To understand fully the extent comprehended by the word _exoteric_, we must recollect that its direct and immediate meaning is negative-- _extraneous to philosophy_, and suitable to an audience not specially taught or prepared for philosophy. Now this negative characteristic belongs not merely to dialectic (as we see it in the example above cited from the Aristotelian Physica), but also to rhetoric or rhetorical argument. We know that, in Aristotle's mind, the rhetorical handling and the dialectical handling, are placed both of them under the same head, as dealing with opinions rather than with truth.[46] Both the one and the other are parted off from the didactic or demonstrative march which leads to philosophical truth; though dialectic has a distant affinity with that march, and is indeed available as an auxiliary skirmisher. The term _exoteric_ will thus comprehend both rhetorical argument and dialectical argument.[47] Of the latter, we have just seen a specimen extracted from the Physica; of the former, I know no specimen remaining, but there probably were many of them in the Aristotelian dialogues now lost--that which was called 'Eudemus,' and others. With these dialogues Cicero was probably more familiar than with any other composition of Aristotle. I think it highly probable that Aristotle alludes to the dialogues in some of the passages where he refers to "exoteric discourses." To that extent I agree with Bernays; but I see no reason to believe (as he does) that the case is the same with all the passages, or that the epithet is to be understood _always_ as implying one of these lost Aristotelian dialogues.[48] [Footnote 46: See the first two chapters of Aristotle's Rhetorica, especially pp. 1355 a. 24-35, 1358 a. 5, 11, 25, also p. 1404 a. 1.: [Greek: o(/lôs ou)/sês _pro\s do/xan_ tê=s pragmatei/as tê=s peri\ tê\n r(êtorikê/n], which is exactly what he says also about Dialectic, in the commencement of the Topica.] [Footnote 47: Octavianus Ferrarius observes, in his treatise De Sermonibus Exotericis (Venet. 1575), p. 24: "Quod si Dialecticus et Rhetor inter se mutant, ut aiunt, ita ut Dialecticus Rhetorem et Rhetor Dialecticum vicissim induat--de his ipsis veteribus Dialecticis minime nobis dubitandum est, quin iidem dialectice simul et rhetorice loqui in utramque partem potuerint. Nec valde mirum debet hoc videri; libros enim exotericos prope solos habuerunt: qui cum scripti essent (ut posterius planum faciam) dialectico more, illorum lectio cum libris peperit philosophos congruentes"--Ferrari adverts well to the distinction between the philosopher and the dialectician (_sensu Aristotelico_), handling often the same subjects, but in a different way: between the [Greek: oi)kei=ai a)rchai/], upon which didactic method rested, and the [Greek: do/xai] or diverse opinions, each countenanced by more or less authority, from which dialectic took its departure (pp. 36, 86, 89).]