Influencing Men in Business

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III AN ANALYSIS OF SUGGESTION Traditional And Modern Conception Of Suggestion The ancients defined man as the reasoning animal. When they attempted to comprehend the workings of his mind, it was by contrast with the mind of the animal which was supposed to be devoid of reason. They thought of man...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III AN ANALYSIS OF SUGGESTION Traditional And Modern Conception Of Suggestion The ancients defined man as the reasoning animal. When they attempted to comprehend the workings of his mind, it was by contrast with the mind of the animal which was supposed to be devoid of reason. They thought of man as responding normally only to logical appeals. Hence the problems connected with influencing man were turned over to the logicians for solution. Three centuries before the Christian era, that great thinker, Aristotle, gave to the world a master work on logic. He showed exactly how arguments must be presented if they are to be presented logically. The syllogism was fully explained. Methods of analyzing and classifying arguments were presented in detail. The work of Aristotle was so accurate and so complete that it dominated the thinking of all logicians for twenty centuries. During all these ages the only authoritative source of information concerning the ever-recurring problems ofinfluencing men was the standard works on logic. These books did not tell how men really think and act, but how they respond to appeals when they respond logically. Historically speaking, the only method recognized as important in persuading men and in securing normal responses was what might be called the logical method?the method of presenting cogent arguments in a logical way. It has been well to emphasize the logical nature of man. It is well for the individual to attempt to act logically and to conform his thinking to the rules of logic. When, however, we desire to exert the maximum influence over our fellows we cannot be bound down to the requirements of a logical presentation of our appeals. Many men have suspected a force other than that of logically presented arguments. In their f...