C. P. Certainly we must examine into them all, and seek them from all, but we must exercise our judgment in order at all times to reject what is trivial, and sometimes pass over even common topics, and those which are not necessary.
C. F. Since you have now answered me as to belief, I wish to hear your account of how one is to raise feelings.
C. P. It is a very reasonable question, but what you wish to know will be explained more clearly when I come to the system of orations and inquiries themselves.
C. F. What, then, comes next?
C. P. When, you have discovered your arguments, to arrange them properly, and in an extensive inquiry the order of the topics is very nearly that which I have set forth, but in a definite one, we must use those topics also which relate to exciting the required feelings in the minds of the hearers.
C. F. How, then, do you explain them?
C. P. I have general precepts for producing belief and exciting feelings. Since belief is a firm opinion, but feelings are an excitement of the mind either to pleasure, or to vexation, or to fear, or to desire, (for there are all these kinds of feelings, and many divisions of each separate genus,) I adapt all my arrangement to the object of the inquiry. For the end in a proposition is belief, in a cause, both belief and feeling wherefore, when I have spoken of the cause, in which proposition is involved, I shall have spoken of both.
C. F. What have you then to say about the cause?
C. P. That it is divided according to the divisions of hearers. For they are either listeners, who do nothing more than hear; or judges, that is to say, regulators both of the fact and of the decision; so as either to be delighted or to determine something. But he decides either concerning the past as a judge, or concerning the future as a senate. So there are three kinds,—one of judgment, one of deliberation, one of embellishment; and this last, because it is chiefly employed in panegyric, has its peculiar name from that.
IV. C. F. What objects shall the orator propose to himself in these three kinds of oratory?