SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider my case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and Gorgias—refute and be refuted: for I suppose that you would claim to know what Gorgias knows—would you not? POLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And you, like him, invite any one to ask you about anything which he pleases, and you will know how to answer him? POLUS: To be sure. SOCRATES: And now, which will you do, ask or answer? POLUS: I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric? SOCRATES: Do you mean what sort of an art? POLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my opinion. POLUS: Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric? SOCRATES: A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of yours, you say that you have made an art. POLUS: What thing? SOCRATES: I should say a sort of experience. POLUS: Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience? SOCRATES: That is my view, but you may be of another mind. POLUS: An experience in what? SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification. POLUS: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be a fine thing? SOCRATES: What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is? POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience? SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight gratification to me? POLUS: I will. SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery? POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery? SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus. POLUS: What then? SOCRATES: I should say an experience. POLUS: In what? I wish that you would explain to me. SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification, Polus. POLUS: Then are cookery and rhetoric the same? SOCRATES: No, they are only different parts of the same profession. POLUS: Of what profession? SOCRATES: I am afraid that the truth may seem discourteous; and I hesitate to answer, lest Gorgias should imagine that I am making fun of his own profession. For whether or not this is that art of rhetoric which Gorgias practises I really cannot tell:—from what he was just now saying, nothing appeared of what he thought of his art, but the rhetoric which I mean is a part of a not very creditable whole.