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For rhetorical purposes we must divide the examination of each πάθος into three parts; the nature of them, what the disposition is in one who feels the emotion; the ordinary objects, against whom the emotion is directed (as the ordinary objects of anger); and the ordinary conditions, the occasions and circumstances which give rise to them. Without the knowledge of all three in each case, it is impossible to excite in the mind of anyone the feeling or emotion required. διαγράφειν, de-scribere, de-lineare, to describe, lit. draw in detail, with all the divisions (διά) marked: comp. διάγραμμα, of a mathematical diagram: applied to a descriptive analysis of a subject. On this part of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the treatise on the πάθη, Bacon has the following remarks, de Augm. Scient. VII 3, Vol. I. p. 736, ed. Ellis et Spedding: ‘Et hic rursus subiit nova admiratio, Aristotelem, qui tot libros de Ethicis conscripsit, Affectus ut membrum Ethicae principale in illis non tractasse; in Rhetoricis autem ubi tractandi interveniunt secundario (quatenus scilicet oratione cieri aut commoveri possint) locum illis reperisse; (in quo tamen loco, de iis, quantum tam paucis fieri potuit, acute et bene disseruit)’. I quote this with the more pleasure, as one of the few fair statements of Aristotle's merits to be found in Bacon's writings.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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