Page - 886 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: This is evidently comprehended in the third or mixed class; which is not composed of any two particular ingredients, but of all the elements of infinity, bound down by the finite, and may therefore be truly said to comprehend the conqueror life. PROTARCHUS: Most true. SOCRATES: And what shall we say, Philebus, of your life which is all sweetness; and in which of the aforesaid classes is that to be placed? Perhaps you will allow me to ask you a question before you answer? PHILEBUS: Let me hear. SOCRATES: Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less? PHILEBUS: They belong to the class which admits of more, Socrates; for pleasure would not be perfectly good if she were not infinite in quantity and degree. SOCRATES: Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some degree of good. But now—admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite—in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we err on this point. PHILEBUS: You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god. SOCRATES: And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question. PROTARCHUS: Socrates is quite right, Philebus, and we must submit to him. PHILEBUS: And did not you, Protarchus, propose to answer in my place? PROTARCHUS: Certainly I did; but I am now in a great strait, and I must entreat you, Socrates, to be our spokesman, and then we shall not say anything wrong or disrespectful of your favourite. SOCRATES: I must obey you, Protarchus; nor is the task which you impose a difficult one; but did I really, as Philebus implies, disconcert you with my playful solemnity, when I asked the question to what class mind and knowledge belong? PROTARCHUS: You did, indeed, Socrates. SOCRATES: Yet the answer is easy, since all philosophers assert with one voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth—in reality they are 886