Now it must be admitted, lest this exposition of the "two-valued" psychology of types sound too absolute, that it is not the only game in town. For, as is well known, Freud postulated not only his Id and Ego, but ultimately a third psychic component: the Superego. Nor was this triadic form something new, for the Greek rhetors had their own trinity of types, as it were, and it parallels Freud's triadic system. Aristotle held that persuasion in rhetoric comes from an appeal not only to the emotions and the reason, Pathos and Logos as these were called, but also to one's character—a form of appeal that Aristotle called Ethos.²⁰ Granted, these concepts—called "proofs" by Aristotle—evolved over the 700 or so years of Greek and Roman rhetoric, and this lengthy development certainly problematizes any crystallization of these concepts in one form. However, there is some justification in seeing these Greek concepts as somehow precursory to Freud's (although more likely Freud's ideas are a variation on this extremely ancient theme). And even more to the point, Aristotle's three forms of persuasion have another parallel, one almost as old as they. These are the three classical values: Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, which are parallel to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos respectively. As Aristotle's Rhetoric tells us, "[Ethos] depends on the personal character of the speaker", for we "believe good men more fully . . . ." And Pathos comes in "when the speech stirs (the hearers) emotions", for our "judgements when we are pleased . . . are not the same as when we are pained . . . ." Here, pleasure and pain are relevant to Beauty because the latter can be—and has been—defined as objectified pleasure. And finally, the third proof, Logos, "is effected . . . when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth . . . ."²¹

The connection of these three forms of proof with the three values and with Freud's three psychic components is pertinent to the task of the rhetor both in respect to his or her understanding of the human mind and as a profound source of a literary allusion. And in fact, as we shall see in Up The Garden Path, this ancient trinity has threaded its way—in one form or another—through some six thousand years of Art, Rhetoric, Philosophy, and even some so-called Science.