The Philebus — Plato
====================
ΦΙΛΗΒΟΣ
Translation/edition: Floyer Sydenham, ed. Thomas Taylor (1804)
Language: English
Read in Plato Scroll: https://plato-scroll.com/s/phil/
This file: https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil-g.txt
Other editions of this work:
  - David Horan: https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil.txt
  - Benjamin Jowett: https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil-b.txt
  - H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1925): https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil-c.txt
  - Greek text: https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil-e.txt
  - Spanish: https://plato-scroll.com/text/phil-h.txt
Sources and licences: https://plato-scroll.com/attribution.html
Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.


## The Philebus

[11a] Socrates: Consider¹ now, Protarchus, what the doctrine of Philebus is, which you are taking upon yourself to second and support; and what things said by me you are going to controvert, if they should be found such as are not agreeable to your mind. Will you permit me to state, in a summary way, the difference between my positions and those of Philebus?
[11b] Protarchus: By all means.
[11b] Socrates: Philebus then says, that the good of all animals is joy, and pleasure, and delight², and whatever else is congenial to them, and harmonizes with all other things of the same kind. And what I contend for is, that those things are not the best; but that to be wise, and to understand³, and remember, and whatever is of kin to them, right opinions, and true reason- ings, are better things than pleasure, and more eligible to all beings universally, that is, to such as are capable of receiving the participation of them; and that to all beings which have that capacity, the actual partaking of them is of all things the most advantageous, not only to those beings which are, but to those also which are to come. Do we not, O Philebus, you and I, severally lay down some such hypotheses as these?
[11c] Philebus: Exactly such, O Socrates!
[11c] Socrates: And will you, Protarchus, take up the controversy, as I have just now stated it?
[11c] Protarchus: Of necessity⁴ I must. For Philebus, the champion of our side, is tired and gives out.
[11c] Socrates: Now it is right and proper for us to discover, by all means possible, the full force and meaning of both those hypotheses; and not to give over till we have determined the controversy between them.
[11d] Protarchus: I agree with you, it is.
[11d] Socrates: Let us agree in this too, besides.
[11d] Protarchus: In what?
[11d] Socrates: That we should, each of us⁵, endeavour to set forth what state and what affection⁶ of the soul is able, according to our different hypotheses, to procure for every man a happy life. Is it not our business so to do?
[11d] Protarchus: Certainly it is.
[11d] Socrates: Well then: You say that it is that of rejoicing; we, that it is that of understanding and thinking rightly.
[11d] Protarchus: True.
[11d] Socrates: But what if there should appear some other, preferable to both of these, but more nearly of kin to pleasure? should we not in this case be both of us confuted, and obliged to yield the preference to a life which gives the stable possession of those very things wherein you place human happiness? However, at the same time it must be agreed, that a life of pleasure would be found more eligible than a life of knowledge or intellection.
[11e] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[11e] Socrates: But if that better state of the soul should appear to be more nearly allied to knowledge, in that case, knowledge would be found to have the advantage over pleasure, and pleasure must give place. Do ye not agree with me, that these things are so? or how otherwise say ye that they are?
[12a] Protarchus: To me, I must confess, they seem to be as you represent them.
[12a] Socrates: But to Philebus how seem they? What say you, Philebus?
[12a] Philebus: To me pleasure seems, and will always seem, to be the superior, whatever it be compared with. And you, Protarchus, will be at length convinced of it yourself.
[12a] Protarchus: After having resigned to me the management of the debate, you can no longer be the master of what should be yielded to Socrates, and what should not.
[12b] Philebus: You are in the right. But, however, I have discharged my duty; and I here call the Goddess herself to witness it.
[12b] Protarchus: We too are witnesses of the same; and can testify your making of the assertion which you have just made. But now, as to that examination, O Socrates! which is to follow after what you and I have agreed in, whether Philebus be willing to consent, or however he may be disposed, let us try to go through with it, and bring it to a conclusion.
[12c] Socrates: By all means, let us; beginning with that very Goddess who, according to him, is called Venus, but whose true name is Pleasure⁷.
[12c] Protarchus: Perfectly right.
[12c] Socrates: The fear⁹ which I have always in me concerning the proper names of the Gods, is no ordinary kind of fear; but surpasses the greatest dread. Hence, in the present case, with regard to Venus, whatever name be agreeable to the Goddess, by that would I choose to call her. But as to pleasure¹⁰, how various a thing it is, I well know. And with this, as I just now said, ought we to begin, by considering and inquiring into the nature of pleasure first. For we hear it called, indeed, by one single name, as if it were one simple thing: it assumes, however, all sorts of forms, even such as are the most unlike one to another. For observe: we say that the intemperate man has pleasure; and that the temperate man has pleasure also,—pleasure in being what he is, that is, temperate. Again: we say that pleasure attends on folly, and on the man who is full of foolish opinions and foolish hopes; that pleasure attends also on the man who thinks wisely,—pleasure in that very mental energy, his thinking wisely. Now any person who would affirm these pleasures to be of similar kind, would be justly deemed to want understanding.
[12d] Protarchus: The pleasures which you mention, O Socrates, are indeed produced by contrary causes; but in the pleasures themselves there is no contrariety. For how should pleasure not be similar to pleasure, itself to itself, the most similar of all things¹¹?
[12e] Socrates: Just so, colour too, my friend, differs not from colour in this respect, that it is colour, all. And yet, we all of us know that black, besides being different from white, happens to be also its direct contrary. So figure, too, is all one with figure, after the same manner, in the general. But as to the parts of that one general thing, some are directly contrary to others; and between the rest there happens to be a kind of infinite diversity. And many other things we shall find to be of this nature. Believe not then this position, that things the most contrary are all of them one. And I suspect that we shall also find some pleasures quite contrary to other pleasures.
[12e] Protarchus: It may be [13a] so. But how will that hurt my side of the question?
[13b] Socrates: In that you call them, dissimilar as they are, by another name; (shall we say?) for all pleasant things you call good. Now that all pleasant things are pleasant, admits of no dispute. But though many of them are evil, and many indeed good, as I readily acknowledge, yet all of them you call good; and at the same time you confess them to be dissimilar in their natures, when a man forces you to this confession. What then is that, the same in every pleasure, in the evil pleasures equally with the good, from which you give to all pleasures the denomination of good?
[13b] Protarchus: What is that, O Socrates, which you say? Do you imagine that any person, after having asserted that pleasure is the good, will admit your supposition? or will suffer it to pass uncontradicted, that only some pleasures are good, but that other pleasures are evil?
[13c] Socrates: However, you will acknowledge that pleasures are unlike one to another, and some even contrary to others?
[13c] Protarchus: By no means; so far as they are pleasures, every one of them.
[13d] Socrates: We are now brought back again to the same position, O Protarchus! There is no difference between pleasure and pleasure; all pleasures are alike, we must say: and the similar instances, just now produced, in colours and in figures, have had, it seems, no effect upon us. But we shall try, and talk after the manner of the meanest arguers, and mere novices in dialectic.
[13d] Protarchus: How do you mean?
[13d] Socrates: I mean, that if I, to imitate you, and dispute with you in your own way, should dare to assert that two things, the most unlike, are of all things the most like to each other, I should say nothing more than what you say: so that both of us would appear to be rawer disputants than we ought to be; and the subject of our dispute would thus slip out of our hands, and get away. Let us resume it, therefore, once more: and, perhaps, by returning to similitudes¹², we may be induced to make some concessions each of us to the other.
[13d] Protarchus: Say how.
[13e] Socrates: Suppose me to be the party questioned; and suppose yourself, Protarchus, to interrogate me.
[13e] Protarchus: Concerning what?
[13e] Pol: Concerning prudence, and science, and intelligence, and all the rest of those things which in the beginning of our conversation I said were good, when I was asked what sort of a thing good was; must I not acknowledge these to be attended with the same circumstance which attends those other things celebrated by you?
[13e] Protarchus: What circumstance?
[13e] Socrates: The sciences, viewed all of them together, will seem to both of us not only many, and of diverse kinds, but dissimilar too, some to others. [14a] Now if besides there should appear a contrariety¹³ in any way, between some of them and others, should I deserve to be disputed with any longer, if, fearful of admitting contrariety between the sciences, I were to assert that no one science was dissimilar to any other science? For then the matter in debate between us, as if it were a mere fable, being destroyed, would vanish: while we saved ourselves by an illogical retreat. But such an event ought not to happen, except this part of it,—the saving of ourselves. And now the equality, which appears thus far between your hypothesis and mine, I am well enough pleased with. The pleasures happen to be found many and dissimilar; many also and diverse are the sciences. The difference, however, between your good and mine, O Protarchus, let us not conceal: but let us dare to lay it fairly and openly before us both; that we may discover, (if those who are closely examined will make any discovery,) whether pleasure or wisdom ought to be pronounced the chief good of man, or whether any third thing, different from either: since it is not, as I presume, with this view that we contend, that my hypothesis, or that yours, may prevail over its antagonist; but that which hath the truth on its side, we are both of us to contend for and support.
[14b] Protarchus: This is certainly our duty.
[14b] Socrates: But this point further we should, both of us together, settle on the surest ground.
[14c] Protarchus: What point do you mean?
[14c] Socrates: That which puzzles and perplexes all persons who choose to make it the subject of their conversation: nay, sometimes some others, who have no such intention, are led to it unawares in conversation upon other subjects.
[14c] Protarchus: Express what you mean in plainer terms.
[14c] Socrates: I mean that which fell in our way but just now, the nature of which is so full of wonders. For that many are one¹⁴, and that one is many, is wonderful to have it said; and either of those positions is easy to be controverted.
[14d] Protarchus: Do you mean such positions as this,—that I Protarchus, who am by nature one person, am also many? and such as these others,—that myself, and other persons the reverse of me,—the great also and the little, the heavy and the light, are one and the same? with a thousand positions more which might be made of like kind?
[14e] Socrates: The wonders, O Protarchus, which you have now spoken of, relating to the one and many, have been hackneyed in the mouths of the vulgar; but by the common agreement, as it were, of all men, they are now laid aside, and are never to be mentioned: for they are considered as childish and easy objections, and great impediments also to discourse. It is now also agreed, never to introduce into conversation, as an instance of one and many, the members or parts into which any single thing may be considered as divisible. Because, when a respondent has once admitted and avowed, that all these [members or parts] are that one thing, which is thus at the same time many, he is refuted and laughed at by his questioner, for having been driven to assert such monstrous absurdities as these,—that a single one is an infinite multitude, and an infinite multitude only one.
[14e] Protarchus: What other things, then, not hackneyed among the vulgar, nor as yet universally agreed on, do you mean, O Socrates, relating to this point?
[15a] Socrates: I mean, young man, when a thing is proposed to be considered, which is one, but is not of the number or nature of things generated and perishable. For as to the ones of this latter sort, it is agreed, as I just now said, to reject them, as unworthy of a serious confutation. The ones which I mean are such as man, ox, beauty, good. When these henads¹⁵, or such as these, are proposed for subjects of debate, much serious attention is given them; and when they come to be divided, any one of them into many, much doubt and controversy arises.
[15a] Protarchus: Upon what points?
[15b] Socrates: In the first place, whether such monads should be deemed to have true being. In the next place, how it is that these monads, every one of them being always the same, and never generated, nor ever to be destroyed, have, notwithstanding, one and the same stability common to them all¹⁶. And lastly, Whether we should suppose every such monad to be dispersed and spread abroad amongst an infinity of things generated or produced, and thus, from being one, to become many; or whether we should suppose it to remain entire, itself by itself¹⁷, separate and apart from that multitude. But, of all suppositions, this might appear the most impossible, that one and the same thing should be in a single one, and in many, at the same time. These points, O Protarchus, which regard such instances as I have mentioned, and not such as were mentioned by you, these are they, which, for want of being rightly settled, create all the difficulties and doubts we meet with in discourse; but when once they are settled rightly, they clear the way with ease.
[15c] Protarchus: Then, it seems, we are to labour these points first.
[15c] Socrates: I should think we ought.
[15c] Protarchus: And that we consent to it, you may take for granted, all of us here. Philebus, indeed, it is best perhaps, at present, not to discompose by asking him questions, now that he is quiet.
[15d] Socrates: Very well; but in what way shall we begin the discussion of these points in so wide a field of controversy? Shall we begin thus?
[15d] Protarchus: How?
[15d] Socrates: We say, in speaking of these [15e] monads, (each of which is one, but, on a logical examination of it, appears to be divisible into many,) that they run throughout every sentence in our discourse, every where and always; and that, as their being shall never have an end, so neither does it first begin in the present age. Now this perpetual attendant upon all speech proceeds, as it seems to me, from something immortal and undecaying within ourselves. And hence it is, that the youth every where, when they have thus had a taste of it, are overjoyed at their having thus found a treasure of wisdom. Transported, therefore, with the delight it gives them, they apply it to every subject of discourse: sometimes they collect particulars from all quarters, and roll them into one; then they unroll them again, and part them asunder. After having in this way puzzled themselves in the first place, they question and puzzle the person next at hand, whether he be their equal in age, or younger than themselves, or older, sparing neither father nor mother, nor any one else who will attend to them, scarcely other animals more than man: it is certain they would not exempt any who speak a foreign language only, could they but find somewhere an interpreter.
[16a] Protarchus: Do you not see, O Socrates, how numerous we are, and that all of us are young? and are you not afraid that, if you rail at us, we shall all join Philebus, and attack you jointly? However (for we apprehend your meaning), if you can by any means or contrivance easily rid of us of these perplexities, which hinder the progress of our inquiry, and can devise some better way of managing the argument, do you but give your mind to the prosecution of it, and we shall do our utmost to follow and attend you. For the present debate is of no trifling concern, Socrates.
[16b] Socrates: Indeed it is not, O boys! as Philebus called you. No better way then is there, nor can there be, than that, which I am always a great lover of; but often before now it has slipped away from my sight, and has left me, as it were, in a desert, at a loss whither to turn me.
[16b] Protarchus: Let us but know what way you mean.
[16c] Socrates: To point out the way is not very difficult; but to travel in it, is the most difficult of all things. For all such human inventions as depend on art are, in this way, discovered and laid open. Consider then the way which I am speaking of.
[16c] Protarchus: Do but tell it us then.
[16d] Socrates: A gift¹⁸ of the Gods to men, as it appears to me, by a certain Prometheus¹⁹ hurled from the Gods along with a fire the most luminous. From the men of antient times, men better than we are, and dwelling nigher to the Gods, this tradition of it hath descended to us,—that those beings said to be for ever derive their essence from one and many; and therefore have in themselves bound and infinity connatural to them: that, being in the midst of things so constituted as they are, we ought to suppose and to search for some one idea in every thing around us; for that, since it is there, we shall, on searching, be sure to find it: that, after we have found it, we are next to look for two, if two only are next; otherwise three, or some other number: again, that every one of this number we are to examine in like manner: until at length a man not only perceives, that the one, with which he began, is one, and many, and infinite, but discovers also how many it contains: for, that a man never should proceed to the idea of infinite, and apply it immediately to any number, before he has fully discovered all the definite number which lies between the infinite and the one: but that, having completed this discovery, we should then finish our search; and dismissing into infinity every one of all those numbers, we should bid farewell to them. [16e] The Gods, as I before said, have given us to consider things in this way, and in this way to learn them, and teach them one to another. But the wise men of these days take any monad whatever, and divide it into many with more conciseness than they ought, and with more prolixity too, since they never come to an end: for immediately after the monad they introduce infinity, overlooking all the intermediate numbers; the express mention of which, or the omission of them, distinguishes such dialectical and fair debates as ours, from such as are contentious and sophistical.
[17a] Protarchus: Part of what you say, Socrates, I seem to apprehend tolerably well: but the meaning of some things which you have now said, I should be glad to hear you express in plainer terms.
[17b] Socrates: The whole of what I have said, Protarchus, is evident in letters. In these, therefore, which have been taught you from your childhood, you may easily apprehend my meaning.
[17b] Protarchus: How in letters?
[17b] Socrates: Voice, that issues out of the human mouth, may be considered as one general thing, admitting of an infinite number of articulations, not only in all men taken together, but also in every individual man.
[17b] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[17b] Socrates: Now we are not made knowing in speech, or sound articulate, through the knowledge either of the infinity or of the oneness of its nature: but to know how many, and what, are the parts into which it is naturally divided,—this it is which makes any of us a grammarian, or skilled in grammar.
[17b] Protarchus: Most certainly.
[17b] Socrates: And further, that by which a man comes to be skilled in music is this very thing.
[17b] Protarchus: How so?
[17b] Socrates: Musical sound²⁰, which is the subject matter of this art, may be considered in itself as one general thing.
[17c] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[17c] Socrates: And let us suppose two kinds of it, the grave and the acute, and a third kind between those two, the homotonous, or how otherwise²¹?
[17c] Protarchus: Musical sound in general is so to be distinguished.
[17c] Socrates: But with the knowledge of this distinction only, you would not yet be skilled in music; though without knowing it you would be, as to music, quite worthless.
[17c] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[17d] Socrates: But, my friend, when you have learnt the intervals²² between all musical sounds, from the more acute to the more grave, how many they are in number, and into what sorts they are distinguished; when you have also learnt the bounds²³ of these intervals, and how many systems²⁴ are compose d out of them; (which our predecessors having discovered, delivered down to us, who come after them, by the name of harmonies²⁵; and having discovered other such affections²⁶ in the motions of the body, and in words²⁷, measuring these by numbers, they have taught us to call them rhythms²⁸ and metres; bidding us to infer from hence, that every one-and- many ought to be searched into and examined in the same way;) when you have learnt all those things, and comprehend them in this ample manner, with all their several diversities and distinctions, then are you become skilled in music. And by considering in the same way the nature of any other kind of being, when you thus fully comprehend it, you are become in that respect intelligent and wise. But the infinite multitude of individuals, their infinite variety, and the infinite changes incident to each, keep you infinitely far off from intelligence and wisdom: and as they make you to be behind other men in every path of knowledge, they make you inconsiderable, and of no account, not to be numbered amongst the knowing in any subject; because you never consider any thing thoroughly, and are unable to give a true account of it, never looking at the definite number which it contains.
[17e] Protarchus: Excellently well, O Philebus, as it appears to me, has Socrates spoken in what he has now said.
[18a] Philebus: It appears so too to me myself. But how does all this speech of his concern our controversy? What was the design or drift of it?
[18a] Socrates: A very pertinent question, O Protarchus, this, proposed to us by Philebus.
[18a] Protarchus: Indeed it is: and by all means give it an answer.
[18a] Socrates: That will I do, as soon as I have gone through the little yet remaining of the subject on which I have been speaking. For, as the man who applies himself to the consideration of any kind of things whatever ought not, as I have said, to throw his eye at once upon the infinite, but upon some definite number in the first place; so, on the other hand, when a man is obliged to set out from the infinite, he ought not to mount up immediately to the one, but to some certain number, in each of whose ones a certain multitude is contained; and thus gradually rising from a greater to a less number, to end in one. As an instance of what I have now said, let us resume the consideration of letters.
[18b] Protarchus: In what way?
[18b] Socrates: Whoever it was, whether some God, or some divine man, (the Egyptian reports say that his name was Theuth²⁹,) who first contemplated the infinite nature of the human voice, he observed, that amongst the infinity of the sounds it uttered the vowel sounds³⁰ were more than one, they were many. Again, other utterances he observed, which were not indeed vowels³¹, but partook, however, of some kind of vocal sound³²; and that of these also there was a certain number³³. [18c] A third sort of letters also he set apart, those which are now called mutes by us³⁴. After this he distinguished every one of these letters which are without any vocal sound, whether perfect or imperfect³⁵: the vowels also, and those of middle sort, every one of them, he distinguished in the same manner: and when he had discovered how many letters there were of each sort, to every one, and to all of them together, he gave the name of element. But perceiving that none of us could understand any one of them by itself alone, without learning them all, he considered that this connection, or common bond between them, was one; and that all these letters made in a manner but one thing: and as he perceived that there was one art in all these, he called it, from its subject matter, the art of letters.
[18d] Philebus: This which Socrates now says, O Protarchus, I understand still more plainly than what he said just before; and am at no loss to apprehend what relation each of the subjects about which he has spoken has to the other. But as to that article in which his argument on the first of those subjects appeared to me to be defective, I am at a loss still.
[18d] Socrates: To know what those instances are to the purpose; is not this your meaning?
[18e] Philebus: Just so. This very thing it is that Protarchus and myself are all this while in search of.
[18e] Socrates: In search still, do you say, when you are just now arrived at it?
[18e] Philebus: How so?
[18e] Socrates: Was not the point originally in dispute between us this: Whether wisdom or pleasure was the more eligible?
[18e] Philebus: Certainly it was.
[18e] Socrates: And do we not admit that each of them is one thing?
[18e] Philebus: Without doubt.
[18e] Socrates: Now then must come this question, arising naturally from what was said a little before the mention of music and grammar,—In what way (or by what division) are wisdom and pleasure, each of them, one and many? or how is it, that neither of them breaks into infinite multitude directly; but that each contains some certain number before it pass into infinity?
[19a] Protarchus: Upon no trivial question, O Philebus, on a sudden has Socrates, after having led us a large round-about way, I know not how, thrown us. And now consider, which of us two shall answer to the question he has proposed. It would be ridiculous in me, who have undertaken the support of your argument, to make an absolute revolt on account of my disability in regard to the present question; and so to remit over again to you the task of giving an answer to it: but I think it would be much more ridiculous for both of us to fail. Consider, then, what we shall do in this case, where Socrates seems to interrogate us concerning the species of pleasure;—whether it is divisible into different species, or not; and, if it be, what is the number of these species, and how they differ in their nature: and the like questions he seems to put to us concerning knowledge and intelligence.
[19b] Socrates: Your conjecture is perfectly right, O son of Callias! and, if we are not able to answer to these questions upon every monad, as to its likeness, sameness, and contrariety,—unless, I say, we can do this,—the instances just now produced have shown, that none of us, in any matter we had to handle, would ever be of any worth at all.
[19b] Protarchus: The case, O Socrates, seems indeed to be not very different from your representation of it. [19c] Well, it is certainly a fine thing to know all things, for a wise and prudent person: but I think the best thing next to that is for a man not to be ignorant of himself. With what design I have now said this, I shall proceed to tell you. This conversation, O Socrates, you have granted to us all, and have given yourself up to us, for the purpose of investigating what is the best of human goods. For, when Philebus had said that it consisted in pleasure, and delight, and joy, and all things of the like nature, you opposed him on this point, and said, it consisted not in these things, but in those which we often repeat the mention of; and we are right in so doing, that the opinions on each side, being always fresh in our memories, may the more easily be examined. [19d] You then, it seems, say, what I shall be right in again repeating, that intellect, science, art, and whatever is allied to them, are better things than Pleasure with her allies; and therefore, that the possession, not of these, but of those greater goods, ought to be the object of our aim. Now these positions being laid down severally on each side, as subject-matters of our debate, we in a jocose way threatened, that we would not suffer you to go home quietly before it was brought to a fair determination. You complied, and promised us to contribute all you could towards the accomplishment of that end. We insist therefore that, as children say, you must not take away again what is fairly given. But, in the present inquiry, forbear proceeding in your usual way.
[19e] Socrates: What way do you mean?
[20a] Protarchus: Bringing us into straits and embarrassments; propounding questions to which we should not be able on the sudden to give a proper answer. For we are not to imagine that our present inquiry is brought to a conclusion, merely because all of us are at a loss what to answer. If, therefore, we are unable to extricate ourselves from these difficulties, you must help us out; for so you promised. Consider, then, what to do on this occasion; whether to distinguish pleasure and knowledge, each of them, into their proper species; or whether to pass it by, if you choose to take a different way, and can find some other means of deciding the matter now controverted between us.
[20b] Socrates: No harm then need I be afraid of any longer to myself, since you have said this³⁶. For your leaving to my own choice what ways and means to make use of, frees me from all apprehensions on my own private account. But, to make it still easier to me, some God, I think, has brought things to my remembrance.
[20c] Protarchus: How do you mean? What things?
[20c] Socrates: Having formerly heard, either in a dream³⁷, or broad awake, certain sayings, I have them now again present to my mind;—sayings concerning pleasure and knowledge, that neither of them is of itself good, but some third thing, different from both of those, and better than either. Now if this should discover itself to us clearly, pleasure is then to be dismissed from any pretensions to the victory. For we should then no longer expect to find that pleasure and good are the same thing: or how say you?
[20c] Protarchus: Just so.
[20c] Socrates: We shall have no occasion then, in my opinion, for distinguishing the several species of pleasure. And in the progress of our inquiry it will appear more evidently still that I am in the right.
[20c] Protarchus: Having begun so happily, proceed, and finish with the same success.
[20c] Socrates: Let us, first, agree upon a few little points beside.
[20c] Protarchus: What are those?
[20c] Socrates: In what condition or state of being is the good? Must it of necessity be perfect³⁸? or may it want perfection?
[20d] Protarchus: Of all things, O Socrates, it is the most perfect.
[20d] Socrates: Well; and is it also sufficient?
[20d] Protarchus: Without doubt: and in this respect it excells all other things.
[20d] Socrates: But further: This also, I presume, is of all things the most necessary to say of it, that every being to whom it is known, hunts after, and desires it, as choosing the possession of it above all things; and, indeed, caring for no other things, except such as are constantly attended with the enjoyment of good.
[20d] Protarchus: There is no possibility of contradicting this.
[20e] Socrates: Now, then, let us consider and judge of the life of pleasure and the life of knowledge: and to do this the better, let us view them each apart from the other.
[20e] Protarchus: How do you mean?
[21a] Socrates: Thus: Let us suppose a life of pleasure, unaccompanied by intelligence; and, on the other hand, a life of intelligence, unaccompanied by pleasure. For, if either of them be good, it must be complete and sufficient, in want of no aid from any other quarter. But, if either of them should appear to be indigent of aught, or insufficient, we are no longer to imagine this to be that real and true good we are in search of.
[21a] Protarchus: In such a case, how could we?
[21a] Socrates: Shall we then examine their pretensions thus separately, making your own mind the judge?
[21a] Protarchus: With all my heart.
[21a] Socrates: Answer then to my questions.
[21a] Protarchus: Propose them.
[21a] Socrates: Would you, Protarchus, accept the offer, were it made you, to live all your life with a sense and feeling of pleasures the most exquisite?
[21b] Protarchus: Undoubtedly. Why not?
[21b] Socrates: Suppose you were in full possession of this, would you not think that something beside was still wanting to you?
[21b] Protarchus: I certainly should not.
[21b] Socrates: Consider now, whether you would not be in want of wisdom, and intelligence, and reasoning, and such other things as are the sisters of these; at least whether you would not want to see something.
[21b] Protarchus: Why should I, when I had in a manner all things, in having continual joy?
[21b] Socrates: Living thus then continually all your life, would the most exquisite pleasures give you any joy?
[21b] Protarchus: Why not?
[21b] Socrates: Having neither intellect, nor memory, nor science, nor opinion,— in the first place of this very thing, your possession of joy, you must of necessity be ignorant, and unable to say whether you then had any joy, or not, being void of all just discernment or knowledge of things present.
[21b] Protarchus: I must.
[21b] Socrates: Being also void of memory, it would be impossible for you to remember that you ever had any joy; or to preserve even the least memorial of a joy then present: wanting also right opinion, you could not so much as think you had any joy, though in the midst of it: unable also to reason or draw consequences, you could not possibly conclude that ever you should have any joy to come. Thus you would live the life, not of a man, but of a sea-sponge, or of an oyster. Are these things so? or ought we to think otherwise concerning them?
[21c] Protarchus: A life of mere pleasure must be such as you have described it.
[21d] Socrates: Do we think, then, that such a life is eligible?
[21d] Protarchus: The description of it, O Socrates, has silenced me entirely for the present.
[21d] Socrates: Nay; let us not shrink so soon from pursuing our inquiries; but proceed to the consideration of that other life, the life of intellect.
[21d] Protarchus: What kind of life is that?
[21e] Socrates: Let us consider, whether any of us would choose to live with wisdom, and intellect, and science, and a perfect memory of all things; but without partaking of pleasure, whether great or small; and, on the other hand, without partaking of pain; wholly exempt from all feelings of either kind.
[21e] Protarchus: To me, O Socrates, neither of these lives appears eligible; and I think never would appear so to any other man.
[22a] Socrates: What think you of a middle life, where both of them are mixed together—a life composed of the other two?
[22a] Protarchus: Composed of pleasure do you mean, on the one hand, and of intellect and wisdom on the other hand?
[22a] Socrates: Just so: such a life do I mean.
[22a] Protarchus: Every man would certainly prefer such a kind of life to either of the other two.
[22a] Socrates: Perceive we now what the result is of our discoursing thus far on the subject now before us?
[22a] Protarchus: Perfectly well; it is this: that three lives have been proposed for our consideration, and that neither of the two first-mentioned appears sufficient or eligible for any one, neither for man, nor any other animal.
[22b] Socrates: Is it not evident, then, with regard to the point in controversy, that neither of those two lives can give the possession of the good? for, whichever of them had such a power, that life would be sufficient, perfect, and eligible also to all those animals⁴⁰ who are capable of living in the continual enjoyment of the good all their lives. And whoever of us should give any other life the preference to that, would make his election contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, though not willingly, because through ignorance, or some unhappy necessity.
[22b] Protarchus: What you say is highly probable indeed.
[22c] Socrates: That we ought not to think that Goddess of Philebus to be the same thing with the good, has been shown, I think, sufficiently.
[22c] Philebus: Neither is that intellect of yours, O Socrates, the good; for it will be found deficient in the same respects.
[22c] Socrates: Mine perhaps, O Philebus, may; [22d] but not that intellect which is divine and true; for it is otherwise, I presume, with this. However, I do not contend for the chief prize of victory, in behalf of the life of intellect against the middle or mixed life. But what to do with the second prize, and which life to bestow it on, is next to be considered. For the cause of that happiness which the mixed life affords, one of us, perhaps, may ascribe to intellect, the other of us to pleasure. And thus, neither of these two would be man’s sovereign good, and yet one or other of them may perhaps be supposed the cause of it. Now on this point I would still more earnestly contend against Philebus,—that not pleasure, but intellect, is the nearest allied, and the most similar to that, whatever it be, by the possession of which the mixed life becomes eligible and good. And if this account be true, pleasure can never be said to have any just pretensions either to the first or to the second prize of excellence. Still further is she from coming in for the third prize, if any credit may be given for the present to that intellect of mine.
[22e] Protarchus: Indeed, O Socrates, it seems to me that Pleasure is now fallen: your reasons have been like so many blows given her; under the force of which, fighting for the master-prize, she lies vanquished. But I think, however, that we must say it was prudent in Intellect not to contend for that prize; for she would otherwise have met with the same fate. Now if Pleasure should also lose the prize of second value, as already she has lost the highest, she must entirely fall into disgrace with her own lovers: for even to them she would no longer appear to merit such honour as they paid to her before.
[23a] Socrates: Well then; is it not the better way to dismiss her now directly, and not give her pain, by inspecting into her too nicely, and discovering all her imperfections?
[23a] Protarchus: What you now say goes for nothing, Socrates.
[23b] Socrates: Do you mean, because I supposed an impossible thing when I supposed that pain might be given to pleasure?
[23b] Protarchus: Not on that account only, but because you are sensible that none of us will give you a discharge before you have brought these arguments to a conclusion.
[23b] Socrates: Ah! the copious matter of argument, O Protarchus, still behind! and scarcely is any part of it very manageable on the present occasion⁴¹. For, whoever stands forth as the champion of Intellect to win the second prize for her, must, as it appears to me, take another way of combating, and has need of other weapons different from those reasons I before made use of: some, however, of the same may, perhaps, be of use again. Must we then proceed in that manner?
[23c] Protarchus: By all means.
[23c] Socrates: But let us begin cautiously, and endeavour to lay down right principles.
[23c] Protarchus: What principles do you mean?
[23c] Socrates: All things which are now in the universe let us divide into two sorts, or rather, if you please, into three.
[23d] Protarchus: You should tell us what difference between things it is, with respect to which you make that division.
[23d] Socrates: Some things which have been already mentioned let us reassume.
[23d] Protarchus: What things? soc. God, we said, has exhibited⁴² the infinite, and also the bound of beings.
[23d] P ot. Very true.
[23d] Socrates: Let us take these for two of the species of things; and for a third let us take that, which is composed of those two mixed together. But I deserve, methinks, to be laughed at for pretending thus to distinguish things, and to enumerate their several species.
[23d] Protarchus: Why so, my good friend?
[23d] Socrates: A fourth kind appears to have been omitted by me.
[23d] Protarchus: Say, What?
[23d] Socrates: Of that commixture, the combination of the former two, consider the cause: and beside those three species, set me down this cause⁴⁴ for a fourth.
[23d] Protarchus: Will you not want a fifth species too, for a cause of disunion and separation?
[23e] Socrates: Perhaps I may; but not, I believe, at present. However, should there be occasion for it, you will pardon me, if I go in pursuit of a fifth life.
[23e] Protarchus: Certainly.
[23e] Socrates: Of these four species, then, in the first place dividing the three, and perceiving that two of these, when both are divided, and their divisions separated, are, each of them, many;—then, gathering together the many of each, and uniting them again, let us endeavour to understand in what manner each of them is, at the same time, one and many.
[23e] Protarchus: Would you but express your meaning more plainly, I might, perhaps, apprehend it.
[24a] Socrates: I mean, then, by the two, which I propose to be now considered, the same which I mentioned at the first; one of them the infinite, and the other bound. That the infinite is, in some manner, many, I will attempt to show: and let bound wait a while.
[24b] Protarchus: It shall.
[24b] Socrates: Give me now your attention. It is, I confess, a difficult and doubtful thing, that, which I would have you to consider. Consider it, however. First, with regard to hotter and colder, in things, see if you can think of any bound. Or would not the more and the less, residing in the kinds themselves of things, hinder, so long as they reside there, an end from being fixed to them? For, if ever they receive an end, to an end also are their very beings then brought.
[24b] Protarchus: Most certainly true.
[24b] Socrates: And in speaking of either the colder or the hotter of any two things, we constantly attribute to them the more and the less.
[24b] Protarchus: And very much so.
[24b] Socrates: Reason then constantly suggests to us that the colder and the hotter have no end: and being thus without any end, they are altogether boundless.
[24b] Protarchus: I am strongly inclined to agree with you, Socrates in this point.
[24c] Socrates: Well have you answered, my friend Protarchus; and well have you reminded me, that the strongly, which you mentioned, and the faintly, have the same power as the more and the less. For, wherever they reside, they suffer not any thing to be just so much; but infusing either the more intense or the more remiss into every action, they always produce in it either the more or the less; while the just so much flies away and vanishes from before them. For, as it was just now observed, were they not to drive away the just so much, or did they permit this, and the moderate, to enter into the regions of the more and the less, or of the intense and the remiss, these very beings must quit their own places: because, if they admitted the just so much, the hotter and the colder would be gone. For the hotter, and in like manner the colder, is always advancing forward, and never abides in the same spot: but the just so much stops, and stays, having finished its progress. Now, according to this reasoning, the hotter must be boundless; and so must also be the colder.
[24d] Protarchus: So it appears indeed, Socrates. But, as you rightly said, it is not easy to apprehend these things. Questions, however, relating to them, again and again repeated, might perhaps show that the questioner and the respondent were tolerably well agreed in their minds concerning them.
[24e] Socrates: You say well: and we should try so to do. But at present, to avoid lengthening out this argument, by enumerating every infinite, consider, whether we may take this for the characteristic mark of the nature of all infinites.
[24e] Protarchus: What mark do you mean?
[25a] Socrates: Whatever things appear to us to be increasing or diminishing, or to admit of intenseness and remission, or the too much, and all other such attributes, we ought to refer all these to the genus of the infinite; collecting, as it were, all of them in one, agreeably to what was before said; that whatever things were divided and separated we ought to assemble together and combine, as well as we are able, affixing to all of them the mark of some one nature;—if you remember.
[25a] Protarchus: I remember it well.
[25a] Socrates: Every thing, then, which rejects all such attributes, and admits only such as are quite the contrary,—in the first place, the equal and equality, and, after the equal, the double, and every other relation which one number bears to another, and one measure to another,—all these things, I say, in summing up, and referring them to bound, think you not that we should do right? or how say you?
[25b] Protarchus: Perfectly right, O Socrates.
[25b] Socrates: Well: but the third thing made up, and consisting of the other two, what characteristic shall we assign to this?
[25b] Protarchus: You, as I presume, will show it to me.
[25b] Socrates: Divinity indeed may; if any of the Gods will hearken to my prayers.
[25b] Protarchus: Pray, then, and survey.
[25b] Socrates: I survey: and some God, O Protarchus, is now, methinks, become favourable to us.
[25b] Protarchus: How do you mean? and by what sign do you know it?
[25c] Socrates: I will tell you in plain words: but do you follow them closely.
[25c] Protarchus: Only speak.
[25c] Socrates: We mentioned just now the hotter and the colder; did we not?
[25c] Protarchus: We did.
[25c] Socrates: To these then add the drier and the moister; the more numerous and the fewer; the swifter and the slower; the larger and the smaller; and whatever things beside, in our late account of them, we ranked under one head,—that which admits of the nature of the more and the less.
[25d] Protarchus: You mean the infinite.
[25d] Socrates: I do: and mingle together with this that which we spoke of next afterward,—the race of bound.
[25d] Protarchus: What race do you mean?
[25d] Socrates: Those things which we did not (as we ought to have done) assemble together under one head, in the same manner as we assembled together the race of the infinite. But you will now, perhaps, do what was then omitted. And when both the sorts are assembled, and viewed together, the race of bound will then become manifest.
[25d] Protarchus: What things do you speak of? and how are they to be assembled?
[25d] Socrates: I speak of that nature in which are comprised the equal and the double; and whatever else puts an end to contest between contrary things; and, introducing number, makes them to be commensurate one with another, and to harmonize together.
[25e] Protarchus: I apprehend your meaning to be, that, from the commixture of those two, a certain progeny will arise between them in every one of their tribes.
[25e] Socrates: You apprehend me rightly.
[25e] Protarchus: Relate then the progeny of these commixtures.
[25e] Socrates: In diseases, does not the right commixture of those two produce the recovery of health?
[26a] Protarchus: Entirely so.
[26a] Socrates: And in the acute and the grave, in the swift also and the slow, which are all of them infinite, does not the other sort, received among them, and begetting bounds, constitute the perfection of all the Muse’s art?
[26a] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[26a] Socrates: And in weather excessively either cold or hot, does not the entrance of that other kind take off the excess, the vehement, and the infinite,—generating in their stead, not only the moderate and the measured, but symmetry also, and correspondence between their measures?
[26b] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[26b] Socrates: And do not propitious seasons, and all their fair productions, arise to us from hence, from the mixture of things which are infinite with things which have a bound?
[26c] Protarchus: Doubtless.
[26c] Socrates: A thousand other things I forbear to mention; as, for instance, strength and beauty, the attendants upon health of body; and in the soul other excellencies, very many and very noble. For Venus herself, O good Philebus! observing lawless lust, and all manner of vice every where reigning, the love of pleasure being in all men boundless, and their desires of it insatiable, she herself established a law and an order, setting bounds to pleasure and desire. This you said was to lessen and to impair pleasure; but I maintain, that, on the contrary, it preserved pleasure from decay. And you, Protarchus! what think you of it?
[26c] Protarchus: For my part, I am entirely of your mind, Socrates.
[26c] Socrates: I have shown you then those three kinds, if you apprehend my meaning.
[26c] Protarchus: Partly, I suppose, I do. By one of those three, I suppose, you mean the infinite; by another, the second sort, you mean that which in all beings is the bound; but what you mean by the third sort, I have no strong apprehension of.
[26d] Socrates: Because the care of that third sort, my friend, has amazed you with its multitude. And yet, the infinite also appeared to contain many tribes: but as they were all of them stamped with the character of more and less, they were seen clearly to be one.
[26d] Protarchus: True.
[26d] Socrates: Then, as to bound; that neither contained many, nor found we any difficulty in admitting the nature of it to be one.
[26d] Protarchus: How could we?
[26d] Socrates: It was not at all possible, indeed. Of those two sorts, then, all the progeny,—all the things produced into being through those measures, which are effected in the immoderate, when bounds are set to the infinite,—in summing up all these things together, and comprehending them in one, understand me to mean, by the third sort, this one.
[26e] Prot, I understand you.
[26e] Socrates: Now, besides these three, we are further to consider, what that kind is which we said was the fourth. And as we are to consider it jointly, see whether you think it necessary, that all things which are produced into being should have some cause of their production.
[26e] Protarchus: I think it is: for, without a cause, how should they be produced?
[26e] Socrates: The nature then of the efficient differs from the cause in nothing but in name: so that the efficient and the cause may be rightly deemed one.
[26e] Protarchus: Rightly.
[27a] Socrates: So, likewise, the thing effected, and the thing produced into being, we shall find to differ in the same manner, in nothing but in name, or how?
[27a] Prot Just so.
[27a] Socrates: In the nature of things, does not the efficient lead the way? and does not the effect follow after it into being?
[27a] Protarchus: Certainly.
[27a] Socrates: Cause, therefore, is not the same thing with that which is subservient to cause in the producing of its effect, but a thing different.
[27a] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[27a] Socrates: Did not the things which are produced into being, and the things out of which they are all of them produced, exhibit to us the three genera?
[27b] Protarchus: Clearly.
[27b] Socrates: That, then, which is the artificer of all these, the cause of them, let us call the fourth cause; as it is fully shown to be different from those other three.
[27b] Protarchus: Be it so.
[27b] Socrates: But the four sorts having been now described, every one of them distinctly, we should do well, for memory’s sake, to enumerate them in order.
[27b] Protarchus: No doubt of it.
[27c] Socrates: The first then I call infinite; the second bound; the third essence⁴⁵ mixt and generated from these: and in saying⁴⁶ that the cause of this mixture and this production is the fourth, should I say aught amiss?
[27c] Protarchus: Certainly not.
[27c] Socrates: Well now: what is next? How proceeds our argument? and with what design came we along this way? Was it not this? We were inquiring who had a right to the second prize of victory; whether Pleasure had, or Wisdom: was it not so?
[27c] Protarchus: It was.
[27c] Socrates: Now then, since we have thus divided these genera, may we not happily form a more finished judgment concerning both the very best and the second-best of those things which originally were the subjects of dispute between us?
[27c] Protarchus: Perhaps we may.
[27c] Socrates: We made no difficulty, I think, of setting down for conqueror, the mixt life, the life of pleasure and wisdom together. Was it not so?
[27d] Protarchus: It was.
[27d] Socrates: We perceive then of what sort the mixt life is, and to which kind it is to be referred.
[27d] Protarchus: Evidently.
[27d] Socrates: And I think we shall agree, that it is part of the third sort. For the mixt life is not to be referred solely to any one of the infinites, mixed with some one only of the bounds: it is a life of all such things together as are infinite in their own nature, but are under the restraint of bound. So that the mixt life, this winner of the prize, may be rightly said to be a part of the third sort.
[27e] Protarchus: Most rightly.
[27e] Socrates: It is well. But that life of yours, O Philebus, a life of pleasure simple and unmixed, to which of the three sorts may we rightly say that it belongs? But before you pronounce, answer me first to this question.
[27e] Philebus: Propose it then⁴⁷.
[27e] Socrates: Concerning pleasure and pain; have they in their own nature any bounds? or are they among those things which admit the more and the less⁴⁸?
[27e] Philebus: Pleasure, O Socrates! to be sure, admits the more. For it would not comprehend every good in it, if it were not by nature infinite, with respect to the multitude which it contains, and the increase which it is capable of.
[28a] Socrates: Nor can pain be imagined, O Philebus, to comprehend every evil. So that we must consider of some other thing, different from the nature of the infinite, for the imparting of any good to pleasures. It is admitted, that your life of pleasure is the issue of things unbounded, and belongs, therefore, to the infinite. But to which of the sorts before mentioned, O Protarchus and Philebus, may we refer wisdom, and science, and intellect, without being guilty of impiety? For it appears to me that we incur no trifling danger in answering the present question, whatever be our answer, whether right or wrong.
[28b] Philebus: You magnify that God of yours, O Socrates, very highly, methinks.
[28b] Socrates: So do you, my friend, that Goddess of yours. The question, however, ought to be answered by us.
[28b] Protarchus: Socrates says what is right, O Philebus, and we must do as he says we ought.
[28c] Philebus: Have not you, Protarchus, taken upon yourself my part in the debate?
[28c] Protarchus: It is true that I have. But in the present case I find myself much at a loss how to answer. I must therefore request, O Socrates, that you yourself will take the office of prophet to us; lest, by some mistake, I should offend the combatant⁴⁹ whom you favour, and by singing out of tune should spoil the harmony⁵⁰.
[28c] Socrates: You must be obeyed, Protarchus. Indeed there is nothing difficult in your injunctions. But, in asking you to which of the two above-mentioned kinds intellect and science were to be referred,—when I was magnifying, as Philebus says, the subject of my question,—the joke, which I intended to soften the solemnity of it, confused your thoughts, I find, in good earnest.
[28c] Protarchus: Very thoroughly so, I confess, O Socrates.
[28c] Socrates: And yet it was an easy question. For, on this point, there is a consent and harmony among all the wise, dignifying thus themselves,—that Intellect is king of heaven and earth. And this which they say is perhaps⁵¹ well said. But let us, if you are willing, consider the nature of this genus more amply, and not in so concise a manner.
[28d] Protarchus: Consider it in what manner you think best, without regarding the length of the inquiry: for the length will not be disagreeable to us.
[28d] Socrates: Fairly spoken. Let us begin, then, by proposing this question.
[28d] Protarchus: What?
[28d] Socrates: Whether shall we say that the power of the irrational principle governs all things in the whole universe, fortuitously and at random? or shall we, on the contrary, agree with our ancestors and predecessors, in affirming that a certain admirable intellect and wisdom orders all things together, and governs throughout the whole?
[28e] Protarchus: Alike in nothing, O Socrates, are these two tenets. That which you mentioned just now is, in my opinion, impious. But, to hold that Intellect disposes all things in a beautiful order, is agreeable to that view which we have of the world, of the celestial bodies, and of the whole circumvolution of the heavens. For my own part, I should never speak nor think any otherwise on this subject.
[29a] Socrates: Is it then your pleasure that we add our voices to those of the antients, and openly avow that tenet to be ours; not contenting ourselves with a bare repetition of the sayings of others, in hopes of escaping danger to ourselves; but resolved to run all risk together, and to share in undergoing the censures of some great and formidable man, when he asserts that in the whole of things there is no order⁵²?
[29a] Protarchus: How can I do otherwise than join with you in this?
[29a] Socrates: Attend now to the argument which comes on next to be considered.
[29b] Protarchus: Propose it then.
[29b] Socrates: In the bodies of all animals, somehow, we discover that fire, water, and air, must be in their composition by nature; and earth, which gives support to the other ingredients in their frame, we see plainly: as mariners say, when they are tossed about in a thunder-storm at sea, and descry land.
[29b] Protarchus: True: and tossed about indeed are we too in these discourses; but for a port to anchor in we are entirely at a loss.
[29b] Socrates: Let us proceed then: Concerning each of those elementary ingredients in our frame, understand this.
[29b] Protarchus: What?
[29b] Socrates: That which there is in us of each element is small and inconsiderable; no where in any part of our frame have we it at all unmixed and pure; neither has it in us a power worthy of its nature. Take one of them for a sample, by which you may estimate all the rest. Fire in some manner there is in us; fire⁵³ there is also in the universe.
[29b] Protarchus: Most certainly.
[29b] Socrates: Now the fire which is in our composition is weak and inconsiderable: but that which is in the universe is admirable for the multitude of it, for the beauty which it exhibits, and for every power and virtue which belong to fire.
[29c] Protarchus: Perfectly true.
[29c] Socrates: Well then: is the fire of the universe generated, fed, and ruled by the fire which we have in us? or, on the contrary, does my fire, and yours, and that of every other living thing, receive its being, support, and laws, from the fire of the universe?
[29c] Protarchus: This question of yours does not deserve an answer.
[29c] Socrates: Rightly said. And you would answer in the same manner, I suppose, if your opinion was asked concerning the earthy part of every animal here, compared with the earth in the universe; and just so concerning the other elementary parts of animal bodies mentioned before.
[29d] Protarchus: What man, who made a different answer, would ever appear to be of sound mind?
[29d] Socrates: Scarcely would any man. But attend to what follows next. Whereever we find these four elements mixed together and united, do we not give to this composition the name of body?
[29d] Protarchus: We do.
[29d] Socrates: Apprehend the same thing then with regard to this, which we call the world. This should be considered as a body in the same manner, being composed of the same elements.
[29e] Protarchus: You are perfectly in the right.
[29e] Socrates: To the whole of this great body, then, does the whole of that little body of ours owe its nourishment, and whatever it has received, and whatever it possesses? or is the body of the universe indebted to ours for all which it is and has?
[29e] Protarchus: There is no reason, O Socrates, for making a question of this point, neither.
[30a] Socrates: Well: what will you say to this point then?
[30a] Protarchus: What point?
[30a] Socrates: Must we not affirm these bodies of ours to be animated with souls?
[30a] Protarchus: It is evident that we must.
[30a] Socrates: But from whence, O my friend Protarchus, should our bodies derive those souls of theirs, if that great body of the universe, which has all the same elements with our bodies, but in much greater purity and perfection, was not, as well as ours, animated with a soul?
[30a] Protarchus: It is evident, O Socrates, that from no other origin could they derive them.
[30b] Socrates: Since, therefore, O Protarchus, we acknowledge these four genera, bound, infinite, the compound of both those, and the genus of cause, to be in all bodies; and since we find, that in this part of the universe to which we belong there are beings of that fourth sort,—causes, which produce souls, build up bodies for those souls to dwell in⁵⁴, and heal those bodies when diseased;—causes, also, which create and frame other compositions, and amend them when impaired;—causes these, to every one of which we gave a particular name, betokening a particular kind of wisdom or skill:—since, I say, we are persuaded of these things, surely we can by no means think that the whole heaven, in the larger parts of which are the same four genera, and these undepraved and pure, can have any other cause than a nature who is full of contrivance and design, and in whom the most beautiful and noble things all unite.
[30c] Protarchus: It would not be at all reasonable to think it can.
[30c] Socrates: If this then be absurd, we may the better assert, as a consequence of our reasoning, that in the universe there are, what we have several times repeated, infinite in great quantity, and bound sufficient; and besides these, a cause, not inconsiderable or mean, which, by mixing them properly together, marshals and regulates the years, the seasons, and the months,—a cause, which with the greatest justice we may term wisdom and intellect.
[30c] Protarchus: With the greatest justice, indeed.
[30c] Socrates: But further, wisdom and intellect could never be without soul⁵⁵.
[30d] Protarchus: By no means.
[30d] Socrates: You will affirm, then, that in the nature of Jupiter there is a kingly soul and a kingly intellect, through the power of cause⁵⁶; and that in the other Gods there are other beautiful things, whatever they are, by which their Deities love to be distinguished, and from which they delight in taking their respective denominations.
[30d] Protarchus: Certainly I shall.
[30d] Socrates: The discourse we have now had together on this subject, O Protarchus, think it not idle, and to no purpose. For it supports that doctrine of our ancestors, that the universe is for ever governed by intellect.
[30e] Protarchus: Indeed it does.
[30e] Socrates: And besides, it has furnished us with an answer to my question,— to what genus intellect is to be referred; in making it appear that intellect is allied to that which we said was the cause of all things, one of our four genera. For now at length you plainly have our answer.
[30e] Protarchus: I have; and a very full and sufficient answer it is: but I was not aware what you were about.
[30e] Socrates: A man’s attention to serious studies, O Protarchus, is sometimes, you know, relaxed by amusements.
[31a] Protarchus: Politely said.
[31a] Socrates: And thus, my friend, to what genus intellect belongs, and what power it is possessed of, has been now shown tolerably well for the present.
[31a] Protarchus: It has, indeed.
[31a] Socrates: And to what genus also belongs pleasure, appeared before.
[31a] Protarchus: Very true.
[31a] Socrates: Concerning these two, then, let us remember these conclusions,— that intellect is allied to cause, and is nearly of this genus; and that pleasure is infinite in her own nature, and belongs to that genus which, of itself, neither has nor ever will have in it either a beginning, or a middle, or an end.
[31a] Protarchus: We shall not fail to remember them both.
[31b] Socrates: Now we ought to consider next, in which genus either of those two things, intelligence and pleasure, is found to have a seat; and in what state or condition those beings must be in whom either of them is produced, at the time of its production. And first in the case of pleasure: for, as we inquired to which genus she belonged, before we considered of which sort was intellect; so, with regard to the points also now proposed, she is the first to be examined⁵⁷. But, separately from the consideration of pain, we should never be able fully to explore the nature of pleasure.
[31b] Protarchus: Well: if we are to proceed in this way, let us then in this way proceed⁵⁸.
[31b] Socrates: Are you of the same opinion with me concerning their rise and production?
[31c] Protarchus: What opinion is that?
[31c] Socrates: Pain and pleasure appear to me, both of them, to arise, according to nature, in that which is a common genus.
[31c] Protarchus: Remind us, friend Socrates, which of the genera mentioned before is meant by the term common.
[31c] Socrates: What you desire, O wonderful man! shall be done, to the best of my ability.
[31c] Protarchus: Fairly said.
[31c] Socrates: By this common genus, then, we are to understand that which, in recounting the four sorts, we reckoned as third.
[31c] Protarchus: That which you mentioned next after both the infinite and bound: that in which you ranked health, and also, as I think, harmony.
[31d] Socrates: Perfectly right. Now give me all possible attention.
[31d] Protarchus: Only speak.
[31d] Socrates: I say, then, that whenever the harmony in the frame of any animal is broken, a breach is then made in its constitution, and at the same time rise is given to pains.
[31d] Protarchus: You say what is highly probable.
[31d] Socrates: But when the harmony is restored, and the breach is healed, we should say that then pleasure is produced: if points of so great importance may be dispatched at once in so few words.
[31d] Protarchus: In my opinion, O Socrates, you say what is very true: but let us try if we can show these truths in a light still clearer.
[31e] Socrates: Are not such things as ordinarily happen, and are manifest to us all, the most easy to be understood?
[31e] Protarchus: What things do you mean?
[31e] Socrates: Want of food makes a breach in the animal system, and at the same time gives the pain of hunger.
[31e] Protarchus: True.
[31e] Socrates: And food, in filling up the breach again, gives a pleasure.
[31e] Protarchus: Right.
[31e] Socrates: Want of drink also, [32a] interrupting the circulation of the blood and humours, brings on us corruption, together with the pain of thirst; but the virtue of a liquid, in moistening and replenishing the parts dried up, yields a pleasure. In like manner, preternatural suffocating heat, in dissolving the texture of the parts, gives a painful sensation: but a cooling again, a refreshment agreeable to nature, affects us with a sense of pleasure.
[32b] Protarchus: Most certainly.
[32b] Socrates: And the concretion of the animal humours through cold, contrary to their nature, occasions pain: but a return to their pristine state of fluidity, and a restoring of the natural circulation, produce pleasure. See, then, whether you think this general account of the matter not amiss, concerning that sort of being which I said was composed of infinite and bound,—that, when by nature any beings of that sort become animated with soul, their passage into corruption, or a total dissolution, is accompanied with pain; and their entrance into existence, the assembling of all those particles which compose the nature of such a being, is attended with a sense of pleasure.
[32b] Protarchus: I admit your account of this whole matter; for, as it appears to me, it bears on it the stamp of truth.
[32b] Socrates: These sensations, then, which affect the soul by means only of the body, let us consider as one species of pain and pleasure.
[32c] Protarchus: Be it so.
[32c] Socrates: Consider now the feelings of the soul herself, in the expectation of such a pain or of such a pleasure,—antecedent to the pleasure expected, an agreeable feeling of hope and alacrity,—antecedent to the pain expected, the uneasiness of fear.
[32c] Protarchus: This is, indeed, a different species of pleasure and pain, independent of the body, and produced in the soul herself through expectation.
[32d] Socrates: You apprehend the matter rightly. Now the consideration of these feelings of pain and pleasure, which immediately affect the soul herself, (and seem to be produced in her, each of them, unmixed and genuine,) will, as I imagine, clear up that doubt concerning pleasure,—whether the whole kind be eligible, or whether a particular species of it be the proper object of our choice. And in the latter case, pleasure and pain (in general), like heat and cold, and all other things of this sort, will deserve sometimes to be embraced, and at other times to be rejected; as not being good in themselves, but admitting the nature of good to be superadded to them only at some times, and some of them only.
[32d] Protarchus: You are perfectly in the right. It must be in some such way as this that we ought to investigate the things we are in pursuit of.
[32e] Socrates: If, then, what we agreed in be true,—that animal bodies feel pain, when any thing befalls them tending to their destruction,—pleasure, when they are using the means of their preservation,—let us now consider what state or condition every animal is in, when it is neither suffering aught that tends to its destruction, nor is engaged in any action, or in the midst of any circumstances, tending to its preservation. Give your earnest attention to this point, and say, whether it is entirely necessary, or not, that every animal at that time should feel neither pain nor pleasure, in any degree, great or small.
[32e] Protarchus: It is quite necessary.
[32e] Socrates: Besides the condition then of an animal delighted, and besides the opposite condition of it under uneasiness, is not this a different, a third, state or condition of an animal?
[33a] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[33a] Socrates: Be careful then to remember this judgment of ours. For on the remembering of it, or not, greatly will depend our judgment concerning the nature of pleasure. But, to go through with this point, let us, if you please, add a short sentence more.
[33a] Protarchus: Say what.
[33a] Socrates: You know, nothing hinders a man who prefers the life of wisdom from living all his life in that state.
[33b] Protarchus: In the state, do you mean, of neither pleasure nor uneasiness?
[33b] Socrates: I do: for, when we compared together the different lives, it was supposed, that whoever should choose the life of intellect and wisdom was not to have pleasure either in a great or in a small degree.
[33b] Protarchus: That was the supposition.
[33b] Socrates: He must live, therefore, such a life⁵⁹. And perhaps it is by no means absurd, to deem that life to be of all lives the most Godlike.
[33b] Protarchus: It is not indeed probable, that the Gods feel either the pleasurable sensation, or its opposite.
[33b] Socrates: Highly, indeed, is it improbable. For neither of them is consistent with the divine nature. But we shall consider further of this point afterwards, if it should appear to be of any service to our argument; and shall apply it to the purpose of winning the second prize for intellect, though we should not be able to make use of it so as to win for her the first.
[33c] Protarchus: Very justly said.
[33c] Socrates: Now that species of pleasure which we said is proper to the soul herself, is all produced in her by means of memory.
[33c] Protarchus: How so?
[33c] Socrates: But, before we consider of this point, I think we should premise some account of memory,—what it is: and still prior to an account of memory, some mention too, methinks, ought to be made of sense, if we are to have this subject appear tolerably plain to us⁶⁰.
[33d] Protarchus: Explain your meaning.
[33d] Socrates: Of those things which are incident to our bodies in every part, coming from all quarters around us, and affecting us in various ways,— some spend all their force upon the body, without penetrating to the soul, leaving this entirely untouched and free; others extend their power through the soul as well as through the body; and some of this latter sort excite a vehement agitation in them both, jointly and severally. Do you admit this?
[33d] Protarchus: Be it admitted.
[33d] Socrates: If we should say of those things, the power of which is confined to the body, and reaches not the soul, that the soul is deprived of knowing them; but of other things which befall us, and have a power to pervade both the body and the soul, that of these the soul hath the knowledge; should we not thus say what is most true?
[33e] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[33e] Socrates: But when I say that the soul is deprived of knowing the former sort, do not suppose my meaning to be, that oblivion happens to her in this case. For oblivion is the departure of memory. But of the accidents now spoken of the soul never had a memory. And of that which neither is nor ever was, it is absurd to say that any loss can happen to us. Is it not?
[33e] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[33e] Socrates: Only then alter the terms.
[33e] Protarchus: In what manner?
[34a] Socrates: Instead of saying that the soul is deprived of knowing what the body suffers, when she is not affected by any motions produced in the body by those ordinary occurrences,—what we termed a privation of knowledge, let us now term insensibility.
[34a] Protarchus: I apprehend your meaning.
[34a] Socrates: But when the soul and the body are affected, both of them in common, by any of those occurrences, and in common also are moved or agitated⁶¹,—in giving to this motion the name of sensation, you would not speak improperly.
[34a] Protarchus: Very true.
[34a] Socrates: Now then do we not apprehend what it is which is commonly called sense or sensation?
[34a] Protarchus: What should hinder us?
[34a] Socrates: And of memory⁶², if one should say that it was the retaining of sensations, it would not be ill defined, in my opinion.
[34a] Protarchus: I think so too.
[34b] Socrates: Do we not hold, that memory differs from remembrance?
[34b] Protarchus: Perhaps it does.
[34b] Socrates: Do they not differ in this respect?
[34b] Protarchus: In what respect?
[34b] Socrates: When the soul alone, unaided by the body, recovers and resumes within herself as much as possible the state which heretofore she was in, when she was affected jointly with the body, we say that the soul then remembers. Do we not?
[34b] Protarchus: Certainly we do.
[34c] Socrates: So we do also, when the soul, after having lost the memory of something which she had sensibly perceived, or of something which she had learnt, recalls and recollects the memory of it again, herself within herself: and all this we term remembrance, and a recovery of things slipt out of our memory⁶³.
[34c] Protarchus: Very true.
[34c] Socrates: Now the end for the sake of which we have been considering these faculties of the soul is this.
[34c] Protarchus: For the sake of what?
[34c] Socrates: That we may apprehend⁶⁴, as well and as clearly as we are able, what is the pleasure of the soul abstracted from the body, and at the same time may apprehend also what is desire. For the nature of both these things seems to be discovered in some measure by showing the nature of memory and of remembrance.
[34c] Protarchus: Let us then, O Socrates, now explain how such a discovery follows from perceiving the nature of these faculties of ours.
[34c] Socrates: In treating of the rise of pleasure, and of the various forms which she assumes, it will be necessary for us, I believe, to consider a great variety of things. But, before we enter on so copious a subject, we should now, I think, in the first place, consider the nature and origin of desire.
[34d] Protarchus: Let us then: for we must not lose any thing.
[34d] Socrates: Nay, Protarchus! we shall lose one thing, when we shall have found the objects of our inquiry; we shall lose our uncertainty about them.
[34d] Protarchus: You are right in your repartee. Proceed we then to what is next.
[34d] Socrates: Was it not just now said, that hunger, and thirst, and many other things of like kind, were certain desires?
[34e] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[34e] Socrates: What is it, then, which is the same in all these things,—that, with respect to which we give to all of them, notwithstanding the great difference between them, one and the same appellation?
[34e] Protarchus: By Jupiter, Socrates! it is, perhaps, not easy to say: it ought, however, to be declared.
[34e] Socrates: Let us resume the mention of that with which we began the consideration of this subject.
[34e] Protarchus: Of what in particular?
[34e] Socrates: Do we not often speak of being thirsty?
[34e] Protarchus: We do.
[34e] Socrates: And do we not mean by it some kind of emptiness?
[34e] Protarchus: Certainly.
[34e] Socrates: Is not thirst a desire?
[34e] Protarchus: It is.
[34e] Socrates: A desire of drink is it?
[34e] Protarchus: Of drink.
[34e] Socrates: Of being replenished by drink: is it not⁶⁵?
[34e] Protarchus: I suppose it is.
[34e] Socrates: Whoever of us then is emptied, desires, it seems, a condition the reverse of what has befallen him. For whereas he is emptied, he longs to be filled again.
[35a] Protarchus: Most evidently so.
[35a] Socrates: Well now: is it possible that a man, who at the first⁶⁶ is empty, should apprehend, either by sense or by memory, what it is to be full,—a condition, in which he neither is at the time, nor ever was heretofore.
[35a] Protarchus: How can he?
[35a] Socrates: We are agreed, that the man who desires has a desire of something.
[35b] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[35b] Socrates: Now it is not the condition in which he is that he desires. For he suffers thirst, that is, an emptiness: but he desires to be full.
[35b] Protarchus: True.
[35b] Socrates: Something, therefore, belonging to the man who is thirsty must apprehend in some manner what it is to be full.
[35b] Protarchus: It must, of necessity.
[35b] Socrates: But it is impossible that this should be his body: for his body is supposed to suffer emptiness.
[35c] Protarchus: Right.
[35c] Socrates: It remains, therefore, that his soul apprehends what it is to be full, by means of her memory.
[35c] Protarchus: Plainly so.
[35c] Socrates: For, indeed, by what other means could his soul have such an apprehension?
[35c] Protarchus: Hardly by any other.
[35c] Socrates: Perceive we now, what consequence follows from this reasoning of ours?
[35c] Protarchus: What consequence?
[35c] Socrates: It proves that desire doth not arise in the body.
[35c] Protarchus: How so?
[35c] Socrates: Because it shows that the aim and endeavour of every animal is to be in a condition opposite to the feelings with which the body is at that time affected.
[35c] Protarchus: It certainly shows this.
[35c] Socrates: And the inclination by which it moves toward this opposite condition, shows the remembrance of a condition opposite to those present feelings and affections.
[35d] Protarchus: Clearly.
[35d] Socrates: Our reasoning, then, in proving that memory leads us toward the objects of our desire, shows at the same time what is the general inclination and desire of the soul; and what is the moving principle in every animal.
[35d] Protarchus: Perfectly right.
[35d] Socrates: Our conclusion, therefore, will by no means admit of an opinion that the body suffers hunger, or thirst, or is affected with any other such desire.
[35d] Protarchus: Most true.
[35d] Socrates: Let us observe this also further, regarding these very subjects now under consideration. Our reasoning seems to me as if it meant to exhibit in those very things a certain kind of life.
[35d] Protarchus: What things do you mean? and what kind of life do you speak of?
[35e] Socrates: I mean the being filled, and the being emptied, and all other things tending either to the preservation of animal life, or to the destruction of it; and whatever things ordinarily give pain,—yet, coming in a change from things contrary, are sometimes grateful.
[35e] Protarchus: True.
[35e] Socrates: But what when a man is in the midst of these contrary conditions, and is partaking of them both?
[36a] Protarchus: How do you mean in the midst?
[36a] Socrates: When he is afflicted with an anxious sense of his present bad condition, but at the same time has a remembrance of past delights; he may enjoy an intermission of his pain, without having as yet the cause of it removed⁶⁷; now do we affirm, or do we deny, that he is at that time in the midst of two contrary conditions?
[36a] Protarchus: It must be affirmed.
[36a] Socrates: Is he afflicted or delighted wholly?
[36a] Protarchus: By Jupiter, he is in a manner afflicted doubly: in his body, from his present condition; in his soul, from a tedious expectation, longing for relief.
[36b] Socrates: How is it, O Protarchus, that you suppose his affliction to be doubled? Is not a man whose stomach is empty sometimes in a state of hopefulness, with assurance of having it filled? and on the contrary, is he not at other times in a condition quite hopeless?
[36b] Protarchus: Certainly.
[36b] Socrates: Do you not think that, when he is in hopes of being filled, he is delighted with the remembrance of fulness? and yet that, being empty at the same time, he is in pain?
[36b] Protarchus: He must be so.
[36b] Socrates: In such a state, therefore, man and other animals are at the same time afflicted and delighted.
[36b] Protarchus: It seems so to be.
[36b] Socrates: But what think you when a man is empty, and hopeless of obtaining fulness? must he not, in such a condition, suffer double pain? with a view to which particular condition it was, that just now you supposed the memory of past delight, in all cases, to double the present pain.
[36c] Protarchus: Most true, Socrates.
[36c] Socrates: Now of this inquiry into these feelings of ours we shall make this use.
[36c] Protarchus: What use?
[36c] Socrates: Shall we say that all these pains and pleasures are true? or that they are all false? or that some of them are true, and others false?
[36c] Protarchus: How should pleasures or pains, O Socrates, be false?
[36c] Socrates: How is it then, O Protarchus, that fears may be either true or false? that expectations may be true, or not? Or, of opinions, how is it that some are true, and others false?
[36d] Protarchus: Opinions, I admit, may be of either kind: but I cannot grant you this of those other feelings.
[36d] Socrates: How say you? We are in danger of starting a disquisition of no small importance.
[36d] Protarchus: That is true.
[36d] Socrates: But whether it has any relation to the subjects which have preceded, this, O son of an illustrious father⁶⁸! ought to be considered.
[36d] Protarchus: Perhaps, indeed, it ought.
[36d] Socrates: Tell me then: for, as to myself, I am continually in a state of wonderment about these very difficulties now proposed.
[36e] Protarchus: What difficulties do you mean?
[36e] Socrates: False pleasures are not true; nor true pleasures false⁶⁹.
[36e] Protarchus: How is it possible they should?
[36e] Socrates: Neither in a dream, then, nor awake, is it possible, as you hold, not even if a man is out of his senses through madness, or has lost the soundness of his judgment any other way, is it possible for him ever to imagine that he feels delight, when he is by no means sensibly delighted; or to imagine that he feels pain, when actually the man feels none.
[36e] Protarchus: All of us, O Socrates, constantly suppose these facts to be as you have now stated them.
[36e] Socrates: But is it a right supposition? or should we examine whether it is right, or not?
[37a] Protarchus: We ought to examine it, I must own.
[37a] Socrates: Let us then explain a little more clearly what was just now said concerning pleasure and opinion. Do we not hold the reality of our having an opinion?
[37a] Protarchus: Certainly.
[37a] Socrates: And the reality of our having pleasure?
[37a] Protarchus: To be sure.
[37a] Socrates: Further: it is something, that which is the object of our opinion.
[37a] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[37b] Socrates: And something also that is with which whatever feels a pleasure is delighted.
[37b] Protarchus: Most certainly.
[37b] Socrates: In the having, then, of an opinion, whether we are right or wrong in entertaining that opinion, the reality of our having it abides still.
[37b] Protarchus: How can a man lose an opinion whilst he has it?
[37b] Socrates: In the enjoying also of any pleasure, whether we do right or wrong to enjoy it, it is certain that the reality of the enjoyment still remains.
[37b] Protarchus: To be sure, these things are so.
[37b] Socrates: On what account is it, then, that we are used to call some opinions true, and others false; yet to pleasures only we allow the attribute of true; notwithstanding that pleasure and opinion, both of them, equally admit reality in the having of them?
[37c] Protarchus: This ought to be considered.
[37c] Socrates: Is it that falsehood and truth are incident to opinion? so that, by the supervening of one or other of these, opinion becomes something beside what in itself it is; and every opinion is thus made to have the quality of being either false or true. Do you say that this ought to be considered?
[37c] Protarchus: I do.
[37c] Socrates: And beside this: supposing that opinions universally do admit of attributes and qualities; whether only pleasure and pain are what they are in themselves simply, and never admit any quality to arise in them; ought we not to settle this point also by agreement between us?
[37c] Protarchus: It is evident that we ought.
[37d] Socrates: But it is easy enough to perceive, that these also admit the accession of some qualities. For of pleasures and pains we agreed awhile since, that some are great, others little; and that each sort admits of vehemence and of intension.
[37d] Protarchus: Very true.
[37d] Socrates: And if either to any pleasure, or to any opinion, there be added the quality of evil, shall we not affirm the opinion thus to become evil, and the pleasure evil in the same manner?
[37d] Protarchus: Without doubt, O Socrates.
[37d] Socrates: And what, if rectitude, or the opposite to rectitude, accede to any of them, shall we not say, that the opinion is right, if rectitude be in it? and shall we not ascribe the same quality to pleasure, on the same supposition?
[37e] Protarchus: Of necessity we must.
[37e] Socrates: And if the object of our opinion be mistaken by us, must we not in such a case acknowledge that our opinion is erroneous, and not right; and that we are not right ourselves in entertaining such an opinion?
[37e] Protarchus: Certainly we must.
[37e] Socrates: But what, if we discover ourselves to be mistaken in the object of our grief or of our pleasure, shall we give to this grief, or to this pleasure, the epithet of right, or good, or any other which is fair and honourable?
[37e] Protarchus: We certainly cannot, where a mistake is in the pleasure.
[37e] Socrates: And surely pleasure is apt to arise in us oftentimes, accompanied, not with a right opinion, but with an opinion which is false.
[37e] Protarchus: Indisputably so. And the opinion, O Socrates, then and in that case, we should say was a false opinion. But to the pleasure itself no man would ever give the appellation of false.
[38a] Socrates: You are very ready, O Protarchus, at supporting the plea made use of by Pleasure on this occasion.
[38a] Protarchus: Not at all so. I only repeat what I have heard.
[38a] Socrates: Do we make no difference, my friend, between such a pleasure as comes accompanied with right opinion or with science, and that kind of pleasure which often arises in every one of us at the same time with false opinion or ignorance⁷⁰?
[38b] Protarchus: It is probable, I own, that no little difference is between them.
[38b] Socrates: Let us now come to the consideration of what the difference is.
[38b] Protarchus: Proceed in whatever way you think proper.
[38b] Socrates: I shall take this way then.
[38b] Protarchus: What way?
[38b] Socrates: Some of our opinions are false, and others of them are true: this is agreed.
[38b] Protarchus: It is.
[38b] Socrates: Pleasure and pain, as it was just now said, oftentimes attend on either of them indifferently; on opinions, I mean, either true or false.
[38c] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[38c] Socrates: Is it not from memory and from sense that opinion is produced in us, and that room is given for a diversity of opinions on every subject?
[38c] Protarchus: Most undoubtedly.
[38c] Socrates: I ask you, then, whether or no, as to these things, we deem ourselves to be of necessity affected thus?
[38c] Protarchus: How?
[38c] Socrates: Oftentimes, when a man looks at something which he discovers at a great distance, but does not discern very clearly, will you admit that he may have an inclination to judge of what he sees?
[38c] Protarchus: I do admit the case.
[38c] Socrates: Upon this, would not the man question himself in this manner?
[38d] Protarchus: In what manner?
[38d] Socrates: What is that which appears as if it was standing under some tree by the cliff there? Do you not suppose that he would speak those words to himself, looking at some such appearances before him, as I have mentioned?
[38d] Protarchus: No doubt of it.
[38d] Socrates: Hereupon, might not this man then, making a conjecture, say to himself, by way of answer,—It is a man?
[38d] Protarchus: Certainly.
[38d] Socrates: But walking on, perhaps he might discern it to be but the work of some shepherds, and would say again to himself,—It is only a statue.
[38d] Protarchus: Most certainly he would.
[38e] Socrates: And if he had any companion with him, he would speak out aloud what he had first spoken within himself, and repeat the very same words to his companion: so that what we lately termed an opinion would thus become a speech.
[38e] Protarchus: Very true.
[38e] Socrates: But if he were alone, this very thing would be a thought still within him; and he might walk on, keeping the same thought in his mind, a considerable way.
[38e] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[38e] Socrates: Well now: does this matter appear to you in the same light as it does to me?
[38e] Protarchus: How is that?
[38e] Socrates: The soul in that case seems to me to resemble some book.
[38e] Protarchus: How so?
[38e] Socrates: The memory, coinciding [39a] with the senses, together with those passions of the soul which attend this memory and the present sensation, seem to me as if they concurred in writing sentences at that time within our souls. And when the scribe writes what is true, true opinions and true sentences are by him produced within us: but when our scribe writes what is false, then what we think, and what we say to ourselves, is contrary to the truth.
[39b] Protarchus: I heartily agree to your account of this matter, and acknowledge those joint scribes within the soul.
[39b] Socrates: Acknowledge also another workman within us, operating at that time.
[39b] Protarchus: What is he?
[39b] Socrates: An engraver, who follows after the scribe; engraving within the soul images of those thoughts, sentences, and sayings.
[39b] Protarchus: How and when is this done?
[39b] Socrates: It is, when that which a man thinks and says to himself, concerning the object of his sight, or of any other outward sense, he separates from the sensation which he has of it; and views somehow within himself the image of that thought, and of that saying. Or is there no such thing as this ever produced within us?
[39c] Protarchus: Nothing is more certain.
[39c] Socrates: The images of true thoughts and true sentences, are they not true? and the images of those which are false, are they not themselves also false?
[39c] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[39c] Socrates: Now if we have pronounced thus far rightly, let us proceed to the consideration of one point further.
[39c] Protarchus: What is that?
[39c] Socrates: Whether all the operations of this kind, such as are naturally performed within our souls, regard only things present and things past, but not things to come; or whether any of them have a reference to these also.
[39d] Protarchus: Difference of time makes no difference in these matters.
[39d] Socrates: Did we not say before, that pleasures and pains of the soul, by herself, arise in us prior to those pleasures and pains which affect the body? so as that we feel antecedent joy and grief in the prospect of things to come hereafter.
[39d] Protarchus: Very true.
[39d] Socrates: Those writings, then, and those engravings, which, as we held just now, are performed within us, do they respect the past and the present time only? and have they no concernment with the future?
[39e] Protarchus: About the future very much are they concerned, and chiefly.
[39e] Socrates: In saying this, do you mean that all these things are expectations of the future; and that we are, all of us, throughout life, full of expectations?
[39e] Protarchus: The very thing I mean.
[39e] Socrates: Now, then, since we are thus far agreed, answer to this further question.
[39e] Protarchus: What is it?
[39e] Socrates: A man who is just, and pious, and entirely good, is he not beloved by Divinity?
[39e] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[40a] Socrates: And what of the unjust and entirely bad man? is not the reverse of it true of him?
[40a] Protarchus: How can it be otherwise?
[40a] Socrates: Now every man, as we said just now, is full of a multitude of expectations.
[40a] Protarchus: True.
[40a] Socrates: Sayings there are, written within every one of us, to which we give the name of expectations.
[40a] Protarchus: There are.
[40a] Socrates: And phantasies also, engraven in us. Thus, for instance, a man often sees in imagination plenty of money flowing into him, and by those means many pleasures surrounding him; and views himself, engraven within himself, as highly delighted.
[40b] Protarchus: That often is the case.
[40b] Socrates: Of these engravings, shall we say that good men, because of the divine favour, have generally those which are true; and bad men, generally those of the contrary sort? or shall we deny it?
[40b] Protarchus: It cannot be denied.
[40b] Socrates: Bad men, then, have pleasures engraven within them also; but these are of the false sort.
[40c] Protarchus: No doubt of it.
[40c] Socrates: Wicked men, therefore, delight mostly in false pleasures; the good, in pleasures which are true.
[40c] Protarchus: It must of necessity be so.
[40c] Socrates: According to this account, there are, in the souls of men, such pleasures as are false; though in a most ridiculous manner they imitate, and would fain pass for, true pleasures: pains also there are with the like qualities.
[40c] Protarchus: Such pleasures and such pains there are.
[40c] Socrates: May not a man who indulges fancy at random, and embraces opinions of any kind whatever, always really⁷¹ think and believe some things to be, which neither are nor ever were, and sometimes such as never will be?
[40c] Protarchus: Certainly.
[40c] Socrates: And they are the false semblances and seemings of these unreal things, which produce in him those false opinions, and occasion him to think thus falsely. Are they not?
[40d] Protarchus: They are.
[40d] Socrates: Well then: should we not say of the pains and pleasures felt by those bad men, that their condition corresponds with the case of false opinions?
[40d] Protarchus: How do you mean?
[40d] Socrates: May not a man who courts and embraces pleasure at random, pleasure in general, of any kind whatever, may not such a man always really feel delight from things which are not, and sometimes from things which never were,—often too, and perhaps the most frequently, from things which will never be?
[40e] Protarchus: This must of necessity be granted.
[40e] Socrates: Should not the same be said of fears and desires, and all things of the like sort, that these also are sometimes false?
[40e] Protarchus: Certainly.
[40e] Socrates: Well now: can we say of opinions, that they are bad, or that they are good, any otherwise than as they prove to be false, or prove to be true⁷²?
[41a] Protarchus: No otherwise.
[41a] Socrates: And I should think, that pleasures too we apprehend not to be bad on any other account, than as they are false.
[41a] Protarchus: Quite the contrary, O Socrates. For hardly would any man put to the account of falsehood any of the evils brought on by pain and pleasure; since many and great evils accede to them from other quarters.
[41a] Socrates: Pleasures which are evil, through the evil they occasion, we shall speak of by and by, if we shall continue to think it requisite: but we are now to speak of a multitude of pleasures felt by us, and frequently arising in us,—pleasures which are false in yet another way. And this other way of considering pleasure we shall have occasion, perhaps, to make use of in forming a right judgment of the several sorts of it.
[41b] Protarchus: By all means let us speak of these, if any such pleasures there are.
[41b] Socrates: And there are such, O Protarchus, in my opinion. But as long as this opinion lies by us unexamined, it is impossible for it to become certain or incontestable.
[41b] Protarchus: Fairly said.
[41b] Socrates: Now, therefore, let us advance to this other argument, like champions to the combat.
[41b] Protarchus: Come we on then.
[41c] Socrates: We said, if we remember, a little while since, that as long as the wants of the body, which are called desires in us, remain unsatisfied, the body all that time will be affected distinctly, and in a different manner from the soul.
[41c] Protarchus: We remember that it was so held.
[41c] Socrates: In such a case, that within us, which desired, would be the soul, desiring to have her body in a state contrary to its present condition; and that which felt uneasiness or pain from the condition it was in, would be the body.
[41c] Protarchus: Things would be thus with us.
[41c] Socrates: Now compute these things together, and consider the amount.
[41c] Protarchus: Say what.
[41c] Socrates: In such a case, it comes out that pains and pleasures are placed together, each by the other’s side; and that together, each by the other’s side, arise in us a feeling of emptiness, and a desire of its contrary, fulness: for so it has just now appeared.
[41d] Protarchus: It is indeed apparent.
[41d] Socrates: Has not this also been said? and does it not remain with us a point settled between us by agreement?
[41d] Protarchus: What?
[41d] Socrates: That pain and pleasure, both of them, admit of the more and of the less; and that they both are of the infinites.
[41d] Protarchus: It was so said and agreed.
[41d] Socrates: Is there not, then, some way in which we may judge of pain and pleasure rightly?
[41d] Protarchus: What way, and how do you mean?
[41d] Socrates: In judging of them, are we not wont, in every case, readily to try them by these marks,—which of them is the greater, and which is the less,— which of them hath the nature of its kind the most,—and which is more intense than the other,—in comparing either a pain with a pleasure, or one pain with another pain, or one pleasure with another pleasure?
[41e] Protarchus: Such comparisons are often made: and from these comparisons we are wont to form our judgment and our choice.
[42a] Socrates: Well now: in the case of magnitudes, does not the distance of visible objects, some of which are seen remote, and others near, render their real magnitudes uncertain, obscuring the truth of things, and producing false opinions? and does not the same thing hold true with regard to pains and pleasures? is not the same effect produced by the same means in this case also?
[42a] Protarchus: Much more feelingly, O Socrates.
[42a] Socrates: But in this case it happens contrary to what was in the case mentioned a little before.
[42a] Protarchus: What happens, say you?
[42a] Socrates: In that case, the true and the false opinions entertained by us impart to the pains and pleasures which attend them, their own qualities of truth and falsehood.
[42b] Protarchus: Very right.
[42b] Socrates: But, in the case which I am now speaking of, the pains and pleasures being viewed afar off and near, continually changing [their aspects with their distances], and being set in comparison together, [it happens that] the pleasures [at hand] compared with the [remote] pains, appear greater and more intense [than they really are], and [that] the pains, compared with the pleasures, [have an appearance] quite the contrary.
[42b] Protarchus: Such appearances must of necessity arise by these means.
[42b] Socrates: As far, therefore, as the pains and pleasures appear less or greater than they really are, if from the reality you separate this appearance of what neither of them is, and take it by itself thus separated, you will not say that it is a right appearance; nor will you venture to assert, that this additional part of pain and pleasure is right and true.
[42c] Protarchus: By no means.
[42c] Socrates: After these discoveries, let us look if we can meet with pleasures and pains still falser, and more remote from truth, than those already mentioned, which are not only in appearance what they are called, but are felt also by the soul.
[42c] Protarchus: What pleasures and pains do you speak of?
[42c] Socrates: We have more than once said, that when the frame of any animal is on its way to dissolution, through mixtures and separations, repletions and evacuations, the increase of some, and the diminution of other parts of it, that in such a condition of its body, pains, aches, and oppressions, with many other uneasy feelings, to which are given various names, are wont to arise in us.
[42d] Protarchus: True: this observation has been again and again repeated.
[42d] Socrates: And that, when all things in our bodily frame return to their natural and sound state, together with this recovery, we receive some pleasure from within ourselves.
[42d] Protarchus: Right.
[42d] Socrates: But how is it when none of these changes are operating in our bodies?
[42d] Protarchus: At what times, O Socrates, may this be?
[42e] Socrates: The question, O Protarchus, which you have now put to me is nothing to the purpose.
[42e] Protarchus: Why not?
[42e] Socrates: Because it will not hinder me from putting again my question to you.
[42e] Protarchus: Repeat it then.
[42e] Socrates: I shall put it thus: If at any time none of those things were passing within us, what condition should we of necessity be in, as to pleasure and pain, at such a time?
[42e] Protarchus: When no motion was in the body either way, do you mean?
[42e] Socrates: Exactly so.
[42e] Protarchus: It is plain, O Socrates, that we should feel neither any pleasure nor any pain at such a time.
[43a] Socrates: Perfectly well answered. But now in your question I suppose you meant this,—that some or other of those things were of necessity passing within us continually at all times; agreeably to this saying of the wise,— “that all things are in perpetual flow, going upward and downward.”
[43a] Protarchus: So they tell us: and this saying of theirs is, methinks, worthy of regard.
[43a] Socrates: Undoubtedly it is: for it is said by men who are worthy, themselves, to be regarded. But this subject, which we have thus lighted on, I would willingly decline. Now I have it in my thoughts to avoid it this way; but you must accompany me.
[43b] Protarchus: What way?
[43b] Socrates: Be it so, then, let us say to these wise men: but you, Protarchus, answer me to this question: Do animals feel all the alterations which they continually undergo? or, whilst we are growing, or suffering in any part of our bodies any other change, are we sensible of these internal motions? Is not quite the contrary true? for almost every thing of this kind passing within us passes without our knowledge.
[43b] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[43b] Socrates: It was, therefore, not right in us to say, as we did just now, that all the alterations which happen to our bodies, and all the motions within them, produce either pains or pleasures.
[43c] Protarchus: Certainly not right.
[43c] Socrates: And it would be better, and less liable to censure, to lay down this position.
[43c] Protarchus: What position?
[43c] Socrates: That great changes within give us pains and pleasures; but that such as are inconsiderable, or only moderate, produce neither pleasures nor pains.
[43c] Protarchus: This is more justly said than the other sentence, indeed, Socrates.
[43c] Socrates: If, then, these things are so, we meet with the life mentioned before recurring to us here again.
[43c] Protarchus: What life?
[43c] Socrates: That which is exempt from all sensations, both of pain and pleasure.
[43c] Protarchus: Very true.
[43c] Socrates: Hence, we find there are three kinds of life proposed to our consideration: one of them full of pleasure, another full of pain; the third neutral, and free from both. Or how otherwise would you determine upon these points?
[43d] Protarchus: No otherwise I, for my part: for three different kinds of life appear to me in what has been said.
[43d] Socrates: To have no pain, therefore, cannot be the same thing as to have pleasure.
[43d] Protarchus: Certainly it cannot.
[43d] Socrates: But whenever you hear a man say, that it is the most pleasurable of all things to live all one’s life free from pain, what do you take to be his thought and meaning?
[43d] Protarchus: He means and thinks, as I take it, that it is a pleasure not to have any pain.
[43e] Socrates: Well now: let there be any three things whatever: to instance in things of honourable name, let us suppose one of them to be gold, another to be silver, and the third to be neither gold nor silver.
[43e] Protarchus: We shall suppose so.
[43e] Socrates: That which is neither, is it possible for it any way to become either gold or silver?
[43e] Protarchus: By no means.
[43e] Socrates: The middle life, therefore, if it were said to be pleasurable, or if it were said to be painful, would not be spoken of in either way, rightly and agreeably to the true nature of things; nor would any person who entertains either of those opinions concerning it think rightly.
[43e] Protarchus: Certainly not.
[44a] Socrates: And yet, my friend, we find that there are persons who actually speak and think thus amiss.
[44a] Protarchus: It is very evident.
[44a] Socrates: Do these persons really feel pleasure⁷³ whenever they are free from pain?
[44a] Protarchus: So they say.
[44a] Socrates: They must imagine, then, that they are pleased; for otherwise they would not say so.
[44a] Protarchus: They do, it seems, imagine it.
[44a] Socrates: They have a wrong opinion then of pleasure; if it be true that pleasure, and freedom from pain, have each a distinct nature, different from that of the other.
[44a] Protarchus: Different, indeed, we have concluded them to be.
[44b] Socrates: And are we willing to abide by our late conclusion, that the subjects still under examination are three distinct things? or do we choose to say that they are only two? Do we now say that pain is man’s evil, and that deliverance from pain is man’s good, and is that to which is given the appellation of pleasure?
[44b] Protarchus: How come we, O Socrates, to propose this point to be reconsidered by us now? for I do not apprehend your drift.
[44b] Socrates: In fact, O Protarchus, you do not apprehend who are the direct enemies to Philebus.
[44b] Protarchus: To whom do you give that character?
[44b] Socrates: To persons who are said to have a profound knowledge of nature: these persons say that pleasures have no reality at all.
[44b] Protarchus: What do they mean?
[44b] Socrates: They say that all those things which Philebus and his party call pleasures are but deliverances from pain.
[44c] Protarchus: Is it your advice, then, O Socrates, that we should hearken to these persons? or how otherwise?
[44d] Socrates: Not so: but to consider them as a kind of diviners, who divine not according to any rules of art; but, from the austerity of a certain genius in them not ignoble, have conceived an aversion to the power of Pleasure, and deem nothing in her to be solid; but all her attractive charms to be mere illusions, and not [true] pleasure. It is thus that we should regard these persons, especially if we consider their other harsh maxims. You shall in the next place hear what pleasures seem to me to be true pleasures: so that, from both the accounts compared together, we may find out the nature of Pleasure, and form our judgment of her comparative value.
[44d] Protarchus: Rightly said.
[44d] Socrates: Let us then follow after them, as our allies, wherever their austerity shall lead us. For I suppose they would begin their argument with some general principle, and propound to us some such question as this,— whether, if we had a mind to know the nature of any particular quality of things, for instance, the nature of the hard, whether or no we should not comprehend it better by examining the hardest things, than we should by scrutinizing a various multitude of the less hard. Now, Protarchus, you must make an answer to these austere persons, as if you were making it to me.
[44e] Protarchus: By all means: and I make this answer to them,—that to examine such bodies as exceed all others in hardness is the better way.
[45a] Socrates: In like manner, then, if we had a mind to know the nature of pleasure in general, we are not to consider the multitude of little or mean pleasures, but those only which are called extreme and exquisite.
[45a] Protarchus: Every man would grant you the truth of this your present argument.
[45a] Socrates: The pleasures which are always within our reach, those which we often call the greatest, do they not belong to the body?
[45a] Protarchus: There is no doubt of it.
[45b] Socrates: Are the [bodily] pleasures which are produced in those persons who labour under diseases, greater than the pleasures [of the same kind] felt by those who are in health? Now let us take care not to err, by making too precipitate an answer.
[45b] Protarchus: What danger is there of erring?
[45b] Socrates: Perhaps we might pronounce in favour of those who are in health.
[45b] Protarchus: Probably we should.
[45b] Socrates: But what? are not those pleasures the most excessive which are preceded by the strongest desires?
[45b] Protarchus: This cannot be denied.
[45b] Socrates: The afflicted with fevers, or with diseases of kin to fevers, are they not more thirsty than other persons? do they not more shake with cold? and suffer they not in a greater degree other evils which the body is subject to? Do they not feel their wants more pressing? and feel they not greater pleasures when they have those wants supplied⁷⁴? Or shall we deny all this to be true?
[45c] Protarchus: Your representation of those cases clearly is right.
[45d] Socrates: Well then: should we not be clearly right in saying, that whoever would know what pleasures are the greatest must not go to the healthy, but to the sick, to look for them? Be careful now not to imagine the meaning of my question to be this,—whether the sick enjoy pleasures more, in number, than the healthy: but consider me as inquiring into high degrees of pleasure; and by what means, and in what subjects, the vehemence or extreme of it always is produced. For we are to find out, we say, what the nature is of pleasure, and what those persons mean by pleasure who pretend that no such thing as pleasure has any being at all.
[45d] Protarchus: Tolerably well do I apprehend your argument.
[45d] Socrates: And possibly, O Protarchus, you will equally well show the truth of it. For, tell me; in a life of boundless luxury see you not greater pleasures (I do not mean more in number, but more intense and vehement,) than those in the life of temperance? Give your mind to the question first, and then answer.
[45d] Protarchus: I apprehend what you say: and the great superiority of the pleasures enjoyed in a luxurious life I easily discern. For sober and temperate persons are on all occasions under the restraint of that maxim, now become a proverb, which advises them to avoid the too much of any thing; to which advice they are obedient. But an excess of pleasure, even to madness, possessing the souls of the unwise and intemperate, as it makes them frantic, it makes them conspicuous, and famed for being men of pleasure.
[45e] Socrates: Well said. If this, then, be the case, it is evident that the greatest pleasures, as well as the greatest pains, are produced in a morbid and vicious disposition of the soul or of the body; and not when they are in their sound and right state.
[45e] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[45e] Socrates: Ought we not then to instance in some of these pleasures, and to consider what circumstances attend them on account of which it is that they are styled the greatest?
[46a] Protarchus: That must be done.
[46a] Socrates: Consider now what circumstance attends the pleasures which are produced in certain maladies.
[46a] Protarchus: In what maladies?
[46a] Socrates: In those of the base or indecent kind;—pleasures, to which the persons whom we termed austere have an utter aversion.
[46b] Protarchus: What pleasures do you mean?
[46b] Socrates: Those which are felt in curing the itch, for instance, by friction; and in other maladies of like kind, such as need no other medicine.
[46b] Now the sensation thence arising in us, in the name of the Gods, what shall we say of it? Pleasure is it? or shall we term it pain?
[46c] Protarchus: A mixt sort of sensation, O Socrates, seems to arise from this malady, partaking of both pain and pleasure.
[46c] Socrates: It was not, however, for the sake of Philebus that I brought this last subject into our discourse: it was because we should never be able to determine the point now before us, unless we had taken a view of these mixt pleasures, and of others also which depend on these. Let us proceed, therefore, to consider such as have an affinity with them.
[46c] Protarchus: Such, do you mean, as partake of pleasure and pain by means of their commixture?
[46c] Socrates: That is my very meaning. Of these mixt feelings, then, some belong to the body; and in the body are these generated. Others are of the soul; and these have in the soul their residence. We shall find also pleasures mingled with pains, where the soul and the body have, each of them, a share. Now these mixtures [though composed of contraries] are, in some cases, termed only pleasures; in other cases, only pains.
[46d] Protarchus: Express yourself more fully.
[46d] Socrates: When a man, whether in a sound or in a decaying state of his body, feels two contrary sensations at the same time; as when, chilled with cold, he is warming himself; or sometimes, when overheated, he is cooling himself; with a view, I suppose, to his enjoying one of those sensations, and to his deliverance from the other: in such cases, what is called the bitter-sweet, through the difficulty met with in driving away the bitter part, causeth a struggle within, and a fierce meeting together of opposite qualities and sensations.
[46e] Protarchus: It is perfectly true, what you have now said.
[46e] Socrates: Are not some of these mixt sensations composed of pain and pleasure in equal proportion? and in others is not one of them predominant?
[46e] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[46e] Socrates: Among those, then, in which there is an overplus of pain, I reckon that of the malady termed the itch, and all other pruriencies and itchings, when nothing more than a slight friction or motion is applied to them, such as only dissipates what humours are at the surface, but reaches not the fermentation and turgescence of those humours which lie deep within. In this condition, the diseased often apply heat to the parts which pain them, and then the opposite extreme, through impatience, and uncertainty which way to take. Thus they excite inexpressible pleasures first, and then the contrary, in the interior parts, compared with the pains felt in the exterior, which yet are mixed with pleasures, according as the humours are driven outwardly or inwardly. For by violently dispersing the morbific matter where it is collected, and by compelling it together from places where it lies dispersed, pleasures and pains are at once excited, and arise by each other’s side.
[46e] Protarchus: Most true.
[47a] Socrates: Now wherever, in any case of this kind, a greater quantity of pleasure is mingled, the smaller quantity of pain creates but a slight uneasiness, no more than what serves to tickle: whilst, on the other hand⁷⁵, the great excess of pleasure spread throughout convulseth the whole frame, and sometimes causeth involuntary motions; operating also every change of colour in the countenance, every variety of posture in the limbs, and every different degree of respiration;—and within the soul it energizes in transports, uttered madly in exclamations.
[47a] Protarchus: Entirely so.
[47a] Socrates: Further: a man in such a condition, O my friend! is apt to say of himself, and others are apt to say of him, that he is dying, as it were, through excess of pleasure. From this time for ever after he is wholly intent on pursuing the like pleasures; and the more so, the more he happens to be intemperate, and less under the government of prudence. Thus he calls these pleasures the greatest, and accounts him the happiest of men who spends his whole time, as far as possible, in the enjoyment of them.
[47b] Protarchus: You have described [47c] all this, O Socrates, just as it happens to the bulk of mankind, according to their own sense and opinion.
[47d] Socrates: But all this, O Protarchus, relates only to such pleasures mixed with pains as arise solely in the body, in its superficial parts and interior parts alternately. And as to those feelings of the soul which meet with a contrary condition of the body, when pleasure in the one is mixed with pain in the other, so as that both are ingredients in one composition, we spake of those before; such as a desire of fulness, under a sense of emptiness in the body; when hope administers delight, while the emptiness gives a pain. We did not, indeed, consider them at that time as evidences of the present point; but we now say, that in all those cases (and the number of them is infinite) where the condition of the soul is different from that of the body, a mixture of pain and pleasure happens to be produced.
[47d] Protarchus: You are, I believe, perfectly in the right.
[47d] Socrates: Among the mixtures of pain and pleasure, there is a third kind remaining, yet unmentioned.
[47d] Protarchus: What kind is that?
[47d] Socrates: That where such pleasures and pains as we said arise frequently in the soul, herself by herself, are mixed together.
[47d] Protarchus: In what cases, say we, are these mixtures found?
[47e] Socrates: Anger, fear, and desire, and lamentation, love, emulation, and envy, and all other such passions of the soul herself, do you not suppose them to give pain and uneasiness to the soul?
[47e] Protarchus: I do.
[48a] Socrates: And shall we not find these very passions fraught with wondrous pleasures? In the passions of resentment and anger, do we need to be reminded of what the poet says⁷⁶,—that
[48a] — though resentment raise
Choler, like smoke, in even the prudent breast;
The luscious honey from its waxen seat
Distills not half such sweetness.
[48a] And do we not remember, in lamentations and desires, the pleasures we have felt mingled with the pains which those passions produce?
[48a] Protarchus: It is true: our passions do affect us in the manner you have mentioned, and no otherwise.
[48a] Socrates: And have you not observed, at tragic spectacles presented on the stage, with how much pleasure the spectators shed tears?
[48a] Protarchus: I certainly have.
[48a] Socrates: But have you attended to the disposition of your soul at the acting of a comedy? Do you know that there also we feel pain mixed with pleasure?
[48a] Protarchus: I do not perfectly well comprehend that.
[48a] Socrates: It is not perfectly easy, O Protarchus, at such a time, to comprehend what mixed passions possess the soul in every case of that kind.
[48b] Protarchus: Not at all easy, I believe.
[48b] Socrates: However, let us consider what our feelings are at that time; and the more attentively, on account of their obscurity; that we may be able to discover with the greater ease what mixture there is of pain and pleasure in other cases.
[48b] Protarchus: Say on, then.
[48b] Socrates: The passion known by the name of envy, will you set it down for a sort of pain in the soul, or how?
[48b] Protarchus: Even so.
[48b] Socrates: And yet the man who envies another will plainly appear to be delighted with the evils which befall him.
[48c] Protarchus: Clearly so.
[48c] Socrates: Now ignorance is an evil; and so is what we term want of sense.
[48c] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[48c] Socrates: From these premises you may perceive what is the nature of ridicule and the ridiculous.
[48c] Protarchus: You must tell me what it is.
[48c] Socrates: Every particular vice takes its name from some particular bad habit in the soul. But total viciousness, the habit of wickedness in all respects, is the direct contrary of that habit which the Delphic inscription adviseth us to acquire.
[48c] Protarchus: That of knowing one’s self do you mean, O Socrates?
[48d] Socrates: I do. And the contrary to this advice of the oracle would be,—not to know one’s self in any respect at all.
[48d] Protarchus: Certainly it would.
[48d] Socrates: Try now to divide this ignorance of ourselves into three kinds.
[48d] Protarchus: How, say you, should this be done? for I am not able to do it.
[48d] Socrates: Do you say that I should make this division in your stead?
[48d] Protarchus: I not only say it, but desire you so to do.
[48d] Socrates: Well then: whoever is ignorant of himself, must he not be thus ignorant, in one or other of these three respects?
[48e] Protarchus: What three?
[48e] Socrates: First, with respect to external possessions, in imagining himself wealthier than he really is.
[48e] Protarchus: Many persons there are who labour under this sort of ignorance.
[48e] Socrates: Yet more numerous are they, in the next place, who imagine themselves handsomer in their persons, nobler in their air, or graced with some other corporeal advantage in a higher degree than actually they are.
[48e] Protarchus: Very true.
[48e] Socrates: But the number is by far the greatest, I presume, of such as are mistaken in themselves, with respect to the third kind of excellence, that which belongs to the soul, by fancying themselves possessed of more virtue than in truth they have.
[49a] Protarchus: Nothing is more certain.
[49a] Socrates: Among the virtues and excellencies of the soul, is not wisdom that to which the generality of mankind lay claim with the greatest earnestness, and in regard to which they are full of contention, opinionativeness, and false notions?
[49a] Protarchus: Evidently so.
[49a] Socrates: Now the man who should say that ignorance and error, in any of these respects, were evils, would say what is true.
[49a] Protarchus: Very right.
[49a] Socrates: But we are to make still another division of this ignorance of a man’s self, O Protarchus, if we would discover the odd mixture of pain and pleasure in that mirthful envy which is excited by comedy,—a division into two sorts.
[49b] Protarchus: Into what two sorts do you mean?
[49b] Socrates: To those persons who foolishly entertain any such false opinion of themselves it necessarily happens, as it does to all men in general, that strength and power attend on some; while the fate of others is quite the contrary.
[49b] Protarchus: It must be so.
[49b] Socrates: According to this difference then between them, distinguish those ignorant persons into two sorts. [49c] And all those whose self-ignorance is attended with weakness, and with a want of power to be revenged on such as laugh at them, you may justly say that they are open to ridicule, and may call their characters properly ridiculous. But as to the others, who have power to take their revenge, if you should say that these are to be dreaded, as being powerful and hostile, you would give a very right account of them. For such ignorance, armed with power, is powerful to do mischief; and not only itself is hostile and hurtful to all persons within its reach, but so likewise are all its images and representatives. But self-ignorance, without strength and power, is to be ranked among the things which are ridiculous, and is a proper object of ridicule.
[49c] Protarchus: There is much of truth in what you say. But I do not as yet perceive clearly what mixture there is of pain and pleasure in our feelings on such occasions.
[49c] Socrates: You are, in the first place, to apprehend the force of envy in these cases.
[49c] Protarchus: Show it me then.
[49d] Socrates: Is not sorrow, on some occasions, felt unjustly? and is it not the same case with joy and pleasure?
[49d] Protarchus: No doubt can be made of it.
[49d] Socrates: There is neither injustice, nor envy, in rejoicing at the evils which befall our enemies.
[49d] Protarchus: Certainly there is not.
[49d] Socrates: But if at any time, when we see an evil happening to our friends, we feel no sorrow,—if, on the contrary, we rejoice at it,—are we not guilty of injustice?
[49d] Protarchus: Without dispute.
[49d] Socrates: Did we not say that it was an evil to any person to be ignorant of himself?
[49e] Protarchus: We did, and justly too.
[49e] Socrates: If there be in any of our friends a false conceit of their own wisdom, or of their own beauty, or of whatever else we mentioned, when we divided ignorance of one’s self into three kinds, is not this conceit an object of ridicule, where it is attended with impotence and weakness; but an object of hatred, if power and strength⁷⁷ are joined with it? or do we deny, what I just now said, that the having of such a false opinion, if it be not hurtful to others, is an object of ridicule?
[49e] Protarchus: You said what is entirely true.
[50a] Socrates: And do we not acknowledge this false conceit to be an evil, as being built on ignorance?
[50a] Protarchus: Most heartily.
[50a] Socrates: Whether do we feel delight or sorrow when we laugh at it?
[50a] Protarchus: It is plain that we feel delight.
[50a] Socrates: Did we not say, that whenever we feel delight from the evils which happen to our friends, it is envy which operates in us that unjust delight?
[50a] Protarchus: It must be envy.
[50a] Socrates: Our reasoning then shows, that when we laugh at what is ridiculous in a friend, mixing thus delight with envy, we mix together pleasure and pain. For we acknowledged long ago that envy gives uneasiness and pain to the soul; and we have admitted, that laughing yields delight. Now in these cases they arise, both of them, at the same time.
[50a] Protarchus: True.
[50a] Socrates: We see, then, from the conclusion of our argument, that in mournful spectacles, and no less in comedies, not only as they are acted on the stage, but as they are presented to us also in the tragedy and comedy of real life, and in a thousand intermediate occurrences, pains and pleasures are blended together.
[50b] Protarchus: It would be impossible, O Socrates, for a man not to acknowledge this, were he ever so zealous an advocate for the opposite side.
[50b] Socrates: When we entered on the present subject, we proposed to consider anger, desire and grief, fear and love, jealousy and envy, and such other passions of the soul; promising ourselves to find in them those mixed feelings which again and again we had been speaking of: did we not?
[50c] Protarchus: We did.
[50c] Socrates: Do we perceive that we have dispatched already all which relates to grief, and envy, and anger?
[50c] Protarchus: We perceive it clearly.
[50c] Socrates: But there is much yet remaining.
[50c] Protarchus: Very true.
[50c] Socrates: For what reason, principally, do you suppose it was that I explained to you the mixed feeling which a comedy occasions in us? [50d] Do you not conceive, that it was to show myself able to explain to you with much more ease, the like mixture of pain and pleasure in fear, in love, and in the other passions? and that after you had seen the truth of it in one instance, you might discharge me from the necessity of proceeding to the rest, or of lengthening out the argument any further; but might receive it for a truth, without limitation or exception, that the body without the soul, and the soul without the body, and both together likewise, are, in many things, which affect them severally or jointly, full of a sense of pleasures mingled with pains. Say, then, whether you will dismiss me, or make it midnight before we finish. But I imagine that, after I shall have added a few things more, I shall obtain from you my dismission: for I shall be ready to give you an account of all these things at large tomorrow; but at present am desirous of proceeding to what remains on this subject; that we may come to a decision of the point in controversy, as Philebus hath enjoined us.
[50e] Protarchus: You have well spoken, O Socrates; and as to what remains, go through with it in whatever way it is agreeable to yourself.
[50e] Socrates: Well then: after the mixed pleasures we are to proceed, by a kind of natural necessity, to the several pleasures which are unmixed and pure.
[50e] Protarchus: Perfectly well said.
[51a] Socrates: The nature of these I shall endeavour to explain to you, by converting to my own use, with a little alteration, what is said of them by others. For I do not entirely give credit to those persons who tell us, that all pleasure consists in a cessation from uneasiness and pain. But, as I said before, I make use of these persons as witnesses, in confirmation of this truth,—that some things there are which seem to be pleasures, but by no means are so in reality; and of this also,—that some other pleasures there are, many and great in imagination, accompanied with pains, but at the same time with relief from greater pains, amid the distresses of the body and of the soul.
[51b] Protarchus: But what pleasures are those, O Socrates, which a man would deem rightly of, in supposing them to be true?
[51b] Socrates: The pleasures⁷⁸ which are produced in us from seeing beauteous colours and beauteous figures; many pleasures also of the smell, and many others arising in us from the hearing of sounds; in a word, whatever pleasures we feel from perceiving the presence of any thing, whose absence we are insensible of, or at least occasions no pain in us, all these are unmixed and pure.
[51c] Protarchus: How do you explain this general account, O Socrates?
[51c] Socrates: The meaning of it, indeed, is not directly obvious: but we must endeavour to make it evident. I mean, then, by beauteous figures, not, as most men would suppose I meant, the beauty of living forms, or their statues; but the straight and the round, whether in surfaces⁷⁹, or in solids⁸⁰; according to which are fashioned the turner’s works, and those of the carpenter, by means of his rules and angles. For the figures which I mean, if you apprehend me, have no relative beauty, like those other beauteous forms⁸¹; but in their own nature, separately considered, are always absolutely beautiful; and the beholding of them gives us certain peculiar pleasures, not at all similar to the pleasures excited in us by any kind of motion. And as to colours, I mean such as bear the like stamp of absolute beauty⁸², and yield also pleasures of a peculiar nature. But do we apprehend these things? or what say we to them?
[51d] Protarchus: I endeavour, O Socrates, to comprehend your full meaning: but endeavour you yourself to explain thoroughly the whole of it.
[51d] Socrates: As to sounds, I mean such as are smooth, clear, and canorous, conveying some pure and simple melody⁸³, without relation to any other sounds, but singly of themselves musical: of such I speak, and of the connatural pleasures which attend them.
[51d] Protarchus: That such pleasures also there are, I readily acknowledge.
[51d] Socrates: The pleasures felt by us from certain odours are, indeed, of a kind less divine than the pleasures just now mentioned; but in respect of their being equally pure, and not, of necessity, mixed with pains, I rank them all under the same head. For in whatever pleasures there happens to be found this quality of entire freedom from pain, all these I oppose to those other pleasures with which pain is complicated. Now, if you observe, we have already spoken of two different kinds of pleasure.
[51e] Protarchus: I do observe.
[51e] Socrates: To these let us now add the pleasures taken in the mathematical sciences; unless we are of opinion that such pleasures are of necessity preceded by a thirst of learning them; and that, when tasted and enjoyed, they raise a thirst of more and more; so that, from our beginning to learn them, they are all along attended with uneasiness.
[52a] Protarchus: I think that such uneasiness is not at all necessary.
[52a] Socrates: Well: but suppose that, having attained to full possession of them, we happen afterwards to lose some part through forgetfulness, do you see no uneasiness arising hence?
[52a] Protarchus: None at all from the nature of the thing itself: but when the knowledge is wanted to be applied to some use in human life, then a man is uneasy at having lost it, on account of its usefulness.
[52b] Socrates: And we are at present, my friend, actually concerned about those feelings only which arise in us from the nature of the knowledge itself, without any regard to the usefulness of it in computing or measuring.
[52b] Protarchus: You are right then in saying, that, in mathematical knowledge, a forgetfulness frequently befalls us, without giving us any uneasiness.
[52b] Socrates: These pleasures, therefore, the pleasures of science, we must acknowledge to be unmixed with pains. But these pleasures belong not to the vulgar multitude, being enjoyed only by a very few.
[52b] Protarchus: All this must certainly be acknowledged.
[52c] Socrates: Now, then, that we have tolerably well distinguished between the pure pleasures and those which are rightly called impure, let us further add these distinctions between them,—that the vehement pleasures know not moderation nor measure; while those of the gentler kind admit of measure, and are moderate: and that greatness and intenseness, and the contrary qualities, the frequency also and the rareness of repetition, are attributes of such pleasures only as belong to the boundless genus,—to that which is perpetually varying in its quantities and motions through the body and through the soul,—while the pleasures to which the like variations never happen, belong to the contrary genus, and are allied to all things wherein symmetry is found.
[52d] Protarchus: Perfectly right, O Socrates.
[52d] Socrates: The pleasures, beside these assortments of them, are to be further distinguished thus.
[52d] Protarchus: How?
[52d] Socrates: We should consider whether the purity and the simplicity of pleasures serve to discover what true pleasure is: or whether the truth of pleasures may best be known from their intenseness, their multitude, their greatness and their abundance.
[52d] Protarchus: What is your view, Socrates, in proposing this to be considered?
[52e] Socrates: To omit nothing by which the nature of pleasure, and that of knowledge, may be set in the clearest light; and not to leave it undiscovered, whether or no some kinds of each of them are pure, while other kinds are impure; that thus, what is pure and simple in each being brought before us to be judged of, you and I, and all this company, may the more easily form a right judgment.
[52e] Protarchus: Very rightly said.
[52e] Socrates: Well then: all those kinds of things which we commonly say are pure, let us consider of in the following way: but first let us choose out some one among them for an instance to consider of.
[53a] Protarchus: Which would you have us choose?
[53a] Socrates: Among the principal of those kinds, let us, if you please, consider the white kind of things.
[53a] Protarchus: By all means.
[53a] Socrates: In what way, then, might we have any thing which is called white, with the most perfect and pure whiteness? whether by having the greatest number of things which are white, and the largest of the kind in size, or by having what is white in the highest degree, and not tinged with the least degree of any other colour?
[53b] Protarchus: Evidently, by having what is of the most simple and unmixed whiteness.
[53b] Socrates: Rightly said. Shall we not then determine that this pure white is the truest, and at the same time the most beautiful of all whites; and not that which is of the largest size, and whose number is the greatest?
[53b] Protarchus: Most certainly we shall.
[53b] Socrates: In pronouncing, then, that a little of purely white is whiter, and of a more beautiful and true whiteness, than a great quantity of the mixed white, we shall say what is entirely right.
[53c] Protarchus: Without the least doubt.
[53c] Socrates: Well then: I suppose we shall have no occasion to produce many such instances to prove the truth of our conclusion concerning pleasure; the instance already brought seems sufficient for us to perceive at once, that a little of pleasure, pure, and free from pain, is more pleasant, more true, and perfect, as well as more comely, than pleasure where pain is mingled, be there ever so much of it, or be it ever so vast and vehement.
[53c] Protarchus: By all means: the instance you gave in whiteness, is an argument from analogy, sufficient for the proof of it.
[53c] Socrates: But what think you now of this? Have we not heard it said concerning pleasure, that it is a thing always in generation, always produced anew, and having no stability of being, cannot properly be said to be at all? For some ingenious⁸⁴ persons there are who endeavour to show us, that such is the nature of pleasure; and we are much obliged to them for this their account of it.
[53d] Protarchus: Why so?
[53d] Socrates: I shall recount to you the whole of their reasoning on this point, my friend Protarchus, by putting a few questions to you.
[53d] Protarchus: Do so: and begin your questions.
[53d] Socrates: Are there not in nature two very different kinds of things: this, in itself alone complete; that, desirous always of the other?
[53d] Protarchus: How do you mean? and what things do you speak of?
[53d] Socrates: One of them is by nature always of high dignity and value; the other, falling far short of it, and always indigent.
[53d] Protarchus: Express yourself a little more clearly.
[53d] Socrates: Have we not seen some of the fair sex who excelled in beauty and in virtue? and have we not seen their lovers and admirers?
[53d] Protarchus: Often.
[53d] Socrates: Analogous then to these two different sorts of persons, see if you cannot discover two different kinds of things, to one or other of which different kinds belongs every thing, commonly said to have a being: the third be to the saviour⁸⁵.
[53e] Protarchus: Speak your meaning, O Socrates, in plainer terms.
[53e] Socrates: I mean nothing, O Protarchus, but what is very simple and easy to be seen. But our present argument is pleased to sport itself. However, it means no more than this,—that there is a kind of things which are always for the sake of some other; and there is also a kind of things for whose sake always is produced whatever hath any final cause of its production.
[53e] Protarchus: I find it difficult to understand your meaning, after your many explanations of it.
[54a] Socrates: Perhaps, young man, it will be understood better as we proceed in the reasoning on this subject.
[54a] Protarchus: I make no doubt of it.
[54a] Socrates: Let us now make another division of things into two different kinds.
[54a] Protarchus: What kinds are they?
[54a] Socrates: The generation⁸⁶ of all things is one kind of things; and the being of all is a different kind.
[54a] Protarchus: I admit your difference between being and generation.
[54a] Socrates: You are perfectly in the right. Now, whether of these two is for the sake of the other? Shall we say that generation is for the sake of being? or shall we say that being is for the sake of generation?
[54a] Protarchus: Whether or no that which is termed being, is what it is for the sake of generation, is this your present question?
[54a] Socrates: Apparently it is.
[54b] Protarchus: In the name of the Gods, how can you ask so strange a question?
[54b] Socrates: My meaning in that question, O Protarchus, is of such a kind as this other;—whether you would choose to say that ship-building is for the sake of shipping, rather than you would say that shipping is for the sake of ship-building: and all other things of like kind, O Protarchus, I include in the question which I ask you.
[54b] Protarchus: But for what reason, O Socrates, do you not give an answer to it yourself?
[54b] Socrates: I have no reason to refuse that office; do you but go along with me in my answer.
[54b] Protarchus: Certainly I shall.
[54c] Socrates: I say, then, that for the sake of generation, it is true, that medicines are composed; the instrumental parts, prepared by nature, and all the materials of it, provided: but that every act of generation is for the sake of some being; generation in every species, for the sake of some being belonging to that species; and universally, all generation, for the sake of universal being.
[54c] Protarchus: Most evidently so.
[54c] Socrates: If pleasure, then, be of such a nature as to be generated always anew, must not the generating of it be always for the sake only of some being?
[54c] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[54c] Socrates: Now that, for the sake of which is always generated whatever is generated for some end, must be in the rank of things which are good: and that which is generated for the sake of any other thing, must of necessity, my friend, be placed in a different rank of things.
[54d] Protarchus: Certainly it must.
[54d] Socrates: Shall we not be right, then, in placing pleasure in a rank of things different from that of good; if it be true, that pleasure has no stable being, but is always generated anew?
[54d] Protarchus: Perfectly right.
[54d] Socrates: Therefore, as I said in beginning this argumentation, we are much obliged to the persons who have given us this account of pleasure,—that the essence of it consists in being always generated anew, but that never has it any kind of being. For it is plain, that these persons would laugh at a man who asserted, that pleasure and good were the same thing.
[54e] Protarchus: Certainly they would.
[54e] Socrates: And these very persons would certainly laugh at those men, whereever they met with them, who place their chief good and end in generation.
[54e] Protarchus: How, and what sort of men do you mean?
[54e] Socrates: Such, as in freeing themselves from hunger, or thirst, or any of the uneasinesses from which they are freed by generation, are so highly delighted with the action of removing those uneasinesses, as to declare they would not choose to live without suffering thirst and hunger, nor without feeling all those other sensations which may be said to follow from such kinds of uneasiness.
[55a] Protarchus: Such, indeed, there are, who seem to be of that opinion.
[55a] Socrates: Would not all of us say that corruption was the contrary of generation?
[55a] Protarchus: It is impossible to think otherwise.
[55a] Socrates: Whoever, then, makes such a life his choice, must choose both corruption and generation, rather than that third kind of life, in which he might live with the clearest discernment of what is right and good, but without the feeling of either pain or pleasure.
[55a] Protarchus: Much absurdity, as it seems, O Socrates, is to be admitted by the man who holds that human good consists wholly in pleasure.
[55a] Socrates: Much, indeed. For let us argue further thus.
[55a] Protarchus: How?
[55a] Socrates: Since no good nor beauty is in bodies, nor in any other things beside the soul; [55b] is it not absurd to imagine, that in the soul pleasure should be the only good; and that neither fortitude, nor temperance, nor understanding, nor any of the other valuable attainments of the soul, should be numbered among the good things which the soul enjoys? Further too, is it not highly irrational to suppose, that a man afflicted with pain, without feeling any pleasure, should be obliged to say that evil only, and no good, was with him at the time when he was in pain, though he were the best of all men? And is it not equally absurd, on the other hand, to suppose that a man in the midst of pleasures must be, during that time, in the midst of good; and that the more pleasure he feels, the more good he is filled with, and is so much the better man?
[55c] Protarchus: All these suppositions, O Socrates, are absurdities in the highest degree possible.
[55c] Socrates: It is well. But now let us not employ ourselves wholly in searching into the nature of pleasure; as if we industriously declined the examination of intellect and science; but in these also, if there be any thing putrid or unsound, let us have the courage to cut it all off, and throw it aside; till, coming to a discovery of what is entirely pure and sound therein, the discovery may be of use to us in comparing the truest parts of intellect and science with the truest parts of pleasure, and in forming our judgment concerning the superiority of either from that comparison.
[55c] Protarchus: Rightly said.
[55d] Socrates: Do we not hold, that mathematical science is partly employed in the service of the mechanic arts, and partly in the liberal education and discipline of youth? or how think we on this subject?
[55d] Protarchus: Exactly so.
[55d] Socrates: Now, as to the manual arts⁸⁷, let us consider, in the first place, whether some of these depend not on science more than others; and whether we ought not to look on those of the former sort as the more pure, and on these others as the more impure.
[55d] Protarchus: Certainly we ought.
[55d] Socrates: And in each of these we should distinguish and separate the leading arts from the arts which are led and governed by them.
[55d] Protarchus: What arts do you call the leading arts? and why do you give that epithet to them?
[55d] Socrates: I mean thus: from all the arts were a man to separate and lay aside those of numbering, of measuring, and of weighing, what remained in every one of them, would become comparatively mean and contemptible.
[55e] Protarchus: Contemptible, indeed.
[55e] Socrates: For room would be then left only for conjecture, and for exercise of the senses, by experience and habitual practice; and we should then make use of no other faculties beside those of guessing and aiming well, (to which, indeed, the multitude give the name of arts) increasing the strength of those faculties by dint of assiduity and labour.
[56a] Protarchus: All which you have now said must, of necessity, be true.
[56a] Socrates: The truth of it is evident in all musical performances throughout. For, in the first place, harmony is produced, and one sound is adapted to another, not by measuring, but by that aiming well which arises from constant exercise. It is evident too in musical performances on all wind-instruments: for in these the breath, by being well aimed as it is blown along, searches and attains the measure of every chord beaten. So that music has in it much of the uncertain, and but a little of the fixed and firm.
[56a] Protarchus: Very true.
[56b] Socrates: And we shall find the case to be the same in the arts of medicine and agriculture, in the art of navigation also, and the military art.
[56b] Protarchus: Most clearly so.
[56b] Socrates: But in the art of building we shall find, as I presume, many measures made use of, and many instruments employed; by which it is made to surpass in accuracy many things which are called sciences.
[56b] Protarchus: How so?
[56b] Socrates: It is so in ship-building, and house-building, and in many other works of carpentry. For in these, I think, the art useth the straight-rule, and the square, the turning-lath and the compasses, the plummet and the marking-line.
[56c] Protarchus: You are entirely right, O Socrates: it is so as you say.
[56c] Socrates: The arts, therefore, as they are called, let us now distinguish into two sorts;—those which music is at the head of, as they are less accurate than some others; and these others which partake of accuracy the most, at the head of which is architecture.
[56c] Protarchus: This distinction is allowed of.
[56c] Socrates: And let us set down those arts for the most accurate which we lately said were the prime or leading arts.
[56c] Protarchus: You mean, if I mistake not, arithmetic, and those other arts which you mentioned together with it but just now⁸⁸.
[56d] Socrates: The very same. But, O Protarchus, must we not say that each of these arts is twofold? or how otherwise?
[56d] Protarchus: What arts do you speak of?
[56d] Socrates: Arithmetic, in the first place. Must we not say of this, that the arithmetic of the multitude is of one sort, and that the arithmetic of those who apply themselves to philosophy⁸⁹ is of another sort?
[56d] Protarchus: What is the difference by which the one may be distinguished from the other?
[56d] Socrates: The difference between them, O Protarchus, is far from being inconsiderable. For the multitude in numbering, number by unequal ones put together; as two armies of unequal force; two oxen of unequal size; two things, the smallest of all,—or two, the greatest,—being compared with others of the same kind. But the students in philosophy would not understand what a man meant, who, in numbering, made any difference between some and other of the ones which composed the number.
[56e] Protarchus: You are perfectly right in saying that no inconsiderable difference lies in the different manner of studying and using numbers; so as to make it probable that two different sorts there are of arithmetic.
[57a] Socrates: Well: and what of calculation in trade, and of mensuration in building? Does the latter of these arts not differ from mathematical geometry? nor the other from calculations made by the students in pure mathematics. Shall we say that they are, each of them, but one art? or shall we set down each of them for two?
[57a] Protarchus: For my part, I should give my opinion agreeably to your division of arithmetic; and should say that each of these arts also was twofold.
[57a] Socrates: You would give a right opinion. But with what design I brought these distinctions on the carpet do you conceive?
[57b] Protarchus: Perhaps I do. But I could wish that you yourself would declare what was your design.
[57b] Socrates: These distinctions seem to me to have shown to us, that in science there is that very circumstance attending it which we had before discovered to be in pleasure; the one thus answering to the other. For, having found that some sort of pleasure was purer than some other sort, we were inquiring whether the same difference was to be found with regard to science; and whether one sort of this also was purer than some other.
[57b] Protarchus: It is very manifest that your distinctions between the several arts were introduced for this very purpose.
[57b] Socrates: Well then: have we not discovered, in what has been said, that some arts are clearer than others, having more light within them; and that others are more involved in obscurity and darkness?
[57c] Protarchus: Evidently so.
[57c] Socrates: And has not the course of our argument led us to take notice of some art, bearing the same name with some other art; and first, to suppose them both to be, as they are commonly imagined, but one art; then, to consider them as two different arts; to examine each with regard to its clearness and purity; and to inquire which of the two has in it the most accuracy, whether that which is cultivated by students in philosophy, or that which is exercised by the multitude?
[57c] Protarchus: Our argument seems to bring on this inquiry.
[57c] Socrates: And what answer, O Protarchus, should we make to such a question?
[57c] Protarchus: O Socrates, we are now advanced so far as to discover an amazingly wide difference between the parts of our knowledge in point of clearness.
[57d] Socrates: It will, therefore, be the easier for us to answer to that question.
[57d] Protarchus: Without doubt. And let us affirm, that those leading arts greatly excel the others with regard to clearness; and that such of those brighter arts themselves as are studied by real students in philosophy, display, in measures and in numbers, their vast superiority to all other arts, with regard to accuracy and truth⁹⁰.
[57d] Socrates: Granting these things to be what you say they are, let us, on the credit of what you have said, boldly answer to those persons who are so formidable in argumentation, thus:
[57d] Protarchus: How?
[57d] Socrates: That there are two sorts of arithmetic; and that, dependant on these, there is a long train of arts, each of them, in like manner, twofold under one denomination.
[57e] Protarchus: Let us give to the persons whom you call formidable that very answer, O Socrates, with a confidence of its being right.
[57e] Socrates: Do we then affirm, that in these sciences there is an accuracy the highest of all.
[57e] Protarchus: Certainly.
[57e] Socrates: But the power of dialectic, O Protarchus, if we gave to any other science the preference above her, would deny that superiority.
[57e] Protarchus: What power is it to which we are to give that name?
[58a] Soc Plainly that power, O Protarchus, by which the mind perceives all that accuracy and clearness of which we have been speaking. For I am entirely of opinion, that all persons, endued with even the smallest portion of understanding, must deem the knowledge of the real essence of things— the knowledge of that kind of being whose nature is invariable—to be by far the most certain and true knowledge. But you, Protarchus, to what art or science would you give the distinction of pre-eminence?
[58a] Protarchus: As to me, O Socrates, I have often heard Gorgias maintaining in all places, that the art of persuasion has greatly the advantage over all other arts in overruling all things, and making all persons submit to it, not by constraint, but by a voluntary yielding; and therefore, that of all arts it is by far the most excellent. Now I should not choose to contradict or oppose either you or him.
[58b] Socrates: As much as to say, if I apprehend your meaning rightly, that you cannot for shame desert your colours.
[58b] Protarchus: Let your opinion of these matters now prevail; and the ranks of the several arts be settled as you would have them.
[58b] Socrates: Am I now to blame for your making a mistake?
[58c] Protarchus: What mistake have I made?
[58c] Socrates: The question, my friend Protarchus, was not which art, or which science, is superior to all the rest, with regard to greatness, and excellence, and usefulness to us; but of which art the objects are the brightest, the most accurate, and true, though the art itself brought us little or no gain: this it is, which is the present subject of our inquiry. Observe, then, Gorgias will have no quarrel with you: [58d] for you may still allow to his art the preference above all others, in point of utility and profit to mankind. But, as I said before concerning white, that be there ever so little of it, so it be pure, it excels a large quantity of an impure white, with regard to the truth of whiteness; just so is it with the study which I have been commending; it excels all others with regard to truth itself. And now that we have considered this subject attentively, and discussed it sufficiently, laying aside all regards to the usefulness of the sciences and arts, as well as to the reputation which they bear in the world, and thoroughly sifting them to find out the purity of intellect and wisdom,—if there be in the soul any faculty of loving truth above all things, and of doing whatever she does for the sake of truth,—let us consider whether it is right to say that we we have this faculty improved chiefly by dialectic, or whether we must search for some other art fitter for that purpose, and making it more her proper business.
[58e] Protarchus: Well: I do consider the point proposed; and I imagine it no easy matter to admit that any other science or art seeks and embraces truth so much as this.
[59a] Socrates: Say you this from having observed that many of the arts, even such as profess a laborious inquiry after truth, are, in the first place, conversant only with opinions, and exercise only the imagination; and that methodically, and according to a set of rules, they then search into things which are the subjects only of such opinions⁹¹? and do you know, that the persons who suppose themselves to be inquiring into the nature of things are, all their lives, inquisitive about nothing more than this outward world, how it was produced, what causeth the changes which happen therein, and how those changes operate their effects? Should we acknowledge all this so to be, or how otherwise?
[59b] Protarchus: Just so.
[59b] Socrates: Whoever of us then addicts himself to the study of nature in this way, employs his time and care, not about the things which always are in being, but about things which are either newly come into being, or which are to come, or which have been already, and are past.
[59b] Protarchus: Very true.
[59b] Socrates: What clearness, therefore, what certainty, or exact truth, can we expect to find in these things, none of which had ever any stability or sameness in them, nor ever will have any, nor have such of them as now exist any, even during their existence?
[59b] Protarchus: How can it be expected?
[59b] Socrates: Concerning things in which there is not the least stability, how can we form any stable notions?
[59c] Protarchus: I suppose it not possible.
[59c] Socrates: Of those things, then, there is neither intelligence, nor any sort of science to be acquired; at least not such as contains the highest degree of certainty.
[59c] Protarchus: It is not probable that there is.
[59c] Socrates: We ought, therefore, both you and I, to lay aside the consideration of what Gorgias or Philebus said, and to establish on a firmer basis this truth.
[59c] Protarchus: What truth?
[59c] Socrates: This:—Whatever is in us of stable, pure, and true, it has for the objects of it—either the beings which always are, and remain invariable, entirely pure and unadulterate; or [if these are beyond the reach of our sight] then such as are the nearest allied to them, and are second in the ranks of being: for all other things come after those first beings; second, and so on in order.
[59c] Protarchus: Perfectly right.
[59c] Socrates: The noblest, therefore, of the names given to things of this kind, is it not perfectly right to assign to those of this kind, which are the noblest?
[59c] Protarchus: It is reasonable so to do.
[59d] Socrates: Are not intellect and wisdom the noblest of those names?
[59d] Protarchus: They are.
[59d] Socrates: Rightly then are these names in accurate speech appropriated to the intelligence and contemplation of real being.
[59d] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[59d] Socrates: And the things for the excellency of which I at the first contended, are the very things to which we give these names.
[59d] Protarchus: Clearly are they, O Socrates.
[59d] Socrates: Well now: were a man to say that the nature of intellect and the nature of pleasure lay severally before us, like two different sorts of materials before some workman, for him to mix or join together, and from them, and in them, to compose his designed work,—would he not make a fair comparison suitable to the task which our inquiry has engaged us in?
[59e] Protarchus: A very fair comparison.
[59e] Socrates: Should we not, then, in the next place, set about mixing them together?
[59e] Protarchus: Why should we not?
[59e] Socrates: Would it not be our best way to begin this work by recollecting and repeating those things over again?
[60a] Protarchus: What things?
[60a] Socrates: Those we have often mentioned before. For, I think, the proverb says well:—“Again and again that which is right, by repeating it, to recall into our minds.”
[60a] Protarchus: Undoubtedly.
[60a] Socrates: In the name of Jupiter, then, come on. The whole of our controversy began, I think, with stating the point in question, to this effect.
[60a] Protarchus: How?
[60a] Socrates: Philebus affirms that pleasure is the right mark set up by nature for all animals to aim at; that they all ought to pursue pleasure; that the good of them all is this very thing, pleasure; and that good and pleasant, these two attributes, belong but to one subject, as they both have but one and the same nature: on the other hand, Socrates denies this to be true; and maintains, in the first place, that as the two names, good and pleasant, are two different names, different also are the things so denominated; in the next place, that the nature of good differs from that of pleasure; and that intelligence, or mind, partakes of the properties of good more than pleasure does, and is allied nearer to its nature. Were not some such positions as these, O Protarchus, severally laid down by us?
[60b] Protarchus: They were.
[60b] Socrates: But was not this point agreed on between us at that time, and do we not still agree in it?
[60b] Protarchus: What point?
[60b] Socrates: That the nature of good itself is more excellent than the nature of any other thing in this respect?
[60c] Protarchus: In what respect?
[60c] Socrates: This: that whatever animal being hath the constant, entire, and full possession of good itself, such a being has no want of any thing beside, having always a most perfect and complete sufficiency. Is it not so?
[60c] Protarchus: It certainly is.
[60c] Socrates: Have we not endeavoured to consider separately a life of pleasure and a life of intellect, each unmixed with the other,—a life of pleasure without intellect, and in like manner, a life of intellect without the smallest degree of pleasure?
[60c] Protarchus: We have.
[60c] Socrates: Did either of those lives appear to us at that time to be sufficient for the happiness of any man?
[60d] Protarchus: How was it possible?
[60d] Socrates: But if at that time any mistake was committed, let it be now revised and rectified. [60e] In order to which, let us take memory, science, wisdom, and right opinion, comprehending them all in one idea, and consider whether any man, without having something of that kind, would accept of pleasure, were it offered to him, either in the greatest abundance, or in the most exquisite degree; whether, indeed, he would regard the having or the receiving of any thing whatever; as he would not, in that case, have a right thought or opinion of his having any pleasure; neither would he know what he felt or had at present; nor would he remember in what condition or circumstances he had been at any time before. In like manner concerning wisdom, consider, whether a man would choose to have it without a mixture of any pleasure in the least, rather than to have the same wisdom attended with pleasures of certain kinds; and whether a man would prefer the having of all possible pleasures, without wisdom, to the having of them accompanied with some portion of wisdom.
[60e] Protarchus: It is impossible, O Socrates, for a man to make any such choice as you have supposed. And there is no occasion to repeat these questions again and again.
[61a] Socrates: Not pleasure, then, nor wisdom, either of them alone, can be the perfect and consummate good, eligible to all men, that which we are inquiring after.
[61a] Protarchus: Certainly not.
[61a] Socrates: Of this good, then, we are to give a clear and full description, or at least some sketch, that we may know where the second prize of excellence, as we called it, ought to be bestowed.
[61a] Protarchus: Perfectly right.
[61a] Socrates: Have we not, then, taken a way by which we may find out our chief good?
[61b] Protarchus: What way do you mean?
[61b] Socrates: As if we were in search of any particular man, and were already well informed of the place of his abode, we should have made a great progress toward finding the man himself.
[61b] Protarchus: Without doubt.
[61b] Socrates: And our reasoning has now declared to us clearly, what it pointed to before, that, not in the unmixed life, but in the mixed, we are to seek for happiness.
[61b] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[61b] Socrates: But in a proper and well-tempered mixture we may reasonably hope to discover what we are in search of with more certainty than we could by an ill-made composition.
[61b] Protarchus: With much more.
[61b] Socrates: Let us, then, set about mixing and making the composition, first praying to the Gods for their assistance; whether it be Bacchus⁹², or Vulcan, or some other of the Gods, who presides over the mixture of these ingredients.
[61c] Protarchus: Let us, by all means, do so.
[61c] Socrates: And now, as it were, two cisterns, or vases, are set before us; the vase of pleasure⁹³, as of honey; and the vase of intellect, cool and sober, as of some hard and healthful water. These, then, we are to mix together in the best manner we are able.
[61d] Protarchus: With all my heart.
[61d] Socrates: Come, then: but first say, whether by mingling all pleasure with all wisdom we may best obtain our end, the having of a proper and due mixture.
[61d] Protarchus: Perhaps we might.
[61d] Socrates: But it is dangerous to make the experiment. And I believe that I can point out a way to mix them with more safety.
[61d] Protarchus: Say what way.
[61d] Socrates: Concerning pleasures, I think, we held, that some more truly deserved that name than others of them; and of arts, that some were more accurate and exact than others.
[61d] Protarchus: Undoubtedly so.
[61d] Socrates: And that the sciences also differed one from another in like manner: for that some kinds of science have for their objects only such things as arise into being and afterwards perish; whereas another kind directs its view to things which are neither generated nor destroyed, but always are in being, always have the same properties, and preserve always the same relalations. And this kind of science, with regard to the truth of it, we deemed more excellent than the other kinds.
[61e] Protarchus: Entirely right.
[61e] Socrates: In the first place, therefore, mixing together the purest parts of pleasure and of wisdom, when they have been thus distinguished from the less pure, if we view those purest parts of each in combination, are they not, thus combined, sufficient to furnish out, and present us with, an ample view of that life which is desirable? or is any thing further, any ingredient of a different kind, wanting to perfect the composition?
[62a] Protarchus: So as you propose, and only so, it seems to me necessary for us to do.
[62a] Socrates: Let us, then, suppose a man to have in his mind the idea of justice itself, so as to know what it is in its own essence, and to be able to give an account of it in consequence of that knowledge. Let us also suppose him to have the like knowledge of all other beings.
[62a] Protarchus: Be such a man supposed.
[62b] Socrates: Will this man now sufficiently possess science by knowing the nature of the circle, and of the divine sphere itself; whilst he is ignorant of that sphere, and of those circles with which the eyes of men are conversant? Will that knowledge of his be sufficient for his use in building, and in other arts where lines and circles are to be drawn?
[62b] Protarchus: Ridiculous we should call our condition here, O Socrates, if our knowledge were thus confined to things ideal and divine.
[62b] Socrates: How do you say? Arts which are neither certain nor pure, using untrue rules, and conversant with untrue circles, are we to throw such arts into the composition, and mix them with the other ingredients?
[62b] Protarchus: It is necessary for us; if, whenever we are any where abroad, we are desirous of finding our way home.
[62c] Socrates: Are we to add music too?—an art which, not long since we said, is wanting in purity, as being full of conjecture and imitation?
[62c] Protarchus: Of necessity we must, as it appears to me, if the life which we are to lead shall ever deserve to be called life, or be at all worth the having.
[62c] Socrates: Would you, then, like a door-keeper, when he is pushed and pressed by a throng of people, yield to them, set the doors wide open, and suffer all the sciences to rush in, the less pure mingling themselves among the perfectly pure?
[62c] Protarchus: I see not, O Socrates, for my part, how any man would be hurt by receiving all the other sciences, if he was already in possession of the first and highest.
[62d] Socrates: I may safely then admit them all to come pouring in, like the torrents of water in that fine poetical simile of Homer’s⁹⁴, rushing down into a valley from the mountains which surround it.
[62d] Protarchus: By all means, let them be all admitted.
[62d] Socrates: Let us now return to the vase of pleasure. For when we thought of mixing pleasure and knowledge together, the purer parts of pleasure did not present themselves immediately to our minds: but, from our affectionate regard to science, we suffered all kinds of it to crowd in before any of the pleasures.
[62e] Protarchus: Very true.
[62e] Socrates: It is now time for us to consult about the pleasures; whether we should let them all come thronging in, or whether we should admit those of the true sort first.
[62e] Protarchus: It makes a great difference in point of safety, to let in, the first; such only as are true.
[62e] Socrates: Let these, then, be admitted. But how shall we proceed? Must we not do, as we did with the several kinds of science, admit as many pleasures also as are of the necessary sort?
[62e] Protarchus: Without doubt, the necessary pleasures also, by all means.
[62e] Socrates: But now, as we held it both safe and advantageous in going through life to be acquainted with every art,—if we are of the same opinion with regard to pleasures,—if we hold it conducive to our good, and at the same time harmless, to enjoy every sort of pleasure in the course of our lives,—in this case, we are to intermix all sorts of pleasure with all the kinds of science.
[63a] Protarchus: What say we then as to this point? and how ought we to act?
[63a] Socrates: This question, O Protarchus, should not be put to us. But the pleasures themselves, and the other assembly also, that of the sciences and arts, are to be examined, each party concerning the other, in this manner.
[63b] Protarchus: In what manner?
[63b] Socrates: Friends, we shall say, [addressing our question to the pleasures first] whether we ought to call you pleasures, or whatever is your right name, would ye choose to live in the same place with all kinds of wisdom, or to live without wisdom? To this interrogatory they must, I think, answer thus:
[63b] Protarchus: How?
[63b] Socrates: That seeing, as was said before, were wisdom and pleasure to be left, each of them, alone, single, and destitute of aid, neither of them would have any virtue or power at all, nor would any advantage arise from either,—we deem it best that all the kinds of wisdom should dwell with us, one kind of wisdom with each of us, one who is suitable to the peculiar nature of its companion, and is perfectly acquainted with her power and influence.
[63c] Protarchus: And well have ye now answered, we shall say to them.
[63c] Socrates: After this, we are to demand of wisdom and intellect, in the same manner, thus:—Have ye any occasion for pleasures to be mixed among you? On the other side, we may suppose wisdom and intellect to interrogate us; and what sort of pleasures, they would perhaps say, is it that ye mean?
[63d] Protarchus: Probably they would.
[63d] Socrates: And to this question of theirs our answer would be this:—Beside those true pleasures, we should say, do ye further want the pleasures of the intense and exquisite kind to dwell with you? How is it possible, O Socrates, they would then perhaps say, that we should want these? These, who give a thousand hindrances to all our proceedings; and who, by their fury and madness, are always creating disturbance in the souls where we dwell;—these, who had they been there first, would never have suffered us to have admittance; and who entirely spoil our children, there born, by letting forgetfulness in upon them, for want of care to guard the dwelling-place. [63e] But the other pleasures mentioned by you, the true and the pure, you are to know that they are nearly related to us, and belong to our family: and beside these, the pleasures who are accompanied by health and sobriety; such, also, as are the followers of all virtue, like the train of some Goddess, every where attending her; let all of these come and mix amongst us. But those pleasures who are always found in company with folly, and with all kinds of vice, it is very absurd for a man to mingle with intellect,—if he desires to see a mixture as clear, untroubled, and well-attempered as possible to be made;—and if he would from thence try to discover what the nature is of good, not only in man, but also in the universe; from which discovery some notion is to be gained, by a sort of divination, of what the idea is of good itself. Shall we not say that intellect and science, in thus answering, have spoken prudently and consistently with themselves, pleading in their own cause,and at the same time in behalf of memory and right opinion?
[63e] Protarchus: By all means ought we.
[64a] Socrates: But in our mixture it is necessary to add this also; for without it no one thing could ever be.
[64b] Protarchus: What is that?
[64b] Socrates: Whatever has not truth mixed with it in the composing of it, can never be produced into true existence; or, could it be produced, it never can be lasting.
[64b] Protarchus: How is it possible that it should?
[64b] Socrates: Certainly no way. Now if any thing further be yet wanting to perfect our composition, declare it, you and Philebus. For the mixture which we have now made in speculation, appears to me to have been as perfectly well composed as if it were some incorporeal world meant for the good government of an animated body.
[64b] Protarchus: And be assured, O Socrates, that to me it has had the same appearance.
[64c] Socrates: Might we not, then, rightly say, that we were now arrived at the dwelling-place of the good, and were standing in its vestibules?
[64c] Protarchus: I think we might.
[64c] Socrates: And now what should we deem to be the greatest excellence in the composition, and to be also the chief cause that such a mixture must be grateful to all? For when we shall have discerned what this is which is so grateful and so excellent, we shall then consider to which of the two, to pleasure or to intellect, it is related the most nearly, and familiar the most intimately, in the constitution of the universe.
[64d] Protarchus: Right: it will be of the greatest service to us in determining this point.
[64d] Socrates: And there is, indeed, no difficulty in discovering the cause, why some mixtures are most valuable, and others good for nothing.
[64d] Protarchus: Explain your meaning.
[64d] Socrates: No person is ignorant of this.
[64d] Protarchus: Of what?
[64d] Socrates: That in every mixture, whatever it be, and whatever be the quantity of it⁹⁵, if measure pervades it not, and if thence it obtains not symmetry and proportion, all the ingredients must of necessity be spoiled, besides the spoiling of the whole composition. For, in such a case, no one thing is really tempered by any other thing; but a confused and disorderly assemblage is made of various things jumbled together; which, like a concurrence of bad accidents in life, is a real misfortune to the persons who are to use it.
[64e] Protarchus: It is very true.
[64e] Socrates: The power of the good then is transferred, we find, into that province where dwells the nature of the beautiful. For every where, from measure and mediocrity, and from symmetry and proportion, arise beauty and virtue.
[64e] Protarchus: Certainly so.
[64e] Socrates: And we said before that truth also was an ingredient in the composition.
[64e] Protarchus: We did.
[64e] Socrates: If, then, we are not able to discover the nature of good itself in one single idea,—yet, taking it in three ideas together, in beauty, symmetry, and truth⁹⁶, we may conceive it as one thing; and most justly attributing to it the cause of whatever is graceful or agreeable in the composition, we may most truly say, that by means of this, as being good itself, the whole proves to be such as it is, thus agreeable, and thus graceful.
[65a] Protarchus: Most truly, indeed.
[65b] Socrates: Now then, O Protarchus, any person may be a competent judge between pleasure and wisdom to decide, whether of the two is nearest allied to the supreme good, and of higher value than the other is, both to men and Gods.
[65b] Protarchus: What the decision must be is clear. However, it is the better way to go through the recital of it in explicit words.
[65b] Socrates: Each of those three, then, let us compare, severally, with pleasure, and again with intellect. For we are to see and determine whether of these two it is that each of those three is most congenial to, and to give sentence accordingly.
[65b] Protarchus: Do you speak of beauty, and truth, and mediocrity?
[65c] Socrates: I do. Now take, in the first place, O Protarchus, truth; and look at all the three together, intellect, truth, and pleasure: and after you have considered them a sufficient time, say whether, in your opinion, intellect, or whether pleasure, is nearer of kin to truth.
[65c] Protarchus: What need is there of time to consider of this point? for, I presume, that very great is the difference between intellect and pleasure in this respect. Of all things in the world, pleasure is the most addicted to lying: and it is said, that in the pleasures of Venus, which seem to be the greatest, even perjury is pardoned by the Gods; it being supposed that pleasures, like children, have not the least intellect in them to know what they say. But intellect is either the same thing with truth, or it is of all things the most like to it, and the truest.
[65d] Socrates: Next, then, consider mediocrity in the same manner⁹⁷; and say whether you think that pleasure possesses more of it than wisdom, or that wisdom possesses more of it than pleasure.
[65d] Protarchus: This which you have now proposed for a subject of consideration is not less easy than the other. For there cannot, in my opinion, be found any thing more immoderate in its nature than pleasure and extravagant joy; nor any thing which has more of measure in it than intellect and science.
[65e] Socrates: You have well said. But proceed further now to the third. Do you say that intellect partakes of beauty more than any species of pleasure partakes of it? and that intellect is more excellent than pleasure in this respect? or that the contrary is true?
[65e] Protarchus: Did ever any man then, O Socrates, whether awake or dreaming, see or imagine wisdom and intellect to be in any matter, or in any manner, unhandsome or unbecoming, whether in reflecting on the past, or in peceiving the present, or in looking forward to the future?
[66a] Socrates: Right.
[66a] Protarchus: But whenever we see any person immersed in pleasures, in those pleasures too which are of all perhaps the greatest,—when we behold what a ridiculous figure the man makes in the very act of enjoying them,—or view what is of all spectacles the most unseemly, the consequence of his enjoyment,—we ourselves are ashamed; and all such things, as far as possible, we conceal, veiling them with night and darkness, as not being fit objects for the light to look on.
[66a] Socrates: Every where then, O Protarchus, you will declare, speaking yourself to all persons about you, and publishing abroad by messengers, that the possession of pleasure is neither of supreme nor of secondary worth: but that whatevever is of all things the most excellent and valuable, is to be found in measure, in the moderate, and the seasonable, and in all things⁹⁸ of that kind, whose nature and essence we ought to deem eternal.
[66a] Protarchus: Their supreme excellence appears from what has been said and proved.
[66b] Socrates: And that the next in value are symmetry and beauty, the perfect and the sufficient, and whatever else is congenial to these.
[66b] Protarchus: So it seems.
[66b] Socrates: In the third degree of excellence, if I divine aright, you would not greatly mistake the truth if you were to place intellect and wisdom.
[66b] Protarchus: Perhaps I should not.
[66c] Socrates: And is not the fourth rank due to those things which we assigned to the soul herself, as her own proper goods, sciences, and arts, and right opinions, a fourth order of goods, following next after the first three? ought we not here to place them, if they are more nearly related to the good than they are to pleasure?
[66c] Protarchus: Perhaps we ought.
[66c] Socrates: Then follow, fifth in order, the pleasures of that sort which we described to be unmixed with pain, and denominated pure, such as those consequent to sensation, but belonging to the soul herself when she is engaged in the sciences⁹⁹.
[66c] Protarchus: It may be so.
[66d] Soc.
[66d] With the sixth race (says Orpheus)
Close we the finish’d series of our song¹⁰⁰.
[66d] Our disquisition, too, seems to be now finished, and to close with passing our sixth sentence. After all this, nothing remains for us to do but to affix a head, as it were, to the whole body of our inquiry.
[66d] Protarchus: It is fit that we should.
[66d] Socrates: Come, then: the third to the saviour. Let us commemorate him whose aid brought the argument to a conclusion; calling him to witness the truth of it.
[66d] Protarchus: Whom do you mean?
[66d] Socrates: Philebus laid down this position: that the good was all and every kind of pleasure in full abundance.
[66d] Protarchus: By commemorating the saviour, it seems then, Socrates, you meant that we should resume the original argument of our inquiry.
[66e] Socrates: Well: but let us observe what followed. I, viewing with dislike that position just now mentioned,—the tenet, not of Philebus only, but of thousands beside in all ages,—on the other hand asserted, that intellect was a thing far better and more beneficial to human life than pleasure.
[66e] Protarchus: That was your position.
[66e] Socrates: But then, suspecting that many other things had pretensions to the same character of being the good, I engaged, if something¹⁰¹ should appear better than both of those, to combat for the second prize, in behalf of intellect against pleasure; that pleasure, in her claim to so much as this, might be defeated.
[66e] Protarchus: You did engage so to do.
[67a] Socrates: Afterwards, on trial, it was very sufficiently proved that neither of our favourites answered the character of complete good.
[67a] Protarchus: Perfectly true.
[67a] Socrates: Intellect, therefore, and pleasure, were, both of them, quite dismissed from having any thing to do in the controversy concerning good itself; as each of them wanted self-sufficience, and that power which attends the sufficient and perfect.
[67a] Protarchus: Very right.
[67a] Socrates: But after we had discovered a third thing preferable to either of those two, we found the nature of intellect to approach nearer to the nature of this conqueror, and to be much more familiar with this form than pleasure.
[67a] Protarchus: We certainly did.
[67a] Socrates: The sixth¹⁰² and lowest place, then, according to the judgment now given as the result of this inquiry, belongs to the power of pleasure unbounded.
[67b] Protarchus: So it appears.
[67b] Socrates: But the first place belongs to her, as bulls¹⁰³ would say, and horses¹⁰⁴, and all beasts whatever of the savage kind: for it appears so from the manner in which they pursue pleasure. And on the credit of these animals, just as the judgment of diviners depends on the flight of birds, sentence is pronounced by the multitude, that pleasures have the greatest power in making our lives happy. For the loves and joys of brute animals they deem a stronger evidence, and fitter to be credited, than the sayings of men prophetically uttered in all places though inspiration of the philosophic muse.
[67b] Protarchus: That you have said what is most agreeable to truth, O Socrates, we are, all of us, now agreed.
[67b] Socrates: Now then ye will dismiss me.
[67b] Protarchus: There is a little, O Socrates, still remaining to be considered. For you must not quit the company before it breaks up: and I will put you in mind of what you have left unsaid.¹⁰⁵

## Notes

[1] The beginning of this dialogue supposes that much conversation had passed, immediately before, between Socrates and Philebus.—S.
[2] This part of the sentence, to give it a literal translation, runs thus: that it is good for all animals to rejoice, and (to feel) pleasure and delight, &c.—But in translating it we chose to give it that meaning which is rightly presumed by Socrates to be agreeable to the sentiments of Philebus; for otherwise there would be no opposition between the opinion of Philebus and his own.—S.
[3] How is intellect, says Olympiodorus, spoken of with relation to pleasure? For, in the first place, appetite (orexis) rather is divided in opposition to knowledge; but appetite and pleasure are not the same. And, in the next place, there is a certain pleasure in knowledge. To this we may reply, that there is a pleasure in knowledge, in consequence of its participation of appetite. For to be pleasantly affected when we apprehend the object of knowledge, arises from the assumption of appetite. But to the other question we may reply, that the investigative is analogous to the orectic power: for investigation, being as it were a gnostic orexis (appetite), is a way to a certain end; just as orexis hastens to a certain thing. But the possession of the object of appetite is analogous to knowledge, which is the possession of truth. Again, the vital and the orectic are not the same. For life is also predicated of knowledge; since knowledge moves, and that which knows is moved, which is especially the peculiarity of life. But that which knows is moved when it investigates, not when it has arrived at the end, which knowledge signifies. Again, good is predicated both of knowledge and orexis: for knowledge is beneficial, and is the cause of union with the object of knowledge. But the good of orexis is, as it were, practic, and we wish not to know, but to be passive to it, and we embrace it more nearly, but do not endure to have it at a distance. But we can endure the object of knowledge, though at a distance; for we wish to know and not to be it. What, however, shall we say the orectic is? For it is not common good; since this also pertains to knowledge. Nor is it something unknown: for orexis subsists together with knowledge. It is, therefore, a certain good which is known. Hence, it moves from itself the perceiver. But this is the beautiful; since orexis, considered according to its common acceptation, is nothing else than love; though love is a strenuous orexis. For the more and the less produce no alteration according to species; but the strenuous is intenseness alone. Further still, the pleasant is the attendant of orexis; but the pleasant is apparent beauty. For apparent good is benignant and lovely to all animals. But may not the beautiful be thus related to the good, according to indication? For, in the first place, the good is above idea; but things which are in forms are more allied to us. For the good is the formal object of orexis; but the beautiful is the formal object of love; just as being is the formal object of knowledge. Orexis, however, differs in species from love. For, if orexis is assumed in common, it is extended to one common good. But, if the ends are separated, the powers also which hasten towards them must be separated. For the contact which, according to its idiom, is called friendship, φιλια, and which makes a union with good, is one thing, and the power which harmonizes with this must be called desire, εφεσις; but the power which, according to indigence, urges the multitude is another; and a thing of this kind is denominated love, ερως, and hastens to the beautiful.—T,
[4] Necessity is threefold: for it is either self-perfect, associating with the good; or material, with which indigence and imbecility associate; or it is as that which is referred to an end, as navigation with a view to gain. Thus Proclus.—T.
[5] The Greek of this sentence, in all the editions of Plato, is αυτων ἑκατερος. But all the translators interpret, as if they read in the MSS. ἡμων ἑκατερος: a reading which is clearly agreeable to the sense of the passage, and makes it easier to be understood. In the printed reading the word αυτων must refer to λογων, which is more remote, and has been rather implied than expressed; αυτων ἑκατερος will then mean the argument of each; but to say, the argument should endeavour, is in a style too figurative and bold to be used by any prosaic writer.—S.
[6] In the Greek,—ἑξιν και διαθεσιν.—All the differences between ἑξις and διαθεσις are accurately shown by Aristotle in his Categories, cap. viii. and in his Metaphysics, lib. iv. sec. 19. In the sentence now before us, the difference between them is this: διαθεσις ψυχης, an affection of the soul, is the soul’s present but transient state; ἑξις ψυχης, a state of the soul, is the soul’s permanent affection. Thus we say of a man, that he is in a joyous state of mind, when the joy with which he is affected is of some standing, and is likely to continue: but of a man in whose soul joy is just now arisen, we say, that he is seized (that is, affected suddenly) with joy. And thus again we say, that the mind is in a thoughtful state, when it has been for some time actually thinking, and is not easy to be diverted from thinking on: but when a thought arises suddenly within us, in an unthinking state of mind, and amidst the wanderings of fancy, we say that a thought strikes us, that is, suddenly affects our mind. It must not however be concealed, that ἑξις and διαθεσις, which we have here translated by the words state and affection, usually mean habit and disposition. But the affinity between this their usual meaning, and that which they have in the passage now before us, will appear, from considering, that, as the soul acquires certain habits of acting, through frequently-repeated acts of the same kind,—so she is fixed in some certain state, through frequent impressions made on her where she is passive, or through frequent energies of her own where she is active; a state, to which those impressions from without, and those energies within, gradually lead her;—and also that, in like manner as some certain previous disposition of the soul is necessary to every single act which is voluntary, so is it also necessary to the receiving of every impression from without, and to the performing of every energy within.—S.
[7] Why is Pleasure, says Olympiodorus, a Goddess, according to Philebus? May we not say, As that which is the object of desire, and as an end? But why is Venus a Goddess? Shall we say, As lovely? Perhaps they are Goddesses, because they are both concerned in the procreations of animals, the one as a presiding power, the other as a passion. Why, too, is Pleasure not considered as a Goddess by any of the antients⁸? Because, says Proclus, it neither is a precedaneous good, nor immediately beautiful, nor has a middle subsistence, and different from both these. We must say, however, that Pleasure, according to Jamblichus, is a Goddess, and is recognized in temples by Proclus the Laodicean. Again, no one of the antients says that Venus is Pleasure. What then is the reason of this? May we not say, that it is because Venus has a copulative power, and that a certain pleasure follows copulation? And also, that this pleasure is accompanied with much of the deformed? Venus, however, is beautiful, not only that Venus which is divine, but that also which belongs to nature. And in theology, the idiom of Venus is different from that of Ευφροσυνη, Delight.—T.
[8] Viz. by none of the Greek theologists.
[9] Why does Socrates, says Olympiodorus, so much venerate the names of the Gods? Shall we say, Because formerly things adapted were consecrated to appropriate natures, and because it is unbecoming to move things immovable? or, that names are adapted to the nature of the Gods, according to what is said in the Cratylus? or, that these names are vocal images of the Gods, according to Democritus? But how does a worthy man fear? Either very properly the divine wrath; or this fear is a veneration, but not a certain passion attended with dread. I shall only observe, in addition to what is said by Olympiodorus, that this passage, among a multitude of others, proves, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that Socrates believed in the existence of divine beings, the immediate progeny of the ineffable cause of all, or, in other words, was a polytheist.—T.
[10] Pleasure subsists together with motion; for it is the attendant of it. But the motion of intellect is an immutable energy; that of soul, a mutable energy; and that of an animal, a passive energy. But that of a plant is passion only.—T.
[11] This was the very language, or manner of expression, used by a sect of philosophers called Cyrenaïcs, from Cyrene, the native city of Aristippus, their master. For the Cyrenaïcs held, says Laërtius, μη διαφερειν ἡδονην ἡδονης, that pleasure differs not from plea- sure. Whence it appears probable, that Philebus derived his notions and expressions on this point from some of the disciples of Aristippus, if not from Aristippus himself. For this philosopher, after he had for some time conversed with Socrates, for the sake of whose conversation he came to Athens, departed thence, and went to Ægina; where he professed the teaching of philosophy, and where he resided till after the death of Socrates.—S.
[12] The sense and the reasoning require a small alteration to be here made in the Greek copies of Plato, by reading, instead of τας ὁμοιας,—τας ὁμοιοτητας, similitudes, or rather τα ὁμοια, similes.—Similes of the kind here meant are by Aristotle, in his Art of Rhetoric, lib. ii. cap. 20. edit. Du Vall, justly styled τα Σωκρατικα, Socratic, because frequently employed by Socrates. They are not such as those for which the imagination of a poet skims over all nature, to illustrate some things by superficial resemblances to them in other things: neither are they such as the memory of an orator ransacks all history for, to prove the certainty of some doubtful fact by examples on record, which agree with it in a few circumstances: but they are such as the reason of an accomplished master of dialectic chooses out from subjects near at hand, to prove the truth of some uncertain or controverted position, by the analogy it bears to some other truth which is obvious, and clear, and will be readily admitted. Such a simile, bearing the plainest and most striking analogy with what is to be proved, is actually produced, immediately after this preface to it, by Socrates. But not a word is there in what follows concerning similar pleasures; and τας ὁμοιας, alike or similar, cannot be joined with, or belong to, any preceding noun, beside ἡδονας. As to the word returning, in the present sentence, it refers to those similes produced before of colour and of figure.—S.
[13] Contrariety in the sciences is nothing more than diversity. For one science is not in opposition to, or hostile to, another; since secondary are subservient to prior sciences, and from them derive their proper principles.—T.
[14] See the Parmenides.—T.
[15] Plato, says Olympiodorus, calls the summits of forms monads and henads. He calls them henads, with reference to the appropriate multitude of which they are the leaders: but monads, with reference to the superessential. Or we may say, that there are twofold summits of forms, the one essential, and the other characterized by unity, as it is said in the Parmenides.—See the Notes on the first hypothesis of the Parmenides. From hence the ignorance of Cudworth is apparent, who, in his Intellectual System, p. 555, considers the doctrine of henads derived from the first one, or the one itself, as a fiction of the latter Platonists.—T.
[16] This second question supposes the first question decided in favour of the true being of the monads. For, if universals are held to be only names, invented to denote unreal fancies or factitious notions, it is trifling and idle to inquire whence they derive stability; this being an affection, or property, of real beings only,—unless it be as merely nominal, notional, or fantastic, as those things are to which it is attributed.—The sentence now before us in the Greek is printed thus: πως αυ ταυτας, μιαν ἑκαστην ουσαν αει την αυτην, και μητε γενεσιν μητε ολεθρον προσδεχομενην, ὁμως ειναι βεβαιοτητα μιαν ταυτην. The Greek text must here be faulty; and, to make good sense of it, it is necessary to make a small alteration or two,—by reading εχειν instead of ειναι, and και αυτην instead of ταυτην. In translating this passage, we have presumed it ought to be so read; and the meaning, intended to be conveyed by it, we suppose to be this:—“it must needs seem strange, that distinct beings, not generated, some of them by others, but all equally eternal, without intercommunity or interchange between them, should, nevertheless, have one and the same nature, that of monad or unity, and one and the same property of their being, that of stability.”—S.
[17] In the Greek we here read—αυτην αὑτης χωρις. But it is presumed that we ought to read—αυτην εφ’ αὑτης χωρις.—S.
[18] This gift is the dialectic of Plato, of which we have given an ample account in the Introduction to, and Notes on, the Parmenides. I shall only observe at present, that this vertex of the sciences consists of four parts, viz. division, definition, demonstration, and analysis. Of these, the divisive art, says Olympiodorus, is connate with the progression of things; but the analytic with their conversion. And the definitive and demonstrative arts, which have a middle situation, are similar to the hypostasis, or subsisting nature of things. The definitive, however, is analogous to that hypostasis which subsists from itself; but the demonstrative to that which is suspended from its cause.—T.
[19] Prometheus, says Olympiodorus, does not produce good, as unfolding into light, but as a Titan. For he employs a providential care upon rational essences which proceed to the extremity, just as Epimetheus provides for irrational natures. For irrational natures proceed to a care of things subordinate, and, having proceeded, distribute the whole of divine Providence. Again, the fire which Prometheus stole, and gave to men, is every anagogic essence and perfection, distributed through him to the last of things. Hence it is said to have been stolen, because an anagogic essence is deduced; but through him, because it is alone deduced Titanically,—but other Gods give subsistence to a form of this kind. Again, that every generated nature is one and many, is nothing wonderful; for these natures are partible, and participate of many habitudes; but how is this the case with every intelligible essence? In the first place, we may say that each is a monad, and also a number, according to the series of the monad; as, for instance, the beautiful, and things beautiful. In the second place, that the monad is both that which it is, and all other things according to commixtion. In the third place, it both consists from the genera of being and one idiom. In the fourth place, the idiom is multiplied together with the many; but there is a certain impartible summit in all the many. In the fifth place, this summit is an united form, but there is also something in it above form. And, in the sixth place, this summit is at the same time the united, but not the one. Further still, as all things are from one and many, it is necessary that these two principles should be arranged prior to all things; the former being the cause to all things of unity, and the latter of multitude. They must likewise evidently be posterior to the first cause; for that is at once the cause of all things. Again, in the extremities of things infinite multitude is beheld, but in the summit a monad presubsists, according to every form. But infinite multitude would not be generated, unless in the monad which generates it an infinite power was preassumed. Nor would every individual in infinites be bounded, unless bound proceeded to the last of things. Progression subsists through all appropriate media, from the monad to infinite multitude. And, in the first place, this is seen in multitude capable of being participated. For progression is not immediately from the one to the infinite, but to two and three, and the following numbers. And, in the next place, the progression of bodies is of this kind, for it has no vacuum together with its variety. In the third place, the generative power of the monad being both one and many, at once generates all things according to the whole of itself; things secondary being always consequent to such as are prior. Further still, says Olympiodorus, the divisive method proceeds together with the progression of forms, not cutting off the continuity of subjection, nor introducing a vacuum, but proceeding through all the media, from the one to the infinite. The business of the divisive method is first to place the one every where before the many. Secondly, to place the finite before infinite multitude. Thirdly, always to define according to quantity, the lesser before the greater number. Fourthly, to omit no number of things which give completion to progression. Fifthly, to select numbers adapted to respective forms; the triadic, for instance, or the hebdomadic, to Minerva, and in a similar manner in all the rest. For different numbers proceed according to different forms; as also of the Gods, there are different numbers according to different Divinities. For of monads themselves, one progression is monadic, as that of the monad; another dyadic, as that of the dyad; and in a similar manner with the rest: so that there is not a division of all things into two. Sixthly, to divide through forms, but not through form and negation, according to the opinion of Aristotle: for no number is produced from form and negation. Seventhly, to produce every monad into division in its proper order, whether it be in that of bound, or in that of infinity: for each is every where. Ninthly, to produce things oppositely divided, according to antithesis, whether certain media are discovered, or not. Tenthly, not to leave the media in the extent (εν τῳ πλατει). Eleventhly, to ascribe different numbers appropriately to different orders, as the number twelve to supermundane natures, and the number seven to intellectuals. Twelfthly, to see where the lesser numbers are more excellent, and where they are subordinate, and in a similar manner with respect to the greater. For the mundane decad is subordinate to the supermundane duodecad; but the intellectual hebdomad is superior to it. Again, the analytic art is subordinate to the divisive: for the latter is from a cause, but the former from a sign; and the latter from on high surveys things more subordinate, but the former beholds downwards things on high; and the latter stops at nothing sensible, but the former at first stands in need of sense. Thus, the latter giving subsistence and producing, nearly makes the whole of the proceeding essence; but the former converting, confers on that which has proceeded a departure from the subordinate, and an adherence to the more excellent nature. On which account progression is more essential than conversion, and is therefore more excellent. So that procession is superior to conversion, and the essential to the anagogic. In the descent of the soul, however, since progression is here an apostacy from better natures, ascent which corresponds to conversion is better than progression or descent.—T.
[20] In the Greek, the term used here, as well as just before, (where this translation hath the word voice,) is φωνη. It there signified articulated vocal sound, or speech: it here signifies musical sound of the voice, or vocal music. We see then that φωνη, human voice, is by Plato supposed to be a common genus, divisible into those two sorts or species. It is expressly so laid down by Nicomachus, (Harmonic. Enchirid. pag. 3, edit. Amst.) in these words:—Της ανθρωπινης φωνης οἱ απο του Πυθαγορικου διδασκαλειου δυο εφασκον, ὡς ἑνος γενους, ειδη ὑπαρχειν· και το μεν συνεχες ιδιως ωνομαζον· το δε διαστηματικον. Such [writers concerning music] as came out of the Pythagorean school say, that of human voice [in general], as of one genus, there are two species. One of these two they properly named continuous, the other discrete. These two technical terms he afterward explains, by showing us that the continuous is that voice which we utter in discoursing and in reading; (and therefore, by Aristoxenus and by Euclid termed φωνη λογικη·) and that the discrete is the voice issued out of our mouths in singing; (and thence termed φωνη μελωδικη·) for, in this latter case, every single sound is distinguished by a certain or measured tone of the voice. The same division of φωνη is laid down, and a similar account of it is given, by Aristoxenus in Harmonic. Element. pag. 8 & 9, edit. Amst.—S.
[21] Homotony of sound is made when a string of some stringed instrument of music, having the same degree of tension with a similar string of some other, yields, in conjunction with it, the same musical tone; or when two different voices utter at the same time musical sounds, neither of which is more acute, or more grave, than the other. In both cases, the sameness of the sound is also termed ὁμοφωνια: for φωνη, voice, is (metaphorically) attributed to all musical instruments; (see Nicomachus, pag. 5 and 6.) as, on the other hand, tone is (by an easy metaphor) attributed to the human voice, modulated by the will in the trachea, or aspera arteria: for this natural wind-instrument, in English aptly named the wind-pipe, while it transmits the air breathed out from the lungs, receives any degree of tension it is capable of, at the pleasure of the mind. In like manner, a repetition of the same tone from a single human voice, as well as from a single monochord, is termed a monotony.—S.
[22] An interval is the distance [or difference κατα τοπον, with regard to place] between any two musical sounds, (between that which is acute relatively to the other, and that other which is relatively a grave,) however near together they may be, or however remote from each other, on any scale of music. In proportion to the nearness or remoteness of these two sounds, the interval between them is, in mathematical language, said to be small or great; that is, it is short or long. So that different musical intervals, like all other different distances from place to place, essentially differ one from another in magnitude or length. And on this essential difference are founded all the other diversities of the intervals.
[23] The bounds of each interval are those two musical sounds, from either of which there is made an immediate step or transition to the other. Of all musical sounds the three principal were: ὑπατη the most grave, νητη the most acute, and μεση the middle between those other two, on the most antient scale of music; which consisted of only seven sounds, produced by striking on the same number of strings, all of different lengths. We account those three just now mentioned the principal, because the first and easiest division of any quantity, whether it be continuous or discrete, is into two equal parts, or halves: the most distinguishable points or bounds of it, therefore, however it be afterwards subdivided, are the two extremes and the middle. Accordingly Plato, in his 4th book De Republicâ, edit. Cantab. pag. 314, speaking of the νεατη, the ὑπατη, and the μεση, the highest, the lowest, and the middle sound in music, calls them ὁρους τρεις ἁρμονιας, the three bounds of harmony; and likens to them the three most evidently distinguished parts of the soul,—the rational part, the highest; the concupiscible, the lowest; and the irascible, between them both.—S.
[24] A system is a composition of three or more musical sounds; or (what amounts to the same thing) it is an extent, comprehending two or more intervals. Of these systems the general diversities are laid down by Aristides, pag. 15 & seq. But in his definition of a system (as it is printed) an important error deserves notice. For we there read—πλειονων ἢ δυοιν, more than two: instead of which we ought to read—δυοιν ἢ πλειονων, two or more; or else—πλειονων ἢ ἑνος, more than one: which last are the very words used by Aristoxenus, Euclid, and Gaudentius, in their definitions of a system. The error probably arose from some manuscript copy of Aristides happening to be not easily legible in this place. The transcriber of it, therefore, we suppose, consulted Baccheius; who in his definition of a system useth the words—πλειονων ἢ δυοιν. These words are right indeed in Baccheius, because they are by him applied to φθογγων, musical sounds, agreeably to our first definition; but they would be wrong in Aristides, where he is speaking, not of φθογγων, but of διαστηματων, the intervals of those sounds, agreeably to our second definition. On the many diversities and variations to be made in so large a field of systems, are founded those many different forms, figures, or modes of harmony, or sorts of tunes, (the Greek writers call them ειδη, μορφαι, σχηματα, τροποι, and τονοι ἁρμονιας,) the general kinds of which, according to Aristides, pag. 25, are these—the Doric, the Phrygian, and the Lydian. If this be true, all the other modes are to be considered as subordinate to these three; and indeed they seem, some of them, to be intensions, others to be remissions, and others to be mixtures, of those the more moderate and simple.—S.
[25] The word ἁρμονια, harmony, was used in different senses by the old Grecian writers. We learn from Nicomachus, that the most antient writers on music gave the name of harmony to that most perfect consonance, the diapason. Aristoxenus and Euclid mean, by the term harmony, that kind of melody which is called enharmonic. Plato and Aristotle, when they speak of harmony in the singular number, without the addition of an epithet denoting the sort, mean by that term the idea which is commonly now-a-days expressed by the term music; probably, because it was the first discovered of those sciences, as well as the first invented of those arts, which were antiently comprehended together in one general idea, expressed in one word, and termed music. But when the same great philosophers speak of harmonies in the plural number, they mean those different forms or modes of harmony whose specific differences depend on the different systems, or on the different order of those systems of which they are severally composed. To the term harmony in this latter sense only, (as it signifies a mode of harmony,) agrees the following definition of it, given us by Theo, and, long after him, by Psellus:—Ἁρμονια εστι συστηματων συνταξις· A harmony (not harmony in general) is a composition (or an ordering together) of systems. On this definition Bouillaud, in his Notes to Theo, pag. 250, judiciously observes,—Vocat hic harmoniam quos alii appellant τροπους seu τονους. On this subject we shall only observe further, that the synthesis of harmony, presented to us by Plato, in the whole passage now before us, beginning from simple φθογγοι, or musical sounds, (which are the elements or primary constituent parts of harmony,) is exactly the same, and proceeds in the same order, with that synthesis which is taught by all the antient Greek writers on music: one proof among many, this, of Plato’s knowledge in the theory of music. Agreeably to which observation, Plutarch, in his Treatise περι Μουσικης, informs us, that Plato applied his mind closely to the science of music; having attended the Lectures of Draco the Athenian, and those of Metellus of Agrigentum. Or if we suppose that Plato, in this part of the present dialogue, did no more than faithfully record the doctrine of Socrates, our supposition is very justifiable; for Socrates in his old age studied music under Connus.—S.
[26] That is, such relations and proportions, (or, to make use of musical terms,) such steps and transitions, intervals and bounds, systems and compositions, in the motions of the body, and in words, as are analogous to the affections of musical sounds, called by those very names. The Greek word, which we have rendered into English by the word affections, in the passage of Plato now before us is παθη, and, translated literally, signifies passions. For, whatever situation, condition, or circumstance, any being or thing is placed in by some other,—or by its relation to some other,—in whatever way it is acted on, or affected by, that other,—such situation, &c. of the being or thing so placed, so acted on, or so affected, was by the Greek philosophers termed a παθος, a passion of such being; because in that respect the being is passive.—S. I shall only observe, in addition to what Mr. Sydenham has said, that the word passion always signifies, both with Plato and Aristotle, a participated property of any being.—T.
[27] In the printed Greek of this passage we read only,—εντε ταις κινησεσιν αυ του σωματος— immediately after which,—εντε ῥημασιν,—ought to follow, but is omitted.—S.
[28] Rhythm, in general, is an order of homogeneous motions measured by time.
[29] See the Notes on the Phædrus, vol. iii.—T.
[30] That is, sounds purely vocal; whence the letters by which they are distinguished are called vowels; in the utterance of which sounds the voice solely is employed, whilst the other organs of speech remain inactive.—S.
[31] In the Greek of this passage, as it is printed by Aldus and by Stephens, we here read— φωνης μεν ου, φθογγου δε μετεχοντα τινος·—a reading which may be tolerably well supported by what soon follows. But the margin of the first Basil edition of Plato has suggested to us a reading, in which appears a distinction more obvious and plain than there is between φωνη and φθογγος, voice and sound of the voice. For, in that margin, we are directed to read the word οντα (found, perhaps, in some manuscript copy of Plato) immediately after the word φωνης, and before the words μεν ου, in this sentence. Now these two words φωνης οντα, put together, very little differ from φωνηεντα, a word which gives to this part of the sentence a meaning quite agreeable to the tenor of the whole of it, and to the language of all grammarians.—S.
[32] These were by the old grammarians called ἡμιφωνα, semi-vowels; because, in their very formation by the organs of speech, they are, of necessity, so far accompanied by the voice, as to give a half-vocal sound, without the open aid of any vowel.—S.
[33] The Greek grammarians enumerate eight of these semi-vowels.—S.
[34] Socrates, by expressing himself in this manner, concerning the general name of this third sort of letters, as if it were then newly given them at Athens, seems to disapprove it. Perhaps the antient term συμφωνα, consonants,—a term applied by the new grammarians to the ἡμιφωνα, semi- vowels, as well as to the αφωνα, mutes,—was, in his judgment, properly applicable to those letters only which yield of themselves no sound at all. For mutes, as they are called, cannot be pronounced even imperfectly and obscurely, as semi-vowels can, without the concurrence of some vowel, some sound perfectly vocal.— S.
[35] In the Greek,—αφθογγα και αφωνα·—evidently meaning such as are neither vowels nor semi-vowels. It should seem, therefore, that by φωνη Plato meant a perfect and clear vocal sound, such as we utter in pronouncing a vowel singly; and that by φθογγος he meant that imperfect and obscure sound of the voice made in the forming and pronouncing of a semi-vowel, unaided by a vowel. Now if this be true, then may the printed reading of that passage, to which belongs note 3 in the preceding page, be justified. Aristotle, however, who treats of this subject in his Poetics, cap. 20, recognizes not any such distinction between φωνη and φθογγος: for he attributes φωνη ακουστη, a vocal sound, such as may be heard, to the semi-vowels no less than to the vowels; and states the difference between these two sorts of letters thus:—The voice in uttering the vowels proceeds ανευ προσβολης, that is, it makes no allision against any parts of the mouth, those upper organs of speech, so as to be impeded in its free and full exit: but the expressing of the semi-vowels is μετα προσβολης, the voice in uttering them makes such allision, and meets with some degree of resistance: by the allision it is, indeed, articulated; but by the resistance, the passages through the mouth being straitened, it becomes weaker, and is diminished,—except it be in some syllable; for here a vowel will never fail to assist in the delivery, by giving the voice a free passage into the air. Now Aristotle is indisputably right in attributing to a semi-vowel, by itself, φωνην, vocem, a vocal sound: but his learned commentator Victorius is equally right in giving to this vocal sound the epithets obscura, tenuis, & exilis; since it is but half of the full and whole vowel-sound: and Plato may fairly be allowed to distinguish the half-sound by a particular name, and to call it φθογγος. But we know not how to agree with him, if he says that a semi-vowel does not partake of the vowel-sound; because the half of any thing whatever seems to partake, to be a part, or to have a share of its whole. For this reason it is that we incline to that emendation of the printed Greek text proposed in note 3 in page 484.—S.
[36] Alluding to those jocular threats employed by the young gentlemen, then in the Lycæum, and gathered around Socrates, to engage him in this dialectic inquiry.—S.
[37] Olympiodorus here justly observes, that we possess the reasons of things as in a dream, with respect to a separate life supernally perfected; but as in a vigilant state with respect to the exertion of them through sense. Perhaps however, says he, it is better to consider the vigilant state with respect to the distinct evolution, but the dreaming state, with respect to the indistinct subsistence of knowledge.—T.
[38] The desirable, says Olympiodorus, proceeds from the intelligible father³⁹; the sufficient from power; and the perfect from the paternal intellect. In reality, however, perfection is the third from essence: for the middle is life. But if this be true, it is evident that the end is different from perfection; for the latter is the last; but the former the first, to which essence, life, and intellect, and therefore all things converge. So that in every form, in a similar manner, the end will be the summit, and that which connectedly contains the whole; but perfection will be the third, subsisting after essence and life: for it is necessary that a thing should be, and should live, that it may become perfect. Again, the perfect is spread under the sufficient, in the same manner as the full under the superfull, and the sufficient under the desirable. For things when full excite to desire. The first end; likewise, is above the desirable, the sufficient, and the perfect. For that is simple and ineffable; and hence Socrates does not say that it is composed from the elements; but that these elements possess indefinitely a portion of the good. It is better, however, to call the coordinated common contraction (συναιρεμα) of the three a portion of the good, though this is anonymous. For the good is all things, and not only these three; nor is it alone the end, but is truly all things prior to all. Besides, the end which is now the object of consideration is knowable, so that there will be another end more common than this.—T.
[39] That is, from the summit of the intelligible order.—See the Parmenides.
[40] In the Greek,—πασι φυτοις και ζωοις, to all plants and animals. But are plants capable of living a life of sensual pleasure? or brute animals, a life of science and understanding? We are, therefore, inclined to think, that Plato’s own words were πασι τοις ζωοις· for immediately he subjoins an explanation of his meaning, and limits the word πασι, all, to such only as are endued with reason; and that the word φευ was written in the margin of some manuscript, opposite to the words πασι τοις, by a reader, astonished at the boldness of the expression πασι τοις ζωοις, and not sufficiently attentive to the qualifying words subjoined.—S.
[41] Aldus’s edition of Plato, by omitting the word ουδὲ in this sentence, gives a quite contrary turn to it. Stephens, in his edition, has inserted the ουδὲ: and this reading we have preferred to the former; because it makes much better sense, and is agreeable also to Ficinus’s translation from the Medicean manuscript. It is strange that Grynæus, who undertook to revise that translation, should depart from it here, where it is evidently right, to follow the erroneous reading in the Aldine edition. Cornarius, Serranus, Bembo, and Grou, were not so misled.—S.
[42] Proclus, in Platon. Theol. p. 132, observes, that Plato here, according to the theology of his country, establishes two principles after the one. And, according to Philolaus, the nature of beings is connected from things bounded and things infinite. If beings, therefore, subsist from bound and the infinite, it is evident that these two must be prior to beings, or, in other words, must be superessential. Hence, as bound and the infinite are superessential, Socrates with great propriety says that “God has exhibited them.” For their procession from the highest God is ineffable, and they may be rather said to be arcane manifestations from him than his productions. Mr. Sydenham, from being unacquainted with the sublime theology of the Greeks, has totally mistaken the profound meaning of this passage in his translation, which is as follows:—“The Gods, we said, have shown us the infinite of things, and also their bound.” For the original is τον θεον ελεγομεν που, το μεν απειρον δειξαι των οντων, το δὲ περας. Should it be asked, says Olympiodorus, how the two elements bound and infinity are better than that which is mixed, since these two elements are the principles of being; we reply, that these principles must be considered as total orders more simple than that which is mixt; and that secondary principles proceed from these two, in the first mixt, which are subordinate to the mixt, in the same manner as elements are every where subordinate to that which is composed from them. Again, neither is perfect separation in the second⁴³ order: for the fabrication of form first pertains to intellect; and the first intellect is pure intellect. Hence, Jamblichus says that the monads of forms subsist in this, meaning by monads that which is unseparated in every form. On this account it is intellectual as in intellectuals, and is the cause of formal essence, just as the second is the cause of life, and the third of the fabrication of form in intellectuals. Again, the egg, the paternal intellect, occult number; and, in short, that which is the third from bound, respectively signify the third God, according to theologists, and consequently each is the same as that which is mixt from bound and infinity. Further still, the one principle which gives subsistence to, and is the end of, all things, contains the final as superior to the producing; for hypostasis is through the ends. But the first principle is both these according to the one: and the two principles bound and infinity distribute these; bound subsisting according to the final, and infinity according to the producing cause. Again, Socrates establishing that which is mixt as a certain cause of union, the cause of separation is also investigated. This cause, however, will be the difference which subsists after the intelligible, as we learn from the Parmenides. For the intelligible is united alone. But it would be better to make the one the cause of all things; bound the cause of union; infinite of separation; and the mixt that which participates of both. Observe, too, that the more and the less are every where, but in intelligibles according to a superior and inferior degree of power.—T.
[43] The reader must remember that the intelligible order consists of being, life, and intellect, and that each of these receives a triadic division.—See the Notes on the Parmenides.
[44] That is, the ineffable principle of things.—T.
[45] As essence, therefore, is plainly asserted by Socrates to be mixt and generated from bound and infinity, it is evident that bound and infinity are superessential. For cause is every where superior to its effect.—T.
[46] The edition of Plato by Aldus, and that by Stephens, in this place erroneously give us to read λεγω, instead of the evidently right reading, which is λεγων, exhibited in the Basil editions.—S.
[47] Aldus, in his edition of Plato, gave these words to Protarchus; though nothing is more plain than that Plato meant them for Philebus. The Basil editors restored them to the right owner: and it is strange that Stephens either knew it not, or did not acknowledge it.—S.
[48] In all the editions of the Greek we here read εστι instead of εστον. We are ignorant of any authority for using so strange an enallage; and therefore we suppose it an erroneous reading.—S.
[49] This evidently is a metaphor taken from the contentions usual at that time between dramatic poets during the feasts of Bacchus, for the fame of superiority in their art. For the Grecians of those days had an emulation to excell in the musical entertainments of the mind, as well as in the gymnic exercises of the body. To inspire them with that emulation, combats in poetry and music, as well as in gymnastic, were instituted by their legislators: and the contenders in either kind were alike termed αγωνισται, combatants. The metaphorical combatants meant by Protarchus are Mind and Pleasure.—S.
[50] In continuing the metaphor taken from theatrical contests, Protarchus likens himself to one of the chorus in a tragedy or comedy, and Socrates to the κορυφαιος, or χορηγος, the chief or leader of the whole band. For, in the chorus songs, it was the office of the chief, or president, to lead the vocal music, keeping it in time and tune with the instrumental: and in the dialogue scenes, wherever the chorus bore a part, their president spoke alone for them all.—S.
[51] Socrates does not say this as being himself doubtful whether Intellect is king of heaven and earth, but because those with whom he was conversing had not arrived at a scientific knowledge of this dogma.—T.
[52] That the person here alluded to is Critias, one of the thirty oligarchic tyrants, cannot be doubted of by those who are acquainted with his character, and the injurious treatment he gave to Socrates. A considerable fragment of his atheistic poetry is extant in Sextus Empiricus, pag. 562.—S.
[53] Socrates is here speaking of the difference between the wholes of the universe, and the parts to which these wholes are prior, as being their cause. See the Introduction to the Timæus.—T.
[54] In the Greek of this passage we read—ψυχην τε παρεχον και σωμα σκιαν εμποιουν.— Ficinus translates the two last words of it thus:—“dum imprimit umbram.” But this being obscure, an error in the Greek manuscripts was justly suspected by the subsequent translators, Cornarius and Serranus; the former of whom proposes instead of σκιαν to read ὑγειαν; and the latter imagines that we should read σωμασκιαν as one word. Grynæus and Bembo never attempt an emendation of the printed Greek, even where it is most apparently erroneous. And Mons. Grou has taken the easy way of not translating the two last words. But all the difficulty vanishes, if, instead of σκιαν we read σκηνος, a tabernacle or tent; a word metaphorically used by the Pythagoreans to signify the human body, as being but a slight temporary dwelling for the soul. See Timæus the Locrian, in several passages; and a fragment of Ocellus the Lucanian, de Lege, in Stobæus’s Eclogæ Phys. cap. 16. See also Æschines the Socratic, pag. 128, edit. Horrei; the Greek index to which will furnish the learned reader with examples of the same metaphor, used by several Greek writers in the succeeding ages.—S.
[55] That is, soul is consubsistent with wisdom and intellect. If this be the case, it is evident that when Plato in the Timæus speaks of the generation of soul by the demiurgus, whom he there expressly calls intellect, he does not mean by generation a temporal production, but an eternal procession from cause. And in the same manner, what he there says of the generation of the universe is to be understood. Hence, those are to be derided who assert that the world, according to Plato, was produced in time.—T.
[56] That is to say, a kingly soul, and a kingly intellect, subsist in Jupiter, the artificer of the universe according to cause. For Jupiter, as a Deity, is a superessential unity, in which all things have a causal subsistence.—T.
[57] Cornarius and Stephens, both of them, perceived the Greek of this sentence to be erroneous. But the emendations proposed by them appear insufficient. Ficinus’s translation from the Florentine MS. helps to restore the right reading thus:—Δει δη,—ιδειν ἡμας· και πρωτον περι την ἡδονην, ὡσπερ—ουτω και ταυτα προτερον [sc. δει ιδειν].—S.
[58] In the edition of Plato by Aldus, and in that also by Stephens, this sentence, by a strange mistake, is printed as if it were spoken by Socrates.—S.
[59] In the Greek, the first words of this sentence of Socrates, and the first word also of the next sentence, spoken by Protarchus, ought for the future to be printed thus—Οὔκουν and not Ουκοῦν.—The wrong accentuation of these passages in all the editions seems owing to the error of Ficinus, who mistook both the sentences for interrogations: and the mistakes are continued by Grynæus. Serranus’s translation is guilty of the same mistakes: but in those of Cornarius, Bembo, and Grou, they are corrected.—S.
[60] The Greek of this passage, it is presumed, ought to be read thus—ειπερ μελλει ταυθ’ ἡμιν κ. τ. λ.—S.
[61] In the Greek of this passage, instead of γιγνομενον, the participle singular, agreeing with σωμα, we ought to read γιγνομενα, the plural, agreeing with the two preceding substantives, ψυχην and σωμα, coupled together; according to a rule, the same in the grammars of the Greek and Latin languages. For the words of this sentence, placed in the order of their grammatical construction, are these,—Τῳ κοινῃ κινεισθαι την ψυχην και το σωμα, κοινῃ γιγνομενα εν ἑνι παθει,—ταυτην την κινησιν κ. τ. λ. If Stephens had perceived this, he would not have adopted Cornarius’s alteration of the text.—S.
[62] Memory, says Olympiodorus, is triple, viz. irrational, rational, and intellectual. Each of these likewise is twofold, viz. phantastic, sensitive; dianoëtic, doxastic; essential, divine.—T.
[63] In the printed Greek we here read—αναμνησεις και μνημας.—So that memory and re- membrance are now confounded together; and the difference but just before made between them is annulled. It is therefore apprehended, that we ought to read—αναμνησεις και μνημης ανακτησεις.—S.
[64] All the editions of Plato give us here to read—Ἱνα μη—λαβοιμεν κ. τ. λ. From this sentence, thus absurdly printed, Cornarius, in his marginal lemmas, extracted the following curious precept,—“Voluptas & cupiditas animæ, absque corpore, vitanda.” Plea- sure and desire in the soul herself, abstracted from the body, are both to be avoided. The French translator has judiciously rejected the negative particle in this sentence.—S.
[65] A future editor of Plato may consider, in the Greek of this sentence, whether δια should no be inserted before the word ποματος.—S.
[66] That is, at the beginning of his sensitive life.—S.
[67] Thus have we rendered into English the Greek of this sentence as it is printed. But we are much inclined to adopt the emendation και παυεται μεν, proposed by Stephens in the margin of his edition: only changing και into ἢ. If our learned readers are of the same opinion, and think with us, that two different cases are here stated by Socrates; in both of which there is a mixture of anxiety and delight, but not a mixture of the same kind; then, instead of—he may enjoy, the translation should be—or when he enjoys, &c.—S.
[68] We cannot conceive to what purpose this compliment to Protarchus is here introduced, unless it be by way of a simile; to represent the dignity and excellence of the matters before difcussed; and, by reminding Protarchus of his illustrious birth, to signify to him,— that, as he ought not to degenerate from his ancestors, so neither ought any new matters to be brought upon the carpet, if, in their weight and value, they fall short of those which have preceded. Perhaps also an intimation is thus given by Plato to his readers, that one of the subjects of inquiry just now mentioned by Socrates,—that concerning opinions,—immediately related to that other concerning pleasures, as to their truth or falsehood. In the Greek of this passage, it is probable that the printed reading κεινου του ανδρος is erroneous; and that Plato wrote κλειτου ανδρος; but that, in after ages, a reader of some manuscript copy of this dialogue, where instead of κλειτου was written κλεινου, (and Hesychius interprets κλεινὸς by the more usual terms ενδοξος, ονόμαστος,) on collating it with another MS. copy, where he found κλειτου written, wrote του in the margin of the former copy, opposite to the syllable νου, with which, perhaps, a new line began; that afterwards a transcriber of this copy received του into the text of his own transcript, just before ανδρος, supposing it to be a word casually omitted in the former copy; and that, last of all, when κλεινου του ανδρος was discovered to be a solecism in the Greek syntaxis, κλεινου, a word very uncommon, was easily changed into κεινου, and the construction was thus purified.—S.
[69] In the Greek we read only,—ψευδεις, αἱ δ’ αληθεις ουκ εισιν ἡδοναι. All the translators of Plato into other languages justly suppose this sentence to be imperfect in the beginning of it: but in their way of supplying the words omitted, it is nothing more than a repetition of the question proposed before, without any new additional matter. Socrates, in fact, is now entering on a proof of the distinction between the true pleasures and the false: and we presume, that he here builds his proof on that prime axiom on which is founded all demonstration, viz. “Things cannot be what they are, and yet different from what they are, at the same time.”—In the passage, therefore, now before us, it seems probable that the sentence, to be made agreeable to the sense of it, is to be completed thus,—Αληθεις αἱ μεν ψευδεις, ψευδεις αἱ δ’ αληθεις, οὐκ εισιν ἡδοναι. The error of omitting the first words is easy to be accounted for.—S.
[70] Stephens’s edition of Plato agrees with all the prior editions in giving us to read ανοιας in this place: but that learned printer, in his latter annotations, pag. 75, justly observes, that instead of ανοιας we ought to read αγνοιας. That emendation was made before Stephens by Cornarius, in his Eclogæ, pag. 333. Ignorance is here opposed to knowledge, as false opinion is opposed to true. The Medicean manuscript exhibits the right reading, as appears from the Latin of Ficinus.—S.
[71] In the Greek of this sentence, before the word αει, we ought to read οντως instead of οὑτως. This appears from a sentence soon after, concerning a man really delighted with the thoughts of things unreal. Both the sentences refer to what was said before, where the same word is used in the same sense as it is here.—S.
[72] It is observed by Cornarius, that after the word ψευδεις, in the Greek of this sentence, all the printed editions omit the words και αληθεις: the sense evidently demands them; and they are not wanting in the Medicean MS., as appears from Ficinus’s Latin translation.—S.
[73] We have ventured to suppose an error in the Greek of this passage; and that we ought to read χαιρουσιν ουτοι, instead of the printed words—χαιρειν οιονται. For, without such an alteration, Socrates in his next sentence (where these very words—χαιρειν οιονται— appear again, and where they are very proper) is guilty of mere tautology; and his argumentation proceeds not the least step, but halts during that whole sentence.—S.
[74] In all the editions of the Greek we here read αποπληρουμενων· but certainly we ought to read αποπληρουμενοι.—S.
[75] In the Greek, as it is printed, we read το δ’ αυτης ἡδονης: but we should choose to read το δ’ αυ της ἡ.—S.
[76] Homer, in the eighteenth book of his Iliad, ver. 108, &c.
[77] It is hoped that no future editor of Plato will be either so absurd, or so careless, as to follow all the former editors in printing μη (instead of αν η) εῤῥωμενα, in the Greek of this passage.—S.
[78] Of pleasures, says Olympiodorus, those that excite a vehement agitation are such as are attended with pain, but the energetic alone are such as are beheld in a perfect animal when energizing. Again, of pure pleasures, the corporeal are such as the vision of commensurate light; those pertaining to the soul are such as result from the speculation and apprehension of a certain intelligible; but those which belong to both, viz. to body and soul, are such as those of health, in which the soul also rejoices; the pleasure in this case beginning from the motion of the soul, but descending as far as to the body.—T.
[79] That is, rectilinear plane figures, such as triangles, rectangles, and circles.—S.
[80] Such as pyramids and eubes, spheres, cylinders and cones.—S.
[81] The parts of every mathematical simple figure, whether it be right-lined or circular, are, all of them, similar and commensurable.—The beauty of figure in all animals, on the contrary, arises from the proportions of dissimilar parts, measured, not by any common measure, but by the respective ends and uses for which they are severally designed by nature.—S.
[82] Such as the beautiful colours of many flowers; or as those of a clear morning or evening sky: not such as the colour of a complexion, the tincture of a skin,—in the human species,—a colour belonging only to that species, and relatively agreeable, as it indicates health of body, and a purity of the blood and humours.—S.
[83] Such is that of many species of birds, whose whistling is all monotonous. Such also is that of the Æolian harp, on which the vibrations are made solely by the air in motion.— S.
[84] In the Greek—κομψοι, neat and trim, that is, in their reasonings and discourses;— subtle arguers, or fine logicians;—a character which distinguished the school of Zeno the Eleatic. It will presently be seen, that the persons here spoken of philosophized on the principles of the Eleatic sect, and probably were some of the same Zeno’s Athenian disciples.—S.
[85] This whole sentence in all the editions of the Greek is thus printed,—Τουτοις τοινυν εοικοτα δυοιν ουσι, δυ’ αλλα ζητει, κατα παντα ὁσα λεγομεν ειναι το τριτον ἑτερῳ.—A sentence quite unintelligible to us. Mons. Grou very justly apprehends some error in the text. We presume, that this sensible and elegant translator never saw the emendation proposed by Cornarius; for that, otherwise, he would have embraced it, and have made his version, as we have ours, agreeable to that emendation: which is no more than a change of the last word—ἑτερῳ into σωτηρι. The sentence, thus amended, concludes with this proverbial saying,—the third to the saviour. It was a form of words antiently used at the feast of every victor in the Olympic games, when he made an accustomed libation out of the third cup or glass, Διϊ σωτηρι, to Jupiter, in his character of saviour in all difficulties and dangers. A speech so well known to all the Grecians, easily passed into a proverb: and it is alluded to as such by Plato in his Charmides, in his Republic, and in his Seventh Epistle.—S.
[86] Essence and generation, says Olympiodorus, are fourfold. For that which is sensible is generation, and the intelligible is essence. In a similar manner, that which is subcelestial is generation, and that which is celestial is essence. Further still, in the third place, generation is a procession to form, and form itself is essence. In the fourth place, mutation about a subject is generation, and the subject itself is essence; as, for instance, quality about body. But every where generation is for the sake of essence: for essence is the cause of generation—T.
[87] In the Greek of this passage it is presumed that we ought to read χειροτεχνιαις, and not, as it is printed, χειροτεχνικαις,—and also to read εστι instead of ενι.—S.
[88] Namely, mensuration and statics.—S.
[89] Meaning the students in mathematics. For the study of the mathematical sciences was deemed by Plato the best introduction to the knowledge of intelligible things.—S.
[90] This whole sentence, beginning with the words “and let us affirm,” is, in Stephens’s edition, very improperly given to Socrates; and consequently the sentence following, with equal impropriety, to Protarchus. The Basil editions are both right; the Aldine not clear.—S.
[91] Meaning, as we presume, such as the philosophers of the Ionic sect, by Aristotle styled φυσικοι, naturalists. For we learn from D. Laertius that Archelaus, a disciple of Anaxagoras, and the last professor and teacher of the doctrine of those philosophers, did, in the time of Socrates, introduce into Athens their way of philosophizing; which was none other than that spoken of in this passage. It seems therefore probable, that the Athenian scholars of Archelaus are the very persons whose studies are here shown to fall short of attaining to the knowledge of truth, or the true nature of things. The same judgment of Socrates concerning these Ionic physiologers we find recorded by Xenophon in Memorabil. lib. i. cap. 1. sec. 11.—S.
[92] There are Gods, says Olympiodorus, that preside over temperament; over the physical and mundane, Vulcan; but over the psychical and supermundane, Bacchus. The mingling idiom, indeed, proceeds as far as to the last hyparxis. Thus, for instance, Vulcan being the leader of physical temperament, first produces this idiom in himself; afterwards, in the mundane intellect which presides over nature; in the third place, in a soul of this kind, in a similar manner; and lastly, in the physical world according to hyparxis. In like manner, Bacchus unfolding in himself the principle of psychical temperament after a divine manner, in the next place establishes this in intellect intellectually, according to hyparxis in soul, and in a binding mode in the animated body. And still higher than these, Jupiter is the principle of intellectual temperament. There are also other principles of temperament more partial than Bacchus and Vulcan. Plato mentions these two, as being about to mingle all the supermundane and mundane mixtures; but he omits the Jovian temperament, as being superior to the things proposed in this dialogue.—T.
[93] Pleasure is compared to honey, says Olympiodorus, because it possesses sweetness and the ecstatic. And hence the Pythagoric saying, that souls fall into generation through honey (διο και πυθαγορειος λογος, δια μελιτος πιπτειν εις γενεσιν τας ψυχας). But intellect is compared to water, because it is sober.—T.
[94] Iliad, lib. iv. ver. 453.
[95] In all the editions of the Greek we here read—ὁπωσουν, however it be made. But this is contradictory to the meaning of the sentence; for the meaning is this,—that “every right and good mixture must be made in one certain manner only, viz. by measure.”— We may fairly therefore presume, that Plato wrote, not ὁπωσουν, but ὁποσαουν, (or, by elision, ὁποσουν,) with a view to the magnitude of the universe.—S.
[96] The one principle of all things, says Olympiodorus, presides over every thing, according to that which he is. Hence, the light proceeding from him is truth, and subsists as the object of desire to all things. On this account, too, this light is the first beauty, the cause of things beautiful, bounding every thing in its proper measure; and hence it is celebrated as measure. Again, the one principle is not a contracted comprehension of the three monads, beauty, symmetry, and truth: for it is the cause of all things. But that which is mixed is the contraction of all things, as the end, and not as the contraction of essences; so that the one principle may be more justly denominated the end of ends. Again, the three monads subsist arcanely in the first principle; unically, and according to one, in bound; multiformly, and as it were according to the parturition of separation, in infinity; but according to the first separation, though not perfectly divided, nor yet intellectually, in the third God, who is the cause of the mixed, so far as it is mixed. Again, the good is analogous to truth: for the good to every thing is to be that which it in reality is; but the just is analogous to symmetry. For this is the measure of that which pertains to every thing, in the same manner as the commensurate. Further still, Jamblichus says, that the three monads proceeding from the good adorn intellect; but it is immanifest what intellect, whether that which subsists after life, or the paternal intellect which is celebrated in essence. Besides, in the Orphic writings, these three monads become apparent in the mythological egg. The followers of Syrianus, however, make a division, and survey truth in the first being, as being perfectly replete with that which it is, and in no respect admitting in itself non-being. But they survey beauty in life, as being prolific, and rejoicing in progressions. For, after that which is perfectly without separation, life introduces a parturition, as it were, of separation. And they contemplate symmetry in intellect, because in this forms are first separated and harmoniously coordinated. You may also divide them into the principles after the one principle of all things. For you may justly ascribe truth to bound; beauty to infinity, through its progression; and symmetry to that which is mixed. Proclus, in Theol. Plat. p. 140, observes, “that Jamblichus appears to him to have bounded the intelligible in these three monads, symmetry, truth, and beauty; and through these to have unfolded the intelligible Gods in the Platonic theology.” He adds, “it is also apparent why Socrates speaks of this triad as subsisting in the vestibules of the good. (See p. 563). For that which is primarily being, in consequence of its union with the good, participates of this triad. Hence, because the good is the measure of all things, the first being is commensurate. Because the good is prior to being, the first being truly subsists. And because the former is desirable, the latter shines forth as the beautiful itself.”—T.
[97] Cornarius, and Stephens after him, rightly observe, that in the Greek of this sentence we ought to read ὡσαυτως, and not, as it is printed, ὡς ὁυτως.—S.
[98] Mons. Grou has observed, very justly, that the word ειρησθαι, in the latter part of this sentence, is an error in the text: and instead of it, he proposes the word ἡρησθαι. Grynæus, the corrector of Ficinus’s translation of Plato, seems, in his rendering the Greek word in this place into Latin by the words sortita esse, (to have obtained an allot- ment of,) either to have read ειληχθαι in some manuscript, or else to have thus amended the text by a happy conjecture of his own.—S.
[99] In the Greek of this sentence, the word επιστημας ought to be either quite expunged, or changed for the word ἡδονας, or immediately preceded by the preposition περι. The purest pleasures, those of science, are certainly not sciences themselves.—S.
[100] This verse of Orpheus we meet with again in Plutarch’s Treatise concerning the Delphic Inscription Ει, and in no other antient author whom we are acquainted with. It is introduced by Plutarch no otherwise than as a part of the present passage in Plato, which is there quoted; and not so as to give us any light into the poet’s own meaning in that verse. But if we may form a probable conjecture from Plato’s application of it, it was the end of a description of five different ages of the world, with regard to men’s manners and ways of life.—S.
[101] All the editions of Plato give us to read το instead of τι in this sentence. Ficinus, however, translates as if in the Medicean manuscript he read τι, which undoubtedly is the true reading; and herein he is followed by all the translators who came after him.—S.
[102] A very gross error has infected all the editions and all the translations of Plato in this place. For in all the editions we read πεμπτον the fifth, instead of ἑκτον the sixth. Now the fifth rank was before assigned solely to the pure pleasures. The sixth and last rank, therefore, remains to Pleasure, one of the three great subjects of this dialogue; to plea- sure, pretending to be the only or the chief good of man, and by Philebus avowed and contended for as such; pleasure in general and undistinguished; pleasure at ran- dom, from whatever quarter it comes;—in Plato’s own words, vol. ii, p. 40, edit. Steph. παραπαν, ὁπωσουν, και εικη χαιρειν. But the very next sentence of Socrates puts it beyond all doubt, that pleasure of sense, sensual pleasure, is here meant.—S.
[103] In the Greek of this sentence, we presume that the word ουκ ought to be changed into ὡς.—S.
[104] Porphyry, in his Treatise περι αποχης εμψυχων, lib. iii. sec. 1. writes thus: Σωκρατης προς τους ἡδονην διαμφισβητουντας ειναι το τελος, ουδ’ αν παντες, εφη, συες και τραγοι τουτῳ συναινοιεν, πεισθησεσθαι αν εν τῳη δεσθαι τὸ ευδαιμὸν ἡμων κεισθαι, εστ’ αν νους εν τοις πασι κρατῃ. “To certain persons who were disputing on this point,—whether pleasure was the ultimate end of man, Socrates said that, were all the swine and goats in the world to join in applauding this man, (the advocate for pleasure) yet he should never be persuaded that human happiness consisted in being pleased, so long as mind excelled and prevailed in all things.” If Porphyry in this alluded to the very emphatical passage in Plato now before us, he seems to have improved the force of it not a little; unless, in his copy of this dialogue, he read συες και τραγοι instead of βοες και ἱπωοι.—S.
[105] This dialogue both begins and ends abruptly. Hence Olympiodorus asks, why it is without a beginning and an end? And he solves this question very properly as follows: “Shall we say that this is because the good is uncircumscribed, and has neither beginning nor end? But it may be said, that on the contrary it is necessary the good should have a beginning and end; a beginning of such a kind, that there is not another beginning prior to it, and an end beyond which there is not any other end. Perhaps therefore, it is better to say with our preceptor, that the mixt life has an end, and such a one as is adapted to all animals. So that the dialogue is very properly without a beginning, for the purpose of indicating that there is a certain good beyond that which it investigates. And again, for the same reason, it is without an end: for there is also another end more antient than its end.” = THE END OF THE PHILEBUS.