to the judge." The true aim should be to prove your point, or
seem to prove it.
Here we may interpolate a comment which has a general bearing on Aristotle's Rhetoric. 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? Logic may be more persuasive with the more select hearers of rhetoric; but rhetoric is for the many, and with the many appeals to passion will sometimes, perhaps usually, be more effective than syllogism. No formulation of rhetoric can correspond 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 proo " (aéépa rrtir-rews), or whether the stress of persuading effort should not be rather addressed to the emotions of the hearers. But we can entirely agree with Aristotle in his next remark, which is historical in its nature. The deliberative branch of rhetoric had hitherto been postponed, he observes, to the forensic. We have, in fact, already seen that the very origin of rhetoric in Hellas was forensic. The relative subordination of deliberative rhetoric, however unscientihc, 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 οἱ χαρίεντες, the cultivated few; on the other hand, he is apt to assume tacitly-and here his individual bent comes out-that these hearers are not the great surging crowd, the oxhos, 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 replies. Rhetoric is useful, first of all, because truth and justice 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.Uses of rhetoric. 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 sffgggc 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 some process of reasoning which the rhetorician himself knows to 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 (1rpoa.ipem.s), i.e. if he knowingly used a fallacious syllogism. But rhetoric takes no account of the moral purpose. It takes account simply of the faculty (ébvapcs)-the faculty of discovering any means of persuasion.
Aristotle's Rhetoric is incom arably the most scientific work P
which exists on the subject. It may also be regarded determined the main lines on which the subject was as having
treated by nearly all subsequent writers. The extant;':'; treatise on rhetoric (also by Aristotle?) entitled 'Pm-0pu<1) HC, , to zrpos 'A>é£av5p¢w, formerly ascribed to Anaximenes of;, eX Lampsacus, was written at latest by 340 B.c. The d ., introductory letter prefixed to it is probably a late forgery. af' e ° Its relation towards Aristotle's Rhetoric is discussed in the article on Arusrorta.
During the three centuries from the age of Alexander to that of Augustus the fortunes of rhetoric were governed by the new conditions of Hellenism. Aristotle's scientific The method lived on in the Peripatetic school. Meanwhile |;'“"'°" the fashion of florid declamation or strained conceits Arg; prevailed in the rhetorical schools of Asia, where, amid ander fa mixed populations, the pure traditions of the best Augus-Greek taste had been dissociated from the use of the *US-Greek language. The “ Asianism ” of style which thus Came to be contrasted with “ Atticism ” found imitators at Rome, among whom must be reckoned the orator HOft€HSlU5 (c. Q5 B.c.). Hermagoras of Temnos in Aeolis (c. 110 Hermv B.C.) claims mention as having done much to revive go, ., , s a higher conception. Using both the practical rhetoric of the time before Aristotle and Aristotle's philosophical rhetoric, he worked up the results of both in a new system, -following the philosophers so far as to give the chief prominence to “ invention.” He thus became the founder of a rhetoric which may be distinguished as the scholastic. Through the influence of his school, Hermagoras did for Roman eloquence very much what Isocrates had done for Athens. Above all, he counteracted the view of “ Asianism, ” that oratory is a mere knack founded on practice, and recalled attention to the study of it as an art.1
Cicero's rhetorical works are to some extent based on the technical system to which he had been introduced by Molon at Rhodes. But Cicero further made an independent Ciarm use of the best among the earlier Greek writers, Isocrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus. Lastly, he could draw, at least in the later of his treatises, on a vast fund of reflection and experience. Indeed, the distinctive interest of his contributions to the theory of rhetoric consists in the fact that his theory can be compared with his practice. The result of such a comparison is certainly to suggest how much less he owed to his art than to his genius. Some consciousness of this is perhaps implied in the idea which pervades much of his writing on oratory, that the perfect orator is the perfect man. The same thought is present to Quintilian, in whose great work, Quin-
De Institutiorie Oratoria, the scholastic rhetoric re-, inam ceives its most complete expression (c. A.D. go). Quintilian treats oratory as the end to which the entire mental and moral development of the student is to be directed. Thus he devotes his first book to an early discipline which should precede the orator's first studies, and his last book to a discipline of the whole man which lies beyond them. Some notion of his comprehensive method may be derived from the circumstance that he introduces a succinct estimate of the chief Greek and Roman authors, of every kind, from Homer to Seneca (bk. x. §§ 46-131). After Quintilian, the next important name is that of Hermogenes of Tarsus, who under Marcus Aurelius H made a complete digest of the scholastic rhetoric from ggi? the time of Hermagoras of Temnos (rio B.C.). It is contained in five extant treatises, which are remarkable for clearness and acuteness, and still more remarkable as having been completed before the age of twenty-five. Hermogenes continued for nearly a century and a half to be one of the chief authorities in the schools. Longinus (c. A.D. 260) published an Art of Rhetoric which is still extant; and the more celebrated treatise Ort Sublirnity (vrepi iigbovs), if not?, , f7, ;'; s his work, is at least of the same period. In the later half of the 4th century Aphthonius (q.v.) composed the “ exercises ” (1rpo'yv;.w6urya-ra) which superseded the work of 1 See ]ebb's Attic Orators, ii. 445.
