Page - 174 - in The Complete Plato

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. 174