It should be added that Burke came very near a true explanation in the
following passage:--"It is difficult to conceive how words can move the
passions which belong to real objects without representing these
objects clearly. This is difficult to us because we do not sufficiently
distinguish between a clear expression and a strong expression. The
former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to the passions.
The one describes a thing as it is, the other describes it as it is
felt. Now as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned
countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of the
things about which they are exerted, so there are words and certain
dispositions of words which being peculiarly devoted to passionate
subjects, and always used by those who are under the influence of
passion, touch and move us more than those which far more clearly and
distinctly express the subject-matter." Burke here fails to see that
the tones, looks, and gestures are the intelligible symbols of
passion--the "images' in the true sense just as words are the
intelligible symbols of ideas. The subject-matter is as clearly
expressed by the one as by the other; for if the description of a Lion
be conveyed in the symbols of admiration or of terror, the
subject-matter is THEN a Lion passionately and not zoologically
considered. And this Burke himself was led to admit, for he adds, "We
yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all
verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact,
conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that
it could scarcely have the smallest eflfect if the speaker did not call
in to his aid those modes of speech that work a strong and lively
feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a
fire already kindled in another." This is very true, and it sets
clearly forth the fact that naked description, addressed to the calm