you, and first the physician will
say: 'O Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you, for my art is concerned with
the greatest good of men and not his.' And when I ask, Who are you? he
will reply, 'I am a physician.' What do you mean? I shall say. Do you
mean that your art produces the greatest good? 'Certainly,' he will
answer, 'for is not health the greatest good? What greater good can men
have, Socrates?' And after him the trainer will come and say, 'I too,
Socrates, shall be greatly surprised if Gorgias can show more good of
his art than I can show of mine.' To him again I shall say, Who are
you, honest friend, and what is your business? 'I am a trainer,' he will
reply, 'and my business is to make men beautiful and strong in body.'
When I have done with the trainer, there arrives the money-maker, and
he, as I expect, will utterly despise them all. 'Consider Socrates,' he
will say, 'whether Gorgias or any one else can produce any greater
good than wealth.' Well, you and I say to him, and are you a creator of
wealth? 'Yes,' he replies. And who are you? 'A money-maker.' And do you
consider wealth to be the greatest good of man? 'Of course,' will be his
reply. And we shall rejoin: Yes; but our friend Gorgias contends that
his art produces a greater good than yours. And then he will be sure to
go on and ask, 'What good? Let Gorgias answer.' Now I want you, Gorgias,
to imagine that this question is asked of you by them and by me; What
is that which, as you say, is the greatest good of man, and of which you
are the creator? Answer us.

GORGIAS: That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that
which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the
power of ruling over others in their several states.

SOCRATES: And what would you consider this to be?

GORGIAS: What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges
in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the
assembly, or at any other political meeting?--if you have the power
of uttering this word, you will have the physician your slave, and the
trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found
to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak
and to persuade the multitude.

SOCRATES: Now I think, Gorgias, that you have very accurately explained
what you conceive to be the art of rhetoric; and you mean to say, if I
am not mistaken, that rhetoric is the artificer of persuasion