_Soc._ As to the arts generally, they are for the most part concerned with doing, and require little or no speaking; in painting, and statuary, and many other arts, the work may proceed in silence; and of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within the province of rhetoric. _Gor._ You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates. [Sidenote: You mean to say that rhetoric belongs to that class of arts which is chiefly concerned with words.] [Sidenote: _Rhetoric and arithmetic._] _Soc._ But there are other arts which work wholly through the medium of language, and require either no action or very little, as, for example, the arts of arithmetic, of calculation, of geometry, and of playing draughts; in some of these speech is pretty nearly coextensive with action, but in most of them the verbal element is greater—they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power: and I take your meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter sort? _Gor._ Exactly. [Sidenote: And yet you would not call arithmetic rhetoric.] _Soc._ And yet I do not believe that you really mean to call any of these arts rhetoric; although the precise expression which you used was, that rhetoric is an art which works and takes effect only through the medium of discourse; and an adversary who wished to be captious might say, ‘And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric.’ But I do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry would be so called by you. 451 _Gor._ You are quite right, Socrates, in your apprehension of my meaning. [Sidenote: Illustrations.]