Philebus (18-19)

Phi. So do I; it is excellent in itself, but why has he said it now to us, and what purpose is there in it?

Soc. Protarchus, that is a very proper question which Philebus has asked us.

Pro. Certainly it is, so please answer it.

Soc. I will, when I have said a little more on just this subject. For if a person begins with some unity or other, he must, as I was saying, not turn immediately to infinity, but to some definite number; now just so, conversely, when he has to take the infinite first, he must not turn immediately to the one, but must think of some number which possesses in each case some plurality, and must end by passing from all to one. Let us revert to the letters of the alphabet to illustrate this.

Pro. How?

Soc. When some one, whether god or godlike man,—there is an Egyptian story that his name was Theuth—observed that sound was infinite, he was the first to notice that the vowel sounds in that infinity were not one, but many, and again that there were other elements which were not vowels but did have a sonant quality, and that these also had a definite number; and he distinguished a third kind of letters which we now call mutes. Then he divided the mutes until he distinguished each individual one, and he treated the vowels and semivowels in the same way, until he knew the number of them and gave to each and all the name of letters. Perceiving, however, that none of us could learn any one of them alone by itself without learning them all, and considering that this was a common bond which made them in a way all one, he assigned to them all a single science and called it grammar.

Phi. I understand that more clearly than the earlier statement, Protarchus, so far as the reciprocal relations of the one and the many are concerned, but I still feel the same lack as a little while ago.

Soc. Do you mean, Philebus, that you do not see what this has to do with the question?

Phi. Yes; that is what Protarchus and I have been trying to discover for a long time.

Soc. Really, have you been trying, as you say, for long time to discover it, when it was close to you all the while?

Phi. How is that?

Soc. Was not our discussion from the beginning about wisdom and pleasure and which of them is preferable?

Phi. Yes, of course.

Soc. And surely we say that each of them is one.

Phi. Certainly.

Soc. This, then, is precisely the question which the previous discussion puts to us: How is each of them one and many, and how is it that they are not immediately infinite, but each possesses a definite number, before the individual phenomena become infinite?

Pro. Philebus, somehow or other Socrates has led us round and plunged us into a serious question. Consider which of us shall answer it. Perhaps it is ridiculous that I, after taking your place in entire charge of the argument, should ask you to come back and answer this question because I cannot do so, but I think it would be still more ridiculous if neither of us could answer. Consider, then, what we are to do. For I think Socrates is asking us whether there are or are not kinds of pleasure, how many kinds there are, and what their nature is, and the same of wisdom.

Soc. You are quite right, son of Callias; for, as our previous discussion showed, unless we can do this in the case of every unity, every like, every same, and their opposites, none of us can ever be of any use in anything.

Pro. That, Socrates, seems pretty likely to be true. However, it is splendid for the wise man to know everything, but the next best thing, it seems, is not to be ignorant of himself. I will tell you why I say that at this moment. You, Socrates, have granted to all of us this conversation and your cooperation for the purpose of determining what is the best of human possessions. For when Philebus said it was pleasure and gaiety and enjoyment and all that sort of thing, you objected and said it was not those things, but another sort, and we very properly keep reminding ourselves voluntarily of this, in order that both claims may be present in our memory for examination. You, as it appears, assert that the good which is rightly to be called better than pleasure is mind, knowledge, intelligence, art, and all their kin; you say we ought to acquire these, not that other sort. When those two claims were made and an argument arose, we playfully threatened that we would not let you go home until the discussion was brought to some satisfactory conclusion. You agreed and put yourself at our disposal for that purpose. Now, we say that, as children put it, you cannot take back a gift once fairly given. So cease this way of meeting all that we say.

Soc. What way do you mean?