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Book 2 - Chapter 18
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Arts or sciences are of three kinds; rhetoric is a practical art or science, § 1, 2. Partakes of the nature of arts of other kinds, 3-5.
1. BUT some arts consist merely in an insight into things, that is, knowledge of them and judgment concerning them, such as astronomy, which requires no act, but is confined to a mere understanding of the matters that form the subject of it, a sort of art which is called θεωρητική (theoretikē). Others consist of action, the object of which lies in the act and is fulfilled in it, leaving nothing produced from it, a sort of art which is called πρακτική (praktikē), as dancing. 2. Others consist in production, which attain their end in the execution of the work which is submitted to the eye, a sort which we call ποητική (poetikē), as painting. We may pretty safely determine that oratory consists in act, for it accomplishes in the act all that it has to do. Such indeed has been the judgment pronounced upon it by everyone.
3. To me, however, it appears to partake greatly of the other sort of arts, for the subject of it may sometimes be restricted to contemplation, since there will be oratory in an orator even though he be silent, and if, either designedly or from being disabled by any accident, he has ceased to plead, he will not cease to be an orator more than a physician who has left off practice ceases to a physician. 4. There is some enjoyment, and perhaps the greatest of all enjoyments, in retired meditation, and the pleasure derived from knowledge is pure when it is withdrawn from action, that is, from toil and enjoys the calm contemplation of itself. 5. But oratory will also effect something similar to a productive art in written speeches and historical compositions, a kind of writing which we justly consider as allied to oratory. Yet if it must be classed as one of the three sorts of arts which I have mentioned, let it, as its performance consists chiefly in the mere act and as it is most frequently exhibited in act, be called an active or a practical art, for the one term is of the same signification as the other.
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