The first part of the reading is entitled “Emerson and Romantic Rhetoric,” which I have to admit was not at all what I thought it would be about. The composition/rhetoric side of the classics has completely thrown me off course because I dive head first into a topic and it turns out to be something that I never expected. For instance, the reading focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s perception of rhetorical theory and how he was a follower of Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Because of his loyalty to Blair, Emerson incorporated oration with other forms of writing for one purpose; to discover and communicate truth. According to Robert Cushman, the individual must “discover truth on their own, in their private, visionary pursuits,” (44) and they must have the urge and desire to discover it or it will never come. Language and metaphor can help that discovery to obtain ultimate truth. Roberta K. Ray explains the use of the metaphor as ”the exploitation of the outer world to explain the inner world of mind and spirit” (44). Ray says that human’s existence relies upon finding God, and only then will man grasp the higher truth. As Ray calls it, “truth is a state of mind… the communicator can serve as a midwife helping other to give birth to their own thoughts” (45). The communicator has the power, through language, to serve others as a gateway. They can show the path, but not teach it. It has to come from within. Once that relationship is established, man can find truth at the intersection of the inner and outer, the object and subject, idea and matter. This is where language comes into play. Emerson explains that “words are signs of concrete objects” (47), therefore natural language would be the only way to express the realm of truth. He says:
Without the language of the sensory, the ideal cannot be name manifest. Conversely, without the ideal, the world of nature is mere sense data without order of meaning. The point of intersection between outside and inside is language (48)
In other words, truth cannot be obtained without language, nor can one express truth without natural language. According to Wittgenstein, “the limits of ones’ language are the limits of one’s world” (53).
In order to expand language, one must open their senses and explore the world. This exploration begins in schools where children are given the opportunity to express themselves through learning patterns with concrete objects or illustrations. In John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, he says, “education should proceed according to the child’s mental development, beginning with the child’s own sense perceptions and experiences of the physical world” (61). This exploration becomes the learning tool and helps the child establish their natural language. Their creativity is too often overshadowed by the babbling teachers who lead by example. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi believed that life educates and “children should never be told what they can find out for themselves” (64). This theory inspired Pestalozzi-Mayo-Frost involvement of children’s lessons. Examples from lesson one of the 1839 Easy Exercises advises instructors to allow children to observe various items and hold them in their hands. Once they have done so, questions are asked such as what have you observed and what can you say that it is? The point of the lessons is that there is no wrong answer and gives children the chance to explore their mind for words that describe what they just experienced. This is the beginning of the search for truth.
