Should rhetoric be founded on the science of the mind rather than on the precepts of the ancients?

George Campbell, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Eloquence is the art by which discourse is adapted to its end. Since its ends are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passions and influence the will, the rules must be drawn from an account of those faculties and of how each is affected.1234

Sources

  1. I can assure you from my own experience, that when there is a proper choice of persons, an entire confidence in one another, and a real disposition to be mutually useful, it is one of the most powerful means of improvement that I know.
    Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence, pp. 349–350
  2. Every speech hath, or ought to have, for its professed aim, either to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will. The first of these may be subdivided into two others.
    Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence, pp. 351–353
  3. Of the four sorts of discourses now enumerated it may be observed in general, that each preceding species, in the order above exhibited, is preparatory to the subsequent, that each subsequent species is founded on the preceding, and that thus they ascend in a regular progression.
    Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence, pp. 355–356
  4. This was the idea of Lord Verulam, perhaps the most compreljoMsive genius in philosophy that has appeared in modern times. 13ut these are not the only arts which have their foundation in tlie science of human nature. Grammar, too, in its general principles, has a close connexion with the understanding, and the theory of the association of ideas.
    The Philosophy of Rhetoric

Where the argument is made

  • The Philosophy of Rhetoric, the Introduction and I.1-2 (the ends of discourse), I.7 (the connection of argument and passion)

How the argument was received

The organizing principle of the whole work and its claim to be a philosophy of rhetoric rather than another system of precepts.