Institutio Oratoria

The minor premise is refuted by all the methods which we mentioned in dealing with refutation. [*](In the preceding chapter.) As to the reason it must be pointed out that it is sometimes true when the proposition to which it is attached is not true, but may on the other hand sometimes be false although the proposition is true. For example,

Virtue is a good thing

Because it brings us wealth,

With regard to the conclusion, we may either deny its truth when it infers something which does not logically result from the premises, or we may treat it as irrelevant. The truth is denied in the following case:

We are justified in killing one who lies in wait for us; for since, like an enemy, he threatens us with violence, we ought to repulse his attack as though he were an enemy: therefore Milo was justified in killing Clodius as an enemy.

But while the major premise and the reason

Some call the enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism, while others regard it as a part of the syllogism, because whereas the latter always has its premises and conclusion and effects its proof by the employment of all its parts, the ethymeme is content to let its proof be understood without explicit statement.

The following is an example of a syllogism:

Virtue is the only thing that is good, for that alone is good which no one can put to a bad use: but no one can make a bad use of virtue; virtue therefore is good.

Virtue is a good thing because no one can put it to a bad use.

Money is not a good thing; for that is not good which can be put to a bad use: money may be put to a bad use; therefore money is not a good thing.

Can money be a good thing when it is possible to put it to a bad use?

The following argument is couched in syllogistic form:

If money in the form of silver coin is silver, the man who bequeathed all his silver to a legatee, includes all money in the form of coined silver: but he bequeathed all his silver: therefore he included in the bequest all money in the form of coined silver.

Since he bequeathed all his silver, he included in his bequest all his silver money.

I think I have now dealt with all the precepts of those who treat oratory as a mystery. But these rules still leave scope for free exercise of the judgment. For although I consider that there are occasions

For in the former we are confronted with learned men seeking for truth among men of learning; consequently they subject everything to a minute and scrupulous inquiry with a view to arriving at clear and convincing truths, and they claim for themselves the tasks of invention and judgment, calling the former τοπική or the art of selecting the appropriate material for treatment, and the latter κριτική or the art of criticism.

We on the other hand have to compose our speeches for others to judge, and have frequently to speak before an audience of men who, if not thoroughly ill-educated, are certainly ignorant of such arts as dialectic: and unless we attract them by the charm of our discourse or drag them by its force, and occasionally throw them off their balance by an appeal to their emotions, we shall be unable to vindicate the claims of truth and justice.

Eloquence aims at being rich, beautiful and commanding, and will attain to none of these qualities if it be broken up into conclusive inferences which are generally expressed in the same monotonous form: on the contrary its meanness will excite contempt, its severity dislike, its elaboration satiety, and its sameness boredom.

Eloquence therefore must not restrict itself to narrow tracks, but range at large over the open fields. Its streams must not be conveyed

Must lie not vary and diversify it by a thousand figures, and do all this in such a way that it seems to come into being as the very child of nature, not to reveal an artificial manufacture and a suspect art nor at every moment to show traces of an instructor's hand? What orator ever spoke thus? Even in Demosthenes we find but few traces of such a mechanism. And yet the Greeks of to-day are even more prone than we are (though this is the only point in which their practice is worse than ours) to bind their thoughts in fetters and to connect them by an inexorable chain of argument, making inferences where there was never any doubt, proving admitted facts and asserting that in so doing they are following the orators of old, although they always refuse to answer the question who it is that they are imitating. However of figures I shall speak elsewhere. [*](IX. i. ii. iii.)

For the present I must add that I do not even agree with those who hold that arguments should always be expressed in language which is not only pure, lucid and distinct, but also as free as possible from all elevation and ornateness. I readily admit that

But if the subject be one of real importance every kind of ornament should be employed, so long as it does nothing to obscure our meaning. For metaphor will frequently throw a flood of light upon a subject: even lawyers, who spend so much trouble over the appropriateness of words, venture to assert that the word litus is derived from eludere, because the shore is a place where the waves break in play.

Further, the more unattractive the natural appearance of anything, the more does it require to be seasoned by charm of style: moreover, an argument is often less suspect when thus disguised, and the charm with which it is expressed makes it all the more convincing to our audience. Unless indeed we think that Cicero was in error when he introduced phrases such as the following into an argumentative passage:

The laws are silent in the midst of arms,

A sword is sometimes placed in our hands by the laws themselves.