Page - 906 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: Next let us see whether in another direction we may not find pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living beings, which are still more false than these. PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how shall we find them? SOCRATES: If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out of a corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and decay? PROTARCHUS: Yes, that has been often said. SOCRATES: And we have also agreed that the restoration of the natural state is pleasure? PROTARCHUS: Right. SOCRATES: But now let us suppose an interval of time at which the body experiences none of these changes. PROTARCHUS: When can that be, Socrates? SOCRATES: Your question, Protarchus, does not help the argument. PROTARCHUS: Why not, Socrates? SOCRATES: Because it does not prevent me from repeating mine. PROTARCHUS: And what was that? SOCRATES: Why, Protarchus, admitting that there is no such interval, I may ask what would be the necessary consequence if there were? PROTARCHUS: You mean, what would happen if the body were not changed either for good or bad? SOCRATES: Yes. PROTARCHUS: Why then, Socrates, I should suppose that there would be neither pleasure nor pain. SOCRATES: Very good; but still, if I am not mistaken, you do assert that we must always be experiencing one of them; that is what the wise tell us; for, say they, all things are ever flowing up and down. PROTARCHUS: Yes, and their words are of no mean authority. SOCRATES: Of course, for they are no mean authorities themselves; and I should like to avoid the brunt of their argument. Shall I tell you how I mean to escape from them? And you shall be the partner of my flight. 906