out the sick?

GORGIAS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then medicine also treats of discourse?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Of discourse concerning diseases?

GORGIAS: Just so.

SOCRATES: And does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning the
good or evil condition of the body?

GORGIAS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the same, Gorgias, is true of the other arts:--all of them
treat of discourse concerning the subjects with which they severally
have to do.

GORGIAS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Then why, if you call rhetoric the art which treats of
discourse, and all the other arts treat of discourse, do you not call
them arts of rhetoric?

GORGIAS: Because, Socrates, the knowledge of the other arts has only to
do with some sort of external action, as of the hand; but there is no
such action of the hand in rhetoric which works and takes effect only
through the medium of discourse. And therefore I am justified in saying
that rhetoric treats of discourse.

SOCRATES: I am not sure whether I entirely understand you, but I dare
say I shall soon know better; please to answer me a question:--you would
allow that there are arts?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: As to the arts generally, they are for the most part concerned
with doing, and require little or no speaking; in painting, and
statuary, and many other arts, the work may proceed in silence; and
of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within the
province of rhetoric.

GORGIAS: You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.

SOCRATES: 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?

GORGIAS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: 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.

GO