Socrates: Then there is Hippias the Elean stranger, who probably agrees with him.
Phaedrus: Yes.
Socrates: And there is also Polus, who has treasuries of diplasiology, and gnomology, and eikonology, and who teaches in them the names of which Licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish.
Phaedrus: Had not Protagoras something of the same sort?
Socrates: Yes, rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts; for the “sorrows of a poor old man,” or any other pathetic case, no one is better than the Chalcedonian giant; he can put a whole company of people into a passion and out of one again by his mighty magic, and is first-rate at inventing or disposing of any sort of calumny on any grounds or none. All of them agree in asserting that a speech should end in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word.
Phaedrus: You mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them.
Socrates: I have now said all that I have to say of the art of rhetoric: have you anything to add?
Phaedrus: Not much; nothing very important.
Socrates: Leave the unimportant and let us bring the really important question into the light of day, which is: What power has this art of rhetoric, and when?
Phaedrus: A very great power in public meetings.
Socrates: It has. But I should like to know whether you have the same feeling as I have about the rhetoricians? To me there seem to be a great many holes in their web.
Phaedrus: Give an example.
Socrates: I will. Suppose a person to come to your friend Eryximachus, or to his father Acumenus, and to say to him: “I know how to apply drugs which shall have either a heating or a cooling effect, and I can give a vomit and also a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all this, as I do, I claim to be a physician and to make physicians by imparting this knowledge to others,”—what do you suppose that they would say?
Phaedrus: They would be sure to ask him whether he knew “to whom” he would give his medicines, and “when,” and “how much.”
Socrates: And suppose that he were to reply: “No; I know nothing of all that; I expect the patient who consults me to be able to do these things for himself”?
Phaedrus: They would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine.
Socrates: And suppose a person were to come to Sophocles or Euripides and say that he knows how to make a very long speech about a small matter, and a short speech about a great matter, and also a sorrowful speech, or a terrible, or threatening speech, or any other kind of speech, and in teaching this fancies that he is teaching the art of tragedy—?
Phaedrus: They too would surely laugh at him if he fancies that tragedy is anything but the arranging of these elements in a manner which will be suitable to one another and to the whole.
Socrates: But I do not suppose that they would be rude or abusive to him: Would they not treat him as a musician a man who thinks that he is a harmonist because he knows how to pitch the highest and lowest note; happening to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely, “Fool, you are mad!” But like a musician, in a gentle and harmonious tone of voice, he would answer: “My good friend, he who would be a harmonist must certainly know this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony if he has not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for you only know the preliminaries of harmony and not harmony itself.”
Phaedrus: Very true.
Socrates: And will not Sophocles say to the display of the would-be tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the preliminaries of tragedy? and will not Acumenus say the same of medicine to the would-be physician?
Phaedrus: Quite true.
Socrates: And if Adrastus the mellifluous or Pericles heard of these wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names which we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what would they say? Instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary epithets, as you and I have been doing, to the authors of such an imaginary art, their superior wisdom would rather censure us, as well as them. “Have a little patience, Phaedrus and Socrates, they would say; you should not be in such a passion with those who from some want of dialectical skill are unable to define the nature of rhetoric, and consequently suppose that they have found the art in the preliminary conditions of it, and when these have been taught by them to others, fancy that the whole art of rhetoric has been taught by them; but as to using the several instruments of the art effectively, or making the composition a whole—an application of it such as this is they regard as an easy thing which their disciples may make for themselves.”
Phaedrus: I quite admit, Socrates, that the art of rhetoric which these men teach and of which they write is such as you describe—there I agree with you. But I still want to know where and how the true art of rhetoric and persuasion is to be acquired.
Socrates: The perfection which is required of the finished orator is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else; partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by art. If you have the natural power and add to it knowledge and practice, you will be a distinguished speaker; if you fall short in either of these, you will be to that extent defective. But the art, as far as there is an art, of rhetoric does not lie in the direction of Lysias or Thrasymachus.