talking! As if I
forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth! Whatever
my advice may be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth
first, and then come to me. At the same time I boldly assert that mere
knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.

PHAEDRUS: There is reason in the lady's defence of herself.

SOCRATES: Quite true; if only the other arguments which remain to be
brought up bear her witness that she is an art at all. But I seem to
hear them arraying themselves on the opposite side, declaring that she
speaks falsely, and that rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an
art. Lo! a Spartan appears, and says that there never is nor ever will
be a real art of speaking which is divorced from the truth.

PHAEDRUS: And what are these arguments, Socrates? Bring them out that we
may examine them.

SOCRATES: Come out, fair children, and convince Phaedrus, who is the
father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about
anything as he ought to speak unless he have a knowledge of philosophy.
And let Phaedrus answer you.

PHAEDRUS: Put the question.

SOCRATES: Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of
enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts
and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with
all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all
equally right, and equally to be esteemed--that is what you have heard?

PHAEDRUS: Nay, not exactly that; I should say rather that I have heard
the art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in
public assemblies--not extended farther.

SOCRATES: Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of
Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at
Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes?

PHAEDRUS: No more than of Nestor and Odysseus, unless Gorgias is your
Nestor, and Thrasymachus or Theodorus your Odysseus.

SOCRATES: Perhaps that is my meaning. But let us leave them. And do
you tell me, instead, what are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law
court--are they not contending?

PHAEDRUS: Exactly so.

SOCRATES: About the just and unjust--that is the matter in dispute?

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And a professor of the art will make the same thing appear to
the same persons to be at one time just, at another time, if he is so
inclined, to be unjust?

PHAEDRUS: Exactly.

SOC