respect to the beauty of composition and discourse, attention to the most approved models, study of the best authors, comparisons of lower and higher degrees of the fame beauties, operate towards the refinement of Taste. When one is only beginning his acquaintance with works of genius, the sentiment which attends them is obscure and confused. He cannot point out the several excellencies or blemishes of a performance which he peruses; he is at a loss on what to rest his judgment; all that can be expected is5 that he should tell in general whether he be pleased or not. But allow him more experience in works of this kind, and his Taste becomes by degrees more exact and enlightened. He begins to perceive not only the character of the whole, but the beauties and defects of each part; and is able to describe the peculiar qualities which he praises or blames. The mist is dissipated which seemed formerly to hang over the object; and he can at length pronounce firmly, and without hesitation, concerning it. Thus in Taste, considered as mere sensibility, exercise Opens a great source of improvement.
But although Taste be ultimately sounded on sensibility, it must not be considered as instinctive sensibility alone. Reason and good sense, as I before hinted, have so extensive an influence on all the operations and decisions of Taste, that a thorough good Taste may well be considered as a power compounded of natural sensibility to beauty, and of improved understanding. In order to be satisfied of this, let us observe, that the greater part of the productions of genius are no other than imitations of nature; representations of the characters, actions, or manners of men. The pleasure we receive from such imitations or representations is founded on mere Taste: but to judge whether they be properly executed belongs to the understanding, which compares the copy with the original.
In reading, for instance, such a poem as the Æneid, a great part of our pleasure arises from the the plan or story being well conducted, and all the parts joined together with probability and due connexion; from the characters being taken from nature, the sentiments being suited to the characters, and the style to the sentiments. The pleasure which arises from a poem so conducted, is felt or enjoyed by Taste as an internal sense; but the discovery of this conduct in the poem is owing to reason; and the more that reason enables us to discover such propriety in the conduct, the greater will be our pleasure. We are pleased, through our natural sense of beauty. Reason shews us why, and upon what grounds, we are pleased. Wherever in works of Taste, any resemblance to nature is aimed at; wherever there is any reserence of parts to a whole, or of means to, an end, as there is indeed in almost every writing and discourse, there the understanding must always have a great part to act.
Here then is a wide field for reason's exerting its powers in relation to the objects of Taste, particularly with respect to composition, and works of genius; and hence arises a second and a very considerable source of the improvement of Taste, from the application of reason and good sense to such productions of genius. Spurious beauties, such as unnatural characters, forced sentiments, affected style, may please for a little; but they please only because their opposition to nature and to good sense has not been examined, or attended to. Once show how nature might have been more justly imitated or represented; how the writer might have managed his subject to greater advantage; the illusion will presently be dissipated, and these false beauties will please no more.
From these two sources then, first, the frequent exercise of Taste, and next the application of good sense and reason to the objects of Taste, Taste as a power of the mind receives its improvement. In its present state, it is undoubtedly the result both of nature and of art. It supposes our natural sense of beauty to be refined by frequent attention to the most beautiful objects, and at the same time to be guided and improved by the light of the understanding.
I Must be allowed to add, that as a sound head, so likewise a good heart, is a very material requisite to just Taste. The moral beauties are not only in themselves superior to all others, but they exert an influence, either more near or more remote, on a great variety of other objects of Taste. Wherever the affections, characters, or actions of men are concerned (and these certainly afford the noblest subjects to genius), there can be neither any just beauty of that description, without our possessing the virtuous affections. He whose heart is indelicate or hard, he who has no admiration of what is truly noble or praiseworthy, nor the proper sympathetic sense of what is soft and tender, must have a very imperfect relish of the highest beauties of eloquence and poetry.
The characters of Taste when brought to its most improved state are all reducible to two, Delicacy and Correctness.
Delicacy of Taste respects principally the persection of that natural sensibility on which Taste is founded. It implies those finer organs or powers which enable us to discover beauties that lie hid from a vulgar eye. One may have strong sensibility, and yet be deficient in delicate Taste. He may be deeply impressed by such beauties as he perceives; but he perceives only what is in some degree coarse, what is bold and palpable; while chaster and simpler ornaments escape his notice. In this state Taste generally exists among rude and unrefined nations. But a person of delicate Taste both feels strongly, and feels accurately. He sees distinctions and differences where others see none; the most latent beauty does not escape him, and he is sensible of the smallest blemish. Delicacy of Taste is judged of by the fame marks that we use in judging of the delicacy of an external sense. As the goodness of the palate is not tried by strong flavours, but by a mixture of ingredients, where, notwithstanding the confusion we remain sensible of each; in like manner delicacy of internal Taste appears, by a quick and lively sensibility to its finest, most compounded, or most latent objects.
Correctness of Taste respects chiefly the improvement which that faculty receives through its connection with the understanding. A man of correct Taste is one who is never imposed on by counterfeit beauties; who carries always in his mind that standard of good sense which he employs in judging of everything. He estimates with propriety the comparative merit of the several beauties which he meets with in any work of genius; refers them to their proper classes; assigns the principles, as far as they can be traced, whence their power of pleasing flows; and is pleased himself precisely in that degree in which he ought, and no more.
It is true that these two qualities of Taste, Delicacy and Correctness, mutually imply each other. No Taste can be exquisitely delicate without being correct nor can be thoroughly correct; without being delicate. But still a predominancy of one or other quality in the mixture is often visible. The power of Delicacy is chiefly seen in discerning the true merit of a work; the power of Correctness, in rejecting false pretensions to merit. Delicacy leans more to feeling; Correctness more to reason and judgment. The former is more the gift of nature; the latter, more the product of culture and art. Among the ancient critics, Longinus possessed most Delicacy; Aristotle, most Correctness. Among the moderns, Mr. Addison is a high example of delicate Taste; Dean Swift, had he written on the subject of criticism, would perhaps have afforded the example of a correct one.
Having viewed Taste in its most improved and perfect state, I come next to consider its deviations from that state, the fluctuations and changes to which it is liable; and to enquire whether, in the midst of these, there be any means of distinguishing a true from a corrupted Taste. This brings us to the most difficult part of our task. For it must be acknowledged, that no principle of the human mind is, in its operations, more fluctuating and capricious than Taste, Its variations have been so great and frequent, as to create a suspicion with some, of its being merely arbitrary; grounded on no foundation, ascertainable able by no standard, but wholly dependent on changing fancy; the consequence of which would be, that all studies or regular enquiries concerning the objects of Taste were vain. In architecture, the Grecian models were long esteemed the most perfect. In succeeding ages the Gothic architecture alone prevailed, and afterwards the Grecian Taste revived In all its vigour, and engrossed the public admiration. In eloquence and poetry, the Asiatics at no time relished anything but what was full of ornament, and splendid in a degree that we should denominate gawdy; whilst the Greeks admired only chaste and simple beauties, and despised the Asiatic ostentation. In our own country, how many writings that were greatly extolled two or three centuries ago, are now fallen into entire disrepute and oblivion? Without going back to remote instances, how very different is the taste of poetry which prevails in Great Britain now, from what prevailed there no longer ago than the reign of king Charles II. which the authors too of that time deemed an Augustan age: when nothing was in vogue but an affected brilliancy of wit; when the simple majesty of Milton was overlooked, and Paradise Lost almost entirely unknown; when Cowley's laboured and unnatural conceits Were admired as the very quintessence of genius; Waller's gay sprightliness was mistaken for the tender spirit of Love; poetry; and such writers as Suckling and Etheridge were held in esteem for dramatic composition?
The question is, what conclusion we are to form from such instances as these? Is there anything that can be called a standard of Taste, by appealing to which we may distinguish between a good and a bad Taste? Or, is there in truth no such distinction; and are we to hold that, according to the proverb, there is no disputing of Tastes; but that whatever pleases is right, for that reason that it does please? This is the question, and a very nice and subtle one it is, which we are now to discuss.
I Begin by observing, that if there be no such thing as any standard of Taste, this consequence must immediately follow, that all Tastes are equally good; a position, which though it may pass unnoticed in slight matters, and when we speak of the lesser differences among the Tastes of men, yet when we apply it to the extremes, presently shows its absurdity. For is there any one who will seriously maintain that the Taste of a Hottentot or a Laplander is as delicate and as correct as that of a Longinus or an Addison or, that he can be charged with no defect or incapacity who thinks a common news-writer as excellent aa aft Historian as Tacitus? As it would be held downright extravagance to talk in this manner, we are led unavoidably to this conclusion, that there is some foundation for the preference of one man's Taste to that of another; or, that there is a good and a bad, a right and a wrong in Taste, as in other things.
But to prevent mistakes on this subject, it is necessary to observe next, that the diversity of Tastes which prevails among mankind, does not in every case infer corruption of Taste, or oblige us to seek for some standard in order to determine who are in the right. The Tastes of men may differ very considerably as to their object, and yet none of them be wrong. One man relishes poetry most; another takes pleasure in nothing but History. One prefers Comedy; another, Tragedy. One admires the simple; another, the ornamented style. The young are amused with gay and sprightly compositions. The elderly are more entertained with those of a graver cast. Some nations delight in bold pictures of manners, and strong representations of passion. Others incline to more correct and regular elegance both in description and sentiment. Though all differ, yet all pitch upon some one beauty which peculiarly suits their turn of mind; and therefore no one has a title to condemn the rest. It is not in matters of Taste, as in questions of mere reason, where there is but one conclusion that can be true, and all the rest are erroneous. Truth, which is the object of reason, is one; Beauty, which is the object of Taste, is manifold. Taste therefore admits of latitude and diversity of objects, in sufficient consistency with goodness or justness of Taste.
But then, to explain this matter thoroughly, I must observe farther, that this admissible diversity of Tastes can only have place where the objects of Taste are different. Where it is with respect to the same object that men disagree, when one condemns that as ugly, which another admires as highly beautiful; then it is no longer diversity, but direct opposition of Taste that takes place; and therefore one must be in the right, and another in the wrong, unless that absurd paradox were allowed to hold, that all Tastes are equally good and true. One man prefers Virgil to Homer. Suppose that I, on the other hand, admire Homer more than Virgil. I have as yet no reason to say that our Tastes are contradictory. The other person is most struck with the elegance and tenderness which are the characteristics of Virgil; I, with the simplicity and fire of Homer. As long as neither of us deny that both Homer and Virgil have great beauties, our difference falls within the compass of that diversity of Tastes, which I have shewed to be natural and allowable. But if the other man shall assert that Homer has no beauties whatever; that he holds him to be a dull and spiritless writer, and that he would as soon peruse any old legend of Knight-errantry as the Iliad; then I exclaim, that my antagonist either is void of all Taste, or that his Taste is corrupted in a miserable degree; and I appeal to whatever I think the standard of Taste, to shew him that he is in the wrong.
What that standard is, to which, in such opposition of Tastes, we are obliged to have recourse, remains to be traced. A standard properly signifies, that which is of such undoubted authority as to be the test of other things of the fame kind. Thus a standard weight or measure, is that which is appointed by law to regulate all other measures and weights. Thus the court is said to be the standard of good breeding; and the scripture, of theological truth.
When we say that nature is the standard of Taste, we lay down a principle very true and just, as far as it can be applied. There is no doubt, that in all cases where an imitation is intended of some object that exists in nature, as in representing human characters or actions, conformity to nature affords a full and distinct criterion os what is truly beautiful. Reason hath in such cases full scope for exerting its authority, for approving or condemning; by comparing the copy with the original. But there are innumerable cases in which this rule cannot be at all applied; and conformity to nature, is an expression frequently used, without any distinct or determinate meaning. We must therefore search for somewhat that can be rendered more clear and precise, to be the standard of Taste,
Taste, as I before explained it, is ultimately founded on an internal sense of beauty, which is natural to men, and which, in its application to particular objects, is capable of being guided and enlightened by reason. Now, were there any one person who possessed in full perfection all the powers of human .nature, whose internal senses were in every instance exquisite and just, and whose reason was unerring and sure, the determinations of such a person concerning beauty, would, beyond doubt, be a perfect standard for the Taste of all others. Wherever their Taste differed from his, it could be imputed only to some imperfection in their natural powers. But as there is no such living standard, no one person to whom all mankind will allow such submission to be due, what is there of sufficient authority to be the standard of the various and opposite Tastes of men? Most certainly there is nothing but the Taste, as far as it can be gathered, of human nature. That which men concur the most in admiring, must be held to be beautiful. His Taste must be esteemed just and true, which coincides with the general sentiments of men. In this standard we must rest. To the sense of mankind the ultimate appeal must ever lie, in all works of Taste. If anyone should maintain that sugar was bitter and tobacco was sweet, no reasonings could avail to prove it. The Taste of such a person would infallibly be held to be diseased, merely because it differed so widely from the Taste of the species to which he belongs. In like manner, with regard to the objects of sentiment or internal Taste, the common feelings of men carry the same authority, and have a title to regulate the Taste of every individual.
But have we then, it will be said, no other criterion of what is beautiful, than the approbation of the majority? Must we collect the voices of others, before we form any judgment for ourselves, of what deserves applause in Eloquence or Poetry? By no means; there are principles of reason and sound judgment which can be applied to matters of Taste, as well as to the subjects of science and philosophy. He who admires or censures any work of genius, is always ready, if his Taste be in any degree improved, to assign some reasons of his decision. He appeals to principles, and points out the grounds on which he proceeds. Taste is a fort of compound power, in which the light of the understanding always mingles, more or less, with the feelings of sentiment.
But, though reason can carry us a certain length in judging concerning works of Taste, it is not to be forgotten that the ultimate conclusions to which our reasonings lead, refer at last to sense and perception. We may speculate and argue concerning propriety of conduct in a Tragedy, or an Epic Poem. Just reasonings on the subject will correct the caprice of unenlightened Taste, and establish principles for judging of what deserves praise. But, at the same time, these reasonings appeal always, in the last resort, to feeling: The foundation upon which they rest, is what has been found from experience to please mankind universally. Upon this ground we prefer a simple and natural, to an artificial and affected style; a regular and well-connected story, to loose and scattered narratives; a catastrophe which is tender and pathetic, to one which leaves us unmoved. It is from consulting our own imagination and heart, and from attending' to the feelings of others, that any principles are formed which acquire authority in matters of Taste.[11]
When we refer to the concurring sentiments of men as the ultimate test of what is to be accounted beautiful in the arts, this is to be always understood of men placed in such situations as are favorable to the proper exertions of Taste. Everyone must perceive, that among rude and uncivilized nations, and during the ages of ignorance and darkness, any loose notions that are entertained concerning such subjects carry no authority. In those states of society, Taste has no materials on which to operate. It is either totally suppressed, or appears in its lowest and most imperfect form. We refer to the sentiments of mankind in polished and flourishing nations; when arts are cultivated and manners refined; when works of genius are subjected to free discussion, and Taste is improved by Science and Philosophy.
Even among nations, at such a period of society, I admit, that accidental causes may occasionally warp the proper operations of Taste; sometimes the state of religion, sometimes the form of government, may for a while pervert it; a licentious court may introduce a taste for false ornaments, and dissolute writings. The usage of one admired genius may procure approbation for his faults, and even render them fashionable. Sometimes envy may have power to bear down, for a little, productions of great merit; while popular humour, or party spirit, may, at other times, exalt to a high, though short-lived, reputation, what little deserved it. But though such casual circumstances give the appearance of caprice to the judgments of Taste, that appearance is easily corrected. In the course of time, the genuine taste of human nature never fails to disclose itself, and to gain the ascendant over any fantastic and corrupted modes of Taste which may chance to have been introduced. These may have currency for a while, and mislead superficial judges; but being subjected to examination, by degrees they pass away; while that alone remains which is founded on found reason, and the native feelings of men.
I By no means pretend, that there is any standard of Taste, to which, in every particular instance, we can resort for clear and immediate determination. Where, indeed, is such a standard to be found for deciding any of those great controversies in reason and philosophy, which perpetually divide mankind? In the present case, there was plainly no occasion for any such strict and absolute provision to be made. In order to judge of what is morally good or evil, of what man ought, or ought not in duty to do, it was fit that the means of clear and precise determination should be afforded us. But to ascertain in every case with the utmost exactness what is beautiful or elegant, was not at all necessary to the happiness of man. And therefore some diversity in feeling was here allowed to take place; and room was left for discussion and debate, concerning the degree of approbation to which any work of genius is entitled.
The conclusion, which it is sufficient for us to rest upon, is, that Taste is far from being an arbitrary principle, which is subject to the fancy of every individual, and which admits of no criterion for determining whether it be false or true. Its foundation is the same in all human minds. It is built upon sentiments and perceptions which belong to our nature; and which, in general, operate with the same uniformity as our other intellectual principles. When these sentiments are perverted by ignorance and prejudice, they are capable of being rectified by reason. Their sound and natural state is ultimately determined, by comparing them with the general Taste of mankind. Let men declaim as much as they please, concerning the caprice and the uncertainty of Taste, it is found, by experience, that there are beauties, which, if they be displayed in aproper light, have power to command lasting and general admiration. In every composition, what interests the imagination, and touches the heart, pleases all ages and all nations. There is a certain string, to which, when properly struck, the human heart is so made as to answer.
Hence the universal testimony which the most improved nations of the earth have conspired, throughout a long tract of ages, to give to some few works of genius; such as the Iliad of Homer, and the Æneid of Virgil. Hence the authority which such works have acquired, as standards, in some degree, of poetical composition; since from them we are enabled to collect what the sense of mankind is, concerning those beauties which give them the highest pleasure, and which therefore poetry ought to exhibit. Authority or prejudice may, in one age or country, give a temporary reputation to an indifferent poet, or a bad artist; but when foreigners, or when posterity examine his works, his faults are discerned, and the genuine Taste of human nature appears. "Opinionum commenta delet dies; naturæ judicia confirmat." Time overthrows the illusions of opinion, but establishes the decisions of nature.
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George Jardine, Outlines of Philosophical Education
Preface
The Author of the following Outlines has long been of opinion that philosophical education, as it is generally conducted in our universities, is too much confined to the mere communication of knowledge; and that too little attention is bestowed on the formation of those intellectual habits of thinking, judging, reasoning, and communication, upon which the farther prosecution of science, and the business of active life, almost entirely depend. He is fully sensible of the genius, the knowledge, and the eloquence, which have been displayed in the public lectures delivered by many professors in our universities,—some of whom, during the last century, have attained to the highest rank in their respective departments; but still he cannot help thinking that little has been done to generate, in the student, that activity of mind, and that facility of applying his intellectual powers, which ought to be the great object of all education.
The communication of knowledge is indeed necessary to furnish suitable materials for the exercise of the mental faculties; and, perhaps, with a few students, whose minds are easily awakened to scientific pursuits, little else may be required. But this can only apply to a very small proportion indeed of those who enter upon a course of philosophical education; and, even with regard to them, nearly the same advantage may be derived from the judicious and systematic perusal of the writings of ancient and modern philosophers, as from merely attending a course of lectures.
It has been the object of the author, who has been employed for the long period of fifty years in the department of the first philosophy class in the university of Glasgow, to endeavour, as much as possible, to remedy this defect; and while he has, in the course of his public lectures, explained the first principles of the philosophy of the human mind, he has uniformly accompanied these lectures with a system of active discipline on the part of his students, with a view to invigorate, and improve, the important habits of inquiry and of communication.
These Outlines, accordingly, consist of two parts: —the first exhibits a view of the lectures which are delivered to the students; in which the author does not lay claim to the merit of any new discoveries in the science of mind, but has endeavoured to select those subjects which seemed most adapted for the employment of youth, at the commencement of their philosophical studies. Accordingly, he has not confined himself to the art of logic, or to any one department of knowledge, but has endeavoured to lay before his students, in a simple and intelligible form, the elements of the science of mind, with an analysis of the different intellectual powers, in the order of their connexion and dependence,—the theory of language, as illustrative of human thought, —the principles of taste and criticism,—and the means of improving the powers of communication by speech and writing, as exhibited in the best models of ancient and modern composition.
The second part—which, to the author, appears by far the most useful department of his labours— contains an account of the practical system of discipline to which the students of this class are regularly subjected, for the purpose of acquiring habits of inquiry and communication. [ . . . ]
Part II
[ . . . ] The great end of philosophical education, however, is not to be attained by a mere theoretical acquaintance with the mental faculties, as explained in lectures, or even by the ablest writers in this department of knowledge. It consists rather in improved habits of directing their several energies; in thinking correctly, in reasoning closely, and in the acquired facility of conducting the various processes of generalization, invention, and communication, by speech or by writing. A well educated man, accordingly, is not merely distinguished by his knowledge of particular theories, as to the arrangement and distribution of the powers of the mind, but by the command which he has acquired of his faculties, so as to apply them, as occasion may require, in the prosecution of science, of art, or of business. "It has been unfortunately forgotten," says Dr. Barrow, "that communication of truth is only one-half of the business of education, and is not even the most important half. The most important part is the habit of employing to some good purpose the acquisitions of memory, by the exercise of the understanding about them, and till this be acquired the acquisition will not be found of much use."
To the same effect is the opinion of Mr. Locke in his Essay on the Conduct of the Human Understanding. "Nobody has made any thing by the hearing of rules or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well expect to make a good painter or musician extempore, by a lecture or instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker or strict reasoner, by a set of rules showing him wherein right reason consists." And in another part of the same essay: "The faculties of the soul are improved and made useful to us, just aller the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write, or paint, or dance well, or perform any other mechanical operation dexterously and with ease; let him have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and address, yet nobody expects this from him, unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand or other parts to these motions. Just so it is in the mind. Would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in it, observing the connexion of ideas and following them in train." [ . . . ]
The facts now stated may be considered as a sufficient proof that the wisest and most learned men, whether in remote antiquity or in ages bordering upon our own, did not hold mere lectures as competent means of education viewed in its proper light; but that, on the contrary, they regarded these as altogether inadequate to answer the purposes of academical discipline, without the accompaniment of a certain degree of practice, in all the arts to which the attention of the student is directed. It was reserved for the times in which we live to make the singular discovery, that philosophy may be taught to any number of young persons, and intellectual habits formed in their minds, by the simple act of pronouncing a lecture from a professorial chair. Agreeably to this view of things, no exertion is demanded on the part of the student; and no exercises are enjoined, by which he might be led to arrange the knowledge communicated to him; to discover the connexion of its various parts; to compare opinions, principles, theories, and thus at once to make that knowledge completely his own, by improving the faculties of his understanding.
It appears indeed surprising that men of ability and experience, employed in conducting education, should imagine that young persons, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, could possibly acquire habits of intellectual energy, by the mere passive operation of listening to lectures, however learned or ingenious. With persons of more mature age, who have a deep and immediate interest in the subjects discussed, the case may be different. Such individuals naturally exert attention in the presence of the professor, and may, besides, be able to form for themselves a course of practical discipline, and to follow out a regular plan of reading and composing, without his assistance or direction. But this cannot reasonably be expected from the greater number of those who attend lectures in a first class of philosophy; as it would imply the prudence and steadiness of age where we must lay our account with the giddiness and inconstancy of youth. Every system of academical instruction, therefore, which leaves it optional to the students whether they shall second the exertions of the teacher by private application and stated labour, is founded on a principle radically erroneous.
It is unquestionably true, that able men and good scholars come forth from seminaries, where the plan of instruction is faulty in a high degree; but able men and good scholars are found among those who have not had the benefit of a regular education at all; and a few instances of success, in the case of young men whose disposition to receive and apply instruction may have been peculiarly favourable, do not by any means prove that the system is well calculated for the great mass of juvenile students, whose education it is intended to regulate. Nor can it fail to be surprising, that a teacher of philosophy should conceive, either that there is nothing more in his power, or that his duty requires of him to do nothing more, than to compose ingenious lectures, to read them at stated hours to his students, and to leave the application wholly to their own prudence or love of learning. What farther may be done, and indeed ought to be done, by each of them respectively, will be explained in the sequel.
As the system of practical discipline established in this class, has its foundation in the lectures delivered to the students, on the elements of the different branches of science already specified, it is essentially requisite, in the first instance, that these lectures be clearly comprehended, both in principle and in detail; for it is very obvious that, amid obscure conception of the subjects, or imperfect recollection of the illustrations, young men cannot derive any advantage from the prelections to which they listen, nor can the teacher supply himself with the means of calling into action their mental endowments. When the professor, then, has done all in his power by a suitable selection of his subjects, by simplicity of arrangement, and perspicuity of style, to render his lectures acceptable and useful to his pupils, he has every reason to expect that they will be disposed to attend to them with composure and earnestness. This disposition, indeed, with respect to the majority of the students, ought to be taken for granted; and the next step is to put them in the way of availing themselves of the means of knowledge with which they are furnished, so as to secure, or, if I may be allowed the expression, to realize for themselves as large a share of it as possible.
Various expedients have been suggested for this purpose, among which may be mentioned the art of short-hand writing. With one single advantage, this practice is attended with many objections; for being constantly occupied with the mechanical operation of transferring the words of the lecture into his note-book, the mind of the student receives scarcely any ideas connected with the subject under discussion, and is altogether removed from that active and strenuous exertion of its powers, upon which the formation of all valuable intellectual habits is found chiefly to depend. The voluminous short-hand writer is commonly less acquainted than others with the facts and reasonings which he has committed to paper; and when he leaves college, accordingly, his port-folio, and not his memory, contains the chief part of the instruction which he carries away.
Some students, again, unwilling to distract their attention by taking notes during the delivery of the lecture, keep their minds unremittingly fixed upon the various statements and arguments, as they are successively brought forward; and exercise, as they go along with the professor, a modified kind of recollection and judgment, on the several parts of his discourse. Upon retiring to their apartments, they immediately review the lecture in the order in which the subjects were illustrated; and having, in this way, formed a clear conception of its general object, as well as of the subserviency of the different portions of the reasoning to the establishment of the main point, they commit to writing, in their own composition, whatever they judge to be of leading importance.
This, no doubt, is the most profitable way of attending a lecture; for it improves the mind both at the moment of delivery, and in the subsequent process of reminiscence and abridgment: but as many students have it not in their power to make such arrangements, with regard to their time, as to render this mode practicable—and, besides, as it implies an exercise of the understanding which few juvenile students are found to possess—the greater number adopt a middle course, and take, each in his own way, contracted notes or memoranda of the principal heads, divisions, and illustrations, trusting to their memory for the recollection of the remainder. The great diversity of talents and habits which subsists even among young persons necessarily suggests different methods of pursuing this object; but that which has just been mentioned, is probably most eligible for those of ordinary memory and capacity.
These hints may appear trifling to such as have not attended to this subject; but all who are experimentally acquainted with the difficulties and embarrassments of students, when entering upon the study of philosophy, must admit the importance even of the most minute observations, which may tend to smooth their way, or to throw light upon their path. [ . . . ]
The lectures and examinations, of which some account has been here given, are supposed to afford the students such materials as will enable them to take another step in their progress towards intellectual improvement. The powers of mind exercised in hearing and in comprehending lectures, are exerted without much difficulty, because the young men have in some degree been accustomed to such exercises; but the intellectual processes of investigation and reasoning, of composition and communication, on which the pursuits of science and the active business of life chiefly depend, are at first accomplished with great difficulty. In proportion, however, to the frequency and regularity with which these combined operations are performed, a power as well as a disposition to exert them is acquired, resistance and difficulty are removed, and those faculties of which the exercise at first demanded the firmest resolution, are afterwards employed without effort, and apparently without volition. Of this we have complete experience in the acquired habits of dancing, or of performing on a musical instrument—and in the great facility with which the exercises of reading, writing, and arithmetic are practised.
The pride of philosophers has often led them to tleviate from the beaten path, merely because common travellers were found to pursue it. Thus, for more than two thousand years, the logician and moralist overlooked the natural mode of reasoning by induction, because men in every situation of life, and even they themselves in common business, were in use to practise it. Did the teachers of philosophy deign to receive instruction in the principles of education from a common artist, in the simplest occupations of life, they would no longer refuse to combine, with their elementary precepts, a system of progressive exercise, in the art of arranging and expressing thought. The young artist is no sooner made acquainted with a rule, than he is required to act upon it, and to produce specimens of his work for the examination and correction of his master: while, on his part, the master knows well, that nothing can be expected from his instructions, unless they are immediately followed up by earnest endeavours to reduce them to practice.
These general laws of culture extend to the more exalted faculties of mind, as well as to those which regulate the mere bodily habits; while the improvement of the original powers of intellect, and the facility of applying them to practical uses, can, it is equally evident, be secured in no other manner. The teacher of a first class of philosophy must follow this example. He must, from time to time, prescribe subjects for specimens or themes, which his students are required to execute according to the directions given them; and these specimens are, also, in a simi lar manner, to be subjected to his correction and amendment; after which, such farther instructions are to be afforded as may be found necessary.
The skill, experience, and prudence, of the teacher are essentially necessary to success in this part of his business. Indeed, this system of practical instruction is much more difficult than the composition of lectures. The specimens required must be as nearly as possible adapted to the actual state of the intellectual powers and previous attainments of the students. The first themes should be such as require less labour and exertion than those which are to succeed them; but even those must require such a degree of exertion as will call into action all the powers of the student, and carry him forward to the next step in his progress to higher attainments. That burden which the labourer, by gradually increasing efforts, may become able to support, would completely overpower him, when he made his first efforts. "He that begins," says Mr. Locke, "with the calf, may carry the ox, but he that will go at first to take up the ox, may so disable himself, as not to be able to lift the calf after that." "When the mind has brought itself to attention and close thinking, it must be able to cope with difficulties, and master them without any prejudice to itself, and then it may go on readily." Still, as the same author justly observes, "' Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent,' must be made the measure of every man's understanding who has a desire not only to perform well, but to
keep up the vigour of his faculties, and not to baulk his understanding by what is too hard for it. The mind by being engaged in a task beyond its strength, like the body strained by lifting a weight too heavy, has often its force broken, and thereby gets an inaptness, or an aversion to any vigorous attempt ever afterwards." In the same essay he observes, that too easy tasks are equally hurtful. "He that has for some time accustomed himself to take up what easily offers itself at first view, has reason to fear, he shall never reconcile himself to the fatigue of turning and tumbling things in his mind, to discover their more retired and more valuable secrets."
Lord Bacon, from whom every teacher of philosophy may find much to learn, seems to have had precisely the same notion relative to themes and exercises when prescribed to students. The task, says he, must be as exactly as possible accommodated to the capacity and knowledge of the student, and should require neither more nor less than he can give. Too great a burden might depress those who have little courage, and a burden too easy might lead them to place such confidence in their own capacity, as both to repress their ardour, and to obstruct the progress of their studies.
The themes which are presented to the students of a first class of philosophy must not only be adapted to their progress and previous attainments, but must also be prescribed frequently and regularly. No habit can be acquired, without a frequent and regular repetition of the act to which it bears a reference; for the same number of acts which, when closely following each other generate a habit, would fail to have this effect, if separated by long intervals: and the more difficult the attainment of the habit, the more necessary it is that the endeavours to acquire it should be constant and regular.
The subjects, also, of the themes must be various and numerous. Were the same topics given out every succeeding session, there would be a great risk of idle and negligent students borrowing and copying those of a former year, and even attentive students might occasionally have recourse to such performances to abridge their labour. In this case, themes, like the strings of syllogisms, formerly well known in some celebrated seminaries, would become a sort of college property, descending from one generation to another. This pernicious practice, wherever it prevails, defeats the very purpose of prescribing themes, and can only be prevented by introducing variety and alterations in the subjects prescribed.
The difficulty of finding fit subjects is, probably, one cause which has prevented this mode of instruction from becoming a regular part of the business of a first class of philosophy. It seems to have been forgotten that a class of this sort is chiefly intended for the acquisition and formation of intellectual habits. For this purpose voluntary exercises, to be performed only by such of the students as choose to take the trouble, are comparatively of little use—their benefits being confined to a few only of the students, and those too, probably, who stand least in need of any incentive to improvement. We find, accordingly, that the themes which are required in some of our seminaries from the students of philosophy, are few in number, and not very closely connected with the inquiries pursued in the lectures. It would appear, that teachers have neither duly considered the nature and object of the exercises required, northe source from which they should be drawn. Young persons entering upon the study of philosophy cannot be supposed to possess a sufficient stock of knowledge for accomplishing at once an essay on an abstract subject. The daily lectures, the examinations, and the books which are recommended to them, must supply materials for the greatest part of their themes; while the extension of the course of lectures to the elements of so many different branches of science, is well adapted for that purpose, and accommodated to the diversity of talents in youth.
The themes first prescribed have a reference to the improvement of those intellectual powers which are first occupied in the acquisition of knowledge, while the others which succeed are intended to be adapted to the natural procedure of those powers, as well as to thejr dependence on each other. I shall now point out several classes of these themes, the separate object of each, and the manner in which the professor corrects them, after they are executed, with a view to the improvement of future efforts, on the part of the students: and I have comprehended these themes under four classes, not with the view of any exact line of demarcation between them—but in relation to those powers of the mind which are intended to be successively called forth into operation.
ON THE FIRST ORDER OF THEMES.
The object of the first class of exercises is to enable the student to form clearer and more accurate notions of the subjects discussed in the lectures than can be acquired from merely hearing them delivered; and also to accustom him to express his thoughts on these subjects in correct and perspicuous language. [ . . . ]
ON THE SECOND ORDER OF THEMES.
On Analysis and Classification.
Though all the orders of themes require the exertion of the principal faculties of the understanding, there is yet, in each class, a more special reference to some one or other of those intellectual processes, to which, in the pursuit of different branches of science, the human mind is necessarily called. The object of the first order of themes was to promote the habitual exercise of those mental powers, by means of which, clear and accurate notions are formed of philosophical terms, taken separately: the object of the succeeding order is to cultivate the faculties, whose office it is to arrange and classify the subjects of our knowledge, according to their nature and relations.
The process of analysis is indispensably necessary for enabling the mind to form a distinct notion of all the parts of a complex object. We see, for instance, a palace or castle, and the idea of it as a whole is immediately formed; but it is not before we have directed our attention to the several portions of such a building, that our notion of it can be either complete or accurate. The idea of a watch, too, viewed as a whole, is very different, indeed, from that which is obtained by a person who has separated all the parts from each other, made them successively an object of attention, and ascertained their respective office and connection.
ON THE THIRD ORDER OF THEMES.
In the former part of the lectures, an analysis is given of the faculties of judging and reasoning; as also, an account of the means which are used for improving these powers of the mind, as derived from the ancient dialectic art, as well as from the more improved logic of modern times. The object of the exercises prescribed under the head upon which we have now entered, is to accustom the student to judge and reason for himself; and, consequently, to form in his mind those intellectual habits, which, at an earlier stage of his progress, had merely been the subject of examination and research.
ON THE FOURTH ORDER OF THEMES.
The object of this last order of exercises is to improve those faculties of the mind which are employed in the higher processes of investigation, and which, when viewed under a certain light, may be said to constitute the envied endowment of genius.
To investigate, is, in the original sense of the word, to search out for an absent object, by discovering and following out the traces which it has left in the path over which it has passed. Thus, we attempt to discover a person who has concealed himself, by mark ing his footsteps towards the place of his retreat: and on the same principle, a hound may be literally said to investigate the track of the fox, by pursuing the scent which remains on the line along which the latter had directed his flight.
To these familiar processes may be compared the keen and earnest search of the mind, in its endeavours to ascertain the unknown causes and principles of things. Indeed, the perplexed anxiety which the set-dog often exhibits in the search of game, affords a striking resemblance of the careful, anxious, and occasionally disappointed state of mind which the philosopher frequently experiences in his researches after truth. Trusting to a persuasion natural to the human mind, that every effect must have a cause, and that the connexion between causes and their effects is constant and uniform, the student of nature proceeds through the labyrinth of phenomena, guided by the chain which associates every event he witnesses with some prior event which he infers must have preceded it, until at length he arrives at that ultimate point, which marks the boundary of physical causation, and limits the researches of philosophy.
This process of investigation has often been explained and recommended to young men when entering upon the study of philosophy. But the teacher, in general, satisfies himself with this recommendation, and leaves the student to pursue the difficult and untrodden path of investigation, without a guide to direct him in the course he ought to take, or to bring him back into it, if he should chance to deviate. It is here where the master generally leaves him, that the art of teaching should properly begin; and it is with the view of supplying in some measure the defect now alluded to, that, in the ordinary business of this class, the student is required to make efforts which are directed and sustained by the assistance of the professor, and to enter upon investigations which he is taught how he may pursue with success. Nor can the teacher find any difficulty in selecting subjects of these important exercises.
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Sarah J. Hale. Ladies’ Magazine 2.1 (1829)
THE BEGINNING.
"We beg your hearing patiently."
Perhaps there is no part of the duty devolving on editors more difficult to execute cleverly, than that of preparing the article which is to announce a new series of the work under their care. They must satisfy, by promises, public expectation on the one hand, and keep within the scope and likelihood of their own abilities to perform, on the other. The rage for novelties is at present universal, and seems insatiable. New writers, as well as new books, are constantly demanded; and fashion is nearly as variable in modes of thought, as in modes of dress. What delights the world to-day, may probably disgust to-morrow; and this love of change and variety, is the natural consequence of the spirit of inquiry, invention and improvement, which so decidedly marks the age: a spirit, which is productive of much good, but nevertheless partakes sufficiently of the character of all human knowledge, to have evil mingled with the results of its speculations and experiments. One evil is, the encouragement given to a class of writers merely because they write. Many a novel is published and puffed, whose only merit is, that it is the "last new novel."
It may be thought strange that the editor of the Ladies' Magazine should censure as evil, that thirst for literary novelties which undoubtedly, was one of the most efficient causes in giving patronage to the first volume of the work tmder her care. But though the novelty of the undertaking, on the part of a woman, excited curiosity to see how the publication would be managed, she would be loath to think, she must owe her permanent support to the novelty of the theories she must advance or advocate. In truth, she would be very reluctant to see any extraordinary changes in the manners of our American women, any daring innovation in female allotments. But then, no doubt, gradual improvements may be advantageously made. Whether there is, between the sexes, a perfect equality of intellect, is, in the editor's opinion, a question of small importance, while it must be so obvious to every person of reflection, that the duties of men and women are different. One motive that influenced her to endeavor to add somewhat to the knowledge of her sex, was to make females better acquainted with their duties and privileges as women. The editor has no wish to tinge all her sex blue—to make the standard of excellence in authorship, the standard of female excellence— to turn our country into a great literary Factory, and set all our young ladies to spinning their brains. No—she wishes to direct them to a far nobler and more efficient method of gaining an influence, and maintaining an importance in society. She would arouse her sex to the consideration of the vast power nature has given them over the human mind, by committing the infancy of men as welt as women entirely to their care. Women, therefore, are in fact, the tutors of men; and the sentiments of a man may be appropriately quoted, to show the extent of female influence in this early training.
"There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother. The forms of a free government, the provisions of wise legislation', the schemes of the statesman, the sacrifices of the patriot, are as nothing compared with this. If the future citizens of our republic, are to be worthy of their rich inheritance, they must be made so, principally through the virtue and intelligence of their mothers. It is in that school of maternal tenderness, that the kind affections must be first roused and made habitual,—the early sentiment of piety awakened, and rightly directed—the sense of duty and; moral responsibility unfolded and enlightened. But next in rank and efficacy to that pure and holy source of moral influence, is that of the schoolmaster."
Now the editor wishes to unite the perfection of these two characters, namely, that of excellent mothers and excellent instructresses, with the name of woman. She believes that women are capable of the task; that the business of instruction, except in the very highest seminaries, might with propriety be committed to females; that it would be a business suited to their talents, congenial to their character, and appropriate to their station. She intends, therefore, seriously to urge it upon the consideration of parents whether, in this practical age, the education of young ladies cannot be directed to some aim besides that of meredisplay. And this is the greatest innovation which will be advocated in the Ladies' Magazine.
Of the literary character of the work, perhaps the present number is a tolerable specimen. But it is intended to have one copperplate engraving as a frontispiece. It will be given in February or March. Should the patronage equal the hopes of the publishers, there will be more ornaments introduced; but it is not wise to promise too much, becauseour promises are made, not with an intention of gaining subscribers, but of gratifying them—and they will not bo gratified with a disappointment.
A THOUGHT.
It must be borne in mind, that this periodical is not a compilation, a mere "omnium gatherum" of the shreds and clippings of all the old newspapers in the nation. The work is to be wholly original articles; but then, that an article is original, will not form the only grounds of its acceptance. Though all due attention will be paid to the efforts of young writers and casual contributions, yet such do not form all the resources from which the materials of the Ladies' Magazine will be drawn. Several of our most popular poets are engaged to write for the work; and the editor will devote herself, with all the industry in her power, to its arrangement. But she cannot do this without pecuniary remuneration. She does not write for fame. She is animated by the hope of a far higher reward that of being enabled to support and educate her children. She asks patronage, because she intends to deserve it; and the public has the surest guaranty on earth, that she will endeavor to redeem her pledge—the guaranty of a mother's affection.
AUTHORESSES.—No. I.
"She is an authoress," has long and often been the sneering remark among ignorant witlings, of both sexes, whenever they attempted to account for any seeming or supposed impropriety of behavior and inelcgancy of taste, reported to characterize the woman, who had been so regardless of her sex's disqualifications for thought, as actually to allow her own thoughts to appear in print. "She is an authoress!"—how much more is meant than meets the ear, in that phrase. Perhaps there is no subject which has been so often canvassed, that is at the present time so little understood, as the capacities of the female mind, and the importance which should be attached to female education. There must, in the outset, have been some strange prejudices indulged, or wrong pretensions insisted on, otherwise the absurdity of the conclusion that has followed, could never have been entertained, as it now is, by many men of sense and reflection—namely, that learning has often a tendency to render women unamiable and unuscful. Yet why should it be so? Why, when knowledge is one of the perfections of immortal beings, should christians, who are taught that in heaven is no distinction of sex, make a distinction in the honor they pay to intelligence, to talents, when combined with piety, on earth?
In the rude ages of the world, when physical strength gave the right to be eminent, woman could have no chance of establishing her pretensions to equality, even had she advanced them. Now the scene is changed. In our Republic, especially, the lot of the weaker sex (always weaker in bones and muscles) is highly favored, and here, if ever in this world, appears to be preparing the theatre where the abilities of woman are to be developed, and where the full influence of her powers of mind, when prepared and polished by education to act with effect on society, are to be tested. Those of either sex, who have reflected on the subject, compared the evidences of female intellect, as they have been exhibited, under all the disadvantages and disabilities which, for so many centuries, seemed sufficient to annihilate thought, and mind too, could that have been destroyed, in the fun:i!i.. to such there can exist little doubt but that the trial will fully sustain the credit of those candid writers who have occasionally appeared as advocates of the weaker party. A party whose reputed inferiority of mind exposed them always to that pity which is so nearly allied to contempt, and yet from which they were not permitted even to attempt an escape, without encountering a greater evil;— for was pity or contempt so much to be dreaded as the ridicule or fear, the hatred or envy, which learned women, beu blues, as they are contemptuously styled, have usually had to encounter? But should the trial be thus decisive in favor of woman, should she, no longer considered an intruder in the fields of science, be permitted to take an honorable seat in the temple of learning, the next questionwill be, what portion of the labors and laurels of knowledge are to be assigned her? The settlement of this question involves, in my opinion, riot only much of the happiness and permanent respectability of my own sex, but it will, also, materially aflect the happiness and order of society, and even the character of our country.
It shonld always be borne in mind that our form of government is dependent on public opinion, that this public opinion is only the expression of a majority of private opinions, and that if the majority of our citi/ens are not honest, and well instructed in the knowledge of their rights and duties, our republican institutions will surely become corrupted;—and the licentiousness of a lawless democracy, without virtue or intelligence is, we learn from history, (may we never know otherwise) more terrible than the oppressions of despotism. The great desideratum, therefore, to be sought, as the only probable means which will make the experiment of national self-government successful and permanent, is national education. Not the enlightening of the minds of our people merely, but the culture of the heart, the discipline of the passions, the regulations of the feelings and the affections. And education thus radical in its operations, and important in its consequences should never be committed to incompetent or inferior agents. What father, wishing his children to be wise and good, would willingly entrust them, while receiving their first impressions and first lessons, usually the most influential on their future characters, to an ignorant or a feeble minded person? Yet to women always did and always must belong this province of early education. And may not most of the ignorance and consequent misery mankind have suffered be traced to the neglect and undervaluing of the agents by whom this early training has been carried on? Women were long thought incompetent to share the knowledge of good imparted by the tree that
" Brought death into the world, and all our wo,"
though they had to endure their full share of the evil. The consequence was that darkness prevailed more than light, because while one half of the species was in blank ignorance, it were as vain to hope that the remainder would attain to their full capacity of intelligence, as to expect that the perfect effulgence of day would be poured over the earth, while the sun was shorn, by an eclipse, of half his beams.
When the religion of the Son of Mary was introduced it gave woman an exalted triumph. In establishing the immortality of the human soul, it established, between the sexes, an equality of promises and duties, of hopes and joys, that no christian dared dispute or disbelieve. Tins equality, and the consequent improvement and elevation of the mind of woman and her influence on society, were doubtless among the most efficient causes in promoting the civilization of those nations that embraced christianity. But still the sphere of woman was incomplete, because her powers were not yet half developed, neither were the application of her talents defined or honored as they ought to have been. This happened partly because her physical strength and delicacy of constitution forbade her to engage in those pursuits to which men had decreed the awards of merit ; but mostly because the importance of early education was neither understood or appreciated,
"To suckle fools and chronicle smail beer,"
as that satirist of women, who nevertheless sorely envied the talents of Laily Montague, asserted, was supposed to he the amount of the duties and usefulness of the iemale, when divested of the factitious importance imparted by her appearance in society and her influence on manners and fashions. This disposition to be-little, to represent as insignificant the domestic employments of females, and above all, the attempt to throw ridicule on the almost holy office of the mother, has had a very injurious effect; indeed it will be found, by those who carefully examine, to be the chief cause of all the evils, and they are neither few nor small, which threaten society, on the one hand, from the ignorance of women, which render them unfit to discharge their duties properly, and on the other hand, from that pride of learning which leads them to despise their duties and neglect them altogether. For it is to escape the imputation of this insignificance that has induced many women, who felt conscious of their own powers, to devote themselves to studies and researches which would otherwise never have engrossed their attention; and they have neglected those cares and concerns which would have been their choice and pride, had not the opinion of the world, (meaning the opinion of the men) stigma- ' tized such employments as trilling, as unconnected with the exertion of mind, as only to be imposed on those whose capacity, as well as station, wad subordinate.
Here then is the root of the evil.—Females have never been thought entitled to respect from their station as wo- . men, for the fulfilment of their feminine duties merely- ' Admiration and adulation have followed their personal charms, but still this flattery was to their foolishness ; not one of their admirers ever thought an improvement in knowledge, which of course supposed an increase in years, would be to the advantage of those he pretended to love. Folly was synonymous with the name of women while in youth —she was then adored;—ignorance was her appellation in age—she was then abhorred.—And can rational beings be contented to occupy a station where reason is denied them? where the faculties of the mind are never to be exercised, or never to be considered as adding to their worth and respectability?
But is it necessary to the peace and comfort of society that women should be ignorant, or that they should be considered- inferior? Is there no scope for their abilities without entering into a competition for masculine honors, and engaging in masculine employments ? Was the Creator when forming his" last work" certainly, if not his " best," so improvident or unjust as to bestow powers which were above the station she was designed to hold, and, which, of course, it would be wrong, perhaps detrimental to the world, to cultivate or display? Who that worships the "God of order" can believe this ? And yet, for nearly 6000 years has the female intellect been suffered to remain a blank, either neglected or derided.—In her assuredly
----' The faculty divine,
"Is chained and tortured,—cabined, cribbed, confined!"
No wonder the few who escaped such thraldom sometimes use the liberty of their facilities unguardedly, improperly, even dangerously, if you will, to the happiness of their own families, perhaps even to the disturbance of society. But what then? The abuse of reason does not prove that women have no use for reason. Neither does the little they have as yet ostensibly contributed to the stock of general knowledge demonstrate that they are incapable of such exertion, or that it would be, under different circumstances, o'erstepping the modesty and privileges of their sex, should they actually become co-workers with the lords of creation in the fields of science and national improvement. How this may be accomplished, without endangering in the least that supremacy in all that properly belongs to the government of earth—which, believing as I do, that it was by the Almighty delegated expressly to the man, (mark me, not deserved by any superior strength of mind, except what may be derived only from the superior strength of physical powers,) I have no wish to controvert or undervalue,—I shall in my next number attempt to show.
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Horace Mann, [On Education and National Welfare] From Twelfth Annual Report of Horace Mann as Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education. (1848)
.... A cardinal object which the government of Massachusetts, and all the influential men in the State, should propose to themselves, is the physical well-being of all the people,—the sufficiency, comfort, competence, of every individual in regard to food, raiment, and shelter. And these necessaries and conveniences of life should be obtained by each individual for himself, or by each family for themselves, rather than accepted from the hand of charity or extorted by poor laws. It is not averred that this most desirable result can, in all instances, be obtained; but it is, nevertheless, the end to be aimed at. True statesmanship and true political economy, not less than true philanthropy, present this perfect theory as the goal, to be more and more closely approximated by our imperfect practice. The desire to achieve such a result cannot be regarded as an unreasonable ambition; for, though all mankind were well fed, well clothed, and well housed, they might still be half civilized.
According to the European theory, men are divided into classes,—some to toil and earn, others to seize and enjoy. According to the Massachusetts theory, all are to have an equal chance for earning, and equal security in the enjoyment of what they earn. The latter tends to equality of condition; the former, to the grossest inequalities. Tried by any Christian standard of morals, or even by any of the better sort of heathen standards, can any one hesitate, for a moment, in declaring which of the two will produce the greater amount of human welfare, and which, therefore, is the more conformable to the divine will? The European theory is blind to what constitutes the highest glory as well as the highest duty of a State....
Our ambition as a State should trace itself to a different origin, and propose to itself a different object. Its flame should be lighted at the skies. Its radiance and its warmth should reach the darkest and the coldest of abodes of men. It should seek the solution of such problems as these: To what extent can competence displace pauperism? How nearly can we free ourselves from the low-minded and the vicious, not by their expatriation, but by their elevation? To what extent can the resources and powers of Nature be converted into human welfare, the peaceful arts of life be advanced, and the vast treasures of human talent and genius be developed? How much of suffering, in all its forms, can be relieved? or, what is better than relief, how much can be prevented? Cannot the classes of crimes be lessened, and the number of criminals in each class be diminished? . . .
Now two or three things will doubtless be admitted to be true, beyond all controversy, in regard to Massachusetts. By its industrial condition, and its business operations, it is exposed, far beyond any other State in the Union, to the fatal extremes of overgrown wealth and desperate poverty. Its population is far more dense than that of any other State. It is four or five times more dense than the average of all the-other States taken together; and density of population has always been one of the proximate causes of social inequality. According to population and territorial extent there is far more capital in Massachusetts -- capital which is movable, and instantaneously available -- than in any other State in the Union; and probably both these qualifications respecting population and territory could be omitted without endangering the truth of the assertion....
Now surely nothing but universal education can counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and the servility of labor. If one class possesses all the wealth and the education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former. But, if education be equally diffused, it will draw property after it by the strongest of all attractions; for such a thing never did happen, and never can happen, as that an intelligent and practical body of men should be permanently poor. Property and labor in different classes are essentially antagonistic; but property and labor in the same class are essentially fraternal. The people of Massachusetts have, in some degree, appreciated the truth that the unexampled prosperity of the State -- its comfort, its competence, its general intelligence and virtue -- is attributable to the education, more or less perfect, which all its people have received; but are they sensible of a fact equally important,— namely, that it is to this same education that two-thirds of the people are indebted for not being to-day the vassals of as severe a tyranny, in the form of capital, as the lower classes of Europe are bound to in any form of brute force?
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men,—the balance wheel of the social machinery. I do not here mean that it so elevates the moral nature as to make men disdain and abhor the oppression of their fellow men. This idea pertains to another of its attributes. But I mean that it gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich: it prevents being poor. Agrarianism is the revenge of poverty against wealth. The wanton destruction of the property of others -- the burning of hay-ricks, and corn-ricks, the demolition of machinery because it supersedes hand-labor, the sprinkling of vitriol on rich dresses -- is only agrarianism run mad. Education prevents both the revenge and the madness. On the other hand, a fellow-feeling for one's class or caste is the common instinct of hearts not wholly sunk in selfish regard for a person or for a family. The spread of education, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this education should be universal and complete, it would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society.. ..
For the creation of wealth, then,—for the existence of a wealthy people and a wealthy nation,—intelligence is the grand condition. The number of improvers will increase as the intellectual constituency, if I may so call it, increases. In former times, and in most parts of the world even at the present day, not one man in a million has ever had such a development of mind as made it possible for him to become a contributor to art or science.... Let this development proceed, and contributions . . . of inestimable value, will be sure to follow. That political economy, therefore, which busies itself about capital and labor, supply and demand, interests and rents, favorable and unfavorable balances of trade, but leaves out of account the elements of a wide-spread mental development, is naught but stupendous folly. The greatest of all the arts in political economy is to change a consumer into a producer; and the next greatest is to increase the producing power,—and this to be directly obtained by increasing his intelligence. For mere delving, an ignorant man is but little better than a swine, whom he so much resembles in his appetites, and surpasses in his power of mischief....
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Samuel Newman. A Practical System of Rhetoric (1832).
INTRODUCTION
The advantages proposed to be attained by the study of Rhetoric[12]
1. Some acquaintance with the philosophy of rhetoric.
2. The cultivation of the taste, and in connexion, the exercise of the imagination.
3. Skill in the use of language.
4. Skill in literary criticism.
5. The formation of a good style.
By the philosophy of rhetoric, I here refer to those principles in the science of the philosophy of mind, and in the philosophy of language, on which are founded those conclusions and directions which are applicable to literary criticism, and to the formation of style. Obviously, then, it will be said, an acquaintance with the science of intellectual philosophy, and with the philosophy of language, should precede the study of rhetoric. Hence, no doubt, Milton and others assign to this branch of study the last place in a Bourse of education.
But it is known to all, that the prevalent opinion and practice are different from those recommended by Milton; so that our inquiry should be, what is the best practical method of acquainting the young with the philosophy of rhetoric — those whose minds are not accustomed to philosophical investigations, and who are ignorant of those sciences on which the art is founded?
I answer, that, while the attention should be directed to but few principles, and those most essential in a practical view, instruction should be imparted principally by familiar, talking lectures. A text-book, if one is used, should contain but a mere outline, — some general principles plainly stated and well illustrated.
Here I would more fully state, what I mean by familiar, talking lectures. Suppose I wish to make the student understand what 1 mean by taste, and in so doing, I have occasion to speak of the judgment, sensibility, imagination, emotions of beauty and sublimity. Now, should I attempt to effect my purpose by a definition, or an extended technical explanation of these terms, there would be little reason to hope for success. I would rather refer him directly to the operations of his own mind, point out to him instances where he forms a judgment, where his sensibility is excited bis imagination called into exercise, and emotions of beauty and sublimity kindled up in his own soul. It is true he may not, after this, be able to give me an exact definition of these faculties and intellectual operations, but he has learned what is meant by the proposed terms; and when I have occasion to use them afterwards, I have no fears of not being understood.
That instruction in this part of rhetoric is attended with difficulty, no one will deny. The subjects themselves are intricate: hard to be understood, and still harder to explain, especially to those whose minds are immature and unaccustomed to philosophical reasonings. Here, then, is room for much ingenuity in the instructor; and without a skilful effort on his part, the efforts of the pupil will be of little avail. Above all things, let not the mockery of set questions and set answers be practised, in teaching what pertains to the philosophy of rhetoric.
After all, it must be allowed, that with the most skilful instruction, and the best text-book, young students will obtain but imperfect ideas in what pertains to the philosophy of rhetoric. Still, what is thus imperfectly acquired, will be of importance to them as opening some interesting fields of thought, which, with strengthened powers, they may afterwards explore; and further, as aiding them in better understanding the nature of the rules and directions founded on these important and somewhat intricate principles.
I have stated as a second object to be attained by the study of rhetoric, the cultivation of a literary taste, and, in connection, the exercise of the imagination.
The cultivation of a literary taste must evidently depend principally on a familiarity with those production, which are esteemed models of excellence in literature. In this respect, there is a close analogy to the cultivation of taste in painting, or in any of the fine arts. We may also learn something on this subject, from the course pursued by painters in the improvement of their taste. They visit the most celebrated galleries, and seek for models of excellence in their art; and these they make the object of close, long-continued and patient study. They inquire what there is to excite admiration in these paintings, and dwell on their different prominent beauties, and in this way cultivate and improve their tastes. Now it is in the same way that a literary taste is to be cultivated. And that the student may skillfully use his models of excellence in literature, and unite with his observation of them the application of those principles on which they depend, he needs the assistance of an instructor.
In stating the details of the course here recommended, I remark, that, by the aid of a text-book prepared with reference to the proposed method of instruction, the student may have brought to his view examples of those instances, where there is most frequent occasion for the exercise of literary taste. I here refer to what are termed the ornaments of style. In connexion with these examples, the nature of whatever in literary productions comes under the cognizance of literary taste, may be explained. The different ornaments of style may be pointed out to his notice, and he may be led fully to see why attempts of this kind are in some instances successful, and in other instances fail.
When the examples thus cited, and the comments upon them, have become familiar to the student, let his attention next be directed to finding examples in English writers, which may exhibit similar ornaments of style, and in the examination of which, there is opportunity for the application of the same principles. Here it is that important aid may he rendered by the instructor, since, in conducting these inquiries and forming his decisions, the student needs both guidance and confirmation.
To make myself fully understood, I will here illustrate my remarks. Suppose that a student finds in his text-book the following comparison from the writings of Locke : —
'The minds of the aged are like the tombs to which they are approaching; where, though the brass and the marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery has mouldered away.'
This comparison, he is told, is naturally suggested; and in connexion with the example, the meaning of this phrase is fully explained to him. And not only is he made to see what is meant by a comparison's being naturally suggested, but to feel, that in the absence of this trait, the pleasure to be derived from it, as exciting an emotion of taste, would be impaired. Let the student now be directed to bring forward from any author, instances of comparison, which are in the same manner naturally suggested; and in this way let him become familiar with the principle stated, and with its application. In the same manner, by directing the attention in succession to the different traits in the various ornaments of styie, and illustrating, in connexion with examples, the various principles on which these attempts to excite emotions ol taste are founded, the pupil is led to a full acquaintance with this part of rhetoric. He is enabled at once, when reading the productions of any author, to perceive the beauties of style, and to classify and arrange them—in other words, he acquires a good literary taste.
But there is another point connected with this part of mv subject, to which I will for a moment direct your attention. I refer to the exercise thus given to the imagination. In our courses of study, we have discipline for the memory, for the reasoning powers in their various forms, and for the invention. But no regard is paid to the exercise and improvement of the imagination. And this, not because this faculty of the mind is useless, or because it admits not of being strengthened, and improved by exercise. The impression is, that there is no method which can be adopted for the attainment of this end. Now I would ask, if, by the course here recommended, the imagination will not be called into exercise, and strengthened? These attempts to excite emotions of taste are addressed to the imagination; they are understood by the imagination, and it is a just inference, that the plan of study I have now recommended, will furnish a salutary discipline to the imagination.
Of the favorable tendency of the method of instruction, 1 can from my own experience as an instructor, speak with some confidence. I have ever found, that my pupils engage in this part of their rhetorical course with interest. They get new views of the nature of style, are led to notice their susceptibilities of emotions, of which before they have been unmindful. They also become conscious of their own powers of imagination, and learn something of the nature and offices of this faculty; and with these views and this consciousness, they find that a new source of pleasure is opened to them. Thus they both derive important aid in becoming writers themselves, and are prepared to read with increased interest the writings of others.
Before concluding my remarks on this head, let me say, that what is here recommended, is perfectly practicable. It is an employment, which any student with common powers of mind may pursue; and it requires, on the part of the instructor, only that degree of literary taste, which every one professing to teach rhetoric should possess.
The third object proposed to be obtained by the study of rhetoric, is skill in the use of language. Here I refer both to the choice of words, so far as purity and propriety are concerned, and to the construction of sentences.
Instruction in this part of rhetoric should be conducted with reference to two points, — to acquaint the student with the nature and principles of verbal criticism, and further to lead him to beware of those faults in construction, to which he is most liable.
The former of these appertains to the philosophy of rhetoric, and is included under my first head: but I here offer an additional remark. It was stated, when speaking of giving instruction on the philosophy of rhetoric, that difficulties attend this part of the course. These difficulties exist but in a slight degree, when exhibiting what is connected with the philosophy of language. Here is such abundant opportunity for illustration, and examples are so easily adduced, that every principle may without difficulty be made perfectly intelligible. Neither is this part of the study uninteresting to students. Curiosity is fully awake to whatever pertains to the nature of language, and to the rules that govern its use. And here I may be permitted to mention a work which, in what pertains to this part of rhetoric, I regard as of the highest authority. I refer to Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, — the ingenious, elaborate production of the Quinctilian of English literature.
To lead the student to beware of those faults in construction which are of most common occurrence, — the other object in view in this part of the course, must evidently be effected by adducing examples of these faults. From the nature of the case, the endless forms of correct construction cannot be stated. On the obvious principle, then, that where one has erred, another will be liable to leave the right way, we direct the attention to these wanderings, and connect with such instances the cautions they naturally suggest. The object here in view may be accomplished for the most part by the text-book. All that is incumbent on the instructor, is, to lead the pupil fully to see what in every example adduced the failure is, and how it is to be remedied. This part of a text-book does not require to be dwelt upon in the recitation-room. It is rather a part to be referred to by the student, when, hesitating as to the construction of sentences, he needs guidance and assistance.
I mention in the fourth place, as an object to be obtained by the study of rhetoric, skill in literary criticism.
Under this head, I include whatever pertains more particularly to style, its nature and diversities, as seen in the writings of different individuals, and in different classes of literary productions. Our inquiry is, What can be done by the instructor most efficiently, to aid the pupil in acquiring skill in literary criticism, as thus explained?
Style has been happily defined by Buffon as 'the man himself.' If I wish to become acquainted with any individual, I seek an introduction to him; I endeavor to learn from personal observation the peculiar traits in his character. I may, indeed, from the description of a third person receive some general and perhaps just impression respecting this individual; but all this, though it might prepare the way for my better understanding his peculiarities when in his presence, would alone make me but imperfectly acquainted with him.
The same holds true, if I wish to become acquainted with the peculiarities of those of different nations. You might describe to me the national traits of the French and of the Spanish; but a visit to those countries, and familiarity with their inhabitants, would be of far more avail in learning their national traits of character.
This illustration suggests the best practical method of giving instruction in what relates to literary criticism. A text-book or an instructor may describe, with accuracy and fulness, the peculiarities of style, as they are seen in the writings of different individuals, or found in different classes of literary productions. But this is not enough. That the student may clearly discern these characteristic traits, and understand their nature, and the causes on which they depend, his attention must be directed to these writings. He must in some good degree become familiar with them, and thus learn wherein they differ, and what there is in each to approve or condemn.
It may be thought, that to bring to the view of the student in this manner the peculiarities of different styles, may require too much time and labor. But with the aid of the text-book, much of the work may be performed by the student himself. What is most necessary on the part of the instructor is, to direct the attention to specimens of different styles, and in some few instances to point out characteristic traits. The student, with this aid, will soon acquire sufficient knowledge and skill to apply the remarks found in the text-book himself.
This leads me to remark generally on the importance of reading good authors in connexion with rhetorical studies. This part of education is, I fear, in most of our schools and colleges, too much neglected. From his inability to judge of the merits of writers, the student needs guidance in selecting those which may be most useful to him, and this guidance the instructor should feel it is incumbent on him to supply. To read over occasionally with the pupil some choice specimens of style, may also be of essential advantage. To learn how to read, is no easy acquisition. Of course, I refer, not to the pronunciation of the words, or the inflections of the voice, but to the quick and true apprehension of the meaning, and a susceptibility to the beauties of style.
In this connection, too, the student may be taught the true nature of literary criticism. It looks not for faults. It cherishes not a censorious, captious spirit. Its eye is directed after what is excellent and praiseworthy — after what may inform the mind, give grateful exercise to the imagination and refinement to the taste. And when it discerns excellences of a high order, as if dazzled with what is bright and imposing, it sees not minute and unimportant defects. It is indeed nearly allied to that charity which is kind, and which, where she discovers what is truly worthy of her regard, throws her mantle of forgiveness over a multitude of sins.
I proceed now to notice the last mentioned advantage proposed to be obtained by the study of rhetoric. I refer to the formation of style.
This part of a rhetorical course of instruction is not particularly connected with the use of a text-book, further than that it furnishes opportunities for the application of principles and rules, which are there found. The aid furnished by an instructor, is principally in the correction of attempts in composition, with such general guidance and advice, as the intellectual habits and peculiarities of the individual may require. I offer, therefore, on this head, merely a few practical suggestions.
1. It is highly important, that the attention of the student, in his first attempts, should be directed to the management of his subject. I would require of him to exhibit a plan, or skeleton, stating the precise object he has in view, the divisions he proposes to make with reference to this point, and the manner in which he designs to enhrge on each head. In this way, he will not only be aided in forming habits of methodically arranging his thoughts, but will be led to adopt the easiest and most direct method of proceeding, in writing on any subject.
2. I have ever found, that, so far as the construction of sentences is concerned, and here I refer both to the division of a paragraph into sentences and to the phrases and forms of expression, — I remark, that, in relation to this part of the work of composition, I have ever found, that students derive important aid from translating select passages fiom the writings of good authors in other languages. Every one knows, that in this way a command of languages is acquired And I would extend the meaning of the phrase, so as to include, not only that copia verborum, and that power of nice discrimination in the use of words, which are generally understood to be implied by it, but also the right arrangement of words, and the correct construction of sentences. Other things being equal, he who, during the first six months in which the attention is directed to composition, should devote half of his efforts to the writing of translation would, I doubt not, be in advance of him, all whose exertions had been employed in the work of composition.
3. I would further recommend a familiar mode of correcting the first attempts of the student. If practicable, the instructor may with advantage read over with the pupil his productions, and alone with him freely comment upon its defects and excellences. While in this way needed encouragement is given, the attention of the student is directed to that point where there is most need of improvement. Besides, it not unfrequently happens, that the efforts of the student have taken some wrong direction. He has some erroneous impressions as to the nature of style, or as to the manner in which a good style may be formed. It may be that he is laboring too much on the choice and arrangement of his words, or the construction of his sentences; or, assigning undue importance to the ornaments of style, he may be seeking principally after what is figurative, and the elegances of expression; or, again, with false notions of what is original and forcible, he may be striving after what is sententious and striking. Sometimes, too, there exists a fastidiousness of taste, which is detrimental. The student is kept from doing any thing, because he is unable to do better than he can do. In other instances, there is an injurious propensity to imitation. The student has fixed upon some writer as his model, and, servilely copying his master, his own native powers are neglected. Now, in all these instances, the advice of the instructor may be of essential benefit.
One general remark is all that I have to offer further on this head. It should ever be impressed on the student, that, in forming a style, he is to acquire a manner of writing, to some extent, peculiarly his own, and which is to be the index of his modes of thinking — the development of his intellectual traits and feelings. It is the office of the instructor to facilitate the accomplishment of this important end, both by wisely directing the efforts of his pupil, and bv removing every obstacle in his way.
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Almira Hart Phelps. “Rhetoric, Criticism, Composition,” Lectures to Young Ladies (1833)
The studies of Rhetoric and Criticism, are more especially designed for the cultivation of those faculties of mind, called taste and imagination. Taste has by many writers been termed a simple independent power or sense; but by Dr. Brown it is considered as a complex state of mind, which may be analyzed into judgment and an emotion. The human mind is formed with a susceptibility of certain emotions, as beauty, sublimity and ludicrousness; these emotions are those on which taste chiefly depends, or which, in conjunction with judgment, constitute taste. Thus a painter, having experienced the emotion of beauty, exercises his judgment in forming such combinations as may produce in others the same emotion. A poet must have experienced emotions, before he can by an effort of art produce them in others; and he exercises his judgment no less in the selection and combination of his images, than the chemist, who puts together substances in order to produce a certain result. That is, both the poet and chemist judge of the fitness of ideas and of objects to produce their determinate effects.
For a clear and interesting explanation of the elements of taste, and of its three most essential qualities, refinement, delicacy and correctness, I would refer you to the interesting and useful system of Rhetoric, now adopted as a class book in this Institution.[13]The author of this work has taken up the subject in a philosophical and practical manner. He at once informs the student that the art of writing well, is not to be obtained by a set of rules, but that ' the store-house of the mind must be well filled; and he must have that command of his treasures which will enable him to bring forward, whenever the occasion may require, what has been accumulated, for future use.' He dwells particularly upon the necessity of mental discipline, especially the previous cultivation of the reasoning powers; and observes that ' the student who, in the course of his education is called to search for truth in the labyrinth of metaphysical and moral reasonings, and to toil in the wearisome study of the long and intricate solutions of mathematical principles, is acquiring that discipline of the mind, which fits him to distinguish himself as an able writer.
You will perceive that the different branches of knowledge we have already considered, are all conducive to one great end, that of enabling a person to compose with elegance and facility. And is this an object of little importance, even to our sex? We are permitted to use the pen as our tastes, genius, or mental acquirements may direct. Even the composition of a simple note of ceremony, attests the fact of mental cultivation, or the want of it; and a letter on the most common subject, plainly indicates the nature of the writer's education. Higher efforts of mind, such as stories for children, religious tracts, and works in the various departments connected with education, are all now considered as offering proper employment for the exertion of female talents. But it must be remembered that these talents should be cultivated with the most assiduous care—that the various fields of knowledge should be explored, as far as possible, in order to become a successful candidate for literary distinction. The time has gone by, when a publication meets with indulgence, because its author is a woman; we must now expect to be judged by our real merits, and our titles to approbation.
Grammar and rhetoric bear to each other an intimate relation; the former teaches the method of speaking and writing with accuracy, the latter of arranging our thoughts with propriety and elegance. The science of rhetoric is founded upon observations made by philosophers, of the nature and operations of the human mind, and by a critical analysis of the style, and an examination of the methods of arrangement of those authors whose works have been most generally approved. The chapter on Literary Taste in Newman's Rhetoric is well written, and calculated to give just ideas of the peculiar merits of different authors; it also happily illustrates the proper use of rhetorical figures. The chapter on style, is an interesting exposition of the qualities of a good style, and the modes of writing which characterize different individuals. This little work leads the pupil to a knowledge of the rules and principles of rhetoric, in an easy and simple manner, and has the merit of more originality than many school books, which profess to be improvements.
Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric have been deservedly popular: they are written in a pure and concise style; but the larger work is too voluminous for beginners, and the abridgement, as is usually the case, is a mere skeleton, without suitable illustrations.
In pursuing the study of rhetoric, you should make it your constant aim to render your knowledge practical: you should examine authors, with a view of discovering their peculiar beauties or defects, and notice their use of the various figures of speech; each of which you should accustom yourself to distinguish, wherever you meet them. This might be rendered interesting as an amusement. When several young ladies are passing leisure hours together, one might ask others to point out, in a certain page or chapter of a book, all the comparisons, metaphors, antitheses, &c. which could be found. The suggestion and proper uses of figures, must be the result of much practice in composition, as well as the fruit of learning. The study of rhetoric will not at once give you the power of writing with ease and elegance: this requires a knowledge of nature and of the human heart, a habit of deep and serious reflection, and a taste at once delicate and refined.
Criticism is ranked in this institution as a higher study than the elementary works on rhetoric; it is indeed a department of rhetoric, but so extensive, that it has been treated separately by some distinguished writers. The best works on this subject which are now before the public are those of Kames, Alison, and Campbell. Kames' Criticism contains much valuable philosophy; the author appears to have studied the human heart with considerable success: his style is agreeable and he carries his reader along with him in an easy companionship. The study of this work is an excellent preparation for mental philosophy; indeed it was, by the author, designed to hold a middle rank between moral speculations and the study of the natural and mathematical sciences. Without attempting a theory and classification of the passions, Lord Kames gives a variety of practical illustrations of their operations and moving principles; and such as are calculated to be of great use to a young person on entering into life. The greatest objection to his work on criticism is the occasional obsoleteness of the style, (the third edition was published as far back as 1761) and a want of system in his arrangements. These faults may be remedied by the remarks of teachers, and care on their part to make a better arrangement. The practical part of criticism will not probably be acquired in a very great degree by the study of Kames, or any other author; but a new stock of ideas may be gained, and the power of making for yourselves critical distinctions.
Alison is a writer of peculiar beauty and sweetness: the fault in his work, as a text-book on criticism, is that he confines himself to the subjects of beauty and sublimity, a sphere too circumscribed for so extensive a science. The politeness and respect with which Alison speaks of the 'profound remarks of Lord Kames,'furnish a pleasant contrast to the illiberality with which writers often speak of those who have preceded them in any particular department of literature. The whole work of Alison is replete with beautiful passages, calculated to inspire the reader with noble and just sentiments. In his essays upon the beauty and sublimity of the material world, he leads the mind to the delightful contemplation of nature and the Author of nature. After expatiating on the moral effect of the study of nature upon the mind, he finely and piously observes' there is yet, however, a greater expression which the appearances of the material world are fitted to convey, and a more important influence which, in the design of nature, they are destined to produce upon us: their influence, I mean, in leading us directly to religious sentiment. Had organic enjoyment been the only object of our formation, it would have been sufficient to establish senses for the reception of these enjoyments. But if the promises of our nature are greater—if it is destined to a nobler conclusion—if it is enabled to look to the Author of Being himself, and to feel its proud relation to Him; then nature, in all its aspects around us, ought only to be felt as signs of his providence, and as conducting us, by the universal language of these signs, to the throne of the Deity.'
After remarking upon the effect of natural scenery upon elevated minds, he adds: 'Even the thoughtless and the dissipated yield unconsciously to this beneficent instinct; and in the pursuit of pleasure, return, without knowing it, to the first and the noblest sentiments of their nature. They leave the society of cities, and all the artificial pleasures, which they feel to have occupied, without satiating their imagination. They hasten into those solitary, and those uncultivated scenes, where they seem to breathe a purer air, and to experience more profound delight. They leave behind them all the arts, and all the labors of man, to meet nature in her primeval magnificence and beauty. Amid the slumber of their usual thoughts, they love to feel themselves awakened to those deep and majestic emotions which give a new and a nobler expansion to their hearts, and amid the tumult and astonishment of their imagination,
To behold the present God
On the rocks by man untrod,
On the hill-tops wild and ruder
On the cliff's deep solitude.
Where the roaring waters move,
In the darkness of the grove.'
It is particularly on account of its moral effect that iff is of so much consequence to encourage their instinctive taste for the beauty and sublimity of nature. While it opens to the mind of childhood, or youth, a source of pure and of permanent enjoyment, it has consequences on the character and happiness of future life, which they are enabled to foresee. It is to provide them, amid all the agitations and trials of society, with one gentle and unreproaching friend, whose voice is ever in alliance with goodness and virtue, and which, when once understood, is able both to soothe misfortune, and to reclaim from folly. It is to identify them with the happiness of that nature to which they belong; to give them an interest in every species of being which surrounds them ; and, amid the hours of curiosity and delight, to awaken those latent feelings of benevolence and of sympathy, from which all the moral or intellectual greatness of man finally arises. It is to lay the foundation of an early and of a manly piety: amid the magnificent system of material signs in which they reside, to give them the mighty key which can interpret them; and to make them look upon the universe which they inhabit, not as the abode of human cares, or human joys only, but as the temple of the LIVING GOD, in which praise is due, and where service is to be performed.
Composition.
The study of Belles Lettres, or of rhetoric and criticism, is introduced into education, principally for the purpose of improving the young in the art of composition. It is indeed pleasant to be able to judge of the performances of others, to know the causes of our approbation or disapprobation of literary works, to enter into the secrets of the mind, and explore its mysterious laws, to compare the productions of genius with those rules which nature suggests, and to observe the uniformity of her operations in all well organized minds: all this is agreeable ; but it is still more desirable, still more delightful to be able of ourselves to execute, to be able to catch the ideal train, as they glide through our minds, and paint them in all their freshness and originality for our own future examination, or for the inspection of others.
Of all the enjoyments granted to mortals, this is probably the most exquisite and the most elevated; to behold before as the image of our own minds, the glowing transcripts of our own thoughts, as delineated by ourselves; it seems to assimilate us in some degree with the great Creator of mind, when we are able to render its operations visible. Many who are conscious of elevated thoughts are destitute of a power of expression suited to these; many in whom the fire of genius is smothered by ignorance and prejudice, feeling within themselves the workings of a latent intellect, sigh for education as the greatest of human blessings, the means of elevating the mind and rendering its operations sources of the highest enjoyment. Under the greatest disadvantages, the light of genius .has occasionally burst forth, discovering upon the shoemaker's bench a tuneful and sentimental Bloomfield, or at the plough a noble and high-souled Burns. But instances are rare in which unaided genius acquires the confidence to come forth, and try her pinions: education is required by most minds in order to give the courage and skill necessary for effort in the regions of composition. And besides, we must acknowledge that genius is not a common gift; I mean that fire which, unless it can have vent, consumes the soul. And in this we see the goodness of our Creator; for genius is of too fine, too exquisite a nature to bear the rude contact of worldly things; it droops and folds its wings when calamities assail; even the imaginary sufferings of a flower transplanted from its own home, a rose plucked from its parent stem, or the agonies of a poor worm or insect, are sufficient to call forth its tender and plaintive wailings,—how then can it look upon human sufferings, poverty, oppression, injustice, treachery, pain and death ? Indeed we often see that mind which exhibits unequivocal marks of genius, early fading away, as if the atmosphere of the world were too cold for its sensitive nature; thus have Henry Kirk White and Lucretia Davidson,[14] and many others gradually sunk to an untimely grave, apparently through an excess of sensibility.
But is there no remedy for this? Must the fairest and best of human blossoms be given up to be chilled by the frosts, and blighted by the mildews of an ungenial world? Let a suitable and proper direction be given to sensibility, and it may be disciplined and chastened. Let education be properly conducted, and then will reason and judgment be brought to sustain and guide the trembling, aspiring etherial spirit, which is ever shrinking from real evils and refusing to look with steady eye upon the obstacles in the pathway of life. But, supported by reason and judgment, sensibility may learn to encounter evils and to overcome difficulties; especially does she need the aid of religion to reconcile her to earthly sufferings, in view of a happier future. I have spoken of sensibility, because I believe it always belongs to true genius, aad to be the cause of those frequent failures in life which are observable among those who are highly gifted; but a proper mode of education may do much towards chastening, and giving it a right direction.
Lucretia Davidson, the lovely girl whose precocious powers have been the admiration of many, probably fell a victim to an extreme and morbid sensibility: many of you are aware that several years since, she was a member of this institution; some of you may remember her personally. She had, in her childhood, been indulged in her fondness for seclusion and solitary musings. Her education, owing to peculiar circumstances, had not been systematically and thoroughly pursued. On her entering the Seminary, she at once surprised us by the brilliancy and pathos of her compositions,—she evinced a most exquisite sense of the beautiful in the productions of her pencil; always giving to whatever she attempted to copy, certain peculiar and original touches which marked the liveliness of her conceptions, and the power of her genius to embody those conceptions. But from studies which required calm and steady investigation, efforts of memory, judgment and consecutive thinking, her mind seemed to shrink. She had no confidence in herself, and appeared to regard with dismay any requisitions of this nature. Even in geography, which was one of her studies, she found a difficulty in preparing herself for recitations. At the approach of an examination, she was agonized with the fear of disgracing her class by her appearance; 'and in order to calm her apprehensions, 1 had promised to ask her very few questions. When it came her turn to recite, instead of taking the subject next in order, which would have been an explanation of the 'geological structure of the globe,' and which the poor trembling girl had never felt an interest in knowing, I asked her to give some account of the peculiarities of the torrid zone. Miss Davidson's countenance brightened: she begun with the sweetest tones of voice to describe the vegetable wonders of those regions, the spreading bananas, the lofty bamboo trees, forests rendered impenetrable by the luxuriancy of vegetation, and blooming with perennial verdure and beauty. She spoke of the mighty elephant, the hippopotamus, rolling his enormous bulk along the rivers of Africa, the fierce lions and, tigers, poisonous reptiles and ensnaring crocodiles, the great anaconda, winding his huge coils around his helpless victim; nor did she fail to describe that dreadful vampyre, which seeks the traveller in his hour of sleep and gluts itself with his blood. She then, with a new and kindling emotion, spoke of the brilliant fire-flies which illuminate those regions in the night as with a mass of liquid light, of the bounding antelope, and of the beautiful gazelle, whose brilliant and fascinating eyes are the admiration of the beholder. So vivid in my mind is the recollection of her animated and enthusiastic manner at that time, the bright flashing of her dark eye, and the glow of her brilliant complexion, that the conception appears like reality, and it seems as if she now stood before me, the living image of youthful genius and sensibility. But the grave has for many years shrouded her form, once so interesting. We may not imagine the process which is going on in that dreadful laboratory, where the elements which compose the human body are separated and set free to enter into other combinations ; we will rather say with the poet,
‘Not to the grave my soul,
Not to the grave descend to contemplate
The form that once was dear!'
it is better to think of the spirit as disencumbered of its load of clay, and an inhabitant of a purer world.
I have introduced the character of this young lady to show you the great importance of early mental discipline; for, lovely as genius and sensibility may be, in order to be useful, in order to be fitted for life, they must be sustained by the other mental powers. We see the evils of suffering any one department of mind to usurp unlimited power over the other. If one could not be a fine writer, without becoming unfit for the duties of life; if talents were necessarily connected with eccentricities, I would at once warn all my sex from attempting to acquire these dangerous gifts; but I trust it is unnecessary for me to point out the many ladies who at this time hold an important standing in the literary world, and are yet among the most active supporters of social and religious institutions, who are equally distinguished for domestic virtues as for high mental endowments.
But we are yet to go back to the first attempts of the pupil in the art of composition; this it is necessary to do for the benefit of the younger members of the institution, and of some others to whom the idea of writing compositions is new and appalling.
Those who are studying languages, will derive great assistance in composition from the habit of translating. It appears to me that this advantage has not been sufficiently estimated: were it indeed the only one, I should think it a sufficient compensation for the labor which is necessary in acquiring a language. If you take a fine passage of a Latin or French author, and attempt to translate it, the mind, gradually seizing upon the ideas, seems to adopt them as its own; and feeling itself elevated by this new acquisition, becomes capable of greater efforts.
In translating, particular attention should be paid to the exact import of words; thus, the word sentiment which in English is applied to opinions, is in French restricted to the feelings of the heart, it being derived from the verb sentir, to feel. The French would not then speak of political sentiments, but political opinions; they would speak of a sentiment of gratitude or love: when you reflect on the origin of the word sentiment, you will perceive that there is a propriety in making this distinction between this word and opinion, which is derived from a Latin verb signifying to believe. To those of you whose understanding and observation have not furnished you with a stock of ideas for composition, translation may be recommended as a substitute, until you shall have acquired the confidence and ability to compose.
I am aware that of all your exercises, many of you find original composition the most difficult; indeed it is not strange you do so; when you write, you can only express by written characters the thoughts which you have gained by reflection and observation. If you have reflected o observed but little, your stock of intellectual wealth must be small; and who can impart to others that which they do not possess? It may be said, then, why should we be required to write compositions before we are capable of writing well? I answer, that if you have but a small capital to begin with, your store will increase by use; but permit me to caution you as to a choice of subjects; for beginners in composition, often choose such as would require a philosopher to investigate.
For example, let us suppose a young Miss, unaccustomed to confine her thoughts, for any length of time, to any given subject, writing a composition on Gratitude. She has a vague idea that gratitude is something praise-worthy, and begins by saying, ‘that it is a virtue that all should possess.’ When she has proceeded so far, she does not well know what more to say; but the composition must be written; and so she proceeds to say that 'every one ought to be grateful, and when they see people in distress, they ought to relieve their wants:—thus she goes from gratitude to benevolence, and, confounding the two virtues, destroys all distinctions of terms and ideas.
It is very important that in your attempts at writing you confine yourselves to subjects with which you are in some degree familiar. No matter how common, or trivial may be the theme; the object is to acquire a habit of expressing your ideas in writing, with clearness and simplicity. For example, give a description of your own dwelling house, state its length, width, and mode of construction, the materials of which it is composed; and a little reflection, with some previous learning, would suggest to you the improvements which have been made in the building of houses and other kinds of architecture. You might describe your own room, with its furniture, &.c.; or, looking out upon the prospect before you, delineate in words the various objects before you. Any production of nature or art, might furnish you with ideas. For instance, suppose you should write about an apple —you may think this a very insignificant subject—but nothing that God has made is insignificant; nor is the power of describing the most common object to be despised. Well, now begin to think what you could find to say about an apple: you all know to which of the kingdoms of nature it belongs ; you know that it is a fruit, originating from a flower of a certain kind—the kind of flower might be described, the usual height of the tree on which it grows, the climate most favorable to the growth of this tree, the various culinary uses of the apple, the evil purposes to which the ingenuity of man has perverted it, &c. I have yet touched upon few of the subjects which your theme might suggest, and yet much might be said upon each one of the abovementioned heads. A fly, a bee, or a butterfly, might afford subjects for your pen. I do not mean that you are in your descriptions of an apple or an insect, to write as a botanist or geologist would do, but that you express in simple language your own observations upon these, or any other objects. I have said your own observations; you will please to notice this, for without observation you cannot write on any subject, except it be merely to repeat like the parrot, what you hear from others. But by attempting to describe common objects you will see the need of observation and attention with respect to common things, and that learning is not confined to the knowledge which is contained in books.
By using your knowledge, however small the stock at first may be, you will continue to add to your intellectual stores; the idea of wanting to know something that you may communicate in your composition, will induce you to pay attention to objects around you, to hear the remarks of wiser people, and to recollect what you read in books. But do not allow yourselves to borrow from others. On reading a very spirited or profound composition from a young lady of limited talents and opportunities, a teacher immediately believes that it is borrowed, even should it chance that she has not before seen the same thing. This is not only stealing, but defrauding yourselves. If you begin with compositions, above your own capacities, you must continue them, or the deception, will at once appear to your companions, as well as teachers. But I should very unwillingly believe that any pupil can be so lost to honorable sentiments as to wish to gain reputation for talents she does not possess, or so unjust to herself as to prevent her own improvement in the attempt to seem to be, what she is not. You have heard some things that may be said upon an apple. Look around you, and you see innumerable objects in the productions of nature and art; all of these have peculiarities of their own, which may be described even with no other knowledge of them, than you may gain by your sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell,—innumerable comparisons between these objects will also naturally suggest themselves to your minds; as you acquire more knowledge, you will think of many relations existing between them which you now do not observe. The subject of geology, on which you all have the advantage of hearing lectures, will serve to lead even the youngest of you to reflect on the many things which may be said even of stones. You have perhaps thought that all were alike, but you now find that there is diversity of character among rocks, as well as people. The rocks are not morally or intellectually different from each other, since they are destitute of intelligence, and even of life, which plants possess—but rocks and stones are physically different, that is, their external appearance is various, and their chemical composition different.
When you walk or ride out, you can always meet with something animate or inanimate that may serve for the subject of a composition. When you see a person in affliction, or behold some one debased by intoxication, or taking the name of God in vain, emotions of various kinds will be awakened, and under the influence of these you might be led to write with facility. When you see a good person relieving distress, you will sympathize with the feelings of those who receive this kindness, and thus you may, from your own observation and reflection, comprehend the nature and obligations of gratitude. Yet still you may not be able to investigate this emotion; for in order to do this, you would need to be acquainted with the operations of the mind, and to explore the recesses of the human heart, and the relations of cause and effect.
Although in some of the foregoing remarks I have more particularly addressed myself to the younger pupils, and those to whom the exercise of writing composition is new, I would any to all, be careful of going out of your own depth; study to understand the nature of your own minds, and occupy yourselves with subjects which you most readily and fully comprehend—write as if you had something to say, not as if you attempted to say something because you must write. If your minds are properly disciplined to habits of reflection, you must, with all that you are now studying, hearing and seeing, have something to say respecting your own observations, reflections, sentiments and opinions. It is well for advanced pupils, to write frequently on the subjects which they are engaged in studying.
A pupil in astronomy having beheld the heavens, traced the path of the constellations, contemplated the planets and the fixed stars, as they are arranged in their beautiful order, may surely find enough to say of such observations—she might, as genius or inclination prompted, state in precise and scientific language the various celestial phenomena, or with an imagination kindling at such scenes rise to a style of sublimity. Or if a Christian, and impressed with the thoughts of the Divine Power which created and upholds this wonderful universe, she would naturally be led to pour forth the devout expressions of a pious heart. Mechanical philosophy, optics, botany, chemistry, and all physical subjects, should lead the mind of the student to the observation of nature, and such observations will furnish matter for composition.
History and geography are fruitful in subjects for the exercise of the pen. Rhetoric and criticism are intended chiefly to teach you to arrange your thoughts with clearness and elegance, and to avoid errors which might offend the ear of taste, and rules of composition. Moral philosophy, leading the mind to reflect upon the reciprocal duties of mankind, and their common obligations to their Maker, cannot fail to suggest new trains of thought.
And when the empire of the human mind is first unfolded, as it were, upon a map before you, and the many devious windings of thought traced to their mysterious sources ; when you are first led to perceive that the mind possesses the power of looking inwardly upon its own operations, how many new and interesting ideas spring into existence! Copy these in their own native freshness and vividness of coloring, and the transcript cannot fail of being delightful to others.
The first impressions which the various branches of literature and science make upon the mind, have a character of originality and enthusiasm, which cannot afterwards be caught—these evanescent emotions should then be secured by copies made when they are fresh and new.
I have not recommended the attempt to write stories from the imagination; this may be well occasionally, but it has the bad effect of bringing the mind too much under the dominion of fancy. It is better for young ladies to occupy themselves with realities, than to stray too much into the dangerous regions of imagination. Besides, the practice of writing tales has a tendency to form a tinselled kind of style, not to be compared in dignity or propriety with a simple and plain manner of telling truth. Indeed it is to be hoped that as the various departments of human knowledge become more filled with facts, and these facts are arranged according to the rules of science, ample scope will be found for the exercise of the human faculties;—and although we desire not to see the province of fiction deserted, yet we would see a higher rank awarded to those who search for and discover truth, who assist and perfect nature, than to the fabricators of those gossamer tales which receive all their coloring from the varying and illusive hue of fancy, and which have no higher aim than the amusement of hours, which are already too short and too few for the great objects of human existence.
Poetry is a species of composition which none should attempt except those who are strongly prompted by genius. True poetical talent is rare, and can never be forced into existence: when it is possessed, it should be regarded as a precious gift from the Creator of mind, and enlisted in the service of virtue and piety.
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J. Hamilton Moore. The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Monitor and English Teacher's Assistant; Being A Collection of Select Pieces from Our Best Modern Writers; Calculated to Eradicate vulgar Prejudices and rusticity of manners; Improve the Understanding; Rectify the Will; Purify the passions; direct the Minds of Youth to the pursuit of proper Objects; and to .facilitate their Reading, 'Writing, and Speaking the English Language, with Elegance and Propriety. Particularly adapted for the use of our eminent Schools and Academies as well as Private Persons, who have not an opportunity of perusing the Works of those celebrated Authors, from whence this Collection is made (1824).
PREFACE.
AS the design of Learning is to render persons agreeable companions to themselves, and useful members of society; to support solitude with pleasure, and to pass through promiscuous temptations with prudence; it is presumed, this compilation will not be unacceptable ; being composed of pieces selected from the most celebrated moral writers in the English language, equally calculated to promote the principles of religion, and to render youth vigilant in discharging the social and relative duties in the several stations of life; by instilling into their minds such maxims of virtue and good breeding, as tend to eradicate local prejudices and rusticity of manners; and at the same time, habituate them to an elegant manner of expressing themselves either in Writing or Speaking.
And as the first impression made on the minds of youth is the most lasting, great care should be taken to furnish them with such seeds of reason and philosophy, as may rectify and sweeten every part of their future lives; by marking out a proper behaviour both with respect to themselves and others, and exhibiting every virtue to their view which claims their attention, and every vice which they ought to avoid. Instead of this, we generally see youth suffered to read romances, which impress on their minds such notions of Fairies, Goblins, &c. that exist only in the imagination, and being strongly imbibed, take much time to eradicate, and very often baffle all the power of philosophy. If books abounding with moral instructions conveyed in a proper manner, were given in their stead, the frequent reading of them would implant in their minds such ideas and sentiments, as would enable them to guard against those prejudices so frequently met with amongst the ignorant.
Nor is it possible that any person can speak or write with elegance and propriety, who has not been taught to read well, and in such books where the sentiments are just and the language pure.
An insipid flatness and languor is almost the universal fault in reading; often uttering their words so faint and feeble, that they appear neither to feel nor understand what they read, nor have any desire it should be understood or felt by others. In order to acquire a forcible manner of pronouncing words, let the pupil inure themselves, while reading, to draw in as much air as their lungs can contain with ease, and to expel it with vehemence in uttering those sounds which require an emphatical pronunciation, and to read aloud with all the exertion they can command; let all the consonant sounds be expressed with a full impulse of the breath, and a forcible action of the organs employed in forming them; and all the vow el sound have a full and bold utterance.
These reasons, and to inspire youth with noble sentiments, just expressions, to ease the teacher, and to render a book cheap and convenient for schools, as well as private persons who have neither time nor opportunity to peruse the works of those celebrated authors from which this collection is made, was the cause of the following compilation.
And as speeches in both bouses of parliament, pleadings at the bar, instructions in the pulpit, and commercial correspondence, are delivered and carried on in the English Language; the clothing our thoughts with proper expressions, and conveying our ideas, either in writing or speaking, agreeably, cannot fail of making an impression upon the hearer or reader For, a man's knowledge is of little use to the world, when he is not able to convey it properly to others; which is the case of many who are endowed with excellent parts, but either afraid or ashamed of writing or speaking in public, being conscious of tbeir own deficiency of expressing themselves in proper terms.
In order lo remedy these defects, and to ease the teacher, I would advise that several young gentlemen read in a class, each a sentence in this book, (it being divided into small portions for that purpose) as often as convenient: and let him who reads best, be advanced to the head, or have some pecuniary reward ; and every inferior one according to his merit; this will create emulation among them, and facilitate their improvement much, more than threats or corrections, which stupifies and intimidates them, and often ends in contempt of their teacher and learning in general. This will draw forth those latent abilities, which otherwise might lie dormant for ever.
It may not be improper for the teacher, or some good reader, to read a sentence or two first, that the learners may gain the proper emphasis, and read without that monotony so painful to a good ear; for they will improve more by imitating a good reader than any rules that can be laid down to them. When they come to read gracefully, let them stand up in the school, read aloud, in order to take off that bashfulness generally attending those who are called upon either to read or speak in public.
The next thing I would recommend, is the English Grammar (the best I know of is Buchanan's Syntax) the knowledge of which is absolutely necessary as it is the solid foundation upon which all other science pests. After they have run over the rules of syntax, the teacher may dictate to them one or more sentences in false English, which they may correct by their grammar rules, and also find out the various significations of each word in the dictionary: by which means they will soon acquire a copious vocabulary, and become acquainted not with words only, but with things themselves. Let them^et those sentences by heart to speak extempore; which will, in some measure, be delivering their own compositions, and may be repeated as often as convenient. This will soon give the young gentlemen an idea of the force, elegance, and beauty of the English language.
The next thing I would gladly recommend, is that of letter-writing, a branch of education, which seems to me of the utmost utility, and of which most of our youth are deficient at their leaving school; being suffered to form their own stile by chance, or imitate the first wretched model that falls in their way, before they know what is faulty, or can relish the beauties of a just simplicity.
For their improvement in this particular, the teacher may cause every young gentlemen to have a slate or paper before him, on Saturdays and then dictate a letter to them, either of his own composition, or taken out of some book, and turn it into false English, to exercise them in the grammar rules if he thinks proper, which they should all write down, and then correct and transcribe it fairly in their books.
After the young gentlemen have been accustomed to this some time, a supposed correspondence may be fixed between every two of them, and write to one anothor under the inspection of the teacher, who may correct and shew their faults, when he sees occasion : by such a method he will soon find them improve in epistolary writing. The same maybe observed with regard to young ladies, who are very often deficient not only in orthography, but every other part of grammar.
If something similar to this method be pursued, it will soon reflect honour on the teacher, give the highest satisfaction to judicious parents, and entail upon the scholar a pleasing and lasting advantage.
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Sarah J. Hale. Ladies’ Magazine 2.1 (1829)
THE BEGINNING.
"We beg your hearing patiently."
Perhaps there is no part of the duty devolving on editors more difficult to execute cleverly, than that of preparing the article which is to announce a new series of the work under their care. They must satisfy, by promises, public expectation on the one hand, and keep within the scope and likelihood of their own abilities to perform, on the other. The rage for novelties is at present universal, and seems insatiable. New writers, as well as new books, are constantly demanded; and fashion is nearly as variable in modes of thought, as in modes of dress. What delights the world to-day, may probably disgust to-morrow; and this love of change and variety, is the natural consequence of the spirit of inquiry, invention and improvement, which so decidedly marks the age: a spirit, which is productive of much good, but nevertheless partakes sufficiently of the character of all human knowledge, to have evil mingled with the results of its speculations and experiments. One evil is, the encouragement given to a class of writers merely because they write. Many a novel is published and puffed, whose only merit is, that it is the "last new novel."
It may be thought strange that the editor of the Ladies' Magazine should censure as evil, that thirst for literary novelties which undoubtedly, was one of the most efficient causes in giving patronage to the first volume of the work tmder her care. But though the novelty of the undertaking, on the part of a woman, excited curiosity to see how the publication would be managed, she would be loath to think, she must owe her permanent support to the novelty of the theories she must advance or advocate. In truth, she would be very reluctant to see any extraordinary changes in the manners of our American women, any daring innovation in female allotments. But then, no doubt, gradual improvements may be advantageously made. Whether there is, between the sexes, a perfect equality of intellect, is, in the editor's opinion, a question of small importance, while it must be so obvious to every person of reflection, that the duties of men and women are different. One motive that influenced her to endeavor to add somewhat to the knowledge of her sex, was to make females better acquainted with their duties and privileges as women. The editor has no wish to tinge all her sex blue—to make the standard of excellence in authorship, the standard of female excellence— to turn our country into a great literary Factory, and set all our young ladies to spinning their brains. No—she wishes to direct them to a far nobler and more efficient method of gaining an influence, and maintaining an importance in society. She would arouse her sex to the consideration of the vast power nature has given them over the human mind, by committing the infancy of men as welt as women entirely to their care. Women, therefore, are in fact, the tutors of men; and the sentiments of a man may be appropriately quoted, to show the extent of female influence in this early training.
"There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother. The forms of a free government, the provisions of wise legislation', the schemes of the statesman, the sacrifices of the patriot, are as nothing compared with this. If the future citizens of our republic, are to be worthy of their rich inheritance, they must be made so, principally through the virtue and intelligence of their mothers. It is in that school of maternal tenderness, that the kind affections must be first roused and made habitual,—the early sentiment of piety awakened, and rightly directed—the sense of duty and; moral responsibility unfolded and enlightened. But next in rank and efficacy to that pure and holy source of moral influence, is that of the schoolmaster."
Now the editor wishes to unite the perfection of these two characters, namely, that of excellent mothers and excellent instructresses, with the name of woman. She believes that women are capable of the task; that the business of instruction, except in the very highest seminaries, might with propriety be committed to females; that it would be a business suited to their talents, congenial to their character, and appropriate to their station. She intends, therefore, seriously to urge it upon the consideration of parents whether, in this practical age, the education of young ladies cannot be directed to some aim besides that of mere display. And this is the greatest innovation which will be advocated in the Ladies' Magazine.
Of the literary character of the work, perhaps the present number is a tolerable specimen. But it is intended to have one copperplate engraving as a frontispiece. It will be given in February or March. Should the patronage equal the hopes of the publishers, there will be more ornaments introduced; but it is not wise to promise too much, becauseour promises are made, not with an intention of gaining subscribers, but of gratifying them—and they will not bo gratified with a disappointment.
A THOUGHT.
It must be borne in mind, that this periodical is not a compilation, a mere "omnium gatherum" of the shreds and clippings of all the old newspapers in the nation. The work is to be wholly original articles; but then, that an article is original, will not form the only grounds of its acceptance. Though all due attention will be paid to the efforts of young writers and casual contributions, yet such do not form all the resources from which the materials of the Ladies' Magazine will be drawn. Several of our most popular poets are engaged to write for the work; and the editor will devote herself, with all the industry in her power, to its arrangement. But she cannot do this without pecuniary remuneration. She does not write for fame. She is animated by the hope of a far higher reward that of being enabled to support and educate her children. She asks patronage, because she intends to deserve it; and the public has the surest guaranty on earth, that she will endeavor to redeem her pledge—the guaranty of a mother's affection.
AUTHORESSES.—No. I.
"She is an authoress," has long and often been the sneering remark among ignorant witlings, of both sexes, whenever they attempted to account for any seeming or supposed impropriety of behavior and inelcgancy of taste, reported to characterize the woman, who had been so regardless of her sex's disqualifications for thought, as actually to allow her own thoughts to appear in print. "She is an authoress!"—how much more is meant than meets the ear, in that phrase. Perhaps there is no subject which has been so often canvassed, that is at the present time so little understood, as the capacities of the female mind, and the importance which should be attached to female education. There must, in the outset, have been some strange prejudices indulged, or wrong pretensions insisted on, otherwise the absurdity of the conclusion that has followed, could never have been entertained, as it now is, by many men of sense and reflection—namely, that learning has often a tendency to render women unamiable and unuseful. Yet why should it be so? Why, when knowledge is one of the perfections of immortal beings, should Christians, who are taught that in heaven is no distinction of sex, make a distinction in the honor they pay to intelligence, to talents, when combined with piety, on earth?
In the rude ages of the world, when physical strength gave the right to be eminent, woman could have no chance of establishing her pretensions to equality, even had she advanced them. Now the scene is changed. In our Republic, especially, the lot of the weaker sex (always weaker in bones and muscles) is highly favored, and here, if ever in this world, appears to be preparing the theatre where the abilities of woman are to be developed, and where the full influence of her powers of mind, when prepared and polished by education to act with effect on society, are to be tested. Those of either sex, who have reflected on the subject, compared the evidences of female intellect, as they have been exhibited, under all the disadvantages and disabilities which, for so many centuries, seemed sufficient to annihilate thought, and mind too, could that have been destroyed, in the fun:i!i.. to such there can exist little doubt but that the trial will fully sustain the credit of those candid writers who have occasionally appeared as advocates of the weaker party. A party whose reputed inferiority of mind exposed them always to that pity which is so nearly allied to contempt, and yet from which they were not permitted even to attempt an escape, without encountering a greater evil;— for was pity or contempt so much to be dreaded as the ridicule or fear, the hatred or envy, which learned women, beu blues, as they are contemptuously styled, have usually had to encounter? But should the trial be thus decisive in favor of woman, should she, no longer considered an intruder in the fields of science, be permitted to take an honorable seat in the temple of learning, the next questionwill be, what portion of the labors and laurels of knowledge are to be assigned her? The settlement of this question involves, in my opinion, riot only much of the happiness and permanent respectability of my own sex, but it will, also, materially aflect the happiness and order of society, and even the character of our country.
It shonld always be borne in mind that our form of government is dependent on public opinion, that this public opinion is only the expression of a majority of private opinions, and that if the majority of our citi/ens are not honest, and well instructed in the knowledge of their rights and duties, our republican institutions will surely become corrupted;—and the licentiousness of a lawless democracy, without virtue or intelligence is, we learn from history, (may we never know otherwise) more terrible than the oppressions of despotism. The great desideratum, therefore, to be sought, as the only probable means which will make the experiment of national self-government successful and permanent, is national education. Not the enlightening of the minds of our people merely, but the culture of the heart, the discipline of the passions, the regulations of the feelings and the affections. And education thus radical in its operations, and important in its consequences should never be committed to incompetent or inferior agents. What father, wishing his children to be wise and good, would willingly entrust them, while receiving their first impressions and first lessons, usually the most influential on their future characters, to an ignorant or a feeble minded person? Yet to women always did and always must belong this province of early education. And may not most of the ignorance and consequent misery mankind have suffered be traced to the neglect and undervaluing of the agents by whom this early training has been carried on? Women were long thought incompetent to share the knowledge of good imparted by the tree that
" Brought death into the world, and all our wo,"
though they had to endure their full share of the evil. The consequence was that darkness prevailed more than light, because while one half of the species was in blank ignorance, it were as vain to hope that the remainder would attain to their full capacity of intelligence, as to expect that the perfect effulgence of day would be poured over the earth, while the sun was shorn, by an eclipse, of half his beams.
When the religion of the Son of Mary was introduced it gave woman an exalted triumph. In establishing the immortality of the human soul, it established, between the sexes, an equality of promises and duties, of hopes and joys, that no christian dared dispute or disbelieve. Tins equality, and the consequent improvement and elevation of the mind of woman and her influence on society, were doubtless among the most efficient causes in promoting the civilization of those nations that embraced christianity. But still the sphere of woman was incomplete, because her powers were not yet half developed, neither were the application of her talents defined or honored as they ought to have been. This happened partly because her physical strength and delicacy of constitution forbade her to engage in those pursuits to which men had decreed the awards of merit ; but mostly because the importance of early education was neither understood or appreciated,
"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer,"
as that satirist of women, who nevertheless sorely envied the talents of Lady Montague, asserted, was supposed to he the amount of the duties and usefulness of the female, when divested of the factitious importance imparted by her appearance in society and her influence on manners and fashions. This disposition to be-little, to represent as insignificant the domestic employments of females, and above all, the attempt to throw ridicule on the almost holy office of the mother, has had a very injurious effect; indeed it will be found, by those who carefully examine, to be the chief cause of all the evils, and they are neither few nor small, which threaten society, on the one hand, from the ignorance of women, which render them unfit to discharge their duties properly, and on the other hand, from that pride of learning which leads them to despise their duties and neglect them altogether. For it is to escape the imputation of this insignificance that has induced many women, who felt conscious of their own powers, to devote themselves to studies and researches which would otherwise never have engrossed their attention; and they have neglected those cares and concerns which would have been their choice and pride, had not the opinion of the world, (meaning the opinion of the men) stigmatized such employments as trilling, as unconnected with the exertion of mind, as only to be imposed on those whose capacity, as well as station, wad subordinate.
Here then is the root of the evil.—Females have never been thought entitled to respect from their station as wo- . men, for the fulfilment of their feminine duties merely- ' Admiration and adulation have followed their personal charms, but still this flattery was to their foolishness ; not one of their admirers ever thought an improvement in knowledge, which of course supposed an increase in years, would be to the advantage of those he pretended to love. Folly was synonymous with the name of women while in youth —she was then adored;—ignorance was her appellation in age—she was then abhorred.—And can rational beings be contented to occupy a station where reason is denied them? where the faculties of the mind are never to be exercised, or never to be considered as adding to their worth and respectability?
But is it necessary to the peace and comfort of society that women should be ignorant, or that they should be considered- inferior? Is there no scope for their abilities without entering into a competition for masculine honors, and engaging in masculine employments? Was the Creator when forming his" last work" certainly, if not his " best," so improvident or unjust as to bestow powers which were above the station she was designed to hold, and, which, of course, it would be wrong, perhaps detrimental to the world, to cultivate or display? Who that worships the "God of order" can believe this ? And yet, for nearly 6000 years has the female intellect been suffered to remain a blank, either neglected or derided.—In her assuredly
----' The faculty divine,
"Is chained and tortured,—cabined, cribbed, confined!"
No wonder the few who escaped such thraldom sometimes use the liberty of their facilities unguardedly, improperly, even dangerously, if you will, to the happiness of their own families, perhaps even to the disturbance of society. But what then? The abuse of reason does not prove that women have no use for reason. Neither does the little they have as yet ostensibly contributed to the stock of general knowledge demonstrate that they are incapable of such exertion, or that it would be, under different circumstances, o'erstepping the modesty and privileges of their sex, should they actually become co-workers with the lords of creation in the fields of science and national improvement. How this may be accomplished, without endangering in the least that supremacy in all that properly belongs to the government of earth—which, believing as I do, that it was by the Almighty delegated expressly to the man, (mark me, not deserved by any superior strength of mind, except what may be derived only from the superior strength of physical powers,) I have no wish to controvert or undervalue,—I shall in my next number attempt to show.
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Elias Boudinot. An Address to the Whites (1826)
To those who are unacquainted with the manners, habits, and improvements of the Aborigines of this country, the term Indian is pregnant with ideas the most repelling and degrading. But such impressions, originating as they frequently do, from infant prejudices, although they hold too true when applied to some, do great injustice to many of this race of beings.
Some there are, perhaps even in this enlightened assembly, who at the bare sight of an Indian, or at the mention of the name, would throw back their imaginations to ancient times, to the ravages of savage warfare, to the yells pronounced over the mangled bodies of women and children, thus creating an opinion, inapplicable and highly injurious to those for whose temporal interest and eternal welfare, I come to plead.
What is an Indian? Is he not formed of the same materials with yourself? For "of one blood God created all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth." Though it be true that he is ignorant, that he is a heathen, that he is a savage; yet he is no more than all others have been under similar circumstances. Eighteen centuries ago what were the inhabitants of Great Britain?
You here behold an Indian, my kindred are Indians, and my fathers sleeping in the wilderness grave -- they too were Indians. But I am not as my fathers were -- broader means and nobler influences have fallen upon me. Yet I was not born as thousands are, in a stately dome and amid the congratulations of the great, for on a little hill, in a lonely cabin, overspread by the forest oak, I first drew my breath; and in a language unknown to learned and polished nations, I learnt to lisp my fond mother's name. In after days, I have had greater advantages than most of my race; and I now stand before you delegated by my native country to seek her interest, to labour for her respectability, and by my public efforts to assist in raising her to an equal standing with other nations of the earth.
The time has arrived when speculations and conjectures as to the practicability of civilizing the Indians must forever cease. A period is fast approaching when the stale remark -- "Do what you will, an Indian will still be an Indian," must be placed no more in speech. With whatever plausibility this popular objection may have heretofore been made, every candid mind must now be sensible that it can no longer be uttered, except by those who are uninformed with respect to us, who are strongly prejudiced against us, or who are filled with vindictive feelings towards us; for the present history of the Indians, particularly of that nation to which I belong, most incontrovertibly establishes the fallacy of this remark. I am aware of the difficulties which have ever existed to Indian civilization, I do not deny the almost insurmountable obstacles which we ourselves have thrown in the way of this improvement, nor do I say that difficulties no longer remain; but facts will permit me to declare that there are none which may not easily be overcome, by strong and continued exertions. It needs not abstract reasoning to prove this position. It needs not the display of language to prove to the minds of good men, that Indians are susceptible of attainments neeessary to the formation of polished society. It needs not the power of argument on the nature of man, to silence forever the remark that "it is the purpose of the Almighty that the Indians should be exterminated." It needs only that the world should know what we have done in the few last years, to foresee what yet we may do with the assistance of our white brethren, and that of the common Parent of us all.
It is not necessary to present to you a detailed account of the various aboriginal tribes, who have been known to you only on the pages of history, and there but obscurely known. They have gone; and to revert back to their days, would be only to disturb their oblivious sleep; to darken these walls with deeds at which humanity must shudder; to place before your eyes the scenes of Muskingum Sahta-goo and the plains of Mexico, to call up the crimes of the bloody Cortes and his infernal host; and to describe the animosity and vengeance which have overthrown, and hurried into the shades of death those numerous tribes. But here let me say, that however guilty these unhappy nations may have been, yet many and unreasonable were the wrongs they suffered, many the hardships they endured, and many their wanderings through the trackless wilderness. Yes, "notwithstanding the obloquy with which the early historians of the colonies have overshadowed the character of the ignorant and unfortunate natives, some bright gleams will occasionally break through, that throw a melancholy lustre on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be met with in their rude annals, which, though recorded with all the colouring of prejudice and bigotry, yet speak for themselves, and will be dwelt upon with applause and sympathy when prejudice shall have passed away."
Nor is it my purpose to enter largely into the consideration of the remnants, of those who have fled with time and are no more -- They stand as monuments of the Indian's fate. And should they ever become extinct, they must move off the earth, as did their fathers. My design is to offer a few disconnected facts relative to the present improved state, and to the ultimate prospects of that particular tribe called Cherokees to which I belong.
The Cherokee nation lies within the chartered limits of the states of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Its extent as defined by treaties is about 200 miles in length from East to West, and about 120 in breadth. This country which is supposed to contain about 10,000,000 of acres exhibits great varieties of surface, the most part being hilly and mountaneous, affording soil of no value. The vallies, however, are well watered and afford excellent land, in many parts particularly on the large streams, that of the first quality. The climate is temperate and healthy, indeed I would not be guilty of exaggeration were I to say, that the advantages which this country possesses to render it salubrious, are many and superior. Those lofty and barren mountains, defying the labour and ingenuity of man, and supposed by some as placed there only to exhibit omnipotence, contribute to the healthiness and beauty of the surrounding plains, and give to us that free air and pure water which distinguish our country. These advantages, calculated to make the inhabitants healthy, vigorous, and intelligent, cannot fail to cause this country to become interesting. And there can be no doubt that the Cherokee Nation, however obscure and trifling it may now appear, will finally become, if not under its present occupants, one of the Garden spots of America. And here, let me be indulged in the fond wish, that she may thus become under those who now possess her; and ever be fostered, regulated and protected by the generous government of the United States.
The population of the Cherokee Nation increased from the year 1810 to that of 1824, 2000 exclusive of those who emigrated in 1818 and 19 to the west of the Mississippi -- of those who reside on the Arkansas the number is supposed to be about 5000.
The rise of these people in their movement towards civilization, may be traced as far back as the relinquishment of their towns; when game became incompetent to their support, by reason of the surrounding white population. They then betook themselves to the woods, commenced the opening of small clearings, and the raising of stock; still however following the chase. Game has since become so scarce that little dependence for subsistence can be placed upon it. They have gradually and I could almost say universally forsaken their ancient employment. In fact, there is not a single family in the nation, that can be said to subsist on the slender support which the wilderness would afford. The love and the practice of hunting are not now carried to a higher degree, than among all frontier people whether white or red. It cannot be doubted, however, that there are many who have commenced a life of agricultural labour from mere necessity, and if they could, would gladly resume their former course of living. But these are individual failings and ought to be passed over.
On the other hand it cannot be doubted that the nation is improving, rapidly improving in all those particulars which must finally constitute the inhabitants an industrious and intelligent people.
It is a matter of surprise to me, and must be to all those who are properly acquainted with the condition of the Aborigines of this country, that the Cherokees have advanced so far and so rapidly in civilization. But there are yet powerful obstacles, both within and without, to be surmounted in the march of improvement. The prejudices in regard to them in the general community are strong and lasting. The evil effects of their intercourse with their immediate white neighbours, who differ from them chiefly in name, are easily to be seen, and it is evident that from this intercourse proceed those demoralizing practices which in order to surmount, peculiar and unremitting efforts are necessary. In defiance, however, of these obstacles the Cherokees have improved and are still rapidly improving. To give you a further view of their condition, I will here repeat some of the articles of the two statistical tables taken at different periods.
In 1810 There were 19,500 cattle; 6,100 horses; 19,600 swine; 1,037 sheep; 467 looms; 1,600 spinning wheels; 30 waggons; 500 ploughs; 3 saw-mills; 13 grist-mills &c. At this time there are 22,000 cattle; 7,600 Horses; 46,000 swine; 2,500 sheep; 762 looms; 2488 spinning wheels; 172 waggons; 2,943 ploughs; 10 saw-mills; 31 grist-mills; 62 Blacksmith-shops; 8 cotton machines; 18 schools; 18 ferries; and a number of public roads. In one district there were, last winter, upwards of 0000 volumes of good books; and 11 different periodical papers both religious and political, which were taken and read. On the public roads there are many decent Inns, and few houses for convenience, &c., would disgrace any country. Most of the schools are under the care and tuition of christian missionaries, of different denominations, who have been of great service to the nation, by inculcating moral and religious principles into the minds of the rising generation. In many places the word of God is regularly preached and explained, both by missionaries and natives; and there are numbers who have publicly professed their belief and interest in the merits of the great Saviour of the world. It is worthy of remark, that in no ignorant country have the missionaries undergone less trouble and difficulty, in spreading a knowledge of the Bible, than in this. Here, they have been welcomed and encouraged by the proper authorities of the nation, their persons have been protected, and in very few instances have some individual vagabonds threatened violence to them. Indeed it may be said with truth, that among no heathen people has the faithful minister of God experienced greater success, greater reward for his labour, than in this. He is surrounded by attentive hearers, the words which flow from his lips are not spent in vain. The Cherokees have had no established religion of their own, and perhaps to this circumstance we may attribute, in part, the facilities with which missionaries have pursued their ends. They cannot be called idolators; for they never worshipped Images. They believed in a Supreme Being, the Creator of all, the God of the white, the red, and the black man. They also believed in the existence of an evil spirit who resided, as they thought, in the setting sun, the future place of all who in their life time had done iniquitously. Their prayers were addressed alone to the Supreme Being, and which if written would fill a large volume, and display much sincerity, beauty and sublimity. When the ancient customs of the Cherokees were in their full force, no warrior thought himself secure, unless he had addressed his guardian angel; no hunter could hope for success, unless before the rising sun he had asked the assistance of his God, and on his return at eve he had offered his sacrifice to him.
There are three things of late occurance, which must certainly place the Cherokee Nation in a fair light, and act as a powerful argument in favor of Indian improvement.
First. The invention of letters.
Second. The translation of the New Testament into Cherokee.
And third. The organization of a Government.
The Cherokee mode of writing lately invented by George Guest, who could not read any language nor speak any other than his own, consists of eight-six characters, principally syllabic, the combinations of which form all the words of the language. Their terms may be greatly simplified, yet they answer all the purposes of writing, and already many natives use them.
The translation of the New Testament, together with Guest's mode of writing, has swept away that barrier which has long existed, and opened a spacious channel for the instruction of adult Cherokees. Persons of all ages and classes may now read the precepts of the Almighty in their own language. Before it is long, there will scarcely be an individual in the nation who can say, "I know not God neither understand I what thou sayest," for all shall know him from the greatest to the least. The aged warrior over whom has rolled three score and ten years of savage life, will grace the temple of God with his hoary head; and the little child yet on the breast of its pious mother shall learn to lisp its Maker's name.
The shrill sound of the Savage yell shall die away as the roaring of far distant thunder; and Heaven wrought music will gladden the affrighted wilderness. "The solitary places will be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose." Already do we see the morning star, forerunner of approaching dawn, rising over the tops of those deep forests in which for ages have echoed the warrior's whoop. But has not God said it, and will he not do it? The Almighty decrees his purposes, and man cannot with all his ingenuity and device countervail them. They are more fixed in their course than the rolling sun -- more durable than the everlasting mountains.
The Government, though defective in many respects, is well suited to the condition of the inhabitants. As they rise in information and refinement, changes in it must follow, until they arrive at that state of advancement, when I trust they will be admitted into all the privileges of the American family.
The Cherokee Nation is divided into eight districts, in each of which are established courts of justice, where all disputed cases are decided by a Jury, under the direction of a circuit Judge, who has jurisdiction over two districts. Sheriffs and other public officers are appointed to execute the decisions of the courts, collect debts, and arrest thieves and other criminals. Appeals may be taken to the Superior Court, held annually at the seat of Government. The Legislative authority is vested in a General Court, which consists of the National Committee and Council. The National Committee consists of thirteen members, who are generally men of sound sense and fine talents. The National Council consists of thirty-two members, beside the speaker, who act as the representatives of the people. Every bill passing these two bodies, becomes the law of the land. Clerks are appointed to do the writings, and record the proceedings of the Council. The executive power is vested in two principal chiefs, who hold their office during good behaviour, and sanction all the decisions of the legislative council. Many of the laws display some degree of civilization, and establish the respectability of the nation.
Polygamy is abolished. Female chastity and honor are protected by law. The Sabbath is respected by the Council during session. Mechanics are encouraged by law. The practice of putting aged persons to death for witchcraft is abolished and murder has now become a governmental crime.
From what I have said, you will form but a faint opinion of the true state and prospects of the Cherokees. You will, however, be convinced of three important truths.
First, that the means which have been employed for the christianization and civilization of this tribe, have been greatly blessed. Second, that the increase of these means will meet with final success. Third, that it has now become necessary, that efficient and more than ordinary means should be employed.
Sensible of this last point, and wishing to do something for themselves, the Cherokees have thought it advisable that there should be established, a Printing Press and a Seminary of respectable character; and for these purposes your aid and patronage are now solicited. They wish the types, as expressed in their resolution, to be composed of English letters and Cherokee characters. Those characters have now become extensively used in the nation; their religious songs are written in them; there is an astonishing eagerness in people of all classes and ages to acquire a knowledge of them; and the New Testament has been translated into their language. All this impresses on them the immediate necessity of procuring types. The most informed and judicious of our nation, believe that such a press would go further to remove ignorance, and her offspring superstition and prejudice, than all other means. The adult part of the nation will probably grovel on in ignorance and die in ignorance, without any fair trial upon them, unless the proposed means are carried into effect. The simplicity of this method of writing, and the eagerness to obtain a knowledge of it, are evinced by the astonishing rapidity with which it is acquired, and by the numbers who do so. It is about two years since its introduction, and already there are a great many who can read it. In the neighbourhood in which I live, I do not recollect a male Cherokee, between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, who is ignorant of this mode of writing. But in connexion with those for Cherokee characters, it is necessary to have types for English letters. There are many who already speak and read the English language, and can appreciate the advantages which would result from the publication of their laws and transactions in a well conducted newspaper. Such a paper, comprising a summary of religious and political events, &c. on the one hand; and on the other, exhibiting the feelings, disposition, improvements, and prospects of the Indians; their traditions, their true character, as it once was and as it now is; the ways and means most likely to throw the mantle of civilization over all tribes; and such other matter as will tend to diffuse proper and correct impressions in regard to their condition -- such a paper could not fail to create much interest in the American community, favourable to the aborigines, and to have a powerful influence on the advancement of the Indians themselves. How can the patriot or the philanthropist devise efficient means, without full and correct information as to the subjects of his labour. And I am inclined to think, after all that has been said of the aborigines, after all that has been written in narratives, professedly to elucidate the leading traits of their character, that the public knows little of that character. To obtain a correct and complete knowledge of these people, there must exist a vehicle of Indian intelligence, altogether different from those which have heretofore been employed. Will not a paper published in an Indian country, under proper and judicious regulations, have the desired effect? I do not say that Indians will produce learned and elaborate dissertations in explanation and vindication of their own character; but they may exhibit specimens of their intellectual efforts, of their eloquence, of their moral, civil and physical advancement, which will do quite as much to remove prejudice and to give profitable information.
The Cherokees wish to establish their Seminary, upon a footing which will insure to it all the advantages, that belong to such institutions in the states. Need I spend one moment in arguments, in favour of such an institution; need I speak one word of the utility, of the necessity, of an institution of learning; need I do more than simply to ask the patronage of benevolent hearts, to obtain that patronage.
When before did a nation of Indians step forward and ask for the means of civilization? The Cherokee authorities have adopted the measures already stated, with a sincere desire to make their nation an intelligent and a virtuous people, and with a full hope that those who have already pointed out to them the road of happiness, will now assist them to pursue it. With that assistance, what are the prospects of the Cherokees? Are they not indeed glorious, compared to that deep darkness in which the nobler qualities of their souls have slept. Yes, methinks I can view my native country, rising from the ashes of her degradation, wearing her purified and beautiful garments, and taking her seat with the nations of the earth. I can behold her sons bursting the fetters of ignorance and unshackling her from the vices of heathenism. She is at this instant, risen like the first morning sun, which grows brighter and brighter, until it reaches its fulness of glory.
She will become not a great, but a faithful ally of the the United States. In times of peace she will plead the common liberties of America. In times of war her intrepid sons will sacrifice their lives in your defence. And because she will be useful to you in coming time, she asks you to assist her in her present struggles. She asks not for greatness; she seeks not wealth; she pleads only for assistance to become respectable as a nation, to enlighten and ennoble her sons, and to ornament her daughters with modesty and virtue. She pleads for this assistance, too, because on her destiny hangs that of many nations. If she complete her civilization -- then may we hope that all our nations will -- then, indeed, may true patriots be encouraged in their efforts to make this world of the West, one continuous abode of enlightened, free, and happy people.
But if the Cherokee Nation fail in her struggle, if she die away, then all hopes are blasted, and falls the fabric of Indian civilization. Their fathers were born in darkness, and have fled in darkness; without your assistance so will their sons. You see, however, where the probability rests. Is there a sould whose narrowness will not permit the exercise of charity on such an occasion? Where is he that can withhold his mite from an object so noble? Who can prefer a little of his silver and gold, to the welfare of nations of his fellow beings? Human wealth perishes with our clay, but that wealth gained in charity still remains on earth, to enrich our names, when we are gone, and will be remembered in Heaven, when the miser and his coffers have mouldered together in their kindred earth. The works of a generous mind sweeten the cup of affliction; they enlighten the dreary way to the cold tomb; they blunt the sting of death, and smooth his passage to the unknown world. When all the kingdoms of this earth shall die away and their beauty and power shall perish, his name shall live and shine as a twinkling star; those for whose benefit he done his deeds of charity shall call him blessed, and they shall add honor to his immortal head.
There are, with regard to the Cherokees and other tribes, two alternatives; they must either become civilized and happy, or sharing the fate of many kindred nations, become extinct. If the General Government continue its protection, and the American people assist them in their humble efforts, they will, they must rise. Yes, under such protection, and with such assistance, the Indian must rise like the Phoenix, after having wallowed for ages in ignorance and barbarity. But should this Government withdraw its care, and the American people their aid, then, to use the words of a writer, "they will go the way that so many tribes have gone before them; for the hordes that still linger about the shores of Huron, and the tributary streams of the Mississippi, will share the fate of those tribes that once lorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson; of that gigantic race that are said to have existed on the borders of the Susquehanna; of those various nations that flourished about the Potomac and the Rhappahannoc, and that peopled the forests of the vast valley of Shenandoah. They will vanish like a vapour from the face of the earth, their very history will be lost in forgetfulness, and the places that now know them will know them no more."
There is, in Indian history, something very melancholy, and which seems to establish a mournful precedent for the future events of the few sons of the forest, now scattered over this vast continent. We have seen every where the poor aborigines melt away before the white population. I merely speak of the fact, without at all referring to the cause. We have seen, I say, one family after another, one tribe after another, nation after nation, pass away; until only a few solitary creatures are left to tell the sad story of extinction.
Shall this precedent be followed? I ask you, shall red men live, or shall they be swept from the earth? With you and this public at large, the decision chiefly rests. Must they perish? Must they all, like the unfortunate Creeks, (victims of the unchristian policy of certain persons,) go down in sorrow to their grave?
They hang upon your mercy as to a garment. Will you push them from you, or will you save them? Let humanity answer.
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About the Cherokee Phoenix. Cherokee Phoenix 1.1 (February 21, 1828)
To The Public
We are happy in being able, at length, to issue the first number of our paper, although after a longer delay than we anticipated. This delay has been owing to unavoidable circumstances, which, we think, will be sufficient to acquit us, and though our readers and patrons may be wearied in the expectation of gratifying their eyes on this paper of no ordinary novelty, yet we hope their patience will not be so exhausted, but that they will give it a calm perusal, and pass upon it a candid judgment. It is far from our expectation that it will meet with entire and universal approbation, particularly from those who consider learning and science necessary to the merits of newspapers. Such must not expect to be gratified here, for the merits, (if merits they can be called,) on which our paper is expected to exist, are not alike with those which keep alive the political and religious papers of the day. We lay no claim to extensive information; and we sincerely hope, this public disclosure will save us from the severe criticisms, to which our ignorance of many things, will frequently expose us, in the future course of our editorial labors.- Let the public but consider our motives, and the design of this paper, which is, the benefit of the Cherokees, and we are sure, those who wish well to the Indian race, will keep out of view all the failings and deficiences [sic] of the Editor, and give a prompt support to the first paper ever published in the Indian country, and under the direction of some of the remnants of those, who by the most mysterious course of providence, have dwindled into oblivion. To prevent us from the like destiny, is certainly a laudable undertaking, which the Christian, the Patriot, and the Philanthropist will not be ashamed to aid. Many are now engaged, by various means and with various success, in attempting to rescue, not only us, but all our kindred tribes, from the impending danger which has been so fatal to our fore-fathers; and we are happy to be in a situation to tender them our public acknowledgements for their unwearied efforts. Our present undertaking is intended to be nothing more than a feeble auxiliary to these efforts. Those therefore, who are engaged for the good of the Indians of every tribe, and who pray that salvation, peace, and the comforts of civilized life may be extended to every Indian fire side on this continent, will consider us as co-workers together in their benevolent labors. To them we make our appeal for patronage, and pledge ourselves to encourage and assist them, in whatever appears to be for the benefit of the Aborigines.
In the commencement of our labours [sic], it is due to our readers that we should acquaint them with the general principles, which we have prescribed to ourselves as rules in conducting this paper. These principles we shall accordingly state briefly. It may, however, be proper to observe that the establishment which has been lately purchased, principally with the charities of our white brethren is the property of the Nation and that the paper, which is now offered to the public, is patronized by, and under the direction of, the Cherokee Legislature, as will be seen in the Prospectus already before the public. As servants we are bound to that body, from which, however, we have not received any instructions, but are left at liberty to form such regulations for our conduct as will appear to us most conducive to the interests of the people, for whose benefit, this paper has been established.
As the Phoenix is a national paper, we shall feel ourselves bound to devote it to national purposes. "The laws and public documents of the Nation," and matters relating to the welfare and condition of the Cherokees as a people, will be faithfully published in English and Cherokee.
As the liberty of the press is so essential to the improvement of the mind, we shall consider our paper, a free paper, with, however, proper and usual restrictions. We shall reserve to ourselves the liberty of rejecting such communications as tend to evil, and such as are too intemperate and too personal. But the columns of this paper shall always be open to free and temperate discussions on matters of politics, religion, &c.
We shall avoid as much as possible, controversy on disputed doctrinal points in religion. Though we have our particular belief on this important subject, and perhaps are as strenuous upon it, as some of our brethren of a different faith, yet we conscientiously think, & in this thought we are supported by men of judgment that it would be injudicious, perhaps highly pernicious, to introduce to this people, the various minor differences of Christians. Our object is not sectarian; and if we had a wish to support, in our paper, the denomination with which we have the honor and privilege of being connected, yet we know our incompetency for the task.
We will not unnecessarily intermeddle with the politics and affairs of our neighbors. As we have no particular interest in the concerns of the surrounding states, we shall only expose ourselves to contempt and ridicule by improper intrusion. And though at times, we should do ourselves injustice, to be silent, on matters of great interest to the Cherokees, yet we will not return railing for railing, but consult mildness, for we have been taught to believe, that "A soft answer turneth [sic] away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger." The unpleasant controversy existing with the state of Georgia, of which many of our readers are aware, will frequently make our situation trying, by having hard sayings and threatenings [sic] thrown out against us, a specimen of which will be found in our next. We pray God that we may be delivered from such spirit.
In regard to the controversy with Georgia, and the present policy of the General Government, in removing, and concentrating the Indians, out of the limits of any state, which, by the way, appears to be gaining strength, we will invariably and faithfully state the feelings of the majority of our people. Our views, as a people, on this subject, have been most sadly misrepresented. These views we do not wish to conceal, but are willing that the public should know what we think of this policy, which, in our opinion, if carried into effect, will prove pernicious to us.
We have been asked which side of the Presidential question we should take. Our answer is, we think best to take a neutral stand, and we know that such a course is most prudent, as we have no vote on the question, and although we have our individual choice, yet it would be folly for us to spend words and time on a subject, which has engrossed very much, the attention of the public already.
In fine, we shall pay a sacred regard to truth, and avoid, as much as possible, that partiality to which we shall be exposed.-- In relating facts of a local nature, whether political, moral, or religious, we shall take care that exaggeration shall not be our crime. We shall also feel ourselves bound to correct all mistatements [sic], relating to the present conditions of the Cherokees.
How far we shall be successful in advancing the improvement of our people, is not now for us to decide. We hope, however, our efforts will not be altogether in vain.-- Now is the moment when mere speculation on the practicability of civilizing us is out of the question. Sufficient and repeated evidence has been given, that Indians can be reclaimed from a savage state, and that with proper advantages, they are as capable of improvement in mind as any other people; and let it be remembered, notwithstanding the assertions of those who talk to the contrary, that this improvement can be made, not only by the Cherokees, but by all the Indians, in their present locations. We are rendered bold in making this assertion by considering the history of our people within the last fifteen years. There was a time within our remembrance, when darkness was sadly prevalent, and ignorance abounded amongst us-when strong and deep rooted prejudices were directed against many things relating to civilized ( word unclear) had when it was thought a disgrace for a Cherokee to appear in the costume of a white man. We mention these things not by way of boasting, but to show to our readers that it is not a visionary thing to attempt to civilize and Christianize all the Indians, but highly practicable.
It is necessary for our white patrons to know that this paper is not intended to be a source of profit, and that its continuance must depend, in a great measure, on the liberal support which they may be pleased to grant us. Though our object is not gain, yet we with as much patronage, as will enable us to support the establishment without subjecting it to pecuniary difficulties. Those of our friends, who have done so much already for us by instructing us in the arts of civilized life, and enabling us to enjoy the blessings of education, and the comforts of religion, and to those exertions may be attributed the present means of improvement in this Nation, will not think it a hard matter that their aid should now be respectfully requested. In order that our paper may have an extensive circulation in this Nation and out of it, we have fixed upon the most liberal terms possible; such, in our opinion, as will render it as cheap as most of the Southern papers; and in order that our subscribers may be prompt in their remittances, we have made considerable difference between the first and the last payments. Those who have any experience in the management of periodicals will be sensible how important it is, that the payments of subscribers should be prompt and regular, particularly where the existence of a paper depends upon its own income. We sincerely hope that we shall never have any occasion to complain of the delinquency of any of our patrons.
We would now commit our feeble efforts to the good will and indulgence of the public, praying that God will attend them with his blessing, and hoping for that happy period, when all the Indian tribes of America shall arise, Phoenix like, from their ashes, and when the terms, "Indian depredation," "war whoop," "scalping knife" and the like, shall become obsolete, and for ever be "buried deep under ground."
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Preamble. United States Constitution. (1787)
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Constitution of the Cherokee. Cherokee Phoenix 1.1 (February 21, 1828)
Formed by a Convention of Delegates from the several Districts, at New Echota, July 1827.
WE THE REPRESENTATIVES of the people of the CHEROKEE NATION in Convention assembled, in order to establish justice, ensure tranquility, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with humility and gratitude the goodness of the sovereign Ruler of the Universe, in offering as an opportunity so favorable to the design, and imploring his aid and direction in its accomplishment, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Government of the Cherokee Nation.
ARTICLE I
Sec. 1. THE BOUNDARIES of this nation, embracing the lands solemnly guarantied and reserved forever to the Cherokee Nation by the Treaties concluded with the United States, are as follows; and shall forever hereafter remain unalterably the same-to wit- Beginning on the North Bank of Tennessee River at the upper part of the Chickasaw old fields; thence along the main channel of said river, including all the islands therein, to the mouth of the Hiwassee River, thence up the main channel of said river, including islands, to the first hill which closes in on said river, about two miles above Hiwassee Old Town; thence along the ridge which divides the waters of the Hiwassee and Little Tellico, to the Tennessee River at Tallasasei, thence along the main channel, including islands, to the junction of the Cowee and Nanteyalee; thence along the ridge in the fork of said river, to the top of the Blue Ridge; thence along the Blue Ridge to the Unicoy Turnpike road; thence by a straight line to the main source of the Chestatee; thence along its main channel, including islands, to the Chattahoochy; and thence down the same to the Creek boundary at Buzzard Roost; thence along the boundary line which separates this and the Creek Nation, to a point on the Coosa River opposite the mouth of Will's Creek; thence down along the south bank of the same to a point opposite to Fort Strother; thence up the river to the mouth of Will's Creek; thence up along the east bank of said creek to the west branch thereof, and up the same to its source; and thence along the ridge which separates the Tombechee and Tennessee waters, to a point on the top of said ridge; thence due north to Camp Coffee on Tennessee River, which is opposite the Chickasaw Island; thence to the place of beginning.
Sec. 2. The Sovereignty and Jurisdiction of this Government shall extend over the country within the boundaries above described, and the lands therein are, and shall remain the common property of the Nation; but the improvements made thereon, and in the possession of the citizens of the Nation, are the exclusive and indefeasible property of the citizens respectively who made, or may rightfully be in possession of them; Provided, That the citizens of the Nation, possessing exclusive and indefeasible right to their respective improvements, as expressed in this article, shall possess no right nor power to dispose of their improvements in any manner whatever to the United States, individual states, nor to individual citizens hereof; and that, whenever any such citizen or citizens shall remove with their effects out of the limits of this Nation, and become citizens of any other government, all their rights and privileges as citizens of this nation shall cease; Provided nevertheless, That the Legislature shall have power to re-admit by law to all the rights of citizenship any such person or persons, who may at any time desire to return to the Nation on their memorializing the General Council for such readmission. Moreover, the Legislature shall have power to adopt such laws and regulations, as its wisdom may deem expedient and proper, to prevent the citizens from monopolizing improvements with the view of speculation.
ARTICLE II
Sec. 1. The Power of this Government, shall be divided into three distinct departments; the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial.
Sec. 2. No person or persons, belonging to one of these Departments, shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others, except in the cases hereinafter expressly directed or permitted.
ARTICLE III
Sec. 1. THE LEGISLATIVE POWER shall be vested in two distinct branches; a Committee, and a Council; each to have a negative on the other, and both to be styled, the General Council of the Cherokee Nation; and the style of their acts and laws shall be,
"RESOLVED by the Committee and Council in General Council convened."
Sec. 2. The Cherokee Nation, as laid off into eight Districts, shall so remain.
Sec. 3. The Committee shall consist of two members from each district, and the Council shall consist of three members from each District, to be chosen by the qualified electors of their respective Districts for two years; and the elections to be held in every District on the first Monday in August for the year 1828, and every succeeding two years thereafter; and the General Council shall be held once a year, to be convened on the second Monday of October in each year, at New Echota.
Sec. 4. No person shall be eligible to a seat on the General Council, but a free Cherokee Male citizen, who shall have attained to the age of twenty-five years. The descendants of Cherokee men by all free women, except the African race, whose parents may be or have been living together as man and wife, according to the customs and laws of this Nation, shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of this Nation, as well as the posterity of Cherokee women by all free men. No person who is of negro or mulatto parentage, either by the father or mother side, shall be eligible to hold any office of profit, honor or trust, under this Government.
Sec. 5. The Electors, and members of the General Council shall, in all cases except those of treason, felony, or breach of peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at election, and at the General Council, and in going to, and returning from the same.
Sec. 6. In all elections by the people, the electors shall vote viva voce. Electors for members to the General Council for 1828 shall be held at the places of holding the several courts, and at the other two precincts in each District which are designated by the law under which the members of this convention were elected; and the District Judges shall superintend the elections within the precincts of their respective Court Houses, and the Marshals & Sheriffs shall superintend within the precincts which may be assigned them by the Circuit Judges of their respective Districts, together with one other person, who shall be appointed by the Circuit Judges for each precinct within their respective Districts, and the Circuit Judges shall also appoint a clerk to each precinct. The superintendents and clerks shall on the Wednesday morning succeeding the election assemble at their respective Court Houses and proceed to examine and ascertain the true state of the polls, and shall issue to each member, duly elected, a certificate; and also make an official return of the state of the polls of election to the principal chief, and it shall be the duty of the Sheriffs to deliver the same to the Executive Office; Provided nevertheless, The General Council shall have power, after the election of 1828 to regulate by law the precincts and superintendents and clerks of elections in the several Districts.
Sec. 7. All free male citizens (except negroes, and descendants of white and Indian men by negro women, who may have been set free,) who shall have attained to the age of eighteen years, shall be equally entitled in vote at all public elections. . . .
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“Extract from the closing part of an address, delivered in New Orleans, in the summer of 1826, by a young Cherokee.” Cherokee Phoenix & Indians' Advocate 1.52 (March 11, 1829).
After speaking of the progress of his countrymen, in the arts and sciences, the result of Gen. Washington's advice to them, he proceeds thus:
But gentlemen tell us, that, these Indians must be removed to some point in the west. What? Shall we leave our country, the gift of Heaven and the request of our ancestors? Forever bid farewell to the land that gave us birth -- the pure and sweet waters of Tsalagi, and go to penetrate the dreary and inhospitable regions of the west? there to linger out a miserable existence? Never! never! Let us remain in the land of our Fathers, & give us death. We have resolved never to raise up arms against the United States, and if, in the course of time, that power were to aim at the extirpation of our race in order to get our lands, we shall willingly fall by our fire sides, and mingle our dust with that of our departed friends. We will seal the honor of our name at the altar of patriotism. Our spirits will go to the land of shadows, where our Fathers have gone, and where we hope to be annoyed no more by the avarice of the white man, who knows no law but that of power.
But I have forgotten myself. The Inspiration of my theme has carried me too far. I am addressing myself to a patriotic, enlightened, and christian assembly. I have anticipated events, which I hope, may never occur. For my brethren and kindred, the Cherokees are in the midst of a christian community, and in the bosom of the United States. Behold, I am at this moment, not in the dominions of the Sultan, & in a mahometan mosque, but in a land of freedom, pure christianity and enlightened benevolence, with the walls of a temple dedicated to an Almighty & a righteous God.
You my friends have read, with tears, the Spanish cruelties in South America. As enlightened christians, you long for the emancipation of the Catholics in Ireland. You sympathize very justly, with Greece in her present struggle for freedom. Your friendly hand is extended to foreigners from every part of the Globe. Here the oppressed and persecuted in other nations find an asylum and a home. They are admitted, in time, into the rights and privileges of American citizens. In a word, your country is celebrated for the mildness of its government, the hospitality and humanity of its citizens, and for its superior religion, based on these words: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."
Surely then, you cannot concur in the policy of the day to remove the natives, the rightful and original owners of America, tantalized with hopes of civilization, from the native homes, to the wilds of the west. You will not, I am sure, aid in the destruction of the Cherokees and extinguish the last ray of hope left to them -- strip them of every right, and all that is dear and precious to their hearts. -- But such a project is in operation. O cruel! cruel! I call upon the Honorable judges and gentlemen of the bar for defence. I invoke the genius of the Constitution of the United States, for protection. I call upon the clergy who officiate at the holy altar, to defend the rights of bleeding humanity. And may New Orleans famous for its commercial importance, be equally famous for its friendship to this unfortunate race.
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Richard Allen, An Address
To those who keep slaves, and approve the practice.
The judicious part of mankind, will think it unreasonable, that a superior good conduct is looked for from our race, by those who stigmatize us as men, whose baseness is incurable, and may therefore be held in a state of servitude, that a merciful man would not doom a beast to; yet you try what you can, to prevent our rising from a state of barbarism you represent us to be in, but we can tell you from a degree of experience, that a black man, although reduced to the most abject state human nature is capable of, short of real madness, can think, reflect, and feel injuries, although it may not be with the same degree of keen resentment and revenge, that you who have been, and are our great oppressors would manifest, if reduced to the pitiable condition of a slave. We believe if you would try the experiment of taking a few black children, and cultivate their minds with the same care, and let them have the same prospect in view as to living in the world, as you would wish for your own children, you would find upon the trial, they were not inferior in mental endowments. I do not wish to make you angry, but excite attention to consider how hateful slavery is, in the sight of that God who hath destroyed kings and princes, for their oppression of the poor slaves. Pharoah and his princes with the posterity of king Saul, were destroyed by the protector and avenger of slaves. Would you not suppose the Israelites to be utterly unfit for freedom, and that it was impossible for them, to obtain to any degree of excellence? Their history shews how slavery had debased their spirits. Men must be wilfully blind, and extremely partial, that cannot see the contrary effects of liberty and slavery upon the mind of man; I truly confess the vile habits often acquired in a state of servitude, are not easily thrown off; the example of the Israelites shews, who with all that Moses could do to reclaim them from it, still continued in their habits more or less; and why will you look for better from us, why will you look for grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? it is in our posterity enjoying the same privileges with your own, that you ought to look for better things.
When you are pleaded with, do not you reply as Pharoah did, "Wherefore do ye Moses and Aaron let the people from their work, behold the people of the land now are many, and you make them rest from their burthens." We wish you to consider, that God himself was the first pleader of the cause of slaves.
That God who knows the hearts of all men, and the propensity of a slave to hate his oppressor, hath strictly forbidden it to his chosen people, "Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land." Deut. 23. 7. The meek and humble Jesus, the great pattern of humanity, and every other virtue that can adorn and dignify men, hath commanded to love our enemies, to do good to them that hate and despitefully use us. I feel the obligations, I wish to impress them on the minds of our colored brethren, and that we may all forgive you, as we wish to be forgiven, we think it a great mercy to have all anger and bitterness removed from our minds; I appeal to your own feelings, if it is not very disquiting to feel yourselves under dominion of wrathful disposition.
If you love your children, if you love your country, if you love the God of love, clear your hands from slaves, burthen not your children or your country with them, my heart has been sorry for the blood shed of the oppressors, as well as the oppressed, both appear guilty of each other’s blood, in the sight of him who hath said, he that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
Will you, because you have reduced us to the unhappy condition our color is in, plead our incapacity for freedom, and our contented condition under oppression, as a sufficient cause for keeping us under the grevious yoke. I have shown the cause,--I will also shew why they appear contented as they can in your sight, but the dreadful insurrections they have made when opportunity has offered, is enough to convince a reasonable man, that great uneasiness and not contentment, is the inhabitant of their hearts. God himself hath pleaded their cause, he hath from time to time raised up instruments for that purpose, sometimes mean and contemptible in your sight, at other times he hath used such as it hath pleased him, with whom you have not thought it beneath your dignity to contend. Many have been convinced of their error, condemned their former conduct, and become zealous advocates for the cause of those, whom you will not suffer to plead for themselves.
To the people of color.
FEELING an engagement of mind for your welfare, I address you with an affectionate sympathy, having been a slave, and as desirous of freedom as any of you; yet the bands of bondage were so strong that no way appeared for my release; yet at times a hope arose in my heart that a way would open for it; and when my mind was mercifully visited with the feeling of the love of God, then these hopes increased, and a confidence arose that he would make way for my enlargement; and as a patient waiting was necessary, I was sometimes favoured with it; at other times I was very impatient. Then the prospect of liberty almost vanished away, and I was in darkness and perplexity.
I mention experience to you, that your hearts may not sink at the discouraging prospects you may have, and that you may put your trust in God, who sees your condition; and as a merciful father pitieth his children, so doth God pity them that love him; and as your hearts are inclined to serve God, you will feel an affectionate regard towards your masters and mistresses, so called, and the whole family in which you live. This will be seen by them, and tend to promote your liberty, especially with such as have feeling masters; and if they are otherwise, you will have the favour and love of God dwelling in your hearts, which you will value more than anything else, which will be a consolation in the worst condition you can be in, and no master can deprive you of it, and as life is short and uncertain, and the chief end of our having a being in this world is to be prepared for a better, I wish you to think of this more than any thing else; then you will have a view of that freedom which the sons of God enjoy; and if the troubles of your condition end with your lives, you will be admitted to the freedom which God hath prepared for those of all colors that love him. Here the power of the roost cruel master ends, and all sorrow and fears are wiped away.
To you who are favored with freedom--let your conduct manifest your gratitude toward the compassionate masters who have set you free; and let no rancor or ill-will lodge in your breast for any bad treatment you may have received from any. If you do, you transgress against God, who will not hold you guiltless. He would not suffer it even in his beloved people Israel; and you think he will allow it unto us? Many of the white people have been instruments in the hands of God for our good; even such as have held us in captivity, are now pleading our cause with earnestness and zeal; and I am sorry to say, that too many think more of the evil than of the good they have received, and instead of taking the advice of their friends, turn from it with indifference. Much depends upon us for the help of our colour--more than many are aware. If we are lazy and idle, the enemies of freedom plead it as a cause why we ought not to be free, and say we are better in a state of servitude, and that giving us our liberty would be an injury to us, and by such conduct we strengthen the bands of oppression, and keep many in bondage who are more worthy than ourselves. I entreat you to consider the obligations we lie under to help forward the cause of freedom. We who know how bitter the cup is of which the slave hath to drink, O how ought we to feel for those who yet remain in bondage! will even our friends excuse--will God pardon us--for the part we act in making strong the hands of the enemies of our color?
A short Address to the friends of him who hath no helper.
I FEEL an inexpressible gratitude towards you who have engaged in the cause of the African race; you have wrought a deliverance for many from more than Egyptian bondage; your labours are unremitted for their complete redemption from the cruel subjection they are in. You feel our afflictions--you sympathize with us in the heart-rending distress, when the husband is separated from the wife, and the parents from the children, who are never more to meet in this world. The tear of sensibility trickles from your eye to see the sufferings that keep us from increasing. Your righteous indignation is roused at the means taken to supply the place of the murdered babe; you see our race more effectually destroyed than was in Pharaoh's power to effect upon Israel's sons; you blow the trumpet against the mighty evil; you make the tyrants tremble; you strive to raise the slave to the dignity of a man; you take our children by the hand to lead them in the path of virtue, by your care of our education; you are not ashamed to call the most abject of our race brethren, children of one Father, who hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth. You ask for this, nothing for yourselves, nothing but what is worthy the cause you are engaged in; nothing but that we would be friends to ourselves, and not strengthen the bands of oppression by an evil conduct, when led out of the house of bondage. May He who hath arisen to plead our cause, and engaged you as volunteers in the service, add to your numbers, until the princes shall come forth from Egypt, and Ethiopia stretch out her hands unto God.
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Sojourner Truth. Ain't I A Woman? (1851).
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
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Sojourner Truth. Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (1867)
My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field-the country of the slave. They have got their liberty-so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to got it going again. White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no food. I want you to consider on that, chil'n I call you chil'n; you are somebody's chil'n and I am old enough to be mother of all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.
I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do, I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not got the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.
Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, "We are going home." "There, children," said she, "in heaven we shall rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place, and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there, too."
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Frederick Douglass. "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (July 5, 1852)
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too and great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. [. . .]
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, "It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their mastcrs? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. [. . .]
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. 'Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But to all manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive --
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
Woman's Rights Convention, Held at Seneca Falls, 19-20 July 1848
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation,—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf.We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.
At the appointed hour the meeting convened. The minutes having been read, the resolutions of the day before were read and taken up separately. Some, from their self-evident truth, elicited but little remark; others, after some criticism, much debate, and some slight alterations, were finally passed by a large majority.
[At an evening session] Lucretia Mott offered and spoke to the following resolution:
Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce.
The Resolution was adopted.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Address to the National Woman Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., January 19, 1869
Mrs. Stanton's speech the first evening of the convention gave a fair statement of the hostile feelings of women toward the amendments; we give the main part of it. Of all the other speeches, which were extemporaneous, only meagre and unsatisfactory reports can be found.
Mrs. STANTON said -A great idea of progress is near its consummation, when statesmen in the councils of the nation propose to frame it into statutes and constitutions; when Reverend Fathers recognize it by a new interloretation of their creeds and canons; when the Bar and Bench at its command set aside the legislation of centuries, and girls of twenty put their heels on the Cokes and Blackstones of the past.
Those who represent what is called "the Woman's Rights Movement," have argued their right to political equality from every standpoint of justice, religion, and logic, for the last twenty years. They have quoted the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the opinions of great men and women in all ages; they have plead the theory of our government; suffrage a natural, inalienable right; shown from the lessons of history, that one class can not legislate for another; that disfranchised classes must ever be neglected and degraded; and that all privileges are but mockery to the citizen, until he has a voice in the making and administering of law. Such arguments have been made over and over in conventions and before the legislatures of the several States. judges, lawyers, priests, and politicians have said again and again, that our logic was unanswerable, and although much nonsense has emanated from the male tongue and pen on this subject, no man has yet made a fair, argument on the other side. Knowing that we hold the Gibraltar rock of reason on this question, they resort to ridicule and petty objections. Compelled to follow our assailants, wherever they go, and fight them with their own weapons; when cornered with wit and sarcasm, some cry out, you have no logic on your platform, forgetting that we have no use for logic until they give us logicians at whom to hurl it, and if, for the pure love of it, we now and then rehearse the logic that is like a, b, c, to all of us, others cry out-the same old speeches we have heard these twenty years. It would be safe to say a hundred years, for they are the same our fathers used when battling old King George and the British Parliament for their right to representation, and a voice in the laws by which they were governed. There are no new arguments to be made on human rights, our work to-day is to apply to ourselves those so familiar to all; to teach man that woman is not an anomalous being, outside all laws and constitutions, but one whose rights are to be established by the same process of reason as that by which he demands his own.
When our Fathers made out their famous bill of impeachment against England, they specified eighteen grievances. When the women of this country surveyed the situation in their first convention, they found they had precisely that number, and quite similar in character; and reading over the old revolutionary arguments of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Otis, and Adams, they found they applied remarkably well to their case. The same arguments made in this country for extending suffrage from time to time, to white men, native born citizens, without property and education, and to foreigners; the same used by John Bright in England, to extend it to a million new voters, and the same used by the great Republican party to enfranchise a million black men in the South, all these arguments we have to-day to offer for woman, and one, in addition, stronger than all besides, the difference in man and woman. Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.
The Republican party to-day congratulates itself on having carried the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, thus securing 11 manhood suffrage " and establishing an aristocracy of sex on this continent. As several bills to secure Woman's Suffrage in the District and the Territories have been already presented in both houses of Congress, and as by Mr. Julian's bill, the question of so amending the Constitution as to extend suffrage to all the women of the country has been presented to the nation for consideration, it is not only the right but the duty of every thoughtful woman to express her opinion on a Sixteenth Amendment While I hail the late discussions in Congress and the various bills presented as so many signs of progress, I am especially gratified with those of Messrs. Julian and Pomeroy, which forbid any State to deny the right of suffrage to any of its citizens on account of sex or color.
This fundamental principle of our government-the equality of all the citizens of the republic-should be incorporated in the Federal Constitution, there to remain forever. To leave this question to the States and partial acts of Congress, is to defer indefinitely its settlement, for what is done by this Congress may be repealed by the next; and politics in the several States differ so widely, that no harmonious action on any question can ever be secured, except as a strict party measure. Hence, we appeal to the party now in power, everywhere, to end this protracted debate on suffrage, and declare it the inalienable right of every citizen who is amenable to the laws of the land, who pays taxes and the penalty of crime. We have a splendid theory of a genuine republic, why not realize it and make our government homogeneous, from Maine to California. The Republican party has the power to do this, and now is its only opportunity. Woman's Suffrage, in 1872, may be as good a card for the Republicans as Gen. Grant was in the last election. it is said that the Republican party made him President, not because they thought him the most desirable man in the nation for that office, but they were afraid the Democrats would take him if -they did not. We would suggest, there may be the same danger of Democrats taking up Woman Suffrage if they do not. God, in his providence, may have purified that party in the furnace of affliction. They have had the opportunity, safe from the turmoil of political life and the temptations of office, to study and apply the divine principles of justice and equality to life, for minorities are always in a position to carry principles to their logical results, while majorities are governed only by votes. You see my faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirtyfour new members, hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood, ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of the most virtuous and humane half of the American people . . . . .
I urge a speedy adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment for the following reasons:
1. A government, based on the principle of caste and class, can not stand. The aristocratic idea, in any form, is opposed to the genius of our free institutions, to our own declaration of rights, and to. the civilization of the age. All artificial distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex, are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally destructive to national life and prosperity. Governments based on every form of aristocracy, on every degree and variety of inequality, have been tried in despotisms, monarchies, and republics, and all alike have perished. In the panorama of the past behold the mighty nations that have risen, one by one, but to fall. Behold their temples, thrones, and pyramids, their gorgeous palaces and stately monuments now crumbled all to dust. Behold every monarch in Europe at. this very hour trembling on his throne. Behold the republics on this Western continent Convulsed, distracted, divided, the hosts scattered, the leaders fallen, the scouts lost in the wilderness, the once inspired prophets blind and dumb, while on all sides the cry is echoed, 11 Republicanism is a failure," though that great principle of a government "by the people, of the people, for the people," has never been tried. Thus far, all nations have been built on caste and failed. Why, in this hour of reconstruction, with the experience of generations before us, make another experiment in the same direction? If serfdom, peasantry, and slavery have shattered kingdoms, deluged continents with blood, scattered republics like dust before the wind, and rent our own Union asunder, what kind of a government, think you, American statesmen, you can build, with the mothers of the race crouching at your feet, while iron-heeled peasants, serfs, and exalted by your hands, tread our inalienable rights into the dust? While all men, everywhere, are rejoicing in new-found liberties, shall woman alone, be denied the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship? While in England men are coming up from the coal mines of Cornwall, from the factories of Birmingham and Manchester, demanding the suffrage; while in frigid Russia the 22,000,000 newly-emancipated serfs are already claiming a voice in the government; while here, in our own land, slaves, but just rejoicing in the proclamation of emancipation, ignorant alike of its power and significance, have the ballot unasked, unsought, already laid at their feetthink you the daughters of Adams, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, in whose veins, flows the blood of two Revolutions, will forever linger round the campfires of an old barbarism, with no longings to join this grand army of freedom in its onward march to roll back the golden gates of a higher and better civilization? Of all kinds of aristocracy, that of sex is the most odious and unnatural; invading, as it does, our homes, desecrating our family altars, dividing those whom God has joined together, exalting the son above the mother who bore him, and subjugating, everywhere, moral power to brute force. Such a government would not be worth the blood and treasure so freely poured out in its long struggles for freedom . . . . .
2. 1 urge a Sixteenth Amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival thus far, it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered by woman's thought, the hard iron rule, we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters.
People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised we have few women in the best sense, we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul. She must believe his theology, though it pave the highways of hell with the skulls of new-born infants, and make God a monster of vengeance and hypocrisy. She must look at everything from its dollar and cent point of view, or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the poverty of the poor. their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums, the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed repression. And now man himself stands appalled at the results of his own excesses, and mourns in bitterness that falsehood, selfishness and violence are the law of life. The need of this hour is not territory, gold mines, railroads, or specie payments, but a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue, morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of thought and action.
We ask woman's enfranchisement, as the first step toward the recognition of that essential element in government that can only secure the health, strength, and prosperity of the nation. Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race. In speaking of the masculine element, I do not wish to be understood to say that all men are hard, selfish, and brutal, for many of the most beautiful spirits the world has known have been clothed with manhood; but I refer to those characteristics, though often marked in woman, that distinguish what is called the stronger sex. For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea, the elements, the riches and forces of Nature, are powers of destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to sacrifice nations to ambition. Here that great conservator of woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally would in freedom against oppression, violence, and war, would hold all these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain. With violence and disturbance in the natural world, we see a constant effort to maintain an equilibrium of forces. Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme. There is a striking analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization of society warns us, that in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the whole, and protect the interests of all than could the representation of either sex alone. But government gains no new element of strength in admitting all men to the ballot-box, for we have too much of the man-power there already. We see this in every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all they know?
3. 1 urge a Sixteenth Amendment because, when "manhood suffrage " is established from Maine to California, woman has reached the lowest depths of political degradation. So long as there is a disfranchised class in this country, and that class its women, a man's government is worse than a white man's government with suffrage limited by property and educational qualifications, because in proportion as you multiply the rulers, the condition of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded. John Stuart Mill, in his work on 11 Liberty," shows that the condition of one disfranchised man in a nation is worse than when the whole nation is under one man, because in the latter case, if the one man is despotic, the nation can easily throw him off, but what can one man do with a nation of tyrants over him ? If American women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own Saxon fathers, the best orders of manhood, what may they not be called to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners now crowding our shores legislate for them and their daughters. Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book, making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E. Dickinson. Think of jurors and jailors drawn from these ranks to watch and try young girls for the crime of infanticide, to decide the moral code by which the mothers of this Republic shall be governed ? This manhood suffrage is an appalling question, and it would be well for thinking women, who seem to consider it so magnanimous to hold their own claims in abeyance until all men are crowned with citizenship, to remember that the most ignorant men are ever the most hostile to the equality of women, as they have known them only in slavery and degradation.
Go to our courts of justice, our jails and prisons ; go into the world of work; into the trades and professions; nto the temples of science and learning, and see what is meted out everywhere to women-to those who have no advocates in our courts, no representatives in the councils of the nation. Shall we prolong and perpetuate such injustice, and by increasing this power risk worse oppressions for ourselves and daughters? It is an open, deliberate insult to American womanhood to be cast down under the iron-heeled peasantry of the Old World and the slaves of the New, as we shall be in the practical working of the Fifteenth Amendment, and the only atonement the Republican party can make is now to complete its work, by enfranchising the women of the nation. I have not forgotten their action four years ago, when Article XIV., Sec. 2, was amended* by invidiously introducing the word " male " into the Federal Constitution, where it had never been before, thus counting out of the basis of representation all men not permitted to vote, thereby making it the interest of every State to enfranchise its male citizens, and virtually declaring it no crime to disfranchise its women. As political sagacity moved our rulers thus to guard the interests of the negro for party purposes, common justice might have compelled them to show like respect' for their own mothers, by counting woman too out of the basis of representation, that she might no longer swell the numbers to legislate adversely to her interests. And this desecration of the last will and testament of the fathers, this retrogressive legislation for woman, was in the face of the earnest protests of thousands of the best educated, most refined and cultivated women of the North.
Now, when the attention of the whole world is turned to this question of suffrage, and women themselves are throwing off the lethargy of ages, and in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia are holding their conventions, and their rulers are everywhere giving them a respectful hearing, shall American statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the effete civilizations of the Old World? While poets and philosophers, statesmen and men of science are all alike pointing to woman as the new hope for the redemption of the race, shall the freest Government on the earth be the first to establish an aristocracy based on sex alone? to exalt ignorance above education, vice above virtue, brutality and barbarism above refinement and religion? Not since God first called light out of darkness and order out of chaos, was there ever made so base a proposition as " manhood suffrage in this American Republic, after all the discussions we have had on human rights in the last century. On all the blackest pages of history there is no record of an act like this, in any nation, where native born citizens, having the same religion, speaking the same language, equal to their rulers in wealth, family, and education, have been politically ostracised by their own countrymen, outlawed with savages, and subjected to the government of outside barbarians. Remember the Fifteenth Amendment takes in a larger population than the 2,000,000 black men on the Southern plantation. It takes in all the foreigners daily landing in our eastern cities, the Chinese crowding our western shores, the inhabitants of Alaska, and all those western isles that will soon be ours. American statesmen may flatter themselves that by superior intelligence and political sagacity the higher orders of men will always govern, but when the ignorant foreign vote already holds the balance of power in all the large cities by sheer force of numbers, it is simply a question of impulse or passion, bribery or fraud, how our elections will be carried. When the highest offices in the gift of the people are bought and sold in Wall Street, it is a mere chance who will be our rulers. Whither is a nation tending when brains count for less than bullion, and clowns make laws for queens? It is a startling assertion, but nevertheless true, that in none of the nations of modern Europe are the higher classes of women politically so degraded as are the women of this Republic to-day. In the Old World, where the government is the aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of nobility to share its offices and powers, women of rank have certain hereditary rights which raise them above a majority of the men, certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs and peasants. There women are queens, hold subordinate offices, and vote on many questions. In our Southern States even, before the war, women were not degraded below the working population. They were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here, in this boasted Northern civilization, women of wealth and education, who pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intellect are the peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors, idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny, and infamous crimes.
Would those gentlemen who are on all sides telling the women of the nation not to press their claims until the negro is safe beyond peradventure, be willing themselves to stand aside and trust all their interests to hands like these? The educated women of this nation feel as much interest in republican institutions, the preservation of the country, the good of the race, their own elevation and success, as any man possibly can, and we have the same distrust in man's power to legislate for us, that he has in woman's power to legislate wisely for herself.
4. 1 would press a Sixteenth Amendment, because the history of American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in man's capacity to govern the nation alone, with justice and mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves. Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again, and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the present administration. Others have set forth, with equal clearness, the ignorance of out rulers on the question of finance. . . . .
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Susan B. Anthony. “Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” (1872)
After being arrested for voting, Anthony gave a speaking tour through the region to enlist support for her action by identifying her action with the republican tradition.
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny. . . .
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot. . . .
James Madison said;
"Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrate who are to administer them." Also, "Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature."
And these assertions of the framers of the United States Constitution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire history of our government. . . .
For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. . . .
To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation. . . .
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.
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Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Solitude of Self” An Address before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress (1892)
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should repeat them again.
The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.
Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.
Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and development.
Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such as men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of woman may never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother, or a son, relations some of which he may never fill. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual.
Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.
The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.
Nature having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.
To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us; we leave it alone under circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal ever has been, no mortal over will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. There can never again be just such environments as make up the infancy, youth and manhood of this one. Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will never find two human beings alike. Seeing, then, what must be the infinite diversity in human, character, we can in a measure appreciate the loss to a nation when any large class of the people in uneducated and unrepresented in the government. We ask for the complete development of every individual, first, for his own benefit and happiness. In fitting out an army we give each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder, his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities, then each man bears his own burden.
Again we ask complete individual development for the general good; for the consensus of the competent on the whole round of human interest; on all questions of national life, and here each man must bear his share of the general burden. It is sad to see how soon friendless children are left to bear their own burdens before they can analise their feelings; before they can even tell their joys and sorrows, they are thrown on their own resources. The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. What a touching instance of a child's solitude; of that hunger of heart for love and recognition, in the case of the little girl who helped to dress a christmas tree for the children of the family in which she served. On finding there was no present for herself she slipped away in the darkness and spent the night in an open field sitting on a stone, and when found in the morning was weeping as if her heart would break. No mortal will ever know the thoughts that passed through the mind of that friendless child in the long hours of that cold night, with only the silent stars to keep her company. The mention of her case in the daily papers moved many generous hearts to send her presents, but in the hours of her keenest sufferings she was thrown wholly on herself for consolation.
In youth our most bitter disappointments, our brighest hopes and ambitions are known only to otherwise, even our friendship and love we never fully share with another; there is something of every passion in every situation we conceal. Even so in our triumphs and our defeats.
The successful candidate for Presidency and his opponent each have a solitude peculiarly his own, and good form forbid either in speak of his pleasure or regret. The solitude of the king on his throne and the prisoner in his cell differs in character and degree, but it is solitude nevertheless.
We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest ties, alone we sit in the shadows of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the devine heights of human attainments, eulogized land worshiped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded thro dark courts and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.
To throw obstacle in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.
The girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to support herself, to make her own place in society, to resist the temptations that surround her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do all this by native force or superior education. She does not acquire this power by being trained to trust others and distrust herself. If she wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to swim upstream, and allow herself to drift with the current, she will find plenty of company, but not one to share her misery in the hour of her deepest humiliation. If she tried to retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her life is hedged about with fears last willing hands should tear the veil from what she fain would hide. Young and friendless, she knows the bitter solitude of self.
How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible.
The young wife and mother, at the head of some establishment with a kind husband to shield her from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety, occurs against the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a deatrable influence in society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all this she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most successful statesman possesses.
An uneducated woman, trained to dependence, with no resources in herself must make a failure of any position in life. But society says women do not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal training that experience in public life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when for the lock of all this, the woman's happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humiliation; and the attitude of the weak and the ignorant in indeed pitiful in the wild chase for the price of life they are ground to powder.
In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and hustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old armchair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms, with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us continues. If from a lifelong participation in public affairs a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our private homes, public buildings, and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, here solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.
The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties an pleasures is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone. I once asked Prince Krapotkin, the Russian nihilist, how he endured his long years in prison, deprived of books, pen, ink, and paper. "Ah," he said, "I thought out many questions in which I had a deep interest. In the pursuit of an idea I took no note of time. When tired of solving knotty problems I recited all the beautiful passages in prose or verse I have ever learned. I became acquainted with myself and my own resources. I had a world of my own, a vast empire, that no Russian jailor or Czar could invade." Such is the value of liberal thought and broad culture when shut off from all human companionship, bringing comfort and sunshine within even the four walls of a prison cell.
As women of times share a similar fate, should they not have all the consolation that the most liberal education can give? Their suffering in the prisons of St. Petersburg; in the long, weary marches to Siberia, and in the mines, working side by side with men, surely call for all the self-support that the most exalted sentiments of heroism can give. When suddenly roused at midnight, with the startling cry of "fire! fire!" to find the house over their heads in flames, do women wait for men to point the way to safety? And are the men, equally bewildered and half suffocated with smoke, in a position to more than try to save themselves?
At such times the most timid women have shown a courage and heroism in saving their husbands and children that has surprise everybody. Inasmuch, then, as woman shares equally the joys and sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the height of presumption in man to propose to represent her at the ballot box an the throne of grace, do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to assume the position of priest at the family alter.
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities of life rests equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce sterns of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of individual. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman, it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.
Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he cannot bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, on one mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.
From the mountain tops of Judea, long ago, a heavenly voice bade His disciples, "Bear ye one another's burdens," but humanity has not yet risen to that point of self-sacrifice, and if ever so willing, how few the burdens are that one soul can bear for another. In the highways of Palestine; in prayer and fasting on the solitary mountain top; in the Garden of Gethsemane; before the judgment seat of Pilate; betrayed by one of His trusted disciples at His last supper; in His agonies on the cross, even Jesus of Nazareth, in these last sad days on earth, felt the awful solitude of self. Deserted by man, in agony he cries, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" And so it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, on the long weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience each moral stands alone.
But when all artificial trammels are removed, and women are recognized as individuals, responsible for their own environments, thoroughly educated for all the positions in life they may be called to fill; with all the resources in themselves that liberal though and broad culture can give; guided by their own conscience an judgment; trained to self-protection by a healthy development of the muscular system and skill in the use of weapons of defense, and stimulated to self-support by the knowledge of the business world and the pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever give; when women are trained in this way they will, in a measure, be fitted for those hours of solitude that come alike to all, whether prepared or otherwise. As in our extremity we must depend on ourselves, the dictates of wisdom point of complete individual development.
In talking of education how shallow the argument that each class must be educated for the special work it proposed to do, and all those faculties not needed in this special walk must lie dormant and utterly wither for want of use, when, perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed in life's greatest emergies. Some say, Where is the use of drilling serie in the languages, the Sciences, in law, medicine, theology? As wives, mothers, housekeepers, cooks, they need a different curriculum from boys who are to fill all positions. The chief cooks in our great hotels and ocean steamers are men. In large cities men run the bakies; they make our bread, cake and pies. They manage the laundries; they are now considered our best milliners and dressmakers. Because some men fill these departments of usefulness, shall we regulate the curriculum in Harvard and Yale to their present necessities? If not why this talk in our best colleges of a curriculum for girls who are crowding into the trades and professions; teachers in all our public schools rapidly hiling many lucrative and honorable positions in life? They are showing too, their calmness and courage in the most trying hours of human experience.
You have probably all read in the daily papers of the terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay when a tidal wave such havoc on the shore, wrecking vessels, unroofing houses and carrying destruction everywhere. Among other buildings the woman's prison was demolished. Those who escaped saw men struggling to reach the shore. They promptly by clasping hands made a chain of themselves and pushed out into the sea, again and again, at the risk of their lives until they had brought six men to shore, carried them to a shelter, and did all in their power for their comfort and protection.
What especial school of training could have prepared these women for this sublime moment of their lives. In times like this humanity rises above all college curriculums and recognises Nature as the greatest of all teachers in the hour of danger and death. Women are already the equals of men in the whole of ream of thought, in art, science, literature, and government. With telescope vision they explore the starry firmament, and bring back the history of the planetary world. With chart and compass they pilot ships across the mighty deep, and with skillful finger send electric messages around the globe. In galleries of art the beauties of nature and the virtues of humanity are immortalized by them on their canvas and by their inspired touch dull blocks of marble are transformed into angels of light.
In music they speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics, and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, and plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, and speak from the pulpit and the platform; such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes today, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.
Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No! no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human being for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self dependence of every human soul we see the need of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.
Whatever may be said of man's protecting power in ordinary conditions, mid all the terrible disasters by land and sea, in the supreme moments of danger, alone, woman must ever meet the horrors of the situation; the Angel of Death even makes no royal pathway for her. Man's love and sympathy enter only into the sunshine of our lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever. A recent writer says:
I remember once, in crossing the Atlantic, to have gone upon the deck of the ship at midnight, when a dense black cloud enveloped the sky, and the great deep was roaring madly under the lashes of demoniac winds. My feelings was not of danger or fear (which is a base surrender of the immortal soul), but of utter desolation and loneliness; a little speck of life shut in by a tremendous darkness. Again I remember to have climbed the slopes of the Swiss Alps, up beyond the point where vegetation ceases, and the stunted conifers no longer struggle against the unfeeling blasts. Around me lay a huge confusion of rocks, out of which the gigantic ice peaks shot into the measureless blue of the heavens, and again my only feeling was the awful solitude.
And yet, there is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.
Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?
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Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition and Duties, of Woman.
Introduction by Horace Greeley.
The problem of Woman's position, or "sphere,"--of her duties, responsibilities, rights and immunities as Woman,--fitly attracts a large and still-increasing measure of attention from the thinkers and agitators of our time, The legislators, so called,--those who ultimately enact into statutes what the really governing class (to wit, the thinkers) have originated, matured and gradually commended to the popular comprehension and acceptance,--are not as yet much occupied with this problem, only fitfully worried and more or less consciously puzzled by it. More commonly they merely echo the mob's shallow retort to the petition of any strong-minded daughter or sister, who demands that she be allowed a voice in disposing of the money wrenched from her hard earnings by inexorable taxation, or in shaping the laws by which she is ruled, judged, and is liable to be sentenced to prison or to death, "It is a woman's business to obey her husband, keep his home tidy, and nourish and train his children." But when she rejoins to this, "Very true; but suppose I choose not to have a husband, or am not chosen for a wife--what then? I am still subject to your laws. Why am I not entitled, as a rational human being, to a voice in shaping them? I have physical needs, and must somehow earn a living. Why should I not be at liberty to earn it in any honest and useful calling?"--the mob's flout is hushed, and the legislator Is struck dumb also. They were already at the end of their scanty resources of logic, and it would be cruel for woman to ask further: "Suppose me a wife, and my husband a drunken prodigal--what am I to do then? May I not earn food for my babes without being exposed to have it snatched from their mouths to replenish the rum seller's till, and aggravate my husband's madness? If some sympathizing relative sees fit to leave me a bequest wherewith to keep my little ones together, why may I not be legally enabled to secure this to their use and benefit? In short, why am I not regarded by the law as a soul, responsible for my acts to God and humanity, and not as a mere body, devoted to the unreasoning service of my husband?" The state gives no answer, and the champions of her policy evince wisdom in imitating her silence.
The writer of the following pages was one of the earliest as well as ablest among American women, to demand for her sex equality before the law with her titular lord and master, Her writings on this subject have the force which springs from the ripening of profound reflection into assured conviction. She wrote as one who had observed, and who deeply felt what she deliberately uttered. Others have since spoken more fluently, more variously, with a greater affluence of illustration; but none, it is believed, more earnestly or more forcibly. It is due to her memory, as well as to the great and living cause of which she was so eminent and so fearless an advocate, that what she thought and said with regard to the position of her sex and its limitations, should be fully and fairly placed before the public. For several years past her principal essay on "Woman," here given, has not been purchasable at any price, and has only with great difficulty been accessible to the general reader. To place it within the reach of those who need and require it, is the main impulse to the publication of this volume; but the accompanying essays and papers will be found equally worthy of thoughtful consideration.
* * * * *
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
"Frailty, thy name is WOMAN."
"The Earth waits for her Queen."
The connection between these quotations may not be obvious, but it is strict. Yet would any contradict us, if we made them applicable to the other side, and began also,
Frailty, thy name is MAN.
The Earth waits for its King?
Yet Man, if not yet fully installed in his powers, has given much earnest of his claims. Frail he is indeed,--how frail! how impure! Yet often has the vein of gold displayed itself amid the baser ores, and Man has appeared before us in princely promise worthy of his future.
If, oftentimes, we see the prodigal son feeding on the husks in the fair field no more his own, anon we raise the eyelids, heavy from bitter tears, to behold in him the radiant apparition of genius and love, demanding not less than the all of goodness, power and beauty. We see that in him the largest claim finds a due foundation. That claim is for no partial sway, no exclusive possession. He cannot be satisfied with any one gift of life, any one department of knowledge or telescopic peep at the heavens. He feels himself called to understand and aid Nature, that she may, through his intelligence, be raised and interpreted; to be a student of, and servant to, the universe-spirit; and king of his planet, that, as an angelic minister he may bring it into conscious harmony with the law of that spirit. [. . .]
Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists always in the growth of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly impede. Only seemingly; and whatever seems to the contrary, this country is as surely destined to elucidate a great moral law, as Europe was to promote the mental culture of Man.
Though the national independence be blurred by the servility of individuals; though freedom and equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for a monstrous display of slave-dealing and slave-keeping; though the free American so often feels himself free, like the Roman, only to pamper his appetites end his indolence through the misery of his fellow-beings; still it is not in vain that the verbal statement has been made, "All men are born free and equal." There it stands, a golden certainty wherewith to encourage the good, to shame the bad. The New World may be called clearly to perceive that it incurs the utmost penalty if it reject or oppress the sorrowful brother. And, if men are deaf, the angels hear. But men cannot be deaf. It is inevitable that an external freedom, an independence of the encroachments of other men, such as has been achieved for the nation, should be so also for every member of it. That which has once been clearly conceived in the intelligence cannot fail, sooner or later, to be acted out. [. . .]
These symptoms of the times have come under my view quite accidentally: one who seeks, may, each month or week, collect more.
The numerous party, whose opinions are already labeled and adjusted too much to their mind to admit of any new light, strive, by lectures on some model-woman of bride-like beauty and gentleness, by writing and lending little treatises, intended to mark out with precision the limits of Woman's sphere, and Woman's mission, to prevent other than the rightful shepherd from climbing the wall, or the flock from using any chance to go astray.
Without enrolling ourselves at once on either side, let us look upon the subject from the best point of view which to-day offers; no better, it is to be feared, than a high house-top. A high hill-top, or at least a cathedral-spire, would be desirable.
It may well be an Anti-Slavery party that pleads for Woman, if we consider merely that she does not hold property on equal terms with men; so that, if a husband dies without making a will, the wife, instead of taking at once his place as head of the family, inherits only a part of his fortune, often brought him by herself, as if she were a child, or ward only, not an equal partner. [. . .]
But to return to the historical progress of this matter. Knowing that there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves, such as is expressed in the common phrase, "Tell that to women and children;" that the infinite soul can only work through them in already ascertained limits; that the gift of reason, Man's highest prerogative, is allotted to them in much lower degree; that they must be kept from mischief and melancholy by being constantly engaged in active labor, which is to be furnished and directed by those better able to think, &c., &c.,--we need not multiply instances, for who can review the experience of last week without recalling words which imply, whether in jest or earnest, these views, or views like these,--knowing this, can we wonder that many reformers think that measures are not likely to be taken in behalf of women, unless their wishes could be publicly represented by women?
"That can never be necessary," cry the other side. "All men are privately influenced by women; each has his wife, sister, or female friends, and is too much biased by these relations to fail of representing their interests; and, if this is not enough, let them propose and enforce their wishes with the pen. The beauty of home would be destroyed, the delicacy of the sex be violated, the dignity of halls of legislation degraded, by an attempt to introduce them there. Such duties are inconsistent with those of a mother;" and then we have ludicrous pictures of ladies in hysterics at the polls, and senate-chambers filled with cradles. [. . .]
As to men's representing women fairly at present, while we hear from men who owe to their wives not only all that is comfortable or graceful, but all that is wise, in the arrangement of their lives, the frequent remark, "You cannot reason with a woman,"--when from those of delicacy, nobleness, and poetic culture, falls the contemptuous phrase "women and children," and that in no light sally of the hour, but in works intended to give a permanent statement of the best experiences,--when not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that Woman was made for Man,--when such traits as these are daily forced upon the attention, can we feel that Man will always do justice to the interests of Woman? Can we think that he takes a sufficiently discerning and religious view of her office and destiny ever to do her justice, except when prompted by sentiment,--accidentally or transiently, that is, for the sentiment will vary according to the relations in which he is placed? The lover, the poet, the artist, are likely to view her nobly. The father and the philosopher have some chance of liberality; the man of the world, the legislator for expediency, none.
Under these circumstances, without attaching importance, in themselves, to the changes demanded by the champions of Woman, we hail them as signs of the times. We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession. As the friend of the negro assumes that one man cannot by right hold another in bondage, so should the friend of Woman assume that Man cannot by right lay even well-meant restrictions on Woman. If the negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, appareled in flesh, to one Master only are they accountable. There is but one law for souls, and, if there is to be an interpreter of it, he must come not as man, or son of man, but as son of God.
Were thought and feeling once so far elevated that Man should esteem himself the brother and friend, but nowise the lord and tutor, of Woman,--were he really bound with her in equal worship,--arrangements as to function and employment would be of no consequence. What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home. If fewer talents were given her, yet if allowed the free and full employment of these, so that she may render back to the giver his own with usury, she will not complain; nay, I dare to say she will bless and rejoice in her earthly birth-place, her earthly lot. Let us consider what obstructions impede this good era, and what signs give reason to hope that it draws near. [. . .]
This author, beginning like the many in assault upon bad institutions, and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative freedom, sees at last that the only efficient remedy must come from individual character. These bad institutions, indeed, it may always be replied, prevent individuals from forming good character, therefore we must remove them. Agreed; yet keep steadily the higher aim in view. Could you clear away all the bad forms of society, it is vain, unless the individual begin to be ready for better. There must be a parallel movement in these two branches of life. And all the rules left by Moses availed less to further the best life than the living example of one Messiah.
Still the mind of the age struggles confusedly with these problems, better discerning as yet the ill it can no longer bear, than the good by which it may supersede it. But women like Sand will speak now and cannot be silenced; their characters and their eloquence alike foretell an era when such as they shall easier learn to lead true lives. But though such forebode, not such shall be parents of it. [Footnote: Appendix E.] Those who would reform the world must show that they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse; their lives must be unstained by passionate error; they must be severe lawgivers to themselves. They must be religious students of the divine purpose with regard to man, if they would not confound the fancies of a day with the requisitions of eternal good. Their liberty must be the liberty of law and knowledge. But as to the transgressions against custom which have caused such outcry against those of noble intention, it may be observed that the resolve of Eloisa to be only the mistress of Abelard, was that of one who saw in practice around her the contract of marriage made the seal of degradation. Shelley feared not to be fettered, unless so to be was to be false. Wherever abuses are seen, the timid will suffer; the bold will protest. But society has a right to outlaw them till she has revised her law; and this she must be taught to do, by one who speaks with authority, not in anger or haste.
If Godwin's choice of the calumniated authoress of the "Rights of Woman," for his honored wife, be a sign of a new era, no less so is an article to which I have alluded some pages back, published five or six years ago in one of the English Reviews, where the writer, in doing fall justice to Eloisa, shows his bitter regret that she lives not now to love him, who might have known better how to prize her love than did the egotistical Abelard.
These marriages, these characters, with all their imperfections, express an onward tendency. They speak of aspiration of soul, of energy of mind, seeking clearness and freedom. Of a like promise are the tracts lately published by Goodwyn Barmby (the European Pariah, as he calls himself) and his wife Catharine. Whatever we may think of their measures, we see in them wedlock; the two minds are wed by the only contract that can permanently avail, that of a common faith and a common purpose.
We might mention instances, nearer home, of minds, partners in work and in life, sharing together, on equal terms, public and private interests, and which wear not, on any side, the aspect of offence shown by those last-named: persons who steer straight onward, yet, in our comparatively free life, have not been obliged to run their heads against any wall. But the principles which guide them might, under petrified and oppressive institutions, have made them warlike, paradoxical, and, in some sense, Pariahs. The phenomena are different, the law is the same, in all these cases. Men and women have been obliged to build up their house anew from the very foundation. If they found stone ready in the quarry, they took it peaceably; otherwise they alarmed the country by pulling down old towers to get materials.
These are all instances of marriage as intellectual companionship. The parties meet mind to mind, and a mutual trust is produced, which can buckler them against a million. They work together for a common, purpose, and, in all these instances, with the same implement,--the pen. The pen and the writing-desk furnish forth as naturally the retirement of Woman as of Man. [. . .]
In our own country, women are, in many respects, better situated than men. Good books are allowed, with more time to read them. They are not so early forced into the bustle of life, nor so weighed down by demands for outward success. The perpetual changes, incident to our society, make the blood circulate freely through the body politic, and, if not favorable at present to the grace and bloom of life, they are so to activity, resource, and would be to reflection, but for a low materialist tendency, from which the women are generally exempt in themselves, though its existence, among the men, has a tendency to repress their impulses and make them doubt their instincts, thus often paralyzing their action during the best years.
But they have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few conventionalities, compared with what must be met in other nations. There is no reason why they should not discover that the secrets of nature are open, the revelations of the spirit waiting, for whoever will seek them. When the mind is once awakened to this consciousness, it will not be restrained by the habits of the past, but fly to seek the seeds of a heavenly future. [. . .]
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Adams Sherman Hill. “An Answer to the Cry for More English” (1879).
We can all remember a time when our schools and colleges gave even less instruction in the art of writing and speaking the English language correctly than is given at present, and that too without much complaint from any quarter. Children who learned their A B C's under the old system could call the letters in a word by name, but were often unable to pronounce the same word, or to understand its meaning. Boys and girls who were well on in their teens could talk glibly about "parts-of speech," "analyze" sentences, and "parse" difficult lines in Young's "Night Thoughts" or Pope's "Essay On Man," but could not explain the sentences they took to pieces, or write grammatical sentences of their own. Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscript written in an examination room — whether at a grammar school, a high school, or a college — have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Every one who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges, has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old.
Common as such shames were, they went on, not indeed without protest, but without criticism loud enough to disturb those through whom reform, if reform was to be, must come. The overburdened and underpaid teacher had every inducement to cling to the prescribed routine; the superintendent of schools was too busy to listen, too busy with the machinery of "the marking system," with his pet theory of education, with the problem how to crowd a new study into "the curriculum," or how to secure his own re-election; the professor, absorbed in a specialty, contented himself with requiring at recitations and examinations knowledge of the subject-matter, however ill-digested and ill-expressed ; journals of the better class affirmed that, though such a book was not written well, it was written well enough for its purpose, and sneered at those who took pains to correct gross errors in others, or to avoid them themselves ; and even some acknowledged masters of English held, with Dogberry, that " to write and read comes by nature."
Within a short time, people have partially opened their eyes to the defects of a system which crams without training, which spends its strength on the petty or the useless, and neglects that without which knowledge is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Voices have been raised which command attention. At least one schoolcommittee and one board of supervisors have moved in the right direction. At least one college has increased its force of instructors and its number of courses in English, and has done what it could to stimulate the schools; and one president of a university has gone so far as to say, in an oft-quoted sentence: "I may as well abruptly avow, as the result of my reading and observation in the matter of education, that I recognize but one mental acquisition as an essential part of the education of a lady or a gentleman, —namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue."
We should, however, not blind ourselves to the fact that the reform has only begun. What a recent article in ''The Saturday Review" says of England is at least equally true of America: "A large proportion of our fellow-creatures labour under the hallucination that they could write as well as Macaulay, Thackeray, or Dickens, if they chose to take the trouble." They are like the man who told Charles Lamb that he "could write like Shakspere if he only had a mind to." "All he wants, you see," said Lamb, "is the mind."
The scepticism on this point which used to pervade the high places of education still lingers on the low ground, and must be dispelled before a healthy state of feeling can exist. So long as people think literary skill easy of acquisition, they will be unwilling to have their children spend time in acquiring "an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue." If the movement in favor of those things which make for good English is to be of much practical utility, it must spread widely and penetrate deeply; every school-committee must insist that, whatever else is done or is left undone, a serious effort shall be made to teach boys and girls to use their native tongue correctly and intelligently; all our colleges must put English upon a par, at least, with Latin and Greek, and must provide their students with ample opportunities for practice in writing and speaking the language they will have to use all their lives. If the schools and the colleges do this work thoroughly, a short time will suffice to bring parents to a sense of the paramount importance to every one of knowing how to read and write, and to show them how much labor that knowledge costs.
The better to understand what has yet to be done in order to secure the desired end, let us first see what is now done in the schools, as tested by the examination in English which all applicants for admission to Harvard must pass, and what is now done at Harvard.
In 1874, for the first time, every applicant for admission to Harvard was required to present English composition. The requirement was as follows:
English Composition. Each candidate will be required to write a short English composition, correct in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and expression, the subject to be taken from such standard authors as shall be announced from time to time. The subject for 1874 will be taken from one of the following works: Shakespeare's Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Merchant of Venice; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield; Scott's Ivanhoe and Lay of the Last Minstrel.
It was hoped that this requirement would effect several desirable objects, — that the student, by becoming familiar with a few works holding a high place in English literature, would acquire a taste for good reading, and would insensibly adopt better methods of thought and better forms of expression; that teachers would be led to seek subjects for composition in the books named, subjects far preferable to the vague generalities too often selected, and that they would pay closer attention to errors in elementary matters; that, in short, this recognition by the College of the importance of English would lead both teachers and pupils to give more time to the mother tongue, and to employ the time thus given to better advantage.
Naturally enough, these ends were not reached at once. Some of the schools did not, at first, take the requirement in a serious light; others failed to comprehend its scope; others still deemed it a high crime and misdemeanor to take an hour for English from Latin, Greek, or mathematics. In applying the requirement, moreover, the examiners gave it a liberal construction — as was proper while it was new—and the Faculty of the College, posted on the heights of the classics and mathematics, descended with difficulty to petty questions of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. This laxity of construction, coupled with the belief that a good writer had no advantage over a poor one in the studies of the Freshman year, and but a slight advantage in the subsequent years of the course, confirmed the schools in their disposition to slight the new requirement.
Within the last two years there has been a marked change for the better. More work is done in the schools; greater proficiencyis demanded from the candidate for admission; the Faculty frankly accept the requirement in English as standing upon a par with the other requirements; and many of the college instructors take account of a student's ability or inability to express his ideas with precision and clearness.
As yet, however, the amount of improvement in the schools is slight, as is shown by the results of the examination for admission to Harvard last June. For that examination the requirement was as follows: —
English Composition. Each candidate will be required to write a short English composition, correct in spelling, punctuation, grammar, division by paragraphs, and expression, upon a subject announced at the time of examination. In 1879, the subject will be drawn from one of the following works: —
Shakspere's Macbeth, Richard II., and Midsummer Night's Dream; Scott's Guy Mannering; Byron's Prisoner of Chillon; Thackeray's Henry Esmond; Macaulay's Essay on Addison; the Sir Roger de Coverley Essays in the Spectator.
Every candidate is expected to be familiar with all the books in this list.
The time allotted for the examination in this subject was an hour, and the paper set was as follows: —
ENGLISH COMPOSITION.
Write a short composition upon one of the subjects given below.
Before beginning to write, consider what you have to say on the subject selected, and arrange your thoughts in logical order.
Aim at quality rather than quantity of work.
Carefully revise your composition, correcting all errors in punctuation, spelling, grammar, division by paragraphs, and expression, and making each sentence as clear and forcible as possible. If time permits, make a clean copy of the revised work.
I. The Character of Sir Richard Steele.
II.The Duke of Marlborough as portrayed by Thackeray.
III. The Style of "Henry Esmond."
IV. Thackeray's account of the Pretender's visit to England.
V. Duelling in the Age of Queen Anne.
The whole number of persons who presented themselves for examination in this paper was 316—including those applying for immediate admission and those taking the first, or "preliminary," half of the examination, the rest to be taken in some subsequent year. Of this number 157, almost exactly one half, failed to pass, the percentage of failure being but slightly larger among the applicants for a "preliminary certificate" than among the candidates for admission.
The causes of failure were diverse. Some of the unsuccessful, an eighth or a tenth of them perhaps, avowed or displayed utter ignorance of the subject-matter: several, for example, confounded Steele with'Sir Roger de Coverley, others the period of Queen Anne with that of Richard Cceur de Lion, others the style of "Henry Esmond," the novel, with the manners of Henry Esmond, the hero of the novel. Some — a smaller number, however, than in previous years — showed such utter ignorance of punctuation as to put commas at the end of complete sentences, or between words that no rational being would separate from one another; and a few began sentences with small letters, or began every long word with a capital letter. Many, a larger number than usual, spelled as if starting a spelling reform, each for himself. . . . Of these mistakes some are evidently much graver than others; but some of the worst were found in several books, and not a few are apparently due to an unconscious effort to represent to the eye a vicious pronunciation. Many books were deformed by grossly ungrammatical or profoundly obscure sentences, and some by absolute illiteracy.
To bring himself below the line between failure and success, a writer had to commit several serious faults; and even if he did commit such faults, he was allowed to pass if he offset them by tolerably good work in the rest of his book. Even apparent ignorance of the nature of a paragraph, or of the principle of sequence in thought or in language, did not of itself form an insurmountable obstacle to success. The books of many who managed to get above the line were, as regards all but the A B C of composition, discreditable to the teachers whose instruction they represented. If the examiner erred, it was in giving the candidate the benefit of too many doubts, in tempering justice with too much mercy. He meant to make the requirement more serious than in previous years, but he did not mean to demand as much as might reasonably be expected from boys between sixteen and twenty years of age.
The great majority of the compositions this year, as in previous years, were characterized by general defects, which, though not taken into account by the examiner, point to grave imperfections in the method (or want of method) of the preparatory schools. The suggestions at the head of the paper were often disregarded in the letter, and almost always in the spirit. The candidate, instead of considering what he had to say and arranging his thoughts before beginning to write, either wrote without thinking about the matter at all, or thought to no purpose. Instead of aiming at good work, and to that end subjecting his composition to careful revision, he either did not undertake to revise it at all, or did not know how to correct his errors. Evidently, he had never been taught the value of previous thought or of subsequent criticism.
To the rule there were, of course, exceptions. A few boys showed the results of excellent training; but out of the whole number only fourteen received a mark high enough to entitle them to the distinction of passing "with credit."
On the whole, the examination makes a poor showing for the schools that furnish the material whereof the university which professes to set up the highest standard in America, has to make educated men. If she does not succeed in giving to all her graduates the one mental acquisition deemed by her president the essential part of education, the fault is not altogether or mainly hers. For her to teach bearded men the rudiments of their native tongue would be almost as absurd as to teach them the alphabet or the multiplication table. Those who call for "more English" in the colleges should cry aloud and spare not till more and better English is taught in the schools.
In the schools the reform should start. From the beginning to the end of the pre-collegiate course, the one thing that should never be lost sight of is the mother tongue, the language which the boy uses all the time as a boy, and will use as a man. Till he knows how to write a simple English sentence, he should not be allowed to open a Latin grammar. Till he can speak and write his own language with tolerable correctness, he should not be set down before the words of another language. Whatever knowledge he acquires, he should be able to put into clear and intelligible English. Every new word he adds to his vocabulary, he should know in the spelling and with the meaning accepted by the rest of the world. Every stop he inserts-in a sentence should serve a definite purpose.
The work begun in the primary school should be carried on by the grammar school, the high school, the private tutor. No translation from a foreign language, whether oral or written, no examination book, no recitation, should be deemed creditable unless made in good English. Gradually a boy should be led from the construction of a well-formed sentence to that of a well-formed paragraph, and from paragraph to essay. Gradually he should be led from the skilful use of materials for composition provided by others to the discovery and arrangement of materials for himself, from the practice of clothing another's thoughts in his own language to the presentation of his own thoughts or fancies iu appropriate language, — care being taken, of course, to provide, at each stage in his education, subjects suited to his powers and attractive to his tastes.
The teacher of English should be equally quick to detect faults and to recognize merits of every description, and should know how to stimulate his pupils' minds till they are as fresh and alert at the desk as on the playground. He should possess special qualifications, for his task is at once difficult and important. The best talent in each school —it is not too much to say—cannot be better employed than in teaching the use of the great instrument of communication between man and man, between books and men, the possession without which learning is mere pedantry, and thought an aimless amusement.
When schools of all grades are provided with instructors in English who are neither above nor below their business, it will be possible to make the requirement in this subject for admission to college decidedly higher than it is at present, and the work after admission correspondingly better. When the schools shall be ready to teach the laws of good use in language and the elementary principles of rhetoric, a great point will be gained.
The next best step would be to give to English two hours or more a week during the Freshman year. Could the study be taken up at the threshold of college life, the schools would be made to feel that their labors in this direction were going to tell upon a pupil's standing in college as well as upon his admission. Unfortunately, however, it has not been found possible to make room in the Freshman year for English, no one of the departments which now occupy the year being willing to give up any of its time, and each supporting the others in opposition to change.
While things remain as they are, the only way in which progress can be made is by a disposition on the part of those who instruct Freshmen in other studies to insist upon the use of good English whenever, in oral or written work, any English is used; and this to a certain extent is done, some of those who are most unwilling to surrender a half hour of their own time to the instructor in English taking most pains to require good language from their pupils: but they have too many other things in hand to do this thoroughly, and there are obvious obstacles in the way of their achieving results that could easily be reached with younger boys in smaller classes.
At Harvard, then, a student receives no direct instruction in English till his Sophomore year. During that year two hours a week are given to the study of rhetoric. A text-book is used which aims at familiarizing the pupil with the principles that underlie all good composition, as deduced from the best authors and illustrated by examples or warnings from recent works; exercises are written and criticised; and writers noted for clearness, like Macaulay, or for strength of statement and logical coherence, like Burke or Webster, are studied to the extent that time permits. Every Sophomore, moreover, writes six themes on assigned subjects, which are corrected and criticised by the instructor, and are rewritten by the student to the end that he may seize the spirit as well as the letter of the suggestions he has received. The books studied ought to tell on the themes, and they do so tell with faithful students who assimilate what they learn.
Juniors are required to write six themes and four forensics. The themes are in the hands of three instructors. One has the A division, which is composed of the best writers in the class, and is small enough to enable the teacher to read each theme either with its author or aloud to a section of the division, and thus to make the criticism more searching and the revision more thorough than is possible under any system of notes on the margin. The B and C divisions, comprising the rest of the class, are so large that their themes for the most part have to be treated like those of the Sophomores.
The forensics, which, in theory at least, are exeeises in argumentative composition, are read and weighed, but not criticised. For them candidates for Honors are allowed to substitute theses in their several departments, that is, writings which call for learning rather than for argumentative power.
Seniors have to write four forensics, which are criticised from a rhetorical as well as from a lo'rionl point of view. For them, as for the Junior forensics, theses may in certain cases be substituted; and for two of them a Commencement Part is accepted as an equivalent.
Commencement Parts themselves (with the exception of one or two written in Latin) may be regarded as exercises in English composition. Early in November, the professor of rhetoric meets those whose rank at the end of the Junior year renders it probable that they will receive degrees "with distinction" at the end of the course. He tries to impress them with the importance of the academic festival in which they are to take part, and with their duty to do their best, both for their own credit and for that of the University. Each is left to choose his own topic, subject to the approval of a committee of professors representing all departments of the University, and to treat the topic chosen in the way that best suits his powers. The Parts must be written by the first of May. The best of them are read by their authors to the committee, who select from the whole number the five or six best adapted to the occasion, — subject, treatment, and delivery, being all taken into account. Every year the honor of speaking is more highly prized; every year the competitors show better work and more thorough comprehension of the essentials of a successful essay ; every year the committee find more difficulty in deciding which among several productions to select — a difficulty which is likely to increase now that, in consequence of certain changes in the regulations concerning degrees, the number of -competitors is more than doubled, over fifty being entitled to write this year, as against twenty-three or twenty-four last year. The testimony of those who are in the habit of attending Harvard Commencements (that of Rev. Dr. Bellows, for instance, as expressed in his enthusiastic speech last June) supports the opinion that there is, from year to year, a gradual improvement, sufficient to indicate that the labors of those who have helped the cause of good English have not been thrown away, that the ambition of the young men has not been appealed to in vain, and that the newly-awakened interest of the community in its own language has penetrated the academic shades.
In addition to the prescribed work in English, an advanced elective course was established two years ago. To this course none but Seniors or Juniors who have proved their ability as writers are admitted. Every member of the class is required to write a composition once a fortnight, sometimes on a subject of his own, sometimes on an assigned subject or one of several assigned subjects. Occasionally the instructor calls for a written criticism of an author whose works he deems worthy of study, or for a critical estimate of the relative merits of two authors of the same general character. Three hours a week are spent in criticism of the themes in the presence of the class, criticism in which all take part and which now and then leads to animated discussion. Often the best themes present the most matter for comment; and some of the best as well as some of the worst writers make great improvement in recasting their essays after they have been criticised. Two examinations occur in the course of the year, at which the class write upon subjects announced at the time, subjects drawn from books that have been read in preparation, or from current questions or familiar topics.
Last year, a course in "Oral Discussion" was established. In order to give ample time for preparation, the class meets only once a fortnight; in order to give ample time for debate, each session lasts for three consecutive hours. A question — political, historical, or literary — which presents a fair field for argument, and demands both reading and thought, is announced a fortnight before the time fixed for its discussion; two members of the class are appointed to open the argument on each side, and one to close it, each of the opening speakers to have ten minutes and each of the closing ones fifteen minutes. Between the opening and the closing speeches nearly an hour is given to volunteers on either side, each being allowed five minutes only. The remaining hour is spent in comment by the instructor on the debate to which he has been listening, comment which extends to points of manner as well as of matter, to the way of putting things as much as to the things put, the general aim being to teach the young men how to make everything serve the main object—the object of convincing or persuading a hearer. Awkward attitudes, nongrammatical or obscure sentences, provincial or vulgar locutions, fanciful analogies, far-fetched illustrations, ingenious sophisms, pettifogging subtleties, ineffective arrangement—all come in for animadversion; and corresponding merits for praise. The debate is judged as an exercise in spoken English us well as in reasoning; and observation shows that, as might have been anticipated, a strong writer is usually a strong speaker also.
These two are the only elective courses which rnnke the writing or the speaking of good English their principal aim ; and since the efficiency of each requires that the class should be limited in number and that preference should be given to the most competent writers or speakers, it is not unlikely that some who become conscious, at the end of their Junior year, of deficiencies in their powers of expression, are unable to avail themselves of these opportunities to supply their deficiencies, and that many more do not open their eyes to their needs till after they have left college. If, however, the demand for elective work in English should greatly exceed the supply, the College will doubtless provide new courses sufficient to meet the demand. In establishing a course in composition in 1877, and one in oral discussion in 1878, the Faculty anticipated, rather than gratified, the wishes of the students; but both courses, as the event has proved, supply real wants.
Though the courses described are the only ones which aim, first and foremost, at good English, there are others which exercise a marked influence in the same direction. Prominent among these are the courses conducted by Professor Child, one of the most accomplished living English scholars,—those in philology making the student familiar with the sources of the existing language, and those in Shakspere, Bacon, Chaucer, Milton, and Dryclen, bringing him into close contact with the greatest of our writers. There is also a course in the English literature of the last and the present century; there are readings and lectures in English, and literary courses in other languages, none of which can fail, in one way or another, in a greater or a less degree, to cultivate a faithful student's powers of expression. A similar influence may be traced to the courses in the fine arts, in mental and moral philosophy, in history, in political economy, and even to some of the scientific courses. Every instructor who himself speaks and writes good English, and who demands good English from his pupils, is of great service; and the number of those who keep this object in view is steadily increasing.
On the whole, it seems fair to conclude that Harvard College, if not doing as much for the English of her students as can reasonably be expected while the schools do so little, is yet doing more and more every year, and that the most serious shortcomings in this respect on the part of her recent graduates cannot justly be laid at her door. English composition is the only study that every student must pursue after the Freshman year, every other subject being now optional; in the elective courses in writing and speaking English, the best men have ample opportunities for practice ; in other courses, the best influences are indirectly at work to cultivate the students' powers of expression; instruction in elocution is given to all who desire it; Commencement Parts and Bowdoin Prizes (for dissertations on stated subjects) offer rewards for excellence in writing, Lee and Boylston Prizes for excellence in reading aloud and in speaking; and there is now no doubt that in all the governing bodies of the University the current of opinion sets strongly in favor of good English.
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[1]Aristot. Rhet. book iii.
[2]Or rather of Paper ; for the invention of printing is too obvious not to have speedily followed, in a literary nation, the introduction of a paper sufficiently cheap to make the art available. Indeed the seals of the ancients seem to have been a kind of stamps, with which they in fact printed their names.
[3]I am sensible that this word is commonly used in a more limited sense, for that which only excites commiseration. Perhaps the word impassioned would answer better.
[4]The author of a Treatise of Human Nature, in 3 vols.
[5]If one is desirous to see a refutation of this principle, let him consult Reid's Inquiry, Chap. ii. Sect. 5.
[6]Chap. v. Sect. ii. P. 1.
[7]Tit. ii. 11, 12.
[8]The Author was the first who read Lectures on this subject in the University of Edinburgh. He began with reading them in a private character in the year 1759. In the following year he was chosen Professor of Rhetoric by the Magistrates and Town-council of Edinburgh; and, in, 1762, his Majesty was pleased to erect and endow a Profession of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in that University; and the Author was appointed the first Regius Professor.
[9]See Dr. Gerard's Essay on Taste—D'AIembert's Reflections on the use and abuse of philosophy in matters which relate to Taste.—Reflexions Critiques fur la poesie et fur la peinture, tome ii. ch. 22 — 31. Elements of Criticism, chap. 25.—Mr Hume's Essay on the Standard ef Taste.—Introduction to the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful.
[10]On the subject of Taste considered as a power or faculty of the mind, much less is to be found among the ancient, than among the modern rhetorical and critical writers. The following remarkable passage in Cicero serves however to show, that his ideas on this subject agrees perfectly with what has been said above. He is speaking of the beauties of style and numbers. "Illud autem nequis admiretur quonam modo hæc vulgus imperitorum in audiendo, notet; cum in omni genere, turn in hoc ipso, magna quædam est vis, incredibilisque naturæ. Omnes enim tacito quodam sensu, sine ulla arte aut ratione, quæ fint in artibus de rationibus recta et prava dijudicant: idque cum faciunt in picturis, et in signis,” "et in aliis operibus, ad quorum intelligentiam a natura minus habent instrument, turn multo ostendunt magis "in verborum, numerorum, vocumque judicio; quod ea "sunt in communibus infixa sensibus; neque earum re"rum quenquam sunditus natura voluit esse expertem." Cic.de Orat. lib. iii. cap. 50. Edit. Gruteri Quintilian seems to include Taste (for which, in the sense which we now give to that word, the ancients appear to have had ho distinct name) under what he calls judicium. "Locus de judicio, mea quidem opinione adeo partibus hujus operis omnibus connectus at mistus est, ut ne a sententiis quidem aut verbis saltern singulis poffit separari,nee magis arte traditur qtiam gustus aut odor. Ut contraria viteinus et communia, ne quid in eloquendo "corruptum pbscurumque sit, reseratur oportet ad scnsus "qui non docentur.'' Institut. lib. vi. cap. 3. Edit. Obrechti.
[11]The difference between the authors who sound the standard of Taste upon the common feelings of human nature ascertained by general approbation, and those who found it upon established principles which can be ascertained by Reason, is more an apparent than a real difference. Like many other literary controversies, it turns chiefly on modes of expression. For they who lay the greatest stress on sentiment and feeling, make no scruple of applying argument and reason to matters of Taste. They appeal, like other writers, to established principles, in judging of the excellencies of Eloquence or Poetry; and plainly show, that the general approbation to which they ultimately recur, is an approbation resulting from discussion as well as from sentiment. They, on the other hand, who, in order to vindicate Taste from any suspicion of being arbitrary, maintain that it is ascertainable by the standard of Reason, admit nevertheless, that what pleases universally, must on that account be held to be truly beautiful; and that no rules or conclusions concerning objects of Taste, can have any just authority, if they be found to contradict the general sentiments of men. These two systems, therefore, differ in reality very little from one another. Sentiment and Reason enter into both ; and by allowing to each of these powers its due place, both systems may be rendered consistent. Accordingly, it is in this light that I have endeavoured to place the subject.
[12]Extracted from a lecture delivered in Boston before the American Institute, August, 1830.
[13]Newman’s Rhetoric.
[14]Miss Davidson died at about the age of seventeen; a volume of her posthumous works, entitled ' Amir Kahn, and other Poems,' has received much praise from critics. The British Reviewers spoke of it as an extraordinary production, comparing her to their favorite and lamented White.
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