Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/528

Rh 510 RHETORIC accorded to the earlier Sophists, such as Protagoras, and the influence which the school of Isocrates exerted through the men whom it had trained. Rhetoric had won its place in education. It kept that place, through varying for- tunes, to the fall of the Roman empire, and resumed it, for a while, at the revival of learning. iris- Aristotle's Rhetoric belongs to the generation after stle's Isocrates, having been composed between 330 and 322 " ietonc - B.C. As controversial allusions sometimes hint, it holds Isocrates for one of the foremost exponents of the subject. From a merely literary point of view, Aristotle's Rhetoric (with the partial exception of book iii.) is one of the driest works in the world. From the historical or scientific point of view, it is one of the most curious and the most interesting. If we would seize the true significance of the treatise, it is better to compare rhetoric with grammar than with its obvious analogue, logic. A method of grammar was the conception of the Alexandrian age, which had lying before it the standard masterpieces of Greek literature, and deduced the " rules " of grammar from the actual practice of the best writers. Aristotle, in the latter years of the 4th century B.C., held the same position relatively to the monuments of Greek oratory which the Alexandrian methodizers of grammar held rela- tively to Greek literature at large. Abundant materials lay before him, illustrating, in the greatest variety of forms, how speakers had been able to persuade the reason or to move the feelings. From this mass of material, said Aristotle, let us try to generalize. Let us deduce rules, by applying which a speaker shall always be able to per- suade the reason or to move the feelings. And, when we have got our rules, let us digest them into an intelligent method, and so construct a true art. Aristotle's practical purpose was undoubtedly real. If we are to make persua- sive speakers, he believed, this is the only sound way to set about it. But, for us moderns, the enduring interest of his Rhetoric is mainly retrospective. It attracts us as a feat in analysis by an acute mind a feat highly character- istic of that mind itself, and at the same time strikingly illustrative of the field over which the materials have been gathered. nalysis. Rhetoric is properly an art. This is the proposition from ook I. which Aristotle sets out. It is so because, when a speaker persuades, it is possible to find out why he succeeds in doing so. Rhetoric is, in fact, the popular branch of logic. Now hitherto, Aristotle says, the essence of rhetoric has been neglected for the accidents. Writers on rhetoric have hitherto concerned themselves mainly with "the exciting of prejudice, of pity, of anger, and such- like emotions of the soul." All this is very well, but "it has nothing to do with the matter in hand ; it has regard to the judge." The true aim should be to prove your point, or seem to prove it. Here we may venture to interpolate a comment which has a general bearing on Aristotle's JKhetoric. It is quite true that, if we start from the conception of rhetoric as a branch of logic, the phantom of logic in rhetoric claims precedence over appeals to passion. But Aristotle does not sufficiently regard the question What, as a matter of experience, is most persuasive ? The phantom of logic may be more persuasive with the more select hearers of rhetoric ; but rhetoric is not for the more select ; it is for the many, and with the many appeals to passion will sometimes, perhaps usually, be more effective than the semblance of the syllogism. And here we seem to touch the basis of the whole practical vice it was not strictly a theoretical vice in the old world's view of rhetoric, which, after Aristotle's day, was ultimately Aristotelian. No formulation of rhetoric can corre- spond with fact which does not leave it absolutely to the genius of the speaker whether reasoning (or its phantom) is to be what Aristotle calls it, the "body of proof" (/ia ir/erreeoy), or whether the stress of persuading effort should not be rather addressed to the emotions of the hearers. This is a matter of tact, of instinct, of oratorical genius. But we can entirely agree with Aristotle in his next remark, which is historical in its nature. The deliberative branch of rhe- toric had hitherto been postponed, he observes, to the forensic. We have already seen the primary cause of this, namely, that the very origin of rhetoric in Hellas was forensic. The most urgent need which the citizen felt for this art was not when he had to discuss the interests of the city, but when he had to defend (perhaps) his own property or his own life. The relative subordination of deliberative rhetoric, however unscientific, had thus been human. Aristotle's next statement, that the master of logic will be the master of rhetoric, is a truism if we concede the essential primacy of the logical element in rhetoric. Otherwise it is a paradox ; and it is not in accord with experience, which teaches that speakers incapable of showing even the ghost of an argument have sometimes been the most completely successful in carrying great audiences along with them. Aristotle never assumes that the hearers of his rhetorician are as of x a p' if " r( ^> the cultivated few ; on the other hand, he is apt to assume tacitly and here his individual bent conies out that these hearers are not the great surging crowd, the t>x*-s> but a body of persons with a decided, though imperfectly developed, preference for sound logic. "What is the use of an art of rhetoric ? It is fourfold, Aristotle Uses of replies. Rhetoric is useful, first of all, because truth and justice rhetoric are naturally stronger than their opposites. When awards are not duly given, truth and justice must have been worsted by their own fault. This is worth correcting. Rhetoric is then (1) corrective. Next, it is (2) instructive, as a popular vehicle of persuasion for persons who could not be reached by the severer methods of strict logic. Then it is (3) suggestive. ( Logic and rhetoric are the two impartial arts ; that is to say, it is a matter of indifference to them, as arts, whether the conclusion which they draw in any given case is affirmative or negative. Suppose that I am going to plead a cause, and have a sincere conviction that I am on the right side. The art of rhetoric will suggest to me what might be urged on the other side ; and this will give me a stronger grasp of the whole situation. Lastly, rhetoric is (4) defensive. Mental effort is more distinctive of man than bodily effort ; and "it would be absurd that, while incapacity for physical self-defence is a reproach, incapacity for mental defence should be no reproach." Rhetoric, then, is corrective, instructive, suggestive, defensive. But what if it be urged that this art may be abused ? The objection, Aristotle answers, applies to all good things, except virtue, and especially to the most useful things. Men may abuse strength, health, wealth, generalship. The function of the medical art is not necessarily to cure, but to make such progress towards a cure as each case may admit. Similarly it would be inaccurate to say that the function of rhetoric was to persuade. Rather must rhetoric be defined as "the faculty of discerning in every case the available means of persuasion." Suppose that among these means of persuasion is Rhetoric some process of reasoning Avhich the rhetorician himself knows to defined. be unsound. That belongs to the province of rhetoric all the same. In relation to logic, a man is called a "sophist" with regard to his moral purpose (irpoa/pecm), i.e., if he knowingly uses a fallacious syllogism. But rhetoric takes no account of the moral purpose. It takes account simply of the faculty (8iW/m) the faculty of discovering any means of persuasion. The "available means of persuasion," universally considered, The may be brought under two classes. (1) First, there are the proofs viarta external to the art,- not furnished by rhetoric, the " inartificial classifitt proofs" (&Texvot irlffrfts). Such are the depositions made by witnesses, documents, and the like. (2) Secondly, there are the proofs, i.e., the agents of persuasion, which the art of rhetoric itself provides, the "artificial proofs" (evrtx^oi via-reis). These are of three kinds : (a) logical (oyiK^ irio-Tts) demonstration, or seeming demonstration, by argument ; (b) ethical (yOuc}) irlaris), when the speaker succeeds in conveying such an impression of his own character as may lead the hearers to put trust in him ; (c) emotional (iraB-qrin^ nitnis), when the speaker works persuasively on the feelings of the hearers. It follows that, besides logical skill, the rhetorician should possess the power of analysing character, in order to present himself in the ethical light which will be most effective with his audience. He must also under- stand the sources of the emotions, and the means of producing them. Hence rhetoric has a double relationship. While in one aspect the most important to it as an art it may be regarded as popular logic, in another aspect it is related to ethics. And hence, .says Aristotle, political science (irotriK'fi) being a branch of ethical, as the citizen is one aspect of the man, "rhetoric and its professors slip into the garb of political science (uiroSvcrai rb o-X*)M a T*> TW iroAiTiKijs), cither through want of education, or from pretentiousness, or from other human causes. " Aristotle now proceeds to analyse the first of the " artificial The proofs," the logical (oymri ir'urns). Answering to the strict logical syllogism of logic, rhetoric has its popular syllogism, to which i>r"" 4 Aristotle gives the name of "enthymeme" (^flu^Tj/ua). This term (from the verb ivQvp.tiffea.i, " to revolve in the mind "), means properly "a consideration" or "reflection." It occurs first in Isocrates, who uses it simply of the "thoughts" or "sentiments" with which a rhetorician embellishes his work (TO?S ivdv^fnaat TrptTrti/Tws 8ov rlv yov Ka.-rairoiKia.i, Or., xiii. 16). Whether the technical sense was or was not known before Aristotle, it is to