Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution

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440 APPENDIX [FJ. [Jl'.] Part I. C/tap. III. § 3. p. 136.« No man is so obstinate an admirer of the old times, as to deny that medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, engineering , navigation, at'e better understood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the same with political science. Like those other sciences which we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and depositing impurity after impurity. There was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchymist; and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and virtuous statesmen thought it the first duty of a government to persecute heretics , to found monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances, facts accumulate, doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains , are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, wl1ieh at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetl'ates to the deepest valley. }~il'st come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. '1'he sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority -of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon whicll imposed on Eacon,till country rectors condemn the illiberality andintolerance of Sir '1'homas More."-Edinb. Review, July, 1835, p. 282. " We have said that the history of England is the history of progress, and, when we take a comprehensive view of it, it is so. But, when examined in small separate portions, it may with more propriety be called a history of actions and reactions. We have often tllOllght that the motion of the public mind in our country resembles that of the sea when the tide is rising. APPENDIX [FJ. 441 Each successive wave rushes forward, bl'eaks, and rolls back; but the great flooa is steadily coming in. A person who looked on the waters only for a moment might fancy that they were retiring, or that they obeyed no fixed law, but were rush~ ing capriciously to and fro. But when he keeps his eye on them for a quarter of an hour, and sees one sea-mark disappear after anothcr, it is impossible for him to doubt of the general direction in which thc ocean is moved. Just such has been the course of events in England. In the history of the national mind, which is, in truth, the history of the nation, we must carefully distinguish that recoil which regularly follows evel'y advance (l'om a great general ebb. If we take short intCl 'vals-ifwe compare 1640 and 1660,1680 and 1685, 1708 and 1712, 1782 and 1794, we find a retrogression. But if we take centuries,-if, for example, we compare 1'194 with 1660, or with 1685,-we cannot doubt in which direction society is proceeding.JJ-Edinb. Review, July, 1839, pp.228, 289. This last passage elosely resembles the following one in the (( Lectures on Political Economy." (( Another point which is attainable is, to IJel'ceive, amidst all the admixture of evil, and all the seeming disorder of conflicting agencies, a general tendency nevertheless tOWRl'ds the accomplishment of wise and beneficent designs. (( As in contemplating an ebbing tide, we are sometimes in doubt, on a short inspection, whether the sea is really receding, because, from time to time, a wave will dash further up the shore than those which had preceded it, but if we continue OUl' observation long enough, we see plainly, that the boundary of the land is on the whole advancing j so here, by extending OUl' view over many countries and through several ages, we may distinctly perccive the tendencies which would have escaped a more confined research."-Lect. iv. p.106. The following from the Edinburgh Review*, is an admirable specimen of illustrative argumcnt ;- (( A blade wllich is designed both to shave and to carve will * No. exxxix. April, 1839. 442 APPENDIX [F]. certainly not shave so well as a razor, or carve so well as a cal·ving...