PROTARCHUS: The knowledge which is only superhuman, Socrates, is
ridiculous in man.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean that you are to throw into the
cup and mingle the impure and uncertain art which uses the false measure
and the false circle?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, we must, if any of us is ever to find his way home.

SOCRATES: And am I to include music, which, as I was saying just now, is
full of guesswork and imitation, and is wanting in purity?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that you must, if human life is to be a life at
all.

SOCRATES: Well, then, suppose that I give way, and, like a doorkeeper
who is pushed and overborne by the mob, I open the door wide, and let
knowledge of every sort stream in, and the pure mingle with the impure?

PROTARCHUS: I do not know, Socrates, that any great harm would come of
having them all, if only you have the first sort.

SOCRATES: Well, then, shall I let them all flow into what Homer
poetically terms 'a meeting of the waters'?

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: There--I have let them in, and now I must return to the
fountain of pleasure. For we were not permitted to begin by mingling
in a single stream the true portions of both according to our original
intention; but the love of all knowledge constrained us to let all the
sciences flow in together before the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And now the time has come for us to consider about the
pleasures also, whether we shall in like manner let them go all at once,
or at first only the true ones.

PROTARCHUS: It will be by far the safer course to let flow the true ones
first.

SOCRATES: Let them flow, then; and now, if there are any necessary
pleasures, as there were arts and sciences necessary, must we not mingle
them?

PROTARCHUS: Yes; the necessary pleasures should certainly be allowed to
mingle.

SOCRATES: The knowledge of the arts has been admitted to be innocent
and useful always; and if we say of pleasures in like manner that all of
them are good and innocent for all of us at all times, we must let them
all mingle?

PROTARCHUS: What shall we say about them, and what course shall we take?

SOCRATES: Do not ask me, Protarchus; but ask the daughters of pleasure
and wisdom to answer for themselves.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Tell us, O beloved--shall we call you pleasures or by some
other name?--would you rather live with or without wisdom? I am of
opinion that they would certainly