Philebus Part 24

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?

PROTARCHUS: Far greater.

SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the G.o.d who presides over the ceremony of mingling.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Tell me first;--should we be most likely to succeed if we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.

SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I can show a safer plan.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than another, and one art to be more exact than another.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: There was also supposed to be a difference in sciences; some of them regarding only the transient and perishing, and others the permanent and imperishable and everlasting and immutable; and when judged by the standard of truth, the latter, as we thought, were truer than the former.

PROTARCHUS: Very good and right.

SOCRATES: If, then, we were to begin by mingling the sections of each cla.s.s which have the most of truth, will not the union suffice to give us the loveliest of lives, or shall we still want some elements of another kind?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we ought to do what you suggest.

SOCRATES: Let us suppose a man who understands justice, and has reason as well as understanding about the true nature of this and of all other things.

PROTARCHUS: We will suppose such a man.

SOCRATES: Will he have enough of knowledge if he is acquainted only with the divine circle and sphere, and knows nothing of our human spheres and circles, but uses only divine circles and measures in the building of a house?

PROTARCHUS: The knowledge which is only superhuman, Socrates, is ridiculous in man.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean that you are to throw into the cup and mingle the impure and uncertain art which uses the false measure and the false circle?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, we must, if any of us is ever to find his way home.

SOCRATES: And am I to include music, which, as I was saying just now, is full of guesswork and imitation, and is wanting in purity?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that you must, if human life is to be a life at all.

SOCRATES: Well, then, suppose that I give way, and, like a doorkeeper who is pushed and overborne by the mob, I open the door wide, and let knowledge of every sort stream in, and the pure mingle with the impure?

PROTARCHUS: I do not know, Socrates, that any great harm would come of having them all, if only you have the first sort.

SOCRATES: Well, then, shall I let them all flow into what Homer poetically terms 'a meeting of the waters'?

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: There--I have let them in, and now I must return to the fountain of pleasure. For we were not permitted to begin by mingling in a single stream the true portions of both according to our original intention; but the love of all knowledge constrained us to let all the sciences flow in together before the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And now the time has come for us to consider about the pleasures also, whether we shall in like manner let them go all at once, or at first only the true ones.

PROTARCHUS: It will be by far the safer course to let flow the true ones first.

SOCRATES: Let them flow, then; and now, if there are any necessary pleasures, as there were arts and sciences necessary, must we not mingle them?

PROTARCHUS: Yes; the necessary pleasures should certainly be allowed to mingle.

SOCRATES: The knowledge of the arts has been admitted to be innocent and useful always; and if we say of pleasures in like manner that all of them are good and innocent for all of us at all times, we must let them all mingle?

PROTARCHUS: What shall we say about them, and what course shall we take?

SOCRATES: Do not ask me, Protarchus; but ask the daughters of pleasure and wisdom to answer for themselves.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Tell us, O beloved--shall we call you pleasures or by some other name?--would you rather live with or without wisdom? I am of opinion that they would certainly answer as follows:

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: They would answer, as we said before, that for any single cla.s.s to be left by itself pure and isolated is not good, nor altogether possible; and that if we are to make comparisons of one cla.s.s with another and choose, there is no better companion than knowledge of things in general, and likewise the perfect knowledge, if that may be, of ourselves in every respect.

PROTARCHUS: And our answer will be:--In that ye have spoken well.

SOCRATES: Very true. And now let us go back and interrogate wisdom and mind: Would you like to have any pleasures in the mixture? And they will reply:--'What pleasures do you mean?'

PROTARCHUS: Likely enough.

SOCRATES: And we shall take up our parable and say: Do you wish to have the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your companions in addition to the true ones? 'Why, Socrates,' they will say, 'how can we? seeing that they are the source of ten thousand hindrances to us; they trouble the souls of men, which are our habitation, with their madness; they prevent us from coming to the birth, and are commonly the ruin of the children which are born to us, causing them to be forgotten and unheeded; but the true and pure pleasures, of which you spoke, know to be of our family, and also those pleasures which accompany health and temperance, and which every Virtue, like a G.o.ddess, has in her train to follow her about wherever she goes,--mingle these and not the others; there would be great want of sense in any one who desires to see a fair and perfect mixture, and to find in it what is the highest good in man and in the universe, and to divine what is the true form of good--there would be great want of sense in his allowing the pleasures, which are always in the company of folly and vice, to mingle with mind in the cup.'--Is not this a very rational and suitable reply, which mind has made, both on her own behalf, as well as on the behalf of memory and true opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

SOCRATES: And still there must be something more added, which is a necessary ingredient in every mixture.

PROTARCHUS: What is that?

SOCRATES: Unless truth enter into the composition, nothing can truly be created or subsist.