treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato subjects himself
to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he gives unity of form to
the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together.
He works freely and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of
the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves together the
frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and
which is the woof cannot always be determined.

The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory passage
about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are first the
false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the inspiration of
beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness; thirdly, dialectic or
the art of composition and division; fourthly, the true rhetoric, which is
based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of persuasion nor knowledge of
the truth alone, but the art of persuasion founded on knowledge of truth
and knowledge of character; fifthly, the superiority of the spoken over the
written word. The continuous thread which appears and reappears throughout
is rhetoric; this is the ground into which the rest of the Dialogue is
worked, in parts embroidered with fine words which are not in Socrates'
manner, as he says, 'in order to please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias
which has thrown Phaedrus into an ecstacy is adduced as an example of the
false rhetoric; the first speech of Socrates, though an improvement,
partakes of the same character; his second speech, which is full of that
higher element said to have been learned of Anaxagoras by Pericles, and
which in the midst of poetry does not forget order, is an illustration of
the higher or true rhetoric. This higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic,
and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love (compare Symp.); in
these two aspects of philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are
absorbed. And so the example becomes also the deeper theme of discourse.
The true knowledge of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm