To look at this for a moment through a practical illustration, let us
suppose that a speaker has convinced his listeners that his position is
“true” as far as dialectical inquiry may be pushed. Now he sets about
moving the listeners toward that position, but there is no way to move
them except through the operation of analogy. The analogy proceeds by
showing that the position being urged resembles or partakes of something
greater and finer. It will be represented, in sum, as one of the steps
leading toward ultimate good. Let us further suppose our speaker to be
arguing for the payment of a just debt. The payment of the just debt is
not itself justice, but the payment of this particular debt is one of the
many things which would have to be done before this could be a completely
just world. It is just, then, because it partakes of the ideal justice,
or it is a small analogue of all justice (in practice it will be found
that the rhetorician makes extensive use of synecdoche, whereby the small
part is used as a vivid suggestion of the grandeur of the whole). It is
by bringing out these resemblances that the good rhetorician leads those
who listen in the direction of what is good. In effect, he performs a
cure of souls by giving impulse, chiefly through figuration, toward an
ideal good.
We now see the true rhetorician as a noble lover of the good, who works
through dialectic and through poetic or analogical association. However
he is compelled to modulate by the peculiar features of an occasion, this
is his method.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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