S: You will soon have a better opportunity of showing whether you
do or not, Protarchus. Answer now, and tell me whether you see, I will
not say more, but more intense and excessive pleasures in wantonness
than in temperance? Reflect before you speak.

PROTARCHUS: I understand you, and see that there is a great difference
between them; the temperate are restrained by the wise man's aphorism of
'Never too much,' which is their rule, but excess of pleasure possessing
the minds of fools and wantons becomes madness and makes them shout with
delight.

SOCRATES: Very good, and if this be true, then the greatest pleasures
and pains will clearly be found in some vicious state of soul and body,
and not in a virtuous state.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And ought we not to select some of these for examination, and
see what makes them the greatest?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure we ought.

SOCRATES: Take the case of the pleasures which arise out of certain
disorders.

PROTARCHUS: What disorders?

SOCRATES: The pleasures of unseemly disorders, which our severe friends
utterly detest.

PROTARCHUS: What pleasures?

SOCRATES: Such, for example, as the relief of itching and other ailments
by scratching, which is the only remedy required. For what in Heaven's
name is the feeling to be called which is thus produced in us?--Pleasure
or pain?

PROTARCHUS: A villainous mixture of some kind, Socrates, I should say.

SOCRATES: I did not introduce the argument, O Protarchus, with any
personal reference to Philebus, but because, without the consideration
of these and similar pleasures, we shall not be able to determine the
point at issue.

PROTARCHUS: Then we had better proceed to analyze this family of
pleasures.

SOCRATES: You mean the pleasures which are mingled with pain?

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: There are some mixtures which are of the body, and only in
the body, and others which are of the soul, and only in the soul; while
there are other mixtures of pleasures with pains, common both to soul
and body, which in their composite state are called sometimes pleasures
and sometimes pains.

PROTARCHUS: How is that?

SOCRATES: Whenever, in the restoration or in the derangement of nature,
a man experiences two opposite feelings; for example, when he is cold
and is growing warm, or again, when he is hot and is becoming cool,
and he wants to have the one and be rid of the other;--the sweet has a
bitter, as the common