Gorgias [32]
we strip all poetry of song and rhythm and metre, there will remain speech? Cal. To be sure. Soc. And this speech is addressed to a crowd of people? Cal. Yes. Soc. Then, poetry is a sort of rhetoric? Cal. True. Soc. And do not the poets in the theatres seem to you to be rhetoricians? Cal. Yes. Soc. Then now we have discovered a sort of rhetoric which is addressed to a crowd of men, women, and children, freemen and slaves. And this is not much to our taste, for we have described it as having the nature of flattery. Cal. Quite true. Soc. Very good. And what do you say of that other rhetoric which addresses the Athenian assembly and the assemblies of freemen in other states? Do the rhetoricians appear to you always to aim at what is best, and do they seek to improve the citizens by their speeches, or are they too, like the rest of mankind, bent upon giving them pleasure, forgetting the public good in the thought of their own interest, playing with the people as with children, and trying to amuse them, but never considering whether they are better or worse for this? Cal. I must distinguish. There are some who have a real care of the public in what they say, while others are such as you describe. Soc. I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of two sorts; one, which is mere flattery and disgraceful declamation; the other, which is noble and aims at the training and improvement of the souls of the citizens, and strives to say what is best, whether welcome or unwelcome, to the audience; but have you ever known such a rhetoric; or if you have, and can point out any rhetorician who is of this stamp, who is he? Cal. But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any such among the orators who are at present living. Soc. Well, then, can you mention any one of a former generation, who may be said to have improved the Athenians, who found them worse and made them better, from the day that he began to make speeches? for, indeed, I do not know of such a man. Cal. What! did you never hear that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon and Miltiades and Pericles, who is just lately dead, and whom you heard yourself? Soc. Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first, true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us better, and of others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and there is an art in distinguishing them-can you tell me of any of these statesmen who did distinguish them? Cal. No, indeed, I cannot. Soc. Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one. Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described. Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it? The artist disposes all things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and accord with the other part, until he has constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is true of all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny this? Cal. No; I am ready to admit it. Soc. Then the house in which order and regularity prevail is good, that in which there is disorder, evil? Cal. Yes. Soc. And the same is true of a ship? Cal. Yes. Soc. And the same may be said of the human body? Cal. Yes. Soc. And what would you say of the soul? Will the good soul be that in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and order? Cal. The latter follows from our previous admissions. Soc. What is the name which is given to the effect of harmony and order in the body? Cal. I suppose that you mean