Page - 929 - in The Complete Plato

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not, Socrates; but why repeat such questions any more? SOCRATES: Then the perfect and universally eligible and entirely good cannot possibly be either of them? PROTARCHUS: Impossible. SOCRATES: Then now we must ascertain the nature of the good more or less accurately, in order, as we were saying, that the second place may be duly assigned. PROTARCHUS: Right. SOCRATES: Have we not found a road which leads towards the good? PROTARCHUS: What road? SOCRATES: Supposing that a man had to be found, and you could discover in what house he lived, would not that be a great step towards the discovery of the man himself? PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning, that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed. PROTARCHUS: True. SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in the life which is well mixed than in that which is not? PROTARCHUS: Far greater. SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who presides over the ceremony of mingling. PROTARCHUS: By all means. SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures. PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Tell me first;—should we be most likely to succeed if we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom? PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might. 929