Rhetoric   

loquacity; they are continually talking of the past, because they
enjoy remembering it. Their fits of anger are sudden but feeble. Their
sensual passions have either altogether gone or have lost their
vigour: consequently they do not feel their passions much, and their
actions are inspired less by what they do feel than by the love of
gain. Hence men at this time of life are often supposed to have a
self-controlled character; the fact is that their passions have
slackened, and they are slaves to the love of gain. They guide their
lives by reasoning more than by moral feeling; reasoning being
directed to utility and moral feeling to moral goodness. If they wrong
others, they mean to injure them, not to insult them. Old men may feel
pity, as well as young men, but not for the same reason. Young men
feel it out of kindness; old men out of weakness, imagining that
anything that befalls any one else might easily happen to them, which,
as we saw, is a thought that excites pity. Hence they are querulous,
and not disposed to jesting or laughter-the love of laughter being the
very opposite of querulousness.
Such are the characters of Young Men and Elderly Men. People always
think well of speeches adapted to, and reflecting, their own
character: and we can now see how to compose our speeches so as to
adapt both them and ourselves to our audiences.
Part 14
As for Men in their Prime, clearly we shall find that they have a
character between that of the young and that of the old, free from the
extremes of either. They have neither that excess of confidence which
amounts to rashness, nor too much timidity, but the right amount of
each. They neither trust everybody nor distrust everybody, but judge
people correctly. Their lives will be guided not by the sole
consideration either of what is noble or of what is useful, but by
both; neither by parsimony nor by prodigality, but by what is fit and
proper. So, too, in regard to anger and desire; they will be brave as
well as temperate, and temperate as well as brave; these virtues are
divided between the young and the old; the young are brave but
intemperate, the old temperate but cowardly. To put it generally, all
the valuable qualities that youth and age divide between them are
united in the prime of life, while all their excesses or defects are
replaced by moderation and fitness. The body is in its prime from
thirty to five-and-thirty; the mind about forty-nine.
Part 15
So much for the types of character that distinguish youth, old age,
and the prime of life. We will now turn to those Gifts of Fortune by
which human character is affected. First let us consider Good Birth.
Its effect on character is to make those who have it more ambitious;
it is the way of all men who have something to start with to add to
the pile, and good birth implies ancestral distinction. The well-born
man will look down even on those who are as good as his own ancestors,
because any far-off distinction is greater than the same thing close
to us, and better to boast about. Being well-born, which means coming
of a fine stock, must be distinguished from nobility, which means
being true to the family nature-a quality not usually found in the
well-born, most of whom are poor creatures. In the generations of men
as in the fruits of the earth, there is a varying yield; now and then,
where the stock is good, exceptional men are produced for a while, and
then decadence sets in. A clever stock will degenerate towards the
insane type of character, like the descendants of Alcibiades or of the
elder Dionysius; a steady stock towards the fatuous and torpid type,
like the descendants of Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates.
Part 16
The type of character produced by Wealth lies on the surface for all
to see. Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of
wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every
good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for
everything else, and th
Rhetoric