SOCRATES: And suppose that he were to reply: PHAEDRUS: They too would surely laugh at him
‘No; I know nothing of all that; I expect the pa-if he fancies that tragedy is anything but the tient who consults me to be able to do these arranging of these elements in a manner which things for himself’?
will be suitable to one another and to the whole.
PHAEDRUS: They would say in reply that he is a SOCRATES: But I do not suppose that they would madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a be rude or abusive to him: Would they not treat physician because he has read something in a him as a musician a man who thinks that he is a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, harmonist because he knows how to pitch the although he has no real understanding of the highest and lowest note; happening to meet such art of medicine.
an one he would not say to him savagely, ‘Fool, you are mad!’ But like a musician, in a gentle SOCRATES: And suppose a person were to come and harmonious tone of voice, he would answer: to Sophocles or Euripides and say that he knows
‘My good friend, he who would be a harmonist how to make a very long speech about a small must certainly know this, and yet he may under-matter, and a short speech about a great matter, stand nothing of harmony if he has not got be-and also a sorrowful speech, or a terrible, or yond your stage of knowledge, for you only know threatening speech, or any other kind of speech, the preliminaries of harmony and not harmony and in teaching this fancies that he is teaching itself.’
the art of tragedy—?
PHAEDRUS: Very true.