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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Philebus, by Plato
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Philebus
+
+Author: Plato
+
+Posting Date: October 30, 2008 [EBook #1744]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHILEBUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sue Asscher
+
+
+
+
+
+PHILEBUS
+
+By Plato
+
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
+
+The Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which
+the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element
+has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the
+development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the
+Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a
+corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the
+persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and
+incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of Thucydides,
+the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the power of
+expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of the
+earlier dialogues there occur two or three highly-wrought passages;
+instead of the ever-flowing play of humour, now appearing, now
+concealed, but always present, are inserted a good many bad jests, as
+we may venture to term them. We may observe an attempt at artificial
+ornament, and far-fetched modes of expression; also clamorous demands
+on the part of his companions, that Socrates shall answer his own
+questions, as well as other defects of style, which remind us of the
+Laws. The connection is often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from
+clear. Many points require further explanation; e.g. the reference of
+pleasure to the indefinite class, compared with the assertion which
+almost immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their
+seat in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled.
+In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the
+two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the
+divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final
+summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not appear;
+though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest good, the
+sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the fourth class.
+We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in which some
+topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller consideration. The
+various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life, the mixed class
+of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain, are a
+further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which
+Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a
+controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended
+to refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has
+not told us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them,
+the relation in which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or
+the Megarian good, or to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes
+respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to say how far Plato in the
+Philebus conceives the finite and infinite (which occur both in the
+fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean table of opposites) in the
+same manner as contemporary Pythagoreans.
+
+There is little in the characters which is worthy of remark. The
+Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony,
+though here, as in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his
+ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of
+Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a
+disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is drawn over to the opposite
+side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous youth are
+easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from
+the argument, is several times brought back again, that he may support
+pleasure, of which he remains to the end the uncompromising advocate.
+On the other hand, the youthful group of listeners by whom he is
+surrounded, 'Philebus' boys' as they are termed, whose presence is
+several times intimated, are described as all of them at last convinced
+by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very faded resemblance to the
+interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or Protagoras. Other
+signs of relation to external life in the dialogue, or references
+to contemporary things and persons, with the single exception of the
+allusions to the anonymous enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the
+flux, there are none.
+
+The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a previous
+state of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of Plato.
+The transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly
+discussed by him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has given
+way to a psychological one. The omission is rendered more significant
+by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire. Of
+the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his
+criticism of them in the Parmenides. He touches on the same difficulties
+and he gives no answer to them. His mode of speaking of the analytical
+and synthetical processes may be compared with his discussion of the
+same subject in the Phaedrus; here he dwells on the importance of
+dividing the genera into all the species, while in the Phaedrus he
+conveys the same truth in a figure, when he speaks of carving the whole,
+which is described under the image of a victim, into parts or members,
+'according to their natural articulation, without breaking any of
+them.' There is also a difference, which may be noted, between the two
+dialogues. For whereas in the Phaedrus, and also in the Symposium,
+the dialectician is described as a sort of enthusiast or lover, in the
+Philebus, as in all the later writings of Plato, the element of love
+is wanting; the topic is only introduced, as in the Republic, by way of
+illustration. On other subjects of which they treat in common, such as
+the nature and kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of
+the good, the order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less
+advanced than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical
+truth more obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here,
+as Plato expressly tells us, he is 'forging weapons of another make,'
+i.e. new categories and modes of conception, though 'some of the old
+ones might do again.'
+
+But if superior in thought and dialectical power, the Philebus falls
+very far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The development of
+the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which
+Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or
+rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to
+the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel
+between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some
+degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in
+abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety
+of indications, derived from style as well as subject, that the Philebus
+belongs to the later period of his life and authorship. But in this, as
+in all the later writings of Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and
+expressions in which he rises to his highest level.
+
+The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan renders
+the progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading ideas
+seem to emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four original
+elements, the kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge, the scale of
+goods. These are only partially connected with one another. The dialogue
+is not rightly entitled 'Concerning pleasure' or 'Concerning good,' but
+should rather be described as treating of the relations of pleasure
+and knowledge, after they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The
+question is asked, whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or some
+nature higher than either; and if the latter, how pleasure and wisdom
+are related to this higher good. (2) Before we can reply with exactness,
+we must know the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But
+still we may affirm generally, that the combined life of pleasure and
+wisdom or knowledge has more of the character of the good than either of
+them when isolated. (4) to determine which of them partakes most of the
+higher nature, we must know under which of the four unities or elements
+they respectively fall. These are, first, the infinite; secondly, the
+finite; thirdly, the union of the two; fourthly, the cause of the union.
+Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or knowledge of the third class, while
+reason or mind is akin to the fourth or highest.
+
+(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed
+pleasures there are three classes--(a) those in which both the pleasures
+and pains are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in which
+there is a pain of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when you
+are hungry and are looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which the
+pleasure and pain are both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there are four
+kinds: those of sight, hearing, smell, knowledge.
+
+(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical and
+productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The
+pure part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like
+carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher
+than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is
+also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively
+theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the
+truest and purest knowledge.
+
+(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.
+First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the
+impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to discover
+what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There are three
+criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are clearly more
+akin to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix the places
+of both of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the
+second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom;
+the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures;
+and here the Muse says 'Enough.'
+
+'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the
+metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I)
+the paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or
+elements; (III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge;
+(V) the conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the
+relation of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.
+
+I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic
+of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by
+showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence
+of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by
+well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems
+to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed
+illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense
+('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites was
+a sufficient answer to them. He will leave them to Cynics and Eristics;
+the youth of Athens may discourse of them to their parents. To no
+rational man could the circumstance that the body is one, but has many
+members, be any longer a stumbling-block.
+
+Plato's difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot
+understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be
+broken up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at
+once. Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one or
+Being, by the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind could no
+longer imagine 'Being' as in a state of change or division. To say that
+the verb of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere unit, is
+to us easy; but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought such an
+analysis involved the same kind of difficulty as the conception of God
+existing both in and out of the world would to ourselves. Nor was he
+assisted by the analogy of sensible objects. The sphere of mind was dark
+and mysterious to him; but instead of being illustrated by sense, the
+greatest light appeared to be thrown on the nature of ideas when they
+were contrasted with sense.
+
+Both here and in the Parmenides, where similar difficulties are raised,
+Plato seems prepared to desert his ancient ground. He cannot tell the
+relation in which abstract ideas stand to one another, and therefore he
+transfers the one and many out of his transcendental world, and proceeds
+to lay down practical rules for their application to different branches
+of knowledge. As in the Republic he supposes the philosopher to proceed
+by regular steps, until he arrives at the idea of good; as in the
+Sophist and Politicus he insists that in dividing the whole into its
+parts we should bisect in the middle in the hope of finding species;
+as in the Phaedrus (see above) he would have 'no limb broken' of the
+organism of knowledge;--so in the Philebus he urges the necessity of
+filling up all the intermediate links which occur (compare Bacon's
+'media axiomata') in the passage from unity to infinity. With him the
+idea of science may be said to anticipate science; at a time when
+the sciences were not yet divided, he wants to impress upon us the
+importance of classification; neither neglecting the many individuals,
+nor attempting to count them all, but finding the genera and species
+under which they naturally fall. Here, then, and in the parallel
+passages of the Phaedrus and of the Sophist, is found the germ of the
+most fruitful notion of modern science.
+
+Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted by
+the one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour of
+metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none the less
+an everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows old in
+us. At first we have but a confused conception of them, analogous to the
+eyes blinking at the light in the Republic. To this Plato opposes
+the revelation from Heaven of the real relations of them, which some
+Prometheus, who gave the true fire from heaven, is supposed to have
+imparted to us. Plato is speaking of two things--(1) the crude notion of
+the one and many, which powerfully affects the ordinary mind when first
+beginning to think; (2) the same notion when cleared up by the help of
+dialectic.
+
+To us the problem of the one and many has lost its chief interest and
+perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts, that the
+continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is
+a one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy
+to purely intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the
+words, we are compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are
+true. But the antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us.
+Our sense of the contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher
+sphere, when we speak of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of
+Three Persons and One Substance, and the like. The world of knowledge
+is always dividing more and more; every truth is at first the enemy of
+every other truth. Yet without this division there can be no truth; nor
+any complete truth without the reunion of the parts into a whole. And
+hence the coexistence of opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded
+by Hegel as the supreme principle of philosophy; and the law of
+contradiction, which is affirmed by logicians to be an ultimate
+principle of the human mind, is displaced by another law, which asserts
+the coexistence of contradictories as imperfect and divided elements of
+the truth. Without entering further into the depths of Hegelianism, we
+may remark that this and all similar attempts to reconcile antinomies
+have their origin in the old Platonic problem of the 'One and Many.'
+
+II. 1. The first of Plato's categories or elements is the infinite. This
+is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknowable;
+of which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which preceded
+distinct kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague impression
+of sense; the more or less which refuses to be reduced to rule, having
+certain affinities with evil, with pleasure, with ignorance, and which
+in the scale of being is farthest removed from the beautiful and good.
+To a Greek of the age of Plato, the idea of an infinite mind would
+have been an absurdity. He would have insisted that 'the good is of the
+nature of the finite,' and that the infinite is a mere negative, which
+is on the level of sensation, and not of thought. He was aware that
+there was a distinction between the infinitely great and the infinitely
+small, but he would have equally denied the claim of either to true
+existence. Of that positive infinity, or infinite reality, which we
+attribute to God, he had no conception.
+
+The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly described, in
+our way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion of infinity
+is subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing not absolute
+vacancy or negation, but only the removal of limit or restraint, which
+we suppose to exist not before but after we have already set bounds to
+thought and matter, and divided them after their kinds. From different
+points of view, either the finite or infinite may be looked upon
+respectively both as positive and negative (compare 'Omnis determinatio
+est negatio')' and the conception of the one determines that of the
+other. The Greeks and the moderns seem to be nearly at the opposite
+poles in their manner of regarding them. And both are surprised when
+they make the discovery, as Plato has done in the Sophist, how large an
+element negation forms in the framework of their thoughts.
+
+2, 3. The finite element which mingles with and regulates the infinite
+is best expressed to us by the word 'law.' It is that which measures all
+things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves them in their
+natural state, and brings them within the sphere of human cognition.
+This is described by the terms harmony, health, order, perfection, and
+the like. All things, in as far as they are good, even pleasures, which
+are for the most part indefinite, partake of this element. We should be
+wrong in attributing to Plato the conception of laws of nature derived
+from observation and experiment. And yet he has as intense a conviction
+as any modern philosopher that nature does not proceed by chance. But
+observing that the wonderful construction of number and figure, which he
+had within himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained
+a part of the phenomena of the external world, he extended their
+principles to the whole, finding in them the true type both of human
+life and of the order of nature.
+
+Two other points may be noticed respecting the third class. First, that
+Plato seems to be unconscious of any interval or chasm which separates
+the finite from the infinite. The one is in various ways and degrees
+working in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the difficulty
+with which he started, of how the one could remain one and yet be
+divided among many individuals, or 'how ideas could be in and out of
+themselves,' and the like. Secondly, that in this mixed class we find
+the idea of beauty. Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure
+or symmetry, becomes beauty. And if we translate his language into
+corresponding modern terms, we shall not be far wrong in saying that
+here, as well as in the Republic, Plato conceives beauty under the idea
+of proportion.
+
+4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause
+of the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the
+order of the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that
+as there is a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which
+he identifies with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of
+which 'our ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the
+Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed
+to have been revealed by tradition. For the mythical element has not
+altogether disappeared.
+
+Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the
+ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.
+
+a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal.
+Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
+speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem
+to himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
+impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
+distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
+various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
+almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without
+any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time
+of God or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he
+seems to pass unconsciously from the concrete to the abstract conception
+of the Ideas in the same dialogue. Nor in the Philebus is he careful to
+show in what relation the idea of the divine mind stands to the supreme
+principle of measure.
+
+b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a first
+cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a first cause
+with God, and the final cause with the world, which is His work. But
+Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from confounding God with
+the world, tends to identify the first with the final cause. The cause
+of the union of the finite and infinite might be described as a higher
+law; the final measure which is the highest expression of the good
+may also be described as the supreme law. Both these conceptions are
+realized chiefly by the help of the material world; and therefore when
+we pass into the sphere of ideas can hardly be distinguished.
+
+The four principles are required for the determination of the relative
+places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we should
+proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accordingly, before
+assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he must first
+find out and arrange in order the general principles of things. Mind
+is ascertained to be akin to the nature of the cause, while pleasure is
+found in the infinite or indefinite class. We may now proceed to divide
+pleasure and knowledge after their kinds.
+
+III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a
+generation, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct
+from good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of
+the nature of the finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly
+allied to, knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the
+indefinite is equally real with the definite. Health and mental
+qualities are in the concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real
+goods, and Plato rightly regards them as falling under the finite class.
+Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are
+in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can
+therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test
+of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being
+defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we
+proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing
+to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, happiness, and the
+like.
+
+2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as
+absolute. But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode
+of regarding them; the abstract idea of the one is compared with the
+concrete experience of the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge may
+be viewed either abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the mind
+(compare Aristot. Nic. Ethics). The first is an idea only, which may be
+conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of
+pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when
+we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same defects
+are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon them is
+equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a state of
+intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure always.
+The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems
+to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of
+eating after hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of unconsciousness
+and indifference. Change and alternation are necessary for the mind as
+well as for the body; and in this is to be acknowledged, not an element
+of evil, but rather a law of nature. The chief difference between
+subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in respect of permanence is
+that the latter, when our feeble faculties are able to grasp it, still
+conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which cannot be got rid of.
+
+3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of
+pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to
+Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as the
+Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from another,
+as the transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared with the
+supposed permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us the distinction
+is unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
+away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that the continuance or life
+of things is quite as much to be attributed to a principle of rest as
+of motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later view of pleasure is found
+in Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many points, e.g. in his view of
+pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his distinction between bodily
+and mental, between necessary and non-necessary pleasures. But he is
+also in advance of Plato; for he affirms that pleasure is not in the
+body at all; and hence not even the bodily pleasures are to be spoken of
+as generations, but only as accompanied by generation (Nic. Eth.).
+
+4. Plato attempts to identify vicious pleasures with some form of error,
+and insists that the term false may be applied to them: in this he
+appears to be carrying out in a confused manner the Socratic doctrine,
+that virtue is knowledge, vice ignorance. He will allow of no
+distinction between the pleasures and the erroneous opinions on which
+they are founded, whether arising out of the illusion of distance or
+not. But to this we naturally reply with Protarchus, that the
+pleasure is what it is, although the calculation may be false, or the
+after-effects painful. It is difficult to acquit Plato, to use his own
+language, of being a 'tyro in dialectics,' when he overlooks such
+a distinction. Yet, on the other hand, we are hardly fair judges
+of confusions of thought in those who view things differently from
+ourselves.
+
+5. There appears also to be an incorrectness in the notion which occurs
+both here and in the Gorgias, of the simultaneousness of merely bodily
+pleasures and pains. We may, perhaps, admit, though even this is not
+free from doubt, that the feeling of pleasureable hope or recollection
+is, or rather may be, simultaneous with acute bodily suffering. But
+there is no such coexistence of the pain of thirst with the pleasures
+of drinking; they are not really simultaneous, for the one expels the
+other. Nor does Plato seem to have considered that the bodily pleasures,
+except in certain extreme cases, are unattended with pain. Few
+philosophers will deny that a degree of pleasure attends eating
+and drinking; and yet surely we might as well speak of the pains of
+digestion which follow, as of the pains of hunger and thirst which
+precede them. Plato's conception is derived partly from the extreme case
+of a man suffering pain from hunger or thirst, partly from the image
+of a full and empty vessel. But the truth is rather, that while the
+gratification of our bodily desires constantly affords some degree
+of pleasure, the antecedent pains are scarcely perceived by us, being
+almost done away with by use and regularity.
+
+6. The desire to classify pleasures as accompanied or not accompanied by
+antecedent pains, has led Plato to place under one head the pleasures of
+smell and sight, as well as those derived from sounds of music and from
+knowledge. He would have done better to make a separate class of the
+pleasures of smell, having no association of mind, or perhaps to have
+divided them into natural and artificial. The pleasures of sight and
+sound might then have been regarded as being the expression of ideas.
+But this higher and truer point of view never appears to have occurred
+to Plato. Nor has he any distinction between the fine arts and the
+mechanical; and, neither here nor anywhere, an adequate conception of
+the beautiful in external things.
+
+7. Plato agrees partially with certain 'surly or fastidious'
+philosophers, as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence
+of pain. They are also described as eminent in physics. There is
+unfortunately no school of Greek philosophy known to us which combined
+these two characteristics. Antisthenes, who was an enemy of pleasure,
+was not a physical philosopher; the atomists, who were physical
+philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure. Yet such a combination of
+opinions is far from being impossible. Plato's omission to mention them
+by name has created the same uncertainty respecting them which also
+occurs respecting the 'friends of the ideas' and the 'materialists' in
+the Sophist.
+
+On the whole, this discussion is one of the least satisfactory in the
+dialogues of Plato. While the ethical nature of pleasure is scarcely
+considered, and the merely physical phenomenon imperfectly analysed,
+too much weight is given to ideas of measure and number, as the sole
+principle of good. The comparison of pleasure and knowledge is really
+a comparison of two elements, which have no common measure, and which
+cannot be excluded from each other. Feeling is not opposed to knowledge,
+and in all consciousness there is an element of both. The most abstract
+kinds of knowledge are inseparable from some pleasure or pain, which
+accompanies the acquisition or possession of them: the student is liable
+to grow weary of them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy
+is not granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is
+inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy who,
+to borrow Plato's illustration, is leading the life of an oyster. Hence
+(by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth determining; the
+real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no more separate
+pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can separate justice
+from happiness in the Republic.
+
+IV. An interesting account is given in the Philebus of the rank and
+order of the sciences or arts, which agrees generally with the scheme
+of knowledge in the Sixth Book of the Republic. The chief difference is,
+that the position of the arts is more exactly defined. They are divided
+into an empirical part and a scientific part, of which the first is mere
+guess-work, the second is determined by rule and measure. Of the more
+empirical arts, music is given as an example; this, although affirmed
+to be necessary to human life, is depreciated. Music is regarded from
+a point of view entirely opposite to that of the Republic, not as a
+sublime science, coordinate with astronomy, but as full of doubt and
+conjecture. According to the standard of accuracy which is here adopted,
+it is rightly placed lower in the scale than carpentering, because the
+latter is more capable of being reduced to measure.
+
+The theoretical element of the arts may also become a purely abstract
+science, when separated from matter, and is then said to be pure and
+unmixed. The distinction which Plato here makes seems to be the same as
+that between pure and applied mathematics, and may be expressed in the
+modern formula--science is art theoretical, art is science practical.
+In the reason which he gives for the superiority of the pure science of
+number over the mixed or applied, we can only agree with him in part. He
+says that the numbers which the philosopher employs are always the same,
+whereas the numbers which are used in practice represent different sizes
+or quantities. He does not see that this power of expressing different
+quantities by the same symbol is the characteristic and not the defect
+of numbers, and is due to their abstract nature;--although we admit of
+course what Plato seems to feel in his distinctions between pure and
+impure knowledge, that the imperfection of matter enters into the
+applications of them.
+
+Above the other sciences, as in the Republic, towers dialectic, which is
+the science of eternal Being, apprehended by the purest mind and reason.
+The lower sciences, including the mathematical, are akin to opinion
+rather than to reason, and are placed together in the fourth class of
+goods. The relation in which they stand to dialectic is obscure in the
+Republic, and is not cleared up in the Philebus.
+
+V. Thus far we have only attained to the vestibule or ante-chamber of
+the good; for there is a good exceeding knowledge, exceeding
+essence, which, like Glaucon in the Republic, we find a difficulty
+in apprehending. This good is now to be exhibited to us under various
+aspects and gradations. The relative dignity of pleasure and knowledge
+has been determined; but they have not yet received their exact position
+in the scale of goods. Some difficulties occur to us in the enumeration:
+First, how are we to distinguish the first from the second class of
+goods, or the second from the third? Secondly, why is there no mention
+of the supreme mind? Thirdly, the nature of the fourth class. Fourthly,
+the meaning of the allusion to a sixth class, which is not further
+investigated.
+
+(I) Plato seems to proceed in his table of goods, from the more abstract
+to the less abstract; from the subjective to the objective; until at the
+lower end of the scale we fairly descend into the region of human action
+and feeling. To him, the greater the abstraction the greater the truth,
+and he is always tending to see abstractions within abstractions;
+which, like the ideas in the Parmenides, are always appearing one behind
+another. Hence we find a difficulty in following him into the sphere of
+thought which he is seeking to attain. First in his scale of goods he
+places measure, in which he finds the eternal nature: this would be more
+naturally expressed in modern language as eternal law, and seems to be
+akin both to the finite and to the mind or cause, which were two of the
+elements in the former table. Like the supreme nature in the Timaeus,
+like the ideal beauty in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, or like the
+ideal good in the Republic, this is the absolute and unapproachable
+being. But this being is manifested in symmetry and beauty everywhere,
+in the order of nature and of mind, in the relations of men to one
+another. For the word 'measure' he now substitutes the word 'symmetry,'
+as if intending to express measure conceived as relation. He then
+proceeds to regard the good no longer in an objective form, but as the
+human reason seeking to attain truth by the aid of dialectic; such at
+least we naturally infer to be his meaning, when we consider that both
+here and in the Republic the sphere of nous or mind is assigned
+to dialectic. (2) It is remarkable (see above) that this personal
+conception of mind is confined to the human mind, and not extended to
+the divine. (3) If we may be allowed to interpret one dialogue of Plato
+by another, the sciences of figure and number are probably classed
+with the arts and true opinions, because they proceed from hypotheses
+(compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a sixth class is to be
+added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from Orpheus: Plato means
+to say that a sixth class, if there be such a class, is not worth
+considering, because pleasure, having only gained the fifth place in the
+scale of goods, is already out of the running.
+
+VI. We may now endeavour to ascertain the relation of the Philebus to
+the other dialogues. Here Plato shows the same indifference to his own
+doctrine of Ideas which he has already manifested in the Parmenides and
+the Sophist. The principle of the one and many of which he here speaks,
+is illustrated by examples in the Sophist and Statesman. Notwithstanding
+the differences of style, many resemblances may be noticed between the
+Philebus and Gorgias. The theory of the simultaneousness of pleasure
+and pain is common to both of them (Phil. Gorg.); there is also a common
+tendency in them to take up arms against pleasure, although the view of
+the Philebus, which is probably the later of the two dialogues, is
+the more moderate. There seems to be an allusion to the passage in
+the Gorgias, in which Socrates dilates on the pleasures of itching and
+scratching. Nor is there any real discrepancy in the manner in which
+Gorgias and his art are spoken of in the two dialogues. For Socrates
+is far from implying that the art of rhetoric has a real sphere of
+practical usefulness: he only means that the refutation of the claims
+of Gorgias is not necessary for his present purpose. He is saying
+in effect: 'Admit, if you please, that rhetoric is the greatest and
+usefullest of sciences:--this does not prove that dialectic is not the
+purest and most exact.' From the Sophist and Statesman we know that his
+hostility towards the sophists and rhetoricians was not mitigated in
+later life; although both in the Statesman and Laws he admits of a
+higher use of rhetoric.
+
+Reasons have been already given for assigning a late date to the
+Philebus. That the date is probably later than that of the Republic, may
+be further argued on the following grounds:--1. The general resemblance
+to the later dialogues and to the Laws: 2. The more complete account of
+the nature of good and pleasure: 3. The distinction between perception,
+memory, recollection, and opinion which indicates a great progress
+in psychology; also between understanding and imagination, which is
+described under the figure of the scribe and the painter. A superficial
+notion may arise that Plato probably wrote shorter dialogues, such as
+the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Statesman, as studies or preparations
+for longer ones. This view may be natural; but on further reflection is
+seen to be fallacious, because these three dialogues are found to make
+an advance upon the metaphysical conceptions of the Republic. And we can
+more easily suppose that Plato composed shorter writings after longer
+ones, than suppose that he lost hold of further points of view which he
+had once attained.
+
+It is more easy to find traces of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Megarians,
+Cynics, Cyrenaics and of the ideas of Anaxagoras, in the Philebus, than
+to say how much is due to each of them. Had we fuller records of those
+old philosophers, we should probably find Plato in the midst of the fray
+attempting to combine Eleatic and Pythagorean doctrines, and seeking to
+find a truth beyond either Being or number; setting up his own concrete
+conception of good against the abstract practical good of the Cynics,
+or the abstract intellectual good of the Megarians, and his own idea of
+classification against the denial of plurality in unity which is also
+attributed to them; warring against the Eristics as destructive of
+truth, as he had formerly fought against the Sophists; taking up a
+middle position between the Cynics and Cyrenaics in his doctrine of
+pleasure; asserting with more consistency than Anaxagoras the existence
+of an intelligent mind and cause. Of the Heracliteans, whom he is said
+by Aristotle to have cultivated in his youth, he speaks in the Philebus,
+as in the Theaetetus and Cratylus, with irony and contempt. But we have
+not the knowledge which would enable us to pursue further the line of
+reflection here indicated; nor can we expect to find perfect clearness
+or order in the first efforts of mankind to understand the working of
+their own minds. The ideas which they are attempting to analyse, they
+are also in process of creating; the abstract universals of which they
+are seeking to adjust the relations have been already excluded by them
+from the category of relation.
+
+...
+
+The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is supposed to be the continuation of
+a previous discussion. An argument respecting the comparative claims of
+pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has been already carried
+on between Philebus and Socrates. The argument is now transferred to
+Protarchus, the son of Callias, a noble Athenian youth, sprung from
+a family which had spent 'a world of money' on the Sophists (compare
+Apol.; Crat.; Protag.). Philebus, who appears to be the teacher, or
+elder friend, and perhaps the lover, of Protarchus, takes no further
+part in the discussion beyond asserting in the strongest manner his
+adherence, under all circumstances, to the cause of pleasure.
+
+Socrates suggests that they shall have a first and second palm of
+victory. For there may be a good higher than either pleasure or wisdom,
+and then neither of them will gain the first prize, but whichever of the
+two is more akin to this higher good will have a right to the second.
+They agree, and Socrates opens the game by enlarging on the diversity
+and opposition which exists among pleasures. For there are pleasures of
+all kinds, good and bad, wise and foolish--pleasures of the temperate as
+well as of the intemperate. Protarchus replies that although pleasures
+may be opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources,
+nevertheless as pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates,
+pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like
+colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and
+colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates
+proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate
+(i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are
+different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate
+by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial
+sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that
+knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and
+trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the
+discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two disputants. In
+order to avoid this danger, he proposes that they shall beat a retreat,
+and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about the 'high
+argument' of the one and the many.
+
+Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that
+Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can
+be one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,'
+'light' and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and
+the like wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these
+phenomena; his difficulties begin with the application of number to
+abstract unities (e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide
+them. For have these unities of idea any real existence? How, if
+imperishable, can they enter into the world of generation? How, as
+units, can they be divided and dispersed among different objects? Or do
+they exist in their entirety in each object? These difficulties are but
+imperfectly answered by Socrates in what follows.
+
+We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all
+things, concerning which a young man often runs wild in his first
+metaphysical enthusiasm, talking about analysis and synthesis to his
+father and mother and the neighbours, hardly sparing even his dog. This
+'one in many' is a revelation of the order of the world, which some
+Prometheus first made known to our ancestors; and they, who were better
+men and nearer the gods than we are, have handed it down to us. To know
+how to proceed by regular steps from one to many, and from many to one,
+is just what makes the difference between eristic and dialectic. And the
+right way of proceeding is to look for one idea or class in all things,
+and when you have found one to look for more than one, and for all that
+there are, and when you have found them all and regularly divided a
+particular field of knowledge into classes, you may leave the further
+consideration of individuals. But you must not pass at once either from
+unity to infinity, or from infinity to unity. In music, for example, you
+may begin with the most general notion, but this alone will not make you
+a musician: you must know also the number and nature of the intervals,
+and the systems which are framed out of them, and the rhythms of the
+dance which correspond to them. And when you have a similar knowledge of
+any other subject, you may be said to know that subject. In speech again
+there are infinite varieties of sound, and some one who was a wise man,
+or more than man, comprehended them all in the classes of mutes, vowels,
+and semivowels, and gave to each of them a name, and assigned them to
+the art of grammar.
+
+'But whither, Socrates, are you going? And what has this to do with the
+comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom:' Socrates replies, that
+before we can adjust their respective claims, we want to know the number
+and kinds of both of them. What are they? He is requested to answer the
+question himself. That he will, if he may be allowed to make one or two
+preliminary remarks. In the first place he has a dreamy recollection of
+hearing that neither pleasure nor knowledge is the highest good, for
+the good should be perfect and sufficient. But is the life of pleasure
+perfect and sufficient, when deprived of memory, consciousness,
+anticipation? Is not this the life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind
+sufficient, if devoid of any particle of pleasure? Must not the union of
+the two be higher and more eligible than either separately? And is not
+the element which makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than
+to pleasure? Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet
+there may be a life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.
+
+But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some
+new weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence. (1)
+There is a finite element of existence, and (2) an infinite, and (3) the
+union of the two, and (4) the cause of the union. More may be added if
+they are wanted, but at present we can do without them. And first of the
+infinite or indefinite:--That is the class which is denoted by the terms
+more or less, and is always in a state of comparison. All words or
+ideas to which the words 'gently,' 'extremely,' and other comparative
+expressions are applied, fall under this class. The infinite would be
+no longer infinite, if limited or reduced to measure by number and
+quantity. The opposite class is the limited or finite, and includes all
+things which have number and quantity. And there is a third class of
+generation into essence by the union of the finite and infinite, in
+which the finite gives law to the infinite;--under this are comprehended
+health, strength, temperate seasons, harmony, beauty, and the like. The
+goddess of beauty saw the universal wantonness of all things, and gave
+law and order to be the salvation of the soul. But no effect can be
+generated without a cause, and therefore there must be a fourth class,
+which is the cause of generation; for the cause or agent is not the same
+as the patient or effect.
+
+And now, having obtained our classes, we may determine in which our
+conqueror life is to be placed: Clearly in the third or mixed class, in
+which the finite gives law to the infinite. And in which is pleasure to
+find a place? As clearly in the infinite or indefinite, which alone,
+as Protarchus thinks (who seems to confuse the infinite with the
+superlative), gives to pleasure the character of the absolute good. Yes,
+retorts Socrates, and also to pain the character of absolute evil. And
+therefore the infinite cannot be that which imparts to pleasure the
+nature of the good. But where shall we place mind? That is a very
+serious and awful question, which may be prefaced by another. Is mind
+or chance the lord of the universe? All philosophers will say the first,
+and yet, perhaps, they may be only magnifying themselves. And for this
+reason I should like to consider the matter a little more deeply, even
+though some lovers of disorder in the world should ridicule my attempt.
+
+Now the elements earth, air, fire, water, exist in us, and they exist in
+the cosmos; but they are purer and fairer in the cosmos than they are in
+us, and they come to us from thence. And as we have a soul as well as a
+body, in like manner the elements of the finite, the infinite, the union
+of the two, and the cause, are found to exist in us. And if they, like
+the elements, exist in us, and the three first exist in the world,
+must not the fourth or cause which is the noblest of them, exist in the
+world? And this cause is wisdom or mind, the royal mind of Zeus, who
+is the king of all, as there are other gods who have other noble
+attributes. Observe how well this agrees with the testimony of men of
+old, who affirmed mind to be the ruler of the universe. And remember
+that mind belongs to the class which we term the cause, and pleasure to
+the infinite or indefinite class. We will examine the place and origin
+of both.
+
+What is the origin of pleasure? Her natural seat is the mixed class,
+in which health and harmony were placed. Pain is the violation, and
+pleasure the restoration of limit. There is a natural union of finite
+and infinite, which in hunger, thirst, heat, cold, is impaired--this is
+painful, but the return to nature, in which the elements are restored
+to their normal proportions, is pleasant. Here is our first class of
+pleasures. And another class of pleasures and pains are hopes and fears;
+these are in the mind only. And inasmuch as the pleasures are unalloyed
+by pains and the pains by pleasures, the examination of them may show
+us whether all pleasure is to be desired, or whether this entire
+desirableness is not rather the attribute of another class. But if
+pleasures and pains consist in the violation and restoration of limit,
+may there not be a neutral state, in which there is neither dissolution
+nor restoration? That is a further question, and admitting, as we must,
+the possibility of such a state, there seems to be no reason why
+the life of wisdom should not exist in this neutral state, which is,
+moreover, the state of the gods, who cannot, without indecency, be
+supposed to feel either joy or sorrow.
+
+The second class of pleasures involves memory. There are affections
+which are extinguished before they reach the soul, and of these there
+is no consciousness, and therefore no memory. And there are affections
+which the body and soul feel together, and this feeling is termed
+consciousness. And memory is the preservation of consciousness, and
+reminiscence is the recovery of consciousness. Now the memory of
+pleasure, when a man is in pain, is the memory of the opposite of his
+actual bodily state, and is therefore not in the body, but in the mind.
+And there may be an intermediate state, in which a person is balanced
+between pleasure and pain; in his body there is want which is a cause of
+pain, but in his mind a sure hope of replenishment, which is pleasant.
+(But if the hope be converted into despair, he has two pains and not
+a balance of pain and pleasure.) Another question is raised: May not
+pleasures, like opinions, be true and false? In the sense of being real,
+both must be admitted to be true: nor can we deny that to both of them
+qualities may be attributed; for pleasures as well as opinions may be
+described as good or bad. And though we do not all of us allow that
+there are true and false pleasures, we all acknowledge that there are
+some pleasures associated with right opinion, and others with
+falsehood and ignorance. Let us endeavour to analyze the nature of this
+association.
+
+Opinion is based on perception, which may be correct or mistaken. You
+may see a figure at a distance, and say first of all, 'This is a man,'
+and then say, 'No, this is an image made by the shepherds.' And you
+may affirm this in a proposition to your companion, or make the remark
+mentally to yourself. Whether the words are actually spoken or not,
+on such occasions there is a scribe within who registers them, and a
+painter who paints the images of the things which the scribe has written
+down in the soul,--at least that is my own notion of the process; and
+the words and images which are inscribed by them may be either true
+or false; and they may represent either past, present, or future. And,
+representing the future, they must also represent the pleasures and
+pains of anticipation--the visions of gold and other fancies which are
+never wanting in the mind of man. Now these hopes, as they are termed,
+are propositions, which are sometimes true, and sometimes false; for the
+good, who are the friends of the gods, see true pictures of the future,
+and the bad false ones. And as there may be opinion about things which
+are not, were not, and will not be, which is opinion still, so there may
+be pleasure about things which are not, were not, and will not be, which
+is pleasure still,--that is to say, false pleasure; and only when
+false, can pleasure, like opinion, be vicious. Against this conclusion
+Protarchus reclaims.
+
+Leaving his denial for the present, Socrates proceeds to show that
+some pleasures are false from another point of view. In desire, as we
+admitted, the body is divided from the soul, and hence pleasures and
+pains are often simultaneous. And we further admitted that both of them
+belonged to the infinite class. How, then, can we compare them? Are we
+not liable, or rather certain, as in the case of sight, to be deceived
+by distance and relation? In this case the pleasures and pains are not
+false because based upon false opinion, but are themselves false. And
+there is another illusion: pain has often been said by us to arise out
+of the derangement--pleasure out of the restoration--of our nature. But
+in passing from one to the other, do we not experience neutral states,
+which although they appear pleasureable or painful are really neither?
+For even if we admit, with the wise man whom Protarchus loves (and only
+a wise man could have ever entertained such a notion), that all things
+are in a perpetual flux, still these changes are often unconscious, and
+devoid either of pleasure or pain. We assume, then, that there are three
+states--pleasureable, painful, neutral; we may embellish a little by
+calling them gold, silver, and that which is neither.
+
+But there are certain natural philosophers who will not admit a third
+state. Their instinctive dislike to pleasure leads them to affirm that
+pleasure is only the absence of pain. They are noble fellows, and,
+although we do not agree with them, we may use them as diviners who
+will indicate to us the right track. They will say, that the nature of
+anything is best known from the examination of extreme cases, e.g. the
+nature of hardness from the examination of the hardest things; and that
+the nature of pleasure will be best understood from an examination of
+the most intense pleasures. Now these are the pleasures of the body, not
+of the mind; the pleasures of disease and not of health, the pleasures
+of the intemperate and not of the temperate. I am speaking, not of the
+frequency or continuance, but only of the intensity of such pleasures,
+and this is given them by contrast with the pain or sickness of body
+which precedes them. Their morbid nature is illustrated by the lesser
+instances of itching and scratching, respecting which I swear that I
+cannot tell whether they are a pleasure or a pain. (1) Some of these
+arise out of a transition from one state of the body to another, as from
+cold to hot; (2) others are caused by the contrast of an internal pain
+and an external pleasure in the body: sometimes the feeling of pain
+predominates, as in itching and tingling, when they are relieved by
+scratching; sometimes the feeling of pleasure: or the pleasure which
+they give may be quite overpowering, and is then accompanied by all
+sorts of unutterable feelings which have a death of delights in them.
+But there are also mixed pleasures which are in the mind only. For are
+not love and sorrow as well as anger 'sweeter than honey,' and also full
+of pain? Is there not a mixture of feelings in the spectator of tragedy?
+and of comedy also? 'I do not understand that last.' Well, then, with
+the view of lighting up the obscurity of these mixed feelings, let
+me ask whether envy is painful. 'Yes.' And yet the envious man finds
+something pleasing in the misfortunes of others? 'True.' And
+ignorance is a misfortune? 'Certainly.' And one form of ignorance is
+self-conceit--a man may fancy himself richer, fairer, better, wiser than
+he is? 'Yes.' And he who thus deceives himself may be strong or weak?
+'He may.' And if he is strong we fear him, and if he is weak we laugh
+at him, which is a pleasure, and yet we envy him, which is a pain? These
+mixed feelings are the rationale of tragedy and comedy, and equally the
+rationale of the greater drama of human life. (There appears to be some
+confusion in this passage. There is no difficulty in seeing that in
+comedy, as in tragedy, the spectator may view the performance with mixed
+feelings of pain as well as of pleasure; nor is there any difficulty in
+understanding that envy is a mixed feeling, which rejoices not without
+pain at the misfortunes of others, and laughs at their ignorance of
+themselves. But Plato seems to think further that he has explained the
+feeling of the spectator in comedy sufficiently by a theory which only
+applies to comedy in so far as in comedy we laugh at the conceit or
+weakness of others. He has certainly given a very partial explanation of
+the ridiculous.) Having shown how sorrow, anger, envy are feelings of
+a mixed nature, I will reserve the consideration of the remainder for
+another occasion.
+
+Next follow the unmixed pleasures; which, unlike the philosophers of
+whom I was speaking, I believe to be real. These unmixed pleasures are:
+(1) The pleasures derived from beauty of form, colour, sound, smell,
+which are absolutely pure; and in general those which are unalloyed with
+pain: (2) The pleasures derived from the acquisition of knowledge, which
+in themselves are pure, but may be attended by an accidental pain of
+forgetting; this, however, arises from a subsequent act of reflection,
+of which we need take no account. At the same time, we admit that the
+latter pleasures are the property of a very few. To these pure and
+unmixed pleasures we ascribe measure, whereas all others belong to the
+class of the infinite, and are liable to every species of excess. And
+here several questions arise for consideration:--What is the meaning of
+pure and impure, of moderate and immoderate? We may answer the question
+by an illustration: Purity of white paint consists in the clearness or
+quality of the white, and this is distinct from the quantity or amount
+of white paint; a little pure white is fairer than a great deal which
+is impure. But there is another question:--Pleasure is affirmed by
+ingenious philosophers to be a generation; they say that there are
+two natures--one self-existent, the other dependent; the one noble
+and majestic, the other failing in both these qualities. 'I do not
+understand.' There are lovers and there are loves. 'Yes, I know, but
+what is the application?' The argument is in play, and desires to
+intimate that there are relatives and there are absolutes, and that the
+relative is for the sake of the absolute; and generation is for the
+sake of essence. Under relatives I class all things done with a view to
+generation; and essence is of the class of good. But if essence is
+of the class of good, generation must be of some other class; and our
+friends, who affirm that pleasure is a generation, would laugh at the
+notion that pleasure is a good; and at that other notion, that pleasure
+is produced by generation, which is only the alternative of destruction.
+Who would prefer such an alternation to the equable life of pure
+thought? Here is one absurdity, and not the only one, to which the
+friends of pleasure are reduced. For is there not also an absurdity in
+affirming that good is of the soul only; or in declaring that the best
+of men, if he be in pain, is bad?
+
+And now, from the consideration of pleasure, we pass to that of
+knowledge. Let us reflect that there are two kinds of knowledge--the one
+creative or productive, and the other educational and philosophical.
+Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge
+than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element
+of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in
+flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering
+there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts,
+then, we may make two classes--the less exact and the more exact. And
+the exacter part of all of them is really arithmetic and mensuration.
+But arithmetic and mensuration again may be subdivided with reference
+either to their use in the concrete, or to their nature in the
+abstract--as they are regarded popularly in building and binding, or
+theoretically by philosophers. And, borrowing the analogy of pleasure,
+we may say that the philosophical use of them is purer than the other.
+Thus we have two arts of arithmetic, and two of mensuration. And truest
+of all in the estimation of every rational man is dialectic, or the
+science of being, which will forget and disown us, if we forget and
+disown her.
+
+'But, Socrates, I have heard Gorgias say that rhetoric is the greatest
+and usefullest of arts; and I should not like to quarrel either with
+him or you.' Neither is there any inconsistency, Protarchus, with
+his statement in what I am now saying; for I am not maintaining that
+dialectic is the greatest or usefullest, but only that she is the truest
+of arts; my remark is not quantitative but qualitative, and refers not
+to the advantage or repetition of either, but to the degree of truth
+which they attain--here Gorgias will not care to compete; this is what
+we affirm to be possessed in the highest degree by dialectic. And do not
+let us appeal to Gorgias or Philebus or Socrates, but ask, on behalf of
+the argument, what are the highest truths which the soul has the power
+of attaining. And is not this the science which has a firmer grasp
+of them than any other? For the arts generally are only occupied with
+matters of opinion, and with the production and action and passion of
+this sensible world. But the highest truth is that which is eternal and
+unchangeable. And reason and wisdom are concerned with the eternal; and
+these are the very claimants, if not for the first, at least for the
+second place, whom I propose as rivals to pleasure.
+
+And now, having the materials, we may proceed to mix them--first
+recapitulating the question at issue.
+
+Philebus affirmed pleasure to be the good, and assumed them to be
+one nature; I affirmed that they were two natures, and declared that
+knowledge was more akin to the good than pleasure. I said that the two
+together were more eligible than either taken singly; and to this we
+adhere. Reason intimates, as at first, that we should seek the good not
+in the unmixed life, but in the mixed.
+
+The cup is ready, waiting to be mingled, and here are two fountains,
+one of honey, the other of pure water, out of which to make the fairest
+possible mixture. There are pure and impure pleasures--pure and impure
+sciences. Let us consider the sections of each which have the most of
+purity and truth; to admit them all indiscriminately would be
+dangerous. First we will take the pure sciences; but shall we mingle the
+impure--the art which uses the false rule and the false measure? That
+we must, if we are any of us to find our way home; man cannot live upon
+pure mathematics alone. And must I include music, which is admitted to
+be guess-work? 'Yes, you must, if human life is to have any humanity.'
+Well, then, I will open the door and let them all in; they shall mingle
+in an Homeric 'meeting of the waters.' And now we turn to the pleasures;
+shall I admit them? 'Admit first of all the pure pleasures; secondly,
+the necessary.' And what shall we say about the rest? First, ask the
+pleasures--they will be too happy to dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask
+the arts and sciences--they reply that the excesses of intemperance are
+the ruin of them; and that they would rather only have the pleasures of
+health and temperance, which are the handmaidens of virtue. But still we
+want truth? That is now added; and so the argument is complete, and may
+be compared to an incorporeal law, which is to hold fair rule over a
+living body. And now we are at the vestibule of the good, in which there
+are three chief elements--truth, symmetry, and beauty. These will be the
+criterion of the comparative claims of pleasure and wisdom.
+
+Which has the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure is the
+veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers have passed
+into a proverb.
+
+Which of symmetry? Wisdom again; for nothing is more immoderate than
+pleasure.
+
+Which of beauty? Once more, wisdom; for pleasure is often unseemly, and
+the greatest pleasures are put out of sight.
+
+Not pleasure, then, ranks first in the scale of good, but measure, and
+eternal harmony.
+
+Second comes the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect.
+
+Third, mind and wisdom.
+
+Fourth, sciences and arts and true opinions.
+
+Fifth, painless pleasures.
+
+Of a sixth class, I have no more to say. Thus, pleasure and mind may
+both renounce the claim to the first place. But mind is ten thousand
+times nearer to the chief good than pleasure. Pleasure ranks fifth and
+not first, even though all the animals in the world assert the contrary.
+
+...
+
+From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the nature
+of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. 'Is pleasure
+an evil? a good? the only good?' are the simple forms which the enquiry
+assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early stage of the
+controversy another question was asked: 'Do pleasures differ in kind?
+and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad nor good?' There are
+bodily and there are mental pleasures, which were at first confused but
+afterwards distinguished. A distinction was also made between necessary
+and unnecessary pleasures; and again between pleasures which had or had
+not corresponding pains. The ancient philosophers were fond of asking,
+in the language of their age, 'Is pleasure a "becoming" only, and
+therefore transient and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth
+and Being?' To these ancient speculations the moderns have added a
+further question:--'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your
+neighbour,--of the individual, or of the world?' This little addition
+has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now
+supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence
+and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between
+pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal
+test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or
+best motive of them (why I do them).
+
+Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew
+attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to
+act rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of
+the Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who
+maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for
+generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics
+(Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action
+which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the
+calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the
+chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not
+intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the
+Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues
+the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the
+so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and
+motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends
+upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and
+at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of
+Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first
+utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which
+may not with reason be ascribed to him--he is Cynic and Cyrenaic,
+Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has
+already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather
+Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the
+exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue.
+Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of
+appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures
+of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the
+philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near
+or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise
+the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will
+hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge
+are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher
+so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds.
+(Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders of
+Utilitarianism, Mill's Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although
+he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still further
+modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to
+confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those
+which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale of goods.
+
+There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general
+have been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.'
+Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or
+the life and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts
+of right and wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been
+associated in their mind with merely animal enjoyment. They could not
+believe that what they were always striving to overcome, and the power
+or principle in them which overcame, were of the same nature. The
+pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence,
+the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so
+different:--Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the
+equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like
+the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and
+then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should
+we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the
+higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at
+variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics
+and of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended
+their taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,'
+into a general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not
+desire to bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The
+simplicity of the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to
+philosophers, but the better part of the world has been slow to receive
+it.
+
+Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the
+field of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices,
+which intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed
+to discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that
+no action can be right which does not tend to the happiness of mankind;
+we acknowledge that a large class of actions are made right or wrong
+by their consequences only; we say further that mankind are not too
+mindful, but that they are far too regardless of consequences, and that
+they need to have the doctrine of utility habitually inculcated on them.
+We recognize the value of a principle which can supply a connecting link
+between Ethics and Politics, and under which all human actions are or
+may be included. The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference
+of expediency to right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by
+which human nature can be animated. Neither in referring actions to the
+test of utility have we to make a laborious calculation, any more than
+in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they have been
+classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the thinker,
+by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever may be the
+hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases
+may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever,
+called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect
+upon the happiness of mankind.
+
+There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and
+others--the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong
+innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those
+speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has
+been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent
+with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with
+a greatest happiness principle or with Kant's law of duty. Yet to avoid
+misconception, what appears to be the truth about the origin of
+our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows:--To each of us
+individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through
+the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the
+unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which
+at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon
+become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps
+weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and
+enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought
+home to us by the circumstances of our lives, they may be intensified
+by imagination, by reflection, by a course of action likely to confirm
+them. Under the influence of religious feeling or by an effort of
+thought, any one beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may
+create out of them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They
+slumber in the minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some
+tincture of affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some
+fear of the law. Of some such state or process each individual is
+conscious in himself, and if he compares his own experience with that
+of others he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with
+that of his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we
+have the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of
+mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk,
+instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in
+a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten years
+old already knows the essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not steal,'
+'thou shalt speak the truth,' 'thou shalt love thy parents,' 'thou shalt
+fear God.' What more does he want?
+
+But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral ideas? Their
+beginning, like all other beginnings of human things, is obscure, and
+is the least important part of them. Imagine, if you will, that Society
+originated in the herding of brutes, in their parental instincts, in
+their rude attempts at self-preservation:--Man is not man in that he
+resembles, but in that he differs from them. We must pass into another
+cycle of existence, before we can discover in him by any evidence
+accessible to us even the germs of our moral ideas. In the history of
+the world, which viewed from within is the history of the human mind,
+they have been slowly created by religion, by poetry, by law, having
+their foundation in the natural affections and in the necessity of some
+degree of truth and justice in a social state; they have been deepened
+and enlarged by the efforts of great thinkers who have idealized and
+connected them--by the lives of saints and prophets who have taught and
+exemplified them. The schools of ancient philosophy which seem so far
+from us--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and
+a few modern teachers, such as Kant and Bentham, have each of them
+supplied 'moments' of thought to the world. The life of Christ has
+embodied a divine love, wisdom, patience, reasonableness. For his image,
+however imperfectly handed down to us, the modern world has received a
+standard more perfect in idea than the societies of ancient times, but
+also further removed from practice. For there is certainly a greater
+interval between the theory and practice of Christians than between the
+theory and practice of the Greeks and Romans; the ideal is more above
+us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to
+evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when
+the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted
+by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower
+have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of religion and right.
+
+We may further remark that our moral ideas, as the world grows older,
+perhaps as we grow older ourselves, unless they have been undermined in
+us by false philosophy or the practice of mental analysis, or
+infected by the corruption of society or by some moral disorder in
+the individual, are constantly assuming a more natural and necessary
+character. The habit of the mind, the opinion of the world, familiarizes
+them to us; and they take more and more the form of immediate intuition.
+The moral sense comes last and not first in the order of their
+development, and is the instinct which we have inherited or acquired,
+not the nobler effort of reflection which created them and which keeps
+them alive. We do not stop to reason about common honesty. Whenever we
+are not blinded by self-deceit, as for example in judging the actions
+of others, we have no hesitation in determining what is right and wrong.
+The principles of morality, when not at variance with some desire or
+worldly interest of our own, or with the opinion of the public, are
+hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict of reason and passion they
+assert their authority and are not overcome without remorse.
+
+Such is a brief outline of the history of our moral ideas. We have to
+distinguish, first of all, the manner in which they have grown up in the
+world from the manner in which they have been communicated to each of
+us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing out of the boundless
+ocean of language and thought in little rills, which convey them to the
+heart and brain of each individual. But neither must we confound the
+theories or aspects of morality with the origin of our moral ideas.
+These are not the roots or 'origines' of morals, but the latest efforts
+of reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been
+regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we
+ask: Which of these many theories is the true one? we may answer: All
+of them--moral sense, innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the
+philosophy of experience, the philosophy of intuition--all of them have
+added something to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole
+truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from
+one source or another; to determine what history, what philosophy has
+contributed to them; to distinguish the original, simple elements from
+the manifold and complex applications of them, would be a long enquiry
+too far removed from the question which we are now pursuing.
+
+Bearing in mind the distinction which we have been seeking to establish
+between our earliest and our most mature ideas of morality, we may now
+proceed to state the theory of Utility, not exactly in the words, but
+in the spirit of one of its ablest and most moderate supporters (Mill's
+Utilitarianism):--'That which alone makes actions either right or
+desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote the happiness of
+mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the
+world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as
+well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior in quality is
+incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness,
+which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of others,--of our family, of
+our country, of mankind. The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of
+our own interest to that of other men, may become a passion to a rightly
+educated nature. The Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this
+virtue and for every other.'
+
+Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end
+of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and
+in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be
+explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do
+not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the
+greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general
+they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is
+proved, as in Aristotle's time, so in our own, by the universal fact
+that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the
+social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some
+degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened.
+So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness
+principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more
+reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures?
+and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working
+together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of
+the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a
+conception.
+
+But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,'
+it seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,'
+'the happiness of others principle'--the principle not of the greatest,
+but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own
+immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation.
+Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external
+circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness
+in this, and the meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from
+holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight addition 'of others,' all
+the associations of the word are altered; we seem to have passed
+over from one theory of morals to the opposite. For allowing that the
+happiness of others is reflected on ourselves, and also that every man
+must live before he can do good to others, still the last limitation is
+a very trifling exception, and the happiness of another is very far from
+compensating for the loss of our own. According to Mr. Mill, he would
+best carry out the principle of utility who sacrificed his own
+pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler,
+Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and their followers
+imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are alike
+superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at
+large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the
+friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great
+sufferer.
+
+And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral
+philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time
+so practical,--so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration,--and
+which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle
+intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates
+and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at
+any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as
+is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led
+on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowledging that what
+is right for us is the right and inheritance of others. We feel the
+advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and strong enough
+to override all the particularisms of mankind; which acknowledges a
+universal good, truth, right; which is capable of inspiring men like
+a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which they are ready to
+contend to their life's end.
+
+And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would
+certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days
+of Eudoxus (Arist. Ethics) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of
+pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice.
+Two of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this
+century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion to
+the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusiastic
+supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were
+of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in
+action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back
+on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind
+has been the better for them. The world was against them while they
+lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating
+them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on
+politics--especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has
+been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have
+justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better
+feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers.
+Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have
+remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received
+with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the
+ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached
+to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his
+contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which
+has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the
+last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.
+
+While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle
+has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for
+denying its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with
+other principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics.
+Any one who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor
+to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he
+may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is
+subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or
+how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world;
+or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the
+whole which is only a part,--to be the necessary foundation which
+is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all
+philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of
+imagination which forged them has cooled, and they are seen in the
+temperate light of day. All of them have contributed to enrich the mind
+of the civilized world; none of them occupy that supreme or exclusive
+place which their authors would have assigned to them.
+
+We may preface the criticism with a few preliminary remarks:--
+
+Mr. Mill, Mr. Austin, and others, in their eagerness to maintain the
+doctrine of utility, are fond of repeating that we are in a lamentable
+state of uncertainty about morals. While other branches of knowledge
+have made extraordinary progress, in moral philosophy we are supposed by
+them to be no better than children, and with few exceptions--that is to
+say, Bentham and his followers--to be no further advanced than men were
+in the age of Socrates and Plato, who, in their turn, are deemed to be
+as backward in ethics as they necessarily were in physics. But this,
+though often asserted, is recanted almost in a breath by the same
+writers who speak thus depreciatingly of our modern ethical philosophy.
+For they are the first to acknowledge that we have not now to begin
+classifying actions under the head of utility; they would not deny that
+about the general conceptions of morals there is a practical agreement.
+There is no more doubt that falsehood is wrong than that a stone falls
+to the ground, although the first does not admit of the same ocular
+proof as the second. There is no greater uncertainty about the duty
+of obedience to parents and to the law of the land than about the
+properties of triangles. Unless we are looking for a new moral world
+which has no marrying and giving in marriage, there is no greater
+disagreement in theory about the right relations of the sexes than about
+the composition of water. These and a few other simple principles, as
+they have endless applications in practice, so also may be developed in
+theory into counsels of perfection.
+
+To what then is to be attributed this opinion which has been often
+entertained about the uncertainty of morals? Chiefly to this,--that
+philosophers have not always distinguished the theoretical and the
+casuistical uncertainty of morals from the practical certainty. There
+is an uncertainty about details,--whether, for example, under given
+circumstances such and such a moral principle is to be enforced, or
+whether in some cases there may not be a conflict of duties: these are
+the exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality, important, indeed, but
+not extending to the one thousandth or one ten-thousandth part of human
+actions. This is the domain of casuistry. Secondly, the aspects under
+which the most general principles of morals may be presented to us are
+many and various. The mind of man has been more than usually active
+in thinking about man. The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right,
+freedom, benevolence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some
+philosopher or other the truest and most comprehensive expression of
+morality. There is no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of
+opinion about the right and wrong of actions, but only about the
+general notion which furnishes the best explanation or gives the most
+comprehensive view of them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere
+of the metaphysic of ethics. But these two uncertainties at either end,
+en tois malista katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space enough for
+an intermediate principle which is practically certain.
+
+The rule of human life is not dependent on the theories of philosophers:
+we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about
+them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already
+know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general,
+to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm
+one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they
+are not many, but one. There is the same kind of pleasure and use in
+reducing morals, as in reducing physics, to a few very simple truths.
+And not unfrequently the more general principle may correct prejudices
+and misconceptions, and enable us to regard our fellow-men in a larger
+and more generous spirit.
+
+The two qualities which seem to be most required in first principles of
+ethics are, (1) that they should afford a real explanation of the facts,
+(2) that they should inspire the mind,--should harmonize, strengthen,
+settle us. We can hardly estimate the influence which a simple principle
+such as 'Act so as to promote the happiness of mankind,' or 'Act so that
+the rule on which thou actest may be adopted as a law by all rational
+beings,' may exercise on the mind of an individual. They will often seem
+to open a new world to him, like the religious conceptions of faith or
+the spirit of God. The difficulties of ethics disappear when we do not
+suffer ourselves to be distracted between different points of view.
+But to maintain their hold on us, the general principles must also be
+psychologically true--they must agree with our experience, they must
+accord with the habits of our minds.
+
+When we are told that actions are right or wrong only in so far as they
+tend towards happiness, we naturally ask what is meant by 'happiness.'
+For the term in the common use of language is only to a certain extent
+commensurate with moral good and evil. We should hardly say that a good
+man could be utterly miserable (Arist. Ethics), or place a bad man in
+the first rank of happiness. But yet, from various circumstances, the
+measure of a man's happiness may be out of all proportion to his desert.
+And if we insist on calling the good man alone happy, we shall be
+using the term in some new and transcendental sense, as synonymous with
+well-being. We have already seen that happiness includes the happiness
+of others as well as our own; we must now comprehend unconscious as well
+as conscious happiness under the same word. There is no harm in this
+extension of the meaning, but a word which admits of such an extension
+can hardly be made the basis of a philosophical system. The exactness
+which is required in philosophy will not allow us to comprehend under
+the same term two ideas so different as the subjective feeling of
+pleasure or happiness and the objective reality of a state which
+receives our moral approval.
+
+Like Protarchus in the Philebus, we can give no answer to the question,
+'What is that common quality which in all states of human life we call
+happiness? which includes the lower and the higher kind of happiness,
+and is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the meanest of mankind?' If
+we say 'Not pleasure, not virtue, not wisdom, nor yet any quality which
+we can abstract from these'--what then? After seeming to hover for a
+time on the verge of a great truth, we have gained only a truism.
+
+Let us ask the question in another form. What is that which constitutes
+happiness, over and above the several ingredients of health, wealth,
+pleasure, virtue, knowledge, which are included under it? Perhaps we
+answer, 'The subjective feeling of them.' But this is very far from
+being coextensive with right. Or we may reply that happiness is the
+whole of which the above-mentioned are the parts. Still the question
+recurs, 'In what does the whole differ from all the parts?' And if we
+are unable to distinguish them, happiness will be the mere aggregate of
+the goods of life.
+
+Again, while admitting that in all right action there is an element of
+happiness, we cannot help seeing that the utilitarian theory supplies
+a much easier explanation of some virtues than of others. Of many
+patriotic or benevolent actions we can give a straightforward account by
+their tendency to promote happiness. For the explanation of justice, on
+the other hand, we have to go a long way round. No man is indignant
+with a thief because he has not promoted the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number, but because he has done him a wrong. There is an
+immeasurable interval between a crime against property or life, and the
+omission of an act of charity or benevolence. Yet of this interval the
+utilitarian theory takes no cognizance. The greatest happiness principle
+strengthens our sense of positive duties towards others, but weakens
+our recognition of their rights. To promote in every way possible the
+happiness of others may be a counsel of perfection, but hardly seems
+to offer any ground for a theory of obligation. For admitting that our
+ideas of obligation are partly derived from religion and custom, yet
+they seem also to contain other essential elements which cannot be
+explained by the tendency of actions to promote happiness. Whence comes
+the necessity of them? Why are some actions rather than others which
+equally tend to the happiness of mankind imposed upon us with the
+authority of law? 'You ought' and 'you had better' are fundamental
+distinctions in human thought; and having such distinctions, why should
+we seek to efface and unsettle them?
+
+Bentham and Mr. Mill are earnest in maintaining that happiness includes
+the happiness of others as well as of ourselves. But what two notions
+can be more opposed in many cases than these? Granting that in a perfect
+state of the world my own happiness and that of all other men would
+coincide, in the imperfect state they often diverge, and I cannot truly
+bridge over the difficulty by saying that men will always find pleasure
+in sacrificing themselves or in suffering for others. Upon the greatest
+happiness principle it is admitted that I am to have a share, and in
+consistency I should pursue my own happiness as impartially as that of
+my neighbour. But who can decide what proportion should be mine and what
+his, except on the principle that I am most likely to be deceived in my
+own favour, and had therefore better give the larger share, if not all,
+to him?
+
+Further, it is admitted that utility and right coincide, not in
+particular instances, but in classes of actions. But is it not
+distracting to the conscience of a man to be told that in the particular
+case they are opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral
+obligation, yet he must not do what clearly conduces to his own
+happiness if it is at variance with the good of the whole. Nay, further,
+he will be taught that when utility and right are in apparent conflict
+any amount of utility does not alter by a hair's-breadth the morality
+of actions, which cannot be allowed to deviate from established law or
+usage; and that the non-detection of an immoral act, say of telling a
+lie, which may often make the greatest difference in the consequences,
+not only to himself, but to all the world, makes none whatever in the
+act itself.
+
+Again, if we are concerned not with particular actions but with classes
+of actions, is the tendency of actions to happiness a principle upon
+which we can classify them? There is a universal law which imperatively
+declares certain acts to be right or wrong:--can there be any
+universality in the law which measures actions by their tendencies
+towards happiness? For an act which is the cause of happiness to one
+person may be the cause of unhappiness to another; or an act which if
+performed by one person may increase the happiness of mankind may have
+the opposite effect if performed by another. Right can never be wrong,
+or wrong right, that there are no actions which tend to the happiness
+of mankind which may not under other circumstances tend to their
+unhappiness. Unless we say not only that all right actions tend to
+happiness, but that they tend to happiness in the same degree in which
+they are right (and in that case the word 'right' is plainer), we weaken
+the absoluteness of our moral standard; we reduce differences in kind
+to differences in degree; we obliterate the stamp which the authority of
+ages has set upon vice and crime.
+
+Once more: turning from theory to practice we feel the importance of
+retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such as truth,
+justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they have become
+sacred to us,--'the word of God' written on the human heart: to no other
+words can the same associations be attached. We cannot explain them
+adequately on principles of utility; in attempting to do so we rob them
+of their true character. We give them a meaning often paradoxical and
+distorted, and generally weaker than their signification in common
+language. And as words influence men's thoughts, we fear that the hold
+of morality may also be weakened, and the sense of duty impaired, if
+virtue and vice are explained only as the qualities which do or do not
+contribute to the pleasure of the world. In that very expression we seem
+to detect a false ring, for pleasure is individual not universal; we
+speak of eternal and immutable justice, but not of eternal and immutable
+pleasure; nor by any refinement can we avoid some taint of bodily sense
+adhering to the meaning of the word.
+
+Again: the higher the view which men take of life, the more they lose
+sight of their own pleasure or interest. True religion is not working
+for a reward only, but is ready to work equally without a reward. It is
+not 'doing the will of God for the sake of eternal happiness,' but doing
+the will of God because it is best, whether rewarded or unrewarded. And
+this applies to others as well as to ourselves. For he who sacrifices
+himself for the good of others, does not sacrifice himself that they
+may be saved from the persecution which he endures for their sakes,
+but rather that they in their turn may be able to undergo similar
+sufferings, and like him stand fast in the truth. To promote their
+happiness is not his first object, but to elevate their moral nature.
+Both in his own case and that of others there may be happiness in the
+distance, but if there were no happiness he would equally act as he
+does. We are speaking of the highest and noblest natures; and a passing
+thought naturally arises in our minds, 'Whether that can be the first
+principle of morals which is hardly regarded in their own case by the
+greatest benefactors of mankind?'
+
+The admissions that pleasures differ in kind, and that actions are
+already classified; the acknowledgment that happiness includes the
+happiness of others, as well as of ourselves; the confusion (not made
+by Aristotle) between conscious and unconscious happiness, or between
+happiness the energy and happiness the result of the energy, introduce
+uncertainty and inconsistency into the whole enquiry. We reason readily
+and cheerfully from a greatest happiness principle. But we find that
+utilitarians do not agree among themselves about the meaning of the
+word. Still less can they impart to others a common conception or
+conviction of the nature of happiness. The meaning of the word is always
+insensibly slipping away from us, into pleasure, out of pleasure, now
+appearing as the motive, now as the test of actions, and sometimes
+varying in successive sentences. And as in a mathematical demonstration
+an error in the original number disturbs the whole calculation which
+follows, this fundamental uncertainty about the word vitiates all the
+applications of it. Must we not admit that a notion so uncertain in
+meaning, so void of content, so at variance with common language and
+opinion, does not comply adequately with either of our two requirements?
+It can neither strike the imaginative faculty, nor give an explanation
+of phenomena which is in accordance with our individual experience. It
+is indefinite; it supplies only a partial account of human actions:
+it is one among many theories of philosophers. It may be compared
+with other notions, such as the chief good of Plato, which may be best
+expressed to us under the form of a harmony, or with Kant's obedience to
+law, which may be summed up under the word 'duty,' or with the Stoical
+'Follow nature,' and seems to have no advantage over them. All of these
+present a certain aspect of moral truth. None of them are, or indeed
+profess to be, the only principle of morals.
+
+And this brings us to speak of the most serious objection to the
+utilitarian system--its exclusiveness. There is no place for Kant or
+Hegel, for Plato and Aristotle alongside of it. They do not reject the
+greatest happiness principle, but it rejects them. Now the phenomena of
+moral action differ, and some are best explained upon one principle and
+some upon another: the virtue of justice seems to be naturally connected
+with one theory of morals, the virtues of temperance and benevolence
+with another. The characters of men also differ; and some are more
+attracted by one aspect of the truth, some by another. The firm
+stoical nature will conceive virtue under the conception of law, the
+philanthropist under that of doing good, the quietist under that of
+resignation, the enthusiast under that of faith or love. The upright man
+of the world will desire above all things that morality should be plain
+and fixed, and should use language in its ordinary sense. Persons of an
+imaginative temperament will generally be dissatisfied with the words
+'utility' or 'pleasure': their principle of right is of a far higher
+character--what or where to be found they cannot always distinctly
+tell;--deduced from the laws of human nature, says one; resting on the
+will of God, says another; based upon some transcendental idea which
+animates more worlds than one, says a third:
+
+     on nomoi prokeintai upsipodes, ouranian
+     di aithera teknothentes.
+
+To satisfy an imaginative nature in any degree, the doctrine of utility
+must be so transfigured that it becomes altogether different and loses
+all simplicity.
+
+But why, since there are different characters among men, should we not
+allow them to envisage morality accordingly, and be thankful to the
+great men who have provided for all of us modes and instruments of
+thought? Would the world have been better if there had been no Stoics or
+Kantists, no Platonists or Cartesians? No more than if the other pole
+of moral philosophy had been excluded. All men have principles which
+are above their practice; they admit premises which, if carried to their
+conclusions, are a sufficient basis of morals. In asserting liberty of
+speculation we are not encouraging individuals to make right or wrong
+for themselves, but only conceding that they may choose the form under
+which they prefer to contemplate them. Nor do we say that one of these
+aspects is as true and good as another; but that they all of them, if
+they are not mere sophisms and illusions, define and bring into relief
+some part of the truth which would have been obscure without their
+light. Why should we endeavour to bind all men within the limits of a
+single metaphysical conception? The necessary imperfection of language
+seems to require that we should view the same truth under more than one
+aspect.
+
+We are living in the second age of utilitarianism, when the charm of
+novelty and the fervour of the first disciples has passed away. The
+doctrine is no longer stated in the forcible paradoxical manner of
+Bentham, but has to be adapted to meet objections; its corners are
+rubbed off, and the meaning of its most characteristic expressions is
+softened. The array of the enemy melts away when we approach him. The
+greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great original idea when
+enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a generation and has left its mark
+on thought and civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it
+had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he
+would have denied that pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness
+he meant anything but pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his
+thoroughness. The 'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other
+hands; and now we seem to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want
+of exactness while assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness,
+its paradoxical explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has
+ever stood this criticism of the next generation, though the founders
+of all of them have imagined that they were built upon a rock. And the
+utilitarian system, like others, has yielded to the inevitable analysis.
+Even in the opinion of 'her admirers she has been terribly damaged'
+(Phil.), and is no longer the only moral philosophy, but one among many
+which have contributed in various degrees to the intellectual progress
+of mankind.
+
+But because the utilitarian philosophy can no longer claim 'the prize,'
+we must not refuse to acknowledge the great benefits conferred by it on
+the world. All philosophies are refuted in their turn, says the sceptic,
+and he looks forward to all future systems sharing the fate of the past.
+All philosophies remain, says the thinker; they have done a great work
+in their own day, and they supply posterity with aspects of the truth
+and with instruments of thought. Though they may be shorn of their
+glory, they retain their place in the organism of knowledge.
+
+And still there remain many rules of morals which are better explained
+and more forcibly inculcated on the principle of utility than on any
+other. The question Will such and such an action promote the happiness
+of myself, my family, my country, the world? may check the rising
+feeling of pride or honour which would cause a quarrel, an estrangement,
+a war. 'How can I contribute to the greatest happiness of others?' is
+another form of the question which will be more attractive to the
+minds of many than a deduction of the duty of benevolence from a priori
+principles. In politics especially hardly any other argument can be
+allowed to have weight except the happiness of a people. All parties
+alike profess to aim at this, which though often used only as the
+disguise of self-interest has a great and real influence on the minds
+of statesmen. In religion, again, nothing can more tend to mitigate
+superstition than the belief that the good of man is also the will of
+God. This is an easy test to which the prejudices and superstitions of
+men may be brought:--whatever does not tend to the good of men is not of
+God. And the ideal of the greatest happiness of mankind, especially if
+believed to be the will of God, when compared with the actual fact, will
+be one of the strongest motives to do good to others.
+
+On the other hand, when the temptation is to speak falsely, to be
+dishonest or unjust, or in any way to interfere with the rights of
+others, the argument that these actions regarded as a class will not
+conduce to the happiness of mankind, though true enough, seems to have
+less force than the feeling which is already implanted in the mind by
+conscience and authority. To resolve this feeling into the greatest
+happiness principle takes away from its sacred and authoritative
+character. The martyr will not go to the stake in order that he may
+promote the happiness of mankind, but for the sake of the truth:
+neither will the soldier advance to the cannon's mouth merely because he
+believes military discipline to be for the good of mankind. It is better
+for him to know that he will be shot, that he will be disgraced, if he
+runs away--he has no need to look beyond military honour, patriotism,
+'England expects every man to do his duty.' These are stronger motives
+than the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which is the thesis
+of a philosopher, not the watchword of an army. For in human actions
+men do not always require broad principles; duties often come home to
+us more when they are limited and defined, and sanctioned by custom and
+public opinion.
+
+Lastly, if we turn to the history of ethics, we shall find that our
+moral ideas have originated not in utility but in religion, in law, in
+conceptions of nature, of an ideal good, and the like. And many may be
+inclined to think that this conclusively disproves the claim of utility
+to be the basis of morals. But the utilitarian will fairly reply (see
+above) that we must distinguish the origin of ethics from the principles
+of them--the historical germ from the later growth of reflection. And he
+may also truly add that for two thousand years and more, utility, if
+not the originating, has been the great corrective principle in law, in
+politics, in religion, leading men to ask how evil may be diminished
+and good increased--by what course of policy the public interest may be
+promoted, and to understand that God wills the happiness, not of some
+of his creatures and in this world only, but of all of them and in every
+stage of their existence.
+
+'What is the place of happiness or utility in a system of moral
+philosophy?' is analogous to the question asked in the Philebus, 'What
+rank does pleasure hold in the scale of goods?' Admitting the greatest
+happiness principle to be true and valuable, and the necessary
+foundation of that part of morals which relates to the consequences of
+actions, we still have to consider whether this or some other general
+notion is the highest principle of human life. We may try them in this
+comparison by three tests--definiteness, comprehensiveness, and motive
+power.
+
+There are three subjective principles of morals,--sympathy, benevolence,
+self-love. But sympathy seems to rest morality on feelings which differ
+widely even in good men; benevolence and self-love torture one half
+of our virtuous actions into the likeness of the other. The greatest
+happiness principle, which includes both, has the advantage over all
+these in comprehensiveness, but the advantage is purchased at the
+expense of definiteness.
+
+Again, there are the legal and political principles of morals--freedom,
+equality, rights of persons; 'Every man to count for one and no man
+for more than one,' 'Every man equal in the eye of the law and of the
+legislator.' There is also the other sort of political morality, which
+if not beginning with 'Might is right,' at any rate seeks to deduce
+our ideas of justice from the necessities of the state and of society.
+According to this view the greatest good of men is obedience to law: the
+best human government is a rational despotism, and the best idea which
+we can form of a divine being is that of a despot acting not wholly
+without regard to law and order. To such a view the present mixed
+state of the world, not wholly evil or wholly good, is supposed to be a
+witness. More we might desire to have, but are not permitted. Though a
+human tyrant would be intolerable, a divine tyrant is a very tolerable
+governor of the universe. This is the doctrine of Thrasymachus adapted
+to the public opinion of modern times.
+
+There is yet a third view which combines the two:--freedom is obedience
+to the law, and the greatest order is also the greatest freedom; 'Act so
+that thy action may be the law of every intelligent being.' This view
+is noble and elevating; but it seems to err, like other transcendental
+principles of ethics, in being too abstract. For there is the same
+difficulty in connecting the idea of duty with particular duties as
+in bridging the gulf between phainomena and onta; and when, as in the
+system of Kant, this universal idea or law is held to be independent of
+space and time, such a mataion eidos becomes almost unmeaning.
+
+Once more there are the religious principles of morals:--the will of
+God revealed in Scripture and in nature. No philosophy has supplied a
+sanction equal in authority to this, or a motive equal in strength to
+the belief in another life. Yet about these too we must ask What will of
+God? how revealed to us, and by what proofs? Religion, like happiness,
+is a word which has great influence apart from any consideration of its
+content: it may be for great good or for great evil. But true religion
+is the synthesis of religion and morality, beginning with divine
+perfection in which all human perfection is embodied. It moves among
+ideas of holiness, justice, love, wisdom, truth; these are to God, in
+whom they are personified, what the Platonic ideas are to the idea of
+good. It is the consciousness of the will of God that all men should
+be as he is. It lives in this world and is known to us only through
+the phenomena of this world, but it extends to worlds beyond. Ordinary
+religion which is alloyed with motives of this world may easily be
+in excess, may be fanatical, may be interested, may be the mask of
+ambition, may be perverted in a thousand ways. But of that religion
+which combines the will of God with our highest ideas of truth and right
+there can never be too much. This impossibility of excess is the note of
+divine moderation.
+
+So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of moral
+philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though, like the
+reader of the Philebus, we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
+different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point at
+which the human passes into the divine.
+
+First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another,--justice,
+holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ouch e genesis
+prosestin), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as
+divine perfection.
+
+Secondly, human perfection, or the fulfilment of the will of God in
+this world, and co-operation with his laws revealed to us by reason and
+experience, in nature, history, and in our own minds.
+
+Thirdly, the elements of human perfection,--virtue, knowledge, and right
+opinion.
+
+Fourthly, the external conditions of perfection,--health and the goods
+of life.
+
+Fifthly, beauty and happiness,--the inward enjoyment of that which is
+best and fairest in this world and in the human soul.
+
+...
+
+The Philebus is probably the latest in time of the writings of Plato
+with the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last
+development of his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of
+the Cynics and Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole; the
+relations of pleasure and knowledge to each other and to the good are
+authoritatively determined; the Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux
+no longer divide the empire of thought; the Mind of Anaxagoras has
+become the Mind of God and of the World. The great distinction between
+pure and applied science for the first time has a place in philosophy;
+the natural claim of dialectic to be the Queen of the Sciences is once
+more affirmed. This latter is the bond of union which pervades the whole
+or nearly the whole of the Platonic writings. And here as in several
+other dialogues (Phaedrus, Republic, etc.) it is presented to us in a
+manner playful yet also serious, and sometimes as if the thought of it
+were too great for human utterance and came down from heaven direct. It
+is the organization of knowledge wonderful to think of at a time when
+knowledge itself could hardly be said to exist. It is this more than any
+other element which distinguishes Plato, not only from the presocratic
+philosophers, but from Socrates himself.
+
+We have not yet reached the confines of Aristotle, but we make a
+somewhat nearer approach to him in the Philebus than in the earlier
+Platonic writings. The germs of logic are beginning to appear, but they
+are not collected into a whole, or made a separate science or system.
+Many thinkers of many different schools have to be interposed between
+the Parmenides or Philebus of Plato, and the Physics or Metaphysics of
+Aristotle. It is this interval upon which we have to fix our minds if we
+would rightly understand the character of the transition from one to the
+other. Plato and Aristotle do not dovetail into one another; nor does
+the one begin where the other ends; there is a gulf between them not to
+be measured by time, which in the fragmentary state of our knowledge
+it is impossible to bridge over. It follows that the one cannot be
+interpreted by the other. At any rate, it is not Plato who is to be
+interpreted by Aristotle, but Aristotle by Plato. Of all philosophy
+and of all art the true understanding is to be sought not in the
+afterthoughts of posterity, but in the elements out of which they have
+arisen. For the previous stage is a tendency towards the ideal at which
+they are aiming; the later is a declination or deviation from them, or
+even a perversion of them. No man's thoughts were ever so well expressed
+by his disciples as by himself.
+
+But although Plato in the Philebus does not come into any close
+connexion with Aristotle, he is now a long way from himself and from the
+beginnings of his own philosophy. At the time of his death he left his
+system still incomplete; or he may be more truly said to have had
+no system, but to have lived in the successive stages or moments of
+metaphysical thought which presented themselves from time to time. The
+earlier discussions about universal ideas and definitions seem to have
+died away; the correlation of ideas has taken their place. The flowers
+of rhetoric and poetry have lost their freshness and charm; and a
+technical language has begun to supersede and overgrow them. But the
+power of thinking tends to increase with age, and the experience of life
+to widen and deepen. The good is summed up under categories which are
+not summa genera, but heads or gradations of thought. The question of
+pleasure and the relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly
+treated of elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The
+mean or measure is now made the first principle of good. Some of these
+questions reappear in Aristotle, as does also the distinction between
+metaphysics and mathematics. But there are many things in Plato which
+have been lost in Aristotle; and many things in Aristotle not to be
+found in Plato. The most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle is the
+disappearance of the Platonic dialectic, which in the Aristotelian
+school is only used in a comparatively unimportant and trivial sense.
+The most remarkable additions are the invention of the Syllogism, the
+conception of happiness as the foundation of morals, the reference of
+human actions to the standard of the better mind of the world, or of
+the one 'sensible man' or 'superior person.' His conception of ousia,
+or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a return to the poor and
+meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philosophy. The dry attempt to reduce
+the presocratic philosophy by his own rather arbitrary standard of the
+four causes, contrasts unfavourably with Plato's general discussion of
+the same subject (Sophist). To attempt further to sum up the differences
+between the two great philosophers would be out of place here. Any
+real discussion of their relation to one another must be preceded by an
+examination into the nature and character of the Aristotelian writings
+and the form in which they have come down to us. This enquiry is not
+really separable from an investigation of Theophrastus as well as
+Aristotle and of the remains of other schools of philosophy as well as
+of the Peripatetics. But, without entering on this wide field, even a
+superficial consideration of the logical and metaphysical works which
+pass under the name of Aristotle, whether we suppose them to have
+come directly from his hand or to be the tradition of his school, is
+sufficient to show how great was the mental activity which prevailed in
+the latter half of the fourth century B.C.; what eddies and
+whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought, what
+transformations of the old philosophies were taking place everywhere,
+what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and nominalisms were
+affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of philosophy during this
+period is no less remarkable than the loss of freedom; and the two
+are not unconnected with each other. But of the multitudinous sea of
+opinions which were current in the age of Aristotle we have no exact
+account. We know of them from allusions only. And we cannot with
+advantage fill up the void of our knowledge by conjecture: we can only
+make allowance for our ignorance.
+
+There are several passages in the Philebus which are very characteristic
+of Plato, and which we shall do well to consider not only in their
+connexion, but apart from their connexion as inspired sayings or
+oracles which receive their full interpretation only from the history
+of philosophy in later ages. The more serious attacks on traditional
+beliefs which are often veiled under an unusual simplicity or irony are
+of this kind. Such, for example, is the excessive and more than human
+awe which Socrates expresses about the names of the gods, which may
+be not unaptly compared with the importance attached by mankind to
+theological terms in other ages; for this also may be comprehended under
+the satire of Socrates. Let us observe the religious and intellectual
+enthusiasm which shines forth in the following, 'The power and faculty
+of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of the truth':
+or, again, the singular acknowledgment which may be regarded as the
+anticipation of a new logic, that 'In going to war for mind I must have
+weapons of a different make from those which I used before, although
+some of the old ones may do again.' Let us pause awhile to reflect on
+a sentence which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or to the
+original thinker of all ages: 'Shall we then agree with them of
+old time, and merely reassert the notions of others without risk to
+ourselves; or shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the
+reproach which will await us': i.e. if we assert mind to be the author
+of nature. Let us note the remarkable words, 'That in the divine nature
+of Zeus there is the soul and mind of a King, because there is in him
+the power of the cause,' a saying in which theology and philosophy are
+blended and reconciled; not omitting to observe the deep insight into
+human nature which is shown by the repetition of the same thought 'All
+philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven and earth' with
+the ironical addition, 'in this way truly they magnify themselves.' Nor
+let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth at the
+'blasphemy' of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the
+world; or the significance of the words 'those who said of old time that
+mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant observation that 'we are
+not always conscious of what we are doing or of what happens to us,' a
+chance expression to which if philosophers had attended they would have
+escaped many errors in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which
+is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the
+seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher
+point of view of abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner in which
+the question of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is regarded
+by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon), and
+the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics
+of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so
+many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of knowledge in
+the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks forward into the
+distance, the many questions of modern philosophy which are anticipated
+in his writings, may we not truly describe him in his own words as a
+'spectator of all time and of all existence'?
+
+
+
+
+PHILEBUS
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Philebus, by Plato
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