Philebus (51-55)

Pro. Very good.

Soc. So I will turn to them and try to explain them; for I do not in the least agree with those who say that all pleasures are merely surcease from pain, but, as I said, I use them as witnesses to prove that some pleasures are apparent, but not in any way real, and that there are others which appear to be both great and numerous, but are really mixed up with pains and with cessations of the greatest pains and distresses of body and soul.

Pro. But what pleasures, Socrates, may rightly be considered true?

Soc. Those arising from what are called beautiful colors, or from forms, most of those that arise from odors and sounds, in short all those the want of which is unfelt and painless, whereas the satisfaction furnished by them is felt by the senses, pleasant, and unmixed with pain.

Pro. Once more, Socrates, what do you mean by this?

Soc. My meaning is certainly not clear at the first glance, and I must try to make it so. For when I say beauty of form, I am trying to express, not what most people would understand by the words, such as the beauty of animals or of paintings, but I mean, says the argument, the straight line and the circle and the plane and solid figures formed from these by turning-lathes and rulers and patterns of angles; perhaps you understand. For I assert that the beauty of these is not relative, like that of other things, but they are always absolutely beautiful by nature and have peculiar pleasures in no way subject to comparison with the pleasures of scratching; and there are colors which possess beauty and pleasures of this character. Do you understand?

Pro. I am trying to do so, Socrates; and I hope you also will try to make your meaning still clearer.

Soc. I mean that those sounds which are smooth and clear and send forth a single pure note are beautiful, not relatively, but absolutely, and that there are pleasures which pertain to these by nature and result from them.

Pro. Yes, that also is true.

Soc. The pleasures of smell are a less divine class; but they have no necessary pains mixed with them, and wherever and in whatever we find this freedom from pain, I regard it always as a mark of similarity to those other pleasures. These, then, are two classes of the pleasures of which I am speaking. Do you understand me?

Pro. I understand.

Soc. And further let us add to these the pleasures of knowledge, if they appear to us not to have hunger for knowledge or pangs of such hunger as their source.

Pro. I agree to that.

Soc. Well, if men are full of knowledge and then lose it through forgetfulness, do you see any pains in the losses?

Pro. Not by their inherent nature, but sometimes there is pain in reflecting on the event, when a man who has lost knowledge is pained by the lack of it.

Soc. True, my dear fellow, but just at present we are recounting natural feelings only, not reflection.

Pro. Then you are right in saying that we feel no pain in the loss of knowledge.

Soc. Then we may say that these pleasures of knowledge are unmixed with pain and are felt not by the many but only by very few.

Pro. Yes, certainly.

Soc. And now that we have fairly well separated the pure pleasures and those which may be pretty correctly called impure, let us add the further statement that the intense pleasures are without measure and those of the opposite sort have measure; those which admit of greatness and intensity and are often or seldom great or intense we shall assign to the class of the infinite, which circulates more or less freely through the body and soul alike, and the others we shall assign to the class of the limited.

Pro. Quite right, Socrates.

Soc. There is still another question about them to be considered.

Pro. What is it?

Soc. What kind of thing is most closely related to truth? The pure and unadulterated, or the violent, the widespread, the great, and the sufficient?

Pro. What is your object, Socrates, in asking that question?

Soc. My object, Protarchus, is to leave no gap in my test of pleasure and knowledge, if some part of each of them is pure and some part impure, in order that each of them may offer itself for judgement in a condition of purity, and thus make the judgement easier for you and me and all our audience.

Pro. Quite right.

Soc. Very well, let us adopt that point of view towards all the classes which we call pure. First let us select one of them and examine it.

Pro. Which shall we select?

Soc. Let us first, if agreeable to you, consider whiteness.

Pro. By all means.

Soc. How can we have purity in whiteness, and what purity? Is it the greatest and most widespread, or the most unmixed, that in which there is no trace of any other color?

Pro. Clearly it is the most unadulterated.

Soc. Right. Shall we not, then, Protarchus, declare that this, and not the most numerous or the greatest, is both the truest and the most beautiful of all whitenesses?

Pro. Quite right.

Soc. Then we shall be perfectly right in saying that a little pure white is whiter and more beautiful and truer than a great deal of mixed white.

Pro. Perfectly right.

Soc. Well then, we shall have no need of many such examples in our discussion of pleasure; we see well enough from this one that any pleasure, however small or infrequent, if uncontaminated with pain, is pleasanter and more beautiful than a great or often repeated pleasure without purity.

Pro. Most certainly; and the example is sufficient.

Soc. Here is another point. Have we not often heard it said of pleasure that it is always a process or generation and that there is no state or existence of pleasure? There are some clever people who try to prove this theory to us, and we ought to be grateful to them.

Pro. Well, what then?

Soc. I will explain this whole matter, Protarchus, by asking questions.

Pro. Go on; ask your questions.

Soc. There are two parts of existence, the one self-existent, the other always desiring something else.

Pro. What do you mean? What are these two?

Soc. The one is by nature more imposing, the other inferior.

Pro. Speak still more plainly.

Soc. We have seen beloved boys who are fair and good, and brave lovers of them.

Pro. Yes, no doubt of it.

Soc. Try to find another pair like these in all the relations we are speaking of.

Pro. Must I say it a third time? Please tell your meaning more plainly, Socrates.

Soc. It is no riddle, Protarchus; the talk is merely jesting with us and means that one part of existences always exists for the sake of something, and the other part is that for the sake of which the former is always coming into being.

Pro. I can hardly understand after all your repetition.

Soc. Perhaps, my boy, you will understand better as the discussion proceeds.

Pro. I hope so.

Soc. Let us take another pair.

Pro. What are they?

Soc. One is the generation of all things (the process of coming into being), the other is existence or being.

Pro. I accept your two, generation and being.

Soc. Quite right. Now which of these shall we say is for the sake of the other, generation for the sake of being, or being for the sake of generation?

Pro. You are now asking whether that which is called being is what it is for the sake of generation?

Soc. Yes, plainly.

Pro. For Heaven’s sake, is this the kind of question you keep asking me, Tell me, Protarchus, whether you think shipbuilding is for the sake of ships, or ships for the sake of shipbuilding, and all that sort of thing?

Soc. Yes; that is just what I mean, Protarchus.

Pro. Then why did you not answer it yourself, Socrates?

Soc. There is no reason why I should not; but I want you to take part in the discussion.

Pro. Certainly.

Soc. I say that drugs and all sorts of instruments and materials are always employed for the sake of production or generation, but that every instance of generation is for the sake of some being or other, and generation in general is for the sake of being in general.

Pro. That is very clear.

Soc. Then pleasure, if it is a form of generation, would be generated for the sake of some form of being.

Pro. Of course.

Soc. Now surely that for the sake of which anything is generated is in the class of the good, and that which is generated for the sake of something else, my friend, must be placed in another class.

Pro. Most undeniably.

Soc. Then if pleasure is a form of generation, we shall be right in placing it in a class other than that of the good, shall we not?

Pro. Quite right.

Soc. Then, as I said when we began to discuss this point, we ought to be grateful to him who pointed out that there is only a generation, but no existence, of pleasure; for he is clearly making a laughing-stock of those who assert that pleasure is a good.

Pro. Yes, most emphatically.

Soc. And he will also surely make a laughing-stock of all those who find their highest end in forms of generation.

Pro. How is that, and to whom do you refer?

Soc. To those who, when cured of hunger or thirst or any of the troubles which are cured by generation are pleased because of the generation, as if it were pleasure, and say that they would not wish to live without thirst and hunger and the like, if they could not experience the feelings which follow after them.

Pro. That seems to be their view.

Soc. We should all agree that the opposite of generation is destruction, should we not?

Pro. Inevitably.

Soc. And he who chooses as they do would be choosing destruction and generation, not that third life in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, but only the purest possible thought.

Pro. It is a great absurdity, as it appears, Socrates, to tell us that pleasure is a good.

Soc. Yes, a great absurdity, and let us go still further.

Pro. How?

Soc. Is it not absurd to say that there is nothing good in the body or many other things, but only in the soul, and that in the soul the only good is pleasure, and that courage and self-restraint and understanding and all the other good things of the soul are nothing of the sort; and beyond all this to be obliged to say that he who is not feeling pleasure, and is feeling pain, is bad when he feels pain, though he be the best of men, and that he who feels pleasure is, when he feels pleasure, the more excellent in virtue the greater the pleasure he feels?

Pro. All that, Socrates, is the height of absurdity.

Soc. Now let us not undertake to subject pleasure to every possible test and then be found to give mind and knowledge very gentle treatment. Let us rather strike them boldly everywhere to see if their metal rings unsound at any point; so we shall find out what is by nature purest in them, and then we can make use of the truest elements of these and of pleasure to form our judgement of both.

Pro. Right.

Soc. Well, then, one part of knowledge is productive, the other has to do with education and support. Is that true?

Pro. It is.

Soc. Let us first consider whether in the manual arts one part is more allied to knowledge, and the other less, and the one should be regarded as purest, the other as less pure.

Pro. Yes, we ought to consider that.

Soc. And should the ruling elements of each of them be separated and distinguished from the rest?

Pro. What are they, and how can they be separated?

Soc. For example, if arithmetic and the sciences of measurement and weighing were taken away from all arts, what was left of any of them would be, so to speak, pretty worthless.

Pro. Yes, pretty worthless.