[30]
The point, however, that gives rise to the greatest
number of these captious accusations against rhetoric,
is found in the allegation that orators speak indifferently on either side of a case. From which they
draw the following arguments: no art is self-contradictory, but rhetoric does contradict itself; no art
tries to demolish what itself has built, but this does
happen in the operations of rhetoric; or again:—
rhetoric teaches either what ought to be said or what
ought not to be said; consequently it is not an art
because it teaches what ought not to be said, or
because, while it teaches what ought to be said, it
also teaches precisely the opposite.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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