SOCRATES: Very true; and therefore let us consider this matter in every light, and see whether we cannot find a shorter and easier road; there is no use in taking a long rough roundabout way if there be a shorter and easier one. And I wish that you would try and remember whether you have heard from Lysias or any one else anything which might be of service to us.
PHAEDRUS: If trying would avail, then I might; but at the moment I can think of nothing.
SOCRATES: Suppose I tell you something which somebody who knows told me.
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: May not 'the wolf,' as the proverb says, 'claim a hearing'?
PHAEDRUS: Do you say what can be said for him.
SOCRATES: He will argue that there is no use in putting a solemn face on these matters, or in going round and round, until you arrive at first principles; for, as I said at first, when the question is of justice and good, or is a question in which men are concerned who are just and good, either by nature or habit, he who would be a skilful rhetorician has no need of truth—for that in courts of law men literally care nothing about truth, but only about conviction: and this is based on probability, to which he who would be a skilful orator should therefore give his whole attention. And they say also that there are cases in which the actual facts, if they are improbable, ought to be withheld, and only the probabilities should be told either in accusation or defence, and that always in speaking, the orator should keep probability in view, and say good-bye to the truth. And the observance of this principle throughout a speech furnishes the whole art.
PHAEDRUS: That is what the professors of rhetoric do actually say, Socrates. I have not forgotten that we have quite briefly touched upon this matter already; with them the point is all-important.
SOCRATES: I dare say that you are familiar with Tisias. Does he not define probability to be that which the many think?
PHAEDRUS: Certainly, he does.