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                                     350 BC

                                    RHETORIC

                                  by Aristotle

                         translated by W. Rhys Roberts

                              Book I

                                 1

  RHETORIC the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with
such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men
and belong to no definite science. Accordingly all men make use,
more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to
discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to
attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through
practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the
subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to
inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and
others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an
inquiry is the function of an art.

  Now, the framers of the current treatises on rhetoric have
constructed but a small portion of that art. The modes of persuasion
are the only true constituents of the art: everything else is merely
accessory. These writers, however, say nothing about enthymemes, which
are the substance of rhetorical persuasion, but deal mainly with
non-essentials. The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar
emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a
personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. Consequently if
the rules for trials which are now laid down some states-especially in
well-governed states-were applied everywhere, such people would have
nothing to say. All men, no doubt, think that the laws should
prescribe such rules, but some, as in the court of Areopagus, give
practical effect to their thoughts and forbid talk about
non-essentials. This is sound law and custom. It is not right to
pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity-one might
as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it. Again, a litigant has
clearly nothing to do but to show that the alleged fact is so or is
not so, that it has or has not happened. As to whether a thing is
important or unimportant, just or unjust, the judge must surely refuse
to take his instructions from the litigants: he must decide for
himself all such points as the law-giver has not already defined for
him.

  Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves
define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be
to the decision of the judges; and this for several reasons. First, to
find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of
legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large
number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas
decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard
for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and
expediency. The weightiest reason of all is that the decision of the
lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general, whereas
members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on
definite cases brought before them. They will often have allowed
themselves to be so much influenced by feelings of friendship or
hatred or self-interest that they lose any clear vision of the truth
and have their judgement obscured by considerations of personal
pleasure or pain. In general, then, the judge should, we say, be
allowed to decide as few things as possible. But questions as to
whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will
not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since
the lawgiver cannot foresee them. If this is so, it is evident that
any one who lays down rules about other matters, such as what must
be the contents of the 'introduction' or the 'narration' or any of the
other divisions of a speech, is theorizing about non-essentials as
if they belonged to the art. The only question with which these
writers here deal is how to put the judge into a given frame of
mind. About the orator's proper modes of persuasion they have
nothing to tell us; nothing, that is, about how to gain skill in
enthymemes.

  Hence it comes that, although the same systematic principles apply
to political as to forensic oratory, and although the former is a
nobler business, and fitter for a citizen, than that which concerns
the relations of private individuals, these authors say nothing
about political oratory, but try, one and all, to write treatises on
the way to plead in court. The reason for this is that in political
oratory there is less inducement to talk about nonessentials.
Political oratory is less given to unscrupulous practices than
forensic, because it treats of wider issues. In a political debate the
man who is forming a judgement is making a decision about his own
vital interests. There is no need, therefore, to prove anything except
that the facts are what the supporter of a measure maintains they are.
In forensic oratory this is not enough; to conciliate the listener
is what pays here. It is other people's affairs that are to be
decided, so that the judges, intent on their own satisfaction and
listening with partiality, surrender themselves to the disputants
instead of judging between them. Hence in many places, as we have said
already, irrelevant speaking is forbidden in the law-courts: in the
public assembly those who have to form a judgement are themselves well
able to guard against that.

  It is clear, then, that rhetorical study, in its strict sense, is
concerned with the modes of persuasion. Persuasion is clearly a sort
of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a
thing to have been demonstrated. The orator's demonstration is an
enthymeme, and this is, in general, the most effective of the modes of
persuasion. The enthymeme is a sort of syllogism, and the
consideration of syllogisms of all kinds, without distinction, is
the business of dialectic, either of dialectic as a whole or of one of
its branches. It follows plainly, therefore, that he who is best
able to see how and from what elements a syllogism is produced will
also be best skilled in the enthymeme, when he has further learnt what
its subject-matter is and in what respects it differs from the
syllogism of strict logic. The true and the approximately true are
apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have
a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do
arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth
is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.

  It has now been shown that the ordinary writers on rhetoric treat of
non-essentials; it has also been shown why they have inclined more
towards the forensic branch of oratory.

  Rhetoric is useful (1) because things that are true and things
that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites,
so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be,
the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be
blamed accordingly. Moreover, (2) before some audiences not even the
possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say
to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies
instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct. Here,
then, we must use, as our modes of persuasion and argument, notions
possessed by everybody, as we observed in the Topics when dealing with
the way to handle a popular audience. Further, (3) we must be able
to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on
opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice
employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is
wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and
that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to
confute him. No other of the arts draws opposite conclusions:
dialectic and rhetoric alone do this. Both these arts draw opposite
conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not
lend themselves equally well to the contrary views. No; things that
are true and things that are better are, by their nature,
practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in. Again,
(4) it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being
unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to
defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech
is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. And if
it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might
do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against
all good things except virtue, and above all against the things that
are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can
confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict
the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

  It is clear, then, that rhetoric is not bound up with a single
definite class of subjects, but is as universal as dialectic; it is
clear, also, that it is useful. It is clear, further, that its
function is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to
discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances
of each particular case allow. In this it resembles all other arts.
For example, it is not the function of medicine simply to make a man
quite healthy, but to put him as far as may be on the road to
health; it is possible to give excellent treatment even to those who
can never enjoy sound health. Furthermore, it is plain that it is
the function of one and the same art to discern the real and the
apparent means of persuasion, just as it is the function of
dialectic to discern the real and the apparent syllogism. What makes a
man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. In
rhetoric, however, the term 'rhetorician' may describe either the
speaker's knowledge of the art, or his moral purpose. In dialectic
it is different: a man is a 'sophist' because he has a certain kind of
moral purpose, a 'dialectician' in respect, not of his moral
purpose, but of his faculty.

  Let us now try to give some account of the systematic principles
of Rhetoric itself-of the right method and means of succeeding in
the object we set before us. We must make as it were a fresh start,
and before going further define what rhetoric is.

                                 2

  Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given
case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of
any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its
own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is
healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes,
arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and
sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the
means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us; and that is
why we say that, in its technical character, it is not concerned
with any special or definite class of subjects.

  Of the modes of persuasion some belong strictly to the art of
rhetoric and some do not. By the latter I mean such things as are
not supplied by the speaker but are there at the outset-witnesses,
evidence given under torture, written contracts, and so on. By the
former I mean such as we can ourselves construct by means of the
principles of rhetoric. The one kind has merely to be used, the
other has to be invented.

  Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are
three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the
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
are not generally admitted or believed.

  The enthymeme and the example must, then, deal with what is in the
main contingent, the example being an induction, and the enthymeme a
syllogism, about such matters. The enthymeme must consist of few
propositions, fewer often than those which make up the normal
syllogism. For if any of these propositions is a familiar fact,
there is no need even to mention it; the hearer adds it himself. Thus,
to show that Dorieus has been victor in a contest for which the
prize is a crown, it is enough to say 'For he has been victor in the
Olympic games', without adding 'And in the Olympic games the prize
is a crown', a fact which everybody knows.

  There are few facts of the 'necessary' type that can form the
basis of rhetorical syllogisms. Most of the things about which we make
decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with
alternative possibilities. For it is about our actions that we
deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have a contingent
character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity. Again,
conclusions that state what is merely usual or possible must be
drawn from premisses that do the same, just as 'necessary' conclusions
must be drawn from 'necessary' premisses; this too is clear to us from
the Analytics. It is evident, therefore, that the propositions forming
the basis of enthymemes, though some of them may be 'necessary',
will most of them be only usually true. Now the materials of
enthymemes are Probabilities and Signs, which we can see must
correspond respectively with the propositions that are generally and
those that are necessarily true. A Probability is a thing that usually
happens; not, however, as some definitions would suggest, anything
whatever that usually happens, but only if it belongs to the class
of the 'contingent' or 'variable'. It bears the same relation to
that in respect of which it is probable as the universal bears to
the particular. Of Signs, one kind bears the same relation to the
statement it supports as the particular bears to the universal, the
other the same as the universal bears to the particular. The
infallible kind is a 'complete proof' (tekmerhiou); the fallible
kind has no specific name. By infallible signs I mean those on which
syllogisms proper may be based: and this shows us why this kind of
Sign is called 'complete proof': when people think that what they have
said cannot be refuted, they then think that they are bringing forward
a 'complete proof', meaning that the matter has now been
demonstrated and completed (peperhasmeuou); for the word 'perhas'
has the same meaning (of 'end' or 'boundary') as the word 'tekmarh' in
the ancient tongue. Now the one kind of Sign (that which bears to
the proposition it supports the relation of particular to universal)
may be illustrated thus. Suppose it were said, 'The fact that Socrates
was wise and just is a sign that the wise are just'. Here we certainly
have a Sign; but even though the proposition be true, the argument
is refutable, since it does not form a syllogism. Suppose, on the
other hand, it were said, 'The fact that he has a fever is a sign that
he is ill', or, 'The fact that she is giving milk is a sign that she
has lately borne a child'. Here we have the infallible kind of Sign,
the only kind that constitutes a complete proof, since it is the
only kind that, if the particular statement is true, is irrefutable.
The other kind of Sign, that which bears to the proposition it
supports the relation of universal to particular, might be illustrated
by saying, 'The fact that he breathes fast is a sign that he has a
fever'. This argument also is refutable, even if the statement about
the fast breathing be true, since a man may breathe hard without
having a fever.

  It has, then, been stated above what is the nature of a Probability,
of a Sign, and of a complete proof, and what are the differences
between them. In the Analytics a more explicit description has been
given of these points; it is there shown why some of these
reasonings can be put into syllogisms and some cannot.

  The 'example' has already been described as one kind of induction;
and the special nature of the subject-matter that distinguishes it
from the other kinds has also been stated above. Its relation to the
proposition it supports is not that of part to whole, nor whole to
part, nor whole to whole, but of part to part, or like to like. When
two statements are of the same order, but one is more familiar than
the other, the former is an 'example'. The argument may, for instance,
be that Dionysius, in asking as he does for a bodyguard, is scheming
to make himself a despot. For in the past Peisistratus kept asking for
a bodyguard in order to carry out such a scheme, and did make
himself a despot as soon as he got it; and so did Theagenes at Megara;
and in the same way all other instances known to the speaker are
made into examples, in order to show what is not yet known, that
Dionysius has the same purpose in making the same request: all these
being instances of the one general principle, that a man who asks
for a bodyguard is scheming to make himself a despot. We have now
described the sources of those means of persuasion which are popularly
supposed to be demonstrative.

  There is an important distinction between two sorts of enthymemes
that has been wholly overlooked by almost everybody-one that also
subsists between the syllogisms treated of in dialectic. One sort of
enthymeme really belongs to rhetoric, as one sort of syllogism
really belongs to dialectic; but the other sort really belongs to
other arts and faculties, whether to those we already exercise or to
those we have not yet acquired. Missing this distinction, people
fail to notice that the more correctly they handle their particular
subject the further they are getting away from pure rhetoric or
dialectic. This statement will be clearer if expressed more fully. I
mean that the proper subjects of dialectical and rhetorical syllogisms
are the things with which we say the regular or universal Lines of
Argument are concerned, that is to say those lines of argument that
apply equally to questions of right conduct, natural science,
politics, and many other things that have nothing to do with one
another. Take, for instance, the line of argument concerned with
'the more or less'. On this line of argument it is equally easy to
base a syllogism or enthymeme about any of what nevertheless are
essentially disconnected subjects-right conduct, natural science, or
anything else whatever. But there are also those special Lines of
Argument which are based on such propositions as apply only to
particular groups or classes of things. Thus there are propositions
about natural science on which it is impossible to base any
enthymeme or syllogism about ethics, and other propositions about
ethics on which nothing can be based about natural science. The same
principle applies throughout. The general Lines of Argument have no
special subject-matter, and therefore will not increase our
understanding of any particular class of things. On the other hand,
the better the selection one makes of propositions suitable for
special Lines of Argument, the nearer one comes, unconsciously, to
setting up a science that is distinct from dialectic and rhetoric. One
may succeed in stating the required principles, but one's science will
be no longer dialectic or rhetoric, but the science to which the
principles thus discovered belong. Most enthymemes are in fact based
upon these particular or special Lines of Argument; comparatively
few on the common or general kind. As in the therefore, so in this
work, we must distinguish, in dealing with enthymemes, the special and
the general Lines of Argument on which they are to be founded. By
special Lines of Argument I mean the propositions peculiar to each
several class of things, by general those common to all classes alike.
We may begin with the special Lines of Argument. But, first of all,
let us classify rhetoric into its varieties. Having distinguished
these we may deal with them one by one, and try to discover the
elements of which each is composed, and the propositions each must
employ.

                                 3

  Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the three classes
of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in
speech-making--speaker, subject, and person addressed--it is the
last one, the hearer, that determines the speech's end and object. The
hearer must be either a judge, with a decision to make about things
past or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly decides about
future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely
decide on the orator's skill are observers. From this it follows
that there are three divisions of oratory-(1) political, (2) forensic,
and (3) the ceremonial oratory of display.

  Political speaking urges us either to do or not to do something: one
of these two courses is always taken by private counsellors, as well
as by men who address public assemblies. Forensic speaking either
attacks or defends somebody: one or other of these two things must
always be done by the parties in a case. The ceremonial oratory of
display either praises or censures somebody. These three kinds of
rhetoric refer to three different kinds of time. The political
orator is concerned with the future: it is about things to be done
hereafter that he advises, for or against. The party in a case at
law is concerned with the past; one man accuses the other, and the
other defends himself, with reference to things already done. The
ceremonial orator is, properly speaking, concerned with the present,
since all men praise or blame in view of the state of things
existing at the time, though they often find it useful also to
recall the past and to make guesses at the future.

  Rhetoric has three distinct ends in view, one for each of its
three kinds. The political orator aims at establishing the
expediency or the harmfulness of a proposed course of action; if he
urges its acceptance, he does so on the ground that it will do good;
if he urges its rejection, he does so on the ground that it will do
harm; and all other points, such as whether the proposal is just or
unjust, honourable or dishonourable, he brings in as subsidiary and
relative to this main consideration. Parties in a law-case aim at
establishing the justice or injustice of some action, and they too
bring in all other points as subsidiary and relative to this one.
Those who praise or attack a man aim at proving him worthy of honour
or the reverse, and they too treat all other considerations with
reference to this one.

  That the three kinds of rhetoric do aim respectively at the three
ends we have mentioned is shown by the fact that speakers will
sometimes not try to establish anything else. Thus, the litigant
will sometimes not deny that a thing has happened or that he has
done harm. But that he is guilty of injustice he will never admit;
otherwise there would be no need of a trial. So too, political orators
often make any concession short of admitting that they are
recommending their hearers to take an inexpedient course or not to
take an expedient one. The question whether it is not unjust for a
city to enslave its innocent neighbours often does not trouble them at
all. In like manner those who praise or censure a man do not
consider whether his acts have been expedient or not, but often make
it a ground of actual praise that he has neglected his own interest to
do what was honourable. Thus, they praise Achilles because he
championed his fallen friend Patroclus, though he knew that this meant
death, and that otherwise he need not die: yet while to die thus was
the nobler thing for him to do, the expedient thing was to live on.

  It is evident from what has been said that it is these three
subjects, more than any others, about which the orator must be able to
have propositions at his command. Now the propositions of Rhetoric are
Complete Proofs, Probabilities, and Signs. Every kind of syllogism
is composed of propositions, and the enthymeme is a particular kind of
syllogism composed of the aforesaid propositions.

  Since only possible actions, and not impossible ones, can ever
have been done in the past or the present, and since things which have
not occurred, or will not occur, also cannot have been done or be
going to be done, it is necessary for the political, the forensic, and
the ceremonial speaker alike to be able to have at their command
propositions about the possible and the impossible, and about
whether a thing has or has not occurred, will or will not occur.
Further, all men, in giving praise or blame, in urging us to accept or
reject proposals for action, in accusing others or defending
themselves, attempt not only to prove the points mentioned but also to
show that the good or the harm, the honour or disgrace, the justice or
injustice, is great or small, either absolutely or relatively; and
therefore it is plain that we must also have at our command
propositions about greatness or smallness and the greater or the
lesser-propositions both universal and particular. Thus, we must be
able to say which is the greater or lesser good, the greater or lesser
act of justice or injustice; and so on.

  Such, then, are the subjects regarding which we are inevitably bound
to master the propositions relevant to them. We must now discuss
each particular class of these subjects in turn, namely those dealt
with in political, in ceremonial, and lastly in legal, oratory.

                                 4

  First, then, we must ascertain what are the kinds of things, good or
bad, about which the political orator offers counsel. For he does
not deal with all things, but only with such as may or may not take
place. Concerning things which exist or will exist inevitably, or
which cannot possibly exist or take place, no counsel can be given.
Nor, again, can counsel be given about the whole class of things which
may or may not take place; for this class includes some good things
that occur naturally, and some that occur by accident; and about these
it is useless to offer counsel. Clearly counsel can only be given on
matters about which people deliberate; matters, namely, that
ultimately depend on ourselves, and which we have it in our power to
set going. For we turn a thing over in our mind until we have
reached the point of seeing whether we can do it or not.

  Now to enumerate and classify accurately the usual subjects of
public business, and further to frame, as far as possible, true
definitions of them is a task which we must not attempt on the present
occasion. For it does not belong to the art of rhetoric, but to a more
instructive art and a more real branch of knowledge; and as it is,
rhetoric has been given a far wider subject-matter than strictly
belongs to it. The truth is, as indeed we have said already, that
rhetoric is a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical
branch of politics; and it is partly like dialectic, partly like
sophistical reasoning. But the more we try to make either dialectic
rhetoric not, what they really are, practical faculties, but sciences,
the more we shall inadvertently be destroying their true nature; for
we shall be re-fashioning them and shall be passing into the region of
sciences dealing with definite subjects rather than simply with
words and forms of reasoning. Even here, however, we will mention
those points which it is of practical importance to distinguish, their
fuller treatment falling naturally to political science.

  The main matters on which all men deliberate and on which
political speakers make speeches are some five in number: ways and
means, war and peace, national defence, imports and exports, and
legislation.

  As to Ways and Means, then, the intending speaker will need to
know the number and extent of the country's sources of revenue, so
that, if any is being overlooked, it may be added, and, if any is
defective, it may be increased. Further, he should know all the
expenditure of the country, in order that, if any part of it is
superfluous, it may be abolished, or, if any is too large, it may be
reduced. For men become richer not only by increasing their existing
wealth but also by reducing their expenditure. A comprehensive view of
these questions cannot be gained solely from experience in home
affairs; in order to advise on such matters a man must be keenly
interested in the methods worked out in other lands.

  As to Peace and War, he must know the extent of the military
strength of his country, both actual and potential, and also the
mature of that actual and potential strength; and further, what wars
his country has waged, and how it has waged them. He must know these
facts not only about his own country, but also about neighbouring
countries; and also about countries with which war is likely, in order
that peace may be maintained with those stronger than his own, and
that his own may have power to make war or not against those that
are weaker. He should know, too, whether the military power of another
country is like or unlike that of his own; for this is a matter that
may affect their relative strength. With the same end in view he must,
besides, have studied the wars of other countries as well as those
of his own, and the way they ended; similar causes are likely to
have similar results.

  With regard to National Defence: he ought to know all about the
methods of defence in actual use, such as the strength and character
of the defensive force and the positions of the forts-this last
means that he must be well acquainted with the lie of the country-in
order that a garrison may be increased if it is too small or removed
if it is not wanted, and that the strategic points may be guarded with
special care.

  With regard to the Food Supply: he must know what outlay will meet
the needs of his country; what kinds of food are produced at home
and what imported; and what articles must be exported or imported.
This last he must know in order that agreements and commercial
treaties may be made with the countries concerned. There are,
indeed, two sorts of state to which he must see that his countrymen
give no cause for offence, states stronger than his own, and states
with which it is advantageous to trade.

  But while he must, for security's sake, be able to take all this
into account, he must before all things understand the subject of
legislation; for it is on a country's laws that its whole welfare
depends. He must, therefore, know how many different forms of
constitution there are; under what conditions each of these will
prosper and by what internal developments or external attacks each
of them tends to be destroyed. When I speak of destruction through
internal developments I refer to the fact that all constitutions,
except the best one of all, are destroyed both by not being pushed far
enough and by being pushed too far. Thus, democracy loses its
vigour, and finally passes into oligarchy, not only when it is not
pushed far enough, but also when it is pushed a great deal too far;
just as the aquiline and the snub nose not only turn into normal noses
by not being aquiline or snub enough, but also by being too
violently aquiline or snub arrive at a condition in which they no
longer look like noses at all. It is useful, in framing laws, not only
to study the past history of one's own country, in order to understand
which constitution is desirable for it now, but also to have a
knowledge of the constitutions of other nations, and so to learn for
what kinds of nation the various kinds of constitution are suited.
From this we can see that books of travel are useful aids to
legislation, since from these we may learn the laws and customs of
different races. The political speaker will also find the researches
of historians useful. But all this is the business of political
science and not of rhetoric.

  These, then, are the most important kinds of information which the
political speaker must possess. Let us now go back and state the
premisses from which he will have to argue in favour of adopting or
rejecting measures regarding these and other matters.

                                 5

  It may be said that every individual man and all men in common aim
at a certain end which determines what they choose and what they
avoid. This end, to sum it up briefly, is happiness and its
constituents. Let us, then, by way of illustration only, ascertain
what is in general the nature of happiness, and what are the
elements of its constituent parts. For all advice to do things or
not to do them is concerned with happiness and with the things that
make for or against it; whatever creates or increases happiness or
some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers
happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.

  We may define happiness as prosperity combined with virtue; or as
independence of life; or as the secure enjoyment of the maximum of
pleasure; or as a good condition of property and body, together with
the power of guarding one's property and body and making use of
them. That happiness is one or more of these things, pretty well
everybody agrees.

  From this definition of happiness it follows that its constituent
parts are:-good birth, plenty of friends, good friends, wealth, good
children, plenty of children, a happy old age, also such bodily
excellences as health, beauty, strength, large stature, athletic
powers, together with fame, honour, good luck, and virtue. A man
cannot fail to be completely independent if he possesses these
internal and these external goods; for besides these there are no
others to have. (Goods of the soul and of the body are internal.
Good birth, friends, money, and honour are external.) Further, we
think that he should possess resources and luck, in order to make
his life really secure. As we have already ascertained what
happiness in general is, so now let us try to ascertain what of
these parts of it is.

  Now good birth in a race or a state means that its members are
indigenous or ancient: that its earliest leaders were distinguished
men, and that from them have sprung many who were distinguished for
qualities that we admire.

  The good birth of an individual, which may come either from the male
or the female side, implies that both parents are free citizens, and
that, as in the case of the state, the founders of the line have
been notable for virtue or wealth or something else which is highly
prized, and that many distinguished persons belong to the family,
men and women, young and old.

  The phrases 'possession of good children' and 'of many children'
bear a quite clear meaning. Applied to a community, they mean that its
young men are numerous and of good a quality: good in regard to bodily
excellences, such as stature, beauty, strength, athletic powers; and
also in regard to the excellences of the soul, which in a young man
are temperance and courage. Applied to an individual, they mean that
his own children are numerous and have the good qualities we have
described. Both male and female are here included; the excellences
of the latter are, in body, beauty and stature; in soul,
self-command and an industry that is not sordid. Communities as well
as individuals should lack none of these perfections, in their women
as well as in their men. Where, as among the Lacedaemonians, the state
of women is bad, almost half of human life is spoilt.

  The constituents of wealth are: plenty of coined money and
territory; the ownership of numerous, large, and beautiful estates;
also the ownership of numerous and beautiful implements, live stock,
and slaves. All these kinds of property are our own, are secure,
gentlemanly, and useful. The useful kinds are those that are
productive, the gentlemanly kinds are those that provide enjoyment. By
'productive' I mean those from which we get our income; by
'enjoyable', those from which we get nothing worth mentioning except
the use of them. The criterion of 'security' is the ownership of
property in such places and under such Conditions that the use of it
is in our power; and it is 'our own' if it is in our own power to
dispose of it or keep it. By 'disposing of it' I mean giving it away
or selling it. Wealth as a whole consists in using things rather
than in owning them; it is really the activity-that is, the use-of
property that constitutes wealth.

  Fame means being respected by everybody, or having some quality that
is desired by all men, or by most, or by the good, or by the wise.

  Honour is the token of a man's being famous for doing good. it is
chiefly and most properly paid to those who have already done good;
but also to the man who can do good in future. Doing good refers
either to the preservation of life and the means of life, or to
wealth, or to some other of the good things which it is hard to get
either always or at that particular place or time-for many gain honour
for things which seem small, but the place and the occasion account
for it. The constituents of honour are: sacrifices; commemoration,
in verse or prose; privileges; grants of land; front seats at civic
celebrations; state burial; statues; public maintenance; among
foreigners, obeisances and giving place; and such presents as are
among various bodies of men regarded as marks of honour. For a present
is not only the bestowal of a piece of property, but also a token of
honour; which explains why honour-loving as well as money-loving
persons desire it. The present brings to both what they want; it is
a piece of property, which is what the lovers of money desire; and
it brings honour, which is what the lovers of honour desire.

  The excellence of the body is health; that is, a condition which
allows us, while keeping free from disease, to have the use of our
bodies; for many people are 'healthy' as we are told Herodicus was;
and these no one can congratulate on their 'health', for they have
to abstain from everything or nearly everything that men do.-Beauty
varies with the time of life. In a young man beauty is the
possession of a body fit to endure the exertion of running and of
contests of strength; which means that he is pleasant to look at;
and therefore all-round athletes are the most beautiful, being
naturally adapted both for contests of strength and for speed also.
For a man in his prime, beauty is fitness for the exertion of warfare,
together with a pleasant but at the same time formidable appearance.
For an old man, it is to be strong enough for such exertion as is
necessary, and to be free from all those deformities of old age
which cause pain to others. Strength is the power of moving some one
else at will; to do this, you must either pull, push, lift, pin, or
grip him; thus you must be strong in all of those ways or at least
in some. Excellence in size is to surpass ordinary people in height,
thickness, and breadth by just as much as will not make one's
movements slower in consequence. Athletic excellence of the body
consists in size, strength, and swiftness; swiftness implying
strength. He who can fling forward his legs in a certain way, and move
them fast and far, is good at running; he who can grip and hold down
is good at wrestling; he who can drive an adversary from his ground
with the right blow is a good boxer: he who can do both the last is
a good pancratiast, while he who can do all is an 'all-round' athlete.

  Happiness in old age is the coming of old age slowly and painlessly;
for a man has not this happiness if he grows old either quickly, or
tardily but painfully. It arises both from the excellences of the body
and from good luck. If a man is not free from disease, or if he is
strong, he will not be free from suffering; nor can he continue to
live a long and painless life unless he has good luck. There is,
indeed, a capacity for long life that is quite independent of health
or strength; for many people live long who lack the excellences of the
body; but for our present purpose there is no use in going into the
details of this.

  The terms 'possession of many friends' and 'possession of good
friends' need no explanation; for we define a 'friend' as one who will
always try, for your sake, to do what he takes to be good for you. The
man towards whom many feel thus has many friends; if these are
worthy men, he has good friends.

  'Good luck' means the acquisition or possession of all or most, or
the most important, of those good things which are due to luck. Some
of the things that are due to luck may also be due to artificial
contrivance; but many are independent of art, as for example those
which are due to nature-though, to be sure, things due to luck may
actually be contrary to nature. Thus health may be due to artificial
contrivance, but beauty and stature are due to nature. All such good
things as excite envy are, as a class, the outcome of good luck.
Luck is also the cause of good things that happen contrary to
reasonable expectation: as when, for instance, all your brothers are
ugly, but you are handsome yourself; or when you find a treasure
that everybody else has overlooked; or when a missile hits the next
man and misses you; or when you are the only man not to go to a
place you have gone to regularly, while the others go there for the
first time and are killed. All such things are reckoned pieces of good
luck.

  As to virtue, it is most closely connected with the subject of
Eulogy, and therefore we will wait to define it until we come to
discuss that subject.

                                 6

  It is now plain what our aims, future or actual, should be in
urging, and what in depreciating, a proposal; the latter being the
opposite of the former. Now the political or deliberative orator's aim
is utility: deliberation seeks to determine not ends but the means
to ends, i.e. what it is most useful to do. Further, utility is a good
thing. We ought therefore to assure ourselves of the main facts
about Goodness and Utility in general.

  We may define a good thing as that which ought to be chosen for
its own sake; or as that for the sake of which we choose something
else; or as that which is sought after by all things, or by all things
that have sensation or reason, or which will be sought after by any
things that acquire reason; or as that which must be prescribed for
a given individual by reason generally, or is prescribed for him by
his individual reason, this being his individual good; or as that
whose presence brings anything into a satisfactory and
self-sufficing condition; or as self-sufficiency; or as what produces,
maintains, or entails characteristics of this kind, while preventing
and destroying their opposites. One thing may entail another in either
of two ways-(1) simultaneously, (2) subsequently. Thus learning
entails knowledge subsequently, health entails life simultaneously.
Things are productive of other things in three senses: first as
being healthy produces health; secondly, as food produces health;
and thirdly, as exercise does-i.e. it does so usually. All this
being settled, we now see that both the acquisition of good things and
the removal of bad things must be good; the latter entails freedom
from the evil things simultaneously, while the former entails
possession of the good things subsequently. The acquisition of a
greater in place of a lesser good, or of a lesser in place of a
greater evil, is also good, for in proportion as the greater exceeds
the lesser there is acquisition of good or removal of evil. The
virtues, too, must be something good; for it is by possessing these
that we are in a good condition, and they tend to produce good works
and good actions. They must be severally named and described
elsewhere. Pleasure, again, must be a good thing, since it is the
nature of all animals to aim at it. Consequently both pleasant and
beautiful things must be good things, since the former are
productive of pleasure, while of the beautiful things some are
pleasant and some desirable in and for themselves.

  The following is a more detailed list of things that must be good.
Happiness, as being desirable in itself and sufficient by itself,
and as being that for whose sake we choose many other things. Also
justice, courage, temperance, magnanimity, magnificence, and all
such qualities, as being excellences of the soul. Further, health,
beauty, and the like, as being bodily excellences and productive of
many other good things: for instance, health is productive both of
pleasure and of life, and therefore is thought the greatest of
goods, since these two things which it causes, pleasure and life,
are two of the things most highly prized by ordinary people. Wealth,
again: for it is the excellence of possession, and also productive
of many other good things. Friends and friendship: for a friend is
desirable in himself and also productive of many other good things.
So, too, honour and reputation, as being pleasant, and productive of
many other good things, and usually accompanied by the presence of the
good things that cause them to be bestowed. The faculty of speech
and action; since all such qualities are productive of what is good.
Further-good parts, strong memory, receptiveness, quickness of
intuition, and the like, for all such faculties are productive of what
is good. Similarly, all the sciences and arts. And life: since, even
if no other good were the result of life, it is desirable in itself.
And justice, as the cause of good to the community.

  The above are pretty well all the things admittedly good. In dealing
with things whose goodness is disputed, we may argue in the
following ways:-That is good of which the contrary is bad. That is
good the contrary of which is to the advantage of our enemies; for
example, if it is to the particular advantage of our enemies that we
should be cowards, clearly courage is of particular value to our
countrymen. And generally, the contrary of that which our enemies
desire, or of that at which they rejoice, is evidently valuable. Hence
the passage beginning:

        Surely would Priam exult.

  This principle usually holds good, but not always, since it may well
be that our interest is sometimes the same as that of our enemies.
Hence it is said that 'evils draw men together'; that is, when the
same thing is hurtful to them both.

  Further: that which is not in excess is good, and that which is
greater than it should be is bad. That also is good on which much
labour or money has been spent; the mere fact of this makes it seem
good, and such a good is assumed to be an end-an end reached through a
long chain of means; and any end is a good. Hence the lines beginning:

        And for Priam (and Troy-town's folk) should

                they leave behind them a boast;

and

        Oh, it were shame

        To have tarried so long and return empty-handed

                as erst we came;

and there is also the proverb about 'breaking the pitcher at the
door'.

  That which most people seek after, and which is obviously an
object of contention, is also a good; for, as has been shown, that
is good which is sought after by everybody, and 'most people' is taken
to be equivalent to 'everybody'. That which is praised is good,
since no one praises what is not good. So, again, that which is
praised by our enemies [or by the worthless] for when even those who
have a grievance think a thing good, it is at once felt that every one
must agree with them; our enemies can admit the fact only because it
is evident, just as those must be worthless whom their friends censure
and their enemies do not. (For this reason the Corinthians conceived
themselves to be insulted by Simonides when he wrote:

        Against the Corinthians hath Ilium no complaint.)

  Again, that is good which has been distinguished by the favour of
a discerning or virtuous man or woman, as Odysseus was distinguished
by Athena, Helen by Theseus, Paris by the goddesses, and Achilles by
Homer. And, generally speaking, all things are good which men
deliberately choose to do; this will include the things already
mentioned, and also whatever may be bad for their enemies or good
for their friends, and at the same time practicable. Things are
'practicable' in two senses: (1) it is possible to do them, (2) it
is easy to do them. Things are done 'easily' when they are done either
without pain or quickly: the 'difficulty' of an act lies either in its
painfulness or in the long time it takes. Again, a thing is good if it
is as men wish; and they wish to have either no evil at an or at least
a balance of good over evil. This last will happen where the penalty
is either imperceptible or slight. Good, too, are things that are a
man's very own, possessed by no one else, exceptional; for this
increases the credit of having them. So are things which befit the
possessors, such as whatever is appropriate to their birth or
capacity, and whatever they feel they ought to have but lack-such
things may indeed be trifling, but none the less men deliberately make
them the goal of their action. And things easily effected; for these
are practicable (in the sense of being easy); such things are those in
which every one, or most people, or one's equals, or one's inferiors
have succeeded. Good also are the things by which we shall gratify our
friends or annoy our enemies; and the things chosen by those whom we
admire: and the things for which we are fitted by nature or
experience, since we think we shall succeed more easily in these:
and those in which no worthless man can succeed, for such things bring
greater praise: and those which we do in fact desire, for what we
desire is taken to be not only pleasant but also better. Further, a
man of a given disposition makes chiefly for the corresponding things:
lovers of victory make for victory, lovers of honour for honour,
money-loving men for money, and so with the rest. These, then, are the
sources from which we must derive our means of persuasion about Good
and Utility.

                                 7

  Since, however, it often happens that people agree that two things
are both useful but do not agree about which is the more so, the
next step will be to treat of relative goodness and relative utility.

  A thing which surpasses another may be regarded as being that
other thing plus something more, and that other thing which is
surpassed as being what is contained in the first thing. Now to call a
thing 'greater' or 'more' always implies a comparison of it with one
that is 'smaller' or 'less', while 'great' and 'small', 'much' and
'little', are terms used in comparison with normal magnitude. The
'great' is that which surpasses the normal, the 'small' is that
which is surpassed by the normal; and so with 'many' and 'few'.

  Now we are applying the term 'good' to what is desirable for its own
sake and not for the sake of something else; to that at which all
things aim; to what they would choose if they could acquire
understanding and practical wisdom; and to that which tends to produce
or preserve such goods, or is always accompanied by them. Moreover,
that for the sake of which things are done is the end (an end being
that for the sake of which all else is done), and for each
individual that thing is a good which fulfils these conditions in
regard to himself. It follows, then, that a greater number of goods is
a greater good than one or than a smaller number, if that one or
that smaller number is included in the count; for then the larger
number surpasses the smaller, and the smaller quantity is surpassed as
being contained in the larger.

  Again, if the largest member of one class surpasses the largest
member of another, then the one class surpasses the other; and if
one class surpasses another, then the largest member of the one
surpasses the largest member of the other. Thus, if the tallest man is
taller than the tallest woman, then men in general are taller than
women. Conversely, if men in general are taller than women, then the
tallest man is taller than the tallest woman. For the superiority of
class over class is proportionate to the superiority possessed by
their largest specimens. Again, where one good is always accompanied
by another, but does not always accompany it, it is greater than the
other, for the use of the second thing is implied in the use of the
first. A thing may be accompanied by another in three ways, either
simultaneously, subsequently, or potentially. Life accompanies
health simultaneously (but not health life), knowledge accompanies the
act of learning subsequently, cheating accompanies sacrilege
potentially, since a man who has committed sacrilege is always capable
of cheating. Again, when two things each surpass a third, that which
does so by the greater amount is the greater of the two; for it must
surpass the greater as well as the less of the other two. A thing
productive of a greater good than another is productive of is itself a
greater good than that other. For this conception of 'productive of
a greater' has been implied in our argument. Likewise, that which is
produced by a greater good is itself a greater good; thus, if what
is wholesome is more desirable and a greater good than what gives
pleasure, health too must be a greater good than pleasure. Again, a
thing which is desirable in itself is a greater good than a thing
which is not desirable in itself, as for example bodily strength
than what is wholesome, since the latter is not pursued for its own
sake, whereas the former is; and this was our definition of the
good. Again, if one of two things is an end, and the other is not, the
former is the greater good, as being chosen for its own sake and not
for the sake of something else; as, for example, exercise is chosen
for the sake of physical well-being. And of two things that which
stands less in need of the other, or of other things, is the greater
good, since it is more self-sufficing. (That which stands 'less' in
need of others is that which needs either fewer or easier things.)
So when one thing does not exist or cannot come into existence without
a second, while the second can exist without the first, the second
is the better. That which does not need something else is more
self-sufficing than that which does, and presents itself as a
greater good for that reason. Again, that which is a beginning of
other things is a greater good than that which is not, and that
which is a cause is a greater good than that which is not; the
reason being the same in each case, namely that without a cause and
a beginning nothing can exist or come into existence. Again, where
there are two sets of consequences arising from two different
beginnings or causes, the consequences of the more important beginning
or cause are themselves the more important; and conversely, that
beginning or cause is itself the more important which has the more
important consequences. Now it is plain, from all that has been
said, that one thing may be shown to be more important than another
from two opposite points of view: it may appear the more important (1)
because it is a beginning and the other thing is not, and also (2)
because it is not a beginning and the other thing is-on the ground
that the end is more important and is not a beginning. So Leodamas,
when accusing Callistratus, said that the man who prompted the deed
was more guilty than the doer, since it would not have been done if he
had not planned it. On the other hand, when accusing Chabrias he
said that the doer was worse than the prompter, since there would have
been no deed without some one to do it; men, said he, plot a thing
only in order to carry it out.

  Further, what is rare is a greater good than what is plentiful.
Thus, gold is a better thing than iron, though less useful: it is
harder to get, and therefore better worth getting. Reversely, it may
be argued that the plentiful is a better thing than the rare,
because we can make more use of it. For what is often useful surpasses
what is seldom useful, whence the saying:

        The best of things is water.

  More generally: the hard thing is better than the easy, because it
is rarer: and reversely, the easy thing is better than the hard, for
it is as we wish it to be. That is the greater good whose contrary
is the greater evil, and whose loss affects us more. Positive goodness
and badness are more important than the mere absence of goodness and
badness: for positive goodness and badness are ends, which the mere
absence of them cannot be. Further, in proportion as the functions
of things are noble or base, the things themselves are good or bad:
conversely, in proportion as the things themselves are good or bad,
their functions also are good or bad; for the nature of results
corresponds with that of their causes and beginnings, and conversely
the nature of causes and beginnings corresponds with that of their
results. Moreover, those things are greater goods, superiority in
which is more desirable or more honourable. Thus, keenness of sight is
more desirable than keenness of smell, sight generally being more
desirable than smell generally; and similarly, unusually great love of
friends being more honourable than unusually great love of money,
ordinary love of friends is more honourable than ordinary love of
money. Conversely, if one of two normal things is better or nobler
than the other, an unusual degree of that thing is better or nobler
than an unusual degree of the other. Again, one thing is more
honourable or better than another if it is more honourable or better
to desire it; the importance of the object of a given instinct
corresponds to the importance of the instinct itself; and for the same
reason, if one thing is more honourable or better than another, it
is more honourable and better to desire it. Again, if one science is
more honourable and valuable than another, the activity with which
it deals is also more honourable and valuable; as is the science, so
is the reality that is its object, each science being authoritative in
its own sphere. So, also, the more valuable and honourable the
object of a science, the more valuable and honourable the science
itself is-in consequence. Again, that which would be judged, or
which has been judged, a good thing, or a better thing than
something else, by all or most people of understanding, or by the
majority of men, or by the ablest, must be so; either without
qualification, or in so far as they use their understanding to form
their judgement. This is indeed a general principle, applicable to all
other judgements also; not only the goodness of things, but their
essence, magnitude, and general nature are in fact just what knowledge
and understanding will declare them to be. Here the principle is
applied to judgements of goodness, since one definition of 'good'
was 'what beings that acquire understanding will choose in any given
case': from which it clearly follows that that thing is hetter which
understanding declares to be so. That, again, is a better thing
which attaches to better men, either absolutely, or in virtue of their
being better; as courage is better than strength. And that is a
greater good which would be chosen by a better man, either absolutely,
or in virtue of his being better: for instance, to suffer wrong rather
than to do wrong, for that would be the choice of the juster man.
Again, the pleasanter of two things is the better, since all things
pursue pleasure, and things instinctively desire pleasurable sensation
for its own sake; and these are two of the characteristics by which
the 'good' and the 'end' have been defined. One pleasure is greater
than another if it is more unmixed with pain, or more lasting.
Again, the nobler thing is better than the less noble, since the noble
is either what is pleasant or what is desirable in itself. And those
things also are greater goods which men desire more earnestly to bring
about for themselves or for their friends, whereas those things
which they least desire to bring about are greater evils. And those
things which are more lasting are better than those which are more
fleeting, and the more secure than the less; the enjoyment of the
lasting has the advantage of being longer, and that of the secure
has the advantage of suiting our wishes, being there for us whenever
we like. Further, in accordance with the rule of co-ordinate terms and
inflexions of the same stem, what is true of one such related word
is true of all. Thus if the action qualified by the term 'brave' is
more noble and desirable than the action qualified by the term
'temperate', then 'bravery' is more desirable than 'temperance' and
'being brave' than 'being temperate'. That, again, which is chosen
by all is a greater good than that which is not, and that chosen by
the majority than that chosen by the minority. For that which all
desire is good, as we have said;' and so, the more a thing is desired,
the better it is. Further, that is the better thing which is
considered so by competitors or enemies, or, again, by authorized
judges or those whom they select to represent them. In the first two
cases the decision is virtually that of every one, in the last two
that of authorities and experts. And sometimes it may be argued that
what all share is the better thing, since it is a dishonour not to
share in it; at other times, that what none or few share is better,
since it is rarer. The more praiseworthy things are, the nobler and
therefore the better they are. So with the things that earn greater
honours than others-honour is, as it were, a measure of value; and the
things whose absence involves comparatively heavy penalties; and the
things that are better than others admitted or believed to be good.
Moreover, things look better merely by being divided into their parts,
since they then seem to surpass a greater number of things than
before. Hence Homer says that Meleager was roused to battle by the
thought of

        All horrors that light on a folk whose city

                is ta'en of their foes,

        When they slaughter the men, when the burg is

                wasted with ravening flame,

        When strangers are haling young children to thraldom,

                (fair women to shame.)

  The same effect is produced by piling up facts in a climax after the
manner of Epicharmus. The reason is partly the same as in the case
of division (for combination too makes the impression of great
superiority), and partly that the original thing appears to be the
cause and origin of important results. And since a thing is better
when it is harder or rarer than other things, its superiority may be
due to seasons, ages, places, times, or one's natural powers. When a
man accomplishes something beyond his natural power, or beyond his
years, or beyond the measure of people like him, or in a special
way, or at a special place or time, his deed will have a high degree
of nobleness, goodness, and justice, or of their opposites. Hence
the epigram on the victor at the Olympic games:

        In time past, hearing a Yoke on my shoulders,

                of wood unshaven,

        I carried my loads of fish from, Argos to Tegea town.

  So Iphicrates used to extol himself by describing the low estate
from which he had risen. Again, what is natural is better than what is
acquired, since it is harder to come by. Hence the words of Homer:

        I have learnt from none but mysell.

  And the best part of a good thing is particularly good; as when
Pericles in his funeral oration said that the country's loss of its
young men in battle was 'as if the spring were taken out of the year'.
So with those things which are of service when the need is pressing;
for example, in old age and times of sickness. And of two things
that which leads more directly to the end in view is the better. So
too is that which is better for people generally as well as for a
particular individual. Again, what can be got is better than what
cannot, for it is good in a given case and the other thing is not. And
what is at the end of life is better than what is not, since those
things are ends in a greater degree which are nearer the end. What
aims at reality is better than what aims at appearance. We may
define what aims at appearance as what a man will not choose if nobody
is to know of his having it. This would seem to show that to receive
benefits is more desirable than to confer them, since a man will
choose the former even if nobody is to know of it, but it is not the
general view that he will choose the latter if nobody knows of it.
What a man wants to be is better than what a man wants to seem, for in
aiming at that he is aiming more at reality. Hence men say that
justice is of small value, since it is more desirable to seem just
than to be just, whereas with health it is not so. That is better than
other things which is more useful than they are for a number of
different purposes; for example, that which promotes life, good
life, pleasure, and noble conduct. For this reason wealth and health
are commonly thought to be of the highest value, as possessing all
these advantages. Again, that is better than other things which is
accompanied both with less pain and with actual pleasure; for here
there is more than one advantage; and so here we have the good of
feeling pleasure and also the good of not feeling pain. And of two
good things that is the better whose addition to a third thing makes a
better whole than the addition of the other to the same thing will
make. Again, those things which we are seen to possess are better than
those which we are not seen to possess, since the former have the
air of reality. Hence wealth may be regarded as a greater good if
its existence is known to others. That which is dearly prized is
better than what is not-the sort of thing that some people have only
one of, though others have more like it. Accordingly, blinding a
one-eyed man inflicts worse injury than half-blinding a man with two
eyes; for the one-eyed man has been robbed of what he dearly prized.

  The grounds on which we must base our arguments, when we are
speaking for or against a proposal, have now been set forth more or
less completely.

                                 8

  The most important and effective qualification for success in
persuading audiences and speaking well on public affairs is to
understand all the forms of government and to discriminate their
respective customs, institutions, and interests. For all men are
persuaded by considerations of their interest, and their interest lies
in the maintenance of the established order. Further, it rests with
the supreme authority to give authoritative decisions, and this varies
with each form of government; there are as many different supreme
authorities as there are different forms of government. The forms of
government are four-democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy. The
supreme right to judge and decide always rests, therefore, with either
a part or the whole of one or other of these governing powers.

  A Democracy is a form of government under which the citizens
distribute the offices of state among themselves by lot, whereas under
oligarchy there is a property qualification, under aristocracy one
of education. By education I mean that education which is laid down by
the law; for it is those who have been loyal to the national
institutions that hold office under an aristocracy. These are bound to
be looked upon as 'the best men', and it is from this fact that this
form of government has derived its name ('the rule of the best').
Monarchy, as the word implies, is the constitution a in which one
man has authority over all. There are two forms of monarchy: kingship,
which is limited by prescribed conditions, and 'tyranny', which is not
limited by anything.

  We must also notice the ends which the various forms of government
pursue, since people choose in practice such actions as will lead to
the realization of their ends. The end of democracy is freedom; of
oligarchy, wealth; of aristocracy, the maintenance of education and
national institutions; of tyranny, the protection of the tyrant. It is
clear, then, that we must distinguish those particular customs,
institutions, and interests which tend to realize the ideal of each
constitution, since men choose their means with reference to their
ends. But rhetorical persuasion is effected not only by
demonstrative but by ethical argument; it helps a speaker to
convince us, if we believe that he has certain qualities himself,
namely, goodness, or goodwill towards us, or both together. Similarly,
we should know the moral qualities characteristic of each form of
government, for the special moral character of each is bound to
provide us with our most effective means of persuasion in dealing with
it. We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as
we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in
their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end
that inspires them.

  We have now considered the objects, immediate or distant, at which
we are to aim when urging any proposal, and the grounds on which we
are to base our arguments in favour of its utility. We have also
briefly considered the means and methods by which we shall gain a good
knowledge of the moral qualities and institutions peculiar to the
various forms of government-only, however, to the extent demanded by
the present occasion; a detailed account of the subject has been given
in the Politics.

                                 9

  We have now to consider Virtue and Vice, the Noble and the Base,
since these are the objects of praise and blame. In doing so, we shall
at the same time be finding out how to make our hearers take the
required view of our own characters-our second method of persuasion.
The ways in which to make them trust the goodness of other people
are also the ways in which to make them trust our own. Praise,
again, may be serious or frivolous; nor is it always of a human or
divine being but often of inanimate things, or of the humblest of
the lower animals. Here too we must know on what grounds to argue, and
must, therefore, now discuss the subject, though by way of
illustration only.

  The Noble is that which is both desirable for its own sake and
also worthy of praise; or that which is both good and also pleasant
because good. If this is a true definition of the Noble, it follows
that virtue must be noble, since it is both a good thing and also
praiseworthy. Virtue is, according to the usual view, a faculty of
providing and preserving good things; or a faculty of conferring
many great benefits, and benefits of all kinds on all occasions. The
forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence,
magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom. If virtue is
a faculty of beneficence, the highest kinds of it must be those
which are most useful to others, and for this reason men honour most
the just and the courageous, since courage is useful to others in war,
justice both in war and in peace. Next comes liberality; liberal
people let their money go instead of fighting for it, whereas other
people care more for money than for anything else. Justice is the
virtue through which everybody enjoys his own possessions in
accordance with the law; its opposite is injustice, through which
men enjoy the possessions of others in defiance of the law. Courage is
the virtue that disposes men to do noble deeds in situations of
danger, in accordance with the law and in obedience to its commands;
cowardice is the opposite. Temperance is the virtue that disposes us
to obey the law where physical pleasures are concerned; incontinence
is the opposite. Liberality disposes us to spend money for others'
good; illiberality is the opposite. Magnanimity is the virtue that
disposes us to do good to others on a large scale; [its opposite is
meanness of spirit]. Magnificence is a virtue productive of
greatness in matters involving the spending of money. The opposites of
these two are smallness of spirit and meanness respectively.
Prudence is that virtue of the understanding which enables men to come
to wise decisions about the relation to happiness of the goods and
evils that have been previously mentioned.

  The above is a sufficient account, for our present purpose, of
virtue and vice in general, and of their various forms. As to
further aspects of the subject, it is not difficult to discern the
facts; it is evident that things productive of virtue are noble, as
tending towards virtue; and also the effects of virtue, that is, the
signs of its presence and the acts to which it leads. And since the
signs of virtue, and such acts as it is the mark of a virtuous man
to do or have done to him, are noble, it follows that all deeds or
signs of courage, and everything done courageously, must be noble
things; and so with what is just and actions done justly. (Not,
however, actions justly done to us; here justice is unlike the other
virtues; 'justly' does not always mean 'nobly'; when a man is
punished, it is more shameful that this should be justly than unjustly
done to him). The same is true of the other virtues. Again, those
actions are noble for which the reward is simply honour, or honour
more than money. So are those in which a man aims at something
desirable for some one else's sake; actions good absolutely, such as
those a man does for his country without thinking of himself;
actions good in their own nature; actions that are not good simply for
the individual, since individual interests are selfish. Noble also are
those actions whose advantage may be enjoyed after death, as opposed
to those whose advantage is enjoyed during one's lifetime: for the
latter are more likely to be for one's own sake only. Also, all
actions done for the sake of others, since less than other actions are
done for one's own sake; and all successes which benefit others and
not oneself; and services done to one's benefactors, for this is just;
and good deeds generally, since they are not directed to one's own
profit. And the opposites of those things of which men feel ashamed,
for men are ashamed of saying, doing, or intending to do shameful
things. So when Alcacus said

        Something I fain would say to thee,

        Only shame restraineth me,

  Sappho wrote

        If for things good and noble thou wert yearning,

        If to speak baseness were thy tongue not burning,

        No load of shame would on thine eyelids weigh;

        What thou with honour wishest thou wouldst say.

  Those things, also, are noble for which men strive anxiously,
without feeling fear; for they feel thus about the good things which
lead to fair fame. Again, one quality or action is nobler than another
if it is that of a naturally finer being: thus a man's will be
nobler than a woman's. And those qualities are noble which give more
pleasure to other people than to their possessors; hence the nobleness
of justice and just actions. It is noble to avenge oneself on one's
enemies and not to come to terms with them; for requital is just,
and the just is noble; and not to surrender is a sign of courage.
Victory, too, and honour belong to the class of noble things, since
they are desirable even when they yield no fruits, and they prove
our superiority in good qualities. Things that deserve to be
remembered are noble, and the more they deserve this, the nobler
they are. So are the things that continue even after death; those
which are always attended by honour; those which are exceptional;
and those which are possessed by one person alone-these last are
more readily remembered than others. So again are possessions that
bring no profit, since they are more fitting than others for a
gentleman. So are the distinctive qualities of a particular people,
and the symbols of what it specially admires, like long hair in
Sparta, where this is a mark of a free man, as it is not easy to
perform any menial task when one's hair is long. Again, it is noble
not to practise any sordid craft, since it is the mark of a free man
not to live at another's beck and call. We are also to assume when
we wish either to praise a man or blame him that qualities closely
allied to those which he actually has are identical with them; for
instance, that the cautious man is cold-blooded and treacherous, and
that the stupid man is an honest fellow or the thick-skinned man a
good-tempered one. We can always idealize any given man by drawing
on the virtues akin to his actual qualities; thus we may say that
the passionate and excitable man is 'outspoken'; or that the
arrogant man is 'superb' or 'impressive'. Those who run to extremes
will be said to possess the corresponding good qualities; rashness
will be called courage, and extravagance generosity. That will be what
most people think; and at the same time this method enables an
advocate to draw a misleading inference from the motive, arguing
that if a man runs into danger needlessly, much more will he do so
in a noble cause; and if a man is open-handed to any one and every
one, he will be so to his friends also, since it is the extreme form
of goodness to be good to everybody.

  We must also take into account the nature of our particular audience
when making a speech of praise; for, as Socrates used to say, 'it is
not difficult to praise the Athenians to an Athenian audience.' If the
audience esteems a given quality, we must say that our hero has that
quality, no matter whether we are addressing Scythians or Spartans
or philosophers. Everything, in fact, that is esteemed we are to
represent as noble. After all, people regard the two things as much
the same.

  All actions are noble that are appropriate to the man who does them:
if, for instance, they are worthy of his ancestors or of his own
past career. For it makes for happiness, and is a noble thing, that he
should add to the honour he already has. Even inappropriate actions
are noble if they are better and nobler than the appropriate ones
would be; for instance, if one who was just an average person when all
went well becomes a hero in adversity, or if he becomes better and
easier to get on with the higher he rises. Compare the saying of
lphicrates, 'Think what I was and what I am'; and the epigram on the
victor at the Olympic games,

        In time past, bearing a yoke on my shoulders,

                of wood unshaven,

and the encomium of Simonides,

        A woman whose father, whose husband, whose

                brethren were princes all.

  Since we praise a man for what he has actually done, and fine
actions are distinguished from others by being intentionally good,
we must try to prove that our hero's noble acts are intentional.
This is all the easier if we can make out that he has often acted so
before, and therefore we must assert coincidences and accidents to
have been intended. Produce a number of good actions, all of the
same kind, and people will think that they must have been intended,
and that they prove the good qualities of the man who did them.

  Praise is the expression in words of the eminence of a man's good
qualities, and therefore we must display his actions as the product of
such qualities. Encomium refers to what he has actually done; the
mention of accessories, such as good birth and education, merely helps
to make our story credible-good fathers are likely to have good
sons, and good training is likely to produce good character. Hence
it is only when a man has already done something that we bestow
encomiums upon him. Yet the actual deeds are evidence of the doer's
character: even if a man has not actually done a given good thing,
we shall bestow praise on him, if we are sure that he is the sort of
man who would do it. To call any one blest is, it may be added, the
same thing as to call him happy; but these are not the same thing as
to bestow praise and encomium upon him; the two latter are a part of
'calling happy', just as goodness is a part of happiness.

  To praise a man is in one respect akin to urging a course of action.
The suggestions which would be made in the latter case become
encomiums when differently expressed. When we know what action or
character is required, then, in order to express these facts as
suggestions for action, we have to change and reverse our form of
words. Thus the statement 'A man should be proud not of what he owes
to fortune but of what he owes to himself', if put like this,
amounts to a suggestion; to make it into praise we must put it thus,
'Since he is proud not of what he owes to fortune but of what he
owes to himself.' Consequently, whenever you want to praise any one,
think what you would urge people to do; and when you want to urge
the doing of anything, think what you would praise a man for having
done. Since suggestion may or may not forbid an action, the praise
into which we convert it must have one or other of two opposite
forms of expression accordingly.

  There are, also, many useful ways of heightening the effect of
praise. We must, for instance, point out that a man is the only one,
or the first, or almost the only one who has done something, or that
he has done it better than any one else; all these distinctions are
honourable. And we must, further, make much of the particular season
and occasion of an action, arguing that we could hardly have looked
for it just then. If a man has often achieved the same success, we
must mention this; that is a strong point; he himself, and not luck,
will then be given the credit. So, too, if it is on his account that
observances have been devised and instituted to encourage or honour
such achievements as his own: thus we may praise Hippolochus because
the first encomium ever made was for him, or Harmodius and
Aristogeiton because their statues were the first to be put up in
the market-place. And we may censure bad men for the opposite reason.

  Again, if you cannot find enough to say of a man himself, you may
pit him against others, which is what Isocrates used to do owing to
his want of familiarity with forensic pleading. The comparison
should be with famous men; that will strengthen your case; it is a
noble thing to surpass men who are themselves great. It is only
natural that methods of 'heightening the effect' should be attached
particularly to speeches of praise; they aim at proving superiority
over others, and any such superiority is a form of nobleness. Hence if
you cannot compare your hero with famous men, you should at least
compare him with other people generally, since any superiority is held
to reveal excellence. And, in general, of the lines of argument
which are common to all speeches, this 'heightening of effect' is most
suitable for declamations, where we take our hero's actions as
admitted facts, and our business is simply to invest these with
dignity and nobility. 'Examples' are most suitable to deliberative
speeches; for we judge of future events by divination from past
events. Enthymemes are most suitable to forensic speeches; it is our
doubts about past events that most admit of arguments showing why a
thing must have happened or proving that it did happen.

  The above are the general lines on which all, or nearly all,
speeches of praise or blame are constructed. We have seen the sort
of thing we must bear in mind in making such speeches, and the
materials out of which encomiums and censures are made. No special
treatment of censure and vituperation is needed. Knowing the above
facts, we know their contraries; and it is out of these that
speeches of censure are made.

                                10

  We have next to treat of Accusation and Defence, and to enumerate
and describe the ingredients of the syllogisms used therein. There are
three things we must ascertain first, the nature and number of the
incentives to wrong-doing; second, the state of mind of wrongdoers;
third, the kind of persons who are wronged, and their condition. We
will deal with these questions in order. But before that let us define
the act of 'wrong-doing'.

  We may describe 'wrong-doing' as injury voluntarily inflicted
contrary to law. 'Law' is either special or general. By special law
I mean that written law which regulates the life of a particular
community; by general law, all those unwritten principles which are
supposed to be acknowledged everywhere. We do things 'voluntarily'
when we do them consciously and without constraint. (Not all voluntary
acts are deliberate, but all deliberate acts are conscious-no one is
ignorant of what he deliberately intends.) The causes of our
deliberately intending harmful and wicked acts contrary to law are (1)
vice, (2) lack of self-control. For the wrongs a man does to others
will correspond to the bad quality or qualities that he himself
possesses. Thus it is the mean man who will wrong others about
money, the profligate in matters of physical pleasure, the
effeminate in matters of comfort, and the coward where danger is
concerned-his terror makes him abandon those who are involved in the
same danger. The ambitious man does wrong for sake of honour, the
quick-tempered from anger, the lover of victory for the sake of
victory, the embittered man for the sake of revenge, the stupid man
because he has misguided notions of right and wrong, the shameless man
because he does not mind what people think of him; and so with the
rest-any wrong that any one does to others corresponds to his
particular faults of character.

  However, this subject has already been cleared up in part in our
discussion of the virtues and will be further explained later when
we treat of the emotions. We have now to consider the motives and
states of mind of wrongdoers, and to whom they do wrong.

  Let us first decide what sort of things people are trying to get
or avoid when they set about doing wrong to others. For it is plain
that the prosecutor must consider, out of all the aims that can ever
induce us to do wrong to our neighbours, how many, and which, affect
his adversary; while the defendant must consider how many, and
which, do not affect him. Now every action of every person either is
or is not due to that person himself. Of those not due to himself some
are due to chance, the others to necessity; of these latter, again,
some are due to compulsion, the others to nature. Consequently all
actions that are not due to a man himself are due either to chance
or to nature or to compulsion. All actions that are due to a man
himself and caused by himself are due either to habit or to rational
or irrational craving. Rational craving is a craving for good, i.e.
a wish-nobody wishes for anything unless he thinks it good. Irrational
craving is twofold, viz. anger and appetite.

  Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes:
chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite. It
is superfluous further to distinguish actions according to the
doers' ages, moral states, or the like; it is of course true that, for
instance, young men do have hot tempers and strong appetites; still,
it is not through youth that they act accordingly, but through anger
or appetite. Nor, again, is action due to wealth or poverty; it is
of course true that poor men, being short of money, do have an
appetite for it, and that rich men, being able to command needless
pleasures, do have an appetite for such pleasures: but here, again,
their actions will be due not to wealth or poverty but to appetite.
Similarly, with just men, and unjust men, and all others who are
said to act in accordance with their moral qualities, their actions
will really be due to one of the causes mentioned-either reasoning
or emotion: due, indeed, sometimes to good dispositions and good
emotions, and sometimes to bad; but that good qualities should be
followed by good emotions, and bad by bad, is merely an accessory
fact-it is no doubt true that the temperate man, for instance, because
he is temperate, is always and at once attended by healthy opinions
and appetites in regard to pleasant things, and the intemperate man by
unhealthy ones. So we must ignore such distinctions. Still we must
consider what kinds of actions and of people usually go together;
for while there are no definite kinds of action associated with the
fact that a man is fair or dark, tall or short, it does make a
difference if he is young or old, just or unjust. And, generally
speaking, all those accessory qualities that cause distinctions of
human character are important: e.g. the sense of wealth or poverty, of
being lucky or unlucky. This shall be dealt with later-let us now deal
first with the rest of the subject before us.

  The things that happen by chance are all those whose cause cannot be
determined, that have no purpose, and that happen neither always nor
usually nor in any fixed way. The definition of chance shows just what
they are. Those things happen by nature which have a fixed and
internal cause; they take place uniformly, either always or usually.
There is no need to discuss in exact detail the things that happen
contrary to nature, nor to ask whether they happen in some sense
naturally or from some other cause; it would seem that chance is at
least partly the cause of such events. Those things happen through
compulsion which take place contrary to the desire or reason of the
doer, yet through his own agency. Acts are done from habit which men
do because they have often done them before. Actions are due to
reasoning when, in view of any of the goods already mentioned, they
appear useful either as ends or as means to an end, and are
performed for that reason: 'for that reason,' since even licentious
persons perform a certain number of useful actions, but because they
are pleasant and not because they are useful. To passion and anger are
due all acts of revenge. Revenge and punishment are different
things. Punishment is inflicted for the sake of the person punished;
revenge for that of the punisher, to satisfy his feelings. (What anger
is will be made clear when we come to discuss the emotions.)
Appetite is the cause of all actions that appear pleasant. Habit,
whether acquired by mere familiarity or by effort, belongs to the
class of pleasant things, for there are many actions not naturally
pleasant which men perform with pleasure, once they have become used
to them. To sum up then, all actions due to ourselves either are or
seem to be either good or pleasant. Moreover, as all actions due to
ourselves are done voluntarily and actions not due to ourselves are
done involuntarily, it follows that all voluntary actions must
either be or seem to be either good or pleasant; for I reckon among
goods escape from evils or apparent evils and the exchange of a
greater evil for a less (since these things are in a sense
positively desirable), and likewise I count among pleasures escape
from painful or apparently painful things and the exchange of a
greater pain for a less. We must ascertain, then, the number and
nature of the things that are useful and pleasant. The useful has been
previously examined in connexion with political oratory; let us now
proceed to examine the pleasant. Our various definitions must be
regarded as adequate, even if they are not exact, provided they are
clear.

                                11

  We may lay it down that Pleasure is a movement, a movement by
which the soul as a whole is consciously brought into its normal state
of being; and that Pain is the opposite. If this is what pleasure
is, it is clear that the pleasant is what tends to produce this
condition, while that which tends to destroy it, or to cause the
soul to be brought into the opposite state, is painful. It must
therefore be pleasant as a rule to move towards a natural state of
being, particularly when a natural process has achieved the complete
recovery of that natural state. Habits also are pleasant; for as
soon as a thing has become habitual, it is virtually natural; habit is
a thing not unlike nature; what happens often is akin to what
happens always, natural events happening always, habitual events
often. Again, that is pleasant which is not forced on us; for force is
unnatural, and that is why what is compulsory, painful, and it has
been rightly said

        All that is done on compulsion is bitterness unto the soul.

So all acts of concentration, strong effort, and strain are
necessarily painful; they all involve compulsion and force, unless
we are accustomed to them, in which case it is custom that makes
them pleasant. The opposites to these are pleasant; and hence ease,
freedom from toil, relaxation, amusement, rest, and sleep belong to
the class of pleasant things; for these are all free from any
element of compulsion. Everything, too, is pleasant for which we
have the desire within us, since desire is the craving for pleasure.
Of the desires some are irrational, some associated with reason. By
irrational I mean those which do not arise from any opinion held by
the mind. Of this kind are those known as 'natural'; for instance,
those originating in the body, such as the desire for nourishment,
namely hunger and thirst, and a separate kind of desire answering to
each kind of nourishment; and the desires connected with taste and sex
and sensations of touch in general; and those of smell, hearing, and
vision. Rational desires are those which we are induced to have; there
are many things we desire to see or get because we have been told of
them and induced to believe them good. Further, pleasure is the
consciousness through the senses of a certain kind of emotion; but
imagination is a feeble sort of sensation, and there will always be in
the mind of a man who remembers or expects something an image or
picture of what he remembers or expects. If this is so, it is clear
that memory and expectation also, being accompanied by sensation,
may be accompanied by pleasure. It follows that anything pleasant is
either present and perceived, past and remembered, or future and
expected, since we perceive present pleasures, remember past ones, and
expect future ones. Now the things that are pleasant to remember are
not only those that, when actually perceived as present, were
pleasant, but also some things that were not, provided that their
results have subsequently proved noble and good. Hence the words

        Sweet 'tis when rescued to remember pain,

and

        Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers

        All that he wrought and endured.

The reason of this is that it is pleasant even to be merely free
from evil. The things it is pleasant to expect are those that when
present are felt to afford us either great delight or great but not
painful benefit. And in general, all the things that delight us when
they are present also do so, as a rule, when we merely remember or
expect them. Hence even being angry is pleasant-Homer said of wrath
that

      Sweeter it is by far than the honeycomb dripping with sweetness-

for no one grows angry with a person on whom there is no prospect of
taking vengeance, and we feel comparatively little anger, or none at
all, with those who are much our superiors in power. Some pleasant
feeling is associated with most of our appetites we are enjoying
either the memory of a past pleasure or the expectation of a future
one, just as persons down with fever, during their attacks of
thirst, enjoy remembering the drinks they have had and looking forward
to having more. So also a lover enjoys talking or writing about his
loved one, or doing any little thing connected with him; all these
things recall him to memory and make him actually present to the eye
of imagination. Indeed, it is always the first sign of love, that
besides enjoying some one's presence, we remember him when he is gone,
and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no longer.
Similarly there is an element of pleasure even in mourning and
lamentation for the departed. There is grief, indeed, at his loss, but
pleasure in remembering him and as it were seeing him before us in his
deeds and in his life. We can well believe the poet when he says

        He spake, and in each man's heart he awakened

                the love of lament.

Revenge, too, is pleasant; it is pleasant to get anything that it is
painful to fail to get, and angry people suffer extreme pain when they
fail to get their revenge; but they enjoy the prospect of getting
it. Victory also is pleasant, and not merely to 'bad losers', but to
every one; the winner sees himself in the light of a champion, and
everybody has a more or less keen appetite for being that. The
pleasantness of victory implies of course that combative sports and
intellectual contests are pleasant (since in these it often happens
that some one wins) and also games like knuckle-bones, ball, dice, and
draughts. And similarly with the serious sports; some of these
become pleasant when one is accustomed to them; while others are
pleasant from the first, like hunting with hounds, or indeed any
kind of hunting. For where there is competition, there is victory.
That is why forensic pleading and debating contests are pleasant to
those who are accustomed to them and have the capacity for them.
Honour and good repute are among the most pleasant things of all; they
make a man see himself in the character of a fine fellow, especially
when he is credited with it by people whom he thinks good judges.
His neighbours are better judges than people at a distance; his
associates and fellow-countrymen better than strangers; his
contemporaries better than posterity; sensible persons better than
foolish ones; a large number of people better than a small number:
those of the former class, in each case, are the more likely to be
good judges of him. Honour and credit bestowed by those whom you think
much inferior to yourself-e.g. children or animals-you do not value:
not for its own sake, anyhow: if you do value it, it is for some other
reason. Friends belong to the class of pleasant things; it is pleasant
to love-if you love wine, you certainly find it delightful: and it
is pleasant to be loved, for this too makes a man see himself as the
possessor of goodness, a thing that every being that has a feeling for
it desires to possess: to be loved means to be valued for one's own
personal qualities. To be admired is also pleasant, simply because
of the honour implied. Flattery and flatterers are pleasant: the
flatterer is a man who, you believe, admires and likes To do the
same thing often is pleasant, since, as we saw, anything habitual is
pleasant. And to change is also pleasant: change means an approach
to nature, whereas invariable repetition of anything causes the
excessive prolongation of a settled condition: therefore, says the
poet,

        Change is in all things sweet.

That is why what comes to us only at long intervals is pleasant,
whether it be a person or a thing; for it is a change from what we had
before, and, besides, what comes only at long intervals has the
value of rarity. Learning things and wondering at things are also
pleasant as a rule; wondering implies the desire of learning, so
that the object of wonder is an object of desire; while in learning
one is brought into one's natural condition. Conferring and
receiving benefits belong to the class of pleasant things; to
receive a benefit is to get what one desires; to confer a benefit
implies both posses sion and superiority, both of which are things
we try to attain. It is because beneficent acts are pleasant that
people find it pleasant to put their neighbours straight again and
to supply what they lack. Again, since learning and wondering are
pleasant, it follows that such things as acts of imitation must be
pleasant-for instance, painting, sculpture, poetry and every product
of skilful imitation; this latter, even if the object imitated is
not itself pleasant; for it is not the object itself which here
gives delight; the spectator draws inferences ('That is a
so-and-so') and thus learns something fresh. Dramatic turns of fortune
and hairbreadth escapes from perils are pleasant, because we feel
all such things are wonderful.

  And since what is natural is pleasant, and things akin to each other
seem natural to each other, therefore all kindred and similar things
are usually pleasant to each other; for instance, one man, horse, or
young person is pleasant to another man, horse, or young person. Hence
the proverbs 'mate delights mate', 'like to like', 'beast knows
beast', 'jackdaw to jackdaw', and the rest of them. But since
everything like and akin to oneself is pleasant, and since every man
is himself more like and akin to himself than any one else is, it
follows that all of us must be more or less fond of ourselves. For all
this resemblance and kinship is present particularly in the relation
of an individual to himself. And because we are all fond of ourselves,
it follows that what is our own is pleasant to all of us, as for
instance our own deeds and words. That is why we are usually fond of
our flatterers, [our lovers,] and honour; also of our children, for
our children are our own work. It is also pleasant to complete what is
defective, for the whole thing thereupon becomes our own work. And
since power over others is very pleasant, it is pleasant to be thought
wise, for practical wisdom secures us power over others. (Scientific
wisdom is also pleasant, because it is the knowledge of many wonderful
things.) Again, since most of us are ambitious, it must be pleasant to
disparage our neighbours as well as to have power over them. It is
pleasant for a man to spend his time over what he feels he can do
best; just as the poet says,

                To that he bends himself,

        To that each day allots most time, wherein

        He is indeed the best part of himself.

  Similarly, since amusement and every kind of relaxation and laughter
too belong to the class of pleasant things, it follows that
ludicrous things are pleasant, whether men, words, or deeds. We have
discussed the ludicrous separately in the treatise on the Art of
Poetry.

  So much for the subject of pleasant things: by considering their
opposites we can easily see what things are unpleasant.

                                12

  The above are the motives that make men do wrong to others; we are
next to consider the states of mind in which they do it, and the
persons to whom they do it.

  They must themselves suppose that the thing can be done, and done by
them: either that they can do it without being found out, or that if
they are found out they can escape being punished, or that if they are
punished the disadvantage will be less than the gain for themselves or
those they care for. The general subject of apparent possibility and
impossibility will be handled later on, since it is relevant not
only to forensic but to all kinds of speaking. But it may here be said
that people think that they can themselves most easily do wrong to
others without being punished for it if they possess eloquence, or
practical ability, or much legal experience, or a large body of
friends, or a great deal of money. Their confidence is greatest if
they personally possess the advantages mentioned: but even without
them they are satisfied if they have friends or supporters or partners
who do possess them: they can thus both commit their crimes and escape
being found out and punished for committing them. They are also
safe, they think, if they are on good terms with their victims or with
the judges who try them. Their victims will in that case not be on
their guard against being wronged, and will make some arrangement with
them instead of prosecuting; while their judges will favour them
because they like them, either letting them off altogether or imposing
light sentences. They are not likely to be found out if their
appearance contradicts the charges that might be brought against them:
for instance, a weakling is unlikely to be charged with violent
assault, or a poor and ugly man with adultery. Public and open
injuries are the easiest to do, because nobody could at all suppose
them possible, and therefore no precautions are taken. The same is
true of crimes so great and terrible that no man living could be
suspected of them: here too no precautions are taken. For all men
guard against ordinary offences, just as they guard against ordinary
diseases; but no one takes precautions against a disease that nobody
has ever had. You feel safe, too, if you have either no enemies or a
great many; if you have none, you expect not to be watched and
therefore not to be detected; if you have a great many, you will be
watched, and therefore people will think you can never risk an attempt
on them, and you can defend your innocence by pointing out that you
could never have taken such a risk. You may also trust to hide your
crime by the way you do it or the place you do it in, or by some
convenient means of disposal.

  You may feel that even if you are found out you can stave off a
trial, or have it postponed, or corrupt your judges: or that even if
you are sentenced you can avoid paying damages, or can at least
postpone doing so for a long time: or that you are so badly off that
you will have nothing to lose. You may feel that the gain to be got by
wrong-doing is great or certain or immediate, and that the penalty
is small or uncertain or distant. It may be that the advantage to be
gained is greater than any possible retribution: as in the case of
despotic power, according to the popular view. You may consider your
crimes as bringing you solid profit, while their punishment is nothing
more than being called bad names. Or the opposite argument may
appeal to you: your crimes may bring you some credit (thus you may,
incidentally, be avenging your father or mother, like Zeno), whereas
the punishment may amount to a fine, or banishment, or something of
that sort. People may be led on to wrong others by either of these
motives or feelings; but no man by both-they will affect people of
quite opposite characters. You may be encouraged by having often
escaped detection or punishment already; or by having often tried
and failed; for in crime, as in war, there are men who will always
refuse to give up the struggle. You may get your pleasure on the
spot and the pain later, or the gain on the spot and the loss later.
That is what appeals to weak-willed persons--and weakness of will
may be shown with regard to all the objects of desire. It may on the
contrary appeal to you as it does appeal to self-controlled and
sensible people--that the pain and loss are immediate, while the
pleasure and profit come later and last longer. You may feel able to
make it appear that your crime was due to chance, or to necessity,
or to natural causes, or to habit: in fact, to put it generally, as if
you had failed to do right rather than actually done wrong. You may be
able to trust other people to judge you equitably. You may be
stimulated by being in want: which may mean that you want necessaries,
as poor people do, or that you want luxuries, as rich people do. You
may be encouraged by having a particularly good reputation, because
that will save you from being suspected: or by having a particularly
bad one, because nothing you are likely to do will make it worse.

  The above, then, are the various states of mind in which a man
sets about doing wrong to others. The kind of people to whom he does
wrong, and the ways in which he does it, must be considered next.
The people to whom he does it are those who have what he wants
himself, whether this means necessities or luxuries and materials
for enjoyment. His victims may be far off or near at hand. If they are
near, he gets his profit quickly; if they are far off, vengeance is
slow, as those think who plunder the Carthaginians. They may be
those who are trustful instead of being cautious and watchful, since
all such people are easy to elude. Or those who are too easy-going
to have enough energy to prosecute an offender. Or sensitive people,
who are not apt to show fight over questions of money. Or those who
have been wronged already by many people, and yet have not prosecuted;
such men must surely be the proverbial 'Mysian prey'. Or those who
have either never or often been wronged before; in neither case will
they take precautions; if they have never been wronged they think they
never will, and if they have often been wronged they feel that
surely it cannot happen again. Or those whose character has been
attacked in the past, or is exposed to attack in the future: they will
be too much frightened of the judges to make up their minds to
prosecute, nor can they win their case if they do: this is true of
those who are hated or unpopular. Another likely class of victim is
those who their injurer can pretend have, themselves or through
their ancestors or friends, treated badly, or intended to treat badly,
the man himself, or his ancestors, or those he cares for; as the
proverb says, 'wickedness needs but a pretext'. A man may wrong his
enemies, because that is pleasant: he may equally wrong his friends,
because that is easy. Then there are those who have no friends, and
those who lack eloquence and practical capacity; these will either not
attempt to prosecute, or they will come to terms, or failing that they
will lose their case. There are those whom it does not pay to waste
time in waiting for trial or damages, such as foreigners and small
farmers; they will settle for a trifle, and always be ready to leave
off. Also those who have themselves wronged others, either often, or
in the same way as they are now being wronged themselves-for it is
felt that next to no wrong is done to people when it is the same wrong
as they have often themselves done to others: if, for instance, you
assault a man who has been accustomed to behave with violence to
others. So too with those who have done wrong to others, or have meant
to, or mean to, or are likely to do so; there is something fine and
pleasant in wronging such persons, it seems as though almost no
wrong were done. Also those by doing wrong to whom we shall be
gratifying our friends, or those we admire or love, or our masters, or
in general the people by reference to whom we mould our lives. Also
those whom we may wrong and yet be sure of equitable treatment. Also
those against whom we have had any grievance, or any previous
differences with them, as Callippus had when he behaved as he did to
Dion: here too it seems as if almost no wrong were being done. Also
those who are on the point of being wronged by others if we fail to
wrong them ourselves, since here we feel we have no time left for
thinking the matter over. So Aenesidemus is said to have sent the
'cottabus' prize to Gelon, who had just reduced a town to slavery,
because Gelon had got there first and forestalled his own attempt.
Also those by wronging whom we shall be able to do many righteous
acts; for we feel that we can then easily cure the harm done. Thus
Jason the Thessalian said that it is a duty to do some unjust acts
in order to be able to do many just ones.

  Among the kinds of wrong done to others are those that are done
universally, or at least commonly: one expects to be forgiven for
doing these. Also those that can easily be kept dark, as where
things that can rapidly be consumed like eatables are concerned, or
things that can easily be changed in shape, colour, or combination, or
things that can easily be stowed away almost anywhere-portable objects
that you can stow away in small corners, or things so like others of
which you have plenty already that nobody can tell the difference.
There are also wrongs of a kind that shame prevents the victim
speaking about, such as outrages done to the women in his household or
to himself or to his sons. Also those for which you would be thought
very litigious to prosecute any one-trifling wrongs, or wrongs for
which people are usually excused.

  The above is a fairly complete account of the circumstances under
which men do wrong to others, of the sort of wrongs they do, of the
sort of persons to whom they do them, and of their reasons for doing
them.

                                13

  It will now be well to make a complete classification of just and
unjust actions. We may begin by observing that they have been
defined relatively to two kinds of law, and also relatively to two
classes of persons. By the two kinds of law I mean particular law
and universal law. Particular law is that which each community lays
down and applies to its own members: this is partly written and partly
unwritten. Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as
every one to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that
is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or
covenant with each other. It is this that Sophocles' Antigone
clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just
act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature.

        Not of to-day or yesterday it is,

        But lives eternal: none can date its birth.

And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, says
that doing this is not just for some people while unjust for others,

        Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky

        Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth's immensity.

And as Alcidamas says in his Messeniac Oration....

  The actions that we ought to do or not to do have also been
divided into two classes as affecting either the whole community or
some one of its members. From this point of view we can perform just
or unjust acts in either of two ways-towards one definite person, or
towards the community. The man who is guilty of adultery or assault is
doing wrong to some definite person; the man who avoids service in the
army is doing wrong to the community.

  Thus the whole class of unjust actions may be divided into two
classes, those affecting the community, and those affecting one or
more other persons. We will next, before going further, remind
ourselves of what 'being wronged' means. Since it has already been
settled that 'doing a wrong' must be intentional, 'being wronged' must
consist in having an injury done to you by some one who intends to
do it. In order to be wronged, a man must (1) suffer actual harm,
(2) suffer it against his will. The various possible forms of harm are
clearly explained by our previous, separate discussion of goods and
evils. We have also seen that a voluntary action is one where the doer
knows what he is doing. We now see that every accusation must be of an
action affecting either the community or some individual. The doer
of the action must either understand and intend the action, or not
understand and intend it. In the former case, he must be acting either
from deliberate choice or from passion. (Anger will be discussed
when we speak of the passions the motives for crime and the state of
mind of the criminal have already been discussed.) Now it often
happens that a man will admit an act, but will not admit the
prosecutor's label for the act nor the facts which that label implies.
He will admit that he took a thing but not that he 'stole' it; that he
struck some one first, but not that he committed 'outrage'; that he
had intercourse with a woman, but not that he committed 'adultery';
that he is guilty of theft, but not that he is guilty of
'sacrilege', the object stolen not being consecrated; that he has
encroached, but not that he has 'encroached on State lands'; that he
has been in communication with the enemy, but not that he has been
guilty of 'treason'. Here therefore we must be able to distinguish
what is theft, outrage, or adultery, from what is not, if we are to be
able to make the justice of our case clear, no matter whether our
aim is to establish a man's guilt or to establish his innocence.
Wherever such charges are brought against a man, the question is
whether he is or is not guilty of a criminal offence. It is deliberate
purpose that constitutes wickedness and criminal guilt, and such names
as 'outrage' or 'theft' imply deliberate purpose as well as the mere
action. A blow does not always amount to 'outrage', but only if it
is struck with some such purpose as to insult the man struck or
gratify the striker himself. Nor does taking a thing without the
owner's knowledge always amount to 'theft', but only if it is taken
with the intention of keeping it and injuring the owner. And as with
these charges, so with all the others.

  We saw that there are two kinds of right and wrong conduct towards
others, one provided for by written ordinances, the other by
unwritten. We have now discussed the kind about which the laws have
something to say. The other kind has itself two varieties. First,
there is the conduct that springs from exceptional goodness or
badness, and is visited accordingly with censure and loss of honour,
or with praise and increase of honour and decorations: for instance,
gratitude to, or requital of, our benefactors, readiness to help our
friends, and the like. The second kind makes up for the defects of a
community's written code of law. This is what we call equity; people
regard it as just; it is, in fact, the sort of justice which goes
beyond the written law. Its existence partly is and partly is not
intended by legislators; not intended, where they have noticed no
defect in the law; intended, where find themselves unable to define
things exactly, and are obliged to legislate as if that held good
always which in fact only holds good usually; or where it is not
easy to be complete owing to the endless possible cases presented,
such as the kinds and sizes of weapons that may be used to inflict
wounds-a lifetime would be too short to make out a complete list of
these. If, then, a precise statement is impossible and yet legislation
is necessary, the law must be expressed in wide terms; and so, if a
man has no more than a finger-ring on his hand when he lifts it to
strike or actually strikes another man, he is guilty of a criminal act
according to the unwritten words of the law; but he is innocent
really, and it is equity that declares him to be so. From this
definition of equity it is plain what sort of actions, and what sort
of persons, are equitable or the reverse. Equity must be applied to
forgivable actions; and it must make us distinguish between criminal
acts on the one hand, and errors of judgement, or misfortunes, on
the other. (A 'misfortune' is an act, not due to moral badness, that
has unexpected results: an 'error of judgement' is an act, also not
due to moral badness, that has results that might have been
expected: a 'criminal act' has results that might have been
expected, but is due to moral badness, for that is the source of all
actions inspired by our appetites.) Equity bids us be merciful to
the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than
about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than
about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so
much as his intentions, nor this or that detail so much as the whole
story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or
usually been. It bids us remember benefits rather than injuries, and
benefits received rather than benefits conferred; to be patient when
we are wronged; to settle a dispute by negotiation and not by force;
to prefer arbitration to motion-for an arbitrator goes by the equity
of a case, a judge by the strict law, and arbitration was invented
with the express purpose of securing full power for equity.

  The above may be taken as a sufficient account of the nature of
equity.

                                14

  The worse of two acts of wrong done to others is that which is
prompted by the worse disposition. Hence the most trifling acts may be
the worst ones; as when Callistratus charged Melanopus with having
cheated the temple-builders of three consecrated half-obols. The
converse is true of just acts. This is because the greater is here
potentially contained in the less: there is no crime that a man who
has stolen three consecrated half-obols would shrink from
committing. Sometimes, however, the worse act is reckoned not in
this way but by the greater harm that it does. Or it may be because no
punishment for it is severe enough to be adequate; or the harm done
may be incurable-a difficult and even hopeless crime to defend; or