the second art, as a remedy that is to be used to fupprefs falfhood, injustice, and the like disorders among the citizens: for, by it law-fuits are determined; and crimes are punished. so that moral philosophy serves to prevent evil; and the knowledge of the laws and constitution, to punish it. there are likewise two arts for managing the body; the gymnaftic art, which by due exercise and temperance, renders it healthy, active, vigorous, and graceful; (for, you know, Sir, the antients made a wonderful use of this art; which we have now quite loft;) and the knowledge of phyfic which cures the body, when its health is loft, or impaired. the gymnastic art affifts the body, as moral philofophy doth the foul; namely to form, and improve it: and skill in medicine is helpful to the body, as the knowledge of the laws is to the mind; for correcting and curing diforders. but this wife institution was altered, fays Socrates: instead of a folid practical philofophy, we have only the vain fubtilty of wrangling fophifts: a fet of fpurious philofophers who abuse reafon: and, having no fenfe of public good, aim only at promoting their own selfish ends. instead of attaining a thorough infight into the national laws, people are amused and misled by vain-glorious oftentation of these rhetoricians, who endeavour only to please and dazzle the mind: and instead of recommending the knowledge of the public constitution, and the administration of juftice, (which being the medicine of the foul, fhould be pro applyed to cure its diforderly paffions,) thefe falfe orators think of nothing but how to spread their own reputation, and with regard to the body, (fays Socrates) the gymnastic art begins to be exchanged for skill in drefs; which gives the body but false deceitful ornaments. whereas we ought to defire only fuch a natural comeliness as refults from health of body, and due portion of its members; which must be acquired and preferved by temperance and exercise. the proper and feafonable ufe of medicine is likewife laid afide to make room for delicious dishes, and fuch palatable things as raise and enfnare the appetite. and instead of carrying off gross humours from the body by proper evacuations, to restore its health; nature is clogged and overcharged; and a false appetite is excited by all the various ways of luxury and intemperance, he farther obferves, that thofe orators, who in order to cure men, should have given them bitter phyfic, and with authority have inculcated the most disagreeable truths; have on the contrary done for the mind, what cooks do for the body: their rhetoric is only an art of dreffing up delicacies to gratify the corrupted tafte of the people. all their concern is to pleafe and footh them, by railing their curiosity and admiration. for, these declaimers harangue only for themselves. he concludes his remarks with asking, where are thofe citizens whom the rhetoricians have cured of their vicious habits? whom have they made fober and virtuous? thus Socrates describes : the general disorders, and corruption of manners that prevailed in his time. but does he not talk like † one of the prefent age, who obferves what paffes among us; and speaks of the abuses that reign in our own days? now you have heard the fentiments of this wife heathen what do you fay of that eloquence which tends only to please, and give pretty defcriptions; when (as he fays) we ought to cauterize, and cut to the quick; and earnestly endeavour to cure people's minds by the bitternefs of remedies, and the severity of an abstemious diet? I appeal to your own judgment in this cafe: if you were fick, would you be pleased with a physician, who in the extremity of your illness should wafte his time, and amuse you with explaining to you some fine hypothefis in an elegant stile; instead of making perti +-- The ornaments of speak- | ing-----are much degenerated from their original usefulness. they were at firft, no doubt, an admirable inftrument in the hands of wife men, when they were only employed to defcribe goodness, honesty, obedience; in larger, fairer, and more moving images; to represent truth cloathed with bodies; and to bring knowledge back again to our very fenfes, whence it was at firft derived to our under standing. but now they are generally changed to worse uses: they make the fancy disgust the best things, if they come found and unadorned: they are in open defiance against reason; profeffing not to hold much correfpondence with that; but with its flaves, the paffions: they give the mind a motion too changeable and bewitching, to confift with right practice.---Bishop Sprat's hift. of the royal fociety, p. 111, 11k. nent inquiries into the cause, and symptoms of your diftempers; and prescribing suitable remedies? or, in a trial at law, where your estate, or your life were at stake, what would you think of your lawyer, if he should play the wit in your defence, and fill his pleading with flowers of rhetoric and quaint turns, instead of arguing with gravity, strength of reason, and earneftness, to gain your cause? our natural love of life, and well-being, fhows us plainly the abfurdity of falfe oratory, and of the unfeasonable oftentation of it, in fuch cafes as I have now mentioned: but we are fo ftrangely unconcerned about religion, and the moral conduct of life, that we do not obferve the fame ridicule in careless, vain-glorious orators; who yet ought to be the spiritual physicians and cenfors of the people. indeed the fentiments of Socrates on this fubject ought to make us ashamed. B. I perceive clearly enough that, according to your reafoning, orators ought to be the defenders of the laws, and instructors of the people to teach them true wisdom and virtue. but among the Romans the rhetoric of the bar was otherwise employed. A. That was certainly the end of it. for, when orators had not occafion to represent in their discourses, the general wants of the republic: they were obliged to protect innocence, and the rights of particular perfons. and it was on this account that their profeffion was fo much honoured; and that Tully gives us fuch at lofty character of a true orator. B. Let us hear then how orators ought to speak. I long to know your thoughts on this point: seeing you deny the finical, florid manner of Ifocrates, which is fo much admired and imitated by others. A. Instead of giving you my own opinion, I fhall go on to lay before you the rules that the antients give us: but I fhall only touch upon the chief points: for, I fuppofe, you do not expect that I should enter into an endless detail of the precepts of rhetoric. there are but too many useless ones; which you must have read in those books where they are copiously explained. it will be enough if we confider the most important rules. Plato in his Phaedrus fhews us, that the greatest fault Neque vero mihi quidquam praeftabilius videtur, quam poffe dicendo tenere hominum coetus, mentes allicere, voluntates compellere quo velit ; unde autem velit, deducere. haec una res in omni libero populo, maximeque in pacatis tranquillifque civitatibus praecipue femper floruit, femperque dominata est. quid enim eft aut tam admirabile, quam ex infinita multitudine hominum exiftere unum, qui id quod omnibus natura fit da tum, vel folus, vel cum paucis facere poffit?-----aut tam potens, tamque magnificum, quam populi motus, judicum religiones, fenatus gravitatem, unius oratione converti?----ac ne plura, quae funt pene innumerabilia, confecter, comprehendam brevi: fic enim statuo, perfecti oratoris moderatione, et fapientia, non folum ipfius dignitatem, fed et privatorum plurimorum, et univerfae reipublicae falutem maxime contineri-Cic. de Orat, lib. i. §. 8. |