Read Ebook: The ethics of rhetoric by Weaver Richard M

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 429 lines and 70938 words, and 9 pages

successful to determine the details to be taught in the schools through the vote of legislatures rather than as a result of scientific investigation.

Thus the two sides lined up as dialectical truth and empirical fact. The state legislature of Tennessee, acting in its sovereign capacity, had passed a measure which made it unlawful to teach that man is connatural with the animals through asserting that he is descended from a "lower order" of them. The legal question was whether John T. Scopes had violated the measure. The philosophical question, which was the real focus of interest, was the right of a state to make this prescription.

We have referred to the kind of truth which can be dialectically established, and here we must develop further the dialectical nature of the state's case. As long as it maintained this dialectical position, it did not have to go into the "factual" truth of evolution, despite the outcry from the other side. The following considerations, then, enter into this "dialectical" prosecution.

The policy of the anti-evolution law was the same type of policy which Darrow had by inference commended only a year earlier in the famous trial of Loeb and Leopold. This clash is perhaps the most direct in the Scopes case and deserves pointing out here. Darrow had served as defense counsel for the two brilliant university graduates who had conceived the idea of committing a murder as a kind of intellectual exploit, to prove that their powers of foresight and care could prevent detection. The essence of Darrow's plea at their trial was that the two young men could not be held culpable--at least in the degree the state claimed--because of the influences to which they had been exposed. They had been readers of a system of philosophy of allegedly anti-social tendency, and they were not to be blamed if they translated that philosophy into a sanction of their deed. The effect of this plea obviously was to transfer guilt from the two young men to society as a whole, acting through its laws, its schools, its publications, etc.

Now the key thing to be observed in this plea was that Darrow was not asking the jury to inspect the philosophy of Nietzsche for the purpose either of passing upon its internal consistency or its contact with reality. He was asking precisely what Bryan was asking of the jury at Dayton, namely that they take a strictly dialectical position outside it, viewing it as a partial universe of discourse with consequences which could be adjudged good or bad. The point to be especially noted is that Darrow did not raise the question of whether the philosophy of Nietzsche expresses necessary truth, or whether, let us say, it is essential to an understanding of the world. He was satisfied to point out that the state had not been a sufficiently vigilant guardian of the forces molding the character of its youth.

But the prosecution at Dayton could use this line of argument without change. If the philosophy of Nietzsche were sufficient to instigate young men to criminal actions, it might be claimed with even greater force that the philosophy of evolution, which in the popular mind equated man with the animals, would do the same. The state's dialectic here simply used one of Darrow's earlier definitions to place the anti-evolution law in a favorable or benevolent category. In sum: to Darrow's previous position that the doctrine of Nietzsche is capable of immoral influence, Bryan responded that the doctrine of evolution is likewise capable of immoral influence, and this of course was the dialectical countering of the defense's position in the trial.

There remains yet a third dialectical maneuver for the prosecution. On the second day of the trial Attorney-General Stewart, in reviewing the duties of the legislature, posed the following problem: "Supposing then that there should come within the minds of the people a conflict between literature and science. Then what would the legislature do? Wouldn't they have to interpret?... Wouldn't they have to interpret their construction of this conflict which one should be recognized or higher or more in the public schools?"

This point was not exploited as fully as its importance might seem to warrant; but what the counsel was here declaring is that the legislature is necessarily the umpire in all disputes between partial universes. Therefore if literature and science should fall into a conflict, it would again be up to the legislature to assign the priority. It is not bound to recognize the claims of either of these exclusively because, as we saw earlier, it operates in a universe with reference to which these are partial bodies of discourse. The legislature is the disposer of partial universes. Accordingly when the Attorney-General took this stand, he came the nearest of any of the participants in the trial to clarifying the state's position, and by this we mean to showing that for the state it was a matter of legal dialectic.

There is little evidence to indicate that the defense understood the kind of case it was up against, though naturally this is said in a philosophical rather than a legal sense. After the questions of law were settled, its argument assumed the substance of a plea for the truth of evolution, which subject was not within the scope of the indictment. We have, for example, the statement of Mr. Hays already cited that the whole case of the defense depended on proving that evolution is a "reasonable scientific theory." Of those who spoke for the defense, Mr. Dudley Field Malone seems to have had the poorest conception of the nature of the contest. I must cite further from his plea because it shows most clearly the trap from which the defense was never able to extricate itself. On the fifth day of the trial Mr. Malone was chosen to reply to Mr. Bryan, and in the course of his speech he made the following revealing utterance: "Your honor, there is a difference between theological and scientific men. Theology deals with something that is established and revealed; it seeks to gather material which they claim should not be changed. It is the Word of God and that cannot be changed; it is literal, it is not to be interpreted. That is the theological mind. It deals with theology. The scientific mind is a modern thing, your honor. I am not sure Galileo was the one who brought relief to the scientific mind; because, theretofore, Aristotle and Plato had reached their conclusions and processes, by metaphysical reasoning, because they had no telescope and no microscope." The part of this passage which gives his case away is the distinction made at the end. Mr. Malone was asserting that Aristotle and Plato got no further than they did because they lacked the telescope and the microscope. To a slight extent perhaps Aristotle was what we would today call a "research scientist," but the conclusions and processes arrived at by the metaphysical reasoning of the two are dialectical, and the test of a dialectical position is logic and not ocular visibility. At the risk of making Mr. Malone a scapegoat we must say that this is an abysmal confusion of two different kinds of inquiry which the Greeks were well cognizant of. But the same confusion, if it did not produce this trial, certainly helped to draw it out to its length of eight days. It is the assumption that human laws stand in wait upon what the scientists see in their telescopes and microscopes. But harking back to Professor Adler: facts are never determinative of dialectic in the sense presumed by this counsel.

Exactly the same confusion appeared in a rhetorical plea for truth which Mr. Malone made shortly later in the same speech. Then he said: "There is never a duel with truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid of it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is imperishable, eternal and immortal and needs no human agency to support it. We are ready to tell the truth as we understand it and we do not fear all the truth that they can present as facts." It is instantly apparent that this presents truth in an ambiguous sense. Malone begins with the simplistic assumption that there is a "standard" truth, a kind of universal, objective, operative truth which it is heinous to oppose. That might be well enough if the meaning were highly generic, but before he is through this short passage he has equated truth with facts--the identical confusion which we noted in his utterance about Plato and Aristotle. Now since the truth which dialectic arrives at is not a truth of facts, this peroration either becomes irrelevant, or it lends itself to the other side, where, minus the concluding phrase, it could serve as a eulogium of dialectical truth.

Such was the dilemma by which the defense was impaled from the beginning. To some extent it appears even in the expert testimony. On the day preceding this speech by Malone, Professor Maynard Metcalf had presented testimony in court regarding the theory of evolution in which he made some statements which could have been of curious interest to the prosecution. They are effectually summarized in the following excerpt: "Evolution and the theories of evolution are fundamentally different things. The fact of evolution is a thing that is perfectly and absolutely clear.... The series of evidences is so convincing that I think it would be entirely impossible for any normal human being who was conversant with the phenomena to have even for a moment the least doubt even for the fact of evolution, but he might have tremendous doubts as to the truth of any hypothesis...."

We first notice here a clear recognition of the kinds of truth distinguished by Adler, with the "fact" of evolution belonging to the first order and theories of evolution belonging to the second. The second, which is referred to by the term "hypothesis," consists of facts in an elaboration. We note furthermore that this scientist has called them fundamentally different things--so different that one is entitled to have not merely doubts but "tremendous doubts" about the second. Now let us imagine the dialecticians of the opposite side approaching him with the following. You have said, Professor Metcalf, that the fact of evolution and the various theories of evolution are two quite different things. You have also said that the theories of evolution are so debatable or questionable that you can conceive of much difference of opinion about them. Now if there is an order of knowledge above this order of theories, which order you admit to be somewhat speculative, a further order of knowledge which is philosophical or evaluative, is it not likely that there would be in this realm still more alternative positions, still more room for doubt or difference of opinion? And if all this is so, would you expect people to assent to a proposition of this order in the same way you expect them to assent to, say, the proposition that a monkey has vertebrae? And if you do make these admissions, can you any longer maintain that people of opposite views on the teaching of evolution are simply defiers of the truth? This is how the argument might have progressed had some Greek Darwin thrown Athens into an uproar; but this argument was, after all, in an American court of law.

It should now be apparent from these analyses that the defense was never able to meet the state's case on dialectical grounds. Even if it had boldly accepted the contest on this level, it is difficult to see how it could have won, for the dialectic must probably have followed this course: First Proposition, All teaching of evolution is harmful. Counter Proposition, No teaching of evolution is harmful. Resolution, Some teaching of evolution is harmful. Now the resolution was exactly the position taken by the law, which was that some teaching of evolution was an anti-social measure. Logically speaking, the proposition that "Some teaching of evolution is harmful," does not exclude the proposition that "Some teaching of evolution is not harmful," but there was the fact that the law permitted some teaching of evolution . In this situation there seemed nothing for the defense to do but stick by the second proposition and plead for that proposition rhetorically. So science entered the juridical arena and argued for the value of science. In this argument the chief topic was consequence. There was Malone's statement that without the theory of evolution Burbank would not have been able to produce his results. There was Lipman's statement that without an understanding of the theory of evolution the agricultural colleges could not carry on their work. There were the statements of Judd and Nelson that large areas of education depended upon a knowledge of evolution. There was the argument brought out by Professor Mather of Harvard: "When men are offered their choice between science, with its confident and unanimous acceptance of the evolutionary principle, on the one hand, and religion, with its necessary appeal to things unseen and improvable, on the other, they are much more likely to abandon religion than to abandon science. If such a choice is forced upon us, the churches will lose many of their best educated young people, the very ones upon whom they must depend for leadership in coming years."

We noted at the beginning of this chapter that rhetoric deals with subjects at the point where they touch upon actuality or prudential conduct. Here the defense looks at the policy of teaching evolution and points to beneficial results. The argument then becomes: these important benefits imply an important beneficial cause. This is why we can say that the pleaders for science were forced into the non-scientific role of the rhetorician.

The prosecution incidentally also had an argument from consequences, although it was never employed directly. When Bryan maintained that the philosophy of evolution might lead to the same results as the philosophy of Nietzsche had led with Loeb and Leopold, he was opening a subject which could have supplied such an argument, say in the form of a concrete instance of moral beliefs weakened by someone's having been indoctrinated with evolution. But there was really no need: as we have sought to show all along, the state had an immense strategic advantage in the fact that laws belong to the category of dialectical determinations, and it clung firmly to this advantage.

An irascible exchange which Darrow had with the judge gives an idea of the frustration which the defense felt at this stage. There had been an argument about the propriety of a cross-examination.

The truth referred to by the judge was whether the action of Scopes fell within the definition of the law; the truth referred to by Darrow was the facts of evolution ; and "prejudice" was a crystallized opinion of the theory of evolution, expressed now as law.

If we have appeared here to assign too complete a forensic victory to the prosecution, let us return, by way of recapitulating the issues, to the relationship between positive science and dialectic. Many people, perhaps a majority in this country, have felt that the position of the State of Tennessee was absurd because they are unable to see how a logical position can be taken without reference to empirical situations. But it is just the nature of logic and dialectic to be a science without any content as it is the nature of biology or any positive science to be a science of empirical content.

We see the nature of this distinction when we realize that there is never an argument, in the true sense of the term, about facts. When facts are disputed, the argument must be suspended until the facts are settled. Not until then may it be resumed, for all true argument is about the meaning of established or admitted facts. And since this meaning is always expressed in propositions, we can say further that all argument is about the systematic import of propositions. While that remains so, the truth of the theory of evolution or of any scientific theory can never be settled in a court of law. The court could admit the facts into the record, but the process of legal determination would deal with the meaning of the facts, and it could not go beyond saying that the facts comport, or do not comport, with the meanings of other propositions. Thus its task is to determine their place in a system of discourse and if possible to effect a resolution in accordance with the movement of dialectic. It is necessary that logic in its position as ultimate arbiter preserve this indifference toward that actuality which is the touchstone of scientific fact.

It is plain that those who either expected or hoped that science would win a sweeping victory in the Tennessee courtroom were the same people who believe that science can take the place of speculative wisdom. The only consolation they had in the course of the trial was the embarrassment to which Darrow brought Bryan in questioning him about the Bible and the theory of evolution . But in strict consideration all of this was outside the bounds of the case because both the facts of evolution and the facts of the Bible were "items not in discourse," to borrow a phrase employed by Professor Adler. That is to say, their correctness had to be determined by scientific means of investigation, if at all; but the relationship between the law and theories of man's origin could be determined only by legal casuistry, in the non-pejorative sense of that phrase.

EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE

Burke is widely respected as a conservative who was intelligent enough to provide solid philosophical foundations for his conservatism. It is perfectly true that many of his observations upon society have a conservative basis; but if one studies the kind of argument which Burke regularly employed when at grips with concrete policies, one discovers a strong addiction to the argument from circumstance. Now for reasons which will be set forth in detail later, the argument from circumstance is the argument philosophically appropriate to the liberal. Indeed, one can go much further and say that it is the argument fatal to conservatism. However much Burke eulogized tradition and fulminated against the French Revolution, he was, when judged by what we are calling aspect of argument, very far from being a conservative; and we suggest here that a man's method of argument is a truer index in his beliefs than his explicit profession of principles. Here is a means whereby he is revealed in his work. Burke's voluminous controversies give us ample opportunity to test him by this rule.

The first and most capital consideration with regard to this, as to every object, is the extent of it. And here it is necessary to premise: this system of penalty and incapacity has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very numerous body of men--a body which comprehends at least two thirds of the whole nation: it amounts to 2,800,000 souls, a number sufficient for the materials constituent of a great people.

He then gave his reason for placing the circumstance first.

This consideration of the magnitude of the object ought to attend us through the whole inquiry: if it does not always affect the reason, it is always decisive on the importance of the question. It not only makes itself a more leading point, but complicates itself with every other part of the matter, giving every error, minute in itself, a character and a significance from its application. It is therefore not to be wondered at, if we perpetually recur to it in the course of this essay.

If such means can with any probability be shown, from circumstances, rather to add strength to our mixed ecclesiastical and secular constitution, than to weaken it; surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to penalties, incapacities, and proscriptions continued from generation to generation.

In this instance the consideration of magnitude took a more extended form:

How much more, certainly, ought they to give way, when, as in our case, they affect, not here and there, in some particular point or in their consequence, but universally, collectively and directly, the fundamental franchises of a people, equal to the whole inhabitants of several respectable kingdoms and states, equal to the subjects of the kings of Sardinia or of Denmark; equal to those of the United Netherlands, and more than are to be found in all the states of Switzerland. This way of proscribing men by whole nations, as it were, from all the benefits of the constitution to which they were born, I never can believe to be politic or expedient, much less necessary for the existence of any state or church in the world.

It is not purely an argument from definition, but it contains such an argument, and so contrasts with his dominant position on a subject which engaged much of his thought and seems to have filled him with sincere feeling.

To see the aspect of this argument, it is useful to begin by looking at the large alternatives which the orator enumerates for Parliament in the exigency. The first of these is to change the spirit of the Colonies by rendering it more submissive. Circumventing the theory of the relationship of ruler and ruled, Burke sets aside this alternative as impractical. He admits that an effort to bring about submission would be "radical in its principle" ; but he sees too many obstacles in geography, ethnology, and other circumstances to warrant the trial.

The second alternative is to prosecute the Colonists as criminal. At this point, the "magnitude of the object" again enters his equation, and he would distinguish between the indictment of a single individual and the indictment of a whole people as things different in kind. The number and vigor of the Americans constitute an embarrassing circumstance. Therefore his thought issues in the oft-quoted statement "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people." This was said, it should be recalled, despite the fact that history is replete with proceedings against rebellious subjects. But Burke had been an agent for the colony of New York; he had studied the geography and history of the Colonies with his usual industry; and we may suppose him to have had a much clearer idea than his colleagues in Parliament of their power to support a conflict.

It is understandable, by this view, that his third alternative should be "to comply with the American spirit as necessary." He told his fellow Commoners plainly that his proposal had nothing to do with the legal right of taxation. "My consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question." This policy he later characterizes as "systematic indulgence." The outcome of this disjunctive argument is then a measure to accommodate a circumstance. The circumstance is that America is a growing country, of awesome potentiality, whose strength, both actual and imminent, makes it advisable for the Mother Country to overlook abstract rights. In a peroration, the topic of abstract rights is assigned to those "vulgar and mechanical politicians," who are "not fit to turn a wheel in the machine" of Empire.

With this conclusion in mind, it will be instructive to see how the orator prepared the way for his proposal. The entire first part of his discourse may be described as a depiction of the circumstance which is to be his source of argument. After a circumspect beginning, in which he calls attention to the signs of rebellion and derides the notion of "paper government," he devotes a long and brilliant passage to simple characterization of the Colonies and their inhabitants. The unavoidable effect of this passage is to impress upon his hearers the size and resources of this portion of the Empire. First he takes up the rapidly growing population, then the extensive trade, then the spirit of enterprise, and finally the personal character of the Colonists themselves. Outstanding even in this colorful passage is his account of the New England whaling industry.

Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle; and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

It is the spectacle of this enterprise which induces Burke to "pardon something to the spirit of liberty."

It must be confessed that Burke's interest in the affairs of India, and more specifically in the conduct of the East India Company, is not reconcilable in quite the same way with the thesis of this chapter. Certainly there is nothing in mean motives or contracted views to explain why he should have labored over a period of fourteen years to benefit a people with whom he had no contact and from whom he could expect no direct token of appreciation. But it must be emphasized that the subject of this essay is methods, and even in this famous case Burke found some opportunity to utilize his favorite source.

Then shortly he continued:

To justify us in taking the administration of their affairs out of the hands of the East India Company, as my principles, I must see several conditions. 1st, the object affected by the abuse must be great and important. 2nd, the abuse affecting the great object ought to be a great abuse. 3rd, it ought to be habitual and not accidental. 4th, it ought to be utterly incurable in the body as it now stands constituted.

It is pertinent to observe that Burke's first condition here is exactly the first condition raised with reference to the Irish Catholics and with reference to the American Colonies. It is further characteristic of his method that the passages cited above are followed immediately by a description of the extent and wealth and civilization of India, just as the plea for approaching the Colonies with reconciliation was followed by a vivid advertisement of their extent and wealth and enterprise. The argument is for justice, but it is conditioned upon a circumstance.

When Burke undertook the prosecution of Hastings in 1788, these considerations seemed far from his mind. The splendid opening charge contains arguments strictly from genus, despite the renunciation of such arguments which we see above. He attacked the charter of the East India Company by showing that it violated the idea of a charter. He affirmed the natural rights of man, and held that they had been criminally denied in India. He scorned the notion of geographical morality. These sound like the utterances of a man committed to abstract right. Lord Morley has some observations on Burke which may contain the explanation. His study of Burke's career led him to feel that "direct moral or philanthropic apostleship was not his function." Of his interest in India, he remarked: "It was reverence rather than sensibility, a noble and philosophic conservatism rather than philanthropy, which raised the storm in Burke's breast against the rapacity of English adventurers in India, and the imperial crimes of Hastings." If it is true that Burke acted out of reverence rather than out of sensibility or philanthropy, what was the reverence of? It was, likely, for storied India, for an ancient and opulent civilization which had brought religion and the arts to a high point of development while his ancestors were yet "in the woods." There is just enough of deference for the established and going concern, for panoply, for that which has prestige, to make us feel that Burke was again impressed--with an intended consequence which was noble, of course; but it is only fair to record this component of the situation.

The noble and philosophic conservatism next translated itself into a violent opposition to the French Revolution, which was threatening to bring down a still greater structure of rights and dignities, though in this instance in the name of reform and emancipation.

The French Revolution was the touchstone of Burke. Those who have regarded his position on this event as a reversal, or a sign of fatigue and senescence, have not sufficiently analyzed his methods and his sources. Burke would have had to become a new man to take any other stand than he did on the French Revolution. It was an event perfectly suited to mark off those who argue from circumstance, for it was one of the most radical revolutions on record, and it was the work of a people fond of logical rigor and clear demonstration.

Why Burke, who had championed the Irish Catholics, the American colonists, and the Indians should have championed on this occasion the nobility and the propertied classes of Europe is easy to explain. For him Europe, with all its settlements and usages, was the circumstance; and the Revolution was the challenge to it. From first to last Burke saw the grand upheaval as a contest between inherited condition and speculative insight. The circumstance said that Europe should go on; the Revolution said that it should cease and begin anew. Burke's position was not selfish; it was prudential within the philosophy we have seen him to hold.

Burke appears terrified by the thought that the ultimate sources and sanctions of government should be brought out into broad daylight for the inspection of everyone, and the first effort was to clothe the British government with a kind of concealment against this sort of inspection, which could, of course, result in the testing of that government by what might have been or might yet be. The second effort was to show that France, instead of embarking on a career of progress through her daring revolution, "had abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue." It will be observed that in both of these, a presumed well-being is the source of his argument. Therefore we have the familiar recourse to concrete situation.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France upon her enjoyment of a government without inquiring what the nature of the government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation on its freedom?

What a number of faults have led to this multitude of misfortunes, and almost all from this one source--that of considering certain general maxims, without attending to circumstances, to times, to places, to conjectures, and to actors! If we do not attend scrupulously to all of these, the medicine of today becomes the poison of tomorrow.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, the subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long succession of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, has produced a noble equality and handed it down through all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by the new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the imagination ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exposed as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashions.

With the writings on French affairs, Burke's argument from circumstance came full flower.

Yet this is an evasion rather than an answer to the real question which is lying in wait for Burke's political philosophy. It is essential to see that government either moves with something in view or it does not, and to say that people may be governed merely by following precedent begs the question. What line do the precedents mark out for us? How may we know that this particular act is in conformity with the body of precedents unless we can abstract the essence of the precedents? And if one extracts the essence of a body of precedents, does not one have a "speculative idea"? However one turns, one cannot evade the truth that there is no practice without theory, and no government without some science of government. Burke's statement that a man's situation is the preceptor of his duty cannot be taken seriously unless one can isolate the precept.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet