Eloquence—as the humanists of earlier centuries, and orators in every culture, had always known—is of essential importance to human beings. Language in general is our very element: the basis of our social and moral lives. It enables us to work out our intellectual critiques of the existing world in detail, to apply our best reasonings to it, and to imagine in words how things might be different—and then to persuade others of these imaginings and reasonings.
