Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

Definite questions involve facts, persons, time and the like. The Greeks call them hypotheses, while we call them causes. In these the whole question turns on persons and facts.

An indefinite question is always the more comprehensive, since it is from the indefinite question that the definite is derived. I will illustrate what I mean by an example. The question

Should a man marry?

is indefinite; the question

Should Cato marry?

is definite, and consequently may be regarded as a subject for a deliberative theme. But even those which have no connexion with particular persons are generally given a specific reference. For instance the question

Ought we to take a share in the government of our country?

is abstract, whereas

Ought we to take part in the government of our country under the sway of a tyrant?

has a specific reference.

But in this latter case we may say that a person is tacitly implied. For the mention of a tyrant doubles the question, and there is an implicit admission of time and quality; but all the same you would scarcely be justified in calling it a cause or definite question. Those questions which I have styled indefinite are also called general: if this is correct, we shall have to call definite questions special questions. But in every special question the general question is implicit, since the genus is logically prior to the species.

And perhaps even in actual causes wherever the notion of quality comes into question, there is a certain intrusion of

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the abstract.

Milo killed Clodius: he was justified in killing one who lay in wait for him.

Does not this raise the general question as to whether we have the right to kill a man who lies in wait for us? What again of conjectures? May not they be of a general character, as for instance,

What was the motive for the crime? hatred? covetousness?

Are we justified in believing confessions made under torture?

Which should carry greater weight, evidence or argument?

As for definitions, everything that they contain is undoubtedly of a general nature.