have laid them down:  Invention; Arrangement; Elocution; Memory; Delivery.  Invention, is the conceiving of topics either true or probable, which may make one’s cause appear probable; Arrangement, is the distribution of the topics which have been thus conceived with regular order; Elocution, is the adaptation of suitable words and sentences to the topics so conceived; Memory, is the lasting sense in the mind of the matters and words corresponding to the reception of these topics.  Delivery, is a regulating of the voice and body in a manner suitable to the dignity of the subjects spoken of and of the language employed.

Now, that these matters have been briefly defined, we may postpone to another time those considerations by which we may be able to elucidate the character and the duty and the object of this art; for they would require a very long argument, and they have no very intimate connexion with the definition of the art and the delivery of precepts relating to it.  But we consider that the man who writes a treatise on the art of rhetoric ought to write about two other subjects also; namely, about the materials of the art, and about its divisions.  And it seems, indeed, that we ought to treat of the materials and divisions of this art at the same time.  Wherefore, let us first consider what sort of quality invention ought to be, which is the most important of all the divisions, and which applies to every description of cause in which an orator can be engaged.

VIII.  Every subject which contains in itself any controversy existing either in language or in disputation, contains a question either about a fact, or about a name, or about a class, or about an action.  Therefore, that investigation out of which a cause arises we call a stating of a case.  A stating of a case is the first conflict of causes arising from a repulse of an accusation; in this way.  “You did so and so;”—­“I did not do so;”—­or, “it was lawful for me to do so.”  When there is a dispute as to the fact, since the cause is confirmed by conjectures, it is called a conjectural statement.  But when it is a dispute as to a name, because the force of a name is to be defined by words, it is then styled a definitive statement.  But when the thing which is sought to be ascertained is what is the character of the matter under consideration, because it is a dispute about violence, and about the character of the affair, it is called a general statement.  But when the cause depends on this circumstance, either that that man does not seem to plead who ought to plead, or that he does not plead with that man with whom he ought to plead, or that he does not plead before the proper people, at the proper time, in accordance with the proper law, urging the proper charge, and demanding the infliction of the proper penalty, then it is called a statement by way of demurrer; because the arguing of the case appears to stand in need of a demurrer and also of some alteration.  And some one or other of these sorts of statement must of necessity be incidental to every cause.  For if there be any one to which it is not incidental, in that there can be no dispute at all; on which account it has no right even to be considered a cause at all.