If later ages had been familiar with Aristotle’s Rhetoric, they would have had a sound basis for developing a theory of probable argument. That was not the case. While in most centuries Aristotle’s eminence was agreed on and his authority respected, he was not read from beginning to end. For one thing, his total work is enormous and is not understood without great effort. Second, some of the works considered less important were more or less lost for long periods of time. A few of the details of what was known at what times are mentioned later as appropriate, but in general it can be said that
...more
