Phaedrus
perceive, makes no difference.
PHAEDRUS: You are making fun of that oration of ours.
SOCRATES: Well, I will say no more about your friend's speech lest I
should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many
other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed
to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students
of rhetoric.
PHAEDRUS: In what way?
SOCRATES: The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one
argued that the lover and the other that the non-lover ought to be
accepted.
PHAEDRUS: And right manfully.
SOCRATES: You should rather say 'madly;' and madness was the argument of
them, for, as I said, 'love is a madness.'
PHAEDRUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human
infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of
custom and convention.
PHAEDRUS: True.
SOCRATES: The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic,
initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the
first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the
third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the
description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be
the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we
introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true though partly erring
myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also
mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung
the hymn in measured and solemn strain.
PHAEDRUS: I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.
SOCRATES: Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made
from blame to praise.
PHAEDRUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in
these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which
we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us
one.
PHAEDRUS: What are they?
SOCRATES: First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea;
as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave
clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define
his several notions and so make his meaning clear.
PHAEDRUS: What is the other principle, Socrates?
SOCRATES: The second principle is that of division into species
according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any
part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed,
first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which
from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and
right side, each having parts right and left of the same name--after
this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side
and did not desist until he found in them an evil or left-handed love
which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the
madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the
same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded
and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.
PHAEDRUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and
generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any
man who is able to see 'a One and Many' in nature, him I follow, and
'walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.' And those who have this
art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God
knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what
name you would give to your or to Lysias' disciples, and whether this
may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others
teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to
any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, they are royal men; but their art is not the same
with the art of those whom you call, and rightly, in my opinion,
dialecticians:--Still we are in the dark about rhetoric.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? The remains of it, if there be anything
remaining which can be brought under rules of art, must be a fine thing;
and, at any rate, is not to be despised by you and me. But how much is
left?
PHAEDRUS: There is a great deal surely to be found in books of rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Yes; thank you for reminding me:--There is the exordium,
showing how the speech should begin, if I remember rightly; that is what
you mean--the niceties of the art?
PHAEDRUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses;
thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great
Byzantian word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation
and further confirmation.
PHAEDRUS: You mean the excellent Theodorus.
SOCRATES: Yes; and he tells how refutation or further refutation is to
be managed, whether in accusation or defence. I ought also to mention
the illustrious Parian, Evenus, who first invented insinuations and
indirect praises; and also indirect censures, which according to some
he put into verse to help the memory. But shall I 'to dumb forgetfulness
consign' Tisias and Gorgias, who are not ignorant that probability is
superior to truth, and who by force of argument make the little appear
great and the great little, disguise the new in old fashions and the old
in new fashions, and have discovered forms for everything, either short
or going on to infinity. I remember Prodicus laughing when I told him of
this; he said that he had himself discovered the true rule of art, which
was to be neither long nor short, but of a convenient length.
PHAEDRUS: Well done, Prodicus!
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.
PHAEDRUS: In what direction then?
SOCRATES: I conceive Pericles to have been the most accomplished of
rhetoricians.
PHAEDRUS: What of that?
SOCRATES: All the great arts require discussion and high speculation
about the truths of nature; hence come loftiness of thought and
completeness of execution. And this, as I conceive, was the quality