is not a physician must, obviously, be ignorant of
what the physician knows.

GORGIAS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the
physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who
has knowledge?--is not that the inference?

GORGIAS: In the case supposed:--yes.

SOCRATES: And the same holds of the relation of rhetoric to all the
other arts; the rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has
only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more
knowledge than those who know?

GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and is not this a great comfort?--not to have
learned the other arts, but the art of rhetoric only, and yet to be in
no way inferior to the professors of them?

SOCRATES: Whether the rhetorician is or not inferior on this account is
a question which we will hereafter examine if the enquiry is likely to
be of any service to us; but I would rather begin by asking, whether he
is or is not as ignorant of the just and unjust, base and honourable,
good and evil, as he is of medicine and the other arts; I mean to
say, does he really know anything of what is good and evil, base or
honourable, just or unjust in them; or has he only a way with the
ignorant of persuading them that he not knowing is to be esteemed to
know more about these things than some one else who knows? Or must
the pupil know these things and come to you knowing them before he can
acquire the art of rhetoric? If he is ignorant, you who are the teacher
of rhetoric will not teach him--it is not your business; but you will
make him seem to the multitude to know them, when he does not know them;
and seem to be a good man, when he is not. Or will you be unable to
teach him rhetoric at all, unless he knows the truth of these things
first? What is to be said about all this? By heavens, Gorgias, I wish
that you would reveal to me the power of rhetoric, as you were saying
that you would.

GORGIAS: Well, Socrates, I suppose that if the pupil does chance not to
know them, he will have to learn of me these things as well.

SOCRATES: Say no more, for there you are right; and so he whom you
make a rhetorician must either know the nature of the just and unjust
already, or he must be taught by you.

GORGIAS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Well, and is not he who has learned carpentering a carpenter?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And he who has learned music a musician?

GORGIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: An