The Training of a Public Speaker | Page 4

It is not to be supposed that the
founders of cities could have made a united people of a vagabond
multitude without the charms of persuasive words, nor that law-givers,
without extraordinary talent for speaking, could have forced men to
bend their necks to the yoke of the laws. Even the precepts of moral life,
tho engraved on our hearts by the finger of nature, are more efficacious
to inspire our hearts with love for them when their beauty is displayed
by the ornaments of eloquent speech. Tho the arms of eloquence may
harm and benefit equally, we must not, therefore, look on that as bad
which may be put to a good use. Doubts of this kind may well be
entertained by such as make "the force persuasion the end of
eloquence," but we who constitute it "The science of speaking well,"
resolved to acknowledge none but the good man an orator, must
naturally judge that its advantage is very considerable.
Certainly, the gracious Author of all beings and Maker of the world,
has distinguished us from the animals in no respect more than by the
gift of speech. They surpass us in bulk, in strength, in the supporting of
toil, in speed, and stand less in need of outside help. Guided by nature
only, they learn sooner to walk, to seek for their food, and to swim over
rivers. They have on their bodies sufficient covering to guard them
against cold; all of them have their natural weapons of defense; their
food lies, in a manner, on all sides of them; and we, indigent beings! to
what anxieties are we put in securing these things? But God, a
beneficent parent, gave us reason for our portion, a gift which makes us
partakers of a life of immortality. But this reason would be of little use
to us, and we would be greatly perplexed to make it known, unless we
could express by words our thoughts. This is what animals lack, more

than thought and understanding, of which it can not be said they are
entirely destitute. For to make themselves secure and commodious
lodges, to interweave their nests with such art, to rear their young with
such care, to teach them to shift for themselves when grown up, to
hoard provisions for the winter, to produce such inimitable works as
wax and honey, are instances perhaps of a glimmering of reason; but
because destitute of speech, all the extraordinary things they do can not
distinguish them from the brute part of creation. Let us consider dumb
persons: how does the heavenly soul, which takes form in their bodies,
operate in them? We perceive, indeed, that its help is but weak, and its
action but languid.
THE VALUE OF THE GIFT OF SPEECH
If, then, the beneficent Creator of the world has not imparted to us a
greater blessing than the gift of speech, what can we esteem more
deserving of our labor and improvement, and what object is more
worthy of our ambition than that of raising ourselves above other men
by the same means by which they raise themselves above beasts, so
much the more as no labor is attended with a more abundant harvest of
glory? To be convinced of this we need only consider by what degrees
eloquence has been brought to the perfection in which we now see it,
and how far it might still be perfected. For, not to mention the
advantage and pleasure a good man reaps from defending his friends,
governing the Senate by his counsels, seeing himself the oracle of the
people, and master of armies, what can be more noble than by the
faculty of speaking and thinking, which is common to all men, to erect
for himself such a standard of praise and glory as to seem to the minds
of men not so much to discourse and speak, but, like Pericles, to make
his words thunder and lightning.
THE ART OF SPEAKING
There would be no end were I to expatiate to the limit of my inclination
on the subject of the gift of speech and its utility. I shall pass, therefore,
to the following question, "Whether rhetoric be an art?" Those who
wrote rules for eloquence doubted so little its being so, that they prefixt
no other title to their books than "The art of speaking." Cicero says that

what we call rhetoric is only an artificial eloquence. If this were an
opinion peculiar to orators, it might be thought that they intended it as a
mark of dignity attached to their studies, but most philosophers, stoics
as well as peripatetics, concur in this opinion. I must confess I had
some doubt about discussing this matter, lest I might seem diffident of
its truth; for who can be