CHAPTER II

THE _RHETORIC_ OF ARISTOTLE

The only art of composition that concerns the mass of mankind, and is therefore universal in both educational practise and critical theory, is the art of effective communication by speaking and writing. This is what the ancients and most moderns call rhetoric. More ample and exact definition, though unnecessary for elementary practise, is demanded for fruitful theory; and the theory of rhetoric has always concerned so many more people than the theory of any other art as to be part of every pedagogy. Here the practise of education not only may be guided by philosophy; it must be. For any coherence in its teaching, rhetoric must be comprehended not only in its immediate functions, but in its pervasive relations to other studies. It is at once the constant in educational schemes and the art among sciences. How we are in a given time and place to learn or teach rhetoric depends on how we understand its function and scope in specific relations.

The importance of a theory of rhetoric in this aspect was discerned by the greatest philosopher of antiquity. In Aristotle’s comprehensive survey of thought and action rhetoric is not merely included; it has substantive place. Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_,[1] though professedly more analytical than constructive, has a consecutive development. Neither his ethics nor his politics receives more scrutiny or shows more penetration and grasp. As if he dared not slight it, he shows in this work, comparatively brief though it is, the full reach of his intelligence. In detail it has been questioned; but in conception and plan, in direction of thought and order of presentation, it has remained fruitful.

BOOK I

Book I _surveys by definition and division the opportunity of the public speaker_. (i) Rhetoric is the complement of logic (dialectic). It is the art of persuasion formulated by investigating the methods of successful address; and its object is to promote a habit of discerning what in any given case is essentially persuasive. Proof as contemplated by rhetoric proceeds by such means as may be used in public address. Instead of the syllogism, which is proper to abstract logic, rhetoric typically uses the enthymeme, that approximate syllogism which is proper and necessary to the actual concrete discussion of public questions. Thus rhetoric serves as a general public means (1) of maintaining truth and justice against falsehood and wrong, (2) of advancing public discussion where absolute proof is impossible, (3) of cultivating the habit of seeing both sides and of exposing sophistries and fallacies, and (4) of self-defense. (ii) The means of persuasion outside of rhetoric (πίστεις ἄτεχνοι) are witnesses, documents, and other evidence; the means within the art of rhetoric (ἔντεχνοι) are the moral force of the speaker, his adaptation to the disposition of the audience, and his arguments. (iii) The three fields of rhetoric are: (1) deliberative address to a popular assembly, discussing the expediency of a proposal for the future; (2) forensic address to a court, discussing the justice of a deed in the past; and (3) panegyric, commemorating the significance of a present occasion. The eleven remaining chapters of this book analyze each of these fields in its main aspects, or fundamental topics, _e.g._, wealth, happiness, government, crime, virtue, etc.[2]

The bare digest will show that Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ is hardly a manual. In fact, it is rather less a manual than is his _Poetic_. It is a philosophical survey. The scope of rhetoric is measured not by any scheme of education, but by the relations of knowledge to conduct and affairs. To be comprehended, this great work should be read consecutively, for it is not merely systematic; in spite of parts undeveloped, it is progressive, and its chief significance, perhaps, is from its total development. The following discussion presupposes a fresh and consecutive reading.

About rhetoric Aristotle would first of all have right thinking, conceptions large enough to be suggestive and distinct enough to be true. So the definition in his first chapter is slowly inductive. First we are to distinguish rhetoric from logic.[3] As modes of thought the two are alike general, both applicable universally, neither having its own subject-matter. As modes of utterance they differ typically in that while logic is abstract, rhetoric is concrete; while the one is analytic, the other is synthetic; while the one is a method of study, the other is a method of communication.

Rhetoric, no less than logic, has subject-matter in every given case. Only its perverters teach it as merely an art of dealing with persons, of reaching an audience. No less than logic, it is a means of bringing out truth, of making people see what is true and fitting. But rhetoric contemplates having truth embraced. It is the application of proof to people. Its distinction from logic is here, in the typical mode of proof. The type in logic is the syllogism; the type in rhetoric Aristotle calls the enthymeme.[4] By this he means concrete proof, proof applicable to human affairs, such argument as is actually available in current discussion. The enthymeme is not inferior to the syllogism; it is merely different. Actually, public address on current public questions cannot be carried on by syllogisms or by final inductions. That by which it can be carried on, the strongest proof possible to actual discussion, Aristotle calls enthymeme.

From this typical mode of rhetoric Aristotle gathers its fourfold function: first and foremost, to make truth prevail by presenting it effectively in the conditions of actual communication, to move; second, to advance inquiry by such methods as are open to men generally, to teach; third, to cultivate the habit of seeing both sides and of analyzing sophistries and fallacies, to debate; and finally to defend oneself and one’s cause. That truth does not always prevail shows the need of effective presentation. The first function, then, of rhetoric is to make truth prevail among men as they are. Truth cannot be learned by the mass of men through scientific investigation; for that demands special training. A second direction, then, of rhetoric is to make the results of investigation generally available, to teach truth in general human terms. Debate, Aristotle’s third item, which is one whole field of rhetoric, may indeed be mere logical fence, using terms and propositions as mere counters; but real skill in debate, the habit of seeing both sides and of analyzing sophistries and fallacies, tends to make truth emerge from current discussion. The fourth use of rhetoric, for self-defense, seems added merely for completeness and to rebut the common objection that rhetoric is abused. That, says Aristotle, is no argument against it.[5]

The definition implied and sketched in Chapter I and formulated in Chapter II, may be summed up in the word persuasion, if we are careful to speak of persuasion not as achievement, but as method. Just as we ask of medicine, not that it shall infallibly heal—a degree of achievement impossible in human affairs—but that it shall discern and use all the means of healing available in the given case, so the true end of rhetoric is to induce such habitual skill as shall _discern in any given case the available means of persuasion_.[6]

As means of persuasion we must include both those that are extrinsic and those that are intrinsic,[7] those that lie outside the art of rhetoric in the domains of subject-matter and those that lie within, the facts of the case and the technic of making them tell. For rhetoric has to include subject-matter, the forces of knowledge. Though this is extrinsic in the sense of lying outside the art of rhetoric, it is essential. Rhetoric is an art, as Aristotle is careful to show; but it differs from other arts in the degree of importance it must always attach to its subject-matter. The division here into extrinsic means and intrinsic means as both necessary to persuasion is not merely the obvious one into matter and manner, substance and style; it is a division of the springs of composition, the sources of effectiveness, into those that lie outside and those that lie inside of utterance, or presentation. It frankly accepts rhetoric as more than artistic, as never self-sufficient and absolute, as always relating presentation to investigation.

Equally philosophical is the following division[8] of the intrinsic means of persuasion into: (1) those inherent in the character or moral potentiality (ἦθος) of the speaker, (2) those inherent in his actual moving of the audience, and (3) those inherent in the form and phrase of the speech itself. That the three are not mutually exclusive is evident and must have been deliberate. Aristotle is telling us that rhetoric as an art is to be approached from these three directions and in this order. The division is comprehensive not only as being satisfying psychologically, but as constituting an outline for the whole work, the headings of the development in three books: first, the speaker himself; secondly, the audience; and finally, in the light of these two, and as the bringing of the one to bear on the other, the speech. Book I deals with the speaker as himself the prime means of persuasion. Rhetoric, Aristotle implies, is necessarily ethical in that everything consecutively imparted or communicated, as distinct from the abstractions of geometry or logic, is subjective. Moreover, in making the speaker the point of departure Aristotle admits that other trend of classical pedagogy which made rhetoric a cultivation of personality. Book II, proceeding to the second item of the division above, deals with the audience, with knowledge of human nature, especially of typical habits of mind; for rhetoric in this aspect too is ethical. It deals with the interaction of moral forces in speaker and audience, and also with the direct arousing of emotion. The speech itself, the final utterance, which is the subject of Book III, has thus been approached as the art of adjusting the subject-matter of a given case through the intelligence and emotion of the speaker to the intelligence and emotion of the audience. This is the only book of very specific technic; and it comes last psychologically.

Aristotle’s division and its order are the division and the order not merely of analysis, but of much the same synthesis as underlies the actual processes of composition. I begin with myself; for the subject-matter else is dead, remaining abstract. It begins to live, to become persuasive, when it becomes my message. Then only have I really a subject for presentation. A subject, for purposes of address as distinct from purposes of investigation, must include the speaker. It is mine if it arouses me. I consider next the audience, not for concession or compromise, but for adaptation. What is mine must become theirs. Therefore I must know them, their ἦθος and their πάθος. My address becomes concrete through my effort to bring it home. The truth must prevail—through what? Against what? Not only through or against reasoning, but through or against complexes of general moral habit and the emotions of the occasion. I must establish sympathy, win openness of mind, instruct in such wise as to please and awaken, rouse to action. My speech is for these people now. Only thus am I ready to consider composition; for only thus can I know what arguments are available, or what order will be effective, or what style will tell.

This is the philosophy of presentation. What is its practise? Rhetoric ranges for subject-matter most often in the fields of social ethics and politics, tempting its professors, Aristotle adds acutely, to assume the mask of politics.[9] It deals with “the ordinary and recognized subjects of deliberation,”[10] with matters still in dispute and doubt. Thus dealing with social and political conduct, it can neither proceed, as logic does, by absolute propositions nor arrive at logical demonstration. Its premises are not universals, but generally accepted probabilities. That is, to resume his previous distinction, the mode of rhetoric is not the syllogism or induction proper to logical formulation, but the enthymeme or instances proper to actual presentation. The mode of scientific induction emerges to-day in the “gas laws” or the formula of the velocity of light; the mode of rhetoric emerges in Huxley’s “Piece of Chalk.” Abstract deduction is summed up in the syllogism;[11] concrete deduction, in the enthymeme. By enthymeme, as Aristotle has now made fully clear, is meant a “rhetorical syllogism” in the sense of a deduction available concretely for presentation, as distinct from a deduction formulated abstractly for analysis. His enthymeme is deductive method used constructively. It is not mere popular reasoning, logic modified for popular consumption, but public reasoning, such reasoning as is available with the public for building up public opinion and policy.

Therefore the headings, or “topics,” of rhetoric are not peculiar to a particular field of investigation, but general or “common topics” such as justice or expediency, which express common human relations. To deviate from these into the method peculiar to a given subject-matter, physics for example, is to pass[12] from rhetorical method for presentation over to scientific method for analysis; and this, of course, the speaker must do to the extent of mastering his subject-matter before he presents it. Though he must not forget that his ultimate task is to present to an audience and therefore concretely, neither can he forget that what is to be presented must be acquired. In so far as he investigates he will follow scientific method, the analysis proper to the field, the “special topics.” Thus for his education he needs some study of the “special topics” of those sciences that furnish most of his subject-matter, the “special topics” of ethics and politics. Of these he must have, as part of his equipment, a practical or working knowledge, the orator’s equipment for considering each case within its own field as well as in its general relations to human nature. Aristotle’s distinction here between general and special “topics” coincides with his earlier division (page 10) of the means of persuasion into intrinsic and extrinsic. The extrinsic means are knowledge, to be got by the methods of getting; the intrinsic means are utterance, to be given by the methods of giving.

At this point, the opening of Chapter iii,[13] Aristotle makes his scientific division of rhetoric by its fields. The three fields of rhetoric are: (1) the _deliberative_, persuasion in public assemblies as to matters of current discussion, looking to the future, urging expediency: (2) the _forensic_, accusation and defense in courts, looking to the past, urging justice; and (3) the _occasional_,[14] praise or blame, looking to the present, urging honor. The underlying, general, or “final topics” of rhetoric, as distinct from the special topics that it uses from other studies, are thus seen to be expediency (including practicability), justice, honor, and their opposites; and the special topics drawn by rhetoric from philosophy, ethics, and politics may be grouped in a speaker’s compend of these studies according as they apply to the deliberative, the forensic, or the occasional field.

In deliberative oratory[15] the speaker deals with good and bad, not in the abstract as the philosopher contemplates virtue or happiness, but in concrete matters of doubt and dispute. So his topic of possibility is not abstract, as in mathematics, but concrete, in relation to human will. So in general Aristotle disclaims for his classification of the ordinary subjects of deliberative oratory any attempt at scientific division or scientific method of investigation. Those he follows in his other works; here the analysis that he provides is avowedly practical. Since in politics,[16] for example, the public speaker needs to know something of finance, war, commerce, legislation, Aristotle gives him a suggestive summary of what he should learn. In our modern educational systems such a summary has far less importance; but the correlation remains vital. Pedagogically as well as philosophically, deliberative oratory must be correlated with its natural subject-matter. So to-day college courses in rhetoric demand correlation with college courses in history, sociology, economics, and politics. The professors of these subjects train for investigation, teaching the scientific method proper to each; the professor of rhetoric trains for presentation, teaching general methods, Aristotle’s general or “final topics,” for handling all such material. But unless each method of training can make use of the other, both will suffer. Rhetoric must lean upon such real knowledge of a given subject-matter as is furnished by the studies dealing with that subject-matter scientifically, i.e., by its “special topics.” Meantime Aristotle’s summary is intended not to explore these special topics, but to show what they are.

Similarly the student of deliberative oratory needs such a survey of philosophy[17] as will acquaint him with current ideas concerning happiness, whether of rank, offspring, wealth, honor, health, beauty, or strength, and concerning a good old age, friendship, fortune, and virtue. Therefore Aristotle, summarizing these conceptions, supplies[18] a cursory examination of good in general and of goods, or good things, in particular, proceeding[19] both by definition and by comparison, and not limiting his discussion to the deliberative field. To the latter, and to politics, he reverts in the concluding chapter[20] of this section by enumerating briefly the common forms of polity: democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and monarchy.

Since occasional oratory[21] demands an equipment primarily ethical, Aristotle provides a summary of moral nobility[22] by definition and comparison. This is applied more specifically than the preceding section to rhetorical method, in this case to the method of enhancing or heightening and to the method of comparison.

For forensic oratory[23] Aristotle provides as a speaker’s compend of philosophy a survey of the objects and conditions of crime. He makes no specific mention of what we now call criminal tendencies; and his division of “extrinsic proofs,” i.e., of legal evidence (laws, witnesses, contracts, tortures, the oath) is for the modern lawyer neither scientific nor significant.

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

Book III studies the speech itself. Book I having presented rhetoric from the view of the speaker, and Book II from the view of the audience, Book III now applies it directly to the speech.[36]

Since rhetoric must treat systematically three things: (1) what the means of persuasion are to be, (2) the diction,[37] (3) how to arrange[38] the parts of the speech, ... [the first has been discussed]. We have next to speak of the diction. For it is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also know how we ought to say it, and this contributes much to the effect of the speech. The first subject of our inquiry [(1) above] was naturally that which comes first by nature, the facts themselves—in what aspects they are persuasive. The second is the expression of these in the diction. The third [_not_ (3) above], which is of very great importance, is the delivery.

The threefold division sketched here seems at first sight to coincide, so far as it goes, with the one that afterward became traditional. Classical rhetoric as a whole assumes a fivefold division: (1) εὕρεσις, _inventio_, the gathering and analysis of the material; (2) τάξις, _dispositio_, _collocatio_, the arrangement, sequence, or movement in the large; (3) λέξις, _elocutio_, the diction, or the choice of words and their combination in phrases, clauses, and sentences, the movement in detail; (4) ὑπόκρισις, _pronuntiatio_, delivery, or “elocution”; (5) μνήμη, _memoria_, memory. But Aristotle’s division neither corresponds to this nor is consistent with itself. The first item is the same in both. Aristotle’s second item is clearly the same as the later third, and has the same name (λέξις, diction). The third item of his opening sentence seems equivalent to the traditional second (τάξις), and uses the corresponding verb (τάξαι); but below he makes his third item instead delivery (ὑπόκρισις), which is the fourth item of the traditional division, and then proceeds in the same chapter to include delivery, by implication, under diction.[39] In a word, the opening division of Book III is baffling. But the actual development of the book is quite clear: chapters i-xii on λέξις, diction, or, in the widest sense, style; chapters xiii-xix, on τάξις, or arrangement.

Delivery, after declaring it to have the greatest force (δύναμιν ... μεγίστην), he dismisses in a few sentences. Tantalizing in its brevity, this passage is nevertheless suggestive; for it sketches an analytic division of delivery into voice-placing and volume, pitch, and rhythm; it points to the value for public speaking of the arts of dramatic recital; and, most important of all, it relates delivery to the whole idea of style as concrete presentation _versus_ abstract formulation.

In thus uniting delivery and diction as alike means of effective utterance Aristotle has seemed to some readers to disparage both. He has seemed to express, as in a similar passage of Book I,[40] a philosophic contempt for style. But this impression is not confirmed by scrutiny. Not only can he hardly be thought to despise that to which he devotes himself cordially throughout a large part of his treatise, but his words here hardly yield the inference that has been drawn from prejudicial translation. They may be rendered more precisely as follows:

An art [of delivery] is not yet settled; for even that of diction emerged but late and seems a bore when regarded ideally. But[41] since the whole practise of rhetoric is gauged to actual effect upon hearers (πρὸς δόξαν), we must give delivery our care, not of [abstract] right, but of necessity. [Abstract] justice, indeed, demands of our speech nothing more than that it should neither offend nor propitiate. For [abstractly] just [method] is so to make one’s plea with the facts that everything beyond exposition is superfluous. Nevertheless [delivery] is of great importance, as I have said, because of the human frailty of the hearer. Indeed, the consideration of the hearer is in a degree necessary in all teaching; for even in explanation it makes some difference whether we speak thus or thus—not so much, however [as in active persuasion], all these things [i.e., of diction and delivery] being means of suggesting images[42] and gauged to the hearer. Therefore no one thus teaches geometry.

That art, then [of delivery], when it comes, will produce the same effects as acting; and some authors, as Thrasymachus on the pathetic, have made a slight attempt at it. Acting is both a natural gift and less reducible to art; but diction has its technic. That is why those who have mastered it take prizes regularly, as do the histrionic orators;[43] for written speeches prevail more by diction than by thought.

“No one thus teaches geometry” cannot be taken as a slur on style. It simply reminds us, by applying to diction a distinction made with great fulness in the first two chapters of Book I, that rhetoric is not geometry. Formulation, as in geometry, is colorless because it is abstract; but any actual presentation, even mere information (ἐν πάσῃ διδασκαλίᾳ), demands style, whether concreteness or the arts of delivery, for mere lucidity (πρὸς τὸ δηλῶσαι), much more for any sort of appeal. For any sort of presentation, Aristotle is saying, we must study style; and we must include the study of delivery except in those written addresses which depend on style even more than on thought.

The appeal of style, Aristotle says in this same first chapter,[44] was first discerned by the poets. The method of suggestion, in other words, belongs to poetic. This is more than a critical distinction; it has an application directly pedagogical. The teaching of style, always delicate and difficult, may well begin through poetry, which in descriptive heightening and in harmony of sound with sense, especially of pace with mood, most plainly exhibits style as adaptation. The connection of this with delivery, both with reading aloud and with dramatic recital, though obvious, is often neglected. Elocution in our modern sense may, if rightly related, be one of the gateways to appreciation of style.[45]

Chapter ii,[46] after glancing at the fundamental virtue of lucidity, considers the choice of words for appropriateness and for suggestiveness, i.e., for their connotation, and especially for the descriptive vividness of the concrete, as in metaphors. Chapter iii[47] deals with the inappropriateness arising from bad taste;[48] Chapter iv,[49] with the extension of metaphor into simile. Chapter v[50] passes from single words and phrases to their combination in clauses and sentences. The distinction is important, and is kept throughout the classical rhetoric from Aristotle down. The choice of words is ἐκλογή (_electio_); the shaping of clauses and sentences is σύνθεσις (_compositio_). Frequent translation of the latter by our English word _composition_, which has a meaning so much wider as to be quite different, misses the specific point of technic, and often makes the ancient writers say what they did not mean.[51]

As the primary virtue in the choice of words is precision, so the first consideration in their combination, says Aristotle, is purity, idiom, conformity to usage. This assured, the next considerations of movement in detail are dignity,[52] which he presents as mainly amplification, and appropriateness.[53] Appropriateness here is not merely of the single word, as in Chapters ii and iii, but of the movement, or pace. It is gauged both to the moral habit (ἦθος) of the audience and to the emotion (πάθος) of the occasion.

From this general idea of appropriate movement Aristotle passes[54] to specific consideration of rhythm with his oft-quoted dictum:

The order[55] of the diction must be neither metrical nor unrhythmical. The former, by seeming artificial, is unpersuasive and at the same time distracting. For it makes us think of recurrences and wait for them to come, as children anticipate the answer to the heralds’ “Whom does the freedman choose as his attorney? Cleon.” On the other hand, the unrhythmical is immeasurable, and a measure we must have, though not by metrical recurrence; for the boundless can be grasped neither by the ear nor by the mind. Now measure in the most general sense is number;[56] and number as applied to the order of the diction is rhythm, of which meters are sections. Rhythm, therefore, the speech must have, but not meter, or it will be a poem—rhythm not too nice, that is, not carried too far.

Of the three rhythms the heroic is solemn and lacking in prose harmony.[57] The iambic is the very diction of the crowd; i.e., it is heard oftener than any other measure in speech, and it lacks capacity to lift and startle. The trochaic[58] is too suggestive of comic dancing, as is evident in trochaic tetrameters, which are a skipping rhythm. There remains the pæan.

Having laid down the principle that prose movement should be rhythmical, but not metrical, why does Aristotle proceed immediately to discuss it in terms of meters? Simply, perhaps, because these terms are familiar and definite. How else, indeed, shall we speak of a particular movement specifically? Perhaps also because the consideration of the larger, freer rhythms of prose is best opened through the fixed rhythms of verse, i.e., because meter is the gateway to appreciation of rhythm, as poetry in a wider sense (see page 24) is the gateway to style in a wider sense. For us moderns it is the more significant that the classical doctrine of clauses and sentences deals so largely with rhythm, since our doctrine throws the emphasis on logic. That the σύνθεσις, or _compositio_, should be idiomatic, dignified, appropriate, Aristotle has urged briefly; that it should be rhythmical he proceeds to set forth in detail, consecutively showing how.[59]

Thus that the diction should be rhythmical, not unrhythmical, what rhythms make it rhythmical, and in what modes, has been set forth.

Now diction[60] [in its sentence-movement] is connected either loosely and only by conjunctions, as the preludes in the dithyrambs, or compactly, as the antistrophes of the old poets. The former movement is the old one, as in Herodotus; for, though once universal, it is now exceptional. By calling it loose I mean that it has no end in itself except as its subject-matter runs out. It is unsatisfying to the ear by its indefiniteness, since we all wish to glimpse the end. That [natural desire] is why [runners] lose wind and heart only at the goal. They do not give out before because they are looking ahead to the finish.

The loose movement, then, of diction is this; the compact, on the other hand, is the one by periods [or definite units]. By _period_ I mean a diction having a beginning and an end in itself and a length to be grasped as a whole. Such sentence-movement is both satisfying to the ear and easily followed by the mind;[61] _satisfying_ as being the opposite of endless and as giving the hearer the sense of always having hold of something, because something has always been ended by itself, whereas the unsatisfying is neither to see ahead nor to get through; _easily followed_, as being easily held in mind, and that because periodic diction has number, which is the chief aid to memory. That is why verses are more easily remembered than loose prose, because verse has number to measure it. The period should also be completed with the sense, not broken off....

A period[62] is either in members or simple. Composed in members, it is such a diction as makes a rounded whole and yet is distinct in its parts, and such as the breath will carry easily, not by [arbitrary] division, but as a whole. A member is one of its parts; and by simple period I mean a period of one member. Both members and periods should be neither curt[63] nor long. For short [members] often make the hearer stumble, since while he is still surging ahead, if he is pulled up by the stopping of the measure that he carries in his head as a guide, he must stumble as in a collision. Long [members] on the other hand make the hearer feel himself left behind, as by walking companions making the turn beyond the usual stretch.... Over-use of short members, since it precludes the periodic form, drags the hearer headlong.

In other words, the period is a sentence movement forecast and fulfilled by the speaker, divined and held by the hearer, as a definite rhythmical and logical unit. Its characteristic is that conclusiveness which satisfies at once ear and mind. In sound and in syntax it is the opposite of formless aggregation, of the addition of clause to clause as by afterthoughts. Forethought, indeed, is its very note. Thus its typical advantages are rather for oratory than for narrative. Oratory moves by grouping around ideas; narrative, by adding image to image. The style of Herodotus is in this sense aggregative. Its aim being to proceed not from idea to idea in thought, but from fact to fact in time, it is “loosely joined,” “running on,” without other rhythmical value than fluency. That Aristotle means to disparage Herodotus when he calls this movement old and unsatisfying need hardly be inferred. Old it is typically, the movement of all early prose, of Herodotus no more than of Froissart and Villani. Unsatisfying, unpleasing to the ear (ἀηδές) it is not—in its place; but its place is not in oratory, which demands definite measures to mark definite stages of thought. Otherwise the audience is frustrated and loses the way.

What Aristotle means by his comparison of the two movements is that the former is unsatisfying, not absolutely, but for the purposes of the latter, i.e., for oratory. This interpretation is confirmed by what he adds concerning the length of members, or clauses. That staccato habit of short statements which in oratory “drags the hearer headlong,”[64] unsatisfied and uncomprehending, may in narrative be actually superior. To drag the hearer headlong is sometimes precisely what a story-teller desires. Examples abound, for instance, in Victor Hugo, for whom this movement became a mannerism. Neither of the two sentence movements, which from the point of view of Aristotle’s time we may call the historical and the oratorical, has remained through the long development of prose quite the same. Narrative has developed in modern times a movement more and more consciously poetic, while history in our special modern sense has turned more and more to the conscious group-movement which he associated with oratory. To-day we see much the same difference between our prose fiction and our expository history that he saw between Herodotus and Demosthenes. But the change is in application, not in the movements themselves. It remains true, and important, that there is on the one hand a prose movement rhythmically and intellectually loose, indefinite, and current, and on the other hand a prose movement compact, conscious, concluded point by point. The latter, the periodic, remains the typical movement of public address; for the audience, in order to follow, in order “to have hold of something[65] and to get something done,” demands definite measures.[66]

Having laid down as fundamental the distinction between the two typical prose movements, Aristotle proceeds to details: the balance of member against member,[67] and the heightening of the individual member[68] by visualizing metaphor. His recurrence here to metaphor is unexpected, since he has discussed this already in Chapter ii[69] under the choice of words; but here something is added. The connotation of figurative language is explored further as a means to make a whole statement telling. Aristotle is inquiring how such pithy sayings as he has just exemplified in balance and antithesis are made forcible[70] by other means; and he implies that the process is essentially poetic, as being imaginative first in realization and secondly[71] in movement.

Imaginative realization in metaphor and simile is considered here as intellectual suggestion. As enthymemes, so metaphors and similes must steer between the obvious and the subtle. The best images, like the best enthymemes, stimulate the hearer to coöperate, to see the relation for himself.

As to sense such are the popular enthymemes; as to style [they are popular] if the order, or movement[72] is antithetical.... So for the terms; if metaphorical, they must be neither far-fetched, for then they are hard to grasp, nor trite, for then they stir no emotion; and besides [as to movement] they must put [the thing] before our eyes; for we must see it in action rather than in intention (happening rather than about to happen, present rather than future). The essential elements, then, are three: metaphor, antithesis, actuality.[73]

Numerous examples follow[74] of ἀστεῖα, or pithy sayings, and Chapter xi[75] expands

what is meant by “before our eyes” and how this is to be done. I mean that those passages put the thing before our eyes which show it in action.[76] For instance, to say that a good man is “square” is metaphor ... but it does not show him in action, whereas “in flowering vigor” does, and so does “at large.” And in “Straightway the Greeks with bounding feet” the “bounding” is at once actuality and metaphor.... In all these [instances from Homer] by being alive (living, organic) [the subject] seems to be in action.... They all make the subject moving and living; and actuality is movement.[77]

Aristotle’s recurrence, then, to metaphor in the midst of his doctrine of sentence movement is because metaphor has the wider implication. It may be more than a single vivid word; it should extend to a whole habit of realizing a thing in action; and this involves expression in a sentence movement that shall heighten the suggestion by its pace.

In like manner the recurrence to aptness, or adaptation, is not repetition. Chapters ii[78] and iii[79] deal with aptness of single words; chapter xii,[80] with aptness of sentence movement. From the general definition[81] of apt movement as adaptation both to the moral habit of the audience (ἦθος) and to the emotion of the occasion (πάθος)