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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: is rhetoric; this is the ground into which the rest of the Dialogue is
worked, in parts embroidered with fine words which are not in Socrates'
manner, as he says, 'in order to please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias
which has thrown Phaedrus into an ecstacy is adduced as an example of the
false rhetoric; the first speech of Socrates, though an improvement,
partakes of the same character; his second speech, which is full of that
higher element said to have been learned of Anaxagoras by Pericles, and
which in the midst of poetry does not forget order, is an illustration of
the higher or true rhetoric. This higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic,
and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love (compare Symp.); in
these two aspects of philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are
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