SOCRATES: Of course, for they are no mean authorities themselves; and I should like to avoid the brunt of their argument. Shall I tell you how I mean to escape from them? And you shall be the partner of my flight. PROTARCHUS: How? SOCRATES: To them we will say: 'Good; but are we, or living things in general, always conscious of what happens to us--for example, of our growth, or the like? Are we not, on the contrary, almost wholly unconscious of this and similar phenomena?' You must answer for them. PROTARCHUS: The latter alternative is the true one. SOCRATES: Then we were not right in saying, just now, that motions going up and down cause pleasures and pains? PROTARCHUS: True. SOCRATES: A better and more unexceptionable way of speaking will be-- PROTARCHUS: What? SOCRATES: If we say that the great changes produce pleasures and pains, but that the moderate and lesser ones do neither. PROTARCHUS: That, Socrates, is the more correct mode of speaking. SOCRATES: But if this be true, the life to which I was just now referring again appears. PROTARCHUS: What life? SOCRATES: The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of pain or of joy. PROTARCHUS: Very true. SOCRATES: We may assume then that there are three lives, one pleasant, one painful, and the third which is neither; what say you? PROTARCHUS: I should say as you do that there are three of them. SOCRATES: But if so, the negation of pain will not be the same with pleasure. PROTARCHUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: 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? PROTARCHUS: I think that by pleasure he must mean the negative of pain. SOCRATES: Let us take any three things; or suppose that we embellish a little and call the first gold, the second silver, and there shall be a third which is neither. PROTARCHUS: Very good. SOCRATES: Now, can that which is neither be either gold or silver? PROTARCHUS: Impossible. SOCRATES: No more can that neutral or middle life be rightly or reasonably spoken or thought of as pleasant or painful. PROTARCHUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: And yet, my friend, there are, as we know, persons who say and think so. PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And do they think that they have pleasure when they are free from pain? PROTARCHUS: They say so. SOCRATES: And they must think or they would not say that they have pleasure. PROTARCHUS: I suppose not. SOCRATES: And yet if pleasure and the negation of pain are of distinct natures, they are wrong. PROTARCHUS: But they are undoubtedly of distinct natures. SOCRATES: 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? PROTARCHUS: But why, Socrates, do we ask the question at all? I do not see the reason.