Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Of what affections, and of what kind of life, are you speaking?

SOCRATES: I am speaking of being emptied and replenished, and of all that relates to the preservation and destruction of living beings, as well as of the pain which is felt in one of these states and of the pleasure which succeeds to it.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And what would you say of the intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean by 'intermediate'?

SOCRATES: I mean when a person is in actual suffering and yet remembers past pleasures which, if they would only return, would relieve him; but as yet he has them not. May we not say of him, that he is in an intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Would you say that he was wholly pained or wholly pleased?

PROTARCHUS: Nay, I should say that he has two pains; in his body there is the actual experience of pain, and in his soul longing and expectation.

SOCRATES: What do you mean, Protarchus, by the two pains? May not a man who is empty have at one time a sure hope of being filled, and at other times be quite in despair?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And has he not the pleasure of memory when he is hoping to be filled, and yet in that he is empty is he not at the same time in pain?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then man and the other animals have at the same time both pleasure and pain?

PROTARCHUS: I suppose so.

SOCRATES: But when a man is empty and has no hope of being filled, there will be the double experience of pain. You observed this and inferred that the double experience was the single case possible.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Shall the enquiry into these states of feeling be made the occasion of raising a question?

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: Whether we ought to say that the pleasures and pains of which we are speaking are true or false? or some true and some false?

PROTARCHUS: But how, Socrates, can there be false pleasures and pains?

SOCRATES: And how, Protarchus, can there be true and false fears, or true and false expectations, or true and false opinions?

PROTARCHUS: I grant that opinions may be true or false, but not pleasures.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? I am afraid that we are raising a very serious enquiry.

PROTARCHUS: There I agree.

SOCRATES: And yet, my boy, for you are one of Philebus' boys, the point to be considered, is, whether the enquiry is relevant to the argument.

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

SOCRATES: No tedious and irrelevant discussion can be allowed; what is said should be pertinent.

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: I am always wondering at the question which has now been raised.

PROTARCHUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Do you deny that some pleasures are false, and others true?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure I do.

SOCRATES: Would you say that no one ever seemed to rejoice and yet did not rejoice, or seemed to feel pain and yet did not feel pain, sleeping or waking, mad or lunatic?

PROTARCHUS: So we have always held, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But were you right? Shall we enquire into the truth of your opinion?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we should.

SOCRATES: Let us then put into more precise terms the question which has arisen about pleasure and opinion. Is there such a thing as opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And such a thing as pleasure?