Philebus Part 25

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: Quite impossible; and now you and Philebus must tell me whether anything is still wanting in the mixture, for to my way of thinking the argument is now completed, and may be compared to an incorporeal law, which is going to hold fair rule over a living body.

PROTARCHUS: I agree with you, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And may we not say with reason that we are now at the vestibule of the habitation of the good?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we are.

SOCRATES: What, then, is there in the mixture which is most precious, and which is the princ.i.p.al cause why such a state is universally beloved by all? When we have discovered it, we will proceed to ask whether this omnipresent nature is more akin to pleasure or to mind.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right; in that way we shall be better able to judge.

SOCRATES: And there is no difficulty in seeing the cause which renders any mixture either of the highest value or of none at all.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Every man knows it.

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: He knows that any want of measure and symmetry in any mixture whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to the elements and to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but only a confused medley which brings confusion on the possessor of it.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And now the power of the good has retired into the region of the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the world over.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one idea only, with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the three, and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of the mixture, and the mixture as being good by reason of the infusion of them.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: And now, Protarchus, any man could decide well enough whether pleasure or wisdom is more akin to the highest good, and more honourable among G.o.ds and men.

PROTARCHUS: Clearly, and yet perhaps the argument had better be pursued to the end.

SOCRATES: We must take each of them separately in their relation to pleasure and mind, and p.r.o.nounce upon them; for we ought to see to which of the two they are severally most akin.

PROTARCHUS: You are speaking of beauty, truth, and measure?

SOCRATES: Yes, Protarchus, take truth first, and, after pa.s.sing in review mind, truth, pleasure, pause awhile and make answer to yourself--as to whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth.

PROTARCHUS: There is no need to pause, for the difference between them is palpable; pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world; and it is said that in the pleasures of love, which appear to be the greatest, perjury is excused by the G.o.ds; for pleasures, like children, have not the least particle of reason in them; whereas mind is either the same as truth, or the most like truth, and the truest.

SOCRATES: Shall we next consider measure, in like manner, and ask whether pleasure has more of this than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Here is another question which may be easily answered; for I imagine that nothing can ever be more immoderate than the transports of pleasure, or more in conformity with measure than mind and knowledge.

SOCRATES: Very good; but there still remains the third test: Has mind a greater share of beauty than pleasure, and is mind or pleasure the fairer of the two?

PROTARCHUS: No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever saw or imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any time, past, present, or future.

SOCRATES: Right.

PROTARCHUS: But when we see some one indulging in pleasures, perhaps in the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful nature of the action makes us ashamed; and so we put them out of sight, and consign them to darkness, under the idea that they ought not to meet the eye of day.

SOCRATES: Then, Protarchus, you will proclaim everywhere, by word of mouth to this company, and by messengers bearing the tidings far and wide, that pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor yet the second, but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable, and the like, the eternal nature has been found.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been now said.

SOCRATES: In the second cla.s.s is contained the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if you reckon in the third cla.s.s mind and wisdom, you will not be far wrong, if I divine aright.

PROTARCHUS: I dare say.

SOCRATES: And would you not put in the fourth cla.s.s the goods which we were affirming to appertain specially to the soul--sciences and arts and true opinions as we called them? These come after the third cla.s.s, and form the fourth, as they are certainly more akin to good than pleasure is.

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

SOCRATES: The fifth cla.s.s are the pleasures which were defined by us as painless, being the pure pleasures of the soul herself, as we termed them, which accompany, some the sciences, and some the senses.

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps.

SOCRATES: And now, as Orpheus says,

'With the sixth generation cease the glory of my song.'

Here, at the sixth award, let us make an end; all that remains is to set the crown on our discourse.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then let us sum up and rea.s.sert what has been said, thus offering the third libation to the saviour Zeus.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Philebus affirmed that pleasure was always and absolutely the good.

PROTARCHUS: I understand; this third libation, Socrates, of which you spoke, meant a recapitulation.

SOCRATES: Yes, but listen to the sequel; convinced of what I have just been saying, and feeling indignant at the doctrine, which is maintained, not by Philebus only, but by thousands of others, I affirmed that mind was far better and far more excellent, as an element of human life, than pleasure.