Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

The distinction between these bases has therefore been rightly accepted by the most learned of

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rhetoricians, and is still adopted by the majority and the wisest of the teachers of to-day. It has not been possible in this connexion to give instructions which will cover the arrangement to be adopted in every case, though I have been able to give some.

There are other details concerning which I can give no instructions without a statement of the particular case on which the orator has to speak. For not only must the whole case be analysed into its component topics and questions, but these subdivisions themselves require to be arranged in the order which is appropriate to them. For example, in the exordium each part has its own special place, first, second and third, etc., while each question and topic requires to be suitably arranged, and the same is true even of isolated general questions. [*](cp. II. iv. 24; III. v. 8. )

For it will not, I imagine, be represented that sufficient skill in division is possessed by the man who, after resolving a controversial theme into questions such as the following, whether a hero is to be granted any reward that he may claim, whether he is allowed to claim private property, whether he may demand any woman in marriage, whether he may claim to marry a woman who already possesses a husband, or this particular woman, then, although it is his duty to deal with the first question first, proceeds to deal with them indiscriminately as each may happen to occur to him, and ignores the fact that the first point which should be discussed is whether we should stand by the letter or the intention of the law, and fails to follow the natural order,

which demands that after beginning with this question he should then proceed to introduce the subsidiary questions, thereby making the structure of his speech

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as regular as that of the human body, of which, for example, the hand is a part, while the fingers are parts of the hand, and the joints of the fingers. [*](fecerit and struxerit are both negatived by the preceding non. It is impossible to reproduce the conciseness of the original. ) It is precisely this method of arrangement which it is impossible to demonstrate except with reference to some definite and specific case.

But it is clearly useless to take one or two cases, or even a hundred or a thousand, since their number is infinite. It is the duty of the teacher to demonstrate daily in one kind of case after another what is the natural order and connexion of the parts, so that little by little his pupils may gain the experience which will enable them to deal with other cases of the same character. For it is quite impossible to teach everything that can be accomplished by art.

For example, what painter has ever been taught to reproduce everything in nature? But once he has acquired the general principles of imitation, he will be able to copy whatever is given him. What vase-maker is there who has not succeeded in producing a vase of a type which he had never previously seen?