Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
man has at one step attained vast power, who has renounced his moral
sentiment, and settled it with himself that he will no longer stick
at anything. It was said of Sir William Pepperel, one of the worthies
of New England, that, “put him where you might, he commanded, and saw
what he willed come to pass.” Julius Cæsar said to Metellus, when that
tribune interfered to hinder him from entering the Roman treasury,
“Young man, it is easier for me to put you to death than to say that I
will”; and the youth yielded. In earlier days, he was taken by pirates.
What then? He threw himself into their ship, established the most
extraordinary intimacies, told them stories, declaimed to them; if they
did not applaud his speeches, he threatened them with hanging,--which
he performed afterwards,--and, in a short time, was master of all on
board. A man this is who cannot be disconcerted, and so can never play
his last card, but has a reserve of power when he has hit his mark.
With a serene face, he subverts a kingdom. What is told of him is
miraculous; it affects men so. The confidence of men in him is lavish,
and he changes the face of the world, and histories, poems, and new
philosophies arise to account for him. A supreme commander over all
his passions and affections; but the secret of his ruling is higher
than that. It is the power of Nature running without impediment from
the brain and will into the hands. Men and women are his game. Where
they are, he cannot be without resource. “Whoso can speak well,” said
Luther, “is a man.” It was men of this stamp that the Grecian States
used to ask of Sparta for generals. They did not send to Lacedæmon
for troops, but they said, “Send us a commander”; and Pausanias, or
Gylippus, or Brasidas, or Agis, was despatched by the Ephors.
It is easy to illustrate this overpowering personality by these
examples of soldiers and kings; but there are men of the most peaceful
way of life, and peaceful principle, who are felt, wherever they go, as
sensibly as a July sun or a December frost,--men who, if they speak,
are heard, though they speak in a whisper,--who, when they act, act
effectually, and what they do is imitated; and these examples may be
found on very humble platforms, as well as on high ones.
In old countries, a high money-value is set on the services of men who
have achieved a personal distinction. He who has points to carry must
hire, not a skilful attorney, but a commanding person. A barrister
in England is reputed to have made thirty or forty thousand pounds
_per annum_ in representing the claims of railroad companies before
committees of the House of Commons. His clients pay not so much for
legal as for manly accomplishments,--for courage, conduct, and a
commanding social position, which enable him to make their claims
heard and respected.
I know very well, that, among our cool and calculating people, where
every man mounts guard over himself, where heats and panics and
abandonments are quite out of the system, there is a good deal of
scepticism as to extraordinary influence. To talk of an overpowering
mind rouses the same jealousy and defiance which one may observe
round a table where anybody is recounting the marvellous anecdotes
of mesmerism. Each auditor puts a final stroke to the discourse by
exclaiming, “Can he mesmerize _me_?” So each man inquires if any orator
can change _his_ convictions.
But does any one suppose himself to be quite impregnable? Does he think
that not possibly a man may come to him who shall persuade him out of
his most settled determination?--for example, good sedate citizen as
he is, to make a fanatic of him,--or, if he is penurious, to squander
money for some purpose he now least thinks of,--or, if he is a prudent,
industrious person, to forsake his work, and give days and weeks to
a new interest? No, he defies any one, every one. Ah! he is thinking
of resistance, and of a different turn from his own. But what if one
should come of the same turn of mind as his own, and who sees much
farther on his own way than he? A man who has tastes like mine, but in
greater power, will rule me any day, and make me love my ruler.
Thus it is not powers of speech that we primarily consider under this
word _eloquence_, but the power that, being present, gives them their
perfection, and, being absent, leaves them a merely superficial value.
Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy.
Personal ascendency may exist with or without adequate talent for its
expression. It is as surely felt as a mountain or a planet; but when
it is weaponed with a power of speech, it seems first to become truly
human, works actively in all directions, and supplies the imagination
with fine materials.
This circumstance enters into every consideration of the power of
orators, and is the key to all their effects. In the assembly, you
shall find the orator and the audience in perpetual balance; and the
predominance of either is indicated by the choice of topic. If the
talents for speaking exist, but not the strong personality, then there
are good speakers who perfectly receive and express the will of the
audience, and the commonest populace is flattered by hearing its low
mind returned to it with every ornament which happy talent can add. But
if there be personality in the orator, the face of things changes. The
audience is thrown into the attitude of pupil, follows like a child its
preceptor, and hears what he has to say. It is as if, amidst the king’s
council at Madrid, Ximenes urged that an advantage might be gained of
France, and Mendoza that Flanders might be kept down, and Columbus,
being introduced, was interrogated whether his geographical knowledge
could aid the cabinet, and he can say nothing to one party or to the
other, but he can show how all Europe can be diminished and reduced
under the king, by annexing to Spain a continent as large as six or
seven Europes.
This balance between the orator and the audience is expressed in what
is called the pertinence of the speaker. There is always a rivalry
between the orator and the occasion, between the demands of the hour
and the prepossession of the individual. The emergency which has
convened the meeting is usually of more importance than anything the
debaters have in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to them.
But if one of them have anything of commanding necessity in his heart,
how speedily he will find vent for it, and with the applause of the
assembly! This balance is observed in the privatest intercourse. Poor
Tom never knew the time when the present occurrence was so trivial that
he could tell what was passing in his mind without being checked for
unseasonable speech; but let Bacon speak, and wise men would rather
listen, though the revolution of kingdoms was on foot. I have heard
it reported of an eloquent preacher, whose voice is not yet forgotten
in this city, that, on occasions of death or tragic disaster, which
overspread the congregation with gloom, he ascended the pulpit with
more than his usual alacrity, and, turning to his favorite lessons of
devout and jubilant thankfulness,--“Let us praise the Lord,”--carried
audience, mourners, and mourning along with him, and swept away all the
impertinence of private sorrow with his hosannas and songs of praise.
Pepys says of Lord Clarendon (with whom “he is mad in love”), on his
return from a conference, “I did never observe how much easier a man do
speak when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him; for,
though he spoke indeed excellent well, yet his manner and freedom of
doing it, as if he played with it, and was informing only all the rest
of the company, was mighty pretty.”[C]
This rivalry between the orator and the occasion is inevitable, and
the occasion always yields to the eminence of the speaker; for a great
man is the greatest of occasions. Of course, the interest of the
audience and of the orator conspire. It is well with them only when his
influence is complete; then only they are well pleased. Especially, he
consults his power by making instead of taking his theme. If he should
attempt to instruct the people in that which they already know, he
would fail; but, by making them wise in that which he knows, he has
the advantage of the assembly every moment. Napoleon’s tactics of
marching on the angle of an army, and always presenting a superiority
of numbers, is the orator’s secret also.
The several talents which the orator employs, the splendid weapons
which went to the equipment of Demosthenes, of Æschines, of Demades
the natural orator, of Fox, of Pitt, of Patrick Henry, of Adams, of
Mirabeau, deserve a special enumeration. We must not quite omit to name
the principal pieces.
The orator, as we have seen, must be a substantial personality. Then,
first, he must have power of statement,--must have the fact, and
know how to tell it. In any knot of men conversing on any subject,
the person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company,
if he wishes it, and lead the conversation,--no matter what genius
or distinction other men there present may have; and in any public
assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will state them, people
will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse
and ungraceful, though he stutters and screams.
In a court of justice, the audience are impartial; they really wish to
sift the statements and know what the truth is. And in the examination
of witnesses there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, three or four
stubborn words or phrases which are the pith and fate of the business,
which sink into the ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine
the cause. All the rest is repetition and qualifying; and the court
and the county have really come together to arrive at these three or
four memorable expressions, which betrayed the mind and meaning of
somebody.
In every company, the man with the fact is like the guide you hire to
lead your party up a mountain, or through a difficult country. He may
not compare with any of the party in mind, or breeding, or courage, or
possessions, but he is much more important to the present need than
any of them. That is what we go to the court-house for,--the statement
of the fact, and the elimination of a general fact, the real relation
of all the parties; and it is the certainty with which, indifferently
in any affair that is well handled, the truth stares us in the face,
through all the disguises that are put upon it,--a piece of the
well-known human life,--that makes the interest of a court-room to the
intelligent spectator.
I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the
counsel, and the local importance of the cause, into the court-room.
The prisoner’s counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in
the Commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the State from corner to
corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence,
but not to submission. When hard pressed, he revenged himself, in his
turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was.
The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything it could
think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of
insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers that are or
might be,--like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who reads the
context with emphasis. But all this flood not serving the cuttle-fish
to get away in, the horrible shark of the district-attorney being still
there, grimly awaiting with his “The court must define,”--the poor
court pleaded its inferiority. The superior court must establish the
law for this, and it read away piteously the decisions of the Supreme
Court, but read to those who had no pity. The judge was forced at last