efforts, this being his principal work and labor, since without it all
other resources are naked, hungry, weak, and unpleasing. The passions
are the very life and soul of persuasion.


QUALITIES NEEDED IN THE ORATOR

What we require in the orator is, in general, a character of goodness,
not only mild and pleasing, but humane, insinuating, amiable, and
charming to the hearer; and its greatest perfection will be if all, as
influenced by it, shall seem to flow from the nature of things and
persons, that so the morals of the orator may shine forth from his
discourse and be known in their genuine colors. This character of
goodness should invariably be maintained by those whom a mutual tie
ought to bind in strict union, whenever it may happen that they suffer
anything from each other, or pardon, or make satisfaction, or admonish,
or reprimand, but far from betraying any real anger or hatred.

A sentiment very powerful for exciting hatred may arise when an act of
submission to our opponents is understood as a silent reproach of their
insolence. Our willingness to yield must indeed show them to be
insupportable and troublesome, and it commonly happens that they who
have desire for railing, and are too free and hot in their invectives,
do not imagine that the jealousy they create is of far greater prejudice
to them than the malice of their speech.

All this presupposes that the orator himself ought to be a good and
humane man. The virtues which he commends, if he possibly can, in his
client, he should possess, or be supposed to possess, himself. In this
way will he be of singular advantage to the cause he undertakes, the