Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/90

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THE THREE KINDS OF ORATORY.

sions, there are intellectual arguments running through the speech, to the effect that Cæsar was unjustly accused of ambition, and unjustly put to death. And the practical conclusion is urged on the hearers by all these various means—that they should rise in revolt and avenge the death of Cæsar upon his murderers.

This imaginary speech belongs, of course, to the class of deliberative oratory, the object of which is to recommend some course of action. This kind, says Aristotle, deals with the future; while judicial oratory, in criminal or civil cases, endeavours to give a certain complexion to the transactions of the past. And there is a third kind, the oratory of display, which, in proposing toasts and the like, deals chiefly in descriptions of the present. In each of the three kinds of oratory, the three “sources of persuasion” above noted, must be employed. But in order to exhibit the features of a particular character the orator must know the moral nature of man in its various phases; and, in order to work upon the feelings, he must know, so to speak, the inner anatomy of the feelings. A knowledge of human nature is, of course, essential for producing persuasion in the minds of men, and Aristotle thus says that Rhetoric is a compound of Logic and Moral Philosophy. In this treatise he supplies a rich fund of psychological remarks on the various passions and characteristics of men. In the condensed knowledge of the world which it displays the ‘Rhetoric’ might be compared with Bacon’s ‘Essays.’ It might be compared also with them in this respect—that a bad and Machiavellian use might certainly be made of some of the suggestions which it contains,