The Methodical Memory: Invention in Current-Traditional Rhetoric

2. How the Outside Gets Inside: The Psychology of the Methodical Memory

2 How the Outside Gets Inside: The Psychology of the Methodical Memory On the very first page of The Philosophy ofRhetoric (originally published in 1776), George Campbell defined eloquence as "that art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end." He then discriminated four such ends: "to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will." For Campbell, the art of rhetoric was aim-centered, the rhetor's aim being to touch and move the mental faculties of an audience in some desired fashion. Campbell's "aims" seem to have included at least two sorts of intention : first, a rhetor must intend to transfer her thoughts as clearly as possible to listeners or readers during the rhetorical act; second, she must also intend to arouse some sort of response in the minds of her audience, such as conviction, persuasion, delight, or action. He simply assumed that rhetors' intentions were always clear and available to them on reflection. Their intentions guided them as they conducted an investigation, and this process was then stored in memory. Subsequently, the memory of the investigation could be transferred to a text. Campbell's location of the starting point of invention in the aims of an individual author was a momentous innovation in inventional theory. I Contemporary writing teachers may have difficulty accepting that the "aims of discourse" have a specific historical locus in the eighteenth century, given our ubiquitous assumption that writers have "a purpose" and that when they write they install that purpose in a discourse. Nevertheless , the first page of the Philosophy of Rhetoric represents a real departure from classical thought about rhetorical invention, which as15 16 The Methodical Memory sumed that rhetors began their investigations with what other people thought, rather than with an introspective review of their own thought processes. The assumption that minds could conduct accurate introspective tours of their own workings was crucial to the modern worldview, of course. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, for example, Locke had defined consciousness as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind" (2.1.19). Locke was confident that people could reflect on the workings of their own minds, that they could be conscious, in an accurate way, of their own mental states at any given time. Campbell shared this belief, arguing that persons can not only reflect on their experience but that they can also contemplate propositions and make judgments about the relationships between their ideas (I). Unlike classical or medieval rhetoricians, then, modern discourse theorists assumed the existence of an individual ordering consciousness that was always in touch both with nature and with its own operations and that was not necessarily constrained by community expectations. This originating consciousness manipulated its "ideas," which represented either the things of the world, related ideas, or propositions. The stuff of invention-subjects, ideas, knowledge, discoveries, and thoughts, as well as aims or intentions-preceded discourse; it existed in some coherent and knowable way prior to and outside of discourse. In this chapter, I explain how Campbell justified the introspective character of minds and how he certified the authority of memory. I also show why he placed much more importance on logical proofs than he did on other kinds of appeals. Eighteenth-century discourse theorists also placed much more faith in the information given to minds by the senses-that is, in empirical evidence-than had classical rhetoricians. In another section of this chapter, then, I show how Campbell, along with Richard Whately, altered the character of rhetorical proofs so that the evidence given to minds by nature could assume a respectable place in rhetorical invention. Faculty Psychology and Associationism Campbell's theory ofrhetorical invention was indebted to two psychological traditions: faculty psychology and associationism. Since both traditions have long been out of vogue, I make a small detour from my central argument in order to explain their relevance to Campbell's introspective theory of invention. Faculty psychology is the source of his notion that minds are divided into compartments. Association psy- How the Outside Gets Inside 17 chology is the source of his assumption that minds contemplate separate, specific "ideas" that they connect to each other by means of a few invariant operations. Throughout the Middle Ages minds were described as collections of divided cells or compartments, each of which housed a separate mental faculty. Authorities on mental...