|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: either by nature or habit, he who would be a skilful rhetorician has no
need of truth--for that in courts of law men literally care nothing about
truth, but only about conviction: and this is based on probability, to
which he who would be a skilful orator should therefore give his whole
attention. And they say also that there are cases in which the actual
facts, if they are improbable, ought to be withheld, and only the
probabilities should be told either in accusation or defence, and that
always in speaking, the orator should keep probability in view, and say
good-bye to the truth. And the observance of this principle throughout a
speech furnishes the whole art.
PHAEDRUS: That is what the professors of rhetoric do actually say,
|
