ask that question: since by rational conversation
man lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. And the
grasshoppers who are chirruping around may carry our words to the
Muses, who are their patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings
themselves in a world before the Muses, and when the Muses came they
died of hunger for the love of song. And they carry to them in heaven
the report of those who honour them on earth.

The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a
Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of
enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike,
as the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly
suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly;
it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included
both the rules of Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly
devoid of truth. Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the
help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed
against ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of
truth is required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make
the gradual departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived,
nor guard ourselves against deception.

Socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as
illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the
debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there
ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such
definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection
in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares the
regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not
his own, for the local deities must have inspired him). Although only a
playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first,
that of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly,
analysis, or the resolution of the whole into parts. These are the
processes of division and generalization which are so dear to the
dialectician, that king of men. They are effected by dialectic, and
not by rhetoric, of which the remains are but scanty after order and
arrangement have been subtracted. There is nothing left but a heap
of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus,
Evenus, Ti