Dialogue

 1  Gorg|        seem; for the next best thing to a man’s being just is
 2  Gorg|    defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all good things,
 3  Gorg|         and rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias has already
 4  Gorg|        replies Socrates, but a thing which in your book you affirm
 5  Gorg| created art. Polus asks, ‘What thing?’ and Socrates answers,
 6  Gorg|     But is not rhetoric a fine thing?’ I have not yet told you
 7  Gorg|     philosophy is an excellent thing; too much is the ruin of
 8  Gorg|      and that is the provoking thing.’ Not provoking to a man
 9  Gorg|   another life. For no visible thing can reveal the invisible.
10  Gorg|      and ‘there is some better thing remaining for the good than
11  Gorg|      question; there is such a thing as ‘having learned’?~GORGIAS:
12  Gorg|      not possibly be an unjust thing. But when you added, shortly
13  Gorg|      arose a contradiction—the thing which you dearly love, and
14  Gorg|       is rhetoric?~SOCRATES: A thing which, as I was lately reading
15  Gorg|       made an art.~POLUS: What thing?~SOCRATES: I should say
16  Gorg|    must not rhetoric be a fine thing?~SOCRATES: What are you
17  Gorg|     whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, when I have not
18  Gorg|      not think rhetoric a fine thing? But I shall not tell him
19  Gorg|     whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, until I have first
20  Gorg|        not call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute
21  Gorg|        sake of which they do a thing? when they take medicine,
22  Gorg|    which we do, but that other thing for the sake of which we
23  Gorg|       so as to cause pain, the thing burned will be burned in
24  Gorg|        being healed a pleasant thing, and are those who are being
25  Gorg|        not.~SOCRATES: A useful thing, then?~POLUS: Yes.~SOCRATES:
26  Gorg|       son of Cleinias says one thing to-day and another thing
27  Gorg|       thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, but philosophy
28  Gorg|    that being just the sort of thing in which you delight. Whereupon
29  Gorg|     education, is an excellent thing, and there is no disgrace
30  Gorg|    more advanced in years, the thing becomes ridiculous, and
31  Gorg|   himself’?~SOCRATES: A simple thing enough; just what is commonly
32  Gorg|       to your view is an awful thing; and indeed I think that
33  Gorg|    child, sometimes saying one thing, and then another, as if
34  Gorg|    agreed that there is such a thing as good, and that there
35  Gorg|       and that there is such a thing as pleasure, and that pleasure
36  Gorg|        and this is the sort of thing which I term flattery, whether
37  Gorg|        is not that the sort of thing, Callicles, which we were
38  Gorg|    drink or any other pleasant thing, which may be really as
39  Gorg|         But the virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument
40  Gorg|      is not the virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement?
41  Gorg|         And that which makes a thing good is the proper order
42  Gorg|  proper order inhering in each thing? Such is my view. And is
43  Gorg|        that just the provoking thing?~SOCRATES: Nay, not to a
44  Gorg|        art; which is a foolish thing?~CALLICLES: True.~SOCRATES:
45  Gorg|     that rhetoric is a perfect thing, and sophistry a thing to
46  Gorg| perfect thing, and sophistry a thing to be despised; whereas
47  Gorg|        to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised,
48  Gorg|         and that the next best thing to a man being just is that