Course XXXIII - Teaching 7: Reflections about the Application of the Above-Mentioned Rules

A contemporary writer said: “It is not an orator he who gets ready, arranges and classifies properly ideas, or he who produces them with harmony and graces of the eloquence by flattering ears and imagination at the same time, but he who possesses these two talents and knows how to reunite and practice them”. Add to this that eloquence may be good or bad, vice or virtue, angel or devil, according to certain object proposed or means used.
Solon’s severe eloquence is the contrary to Pisistratus’ sly and cunning eloquence, and Demosthenes’ immortal harangues are the contrary to Aeschines’ sophisticated and skillful harangues. All this should make reflect that orator and eloquence are instruments, means to serve with decorum to higher purposes; so, that ultimately meditations should be led to the content and meaning of the speech, and later to its form. To be careful with the former and to overlook the latter might mean that your work is rather for self-love than for loving God.
Before he starts speaking, the orator should reduce three things to a clear and definite formula, namely: where, or in which part of his speech, and how he must tell it. In case of improvisation, his intellectual operation should be immediate on these three points.
Remember that reading is quite recommendable, but without meditation is not so useful, and memory is a clock that if you do not wind it up, stops working. Gorgias said to beat a fateful trust of some beings in their “subconscious store”: “Memory is a servant who must be continuously remembered about his duties, otherwise he will forget them”.
In his “Book of Orators”, Timon says about an orator trusting his speech to his own memory, but presenting it as a sudden and spontaneous production: “He does not feel the inner god, the Pythoness’ god stirring and oppressing; he is a man of yesterday and not a man of here and now; he is a man of art and not a man of nature; in short, he is a comedian refusing to be such as he is when he is his own prompter, and trying to deceive them and even to deceive himself”.
It is also advantageous to write down extracts of your readings, because this method permits to save a lot of time and to create the habit of synthesis.