Classical literature; Pleasure -- Early works to 1800
SOCRATES: 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.
PROTARCHUS: I do not see how any one can deny what you say, Socrates,
however eager he may be to assert the opposite opinion.
SOCRATES: I mentioned anger, desire, sorrow, fear, love, emulation,
envy, and similar emotions, as examples in which we should find a
mixture of the two elements so often named; did I not?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: We may observe that our conclusions hitherto have had
reference only to sorrow and envy and anger.
PROTARCHUS: I see.
SOCRATES: Then many other cases still remain?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And why do you suppose me to have pointed out to you the
admixture which takes place in comedy? Why but to convince you that
there was no difficulty in showing the mixed nature of fear and love
and similar affections; and I thought that when I had given you the
illustration, you would have let me off, and have acknowledged as a
general truth that the body without the soul, and the soul without
the body, as well as the two united, are susceptible of all sorts of
admixtures of pleasures and pains; and so further discussion would have
been unnecessary. And now I want to know whether I may depart; or will
you keep me here until midnight? I fancy that I may obtain my release
without many words;--if I promise that to-morrow I will give you an
account of all these cases. But at present I would rather sail in
another direction, and go to other matters which remain to be settled,
before the judgment can be given which Philebus demands.
PROTARCHUS: Very good, Socrates; in what remains take your own course.
SOCRATES: Then after the mixed pleasures the unmixed should have their
turn; this is the natural and necessary order.
PROTARCHUS: Excellent.
SOCRATES: 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.
PROTARCHUS: Then what pleasures, Socrates, should we be right in
conceiving to be true?
SOCRATES: True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour
and form, and most 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.
PROTARCHUS: Once more, Socrates, I must ask what you mean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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