Institutio Oratoria

We were therefore right in asserting that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that comes before the orator for treatment, an assertion which is confirmed by the practice of everyday speech. For when we have been given a subject on which to speak, we often preface our remarks by calling attention to the fact that the matter has been laid before us.

Gorgias indeed felt so strongly that it was the orator's duty to speak on every subject, that he used to allow those who attended his lectures to ask him questions on any subject they pleased. Hermagoras also asserted that the material of oratory lay in the cause and the questions it involved, thereby including every subject that can be brought before it.

If he denies that general questions [*](See III V. 12–16.) are the concern of oratory, he disagrees with me: but if they do concern rhetoric, that

Aristotle [*](Rhet. I. iii. 3. ) himself also by his tripartite division of oratory, into forensic, deliberative and demonstrative, practically brought everything into the orator's domain, since there is nothing that may not come up for treatment by one of these three kinds of rhetoric.

A very few critics have raised the question as to what may be the instrument of oratory. My definition of an instrument is that without which the material cannot be brought into the shape necessary for the effecting of our object. But it is not the art which requires an instrument, but the artist. Knowledge needs no instruments, for it may be complete although it produces nothing, but the artist must have them. The engraver cannot work without his chisel nor the painter without his brush. I shall therefore defer this question until I come to treat of the orator as distinct from his art.