269
Socrates. Whether one can acquire it, so as to become a perfect orator, Phaedrus, is probably, and perhaps must be, dependent on conditions, like everything else. If you are naturally rhetorical, you will become a notable orator, when to your natural endowments you have added knowledge and practice; at whatever point you are deficient in these, you will be incomplete. But so far as the art is concerned, I do not think the quest of it lies along the path of Lysias and Thrasymachus.
269
Phaedrus. Where then?
269
Socrates. I suppose, my friend, Pericles is the most perfect orator in existence.
269
Phaedrus. Well?
270
Socrates. All great arts demand discussion and high speculation about nature; for this loftiness of mind and effectiveness in all directions seem somehow to come from such pursuits. This was in Pericles added to his great natural abilities; for it was, I think, his falling in with Anaxagoras, who was just such a man, that filled him with high thoughts and taught him the nature of mind and of lack of mind, subjects about which Anaxagoras used chiefly to discourse, and from these speculations he drew and applied to the art of speaking what is of use to it.
270
Phaedrus. What do you mean by that?
270
Socrates. The method of the art of healing is much the same as that of rhetoric.
270
Phaedrus. How so?
270
Socrates. In both cases you must analyze a nature, in one that of the body and in the other that of the soul, if you are to proceed in a scientific manner, not merely by practice and routine, to impart health and strength to the body by prescribing medicine and diet, or by proper discourses and training to give to the soul the desired belief and virtue.
270
Phaedrus. That, Socrates, is probably true.
270
Socrates. Now do you think one can acquire any appreciable knowledge of the nature of the soul without knowing the nature of the whole man?
270
Phaedrus. If Hippocrates the Asclepiad is to be trusted, one cannot know the nature of the body, either, except in that way.
