investigate all the pure kinds; first selecting for
consideration a single instance.

PROTARCHUS: What instance shall we select?

SOCRATES: Suppose that we first of all take whiteness.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: How can there be purity in whiteness, and what purity? Is
that purest which is greatest or most in quantity, or that which is most
unadulterated and freest from any admixture of other colours?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly that which is most unadulterated.

SOCRATES: True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not the
greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most
beautiful?

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: And we shall be quite right in saying that a little pure white
is whiter and fairer and truer than a great deal that is mixed.

PROTARCHUS: Perfectly right.

SOCRATES: There is no need of adducing many similar examples in
illustration of the argument about pleasure; one such is sufficient to
prove to us that a small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if pure
or unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter and truer and fairer than a
great pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly; and the instance you have given is quite
sufficient.

SOCRATES: But what do you say of another question:--have we not heard
that pleasure is always a generation, and has no true being? Do not
certain ingenious philosophers teach this doctrine, and ought not we to
be grateful to them?

PROTARCHUS: What do they mean?

SOCRATES: I will explain to you, my dear Protarchus, what they mean, by
putting a question.

PROTARCHUS: Ask, and I will answer.

SOCRATES: I assume that there are two natures, one self-existent, and
the other ever in want of something.

PROTARCHUS: What manner of natures are they?

SOCRATES: The one majestic ever, the other inferior.

PROTARCHUS: You speak riddles.

SOCRATES: You have seen loves good and fair, and also brave lovers of
them.

PROTARCHUS: I should think so.

SOCRATES: Search the universe for two terms which are like these two and
are present everywhere.

PROTARCHUS: Yet a third time I must say, Be a little plainer, Socrates.

SOCRATES: There is no difficulty, Protarchus; the argument is only in
play, and insinuates that some things are for the sake of something
else (relatives), and that other things are the ends to which the former
class subserve (absolutes).

PROTARCHUS: Your many repetitions make me slow to under