It appears from Plato’s Gorgias that he was far from regarding rhetoric as an art of ill tendency, but that, rather it is, or ought to be, if we were to conceive an adequate idea of it inseparable from virtue.  This he explains more clearly in his Phaedrus, where he says that “The art can never be perfect without an exact knowledge and strict observance of justice.”  I join him in this opinion, and if these were not his real sentiments, would he have written an apology for Socrates and the eulogium of those brave citizens who lost their lives in the defense of their country?  This is certainly acting the part of an orator, and if in any respect he attacks the profession, it is on account of those who make ill use of eloquence.  Socrates, animated with the same spirit, thought it unworthy of him to pronounce the speech Lysias had composed for his defense, it being the custom of the orators of those times to write speeches for arraigned criminals, which the latter pronounced in their own defense; thus eluding the law that prohibited pleading for another.  Plato, likewise, in his Phaedrus, condemns the masters that separated rhetoric from justice, and preferred probabilities to truth.

Such are the definitions of rhetoric which have been principally set forth.  To go through all of them is not my purpose, nor do I think it possible, as most writers on arts have shown a perverse dislike for defining things as others do or in the same terms as those who wrote before them.  I am far from being influenced by a like spirit of ambition, and far from flattering myself with the glory of invention, and I shall rest content with that which seems most rational, that rhetoric is properly defined as “The science of speaking well.”  Having found what is best, it is useless to seek further.

Accepting this definition, therefore, it will be no difficult matter to ascertain its end, for if it be “The science of speaking well,” then “to speak well” will be the end it proposes to itself.

THE USE OF RHETORIC

The next question is on the utility of rhetoric, and from this point of view some direct the bitterest invectives against it, and what is very unbecoming, exert the force of eloquence against eloquence, saying that by it the wicked are freed from punishment, and the innocent opprest by its artifices; that it perverts good counsel, and enforces bad; that it foments troubles and seditions in States; that it arms nations against each other, and makes them irreconcilable enemies; and that its power is never more manifest than when error and lies triumph over truth.

Comic poets reproach Socrates with teaching how to make a bad cause good, and Plato represents Lysias and Gorgias boasting the same thing.  To these may be added several examples of Greeks and Romans, and a long list of orators whose eloquence was not only the ruin of private persons, but even destructive to whole cities and republics; and for this reason it was that eloquence was banished from Sparta and so restricted at Athens that the orator was not allowed to make appeal to the passions.