Part 111

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 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?

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Footnote 130:

By Palamedes, as the Scholiast observes, he means Zeno of Elea, the friend of Parmenides.

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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.

98. Phæ. How not?