to give the
necessary instruction if he found time to do so. It is not the object
of this chapter to explain the meaning of rhetoric as the Graeco-Roman
world then understood it, or the theory of a rhetorical education;
for this the reader must be referred to Professor Wilkins' little
book,[298] or, better still, to the main source of our knowledge, the
_Institutio Oratoris_ of Quintilian. Something may, however, be said
here of the view taken of a rhetorical training by Cicero himself,
very clearly expressed in the exordium of the treatise just mentioned,
and often more or less directly reiterated in his later and more
mature works on oratory.

"After much meditation," he says, "I have been led to the conclusion
that wisdom without eloquence is of little use to a state, while
eloquence without wisdom is often positively harmful, and never of any
value. Thus if a man, abandoning the study of reason and duty, which
is always perfectly straight and honourable, spends his whole time in
the practice of speaking, he is being brought up to be a hindrance
to his own development, and a dangerous citizen." This reminds us of
Cato's saying that an orator is "vir bonus dicendi peritus." Less
strongly expressed, the same view is also found in the exordium of
another and more mature treatise on rhetoric, by an author whose name
is unknown, written a year or two before that of Cicero: "Non enim
parum in se fructus habet copia dicendi et commoditas orationis, si
recta intelligentia et definita animi moderatione gubernetur."[299]
We may assume that in Cicero's early years the best men felt that the
rhetorical art, if it were to be of real value to the individual and
the state, must be used with discretion, and accompanied by high aims
and upright conduct.

Yet within a generation of the date when these wise words were
written, the letters of Caelius show us that the art was used utterly
without discretion, and to the detriment both of state and individual.
The high ideal of culture and conduct had been lost in the actual
practice of oratory, in a degenerate age, full of petty ambitions
and animosities. We ourselves know only too well how a thing good in
itself as a means is apt to lose its value if raised into the place of
an end;--how the young mind is apt to elevate cricket, football, golf,
into the main object of all human activity. So it was with rhetoric;
it was the indispensable acquirement to enable a man to enjoy
thoroughly