Polus: I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric?
Socrates: Do you mean what sort of an art?
Polus: Yes.
Socrates: To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my opinion.
Polus: Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?
Socrates: A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of yours, you say that you have made an art.
Polus: What thing?
Socrates: I should say a sort of experience.
Polus: Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience?
Socrates: That is my view, but you may be of another mind.
Polus: An experience in what?
Socrates: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification.
Polus: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be a fine thing?
Socrates: What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is?
Polus: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience?
Socrates: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight gratification to me?
Polus: I will.
Socrates: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?
Polus: What sort of an art is cookery?
Socrates: Not an art at all, Polus.
Polus: What then?
Socrates: I should say an experience.
Polus: In what? I wish that you would explain to me.
Socrates: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification, Polus.
Polus: Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?