that argument together, he will be surprised to see how practically e
efficient those devices are. And none of them counts more for clarity
and thoroughness than the conscientious way in which Burke took his
hearers by the hand at the beginning of each paragraph, and at each turn
in his argument, to make sure that they knew just how they were passing
from one point to another.

From the doctrine of clear explanation, then, we may carry over to the
making of clear arguments the habit of laying out the ground at the
beginning, of making the paragraphs do their full work by attending to
unity, to emphasis, and to coherence, and of binding the paragraphs
together into a closely knit whole.

55. The Power of Persuading. Finally, we have to consider the
question of how an argument can be made persuasive--probably the most
difficult subject in the range of rhetoric on which to give practical
advice. The key to the whole matter lies in remembering that we are here
dealing with feelings, and that feelings are irrational and are the
product of personal experience. The experience may be bitter or sweet,
and to some degree its effects are modified by education; but in
substance your feelings and emotions make you what you are, and your
capacities in these directions were born with you. If the citizens of a
town have no feeling about political dishonesty, reformers may talk
their throats out without producing any result; it is only when taxes
get intolerable or the sewers smell to heaven that anything will be
done. Many people die for whose deaths each of us ought to feel grief,
but if these people have never happened to touch our feelings, we can
reason with ourselves in vain that we should feel deeply grieved.
Feeling and emotion are the deepest, most primitive part of human
nature; and very little of its field has been reduced to the
generalizations of reason.[59]

When you come, therefore, in the making of your argument to the point of
stirring up the feelings of your readers on the subject, do not waste
any time in considering what they ought to feel: the only pertinent
question is what they do feel. On your shrewdness in estimating what
these feelings are, and how strong they are, will hang your success as
an advocate. Tact is the faculty you need now--the faculty of judging
men, of knowing when they will rise to an appeal, and when they will lie
back inert and uninterested. This is a matter you cannot reason about;
if you