r opinion, is rhetoric?

SOCRATES: A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of yours, you
say that you have made an art.

POLUS: What thing?

SOCRATES: I should say a sort of experience.

POLUS: Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience?

SOCRATES: That is my view, but you may be of another mind.

POLUS: An experience in what?

SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and
gratification.

POLUS: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be a fine thing?

SOCRATES: What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me whether rhetoric
is a fine thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric
is?

POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience?

SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a
slight gratification to me?

POLUS: I will.

SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?

POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery?

SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus.

POLUS: What then?

SOCRATES: I should say an experience.

POLUS: In what? I wish that you would explain to me.

SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and
gratification, Polus.

POLUS: Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?

SOCRATES: No, they are only different parts of the same profession.

POLUS: Of what profession?

SOCRATES: I am afraid that the truth may seem discourteous; and I
hesitate to answer, lest Gorgias should imagine that I am making fun of
his own profession. For whether or no this is that art of rhetoric
which Gorgias practises I really cannot tell:--from what he was just now
saying, nothing appeared of what he thought of his art, but the rhetoric
which I mean is a part of a not very creditable whole.

GORGIAS: A part of what, Socrates? Say what you mean, and never mind me.

SOCRATES: In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which rhetoric is a
part is not an art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit,
which knows how to manage mankind: this habit I sum up under the word
'flattery'; and it appears to me to have many other parts, one of which
is cookery, which may seem to be an art, but, as I maintain, is only an
experience or routine and not an art:--another part is rhetoric, and
the art of attiring and sophistry are two others: thus there are four
branches, and four different things answering to them. And Polus may
ask, if he likes, for he has not as yet been informed, what part of
flattery is rhetoric: