The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

goodness
is a part of happiness.
    To praise a man is in one respect akin to urging a course of
action. The suggestions which would be made in the latter case
become encomiums when differently expressed. When we know what
action or character is required, then, in order to express these
facts as suggestions for action, we have to change and reverse our
form of words. Thus the statement ‘A man should be proud not of
what he owes to fortune but of what he owes to himself’, if put
like this, amounts to a suggestion; to make it into praise we must
put it thus, ‘Since he is proud not of what he owes to fortune but
of what he owes to himself.’ Consequently, whenever you want to
praise any one, think what you would urge people to do; and when
you want to urge the doing of anything, think what you would praise
a man for having done. Since suggestion may or may not forbid an
action, the praise into which we convert it must have one or other
of two opposite forms of expression accordingly.
    There are, also, many useful ways of heightening the effect of
praise. We must, for instance, point out that a man is the only
one, or the first, or almost the only one who has done something,
or that he has done it better than any one else; all these
distinctions are honourable. And we must, further, make much of the
particular season and occasion of an action, arguing that we could
hardly have looked for it just then. If a man has often achieved
the same success, we must mention this; that is a strong point; he
himself, and not luck, will then be given the credit. So, too, if
it is on his account that observances have been devised and
instituted to encourage or honour such achievements as his own:
thus we may praise Hippolochus because the first encomium ever made
was for him, or Harmodius and Aristogeiton because their statues
were the first to be put up in the market-place. And we may censure
bad men for the opposite reason.
    Again, if you cannot find enough to say of a man himself, you
may pit him against others, which is what Isocrates used to do
owing to his want of familiarity with forensic pleading. The
comparison should be with famous men; that will strengthen your
case; it is a noble thing to surpass men who are themselves great.
It is only natural that methods of ‘heightening the effect’ should
be attached particularly to speeches of praise; they aim at proving
superiority over others, and any such superiority is a form of
nobleness. Hence if you cannot compare your hero with famous men,
you should at least compare him with other people generally, since
any superiority is held to reveal excellence. And, in general, of
the lines of argument which are common to all speeches, this
‘heightening of effect’ is most suitable for declamations, where we
take our hero’s actions as admitted facts, and our business is
simply to invest these with dignity and nobility. ‘Examples’ are
most suitable to deliberative speeches; for we judge of future
events by divination from past events. Enthymemes are most suitable
to forensic speeches; it is our doubts about past events that most
admit of arguments showing why a thing must have happened or
proving that it did happen.
    The above are the general lines on which all, or nearly all,
speeches of praise or blame are constructed. We have seen the sort
of thing we must bear in mind in making such speeches, and the
materials out of which encomiums and censures are made. No special
treatment of censure and vituperation is needed. Knowing the above
facts, we know their contraries; and it is out of these that
speeches of censure are made.
10
    We have next to treat of Accusation and Defence, and to
enumerate and describe the ingredients of the syllogisms used
therein. There are three things we must ascertain first, the nature
and number of the incentives to wrong-doing; second, the state of
mind of wrongdoers; third, the kind of persons who are wronged, and
their condition. We will deal with these questions in order. But
before that let us define the act of ‘wrong-doing’.
    We may describe ‘wrong-doing’ as injury voluntarily inflicted
contrary to law. ‘Law’ is either special or general. By special law
I mean that written law which regulates the life of a particular
community; by general law, all those unwritten principles which are
supposed to be acknowledged everywhere. We do things ‘voluntarily’
when we do them consciously and without constraint. (Not all
voluntary acts