speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of
mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words
of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal
character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him
credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others:
this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true
where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This
kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the
speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he
begins to speak. It is not true, as some writers assume in their
treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the
speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the
contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective
means of persuasion he possesses. Secondly, persuasion may come
through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our
judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when
we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as
we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole
of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come
to speak of the emotions. Thirdly, persuasion is effected through
the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth
by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

  There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The
man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1)
to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in
their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to
name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which
they are excited. It thus appears that rhetoric is an offshoot of
dialectic and also of ethical studies. Ethical studies may fairly be
called political; and for this reason rhetoric masquerades as
political science, and the professors of it as political
experts-sometimes from want of education, sometimes from
ostentation, sometimes owing to other human failings. As a matter of
fact, it is a branch of dialectic and similar to it, as we said at the
outset. Neither rhetoric nor dialectic is the scientific study of
any one separate subject: both are faculties for providing
arguments. This is perhaps a sufficient account of their scope and
of how they are related to each other.

  With regard to the persuasion achieved by proof or apparent proof:
just as in dialectic there is induction on the one hand and
syllogism or apparent syllogism on the other, so it is in rhetoric.
The example is an induction, the enthymeme is a syllogism, and the
apparent enthymeme is an apparent syllogism. I call the enthymeme a
rhetorical syllogism, and the example a rhetorical induction. Every
one who effects persuasion through proof does in fact use either
enthymemes or examples: there is no other way. And since every one who
proves anything at all is bound to use either syllogisms or inductions
(and this is clear to us from the Analytics), it must follow that
enthymemes are syllogisms and examples are inductions. The
difference between example and enthymeme is made plain by the passages
in the Topics where induction and syllogism have already been
discussed. When we base the proof of a proposition on a number of
similar cases, this is induction in dialectic, example in rhetoric;
when it is shown that, certain propositions being true, a further
and quite distinct proposition must also be true in consequence,
whether invariably or usually, this is called syllogism in
dialectic, enthymeme in rhetoric. It is plain also that each of
these types of oratory has its advantages. Types of oratory, I say:
for what has been said in the Methodics applies equally well here;
in some oratorical styles examples prevail, in others enthymemes;
and in like manner, some orators are better at the former and some
at the latter. Speeches that rely on examples are as persuasive as the
other kind, but those which rely on enthymemes excite the louder
applause. The sources of examples and enthymemes, and their proper
uses, we will discuss later. Our next step is to define the
processes themselves more clearly.

  A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly
self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other
statements that are so. In either case it is persuasive because
there is somebody whom it persuades. But none of the arts theorize
about individual cases. Medicine, for instance, does not theorize
about what will help to cure Socrates or Callias, but only about
what will help to cure any or all of a given class of patients: this
alone is business: individual cases are so infinitely various that
no systematic knowledge of them is possible. In the same way the
theory of rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a
given individual like Socrates or Hippias, but with what seems
probable to men of a given type; and this is true of dialectic also.
Dialectic does not construct its syllogisms out of any haphazard
materials, such as the fancies of crazy people, but out of materials
that call for discussion; and rhetoric, too, draws upon the regular
subjects of debate. The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such
matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us,
in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated
argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning. The subjects of our
deliberation are such as seem to present us with alternative
possibilities: about things that could not have been, and cannot now
or in the future be, other than they are, nobody who takes them to
be of this nature wastes his time in deliberation.

  It is possible to form syllogisms and draw conclusions from the
results of previous syllogisms; or, on the other hand, from
premisses which have not been thus proved, and at the same time are so
little accepted that they call for proof. Reasonings of the former
kind will necessarily be hard to follow owing to their length, for
we assume an audience of untrained thinkers; those of the latter
kind will fail to win assent, because they are based on premisses that