What is rhetoric good for?
SocratesVery well. If these things are true, then, Polus, what is the great use of rhetoric? For by what has now been agreed, a man must above all guard himself against doing injustice, since he will then have evil enough. Isn’t that so?
PolusCertainly.
SocratesAnd if either he himself or anyone else he cares about does do injustice, he must go of his own accord to the place where he will pay the penalty as quickly as possible, to the judge as to the doctor, hurrying so that the illness of injustice does not become chronic and leave the soul festering beneath the surface and incurable. Or how do we put it, Polus, if what we agreed before still stands for us? Mustn’t it be in this way that these things are in harmony with those, and not otherwise?
PolusWhy, what else are we to say, Socrates?