BOOK I.. Chapter I.

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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