Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

But if, as is

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the case, our hearers are fickle of mind, and truth is exposed to a host of perils, we must call in art to aid us in the fight and employ such means as will help our case. He who has been driven from the right road cannot be brought back to it save by a fresh detour.

The point, however, that gives rise to the greatest number of these captious accusations against rhetoric, is found in the allegation that orators speak indifferently on either side of a case. From which they draw the following arguments: no art is self-contradictory, but rhetoric does contradict itself; no art tries to demolish what itself has built, but this does happen in the operations of rhetoric; or again:— rhetoric teaches either what ought to be said or what ought not to be said; consequently it is not an art because it teaches what ought not to be said, or because, while it teaches what ought to be said, it also teaches precisely the opposite.

Now it is obvious that all such charges are brought against that type of rhetoric with which neither good men nor virtue herself will have anything to do; since if a case be based on injustice, rhetoric has no place therein and consequently it can scarcely happen even under the most exceptional circumstances that an orator, that is to say, a good man, will speak indifferently on either side.

Still it is in the nature of things conceivable that just causes may lead two wise men to take different sides, since it is held that wise men may fight among themselves, provided that they do so at the bidding of reason. I will therefore reply to their criticisms in such a way that it will be clear that these arguments have no force even against those who concede the name of orator to persons of bad character. For rhetoric is not self-contradictory.

The conflict is

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between case and case, not between rhetoric and itself. And even if persons who have learned the same thing fight one another, that does not prove that what they have learned is not an art. Were that so, there could be no art of arms, since gladiators trained under the same master are often matched against each other;

nor would the pilot's art exist, because in sea-fights pilots may be found on different sides; nor yet could there be an art of generalship, since general is pitted against general. In the same way rhetoric does not undo its own work. For the orator does not refute his own arguments, nor does rhetoric even do so, because those who regard persuasion as its end, or the two good men whom chance has matched against one another seek merely for probabilities: and the fact that one thing is more credible than another, does not involve contradiction between the two.

There is no absolute antagonism between the probable and the more probable, just as there is none between that which is white and that which is whiter, or between that which is sweet and that which is sweeter. Nor does rhetoric ever teach that which ought not to be said, or that which is contrary to what ought to be said, but solely what ought to be said in each individual case.