Aristotle's Treatise on rhetoric Author:Aristotle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: already in existence ; and what in dissuading, for they are the contraries of these. CHAP. VI. Of the Good and Expedient treated general!/. Since the ex... more »pedient is the object proposed to the de- 1. The deliberative orator, and as all form their conclusions, lucrative not about the end itself, but about the means con- T;ses on ducive to that end ; as moreover these are all things " the which are expedient in reference to human conduct I?6011?'' , JT. ,. . ,x i it i therefore (now every thing expedient is a good), we shall nave he must to ascertain certain elementary propositions, on the know the subjects of the good and the expedient in general. £JJ( Let good, then,.be defined to be, 1. Whatever is 2. an object of choice independently, for its own sake ; 2. and for the sake of which we choose something else. 3. What every thing aims at', or every thing which has perception, or which has intelligence; or every thing would aim at, were it possessed of intelligence. 4. Whatever intelligence would award to each. 5. Whatever the intelligence conversant with every instance awards to each, that to each individual is his good. 6. That which being present, one is well disposed and independent. 7. Independency. 8. Whatever produces or preserves such advantages2; 9. and that on which they are consequent. 10. Whatever, too, has a tendency to prevent or destroy their opposites. Now, things are consequent in two ways ; 3. Conse- for either they may be consequent simultaneously or quences subsequently.—Knowledge, for instance, is a conse- f0id quent on learning subsequently; life is so on health simultaneously. Again, things are productive in Things 1 This principle, which he insists on even in his moral treatises, is peculiarly adapted for a test in rhetoric: where, ...« less