ONT Re: Verities Of Likely Stories
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VOLS. Note 12
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| The function ['ergon'] of Rhetoric, then, is to deal with things about
| which we deliberate, but for which we have no systematic rules; and in
| the presence of such hearers as are unable to take a general view of many
| stages, or to follow a lengthy chain of argument. But we only deliberate
| about things which seem to admit of issuing in two ways; as for those things
| which cannot in the past, present, or future be otherwise, no one deliberates
| about them, if he supposes that they are such; for nothing would be gained
| by it. Now, it is possible to draw conclusions and inferences partly from
| what has been previously demonstrated syllogistically, partly from what
| has not, which however needs demonstration, because it is not probable.
| The first of these methods is necessarily difficult to follow owing to
| its length, for the judge is supposed to be a simple person; the second
| will obtain little credence, because it does not depend upon what is either
| admitted of probable. The necessary result then is that the enthymeme and
| the example are concerned with things which may, generally speaking, be other
| than they are, the example being a kind of induction and the enthymeme a kind
| of syllogism, and deduced from few premisses, often from fewer than the regular
| syllogism; for if any one of these is well known, there is no need to mention it,
| for the hearer can add it himself. For instance, to prove that Dorieus was the
| victor in a contest at which the prize was a crown, it is enough to say that
| he won a victory at the Olympic games; there is no need to add that the
| prize at the Olympic games is a crown, for everybody knows it.
|
| Aristotle, "Art of Rhetoric", 1.2.12-13.
|
| Aristotle, "The 'Art' of Rhetoric",
| John Henry Freese (trans.), in:
|'Aristotle, Volume 22', G.P. Goold (ed.),
| William Heinemann, London, UK, 1926, 1982.
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