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Book 7 - Introduction
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Arrangement necessary to be studied, § 1-3. But no general rules can
be given with respect to it, 4.
1. OF Invention, I think, enough has been said, for I have not only treated of the mode of informing judges, but have touched on the art of exciting their feelings. But as it is not enough for those who are erecting edifices to collect stones, materials, and other things useful for the architect unless the hand of the workman be also applied to the disposition and collocation of them, so in speaking, however abundant be the quantity of matter, it will form but a confused mass and heap unless similar arrangement bind it together, disposed in regular order, and with its several parts connected one with another. 2. It is therefore not without reason that arrangement is considered the second of the five parts of oratory, for though all the limbs of a statue be cast, it is not a statue until they are united, and if, in our own bodies or those of any other animals, we were to displace or alter the position of any part, they would be but monsters, though they had the same number of parts. Even our joints, if but in the least degree dislocated, lose their whole use and power of action, and disorder in an army is an impediment to its efficiency. 3. Nor do those appear to be in the wrong who think that the system of the world is maintained by order, and that if its order were broken, it would cease to exist as a whole.
So speech, if deficient in that quality, must necessarily be confused and float like a ship without a helm. It can have no coherence; it must exhibit many repetitions and many omissions; and like a traveller wandering by night in unknown regions, must, as having no stated course or object, be guided by chance rather than design.
4. The whole of this book, therefore, shall be devoted to arrangement, a quality, which if it could be taught by rules adapted to every kind of subject, would not have fallen to the lot of so small a number of speakers. But as the forms of causes have been and ever will be infinite in variety, and as no one cause during so many ages has been found in all respects similar to another, the pleader must exercise his sagacity, his discernment, his invention, and his judgment, and must ask counsel from himself. Yet I do not deny that there are some things that may be taught by precept, and of these I shall not fail to treat.
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