INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which

the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element

has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the

development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the

Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a

corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the

persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and

incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of Thucydides,

the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the power of

expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of the

earlier dialogues there occur two or three highly-wrought passages;

instead of the ever-flowing play of humour, now appearing, now

concealed, but always present, are inserted a good many bad jests, as

we may venture to term them. We may observe an attempt at artificial

ornament, and far-fetched modes of expression; also clamorous demands

on the part of his companions, that Socrates shall answer his own

questions, as well as other defects of style, which remind us of the

Laws. The connection is often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from

clear. Many points require further explanation; e.g. the reference of

pleasure to the indefinite class, compared with the assertion which

almost immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their

seat in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled.

In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the

two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the

divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final

summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not appear;

though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest good, the

sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the fourth class.

We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in which some

topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller consideration. The

various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life, the mixed class

of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain, are a

further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which

Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a

controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended

to refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has

not told us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them,

the relation in which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or

the Megarian good, or to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes

respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to say how far Plato in the

Philebus conceives the finite and infinite (which occur both in the

fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean table of opposites) in the

same manner as contemporary Pythagoreans.

There is little in the characters which is worthy of remark. The

Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony,

though here, as in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his

ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of

Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a

disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is drawn over to the opposite

side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous youth are

easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from

the argument, is several times brought back again, that he may support

pleasure, of which he remains to the end the uncompromising advocate.

On the other hand, the youthful group of listeners by whom he is

surrounded, 'Philebus' boys' as they are termed, whose presence is

several times intimated, are described as all of them at last convinced

by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very faded resemblance to the

interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or Protagoras. Other

signs of relation to external life in the dialogue, or references

to contemporary things and persons, with the single exception of the

allusions to the anonymous enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the

flux, there are none.

The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a previous

state of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of Plato.

The transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly

discussed by him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has given

way to a psychological one. The omission is rendered more significant

by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire. Of

the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his

criticism of them in the Parmenides. He touches on the same difficulties

and he gives no answer to them. His mode of speaking of the analytical

and synthetical processes may be compared with his discussion of the

same subject in the Phaedrus; here he dwells on the importance of

dividing the genera into all the species, while in the Phaedrus he

conveys the same truth in a figure, when he speaks of carving the whole,

which is described under the image of a victim, into parts or members,

'according to their natural articulation, without breaking any of

them.' There is also a difference, which may be noted, between the two

dialogues. For whereas in the Phaedrus, and also in the Symposium,

the dialectician is described as a sort of enthusiast or lover, in the

Philebus, as in all the later writings of Plato, the element of love

is wanting; the topic is only introduced, as in the Republic, by way of

illustration. On other subjects of which they treat in common, such as

the nature and kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of

the good, the order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less

advanced than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical

truth more obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here,

as Plato expressly tells us, he is 'forging weapons of another make,'

i.e. new categories and modes of conception, though 'some of the old

ones might do again.'

But if superior in thought and dialectical power, the Philebus falls

very far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The development of

the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which

Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or

rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to

the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel

between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some

degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in

abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety

of indications, derived from style as well as subject, that the Philebus

belongs to the later period of his life and authorship. But in this, as

in all the later writings of Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and

expressions in which he rises to his highest level.

The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan renders

the progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading ideas

seem to emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four original

elements, the kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge, the scale of

goods. These are only partially connected with one another. The dialogue

is not rightly entitled 'Concerning pleasure' or 'Concerning good,' but

should rather be described as treating of the relations of pleasure

and knowledge, after they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The

question is asked, whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or some

nature higher than either; and if the latter, how pleasure and wisdom

are related to this higher good. (2) Before we can reply with exactness,

we must know the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But

still we may affirm generally, that the combined life of pleasure and

wisdom or knowledge has more of the character of the good than either of

them when isolated. (4) to determine which of them partakes most of the

higher nature, we must know under which of the four unities or elements

they respectively fall. These are, first, the infinite; secondly, the

finite; thirdly, the union of the two; fourthly, the cause of the union.

Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or knowledge of the third class, while

reason or mind is akin to the fourth or highest.

(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed

pleasures there are three classes--(a) those in which both the pleasures

and pains are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in which

there is a pain of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when you

are hungry and are looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which the

pleasure and pain are both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there are four

kinds: those of sight, hearing, smell, knowledge.

(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical and

productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The

pure part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like

carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher

than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is

also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively

theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the

truest and purest knowledge.

(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.

First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the

impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to discover

what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There are three

criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are clearly more

akin to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix the places

of both of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the

second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom;

the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures;

and here the Muse says 'Enough.'

'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the

metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I)

the paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or

elements; (III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge;

(V) the conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the

relation of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.

I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic

of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by

showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence

of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by

well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems

to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed

illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense

('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites was

a sufficient answer to them. He will leave them to Cynics and Eristics;

the youth of Athens may discourse of them to their parents. To no

rational man could the circumstance that the body is one, but has many

members, be any longer a stumbling-block.

Plato's difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot

understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be

broken up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at

once. Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one or

Being, by the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind could no

longer imagine 'Being' as in a state of change or division. To say that

the verb of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere unit, is

to us easy; but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought such an

analysis involved the same kind of difficulty as the conception of God

existing both in and out of the world would to ourselves. Nor was he

assisted by the analogy of sensible objects. The sphere of mind was dark

and mysterious to him; but instead of being illustrated by sense, the

greatest light appeared to be thrown on the nature of ideas when they

were contrasted with sense.

Both here and in the Parmenides, where similar difficulties are raised,

Plato seems prepared to desert his ancient ground. He cannot tell the

relation in which abstract ideas stand to one another, and therefore he

transfers the one and many out of his transcendental world, and proceeds

to lay down practical rules for their application to different branches

of knowledge. As in the Republic he supposes the philosopher to proceed

by regular steps, until he arrives at the idea of good; as in the

Sophist and Politicus he insists that in dividing the whole into its

parts we should bisect in the middle in the hope of finding species;

as in the Phaedrus (see above) he would have 'no limb broken' of the

organism of knowledge;--so in the Philebus he urges the necessity of

filling up all the intermediate links which occur (compare Bacon's

'media axiomata') in the passage from unity to infinity. With him the

idea of science may be said to anticipate science; at a time when

the sciences were not yet divided, he wants to impress upon us the

importance of classification; neither neglecting the many individuals,

nor attempting to count them all, but finding the genera and species

under which they naturally fall. Here, then, and in the parallel

passages of the Phaedrus and of the Sophist, is found the germ of the

most fruitful notion of modern science.

Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted by

the one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour of

metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none the less

an everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows old in

us. At first we have but a confused conception of them, analogous to the

eyes blinking at the light in the Republic. To this Plato opposes

the revelation from Heaven of the real relations of them, which some

Prometheus, who gave the true fire from heaven, is supposed to have

imparted to us. Plato is speaking of two things--(1) the crude notion of

the one and many, which powerfully affects the ordinary mind when first

beginning to think; (2) the same notion when cleared up by the help of

dialectic.

To us the problem of the one and many has lost its chief interest and

perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts, that the

continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is

a one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy

to purely intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the

words, we are compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are

true. But the antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us.

Our sense of the contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher

sphere, when we speak of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of

Three Persons and One Substance, and the like. The world of knowledge

is always dividing more and more; every truth is at first the enemy of

every other truth. Yet without this division there can be no truth; nor

any complete truth without the reunion of the parts into a whole. And

hence the coexistence of opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded

by Hegel as the supreme principle of philosophy; and the law of

contradiction, which is affirmed by logicians to be an ultimate

principle of the human mind, is displaced by another law, which asserts

the coexistence of contradictories as imperfect and divided elements of

the truth. Without entering further into the depths of Hegelianism, we

may remark that this and all similar attempts to reconcile antinomies

have their origin in the old Platonic problem of the 'One and Many.'

II. 1. The first of Plato's categories or elements is the infinite. This

is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknowable;

of which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which preceded

distinct kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague impression

of sense; the more or less which refuses to be reduced to rule, having

certain affinities with evil, with pleasure, with ignorance, and which

in the scale of being is farthest removed from the beautiful and good.

To a Greek of the age of Plato, the idea of an infinite mind would

have been an absurdity. He would have insisted that 'the good is of the

nature of the finite,' and that the infinite is a mere negative, which

is on the level of sensation, and not of thought. He was aware that

there was a distinction between the infinitely great and the infinitely

small, but he would have equally denied the claim of either to true

existence. Of that positive infinity, or infinite reality, which we

attribute to God, he had no conception.

The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly described, in

our way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion of infinity

is subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing not absolute

vacancy or negation, but only the removal of limit or restraint, which

we suppose to exist not before but after we have already set bounds to

thought and matter, and divided them after their kinds. From different

points of view, either the finite or infinite may be looked upon

respectively both as positive and negative (compare 'Omnis determinatio

est negatio')' and the conception of the one determines that of the

other. The Greeks and the moderns seem to be nearly at the opposite

poles in their manner of regarding them. And both are surprised when

they make the discovery, as Plato has done in the Sophist, how large an

element negation forms in the framework of their thoughts.

2, 3. The finite element which mingles with and regulates the infinite

is best expressed to us by the word 'law.' It is that which measures all

things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves them in their

natural state, and brings them within the sphere of human cognition.

This is described by the terms harmony, health, order, perfection, and

the like. All things, in as far as they are good, even pleasures, which

are for the most part indefinite, partake of this element. We should be

wrong in attributing to Plato the conception of laws of nature derived

from observation and experiment. And yet he has as intense a conviction

as any modern philosopher that nature does not proceed by chance. But

observing that the wonderful construction of number and figure, which he

had within himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained

a part of the phenomena of the external world, he extended their

principles to the whole, finding in them the true type both of human

life and of the order of nature.

Two other points may be noticed respecting the third class. First, that

Plato seems to be unconscious of any interval or chasm which separates

the finite from the infinite. The one is in various ways and degrees

working in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the difficulty

with which he started, of how the one could remain one and yet be

divided among many individuals, or 'how ideas could be in and out of

themselves,' and the like. Secondly, that in this mixed class we find

the idea of beauty. Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure

or symmetry, becomes beauty. And if we translate his language into

corresponding modern terms, we shall not be far wrong in saying that

here, as well as in the Republic, Plato conceives beauty under the idea

of proportion.

4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause

of the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the

order of the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that

as there is a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which

he identifies with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of

which 'our ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the

Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed

to have been revealed by tradition. For the mythical element has not

altogether disappeared.

Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the

ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.

a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal.

Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in

speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem

to himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and

impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental

distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of

various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear

almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without

any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time

of God or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he

seems to pass unconsciously from the concrete to the abstract conception

of the Ideas in the same dialogue. Nor in the Philebus is he careful to

show in what relation the idea of the divine mind stands to the supreme

principle of measure.

b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a first

cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a first cause

with God, and the final cause with the world, which is His work. But

Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from confounding God with

the world, tends to identify the first with the final cause. The cause

of the union of the finite and infinite might be described as a higher

law; the final measure which is the highest expression of the good

may also be described as the supreme law. Both these conceptions are

realized chiefly by the help of the material world; and therefore when

we pass into the sphere of ideas can hardly be distinguished.

The four principles are required for the determination of the relative

places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we should

proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accordingly, before

assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he must first

find out and arrange in order the general principles of things. Mind

is ascertained to be akin to the nature of the cause, while pleasure is

found in the infinite or indefinite class. We may now proceed to divide

pleasure and knowledge after their kinds.

III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a

generation, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct

from good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of

the nature of the finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly

allied to, knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the

indefinite is equally real with the definite. Health and mental

qualities are in the concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real

goods, and Plato rightly regards them as falling under the finite class.

Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are

in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can

therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test

of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being

defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we

proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing

to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, happiness, and the

like.

2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as

absolute. But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode

of regarding them; the abstract idea of the one is compared with the

concrete experience of the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge may

be viewed either abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the mind

(compare Aristot. Nic. Ethics). The first is an idea only, which may be

conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of

pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when

we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same defects

are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon them is

equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a state of

intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure always.

The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems

to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of

eating after hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of unconsciousness

and indifference. Change and alternation are necessary for the mind as

well as for the body; and in this is to be acknowledged, not an element

of evil, but rather a law of nature. The chief difference between

subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in respect of permanence is

that the latter, when our feeble faculties are able to grasp it, still

conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which cannot be got rid of.

3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of

pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to

Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as the

Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from another,

as the transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared with the

supposed permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us the distinction

is unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed

away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that the continuance or life

of things is quite as much to be attributed to a principle of rest as

of motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later view of pleasure is found

in Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many points, e.g. in his view of

pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his distinction between bodily

and mental, between necessary and non-necessary pleasures. But he is

also in advance of Plato; for he affirms that pleasure is not in the

body at all; and hence not even the bodily pleasures are to be spoken of

as generations, but only as accompanied by generation (Nic. Eth.).

4. Plato attempts to identify vicious pleasures with some form of error,

and insists that the term false may be applied to them: in this he

appears to be carrying out in a confused manner the Socratic doctrine,

that virtue is knowledge, vice ignorance. He will allow of no

distinction between the pleasures and the erroneous opinions on which

they are founded, whether arising out of the illusion of distance or

not. But to this we naturally reply with Protarchus, that the

pleasure is what it is, although the calculation may be false, or the

after-effects painful. It is difficult to acquit Plato, to use his own

language, of being a 'tyro in dialectics,' when he overlooks such

a distinction. Yet, on the other hand, we are hardly fair judges

of confusions of thought in those who view things differently from

ourselves.

5. There appears also to be an incorrectness in the notion which occurs

both here and in the Gorgias, of the simultaneousness of merely bodily

pleasures and pains. We may, perhaps, admit, though even this is not

free from doubt, that the feeling of pleasureable hope or recollection

is, or rather may be, simultaneous with acute bodily suffering. But

there is no such coexistence of the pain of thirst with the pleasures

of drinking; they are not really simultaneous, for the one expels the

other. Nor does Plato seem to have considered that the bodily pleasures,

except in certain extreme cases, are unattended with pain. Few

philosophers will deny that a degree of pleasure attends eating

and drinking; and yet surely we might as well speak of the pains of

digestion which follow, as of the pains of hunger and thirst which

precede them. Plato's conception is derived partly from the extreme case

of a man suffering pain from hunger or thirst, partly from the image

of a full and empty vessel. But the truth is rather, that while the

gratification of our bodily desires constantly affords some degree

of pleasure, the antecedent pains are scarcely perceived by us, being

almost done away with by use and regularity.

6. The desire to classify pleasures as accompanied or not accompanied by

antecedent pains, has led Plato to place under one head the pleasures of

smell and sight, as well as those derived from sounds of music and from

knowledge. He would have done better to make a separate class of the

pleasures of smell, having no association of mind, or perhaps to have

divided them into natural and artificial. The pleasures of sight and

sound might then have been regarded as being the expression of ideas.

But this higher and truer point of view never appears to have occurred

to Plato. Nor has he any distinction between the fine arts and the

mechanical; and, neither here nor anywhere, an adequate conception of

the beautiful in external things.

7. Plato agrees partially with certain 'surly or fastidious'

philosophers, as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence

of pain. They are also described as eminent in physics. There is

unfortunately no school of Greek philosophy known to us which combined

these two characteristics. Antisthenes, who was an enemy of pleasure,

was not a physical philosopher; the atomists, who were physical

philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure. Yet such a combination of

opinions is far from being impossible. Plato's omission to mention them

by name has created the same uncertainty respecting them which also

occurs respecting the 'friends of the ideas' and the 'materialists' in

the Sophist.

On the whole, this discussion is one of the least satisfactory in the

dialogues of Plato. While the ethical nature of pleasure is scarcely

considered, and the merely physical phenomenon imperfectly analysed,

too much weight is given to ideas of measure and number, as the sole

principle of good. The comparison of pleasure and knowledge is really

a comparison of two elements, which have no common measure, and which

cannot be excluded from each other. Feeling is not opposed to knowledge,

and in all consciousness there is an element of both. The most abstract

kinds of knowledge are inseparable from some pleasure or pain, which

accompanies the acquisition or possession of them: the student is liable

to grow weary of them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy

is not granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is

inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy who,

to borrow Plato's illustration, is leading the life of an oyster. Hence

(by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth determining; the

real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no more separate

pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can separate justice

from happiness in the Republic.

IV. An interesting account is given in the Philebus of the rank and

order of the sciences or arts, which agrees generally with the scheme

of knowledge in the Sixth Book of the Republic. The chief difference is,

that the position of the arts is more exactly defined. They are divided

into an empirical part and a scientific part, of which the first is mere

guess-work, the second is determined by rule and measure. Of the more

empirical arts, music is given as an example; this, although affirmed

to be necessary to human life, is depreciated. Music is regarded from

a point of view entirely opposite to that of the Republic, not as a

sublime science, coordinate with astronomy, but as full of doubt and

conjecture. According to the standard of accuracy which is here adopted,

it is rightly placed lower in the scale than carpentering, because the

latter is more capable of being reduced to measure.

The theoretical element of the arts may also become a purely abstract

science, when separated from matter, and is then said to be pure and

unmixed. The distinction which Plato here makes seems to be the same as

that between pure and applied mathematics, and may be expressed in the

modern formula--science is art theoretical, art is science practical.

In the reason which he gives for the superiority of the pure science of

number over the mixed or applied, we can only agree with him in part. He

says that the numbers which the philosopher employs are always the same,

whereas the numbers which are used in practice represent different sizes

or quantities. He does not see that this power of expressing different

quantities by the same symbol is the characteristic and not the defect

of numbers, and is due to their abstract nature;--although we admit of

course what Plato seems to feel in his distinctions between pure and

impure knowledge, that the imperfection of matter enters into the

applications of them.

Above the other sciences, as in the Republic, towers dialectic, which is

the science of eternal Being, apprehended by the purest mind and reason.

The lower sciences, including the mathematical, are akin to opinion

rather than to reason, and are placed together in the fourth class of

goods. The relation in which they stand to dialectic is obscure in the

Republic, and is not cleared up in the Philebus.

V. Thus far we have only attained to the vestibule or ante-chamber of

the good; for there is a good exceeding knowledge, exceeding

essence, which, like Glaucon in the Republic, we find a difficulty

in apprehending. This good is now to be exhibited to us under various

aspects and gradations. The relative dignity of pleasure and knowledge

has been determined; but they have not yet received their exact position

in the scale of goods. Some difficulties occur to us in the enumeration:

First, how are we to distinguish the first from the second class of

goods, or the second from the third? Secondly, why is there no mention

of the supreme mind? Thirdly, the nature of the fourth class. Fourthly,

the meaning of the allusion to a sixth class, which is not further

investigated.

(I) Plato seems to proceed in his table of goods, from the more abstract

to the less abstract; from the subjective to the objective; until at the

lower end of the scale we fairly descend into the region of human action

and feeling. To him, the greater the abstraction the greater the truth,

and he is always tending to see abstractions within abstractions;

which, like the ideas in the Parmenides, are always appearing one behind

another. Hence we find a difficulty in following him into the sphere of

thought which he is seeking to attain. First in his scale of goods he

places measure, in which he finds the eternal nature: this would be more

naturally expressed in modern language as eternal law, and seems to be

akin both to the finite and to the mind or cause, which were two of the

elements in the former table. Like the supreme nature in the Timaeus,

like the ideal beauty in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, or like the

ideal good in the Republic, this is the absolute and unapproachable

being. But this being is manifested in symmetry and beauty everywhere,

in the order of nature and of mind, in the relations of men to one

another. For the word 'measure' he now substitutes the word 'symmetry,'

as if intending to express measure conceived as relation. He then

proceeds to regard the good no longer in an objective form, but as the

human reason seeking to attain truth by the aid of dialectic; such at

least we naturally infer to be his meaning, when we consider that both

here and in the Republic the sphere of nous or mind is assigned

to dialectic. (2) It is remarkable (see above) that this personal

conception of mind is confined to the human mind, and not extended to

the divine. (3) If we may be allowed to interpret one dialogue of Plato

by another, the sciences of figure and number are probably classed

with the arts and true opinions, because they proceed from hypotheses

(compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a sixth class is to be

added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from Orpheus: Plato means

to say that a sixth class, if there be such a class, is not worth

considering, because pleasure, having only gained the fifth place in the

scale of goods, is already out of the running.

VI. We may now endeavour to ascertain the relation of the Philebus to

the other dialogues. Here Plato shows the same indifference to his own

doctrine of Ideas which he has already manifested in the Parmenides and

the Sophist. The principle of the one and many of which he here speaks,

is illustrated by examples in the Sophist and Statesman. Notwithstanding

the differences of style, many resemblances may be noticed between the

Philebus and Gorgias. The theory of the simultaneousness of pleasure

and pain is common to both of them (Phil. Gorg.); there is also a common

tendency in them to take up arms against pleasure, although the view of

the Philebus, which is probably the later of the two dialogues, is

the more moderate. There seems to be an allusion to the passage in

the Gorgias, in which Socrates dilates on the pleasures of itching and

scratching. Nor is there any real discrepancy in the manner in which

Gorgias and his art are spoken of in the two dialogues. For Socrates

is far from implying that the art of rhetoric has a real sphere of

practical usefulness: he only means that the refutation of the claims

of Gorgias is not necessary for his present purpose. He is saying

in effect: 'Admit, if you please, that rhetoric is the greatest and

usefullest of sciences:--this does not prove that dialectic is not the

purest and most exact.' From the Sophist and Statesman we know that his

hostility towards the sophists and rhetoricians was not mitigated in

later life; although both in the Statesman and Laws he admits of a

higher use of rhetoric.

Reasons have been already given for assigning a late date to the

Philebus. That the date is probably later than that of the Republic, may

be further argued on the following grounds:--1. The general resemblance

to the later dialogues and to the Laws: 2. The more complete account of

the nature of good and pleasure: 3. The distinction between perception,

memory, recollection, and opinion which indicates a great progress

in psychology; also between understanding and imagination, which is

described under the figure of the scribe and the painter. A superficial

notion may arise that Plato probably wrote shorter dialogues, such as

the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Statesman, as studies or preparations

for longer ones. This view may be natural; but on further reflection is

seen to be fallacious, because these three dialogues are found to make

an advance upon the metaphysical conceptions of the Republic. And we can

more easily suppose that Plato composed shorter writings after longer

ones, than suppose that he lost hold of further points of view which he

had once attained.

It is more easy to find traces of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Megarians,

Cynics, Cyrenaics and of the ideas of Anaxagoras, in the Philebus, than

to say how much is due to each of them. Had we fuller records of those

old philosophers, we should probably find Plato in the midst of the fray

attempting to combine Eleatic and Pythagorean doctrines, and seeking to

find a truth beyond either Being or number; setting up his own concrete

conception of good against the abstract practical good of the Cynics,

or the abstract intellectual good of the Megarians, and his own idea of

classification against the denial of plurality in unity which is also

attributed to them; warring against the Eristics as destructive of

truth, as he had formerly fought against the Sophists; taking up a

middle position between the Cynics and Cyrenaics in his doctrine of

pleasure; asserting with more consistency than Anaxagoras the existence

of an intelligent mind and cause. Of the Heracliteans, whom he is said

by Aristotle to have cultivated in his youth, he speaks in the Philebus,

as in the Theaetetus and Cratylus, with irony and contempt. But we have

not the knowledge which would enable us to pursue further the line of

reflection here indicated; nor can we expect to find perfect clearness

or order in the first efforts of mankind to understand the working of

their own minds. The ideas which they are attempting to analyse, they

are also in process of creating; the abstract universals of which they

are seeking to adjust the relations have been already excluded by them

from the category of relation.

...

The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is supposed to be the continuation of

a previous discussion. An argument respecting the comparative claims of

pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has been already carried

on between Philebus and Socrates. The argument is now transferred to

Protarchus, the son of Callias, a noble Athenian youth, sprung from

a family which had spent 'a world of money' on the Sophists (compare

Apol.; Crat.; Protag.). Philebus, who appears to be the teacher, or

elder friend, and perhaps the lover, of Protarchus, takes no further

part in the discussion beyond asserting in the strongest manner his

adherence, under all circumstances, to the cause of pleasure.

Socrates suggests that they shall have a first and second palm of

victory. For there may be a good higher than either pleasure or wisdom,

and then neither of them will gain the first prize, but whichever of the

two is more akin to this higher good will have a right to the second.

They agree, and Socrates opens the game by enlarging on the diversity

and opposition which exists among pleasures. For there are pleasures of

all kinds, good and bad, wise and foolish--pleasures of the temperate as

well as of the intemperate. Protarchus replies that although pleasures

may be opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources,

nevertheless as pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates,

pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like

colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and

colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates

proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate

(i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are

different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate

by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial

sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that

knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and

trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the

discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two disputants. In

order to avoid this danger, he proposes that they shall beat a retreat,

and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about the 'high

argument' of the one and the many.

Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that

Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can

be one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,'

'light' and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and

the like wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these

phenomena; his difficulties begin with the application of number to

abstract unities (e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide

them. For have these unities of idea any real existence? How, if

imperishable, can they enter into the world of generation? How, as

units, can they be divided and dispersed among different objects? Or do

they exist in their entirety in each object? These difficulties are but

imperfectly answered by Socrates in what follows.

We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all

things, concerning which a young man often runs wild in his first

metaphysical enthusiasm, talking about analysis and synthesis to his

father and mother and the neighbours, hardly sparing even his dog. This

'one in many' is a revelation of the order of the world, which some

Prometheus first made known to our ancestors; and they, who were better

men and nearer the gods than we are, have handed it down to us. To know

how to proceed by regular steps from one to many, and from many to one,

is just what makes the difference between eristic and dialectic. And the

right way of proceeding is to look for one idea or class in all things,

and when you have found one to look for more than one, and for all that

there are, and when you have found them all and regularly divided a

particular field of knowledge into classes, you may leave the further

consideration of individuals. But you must not pass at once either from

unity to infinity, or from infinity to unity. In music, for example, you

may begin with the most general notion, but this alone will not make you

a musician: you must know also the number and nature of the intervals,

and the systems which are framed out of them, and the rhythms of the

dance which correspond to them. And when you have a similar knowledge of

any other subject, you may be said to know that subject. In speech again

there are infinite varieties of sound, and some one who was a wise man,

or more than man, comprehended them all in the classes of mutes, vowels,

and semivowels, and gave to each of them a name, and assigned them to

the art of grammar.

'But whither, Socrates, are you going? And what has this to do with the

comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom:' Socrates replies, that

before we can adjust their respective claims, we want to know the number

and kinds of both of them. What are they? He is requested to answer the

question himself. That he will, if he may be allowed to make one or two

preliminary remarks. In the first place he has a dreamy recollection of

hearing that neither pleasure nor knowledge is the highest good, for

the good should be perfect and sufficient. But is the life of pleasure

perfect and sufficient, when deprived of memory, consciousness,

anticipation? Is not this the life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind

sufficient, if devoid of any particle of pleasure? Must not the union of

the two be higher and more eligible than either separately? And is not

the element which makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than

to pleasure? Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet

there may be a life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.

But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some

new weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence. (1)

There is a finite element of existence, and (2) an infinite, and (3) the

union of the two, and (4) the cause of the union. More may be added if

they are wanted, but at present we can do without them. And first of the

infinite or indefinite:--That is the class which is denoted by the terms

more or less, and is always in a state of comparison. All words or

ideas to which the words 'gently,' 'extremely,' and other comparative

expressions are applied, fall under this class. The infinite would be

no longer infinite, if limited or reduced to measure by number and

quantity. The opposite class is the limited or finite, and includes all

things which have number and quantity. And there is a third class of

generation into essence by the union of the finite and infinite, in

which the finite gives law to the infinite;--under this are comprehended

health, strength, temperate seasons, harmony, beauty, and the like. The

goddess of beauty saw the universal wantonness of all things, and gave

law and order to be the salvation of the soul. But no effect can be

generated without a cause, and therefore there must be a fourth class,

which is the cause of generation; for the cause or agent is not the same

as the patient or effect.

And now, having obtained our classes, we may determine in which our

conqueror life is to be placed: Clearly in the third or mixed class, in

which the finite gives law to the infinite. And in which is pleasure to

find a place? As clearly in the infinite or indefinite, which alone,

as Protarchus thinks (who seems to confuse the infinite with the

superlative), gives to pleasure the character of the absolute good. Yes,

retorts Socrates, and also to pain the character of absolute evil. And

therefore the infinite cannot be that which imparts to pleasure the

nature of the good. But where shall we place mind? That is a very

serious and awful question, which may be prefaced by another. Is mind

or chance the lord of the universe? All philosophers will say the first,

and yet, perhaps, they may be only magnifying themselves. And for this

reason I should like to consider the matter a little more deeply, even

though some lovers of disorder in the world should ridicule my attempt.

Now the elements earth, air, fire, water, exist in us, and they exist in

the cosmos; but they are purer and fairer in the cosmos than they are in

us, and they come to us from thence. And as we have a soul as well as a

body, in like manner the elements of the finite, the infinite, the union

of the two, and the cause, are found to exist in us. And if they, like

the elements, exist in us, and the three first exist in the world,

must not the fourth or cause which is the noblest of them, exist in the

world? And this cause is wisdom or mind, the royal mind of Zeus, who

is the king of all, as there are other gods who have other noble

attributes. Observe how well this agrees with the testimony of men of

old, who affirmed mind to be the ruler of the universe. And remember

that mind belongs to the class which we term the cause, and pleasure to

the infinite or indefinite class. We will examine the place and origin

of both.

What is the origin of pleasure? Her natural seat is the mixed class,

in which health and harmony were placed. Pain is the violation, and

pleasure the restoration of limit. There is a natural union of finite

and infinite, which in hunger, thirst, heat, cold, is impaired--this is

painful, but the return to nature, in which the elements are restored

to their normal proportions, is pleasant. Here is our first class of

pleasures. And another class of pleasures and pains are hopes and fears;

these are in the mind only. And inasmuch as the pleasures are unalloyed

by pains and the pains by pleasures, the examination of them may show

us whether all pleasure is to be desired, or whether this entire

desirableness is not rather the attribute of another class. But if

pleasures and pains consist in the violation and restoration of limit,

may there not be a neutral state, in which there is neither dissolution

nor restoration? That is a further question, and admitting, as we must,

the possibility of such a state, there seems to be no reason why

the life of wisdom should not exist in this neutral state, which is,

moreover, the state of the gods, who cannot, without indecency, be

supposed to feel either joy or sorrow.

The second class of pleasures involves memory. There are affections

which are extinguished before they reach the soul, and of these there

is no consciousness, and therefore no memory. And there are affections

which the body and soul feel together, and this feeling is termed

consciousness. And memory is the preservation of consciousness, and

reminiscence is the recovery of consciousness. Now the memory of

pleasure, when a man is in pain, is the memory of the opposite of his

actual bodily state, and is therefore not in the body, but in the mind.

And there may be an intermediate state, in which a person is balanced

between pleasure and pain; in his body there is want which is a cause of

pain, but in his mind a sure hope of replenishment, which is pleasant.

(But if the hope be converted into despair, he has two pains and not

a balance of pain and pleasure.) Another question is raised: May not

pleasures, like opinions, be true and false? In the sense of being real,

both must be admitted to be true: nor can we deny that to both of them

qualities may be attributed; for pleasures as well as opinions may be

described as good or bad. And though we do not all of us allow that

there are true and false pleasures, we all acknowledge that there are

some pleasures associated with right opinion, and others with

falsehood and ignorance. Let us endeavour to analyze the nature of this

association.

Opinion is based on perception, which may be correct or mistaken. You

may see a figure at a distance, and say first of all, 'This is a man,'

and then say, 'No, this is an image made by the shepherds.' And you

may affirm this in a proposition to your companion, or make the remark

mentally to yourself. Whether the words are actually spoken or not,

on such occasions there is a scribe within who registers them, and a

painter who paints the images of the things which the scribe has written

down in the soul,--at least that is my own notion of the process; and

the words and images which are inscribed by them may be either true

or false; and they may represent either past, present, or future. And,

representing the future, they must also represent the pleasures and

pains of anticipation--the visions of gold and other fancies which are

never wanting in the mind of man. Now these hopes, as they are termed,

are propositions, which are sometimes true, and sometimes false; for the

good, who are the friends of the gods, see true pictures of the future,

and the bad false ones. And as there may be opinion about things which

are not, were not, and will not be, which is opinion still, so there may

be pleasure about things which are not, were not, and will not be, which

is pleasure still,--that is to say, false pleasure; and only when

false, can pleasure, like opinion, be vicious. Against this conclusion

Protarchus reclaims.

Leaving his denial for the present, Socrates proceeds to show that

some pleasures are false from another point of view. In desire, as we

admitted, the body is divided from the soul, and hence pleasures and

pains are often simultaneous. And we further admitted that both of them

belonged to the infinite class. How, then, can we compare them? Are we

not liable, or rather certain, as in the case of sight, to be deceived

by distance and relation? In this case the pleasures and pains are not

false because based upon false opinion, but are themselves false. And

there is another illusion: pain has often been said by us to arise out

of the derangement--pleasure out of the restoration--of our nature. But

in passing from one to the other, do we not experience neutral states,

which although they appear pleasureable or painful are really neither?

For even if we admit, with the wise man whom Protarchus loves (and only

a wise man could have ever entertained such a notion), that all things

are in a perpetual flux, still these changes are often unconscious, and

devoid either of pleasure or pain. We assume, then, that there are three

states--pleasureable, painful, neutral; we may embellish a little by

calling them gold, silver, and that which is neither.

But there are certain natural philosophers who will not admit a third

state. Their instinctive dislike to pleasure leads them to affirm that

pleasure is only the absence of pain. They are noble fellows, and,

although we do not agree with them, we may use them as diviners who

will indicate to us the right track. They will say, that the nature of

anything is best known from the examination of extreme cases, e.g. the

nature of hardness from the examination of the hardest things; and that

the nature of pleasure will be best understood from an examination of

the most intense pleasures. Now these are the pleasures of the body, not

of the mind; the pleasures of disease and not of health, the pleasures

of the intemperate and not of the temperate. I am speaking, not of the

frequency or continuance, but only of the intensity of such pleasures,

and this is given them by contrast with the pain or sickness of body

which precedes them. Their morbid nature is illustrated by the lesser

instances of itching and scratching, respecting which I swear that I

cannot tell whether they are a pleasure or a pain. (1) Some of these

arise out of a transition from one state of the body to another, as from

cold to hot; (2) others are caused by the contrast of an internal pain

and an external pleasure in the body: sometimes the feeling of pain

predominates, as in itching and tingling, when they are relieved by

scratching; sometimes the feeling of pleasure: or the pleasure which

they give may be quite overpowering, and is then accompanied by all

sorts of unutterable feelings which have a death of delights in them.

But there are also mixed pleasures which are in the mind only. For are

not love and sorrow as well as anger 'sweeter than honey,' and also full

of pain? Is there not a mixture of feelings in the spectator of tragedy?

and of comedy also? 'I do not understand that last.' Well, then, with

the view of lighting up the obscurity of these mixed feelings, let

me ask whether envy is painful. 'Yes.' And yet the envious man finds

something pleasing in the misfortunes of others? 'True.' And

ignorance is a misfortune? 'Certainly.' And one form of ignorance is

self-conceit--a man may fancy himself richer, fairer, better, wiser than

he is? 'Yes.' And he who thus deceives himself may be strong or weak?

'He may.' And if he is strong we fear him, and if he is weak we laugh

at him, which is a pleasure, and yet we envy him, which is a pain? These

mixed feelings are the rationale of tragedy and comedy, and equally the

rationale of the greater drama of human life. (There appears to be some

confusion in this passage. There is no difficulty in seeing that in

comedy, as in tragedy, the spectator may view the performance with mixed

feelings of pain as well as of pleasure; nor is there any difficulty in

understanding that envy is a mixed feeling, which rejoices not without

pain at the misfortunes of others, and laughs at their ignorance of

themselves. But Plato seems to think further that he has explained the

feeling of the spectator in comedy sufficiently by a theory which only

applies to comedy in so far as in comedy we laugh at the conceit or

weakness of others. He has certainly given a very partial explanation of

the ridiculous.) Having shown how sorrow, anger, envy are feelings of

a mixed nature, I will reserve the consideration of the remainder for

another occasion.

Next follow the unmixed pleasures; which, unlike the philosophers of

whom I was speaking, I believe to be real. These unmixed pleasures are:

(1) The pleasures derived from beauty of form, colour, sound, smell,

which are absolutely pure; and in general those which are unalloyed with

pain: (2) The pleasures derived from the acquisition of knowledge, which

in themselves are pure, but may be attended by an accidental pain of

forgetting; this, however, arises from a subsequent act of reflection,

of which we need take no account. At the same time, we admit that the

latter pleasures are the property of a very few. To these pure and

unmixed pleasures we ascribe measure, whereas all others belong to the

class of the infinite, and are liable to every species of excess. And

here several questions arise for consideration:--What is the meaning of

pure and impure, of moderate and immoderate? We may answer the question

by an illustration: Purity of white paint consists in the clearness or

quality of the white, and this is distinct from the quantity or amount

of white paint; a little pure white is fairer than a great deal which

is impure. But there is another question:--Pleasure is affirmed by

ingenious philosophers to be a generation; they say that there are

two natures--one self-existent, the other dependent; the one noble

and majestic, the other failing in both these qualities. 'I do not

understand.' There are lovers and there are loves. 'Yes, I know, but

what is the application?' The argument is in play, and desires to

intimate that there are relatives and there are absolutes, and that the

relative is for the sake of the absolute; and generation is for the

sake of essence. Under relatives I class all things done with a view to

generation; and essence is of the class of good. But if essence is

of the class of good, generation must be of some other class; and our

friends, who affirm that pleasure is a generation, would laugh at the

notion that pleasure is a good; and at that other notion, that pleasure

is produced by generation, which is only the alternative of destruction.

Who would prefer such an alternation to the equable life of pure

thought? Here is one absurdity, and not the only one, to which the

friends of pleasure are reduced. For is there not also an absurdity in

affirming that good is of the soul only; or in declaring that the best

of men, if he be in pain, is bad?

And now, from the consideration of pleasure, we pass to that of

knowledge. Let us reflect that there are two kinds of knowledge--the one

creative or productive, and the other educational and philosophical.

Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge

than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element

of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in

flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering

there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts,

then, we may make two classes--the less exact and the more exact. And

the exacter part of all of them is really arithmetic and mensuration.

But arithmetic and mensuration again may be subdivided with reference

either to their use in the concrete, or to their nature in the

abstract--as they are regarded popularly in building and binding, or

theoretically by philosophers. And, borrowing the analogy of pleasure,

we may say that the philosophical use of them is purer than the other.

Thus we have two arts of arithmetic, and two of mensuration. And truest

of all in the estimation of every rational man is dialectic, or the

science of being, which will forget and disown us, if we forget and

disown her.

'But, Socrates, I have heard Gorgias say that rhetoric is the greatest

and usefullest of arts; and I should not like to quarrel either with

him or you.' Neither is there any inconsistency, Protarchus, with

his statement in what I am now saying; for I am not maintaining that

dialectic is the greatest or usefullest, but only that she is the truest

of arts; my remark is not quantitative but qualitative, and refers not

to the advantage or repetition of either, but to the degree of truth

which they attain--here Gorgias will not care to compete; this is what

we affirm to be possessed in the highest degree by dialectic. And do not

let us appeal to Gorgias or Philebus or Socrates, but ask, on behalf of

the argument, what are the highest truths which the soul has the power

of attaining. And is not this the science which has a firmer grasp

of them than any other? For the arts generally are only occupied with

matters of opinion, and with the production and action and passion of

this sensible world. But the highest truth is that which is eternal and

unchangeable. And reason and wisdom are concerned with the eternal; and

these are the very claimants, if not for the first, at least for the

second place, whom I propose as rivals to pleasure.

And now, having the materials, we may proceed to mix them--first

recapitulating the question at issue.

Philebus affirmed pleasure to be the good, and assumed them to be

one nature; I affirmed that they were two natures, and declared that

knowledge was more akin to the good than pleasure. I said that the two

together were more eligible than either taken singly; and to this we

adhere. Reason intimates, as at first, that we should seek the good not

in the unmixed life, but in the mixed.

The cup is ready, waiting to be mingled, and here are two fountains,

one of honey, the other of pure water, out of which to make the fairest

possible mixture. There are pure and impure pleasures--pure and impure

sciences. Let us consider the sections of each which have the most of

purity and truth; to admit them all indiscriminately would be

dangerous. First we will take the pure sciences; but shall we mingle the

impure--the art which uses the false rule and the false measure? That

we must, if we are any of us to find our way home; man cannot live upon

pure mathematics alone. And must I include music, which is admitted to

be guess-work? 'Yes, you must, if human life is to have any humanity.'

Well, then, I will open the door and let them all in; they shall mingle

in an Homeric 'meeting of the waters.' And now we turn to the pleasures;

shall I admit them? 'Admit first of all the pure pleasures; secondly,

the necessary.' And what shall we say about the rest? First, ask the

pleasures--they will be too happy to dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask

the arts and sciences--they reply that the excesses of intemperance are

the ruin of them; and that they would rather only have the pleasures of

health and temperance, which are the handmaidens of virtue. But still we

want truth? That is now added; and so the argument is complete, and may

be compared to an incorporeal law, which is to hold fair rule over a

living body. And now we are at the vestibule of the good, in which there

are three chief elements--truth, symmetry, and beauty. These will be the

criterion of the comparative claims of pleasure and wisdom.

Which has the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure is the

veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers have passed

into a proverb.

Which of symmetry? Wisdom again; for nothing is more immoderate than

pleasure.

Which of beauty? Once more, wisdom; for pleasure is often unseemly, and

the greatest pleasures are put out of sight.

Not pleasure, then, ranks first in the scale of good, but measure, and

eternal harmony.

Second comes the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect.

Third, mind and wisdom.

Fourth, sciences and arts and true opinions.

Fifth, painless pleasures.

Of a sixth class, I have no more to say. Thus, pleasure and mind may

both renounce the claim to the first place. But mind is ten thousand

times nearer to the chief good than pleasure. Pleasure ranks fifth and

not first, even though all the animals in the world assert the contrary.

...

From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the nature

of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. 'Is pleasure

an evil? a good? the only good?' are the simple forms which the enquiry

assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early stage of the

controversy another question was asked: 'Do pleasures differ in kind?

and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad nor good?' There are

bodily and there are mental pleasures, which were at first confused but

afterwards distinguished. A distinction was also made between necessary

and unnecessary pleasures; and again between pleasures which had or had

not corresponding pains. The ancient philosophers were fond of asking,

in the language of their age, 'Is pleasure a "becoming" only, and

therefore transient and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth

and Being?' To these ancient speculations the moderns have added a

further question:--'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your

neighbour,--of the individual, or of the world?' This little addition

has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now

supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence

and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between

pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal

test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or

best motive of them (why I do them).

Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew

attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to

act rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of

the Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who

maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for

generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics

(Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action

which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the

calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the

chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not

intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the

Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues

the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the

so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and

motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends

upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and

at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of

Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first

utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which

may not with reason be ascribed to him--he is Cynic and Cyrenaic,

Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has

already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather

Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the

exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue.

Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of

appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures

of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the

philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near

or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise

the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will

hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge

are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher

so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds.

(Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders of

Utilitarianism, Mill's Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although

he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still further

modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to

confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those

which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale of goods.

There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general

have been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.'

Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or

the life and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts

of right and wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been

associated in their mind with merely animal enjoyment. They could not

believe that what they were always striving to overcome, and the power

or principle in them which overcame, were of the same nature. The

pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence,

the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so

different:--Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the

equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like

the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and

then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should

we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the

higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at

variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics

and of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended

their taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,'

into a general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not

desire to bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The

simplicity of the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to

philosophers, but the better part of the world has been slow to receive

it.

Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the

field of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices,

which intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed

to discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that

no action can be right which does not tend to the happiness of mankind;

we acknowledge that a large class of actions are made right or wrong

by their consequences only; we say further that mankind are not too

mindful, but that they are far too regardless of consequences, and that

they need to have the doctrine of utility habitually inculcated on them.

We recognize the value of a principle which can supply a connecting link

between Ethics and Politics, and under which all human actions are or

may be included. The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference

of expediency to right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by

which human nature can be animated. Neither in referring actions to the

test of utility have we to make a laborious calculation, any more than

in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they have been

classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the thinker,

by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever may be the

hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases

may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever,

called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect

upon the happiness of mankind.

There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and

others--the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong

innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those

speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has

been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent

with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with

a greatest happiness principle or with Kant's law of duty. Yet to avoid

misconception, what appears to be the truth about the origin of

our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows:--To each of us

individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through

the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the

unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which

at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon

become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps

weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and

enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought

home to us by the circumstances of our lives, they may be intensified

by imagination, by reflection, by a course of action likely to confirm

them. Under the influence of religious feeling or by an effort of

thought, any one beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may

create out of them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They

slumber in the minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some

tincture of affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some

fear of the law. Of some such state or process each individual is

conscious in himself, and if he compares his own experience with that

of others he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with

that of his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we

have the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of

mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk,

instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in

a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten years

old already knows the essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not steal,'

'thou shalt speak the truth,' 'thou shalt love thy parents,' 'thou shalt

fear God.' What more does he want?

But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral ideas? Their

beginning, like all other beginnings of human things, is obscure, and

is the least important part of them. Imagine, if you will, that Society

originated in the herding of brutes, in their parental instincts, in

their rude attempts at self-preservation:--Man is not man in that he

resembles, but in that he differs from them. We must pass into another

cycle of existence, before we can discover in him by any evidence

accessible to us even the germs of our moral ideas. In the history of

the world, which viewed from within is the history of the human mind,

they have been slowly created by religion, by poetry, by law, having

their foundation in the natural affections and in the necessity of some

degree of truth and justice in a social state; they have been deepened

and enlarged by the efforts of great thinkers who have idealized and

connected them--by the lives of saints and prophets who have taught and

exemplified them. The schools of ancient philosophy which seem so far

from us--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and

a few modern teachers, such as Kant and Bentham, have each of them

supplied 'moments' of thought to the world. The life of Christ has

embodied a divine love, wisdom, patience, reasonableness. For his image,

however imperfectly handed down to us, the modern world has received a

standard more perfect in idea than the societies of ancient times, but

also further removed from practice. For there is certainly a greater

interval between the theory and practice of Christians than between the

theory and practice of the Greeks and Romans; the ideal is more above

us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to

evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when

the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted

by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower

have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of religion and right.

We may further remark that our moral ideas, as the world grows older,

perhaps as we grow older ourselves, unless they have been undermined in

us by false philosophy or the practice of mental analysis, or

infected by the corruption of society or by some moral disorder in

the individual, are constantly assuming a more natural and necessary

character. The habit of the mind, the opinion of the world, familiarizes

them to us; and they take more and more the form of immediate intuition.

The moral sense comes last and not first in the order of their

development, and is the instinct which we have inherited or acquired,

not the nobler effort of reflection which created them and which keeps

them alive. We do not stop to reason about common honesty. Whenever we

are not blinded by self-deceit, as for example in judging the actions

of others, we have no hesitation in determining what is right and wrong.

The principles of morality, when not at variance with some desire or

worldly interest of our own, or with the opinion of the public, are

hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict of reason and passion they

assert their authority and are not overcome without remorse.

Such is a brief outline of the history of our moral ideas. We have to

distinguish, first of all, the manner in which they have grown up in the

world from the manner in which they have been communicated to each of

us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing out of the boundless

ocean of language and thought in little rills, which convey them to the

heart and brain of each individual. But neither must we confound the

theories or aspects of morality with the origin of our moral ideas.

These are not the roots or 'origines' of morals, but the latest efforts

of reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been

regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we

ask: Which of these many theories is the true one? we may answer: All

of them--moral sense, innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the

philosophy of experience, the philosophy of intuition--all of them have

added something to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole

truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from

one source or another; to determine what history, what philosophy has

contributed to them; to distinguish the original, simple elements from

the manifold and complex applications of them, would be a long enquiry

too far removed from the question which we are now pursuing.

Bearing in mind the distinction which we have been seeking to establish

between our earliest and our most mature ideas of morality, we may now

proceed to state the theory of Utility, not exactly in the words, but

in the spirit of one of its ablest and most moderate supporters (Mill's

Utilitarianism):--'That which alone makes actions either right or

desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote the happiness of

mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the

world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as

well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior in quality is

incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness,

which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of others,--of our family, of

our country, of mankind. The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of

our own interest to that of other men, may become a passion to a rightly

educated nature. The Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this

virtue and for every other.'

Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end

of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and

in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be

explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do

not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the

greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general

they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is

proved, as in Aristotle's time, so in our own, by the universal fact

that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the

social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some

degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened.

So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness

principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more

reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures?

and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working

together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of

the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a

conception.

But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,'

it seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,'

'the happiness of others principle'--the principle not of the greatest,

but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own

immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation.

Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external

circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness

in this, and the meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from

holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight addition 'of others,' all

the associations of the word are altered; we seem to have passed

over from one theory of morals to the opposite. For allowing that the

happiness of others is reflected on ourselves, and also that every man

must live before he can do good to others, still the last limitation is

a very trifling exception, and the happiness of another is very far from

compensating for the loss of our own. According to Mr. Mill, he would

best carry out the principle of utility who sacrificed his own

pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler,

Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and their followers

imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are alike

superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at

large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the

friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great

sufferer.

And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral

philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time

so practical,--so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration,--and

which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle

intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates

and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at

any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as

is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led

on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowledging that what

is right for us is the right and inheritance of others. We feel the

advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and strong enough

to override all the particularisms of mankind; which acknowledges a

universal good, truth, right; which is capable of inspiring men like

a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which they are ready to

contend to their life's end.

And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would

certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days

of Eudoxus (Arist. Ethics) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of

pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice.

Two of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this

century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion to

the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusiastic

supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were

of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in

action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back

on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind

has been the better for them. The world was against them while they

lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating

them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on

politics--especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has

been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have

justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better

feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers.

Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have

remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received

with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the

ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached

to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his

contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which

has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the

last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.

While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle

has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for

denying its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with

other principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics.

Any one who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor

to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he

may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is

subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or

how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world;

or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the

whole which is only a part,--to be the necessary foundation which

is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all

philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of

imagination which forged them has cooled, and they are seen in the

temperate light of day. All of them have contributed to enrich the mind

of the civilized world; none of them occupy that supreme or exclusive

place which their authors would have assigned to them.