The perfection which is required of the finished orator is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else, partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by art. But the art, as far as there is an art, of rhetoric does not lie in the direction of Lysias or Thrasymachus . I conceive Pericles to have been the most accomplished of rhetoricians. And this, as I conceive, was the quality which, in addition to his natural gifts, Pericles acquired from his intercourse with Anaxagoras whom he happened to know. He was thus imbued with the higher philosophy, and attained the knowledge of Mind and the negative of Mind, which were favourite themes of Anaxagoras , and applied what suited his purpose to the art of speaking.
Rhetoric is like medicine.
There, Socrates , I suspect that you are right. Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that the nature even of the body can only be understood as a whole. Hippocrates says about this or about any other nature. You may very likely be right, Socrates . Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of a comparison with the blind, or deaf.