DISADVANTAGES OF DIVISIONS

There are reasons for not always using division, the principal reason being that most things are better received when seemingly of extempore invention and not suggestive of study, but arising in the pleading from the nature of the thing itself.  Whence such figures are not unpleasing as, “I had almost forgotten to say”; “It escaped my memory to acquaint you”; and “You have given me a good hint.”  For if the proofs should be proposed without something of a reputation of this kind, they would lose, in the sequel, all the graces of novelty.

The distinguishing of questions, and the discussing of them, should be equally avoided.  But the listeners’ passions ought to be excited, and their attention diverted from its former bias, for it is the orator’s business not so much to instruct as to enforce his eloquence by emotion, to which nothing can be more contrary than minute and scrupulously exact division of a discourse into parts.

WHEN THE DIVISION IS DESIRABLE

If many things are to be avoided or refuted, the division will be both useful and pleasing, causing everything to appear in the order in which it is to be said.  But if we defend a single crime by various ways, division will be superfluous, as, “I shall make it clear that the person I defend is not such as to make it seem probable that he could be guilty of murder; it shall also be shown that he had no motives to induce him to do it; and lastly, that he was across the sea when this murder took place.”  Whatever is cited and argued before the third point must seem quite unnecessary, for the judge is in haste to have you come to that which is of most consequence, and the patient, will tacitly call upon you to acquit yourself of your promise, or, if he has much business to dispatch, or his dignity puts him above your trifling, or he is of a peevish humor, he will oblige you to speak to the purpose, and perhaps do so in disrespectful terms.

PITFALLS IN ARGUMENT

Many doubt the desirability of this kind of defense:  “If I had killed him, I should have done well; but I did not kill him.”  Where is the occasion, say they, for the first proposition if the second be true?  They run counter to each other, and whoever advances both, will be credited in neither.  This is partly true, for if the last proposition be unquestionable, it is the only one that should be used.  But if we are apprehensive of anything in the stronger, we may use both.  On these occasions persons seem to be differently affected; one will believe the fact, and exculpate the right; another will condemn the right, and perhaps not credit the fact.  So, one dart may be enough for an unerring hand to hit the mark, but chance and many darts must effect the same result for an uncertain aim.  Cicero clears up this matter in his defense of Milo.  He first shows Clodius to be the aggressor, and then, by a superabundance of right, adds that tho he might not be the aggressor, it was brave and glorious in Milo to have delivered Rome of so bad a citizen.