Complete Works (123 page)

P
HAEDRUS
: Brilliantly done, Prodicus!

S
OCRATES
: And what about Hippias?
⁵²
How can we omit him? I am sure our friend from Elis would cast his vote with Prodicus.

P
HAEDRUS
: Certainly.

S
OCRATES
: And what shall we say of the whole gallery of terms Polus
⁵³
[c] set up—speaking with Reduplication, Speaking in Maxims, Speaking in Images—and of the terms Licymnius gave him as a present to help him explain Good Diction?
⁵⁴

P
HAEDRUS
: But didn’t Protagoras actually use similar terms?
⁵⁵

S
OCRATES
: Yes, Correct Diction, my boy, and other wonderful things. As to the art of making speeches bewailing the evils of poverty and old age, the prize, in my judgment, goes to the mighty Chalcedonian.
⁵⁶
He it is also [d] who knows best how to inflame a crowd and, once they are inflamed, how to hush them again with his words’ magic spell, as he says himself. And let’s not forget that he is as good at producing slander as he is at refuting it, whatever its source may be.

As to the way of ending a speech, everyone seems to be in agreement, though some call it Recapitulation and others by some other name.

P
HAEDRUS
: You mean, summarizing everything at the end and reminding the audience of what they’ve heard?

S
OCRATES
: That’s what I mean. And if you have anything else to add about the art of speaking—

P
HAEDRUS
: Only minor points, not worth making.

[268]
S
OCRATES
: Well, let’s leave minor points aside. Let’s hold what we do have closer to the light so that we can see precisely the power of the art these things produce.

P
HAEDRUS
: A very great power, Socrates, especially in front of a crowd.

S
OCRATES
: Quite right. But now, my friend, look closely: Do you think, as I do, that its fabric is a little threadbare?

P
HAEDRUS
: Can you show me?

S
OCRATES
: All right, tell me this. Suppose someone came to your friend Eryximachus or his father Acumenus and said: “I know treatments to raise or lower (whichever I prefer) the temperature of people’s bodies; if I decide [b] to, I can make them vomit or make their bowels move, and all sorts of things. On the basis of this knowledge, I claim to be a physician; and I claim to be able to make others physicians as well by imparting it to them.” What do you think they would say when they heard that?

P
HAEDRUS
: What could they say? They would ask him if he also knew to whom he should apply such treatments, when, and to what extent.

S
OCRATES
: What if he replied, “I have no idea. My claim is that whoever learns from me will manage to do what you ask on his own“? [c]

P
HAEDRUS
: I think they’d say the man’s mad if he thinks he’s a doctor just because he read a book or happened to come across a few potions; he knows nothing of the art.

S
OCRATES
: And suppose someone approached Sophocles and Euripides and claimed to know how to compose the longest passages on trivial topics and the briefest ones on topics of great importance, that he could make them pitiful if he wanted, or again, by contrast, terrifying and menacing, [d] and so on. Suppose further that he believed that by teaching this he was imparting the knowledge of composing tragedies—

P
HAEDRUS
: Oh, I am sure they too would laugh at anyone who thought a tragedy was anything other than the proper arrangement of these things: They have to fit with one another and with the whole work.

S
OCRATES
: But I am sure they wouldn’t reproach him rudely. They would react more like a musician confronted by a man who thought he had mastered harmony because he was able to produce the highest and lowest [e] notes on his strings. The musician would not say fiercely, “You stupid man, you are out of your mind!” As befits his calling, he would speak more gently: “My friend, though that too is necessary for understanding harmony, someone who has gotten as far as you have may still know absolutely nothing about the subject. What you know is what it’s necessary to learn before you study harmony, but not harmony itself.”

P
HAEDRUS
: That’s certainly right.

S
OCRATES
: So Sophocles would also tell the man who was showing off
[269]
to them that he knew the preliminaries of tragedy, but not the art of tragedy itself. And Acumenus would say his man knew the preliminaries of medicine, but not medicine itself.

P
HAEDRUS
: Absolutely.

S
OCRATES
: And what if the “honey-tongued Adrastus” (or perhaps Pericles)
⁵⁷
were to hear of all the marvelous techniques we just discussed—Speaking Concisely and Speaking in Images and all the rest we listed and [b] proposed to examine under the light? Would he be angry or rude, as you and I were, with those who write of those techniques and teach them as if they are rhetoric itself, and say something coarse to them? Wouldn’t he—being wiser than we are—reproach us as well and say, “Phaedrus and Socrates, you should not be angry with these people—you should be sorry for them. The reason they cannot define rhetoric is that they are ignorant of dialectic. It is their ignorance that makes them think they have discovered what rhetoric is when they have mastered only what it is [c] necessary to learn as preliminaries. So they teach these preliminaries and imagine their pupils have received a full course in rhetoric, thinking the task of using each of them persuasively and putting them together into a whole speech is a minor matter, to be worked out by the pupils from their own resources“?

P
HAEDRUS
: Really, Socrates, the art these men present as rhetoric in their courses and handbooks is no more than what you say. In my judgment, [d] at least, your point is well taken. But how, from what source, could one acquire the art of the true rhetorician, the really persuasive speaker?

S
OCRATES
: Well, Phaedrus, becoming good enough to be an accomplished competitor is probably—perhaps necessarily—like everything else. If you have a natural ability for rhetoric, you will become a famous rhetorician, provided you supplement your ability with knowledge and practice. To the extent that you lack any one of them, to that extent you will be less than perfect. But, insofar as there is an art of rhetoric, I don’t believe the right method for acquiring it is to be found in the direction Lysias and Thrasymachus have followed.

P
HAEDRUS
: Where can we find it then?

[e] S
OCRATES
: My dear friend, maybe we can see now why Pericles was in all likelihood the greatest rhetorician of all.

P
HAEDRUS
: How is that?

[270]
S
OCRATES
: All the great arts require endless talk and ethereal speculation about nature: This seems to be what gives them their lofty point of view and universal applicability. That’s just what Pericles mastered—besides having natural ability. He came across Anaxagoras, who was just that sort of man, got his full dose of ethereal speculation, and understood the nature of mind and mindlessness
⁵⁸
—just the subject on which Anaxagoras had the most to say. From this, I think, he drew for the art of rhetoric what was useful to it.

P
HAEDRUS
: What do you mean by that?

[b] S
OCRATES
: Well, isn’t the method of medicine in a way the same as the method of rhetoric?

P
HAEDRUS
: How so?

S
OCRATES
: In both cases we need to determine the nature of something—of the body in medicine, of the soul in rhetoric. Otherwise, all we’ll have will be an empirical and artless practice. We won’t be able to supply, on the basis of an art, a body with the medicines and diet that will make it healthy and strong, or a soul with the reasons and customary rules for conduct that will impart to it the convictions and virtues we want.

P
HAEDRUS
: That is most likely, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Do you think, then, that it is possible to reach a serious understanding [c] of the nature of the soul without understanding the nature of the world as a whole?

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, if we’re to listen to Hippocrates, Asclepius’ descendant,
⁵⁹
we won’t even understand the body if we don’t follow that method.

S
OCRATES
: He speaks well, my friend. Still, Hippocrates aside, we must consider whether argument supports that view.

P
HAEDRUS
: I agree.

S
OCRATES
: Consider, then, what both Hippocrates and true argument say about nature. Isn’t this the way to think systematically about the nature [d] of anything? First, we must consider whether the object regarding which we intend to become experts and capable of transmitting our expertise is simple or complex. Then, if it is simple, we must investigate its power: What things does it have what natural power of acting upon? By what things does it have what natural disposition to be acted upon? If, on the other hand, it takes many forms, we must enumerate them all and, as we did in the simple case, investigate how each is naturally able to act upon what and how it has a natural disposition to be acted upon by what.

P
HAEDRUS
: It seems so, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Proceeding by any other method would be like walking with [e] the blind. Conversely, whoever studies anything on the basis of an art must never be compared to the blind or the deaf. On the contrary, it is clear that someone who teaches another to make speeches as an art will demonstrate precisely the essential nature of that to which speeches are to be applied. And that, surely, is the soul.

P
HAEDRUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: This is therefore the object toward which the speaker’s whole
[271]
effort is directed, since it is in the soul that he attempts to produce conviction. Isn’t that so?

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: Clearly, therefore, Thrasymachus and anyone else who teaches the art of rhetoric seriously will, first, describe the soul with absolute precision and enable us to understand what it is: whether it is one and homogeneous by nature or takes many forms, like the shape of bodies, since, as we said, that’s what it is to demonstrate the nature of something.

P
HAEDRUS
: Absolutely.

S
OCRATES
: Second, he will explain how, in virtue of its nature, it acts and is acted upon by certain things.

P
HAEDRUS
: Of course.

[b] S
OCRATES
: Third, he will classify the kinds of speech and of soul there are, as well as the various ways in which they are affected, and explain what causes each. He will then coordinate each kind of soul with the kind of speech appropriate to it. And he will give instructions concerning the reasons why one kind of soul is necessarily convinced by one kind of speech while another necessarily remains unconvinced.

P
HAEDRUS
: This, I think, would certainly be the best way.

S
OCRATES
: In fact, my friend, no speech will ever be a product of art, whether it is a model or one actually given, if it is delivered or written in [c] any other way—on this or on any other subject. But those who now write
Arts of Rhetoric
—we were just discussing them—are cunning people: they hide the fact that they know very well everything about the soul. Well, then, until they begin to speak and write in this way, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be convinced that they write on the basis of the art.

P
HAEDRUS
: What way is that?

S
OCRATES
: It’s very difficult to speak the actual words, but as to how one should write in order to be as artful as possible—that I am willing to tell you.

P
HAEDRUS
: Please do.

[d] S
OCRATES
: Since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul, whoever intends to be a rhetorician must know how many kinds of soul there are. Their number is so-and-so many; each is of such-and-such a sort; hence some people have such-and-such a character and others have such-and-such. Those distinctions established, there are, in turn, so-and-so many kinds of speech, each of such-and-such a sort. People of such-and-such a character are easy to persuade by speeches of such-and-such a sort in connection with such-and-such an issue for this particular reason, while people of such-and-such another sort are difficult to persuade for those particular reasons.

The orator must learn all this well, then put his theory into practice and [e] develop the ability to discern each kind clearly as it occurs in the actions of real life. Otherwise he won’t be any better off than he was when he was still listening to those discussions in school. He will now not only be able to say what kind of person is convinced by what kind of speech; on
[272]
meeting someone he will be able to discern what he is like and make clear to himself that the person actually standing in front of him is of just this particular sort of character he had learned about in school—to that he must now apply speeches of such-and-such a kind in this particular way in order to secure conviction about such-and-such an issue. When he has learned all this—when, in addition, he has grasped the right occasions for speaking and for holding back; and when he has also understood when the time is right for Speaking Concisely or Appealing to Pity or Exaggeration or for any other of the kinds of speech he has learned and when it is not—then, and only then, will he have finally mastered the art well and completely. But if his speaking, his teaching, or his writing lacks any one of these elements [b] and he still claims to be speaking with art, you’ll be better off if you don’t believe him.