Rhetoric

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case
the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other
art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular
subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy,
geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers,
and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric
we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on
almost any subject presented to us; and that is why we say that, in
its technical character, it is not concerned with any special or definite
class of subjects.

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man
who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able
(1) to
reason logically,
(2) to understand human character and goodness in
their various forms, and
(3) to understand the emotions-that is, to
name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which
they are excited. It thus appears that rhetoric is an offshoot of
dialectic and also of ethical studies. Ethical studies may fairly
be called political; and for this reason rhetoric masquerades as political
science, and the professors of it as political experts-sometimes from
want of education, sometimes from ostentation, sometimes owing to
other human failings. As a matter of fact, it is a branch of dialectic
and similar to it, as we said at the outset. Neither rhetoric nor
dialectic is the scientific study of any one separate subject: both
are faculties for providing arguments. This is perhaps a sufficient
account of their scope and of how they are related to each other.