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Start listening today at P-O-D-C-A-S-T-L-I-D-R-A-R-Y. Dot-O-R-G. Section 9. Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were proposing?
Very good. In good speaking should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is going to speak. And yet Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator, has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment, nor with a truly good or honorable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth. The words of the wise are not to be set aside, for there is probably something in them, and therefore the meaning of this saying is not hastily to be dismissed.
Very true. Let us put them back to thus. Suppose that I persuaded you to buy a horse and go to the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals, the one which has the longest ears.
That would be ridiculous. There is something more ridiculous coming. Suppose further that in sober earnest I, having persuaded you of this, went and composed a speech in honor of an ass, whom I entitled a horse, beginning, a noble animal, and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything. How ridiculous!
Ridiculous, yes, but is not even a ridiculous friend better than a cunning enemy. Certainly, and when the orator, instead of putting an ass in the place of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant, and having studied the notions of the multitude falsely persuades them not about the shadow of an ass, which he confounds with a horse, but about good which he confounds with evil. What will be the harvest which rhetoric will be likely to gather after the sowing of that seed? The reverse of good.
But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer, what amazing nonsense you are talking, as if I forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth. Whatever my advice may be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth first, and then come to me. At the same time, I boldly assert that mere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion. There is reason in the latest events of herself.
Quite true, if only the other arguments, which remain to be brought up, bear her witness that she is an art at all. But I seem to hear them arraying themselves on the opposite side, declaring that she speaks falsely, and that rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an art. Low, a Spartan appears, and says that there never is, nor ever will be a real art of speaking, which is divorced from the truth. And what are these arguments, Socrates?
Bring them out that we may examine them. Calm out fair children, and convince Fydrus, who is the father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about anything as he ought to speak, unless he have a knowledge of philosophy, and let Fydrus answer you. Put the question, is not rhetoric taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments, which is practiced not only in courts and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right and equally to be esteemed. That is what you have heard.
May not exactly that. I should say rather that I have heard the art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in public assemblies not extended farther. Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palomides. No more than of Nestor and Odysseus, unless Gorgias is your Nestor and Prasimachus or theodorus your Odysseus.
Perhaps that is my meaning, but let us leave them, and do you tell me instead, what are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law court? Are they not contending? Exactly so. About the just and unjust.
That is the matter in dispute. Yes. And a professor of the art will make the same thing appear to the same persons to be at one time just at another time, if he is so inclined to be unjust. Exactly.
And when he speaks in the assembly, he will make the same thing seem good to the city at one time, and at another time the reverse of good. That is true. Have we not heard of the Eliatic Palomides, Zeno, who has an art of speaking by which he makes the same things appear to his heroes like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion? Very true.
The art of disputation then is not confined to the court, sound the assembly, but is one and the same in every use of language. This is the art. If there be such an art, which is able to find a likeness of everything to which a likeness can be found, and draws into the light of day, the likenesses and disguises which are used by others. How do you mean?
Let me put the matter thus. When will there be more chance of deception, when the difference is large or small? And you will be less likely to be discovered in passing by degrees into the other extreme than when you go all at once. Of course, he then who would deceive others and not be deceived must exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things.
He must. And if he is ignorant of the true nature of any subject, how can he detect the greater or less degree of likeness in other things do that of which, for the most part, the most part of the world. And if he does not do that of which, by the hypothesis, he is ignorant. He cannot.
And when men are deceived and then notions are at variance with realities, it is clear that the error slips in through resemblances. Yes, that is the way. Then he who would be a master of the art must understand the real nature of everything, or he will never know either how to make the gradual departure from truth into the opposite of truth, which is affected by the help of resemblances, or how to avoid it. He will not.
He then, who being ignorant of the truth, aims at appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric which is ridiculous and is not an art at all. That may be expected. Shall I propose that we look for examples of art and ones of art according to our notion of them in the speech of Lucius, which you have in your hand, and in my own speech? Nothing could be better, and indeed I think that our previous argument has been too abstract and wanting in illustrations.
Yes, and the two speeches happen to afford a very good example of the way in which the speaker who knows the truth may, without any serious purpose, steal away the hearts of his hearers. This piece of good fortune I attribute to the local deities, and perhaps the prophets of the muses who are singing over our heads may have imparted their inspiration to me. For I do not imagine that I have any rhetorical art of my own. Grant it, if you will only please to get on.
End of section 9.