THE GIFT OF SPEECH

If, then, the beneficent Creator of the world has not imparted to us a
greater blessing than the gift of speech, what can we esteem more
deserving of our labor and improvement, and what object is more worthy
of our ambition than that of raising ourselves above other men by the
same means by which they raise themselves above beasts, so much the more
as no labor is attended with a more abundant harvest of glory? To be
convinced of this we need only consider by what degrees eloquence has
been brought to the perfection in which we now see it, and how far it
might still be perfected. For, not to mention the advantage and pleasure
a good man reaps from defending his friends, governing the Senate by his
counsels, seeing himself the oracle of the people, and master of armies,
what can be more noble than by the faculty of speaking and thinking,
which is common to all men, to erect for himself such a standard of
praise and glory as to seem to the minds of men not so much to discourse
and speak, but, like Pericles, to make his words thunder and lightning.

THE ART OF SPEAKING

There would be no end were I to expatiate to the limit of my inclination
on the subject of the gift of speech and its utility. I shall pass,
therefore, to the following question, "Whether rhetoric be an art?"
Those who wrote rules for eloquence doubted so little its being so, that
they prefixt no other title to their books than "The art of speaking."
Cicero says that what we call rhetoric is only an artificial eloquence.
If this were an opinion peculiar to orators, it might be thought that
they intended it as a mark of dignity attached to their studies, but
most philosophers, stoics as well as peripatetics, concur in this
opinion. I must confess I had some doubt about discussing this matter,
lest I might seem diffident of its truth; for who can be so devoid of
sense and knowledge as to find art in architecture, in weaving, in
pottery, and imagine that rhetoric, the excellence of which we have
already shown, could arrive at its present state of grandeur and
perfection without the direction of art? I am persuaded that those of
the contrary opinion were so more for the sake of exercising their wit
on the singularity of the subject than from any real conviction.

IS ELOQUENCE A GIFT OF NATURE?

Some maintain that rhetoric is a gift of nature, yet admit that it may
be helped by exercise. Antonius, in Cicero's books of the Orator, calls