PHILEBUS
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plato and Jowett, Benjamin
SOCRATES: Do not then suppose that these words are rashly spoken by us, O Protarchus, for they are in harmony with the testimony of those who said of old time that mind rules the universe.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And they furnish an answer to my enquiry; for they imply that mind is the parent of that class of the four which we called the cause of all; and I think that you now have my answer.
PROTARCHUS: I have indeed, and yet I did not observe that you had answered.
SOCRATES: A jest is sometimes refreshing, Protarchus, when it interrupts earnest.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: I think, friend, that we have now pretty clearly set forth the class to which mind belongs and what is the power of mind.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And the class to which pleasure belongs has also been long ago discovered?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And let us remember, too, of both of them, (1) that mind was akin to the cause and of this family; and (2) that pleasure is infinite and belongs to the class which neither has, nor ever will have in itself, a beginning, middle, or end of its own.
PROTARCHUS: I shall be sure to remember.
SOCRATES: We must next examine what is their place and under what conditions they are generated. And we will begin with pleasure, since her class was first examined; and yet pleasure cannot be rightly tested apart from pain.
PROTARCHUS: If this is the road, let us take it.
SOCRATES: I wonder whether you would agree with me about the origin of pleasure and pain.
PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that their natural seat is in the mixed class.
PROTARCHUS: And would you tell me again, sweet Socrates, which of the aforesaid classes is the mixed one?
SOCRATES: I will, my fine fellow, to the best of my ability.
PROTARCHUS: Very good.
SOCRATES: Let us then understand the mixed class to be that which we placed third in the list of four.
PROTARCHUS: That which followed the infinite and the finite; and in which you ranked health, and, if I am not mistaken, harmony.
SOCRATES: Capital; and now will you please to give me your best attention?
PROTARCHUS: Proceed; I am attending.
SOCRATES: I say that when the harmony in animals is dissolved, there is also a dissolution of nature and a generation of pain.
PROTARCHUS: That is very probable.
SOCRATES: And the restoration of harmony and return to nature is the source of pleasure, if I may be allowed to speak in the fewest and shortest words about matters of the greatest moment.
PROTARCHUS: I believe that you are right, Socrates; but will you try to be a little plainer?
SOCRATES: Do not obvious and every-day phenomena furnish the simplest illustration?
PROTARCHUS: What phenomena do you mean?
SOCRATES: Hunger, for example, is a dissolution and a pain.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: Whereas eating is a replenishment and a pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Thirst again is a destruction and a pain, but the effect of moisture replenishing the dry place is a pleasure: once more, the unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful, and the natural restoration and refrigeration is pleasant.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an animal is pain, and the natural process of resolution and return of the elements to their original state is pleasure. And would not the general proposition seem to you to hold, that the destroying of the natural union of the finite and infinite, which, as I was observing before, make up the class of living beings, is pain, and that the process of return of all things to their own nature is pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Granted; what you say has a general truth.
SOCRATES: Here then is one kind of pleasures and pains originating severally in the two processes which we have described?
PROTARCHUS: Good.