Chapter VIII: Book II

As Book I is the book of the speaker, Book II is the book of the audience. The audience is not merely discussed; it furnishes the point of view. As Book I considers the necessities and opportunities of the speaker, so Book II considers the attitude of the audience. Book I is rhetoric as conceived; Book II is rhetoric as received.

Since rhetoric is for judgment—for even deliberative speeches
are judged, and forensic is [concerned entirely with]
judgment—we must see to it not only that the speech shall be
convincing and persuasive, but also that the judge shall be in
the right frame of mind. For it makes a great difference to
persuasion, especially in deliberative speeches, but also in
forensic, how the speaker strikes the audience—both how the
hearers think he regards them, and in addition how they are
disposed toward him. How the speaker strikes the audience is
of more practical concern for deliberative speeches; how the
hearer is disposed, for forensic. The effect is not the same
on a friendly audience as on a hostile one, on the angry as on
the tranquil, but either different altogether or different in
degree.... Three [impressions] constitute persuasiveness—three,
that is, outside of the arguments used: wisdom, virtue, and
good will [i.e., a speaker’s persuasiveness, in the sense of
his personal effect on his hearers, depends on their believing
him to be wise, upright, and interested in them].... From
what sources [in moral habits, ἦθος], then, the speaker may
strike his hearers as wise and earnest we must gather from
the analysis of the virtues, whether his immediate purpose
be to make his audience feel thus and so or to appear thus
and so himself; but good will and affection we must discuss
now under the head of the emotions (πάθη). By emotions I
mean any changes, attended by pain or pleasure, that make a
difference to men’s judgment [of a speech]; e.g., anger, pity,
fear, etc., and their opposites. The consideration of each
emotion—anger, for instance—must have a threefold division: (1)
how people are angry, (2) what they are angry at, and (3) why;
for if we should know only one or two of these, not all three,
it would be impossible to excite anger, and so with the other
emotions.[24]

In this way Aristotle proceeds to analyze, in Chapters ii-xi, the common emotions: anger, love, fear, shame, benevolence, pity, envy, emulation, and their opposites. The relation of these to the formation of character leads to six chapters on character in youth, in age, in the prime of life, and on the typical dominant traits of character seen respectively in persons of social rank, of wealth, of power, and of good fortune.[25] The classification here will be more satisfying as psychology if we remember that it analyzes the common types of character and emotion in a crowd. Aristotle is attempting neither an analysis of mental operations nor a science of human nature, but such a practical classification as may inculcate the habit of adaptation to the feelings of an audience.

The psychological analysis of the audience concluded with Chapter xvii, Aristotle returns to rhetoric in our ordinary sense at Chapter xviii with a recapitulation.[26] “The use of persuasive discourse,” he says, resuming the language of the opening of this book, “is for judgment,” or decision; i.e., persuasion connotes an audience to be persuaded. After showing that this is true in all cases, and summarizing briefly the main aspects of Books I and II, he concludes his transition by saying: “it remains for us to go on with the common topics.”[27] With these he actually goes on, not merely extending the treatment of them in Book I (see page 14), but considering them now as to their availability, their effect upon hearers. More explicit statement, however, of this distinction might well have made the bearing of these latter chapters clearer. The topic of possibility[28] implies the range of the argument from antecedent probability (_a priori_). Example[29] includes analogy, both from history[30] and from fiction, with specific mention of fables. In this wide sense, including mere illustration, it means little more than vividness of presentation through the concrete and specific; but that its persuasive value far exceeds its logical cogency no one doubts who knows audiences. This is the angle, too, from which Aristotle discusses maxims.[31] “They have great service for speeches because audiences are commonplace. People are pleased when a speaker hits on a wide general statement of opinions that they hold in some partial or fragmentary form.”[32] The same point of view controls the further discussion of enthymemes,[33] which includes a hint of something like Mill’s Canon of Concomitant Variations,[34] directions for logical exclusion, for analysis demanding particulars, for dilemma, and for _reductio ad absurdum_. Remarking the popularity of the refutative, or destructive enthymeme over the constructive, and touching the fallacies of _petitio principii_ and _post hoc_, the book concludes[35] with methods of refutation (λύσις).

BOOK III