Except perhaps for the
highest eloquence, there is no such thing as universal persuasiveness.
The questions which actively affect the average man usually concern
small groups of people, and each group must be stirred to action by
incentives adapted to its special interests.
57. The Appeal to Moral Interests. Still further from the interests
that touch the pocket, and constantly in healthy and elevating action
against them, are the moral interests. The appeal to moral motives is
sometimes laughed at by men who call themselves practical, but in
America it is in the long run the strongest appeal that can be made. We
are still near enough to the men who fought through the Civil War, in
which each, side held passionately to what it believed to be the moral
right, for us to believe without too much complacency that moral forces
are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt
have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great,
though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any
question on which you have to argue has a moral side, it is not only
your duty, but it is also the path of expediency, to make appeal through
the moral principle involved.
The chief difficulty with making an appeal to moral principles is to set
them forth in other than abstract terms, since they are the product of a
set of feelings which lie too deep for easy phrasing in definite words.
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