Soc.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.
Pro.Quite right.
Soc.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.
Pro.Clearly, and yet perhaps the argument had better be pursued to the end.
Soc.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.
Pro.You are speaking of beauty, truth, and measure?
Soc.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.
Pro.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.
Soc.Shall we next consider measure, in like manner, and ask whether pleasure has more of this than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure?
Pro.Here is another question which may be easily answered; for Iimagine that nothing can ever be more immoderate than the transports of pleasure, or more in conformity with measure than mind and knowledge.
Soc.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?
Pro.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.
Soc.Right.
Pro.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.
Soc.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.
Pro.Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been now said.
Soc.In the second class is contained the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.
Pro.True.
Soc.And if you reckon in the third dass mind and wisdom, you will not be far wrong, if I divine aright.
Pro.I dare say.
Soc.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.
Pro.Surely.
Soc.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.
Pro.Perhaps.
Soc.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.
Pro.True.
Soc.Then let us sum up and reassert what has been said, thus offering the third libation to the saviour Zeus.
Pro.How?
Soc.Philebus affirmed that pleasure was always and absolutely the good.
Pro.I understand; this third libation, Socrates, of which you spoke, meant a recapitulation.
Soc.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, Iaffirmed that mind was far better and far more excellent, as an element of human life, than pleasure.
Pro.True.
Soc.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.
Pro.You did.
Soc.Nothing could be more satisfactorily shown than the unsatisfactory nature of both of them.
Pro.Very true.
Soc.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.
Pro.Most true.
Soc.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.
Pro.Certainly.
Soc.And, according to the judgment which has now been given, pleasure will rank fifth.
Pro.True.
Soc.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.
Pro.And now, Socrates, we tell you that the truth of what you have been saying is approved by the judgment of all of us.
Soc.And will you let me go?
Pro.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.
-THE END-
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