Two Books of the Elements of Rhetoric

which species pertain to which kind. To the Demonstrative kind pertains the act of thanksgiving: for we praise a benefit. Such is the oration for M. Marcellus. Under the Deliberative kind should be placed petitions, recommendations, deprecations, consolations, reproaches, and many other species, which Erasmus reviews in his On the Method of Writing Letters.

TO WHAT END IT SERVES

to know the kind of cause.

So that adolescents may know when they ought to consult the topics of invention, let them first remember this: the topics do not contribute to finding the business or the first question. For times offer the business, as a litigant brings a case to a lawyer. For one teaching in the Church, a certain material is prescribed in the sacred letters, which he ought to explain. In writing letters, various occasions offer various arguments. Therefore, no art is handed down, no precepts are given, about finding business; those things offer themselves voluntarily, and even pursue us as we flee. And the whole art was devised for this purpose, not so that we might seek idle materials for the sake of play, but so that we might explain the grave, great, and obscure causes which the Republic offers to us. Therefore, when a business has been offered, here first the art must be consulted, and from the beginning one must think,