PHILEBUS (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plato and Jowett, Benjamin
PROTARCHUS: Proceed.
SOCRATES: We were maintaining a little while since, that when desires, as they are termed, exist in us, then the body has separate feelings apart from the soul—do you remember?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, I remember that you said so.
SOCRATES: And the soul was supposed to desire the opposite of the bodily state, while the body was the source of any pleasure or pain which was experienced.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then now you may infer what happens in such cases.
PROTARCHUS: What am I to infer?
SOCRATES: That in such cases pleasures and pains come simultaneously; and there is a juxtaposition of the opposite sensations which correspond to them, as has been already shown.
PROTARCHUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And there is another point to which we have agreed.
PROTARCHUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: That pleasure and pain both admit of more and less, and that they are of the class of infinites.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly, we said so.
SOCRATES: But how can we rightly judge of them?
PROTARCHUS: How can we?
SOCRATES: Is it our intention to judge of their comparative importance and intensity, measuring pleasure against pain, and pain against pain, and pleasure against pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, such is our intention, and we shall judge of them accordingly.
SOCRATES: Well, take the case of sight. Does not the nearness or distance of magnitudes obscure their true proportions, and make us opine falsely; and do we not find the same illusion happening in the case of pleasures and pains?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, Socrates, and in a degree far greater.
SOCRATES: Then what we are now saying is the opposite of what we were saying before.
PROTARCHUS: What was that?
SOCRATES: Then the opinions were true and false, and infected the pleasures and pains with their own falsity.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: But now it is the pleasures which are said to be true and false because they are seen at various distances, and subjected to comparison; the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement when placed side by side with the pains, and the pains when placed side by side with the pleasures.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly, and for the reason which you mention.
SOCRATES: And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains the element which makes them appear to be greater or less than they really are: you will acknowledge that this element is illusory, and you will never say that the corresponding excess or defect of pleasure or pain is real or true.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Next let us see whether in another direction we may not find pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living beings, which are still more false than these.
PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how shall we find them?
SOCRATES: If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out of a corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and decay?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that has been often said.
SOCRATES: And we have also agreed that the restoration of the natural state is pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: But now let us suppose an interval of time at which the body experiences none of these changes.
PROTARCHUS: When can that be, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Your question, Protarchus, does not help the argument.
PROTARCHUS: Why not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Because it does not prevent me from repeating mine.
PROTARCHUS: And what was that?
SOCRATES: Why, Protarchus, admitting that there is no such interval, I may ask what would be the necessary consequence if there were?