Chapter 17: Concealment of Figures

It is worthwhile, my dear friend, not to omit one of the matters I have theorized about—but I shall be quite concise—that figures naturally ally themselves with sublimity and that they gain wonderfully from it. But where and how shall I phrase it? A readiness to accomplish everything by figures is by its own nature suspect and produces a sense of insinuation, of lying in wait, of plots, of deception; and this is so whenever the speech and writing is delivered before somebody who is to make a decision, most of all before tyrants, kings, or leaders in pre-eminent positions. Such a man, you see, is quite sore, if, like a senseless child, he is outsophisticated by a speaker who is a technician at figures, and, taking the deception for an insult, he sometimes goes completely wild, and even if he should prevail over his rage, he firms himself entirely against the persuasiveness of the speeches and writings. For just this reason it is the general opinion that a figure is most excellent when the fact that it is a figure thoroughly escapes our notice.

2. Now surely sublimity and emotion form a remedy and a wonderful kind of assistance against the suspicion of using figures, and the technique of being ready to do anything disappears amid the surrounding beauties and greatnesses and flees from all suspicion. What was said before is sufficient for inferring this: “I swear by those at Marathon….” You see, how has me speaker hidden his figure here? Manifestly in the light itself. Just as a faint gleam is almost made to disappear when the sun radiates all around it, so rhetorical contrivances grow faint when greatness is poured over them from all sides. 3. And something not different from this occurs in painting: although light and shadow are portrayed in colors on the same surface side by side, the light meets our eyes first, and not only is it more conspicuous, but it also appears to be much nearer. Now in speeches and writings, since emotion and sublimity lie nearer to our souls—because of a kind of natural kinship and because of their dazzling effect—over and over again they appear to us before the figures, and they cast technique into the shade and keep it hidden.