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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: Polus asks, 'What thing?' and Socrates answers, An experience or routine of
making a sort of delight or gratification. 'But is not rhetoric a fine
thing?' I have not yet told you what rhetoric is. Will you ask me another
question--What is cookery? 'What is cookery?' An experience or routine of
making a sort of delight or gratification. Then they are the same, or
rather fall under the same class, and rhetoric has still to be
distinguished from cookery. 'What is rhetoric?' asks Polus once more. A
part of a not very creditable whole, which may be termed flattery, is the
reply. 'But what part?' A shadow of a part of politics. This, as might
be expected, is wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in
order to explain his meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction between
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