Rhetoric   

themselves to be wronged, are terrible; for they are always looking
out for their opportunity. Also those who have done people wrong, if
they possess power, since they stand in fear of retaliation: we have
already said that wickedness possessing power is terrible. Again, our
rivals for a thing cause us fear when we cannot both have it at once;
for we are always at war with such men. We also fear those who are to
be feared by stronger people than ourselves: if they can hurt those
stronger people, still more can they hurt us; and, for the same
reason, we fear those whom those stronger people are actually afraid
of. Also those who have destroyed people stronger than we are. Also
those who are attacking people weaker than we are: either they are
already formidable, or they will be so when they have thus grown
stronger. Of those we have wronged, and of our enemies or rivals, it
is not the passionate and outspoken whom we have to fear, but the
quiet, dissembling, unscrupulous; since we never know when they are
upon us, we can never be sure they are at a safe distance. All
terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of
retrieving a blunder either no chance at all, or only one that depends
on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also worse which we
cannot, or cannot easily, help. Speaking generally, anything causes us
to feel fear that when it happens to, or threatens, others cause us to
feel pity.
The above are, roughly, the chief things that are terrible and are
feared. Let us now describe the conditions under which we ourselves
feel fear. If fear is associated with the expectation that something
destructive will happen to us, plainly nobody will be afraid who
believes nothing can happen to him; we shall not fear things that we
believe cannot happen to us, nor people who we believe cannot inflict
them upon us; nor shall we be afraid at times when we think ourselves
safe from them. It follows therefore that fear is felt by those who
believe something to be likely to happen to them, at the hands of
particular persons, in a particular form, and at a particular time.
People do not believe this when they are, or think they a are, in the
midst of great prosperity, and are in consequence insolent,
contemptuous, and reckless-the kind of character produced by wealth,
physical strength, abundance of friends, power: nor yet when they feel
they have experienced every kind of horror already and have grown
callous about the future, like men who are being flogged and are
already nearly dead-if they are to feel the anguish of uncertainty,
there must be some faint expectation of escape. This appears from the
fact that fear sets us thinking what can be done, which of course
nobody does when things are hopeless. Consequently, when it is
advisable that the audience should be frightened, the orator must make
them feel that they really are in danger of something, pointing out
that it has happened to others who were stronger than they are, and is
happening, or has happened, to people like themselves, at the hands of
unexpected people, in an unexpected form, and at an unexpected time.
Having now seen the nature of fear, and of the things that cause it,
and the various states of mind in which it is felt, we can also see
what Confidence is, about what things we feel it, and under what
conditions. It is the opposite of fear, and what causes it is the
opposite of what causes fear; it is, therefore, the expectation
associated with a mental picture of the nearness of what keeps us safe
and the absence or remoteness of what is terrible: it may be due
either to the near presence of what inspires confidence or to the
absence of what causes alarm. We feel it if we can take steps-many, or
important, or both-to cure or prevent trouble; if we have neither
wronged others nor been wronged by them; if we have either no rivals
at all or no strong ones; if our rivals who are strong are our friends
or have treated us well or been treated well by us; or if those whose
interest is the same as ours are the more numerous party, or the
stronger, or both.
As for our own state of mind, we feel confidence if we believe we have
often succeeded and never suffered reverses, or have often met danger