Page - 173 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: Illustrious Polus, the reason why we provide ourselves with friends and children is, that when we get old and stumble, a younger generation may be at hand to set us on our legs again in our words and in our actions: and now, if I and Gorgias are stumbling, here are you who should raise us up; and I for my part engage to retract any error into which you may think that I have fallen-upon one condition: POLUS: What condition? SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which you indulged at first. POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please? SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider my case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and Gorgias—refute and be refuted: for I suppose that you would claim to know what Gorgias knows—would you not? POLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And you, like him, invite any one to ask you about anything which he pleases, and you will know how to answer him? POLUS: To be sure. SOCRATES: And now, which will you do, ask or answer? POLUS: I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric? SOCRATES: Do you mean what sort of an art? POLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my opinion. POLUS: Then what, in your 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? 173