Kitap 5
11.4
For instance take the following question: What is the finest form of fruit? Is it not that which is best? This will be admitted. What of the horse? What is the finest? Is it not that which is the best? Several more questions of the same kind follow. Last comes the question for the sake of which all the others were put: What of man? Is not he the finest type who is best? The answer can only be in the affirmative.
11.5
Such a procedure is most valuable in the examination of witnesses, but is differently employed in a set speech. For there the orator either answers his own questions or makes an assumption of that which in dialogue takes the form of a question. What is the finest fruit? The best, I should imagine. What is the finest horse? The swiftest. So too the finest type of man is not he that is noblest of birth, but he that is most excellent in virtue. All arguments of this kind, therefore, must be from things like or unlike or contrary. Similes are, it is true, sometimes employed for the embellishment of the speech as well, but I will deal with them in their proper place; VIII iii. 72 sqq. at present I am concerned with the use of similitude in proof.
