Page - 921 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial, material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence, and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence. PROTARCHUS: Assuredly. SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake of some essence? PROTARCHUS: True. SOCRATES: And that for the sake of which something else is done must be placed in the class of good, and that which is done for the sake of something else, in some other class, my good friend. PROTARCHUS: Most certainly. SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, will be rightly placed in some other class than that of good? PROTARCHUS: Quite right. SOCRATES: Then, as I said at first, we ought to be very grateful to him who first pointed out that pleasure was a generation only, and had no true being at all; for he is clearly one who laughs at the notion of pleasure being a good. PROTARCHUS: Assuredly. SOCRATES: And he would surely laugh also at those who make generation their highest end. PROTARCHUS: Of whom are you speaking, and what do they mean? SOCRATES: I am speaking of those who when they are cured of hunger or thirst or any other defect by some process of generation are delighted at the process as if it were pleasure; and they say that they would not wish to live without these and other feelings of a like kind which might be mentioned. PROTARCHUS: That is certainly what they appear to think. SOCRATES: And is not destruction universally admitted to be the opposite of generation? PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Then he who chooses thus, would choose generation and destruction rather than that third sort of life, in which, as we were saying, was neither pleasure nor pain, but only the purest possible thought. 921