sias, Gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and
who teach how to be short or long at pleasure. Prodicus showed his good
sense when he said that there was a better thing than either to be short
or long, which was to be of convenient length.

Still, notwithstanding the absurdities of Polus and others, rhetoric has
great power in public assemblies. This power, however, is not given by
any technical rules, but is the gift of genius. The real art is always
being confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The
perfection of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural
power must be aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in
the schools of rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for
instance, who was the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his
eloquence not from rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which
he learnt of Anaxagoras. True rhetoric is like medicine, and the
rhetorician has to consider the natures of men's souls as the physician
considers the natures of their bodies. Such and such persons are to be
affected in this way, such and such others in that; and he must know the
times and the seasons for saying this or that. This is not an easy task,
and this, if there be such an art, is the art of rhetoric.

I know that there are some professors of the art who maintain
probability to be stronger than truth. But we maintain that probability
is engendered by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by
the knowledge of it, and that the aim of the good man should not be to
please or persuade his fellow-servants, but to please his good masters
who are the gods. Rhetoric has a fair beginning in this.

Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true
use of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of
writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he
would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From
this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered
the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture,
which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful
likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses
the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a
bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent
nor anyone else is there to defend it. The h