Legal and practical rhetoric

Today, rhetoric appears not only as a science of the future, but also as a fashionable science, on the borders of structuralism, new criticism and semiology. However, as rhetoric itself, as a whole, addresses little more than appearance and opinion, diction must be treated with some care, not as good in itself, but as necessary. Without doubt, perfection would be to confine oneself, when speaking, to causing one's listeners neither pain nor pleasure, and to asking for one's weapons and victory only from the things themselves, so that everything outside the demonstration becomes absolutely useless. But unfortunately, all these accessories exert an enormous influence and it is, I repeat, because the listeners are corrupted. There is no teaching in which diction and style do not necessarily play a small part, because as long as you're demonstrating something, it's not unimportant to express yourself in one way or another.