the grasshoppers make report to them; for
these are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and thought,
divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. For many
reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid-day.

PHAEDRUS: Let us talk.

SOCRATES: Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were
proposing?

PHAEDRUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: In good speaking should not the mind of the speaker know the
truth of the matter about which he is going to speak?

PHAEDRUS: And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator
has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely
to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good
or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion
comes persuasion, and not from the truth.

SOCRATES: The words of the wise are not to be set aside; for there is
probably something in them; and therefore the meaning of this saying is
not hastily to be dismissed.

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Let us put the matter thus:--Suppose that I persuaded you
to buy a horse and go to the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was
like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals the one
which has the longest ears.

PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous.

SOCRATES: There is something more ridiculous coming:--Suppose, further,
that in sober earnest I, having persuaded you of this, went and composed
a speech in honour of an ass, whom I entitled a horse beginning: 'A
noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you
may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.'

PHAEDRUS: How ridiculous!

SOCRATES: Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better
than a cunning enemy?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place
of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true
nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied
the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about 'the
shadow of an ass,' which he confounds with a horse, but about good which
he confounds with evil,--what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be
likely to gather after the sowing of that seed?

PHAEDRUS: The reverse of good.

SOCRATES: But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by
us, and she might answer: What amazing nonsense you are