Kitabı oku: «THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING», sayfa 8

FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit that hovers over

the production of genius.

--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character_.

If you are addressing a body of scientists on such a subject as the

veins in a butterfly's wings, or on road structure, naturally your theme

will not arouse much feeling in either you or your audience. These are

purely mental subjects. But if you want men to vote for a measure that

will abolish child labor, or if you would inspire them to take up arms

for freedom, you must strike straight at their feelings. We lie on soft

beds, sit near the radiator on a cold day, eat cherry pie, and devote

our attention to one of the opposite sex, not because we have reasoned

out that it is the right thing to do, but because it feels right. No one

but a dyspeptic chooses his diet from a chart. Our feelings dictate what

we shall eat and generally how we shall act. Man is a feeling animal,

hence the public speaker's ability to arouse men to action depends

almost wholly on his ability to touch their emotions.

Negro mothers on the auction-block seeing their children sold away from

them into slavery have flamed out some of America's most stirring

speeches. True, the mother did not have any knowledge of the technique

of speaking, but she had something greater than all technique, more

effective than reason: feeling. The great speeches of the world have

not been delivered on tariff reductions or post-office appropriations.

The speeches that will live have been charged with emotional force.

Prosperity and peace are poor developers of eloquence. When great wrongs

are to be righted, when the public heart is flaming with passion, that

is the occasion for memorable speaking. Patrick Henry made an immortal

address, for in an epochal crisis he pleaded for liberty. He had roused

himself to the point where he could honestly and passionately exclaim,

"Give me liberty or give me death." His fame would have been different

had he lived to-day and argued for the recall of judges.

_The Power of Enthusiasm_

Political parties hire bands, and pay for applause--they argue that, for

vote-getting, to stir up enthusiasm is more effective than reasoning.

How far they are right depends on the hearers, but there can be no doubt

about the contagious nature of enthusiasm. A watch manufacturer in New

York tried out two series of watch advertisements; one argued the

superior construction, workmanship, durability, and guarantee offered

with the watch; the other was headed, "A Watch to be Proud of," and

dwelt upon the pleasure and pride of ownership. The latter series sold

twice as many as the former. A salesman for a locomotive works informed

the writer that in selling railroad engines emotional appeal was

stronger than an argument based on mechanical excellence.

Illustrations without number might be cited to show that in all our

actions we are emotional beings. The speaker who would speak efficiently

must develop the power to arouse feeling.

Webster, great debater that he was, knew that the real secret of a

speaker's power was an emotional one. He eloquently says of eloquence:

"Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation,

all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it

come at all, like the outbreak of a fountain from the earth, or

the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous,

original, native force.

"The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and

studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when

their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children,

and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words

have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate

oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and

subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism

is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear

conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose,

the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue,

beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the

whole man onward, right onward to his subject--this, this is

eloquence; or rather, it is something greater and higher than

all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action."

When traveling through the Northwest some time ago, one of the present

writers strolled up a village street after dinner and noticed a crowd

listening to a "faker" speaking on a corner from a goods-box.

Remembering Emerson's advice about learning something from every man we

meet, the observer stopped to listen to this speaker's appeal. He was

selling a hair tonic, which he claimed to have discovered in Arizona. He

removed his hat to show what this remedy had done for him, washed his

face in it to demonstrate that it was as harmless as water, and enlarged

on its merits in such an enthusiastic manner that the half-dollars

poured in on him in a silver flood. When he had supplied the audience

with hair tonic, he asked why a greater proportion of men than women

were bald. No one knew. He explained that it was because women wore

thinner-soled shoes, and so made a good electrical connection with

mother earth, while men wore thick, dry-soled shoes that did not

transmit the earth's electricity to the body. Men's hair, not having a

proper amount of electrical food, died and fell out. Of course he had a

remedy--a little copper plate that should be nailed on the bottom of the

shoe. He pictured in enthusiastic and vivid terms the desirability of

escaping baldness--and paid tributes to his copper plates. Strange as it

may seem when the story is told in cold print, the speaker's enthusiasm

had swept his audience with him, and they crushed around his stand with

outstretched "quarters" in their anxiety to be the possessors of these

magical plates!

Emerson's suggestion had been well taken--the observer had seen again

the wonderful, persuasive power of enthusiasm!

Enthusiasm sent millions crusading into the Holy Land to redeem it from

the Saracens. Enthusiasm plunged Europe into a thirty years' war over

religion. Enthusiasm sent three small ships plying the unknown sea to

the shores of a new world. When Napoleon's army were worn out and

discouraged in their ascent of the Alps, the Little Corporal stopped

them and ordered the bands to play the Marseillaise. Under its

soul-stirring strains there were no Alps.

Listen! Emerson said: "Nothing great was ever achieved without

enthusiasm." Carlyle declared that "Every great movement in the annals

of history has been the triumph of enthusiasm." It is as contagious as

measles. Eloquence is half inspiration. Sweep your audience with you in

a pulsation of enthusiasm. Let yourself go. "A man," said Oliver

Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is

going."

_How are We to Acquire and Develop Enthusiasm?_

It is not to be slipped on like a smoking jacket. A book cannot furnish

you with it. It is a growth--an effect. But an effect of what? Let us

see.

Emerson wrote: "A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without

in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines

of his form merely,--but, by watching for a time his motion and plays,

the painter enters his nature, and then can draw him at will in every

attitude. So Roos 'entered into the inmost nature of his sheep.' I knew

a draughtsman employed in a public survey, who found that he could not

sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to

him."

When Sarah Bernhardt plays a difficult role she frequently will speak to

no one from four o'clock in the afternoon until after the performance.

From the hour of four she lives her character. Booth, it is reported,

would not permit anyone to speak to him between the acts of his

Shakesperean rôles, for he was Macbeth then--not Booth. Dante, exiled

from his beloved Florence, condemned to death, lived in caves, half

starved; then Dante wrote out his heart in "The Divine Comedy." Bunyan

entered into the spirit of his "Pilgrim's Progress" so thoroughly that

he fell down on the floor of Bedford jail and wept for joy. Turner, who

lived in a garret, arose before daybreak and walked over the hills nine

miles to see the sun rise on the ocean, that he might catch the spirit

of its wonderful beauty. Wendell Phillips' sentences were full of

"silent lightning" because he bore in his heart the sorrow of five

million slaves.

There is only one way to get feeling into your speaking--and whatever

else you forget, forget not this: _You must actually ENTER INTO_ the

character you impersonate, the cause you advocate, the case you

argue--enter into it so deeply that it clothes you, enthralls you,

possesses you wholly. Then you are, in the true meaning of the word, in

_sympathy_ with your subject, for its feeling is your feeling, you "feel

with" it, and therefore your enthusiasm is both genuine and contagious.

The Carpenter who spoke as "never man spake" uttered words born out of a

passion of love for humanity--he had entered into humanity, and thus

became Man.

But we must not look upon the foregoing words as a facile prescription

for decocting a feeling which may then be ladled out to a complacent

audience in quantities to suit the need of the moment. Genuine feeling

in a speech is bone and blood of the speech itself and not something

that may be added to it or substracted at will. In the ideal address

theme, speaker and audience become one, fused by the emotion and thought

of the hour.

_The Need of Sympathy for Humanity_

It is impossible to lay too much stress on the necessity for the

speaker's having a broad and deep tenderness for human nature. One of

Victor Hugo's biographers attributes his power as an orator and writer

to his wide sympathies and profound religious feelings. Recently we

heard the editor of _Collier's Weekly_ speak on short-story writing, and

he so often emphasized the necessity for this broad love for humanity,

this truly religious feeling, that he apologized twice for delivering a

sermon. Few if any of the immortal speeches were ever delivered for a

selfish or a narrow cause--they were born out of a passionate desire to

help humanity; instances, Paul's address to the Athenians on Mars Hill,

Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, The Sermon on the Mount, Henry's address

before the Virginia Convention of Delegates.

The seal and sign of greatness is a desire to serve others.

Self-preservation is the first law of life, but self-abnegation is the

first law of greatness--and of art. Selfishness is the fundamental cause

of all sin, it is the thing that all great religions, all worthy

philosophies, have struck at. Out of a heart of real sympathy and love

come the speeches that move humanity.

Former United States Senator Albert J. Beveridge in an introduction to

one of the volumes of "Modern Eloquence," says: "The profoundest feeling

among the masses, the most influential element in their character, is

the religious element. It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of

self-preservation. It informs the whole intellect and personality of the

people. And he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their

unformed thoughts must have this great and unanalyzable bond of sympathy

with them."

When the men of Ulster armed themselves to oppose the passage of the

Home Rule Act, one of the present writers assigned to a hundred men

"Home Rule" as the topic for an address to be prepared by each. Among

this group were some brilliant speakers, several of them experienced

lawyers and political campaigners. Some of their addresses showed a

remarkable knowledge and grasp of the subject; others were clothed in

the most attractive phrases. But a clerk, without a great deal of

education and experience, arose and told how he spent his boyhood days

in Ulster, how his mother while holding him on her lap had pictured to

him Ulster's deeds of valor. He spoke of a picture in his uncle's home

that showed the men of Ulster conquering a tyrant and marching on to

victory. His voice quivered, and with a hand pointing upward he declared

that if the men of Ulster went to war they would not go alone--a great

God would go with them.

The speech thrilled and electrified the audience. It thrills yet as we

recall it. The high-sounding phrases, the historical knowledge, the

philosophical treatment, of the other speakers largely failed to arouse

any deep interest, while the genuine conviction and feeling of the

modest clerk, speaking on a subject that lay deep in his heart, not

only electrified his audience but won their personal sympathy for the

cause he advocated.

As Webster said, it is of no use to try to pretend to sympathy or

feelings. It cannot be done successfully. "Nature is forever putting a

premium on reality." What is false is soon detected as such. The

thoughts and feelings that create and mould the speech in the study must

be born again when the speech is delivered from the platform. Do not let

your words say one thing, and your voice and attitude another. There is

no room here for half-hearted, nonchalant methods of delivery. Sincerity

is the very soul of eloquence. Carlyle was right: "No Mirabeau,

Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first

of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should

say sincerity, a great, deep, genuine sincerity, is the first

characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that

calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed; a

shallow braggart, conscious sincerity, oftenest self-conceit mainly. The

great man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of--is not

conscious of."