The Philosophy of Rhetoric #268119

One reason, though not the only one which the au thor has for mentioning the manner wherein the com position of this work has been conducted, and the time it has taken, is not to enhance its value with the pub lic, but to apologize in some measure for that inequal ity in the execution and the style, with which he is afraid it will be thought chargeable. It is his purpose in this work, on the one hand, to exhibit, he does not say a correct map, but a tolerable sketch of the human mind; and, aided by the lights which the poet and the orator so amply furnish, to disclose its secret move ments, tracing its principal channels of perception and action, as near as possible, to their source: and, on the other hand, from the science of human nature, to as certain, with greater precision, the radical principles of that art, whose object it is, by the-use of language, to Operate on the soul of the hearer, in the way of ih forming, convincing, pleasing, moving, or persuading. In the prosecution of a design so extensive there are.