PHILEBUS (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plato and Jowett, Benjamin
PROTARCHUS: I have often heard Gorgias maintain, Socrates, that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will. Now, I should not like to quarrel either with you or with him.
SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would like to desert, if you were not ashamed?
PROTARCHUS: As you please.
SOCRATES: May I not have led you into a misapprehension?
PROTARCHUS: How?
SOCRATES: Dear Protarchus, I never asked which was the greatest or best or usefullest of arts or sciences, but which had clearness and accuracy, and the greatest amount of truth, however humble and little useful an art. And as for Gorgias, if you do not deny that his art has the advantage in usefulness to mankind, he will not quarrel with you for saying that the study of which I am speaking is superior in this particular of essential truth; as in the comparison of white colours, a little whiteness, if that little be only pure, was said to be superior in truth to a great mass which is impure. And now let us give our best attention and consider well, not the comparative use or reputation of the sciences, but the power or faculty, if there be such, which the soul has of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of it; let us search into the pure element of mind and intelligence, and then we shall be able to say whether the science of which I have been speaking is most likely to possess the faculty, or whether there be some other which has higher claims.
PROTARCHUS: Well, I have been considering, and I can hardly think that any other science or art has a firmer grasp of the truth than this.
SOCRATES: Do you say so because you observe that the arts in general and those engaged in them make use of opinion, and are resolutely engaged in the investigation of matters of opinion? Even he who supposes himself to be occupied with nature is really occupied with the things of this world, how created, how acting or acted upon. Is not this the sort of enquiry in which his life is spent?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: He is labouring, not after eternal being, but about things which are becoming, or which will or have become.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And can we say that any of these things which neither are nor have been nor will be unchangeable, when judged by the strict rule of truth ever become certain?
PROTARCHUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: How can anything fixed be concerned with that which has no fixedness?
PROTARCHUS: How indeed?
SOCRATES: Then mind and science when employed about such changing things do not attain the highest truth?
PROTARCHUS: I should imagine not.
SOCRATES: And now let us bid farewell, a long farewell, to you or me or Philebus or Gorgias, and urge on behalf of the argument a single point.
PROTARCHUS: What point?
SOCRATES: Let us say that the stable and pure and true and unalloyed has to do with the things which are eternal and unchangeable and unmixed, or if not, at any rate what is most akin to them has; and that all other things are to be placed in a second or inferior class.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And of the names expressing cognition, ought not the fairest to be given to the fairest things?
PROTARCHUS: That is natural.
SOCRATES: And are not mind and wisdom the names which are to be honoured most?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And these names may be said to have their truest and most exact application when the mind is engaged in the contemplation of true being?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And these were the names which I adduced of the rivals of pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: In the next place, as to the mixture, here are the ingredients, pleasure and wisdom, and we may be compared to artists who have their materials ready to their hands.
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And now we must begin to mix them?
PROTARCHUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: But had we not better have a preliminary word and refresh our memories?
PROTARCHUS: Of what?
SOCRATES: Of that which I have already mentioned. Well says the proverb, that we ought to repeat twice and even thrice that which is good.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well then, by Zeus, let us proceed, and I will make what I believe to be a fair summary of the argument.
PROTARCHUS: Let me hear.
SOCRATES: Philebus says that pleasure is the true end of all living beings, at which all ought to aim, and moreover that it is the chief good of all, and that the two names 'good' and 'pleasant' are correctly given to one thing and one nature; Socrates, on the other hand, begins by denying this, and further says, that in nature as in name they are two, and that wisdom partakes more than pleasure of the good. Is not and was not this what we were saying, Protarchus?