The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

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burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even
to this day. (It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers
legislate are always prosperous) on the ground that the Athenians
became prosperous under Solon’s laws and the Lacedaemonians under
those of Lycurgus, while at Thebes no sooner did the leading men
become philosophers than the country began to prosper.
    11. Another line of argument is founded upon some decision
already pronounced, whether on the same subject or on one like it
or contrary to it. Such a proof is most effective if every one has
always decided thus; but if not every one, then at any rate most
people; or if all, or most, wise or good men have thus decided, or
the actual judges of the present question, or those whose authority
they accept, or any one whose decision they cannot gainsay because
he has complete control over them, or those whom it is not seemly
to gainsay, as the gods, or one’s father, or one’s teachers. Thus
Autocles said, when attacking Mixidemides, that it was a strange
thing that the Dread Goddesses could without loss of dignity submit
to the judgement of the Areopagus, and yet Mixidemides could not.
Or as Sappho said, ‘Death is an evil thing; the gods have so judged
it, or they would die’. Or again as Aristippus said in reply to
Plato when he spoke somewhat too dogmatically, as Aristippus
thought: ‘Well, anyhow, our friend’, meaning Socrates, ‘never spoke
like that’. And Hegesippus, having previously consulted Zeus at
Olympia, asked Apollo at Delphi ‘whether his opinion was the same
as his father’s’, implying that it would be shameful for him to
contradict his father. Thus too Isocrates argued that Helen must
have been a good woman, because Theseus decided that she was; and
Paris a good man, because the goddesses chose him before all
others; and Evagoras also, says Isocrates, was good, since when
Conon met with his misfortune he betook himself to Evagoras without
trying any one else on the way.
    12. Another line of argument consists in taking separately the
parts of a subject. Such is that given in the Topics: ‘What sort of
motion is the soul? for it must be this or that.’ The Socrates of
Theodectes provides an example: ‘What temple has he profaned? What
gods recognized by the state has he not honoured?’
    13. Since it happens that any given thing usually has both good
and bad consequences, another line of argument consists in using
those consequences as a reason for urging that a thing should or
should not be done, for prosecuting or defending any one, for
eulogy or censure. E.g. education leads both to unpopularity, which
is bad, and to wisdom, which is good. Hence you either argue, ‘It
is therefore not well to be educated, since it is not well to be
unpopular’: or you answer, ‘No, it is well to be educated, since it
is well to be wise’. The Art of Rhetoric of Callippus is made up of
this line of argument, with the addition of those of Possibility
and the others of that kind already described.
    14. Another line of argument is used when we have to urge or
discourage a course of action that may be done in either of two
opposite ways, and have to apply the method just mentioned to both.
The difference between this one and the last is that, whereas in
the last any two things are contrasted, here the things contrasted
are opposites. For instance, the priestess enjoined upon her son
not to take to public speaking: ‘For’, she said, ‘if you say what
is right, men will hate you; if you say what is wrong, the gods
will hate you.’ The reply might be, ‘On the contrary, you ought to
take to public speaking: for if you say what is right the gods will
love you; if you say what is wrong, men will love you.’ This
amounts to the proverbial ‘buying the marsh with the salt’. It is
just this situation, viz. when each of two opposites has both a
good and a bad consequence opposite respectively to each other,
that has been termed divarication.
    15. Another line of argument is this: The things people approve
of openly are not those which they approve of secretly: openly,
their chief praise is given to justice and nobleness; but in their
hearts they prefer their own advantage. Try, in face of this, to
establish the point of view which your opponent has not adopted.
This is the most effective of the forms of argument that contradict
common opinion.
    16. Another line is that of rational correspondence. E.g.
Iphicrates, when