The next objection is not one so much in reality as it is a mere cavil;
that "Art never assents to false opinions, because it can not be
constituted as such without precepts, which are always true; but
rhetoric assents to what is false, therefore it is not an art." I admit
that sometimes rhetoric says false things instead of true, but it does
not follow that it assents to what is false. There is a wide difference
between assenting to a falsehood, and making others assent to it. So it
is that a general of an army often has recourse to stratagems. When
Hannibal perceived himself to be blocked up by Fabius, he ordered
faggots of brush-wood to be fastened about the horns of some oxen, and
fire being set to the faggots, had the cattle driven up the mountains in
the night, in order to make the enemy believe he was about to decamp.
But this was only a false alarm, for he himself very well knew what his
scheme was. When Theopompus the Spartan, by changing clothes with his
wife, made his escape out of prison, the deception was not imposed upon
himself, but upon his guards. Thus, when an orator speaks falsehood
instead of truth, he knows what he is about; he does not yield to it
himself, his intention being to deceive others. When Cicero boasted that
he threw darkness on the minds of the judges, in the cause of Cluentius,
could it be said that he himself was unacquainted with all the
intricacies of his method of confusing their understanding of the facts?
Or shall a painter who so disposes his objects that some seem to project
from the canvas, others to sink in, be supposed not to know that they
are all drawn on a plain surface?