40 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
abstractly considered, propriety and beauty of expression, or
adorned expression, founding upon these the classification of
two orders of expression, naked and ornate. This is a doctrine
of which traces may be found in all the various domains of
art, but which has not been developed in any one of them to
the same extent as in that of words, where it bears a cele-
brated name and is called “Rhetoric,” and has had a very
long history, from the Greek rhetoricians to our own day. It
persists in the schools, in treatises, and even in æstheties of
scientific pretensions, not to mention in common belief (as
is natural), though in our day it has lost much of its primitive
vigour. Men of lofty intellect have accepted it, or let it live,
for centuries, owing to the force of inertia or of tradition; the
few rebels have hardly ever attempted to reduce their rebel-
lion to a system and to cut out the error at the roots. The
injury done by Rhetoric, with its idea of “ornate” as differing
from, and of greater value than, “naked” speech, has not
been limited solely to the circle of æsthetie, but has appeared
also in criticism, and even in literary education, because, just
as it was incapable of explaining perfect beauty, so it was
adapted to provide an apparent justification for vitiated
beauty, and to encourage writing in an inflated, affected,
and improper form. However, the division which it intro-
duces and on which it relies is a logical contradiction, be-
cause, as is easy to prove, it destroys the concept itself,
which it undertakes to divide into moments, and the objects,
which it undertakes to divide into classes. An appropriate
expression, if appropriate, is also beautiful, beauty being
nothing but the determination of the image, and therefore
of the expression; and if it be wished to indicate by calling it
naked that there is something wanting which should be pres-
ent, then the expression is inappropriate and deficient,