with words, and the arts which have to do with external actions. Socrates
extends this distinction further, and divides all productive arts into two
classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in silence; and (2) arts which
have to do with words, or in which words are coextensive with action, such
as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric. But still Gorgias could hardly have
meant to say that arithmetic was the same as rhetoric. Even in the arts
which are concerned with words there are differences. What then
distinguishes rhetoric from the other arts which have to do with words?
'The words which rhetoric uses relate to the best and greatest of human
things.' But tell me, Gorgias, what are the best? 'Health first, beauty
next, wealth third,' in the words of the old song, or how would you rank
them? The arts will come to you in a body, each claiming precedence and
saying that her own good is superior to that of the rest--How will you
choose between them? 'I should say, Socrates, that the art of persuasion,
which gives freedom to all men, and to individuals power in the state, is
the greatest good.' But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?--is
the persevering retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter, or
even as a painter of figures, if there were other painters of figures;
neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of persuasion, because
there are other arts which persuade, such as arithmetic, which is an art of
persuasion about odd and even numbers. Gorgias is made to see the
necessity of a further limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as the art
of persuading in the law courts, and in the assembly, about the just and
unjust. But still there are two sorts of persuasion: one which gives
knowledge, and another which gives belief without knowledge; and knowledge
is always true, but belief may be either true or false,--there is therefore
a further question: which of the two sorts of persuasion does rhetoric
effect in courts of law and assemblies? Plainly that which gives belief
and not that which gives knowledge; for no one can impart a real knowledge
of such matters to a crowd of persons in a few minutes. And there is