6 - De Man on Locke

Summary

The character [ethos] of the speaker is a cause of persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make him worthy of belief; for as a rule we trust men of probity more, and more quickly, about things in general, while on points outside the realm of exact knowledge, where opinion is divided, we trust them absolutely. This trust, however, should be created by the speech itself, and not left to depend upon an antecedent impression that the speaker is this or that kind of man. It is not true, as some writers on the art maintain, that the probity of the speaker contributes nothing to his persuasiveness; on the contrary, we might almost affirm that his character is the most potent of all the means to persuasion.

Aristotle, Rhetoric

In Part II, the project of identifying Locke's figurative representation of mind in the Essay issued in several observations concerning the relationship between rhetoric and Lockean epistemology. The foremost of these is that Locke's own epistemological discourse is pervasively figurative: terms which are commonly used to refer to men, eyes, labor, material substance, acceleration, resistance, property, intercourse, and enclosed space are used by Locke to describe the mind and its actions; terms which are commonly used to refer to women and material objects of various kinds and sizes are used by Locke to describe ideas. This figurative discourse of mind is remarkably consistent and systematic in some ways and inconsistent in others; its implications confirm some of Locke's explicit claims but contest others (a summary of this description and its implications is presented at the opening of the concluding chapter).