Orator and doctor before a crowd
SocratesListen, then, Gorgias, to what I wonder at in the things you have said; for perhaps you are speaking rightly and it is I who am not taking you rightly. You say you are able to make someone a rhetorician, if he wants to learn from you?
GorgiasYes.
SocratesThen about everything, so as to be persuasive in a crowd, not by teaching but by persuading?
GorgiasAbsolutely.
SocratesYou were saying just now that even about what is healthy the orator will be more persuasive than the doctor.
GorgiasYes, I did say it—in a crowd, at least.
SocratesAnd “in a crowd” means among those who do not know? For surely among those who know, at least, he won’t be more persuasive than the doctor.
GorgiasWhat you say is true.
SocratesThen if he is going to be more persuasive than the doctor, he turns out more persuasive than the one who knows?
GorgiasQuite so.
SocratesWithout being a doctor, at least: isn’t it so?
GorgiasYes.
SocratesAnd the one who is not a doctor, surely, is without knowledge of the things the doctor has knowledge of.
GorgiasClearly.