Chapter 2: Nature and Technique

But we are to investigate at the beginning whether there is a technique for sublimity or profundity, for some think that those who reduce such matters to handbooks of technical pronouncements are on the whole misled. You see, they say that things great in nature are innate and not teachable; that nature is the only technique for getting them: the workings of nature are made worse and more wretched when reduced to the bare bones by technical handbooks. 2. But I declare that it will be proven otherwise, if anyone would look to see for himself that in passages that are emotional and lofty nature often loves to be a rule unto herself and does not love to be random and without an orderly way of presenting things; and that it is nature which underlies all things as a kind of first element and archetype of creating, though technique is sufficient to know “how much” to say and the right moment in each case and also to provide a fixed discipline and usage; and that great things are subject to danger when left alone by themselves, apart from knowledge, unsteady like ships without ballast, left to impulse and unlearned audacity; as they ought to have the spur, so ought they to have the bridle. 3. Just what Demosthenes used to say about the common life of mankind—that good luck is thew greatest of goods, but second, no less important, is making good plans (and if the second is not present, it will entirely remove the value of good luck)—I would say about speeches and writings: nature has charge of good luck, technique of good planning. But what is most important is that we can learn from no other source than technique what in speeches and writings depends wholly on nature. If, as I declare, he who looks down on those engaged in useful learning would make for himself a peroration of these things, he would no longer consider theorizing on the subject “too much” and useless