On First Reading Burke's "A Rhetoric of Motives" Author(s): Linda M. Turner Source: College Composition and Communication, Vol.

24, No. 1 (Feb., 1973), pp. 22-30 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/357262 . Accessed: 27/08/2013 19:04
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On ?irst ReadingBurke's "A Rhetoric of 4otives"

LINDA M. TURNER

oric" which has fallen into ill-repute but the very notion of persuasion itself. Persuasion is something done to us: we see ourselves as malleable beings shaped, massaged and molded by the force of words. We identify persuasion with the machinations of political demagoguery or the manipulations of the advertising world. We link it with the coyness and cajolery of love games or the sentimentality which urges us to displays of patriotism. And, behind all of this, I think we have come to understand persuasion as the force which mobilizes all of our surface feelings-those fickle, temporary, unstable emotions waiting to be channeled in support of goals, projects, policies with which we have no genuine connection nor real understanding. We implicitly see ourselves and others as an army of dormant energies and persuasion as the force which puts them to use-to fight a battle here and a battle there; to plug up the hole in one dike, and then another, and then another. In short, then, we see persuasion as glittering ornament which moves us through its attractiveness; as pretty frosting which tempts us to devour the whole cake; as the promise of delectable reward which leads us into a maze designed and controlled by someone other than ourselves. And, in light of all this, it is Kenneth Burke's triumph to have restored not only the good name of rhetoric but the significance of persuasion in human life.1
1I will be referring, in this paper, to Ken-

FOR SOME TIME NOW, it is not only "rhet-

While Burke might admit to our being malleable, he also forces us to see ourselves as rational beings who not only create value in a world where none exists naturally but as beings who must set the stage for the enactment of those values. Consequently, he describes "persuasion" as the intelligent and moral use of words to focus our attention on values and to convince others of their superiority and necessity. Persuasion is therefore not something "done to us," as though we were Skinnerian rats, but the method we use to draw others closer to us. And, as society is the union of separate persons, so persuasion is the essential instrument in creating society: it is the centripetal force which acts against the centrifuge which would wildly throw us into separate and isolated corners. Persuasion is the method whereby we can see through the tangle of present crises and conflicts to a state of unity and cooperation, to a true society. And this vision of a future state of cooperation is intimately connected to Burke's analysis of "ultimate terms"2ideas which stand at the top of a hierarchy and therefore guide us in our sense of the present and the future. But before getting into these "ultimate terms" (what I am primarily inneth Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2See, in particular, Part III of A Rhetoric of Motives, "Positive, Dialectical and Ultimate Terms" and "Ultimate Elements in the Marxist Persuasion" (pp. 183-197).
1969).

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ON FIRST READING BURKE terested in here), I first would like to explore what it is in A Rhetoric of Motives which urges us to experience the significance, the genuine function of these "ultimates" in human life. In reading Burke, I found myself wanting to consider quite closely two aspects of rhetoric which initially seem in opposition but, in the long run, must be understood as working hand in hand. First of all, in A Rhetoric of Motives I was particularly struck by Burke's characterization of rhetoric and the rhetorician within an ethical and political framework. That it is an "ethical and political framework" becomes quite explicit, I think, when we allow Burke's metaphor of "the state of Babel after the Fall" to assume its central place in the book.3 To refer to the "state of Babel" is to at once force into the open our underlying sense of conflict and disarray and yet prod us with another (also underlying) vision of things as they must have been before the Fall. Through one metaphor we are brought in touch both with what is and what should be. And, of course, it is the "should be" which infuses Burke's analysis with its ethical and political characteristics. The job of rhetoric and the rhetorician is not to persuade us per se, to persuade an audience or perhaps the self to just anything, but to persuade men to a state of identity, harmony and unity. The function of rhetoric is to move people back to, or at least closer to, life before the Fall, before the "state of Babel." But I was also, and perhaps more strongly, affected by Burke's realization that there is such a thing as a "false unity" to which men may be persuaded, a state of cooperation where harmony is not based on genuine identification among people but is only a slick veneer. As a veneer, this harmony is quite literally superficial, functioning to hide con3Burke, p. 23: "Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."

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flicts and to charm us into continued (though false) cooperation. In this instance, it is the task of rhetoric and the rhetorician to shatter, unmask and expose-in the interests of that ultimate and genuine cooperation existing beyond the "state of Babel." Quite perceptively, Burke points to the psychotic or neurotic personality as one paradigm of the way in which conflict and disunity can be hidden. In this instance, the hiding of conflict is accomplished by a fantasy (a kind of rhetorical strategy) which allows the person to behave and operate as a harmonious whole. In speaking of the strife-ridden neurotic who yet manages to unite his "rival factions" in a cooperative effort, Burke says: . .. considered rhetorically,the victim of a neurotic conflict is torn by parliamentary wrangling; he is heckled like Hitler within. (Hitler is said to have confronted a constant wrangle in his private deliberations, after having imposed upon his people a flat choice between conformity and silence.) Rhetorically, the neurotic's every attempt to legislate for his own conduct is disorganized by rival factions within his own dissociated self. Yet, considered Symbolically, the same victim is technically "at peace," in the sense that his identity is like a unified, mutually adjusted set of terms. For even antagonistic terms, confronting each other as parry and thrust, can be said to "cooperate"in the building of an over-all form. (p. 23) Then Burke makes it quite clear that the neurotic persuades himself (again, rhetorical strategy) that he indeed has a clear and coherent identity: he is a "sick person": . . . one can systematicallyextend the range of rhetoricif one studies the persuasiveness of false or inadequate terms which may not be directly imposed upon us from without by some

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24

COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION or jingoism which impels people to group identity or loyalty, particularly in times of war. Here, Burke's analysis reveals the irony of war (strife and disunity) being the consequence of cooperative effort. More importantly, his analysis forces us to see that the rhetoric of nationalism, the persuasion to group loyalty, can very often depend upon the blurring of very real class conflicts. As with Joyce's enemy without, any threat to national security provides the perfect opportunity to rivet our attention on the "they" and away from internal and perhaps more fundamental conflicts. As a student of mine pointed out, war is really quite functional as a unifier: it lets people feel a kind of communion in their struggle against a common enemy. But in this case, as with the case of the neurotic or psychotic personality, we discover a critical method, a rhetorical strategy, which seeks to rip the mask off patriotism and national unity and to sharply delineate the conflicts boiling beneath their surfaces. As Burke makes quite clear, Marxist analysis is a rhetorical strategy which seeks to persuade and convince men that the bonds which seem to hold classes together are, at their best, simply tenuous and, at their worst, absolutely destructive. Regardless of the validity of his analysis, the Marxist assumes what I, and I believe Burke, would call a valid and essential rhetorical stance: he refuses to call hell "heaven" and demands that we destroy myths in order to confront reality; he forces us to see the extent to which we are still in conflict so that we may more clearly see where we have yet to go and our distance from that goal of unity. I would call the effect of this unmasking, this exposing, this quite intentional breaking down of achieved and utilitarian unity, a return to what Burke calls "parliamentary wrangle" (p. 188) or "the Human barnyard" (p. 23). Both metaphors are quite apt, since without even the illusion of cooperation and

skillful speaker, but which we impose upon ourselves, in varying degrees of deliberateness and unawareness, through motives indeterminately selfprotective and/or suicidal . . . But for the present we might merely recall the psychologist's concept of "malingering," to designate the ways of neurotic persons who, though not actually ill, persuade themselves that they are, and so can claim the attentions and privileges of the ill. . . . Similarly, if a social or occupationalclass is not too exacting in the scrutiny of identifications that flatter its interests, its very philosophy of life is a profitablemalingering .... (pp. 35-36) In both of these passages, Burke brings to my mind a real person (let me call her "Joyce"), a paranoid schizophrenic, whose paranoid fantasy allows her to deflect attention away from inner tensions and divisions toward an outside enemy against which all her faculties must work cooperatively and harmoniously. "Joyce" believes that her father (plus a hired crew of private detectives and the city police) actively conspires to commit her to a mental institution. As a consequence of this belief, "Joyce" sees her terror, her incredible anxiety, her extreme dependencies, and her child-like manipulations as the appropriate response to a real threat, not as the symptoms of an immense upheaval within herself. The fantasy intervenesas might a piece of patriotic oratory-to persuade "Joyce" to forget inner squabbles and, instead, to work cooperatively in the struggle to defeat the enemy and survive. And, of course, one (but only one) part of the therapeutic process-as a rhetorical strategy-would be to persuade Joyce to unmask and expose the fantasy for herself. One task of the therapist/rhetorician would be to persuade Joyce that conflict is there, not unity. Another paradigm of false cooperation, and one which comes across more forcefully, is the nationalism, patriotism

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ON FIRST READING BURKE unity, men behave as if society were a parliament or a barnyard. There is no identity among men, only the parliamentary wrangle and jangle and haggling of shrill voices, each representing its own special interests and coveting each gain made against the competing demands of those other special interests. There is no identity, only the struggle for the barnyard domain which results in a few victorious, preening cocks and a greater number of crestfallen losers who find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order. With this breakdown of harmony and cooperation, what options are there in terms of attitude, feeling, and action? Burke suggests compromise as one option. In the midst of that parliamentary wrangle, each voice can consent to losing chunks and pieces of its interest in order to preserve some of that interest intact. But at best this compromise is reached under duress; the attitude of each special interest has not changed fundamentally. Generally, we (and Burke also) would anticipate the rapid disintegration of this unsatisfying, unwieldy, and unstable consensus. But I think I would go further to say that parliamentary wrangle is not simply uncomfortable but is indeed unendurable. It is unendurable because it thwarts strong and positive action. When we cannot appease rival factions but find ourselves left with permanent strife, we cannot even begin to mobilize those energies needed to fulfill that fundamental desire for cohesion and wholeness. In the case of the neurotic or psychotic who has been unmasked, and thus must watch in horror as the bits and pieces of himself do battle against one another, this unmasking must lead either to suicide or the reinstatement of the fantasy. Or, as we see in Alexander Trocchi's novel Cain's Book,4 the chaotic

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wrangle of discrete voices ends in a hopeless nihilism. In this fictional account, the journal of a heroin addict, the voice-and the person and values behind it-change from moment to moment. There is no direction, no consistent development, not even the slow building up of identity. There is just the jangle of discrete moments tied loosely together on the same time line. In such a context, Burke's notion of cooperative effort makes little sense. In terms of action, we have reached a stalemate: strife and shrill controversy come to the forefront and obscure the sense that action can lead us someplace. There is no place to move, no direction. In light of this (Burke's insight into the necessity of a rhetoric which attacks, as well as his insight into the unbearable consequences of that attack), I think Burke's most important contribution is to have provided some response to the stalemate, to have provided a way out. From his discussion of "ultimate terms," a rhetorical strategy begins to take form. It is a strategy which simultaneously unmasks and breaks down "false unity" yet provides us with some inkling of how we can regain or rebuild cooperation. The use of "ultimate terms" allows us to descend to an otherwise unendurable state of conflict yet feel that the conflict is a necessary prelude to the building of a more genuine, rich cooperation. The key to understanding such a strategy is the chapter "Positive, Dialectical, and Ultimate Terms" in A Rhetoric of Motives. Here, the "positive term" is quite literally the substance of the positivist's ideal language: it is the basis of a physicalist vocabulary in which words stand for physical entities. The "dialectic term" becomes the word or concept for which we can find no correlation in the physical world. It represents the basic unit of a language which cannot be reduced to the positivist's vocabulary. It 4AlexanderTrocchi, Cain's Book (New York: occupies the realm of values, attitudes, Grove Press, 1960). opinions. But left with these two kinds

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COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION

of terms, we as yet have no way to assign any relative value to the terms we use: all have that equality, that same degree of vociferousness so clearly evident in the parliamentary wrangle men find so frustrating. Thus, it is at this point that the third term, the "ultimate term," becomes crucial for human life and action. The "ultimate term" is that concept, theory or framework which allows for the ranking of ideas within a hierarchy, or the identification of conflicts as stages in a developing process. The relief afforded by this rhetorical strategy is beautifully illustrated by Burke's reference to the trade unionist who is also a Marxist (see p. 196). The perspective allowed by the Marxist analysis lets the trade unionist actively engage himself in a particular conflict and a particular moment, yet also frees him to understand that conflict and moment as part of a larger struggle which has a direction and an outcome. Marxism, considered as an ultimate vocabulary,also owes much of its persuasiveness to the way in which its theory of action fits its theory of order. For if any point, or "moment,"in a hierarchic series can be said to represent, in its limited way, the principle or "perfection"of the ultimate design, then each tiny act shares in the absolute meaning of the total act. Thus, the "truth"is not grasped and tested by merely "perceiving" the logic of the entire series. Perception must be grounded in enactment, by participation in some local role, so that the understanding of the total order is reached through this partial involvement. There is perception from with-, out, made possible through nonparticipation. Or there is local participation, which may become so involved in particularsthat one never sees beyond them. But there is a third way, the fullest kind of understanding,wherein one gets the immediacy of participation in a local act, yet sees in and through this act an over-all design, sees and feels the local itself as but the

partial expressionof the total development. The Marxistpersuasionis in the name of this third way. (p. 195) Here, we must focus on the phrase "feels the local act," for in terms of human life and potential, it is the feel of particular moments that counts. If we feel the local act, the present moment, as chaotic and static, we have reached that unendurable stalemate. Conversely, if we feel the local act as part of a developing whole, we find relief and hope. Now at this point in my study of Burke, I felt compelled to find some instances where I might see this rhetorical strategy (the use of ultimate terms) at work. I wanted to discover how the ultimate term affords relief to those who feel a stalemate, who fear unending conflict. And, I think I found what I sought in three areas: in literature itself (Doris Lessing's novel, The Golden Notebook5); in the therapeutic context (as established by Carl Rogers, in particular,6 plus Robert Coles and Erik Erikson); and in the biographical record of one man's discovery of socialism (E. P. Thompson's William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary).7 Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook presents us with a crisis in identity. The novel is comprised of four notebooks (a fictional notebook; a journal; a business notebook; a political notebook) introduced and tied together within a narrative framework. As the narrative begins, we learn that Anna, the heroine,
5Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1962). 6I am depending, for my sense of Rogers' approach, on the collection of essays (done in conjunction with Barry Stevens, Eugene T. Gendlin, John M. Shlien and Wilson Van Dusen) in Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human (Walnut Creek, California: Real People Press, 1967). 7E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., 1955).

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ON FIRST READING BURKE has been pressured by both friends and her psychiatrist (Mother Sugar) to resume her writing career. However, Anna has reached a stalemate. She cannot write because, on the one hand, she comes to believe her one successful and highly praised novel to have been fraudulent (its perspective is distorted by nostalgia) and, on the other hand, she cannot fuse the various voices of her four notebooks into a single voice which would "ring true," which would relate her experience truthfully. What we get, then, is the struggle of a person who confronts fragments of herself, different poses and voices, yet cannot endure the lack of cohesion among these fragments. Continually, and painfully, we watch Anna work through one voice and perspective, only to question or reject it. We watch her submerge herself in another voice, only to be tormented by its inadequate rendering of her life. We watch Anna try to write honestly, only to be alienated from a voice which is more akin to a tape recorded voice than to the voice we feel in our throats. Essentially, then, the novel is the record of conflict. It is the feel of Burke's parliamentary wrangle minus any compromise. However, the novel also incorporates three images which, I think, are parallel in their effect to an "ultimate term." In a spontaneous move, Anna buys a beautifully bound golden notebook, and while the notebook remains blank and empty, it exercises a certain power. It is the image of an end-point toward which Anna feels she must move: the fusion of the four notebooks into one notebook; the fusion of four voices into one integrated, harmonious, golden voice. Thus, the "golden notebook" is the symbol of what, on a personal level, is comparable to Burke's surpassing of the state of Babel. And, as an ultimate term, it at once allows Anna to participate in, to suffer through, those four notebooks which are only fragments of her total self-and to feel that those

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fragments are part of some unfolding process which will culminate in identity. One cannot read this novel without realizing that the "golden notebook," as an ultimate, prevents The Golden Notebook from echoing the nihilism of Cain's Book. An image comparable to the "golden notebook" in its effect, and parallel to the ultimate term, is Anna's childhood game, which she often re-enacts in times of adult crisis. Essentially, the game is the creation of perspective. Anna, when she finds herself embroiled in crisis, doubt and pain, imagines that she is another being-still Anna, yet a being who can look down upon Anna's body from a ceiling niche. The game progresses as Anna assumes higher and higher positions: first she sees only herself, alone in her room; then she sees herself in the house; then the house in its neighborhood; then the neighborhood in the whole of London; then London in its surrounding countryside; then England; then an entire hemisphere. The process, of course, is one of "distancing" -not only a spatial distancing but an emotional one. During the game, the emotional tenor shifts from that of conflict to the peace of contemplation. And here, what one cannot help but recall is Burke's beautiful description of the calming effect of "ultimate terms": Thus, confrontingthe sort of "dialecti.i cal" procedure required when "interests" have been translated into a corresponding terminology of "principles," with parliamentary spokesmen aiming to further their interests somewhat by compromising with their principles-we can get a glimpse into a possible alternative,whereby a somewhat formless parliamentary wrangle can, by an "ultimate"vocabulary, be creatively endowed with design. And even though the members of the parliament, being "horse-traders" by nature, may not accept this design, it can have a contemplativeeffect; it can organize one's attitude towards the struggles of politics and may suggest

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COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION

reasons why one kind of compromise to confront painful conflicts and diviis, in the long run, to be rated as sions, to unmask himself, to recognize that his values and attitudes are not his superiorto another. (pp. 187-188) own (and thus coherently related), but Finally, we discover one more image in the values of the outside, rife with its The Golden Notebook which operates, divisions and contradictions. Yet that rhetorically, persuasively, to inject some approach also demands of the patient perspective into Anna's life. Anna is some willingness to move, to choose an continually struck (and sometimes an- end-point. And for the patient, it is noyed) by the classical decor of her Rogers himself-not as person or perpsychiatrist's office. Mother Sugar is sonality but as the attitude of "uncondisurrounded by classical sculpture and tional positive regard"-which becomes painting: the tone of her environment is the image of the patient's end-point. The one of simplicity, clarity, harmony, unity. therapist does not become the model for And somehow, this room comes to repre- what the patient will become in terms sent-as did the "golden notebook" and of attitudes, feelings, behavior, but the child's game-the end-point toward rather becomes an illustration of the way which Anna is moving. in which, ultimately, the patient will The effect of the psychiatrist's office, regard himself. And, as Rogers makes and more broadly the effect of the quite clear in Person to Person, it is this therapeutic context, is what I would like way of regarding oneself which is the to consider next as an instance of the key to it all, the top of the hierarchy: rhetorical use of ultimate terms. AlWhile he is learning to listen to himthough in my own mind I place Erik Erikson and Robert Coles in a cluster self he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expresses more and filled out by Carl Rogers, I would like more of the hidden aspects of himself, to limit myself to a consideration of he finds the therapist showing a conrhetorical The is Rogers' strategy. point sistent and unconditional positive renot to evaluate the significance, validity gard for him and his feelings. Slowly or even the interest of his ideas, but to he moves toward taking the same attiexamine the effect of his therapeutic tude toward himself, accepting himself strategy and the similarity of this effect as he is, and therefore ready to move to the consequences of a rhetorical use forward in the process of being free. of ultimate terms. (pp. 49-50) As Norman 0. Brown points out in Life Against Death, Freud ultimately Self-acceptance functions as the ultibecame quite pessimistic about the value mate term which puts all else into of therapy, about the value of revealing perspective and allows the person to enconflicts and strife to a patient. Since dure momentary conflicts as part of the Freud could see these conflicts as ir- movement toward freedom. Self-accepresolvable and destructive, he felt that tance, as a concept and then as an act, once brought to the surface they had literally persuades the patient to growth, to, almost ironically, be submerged or development, maximum integrity. "sublimated." Conversely, the Rogerian The examples I've discussed above are seems to me simuljust two out of many in the fields of approach capable, taneously, of lifting conflict to the sur- literature and therapy. But when I face, yet providing some framework in turned to the one area Burke uses so which that conflict can be dealt with richly and the one area I expected to be and overcome. The Rogerian approach most fruitful-Marxism-I had great difrequires the willingness of the patient ficulty finding what I was looking for. I

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ON FIRST READING BURKE wandered through the beginnings of several novels, hoping to discover a compelling description of the way in which Marxism, as an ultimate vocabulary, affords relief, comfort, and a sense of direction. But, surprisingly, these novels seemed flat, dogmatic and strangely impersonal. Perhaps the best example of this is Harvey Swados' book On the Line.8 Knowing that Swados sympathized with the radicals who struggled to "stand fast" in their commitments during the twenties, thirties and forties, I anticipated that On the Line might dramatically convey the power of Marxist thought to support a person in his dayto-day struggles. Unfortunately, I found the novel to be a conglomeration of heavy-handed portraits, a strained attempt to describe live human beings in terms of scanty abstractions. It was only when I stumbled across E. P. Thompson's biography of William Morris that I found what I was looking for. (The biography was doubly powerful for me because it not only reflected the curative effect of socialist thought [an ultimate vocabulary] on Morris' development, but reflected the biographer's desire to identify with that development. Thompson himself, not only Morris, seemed guided and enlightened by the terms provided by the socialist vocabulary.) The center of Thompson's biography is the contrast between Morris' sense of himself and society before his discovery of socialism and after that discovery. And it is from this contrast that we learn most forcefully the power of an ultimate term to provide perspective, coherence, and the ability to act with confidence. In Morris' "pre-socialist" days he was torn by several conflicts. As a young man, he felt increasingly disgusted by and alienated from Victorian industrial society and culture. He was appalled by the profiteering, by the ethos of Vic-

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torian "progress," by the divisions between rich and poor, by the vapidity of Victorian culture and art. Therefore, and quite logically, his mentor at this time was John Ruskin, whose analyses of art both confirmed Morris' sense of the degeneracy of Victorian culture and pushed him into a nostalgic longing for the past. As Thompson points out in his discussions of the early poetry, Morris' alienation from the society in which he found himself led to escapist fantasies and watery medieval romance. But Morris was stricken not only by the conflicts which surrounded him in society but by the conflicts which proceeded from his marriage to Jane Burden, the preRaphaelite beauty. Jane's aloofness and apparent inability to offer the intimacy Morris desired so strongly left him with a void that must have heightened his sense of aloneness, his sense that he was an aberrant creature in Victorian society. A temporary solution to his isolation was effected by his establishment of the firm of Morris and Company, a group of artists and craftsmen who attempted not only to rejuvenate the arts, but to create a miniature society in which work was not oppressive but fulfilling. But, as I mentioned, the solution was and could be only a temporary one. Morris was dismayed and demoralized by the co-optation of his efforts by those Victorians he most despised. As Morris and Company became well known and in demand, Morris and his craftsmen came simply to be used by those who wished to purchase (ready-made) good taste and esthetic sense-much as they might have purchased any commodity (a good ham, a nice fabric, a library of books appropriate for the "cultured man"). And in view of this, Morris felt his efforts to effect change dwindle and become increasingly trivial. His artistic efforts seemed to afford no relief. But there was a turning point to Morris' life which, while it did not change the On Line Swados, (Boston, 8Harvey the substance of his activities and work, Toronto: Little, Brown, and Co., 1957).

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COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION ultimate term, a model which shapes our own attempts to struggle with language. If we see the intelligent and ethical use of persuasion as the end-point to which we are moving, then it is the idea of this end-point which gives significance to our own individual efforts to capture that intelligent and ethical use of words. But I think the most appropriate "closure" is not such a tidy wrapping-up of things. Rather the necessary closure is, perhaps, to open up for myself and you a series of questions about ultimate terms, questions which may temporarily put the halo askew. When are ultimate terms dangerous things, and why? When and can they become dogmatic and oppressive? When is it necessary to offer a critique of ultimate terms? Must we at times challenge our ultimate terms by a hardnosed look at the particulars, the chaotic experience they are supposed to elucidate? And who are the men and women one might locate as believers in an ultimate term, yet determined critics
of it?

did radically change his perspective on those activities and work. As Thompson makes quite clear, yet in quite undogmatic fashion, Morris' exposure to and eventual identification with the Socialist League in Britain provided the broad overview which placed his work and convictions within a larger historical movement. Consequently, as Morris became increasingly convinced that society could get beyond the "Victorian slump" and to a state of harmony and cooperation, his own turmoil became not nonexistent but certainly less pronounced. As with Anna in The Golden Notebook, Morris could endure the moment of history in which he found himself by understanding it as a moment in the on-going development of a unified society. And, as with Anna, his ultimate term afforded the perspective, the distance, which allowed him to struggle with confidence and hope. Perhaps the logical closure at this point is to apply Burke's analysis of ultimate terms, and their persuasive power, to Burke himself. Perhaps Burke's notion of rhetoric is itself an

Seattle, Washington

SPRING

CONFERENCE

For details concerning the Spring Conference, see pp. 106 & 107.

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