[38]
What I say
will not necessarily be my own invention, but it will
be what I believe to be the right view, as for instance
that oratory is the science of speaking well. For
when the most satisfactory definition has been
[p. 319]
found, he who seeks another, is merely looking for a
worse one.
Thus much being admitted we are now in
a position to see clearly what is the end, the
highest aim, the ultimate goal of rhetoric, that τέλος
in fact which every art must possess. For if rhetoric
is the science of speaking well, its end and highest
aim is to speak well.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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