Phaedrus

​SOCRATES: All the great arts demand endless talk and speculation about nature; for this high-mindedness and all-round effectiveness seem to enter from some such source. This is what Pericles also acquired, in addition to being naturally gifted; for, falling in, I think, with Anaxagoras, who was such a man, and being filled with speculation on high matters, and arriving at the nature of mind and intellect—about which indeed Anaxagoras used to discourse so much—he drew from that source onto the art of speaking what was suitable for it. PHAEDRUS: How do you mean this? SOCRATES: The method of the art of medicine is surely the same as that of rhetoric. PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: In both of them we must analyze nature—of body in the one, and of soul in the other—if you are to proceed not by routine and experience only, but by art, applying medicines and diet to the one to produce health and strength, and administering words and customary practices to the other to hand down whatever persuasion you wish and virtue. PHAEDRUS: At least that is likely, Socrates, to be so. SOCRATES: Do you think, then, that it is possible to understand the nature of the soul in a worthwhile way without the nature of the whole? PHAEDRUS: If indeed we are to believe Hippocrates, the descendant of Asclepius, not even about the body can we understand without this method. SOCRATES: For he speaks well, my friend. However, in addition to Hippocrates, we must examine the argument to see if it agrees. PHAEDRUS: I agree. SOCRATES: Look, then, at what indeed Hippocrates and true reason say about nature. Must we not think in this way about the nature of anything whatsoever: first, whether that about which we shall wish to be ourselves experts and capable of making another so, is simple or multiform; and next, if it is simple, to examine its power, what power it naturally has to act upon what, or what power to be acted upon by what; and if it has more forms, to enumerate these, and, just as in the case of the single one, to see this in the case of each: what it is naturally suited to do to what, or what to suffer by what? PHAEDRUS: It seems likely, Socrates. SOCRATES: At any rate, the method without these would be like the journey of a blind man. But indeed, one who pursues anything by art must not be likened to a blind man or a deaf man; but it is clear that, if someone teaches words to anyone by art, he will show with precision the essential nature of that to which he will apply the words; and this, I suppose, will be the soul. PHAEDRUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: Therefore all his effort is directed toward this; for it is in this that he attempts to produce persuasion. Is it not so? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: It is clear then that Thrasymachus and whoever else seriously teaches the art of rhetoric will first write and make us see the soul with all precision, whether it is by nature one and uniform, or multiform like the shape of the body; for this is what we call showing its nature. PHAEDRUS: Most certainly. SOCRATES: And secondly, what it is naturally disposed to do to what, or what to suffer from what. PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: And thirdly, having classified the types of speeches and of souls and their affections, he will go through all the causes, fitting each to each, and teaching what sort of soul is necessarily persuaded by what kind of speeches and for what reason, and why another is unpersuaded. PHAEDRUS: Indeed that would be best, as it seems, in this way. SOCRATES: At any rate, my friend, anything shown or spoken in any other way than this will never be spoken or written by art, whether anything else or this. But those who write nowadays, whom you have heard, are rogues in their arts of speech and hide themselves, although they know about the soul very well; until, therefore, they speak and write in this way, let us not believe them to write by art. PHAEDRUS: What way is this? SOCRATES: To state the actual words is not easy; but how one must write, if it is to be artistic as far as possible, I am willing to tell. PHAEDRUS: Tell me then. SOCRATES: Since the power of speech happens to be a leading of the soul, the one who is going to be a rhetorician must necessarily know how many forms the soul has. There are, then, so-and-so many, of such-and-such kinds, from which some people become of one sort, and others of another; and when these have been thus classified, there are again so-and-so many kinds of speeches, each of such-and-such a character. People of such-and-such a kind, then, are easily persuaded to such-and-such things by such-and-such speeches for this reason, while people of that kind are hard to persuade for those reasons. One must indeed, having grasped these things sufficiently, and afterwards observing them in actual affairs, as they exist and are being put into practice, be able to follow them quickly with perception, or else there is not yet any advantage for him from the words which he used to hear when he was studying.