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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: PHAEDRUS: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And if Adrastus the mellifluous or Pericles heard of these
wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names which
we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what would they
say? Instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary epithets, as
you and I have been doing, to the authors of such an imaginary art, their
superior wisdom would rather censure us, as well as them. 'Have a little
patience, Phaedrus and Socrates, they would say; you should not be in such
a passion with those who from some want of dialectical skill are unable to
define the nature of rhetoric, and consequently suppose that they have
found the art in the preliminary conditions of it, and when these have been
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