Natural Ability
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 5 anchored passages
natural aptitude · capacity · native ability · natural ability · natural gifts · talent · well endowed by nature
in the texts
Against the Sophists
Innate talent that Isocrates holds to be a necessary ingredient, alongside training and practice, for skill in oratory and other pursuits.
For ability, whether in speech or in any other activity, is found in those who are well endowed by nature and have been schooled by practical experience.
But it cannot fully fashion men who are without natural aptitude into good debaters or writers, although it is capable of leading them on to self-improvement and to a greater degree of intelligence on many subjects.
More than that, they do not attribute any of this power either to the practical experience or to the native ability of the student, but undertake to transmit the science of discourse as simply as they would teach the letters of the alphabet, not having taken trouble to examine into the nature of each kind of knowledge, but thinking that because of the extravagance of their promises they themselves …
Antidosis
Inborn capacity for learning, speaking, memory, and public confidence, treated as necessary but not sufficient.
Some of them say that the profession of the sophist is nothing but sham and chicane, maintaining that no kind of education has ever been discovered which can improve a man’s ability to speak or his capacity for handling affairs, and that those who excel in these respects owe their superiority to natural gifts;
I say to them that if they are to excel in oratory or in managing affairs or in any line of work, they must, first of all, have a natural aptitude for that which they have elected to do;
If anyone, ignoring the other arts, were to ask me which of these factors has the greatest power in the education of an orator I should answer that natural ability is paramount and comes before all else.