[3]
Can
lie hope to get a thorough grasp of such information
at the very moment when he is required to produce
it in his speech? Can he make his assertions with
confidence or speak with native simplicity as though
his arguments were his own? Grant that he may do
so in his actual speech. But what will he do in a
debate, when he has continually to meet fresh points
raised by his opponent and is given no time to learn
[p. 403]
up his case? What will do, if he has no legal
expert to advise him or if his prompter through
insufficient knowledge of the subject provides him
with information that is false? It is the most serious
drawback of such ignorance, that he will always
believe that his adviser knows what he is talking
about.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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