claim the first place for mind as against the
mixed life; but we must come to some understanding about the second
place. For you might affirm pleasure and I mind to be the cause of the
mixed life; and in that case although neither of them would be the good,
one of them might be imagined to be the cause of the good. And I might
proceed further to argue in opposition to Philebus, that the element
which makes this mixed life eligible and good, is more akin and more
similar to mind than to pleasure. And if this is true, pleasure cannot
be truly said to share either in the first or second place, and does
not, if I may trust my own mind, attain even to the third.

PROTARCHUS: Truly, Socrates, pleasure appears to me to have had a fall;
in fighting for the palm, she has been smitten by the argument, and is
laid low. I must say that mind would have fallen too, and may therefore
be thought to show discretion in not putting forward a similar claim.
And if pleasure were deprived not only of the first but of the second
place, she would be terribly damaged in the eyes of her admirers, for
not even to them would she still appear as fair as before.

SOCRATES: Well, but had we not better leave her now, and not pain her by
applying the crucial test, and finally detecting her?

PROTARCHUS: Nonsense, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Why? because I said that we had better not pain pleasure,
which is an impossibility?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, and more than that, because you do not seem to be
aware that none of us will let you go home until you have finished the
argument.

SOCRATES: Heavens! Protarchus, that will be a tedious business, and just
at present not at all an easy one. For in going to war in the cause of
mind, who is aspiring to the second prize, I ought to have weapons of
another make from those which I used before; some, however, of the old
ones may do again. And must I then finish the argument?

PROTARCHUS: Of course you must.

SOCRATES: Let us be very careful in laying the foundation.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Let us divide all existing things into two, or rather, if you
do not object, into three classes.

PROTARCHUS: Upon what principle would you make the division?

SOCRATES: Let us take some of our newly-found notions.

PROTARCHUS: Which of them?

SOCRATES: Were we not saying that God revealed a finite element of
existence, and also an infinite?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Let us assume these two princi