Is it rhetorical question?

Question

Are the following two sentences beginning with 'Did' and 'Did not' questions? What types of question are they?

Is first one 'rhetorical question' and second 'affirmative question'?

Second ond doesn't have question mark there. Doesn't it need question mark here?

Context:

Does it not, for instance, appear ironical that this most sober of all the religious doctrines is still considered by many Westerners as some sort of idolatry or mysticism? Did not the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, already long years ago, understand and lay stress upon this absolute soberness and clearness of Buddhism when he said:

Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity. It has entered upon the inheritance of objectively and coolly putting problems. It came to life after several hundred years of philosophical development....

Source:Page. 1 Fundamentals of Buddhism by Nyanatiloka Mahåthera

Answer 1

They are both rhetorical. Negative questions -- "Does it not" etc -- don't necessarily indicate a rhetorical form, but here it seems clear that they do.

I think the reason for the lack of question mark in the second is simply a matter of page layout. The correct position for the question mark is the end of the question, but here the question has been formed so as to include a block quotation. It would be inappropriate to put the question mark right after the block quote (i.e. after "philosophical development...") because it could incorrectly suggest that Nietzsche's quote itself was a question. And while I can't be sure without seeing the subsequent text, I suspect there simply wasn't scope to have the question mark appear after, and separated from, the block quote.

From time to time, I've found myself in the same situation, and I may choose to do some restructuring to avoid the problem. For example, here it might look like this:

Does it not, for instance, appear ironical that this most sober of all the religious doctrines is still considered by many Westerners as some sort of idolatry or mysticism? When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, said:

Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity. It has entered upon the inheritance of objectively and coolly putting problems. It came to life after several hundred years of philosophical development...

had he not already understood and laid stress upon this absolute soberness and clearness of Buddhism?

But such restructuring isn't always necessary. The second portion of your text is clearly a question, so it stands without needing a question mark.