Seite - 879 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: But do you see the consequence? PROTARCHUS: To be sure I do. The consequence is, that two out of the three lives which have been proposed are neither sufficient nor eligible for man or for animal. SOCRATES: Then now there can be no doubt that neither of them has the good, for the one which had would certainly have been sufficient and perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing that was able to live such a life; and if any of us had chosen any other, he would have chosen contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, and not of his own free will, but either through ignorance or from some unhappy necessity. PROTARCHUS: Certainly that seems to be true. SOCRATES: And now have I not sufficiently shown that Philebus’ goddess is not to be regarded as identical with the good? PHILEBUS: Neither is your ‘mind’ the good, Socrates, for that will be open to the same objections. SOCRATES: Perhaps, Philebus, you may be right in saying so of my ‘mind’; but of the true, which is also the divine mind, far otherwise. However, I will not at present claim the first place for mind as against the mixed life; but we must come to some understanding about the second place. For you might affirm pleasure and I mind to be the cause of the mixed life; and in that case although neither of them would be the good, one of them might be imagined to be the cause of the good. And I might proceed further to argue in opposition to Philebus, that the element which makes this mixed life eligible and good, is more akin and more similar to mind than to pleasure. And if this is true, pleasure cannot be truly said to share either in the first or second place, and does not, if I may trust my own mind, attain even to the third. PROTARCHUS: Truly, Socrates, pleasure appears to me to have had a fall; in fighting for the palm, she has been smitten by the argument, and is laid low. I must say that mind would have fallen too, and may therefore be thought to show discretion in not putting forward a similar claim. And if pleasure were deprived not only of the first but of the second place, she would be terribly damaged in the eyes of her admirers, for not even to them would she still appear as fair as before. SOCRATES: Well, but had we not better leave her now, and not pain her by applying the crucial test, and finally detecting her? PROTARCHUS: Nonsense, Socrates. SOCRATES: Why? because I said that we had better not pain pleasure, 879