_Socr._ Let us then consider it as follows.
_Phæ._ How?
_Socr._ Suppose I should persuade you to purchase a horse for the
purpose of repelling enemies, but both of us should be ignorant what a
horse is, suppose, however, I did happen to know this much, that Phædrus
believes a horse to be that tame animal which has the longest ears.
_Phæ._ That would be ridiculous indeed, Socrates.
_Socr._ Wait a moment: if I should earnestly persuade you, by composing
a speech in praise of the ass, calling him a horse, and asserting that
it is well worth while to purchase this beast both for domestic purposes
and for military service, that he is useful to fight from, and able to
carry baggage, and serviceable in many other respects.
_Phæ._ This, now, would be perfectly ridiculous.
_Socr._ But is it not better that a friend should be ridiculous, than
dangerous and mischievous?
_Phæ._ Clearly so.
94. _Socr._ When an orator, therefore, who is ignorant of good and evil,
having found a city that is likewise so, endeavours to persuade it, not
by celebrating the praises of an ass’s shadow[129], as if it were a
horse, but of evil, as if it were good, and having studied the opinions
of the multitude should persuade them to do evil instead of good, what
kind of fruit do you suppose rhetoric will afterwards reap from such a
sowing?
-----
Footnote 129:
A proverb meaning “a thing of no value.” See Suidas ὄνου σκιά.
-----
_Phæ._ By no means a good one.
_Socr._ But have we not, my good friend, reviled the art of speaking
more roughly than is proper? for she may, perhaps, say: “Why, sirs, do
you talk so foolishly? For I compel no one who is ignorant of the truth
to learn how to speak: but if my advice is worth any thing, when he has
acquired that, he then has recourse to me. This, then, I insist on, that
without me one who knows the truth will not for all that be able to
persuade by art.”
_Phæ._ Will she not speak justly, in asserting this?
95. _Socr._ I admit it, at least if the arguments that assail her
testify that she is an art. For I think I have heard some arguments
coming up and insisting that she lies and is not an art, but an
inartistic trick. But a genuine art of speaking, says the Spartan,
without laying hold of truth, neither exists, nor ever can exist
hereafter.
_Phæ._ We must have these arguments, Socrates; so bring them forward and
examine what they say, and in what manner.
_Socr._ Come hither then, ye noble creatures, and persuade Phædrus with
the beautiful children, that, unless he has sufficiently studied
philosophy, he will never be competent to speak on any subject whatever.
Let Phædrus answer then.
_Phæ._ Put your questions.
_Socr._ Must not then rhetoric in general be an art that leads the soul
by means of argument, not only in courts of justice, and other public
assemblies, but also in private, equally with respect to trivial and
important matters? and is its right use at all more valued when employed
about grave than about trifling things? What have you heard said about
this?
96. _Phæ._ By Jupiter, nothing at all of this kind; but it is for the
most part spoken and written according to art in judicial trials, and it
is spoken also in popular assemblies; but I have never heard any thing
further.
_Socr._ What, have you heard only of the rhetorical arts of Nestor and
Ulysses, which they composed during their leisure in Ilium, and have you
never heard of those by Palamedes?
_Phæ._ And, by Jupiter, I have not even heard of those by Nestor, unless
you make Gorgias a Nestor, or Thrasymachus and Theodorus a Ulysses.
_Socr._ Perhaps I do. But let us pass over these; do you say however; in
courts of justice what do adversaries do? do they not contradict each
other? or what shall we say?
_Phæ._ That very thing.
_Socr._ And respecting the just and unjust?
_Phæ._ Yes.
_Socr._ Will not he, then, who accomplishes this by art, make the same
thing appear to the same persons, at one time just, and, when he
pleases, unjust?
_Phæ._ How not?
_Socr._ And in a popular assembly the same things seem to the state at
one time good, and at another the contrary?
_Phæ._ Just so.
97. _Socr._ And do we not know that the Eleatic Palamedes[130] spoke by
art in such a manner that the same things appeared to his hearers
similar and dissimilar, one and many, at rest and in motion?
-----
Footnote 130:
By Palamedes, as the Scholiast observes, he means Zeno of Elea, the
friend of Parmenides.
-----
_Phæ._ Assuredly.
_Socr._ The art, then, of arguing on both sides has not only to do with
courts of justice and popular assemblies, but as it seems, it must be
one and the same art, if it is an art, with respect to all subjects of
discourse, by which a man is able to make all things appear similar to
each other so far as they are capable of being made appear so, and to
drag them to light, when another attempts to make them appear similar
and conceals his attempt.
_Phæ._ What mean you by this?
_Socr._ I think it will be evident if we enquire as follows: Does
deception more frequently occur in things that differ much or little?
_Phæ._ In things that differ little.
_Socr._ But by changing your position gradually, you will more easily
escape detection in going to the opposite side, than by doing so
rapidly.