Chapter I

THAT RHETORIC IS AN ART CONSISTING NOT ONLY IN MOVING THE PASSIONS OF
THE JUDGE, BUT CHIEFLY IN PROOFS: AND THAT THIS ART IS PROFITABLE.

We see that all men naturally are able in some sort to _accuse_ and _excuse_: some by chance; but some by method. This method may be discovered; and to discover method is all one with teaching an art. If this art consisted in criminations only, and the skill to stir up the judge’s anger, envy, fear, pity, or other affections; a rhetorician in well ordered commonwealths and states, where it is forbidden to digress from the cause in hearing, could have nothing at all to say. For all these perversions of the judge are beside the question. And that which the pleader is to shew, and the judge to give sentence on, is this only: _It is so_, or _not so_. The rest hath been decided already by the law-maker; who judging of universals and future things, could not be corrupted. Besides, it is an absurd thing for a man to make crooked the ruler he means to use.

It consisteth therefore chiefly in proofs, which are inferences: and all inferences being _syllogisms_, a _logician_, if he would observe the difference between a plain syllogism and an enthymeme, which is a rhetorical syllogism, would make the best _rhetorician_. For all syllogisms and inferences belong properly to logic, whether they infer truth or probability. And because without this art it would often come to pass that evil men, by the advantage of natural abilities, would carry an evil cause against a good; it brings with it at least this profit, that making the pleaders even in skill, it leaves the odds only in the merit of the cause. Besides, ordinarily those that are judges, are neither patient, nor capable of long scientifical proofs drawn from the principles through many syllogisms; and therefore had need to be instructed by the rhetorical and shorter way. Lastly, it were ridiculous to be ashamed of being vanquished in exercises of the body, and not to be ashamed of being inferior in the virtue of well expressing the mind.

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CHAPTER II

THE DEFINITION OF RHETORIC.

Rhetoric is that faculty, by which we understand what will serve our turn concerning any subject to win belief in the hearer.

Of those things that beget belief, some require not the help of art, as witnesses, evidences, and the like, which we invent not, but make use of; and some require art, and are invented by us.

The belief that proceeds from our invention, comes partly from the behaviour of the speaker, partly from the passions of the hearer; but especially from the proofs of what we allege.

Proofs are, in rhetoric, either _examples_ or _enthymemes_; as in logic, _inductions_ or _syllogisms_. For an example is a short induction, and an enthymeme a short syllogism; out of which are left, as superfluous, that which is supposed to be necessarily understood by the hearer; to avoid prolixity, and not to consume the time of public business needlessly.

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