1pFFjZK

72 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
added that a listener is
always in sympathy with an emotional
speaker, even though what he says is wholly worthless. 5
This
is the reason why a good many speakers try to overwhelm
the audience by their clamor. This method of proof depending
on external signs is ethical, as the appropriate characteristics
are assigned to any particular class or moral state. I
understand under " class " the different periods of life, boyhood,
manhood, and old age, the sexes, male and female, or
nationalities such as the Lacedaemonian or Thessalian ;
and
under " moral states " such as determine the character of a
person's life, as it is not every such state which influences the
characters of lives. If then the words which the speaker uses
are also appropriate to the moral state,
he will produce this
ethical effect ;
for there will be a difference both in the language
and in the pronunciation of a clown and an educated person.
Another means of moving an audience is the trick which is
used ad nauseam by speech writers, viz. the introduction o)
such phrases as " "
Who is not aware? ", Everybody
is
aware,"
where a listener is shamed into an admission of the fact for
the sake of participating in the knowledge which everybody
else is said to possess.
The question of opportuneness or inopportuneness
in the
use of any rhetorical device is one that belongs
nesr tUne" ec uall l y to a11 the s Pecies of Rhetoric. There
is one remedy for exaggeration of every sort in
the popular rule, that a speaker should * anticipate censure
by pronouncing it on himself, as the is
exaggeration then
regarded as correct, since the is
speaker aware of what
he is doing. Let me add the rule of not employing
simultaneously all the different means of proportion or correspondence^
as this is one way to deceive the audience. What
I mean is e.g. if the words used are harsh in sound,
* Reading Trpoeirnr\^TTt,v.
not to