Declamation of the Philosopher, Physician, and Orator

...most useful of arts, and you shall assign me my paternal inheritance. I have spoken.

You have heard, most esteemed gentlemen, what the philosopher and what, after the philosopher, the physician have said in the matter of acquiring their paternal inheritance. Now, listen diligently and pay attention, and consider with your customary courtesy what the orator has said in this final place. I believe these things will be neither unpleasant to relate, nor unwelcome to hear, nor unworthy of knowing. You may believe that the Orator has conducted his case thus.

Never, judges, have I felt more strongly how great is the power and excellence of the oratorical faculty than on this day, while I hear my brothers pleading their case, having been instructed not by the tools of philosophy or medicine, but by the supplies of Oratory. So much so that the philosopher’s philosophy and the physician’s medicine provided them no help in conducting their case. Indeed, they would have remained almost mute and silent had they not fled to the supports of our eloquence, without whose luster philosophy grows dim and medicine becomes obsolete. All disciplines left uncultivated grow rusty. Eloquence is so necessary and useful to all professors of the liberal arts that its utility and majesty can be compared to nothing far be it that envy should touch these words. And because I must first deal with my brother the philosopher: shall I contend with philosophy through oratory, or the philosopher through the orator? I am forced to treat you more sparingly and gently because you are my brother, but nevertheless, whatever may have been said between us, that illustrious philosophy of yours, which you, my brother, boast of so gloriously and kiss as if it were a little child, is by no means as great as you wish it to appear. Nor is there as much study of wisdom in philosophy as there is opinion. For since knowledge is of the certain, and opinion is of the uncertain, the schools and sects of all philosophers, while they philosophize, undoubtedly speculate. For everyone speculates about that which he does not know. Those, moreover, who dispute about natural and celestial things are led by opinion. Since truth lies hidden, submerged in the secret places of nature, we know that philosophers are called "speculators," "opinionated," and "most full of opinions" by brilliant writers. And whence, I ask, except from opinion, have so many dissensions and so many conflicts of the philosophers arisen, and so many discordant sects? I will speak, not for the sake of obstruction, but because this is how the matter stands. Philosophers fight among themselves and differ with no small disagreement on great and serious matters. Some maintain that water is the principle of things, like Thales of Miletus. Others, fire, like Heraclitus, byname scotinius the dark one. Some, air, like Anaximenes. Pythagoras, indeed, Empedocles, Epicarinus, and several other natural philosophers have posited that the four elements are the principle of things. Plato holds that God is the maker of the world.

Praise of eloquence

Against the philosopher.

Opinionated philosophers:

Thales