Growing out of this conviction-tension comes _resolve to make the
audience share that conviction-tension_. Purpose is the backbone of
force; without it speech is flabby--it may glitter, but it is the
iridescence of the spineless jellyfish. You must hold fast to your
resolve if you would hold fast to your audience.

Finally, all this conviction-tension-purpose is lifeless and useless
unless it results in _propulsion_. You remember how Young in his
wonderful "Night Thoughts" delineates the man who

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
Resolves, and re-resolves, and dies the same.

Let not your force "die a-borning,"--bring it to full life in its
conviction, emotional tension, resolve, and propulsive power.

_Can Force be Acquired?_

Yes, if the acquirer has any such capacities as we have just outlined.
How to acquire this vital factor is suggested in its very analysis: Live
with your subject until you are convinced of its importance.

If your message does not of itself arouse you to tension, _PULL_
yourself together. When a man faces the necessity of leaping across a
crevasse he does not wait for inspiration, he _wills_ his muscles into
tensity for the spring--it is not without purpose that our English
language uses the same word to depict a mighty though delicate steel
contrivance and a quick leap through the air. Then resolve--and let it
all end in actual _punch_.

This truth is worth reiteration: The man within is the final factor. He
must supply the fuel. The audience, or even the man himself, may add the
match--it matters little which, only so that there be fire. However
skillfully your engine is constructed, however well it works, you will
have no force if the fire has gone out under the boiler. It matters
little how well you have mastered poise, pause, modulation, and tempo,
if your speech lacks fire it is dead. Neither a dead engine nor a dead
speech will move anybody.

Four factors of force are measurably within your control, and in that
far may be acquired: _ideas_, _feeling about the subject_, _wording_, and
_delivery_. Each of these is more or less fully discussed in this
volume, except wording, which really requires a fuller rhetorical study
than can here be ventured. It is, however, of the utmost importance that
you should be aware of precisely how wording bears upon force in a
sentence. Study "The Working Principles of Rhetoric," by John Franklin
Genung, or the rhetorical treatises of A