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Philebus

P >> Plato >> Philebus




PROTARCHUS: How?

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

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

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

PROTARCHUS: Likely enough.

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

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

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

PROTARCHUS: What is that?

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

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

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

PROTARCHUS: I agree with you, Socrates.

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

PROTARCHUS: I think that we are.

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

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

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

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Every man knows it.

PROTARCHUS: What?

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

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

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

PROTARCHUS: True.

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

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

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

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOCRATES: Right.

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

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

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

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

PROTARCHUS: True.

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

PROTARCHUS: I dare say.

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

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

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

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps.

SOCRATES: And now, as Orpheus says,

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

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

PROTARCHUS: True.

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

PROTARCHUS: How?

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

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

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

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: But, suspecting that there were other things which were also
better, I went on to say that if there was anything better than either,
then I would claim the second place for mind over pleasure, and pleasure
would lose the second place as well as the first.

PROTARCHUS: You did.

SOCRATES: Nothing could be more satisfactorily shown than the
unsatisfactory nature of both of them.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: The claims both of pleasure and mind to be the absolute good
have been entirely disproven in this argument, because they are both
wanting in self-sufficiency and also in adequacy and perfection.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: But, though they must both resign in favour of another, mind is
ten thousand times nearer and more akin to the nature of the conqueror than
pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And, according to the judgment which has now been given,
pleasure will rank fifth.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: But not first; no, not even if all the oxen and horses and
animals in the world by their pursuit of enjoyment proclaim her to be so;--
although the many trusting in them, as diviners trust in birds, determine
that pleasures make up the good of life, and deem the lusts of animals to
be better witnesses than the inspirations of divine philosophy.

PROTARCHUS: And now, Socrates, we tell you that the truth of what you have
been saying is approved by the judgment of all of us.

SOCRATES: And will you let me go?

PROTARCHUS: There is a little which yet remains, and I will remind you of
it, for I am sure that you will not be the first to go away from an
argument.

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