[16]
What then?—I am asked—will not a builder
speak better on the subject of building and a musician on music? Certainly, if the orator does not
know what is the question at issue. Even an illiterate peasant who is a party to a suit will speak
better on behalf of his case than an orator who does
not know what the subject in dispute may be. But
on the other hand if the orator receive instruction
from the builder or the musician, he will put forward what he has thus learned better than either,
just as he will plead a case better than his client,
once he has been instructed in it.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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