Note 115 — Chapter XXVI · PHÆDRUS — SYMPOSION.

What Longinus says about critical skill is applicable here also — πολλῆς ἔστι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα. Isokrates (De Permut. Or. xv. sect. 290-312-316) has some good remarks about the impossibility of ἐπιστήμη respecting particulars. Plato, in the Gorgias, puts τέχνη, which he states to depend upon reason and foreknowledge, in opposition to ἐμπειρία and τριβή, which he considers as dependant on the φύσις στοχαστική. But in applying the knowledge or skill called Art to particular cases, the φύσις στοχαστικὴ is the best that can be had (p. 463 A-B). The conception of τέχνη given in the Gorgias is open to the same remark as that which we find in the Phædrus. Plato, in another passage of the Phædrus, speaks of the necessity that φύσις, ἐπιστήμη, and μελέτη, shall concur to make an accomplished orator. This is very true; and Lysias, Isokrates, and all the other rhetors whom Plato satirises, would have concurred in it. In his description of τέχνη and ἐπιστήμη, and in the estimate which he gives of all that it comprises, he leaves no outlying ground for μελέτη. Compare Xenophon, Memor. iii. 1, 11; also Isokrates contra Sophistas, a. 16; and a good passage of Dionysius Halik. De Compos. Verborum, in which that rhetor remarks that καιρὸς or opportunity neither has been nor can be reduced to art and rule.