action, you must get home to the interests of the people you are trying to move.  The question of schools is very different for a boy in a small country village and for one in New York City; the question of admission is different for a state university and for an endowed college; the question of Greek is different for a school which sends few pupils on to college and for one which sends many:  and in each case if you want to influence action, you must set forth facts which bear on the problem as it faces that particular audience.  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.  In most cases we know what is right long before we can explain why it is right; and a man who can put into clear words the moral forces that move his fellows is a prophet and leader of men.  Moreover, it must be remembered when one is appealing to moral principles that upright men are not agreed about all of them, and there is even more doubt and disagreement when one comes to the practical application of the principles.  We have seen in Chapter I what bitter division arose in our fathers’ time over the right and the righteousness of slavery; and how in many states to-day good and God-fearing people are divided on the question of prohibition.

But even where the two sides to a question agree on the moral principle which is involved, it by no means follows that they will agree on its application in a particular case.  Church members accept the principle that one must forgive sinners and help them to reform; but it is another thing when it comes to getting work for a man who has been in prison, or help for a woman who has left her husband.  How far is the condoning of offenses consistent with maintaining the standards of society?  And in what cases shall we apply the principle of forgiveness?  In a business transaction how far can one push the Golden Rule?  Life would be a simpler matter if moral principles were always easy to apply to concrete cases.