The lay of the land in our garden metaphor—the position of hills or gorges, the slope of the fields—is for the rhetor symbolic of the contours of the human mind. Landscape, that is, represents mindscape. And just as there are but a few different types of landscape—like the gentle landscape: rolling hills and slopes; or the harsh landscape: deep ravines and jutting cliffs—so among humans we find only a few of what are known as "psychological types". Although admittedly vague, the topic of psychological types is nonetheless worth considering for the rhetor; and the alleged difference between East and West, for example, comes readily to mind, as does Nietzsche's dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysian spirits.¹⁵ And Nietzsche's two spirit-types are certainly analogous to William Jame's "tender-minded" and "tough-minded" temperaments, and are perhaps reflective of the calm or violent types of enlightenment spoken of in Zen Buddhism, as well.¹⁶
Whatever the system of psychological types (and we shall consider several systems used to classify personality types), the rhetor's task is to speak to the hills and fields, as it were. Whether we feel a need to slash and burn—to quickly but indescrimately clear the mindscape of brush and vegetation—or just hoe and weed—pointedly focusing upon a particularly pertenacious outcrop of thought—the job of the rhetor is to work with the lay of the land. In rhetorical terms, this means we must be familiar with the kinds of minds we are expected to cultivate.