gorgias   

Gor. You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.

Soc. But there are other arts which work wholly through the medium

of language, and require either no action or very little, as, for

example, the arts of arithmetic, of calculation, of geometry, and of

playing draughts; in some of these speech is pretty nearly

co-extensive with action, but in most of them the verbal element is

greater-they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power:

and I take your meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter

sort?

Gor. Exactly.

Soc. And yet I do not believe that you really mean to call any of

these arts rhetoric; although the precise expression which you used

was, that rhetoric is an art which works and takes effect only through

the medium of discourse; and an adversary who wished to be captious

might say, "And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric." But I do

not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than

geometry would be so called by you.

Gor. You are quite right, Socrates, in your apprehension of my

meaning.

Soc. Well, then, let me now have the rest of my answer:-seeing

that rhetoric is one of those arts which works mainly by the use of

words, and there are other arts which also use words, tell me what

is that quality in words with which rhetoric is concerned:-Suppose

that a person asks me about some of the arts which I was mentioning

just now; he might say, "Socrates, what is arithmetic?" and I should

reply to him, as you replied to me, that arithmetic is one of those

arts which take effect through words. And then he would proceed to

ask: "Words about what?" and I should reply, Words about and even

numbers, and how many there are of each. And if he asked again:

"What is the art of calculation?" I should say, That also is one of

the arts which is concerned wholly with words. And if he further said,

"Concerned with what?" I should say, like the clerks in the