Every outburst of feeling implies that we have passed from one condition to another. In some emotions, as wonder, the prominent fact is a transition from a previous state; the shock of change is the cause of the feeling. In like manner, a sense of freedom presupposes restraint, and the sentiment of power some previous state of impotence or weakness.

Knowledge, likewise, implies transition. We know light by having passed out of the dark, height by comparison with depth, hardness with softness. In short, knowledge is never single; it must have at least two objects, sometimes more than

Our knowledge of man, for instance, takes in all that we

ever contrast with man—God, angel, animal, &c.

The essential plurality of Knowledge is not fully represented in ordinary language; we are supposed to be capable of recalling the full contrast involved in each case— -heat as against cold, man as opposed to brute, &c. Still, it not unfrequently happens that our understanding of a thing is aided by the express mention of contrasting objects; this mention is therefore a device of Rhetoric, and is called Antithesis or Contrast.*

So it is in the production of Feeling. A speaker may convey a more forcible impression of Liberty by conjoining, with the language usually applied to it, an explicit description of the opposite condition of Restraint. The reference to the opposite contrasting state is almost unavoidable in description; but by the figure of Antithesis this reference amounts to a fully drawn parallel picture.

37. Antithesis, properly so called, consists in the explicit statement of the contrast implied in the meaning of any term or description.

This is exemplified in Motion and Rest, Hot and Cold, Liberty and Restraint, Pain and Pleasure, Industry and Idleness. These are the contrasts that give the contrasted words their principal meaning. The following are examples :—

*It is like judging qualities by placing them beside their contrasts, instead of trusting for these to memory. Thus a white surface appears brighter in proximity to black; a weight is compared with a present, instead of a remembered, standard.

"To be a blessing, and not a curse." "Two men I honor, and no third."

"In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As mild behavior and humanity;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Let us be tigers in our fierce deportment."

Here the characteristic attitude of war is sufficiently given in the last two lines; but for additional vividness the poet prepares the way by an explicit reference to peace.

So in Tennyson's Brook:—

"Men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever."

The idea of perpetuity is more fully impressed by putting beside it an example of its natural opposite, the transitory.

An apposite example occurs in Froude's Henry VIII.: "The petition claims especial notice, not only because it was the first active movement towards a separation from Rome, but because it originated, not with the King, not with the parliament, not with the people, but with a section of the clergy themselves."

38. There are several forms of Antithesis, in which the contrast is only of a secondary kind.

(1.) The contrast of the members of a comprehensive class.

For example, Heat and Light (class of sensations, or of natural agents); Liberty and Plenty (class of worldly blessings); Industry and Frugality (means to wealth); Sublimity and Beauty (artistic effects); Painting and Poetry (fine arts).

The process of classification, whereby things are brought together on some point of resemblance, is accompanied with the marking of differences. We come to know heat, not merely by its fundamental opposite cold, but by its difference from light, another member of the class of natural agents. Heat thus acquires a new meaning, consisting in the peculiarities wherein it differs from light; and, to indicate that meaning explicitly, we should mention light. So Liberty, besides being opposed to Restraint, is opposed to Plenty, to Health, to Honor, in the class of worldly advantages; every one of those con

trasts is something added to its meaning; and, to make that meaning certain, the contrast may be stated. This form of Antithesis is frequent in literature. It is common to contrast points of character that are different phases of excellence or defect, as Sense and Sensibility, Genius and Judgment, the Irascible and the Pusillanimous; these are not fundamentally 'opposed, like Sense and Folly, which are merely the two sides of the same property. The balanced descriptions of Homer and Virgil by Dryden, and of Dryden and Pope by Johnson, are but secondary contrasts. The antithesis of the sycophant and the honest politician, in Demosthenes on the Crown, is more of a real contrast, and is highly effective both as exposition and as oratory.

The qualities contrasted under the foregoing head may also possess a certain agreeable effect when brought together. Thus the contrast of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is the means of producing situations, sometimes harmoniously pleasing, at other times ludicrously incongruous.

The harmony of different qualities is brought about when they mutually supply each other's deficiencies. Thus, a man of inventive genius and a man of practical judgment may combine with advantage to both; and such harmonious combinations form an agreeable picture.

As no one pleasure can endure long, it is usual to provide for variety of excitement. Thus, a poem alternates from sublimity to tenderness, from description to interest of narrative, from the ornate to the plain. In so doing, the moods must not be incompatible or mutually destructive, as would be a combination of the solemn and the ludicrous; in other words, a certain keeping must be preserved.

(2.) Another form of Antithesis is seen when things contradictory are brought pointedly together to increase the oratorical effect.

As in Chatham: "Who is the man that has dared to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods?—to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of

ORATORICAL ANTITHESIS.

49

disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren?"

So in the speech of Brutus over the body of Lucretia:—
"Now look yo where she lies,

That beauteous flower, that innocent sweet rose,
Torn up by ruthless violence."

"Is dust and ashes proud? Want of intellect "makes a village an Eden, a college a sip." The most common example of this kind of contrast is Life and Death.

(3.) Contradictory or conflicting statements are sometimes made for the purpose of exciting wonder.

See the commencement of Extract IV. "What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth," &c. The contrast of great results flowing from small agencies excites wonder in its highest form—the sentiment of power, or the sublime.

39. The chief thing to be considered in the employment of the true Antithesis is the need there is for it. Assuming that the contrast is genuine, and not fanciful, it is still possible to multiply antitheses unnecessarily. In most cases, a single statement sufficiently suggests the implied opposite. When from obscurity or feebleness this is not the case, the explicit mention of the contrast is a valuable aid.

The term Antithesis is also applied to modes of construction afterwards described under the Balanced Sentence.

EXERCISE.

Point out and name the figures in the following passages:—
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends.

Wisdom is grey hair to men.

Let us pass from the Stagirito to the philosopher of Malmesbury.

We bury love;

Forgetfulness grows over it, like grass.

All Switzerland is in the field.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Before his honesty of purpose, calumny was dumb.

Worn out with anguish, toil, and cold, and hunger,
Down sunk the wanderer; sleep had seized her senses.
There did the traveller find her in the morning:

God had released her.

Panoplied in brass, they came from the ships and tents.

There be some who, with everything to make them happy, plod their discontented and melancholy way through life, less grateful than the dog which licks the hand that feeds it.

A hundred head of cattle sometimes passed in a drove.

In Demosthenes we find a fiery energy, but not that polish and elegance that characterize Cicero.

His roof was at the service of the outcast; the unfortunate ever found a welcome at his threshold.

Still in harmonious intercourse they lived
The rural day, and talked the flowing heart.
Talent convinces; Genius but excites:
That tasks the reason; this the soul delights.
Talent from sober judgment takes its birth,
And reconciles the pinion to the earth;
Genius unsettles with desires the mind,
Contented not till earth be left behind.
Talent, the sunshine on a cultivated soil,
Ripens the fruit by slow degrees for toil;
Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies,
On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes,
And to the earth in tears and glory given,
Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of heaven!

It is the decree of Providence that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

Petitions having proved unsuccessful, it was next determined to approach the throne more boldly.

Gold cannot make a man happy any more than rags can render him miserable.

OTHER IMPORTANT FIGURES.

In addition to the three classes of Figures that have been enumerated, corresponding to the three great powers of the Intellect, we may single out, as involving principles of importance, the Epigram, Hyperbole, Climax, Interrogation, Exclamation, Apostrophe, Innuendo, and Irony.