The Science of Discourse; A Rhetoric for High Schools and Colleges (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PURPOSE IN DISCOURSE. Efficient Means To A Worthy End. Discourse, like any other instrument, must be studied in its adaptation to the end sought; and is estimated to have merit in proportion to its efficiency as a means to a worthy end. Hence purpose or effect in discourse is the only standard by which it can be measured, as well as the only motive by which it can be produced. Discourse, being a means to an end, stands between two minds, one of which produces the discourse while the other is affected by it. The effect of the discourse in the mind of the reader is the cause of the discourse in the mind of the writer. While skating produces pleasure, pleasure produces skating; that is, pleasure in idea produces the skating which brings the pleasure in reality. Pleasure is both cause and effect in the skating. Exercise causes health, but health, in idea, causes the exercise. Speed in locomotion produces the train, and the train produces speed in locomotion. Thus everything man produces, as an engine, a palace, or a poem, moves in a circle from end in idea to end as reality. Likewise a discourse stands between the effect held in idea by the author and the effect produced in the reader or hearer. When one calls to his friend, " Seethe rainbow ! " it is because he wishes his friend to have the same rainbow delight which charms himself. This effect held in mind produces the discourse, " See the rainbow"; and this discourse realizes the delight in the one addressed. If one announce that the French President has resigned, it is because he desires the idea which he entertains to be entertained by others. The following lines stand between the heartbreak which Tennyson held in mind and the heartbreak which he desired to produce in the reader: ? " And the stately ships go ...