PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And now, O Protarchus, try to divide this into three.
PROTARCHUS: Indeed I am afraid that I cannot.
SOCRATES: Do you mean to say that I must make the division for you?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, and what is more, I beg that you will.
SOCRATES: Are there not three ways in which ignorance of self may be
shown?
PROTARCHUS: What are they?
SOCRATES: In the first place, about money; the ignorant may fancy
himself richer than he is.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is a very common error.
SOCRATES: And still more often he will fancy that he is taller or fairer
than he is, or that he has some other advantage of person which he
really has not.
PROTARCHUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And yet surely by far the greatest number err about the goods
of the mind; they imagine themselves to be much better men than they
are.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is by far the commonest delusion.
SOCRATES: And of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one which the mass
of mankind are always claiming, and which most arouses in them a spirit
of contention and lying conceit of wisdom?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And may not all this be truly called an evil condition?
PROTARCHUS: Very evil.
SOCRATES: But we must pursue the division a step further, Protarchus, if
we would see in envy of the childish sort a singular mixture of pleasure
and pain.
PROTARCHUS: How can we make the further division which you suggest?
SOCRATES: All who are silly enough to entertain this lying conceit of
themselves may of course be divided, like the rest of mankind, into two
classes--one having power and might; and the other the reverse.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Let this, then, be the principle of division; those of them
who are weak and unable to revenge themselves, when they are laughed at,
may be truly called ridiculous, but those who can defend themselves may
be more truly described as strong and formidable; for ignorance in
the powerful is hateful and horrible, because hurtful to others both in
reality and in fiction, but powerless ignorance may be reckoned, and in
truth is, ridiculous.
PROTARCHUS: That is very true, but I do not as yet see where is the
admixture of pleasures and pains.
SOCRATES: Well, then, let us examine the nature of envy.
PROTARCHUS: Proceed.
SOCRATES: Is not envy an unrighteous pleasure, and also an unrighteous
pain?
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: There is nothing envious or wrong in rejoicing at the
misfortunes of enemies?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: But to feel joy instead of sorrow at the sight of our friends'
misfortunes--is not that wrong?
PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly.
SOCRATES: Did we not say that ignorance was always an evil?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And the three kinds of vain conceit in our friends which we
enumerated--the vain conceit of beauty, of wisdom, and of wealth, are
ridiculous if they are weak, and detestable when they are powerful: May
we not say, as I was saying before, that our friends who are in this
state of mind, when harmless to others, are simply ridiculous?
PROTARCHUS: They are ridiculous.
SOCRATES: And do we not acknowledge this ignorance of theirs to be a
misfortune?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And do we feel pain or pleasure in laughing at it?
PROTARCHUS: Clearly we feel pleasure.
SOCRATES: And was not envy the source of this pleasure which we feel at
the misfortunes of friends?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the argument shows that when we laugh at the folly of our
friends, pleasure, in mingling with envy, mingles with pain, for envy
has been acknowledged by us to be mental pain, and laughter is pleasant;
and so we envy and laugh at the same instant.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And the argument implies that there are combinations of
pleasure and pain in lamentations, and in tragedy and comedy, not only
on the stage, but on the greater stage of human life; and so in endless
other cases.
PROTARCHUS: I do not see how any one can deny what you say, Socrates,
however eager he may be to assert the opposite opinion.
SOCRATES: I mentioned anger, desire, sorrow, fear, love, emulation,
envy, and similar emotions, as examples in which we should find a
mixture of the two elements so often named; did I not?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: We may observe that our conclusions hitherto have had
reference only to sorrow and envy and anger.
PROTARCHUS: I see.
SOCRATES: Then many other cases still remain?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And why do you suppose me to have pointed out to you the
admixture which takes place in comedy? Why but to convince you that
there was no difficulty in showing the mixed nature of fear and love
and similar affections; and I thought that when I had given you the
illustration, you would have let me off, and have acknowledged as a
general truth that the body without the soul, and the soul without
the body, as well as the two united, are susceptible of all sorts of
admixtures of pleasures and pains; and so further discussion would have
been unnecessary. And now I want to know whether I may depart; or will
you keep me here until midnight? I fancy that I may obtain my release
without many words;--if I promise that to-morrow I will give you an
account of all these cases. But at present I would rather sail in
another direction, and go to other matters which remain to be settled,
before the judgment can be given which Philebus demands.
PROTARCHUS: Very good, Socrates; in what remains take your own course.
SOCRATES: Then after the mixed pleasures the unmixed should have their
turn; this is the natural and necessary order.
PROTARCHUS: Excellent.
SOCRATES: These, in turn, then, I will now endeavour to indicate; for
with the maintainers of the opinion that all pleasures are a cessation
of pain, I do not agree, but, as I was saying, I use them as witnesses,
that there are pleasures which seem only and are not, and there are
others again which have great power and appear in many forms, yet
are intermingled with pains, and are partly alleviations of agony and
distress, both of body and mind.
PROTARCHUS: Then what pleasures, Socrates, should we be right in
conceiving to be true?
SOCRATES: True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour
and form, and most of those which arise from smells; those of
sound, again, and in general those of which the want is painless and
unconscious, and of which the fruition is palpable to sense and pleasant
and unalloyed with pain.
PROTARCHUS: Once more, Socrates, I must ask what you mean.
SOCRATES: My meaning is certainly not obvious, and I will endeavour
to be plainer. I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of
animals or pictures, which the many would suppose to be my meaning; but,
says the argument, understand me to mean straight lines and circles,
and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by
turning-lathes and rulers and measurers of angles; for these I affirm
to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things, but they are
eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they have peculiar pleasures,
quite unlike the pleasures of scratching. And there are colours which
are of the same character, and have similar pleasures; now do you
understand my meaning?
PROTARCHUS: I am trying to understand, Socrates, and I hope that you
will try to make your meaning clearer.
SOCRATES: When sounds are smooth and clear, and have a single pure
tone, then I mean to say that they are not relatively but absolutely
beautiful, and have natural pleasures associated with them.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, there are such pleasures.
SOCRATES: The pleasures of smell are of a less ethereal sort, but they
have no necessary admixture of pain; and all pleasures, however and
wherever experienced, which are unattended by pains, I assign to an
analogous class. Here then are two kinds of pleasures.
PROTARCHUS: I understand.
SOCRATES: To these may be added the pleasures of knowledge, if no hunger
of knowledge and no pain caused by such hunger precede them.
PROTARCHUS: And this is the case.
SOCRATES: Well, but if a man who is full of knowledge loses his
knowledge, are there not pains of forgetting?
PROTARCHUS: Not necessarily, but there may be times of reflection, when
he feels grief at the loss of his knowledge.
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, but at present we are enumerating only the
natural perceptions, and have nothing to do with reflection.
PROTARCHUS: In that case you are right in saying that the loss of
knowledge is not attended with pain.
SOCRATES: These pleasures of knowledge, then, are unmixed with pain; and
they are not the pleasures of the many but of a very few.
PROTARCHUS: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And now, having fairly separated the pure pleasures and
those which may be rightly termed impure, let us further add to our
description of them, that the pleasures which are in excess have no
measure, but that those which are not in excess have measure; the great,
the excessive, whether more or less frequent, we shall be right in
referring to the class of the infinite, and of the more and less, which
pours through body and soul alike; and the others we shall refer to the
class which has measure.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Still there is something more to be considered about
pleasures.
PROTARCHUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: When you speak of purity and clearness, or of excess,
abundance, greatness and sufficiency, in what relation do these terms
stand to truth?
PROTARCHUS: Why do you ask, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Because, Protarchus, I should wish to test pleasure and
knowledge in every possible way, in order that if there be a pure and
impure element in either of them, I may present the pure element for
judgment, and then they will be more easily judged of by you and by me
and by all of us.
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: Let us investigate all the pure kinds; first selecting for
consideration a single instance.
PROTARCHUS: What instance shall we select?
SOCRATES: Suppose that we first of all take whiteness.
PROTARCHUS: Very good.
SOCRATES: How can there be purity in whiteness, and what purity? Is
that purest which is greatest or most in quantity, or that which is most
unadulterated and freest from any admixture of other colours?
PROTARCHUS: Clearly that which is most unadulterated.
SOCRATES: True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not the
greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most
beautiful?
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: And we shall be quite right in saying that a little pure white
is whiter and fairer and truer than a great deal that is mixed.
PROTARCHUS: Perfectly right.
SOCRATES: There is no need of adducing many similar examples in
illustration of the argument about pleasure; one such is sufficient to
prove to us that a small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if pure
or unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter and truer and fairer than a
great pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly; and the instance you have given is quite
sufficient.
SOCRATES: But what do you say of another question:--have we not heard
that pleasure is always a generation, and has no true being? Do not
certain ingenious philosophers teach this doctrine, and ought not we to
be grateful to them?
PROTARCHUS: What do they mean?
SOCRATES: I will explain to you, my dear Protarchus, what they mean, by
putting a question.
PROTARCHUS: Ask, and I will answer.
SOCRATES: I assume that there are two natures, one self-existent, and
the other ever in want of something.
PROTARCHUS: What manner of natures are they?
SOCRATES: The one majestic ever, the other inferior.
PROTARCHUS: You speak riddles.
SOCRATES: You have seen loves good and fair, and also brave lovers of
them.
PROTARCHUS: I should think so.
SOCRATES: Search the universe for two terms which are like these two and
are present everywhere.
PROTARCHUS: Yet a third time I must say, Be a little plainer, Socrates.
SOCRATES: There is no difficulty, Protarchus; the argument is only in
play, and insinuates that some things are for the sake of something
else (relatives), and that other things are the ends to which the former
class subserve (absolutes).
PROTARCHUS: Your many repetitions make me slow to understand.
SOCRATES: As the argument proceeds, my boy, I dare say that the meaning
will become clearer.
PROTARCHUS: Very likely.
SOCRATES: Here are two new principles.
PROTARCHUS: What are they?
SOCRATES: One is the generation of all things, and the other is essence.
PROTARCHUS: I readily accept from you both generation and essence.
SOCRATES: Very right; and would you say that generation is for the sake
of essence, or essence for the sake of generation?
PROTARCHUS: You want to know whether that which is called essence is,
properly speaking, for the sake of generation?
SOCRATES: Yes.
PROTARCHUS: By the gods, I wish that you would repeat your question.
SOCRATES: I mean, O my Protarchus, to ask whether you would tell me
that ship-building is for the sake of ships, or ships for the sake of
ship-building? and in all similar cases I should ask the same question.
PROTARCHUS: Why do you not answer yourself, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I have no objection, but you must take your part.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial,
material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each
generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence,
and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake
of some essence?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And that for the sake of which something else is done must
be placed in the class of good, and that which is done for the sake of
something else, in some other class, my good friend.
PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, will be rightly placed in
some other class than that of good?
PROTARCHUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: Then, as I said at first, we ought to be very grateful to him
who first pointed out that pleasure was a generation only, and had no
true being at all; for he is clearly one who laughs at the notion of
pleasure being a good.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: And he would surely laugh also at those who make generation
their highest end.
PROTARCHUS: Of whom are you speaking, and what do they mean?
SOCRATES: I am speaking of those who when they are cured of hunger or
thirst or any other defect by some process of generation are delighted
at the process as if it were pleasure; and they say that they would not
wish to live without these and other feelings of a like kind which might
be mentioned.
PROTARCHUS: That is certainly what they appear to think.
SOCRATES: And is not destruction universally admitted to be the opposite
of generation?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then he who chooses thus, would choose generation and
destruction rather than that third sort of life, in which, as we were
saying, was neither pleasure nor pain, but only the purest possible
thought.
PROTARCHUS: He who would make us believe pleasure to be a good is
involved in great absurdities, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Great, indeed; and there is yet another of them.
PROTARCHUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: Is there not an absurdity in arguing that there is nothing
good or noble in the body, or in anything else, but that good is in
the soul only, and that the only good of the soul is pleasure; and that
courage or temperance or understanding, or any other good of the soul,
is not really a good?--and is there not yet a further absurdity in our
being compelled to say that he who has a feeling of pain and not of
pleasure is bad at the time when he is suffering pain, even though he be
the best of men; and again, that he who has a feeling of pleasure, in
so far as he is pleased at the time when he is pleased, in that degree
excels in virtue?
PROTARCHUS: Nothing, Socrates, can be more irrational than all this.
SOCRATES: And now, having subjected pleasure to every sort of test, let
us not appear to be too sparing of mind and knowledge: let us ring their
metal bravely, and see if there be unsoundness in any part, until we
have found out what in them is of the purest nature; and then the truest
elements both of pleasure and knowledge may be brought up for judgment.
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: Knowledge has two parts,--the one productive, and the other
educational?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And in the productive or handicraft arts, is not one part
more akin to knowledge, and the other less; and may not the one part be
regarded as the pure, and the other as the impure?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Let us separate the superior or dominant elements in each of
them.
PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how do you separate them?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that if arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing
be taken away from any art, that which remains will not be much.
PROTARCHUS: Not much, certainly.
SOCRATES: The rest will be only conjecture, and the better use of the
senses which is given by experience and practice, in addition to
a certain power of guessing, which is commonly called art, and is
perfected by attention and pains.
PROTARCHUS: Nothing more, assuredly.
SOCRATES: Music, for instance, is full of this empiricism; for sounds
are harmonized, not by measure, but by skilful conjecture; the music of
the flute is always trying to guess the pitch of each vibrating note,
and is therefore mixed up with much that is doubtful and has little
which is certain.
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: And the same will be found to hold good of medicine and
husbandry and piloting and generalship.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: The art of the builder, on the other hand, which uses a number
of measures and instruments, attains by their help to a greater degree
of accuracy than the other arts.
PROTARCHUS: How is that?
SOCRATES: In ship-building and house-building, and in other branches of
the art of carpentering, the builder has his rule, lathe, compass, line,
and a most ingenious machine for straightening wood.
PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then now let us divide the arts of which we were speaking into
two kinds,--the arts which, like music, are less exact in their results,
and those which, like carpentering, are more exact.
PROTARCHUS: Let us make that division.
SOCRATES: Of the latter class, the most exact of all are those which we
just now spoke of as primary.
PROTARCHUS: I see that you mean arithmetic, and the kindred arts of
weighing and measuring.
SOCRATES: Certainly, Protarchus; but are not these also distinguishable
into two kinds?
PROTARCHUS: What are the two kinds?
SOCRATES: In the first place, arithmetic is of two kinds, one of which
is popular, and the other philosophical.
PROTARCHUS: How would you distinguish them?
SOCRATES: There is a wide difference between them, Protarchus; some
arithmeticians reckon unequal units; as for example, two armies, two
oxen, two very large things or two very small things. The party who are
opposed to them insist that every unit in ten thousand must be the same
as every other unit.
PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly there is, as you say, a great difference among
the votaries of the science; and there may be reasonably supposed to be
two sorts of arithmetic.
SOCRATES: And when we compare the art of mensuration which is used in
building with philosophical geometry, or the art of computation which
is used in trading with exact calculation, shall we say of either of the
pairs that it is one or two?
PROTARCHUS: On the analogy of what has preceded, I should be of opinion
that they were severally two.
SOCRATES: Right; but do you understand why I have discussed the subject?
PROTARCHUS: I think so, but I should like to be told by you.
SOCRATES: The argument has all along been seeking a parallel to
pleasure, and true to that original design, has gone on to ask whether
one sort of knowledge is purer than another, as one pleasure is purer
than another.
PROTARCHUS: Clearly; that was the intention.
SOCRATES: And has not the argument in what has preceded, already shown
that the arts have different provinces, and vary in their degrees of
certainty?
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And just now did not the argument first designate a particular
art by a common term, thus making us believe in the unity of that art;
and then again, as if speaking of two different things, proceed to
enquire whether the art as pursed by philosophers, or as pursued by
non-philosophers, has more of certainty and purity?
PROTARCHUS: That is the very question which the argument is asking.
SOCRATES: And how, Protarchus, shall we answer the enquiry?
PROTARCHUS: O Socrates, we have reached a point at which the difference
of clearness in different kinds of knowledge is enormous.
SOCRATES: Then the answer will be the easier.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly; and let us say in reply, that those arts into
which arithmetic and mensuration enter, far surpass all others; and that
of these the arts or sciences which are animated by the pure philosophic
impulse are infinitely superior in accuracy and truth.
SOCRATES: Then this is your judgment; and this is the answer which,
upon your authority, we will give to all masters of the art of
misinterpretation?
PROTARCHUS: What answer?
SOCRATES: That there are two arts of arithmetic, and two of mensuration;
and also several other arts which in like manner have this double
nature, and yet only one name.
PROTARCHUS: Let us boldly return this answer to the masters of whom you
speak, Socrates, and hope for good luck.
SOCRATES: We have explained what we term the most exact arts or
sciences.
PROTARCHUS: Very good.
SOCRATES: And yet, Protarchus, dialectic will refuse to acknowledge us,
if we do not award to her the first place.
PROTARCHUS: And pray, what is dialectic?
SOCRATES: Clearly the science which has to do with all that knowledge of
which we are now speaking; for I am sure that all men who have a grain
of intelligence will admit that the knowledge which has to do with being
and reality, and sameness and unchangeableness, is by far the truest of
all. But how would you decide this question, Protarchus?
PROTARCHUS: I have often heard Gorgias maintain, Socrates, that the art
of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the
best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of
their own free will. Now, I should not like to quarrel either with you
or with him.
SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would like to desert, if you were not
ashamed?
PROTARCHUS: As you please.
SOCRATES: May I not have led you into a misapprehension?
PROTARCHUS: How?
SOCRATES: Dear Protarchus, I never asked which was the greatest or best
or usefullest of arts or sciences, but which had clearness and accuracy,
and the greatest amount of truth, however humble and little useful
an art. And as for Gorgias, if you do not deny that his art has the
advantage in usefulness to mankind, he will not quarrel with you
for saying that the study of which I am speaking is superior in this
particular of essential truth; as in the comparison of white colours, a
little whiteness, if that little be only pure, was said to be superior
in truth to a great mass which is impure. And now let us give our best
attention and consider well, not the comparative use or reputation of
the sciences, but the power or faculty, if there be such, which the soul
has of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of it; let
us search into the pure element of mind and intelligence, and then we
shall be able to say whether the science of which I have been speaking
is most likely to possess the faculty, or whether there be some other
which has higher claims.
PROTARCHUS: Well, I have been considering, and I can hardly think that
any other science or art has a firmer grasp of the truth than this.
SOCRATES: Do you say so because you observe that the arts in general and
those engaged in them make use of opinion, and are resolutely engaged in
the investigation of matters of opinion? Even he who supposes himself
to be occupied with nature is really occupied with the things of this
world, how created, how acting or acted upon. Is not this the sort of
enquiry in which his life is spent?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: He is labouring, not after eternal being, but about things
which are becoming, or which will or have become.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And can we say that any of these things which neither are nor
have been nor will be unchangeable, when judged by the strict rule of
truth ever become certain?
PROTARCHUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: How can anything fixed be concerned with that which has no
fixedness?
PROTARCHUS: How indeed?
SOCRATES: Then mind and science when employed about such changing things
do not attain the highest truth?
PROTARCHUS: I should imagine not.
SOCRATES: And now let us bid farewell, a long farewell, to you or me or
Philebus or Gorgias, and urge on behalf of the argument a single point.
PROTARCHUS: What point?
SOCRATES: Let us say that the stable and pure and true and unalloyed has
to do with the things which are eternal and unchangeable and unmixed,
or if not, at any rate what is most akin to them has; and that all other
things are to be placed in a second or inferior class.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And of the names expressing cognition, ought not the fairest
to be given to the fairest things?
PROTARCHUS: That is natural.
SOCRATES: And are not mind and wisdom the names which are to be honoured
most?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And these names may be said to have their truest and most
exact application when the mind is engaged in the contemplation of true
being?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And these were the names which I adduced of the rivals of
pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: In the next place, as to the mixture, here are the
ingredients, pleasure and wisdom, and we may be compared to artists who
have their materials ready to their hands.
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And now we must begin to mix them?
PROTARCHUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: But had we not better have a preliminary word and refresh our
memories?
PROTARCHUS: Of what?
SOCRATES: Of that which I have already mentioned. Well says the proverb,
that we ought to repeat twice and even thrice that which is good.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well then, by Zeus, let us proceed, and I will make what I
believe to be a fair summary of the argument.
PROTARCHUS: Let me hear.
SOCRATES: Philebus says that pleasure is the true end of all living
beings, at which all ought to aim, and moreover that it is the chief
good of all, and that the two names 'good' and 'pleasant' are correctly
given to one thing and one nature; Socrates, on the other hand, begins
by denying this, and further says, that in nature as in name they are
two, and that wisdom partakes more than pleasure of the good. Is not and
was not this what we were saying, Protarchus?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And is there not and was there not a further point which was
conceded between us?
PROTARCHUS: What was it?
SOCRATES: That the good differs from all other things.
PROTARCHUS: In what respect?
SOCRATES: In that the being who possesses good always everywhere and
in all things has the most perfect sufficiency, and is never in need of
anything else.
PROTARCHUS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: And did we not endeavour to make an imaginary separation of
wisdom and pleasure, assigning to each a distinct life, so that pleasure
was wholly excluded from wisdom, and wisdom in like manner had no part
whatever in pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: We did.
SOCRATES: And did we think that either of them alone would be
sufficient?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And if we erred in any point, then let any one who will, take
up the enquiry again and set us right; and assuming memory and wisdom
and knowledge and true opinion to belong to the same class, let him
consider whether he would desire to possess or acquire,--I will not say
pleasure, however abundant or intense, if he has no real perception
that he is pleased, nor any consciousness of what he feels, nor any
recollection, however momentary, of the feeling,--but would he desire to
have anything at all, if these faculties were wanting to him? And about
wisdom I ask the same question; can you conceive that any one would
choose to have all wisdom absolutely devoid of pleasure, rather than
with a certain degree of pleasure, or all pleasure devoid of wisdom,
rather than with a certain degree of wisdom?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not, Socrates; but why repeat such questions any
more?
SOCRATES: Then the perfect and universally eligible and entirely good
cannot possibly be either of them?
PROTARCHUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: Then now we must ascertain the nature of the good more or less
accurately, in order, as we were saying, that the second place may be
duly assigned.
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: Have we not found a road which leads towards the good?
PROTARCHUS: What road?
SOCRATES: Supposing that a man had to be found, and you could discover
in what house he lived, would not that be a great step towards the
discovery of the man himself?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning,
that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in
the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?
PROTARCHUS: Far greater.
SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering
up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who
presides over the ceremony of mingling.
PROTARCHUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which
are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a
fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine
mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek
to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Tell me first;--should we be most likely to succeed if we
mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?
PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.
SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I can
show a safer plan.
PROTARCHUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than another, and
one art to be more exact than another.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: There was also supposed to be a difference in sciences; some
of them regarding only the transient and perishing, and others the
permanent and imperishable and everlasting and immutable; and when
judged by the standard of truth, the latter, as we thought, were truer
than the former.
PROTARCHUS: Very good and right.
SOCRATES: If, then, we were to begin by mingling the sections of each
class which have the most of truth, will not the union suffice to give
us the loveliest of lives, or shall we still want some elements of
another kind?
PROTARCHUS: I think that we ought to do what you suggest.
SOCRATES: Let us suppose a man who understands justice, and has reason
as well as understanding about the true nature of this and of all other
things.
PROTARCHUS: We will suppose such a man.
SOCRATES: Will he have enough of knowledge if he is acquainted only with
the divine circle and sphere, and knows nothing of our human spheres and
circles, but uses only divine circles and measures in the building of a
house?
PROTARCHUS: The knowledge which is only superhuman, Socrates, is
ridiculous in man.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean that you are to throw into the
cup and mingle the impure and uncertain art which uses the false measure
and the false circle?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, we must, if any of us is ever to find his way home.
SOCRATES: And am I to include music, which, as I was saying just now, is
full of guesswork and imitation, and is wanting in purity?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that you must, if human life is to be a life at
all.
SOCRATES: Well, then, suppose that I give way, and, like a doorkeeper
who is pushed and overborne by the mob, I open the door wide, and let
knowledge of every sort stream in, and the pure mingle with the impure?
PROTARCHUS: I do not know, Socrates, that any great harm would come of
having them all, if only you have the first sort.
SOCRATES: Well, then, shall I let them all flow into what Homer
poetically terms 'a meeting of the waters'?
PROTARCHUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: There--I have let them in, and now I must return to the
fountain of pleasure. For we were not permitted to begin by mingling
in a single stream the true portions of both according to our original
intention; but the love of all knowledge constrained us to let all the
sciences flow in together before the pleasures.
PROTARCHUS: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And now the time has come for us to consider about the
pleasures also, whether we shall in like manner let them go all at once,
or at first only the true ones.
PROTARCHUS: It will be by far the safer course to let flow the true ones
first.
SOCRATES: Let them flow, then; and now, if there are any necessary
pleasures, as there were arts and sciences necessary, must we not mingle
them?
PROTARCHUS: Yes; the necessary pleasures should certainly be allowed to
mingle.
SOCRATES: The knowledge of the arts has been admitted to be innocent
and useful always; and if we say of pleasures in like manner that all of
them are good and innocent for all of us at all times, we must let them
all mingle?
PROTARCHUS: What shall we say about them, and what course shall we take?
SOCRATES: Do not ask me, Protarchus; but ask the daughters of pleasure
and wisdom to answer for themselves.
PROTARCHUS: How?
SOCRATES: Tell us, O beloved--shall we call you pleasures or by some
other name?--would you rather live with or without wisdom? I am of
opinion that they would certainly answer as follows:
PROTARCHUS: How?
SOCRATES: They would answer, as we said before, that for any single
class to be left by itself pure and isolated is not good, nor altogether
possible; and that if we are to make comparisons of one class with
another and choose, there is no better companion than knowledge of
things in general, and likewise the perfect knowledge, if that may be,
of ourselves in every respect.
PROTARCHUS: And our answer will be:--In that ye have spoken well.
SOCRATES: Very true. And now let us go back and interrogate wisdom and
mind: Would you like to have any pleasures in the mixture? And they will
reply:--'What pleasures do you mean?'
PROTARCHUS: Likely enough.
SOCRATES: And we shall take up our parable and say: Do you wish to have
the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your companions in addition
to the true ones? 'Why, Socrates,' they will say, 'how can we? seeing
that they are the source of ten thousand hindrances to us; they trouble
the souls of men, which are our habitation, with their madness; they
prevent us from coming to the birth, and are commonly the ruin of
the children which are born to us, causing them to be forgotten and
unheeded; but the true and pure pleasures, of which you spoke, know to
be of our family, and also those pleasures which accompany health and
temperance, and which every Virtue, like a goddess, has in her train to
follow her about wherever she goes,--mingle these and not the others;
there would be great want of sense in any one who desires to see a fair
and perfect mixture, and to find in it what is the highest good in man
and in the universe, and to divine what is the true form of good--there
would be great want of sense in his allowing the pleasures, which are
always in the company of folly and vice, to mingle with mind in the
cup.'--Is not this a very rational and suitable reply, which mind has
made, both on her own behalf, as well as on the behalf of memory and
true opinion?
PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.
SOCRATES: And still there must be something more added, which is a
necessary ingredient in every mixture.
PROTARCHUS: What is that?
SOCRATES: Unless truth enter into the composition, nothing can truly be
created or subsist.
PROTARCHUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: Quite impossible; and now you and Philebus must tell me
whether anything is still wanting in the mixture, for to my way of
thinking the argument is now completed, and may be compared to an
incorporeal law, which is going to hold fair rule over a living body.
PROTARCHUS: I agree with you, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And may we not say with reason that we are now at the
vestibule of the habitation of the good?
PROTARCHUS: I think that we are.
SOCRATES: What, then, is there in the mixture which is most precious,
and which is the principal cause why such a state is universally beloved
by all? When we have discovered it, we will proceed to ask whether this
omnipresent nature is more akin to pleasure or to mind.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right; in that way we shall be better able to judge.
SOCRATES: And there is no difficulty in seeing the cause which renders
any mixture either of the highest value or of none at all.
PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: Every man knows it.
PROTARCHUS: What?
SOCRATES: He knows that any want of measure and symmetry in any mixture
whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to the elements and
to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but only a confused medley
which brings confusion on the possessor of it.
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: And now the power of the good has retired into the region of
the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the
world over.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one idea only,
with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the
three, and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of
the mixture, and the mixture as being good by reason of the infusion of
them.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: And now, Protarchus, any man could decide well enough whether
pleasure or wisdom is more akin to the highest good, and more honourable
among gods and men.
PROTARCHUS: Clearly, and yet perhaps the argument had better be pursued
to the end.
SOCRATES: We must take each of them separately in their relation to
pleasure and mind, and pronounce upon them; for we ought to see to which
of the two they are severally most akin.
PROTARCHUS: You are speaking of beauty, truth, and measure?
SOCRATES: Yes, Protarchus, take truth first, and, after passing
in review mind, truth, pleasure, pause awhile and make answer to
yourself--as to whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth.
PROTARCHUS: There is no need to pause, for the difference between them
is palpable; pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world; and it is
said that in the pleasures of love, which appear to be the greatest,
perjury is excused by the gods; for pleasures, like children, have not
the least particle of reason in them; whereas mind is either the same as
truth, or the most like truth, and the truest.
SOCRATES: Shall we next consider measure, in like manner, and ask
whether pleasure has more of this than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Here is another question which may be easily answered; for I
imagine that nothing can ever be more immoderate than the transports of
pleasure, or more in conformity with measure than mind and knowledge.
SOCRATES: Very good; but there still remains the third test: Has mind
a greater share of beauty than pleasure, and is mind or pleasure the
fairer of the two?
PROTARCHUS: No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever saw or
imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any time, past,
present, or future.
SOCRATES: Right.
PROTARCHUS: But when we see some one indulging in pleasures, perhaps in
the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful nature of the
action makes us ashamed; and so we put them out of sight, and consign
them to darkness, under the idea that they ought not to meet the eye of
day.
SOCRATES: Then, Protarchus, you will proclaim everywhere, by word of
mouth to this company, and by messengers bearing the tidings far and
wide, that pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor yet the second,
but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable, and the like, the
eternal nature has been found.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been now said.
SOCRATES: In the second class is contained the symmetrical and beautiful
and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if you reckon in the third class mind and wisdom, you will
not be far wrong, if I divine aright.
PROTARCHUS: I dare say.
SOCRATES: And would you not put in the fourth class the goods which we
were affirming to appertain specially to the soul--sciences and arts and
true opinions as we called them? These come after the third class, and
form the fourth, as they are certainly more akin to good than pleasure
is.
PROTARCHUS: Surely.
SOCRATES: The fifth class are the pleasures which were defined by us
as painless, being the pure pleasures of the soul herself, as we termed
them, which accompany, some the sciences, and some the senses.
PROTARCHUS: Perhaps.
SOCRATES: And now, as Orpheus says,
'With the sixth generation cease the glory of my song.'
Here, at the sixth award, let us make an end; all that remains is to set
the crown on our discourse.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then let us sum up and reassert what has been said, thus
offering the third libation to the saviour Zeus.
PROTARCHUS: How?
SOCRATES: Philebus affirmed that pleasure was always and absolutely the
good.
PROTARCHUS: I understand; this third libation, Socrates, of which you
spoke, meant a recapitulation.
SOCRATES: Yes, but listen to the sequel; convinced of what I have just
been saying, and feeling indignant at the doctrine, which is maintained,
not by Philebus only, but by thousands of others, I affirmed that mind
was far better and far more excellent, as an element of human life, than
pleasure.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: But, suspecting that there were other things which were also
better, I went on to say that if there was anything better than either,
then I would claim the second place for mind over pleasure, and pleasure
would lose the second place as well as the first.
PROTARCHUS: You did.
SOCRATES: Nothing could be more satisfactorily shown than the
unsatisfactory nature of both of them.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: The claims both of pleasure and mind to be the absolute good
have been entirely disproven in this argument, because they are both
wanting in self-sufficiency and also in adequacy and perfection.
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: But, though they must both resign in favour of another,
mind is ten thousand times nearer and more akin to the nature of the
conqueror than pleasure.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And, according to the judgment which has now been given,
pleasure will rank fifth.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: But not first; no, not even if all the oxen and horses and
animals in the world by their pursuit of enjoyment proclaim her to be
so;--although the many trusting in them, as diviners trust in birds,
determine that pleasures make up the good of life, and deem the lusts
of animals to be better witnesses than the inspirations of divine
philosophy.
PROTARCHUS: And now, Socrates, we tell you that the truth of what you
have been saying is approved by the judgment of all of us.
SOCRATES: And will you let me go?
PROTARCHUS: There is a little which yet remains, and I will remind you
of it, for I am sure that you will not be the first to go away from an
argument.