Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3Grote, George
Philosophy
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3
Grote, George
Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
But the other portion of Plato's sum total of what is necessary to
an Art of Rhetoric, is not open to the same objection. It involves
no incompatible conditions: and we can say nothing against it,
except that it requires a breadth and logical command of
scientific data, far greater than there is the smallest chance of
attaining. That Art is an assemblage of processes, directed to a
definite end, and prescribed by rules which themselves rest upon
scientific data--we find first announced in the works of
Plato.[108] A vast amount of scientific research, both inductive
and deductive, is here assumed as an indispensable foundation--and
even as a portion--of what he calls the Art of Rhetoric: first, a
science of psychology, complete both in its principles and
details: next, an exhaustive catalogue and classification of the
various modes of operative speech, with their respective
impression upon each different class of minds. So prodigious a
measure of scientific requirement has never yet been filled up: of
course, therefore, no one has ever put together a body of precepts
commensurate with it. Aristotle, following partially the large
conceptions of his master, has given a comprehensive view of many
among the theoretical postulates of Rhetoric; and has partially
enumerated the varieties both of persuadable auditors, and of
persuasive means available to the speaker for guiding them.
Cicero, Dionysius of Halikarnassus, Quintilian, have furnished
valuable contributions towards this last category of data, but not
much towards the first: being all of them defective in breadth of
psychological theory. Nor has Plato himself done anything to work
out his conception in detail or to provide suitable rules for it.
We read it only as an impressive sketch--a grand but unattainable
_idéal_--"qualem nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum".
[Footnote 108: I repeat the citation from the Phædrus, one of the
most striking passages in Plato, p. 271 D.
[Greek: e)/peidê\ lo/gou du/namis tugcha/nei psuchagôgi/a ou)=sa,
to\n me/llonta r(êtoriko\n e)/sesthai a)na/gkê ei)de/nai psuchê\
o(/sa ei)/dê e)/chei. e)/stin ou)=n to/sa kai\ to/sa, kai\ toi=a
kai\ toi=a; o(/then oi( me\n toioi/de, oi( de\ toioi/de
gi/gnontai. tou/tôn de\ dê\ diê|rême/nôn, lo/gôn au)= to/sa kai\
to/sa e)/stin ei)/dê, toio/nde e(/kaston. oi( me\n ou)=n toioi/de
u(po\ tô=n toiô=nde logôn dia\ tê/nde tê\n aiti/an e)s ta\ toia/de
eu)peithei=s, oi( de\ toioi/de dia\ ta/de duspeithei=s], &c. Comp.
p. 261 A.
The relation of Art to Science is thus perspicuously stated by Mr.
John Stuart Mill, in the concluding chapter of his System of
Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Book vi. ch. xii. § 2):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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