Philebus

Pro. Yes.

Soc. But if it is more akin to wisdom, then wisdom is victorious and pleasure is vanquished? Do you agree to that? Or what do you say?

Pro. Yes, I at least am satisfied with that.

Soc. But how about you, Philebus? What do you say?

Phi. I think and always shall think that pleasure is the victor. But you, Protarchus, will make your own decision.

Pro. Since you entrusted the argument to me, Philebus, you can no longer dictate whether to make the agreement with Socrates or not.

Phi. True; and for that reason I wash my hands of it and now call upon the goddess herself to witness that I do so.

Pro. And we also will bear witness to these words of yours. But all the same, Socrates, Philebus may agree or do as he likes, let us try to finish our argument in due order.

Soc. We must try, and let us begin with the very goddess who Philebus says is spoken of as Aphrodite but is most truly named Pleasure.

Pro. Quite right.

Soc. My awe, Protarchus, in respect to the names of the gods is always beyond the greatest human fear. And now I call Aphrodite by that name which is agreeable to her; but pleasure I know has various aspects, and since, as I said, we are to begin with her, we must consider and examine what her nature is. For, when you just simply hear her name, she is only one thing, but surely she takes on all sorts of shapes which are even, in a way, unlike each other. For instance, we say that the man who lives without restraint has pleasure, and that the self-restrained man takes pleasure in his very self-restraint; and again that the fool who is full of foolish opinions and hopes is pleased, and also that the wise man takes pleasure in his very wisdom. And would not any person who said these two kinds of pleasure were like each other be rightly regarded as a fool?

Pro. No, Socrates, for though they spring from opposite sources, they are not in themselves opposed to one another; for how can pleasure help being of all things most like pleasure, that is, like itself?

Soc. Yes, my friend, and color is like color in so far as every one of them is a color they will all be the same, yet we all recognize that black is not only different from white, but is its exact opposite. And so, too, figure is like figure; they are all one in kind but the parts of the kind are in some instances absolutely opposed to each other, and in other cases there is endless variety of difference; and we can find many other examples of such relations. Do not, therefore, rely upon this argument, which makes all the most absolute opposites identical. I am afraid we shall find some pleasures the opposites of other pleasures.

Pro. Perhaps; but why will that injure my contention?

Soc. Because I shall say that, although they are unlike, you apply to them a different designation. For you say that all pleasant things are good. Now no argument contends that pleasant things are not pleasant; but whereas most of them are bad and only some are good, as we assert, nevertheless you call them all good, though you confess, if forced to it by argument, that they are unlike. Now what is the identical element which exists in the good and bad pleasures alike and makes you call them all a good?

Pro. What do you mean, Socrates? Do you suppose anyone who asserts that the good is pleasure will concede, or will endure to hear you say, that some pleasures are good and others bad?

Soc. But you will concede that they are unlike and in some instances opposed to each other.

Pro. Not in so far as they are pleasures.

Soc. Here we are again at the same old argument, Protarchus, and we shall presently assert that one pleasure is not different from another, but all pleasures are alike, and the examples just cited do not affect us at all, but we shall behave and talk just like the most worthless and inexperienced reasoners.

Pro. In what way do you mean?

Soc. Why, if I have the face to imitate you and to defend myself by saying that the utterly unlike is most completely like that which is most utterly unlike it, I can say the same things you said, and we shall prove ourselves to be excessively inexperienced, and our argument will be shipwrecked and lost. Let us, then, back her out, and perhaps if we start fair again we may come to an agreement.

Pro. How? Tell me.

Soc. Assume, Protarchus, that I am questioned in turn by you.

Pro. What question do I ask?

Soc. Whether wisdom and knowledge and intellect and all the things which I said at first were good, when you asked me what is good, will not have the same fate as this argument of yours.

Pro. How is that?

Soc. It will appear that the forms of knowledge collectively are many and some of them are unlike each other; but if some of them turn out to be actually opposites, should I be fit to engage in dialectics now if, through fear of just that, I should say that no form of knowledge is unlike any other, and then, as a consequence, our argument should vanish and be lost, like a tale that is told, and we ourselves should be saved by clinging to some irrational notion?

Pro. No, that must never be, except the part about our being saved. However, I like the equal treatment of your doctrine and mine. Let us grant that pleasures are many and unlike and that the forms of knowledge are many and different.

Soc. With no concealment, then, Protarchus, of the difference between my good and yours, but with fair and open acknowledgement of it, let us be bold and see if perchance on examination they will tell us whether we should say that pleasure is the good, or wisdom, or some other third principle. For surely the object of our present controversy is not to gain the victory for my assertions or yours, but both of us must fight for the most perfect truth.

Pro. Yes, we must.

Soc. Then let us establish this principle still more firmly by means of an agreement.

Pro. What principle?

Soc. The principle which gives trouble to all men, to some of them sometimes against their will.

Pro. Speak more plainly.

Soc. I mean the principle which came in our way just now; its nature is quite marvellous. For the assertions that one is many and many are one are marvellous, and it is easy to dispute with anyone who makes either of them.

Pro. You mean when a person says that I, Protarchus, am by nature one and that there are also many of me which are opposites of each other, asserting that I, the same Protarchus, am great and small and heavy and light and countless other things?

Soc. Those wonders concerning the one and the many which you have mentioned, Protarchus, are common property, and almost everybody is agreed that they ought to be disregarded because they are childish and easy and great hindrances to speculation; and this sort of thing also should be disregarded, when a man in his discussion divides the members and likewise the parts of anything, acknowledges that they all collectively are that one thing, and then mockingly refutes himself because he has been compelled to declare miracles—that the one is many and infinite and the many only one.

Pro. But what other wonders do you mean, Socrates, in relation to this same principle, which are not yet common property and generally acknowledged?

Soc. I mean, my boy, when a person postulates unity which is not the unity of one of the things which come into being and perish, as in the examples we had just now. For in cases of a unity of that sort, as I just said, it is agreed that refutation is needless. But when the assertion is made that man is one, or ox is one, or beauty is one, or the good is one, the intense interest in these and similar unities becomes disagreement and controversy.

Pro. How is that?

Soc. The first question is whether we should believe that such unities really exist; the second, how these unities, each of which is one, always the same, and admitting neither generation nor destruction, can nevertheless be permanently this one unity; and the third, how in the infinite number of things which come into being this unity, whether we are to assume that it is dispersed and has become many, or that it is entirely separated from itself—which would seem to be the most impossible notion of all being the same and one, is to be at the same time in one and in many. These are the questions, Protarchus, about this kind of one and many, not those others, which cause the utmost perplexity, if ill solved, and are, if well solved, of the greatest assistance.

Pro. Then is it now, Socrates, our first duty to thresh this matter out?

Soc. Yes, that is what I should say.

Pro. You may assume, then, that we are all willing to agree with you about that; and perhaps it is best not to ask Philebus any questions; let sleeping dogs lie.

Soc. Very well; then where shall we begin this great and vastly complicated battle about the matters at issue? Shall we start at this point?

Pro. At what point?

Soc. We say that one and many are identified by reason, and always, both now and in the past, circulate everywhere in every thought that is uttered. This is no new thing and will never cease; it is, in my opinion, a quality within us which will never die or grow old, and which belongs to reason itself as such. And any young man, when he first has an inkling of this, is delighted, thinking he has found a treasure of wisdom; his joy fills him with enthusiasm; he joyously sets every possible argument in motion, sometimes in one direction, rolling things up and kneading them into one, and sometimes again unrolling and dividing them; he gets himself into a muddle first and foremost, then anyone who happens to be near him, whether he be younger or older or of his own age; he spares neither father nor mother nor any other human being who can hear, and hardly even the lower animals, for he would certainly not spare a foreigner, if he could get an interpreter anywhere.

Pro. Socrates, do you not see how many we are and that we are all young men? Are you not afraid that we shall join with Philebus and attack you, if you revile us? However—for we understand your meaning—if there is any way or means of removing this confusion gently from our discussion and finding some better road than this to bring us towards the goal of our argument, kindly lead on, and we will do our best to follow for our present discussion, Socrates, is no trifling matter.

Soc. No, it is not, boys, as Philebus calls you; and there certainly is no better road, nor can there ever be, than that which I have always loved, though it has often deserted me, leaving me lonely and forlorn.

Pro. What is the road? Only tell us.

Soc. One which is easy to point out, but very difficult to follow for through it all the inventions of art have been brought to light. See this is the road I mean.

Pro. Go on what is it?

Soc. A gift of gods to men, as I believe, was tossed down from some divine source through the agency of a Prometheus together with a gleaming fire; and the ancients, who were better than we and lived nearer the gods, handed down the tradition that all the things which are ever said to exist are sprung from one and many and have inherent in them the finite and the infinite. This being the way in which these things are arranged, we must always assume that there is in every case one idea of everything and must look for it—for we shall find that it is there—and if we get a grasp of this, we must look next for two, if there be two, and if not, for three or some other number; and again we must treat each of those units in the same way, until we can see not only that the original unit is one and many and infinite, but just how many it is. And we must not apply the idea of infinite to plurality until we have a view of its whole number between infinity and one; then, and not before, we may let each unit of everything pass on unhindered into infinity.

Soc. The gods, then, as I said, handed down to us this mode of investigating, learning, and teaching one another; but the wise men of the present day make the one and the many too quickly or too slowly, in haphazard fashion, and they put infinity immediately after unity; they disregard all that lies between them, and this it is which distinguishes between the dialectic and the disputatious methods of discussion.

Pro. I think I understand you in part, Socrates, but I need a clearer statement of some things.

Soc. Surely my meaning, Protarchus, is made clear in the letters of the alphabet, which you were taught as a child; so learn it from them.

Pro. How?

Soc. Sound, which passes out through the mouth of each and all of us, is one, and yet again it is infinite in number.

Pro. Yes, to be sure.

Soc. And one of us is no wiser than the other merely for knowing that it is infinite or that it is one; but that which makes each of us a grammarian is the knowledge of the number and nature of sounds.

Pro. Very true.

Soc. And it is this same knowledge which makes the musician.

Pro. How is that?

Soc. Sound is one in the art of music also, so far as that art is concerned.

Pro. Of course.

Soc. And we may say that there are two sounds, low and high, and a third, which is the intermediate, may we not?

Pro. Yes.

Soc. But knowledge of these facts would not suffice to make you a musician, although ignorance of them would make you, if I may say so, quite worthless in respect to music.

Pro. Certainly.

Soc. But, my friend, when you have grasped the number and quality of the intervals of the voice in respect to high and low pitch, and the limits of the intervals, and all the combinations derived from them, which the men of former times discovered and handed down to us, their successors, with the traditional name of harmonies, and also the corresponding effects in the movements of the body, which they say are measured by numbers and must be called rhythms and measures—and they say that we must also understand that every one and many should be considered in this way— when you have thus grasped the facts, you have become a musician, and when by considering it in this way you have obtained a grasp of any other unity of all those which exist, you have become wise in respect to that unity. But the infinite number of individuals and the infinite number in each of them makes you in every instance indefinite in thought and of no account and not to be considered among the wise, so long as you have never fixed your eye upon any definite number in anything.

Pro. I think, Philebus, that what Socrates has said is excellent.

Phi. So do I; it is excellent in itself, but why has he said it now to us, and what purpose is there in it?

Soc. Protarchus, that is a very proper question which Philebus has asked us.

Pro. Certainly it is, so please answer it.

Soc. I will, when I have said a little more on just this subject. For if a person begins with some unity or other, he must, as I was saying, not turn immediately to infinity, but to some definite number; now just so, conversely, when he has to take the infinite first, he must not turn immediately to the one, but must think of some number which possesses in each case some plurality, and must end by passing from all to one. Let us revert to the letters of the alphabet to illustrate this.

Pro. How?

Soc. When some one, whether god or godlike man,—there is an Egyptian story that his name was Theuth—observed that sound was infinite, he was the first to notice that the vowel sounds in that infinity were not one, but many, and again that there were other elements which were not vowels but did have a sonant quality, and that these also had a definite number; and he distinguished a third kind of letters which we now call mutes. Then he divided the mutes until he distinguished each individual one, and he treated the vowels and semivowels in the same way, until he knew the number of them and gave to each and all the name of letters. Perceiving, however, that none of us could learn any one of them alone by itself without learning them all, and considering that this was a common bond which made them in a way all one, he assigned to them all a single science and called it grammar.

Phi. I understand that more clearly than the earlier statement, Protarchus, so far as the reciprocal relations of the one and the many are concerned, but I still feel the same lack as a little while ago.

Soc. Do you mean, Philebus, that you do not see what this has to do with the question?

Phi. Yes; that is what Protarchus and I have been trying to discover for a long time.

Soc. Really, have you been trying, as you say, for long time to discover it, when it was close to you all the while?

Phi. How is that?

Soc. Was not our discussion from the beginning about wisdom and pleasure and which of them is preferable?

Phi. Yes, of course.

Soc. And surely we say that each of them is one.

Phi. Certainly.

Soc. This, then, is precisely the question which the previous discussion puts to us: How is each of them one and many, and how is it that they are not immediately infinite, but each possesses a definite number, before the individual phenomena become infinite?

Pro. Philebus, somehow or other Socrates has led us round and plunged us into a serious question. Consider which of us shall answer it. Perhaps it is ridiculous that I, after taking your place in entire charge of the argument, should ask you to come back and answer this question because I cannot do so, but I think it would be still more ridiculous if neither of us could answer. Consider, then, what we are to do. For I think Socrates is asking us whether there are or are not kinds of pleasure, how many kinds there are, and what their nature is, and the same of wisdom.

Soc. You are quite right, son of Callias; for, as our previous discussion showed, unless we can do this in the case of every unity, every like, every same, and their opposites, none of us can ever be of any use in anything.

Pro. That, Socrates, seems pretty likely to be true. However, it is splendid for the wise man to know everything, but the next best thing, it seems, is not to be ignorant of himself. I will tell you why I say that at this moment. You, Socrates, have granted to all of us this conversation and your cooperation for the purpose of determining what is the best of human possessions. For when Philebus said it was pleasure and gaiety and enjoyment and all that sort of thing, you objected and said it was not those things, but another sort, and we very properly keep reminding ourselves voluntarily of this, in order that both claims may be present in our memory for examination. You, as it appears, assert that the good which is rightly to be called better than pleasure is mind, knowledge, intelligence, art, and all their kin; you say we ought to acquire these, not that other sort. When those two claims were made and an argument arose, we playfully threatened that we would not let you go home until the discussion was brought to some satisfactory conclusion. You agreed and put yourself at our disposal for that purpose. Now, we say that, as children put it, you cannot take back a gift once fairly given. So cease this way of meeting all that we say.

Soc. What way do you mean?

Pro. I mean puzzling us and asking questions to which we cannot at the moment give a satisfactory answer. Let us not imagine that the end of our present discussion is a mere puzzling of us all, but if we cannot answer, you must do so; for you gave us a promise. Consider, therefore, whether you yourself must distinguish the kinds of pleasure and knowledge or will let that go, in case you are able and willing to make clear in some other way the matters now at issue among us.

Soc. I need no longer anticipate anything terrible, since you put it in that way; for the words in case you are willing relieve me of all fear. And besides, I think some god has given me a vague recollection.

Pro. How is that, and what is the recollection about?

Soc. I remember now having heard long ago in a dream, or perhaps when I was awake, some talk about pleasure and wisdom to the effect that neither of the two is the good, but some third thing, different from them and better than both. However, if this be now clearly proved to us, pleasure is deprived of victory for the good would no longer be identical with it. Is not that true?

Pro. It is.

Soc. And we shall have, in my opinion, no longer any need of distinguishing the kinds of pleasure. But the progress of the discussion will make that still clearer.

Pro. Excellent! Just go on as you have begun.

Soc. First, then, let us agree on some further small points.

Pro. What are they?

Soc. Is the nature of the good necessarily perfect or imperfect?

Pro. The most perfect of all things, surely, Socrates.

Soc. Well, and is the good sufficient?

Pro. Of course; so that it surpasses all other things in sufficiency.

Soc. And nothing, I should say, is more certain about it than that every intelligent being pursues it, desires it, wishes to catch and get possession of it, and has no interest in anything in which the good is not included.

Pro. There is no denying that.

Soc. Let us, then, look at the life of pleasure and the life of wisdom separately and consider and judge them.

Pro. How do you mean?

Soc. Let there be no wisdom in the life of pleasure and no pleasure in the life of wisdom. For if either of them is the good, it cannot have need of anything else, and if, either be found to need anything, we can no longer regard it as our true good.

Pro. No, of course not.

Soc. Shall we then undertake to test them through you?

Pro. By all means.

Soc. Then answer.

Pro. Ask.

Soc. Would you, Protarchus, be willing to live your whole life in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?

Pro. Of course I should.

Soc. Would you think you needed anything further, if you were in complete possession of that enjoyment?

Pro. Certainly not.

Soc. But consider whether you would not have some need of wisdom and intelligence and power of calculating your wants and the like.

Pro. Why should I? If I have enjoyment, I have everything.

Soc. Then living thus you would enjoy the greatest pleasures all your life?

Pro. Yes; why not?

Soc. But if you did not possess mind or memory or knowledge or true opinion, in the first place, you would not know whether you were enjoying your pleasures or not. That must be true, since you are utterly devoid of intellect, must it not?

Pro. Yes, it must.

Soc. And likewise, if you had no memory you could not even remember that you ever did enjoy pleasure, and no recollection whatever of present pleasure could remain with you; if you had no true opinion you could not think you were enjoying pleasure at the time when you were enjoying it, and if you were without power of calculation you would not be able to calculate that you would enjoy it in the future; your life would not be that of a man, but of a mollusc or some other shell-fish like the oyster. Is that true, or can we imagine any other result?

Pro. We certainly cannot.

Soc. And can we choose such a life?

Pro. This argument, Socrates, has made me utterly speechless for the present.

Soc. Well, let us not give in yet. Let us take up the life of mind and scrutinize that in turn.

Pro. What sort of life do you mean?

Soc. I ask whether anyone would be willing to live possessing wisdom and mind and knowledge and perfect memory of all things, but having no share, great or small, in pleasure, or in pain, for that matter, but being utterly unaffected by everything of that sort.

Pro. Neither of the two lives can ever appear desirable to me, Socrates, or, I think, to anyone else.

Soc. How about the combined life, Protarchus, made up by a union of the two?

Pro. You mean a union of pleasure with mind or wisdom?

Soc. Yes, I mean a union of such elements.

Pro. Every one will prefer this life to either of the two others—yes, every single person without exception.

Soc. Then do we understand the consequences of what we are now saying?

Pro. Certainly. Three lives have been proposed, and of two of them neither is sufficient or desirable for man or any other living being.

Soc. Then is it not already clear that neither of these two contained the good for if it did contain the good, it would be sufficient and perfect, and such as to be chosen by all living creatures which would be able to live thus all their lives; and if any of us chose anything else, he would be choosing contrary to the nature of the truly desirable, not of his own free will, but from ignorance or some unfortunate necessity.

Pro. That seems at any rate to be true.

Soc. And so I think we have sufficiently proved that Philebus’s divinity is not to be considered identical with the good.

Phi. But neither is your mind the good, Socrates; it will be open to the same objections.

Soc. My mind, perhaps, Philebus; but not so, I believe, the true mind, which is also divine; that is different. I do not as yet claim for mind the victory over the combined life, but we must look and see what is to be done about the second place; for each of us might perhaps put forward a claim, one that mind is the cause of this combined life, the other that pleasure is the cause and thus neither of these two would be the good, but one or the other of them might be regarded as the cause of the good. On this point I might keep up the fight all the more against Philebus and contend that in this mixed life it is mind that is more akin and more similar than pleasure to that, whatever it may be, which makes it both desirable and good; and from this point of view pleasure could advance no true claim to the first or even the second place. It is farther behind than the third place, if my mind is at all to be trusted at present.