TARCHUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And there is another point to which we have agreed.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: That pleasure and pain both admit of more and less, and that
they are of the class of infinites.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly, we said so.

SOCRATES: But how can we rightly judge of them?

PROTARCHUS: How can we?

SOCRATES: Is it our intention to judge of their comparative importance
and intensity, measuring pleasure against pain, and pain against pain,
and pleasure against pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, such is our intention, and we shall judge of them
accordingly.

SOCRATES: Well, take the case of sight. Does not the nearness or
distance of magnitudes obscure their true proportions, and make us opine
falsely; and do we not find the same illusion happening in the case of
pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, Socrates, and in a degree far greater.

SOCRATES: Then what we are now saying is the opposite of what we were
saying before.

PROTARCHUS: What was that?

SOCRATES: Then the opinions were true and false, and infected the
pleasures and pains with their own falsity.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: But now it is the pleasures which are said to be true and
false because they are seen at various distances, and subjected to
comparison; the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement when
placed side by side with the pains, and the pains when placed side by
side with the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly, and for the reason which you mention.

SOCRATES: And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains the element
which makes them appear to be greater or less than they really are: you
will acknowledge that this element is illusory, and you will never say
that the corresponding excess or defect of pleasure or pain is real or
true.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Next let us see whether in another direction we may not find
pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living beings, which are
still more false than these.

PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how shall we find them?

SOCRATES: If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains
and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out of a
corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and
repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and decay?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that has been often said.

SOCRATES: And we have also agreed that the restoration of the natural
state is pleasure?

PROTARCH