Influencing By Persuasion

                       She hath prosperous art     When she will play with reason and discourse,     And well she can persuade.

    --SHAKESPEARE, _Measure for Measure_.

    Him we call an artist who shall play on an assembly of men as a     master on the keys of a piano,--who seeing the people furious,     shall soften and compose them, shall draw them, when he will, to     laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, and, be they     who they may,--coarse or refined, pleased or displeased, sulky     or savage, with their opinions in the keeping of a confessor or     with their opinions in their bank safes,--he will have them     pleased and humored as he chooses; and they shall carry and     execute what he bids them.

    --RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Essay on _Eloquence_.

More good and more ill have been effected by persuasion than by any other form of speech. _It is an attempt to influence by means of appeal to some particular interest held important by the hearer._ Its motive may be high or low, fair or unfair, honest or dishonest, calm or passionate, and hence its scope is unparalleled in public speaking.

This "instilment of conviction," to use Matthew Arnold's expression, is naturally a complex process in that it usually includes argumentation and often employs suggestion, as the next chapter will illustrate. In fact, there is little public speaking worthy of the name that is not in some part persuasive, for men rarely speak solely to alter men's opinions--the ulterior purpose is almost always action.

The nature of persuasion is not solely intellectual, but is largely emotional. It uses every principle of public speaking, and every "form of discourse," to use a rhetorician's expression, but argument supplemented by special appeal is its peculiar quality. This we may best see by examining

_The Methods of Persuasion_

High-minded speakers often seek to move their hearers to action by an appeal to their highest motives, such as love of liberty. Senator Hoar, in pleading for action on the Philippine question, used this method:

    What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your     ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted nearly six     hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten     thousand American lives--the flower of our youth. You have     devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the     people you desire to benefit. You have established     reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their     harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other     thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable     lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in     the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in     Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and     of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship     which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or     the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models,     has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I     believe--nay, I know--that in general our officers and soldiers     are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare     with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.

    Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a     people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the     garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who     thronged after your men, when they landed on those islands, with     benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable     enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.

    Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You may     struggle against it, you may try to escape it, you may persuade     yourself that your intentions are benevolent, that your yoke     will be easy and your burden will be light, but it will assert     itself again. Government without the consent of the     governed--authority which heaven never gave--can only be     supported by means which heaven never can sanction.

    The American people have got this one question to answer. They     may answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or     a generation, or a century to think of it. But will not down.     They must answer it in the end: Can you lawfully buy with money,     or get by brute force of arms, the right to hold in subjugation     an unwilling people, and to impose on them such constitution as     you, and not they, think best for them?

Senator Hoar then went on to make another sort of appeal--the appeal to fact and experience:

    We have answered this question a good many times in the past.     The fathers answered it in 1776, and founded the Republic upon     their answer, which has been the corner-stone. John Quincy Adams     and James Monroe answered it again in the Monroe Doctrine, which     John Quincy Adams declared was only the doctrine of the consent     of the governed. The Republican party answered it when it took     possession of the force of government at the beginning of the     most brilliant period in all legislative history. Abraham     Lincoln answered it when, on that fatal journey to Washington in     1861, he announced that as the doctrine of his political creed,     and declared, with prophetic vision, that he was ready to be     assassinated for it if need be. You answered it again yourselves     when you said that Cuba, who had no more title than the people     of the Philippine Islands had to their independence, of right     ought to be free and independent.

    --GEORGE F. HOAR.

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