Philebus (Full Text)

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Protarchus, Philebus.

SOCRATES
Observe, Protarchus, the nature of the position which you are now going to take from Philebus, and what the other position is which I maintain, and which, if you do not approve of it, is to be controverted by you. Shall you and I sum up the two sides?

PROTARCHUS
By all means.

SOCRATES
Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will be they are the most advantageous of all things. Have I not given, Philebus, a fair statement of the two sides of the argument?

PHILEBUS
Nothing could be fairer, Socrates.

SOCRATES
And do you, Protarchus, accept the position which is assigned to you?

PROTARCHUS
I cannot do otherwise, since our excellent Philebus has left the field.

SOCRATES
Surely the truth about these matters ought, by all means, to be ascertained.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Shall we further agree—

PROTARCHUS
To what?

SOCRATES
That you and I must now try to indicate some state and disposition of the soul, which has the property of making all
men happy.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, by all means.

SOCRATES
And you say that pleasure, and I say that wisdom, is such a state?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And what if there be a third state, which is better than either? Then both of us are vanquished—are we not? But if
this life, which really has the power of making men happy, turn out to be more akin to pleasure than to wisdom, the life of
pleasure may still have the advantage over the life of wisdom.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Or suppose that the better life is more nearly allied to wisdom, then wisdom conquers, and pleasure is defeated;—do
you agree?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And what do you say, Philebus?

PHILEBUS
I say, and shall always say, that pleasure is easily the conqueror; but you must decide for yourself, Protarchus.

PROTARCHUS
You, Philebus, have handed over the argument to me, and have no longer a voice in the matter?

PHILEBUS
True enough. Nevertheless I would clear myself and deliver my soul of you; and I call the goddess herself to witness
that I now do so.

PROTARCHUS
You may appeal to us; we too will be the witnesses of your words. And now, Socrates, whether Philebus is pleased or
displeased, we will proceed with the argument.

SOCRATES
Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name
is Pleasure.

PROTARCHUS
Very good.

SOCRATES
The awe which I always feel, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is more than human—it exceeds all other fears.
And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss; let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be
manifold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and consider what her nature is. She has one name, and therefore you would imagine that she is one; and yet surely she takes the most varied and even unlike forms. For do we not say
that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance,—that the fool is pleased when he
is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? and how foolish would any one be who
affirmed that all these opposite pleasures are severally alike!

PROTARCHUS
Why, Socrates, they are opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources, but they are not in themselves
opposite. For must not pleasure be of all things most absolutely like pleasure,—that is, like itself?

SOCRATES
Yes, my good friend, just as colour is like colour;—in so far as colours are colours, there is no difference between
them; and yet we all know that black is not only unlike, but even absolutely opposed to white or again, as figure is like
figure, for all figures are comprehended under one class; and yet particular figures may be absolutely opposed to one another,
and there is an infinite diversity of them. And we might find similar examples in many other things; therefore do not rely upon
this argument, which would go to prove the unity of the most extreme opposites. And I suspect that we shall find a similar
opposition among pleasures.

PROTARCHUS
Very likely; but how will this invalidate the argument?

SOCRATES
Why, I shall reply, that dissimilar as they are, you apply to them a new predicate, for you say that all pleasant
things are good; now although no one can argue that pleasure is not pleasure, he may argue, as we are doing, that pleasures are
oftener bad than good; but you call them all good, and at the same time are compelled, if you are pressed, to acknowledge that
they are unlike. And so you must tell us what is the identical quality existing alike in good and bad pleasures, which makes you
designate all of them as good.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean, Socrates? Do you think that any one who asserts pleasure to be the good, will tolerate the notion
that some pleasures are good and others bad?

SOCRATES
And yet you will acknowledge that they are different from one another, and sometimes opposed?

PROTARCHUS
Not in so far as they are pleasures.

SOCRATES
That is a return to the old position, Protarchus, and so we are to say (are we?) that there is no difference in pleasures, but that they are all alike; and the examples which have just been cited do not pierce our dull minds, but we go on arguing all the same, like the weakest and most inexperienced reasoners? (Probably corrupt.)

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
Why, I mean to say, that in self-defence I may, if I like, follow your example, and assert boldly that the two things most unlike are most absolutely alike; and the result will be that you and I will prove ourselves to be very tyros in the art of disputing; and the argument will be blown away and lost. Suppose that we put back, and return to the old position; then perhaps we may come to an understanding with one another.

PROTARCHUS
How do you mean?

SOCRATES
Shall I, Protarchus, have my own question asked of me by you?

PROTARCHUS
What question?

SOCRATES
Ask me whether wisdom and science and mind, and those other qualities which I, when asked by you at first what is the
nature of the good, affirmed to be good, are not in the same case with the pleasures of which you spoke.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
The sciences are a numerous class, and will be found to present great differences. But even admitting that, like the pleasures, they are opposite as well as different, should I be worthy of the name of dialectician if, in order to avoid this difficulty, I were to say (as you are saying of pleasure) that there is no difference between one science and another;—would not the argument founder and disappear like an idle tale, although we might ourselves escape drowning by clinging to a fallacy?

PROTARCHUS
May none of this befal us, except the deliverance! Yet I like the even-handed justice which is applied to both our arguments. Let us assume, then, that there are many and diverse pleasures, and many and different sciences.

SOCRATES
And let us have no concealment, Protarchus, of the differences between my good and yours; but let us bring them to the light in the hope that, in the process of testing them, they may show whether pleasure is to be called the good, or wisdom, or some third quality; for surely we are not now simply contending in order that my view or that yours may prevail, but I presume that we ought both of us to be fighting for the truth.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly we ought.

SOCRATES
Then let us have a more definite understanding and establish the principle on which the argument rests.

PROTARCHUS
What principle?

SOCRATES
A principle about which all men are always in a difficulty, and some men sometimes against their will.

PROTARCHUS
Speak plainer.

SOCRATES
The principle which has just turned up, which is a marvel of nature; for that one should be many or many one, are
wonderful propositions; and he who affirms either is very open to attack.

PROTARCHUS
Do you mean, when a person says that I, Protarchus, am by nature one and also many, dividing the single 'me' into many 'me's,' and even opposing them as great and small, light and heavy, and in ten thousand other ways?
SOCRATES Those, Protarchus, are the common and acknowledged paradoxes about the one and many, which I may say that everybody has by this time agreed to dismiss as childish and obvious and detrimental to the true course of thought; and no more favour is shown to that other puzzle, in which a person proves the members and parts of anything to be divided, and then confessing that they are all one, says laughingly in disproof of his own words Why, here is a miracle, the one is many and infinite, and the many are only one.

PROTARCHUS
But what, Socrates, are those other marvels connected with this subject which, as you imply, have not yet become common and acknowledged?
SOCRATES When, my boy, the one does not belong to the class of things that are born and perish, as in the instances which we were giving, for in those cases, and when unity is of this concrete nature, there is, as I was saying, a universal consent that no refutation is needed; but when the assertion is made that man is one, or ox is one, or beauty one, or the good one, then the interest which attaches to these and similar unities and the attempt which is made to divide them gives birth to a controversy.

PROTARCHUS
Of what nature?

SOCRATES
In the first place, as to whether these unities have a real existence; and then how each individual unity, being always the same, and incapable either of generation or of destruction, but retaining a permanent individuality, can be conceived either as dispersed and multiplied in the infinity of the world of generation, or as still entire and yet divided from itself, which latter would seem to be the greatest impossibility of all, for how can one and the same thing be at the same time in one and in many things? These, Protarchus, are the real difficulties, and this is the one and many to which they relate; they are the source of great perplexity if ill decided, and the right determination of them is very helpful.

PROTARCHUS
Then, Socrates, let us begin by clearing up these questions.

SOCRATES
That is what I should wish.

PROTARCHUS
And I am sure that all my other friends will be glad to hear them discussed; Philebus, fortunately for us, is not
disposed to move, and we had better not stir him up with questions.

SOCRATES
Good; and where shall we begin this great and multifarious battle, in which such various points are at issue? Shall we
begin thus?

PROTARCHUS
How?

SOCRATES
We say that the one and many become identified by thought, and that now, as in time past, they run about together, in and out of every word which is uttered, and that this union of them will never cease, and is not now beginning, but is, as I believe, an everlasting quality of thought itself, which never grows old. Any young man, when he first tastes these subtleties, is delighted, and fancies that he has found a treasure of wisdom; in the first enthusiasm of his joy he leaves no stone, or rather no thought unturned, now rolling up the many into the one, and kneading them together, now unfolding and dividing them; he puzzles himself first and above all, and then he proceeds to puzzle his neighbours, whether they are older or younger, or of his own age—that makes no difference; neither father nor mother does he spare; no human being who has ears is safe from him, hardly even his dog, and a barbarian would have no chance of escaping him, if an interpreter could only be found.

PROTARCHUS
Considering, Socrates, how many we are, and that all of us are young men, is there not a danger that we and Philebus may all set upon you, if you abuse us? We understand what you mean; but is there no charm by which we may dispel all this confusion, no more excellent way of arriving at the truth? If there is, we hope that you will guide us into that way, and we will do our best to follow, for the enquiry in which we are engaged, Socrates, is not unimportant.

SOCRATES
The reverse of unimportant, my boys, as Philebus calls you, and there neither is nor ever will be a better than my own favourite way, which has nevertheless already often deserted me and left me helpless in the hour of need.

PROTARCHUS
Tell us what that is.

SOCRATES
One which may be easily pointed out, but is by no means easy of application; it is the parent of all the discoveries in the arts.

PROTARCHUS
Tell us what it is.

SOCRATES
A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light; and the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition, that whatever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have the finite and infinite implanted in them seeing, then, that such is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin by laying down one idea of that which is the subject of enquiry; this unity we shall find in everything. Having found it, we may next proceed to look for two, if there be two, or, if not, then for three or some other number, subdividing each of these units, until at last the unity with which we began is seen not only to be one and many and infinite, but also a definite number; the infinite must not be suffered to approach the many until the entire number of the species intermediate between unity and infinity has been discovered,—then, and not till then, we may rest from division, and without further troubling ourselves about the endless individuals may allow them to drop into infinity. This, as I was saying, is the way of considering and learning and teaching one another, which the gods have handed down to us. But the wise men of our time are either too quick or too slow in conceiving plurality in unity. Having no method, they make their one and many anyhow, and from unity pass at once to infinity; the intermediate steps never occur to them. And this, I repeat, is what makes the difference between the mere art of disputation and true dialectic.

PROTARCHUS
I think that I partly understand you Socrates, but I should like to have a clearer notion of what you are saying.

SOCRATES
I may illustrate my meaning by the letters of the alphabet, Protarchus, which you were made to learn as a child.

PROTARCHUS
How do they afford an illustration?

SOCRATES
The sound which passes through the lips whether of an individual or of all men is one and yet infinite.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And yet not by knowing either that sound is one or that sound is infinite are we perfect in the art of speech, but the
knowledge of the number and nature of sounds is what makes a man a grammarian.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And the knowledge which makes a man a musician is of the same kind.

PROTARCHUS
How so?

SOCRATES
Sound is one in music as well as in grammar?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And there is a higher note and a lower note, and a note of equal pitch —may we affirm so much?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
But you would not be a real musician if this was all that you knew; though if you did not know this you would know
almost nothing of music.

PROTARCHUS
Nothing.

SOCRATES
But when you have learned what sounds are high and what low, and the number and nature of the intervals and their limits or proportions, and the systems compounded out of them, which our fathers discovered, and have handed down to us who are their descendants under the name of harmonies; and the affections corresponding to them in the movements of the human body, which when measured by numbers ought, as they say, to be called rhythms and measures; and they tell us that the same principle should be applied to every one and many;—when, I say, you have learned all this, then, my dear friend, you are perfect; and you may be said to understand any other subject, when you have a similar grasp of it. But the infinity of kinds and the infinity of individuals which there is in each of them, when not classified, creates in every one of us a state of infinite ignorance; and he who never looks for number in anything, will not himself be looked for in the number of famous men.

PROTARCHUS
I think that what Socrates is now saying is excellent, Philebus.

PHILEBUS
I think so too, but how do his words bear upon us and upon the argument?

SOCRATES
Philebus is right in asking that question of us, Protarchus.

PROTARCHUS
Indeed he is, and you must answer him.

SOCRATES
I will; but you must let me make one little remark first about these matters; I was saying, that he who begins with
any individual unity, should proceed from that, not to infinity, but to a definite number, and now I say conversely, that he who has to begin with infinity should not jump to unity, but he should look about for some number representing a certain quantity, and thus out of all end in one. And now let us return for an illustration of our principle to the case of letters.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
Some god or divine man, who in the Egyptian legend is said to have been Theuth, observing that the human voice was infinite, first distinguished in this infinity a certain number of vowels, and then other letters which had sound, but were not pure vowels (i.e., the semivowels); these too exist in a definite number; and lastly, he distinguished a third class of letters which we now call mutes, without voice and without sound, and divided these, and likewise the two other classes of vowels and semivowels, into the individual sounds, and told the number of them, and gave to each and all of them the name of letters; and observing that none of us could learn any one of them and not learn them all, and in consideration of this common bond which in a manner united them, he assigned to them all a single art, and this he called the art of grammar or letters.

PHILEBUS
The illustration, Protarchus, has assisted me in understanding the original statement, but I still feel the defect of
which I just now complained.

SOCRATES
Are you going to ask, Philebus, what this has to do with the argument?

PHILEBUS
Yes, that is a question which Protarchus and I have been long asking.

SOCRATES
Assuredly you have already arrived at the answer to the question which, as you say, you have been so long asking?

PHILEBUS
How so?

SOCRATES
Did we not begin by enquiring into the comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom?

PHILEBUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And we maintain that they are each of them one?

PHILEBUS
True.

SOCRATES
And the precise question to which the previous discussion desires an answer is, how they are one and also many (i.e., how they have one genus and many species), and are not at once infinite, and what number of species is to be assigned to either of them before they pass into infinity (i.e. into the infinite number of individuals).

PROTARCHUS
That is a very serious question, Philebus, to which Socrates has ingeniously brought us round, and please to consider which of us shall answer him; there may be something ridiculous in my being unable to answer, and therefore imposing the task upon you, when I have undertaken the whole charge of the argument, but if neither of us were able to answer, the result methinks would be still more ridiculous. Let us consider, then, what we are to do —Socrates, if I understood him rightly, is asking whether there are not kinds of pleasure, and what is the number and nature of them, and the same of wisdom.
SOCRATES Most true, O son of Callias; and the previous argument showed that if we are not able to tell the kinds of everything that has unity, likeness, sameness, or their opposites, none of us will be of the smallest use in any enquiry.

PROTARCHUS
That seems to be very near the truth, Socrates. Happy would the wise man be if he knew all things, and the next best thing for him is that he should know himself. Why do I say so at this moment? I will tell you. You, Socrates, have granted us this opportunity of conversing with you, and are ready to assist us in determining what is the best of human goods. For when
Philebus said that pleasure and delight and enjoyment and the like were the chief good, you answered—No, not those, but another class of goods; and we are constantly reminding ourselves of what you said, and very properly, in order that we may not forget to examine and compare the two. And these goods, which in your opinion are to be designated as superior to pleasure, and are the true objects of pursuit, are mind and knowledge and understanding and art, and the like. There was a dispute about which were the best, and we playfully threatened that you should not be allowed to go home until the question was settled; and you agreed, and placed yourself at our disposal. And now, as children say, what has been fairly given cannot be taken back; cease then to fight against us in this way.

SOCRATES
In what way?

PHILEBUS
Do not perplex us, and keep asking questions of us to which we have not as yet any sufficient answer to give; let us not imagine that a general puzzling of us all is to be the end of our discussion, but if we are unable to answer, do you answer, as you have promised. Consider, then, whether you will divide pleasure and knowledge according to their kinds; or you may let the matter drop, if you are able and willing to find some other mode of clearing up our controversy.
SOCRATES If you say that, I have nothing to apprehend, for the words 'if you are willing' dispel all my fear; and, moreover, a god seems to have recalled something to my mind.

PHILEBUS
What is that?

SOCRATES
I remember to have heard long ago certain discussions about pleasure and wisdom, whether awake or in a dream I cannot tell; they were to the effect that neither the one nor the other of them was the good, but some third thing, which was different from them, and better than either. If this be clearly established, then pleasure will lose the victory, for the good will cease to be identified with her —Am I not right?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And there will cease to be any need of distinguishing the kinds of pleasures, as I am inclined to think, but this will
appear more clearly as we proceed.

PROTARCHUS
Capital, Socrates; pray go on as you propose.

SOCRATES
But, let us first agree on some little points.

PROTARCHUS
What are they?

SOCRATES
Is the good perfect or imperfect?

PROTARCHUS
The most perfect, Socrates, of all things.

SOCRATES
And is the good sufficient?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, certainly, and in a degree surpassing all other things.

SOCRATES
And no one can deny that all percipient beings desire and hunt after good, and are eager to catch and have the good
about them, and care not for the attainment of anything which is not accompanied by good.

PROTARCHUS
That is undeniable.

SOCRATES
Now let us part off the life of pleasure from the life of wisdom, and pass them in review.

PROTARCHUS
How do you mean?

SOCRATES
Let there be no wisdom in the life of pleasure, nor any pleasure in the life of wisdom, for if either of them is the
chief good, it cannot be supposed to want anything, but if either is shown to want anything, then it cannot really be the chief
good.

PROTARCHUS
Impossible.

SOCRATES
And will you help us to test these two lives?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Then answer.

PROTARCHUS
Ask.

SOCRATES
Would you choose, Protarchus, to live all your life long in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly I should.

SOCRATES
Would you consider that there was still anything wanting to you if you had perfect pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
Reflect; would you not want wisdom and intelligence and forethought, and similar qualities? would you not at any rate
want sight?

PROTARCHUS
Why should I? Having pleasure I should have all things.

SOCRATES
Living thus, you would always throughout your life enjoy the greatest pleasures?

PROTARCHUS
I should.

SOCRATES
But if you had neither mind, nor memory, nor knowledge, nor true opinion, you would in the first place be utterly
ignorant of whether you were pleased or not, because you would be entirely devoid of intelligence.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And similarly, if you had no memory you would not recollect that you had ever been pleased, nor would the slightest
recollection of the pleasure which you feel at any moment remain with you; and if you had no true opinion you would not think
that you were pleased when you were; and if you had no power of calculation you would not be able to calculate on future
pleasure, and your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster or 'pulmo marinus.' Could this be otherwise?

PROTARCHUS
No.

SOCRATES But is such a life eligible?

PROTARCHUS
I cannot answer you, Socrates; the argument has taken away from me the power of speech.

SOCRATES
We must keep up our spirits;—let us now take the life of mind and examine it in turn.

PROTARCHUS
And what is this life of mind?

SOCRATES
I want to know whether any one of us would consent to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all
things, but having no sense of pleasure or pain, and wholly unaffected by these and the like feelings?

PROTARCHUS
Neither life, Socrates, appears eligible to me, nor is likely, as I should imagine, to be chosen by any one else.

SOCRATES
What would you say, Protarchus, to both of these in one, or to one that was made out of the union of the two?

PROTARCHUS
Out of the union, that is, of pleasure with mind and wisdom?

SOCRATES
Yes, that is the life which I mean.

PROTARCHUS
There can be no difference of opinion; not some but all would surely choose this third rather than either of the
other two, and in addition to them.

SOCRATES
But do you see the consequence?

PROTARCHUS
To be sure I do. The consequence is, that two out of the three lives which have been proposed are neither sufficient
nor eligible for man or for animal.

SOCRATES
Then now there can be no doubt that neither of them has the good, for the one which had would certainly have been
sufficient and perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing that was able to live such a life; and if any of us had
chosen any other, he would have chosen contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, and not of his own free will, but either
through ignorance or from some unhappy necessity.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly that seems to be true.

SOCRATES
And now have I not sufficiently shown that Philebus' goddess is not to be regarded as identical with the good?

PHILEBUS
Neither is your 'mind' the good, Socrates, for that will be open to the same objections.

SOCRATES
Perhaps, Philebus, you may be right in saying so of my 'mind'; but of the true, which is also the divine mind, far
otherwise. However, I will not at present claim the first place for mind as against the mixed life; but we must come to some
understanding about the second place. For you might affirm pleasure and I mind to be the cause of the mixed life; and in that
case although neither of them would be the good, one of them might be imagined to be the cause of the good. And I might proceed
further to argue in opposition to Philebus, that the element which makes this mixed life eligible and good, is more akin and
more similar to mind than to pleasure. And if this is true, pleasure cannot be truly said to share either in the first or second
place, and does not, if I may trust my own mind, attain even to the third.

PROTARCHUS
Truly, Socrates, pleasure appears to me to have had a fall; in fighting for the palm, she has been smitten by the
argument, and is laid low. I must say that mind would have fallen too, and may therefore be thought to show discretion in not
putting forward a similar claim. And if pleasure were deprived not only of the first but of the second place, she would be
terribly damaged in the eyes of her admirers, for not even to them would she still appear as fair as before.

SOCRATES
Well, but had we not better leave her now, and not pain her by applying the crucial test, and finally detecting her?

PROTARCHUS
Nonsense, Socrates.

SOCRATES
Why? because I said that we had better not pain pleasure, which is an impossibility?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, and more than that, because you do not seem to be aware that none of us will let you go home until you have
finished the argument.

SOCRATES
Heavens! Protarchus, that will be a tedious business, and just at present not at all an easy one. For in going to war
in the cause of mind, who is aspiring to the second prize, I ought to have weapons of another make from those which I used
before; some, however, of the old ones may do again. And must I then finish the argument?

PROTARCHUS
Of course you must.

SOCRATES
Let us be very careful in laying the foundation.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
Let us divide all existing things into two, or rather, if you do not object, into three classes.

PROTARCHUS
Upon what principle would you make the division?

SOCRATES
Let us take some of our newly-found notions.

PROTARCHUS
Which of them?

SOCRATES
Were we not saying that God revealed a finite element of existence, and also an infinite?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Let us assume these two principles, and also a third, which is compounded out of them; but I fear that I am
ridiculously clumsy at these processes of division and enumeration.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean, my good friend?

SOCRATES
I say that a fourth class is still wanted.

PROTARCHUS
What will that be?

SOCRATES
Find the cause of the third or compound, and add this as a fourth class to the three others.

PROTARCHUS
And would you like to have a fifth class or cause of resolution as well as a cause of composition?

SOCRATES
Not, I think, at present; but if I want a fifth at some future time you shall allow me to have it.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Let us begin with the first three; and as we find two out of the three greatly divided and dispersed, let us endeavour
to reunite them, and see how in each of them there is a one and many.

PROTARCHUS
If you would explain to me a little more about them, perhaps I might be able to follow you.

SOCRATES Well, the two classes are the same which I mentioned before, one the finite, and the other the infinite; I will first
show that the infinite is in a certain sense many, and the finite may be hereafter discussed.

PROTARCHUS
I agree.

SOCRATES And now consider well; for the question to which I invite your attention is difficult and controverted. When you speak
of hotter and colder, can you conceive any limit in those qualities? Does not the more and less, which dwells in their very
nature, prevent their having any end? for if they had an end, the more and less would themselves have an end.

PROTARCHUS
That is most true.

SOCRATES
Ever, as we say, into the hotter and the colder there enters a more and a less.

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
Then, says the argument, there is never any end of them, and being endless they must also be infinite.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, Socrates, that is exceedingly true.

SOCRATES
Yes, my dear Protarchus, and your answer reminds me that such an expression as 'exceedingly,' which you have just
uttered, and also the term 'gently,' have the same significance as more or less; for whenever they occur they do not allow of
the existence of quantity—they are always introducing degrees into actions, instituting a comparison of a more or a less
excessive or a more or a less gentle, and at each creation of more or less, quantity disappears. For, as I was just now saying,
if quantity and measure did not disappear, but were allowed to intrude in the sphere of more and less and the other
comparatives, these last would be driven out of their own domain. When definite quantity is once admitted, there can be no
longer a 'hotter' or a 'colder' (for these are always progressing, and are never in one stay); but definite quantity is at rest,
and has ceased to progress. Which proves that comparatives, such as the hotter and the colder, are to be ranked in the class of
the infinite.

PROTARCHUS
Your remark certainly has the look of truth, Socrates; but these subjects, as you were saying, are difficult to
follow at first. I think however, that if I could hear the argument repeated by you once or twice, there would be a substantial
agreement between us.

SOCRATES
Yes, and I will try to meet your wish; but, as I would rather not waste time in the enumeration of endless
particulars, let me know whether I may not assume as a note of the infinite—

PROTARCHUS
What?

SOCRATES
I want to know whether such things as appear to us to admit of more or less, or are denoted by the words
'exceedingly,' 'gently,' 'extremely,' and the like, may not be referred to the class of the infinite, which is their unity, for, as was asserted in the previous argument, all things that were divided and dispersed should be brought together, and have the mark or seal of some one nature, if possible, set upon them—do you remember?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And all things which do not admit of more or less, but admit their opposites, that is to say, first of all, equality,
and the equal, or again, the double, or any other ratio of number and measure—all these may, I think, be rightly reckoned by us
in the class of the limited or finite; what do you say?

PROTARCHUS
Excellent, Socrates.

SOCRATES
And now what nature shall we ascribe to the third or compound kind?

PROTARCHUS
You, I think, will have to tell me that.

SOCRATES
Rather God will tell you, if there be any God who will listen to my prayers.

PROTARCHUS
Offer up a prayer, then, and think.

SOCRATES
I am thinking, Protarchus, and I believe that some God has befriended us.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean, and what proof have you to offer of what you are saying?

SOCRATES
I will tell you, and do you listen to my words.

PROTARCHUS
Proceed.

SOCRATES
Were we not speaking just now of hotter and colder?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Add to them drier, wetter, more, less, swifter, slower, greater, smaller, and all that in the preceding argument we
placed under the unity of more and less.

PROTARCHUS
In the class of the infinite, you mean?

SOCRATES
Yes; and now mingle this with the other.

PROTARCHUS
What is the other.

SOCRATES
The class of the finite which we ought to have brought together as we did the infinite; but, perhaps, it will come to
the same thing if we do so now;—when the two are combined, a third will appear.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean by the class of the finite?

SOCRATES
The class of the equal and the double, and any class which puts an end to difference and opposition, and by
introducing number creates harmony and proportion among the different elements.

PROTARCHUS
I understand; you seem to me to mean that the various opposites, when you mingle with them the class of the finite,
takes certain forms.

SOCRATES
Yes, that is my meaning.

PROTARCHUS
Proceed.

SOCRATES
Does not the right participation in the finite give health—in disease, for instance?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And whereas the high and low, the swift and the slow are infinite or unlimited, does not the addition of the principles aforesaid introduce a limit, and perfect the whole frame of music?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, certainly.

SOCRATES
Or, again, when cold and heat prevail, does not the introduction of them take away excess and indefiniteness, and
infuse moderation and harmony?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And from a like admixture of the finite and infinite come the seasons, and all the delights of life?

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
I omit ten thousand other things, such as beauty and health and strength, and the many beauties and high perfections
of the soul O my beautiful Philebus, the goddess, methinks, seeing the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, and
that there was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the limit of law and order, whereby, as you say,
Philebus, she torments, or as I maintain, delivers the soul.—What think you, Protarchus?

PROTARCHUS
Her ways are much to my mind, Socrates.

SOCRATES
You will observe that I have spoken of three classes?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, I think that I understand you you mean to say that the infinite is one class, and that the finite is a second
class of existences; but what you would make the third I am not so certain.

SOCRATES
That is because the amazing variety of the third class is too much for you, my dear friend; but there was not this
difficulty with the infinite, which also comprehended many classes, for all of them were sealed with the note of more and less,
and therefore appeared one.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And the finite or limit had not many divisions, and we readily acknowledged it to be by nature one?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
Yes, indeed; and when I speak of the third class, understand me to mean any offspring of these, being a birth into
true being, effected by the measure which the limit introduces.

PROTARCHUS
I understand.

SOCRATES
Still there was, as we said, a fourth class to be investigated, and you must assist in the investigation; for does not
everything which comes into being, of necessity come into being through a cause?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, certainly; for how can there be anything which has no cause?

SOCRATES
And is not the agent the same as the cause in all except name; the agent and the cause may be rightly called one?

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And the same may be said of the patient, or effect; we shall find that they too differ, as I was saying, only in name—
shall we not?

PROTARCHUS
We shall.

SOCRATES
The agent or cause always naturally leads, and the patient or effect naturally follows it?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Then the cause and what is subordinate to it in generation are not the same, but different?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Did not the things which were generated, and the things out of which they were generated, furnish all the three
classes?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And the creator or cause of them has been satisfactorily proven to be distinct from them,—and may therefore be called
a fourth principle?

PROTARCHUS
So let us call it.

SOCRATES
Quite right; but now, having distinguished the four, I think that we had better refresh our memories by recapitulating
each of them in order.

PROTARCHUS
By all means.

SOCRATES
Then the first I will call the infinite or unlimited, and the second the finite or limited; then follows the third, an
essence compound and generated; and I do not think that I shall be far wrong in speaking of the cause of mixture and generation
as the fourth.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
And now what is the next question, and how came we hither? Were we not enquiring whether the second place belonged to
pleasure or wisdom?

PROTARCHUS
We were.

SOCRATES
And now, having determined these points, shall we not be better able to decide about the first and second place, which
was the original subject of dispute?

PROTARCHUS
I dare say.

SOCRATES
We said, if you remember, that the mixed life of pleasure and wisdom was the conqueror—did we not?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And we see what is the place and nature of this life and to what class it is to be assigned?

PROTARCHUS
Beyond a doubt.

SOCRATES
This is evidently comprehended in the third or mixed class; which is not composed of any two particular ingredients,
but of all the elements of infinity, bound down by the finite, and may therefore be truly said to comprehend the conqueror life.

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
And what shall we say, Philebus, of your life which is all sweetness; and in which of the aforesaid classes is that to
be placed? Perhaps you will allow me to ask you a question before you answer?

PHILEBUS
Let me hear.

SOCRATES
Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less?

PHILEBUS
They belong to the class which admits of more, Socrates; for pleasure would not be perfectly good if she were not
infinite in quantity and degree.

SOCRATES
Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to
pleasure some degree of good. But now—admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite—in which of the
aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be
careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we err on this point.

PHILEBUS
You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god.

SOCRATES
And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question.

PROTARCHUS
Socrates is quite right, Philebus, and we must submit to him.

PHILEBUS
And did not you, Protarchus, propose to answer in my place?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly I did; but I am now in a great strait, and I must entreat you, Socrates, to be our spokesman, and then we
shall not say anything wrong or disrespectful of your favourite.

SOCRATES
I must obey you, Protarchus; nor is the task which you impose a difficult one; but did I really, as Philebus implies,
disconcert you with my playful solemnity, when I asked the question to what class mind and knowledge belong?

PROTARCHUS
You did, indeed, Socrates.

SOCRATES
Yet the answer is easy, since all philosophers assert with one voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth—in
reality they are magnifying themselves. And perhaps they are right. But still I should like to consider the class of mind, if
you do not object, a little more fully.

PHILEBUS
Take your own course, Socrates, and never mind length; we shall not tire of you.

SOCRATES
Very good; let us begin then, Protarchus, by asking a question.

PROTARCHUS
What question?

SOCRATES
Whether all this which they call the universe is left to the guidance of unreason and chance medley, or, on the
contrary, as our fathers have declared, ordered and governed by a marvellous intelligence and wisdom.

PROTARCHUS
Wide asunder are the two assertions, illustrious Socrates, for that which you were just now saying to me appears to
be blasphemy; but the other assertion, that mind orders all things, is worthy of the aspect of the world, and of the sun, and of
the moon, and of the stars and of the whole circle of the heavens; and never will I say or think otherwise.

SOCRATES
Shall we then agree with them of old time in maintaining this doctrine,—not merely reasserting the notions of others,
without risk to ourselves,—but shall we share in the danger, and take our part of the reproach which will await us, when an
ingenious individual declares that all is disorder?

PROTARCHUS
That would certainly be my wish.

SOCRATES
Then now please to consider the next stage of the argument.

PROTARCHUS
Let me hear.

SOCRATES
We see that the elements which enter into the nature of the bodies of all animals, fire, water, air, and, as the
storm-tossed sailor cries, 'land' (i.e., earth), reappear in the constitution of the world.

PROTARCHUS
The proverb may be applied to us; for truly the storm gathers over us, and we are at our wit's end.

SOCRATES
There is something to be remarked about each of these elements.

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
Only a small fraction of any one of them exists in us, and that of a mean sort, and not in any way pure, or having any
power worthy of its nature. One instance will prove this of all of them; there is fire within us, and in the universe.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And is not our fire small and weak and mean? But the fire in the universe is wonderful in quantity and beauty, and in
every power that fire has.

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
And is the fire in the universe nourished and generated and ruled by the fire in us, or is the fire in you and me, and
in other animals, dependent on the universal fire?

PROTARCHUS
That is a question which does not deserve an answer.

SOCRATES
Right; and you would say the same, if I am not mistaken, of the earth which is in animals and the earth which is in
the universe, and you would give a similar reply about all the other elements?

PROTARCHUS
Why, how could any man who gave any other be deemed in his senses?

SOCRATES
I do not think that he could—but now go on to the next step. When we saw those elements of which we have been speaking
gathered up in one, did we not call them a body?

PROTARCHUS
We did.

SOCRATES
And the same may be said of the cosmos, which for the same reason may be considered to be a body, because made up of
the same elements.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
But is our body nourished wholly by this body, or is this body nourished by our body, thence deriving and having the
qualities of which we were just now speaking?

PROTARCHUS
That again, Socrates, is a question which does not deserve to be asked.

SOCRATES
Well, tell me, is this question worth asking?

PROTARCHUS
What question?

SOCRATES
May our body be said to have a soul?

PROTARCHUS
Clearly.

SOCRATES
And whence comes that soul, my dear Protarchus, unless the body of the universe, which contains elements like those in
our bodies but in every way fairer, had also a soul? Can there be another source?

PROTARCHUS
Clearly, Socrates, that is the only source.

SOCRATES
Why, yes, Protarchus; for surely we cannot imagine that of the four classes, the finite, the infinite, the composition
of the two, and the cause, the fourth, which enters into all things, giving to our bodies souls, and the art of self-management,
and of healing disease, and operating in other ways to heal and organize, having too all the attributes of wisdom;—we cannot, I say, imagine that whereas the self-same elements exist, both in the entire heaven and in great provinces of the heaven, only fairer and purer, this last should not also in that higher sphere have designed the noblest and fairest things?

PROTARCHUS
Such a supposition is quite unreasonable.

SOCRATES
Then if this be denied, should we not be wise in adopting the other view and maintaining that there is in the universe
a mighty infinite and an adequate limit, of which we have often spoken, as well as a presiding cause of no mean power, which
orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may be justly called wisdom and mind?

PROTARCHUS
Most justly.

SOCRATES
And wisdom and mind cannot exist without soul?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
And in the divine nature of Zeus would you not say that there is the soul and mind of a king, because there is in him
the power of the cause? And other gods have other attributes, by which they are pleased to be called.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
Do not then suppose that these words are rashly spoken by us, O Protarchus, for they are in harmony with the testimony
of those who said of old time that mind rules the universe.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And they furnish an answer to my enquiry; for they imply that mind is the parent of that class of the four which we
called the cause of all; and I think that you now have my answer.

PROTARCHUS
I have indeed, and yet I did not observe that you had answered.

SOCRATES
A jest is sometimes refreshing, Protarchus, when it interrupts earnest.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
I think, friend, that we have now pretty clearly set forth the class to which mind belongs and what is the power of
mind.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And the class to which pleasure belongs has also been long ago discovered?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And let us remember, too, of both of them, (1) that mind was akin to the cause and of this family; and (2) that
pleasure is infinite and belongs to the class which neither has, nor ever will have in itself, a beginning, middle, or end of
its own.

PROTARCHUS
I shall be sure to remember.

SOCRATES
We must next examine what is their place and under what conditions they are generated. And we will begin with
pleasure, since her class was first examined; and yet pleasure cannot be rightly tested apart from pain.

PROTARCHUS
If this is the road, let us take it.

SOCRATES
I wonder whether you would agree with me about the origin of pleasure and pain.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
I mean to say that their natural seat is in the mixed class.

PROTARCHUS
And would you tell me again, sweet Socrates, which of the aforesaid classes is the mixed one?

SOCRATES
I will, my fine fellow, to the best of my ability.

PROTARCHUS
Very good.

SOCRATES
Let us then understand the mixed class to be that which we placed third in the list of four.

PROTARCHUS
That which followed the infinite and the finite; and in which you ranked health, and, if I am not mistaken, harmony.

SOCRATES
Capital; and now will you please to give me your best attention?

PROTARCHUS
Proceed; I am attending.

SOCRATES
I say that when the harmony in animals is dissolved, there is also a dissolution of nature and a generation of pain.

PROTARCHUS
That is very probable.

SOCRATES
And the restoration of harmony and return to nature is the source of pleasure, if I may be allowed to speak in the
fewest and shortest words about matters of the greatest moment.

PROTARCHUS
I believe that you are right, Socrates; but will you try to be a little plainer?

SOCRATES
Do not obvious and every-day phenomena furnish the simplest illustration?

PROTARCHUS
What phenomena do you mean?

SOCRATES
Hunger, for example, is a dissolution and a pain.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Whereas eating is a replenishment and a pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
Thirst again is a destruction and a pain, but the effect of moisture replenishing the dry place is a pleasure once
more, the unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful, and the natural restoration and refrigeration is
pleasant.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an animal is pain, and the natural process of resolution and return of
the elements to their original state is pleasure. And would not the general proposition seem to you to hold, that the destroying
of the natural union of the finite and infinite, which, as I was observing before, make up the class of living beings, is pain,
and that the process of return of all things to their own nature is pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Granted; what you say has a general truth.

SOCRATES
Here then is one kind of pleasures and pains originating severally in the two processes which we have described?

PROTARCHUS
Good.

SOCRATES
Let us next assume that in the soul herself there is an antecedent hope of pleasure which is sweet and refreshing, and
an expectation of pain, fearful and anxious.

PROTARCHUS
Yes; this is another class of pleasures and pains, which is of the soul only, apart from the body, and is produced
by expectation.

SOCRATES
Right; for in the analysis of these, pure, as I suppose them to be, the pleasures being unalloyed with pain and the
pains with pleasure, methinks that we shall see clearly whether the whole class of pleasure is to be desired, or whether this
quality of entire desirableness is not rather to be attributed to another of the classes which have been mentioned; and whether
pleasure and pain, like heat and cold, and other things of the same kind, are not sometimes to be desired and sometimes not to
be desired, as being not in themselves good, but only sometimes and in some instances admitting of the nature of good.

PROTARCHUS
You say most truly that this is the track which the investigation should pursue.

SOCRATES
Well, then, assuming that pain ensues on the dissolution, and pleasure on the restoration of the harmony, let us now
ask what will be the condition of animated beings who are neither in process of restoration nor of dissolution. And mind what
you say I ask whether any animal who is in that condition can possibly have any feeling of pleasure or pain, great or small?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
Then here we have a third state, over and above that of pleasure and of pain?

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And do not forget that there is such a state; it will make a great difference in our judgment of pleasure, whether we
remember this or not. And I should like to say a few words about it.

PROTARCHUS
What have you to say?

SOCRATES
Why, you know that if a man chooses the life of wisdom, there is no reason why he should not live in this neutral
state.

PROTARCHUS
You mean that he may live neither rejoicing nor sorrowing?

SOCRATES
Yes; and if I remember rightly, when the lives were compared, no degree of pleasure, whether great or small, was
thought to be necessary to him who chose the life of thought and wisdom.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, certainly, we said so.

SOCRATES
Then he will live without pleasure; and who knows whether this may not be the most divine of all lives?

PROTARCHUS
If so, the gods, at any rate, cannot be supposed to have either joy or sorrow.

SOCRATES
Certainly not—there would be a great impropriety in the assumption of either alternative. But whether the gods are or are not indifferent to pleasure is a point which may be considered hereafter if in any way relevant to the argument, and whatever is the conclusion we will place it to the account of mind in her contest for the second place, should she have to resign the first.

PROTARCHUS
Just so.

SOCRATES
The other class of pleasures, which as we were saying is purely mental, is entirely derived from memory.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
I must first of all analyze memory, or rather perception which is prior to memory, if the subject of our discussion is
ever to be properly cleared up.

PROTARCHUS
How will you proceed?

SOCRATES
Let us imagine affections of the body which are extinguished before they reach the soul, and leave her unaffected; and
again, other affections which vibrate through both soul and body, and impart a shock to both and to each of them.

PROTARCHUS
Granted.

SOCRATES
And the soul may be truly said to be oblivious of the first but not of the second?

PROTARCHUS
Quite true.

SOCRATES
When I say oblivious, do not suppose that I mean forgetfulness in a literal sense; for forgetfulness is the exit of
memory, which in this case has not yet entered; and to speak of the loss of that which is not yet in existence, and never has
been, is a contradiction; do you see?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
Then just be so good as to change the terms.

PROTARCHUS
How shall I change them?

SOCRATES
Instead of the oblivion of the soul, when you are describing the state in which she is unaffected by the shocks of the
body, say unconsciousness.

PROTARCHUS
I see.

SOCRATES
And the union or communion of soul and body in one feeling and motion would be properly called consciousness?

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
Then now we know the meaning of the word?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And memory may, I think, be rightly described as the preservation of consciousness?

PROTARCHUS
Right.

SOCRATES
But do we not distinguish memory from recollection?

PROTARCHUS
I think so.

SOCRATES
And do we not mean by recollection the power which the soul has of recovering, when by herself, some feeling which she
experienced when in company with the body?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And when she recovers of herself the lost recollection of some consciousness or knowledge, the recovery is termed
recollection and reminiscence?

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
There is a reason why I say all this.

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
I want to attain the plainest possible notion of pleasure and desire, as they exist in the mind only, apart from the body; and the previous analysis helps to show the nature of both.

PROTARCHUS
Then now, Socrates, let us proceed to the next point.

SOCRATES
There are certainly many things to be considered in discussing the generation and whole complexion of pleasure. At the
outset we must determine the nature and seat of desire.

PROTARCHUS
Ay; let us enquire into that, for we shall lose nothing.

SOCRATES
Nay, Protarchus, we shall surely lose the puzzle if we find the answer.

PROTARCHUS
A fair retort; but let us proceed.

SOCRATES
Did we not place hunger, thirst, and the like, in the class of desires?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And yet they are very different; what common nature have we in view when we call them by a single name?

PROTARCHUS
By heavens, Socrates, that is a question which is not easily answered; but it must be answered.

SOCRATES
Then let us go back to our examples.

PROTARCHUS
Where shall we begin?

SOCRATES
Do we mean anything when we say 'a man thirsts'?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
We mean to say that he 'is empty'?

PROTARCHUS
Of course.

SOCRATES
And is not thirst desire?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, of drink.

SOCRATES
Would you say of drink, or of replenishment with drink?

PROTARCHUS
I should say, of replenishment with drink.

SOCRATES Then he who is empty desires, as would appear, the opposite of what he experiences; for he is empty and desires to be
full?

PROTARCHUS
Clearly so.

SOCRATES
But how can a man who is empty for the first time, attain either by perception or memory to any apprehension of
replenishment, of which he has no present or past experience?

PROTARCHUS
Impossible.

SOCRATES
And yet he who desires, surely desires something?

PROTARCHUS
Of course.

SOCRATES
He does not desire that which he experiences, for he experiences thirst, and thirst is emptiness; but he desires replenishment?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Then there must be something in the thirsty man which in some way apprehends replenishment?

PROTARCHUS
There must.

SOCRATES
And that cannot be the body, for the body is supposed to be emptied?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
The only remaining alternative is that the soul apprehends the replenishment by the help of memory; as is obvious, for
what other way can there be?

PROTARCHUS
I cannot imagine any other.

SOCRATES
But do you see the consequence?

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
That there is no such thing as desire of the body.

PROTARCHUS
Why so?

SOCRATES
Why, because the argument shows that the endeavour of every animal is to the reverse of his bodily state.

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And the impulse which leads him to the opposite of what he is experiencing proves that he has a memory of the opposite
state.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And the argument, having proved that memory attracts us towards the objects of desire, proves also that the impulses
and the desires and the moving principle in every living being have their origin in the soul.

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
The argument will not allow that our body either hungers or thirsts or has any similar experience.

PROTARCHUS
Quite right.

SOCRATES
Let me make a further observation; the argument appears to me to imply that there is a kind of life which consists in
these affections.

PROTARCHUS
Of what affections, and of what kind of life, are you speaking?

SOCRATES
I am speaking of being emptied and replenished, and of all that relates to the preservation and destruction of living beings, as well as of the pain which is felt in one of these states and of the pleasure which succeeds to it.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And what would you say of the intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean by 'intermediate'?

SOCRATES
I mean when a person is in actual suffering and yet remembers past pleasures which, if they would only return, would
relieve him; but as yet he has them not. May we not say of him, that he is in an intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Would you say that he was wholly pained or wholly pleased?

PROTARCHUS Nay, I should say that he has two pains; in his body there is the actual experience of pain, and in his soul longing
and expectation.

SOCRATES
What do you mean, Protarchus, by the two pains? May not a man who is empty have at one time a sure hope of being
filled, and at other times be quite in despair?

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And has he not the pleasure of memory when he is hoping to be filled, and yet in that he is empty is he not at the
same time in pain?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Then man and the other animals have at the same time both pleasure and pain?

PROTARCHUS
I suppose so.

SOCRATES
But when a man is empty and has no hope of being filled, there will be the double experience of pain. You observed
this and inferred that the double experience was the single case possible.

PROTARCHUS
Quite true, Socrates.

SOCRATES
Shall the enquiry into these states of feeling be made the occasion of raising a question?

PROTARCHUS
What question?

SOCRATES
Whether we ought to say that the pleasures and pains of which we are speaking are true or false? or some true and some
false?

PROTARCHUS
But how, Socrates, can there be false pleasures and pains?

SOCRATES
And how, Protarchus, can there be true and false fears, or true and false expectations, or true and false opinions?

PROTARCHUS
I grant that opinions may be true or false, but not pleasures.

SOCRATES
What do you mean? I am afraid that we are raising a very serious enquiry.

PROTARCHUS
There I agree.

SOCRATES
And yet, my boy, for you are one of Philebus' boys, the point to be considered, is, whether the enquiry is relevant to
the argument.

PROTARCHUS
Surely.

SOCRATES
No tedious and irrelevant discussion can be allowed; what is said should be pertinent.

PROTARCHUS
Right.

SOCRATES
I am always wondering at the question which has now been raised.

PROTARCHUS
How so?

SOCRATES
Do you deny that some pleasures are false, and others true?

PROTARCHUS
To be sure I do.

SOCRATES
Would you say that no one ever seemed to rejoice and yet did not rejoice, or seemed to feel pain and yet did not feel
pain, sleeping or waking, mad or lunatic?

PROTARCHUS
So we have always held, Socrates.

SOCRATES
But were you right? Shall we enquire into the truth of your opinion?

PROTARCHUS
I think that we should.

SOCRATES
Let us then put into more precise terms the question which has arisen about pleasure and opinion. Is there such a
thing as opinion?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And such a thing as pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And an opinion must be of something?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And a man must be pleased by something?

PROTARCHUS
Quite correct.

SOCRATES
And whether the opinion be right or wrong, makes no difference; it will still be an opinion?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And he who is pleased, whether he is rightly pleased or not, will always have a real feeling of pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Yes; that is also quite true.

SOCRATES
Then, how can opinion be both true and false, and pleasure true only, although pleasure and opinion are both equally
real?

PROTARCHUS
Yes; that is the question.

SOCRATES
You mean that opinion admits of truth and falsehood, and hence becomes not merely opinion, but opinion of a certain
quality; and this is what you think should be examined?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And further, even if we admit the existence of qualities in other objects, may not pleasure and pain be simple and
devoid of quality?

PROTARCHUS
Clearly.

SOCRATES
But there is no difficulty in seeing that pleasure and pain as well as opinion have qualities, for they are great or
small, and have various degrees of intensity; as was indeed said long ago by us.

PROTARCHUS
Quite true.

SOCRATES
And if badness attaches to any of them, Protarchus, then we should speak of a bad opinion or of a bad pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Quite true, Socrates.

SOCRATES
And if rightness attaches to any of them, should we not speak of a right opinion or right pleasure; and in like manner
of the reverse of rightness?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And if the thing opined be erroneous, might we not say that the opinion, being erroneous, is not right or rightly
opined?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And if we see a pleasure or pain which errs in respect of its object, shall we call that right or good, or by any
honourable name?

PROTARCHUS
Not if the pleasure is mistaken; how could we?

SOCRATES
And surely pleasure often appears to accompany an opinion which is not true, but false?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly it does; and in that case, Socrates, as we were saying, the opinion is false, but no one could call the
actual pleasure false.

SOCRATES
How eagerly, Protarchus, do you rush to the defence of pleasure!

PROTARCHUS
Nay, Socrates, I only repeat what I hear.

SOCRATES
And is there no difference, my friend, between that pleasure which is associated with right opinion and knowledge, and
that which is often found in all of us associated with falsehood and ignorance?

PROTARCHUS
There must be a very great difference, between them.

SOCRATES
Then, now let us proceed to contemplate this difference.

PROTARCHUS
Lead, and I will follow.

SOCRATES
Well, then, my view is—

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
We agree—do we not?—that there is such a thing as false, and also such a thing as true opinion?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And pleasure and pain, as I was just now saying, are often consequent upon these—upon true and false opinion, I mean.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
And do not opinion and the endeavour to form an opinion always spring from memory and perception?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
Might we imagine the process to be something of this nature?

PROTARCHUS
Of what nature?

SOCRATES
An object may be often seen at a distance not very clearly, and the seer may want to determine what it is which he
sees.

PROTARCHUS
Very likely.

SOCRATES
Soon he begins to interrogate himself.

PROTARCHUS
In what manner?

SOCRATES
He asks himself—'What is that which appears to be standing by the rock under the tree?' This is the question which he
may be supposed to put to himself when he sees such an appearance.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES: To which he may guess the right answer, saying as if in a whisper to himself—'It is a man.'

PROTARCHUS
Very good.

SOCRATES
Or again, he may be misled, and then he will say—'No, it is a figure made by the shepherds.'

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And if he has a companion, he repeats his thought to him in articulate sounds, and what was before an opinion, has now
become a proposition.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
But if he be walking alone when these thoughts occur to him, he may not unfrequently keep them in his mind for a
considerable time.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
Well, now, I wonder whether you would agree in my explanation of this phenomenon.

PROTARCHUS
What is your explanation?

SOCRATES
I think that the soul at such times is like a book.

PROTARCHUS
How so?

SOCRATES
Memory and perception meet, and they and their attendant feelings seem to almost to write down words in the soul, and
when the inscribing feeling writes truly, then true opinion and true propositions which are the expressions of opinion come into
our souls—but when the scribe within us writes falsely, the result is false.

PROTARCHUS
I quite assent and agree to your statement.

SOCRATES
I must bespeak your favour also for another artist, who is busy at the same time in the chambers of the soul.

PROTARCHUS
Who is he?

SOCRATES
The painter, who, after the scribe has done his work, draws images in the soul of the things which he has described.

PROTARCHUS
But when and how does he do this?

SOCRATES
When a man, besides receiving from sight or some other sense certain opinions or statements, sees in his mind the
images of the subjects of them;—is not this a very common mental phenomenon?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And the images answering to true opinions and words are true, and to false opinions and words false; are they not?

PROTARCHUS
They are.

SOCRATES
If we are right so far, there arises a further question.

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
Whether we experience the feeling of which I am speaking only in relation to the present and the past, or in relation
to the future also?

PROTARCHUS
I should say in relation to all times alike.

SOCRATES
Have not purely mental pleasures and pains been described already as in some cases anticipations of the bodily ones;
from which we may infer that anticipatory pleasures and pains have to do with the future?

PROTARCHUS
Most true.

SOCRATES
And do all those writings and paintings which, as we were saying a little while ago, are produced in us, relate to the past and present only, and not to the future?

PROTARCHUS
To the future, very much.

SOCRATES
When you say, 'Very much,' you mean to imply that all these representations are hopes about the future, and that
mankind are filled with hopes in every stage of existence?

PROTARCHUS
Exactly.

SOCRATES
Answer me another question.

PROTARCHUS
What question?

SOCRATES
A just and pious and good man is the friend of the gods; is he not?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly he is.

SOCRATES
And the unjust and utterly bad man is the reverse?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And all men, as we were saying just now, are always filled with hopes?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And these hopes, as they are termed, are propositions which exist in the minds of each of us?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures
ensuing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his good fortune.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And may we not say that the good, being friends of the gods, have generally true pictures presented to them, and the
bad false pictures?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
The bad, too, have pleasures painted in their fancy as well as the good; but I presume that they are false pleasures.

PROTARCHUS
They are.

SOCRATES
The bad then commonly delight in false pleasures, and the good in true pleasures?

PROTARCHUS
Doubtless.

SOCRATES
Then upon this view there are false pleasures in the souls of men which are a ludicrous imitation of the true, and
there are pains of a similar character?

PROTARCHUS
There are.

SOCRATES
And did we not allow that a man who had an opinion at all had a real opinion, but often about things which had no
existence either in the past, present, or future?

PROTARCHUS
Quite true.

SOCRATES
And this was the source of false opinion and opining; am I not right?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And must we not attribute to pleasure and pain a similar real but illusory character?

PROTARCHUS
How do you mean?

SOCRATES
I mean to say that a man must be admitted to have real pleasure who is pleased with anything or anyhow; and he may be
pleased about things which neither have nor have ever had any real existence, and, more often than not, are never likely to
exist.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, Socrates, that again is undeniable.

SOCRATES
And may not the same be said about fear and anger and the like; are they not often false?

PROTARCHUS
Quite so.

SOCRATES
And can opinions be good or bad except in as far as they are true or false?

PROTARCHUS
In no other way.

SOCRATES
Nor can pleasures be conceived to be bad except in so far as they are false.

PROTARCHUS
Nay, Socrates, that is the very opposite of truth; for no one would call pleasures and pains bad because they are
false, but by reason of some other great corruption to which they are liable.

SOCRATES
Well, of pleasures which are corrupt and caused by corruption we will hereafter speak, if we care to continue the
enquiry; for the present I would rather show by another argument that there are many false pleasures existing or coming into
existence in us, because this may assist our final decision.

PROTARCHUS
Very true; that is to say, if there are such pleasures.

SOCRATES
I think that there are, Protarchus; but this is an opinion which should be well assured, and not rest upon a mere assertion.

PROTARCHUS
Very good.

SOCRATES
Then now, like wrestlers, let us approach and grasp this new argument.

PROTARCHUS
Proceed.

SOCRATES
We were maintaining a little while since, that when desires, as they are termed, exist in us, then the body has
separate feelings apart from the soul—do you remember?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, I remember that you said so.

SOCRATES
And the soul was supposed to desire the opposite of the bodily state, while the body was the source of any pleasure or
pain which was experienced.

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Then now you may infer what happens in such cases.

PROTARCHUS
What am I to infer?

SOCRATES
That in such cases pleasures and pains come simultaneously; and there is a juxtaposition of the opposite sensations
which correspond to them, as has been already shown.

PROTARCHUS
Clearly.

SOCRATES
And there is another point to which we have agreed.

PROTARCHUS
What is it?

SOCRATES
That pleasure and pain both admit of more and less, and that they are of the class of infinites.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly, we said so.

SOCRATES
But how can we rightly judge of them?

PROTARCHUS
How can we?

SOCRATES
Is it our intention to judge of their comparative importance and intensity, measuring pleasure against pain, and pain
against pain, and pleasure against pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, such is our intention, and we shall judge of them accordingly.

SOCRATES
Well, take the case of sight. Does not the nearness or distance of magnitudes obscure their true proportions, and make
us opine falsely; and do we not find the same illusion happening in the case of pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, Socrates, and in a degree far greater.

SOCRATES
Then what we are now saying is the opposite of what we were saying before.

PROTARCHUS
What was that?

SOCRATES
Then the opinions were true and false, and infected the pleasures and pains with their own falsity.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
But now it is the pleasures which are said to be true and false because they are seen at various distances, and
subjected to comparison; the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement when placed side by side with the pains, and the
pains when placed side by side with the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly, and for the reason which you mention.

SOCRATES
And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains the element which makes them appear to be greater or less than they
really are: you will acknowledge that this element is illusory, and you will never say that the corresponding excess or defect
of pleasure or pain is real or true.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
Next let us see whether in another direction we may not find pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living
beings, which are still more false than these.

PROTARCHUS
What are they, and how shall we find them?

SOCRATES
If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out
of a corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and
decay?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, that has been often said.

SOCRATES
And we have also agreed that the restoration of the natural state is pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
Right.

SOCRATES
But now let us suppose an interval of time at which the body experiences none of these changes.

PROTARCHUS
When can that be, Socrates?

SOCRATES
Your question, Protarchus, does not help the argument.

PROTARCHUS
Why not, Socrates?

SOCRATES
Because it does not prevent me from repeating mine.

PROTARCHUS
And what was that?

SOCRATES
Why, Protarchus, admitting that there is no such interval, I may ask what would be the necessary consequence if there
were?

PROTARCHUS
You mean, what would happen if the body were not changed either for good or bad?

SOCRATES
Yes.

PROTARCHUS
Why then, Socrates, I should suppose that there would be neither pleasure nor pain.

SOCRATES
Very good; but still, if I am not mistaken, you do assert that we must always be experiencing one of them; that is
what the wise tell us; for, say they, all things are ever flowing up and down.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, and their words are of no mean authority.

SOCRATES
Of course, for they are no mean authorities themselves; and I should like to avoid the brunt of their argument. Shall
I tell you how I mean to escape from them? And you shall be the partner of my flight.

PROTARCHUS
How?

SOCRATES
To them we will say: 'Good; but are we, or living things in general, always conscious of what happens to us—for
example, of our growth, or the like? Are we not, on the contrary, almost wholly unconscious of this and similar phenomena?' You
must answer for them.

PROTARCHUS
The latter alternative is the true one.

SOCRATES
Then we were not right in saying, just now, that motions going up and down cause pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
A better and more unexceptionable way of speaking will be—

PROTARCHUS
What?

SOCRATES
If we say that the great changes produce pleasures and pains, but that the moderate and lesser ones do neither.

PROTARCHUS
That, Socrates, is the more correct mode of speaking.

SOCRATES
But if this be true, the life to which I was just now referring again appears.

PROTARCHUS
What life?

SOCRATES The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of pain or of joy.

PROTARCHUS
Very true.

SOCRATES
We may assume then that there are three lives, one pleasant, one painful, and the third which is neither; what say
you?

PROTARCHUS
I should say as you do that there are three of them.

SOCRATES
But if so, the negation of pain will not be the same with pleasure.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
Then when you hear a person saying, that always to live without pain is the pleasantest of all things, what would you
understand him to mean by that statement?

PROTARCHUS
I think that by pleasure he must mean the negative of pain.

SOCRATES
Let us take any three things; or suppose that we embellish a little and call the first gold, the second silver, and
there shall be a third which is neither.

PROTARCHUS
Very good.

SOCRATES
Now, can that which is neither be either gold or silver?

PROTARCHUS
Impossible.

SOCRATES
No more can that neutral or middle life be rightly or reasonably spoken or thought of as pleasant or painful.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly not.

SOCRATES
And yet, my friend, there are, as we know, persons who say and think so.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And do they think that they have pleasure when they are free from pain?

PROTARCHUS
They say so.

SOCRATES
And they must think or they would not say that they have pleasure.

PROTARCHUS
I suppose not.

SOCRATES
And yet if pleasure and the negation of pain are of distinct natures, they are wrong.

PROTARCHUS
But they are undoubtedly of distinct natures.

SOCRATES
Then shall we take the view that they are three, as we were just now saying, or that they are two only—the one being a
state of pain, which is an evil, and the other a cessation of pain, which is of itself a good, and is called pleasant?

PROTARCHUS
But why, Socrates, do we ask the question at all? I do not see the reason.

SOCRATES
You, Protarchus, have clearly never heard of certain enemies of our friend Philebus.

PROTARCHUS
And who may they be?

SOCRATES
Certain persons who are reputed to be masters in natural philosophy, who deny the very existence of pleasure.

PROTARCHUS
Indeed!

SOCRATES
They say that what the school of Philebus calls pleasures are all of them only avoidances of pain.

PROTARCHUS
And would you, Socrates, have us agree with them?

SOCRATES
Why, no, I would rather use them as a sort of diviners, who divine the truth, not by rules of art, but by an
instinctive repugnance and extreme detestation which a noble nature has of the power of pleasure, in which they think that there
is nothing sound, and her seductive influence is declared by them to be witchcraft, and not pleasure. This is the use which you
may make of them. And when you have considered the various grounds of their dislike, you shall hear from me what I deem to be
true pleasures. Having thus examined the nature of pleasure from both points of view, we will bring her up for judgment.

PROTARCHUS
Well said.

SOCRATES
Then let us enter into an alliance with these philosophers and follow in the track of their dislike. I imagine that they would say something of this sort; they would begin at the beginning, and ask whether, if we wanted to know the nature of any quality, such as hardness, we should be more likely to discover it by looking at the hardest things, rather than at the least hard? You, Protarchus, shall answer these severe gentlemen as you answer me.

PROTARCHUS
By all means, and I reply to them, that you should look at the greatest instances.

SOCRATES
Then if we want to see the true nature of pleasures as a class, we should not look at the most diluted pleasures, but
at the most extreme and most vehement?

PROTARCHUS
In that every one will agree.

SOCRATES
And the obvious instances of the greatest pleasures, as we have often said, are the pleasures of the body?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And are they felt by us to be or become greater, when we are sick or when we are in health? And here we must be careful in our answer, or we shall come to grief.

PROTARCHUS
How will that be?

SOCRATES
Why, because we might be tempted to answer, 'When we are in health.'

PROTARCHUS
Yes, that is the natural answer.

SOCRATES
Well, but are not those pleasures the greatest of which mankind have the greatest desires?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
And do not people who are in a fever, or any similar illness, feel cold or thirst or other bodily affections more
intensely? Am I not right in saying that they have a deeper want and greater pleasure in the satisfaction of their want?

PROTARCHUS
That is obvious as soon as it is said.

SOCRATES
Well, then, shall we not be right in saying, that if a person would wish to see the greatest pleasures he ought to go
and look, not at health, but at disease? And here you must distinguish:—do not imagine that I mean to ask whether those who are very ill have more pleasures than those who are well, but understand that I am speaking of the magnitude of pleasure; I want to know where pleasures are found to be most intense. For, as I say, we have to discover what is pleasure, and what they mean by pleasure who deny her very existence.

PROTARCHUS
I think I follow you.

SOCRATES
You will soon have a better opportunity of showing whether you do or not, Protarchus. Answer now, and tell me whether you see, I will not say more, but more intense and excessive pleasures in wantonness than in temperance? Reflect before you speak.

PROTARCHUS
I understand you, and see that there is a great difference between them; the temperate are restrained by the wise man's aphorism of 'Never too much,' which is their rule, but excess of pleasure possessing the minds of fools and wantons becomes madness and makes them shout with delight.

SOCRATES
Very good, and if this be true, then the greatest pleasures and pains will clearly be found in some vicious state of soul and body, and not in a virtuous state.

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And ought we not to select some of these for examination, and see what makes them the greatest?

PROTARCHUS
To be sure we ought.

SOCRATES
Take the case of the pleasures which arise out of certain disorders.

PROTARCHUS
What disorders?

SOCRATES
The pleasures of unseemly disorders, which our severe friends utterly detest.

PROTARCHUS
What pleasures?

SOCRATES
Such, for example, as the relief of itching and other ailments by scratching, which is the only remedy required. For
what in Heaven's name is the feeling to be called which is thus produced in us?—Pleasure or pain?

PROTARCHUS
A villainous mixture of some kind, Socrates, I should say.

SOCRATES
I did not introduce the argument, O Protarchus, with any personal reference to Philebus, but because, without the
consideration of these and similar pleasures, we shall not be able to determine the point at issue.

PROTARCHUS
Then we had better proceed to analyze this family of pleasures.

SOCRATES
You mean the pleasures which are mingled with pain?

PROTARCHUS
Exactly.

SOCRATES
There are some mixtures which are of the body, and only in the body, and others which are of the soul, and only in the
soul; while there are other mixtures of pleasures with pains, common both to soul and body, which in their composite state are
called sometimes pleasures and sometimes pains.

PROTARCHUS
How is that?

SOCRATES
Whenever, in the restoration or in the derangement of nature, a man experiences two opposite feelings; for example,
when he is cold and is growing warm, or again, when he is hot and is becoming cool, and he wants to have the one and be rid of
the other;—the sweet has a bitter, as the common saying is, and both together fasten upon him and create irritation and in time
drive him to distraction.

PROTARCHUS
That description is very true to nature.

SOCRATES: And in these sorts of mixtures the pleasures and pains are sometimes equal, and sometimes one or other of them
predominates?

PROTARCHUS
True.

SOCRATES
Of cases in which the pain exceeds the pleasure, an example is afforded by itching, of which we were just now
speaking, and by the tingling which we feel when the boiling and fiery element is within, and the rubbing and motion only
relieves the surface, and does not reach the parts affected; then if you put them to the fire, and as a last resort apply cold
to them, you may often produce the most intense pleasure or pain in the inner parts, which contrasts and mingles with the pain
or pleasure, as the case may be, of the outer parts; and this is due to the forcible separation of what is united, or to the
union of what is separated, and to the juxtaposition of pleasure and pain.

PROTARCHUS
Quite so.

SOCRATES
Sometimes the element of pleasure prevails in a man, and the slight undercurrent of pain makes him tingle, and causes
a gentle irritation; or again, the excessive infusion of pleasure creates an excitement in him,—he even leaps for joy, he
assumes all sorts of attitudes, he changes all manner of colours, he gasps for breath, and is quite amazed, and utters the most
irrational exclamations.

PROTARCHUS
Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES
He will say of himself, and others will say of him, that he is dying with these delights; and the more dissipated and
good-for-nothing he is, the more vehemently he pursues them in every way; of all pleasures he declares them to be the greatest;
and he reckons him who lives in the most constant enjoyment of them to be the happiest of mankind.

PROTARCHUS
That, Socrates, is a very true description of the opinions of the majority about pleasures.

SOCRATES
Yes, Protarchus, quite true of the mixed pleasures, which arise out of the communion of external and internal
sensations in the body; there are also cases in which the mind contributes an opposite element to the body, whether of pleasure
or pain, and the two unite and form one mixture. Concerning these I have already remarked, that when a man is empty he desires
to be full, and has pleasure in hope and pain in vacuity. But now I must further add what I omitted before, that in all these
and similar emotions in which body and mind are opposed (and they are innumerable), pleasure and pain coalesce in one.

PROTARCHUS: I believe that to be quite true.

SOCRATES
There still remains one other sort of admixture of pleasures and pains.

PROTARCHUS
What is that?

SOCRATES
The union which, as we were saying, the mind often experiences of purely mental feelings.

PROTARCHUS
What do you mean?

SOCRATES
Why, do we not speak of anger, fear, desire, sorrow, love, emulation, envy, and the like, as pains which belong to the
soul only?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And shall we not find them also full of the most wonderful pleasures? need I remind you of the anger
Which stirs even a wise man to violence, And is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb?'And you remember how pleasures mingle with pains in lamentation and bereavement?

PROTARCHUS
Yes, there is a natural connexion between them.

SOCRATES
And you remember also how at the sight of tragedies the spectators smile through their tears?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly I do.

SOCRATES
And are you aware that even at a comedy the soul experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure?

PROTARCHUS
I do not quite understand you.

SOCRATES
I admit, Protarchus, that there is some difficulty in recognizing this mixture of feelings at a comedy.

PROTARCHUS
There is, I think.

SOCRATES
And the greater the obscurity of the case the more desirable is the examination of it, because the difficulty in
detecting other cases of mixed pleasures and pains will be less.

PROTARCHUS
Proceed.

SOCRATES
I have just mentioned envy; would you not call that a pain of the soul?

PROTARCHUS
Yes.

SOCRATES
And yet the envious man finds something in the misfortunes of his neighbours at which he is pleased?

PROTARCHUS
Certainly.

SOCRATES
And ignorance, and what is termed clownishness, are surely an evil?

PROTARCHUS
To be sure.

SOCRATES
From these considerations learn to know the nature of the ridiculous.

PROTARCHUS
Explain.

SOCRATES
The ridiculous is in short the specific name which is used to describe the vicious form of a certain habit; and of
vice in general it is that kind which is most at variance with the inscription at Delphi.

PROTARCHUS
You mean, Socrates, 'Know thyself.'

SOCRATES
I do; and the opposite would be, 'Know not thyself.'

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.