mode in which she acts or is
acted upon.

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: Thirdly, having classified men and speeches, and their kinds
and affections, and adapted them to one another, he will tell the
reasons of his arrangement, and show why one soul is persuaded by a
particular form of argument, and another not.

PHAEDRUS: You have hit upon a very good way.

SOCRATES: Yes, that is the true and only way in which any subject can
be set forth or treated by rules of art, whether in speaking or writing.
But the writers of the present day, at whose feet you have sat, craftily
conceal the nature of the soul which they know quite well. Nor, until
they adopt our method of reading and writing, can we admit that they
write by rules of art?

PHAEDRUS: What is our method?

SOCRATES: I cannot give you the exact details; but I should like to
tell you generally, as far as is in my power, how a man ought to proceed
according to rules of art.

PHAEDRUS: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he
who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they
are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences
between man and man. Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he
will next divide speeches into their different classes:--'Such and such
persons,' he will say, are affected by this or that kind of speech in
this or that way,' and he will tell you why. The pupil must have a good
theoretical notion of them first, and then he must have experience of
them in actual life, and be able to follow them with all his senses
about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters. But
when he understands what persons are persuaded by what arguments, and
sees the person about whom he was speaking in the abstract actually
before him, and knows that it is he, and can say to himself, 'This is
the man or this is the character who ought to have a certain argument
applied to him in order to convince him of a certain opinion;'--he who
knows all this, and knows also when he should speak and when he should
refrain, and when he should use pithy sayings, pathetic appeals,
sensational effects, and all the other modes of speech which he has
learned;--when, I say, he knows the times and seasons of all these
things, then, and not till then, he is a perfect master of his art; but
if he fail in any of these points, whether in speaking or teaching or
writing them, and yet decla