PHILEBUS · 23

PROTARCHUS: The latter alternative is the true one.

SOCRATES: Then we were not right in saying, just now, that motions going up and down cause pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: A better and more unexceptionable way of speaking will be—

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: If we say that the great changes produce pleasures and pains, but that the moderate and lesser ones do neither.

PROTARCHUS: That, Socrates, is the more correct mode of speaking.

SOCRATES: But if this be true, the life to which I was just now referring again appears.

PROTARCHUS: What life?

SOCRATES: The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of pain or of joy.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: We may assume then that there are three lives, one pleasant, one painful, and the third which is neither; what say you?

PROTARCHUS: I should say as you do that there are three of them.

SOCRATES: But if so, the negation of pain will not be the same with pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then when you hear a person saying, that always to live without pain is the pleasantest of all things, what would you understand him to mean by that statement?

PROTARCHUS: I think that by pleasure he must mean the negative of pain.

SOCRATES: Let us take any three things; or suppose that we embellish a little and call the first gold, the second silver, and there shall be a third which is neither.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Now, can that which is neither be either gold or silver?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: No more can that neutral or middle life be rightly or reasonably spoken or thought of as pleasant or painful.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And yet, my friend, there are, as we know, persons who say and think so.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And do they think that they have pleasure when they are free from pain?

PROTARCHUS: They say so.

SOCRATES: And they must think or they would not say that they have pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: I suppose not.

SOCRATES: And yet if pleasure and the negation of pain are of distinct natures, they are wrong.