Gorgias (503)

Call.

This question of yours is not quite so simple; for there are some who have a regard for the citizens in the words that they utter, while there are also others of the sort that you mention.

Soc.

That is enough for me. For if this thing also is twofold, one part of it, I presume, will be flattery and a base mob-oratory, while the other is noble—the endeavor, that is, to make the citizens’ souls as good as possible, and the persistent effort to say what is best, whether it prove more or less pleasant to one’s hearers.

But this is a rhetoric you never yet saw; or if you have any orator of this kind that you can mention, without more ado let me know who he is!

Call.

No, upon my word, I cannot tell you of anyone, at least among the orators of today.

Soc.

Well then, can you mention one among those of older times whom the Athenians have to thank for any betterment that started at the time of his first harangues, as a change from the worse state in which he originally found them? For my part, I have no idea who the man is.

Call.

Why, do you hear no mention of Themistocles and what a good man he was, and Cimon and Miltiades and the great Pericles, who has died recently,[*] and whom you have listened to yourself?

Soc.

Yes, Callicles, if that which you spoke of just now is true virtue—the satisfaction of one’s own and other men’s desires; but if that is not so, and the truth is—as we were compelled to admit in the subsequent discussion—that only those desires

which make man better by their satisfaction should be fulfilled, but those which make him worse should not, and that this is a special art, then I for one cannot tell you of any man so skilled having appeared among them.

Call.

Ah, but if you search properly you will find one.

Soc.

Then let us just consider the matter calmly, and see if any of them has appeared with that skill. Come now: the good man, who is intent on the best when he speaks, will surely not speak at random in whatever he says, but with a view to some object?

He is just like any other craftsman, who having his own particular work in view selects the things he applies to that work of his, not at random, but with the purpose of giving a certain form to whatever he is working upon.