e from elocution, can not
constitute a speech.

It appears from Plato's Gorgias that he was far from regarding rhetoric
as an art of ill tendency, but that, rather it is, or ought to be, if
we were to conceive an adequate idea of it inseparable from virtue. This
he explains more clearly in his Phaedrus, where he says that "The art can
never be perfect without an exact knowledge and strict observance of
justice." I join him in this opinion, and if these were not his real
sentiments, would he have written an apology for Socrates and the
eulogium of those brave citizens who lost their lives in the defense of
their country? This is certainly acting the part of an orator, and if in
any respect he attacks the profession, it is on account of those who
make ill use of eloquence. Socrates, animated with the same spirit,
thought it unworthy of him to pronounce the speech Lysias had composed
for his defense, it being the custom of the orators of those times to
write speeches for arraigned criminals, which the latter pronounced in
their own defense; thus eluding the law that prohibited pleading for
another. Plato, likewise, in his Phaedrus, condemns the masters that
separated rhetoric from justice, and preferred probabilities to truth.

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