PROTARCHUS: What is that? SOCRATES: The union which, as we were saying, the mind often experiences of purely mental feelings. PROTARCHUS: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Why, do we not speak of anger, fear, desire, sorrow, love, emulation, envy, and the like, as pains which belong to the soul only? PROTARCHUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And shall we not find them also full of the most wonderful pleasures? need I remind you of the anger 'Which stirs even a wise man to violence, And is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb?' And you remember how pleasures mingle with pains in lamentation and bereavement? PROTARCHUS: Yes, there is a natural connexion between them. SOCRATES: And you remember also how at the sight of tragedies the spectators smile through their tears? PROTARCHUS: Certainly I do. SOCRATES: And are you aware that even at a comedy the soul experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure? PROTARCHUS: I do not quite understand you. SOCRATES: I admit, Protarchus, that there is some difficulty in recognizing this mixture of feelings at a comedy. PROTARCHUS: There is, I think. SOCRATES: And the greater the obscurity of the case the more desirable is the examination of it, because the difficulty in detecting other cases of mixed pleasures and pains will be less. PROTARCHUS: Proceed. SOCRATES: I have just mentioned envy; would you not call that a pain of the soul? PROTARCHUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And yet the envious man finds something in the misfortunes of his neighbours at which he is pleased? PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And ignorance, and what is termed clownishness, are surely an evil? PROTARCHUS: To be sure. SOCRATES: From these considerations learn to know the nature of the ridiculous. PROTARCHUS: Explain. SOCRATES: The ridiculous is in short the specific name which is used to describe the vicious form of a certain habit; and of vice in general it is that kind which is most at variance with the inscription at Delphi. PROTARCHUS: You mean, Socrates, 'Know thyself.' SOCRATES: I do; and the opposite would be, 'Know not thyself.' PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And now, O Protarchus, try to divide this into three. PROTARCHUS: Indeed I am afraid that I cannot. SOCRATES: Do you mean to say that I must make the division for you? PROTARCHUS: Yes, and what is more, I beg that you will. SOCRATES: Are there not three ways in which ignorance of self may be shown? PROTARCHUS: What are they? SOCRATES: In the first place, about money; the ignorant may fancy himself richer than he is. PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is a very common error. SOCRATES: And still more often he will fancy that he is taller or fairer than he is, or that he has some other advantage of person which he really has not. PROTARCHUS: Of course. SOCRATES: And yet surely by far the greatest number err about the goods of the mind; they imagine themselves to be much better men than they are. PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is by far the commonest delusion.