PHAEDRUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better than a cunning enemy?
SOCRATES: Let us put the matter thus:—Suppose that I persuaded you to buy a horse and go to PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be SOCRATES: And when the orator instead of put-of tame animals the one which has the longest ting an ass in the place of a horse, puts good for ears.
evil, being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous.
and having studied the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about ‘the shadow SOCRATES: There is something more ridiculous of an ass,’ which he confounds with a horse, coming:—Suppose, further, that in sober earnest but about good which he confounds with evil,—
I, having persuaded you of this, went and com-what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be posed a speech in honour of an ass, whom I en-likely to gather after the sowing of that seed?
titled a horse beginning: ‘A noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you PHAEDRUS: The reverse of good.
may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.’
SOCRATES: But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might PHAEDRUS: How ridiculous!
answer: What amazing nonsense you are talk-92
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ing! As if I forced any man to learn to speak in Socrates? Bring them out that we may examine ignorance of the truth! Whatever my advice may them.
be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth first, and then come to me. At the same SOCRATES: Come out, fair children, and convince time I boldly assert that mere knowledge of the Phaedrus, who is the father of similar beauties, truth will not give you the art of persuasion.
that he will never be able to speak about anything as he ought to speak unless he have a PHAEDRUS: There is reason in the lady’s de-knowledge of philosophy. And let Phaedrus anfence of herself.
swer you.
SOCRATES: Quite true; if only the other argu-PHAEDRUS: Put the question.
ments which remain to be brought up bear her witness that she is an art at all. But I seem to SOCRATES: Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a hear them arraying themselves on the opposite universal art of enchanting the mind by argu-side, declaring that she speaks falsely, and that ments; which is practised not only in courts and rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an art.
public assemblies, but in private houses also, Lo! a Spartan appears, and says that there never having to do with all matters, great as well as is nor ever will be a real art of speaking which is small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally divorced from the truth.
right, and equally to be esteemed—that is what you have heard?
PHAEDRUS: And what are these arguments, 93
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PHAEDRUS: Nay, not exactly that; I should say SOCRATES: About the just and unjust—that is the rather that I have heard the art confined to speak-matter in dispute?
ing and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in public assemblies—not extended farther.
PHAEDRUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then I suppose that you have only SOCRATES: And a professor of the art will make heard of the rhetoric of Nestor and Odysseus, the same thing appear to the same persons to which they composed in their leisure hours when be at one time just, at another time, if he is so at Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes?
inclined, to be unjust?
PHAEDRUS: No more than of Nestor and PHAEDRUS: Exactly.
Odysseus, unless Gorgias is your Nestor, and Thrasymachus or Theodorus your Odysseus.
SOCRATES: And when he speaks in the assembly, he will make the same things seem good to SOCRATES: Perhaps that is my meaning. But let the city at one time, and at another time the us leave them. And do you tell me, instead, what reverse of good?
are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law court—
are they not contending?
PHAEDRUS: That is true.
PHAEDRUS: Exactly so.
SOCRATES: Have we not heard of the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno), who has an art of speaking 94
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by which he makes the same things appear to PHAEDRUS: When the difference is small.
his hearers like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion?
SOCRATES: And you will be less likely to be discovered in passing by degrees into the other PHAEDRUS: Very true.
extreme than when you go all at once?
SOCRATES: The art of disputation, then, is not PHAEDRUS: Of course.
confined to the courts and the assembly, but is one and the same in every use of language; this SOCRATES: He, then, who would deceive others, is the art, if there be such an art, which is able and not be deceived, must exactly know the real to find a likeness of everything to which a like-likenesses and differences of things?
ness can be found, and draws into the light of day the likenesses and disguises which are used PHAEDRUS: He must.
by others?
SOCRATES: And if he is ignorant of the true na-PHAEDRUS: How do you mean?
ture of any subject, how can he detect the greater or less degree of likeness in other things to that SOCRATES: Let me put the matter thus: When of which by the hypothesis he is ignorant?
will there be more chance of deception—when the difference is large or small?
PHAEDRUS: He cannot.