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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: art of attiring and sophistry are two others: thus there are four
branches, and four different things answering to them. And Polus may ask,
if he likes, for he has not as yet been informed, what part of flattery is
rhetoric: he did not see that I had not yet answered him when he proceeded
to ask a further question: Whether I do not think rhetoric a fine thing?
But I shall not tell him whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, until I
have first answered, 'What is rhetoric?' For that would not be right,
Polus; but I shall be happy to answer, if you will ask me, What part of
flattery is rhetoric?
POLUS: I will ask and do you answer? What part of flattery is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Will you understand my answer? Rhetoric, according to my view,
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