MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON SOME years ago, upon this page, I wrote an article in dispraise of Cicero's De Oratore. I said that it was a dull and futile book. This brought angry letters accusing me of being ignorant and harsh. I should hate to be unkind to Cicero, since he reminds me of my old chief, Lord Curzon, for whom I shall ever retain warm feelings of affection and respect. It was not the consul himself that I was abusing : I was rather seeking to demonstrate that it is valueless to lay down permanent prin- ciples for so transient an art as that of rhetoric. Even in my own life-time I have observed that the spread of popular educa- tion, accompanied as it has been by a decline in public morals, has altered the style of parliamentary and forensic oratory. The emergence of fresh dogmas, the revolt of the internal and external proletariate, and the invention of new methods of communi- cation, have rendered obsolete the chord that Hampden smote and the elevated diction practised by Gladstone, Bright and Asquith. The orator of to-day must be at pains to conceal from his audience the fact that his education, experience and ethics may be of superior quality ; he must adjust his style to the age of the Common Man. It may be that Cicero, who had about him all the arrogance of the republican aristocracy, and who was inordinately pleased by his own erudition, was incapable of appreciating a style of public speaking which could be adapted, both to the exigencies of an imperial dictatorship and to the understanding of the plebs. To the incipient orator I should recommend rather the Rhetoric of Aristotle, who started from the twin assumptions that the purpose of oratory is to persuade and that, if you desire to be persuasive, you must begin by asses- sing the expectations and capacities of the audience. What is so disturbing about 195o oratory is that two quite different audi- ences must concurrently be borne in mind. There are the people whom one is immediately addressing ; more importantly, there are the vast audiences of viewers and listeners outside. It is to the latter that Mr. Malik addresses his inordinate remarks.
* * * * I' shall send to Mr. Malik at Lake Success an annotated copy of Aristotle's Technique of Rhetoric. He will find it in much that he agrees with, and much also that will strike him as new and strange. The very opening words will startle him. " Rhetoric," he will read, " is the antistrophe or counterpart of dialectic." That inaugural sentence may induce him to pause and think. He will read also that the device of hyperbole or exaggeration is not one which should be practised by the persuasive orator. The true rhetorician should bear in mind that the whole purpose of rhetoric is to persuade and to convince ; for that purpose he should always adopt the middle way and aschew both over—and under—statement. " There is," he will learn, " something youthful about hyperboles ; for they manifest vehemence. Wherefore it is unbecoming for elderly people to make use of them." There are other lessons which Mr. Malik, if he accepts and reads my gift, will learn to his advantage. " The things," he will read, " which induce belief Are three in number : good- sense, virtue and goodwill." I am prepared to believe that the virtue of Mr. Malik is such as to shame all lesser men ; but I should accord him but low marks for sense and none at all for goodwill. If he follows the admirable precepts of Aristotle he will discover also that one of the major arts or oratory, is con- cision. The audience, he will learn, is displeased if they derive the impression that a given speech is likely to prove " un- limited " ; what they enjoy is to foresee with certainty that the end of the oration will, before lotig, be reached. * * * _* ' " The orator," writes Aristotle, " persuades by moral charac- ter, when his speech is made in such a way as to inspire confi- dence." He must " make room in the hearer's mind for the speech that he intends to make." Mr. Malik assuredly abides by this last injunction ; his audience are aware from the outset of the nature of the impending oration, since he has delivered exactly the same speech several times before. If they be a patient audience, they will have arranged a very large room in their minds. Mr. Malik would also agree with Aristotle's precept that " the greater the crowd, the further off is the point of view." Aristotle means by this somewhat cryptic phrase that, when addressing very large audiences, the orator should not seek any detailed perfection of style but should splash his colours boldly, or even indulge in wild striking diagrams or in " skiagraphia. ' Here again Mr. Malik would abundantly agree. He might be less inclined to understand or to appreciate Aris- totle's contention that any attempt on the part of the speaker to appeal to the emotions, whether to feeling of pain or those of pleasure, is a •" vulgar " device, sometimes rendered necessary by the " rottenness of the audience. Yet even in such base- moments the true orator should remember that persuasiveness must be founded upon " propriety." It is this necessity of maintaining throughout a certain elevation of thought and language that induces Aristotle to look with suspicion upon the introduction into a public speech of merriment or jesting. " Wit," he writes, " is refined insolence," but the man who introduces jokes into his speeches must always remember that buffoonery is unbecoming and that there are certain kinds of jests which no gentleman ought to make. Mr. Malik would probably interpret this remark as evidence_ that Aristotle at heart was a fascist hyena.
I hope that when Mr. Malik reads the book I send him, he will not confine himself to the passages dealing specifically with the technique of rhetoric. He will find many other apoph- thegms of psychological and ethical import. He will agree, for instance, that if you desire to arouse popular anger, you must concentrate upon a real or imaginary " enemy." He might even agree,—althougli the acceptance of this apophthegm would be painful to him—that " democracy, not only when relaxed, but also when strained to excess, becomes weaker and will end in an oligarchy." He would certainly agree that possessions which bring no profit are more "gentlemanly" than those which return a dividend : and he might echo the statement that " those who are embittered experience measureless pain when they fail to achieve their revenge, while the hope of it delights them." What I wonder is whether he would respond with equal readiness and felicity to the enumeration of the high virtues of the perfected huinan soul. Even upon the least bourgeois temperament the catalogue of Aristotelian virtues must make some emotional impact, if only because of the utter loveliness of the words employed ; magnanimity, magnificence, courage, self-control, justice, liberality, wisdom, gentleness, and " a certain feeling of affection." The word " megaloprepeia," with all its comely associations, is one that I specially comment to Mr. Malik's attention. Since to Aristotle all littleness or abasement of soul " were things " that are disgraceful and should make us ashamed." The proud tolerance of the Aristiotelian formula is a useful corrective to those who are intolerantly proud. * * The tricks and devices, the tone and diction, of popular oratory may be dependent upon alterations in the awareness of those who are addressed. But the main contention of the Technique of Rhetoric remains to my mind indestructible. The aim of oratory is to persuade ; there can be no persuasion unless con- fidence is established ; there can be no confidence unless the orator is a man of reliable character who speaks the truth. Momentary passions, transitory moods of conviction even, can be aroused or created by propaganda and polemics ; yet' those false methods are subject to the law of diminishing returns. Is it impossible to teach blind mouths to accept these principles. I fear it is impossible. On second thoughts I shall not send Mr. Malik the present that I intended for him. Besides, I do not possess a Russian translation of The Technique of Rhetoric.
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