'What is the art of Rhetoric?' says Polus. Not an art at all, replies
Socrates, but a thing which in your book you affirm to have created art.
Polus asks, 'What thing?' and Socrates answers, An experience or routine of
making a sort of delight or gratification. 'But is not rhetoric a fine
thing?' I have not yet told you what rhetoric is. Will you ask me another
question--What is cookery? 'What is cookery?' An experience or routine of
making a sort of delight or gratification. Then they are the same, or
rather fall under the same class, and rhetoric has still to be
distinguished from cookery. 'What is rhetoric?' asks Polus once more. A
part of a not very creditable whole, which may be termed flattery, is the
reply. 'But what part?' A shadow of a part of politics. This, as might
be expected, is wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in
order to explain his meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction between
shadows or appearances and realities; e.g. there is real health of body or
soul, and the appearance of them; real arts and sciences, and the
simulations of them. Now the soul and body have two arts waiting upon
them, first the art of politics, which attends on the soul, having a
legislative part and a judicial part; and another art attending on the
body, which has no generic name, but may also be described as having two
divisions, one of which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding
with these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of
them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no reason
of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or simulation
of gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine; rhetoric is the simulation
of justice, and sophistic of legislation. They may be summed up in an
arithmetical formula:--

Tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine :: sophistic : legislation.