what house he lived, would not that be a great step towards the
discovery of the man himself?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning,
that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in
the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?

PROTARCHUS: Far greater.

SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering
up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who
presides over the ceremony of mingling.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which
are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a
fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine
mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek
to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Tell me first;--should we be most likely to succeed if we
mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.

SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I can
show a safer plan.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than another, and
one art to be more exact than another.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: There was also supposed to be a difference in sciences; some
of them regarding only the transient and perishing, and others the
permanent and imperishable and everlasting and immutable; and when
judged by the standard of truth, the latter, as we thought, were truer
than the former.

PROTARCHUS: Very good and right.

SOCRATES: If, then, we were to begin by mingling the sections of each
class which have the most of truth, will not the union suffice to give
us the loveliest of lives, or shall we still want some elements of
another kind?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we ought to do what you suggest.

SOCRATES: Let us suppose a man who understands justice, and has reason
as well as understanding about the true nature of this and of all other
things.

PROTARCHUS: We will suppose such a man.

SOCRATES: Will he have enough of knowledge if he is acquainted only with
the divine circle and sphere, and knows nothing of our human spheres and
circles, but uses only divine circles and measures in the building of a
house?