Complete Works (122 page)

P
HAEDRUS
: Never.

S
OCRATES
: Therefore, my friend, the art of a speaker who doesn’t know [c] the truth and chases opinions instead is likely to be a ridiculous thing—not an art at all!

P
HAEDRUS
: So it seems.

S
OCRATES
: So, shall we look for instances of what we called the artful and the artless in the speech of Lysias you carried here and in our own speeches?

P
HAEDRUS
: That’s the best thing to do—because, as it is, we are talking quite abstractly, without enough examples.

S
OCRATES
: In fact, by some chance the two speeches do, as it seems, contain an example of the way in which someone who knows the truth [d] can toy with his audience and mislead them. For my part, Phaedrus, I hold the local gods responsible for this—also, perhaps, the messengers of the Muses who are singing over our heads may have inspired me with this gift: certainly
I
don’t possess any art of speaking.

P
HAEDRUS
: Fine, fine. But explain what you mean.

S
OCRATES
: Come, then—read me the beginning of Lysias’ speech.

P
HAEDRUS
: “You understand my situation: I’ve told you how good it [e] would be for us, in my opinion, if we could work this out. In any case, I don’t think I should lose the chance to get what I am asking for, merely because I don’t happen to be in love with you. A man in love will wish he had not done you any favors—”

S
OCRATES
: Stop. Our task is to say how he fails and writes artlessly. Right?

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes.
[263]

S
OCRATES
: Now isn’t this much absolutely clear: We are in accord with one another about some of the things we discourse about and in discord about others?

P
HAEDRUS
: I think I understand what you are saying; but, please, can you make it a little clearer?

S
OCRATES
: When someone utters the word “iron” or “silver,” don’t we all think of the same thing?

P
HAEDRUS
: Certainly.

S
OCRATES
: But what happens when we say “just” or “good”? Doesn’t each one of us go in a different direction? Don’t we differ with one another and even with ourselves?

P
HAEDRUS
: We certainly do.

[b] S
OCRATES
: Therefore, we agree about the former and disagree about the latter.

P
HAEDRUS
: Right.

S
OCRATES
: Now in which of these two cases are we more easily deceived? And when does rhetoric have greater power?

P
HAEDRUS
: Clearly, when we wander in different directions.

S
OCRATES
: It follows that whoever wants to acquire the art of rhetoric must first make a systematic division and grasp the particular character of each of these two kinds of thing, both the kind where most people wander in different directions and the kind where they do not.

[c] P
HAEDRUS
: What a splendid thing, Socrates, he will have understood if he grasps
that!

S
OCRATES
: Second, I think, he must not be mistaken about his subject; he must have a sharp eye for the class to which whatever he is about to discuss belongs.

P
HAEDRUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: Well, now, what shall we say about love? Does it belong to the class where people differ or to that where they don’t?

P
HAEDRUS
: Oh, surely the class where they differ. Otherwise, do you think you could have spoken of it as you did a few minutes ago, first saying that it is harmful both to lover and beloved and then immediately afterward that it is the greatest good?

[d] S
OCRATES
: Very well put. But now tell me this—I can’t remember at all because I was completely possessed by the gods: Did I define love at the beginning of my speech?

P
HAEDRUS
: Oh, absolutely, by Zeus, you most certainly did.

S
OCRATES
: Alas, how much more artful with speeches the Nymphs, daughters of Achelous, and Pan, son of Hermes, are, according to what you say, than Lysias, son of Cephalus! Or am I wrong? Did Lysias too, at [e] the start of his love-speech, compel us to assume that love is the single thing that he himself wanted it to be? Did he then complete his speech by arranging everything in relation to that? Will you read its opening once again?

P
HAEDRUS
: If you like. But what you are looking for is not there.

S
OCRATES
: Read it, so that I can hear it in his own words.

P
HAEDRUS
: “You understand my situation: I’ve told you how good it would be for us, in my opinion, if we could work this out. In any case, I don’t think I should lose the chance to get what I am asking for, merely
[264]
because I don’t happen to be in love with you. A man in love will wish he had not done you any favors, once his desire dies down—”

S
OCRATES
: He certainly seems a long way from doing what we wanted. He doesn’t even start from the beginning but from the end, making his speech swim upstream on its back. His first words are what a lover would say to his boy as he was concluding his speech. Am I wrong, Phaedrus, dear heart?

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, Socrates, that was the end for which he gave the speech! [b]

S
OCRATES
: And what about the rest? Don’t the parts of the speech appear to have been thrown together at random? Is it evident that the second point had to be made second for some compelling reason? Is that so for any of the parts? I at least—of course I know nothing about such matters—thought the author said just whatever came to mind next, though not without a certain noble willfulness. But you, do you know any principle of speech-composition compelling him to place these things one after another in this order?

P
HAEDRUS
: It’s very generous of you to think that I can understand his [c] reasons so clearly.

S
OCRATES
: But surely you will admit at least this much: Every speech must be put together like a living creature, with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work.

P
HAEDRUS
: How could it be otherwise?

S
OCRATES
: But look at your friend’s speech: Is it like that or is it otherwise? Actually, you’ll find that it’s just like the epigram people say is inscribed on the tomb of Midas the Phrygian.

P
HAEDRUS
: What epigram is that? And what’s the matter with it? [d]

S
OCRATES
: It goes like this:

A maid of bronze am I, on Midas’ tomb I lie

As long as water flows, and trees grow tall

Shielding the grave where many come to cry

That Midas rests here I say to one and all.

I’m sure you notice that it makes no difference at all which of its verses [e] comes first, and which last.

P
HAEDRUS
: You are making fun of our speech, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Well, then, if that upsets you, let’s leave that speech aside—even though I think it has plenty of very useful examples, provided one tries to emulate them as little as possible—and turn to the others. I think it is important for students of speechmaking to pay attention to one of their features.

P
HAEDRUS
: What do you mean?
[265]

S
OCRATES
: They were in a way opposite to one another. One claimed that one should give one’s favors to the lover; the other, to the non-lover.

P
HAEDRUS
: Most manfully, too.

S
OCRATES
: I thought you were going to say “madly,” which would have been the truth, and is also just what I was looking for: We did say, didn’t we, that love is a kind of madness?

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And that there are two kinds of madness, one produced by human illness, the other by a divinely inspired release from normally accepted behavior?

[b] P
HAEDRUS
: Certainly.

S
OCRATES
: We also distinguished four parts within the divine kind and connected them to four gods. Having attributed the inspiration of the prophet to Apollo, of the mystic to Dionysus, of the poet to the Muses, and the fourth part of madness to Aphrodite and to Love, we said that the madness of love is the best. We used a certain sort of image to describe love’s passion; perhaps it had a measure of truth in it, though it may also have led us astray. And having whipped up a not altogether implausible [c] speech, we sang playfully, but also appropriately and respectfully, a story-like hymn to my master and yours, Phaedrus—to Love, who watches over beautiful boys.

P
HAEDRUS
: And I listened to it with the greatest pleasure.

S
OCRATES
: Let’s take up this point about it right away: How was the speech able to proceed from censure to praise?

P
HAEDRUS
: What exactly do you mean by that?

S
OCRATES
: Well, everything else in it really does appear to me to have been spoken in play. But part of it was given with Fortune’s guidance, [d] and there were in it two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art.

P
HAEDRUS
: Which things?

S
OCRATES
: The first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give. Just so with our discussion of love: Whether its definition was or was not correct, at least it allowed the speech to proceed clearly and consistently with itself.

P
HAEDRUS
: And what is the other thing you are talking about, Socrates?

[e] S
OCRATES
: This, in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do. In just this way, our two speeches placed all
[266]
mental derangements into one common kind. Then, just as each single body has parts that naturally come in pairs of the same name (one of them being called the right-hand and the other the left-hand one), so the speeches, having considered unsoundness of mind to be by nature one single kind within us, proceeded to cut it up—the first speech cut its left-hand part, and continued to cut until it discovered among these parts a sort of love that can be called “left-handed,” which it correctly denounced; the second speech, in turn, led us to the right-hand part of madness; discovered a love that shares its name with the other but is actually divine; set it out [b] before us, and praised it as the cause of our greatest goods.

P
HAEDRUS
: You are absolutely right.

S
OCRATES
: Well, Phaedrus, I am myself a lover of these divisions and collections, so that I may be able to think and to speak; and if I believe that someone else is capable of discerning a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many,
⁴⁶
I follow “straight behind, in his tracks, as if he were a god.”
⁴⁷
God knows whether this is the right name for those who can do this correctly or not, but so far I have always called [c] them “dialecticians.” But tell me what I must call them now that we have learned all this from Lysias and you. Or is it just that art of speaking that Thrasymachus and the rest of them use, which has made them masters of speechmaking and capable of producing others like them—anyhow those who are willing to bring them gifts and to treat them as if they were kings?

P
HAEDRUS
: They may behave like kings, but they certainly lack the knowledge you’re talking about. No, it seems to me that you are right in calling the sort of thing you mentioned dialectic; but, it seems to me, rhetoric still eludes us.

S
OCRATES
: What are you saying? Could there be anything valuable which [d] is independent of the methods I mentioned and is still grasped by art? If there is, you and I must certainly honor it, and we must say what part of rhetoric it is that has been left out.

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, there’s quite a lot, Socrates: everything, at any rate, written up in the books on the art of speaking.

S
OCRATES
: You were quite right to remind me. First, I believe, there is the Preamble with which a speech must begin. This is what you mean, isn’t it—the fine points of the art?

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes. [e]

S
OCRATES
: Second come the Statement of Facts and the Evidence of Witnesses concerning it; third, Indirect Evidence; fourth, Claims to Plausibility. And I believe at least that excellent Byzantine word-wizard adds Confirmation and Supplementary Confirmation.

P
HAEDRUS
: You mean the worthy Theodorus?
⁴⁸

S
OCRATES
: Quite. And he also adds Refutation and Supplementary Refutation,
[267]
to be used both in prosecution and in defense. Nor must we forget the most excellent Evenus of Paros,
⁴⁹
who was the first to discover Covert Implication and Indirect Praise and who—some say—has even arranged Indirect Censures in verse as an aid to memory: a wise man indeed! And Tisias
⁵⁰
and Gorgias? How can we leave them out when it is they who realized that what is likely must be held in higher honor than what is true; they who, by the power of their language, make small things appear great and great things small; they who express modern ideas in ancient garb, [b] and ancient ones in modern dress; they who have discovered how to argue both concisely and at infinite length about any subject? Actually, when I told Prodicus
⁵¹
this last, he laughed and said that only he had discovered the art of proper speeches: What we need are speeches that are neither long nor short but of the right length.