In this work we are interested both in causes and the moral quality of causes, and when an orator appears to speak of subjects without an immediate apperception of them, we become curious about the kind of world he is living in. Was this type of orator sick, as some have inferred? Was he suffering from some kind of auto-intoxication which produces insulation from reality? Charles Egbert Craddock in her novel _Where the Battle Was Fought_ has left a satirical picture of the type. Its personification is General Vayne, who holds everything up to a “moral magnifying glass.” “Through this unique lens life loomed up as a rather large affair. In the rickety courthouse in the village of Chattalla, five miles out there to the south, General Vayne beheld a temple of justice. He translated an office-holder as the sworn servant of the people. The State was this great commonwealth, and its seal a proud escutcheon. A fall in cotton struck him as a blow to the commerce of the world. From an adverse political fortune he augured the swift ruin of the country.”[147] There is the possibility that this type was sick with a kind of vanity and egocentricity, and that has frequently been offered as a diagnosis. But on the other hand, there is the possibility that such men were larger than we, with our petty and contentious style, and because larger more exposed in those limitations which they had. The heroes in tragedies also talk bigger than life. Perhaps the source of our discomfort is that this kind of speech comes to us as an admonition that there were giants in the earth before us, mighty men, men of renown. But before we are ready for any conclusion, we must isolate the cause of our intimation. As we scan the old oratory for the chief offender against modern sensibility, we are certain to rank in high position, if not first, _the uncontested term_. By this we mean the term which seems to invite a contest, but which apparently is not so regarded in its own context. Most of these are terms which scandalize the modern reader with their generality, so that he wonders how the speaker ever took the risk of using them. No experienced speaker interlards his discourse with terms which are themselves controversial. He may build his case on one or two such terms, after giving them _ad hoc_ definitions, but to multiply them is to create a force of resistance which almost no speech can overcome. Yet in this period we have speeches which seem made up almost from beginning to end of phrases loose in scope and but weakly defensible. Yet the old orator who employed these terms of sweeping generality knew something of his audience’s state of mind and was confident of his effect. And the public generally responded by putting him in the genus “great man.” This brings us to the rhetorical situation, which must be described in some detail.