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do you call it a noble or an ignoble thing T S . An ignoble thing ; for all bad things I call ignoble : since I must answer you as if you already understood what I have been saying . ' * By Jupiter ! " said Gorgias , ' neither do I myself understand what you mean / S . * And no wonder , for I have not yet explained myself at all clearly ; but Polus is young and sharp . * Leave him alone , ' resumed Gorgias , * and tell me how you consider rhetoric to be the counterfeit of a branch of politics . '
* I will try , ' said Socrates , ' to explain what rhetoric seems to me to be : and , if it be not so , Polus will refute me . There are such things as body and mind ? ' Gorgias answered , * There are . * S . * There is such a thing as a good habit of body , or of mind ?* G . * There is / S . ' And there is such a thing as an apparently good , habit , which is
not really so . Many persons seem to be in a good state of body , and no one but a physician or a gymnast could readily perceive that they are not so . ' G . True . ' S . * There are things , moreover , which cause the body and the mind to be apparently in a good state , without really improving their condition at all . ' G . ' There are so . '
S . * Now , then , I can more clearly explain my meaning . These two things , body and mind , form the subjects of two arts . The art which relates to the mind , I call Politics , or the Social Art . The art which relates to the body , I cannot caH by any single name ; but the culture of the body , being itself one , has two brandies , which are , gymnastics and medicine . Politics consists of the art of legislation , which corresponds to gymnastics , and the art of judicature , which
corresponds to medicine . Gymnastics and Medicine , as they relate to the same subject , have some things in common with each other , as have likewise Judicature and Legislation ; but they nevertheless have some differences . These , then , are four arts , which serve the body and the mind , always having in view their greatest good . Adulation , perceiving this , I do not say knowing , but divining it , separates itself into four branches , and , decking itself in the garb of these four arts , pretends to be lhat which it
counterfeits ; not paying any regard to the greatest good , but baiting its hook with the greatest pleasure , so as to deceive the unreflecting , and appear the most valuable of all things . Cookery puts on the semblance of medicine , and pretends to know what kinds of food are best for the hody ; and if a physician and a cook had to appear before children , or before men who are as unthinking as children , that it might be deckled which of them best understood good and bad diet , the physician would starve for want of employment . This 1 call adulation , and I hold it to
he a disgraceful thing , Polus , because it aims at the pleasant only , without regarding the greatest good ; and I afFirm that it is not an art , hut a mere skill , because it cannot give any account of the real nature of the things which it employs , nor , consequently , can it explain the cause of the effects which it produces . ^ I do not give the name of art to that which cannot render a reason for what it enjoins . If you doubt this , I am willing to contest it with you . Cookery , then , counterfeits medicine . In like manner , Cosmetics counterfeits Gymnastics , being a
. KaXov and A < V ; £ g « : literally beautiful and ugty ; but those words , although aa iostly applicable to moral as to physical objects , are not , in that application , sufficiently "uniliar to English ear * . I have chosen the words which seemed to me moat uutable to the objects of thin dialogue . But no terms would answer the purpose J ^^ jy * unless , with the same original menning , they contiuued the same habitual and »* miliar associations . a « the Greek words .
Untitled Article
Plato * 8 Dialogue *; ike Gorgias . 701
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 701, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/25/
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