The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

not true that
we ought to know ourselves: anyhow, if this man had known himself,
he would never have thought himself fit for an army command.’ It
will raise people’s opinion of our character to say, for instance,
‘We ought not to follow the saying that bids us treat our friends
as future enemies: much better to treat our enemies as future
friends.’ The moral purpose should be implied partly by the very
wording of our maxim. Failing this, we should add our reason: e.g.
having said ‘We should treat our friends, not as the saying
advises, but as if they were going to be our friends always’, we
should add ‘for the other behaviour is that of a traitor’: or we
might put it, I disapprove of that saying. A true friend will treat
his friend as if he were going to be his friend for ever’; and
again, ‘Nor do I approve of the saying “nothing in excess”: we are
bound to hate bad men excessively.’ One great advantage of Maxims
to a speaker is due to the want of intelligence in his hearers, who
love to hear him succeed in expressing as a universal truth the
opinions which they hold themselves about particular cases. I will
explain what I mean by this, indicating at the same time how we are
to hunt down the maxims required. The maxim, as has been already
said, a general statement and people love to hear stated in general
terms what they already believe in some particular connexion: e.g.
if a man happens to have bad neighbours or bad children, he will
agree with any one who tells him, ‘Nothing is more annoying than
having neighbours’, or, ‘Nothing is more foolish than to be the
parent of children.’ The orator has therefore to guess the subjects
on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those
views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same
views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using
maxims. There is another which is more important-it invests a
speech with moral character. There is moral character in every
speech in which the moral purpose is conspicuous: and maxims always
produce this effect, because the utterance of them amounts to a
general declaration of moral principles: so that, if the maxims are
sound, they display the speaker as a man of sound moral character.
So much for the Maxim-its nature, varieties, proper use, and
advantages.
22
    We now come to the Enthymemes, and will begin the subject with
some general consideration of the proper way of looking for them,
and then proceed to what is a distinct question, the lines of
argument to be embodied in them. It has already been pointed out
that the Enthymeme is a syllogism, and in what sense it is so. We
have also noted the differences between it and the syllogism of
dialectic. Thus we must not carry its reasoning too far back, or
the length of our argument will cause obscurity: nor must we put in
all the steps that lead to our conclusion, or we shall waste words
in saying what is manifest. It is this simplicity that makes the
uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular
audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, ‘charm the crowd’s ears
more finely’. Educated men lay down broad general principles;
uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious
conclusions. We must not, therefore, start from any and every
accepted opinion, but only from those we have defined-those
accepted by our judges or by those whose authority they recognize:
and there must, moreover, be no doubt in the minds of most, if not
all, of our judges that the opinions put forward really are of this
sort. We should also base our arguments upon probabilities as well
as upon certainties.
    The first thing we have to remember is this. Whether our
argument concerns public affairs or some other subject, we must
know some, if not all, of the facts about the subject on which we
are to speak and argue. Otherwise we can have no materials out of
which to construct arguments. I mean, for instance, how could we
advise the Athenians whether they should go to war or not, if we
did not know their strength, whether it was naval or military or
both, and how great it is; what their revenues amount to; who their
friends and enemies are; what wars, too, they have waged, and with
what success; and so on? Or how could we eulogize them if we knew
nothing about the sea-fight at Salamis, or the battle of Marathon,
or what they did for the Heracleidae, or any other facts like that?
All eulogy is based upon the noble