Institutio Oratoria

It is sufficient to call attention to the fact that everything which art has brought to perfection originated in nature. Otherwise we might deny the title of art to medicine, which was discovered from the observation of sickness and health, and according to some is entirely based upon experiment: wounds were bound up long before medicine developed into an art, and fevers were reduced by rest and abstention from food, long before the reason for such treatment was

So too building should not be styled an art; for primitive man built himself a hut without the assistance of art. Music by the same reasoning is not an art; for every race indulges in some kind of singing and dancing. If therefore any kind of speech is to be called eloquence, I will admit that it existed before it was an art.

If on the other hand not every man that speaks is an orator and primitive man did not speak like an orator, my opponents must needs acknowledge that oratory is the product of art and did not exist before it. This conclusion also rules out their argument that men speak who have never learnt how to speak, and that which a man does untaught can have no connexion with art.

In support of this contention they adduce the fact that Demades was a waterman and Aeschines an actor, but both were orators. Their reasoning is false. For no man can be an orator untaught and it would be truer to say that these orators learned oratory late in life than that they never learned at all; although as a matter of fact Aeschines had an acquaintance with literature from childhood since his father was a teacher of literature, while as regards Demades, it is quite uncertain that he never studied rhetoric and in any case continuous practice in speaking was sufficient to bring him to such proficiency as he attained: for experience is the best of all schools.

On the other hand it may fairly be asserted that he would have achieved greater distinction, if he had received instruction: for although he delivered his speeches with great effect, he never ventured to write them for others.