Jowett: pain

  

I therefore should never dare, I am sure, to deceive you, who are my friend, or disobey the great Hipparchus  , after whose death the Athenians were for three years under the despotic rule of his brother Hippias, and you might have heard anyone of the earlier period say that it was only in these years that there was despotism in Athens, and that at all other times the Athenians lived very much as in the reign of Cronos. And the subtler sort of people say [229c] that Hipparchus’s death was due, not to the cause supposed by most — the disqualification of the assassin’s sister from bearing the basket, for that is a silly motive — but because Harmodius had become the favorite of Aristogeiton and had been educated by him. Thus Aristogeiton also prided himself on educating people, and he regarded Hipparchus as a dangerous rival. And at that time, it is said, Harmodius [229d] happened to be himself in love with one of the handsome and well-born youths of the day ; they do tell his name, but I cannot remember it. Well, for a while this youth admired both Harmodius and Aristogeiton as wise men, but afterwards, when he associated with Hipparchus, he despised them, and they were so overcome with the PAIN of this “disqualification” that they slew Hipparchus. HIPPARCHUS

Soc. Come now, suppose that you were to say to me : “Since you, Socrates  , are able to assign different passages in Homer to their corresponding arts, I wish that you would tell me what are the passages of which the excellence ought to be judged by the prophet and prophetic art” ; and you will see how readily and truly I shall answer you. For there are many such passages, particularly in the Odyssey ; as, for example, the passage in which Theoclymenus the prophet of the house of Melampus says to the suitors : — Wretched men ! what is happening to you ? Your heads and your faces and your limbs underneath are shrouded in night ; and the voice of lamentation bursts forth, and your cheeks are wet with tears. And the vestibule is full, and the court is full, of ghosts descending into the darkness of Erebus, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is spread abroad. And there are many such passages in the Iliad also ; as for example in the description of the battle near the rampart, where he says : — As they were eager to pass the ditch, there came to them an omen : a soaring eagle, holding back the people on the left, bore a huge bloody dragon in his talons, still living and panting ; nor had he yet resigned the strife, for he bent back and smote the bird which carried him on the breast by the neck, and he in PAIN let him fall from him to the ground into the midst of the multitude. And the eagle, with a cry, was borne afar on the wings of the wind. These are the sort of things which I should say that the prophet ought to consider and determine. ION  

And do you think that a man lives well who lives in PAIN and grief ? PROTAGORAS

May I employ an illustration ? I said. Suppose some one who is enquiring into the health or some other bodily quality of another : — he looks at his face and at the tips of his fingers, and then he says, Uncover your chest and back to me that I may have a better view : — that is the sort of thing which I desire in this speculation. Having seen what your opinion is about good and pleasure, I am minded to say to you : Uncover your mind to me, Protagoras, and reveal your opinion about knowledge, that I may know whether you agree with the rest of the world. Now the rest of the world are of opinion that knowledge is a principle not of strength, or of rule, or of command : their notion is that a man may have knowledge, and yet that the knowledge which is in him may be overmastered by anger, or pleasure, or PAIN, or love, or perhaps by fear, — just as if knowledge were a slave, and might be dragged about anyhow. Now is that your view ? or do you think that knowledge is a noble and commanding thing, which cannot be overcome, and will not allow a man, if he only knows the difference of good and evil, to do anything which is contrary to knowledge, but that wisdom will have strength to help him ? PROTAGORAS

Good, I said, and true. But are you aware that the majority of the world are of another mind ; and that men are commonly supposed to know the things which are best, and not to do them when they might ? And most persons whom I have asked the reason of this have said that when men act contrary to knowledge they are overcome by PAIN, or pleasure, or some of those affections which I was just now mentioning. PROTAGORAS

And in causing diseases do they not cause PAIN ? and in causing poverty do they not cause PAIN ; — they would agree to that also, if I am not mistaken ? PROTAGORAS

Then I should say to them, in my name and yours : Do you think them evil for any other reason, except because they end in PAIN and rob us of other pleasures : — there again they would agree ? PROTAGORAS

“And do you call them good because they occasion the greatest immediate suffering and PAIN ; or because, afterwards, they bring health and improvement of the bodily condition and the salvation of states and power over others and wealth ?” — they would agree to the latter alternative, if I am not mistaken ? PROTAGORAS

“Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert PAIN ? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and PAIN when you call them good ?” — they would acknowledge that they were not ? PROTAGORAS

“And do you not pursue after pleasure as a good, and avoid PAIN as an evil ?” PROTAGORAS

“Then you think that PAIN is an evil and pleasure is a good : and even pleasure you deem an evil, when it robs you of greater pleasures than it gives, or causes pains greater than the pleasure. If, however, you call pleasure an evil in relation to some other end or standard, you will be able to show us that standard. But you have none to show.” PROTAGORAS

“And have you not a similar way of speaking about PAIN ? You call PAIN a good when it takes away greater pains than those which it has, or gives pleasures greater than the pains : then if you have some standard other than pleasure and PAIN to which you refer when you call actual PAIN a good, you can show what that is. But you cannot.” PROTAGORAS

Suppose again, I said, that the world says to me : “Why do you spend many words and speak in many ways on this subject ?” Excuse me, friends, I should reply ; but in the first place there is a difficulty in explaining the meaning of the expression “overcome by pleasure” ; and the whole argument turns upon this. And even now, if you see any possible way in which evil can be explained as other than PAIN, or good as other than pleasure, you may still retract. Are you satisfied, then, at having a life of pleasure which is without PAIN ? If you are, and if you are unable to show any good or evil which does not end in pleasure and PAIN, hear the consequences : — If what you say is true, then the argument is absurd which affirms that a man often does evil knowingly, when he might abstain, because he is seduced and overpowered by pleasure ; or again, when you say that a man knowingly refuses to do what is good because he is overcome at the moment by pleasure. And that this is ridiculous will be evident if only we give up the use of various names, such as pleasant and painful, and good and evil. As there are two things, let us call them by two names — first, good and evil, and then pleasant and painful. Assuming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil knowing that he does evil. But some one will ask, Why ? Because he is overcome, is the first answer. And by what is he overcome ? the enquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able to reply “By pleasure,” for the name of pleasure has been exchanged for that of good. In our answer, then, we shall only say that he is overcome. “By what ?” he will reiterate. By the good, we shall have to reply ; indeed we shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, “That is too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by good. Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil ?” And in answer to that we shall clearly reply, Because it was not worthy ; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. “But how,” he will reply, “can the good be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of the good ?” Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion to one another, either as greater and smaller, or more and fewer ? This we cannot deny. And when you speak of being overcome — ”what do you mean,” he will say, “but that you choose the greater evil in exchange for the lesser good ?” Admitted. And now substitute the names of pleasure and PAIN for good and evil, and say, not as before, that a man does what is evil knowingly, but that he does what is painful knowingly, and because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome. What measure is there of the relations of pleasure to PAIN other than excess and defect, which means that they become greater and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree ? For if any one says : “Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs widely from future pleasure and PAIN” — To that I should reply : And do they differ in anything but in pleasure and PAIN ? There can be no other measure of them. And do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, and their nearness and distance, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other. If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater ; or if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less ; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant ; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true ? I am confident that they cannot deny this. PROTAGORAS

Cr. Why, indeed, Socrates, I myself would rather not have all this sleeplessness and sorrow. But I have been wondering at your peaceful slumbers, and that was the reason why I did not awaken you, because I wanted you to be out of PAIN. I have always thought you happy in the calmness of your temperament ; but never did I see the like of the easy, cheerful way in which you bear this calamity. CRITO  

Critias  , when he heard this, said : The headache will be an unexpected gain to my young relation, if the PAIN in his head compels him to improve his mind : and I can tell you, Socrates, that Charmides   is not only pre-eminent in beauty among his equals, but also in that quality which is given by the charm ; and this, as you say, is temperance ? CHARMIDES

You see then, Critias, that I was not far wrong in fearing that I could have no sound notion about wisdom ; I was quite right in depreciating myself ; for that which is admitted to be the best of all things would never have seemed to us useless, if I had been good for anything at an enquiry. But now I have been utterly defeated, and have failed to discover what that is to which the imposer of names gave this name of temperance or wisdom. And yet many more admissions were made by us than could be fairly granted ; for we admitted that there was a science of science, although the argument said No, and protested against us ; and we admitted further, that this science knew the works of the other sciences (although this too was denied by the argument), because we wanted to show that the wise man had knowledge of what he knew and did not know ; also we nobly disregarded, and never even considered, the impossibility of a man knowing in a sort of way that which he does not know at all ; for our assumption was, that he knows that which he does not know ; than which nothing, as I think, can be more irrational. And yet, after finding us so easy and good-natured, the enquiry is still unable to discover the truth ; but mocks us to a degree, and has gone out of its way to prove the inutility of that which we admitted only by a sort of supposition and fiction to be the true definition of temperance or wisdom : which result, as far as I am concerned, is not so much to be lamented, I said. But for your sake, Charmides, I am very sorry — that you, having such beauty and such wisdom and temperance of soul, should have no profit or good in life from your wisdom and temperance. And still more am I grieved about the charm which I learned with so much PAIN, and to so little profit, from the Thracian, for the sake of a thing which is nothing worth. I think indeed that there is a mistake, and that I must be a bad enquirer, for wisdom or temperance I believe to be really a great good ; and happy are you, Charmides, if you certainly possess it. Wherefore examine yourself, and see whether you have this gift and can do without the charm ; for if you can, I would rather advise you to regard me simply as a fool who is never able to reason out anything ; and to rest assured that the more wise and temperate you are, the happier you will be. CHARMIDES

Soc. That was my meaning when I said that I was to blame in having put my question badly, and that this was the reason of your answering badly. For I meant to ask you not only about the courage of heavy-armed soldiers, but about the courage of cavalry and every other style of soldier ; and not only who are courageous in war, but who are courageous in perils by sea, and who in disease, or in poverty, or again in politics, are courageous ; and not only who are courageous against PAIN or fear, but mighty to contend against desires and pleasures, either fixed in their rank or turning upon their enemy. There is this sort of courage — is there not, Laches ? LACHES

Soc. And now, Laches, do you try and tell me in like manner, What is that common quality which is called courage, and which includes all the various uses of the term when applied both to pleasure and PAIN, and in all the cases to which I was just now referring ? LACHES

Soc. And deformity or disgrace may be equally measured by the opposite standard of PAIN and evil ? GORGIAS

Soc. And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in deformity or disgrace, exceeds either in PAIN or evil — must it not be so ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful than suffering, the more disgraceful must be more painful and must exceed in PAIN or in evil or both : does not that also follow ? GORGIAS

Soc. First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in the consequent PAIN : Do the injurers suffer more than the injured ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then they do not exceed in PAIN ? GORGIAS

Soc. But if not in PAIN, then not in both ? GORGIAS

Soc. And if he burns in excess or so as to cause PAIN, the thing burned will be burned in the same way ? GORGIAS

Soc. And if the cutting be great or deep or such as will cause PAIN, the cut will be of the same nature ? GORGIAS

Soc. And most disgraceful either because most painful and causing excessive PAIN, or most hurtful, or both ? GORGIAS

Soc. Yes, because the patient is delivered from a great evil ; and this is the advantage of enduring the PAIN — that you get well ? GORGIAS

Soc. May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of the PAIN of being burned or cut : — Is not that a parallel case ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in helping a man to excuse his own injustice, that of his parents or friends, or children or country ; but may be of use to any one who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse — himself above all, and in the next degree his family or any of his friends who may be doing wrong ; he should bring to light the iniquity and not conceal it, that so the wrong-doer may suffer and be made whole ; and he should even force himself and others not to shrink, but with closed eyes like brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing iron, not regarding the PAIN, in the hope of attaining the good and the honourable ; let him who has done things worthy of stripes, allow himself to be scourged, if of bonds, to be bound, if of a fine, to be fined, if of exile, to be exiled, if of death, to die, himself being the first to accuse himself and his relations, and using rhetoric to this end, that his and their unjust actions may be made manifest, and that they themselves may be delivered from injustice, which is the greatest evil. Then, Polus, rhetoric would indeed be useful. Do you say “Yes” or “No” to that ? GORGIAS

Soc. Well, I will tell you another image, which comes out of the same school : — Let me request you to consider how far you would accept this as an account of the two lives of the temperate and intemperate in a figure : — There are two men, both of whom have a number of casks ; the one man has his casks sound and full, one of wine, another of honey, and a third of milk, besides others filled with other liquids, and the streams which fill them are few and scanty, and he can only obtain them with a great deal of toil and difficulty ; but when his casks are once filled he has need to feed them anymore, and has no further trouble with them or care about them. The other, in like manner, can procure streams, though not without difficulty ; but his vessels are leaky and unsound, and night and day he is compelled to be filling them, and if he pauses for a moment, he is in an agony of PAIN. Such are their respective lives : — And now would you say that the life of the intemperate is happier than that of the temperate ? Do I not convince you that the opposite is the truth ? GORGIAS

Soc. And in the sentence which you have just uttered, the word “thirsty” implies PAIN ? GORGIAS

Soc. And in PAIN ? GORGIAS

Soc. Do you see the inference : — that pleasure and PAIN are simultaneous, when you say that being thirsty, you drink ? For are they not simultaneous, and do they not affect at the same time the same part, whether of the soul or the body ? — which of them is affected cannot be supposed to be of any consequence : Is not this true ? GORGIAS

Soc. But, you admitted that when in PAIN a man might also have pleasure ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then pleasure is not the same as good fortune, or PAIN the same as evil fortune, and therefore the good is not the same as the pleasant ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then he ceases from PAIN and pleasure at the same moment ? GORGIAS

Soc. Why, my friend, the inference is that the good is not the same as the pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful ; there is a cessation of pleasure and PAIN at the same moment ; but not of good and evil, for they are different. How then can pleasure be the same as good, or PAIN as evil ? And I would have you look at the matter in another light, which could hardly, I think, have been considered by you identified them : Are not the good they have good present with them, as the beautiful are those who have beauty present with them ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then are the good and bad good and bad in a nearly equal degree, or have the bad the advantage both in good and evil ? [i.e. in having more pleasure and more PAIN.] GORGIAS

Soc. And those who are in PAIN have evil or sorrow present with them ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then those who rejoice are good, and those who are in PAIN evil ? GORGIAS

Soc. The degrees of good and evil vary with the degrees of pleasure and of PAIN ? GORGIAS

Soc. Have the wise man and the fool, the brave and the coward, joy and PAIN in nearly equal degrees ? or would you say that the coward has more ? GORGIAS

Soc. And he who is in PAIN is evil ? GORGIAS

Soc. The good and evil both have joy and PAIN, but, perhaps, the evil has more of them ? GORGIAS

Now the proper office of punishment is twofold : he who is rightly punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he suffers, and fear and become better. Those who are improved when they are punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are curable ; and they are improved, as in this world so also in another, by PAIN and suffering ; for there is no other way in which they can be delivered from their evil. But they who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes, are made examples ; for, as they are incurable, the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit. They get no good themselves, but others get good when they behold them enduring for ever the most terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins — there they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world below, a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as I confidently affirm, will be found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of him, and any other tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples, most, as I believe, are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and potentates and public men, for they are the authors of the greatest and most impious crimes, because they have the power. And Homer witnesses to the truth of this ; for they are always kings and potentates whom he has described as suffering everlasting punishment in the world below : such were Tantalus and Sisyphus   and Tityus. But no one ever described Thersites, or any private person who was a villain, as suffering everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst crimes, as I am inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was happier than those who had the power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the class of those who have power. And yet in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain to this. Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be again, at Athens and in other states, who have fulfilled their trust righteously ; and there is one who is quite famous all over Hellas, Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But, in general, great men are also bad, my friend. GORGIAS

Her. What do you say of edone (pleasure), lupe (PAIN), epithumia (desire), and the like, Socrates ? CRATYLUS  

“Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,” she said, “what is the manner of the pursuit ? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love ? and what is the object which they have in view ? Answer me.” “Nay, Diotima,” I replied, “if I had known, I should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I have come to learn from you about this very matter.” “Well,” she said, “I will teach you : — The object which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of body or, soul.” “I do not understand you,” I said ; “the oracle requires an explanation.” “I will make my meaning dearer,” she replied. “I mean to say, that all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certain age at which human nature is desirous of procreation — procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity ; and this procreation is the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing ; for conception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive, and benign, and begets and bears fruit : at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of PAIN, and turns away, and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the alleviation of the PAIN of travail. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only.” “What then ?” “The love of generation and of birth in beauty.” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, indeed,” she replied. “But why of generation ?” “Because to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,” she replied ; “and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good : Wherefore love is of immortality.” SYMPOSIUM  

And when she was gone, Socrates, sitting up on the couch, began to bend and rub his leg, saying, as he rubbed : “How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to PAIN, which might be thought to be the opposite of it ; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem ; and I cannot help thinking that if Aesop   had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together ; and this is the reason why when one comes the other follows, as I find in my own case pleasure comes following after the PAIN in my leg, which was caused by the chain.” PHAEDO  

And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her — neither sounds nor sights nor PAIN nor any pleasure — when she has as little as possible to do with the body, and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being ? PHAEDO

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or PAIN for another fear or pleasure or PAIN, which are measured like coins, the greater with the less, is not the exchange of virtue. O my dear Simmias, is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange ? — and that is wisdom ; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her ? But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her ; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself are a purgation of them. And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For “many,” as they say in the mysteries, “are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,” — meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers. In the number of whom I have been seeking, according to my ability, to find a place during my whole life ; whether I have sought in a right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself arrive in the other world : that is my belief. And now, Simmias and Cebes, I have answered those who charge me with not grieving or repining at parting from you and my masters in this world ; and I am right in not repining, for I believe that I shall find other masters and friends who are as good in the world below. But all men cannot believe this, and I shall be glad if my words have any more success with you than with the judges of the Athenians. PHAEDO

Why, this : When the feeling of pleasure or PAIN in the soul is most intense, all of us naturally suppose that the object of this intense feeling is then plainest and truest : but this is not the case. PHAEDO

Why, because each pleasure and PAIN is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her and makes her believe that to be true which the body affirms to be true ; and from agreeing with the body and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits and ways, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the world below, but is always saturated with the body ; so that she soon sinks into another body and there germinates and grows, and has therefore no part in the communion of the divine and pure and simple. PHAEDO

Socrates smiled and said : O Simmias, how strange that is ; I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans ? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in PAIN, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe ; which are said indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo and have the gift of prophecy and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and the fellow servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less merrily than the swans. Cease to mind then about this, but speak and ask anything which you like, while the eleven magistrates of Athens allow. PHAEDO

Further, I say that you are likely to be improved by me, whereas the lover will spoil you. For they praise your words and actions in a wrong way ; partly, because they are afraid of offending you, and also, their judgment is weakened by passion. Such are the feats which love exhibits ; he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no PAIN to others ; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied. But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master ; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath — unintentional offences I shall forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent ; and these are the marks of a friendship which will last. PHAEDRUS  

During this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence, — which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth, — bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling ; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings, the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion (imeros), and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she ceases from her PAIN with joy. But when she is parted from her beloved and her moisture fails, then the orifices of the passage out of which the wing shoots dry up and close, and intercept the germ of the wing ; which, being shut up with the emotion, throbbing as with the pulsations of an artery, pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the entire soul is pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection of beauty is again delighted. And from both of them together the soul is oppressed at the strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait and excitement, and in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide in her place by day. And wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. And when she has seen him, and bathed herself in the waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains ; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all ; he has forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property ; the rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his desired one, who is the object of his worship, and the physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his PAIN. And this state, my dear imaginary youth to whom I am talking, is by men called love, and among the gods has a name at which you, in your simplicity, may be inclined to mock ; there are two lines in the apocryphal writings of Homer in which the name occurs. One of them is rather outrageous, and not altogether metrical. They are as follows : PHAEDRUS

And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the beloved ; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches, the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling ; and when they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder, and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration ; the other, when the PAIN is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion. Again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time. When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at length he, on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again. And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and takes the bit in his teeth. and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is worse off than ever ; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer, and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. PHAEDRUS

And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover ; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen ; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when his feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again ; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one ; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering. them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he loves, but he knows not what ; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state ; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another ; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their PAIN, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love’s image, love for love (Anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker ; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer ; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not ; — he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend ; and, when they are side by side, he is not in it state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him ; although his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. PHAEDRUS

Phaedr. Need we ? For what should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse ? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous PAIN as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Yes, my boy, outer barbarians. Far more ingenious are the brethren whose mysteries I am about to reveal to you. Their first principle is, that all is motion, and upon this all the affections of which we were just now speaking, are supposed to depend : there is nothing but motion, which has two forms, one active and the other passive, both in endless number ; and out of the union and friction of them there is generated a progeny endless in number, having two forms, sense and the object of sense, which are ever breaking forth and coming to the birth at the same moment. The senses are variously named hearing, seeing, smelling ; there is the sense of heat, cold, pleasure, PAIN, desire, fear, and many more which have names, as well as innumerable others which are without them ; each has its kindred object each variety of colour has a corresponding variety of sight, and so with sound and hearing, and with the rest of the senses and the objects akin to them. Do you see, Theaetetus  , the bearings of this tale on the preceding argument ? THEAETETUS

Str. And do we not see that opinion is opposed to desire, pleasure to anger, reason to PAIN, and that all these elements are opposed to one another in the souls of bad men ? SOPHIST

Str. And these, whether they rule with the will, or against the will of their subjects, with written laws or. without written laws, and whether they are poor or rich, and whatever be the nature of their rule, must be supposed, according to our present view, to rule on some scientific principle ; just as the physician, whether he cures us against our will or with our will, and whatever be his mode of treatment — incision, burning, or the infliction of some other PAIN — whether he practises out of a book or not out of a book, and whether he be rich or poor, whether he purges or reduces in some other way, or even fattens his patients, is a physician all the same, so long as he exercises authority over them according to rules of art, if he only does them good and heals and saves them. And this we lay down to be the only proper test of the art of medicine, or of any other art of command. STATESMAN

Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner ; they were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star ; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be one and the same for all, — no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands ; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals ; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would here after be called man. Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions ; in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and PAIN mingle ; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them ; if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state. Having given all these laws to his creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in the moon, and some in the other instruments of time ; and when he had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was still lacking to the human soul, and having made all the suitable additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him all but self-inflicted evils. TIMAEUS  

The most important of the affections which concern the whole body remains to be considered — that is, the cause of pleasure and PAIN in the perceptions of which I have been speaking, and in all other things which are perceived by sense through the parts of the body, and have both pains and pleasures attendant on them. Let us imagine the causes of every affection, whether of sense or not, to be of the following nature, remembering that we have already distinguished between the nature which is easy and which is hard to move ; for this is the direction in which we must hunt the prey which we mean to take. A body which is of a nature to be easily moved, on receiving an impression however slight, spreads abroad the motion in a circle, the parts communicating with each other, until at last, reaching the principle of mind, they announce the quality of the agent. But a body of the opposite kind, being immobile, and not extending to the surrounding region, merely receives the impression, and does not stir any of the neighbouring parts ; and since the parts do not distribute the original impression to other parts, it has no effect of motion on the whole animal, and therefore produces no effect on the patient. This is true of the bones and hair and other more earthy parts of the human body ; whereas what was said above relates mainly to sight and hearing, because they have in them the greatest amount of fire and air. Now we must conceive of pleasure and PAIN in this way. An impression produced in us contrary to nature and violent, if sudden, is painful ; and, again, the sudden return to nature is pleasant ; but a gentle and gradual return is imperceptible and vice versa. On the other hand the impression of sense which is most easily produced is most readily felt, but is not accompanied by Pleasure or PAIN ; such, for example, are the affections of the sight, which, as we said above, is a body naturally uniting with our body in the day-time ; for cuttings and burnings and other affections which happen to the sight do not give PAIN, nor is there pleasure when the sight returns to its natural state ; but the sensations are dearest and strongest according to the manner in which the eye is affected by the object, and itself strikes and touches it ; there is no violence either in the contraction or dilation of the eye. But bodies formed of larger particles yield to the agent only with a struggle ; and then they impart their motions to the whole and cause pleasure and PAIN — PAIN when alienated from their natural conditions, and pleasure when restored to them. Things which experience gradual withdrawings and emptyings of their nature, and great and sudden replenishments, fail to perceive the emptying, but are sensible of the replenishment ; and so they occasion no PAIN, but the greatest pleasure, to the mortal part of the soul, as is manifest in the case of perfumes. But things which are changed all of a sudden, and only gradually and with difficulty return to their own nature, have effects in every way opposite to the former, as is evident in the case of burnings and cuttings of the body. TIMAEUS

As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God created in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any proportion except by accident ; nor did any of the things which now have names deserve to be named at all — as, for example, fire, water, and the rest of the elements. All these the creator first set in order, and out of them he constructed the universe, which was a single animal comprehending in itself all other animals, mortal and immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the immortal principle of the soul ; and around this they proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and. made it to be the vehicle of the so and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible affections — first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil ; then, PAIN, which deters from good ; also rashness and fear, two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily led astray — these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed man. Wherefore, fearing to pollute the divine any more than was absolutely unavoidable, they gave to the mortal nature a separate habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck between them to be the isthmus and boundary, which they constructed between the head and breast, to keep them apart. And in the breast, and in what is termed the thorax, they encased the mortal soul ; and as the one part of this was superior and the other inferior they divided the cavity of the thorax into two parts, as the women’s and men’s apartments are divided in houses, and placed the midriff to be a wall of partition between them. That part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courage and passion and loves contention they settled nearer the head, midway between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and restraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their own accord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel. TIMAEUS

The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contriving in all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body ; and there they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained up with man, and must be nourished if man was to exist. They appointed this lower creation his place here in order that he might be always feeding at the manger, and have his dwelling as far as might be from the council-chamber, making as little noise and disturbance as possible, and permitting the best part to advise quietly for the good of the whole. And knowing that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some degree of perception would never naturally care for rational notions, but that it would be led away by phantoms and visions night and day — to be a remedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it in the house of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitter quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight ; and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole liver produces colours like bile, and contracting every part makes it wrinkled and rough ; and twisting out of its right place and contorting the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes PAIN and loathing. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration of the understanding pictures images of an opposite character, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural sweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be right and smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which resides about the liver happy and joyful, enabling it to pass the night in peace, and to practise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has no share in mind and reason. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father when he bade them create the human race as good as they could, that they might correct our inferior parts and make them to attain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination. And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration ; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they afford to this man or that, of past, present or future good and evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he utters ; the ancient saying is very true, that “only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.” And for this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets ; they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy. TIMAEUS

Bone was composed by him in the following manner. Having sifted pure and smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it with marrow, and after that he put it into fire and then into water, and once more into fire and again into water — in this way by frequent transfers from one to the other he made it insoluble by either. Out of this he fashioned, as in a lathe, a globe made of bone, which he placed around the brain, and in this he left a narrow opening ; and around the marrow of the neck and back he formed vertebrae which he placed under one another like pivots, beginning at the head and extending through the whole of the trunk. Thus wishing to preserve the entire seed, he enclosed it in a stone-like casing, inserting joints, and using in the formation of them the power of the other or diverse as an intermediate nature, that they might have motion and flexure. Then again, considering that the bone would be too brittle and inflexible, and when heated and again cooled would soon mortify and destroy the seed within — having this in view, he contrived the sinews and the flesh, that so binding all the members together by the sinews, which admitted of being stretched and relaxed about the vertebrae, he might thus make the body capable of flexion and extension, while the flesh would serve as a protection against the summer heat and against the winter cold, and also against falls, softly and easily yielding to external bodies, like articles made of felt ; and containing in itself a warm moisture which in summer exudes and makes the surface damp, would impart a nature coolness to the whole body ; and again in winter by the help of this internal warmth would form a very tolerable defence against the frost which surrounds it and attacks it from without. He who modelled us, considering these things, mixed earth with fire and water and blended them ; and making a ferment of acid and salt, he mingled it with them and formed soft and succulent flesh. As for the sinews, he made them of a mixture of bone and unfermented flesh, attempered so as to be in a mean, and gave them a yellow colour ; wherefore the sinews have a firmer and more glutinous nature than flesh, but a softer and moister nature than the bones. With these God covered the bones and marrow, binding them together by sinews, and then enshrouded them all in an upper covering of flesh. The more living and sensitive of the bones he enclosed in the thinnest film of flesh, and those which had the least life within them in the thickest and most solid flesh. So again on the joints of the bones, where reason indicated that no more was required, he placed only a thin covering of flesh, that it might not interfere with the flexion of our bodies and make them unwieldy because difficult to move ; and also that it might not, by being crowded and pressed and matted together, destroy sensation by reason of its hardness, and impair the memory and dull the edge of intelligence. Wherefore also the thighs and the shanks and the hips, and the bones of the arms and the forearms, and other parts which have no joints, and the inner bones, which on account of the rarity of the soul in the marrow are destitute of reason — all these are abundantly provided with flesh ; but such as have mind in them are in general less fleshy, except where the creator has made some part solely of flesh in order to give sensation — as, for example, the tongue. But commonly this is not the case. For the nature which comes into being and grows up in us by a law of necessity, does not admit of the combination of solid bone and much flesh with acute perceptions. More than any other part the framework of the head would have had them, if they could have co-existed, and the human race, having a strong and fleshy and sinewy head, would have had a life twice or many times as long as it now has, and also more healthy and free from PAIN. TIMAEUS

But our creators, considering whether they should make a longer-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which was better, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer a shorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which was worse ; and therefore they covered the head with thin bone, but not with flesh and sinews, since it had no joints ; and thus the head was added, having more wisdom and sensation than the rest of the body, but also being in every man far weaker. For these reasons and after this manner God placed the sinews at the extremity of the head, in a circle round the neck, and glued them together by the principle of likeness and fastened the extremities of the jawbones to them below the face, and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fastening limb to limb. The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged, having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and the good, contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out for the best purposes ; for that is necessary which enters in and gives food to the body ; but the river of speech, which flows out of a man and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest of all streams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones, on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the different seasons, nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dull and senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh. The fleshy nature was not therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was parted off and remained over, which is now called the skin. This met and grew by the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circular envelopment of the head. And the moisture, rising up under the sutures, watered and closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of knot. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the power of the courses of the soul and of the food, and the more these struggled against one another the more numerous they became, and fewer if the struggle were less violent. This skin the divine power pierced all round with fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made the moisture issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure came away, and a mixed part which was composed of the same material as the skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up by its own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being too slow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled up underneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang up in the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather, but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold, by which each hair, while in process of separation from the skin, is compressed and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed the head hairy, making use of the causes which I have mentioned, and reflecting also that instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light covering or guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter, and at the same time would not impede our quickness of perception. From the combination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of the finger, there arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takes the form of one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and was fabricated by these second causes, but designed by mind which is the principal cause with an eye to the future. For our creators well knew that women and other animals would some day be framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals would require the use of nails for many purposes ; wherefore they fashioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails. For this purpose and for these reasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to grow at the extremities of the limbs. And now that all the parts and members of the mortal animal had come together, since its life of necessity consisted of fire and breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution and depletion, the gods contrived the following remedy : They mingled a nature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, and thus created another kind of animal. These are the trees and plants and seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are now domesticated among us ; anciently there were only the will kinds, which are older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of life may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are now speaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to be seated between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and PAIN and the desires which accompany them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own, and accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observing or reflecting on its own concerns. Wherefore it lives and does not differ from a living being, but is fixed and rooted in the same spot, having no power of self-motion. TIMAEUS

The frame of the entire creature when young has the triangles of each kind new, and may be compared to the keel of a vessel which is just off the stocks ; they are locked firmly together and yet the whole mass is soft and delicate, being freshly formed of marrow and nurtured on milk. Now when the triangles out of which meats and drinks are composed come in from without, and are comprehended in the body, being older and weaker than the triangles already there, the frame of the body gets the better of them and its newer triangles cut them up, and so the animal grows great, being nourished by a multitude of similar particles. But when the roots of the triangles are loosened by having undergone many conflicts with many things in the course of time, they are no longer able to cut or assimilate the food which enters, but are themselves easily divided by the bodies which come in from without. In this way every animal is overcome and decays, and this affection is called old age. And at last, when the bonds by which the triangles of the marrow are united no longer hold, and are parted by the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the bonds of the soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies away with joy. For that which takes place according to nature is pleasant, but that which is contrary to nature is painful. And thus death, if caused by disease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent ; but that sort of death which comes with old age and fulfils the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths, and is accompanied with pleasure rather than with PAIN. TIMAEUS

There is a third class of diseases which may be conceived of as arising in three ways ; for they are produced sometimes by wind, and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. When the lung, which is the dispenser of the air to the body, is obstructed by rheums and its passages are not free, some of them not acting, while through others too much air enters, then the parts which are unrefreshed by air corrode, while in other parts the excess of air forcing its way through the veins distorts them and decomposing the body is enclosed in the midst of it and occupies the midriff thus numberless painful diseases are produced, accompanied by copious sweats. And oftentimes when the flesh is dissolved in the body, wind, generated within and unable to escape, is the source of quite as much PAIN as the air coming in from without ; but the greatest PAIN is felt when the wind gets about the sinews and the veins of the shoulders, and swells them up, so twists back the great tendons and the sinews which are connected with them. These disorders are called tetanus and opisthotonus, by reason of the tension which accompanies them. The cure of them is difficult ; relief is in most cases given by fever supervening. The white phlegm, though dangerous when detained within by reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can communicate with the outside air, is less severe, and only discolours the body, generating leprous eruptions and similar diseases. When it is mingled with black bile and dispersed about the courses of the head, which are the divinest part of us, the attack if coming on in sleep, is not so severe ; but when assailing those who are awake it is hard to be got rid of, and being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly called sacred. An acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of all those diseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have many names because the places into which they flow are manifold. TIMAEUS

Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise ; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence ; and of this there are two kinds ; to wit, madness and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state may be called disease ; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great PAIN, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly ; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great ; his soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body ; yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad ; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will. And in the case of PAIN too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the body. For where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are blended, with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity ; and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue ; this, however, is part of another subject. TIMAEUS

Soc. I want to know whether any one of us would consent to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all things, but having no sense of pleasure or PAIN, and wholly unaffected by these and the like feelings ? PHILEBUS  

Soc. Well, but had we not better leave her now, and not PAIN her by applying the crucial test, and finally detecting her ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Why ? because I said that we had better not PAIN pleasure, which is an impossibility ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Have pleasure and PAIN a limit, or do they belong to the class which admits of more and less ? PHILEBUS

Soc. 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

Soc. We must next examine what is their place and under what conditions they are generated. And we will begin with pleasure, since her class was first examined ; and yet pleasure cannot be rightly tested apart from PAIN ever PHILEBUS

Soc. I wonder whether you would agree with me about the origin of pleasure and PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. I say that when the harmony in animals is dissolved, there is also a dissolution of nature and a generation of PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. Hunger, for example, is a dissolution and a PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. Thirst again is a destruction and a PAIN, but the effect of moisture replenishing the dry Place is a pleasure : once more, the unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful, and the natural restoration and refrigeration is pleasant. PHILEBUS

Soc. And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an animal is PAIN, and the natural process of resolution and return of the elements to their original state is pleasure. And would not the general proposition seem to you to hold, that the destroying of the natural union of the finite and infinite, which, as I was observing before, make up the class of living beings, is PAIN, and that the process of return of all things to their own nature is pleasure ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Let us next assume that in the soul herself there is an antecedent hope of pleasure which is sweet and refreshing, and an expectation of PAIN, fearful and anxious. PHILEBUS

Soc. Right ; for in the analysis of these, pure, as I suppose them to be, the pleasures being unalloyed with PAIN and the pains with pleasure, methinks that we shall see clearly whether the whole class of pleasure is to be desired, or whether this quality of entire desirableness is not rather to be attributed to another of the classes which have been mentioned ; and whether pleasure and PAIN, like heat and cold, and other things of the same kind, are not sometimes to be desired and sometimes not to be desired, as being not in themselves good, but only sometimes and in some instances admitting of the nature of good. PHILEBUS

Soc. Well, then, assuming that PAIN ensues on the dissolution, and pleasure on the restoration of the harmony, let us now ask what will be the condition of animated beings who are neither in process of restoration nor of dissolution. And mind what you say : I ask whether any animal who is in that condition can possibly have any feeling of pleasure or PAIN, great or small ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Then here we have a third state, over and above that of pleasure and of PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. I am speaking of being emptied and replenished, and of all that relates to the preservation and destruction of living beings, as well as of the PAIN which is felt in one of these states and of the pleasure which succeeds to it. PHILEBUS

Pro. Nay, I should say that he has two pains ; in his body there is the actual experience of PAIN, and in his soul longing and expectation. PHILEBUS

Soc. And has he not the pleasure of memory when he is hoping to be filled, and yet in that he is empty is he not at the same time in PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Then man and the other animals have at the same time both pleasure and PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. But when a man is empty and has no hope of being filled, there will be the double experience of PAIN. You observed this and inferred that the double experience was the single case possible. PHILEBUS

Soc. Would you say that no one ever seemed to rejoice and yet did not rejoice, or seemed to feel PAIN and yet did not feel PAIN, sleeping or waking, mad or lunatic ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And further, even if we admit the existence of qualities in other objects, may not pleasure and PAIN be simple and devoid of quality ? PHILEBUS

Soc. But there is no difficulty in seeing that Pleasure and PAIN as well as opinion have qualities, for they are great or small, and have various degrees of intensity ; as was indeed said long ago by us. PHILEBUS

Soc. And if we see a pleasure or PAIN which errs in respect of its object, shall we call that right or good, or by any honourable name ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And pleasure and PAIN, as I was just now saying, are often consequent upon these upon true and false opinion, I mean. PHILEBUS

Soc. And must we not attribute to pleasure and PAIN a similar real but illusory character ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And the soul was supposed to desire the opposite of the bodily state, while the body was the source of any pleasure or PAIN which was experienced. PHILEBUS

Soc. That pleasure and PAIN both admit of more and less, and that they are of the class of infinites. PHILEBUS

Soc. It is our intention to judge of their comparative importance and intensity, measuring pleasure against PAIN, and PAIN against PAIN, and pleasure against pleasure ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains the element which makes them appear to be greater or less than they really are : you will acknowledge that this element is illusory, and you will never say that the corresponding excess or defect of pleasure or PAIN is real or true. PHILEBUS

Pro. Why then, Socrates, I should suppose that there would be neither pleasure nor PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of PAIN or of joy. PHILEBUS

Soc. But if so, the negation of PAIN will not be the same with pleasure. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then when you hear a person saying, that always to live without PAIN is the pleasantest of all things, what would you understand him to mean by that statement ? PHILEBUS

Pro. I think that by pleasure he must mean the negative of PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. And do they think that they have pleasure when they are free from PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And yet if pleasure and the negation of PAIN are of distinct natures, they are wrong. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then shall we take the view that they are three, as we were just now saying, or that they are two only — the one being a state of PAIN, which is an evil, and the other a cessation of PAIN, which is of itself a good, and is called pleasant ? PHILEBUS

Soc. They say that what the school of Philebus calls pleasures are all of them only avoidances of PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. Such, for example, as the relief of itching and other ailments by scratching, which is the only remedy required. For what in Heaven’s name is the feeling to be called which is thus produced in us ? — Pleasure or PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soe. You mean the pleasures which are mingled with PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Of cases in which the PAIN exceeds the pleasure, an example is afforded by itching, of which we were just now speaking, and by the tingling which we feel when the boiling and fiery element is within, and the rubbing and motion only relieves the surface, and does not reach the parts affected ; then if you put them to the fire, and as a last resort apply cold to them, you may often produce the most intense pleasure or PAIN in the inner parts, which contrasts and mingles with the PAIN or pleasure, as the case may be, of the outer parts ; and this is due to the forcible separation of what is united, or to the union of what is separated, and to the juxtaposition of pleasure and PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. Sometimes the element of pleasure prevails in a man, and the slight undercurrent of PAIN makes him tingle, and causes a gentle irritation ; or again, the excessive infusion of pleasure creates an excitement in him, — he even leaps for joy, he assumes all sorts of attitudes, he changes all manner of colours, he gasps for breath, and is quite amazed, and utters the most irrational exclamations. PHILEBUS

Soc. Yes, Protarchus, quite true of the mixed pleasures, which arise out of the communion of external and internal sensations in the body ; there are also cases in which the mind contributes an, opposite element to the body, whether of pleasure or PAIN, and the two unite and form one mixture. Concerning these I have already remarked, that when a man is empty he desires to be full, and has pleasure in hope and PAIN in vacuity. But now I must further add what I omitted before, that in all these and similar emotions in which body and mind are opposed (and they are innumerable), pleasure and PAIN coalesce in one. PHILEBUS

Soc. And are you aware that even at a comedy the soul experiences a mixed feeling of PAIN and pleasure ? PHILEBUS

Soc. I have just mentioned envy ; would you not call that a PAIN of the soul ? PHILEBUS

Soc But we must pursue the division a step further, Protarchus, if we would see in envy of the childish sort a singular mixture of pleasure and PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. Is not envy an unrighteous pleasure, and also an unrighteous PAIN ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And do we feel PAIN or pleasure in laughing at it ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Then the argument shows that when we laugh at the folly of our friends, pleasure, in mingling with envy, mingles with PAIN, for envy has been acknowledged by us to be mental PAIN, and laughter is pleasant ; and so we envy and laugh at the same instant. PHILEBUS

Soc. And the argument implies that there are combinations of pleasure and PAIN in lamentations, and in tragedy and comedy, not only on the stage, but on the greater stage of human life ; and so in endless other cases. PHILEBUS

Soc. These, in turn, then, I will now endeavour to indicate ; for with the maintainers of the opinion that all pleasures are a cessation of PAIN, I do not agree, but, as I was saying, I use them as witnesses, that there are pleasures which seem only and are not, and there are others again which have great power and appear in many forms, yet are intermingled with pains, and are partly alleviations of agony and distress, both of body and mind. PHILEBUS

Soc. True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour and form, and most of of those which arise from smells ; those of sound, again, and in general those of which the want is painless and unconscious, and of which the fruition is palpable to sense and pleasant and unalloyed with PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. The pleasures of smell are of a less ethereal sort, but they have no necessary admixture of PAIN ; and all pleasures, however and wherever experienced, which are unattended by pains, I assign to an analogous class. Here then are two kinds of pleasures. PHILEBUS

Soc. To these may be added the pleasures of knowledge, if no hunger of knowledge and no PAIN caused by such hunger precede them. PHILEBUS

Pro. In that case you are right in saying that the loss of knowledge is not attended with PAIN. PHILEBUS

Soc. These pleasures of knowledge, then, are unmixed with PAIN ; and they are not the pleasures of the many but of a very few. PHILEBUS

Soc. There is no need of adducing many similar examples in illustration of the argument about pleasures ; one such is sufficient to prove to us that a small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if pure or unalloyed with PAIN. is always pleasanter and truer and fairer than a great pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind. PHILEBUS

Soc. 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. PHILEBUS

Soc. Is there not an absurdity in arguing that there is nothing good or noble in the body, or in anything else, but that good is in the soul only, and that the only good of the soul is pleasure ; and that courage or temperance or understanding, or any other good of the soul, is not really a good ? — and is there not yet a further absurdity in our being compelled to say that he who has a feeling of PAIN and not of pleasure is bad at the time when he is suffering PAIN, even though he be the best of men ; and again, that he who has a feeling of pleasure, in so far as he is pleased at the time when he is pleased, in that degree excels in virtue ? PHILEBUS

Meg. I think that I can get as far as the fouth head, which is the frequent endurance of PAIN, exhibited among us Spartans in certain hand-to-hand fights ; also in stealing with the prospect of getting a good beating ; there is, too, the so-called Crypteia, or secret service, in which wonderful endurance is shown — our people wander over the whole country by day and by night, and even in winter have not a shoe to their foot, and are without beds to lie upon, and have to attend upon themselves. Marvellous, too, is the endurance which our citizens show in their naked exercises, contending against the violent summer heat ; and there are many similar practices, to speak of which in detail would be endless. LAWS

Ath. Now, which is in the truest sense inferior, the man who is overcome by pleasure or by PAIN ? LAWS

Cle. I should say the man who is overcome by pleasure ; for all men deem him to be inferior in a more disgraceful sense, than the other who is overcome by PAIN. LAWS

Ath. Then let me once more ask, what institutions have you in either of your states which give a taste of pleasures, and do not avoid them any more than they avoid pains ; but which set a person in the midst of them, and compel or induce him by the prospect of reward to get the better of them ? Where is an ordinance about pleasure similar to that about PAIN to be found in your laws ? Tell me what there is of this nature among you : — What is there which makes your citizen equally brave against pleasure and PAIN, conquering what they ought to conquer, and superior to the enemies who are most dangerous and nearest home ? LAWS

Meg. I was able to tell you, Stranger, many laws which were directed against PAIN ; but I do not know that I can point out any great or obvious examples of similar institutions which are concerned with pleasure ; there are some lesser provisions, however, which I might mention. LAWS

Ath. There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to states, in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no dispute about them. As in the human body, the regimen which does good in one way does harm in another ; and we can hardly say that any one course of treatment is adapted to a particular constitution. Now the gymnasia and common meals do a great deal of good, and yet they are a source of evil in civil troubles ; as is shown in the case of the Milesian, and Boeotian, and Thurian youth, among whom these institutions seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts. The charge may be fairly brought against your cities above all others, and is true also of most other states which especially cultivate gymnastics. Whether such matters are to be regarded jestingly or seriously, I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women ; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver. Leaving the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns almost entirely on pleasure and PAIN, both in states and in individuals : these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy ; and this holds of men and animals — of individuals as well as states ; and he who indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of happy. LAWS

Ath. And each one of us has in his bosom two counsellors, both foolish and also antagonistic ; of which we call the one pleasure, and the other PAIN. LAWS

Ath. Also there are opinions about the future, which have the general name of expectations ; and the specific name of fear, when the expectation is of PAIN ; and of hope, when of pleasure ; and further, there is reflection about the good or evil of them, and this, when embodied in a decree by the State, is called Law. LAWS

Ath. If such convivialities should turn out to have any advantage equal in importance to that of gymnastic, they are in their very nature to be preferred to mere bodily exercise, inasmuch as they have no accompaniment of PAIN. LAWS

Ath. These are the two fears, as I called them ; one of which is the opposite of PAIN and other fears, and the opposite also of the greatest and most numerous sort of pleasures. LAWS

Ath. Pleasure and PAIN I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them. As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, happy is the man who acquires them, even when declining in years ; and we may say that he who possesses them, and the blessings which are contained in them, is a perfect man. Now I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children ; — when pleasure, and friendship, and PAIN, and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet capable of understanding the nature of them, and who find them, after they have attained reason, to be in harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue ; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and PAIN, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off ; and, in my view, will be rightly called education. LAWS II

Ath. I am glad to hear that you agree with me ; for, indeed, the discipline of pleasure and PAIN which, when rightly ordered, is a principle of education, has been often relaxed and corrupted in human life. And the Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals, wherein men alternate rest with labour ; and have given them the Muses and Apollo, the leader of the Muses, and Dionysus, to be companions in their revels, that they may improve their education by taking part in the festivals of the Gods, and with their help. I should like to know whether a common saying is in our opinion true to nature or not. For men say that the young of all creatures cannot be quiet in their bodies or in their voices ; they are always wanting to move and cry out ; some leaping and skipping, and overflowing with sportiveness and delight at something, others uttering all sorts of cries. But, whereas the animals have no perception of order or disorder in their movements, that is, of rhythm or harmony, as they are called, to us, the Gods, who, as we say, have been appointed to be our companions in the dance, have given the pleasurable sense of harmony and rhythm ; and so they stir us into life, and we follow them, joining hands together in dances and songs ; and these they call choruses, which is a term naturally expressive of cheerfulness. Shall we begin, then, with the acknowledgment that education is first given through Apollo and the Muses ? What do you say ? LAWS II

Ath. We will suppose that he knows the good to be good, and the bad to be bad, and makes use of them accordingly : which now is the better trained in dancing and music — he who is able to move his body and to use his voice in what is understood to be the right manner, but has no delight in good or hatred of evil ; or he who is incorrect in gesture and voice, but is right in his sense of pleasure and PAIN, and welcomes what is good, and is offended at what is evil ? LAWS II

Ath. The view which identifies the pleasant and the pleasant and the just and the good and the noble has an excellent moral and religious tendency. And the opposite view is most at variance with the designs of the legislator, and is, in his opinion, infamous ; for no one, if he can help, will be persuaded to do that which gives him more PAIN than pleasure. But as distant prospects are apt to make us dizzy, especially in childhood, the legislator will try to purge away the darkness and exhibit the truth ; he will persuade the citizens, in some way or other, by customs and praises and words, that just and unjust are shadows only, and that injustice, which seems opposed to justice, when contemplated by the unjust and evil man appears pleasant and the just most unpleasant ; but that from the just man’s point of view, the very opposite is the appearance of both of them. LAWS II

Ath. Whereas the physician may often be too happy if he can restore health, and make the body whole, without any very great infliction of PAIN. LAWS III

Ath. That the greatest ignorance is when a man hates that which he nevertheless thinks to be good and noble, and loves and embraces that which he knows to be unrighteous and evil. This disagreement between the sense of pleasure and the judgment of reason in the soul is, in my opinion, the worst ignorance ; and also the greatest, because affecting the great mass of the human soul ; for the principle which feels pleasure and PAIN in the individual is like the mass or populace in a state. And when the soul is opposed to knowledge, or opinion, or reason, which are her natural lords, that I call folly, just as in the state, when the multitude refuses to obey their rulers and the laws ; or, again, in the individual, when fair reasonings have their habitation in the soul and yet do no good, but rather the reverse of good. All these cases I term the worst ignorance, whether in individuals or in states. You will understand, Stranger, that I am speaking of something which is very different from the ignorance of handicraftsmen. LAWS III

Ath. Next, we must pass in review the government of Attica in like manner, and from this show that entire freedom and the absence of all superior authority is not by any means so good as government by others when properly limited, which was our ancient Athenian constitution at the time when the Persians made their attack on Hellas, or, speaking more correctly, on the whole continent of Europe. There were four classes, arranged according to a property census, and reverence was our queen and mistress, and made us willing to live in obedience to the laws which then prevailed. Also the vastness of the Persian armament, both by sea and on land, caused a helpless terror, which made us more and more the servants of our rulers and of the laws ; and for all these reasons an exceeding harmony prevailed among us. About ten years before the naval engagement at Salamis, Datis came, leading a Persian host by command of Darius, which was expressly directed against the Athenians and Eretrians, having orders to carry them away captive ; and these orders he was to execute under PAIN of death. Now Datis and his myriads soon became complete masters of Eretria, and he sent a fearful report to Athens that no Eretrian had escaped him ; for the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and netted the whole of Eretria. And this report, whether well or ill founded, was terrible to all the Hellenes, and above all to the Athenians, and they dispatched embassies in all directions, but no one was willing to come to their relief, with the exception of the Lacedaemonians ; and they, either because they were detained by the Messenian war, which was then going on, or for some other reason of which we are not told, came a day too late for the battle of Marathon. After a while, the news arrived of mighty preparations being made, and innumerable threats came from the king. Then, as time went on, a rumour reached us that Darius had died, and that his son, who was young and hot-headed, had come to the throne and was persisting in his design. The Athenians were under the impression that the whole expedition was directed against them, in consequence of the battle of Marathon ; and hearing of the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and the host of ships, considering that there was no salvation for them either by land or by sea, for there was no one to help them, and remembering that in the first expedition, when the Persians destroyed Eretria, no one came to their help, or would risk the danger of an alliance with them, they thought that this would happen again, at least on land ; nor, when they looked to the sea, could they descry any hope of salvation ; for they were attacked by a thousand vessels and more. One chance of safety remained, slight indeed and desperate, but their only one. They saw that on the former occasion they had gained a seemingly impossible victory, and borne up by this hope, they found that their only refuge was in themselves and in the Gods. All these things created in them the spirit of friendship ; there was the fear of the moment, and there was that higher fear, which they had acquired by obedience to their ancient laws, and which I have several times in the preceding discourse called reverence, of which the good man ought to be a willing servant, and of which the coward is independent and fearless. If this fear had not possessed them, they would never have met the enemy, or defended their temples and sepulchres and their country, and everything that was near and dear to them, as they did ; but little by little they would have been all scattered and dispersed. LAWS III

Enough has now been said of divine matters, both as touching the practices which men ought to follow, and as to the sort of persons who they ought severally to be. But of human things we have not as yet spoken, and we must ; for to men we are discoursing and not to Gods. Pleasures and pains and desires are a part of human nature, and on them every mortal being must of necessity hang and depend with the most eager interest. And therefore we must praise the noblest life, not only as the fairest in appearance, but as being one which, if a man will only taste, and not, while still in his youth, desert for another, he will find to surpass also in the very thing which we all of us desire — I mean in having a greater amount of pleasure and less of PAIN during the whole of life. And this will be plain, if a man has a true taste of them, as will be quickly and clearly seen. But what is a true taste ? That we have to learn from the argument — the point being what is according to nature, and what is not according to nature. One life must be compared with another, the more pleasurable with the more painful, after this manner : — We desire to have pleasure, but we neither desire nor choose PAIN ; and the neutral state we are ready to take in exchange, not for pleasure but for PAIN ; and we also wish for less PAIN and greater pleasure, but less pleasure and greater PAIN we do not wish for ; and an equal balance of either we cannot venture to assert that we should desire. And all these differ or do not differ severally in number and magnitude and intensity and equality, and in the opposites of these when regarded as objects of choice, in relation to desire. And such being the necessary order of things, we wish for that life in which there are many great and intense elements of pleasure and PAIN, and in which the pleasures are in excess, and do not wish for that in which the opposites exceed ; nor, again, do we wish for that in which the clements of either are small and few and feeble, and the pains exceed. And when, as I said before, there is a balance of pleasure and PAIN in life, this is to be regarded by us as the balanced life ; while other lives are preferred by us because they exceed in what we like, or are rejected by us because they exceed in what we dislike. All the lives of men may be regarded by us as bound up in these, and we must also consider what sort of lives we by nature desire. And if we wish for any others, I say that we desire them only through some ignorance and inexperience of the lives which actually exist. LAWS V

Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible ? Let us say that the temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and the courageous another, and the healthful another ; and to these four let us oppose four other lives — the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate, the diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane ; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane ; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate ; but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy life ; they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure exceeds the PAIN, and in sickness the PAIN exceeds the pleasure. Now our intention in choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed, but the life in which PAIN is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to be the more pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life has the elements both of pleasure and PAIN fewer and smaller and less frequent than the intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life, and the life of courage than the life of cowardice ; one of each pair exceeding in pleasure and the other in PAIN, the courageous surpassing the cowardly, and the wise exceeding the foolish. And so the one dass of lives exceeds the other class in pleasure ; the temperate and courageous and wise and healthy exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives ; and generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of body or soul, is pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be infinitely happier than the opposite. LAWS V

The council shall consist of 30 x 12 members — 360 will be a convenient number for sub-division. If we divide the whole number into four parts of ninety each, we get ninety counsellors for each class. First, all the citizens shall select candidates from the first class ; they shall be compelled to vote, and, if they do not, shall be duly fined. When the candidates have been selected, some one shall mark them down ; this shall be the business of the first day. And on the following day, candidates shall be selected from the second class in the same manner and under the same conditions as on the previous day ; and on the third day a selection shall be made from the third class, at which every one may, if he likes, vote, and the three first classes shall be compelled to vote ; but the fourth and lowest class shall be under no compulsion, and any member of this class who does not vote shall not be punished. On the fourth day candidates shall be selected from the fourth and smallest class ; they shall be selected by all, but he who is of the fourth class shall suffer no penalty, nor he who is of the third, if he be not willing to vote ; but he who is of the first or second class, if he does not vote shall be punished ; — he who is of the second class shall pay a fine of triple the amount which was exacted at first, and he who is of the first class quadruple. On the fifth day the rulers shall bring out the names noted down, for all the citizens to see, and every man shall choose out of them, under PAIN, if he do not, of suffering the first penalty ; and when they have chosen out of each of the classes, they shall choose one-half of them by lot, who shall undergo a scrutiny : — These are to form the council for the year. LAWS VI

Ath. Well, but if during these three years every possible care were taken that our nursling should have as little of sorrow and fear, and in general of PAIN as was possible, might we not expect in early childhood to make his soul more gentle and cheerful ? LAWS VII

Cle. You need not, ask Megillus, Stranger, which of us has most truly spoken ; for I myself agree that all men ought to avoid the life of unmingled PAIN or pleasure, and pursue always a middle course. And having spoken well, may I add that you have been well answered ? LAWS VII

Ath. Enough of laws relating to education and learning. But hunting and similar pursuits in like manner claim our attention. For the legislator appears to have a duty imposed upon him which goes beyond mere legislation. There is something over and above law which lies in a region between admonition and law, and has several times occurred to us in the course of discussion ; for example, in the education of very young children there were things, as we maintain, which are not to be defined, and to regard them as matters of positive law is a great absurdity. Now, our laws and the whole constitution of our state having been thus delineated, the praise of the virtuous citizen is not complete when he is described as the person who serves the laws best and obeys them most, but the higher form of praise is that which describes him as the good citizen who passes through life undefiled and is obedient to the words of the legislator, both when he is giving laws and when he assigns praise and blame. This is the truest word that can be spoken in praise of a citizen ; and the true legislator ought not only to write his laws, but also to interweave with them all such things as seem to him honourable and dishonourable. And the perfect citizen ought to seek to strengthen these no less than the principles of law which are sanctioned by punishments. I will adduce an example which will clear up my meaning, and will be a sort of witness to my words. Hunting is of wide extent, and has a name under which many things are included, for there is a hunting of creatures in the water, and of creatures in the air, and there is a great deal of hunting of land animals of all kinds, and not of wild beasts only. The hunting after man is also worthy of consideration ; there is the hunting after him in war, and there is often a hunting after him in the way of friendship, which is praised and also blamed ; and there is thieving, and the hunting which is practised by robbers, and that of armies against armies. Now the legislator, in laying down laws about hunting, can neither abstain from noting these things, nor can he make threatening ordinances which will assign rules and penalties about all of them. What is he to do ? He will have to praise and blame hunting with a view to the exercise and pursuits of youth. And, on the other hand, the young man must listen obediently ; neither pleasure nor PAIN should hinder him, and he should regard as his standard of action the praises and injunctions of the legislator rather than the punishments which he imposes by law. This being premised, there will follow next in order moderate praise and censure of hunting ; the praise being assigned to that kind which will make the souls of young men better, and the censure to that which has the opposite effect. LAWS VII

Ath. When any one commits any injustice, small or great, the law will admonish and compel him either never at all to do the like again, or never voluntarily, or at any rate in a far less degree ; and he must in addition pay for the hurt. Whether the end is to be attained by word or action, with pleasure or PAIN, by giving or taking away privileges, by means of fines or gifts, or in whatsoever way the law shall proceed to make a man hate injustice, and love or not hate the nature of the just — this is quite the noblest work of law. But if the legislator sees any one who is incurable, for him he will appoint a law and a penalty. He knows quite well that to such men themselves there is no profit in the continuance of their lives, and that they would do a double good to the rest of mankind if they would take their departure, inasmuch as they would be an example to other men not to offend, and they would relieve the city of bad citizens. In such cases, and in such cases only, the legislator ought to inflict death as the punishment of offences. LAWS IX

Ath. And now I can define to you clearly, and without ambiguity, what I mean by the just and unjust, according to my notion of them : — When anger and fear, and pleasure and PAIN, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not — I call all this injustice. But when the opinion of the best, in whatever part of human nature states or individuals may suppose that to dwell, has dominion in the soul and orders the life of every man, even if it be sometimes mistaken, yet what is done in accordance therewith, the principle in individuals which obeys this rule, and is best for the whole life of man, is to be called just ; although the hurt done by mistake is thought by many to be involuntary injustice. Leaving the question of names, about which we are not going to quarrel, and having already delineated three sources of error, we may begin by recalling them somewhat more vividly to our memory : — One of them was of the painful sort, which we denominate anger and fear. LAWS IX

Thus much as to the nurture and education of the living soul of man, having which, he can, and without which, if he unfortunately be without them, he cannot live ; and also concerning the punishments : — which are to be inflicted for violent deaths, let thus much be enacted. Of the nurture and education of the body we have spoken before, and next in order we have to speak of deeds of violence, voluntary and involuntary, which men do to one another ; these we will now distinguish, as far as we are able, according to their nature and number, and determine what will be the suitable penalties of each, and so assign to them their proper place in the series of our enactments. The poorest legislator will have no difficulty in determining that wounds and mutilations arising out of wounds should follow next in order after deaths. Let wounds be divided as homicides were divided — into those which are involuntary, and which are given in passion or from fear, and those inflicted voluntarily and with premeditation. Concerning all this, we must make some such proclamation as the following : — Mankind must have laws, and conform to them, or their life would be as bad as that of the most savage beast. And the reason of this is that no man’s nature is able to know what is best for human society ; or knowing, always able and willing to do what is best. In the first place, there is a difficulty in apprehending that the true art or politics is concerned, not with private but with public good (for public good binds together states, but private only distracts them) ; and that both the public and private good as well of individuals as of states is greater when the state and not the individual is first considered. In the second place, although a person knows in the abstract that this is true, yet if he be possessed of absolute and irresponsible power, he will never remain firm in his principles or persist in regarding the public good as primary in the state, and the private good as secondary. Human nature will be always drawing him into avarice and selfishness, avoiding PAIN and pursuing Pleasure without any reason, and will bring these to the front, obscuring the juster and better ; and so working darkness in his soul will at last fill with evils both him and the whole city. For if a man were born so divinely gifted that he could naturally apprehend the truth, he would have no need of laws to rule over him ; for there is no law or order which is above knowledge, nor can mind, without impiety, be deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather the lord of all. I speak of mind, true and free, and in harmony with nature. But then there is no such mind anywhere, or at least not much ; and therefore we must choose law and order, which are second best. These look at things as they exist for the most part only, and are unable to survey the whole of them. And therefore I have spoken as I have. LAWS IX

Athenian Stranger. Dear Cleinias, the class of men is small — they must have been rarely gifted by nature, and trained by education — who, when assailed by wants and desires, are able to hold out and observe moderation, and when they might make a great deal of money are sober in their wishes, and prefer a moderate to a large gain. But the mass of mankind are the very opposite : their desires are unbounded, and when they might gain in moderation they prefer gains without limit ; wherefore all that relates to retail trade, and merchandise, and the keeping of taverns, is denounced and numbered among dishonourable things. For if what I trust may never be and will not be, we were to compel, if I may venture to say a ridiculous thing, the best men everywhere to keep taverns for a time, or carry on retail trade, or do anything of that sort ; or if, in consequence of some fate or necessity, the best women were compelled to follow similar callings, then we should know how agreeable and pleasant all these things are ; and if all such occupations were managed on incorrupt principles, they would be honoured as we honour a mother or a nurse. But now that a man goes to desert places and builds bouses which can only be reached be long journeys, for the sake of retail trade, and receives strangers who are in need at the welcome resting-place, and gives them peace and calm when they are tossed by the storm, or cool shade in the heat ; and then instead of behaving to them as friends, and showing the duties of hospitality to his guests, treats them as enemies and captives who are at his mercy, and will not release them until they have paid the most unjust, abominable, and extortionate ransom — these are the sort of practices, and foul evils they are, which cast a reproach upon the succour of adversity. And the legislator ought always to be devising a remedy for evils of this nature. There is an ancient saying, which is also a true one — “To fight against two opponents is a difficult thing,” as is seen in diseases and in many other cases. And in this case also the war is against two enemies — wealth and poverty ; one of whom corrupts the soul of man with luxury, while the other drives him by PAIN into utter shamelessness. What remedy can a city of sense find against this disease ? In the first place, they must have as few retail traders as possible ; and in the second place, they must assign the occupation to that class of men whose corruption will be the least injury to the state ; and in the third place, they must devise some way whereby the followers of these occupations themselves will not readily fall into habits of unbridled shamelessness and meanness. LAWS XI

When a man does another any injury by theft or violence, for the greater injury let him pay greater damages to the injured man, and less for the smaller injury ; but in all cases, whatever the injury may have been, as much as will compensate the loss. And besides the compensation of the wrong, let a man pay a further penalty for the chastisement of his offence : he who has done the wrong instigated by the folly of another, through the lightheartedness of youth or the like, shall pay a lighter penalty ; but he who has injured another through his own folly, when overcome by pleasure or PAIN, in cowardly fear, or lust, or envy, or implacable anger, shall endure a heavier punishment. Not that he is punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be undone, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him corrected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evil-doing. Having an eye to all these things, the law, like a good archer, should aim at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at the deserved punishment. In the attainment of this the judge shall be a fellow-worker with the legislator, whenever the law leaves to him to determine what the offender shall suffer or pay ; and the legislator, like a painter, shall give a rough sketch of the cases in which the law is to be applied. This is what we must do, Megillus and Cleinias, in the best and fairest manner that we can, saying what the punishments are to be of all actions of theft and violence, and giving laws of such a kind as the Gods and sons of Gods would have us give. LAWS XI

Now he is not to be pitied who is hungry, or who suffers any bodily PAIN, but he who is temperate, or has some other virtue, or part of a virtue, and at the same time suffers from misfortune ; it would be an extraordinary thing if such an one, whether slave or freeman, were utterly forsaken and fell into the extremes of poverty in any tolerably well-ordered city or government. Wherefore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to such cases in the following terms : — Let there be no beggars in our state ; and if anybody begs, seeking to pick up a livelihood by unavailing prayers, let the wardens of the agora turn him out of the agora, and the wardens of the city out of the city, and the wardens of the country send him out of any other parts of the land across the border, in order that the land may be cleared of this sort of animal. LAWS XI

Now the gods — Zeus and Hera and all the rest — each man must regard in what light he pleases, though according to the same law, and must take this account as reliable. But as our visible gods, greatest and most honorable and having keenest vision every way, we must count first the order of the stars and all else that we perceive existing with them ; and after these, and [984e] next below these, the divine spirits, and air-born race, holding the third and middle situation, cause of interpretation, which we must surely honor with prayers for the sake of an auspicious journey across. We must say of either of these two creatures — that which is of ether and, next to it, of air — that it is not entirely plain to sight : when it is near by, it is not made manifest to us ; [985a] but partaking of extraordinary intelligence, as belonging to an order which is quick to learn and strong in memory, we may say that they understand the whole of our thoughts, and show extraordinary kindness to anyone of us who is a good man and true, and hate him who is utterly evil, as one who already partakes of suffering. For we know that God, who has the privilege of the divine portion, is remote from these affections of PAIN and pleasure, but has a share of intelligence and knowledge in every sphere ; and the heaven being filled full of live creatures, [985b] they interpret all men and all things both to one another and to the most exalted gods, because the middle creatures move both to earth and to the whole of heaven with a lightly rushing motion. The kind which is of water, the fifth, we shall be right in representing as a semi-divine product of that element, and it is at one time seen, but at another is concealed through becoming obscure, presenting a marvel in the dimness of vision. EPINOMIS   XII

[3.315c] But as for me, I would not call upon a man, and much less a god, and bid him enjoy himself — a god, because I would be imposing a task contrary to his nature (since the Deity has his abode far beyond pleasure or PAIN), — nor yet a man, because pleasure and PAIN generate mischief for the most part, since they breed in the soul mental sloth and forgetfulness and witlessness and insolence. Let such, then, be my declaration regarding the mode of address ; and you, when you read it, accept it in what sense you please. It is stated by not a few that you related to some [3.315d] of the ambassadors at your Court, that upon one occasion I heard you speaking of your intention to occupy the Greek cities in Italy and to relieve the Syracusans by changing the government to a monarchy instead of a tyranny, and at that time (as you assert) I stopped you from doing so, although you were most eager to do it, whereas now I am urging Dion to do precisely the same thing ; and thus we are robbing you of your empire by means of your own plans. [3.315e] Whether you derive any benefit from this talk you know best yourself, but you certainly wrong me by saying what is contrary to the fact. For of false accusation I have had enough from Philistides and many others who accused me to the mercenaries and to the Syracusan populace because I stayed in the acropolis ; and the people outside, whenever a mistake occurred, ascribed it entirely to me, alleging that you obeyed me in all things. But you yourself know for certain [3.316a] that I willingly took part in some few of your political acts at the first, when I thought that I was doing some good by it and that I gave a fair amount of attention to the Preludes of the laws, besides other small matters, apart from the additions in writing made by you or anyone else — for I am told that some of you afterwards revised my Preludes ; but no doubt the several contributions will be evident to those who are competent to appreciate my style. Well then, as I said just now, what I need is not any further accusation to the Syracusans, or any others there may be who believe your story, but much rather [3.316b] a defence not only against the previous false accusations, but also against the graver and more violent accusation which is now being concocted to follow it. Against the two accusations I must necessarily make a twofold defence — stating, firstly, that I reasonably avoided sharing in your political transactions ; and, secondly, that neither the advice was mine, nor yet the hindrance you alleged, — when you said that I had stopped you when you proposed to plant colonists in the Greek cities. LETTERS 3

For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just, profit there is none, but the PAIN and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house ; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends. But I hear someone exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often difficult ; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With a view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies ; and so, partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But what if there are no gods ? or, suppose them to have no care of human things — why in either case should we mind about concealment ? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets ; and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and turned by “sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.” Let us be consistent, then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak truly, why, then, we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice ; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice ; but, if we are unjust, we shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished. “But there is a world below in which either we or our posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.” Yes, my friend, will be the reflection, but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great power. That is what mighty cities declare ; and the children of the gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony. THE REPUBLIC   II

But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required by us to express the image of the good in their works, on PAIN, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State ? Or is the same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other creative arts ; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him ? We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful ; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything ; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason. THE REPUBLIC III

How can that be ? he replied ; pleasure deprives a man of the use of his faculties quite as much as PAIN. THE REPUBLIC III

Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some PAIN or grief compels to change their opinion. THE REPUBLIC III

Nor would you praise the behavior of States which act like the men whom I was just now describing. For are there not ill-ordered States in which the citizens are forbidden under PAIN of death to alter the constitution ; and yet he who most sweetly courts those who live under this regime and indulges them and fawns upon them and is skilful in anticipating and gratifying their humors is held to be a great and good statesman — do not these States resemble the persons whom I was describing ? THE REPUBLIC IV

Of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they are and of what nature, which the law implants through education ; and I mean by the words “under all circumstances” to intimate that in pleasure or in PAIN, or under the influence of desire or fear, a man preserves, and does not lose this opinion. Shall I give you an illustration ? THE REPUBLIC IV

Suppose that a man thinks he has done a wrong to another, the nobler he is, the less able is he to feel indignant at any suffering, such as hunger, or cold, or any other PAIN which the injured person may inflict upon him — these he deems to be just, and, as I say, his anger refuses to be excited by them. THE REPUBLIC IV

But when he thinks that he is the sufferer of the wrong, then he boils and chafes, and is on the side of what he believes to be justice ; and because he suffers hunger or cold or other PAIN he is only the more determined to persevere and conquer. His noble spirit will not be quelled until he either slays or is slain ; or until he hears the voice of the shepherd, that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more. THE REPUBLIC IV

And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and in PAIN the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to fear ? THE REPUBLIC IV

Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the individual — as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn toward the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a PAIN in his finger ; and the same expression is used about any other part of the body, which has a sensation of PAIN at suffering or of pleasure at the alleviation of suffering. THE REPUBLIC V

And they will have a common interest in the same thing which they will alike call “my own,” and having this common interest they will have a common feeling of pleasure and PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC V

And this unity of feeling we admitted to be the greatest good, as was implied in our comparison of a well-ordered State to the relation of the body and the members, when affected by pleasure or PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC V

Whether he has or has not a pleasure in learning ; for no one will love that which gives him PAIN, and in which after much toil he makes little progress. THE REPUBLIC VI

And so with PAIN and toil we have reached the end of one subject, but more remains to be discussed ; how and by what studies and pursuits will the saviours of the constitution be created, and at what ages are they to apply themselves to their several studies ? THE REPUBLIC VI

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a PAIN in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him ? THE REPUBLIC VII

At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named, treat their subjects badly ; while they and their adherents, especially the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind ; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or PAIN. THE REPUBLIC VIII

Is there any State in which you will find more of lamentation and sorrow and groaning and PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

Say, then, is not pleasure opposed to PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

And there is a neutral state which is neither pleasure nor PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

And when persons are suffering from acute PAIN, you must have heard them say that there is nothing pleasanter than to get rid of their PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

And there are many other cases of suffering in which the mere rest and cessation of PAIN, and not any positive enjoyment, are extolled by them as the greatest pleasure ? THE REPUBLIC IX

Then the intermediate state of rest will be pleasure and will also be PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

And both pleasure and PAIN are motions of the soul, are they not ? THE REPUBLIC IX

How, then, can we be right in supposing that the absence of PAIN is pleasure, or that the absence of pleasure is PAIN ? THE REPUBLIC IX

Look at the other class of pleasures which have no antecedent pains and you will no longer suppose, as you perhaps may at present, that pleasure is only the cessation of PAIN, or PAIN of pleasure. THE REPUBLIC IX

There are many of them : take as an example, the pleasures of smell, which are very great and have no antecedent pains ; they come in a moment, and when they depart leave no PAIN behind them. THE REPUBLIC IX

Let us not, then, be induced to believe that pure pleasure is the cessation of PAIN, or PAIN of pleasure. THE REPUBLIC IX

Still, the more numerous and violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort — they are reliefs of PAIN. THE REPUBLIC IX

Then can you wonder that persons who are inexperienced in the truth, as they have wrong ideas about many other things, should also have wrong ideas about pleasure and PAIN and the intermediate state ; so that when they are only being drawn toward the painful they feel PAIN and think the PAIN which they experience to be real, and in like manner, when drawn away from PAIN to the neutral or intermediate state, they firmly believe that they have reached the goal of satiety and pleasure ; they, not knowing pleasure, err in contrasting PAIN with the absence of PAIN, which is like contrasting black with gray instead of white — can you wonder, I say, at this ? THE REPUBLIC IX

What a wonderful calculation ! And how enormous is the distance which separates the just from the unjust in regard to pleasure and PAIN ! THE REPUBLIC IX

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire, and PAIN, and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action — in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up ; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue. THE REPUBLIC X

Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any of the eulogists of Homer declaring that he has been the educator of Hellas, and that he is profitable for education and for the ordering of human things, and that you should take him up again and again and get to know him and regulate your whole life according to him, we may love and honor those who say these things — they are excellent people, as far as their lights extend ; and we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers ; but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and PAIN will be the rulers in our State. THE REPUBLIC X