Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
But in our search for such questions we follow an order quite different from that which we employ in actual speaking. [*](cp. III. ix. 6. ) For that which as a rule occurs to us first, is just that which ought to come last in our speech: as for instance the conclusion,
You have no right to choose another man's wife.Consequently undue haste will spoil our division of the subject. We must not therefore be content with the thoughts that first offer themselves, but should press our inquiry further till we reach conclusions such as that he ought not even to choose a widow: a further advance is made when we reach the conclusion that be should choose nothing that is private property, or last of all we may go back to the question next in order to the general question, and conclude that he should choose nothing inequitable.
Consequently after surveying our opponent's proposition, an easy task, we should consider, if possible, what it is most natural to answer first. And, if we imagine the case as being actually pleaded and ourselves as under the necessity of making a reply, that answer will probably suggest itself. On the other hand,
if this is impossible, we should put aside whatever first occurs to us and reason with ourselves as follows:
What if this were not the case?We must then repeat the process a second and a third time and so on, until nothing is left for consideration. Thus we shall examine even minor points, by our treatment of which we may perhaps make the judge all the better disposed to us when we come to the main issue.
The rule that we should descend from the common to the particular is much the same, since
He killed a tyrantis common, while
A tyrant was killed by his son, by a woman or by his wifeare all particular.