So much for those circumstances, in the object presented by the speaker, which serve to awaken and inflame the passions of the hearers.85 But when a passion is once raised, there are also other means by which it may be kept alive, and even augmented. Other passions or dispositions may be called in as auxiliaries. Nothing is more efficacious in this respect than a sense of justice, a sense of public utility, a sense of glory; and nothing conduceth more to operate on these, than the sentiments of sages whose wisdom we venerate, the example of heroes whose exploits we admire. I shall conclude what relates to the exciting of passion when I have remarked, that pleading the importance and the other pathetic circumstances, or pleading the authority of opinions or precedents, is usually considered, and aptly enough, as being likewise a species of reasoning.
This concession, however, doth not imply, that by any reasoning we
are ever taught that such an object ought to awaken such a passion.
This we must learn originally from feeling, not from argument. No
speaker attempts to prove it; though he sometimes introduceth moral
considerations, in order to justify the passion when raised, and to
prevent the hearers from attempting to suppress it. Even when he is
enforcing their regard to the pathetic circumstances above mentioned,
it is not so much his aim to show that these circumstances ought to
augment the passion, as that these circumstances are in the object.
The effect upon their minds he commonly leaves to nature; and is not
afraid of the conclusion, if he can make every aggravating
circumstance be, as it were, both perceived and felt by them. In the
enthymeme, (the syllogism of orators, as Quintilian 86
terms it,) employed in such cases, the sentiment that such a quality
or circumstance ought to rouse such a passion, though the foundation
of all, is generally assumed without proof, or even without mention.
This forms the major proposition, which is suppressed as obvious. His
whole art is exerted in evincing the minor, which is the antecedent
in his argument, and which maintains the reality of those attendant
circumstances in the case in hand. A careful attention to the
examples of vehemence in the first chapter, and the quotation in the
foregoing note, will sufficiently illustrate this remark.
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