Part of these things refer to the design.  For the question is asked, whether the plan of executing this deed appears to have been one carefully devised and considered, or whether it was adopted so hastily that it is not likely that any one should have gone on to crime so rashly.  And in this inquiry we ask also whether the deed could have been done with equal ease in any other manner; or whether it could have happened by chance.  For very often if there has been a want of money, or means, or assistants, there would not appear to have been any opportunity of doing such a deed.  If we take careful notice in this way, we shall see that all these circumstances which are attributed to things, and those too which are attributed to persons, fit one another.  In this case it is neither easy nor necessary, as it is in the former divisions, to draw distinctions as to how the accuser and how the advocate for the defence ought to handle each topic.  It is not necessary, because, when the case is once stated, the circumstances themselves will teach those men, who do not expect to find everything imaginable in this treatise, what is suitable for each case; and they will apply a reasonable degree of understanding to the rules which are here laid down, in the way of comparing them with the systems of others.  And it is not easy, because it would be an endless business to enter into a separate explanation with respect to every portion of every case; and besides, these circumstances are adapted to each part of the case in different manners on different occasions.

XIV.  Wherefore it will be desirable to consider what we have now set forth.  And our mind will approach invention with more ease, if it often and carefully goes over both its own relation and that of the opposite party, of what has been done; and if, eliciting what suspicions each part gives rise to, it considers why, and with what intention, and with what hopes and plans, each thing was done.  Why it was done in this manner rather than in that; why by this man rather than by that; why it was done without any assistant, or why with this one; why no one was privy to it, or why somebody was, or why this particular person was; why this was done before; why this was not done before; why it was done in this particular instance; why it was done afterwards; what was done designedly, or what came as a consequence of the original action; whether the speech is consistent with the facts or with itself; whether this is a token of this thing, or of that thing, or of both this and that, and which it is a token of most; what has been done which ought not to have been done, or what has not been done which ought to have been done.