[39]
“But,” they say,
“he does not know whether the cause which he has
undertaken is true.” But not even a doctor can tell
whether a patient who claims to be suffering from a
headache, really is so suffering: but he will treat him
on the assumption that his statement is true, and
medicine will still be an art. Again what of the fact
that rhetoric does not always aim at telling the truth,
but always at stating what is probable? The answer
is that the orator knows that what he states is no
more than probable.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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