Public Speaking Principles And Practice

otion. This is due in part to a misuse of them. The prejudice is often really against excessive emotion, against control by emotion in defiance of reason, or against the over-free expression of emotion. Perhaps a better word to express the thing objected to is sentimentality. Emotion is a constant factor in our mental states, unless we reach absolute indifference. To be without emotion, indeed, is to be without interest, without happiness as well as without sorrow, without desires good or bad. Even our reasons are usually emotions. Whether we act for the sake of "fat" war contracts or for love of country, whether we seek selfish pleasure or die for a friend, whether we decide for "a short life and a merry one" or for a moral, temperate career, and whether we do our work or go to the game,?in all cases we act, if we are acting beyond the range of habit, under the control of emotion. It makes no difference that we may call our emotion a reason or a motive. Even the man who prides himself most on living the life of reason must, if he be a true philosopher, be led by one master emotion,?love of truth. We should fix in our minds the fact that emotion, as such, is neither good nor bad; that a particular emotion may be good or bad. Also, emotions may be violent, moderate, or weak in their expression. The man who loses himself in the study of minerals may be as truly emotional as one who cheers for Alma Mater. Emotion has no necessary relation to either whoops or te...