Part 42

SOCRATES: And did we not endeavour to make an imaginary separation of wisdom and pleasure, assigning to each a distinct life, so that pleasure was wholly excluded from wisdom, and wisdom in like manner had no part whatever in pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: We did.

SOCRATES: And did we think that either of them alone would be sufficient?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And if we erred in any point, then let any one who will, take up the enquiry again and set us right; and assuming memory and wisdom and knowledge and true opinion to belong to the same class, let him consider whether he would desire to possess or acquire,--I will not say pleasure, however abundant or intense, if he has no real perception that he is pleased, nor any consciousness of what he feels, nor any recollection, however momentary, of the feeling,--but would he desire to have anything at all, if these faculties were wanting to him? And about wisdom I ask the same question; can you conceive that any one would choose to have all wisdom absolutely devoid of pleasure, rather than with a certain degree of pleasure, or all pleasure devoid of wisdom, rather than with a certain degree of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not, Socrates; but why repeat such questions any more?

SOCRATES: Then the perfect and universally eligible and entirely good cannot possibly be either of them?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: Then now we must ascertain the nature of the good more or less accurately, in order, as we were saying, that the second place may be duly assigned.

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: Have we not found a road which leads towards the good?

PROTARCHUS: What road?

SOCRATES: Supposing that a man had to be found, and you could discover in what house he lived, would not that be a great step towards the discovery of the man himself?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning, that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?

PROTARCHUS: Far greater.

SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who presides over the ceremony of mingling.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Tell me first;--should we be most likely to succeed if we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.

SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I can show a safer plan.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than another, and one art to be more exact than another.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.