Philebus (61)

Soc. Then the perfect, that which is to be desired by all and is altogether good, is neither of these?

Pro. Certainly not.

Soc. We must, then, gain a clear conception of the good, or at least an outline of it, that we may, as we said, know to what the second place is to be assigned.

Pro. Quite right.

Soc. And have we not found a road which leads to the good?

Pro. What road?

Soc. If you were looking for a particular man and first found out correctly where he lived, you would have made great progress towards finding him whom you sought.

Pro. Yes, certainly.

Soc. And just now we received an indication, as we did in the beginning, that we must seek the good, not in the unmixed, but in the mixed life.

Pro. Certainly.

Soc. Surely there is greater hope that the object of our search will be clearly present in the well mixed life than in the life which is not well mixed?

Pro. Far greater.

Soc. Let us make the mixture, Protarchus, with a prayer to the gods, to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever he be who presides over the mixing.

Pro. By all means.

Soc. We are like wine-pourers, and beside us are fountains—that of pleasure may be likened to a fount of honey, and the sober, wineless fount of wisdom to one of pure, health-giving water—of which we must do our best to mix as well as possible.

Pro. Certainly we must.

Soc. Before we make the mixture, tell me: should we be most likely to succeed by mixing all pleasure with all wisdom?

Pro. Perhaps.

Soc. But that is not safe; and I think I can offer a plan by which we can make our mixture with less risk.

Pro. What is it?

Soc. We found, I believe, that one pleasure was greater than another and one art more exact than another?

Pro. Certainly.

Soc. And knowledge was of two kinds, one turning its eyes towards transitory things, the other towards things which neither come into being nor pass away, but are the same and immutable for ever. Considering them with a view to truth, we judged that the latter was truer than the former.

Pro. That is quite right.

Soc. Then what if we first mix the truest sections of each and see whether, when mixed together, they are capable of giving us the most adorable life, or whether we still need something more and different?