The argument of Sokrates, which I have thus abridged from the Euthydêmus, arrives at no solution: but it is nevertheless eminently suggestive, and puts the question in a way to receive solution. What is the regal or political art which directs or regulates all others? A man has many different impulses, dispositions, qualities, aptitudes, advantages, possessions, &c., which we describe by saying that he is an artist, a general, a tradesman, clever, just, temperate, brave, strong, rich, powerful, &c. But in the course of life, each particular situation has its different exigencies, while the prospective future has its exigencies also. The whole man is one, with all these distinct and sometimes conflicting attributes: in following one impulse, he must resist others--in turning his aptitudes to one object, he must turn them away from others--he must, as Plato says, distinguish the right use of his force from the wrong, by virtue of knowledge, intelligence, reason. Such discriminating intelligence, which in this dialogue is called the Regal or political art,--what is the object of it? It is intelligence or knowledge,--But _of what_? Not certainly of the way how each particular act is to be performed--how each particular end is to be attained. Each of these separately is the object of some special knowledge. But the whole of a man's life is passed in a series of such particular acts, each of which is the object of some special knowledge: what then remains as the object of Regal or political intelligence, upon which our happiness is said to depend? Or how can it have any object at all? [Side-note: Comparison with other dialogues--Republic, Philêbus, Protagoras. The only distinct answer is found in the Protagoras.] The question here raised is present to Plato's mind in other dialogues, and occurs under other words, as for example, What is good? Good is the object of the Regal or political intelligence; but what is Good? In the Republic he raises this question, but declines to answer it, confessing that he could not make it intelligible to his hearers:[39] in the Gorgias, he takes pains to tell us what it _is not_: in the Philêbus, he does indeed tell us what it is, but in terms which need explanation quite as much as the term which they are brought to explain. There is only one dialogue in which the question is answered affirmatively, in clear and unmistakable language, and with considerable development--and that is, the Protagoras: where Sokrates asserts and proves at length, that Good is at the bottom identical with pleasure, and Evil with pain: that the measuring or calculating intelligence is the truly regal art of life, upon which the attainment of Good depends: and that the object of that intelligence--the items which we are to measure, calculate, and compare--is pleasures and pains, so as to secure to ourselves as much as possible of the former, and escape as much as possible of the latter. [Footnote 39: Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 505-506.]