16. There follows the question as to whether
rhetoric is useful. Some are in the habit of
denouncing it most violently and of shamelessly
employing the powers of oratory to accuse oratory
itself.
[2]
“It is eloquence” they say “that snatches
criminals from the penalties of the law, eloquence
that from time to time secures the condemnation of the innocent and leads deliberation astray,
eloquence that stirs up not merely sedition and
popular tumult, but wars beyond all expiation, and
that is most effective when it makes falsehood prevail
over the truth.”
[3]
The comic poets even accuse
Socrates of teaching how to make the worse cause
seem the better, while Plato says that Gorgias and
Tisias made similar professions.
[4]
And to these they
add further examples drawn from the history of
Rome and Greece, enumerating all those who used
their pernicious eloquence not merely against individuals but against whole states and threw an ordered
commonwealth into a state of turmoil or even brought
it to utter ruin; and they point out that for this
very reason rhetoric was banished from Sparta, while
its powers were cut down at Athens itself by the fact
that an orator was forbidden to stir the passions of
his audience.
[5]
On the showing of these critics not only
orators but generals, magistrates, medicine and
[p. 321]
philosophy itself will all be useless. For Flaminius was a
general, while men such as the Gracchi, Saturninus
and Glaucia were magistrates. Doctors have been
caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the
name of philosopher have occasionally been detected
in the gravest crimes.
[6]
Let us give up eating, it
often makes us ill; let us never go inside houses,
for sometimes they collapse on their occupants;
let never a sword be forged for a soldier, since
it might be used by a robber. And who does
not realise that fire and water, both necessities of
life, and, to leave mere earthly things, even the sun
and moon, the greatest of the heavenly bodies, are
occasionally capable of doing harm.
[7]
On the other hand will it be denied that it was
by his gift of speech that Appius the Blind broke
off the dishonourable peace which was on the point
of being concluded with Pyrrhus? Did not the
divine eloquence of Cicero win popular applause
even when he denounced the Agrarian laws,1 did it
not crush the audacious plots of Catiline and win,
while he still wore the garb of civil life, the highest
honour that can be conferred on a victorious general,
a public thanksgiving to heaven?
[8]
Has not oratory
often revived the courage of a panic-stricken army
and persuaded the soldier faced by all the perils of
war that glory is a fairer thing than life itself? Nor
shall the history of Sparta and Athens move me
more than that of the Roman people, who have
always held the orator in highest honour.
[9]
Never in
my opinion would the founders of cities have induced their unsettled multitudes to form communities had they not moved them by the magic of their
eloquence: never without the highest gifts of oratory
[p. 323]
would the great legislators have constrained mankind to submit themselves to the yoke of law.
[10]
Nay,
even the principles which should guide our life,
however fair they may be by nature, yet have greater
power to mould the mind to virtue, when the beauty
of things is illumined by the splendour of eloquence.
Wherefore, although the weapons of oratory may
be used either for good or ill, it is unfair to regard
that as an evil which can be employed for good.
[11]
These problems, however, may be left to those
who hold that rhetoric is the power to persuade. If
our definition of rhetoric as the science of speaking
well implies that an orator must be a good man,
there can be no doubt about its usefulness.
[12]
And
in truth that god, who was in the beginning, the
father of all things and the architect of the universe,
distinguished man from all other living creatures
that are subject to death, by nothing more than
this, that he gave him the gift of speech.
[13]
For as
regards physical bulk, strength, robustness, endurance or speed, man is surpassed in certain cases by
dumb beasts, who also are far more independent of
external assistance. They know by instinct without
need of any teacher how to move rapidly, to feed
themselves and swim.
[14]
Many too have their bodies
clothed against cold, possess natural weapons and
have not to search for their food, whereas in all
these respects man's life is full of toil. Reason
then was the greatest gift of the Almighty, who
willed that we should share its possession with the
immortal gods.
[15]
But reason by itself would help us
but little and would be far less evident in us, had
we not the power to express our thoughts in speech;
for it is the lack of this power rather than thought
[p. 325]
and understanding, which they do to a certain extent possess, that is the great defect in other living
things.
[16]
The construction of a soft lair, the weaving
of nests, the hatching and rearing of their young, and
even the storing up of food for the coming winter,
together with certain other achievements which we
cannot imitate, such as the making of honey and
wax, all these perhaps indicate the possession of a
certain degree of reason; but since the creatures that
do these things lack the gift of speech they are called
dumb and unreasoning beasts.
[17]
Finally, how little
the heavenly boon of reason avails those who are
born dumb. If therefore we have received no fairer
gift from heaven than speech, what shall we regard
as so worthy of laborious cultivation, or in what
should we sooner desire to excel our fellow-men,
than that in which mankind excels all other living
things?
[18]
And we should be all the more eager to do
so, since there is no art which yields a more grateful
recompense for the labour bestowed upon it. This
will be abundantly clear if we consider the origins
of oratory and the progress it has made; and it is
capable of advancing still further.
[19]
I will not stop
to point out how useful and how becoming a task it is
for a good man to defend his friends, to guide the
senate by his counsels, and to lead peoples or armies
to follow his bidding; I merely ask, is it not a
noble thing, by employing the understanding which
is common to mankind and the words that are used
by all, to win such honour and glory that you seem
not to speak or plead, but rather, as was said of
Pericles, to thunder and lighten?2
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