But we must not look upon the foregoing words as a facile prescription for decocting a feeling which may then be ladled out to a complacent audience in quantities to suit the need of the moment.  Genuine feeling in a speech is bone and blood of the speech itself and not something that may be added to it or substracted at will.  In the ideal address theme, speaker and audience become one, fused by the emotion and thought of the hour.

The Need of Sympathy for Humanity

It is impossible to lay too much stress on the necessity for the speaker’s having a broad and deep tenderness for human nature.  One of Victor Hugo’s biographers attributes his power as an orator and writer to his wide sympathies and profound religious feelings.  Recently we heard the editor of Collier’s Weekly speak on short-story writing, and he so often emphasized the necessity for this broad love for humanity, this truly religious feeling, that he apologized twice for delivering a sermon.  Few if any of the immortal speeches were ever delivered for a selfish or a narrow cause—­they were born out of a passionate desire to help humanity; instances, Paul’s address to the Athenians on Mars Hill, Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, The Sermon on the Mount, Henry’s address before the Virginia Convention of Delegates.

The seal and sign of greatness is a desire to serve others.  Self-preservation is the first law of life, but self-abnegation is the first law of greatness—­and of art.  Selfishness is the fundamental cause of all sin, it is the thing that all great religions, all worthy philosophies, have struck at.  Out of a heart of real sympathy and love come the speeches that move humanity.

Former United States Senator Albert J. Beveridge in an introduction to one of the volumes of “Modern Eloquence,” says:  “The profoundest feeling among the masses, the most influential element in their character, is the religious element.  It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of self-preservation.  It informs the whole intellect and personality of the people.  And he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their unformed thoughts must have this great and unanalyzable bond of sympathy with them.”

When the men of Ulster armed themselves to oppose the passage of the Home Rule Act, one of the present writers assigned to a hundred men “Home Rule” as the topic for an address to be prepared by each.  Among this group were some brilliant speakers, several of them experienced lawyers and political campaigners.  Some of their addresses showed a remarkable knowledge and grasp of the subject; others were clothed in the most attractive phrases.  But a clerk, without a great deal of education and experience, arose and told how he spent his boyhood days in Ulster, how his mother while holding him on her lap had pictured to him Ulster’s deeds of valor.  He spoke of a picture in his uncle’s home that showed the men of Ulster conquering a tyrant and marching on to victory.  His voice quivered, and with a hand pointing upward he declared that if the men of Ulster went to war they would not go alone—­a great God would go with them.