A table of arts
SocratesSo flattery is what I call it, and I say that such a thing is shameful, Polus—for it is to you that I say this—because it aims at the pleasant without the best. But I say that it is not an art but experience, because it has no account at all of the things it applies—of what they are by nature—by which to apply them, and so it cannot state the cause of each. And I do not call anything that has no account an art. But if you dispute these points, I am willing to give an account.
So under medicine, as I say, lies the flattery that is cookery; and under gymnastics, in this same way, lies cosmetics—villainous, deceitful, ignoble and illiberal, deceiving with shapes and colours, with smoothness and clothes, so that it makes people take on a beauty not their own and neglect their own, the beauty that comes through gymnastics. So, not to be long-winded, I am willing to put it to you as the geometers do—for by now, perhaps, you could follow me—that as cosmetics is to gymnastics, so the sophist’s art is to legislation, and that as cookery is to medicine, so rhetoric is to justice.
As I say, though, they are distinct in this way by nature; but because the two are close to one another, sophists and orators are mixed together in the same place and about the same things, and neither do they themselves know what to do with themselves, nor do other people know what to do with them. For if the soul did not preside over the body, but the body over itself, and if cookery and medicine were not examined and told apart by the soul, but the body itself judged them, weighing them by the gratifications they offer it, then Anaxagoras’ state of things would be everywhere, my dear Polus—for you are experienced in these things—all things would be mixed together in the same place, with what belongs to medicine, what is healthy and what belongs to cookery left indistinguishable.
So you have heard what I say rhetoric is: the counterpart of cookery in the soul, as that is in the body. Now perhaps I have done something out of place: not allowing you to make long speeches, I have myself stretched out a speech of some length. Still, I deserve to be forgiven; for when I spoke briefly you did not understand, and you could make no use at all of the answer I gave you, but you needed an exposition. So if, when you answer, I too have nothing I can make use of, then you stretch out a speech too; but if I have something, let me make use of it: for that is just. And now, if this answer is of any use to you, use it.