US: Right.

SOCRATES: But now let us suppose an interval of time at which the body
experiences none of these changes.

PROTARCHUS: When can that be, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Your question, Protarchus, does not help the argument.

PROTARCHUS: Why not, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Because it does not prevent me from repeating mine.

PROTARCHUS: And what was that?

SOCRATES: Why, Protarchus, admitting that there is no such interval, I
may ask what would be the necessary consequence if there were?

PROTARCHUS: You mean, what would happen if the body were not changed
either for good or bad?

SOCRATES: Yes.

PROTARCHUS: Why then, Socrates, I should suppose that there would be
neither pleasure nor pain.

SOCRATES: Very good; but still, if I am not mistaken, you do assert that
we must always be experiencing one of them; that is what the wise tell
us; for, say they, all things are ever flowing up and down.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, and their words are of no mean authority.

SOCRATES: Of course, for they are no mean authorities themselves; and I
should like to avoid the brunt of their argument. Shall I tell you how I
mean to escape from them? And you shall be the partner of my flight.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: To them we will say: 'Good; but are we, or living things in
general, always conscious of what happens to us--for example, of
our growth, or the like? Are we not, on the contrary, almost wholly
unconscious of this and similar phenomena?' You must answer for them.

PROTARCHUS: The latter alternative is the true one.

SOCRATES: Then we were not right in saying, just now, that motions going
up and down cause pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: A better and more unexceptionable way of speaking will be--

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: If we say that the great changes produce pleasures and pains,
but that the moderate and lesser ones do neither.

PROTARCHUS: That, Socrates, is the more correct mode of speaking.

SOCRATES: But if this be true, the life to which I was just now
referring again appears.

PROTARCHUS: What life?

SOCRATES: The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of pain or of
joy.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: We may assume then that there are three lives, one pleasant,
one painful, and the third which is neither; what say you?

PROTARCHUS: I should say as you do that there are three of them.

SOCRATES: But if so, the negation of pain will not be the same with
pleasure.