Philebus

Soc. And as we said it was harmless and useful to know all the arts throughout our life, if we now say the same of pleasures—that is, if it is advantageous and harmless for us to enjoy all pleasures throughout life—they must all form part of the mixture.

Pro. What shall we say about these pleasures, and what shall we do?

Soc. There is no use in asking us, Protarchus; we must ask the pleasures and the arts and sciences themselves about one another.

Pro. What shall we ask them?

Soc. Dear ones—whether you should be called pleasures or by any other name—would you choose to dwell with all wisdom, or with none at all? I think only one reply is possible.

Pro. What is it?

Soc. What we said before: For any class to be alone, solitary, and unalloyed is neither altogether possible nor is it profitable; but of all classes, comparing them one with another, we think the best to live with is the knowledge of all other things and, so far as is possible, the perfect knowledge of our individual selves.

Pro. Your reply is excellent, we shall tell them.

Soc. Right. And next we must turn to wisdom and mind, and question them. We shall ask them, Do you want any further pleasures in the mixture? And they might reply, What pleasures?

Pro. Quite likely.

Soc. Then we should go on to say: In addition to those true pleasures, do you want the greatest and most intense pleasures also to dwell with you? How can we want them, Socrates, they might perhaps say, since they contain countless hindrances for us, inasmuch as they disturb with maddening pleasures the souls of men in which we dwell, thereby preventing us from being born at all, and utterly destroying for the most part, through the carelessness and forgetfulness which they engender, those of our children which are born?