Such are the definitions of rhetoric which have been principally set
forth. To go through all of them is not my purpose, nor do I think it
possible, as most writers on arts have shown a perverse dislike for
defining things as others do or in the same terms as those who wrote
before them. I am far from being influenced by a like spirit of
ambition, and far from flattering myself with the glory of invention,
and I shall rest content with that which seems most rational, that
rhetoric is properly defined as "The science of speaking well." Having
found what is best, it is useless to seek further.

Accepting this definition, therefore, it will be no difficult matter to
ascertain its end, for if it be "The science of speaking well," then "to
speak well" will be the end it proposes to itself.


THE USE OF RHETORIC

The next question is on the utility of rhetoric, and from this point of
view some direct the bitterest invectives against it, and what is very
unbecoming, exert the force of eloquence against eloquence, saying that
by it the wicked are freed from punishment, and the innocent opprest by
its artifices; that it perverts good counsel, and enforces bad; that it
foments troubles and seditions in States; that it arms nations against
each other, and makes them irreconcilable enemies; and that its power is
never more manifest than when error and lies triumph over truth.

Comic poets reproach Socrates with teaching how to make a bad cause
good, and Plato represents Lysias and Gorgias boasting the same thing.
To these may be added several examples of Greeks and Romans, and a long
list of orators whose eloquence was not only the ruin of private