The Art of Public Speaking
_Ant._ Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.
Wherein hath Caesar thus deserv'd your loves?
Alas! you know not!--I must tell you then.
You have forgot the will I told you of.
_Ple._ Most true;--the will!--let's stay, and hear the will.
_Ant._ Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal.
To every Roman citizen he gives,
To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.
_2 Ple._ Most noble Caesar!--we'll revenge his death.
_3 Ple._ O royal Caesar!
_Ant._ Hear me with patience.
_All._ Peace, ho!
_Ant._ Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,
And to your heirs forever, common pleasures,
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?
_1 Ple._ Never, never!--Come, away, away!
We'll burn his body in the holy place,
And with the brands fire the traitors' houses.
Take up the body.
_2 Ple._ Go, fetch fire.
_3 Ple._ Pluck down benches.
_4 Ple._ Pluck down forms, windows, anything.
[_Exeunt Citizens, with the body._
_Ant._ Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take thou what course thou wilt!
To unify single, auditors into a crowd, express their common needs,
aspirations, dangers, and emotions, deliver your message so that the
interests of one shall appear to be the interests of all. The conviction
of one man is intensified in proportion as he finds others sharing his
belief--_and feeling_. Antony does not stop with telling the Roman
populace that Caesar fell--he makes the tragedy universal:
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
Applause, generally a sign of feeling, helps to unify an audience. The
nature of the crowd is illustrated by the contagion of applause.
Recently a throng in a New York moving-picture and vaudeville house had
been applauding several songs, and when an advertisement for tailored
skirts was thrown on the screen some one started the applause, and the
crowd, like sheep, blindly imitated--until someone saw the joke and
laughed; then the crowd again followed a leader and laughed at and
applauded its own stupidity.
Actors sometimes start applause for their lines by snapping their
fingers. Some one in the first few rows will mistake it for faint
applause, and the whole theatre will chime in.
An observant auditor will be interested in noticing the various devices
a monologist will use to get the first round of laughter and applause.
He works so hard because he knows an audience of units is an audience of
indifferent critics, but once get them to laughing together and each
single laugher sweeps a number of others with him, until the whole
theatre is aroar and the entertainer has scored. These are meretricious
schemes, to be sure, and do not savor in the least of inspiration, but
crowds have not changed in their nature in a thousand years and the one
law holds for the greatest preacher and the pettiest stump-speaker--you
must fuse your audience or they will not warm to your message. The
devices of the great orator may not be so obvious as those of the
vaudeville monologist, but the principle is the same: he tries to strike
some universal note that will have all his hearers feeling alike at the
same time.
The evangelist knows this when he has the soloist sing some touching
song just before the address. Or he will have the entire congregation
sing, and that is the psychology of "Now _every_body sing!" for he knows
that they who will not join in the song are as yet outside the crowd.
Many a time has the popular evangelist stopped in the middle of his
talk, when he felt that his hearers were units instead of a molten mass
(and a sensitive speaker can feel that condition most depressingly) and
suddenly demanded that everyone arise and sing, or repeat aloud a
familiar passage, or read in unison; or perhaps he has subtly left the
thread of his discourse to tell a story that, from long experience, he
knew would not fail to bring his hearers to a common feeling.
These things are important resources for the speaker, and happy is he
who uses them worthily and not as a despicable charlatan. The difference
between a demagogue and a leader is not so much a matter of method as of
principle. Even the most dignified speaker must recognize the eternal
laws of human nature. You are by no means urged to become a trickster on
the platform--far from it!--but don't kill your speech with dignity. To
be icily correct is as silly as to rant. Do neither, but appeal to those
world-old elements in your audience that have been recognized by all
great speakers from Demosthenes to Sam Small, and see to it that you
never debase your powers by arousing your hearers unworthily.
It is as hard to kindle enthusiasm in a scattered audience as to build a
fire with scattered sticks. An audience to be converted into a crowd
must be made to appear as a crowd. This cannot be done when they are
widely scattered over a large seating space or when many empty benches
separate the speaker from his hearers. Have your audience seated
compactly. How many a preacher has bemoaned the enormous edifice over
which what would normally be a large congregation has scattered in
chilled and chilling solitude Sunday after Sunday! Bishop Brooks himself
could not have inspired a congregation of one thousand souls seated in
the vastness of St. Peter's at Rome. In that colossal sanctuary it is
only on great occasions which bring out the multitudes that the service
is before the high altar--at other times the smaller side-chapels are
used.
Universal ideas surcharged with feeling help to create the
crowd-atmosphere. Examples: liberty, character, righteousness, courage,
fraternity, altruism, country, and national heroes. George Cohan was
making psychology practical and profitable when he introduced the flag
and flag-songs into his musical comedies. Cromwell's regiments prayed
before the battle and went into the fight singing hymns. The French
corps, singing the Marseillaise in 1914, charged the Germans as one man.
Such unifying devices arouse the feelings, make soldiers fanatical
mobs--and, alas, more efficient murderers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 28: _Sesame and Lilies_.]
CHAPTER XXVI
RIDING THE WINGED HORSE
To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men
of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character of Men of Genius_.
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
--SHAKESPEARE, _Midsummer-Night's Dream_.
It is common, among those who deal chiefly with life's practicalities,
to think of imagination as having little value in comparison with direct
thinking. They smile with tolerance when Emerson says that "Science does
not know its debt to the imagination," for these are the words of a
speculative essayist, a philosopher, a poet. But when Napoleon--the
indomitable welder of empires--declares that "The human race is governed
by its imagination," the authoritative word commands their respect.
Be it remembered, the faculty of forming _mental images_ is as efficient
a cog as may be found in the whole mind-machine. True, it must fit into
that other vital cog, pure thought, but when it does so it may be
questioned which is the more productive of important results for the
happiness and well-being of man. This should become more apparent as we
go on.
I. WHAT IS IMAGINATION?
Let us not seek for a definition, for a score of varying ones may be
found, but let us grasp this fact: By imagination we mean either the
faculty or the process of forming mental images.
The subject-matter of imagination may be really existent in nature, or
not at all real, or a combination of both; it may be physical or
spiritual, or both--the mental image is at once the most lawless and the
most law-abiding child that has ever been born of the mind.
First of all, as its name suggests, the process of imagination--for we
are thinking of it now as a process rather than as a faculty--is memory
at work. Therefore we must consider it primarily as
_1. Reproductive Imagination_
We see or hear or feel or taste or smell something and the sensation
passes away. Yet we are conscious of a greater or lesser ability to
reproduce such feelings at will. Two considerations, in general, will
govern the vividness of the image thus evoked--the strength of the
original impression, and the reproductive power of one mind as compared
with another. Yet every normal person will be able to evoke images with
some degree of clearness.
The fact that not all minds possess this imaging faculty in anything
like equal measure will have an important bearing on the public
speaker's study of this question. No man who does not feel at least some
poetic impulses is likely to aspire seriously to be a poet, yet many
whose imaging faculties are so dormant as to seem actually dead do
aspire to be public speakers. To all such we say most earnestly: Awaken
your image-making gift, for even in the most coldly logical discourse it
is sure to prove of great service. It is important that you find out at
once just how full and how trustworthy is your imagination, for it is
capable of cultivation--as well as of abuse.
Francis Galton[29] says: "The French appear to possess the visualizing
faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in
pre-arranging ceremonials and fetes of all kinds and their undoubted
genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee
effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical
contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is
their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase _figurez-vous_, or
_picture to yourself_, seems to express their dominant mode of
perception. Our equivalent, of 'image,' is ambiguous."
But individuals differ in this respect just as markedly as, for
instance, the Dutch do from the French. And this is true not only of
those who are classified by their friends as being respectively
imaginative or unimaginative, but of those whose gifts or habits are not
well known.
Let us take for experiment six of the best-known types of imaging and
see in practise how they arise in our own minds.
By all odds the most common type is, (a) _the visual image_. Children
who more readily recall things seen than things heard are called by
psychologists "eye-minded," and most of us are bent in this direction.
Close your eyes now and re-call--the word thus hyphenated is more
suggestive--the scene around this morning's breakfast table. Possibly
there was nothing striking in the situation and the image is therefore
not striking. Then image any notable table scene in your experience--how
vividly it stands forth, because at the time you felt the impression
strongly. Just then you may not have been conscious of how strongly the
scene was laying hold upon you, for often we are so intent upon what we
see that we give no particular thought to the fact that it is impressing
us. It may surprise you to learn how accurately you are able to image a
scene when a long time has elapsed between the conscious focussing of
your attention on the image and the time when you saw the original.
(b) _The auditory image_ is probably the next most vivid of our recalled
experiences. Here association is potent to suggest similarities. Close
out all the world beside and listen to the peculiar wood-against-wood