nold.

"Conduct is three-fourths of life," says Matthew ArAnother amends this and says, "Conduct is the whole of life." Living means something more than being; it means something more than knowing or believing it means action, conduct, behavior. The man who knows without acting upon that knowledge is as censurable as the man who acts without knowledge. And what does the Apostle James say of faith without works?

The office of persuasive discourse is to arouse men to action. Exposition, we said, presupposes some degree of ignorance on the part of those addressed, and argumentation presupposes error. Persuasion presupposes indifference, inaction, or misdirected action; it appeals to the emotions, the feelings. Strange as it seems, we may know a truth, we may firmly believe it to be truth, and yet fail to take it home to ourselves, to act upon it,

to live it, to concrete it, as it were, in our daily conduct. We know it, we say, but we fail to realize it. Thus we know that the earth is an immense sphere whirling through space at a high velocity, but only seldom do we realize it, and it may be questioned whether some who know the fact ever realize it at all in the sense in which the astronomer does. In like manner we know, every one of us, as positively as we know anything, that sooner or later we shall die, but only at rare intervals does that fact present itself to us in its full significance. We speak of it and write of it a hundred times to once that we act upon it. And so we know a thousand things with a sort of uncomprehending knowledge, a knowledge that leads to nothing. Strange inharmony of the human intellect and will! Stagnation is death, we say; and yet we stagnate unconcernedly while we shudder at and shrink from and rebel against death. Disobedience to the laws of health is slow suicide ;we do not for a moment question the truth of that; and yet we go on disobeying those laws day after day like ignoramuses or skeptics. But we are neither one nor the other for we know and we believe; we simply will not act - we are fools.

Manifestly there is a field for Persuasion, and manifestly, too, of all the various forms of literary art this may be made the most practical and helpful. It will be no mistaken endeavor to turn in this direction all the knowledge and power we have gained by our previous practice, to concentrate it upon this, the supreme achievement of literary labor.

No model will be given here. It may be noticed that what has just been written, though ostensibly exposi

tory, is largely persuasive in character. But it was written without any consciousness of an attempt to make it such. If it has been read with the same unconsciousness so much the better. If it has in the slightest degree inspired you to act, to write, to attempt in particular to persuade others to act upon their knowledge and beliefs in a thousand matters of everyday life, then it has not been written in vain.

EXERCISE LVII.

PERSUASION BY APPEAL TO PERSONAL INTEREST.

Subjects:

Why do I Need Exercise?

With All Thy Getting Get Understanding. — Prov. iv : 7.
Self-Preservation is Nature's First Law.

Motives of private and personal interest are confessedly determinative in most of our ordinary deliberations and actions. They are doubtless stronger with some than with others, and it is often difficult to say just how far a man shall let these considerations carry him without laying his action open to the charge of selfishness. There is a degree of egoism, a selfishness if you will, that few of us presume to blame. Philosophers have declared that self-preservation is our first duty. And who would find fault with a man for seeking self-culture and self-advancement?

Persuasion that would accomplish its end by appeals to these motives must be founded upon a study and

knowledge of human nature. We must know the people to whom we appeal and we must vary our appeals to suit their various interests. The skillful politician works on one man's feelings through his pride, on another's through his love of independence, on another's through his avarice. Of course these appeals are often made with unworthy ends in view. It is only when the object is a worthy one that they are justifiable. Nor does that mean to say that a worthy end will justify any means whatsoever, but that the particular means contemplated here can scarcely be open to great objection. At the worst it is only taking advantage of men's faults for their own and others' good. If a man notoriously fond of ease and inaction can be roused to action by playing upon that very weakness, where is the harm? And besides that, as we have said, there are many kinds and degrees of egoistic desires that cannot be called faults.

Here is a case in point. A certain student was injuring his health by too severe mental work supplemented by too little physical exercise. On the score of health his friends expostulated with him in vain. But when it was represented to him that if he would devote one-tenth of his time to exercise he would accomplish more and better work in the remaining nine-tenths than he could otherwise accomplish in the whole time, he was willing to make the experiment. Thus his friends effected that in which they were chiefly interested by holding forth an inducement of a very different character-the only one that appealed to the student's self-interest as he was pleased to consider it.

That is one of the secrets of effective persuasion. Another is this. If you venture to appeal to a motive so conspicuously selfish as to be unworthy, you must either conceal the fact that you think it unworthy or else in some way ingeniously conceal the fact that you are appealing to the motive at all. But there is always the danger that ingenuity even in a good cause may descend to artifice, and though such methods are freely employed in high places they are not always to be recommended. Self-respect should be maintained at any price, and if there is no other way of effecting an object except by an appeal to base motives it may be better in the end to leave the object uneffected.

A delicate way of persuading others is to pretend to be persuading yourself. The subject "Why do I Need Exercise?" suggests this method of procedure. In any case the address need not be direct. A case may be assumed and the person addressed be trusted to see the similarity between his own case and the assumed one. Fables and parables are commonly constructed on this plan. Or direct address may be deemed the most cogent. The method pursued must depend on the time, the person, the nature of the appeal. The prime requisites are tact and the ability to read character and to divine motives.

MODEL.

A PLEA FOR MORE GENERAL INSTRUCTION IN

PHYSIOLOGY.

If anyone doubts the importance of an acquaintance with the fundamental principles of physiology as a means to complete living, let him look around and see how many men and women he can find in middle or later life who are thoroughly well. Осса