270
Socrates
Socrates. The method of the art of healing is much the same as that of rhetoric.
Phaedrus
Phaedrus. How so?
Socrates
Socrates. In both cases you must analyze a nature, in one that of the body and in the other that of the soul, if you are to proceed in a scientific manner, not merely by practice and routine, to impart health and strength to the body by prescribing medicine and diet, or by proper discourses and training to give to the soul the desired belief and virtue.
5
Phaedrus
Phaedrus. That, Socrates, is probably true.
Socrates
Socrates. Now do you think one can acquire any appreciable knowledge of the nature of the soul without knowing the nature of the whole man?
Phaedrus
Phaedrus. If Hippocrates the Asclepiad is to be trusted, one cannot know the nature of the body, either, except in that way.
Socrates
Socrates. He is right, my friend; however, we ought not to be content with the authority of Hippocrates, but to see also if our reason agrees with him on examination.
Phaedrus
Phaedrus. I assent.
10
Socrates
Socrates. Then see what Hippocrates and true reason say about nature. In considering the nature of anything, must we not consider first, whether that in respect to which we wish to be learned ourselves and to make others learned is simple or multiform, and then, if it is simple, enquire what power of acting it possesses, or of being acted upon, and by what, and if it has many forms, number them, and then see in the case of each form, as we did in the case of the simple nature, what its action is and how it is acted upon and by what?
