tween them
is palpable; pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world; and it is
said that in the pleasures of love, which appear to be the greatest,
perjury is excused by the gods; for pleasures, like children, have not
the least particle of reason in them; whereas mind is either the same as
truth, or the most like truth, and the truest.

SOCRATES: Shall we next consider measure, in like manner, and ask
whether pleasure has more of this than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Here is another question which may be easily answered; for I
imagine that nothing can ever be more immoderate than the transports of
pleasure, or more in conformity with measure than mind and knowledge.

SOCRATES: Very good; but there still remains the third test: Has mind
a greater share of beauty than pleasure, and is mind or pleasure the
fairer of the two?

PROTARCHUS: No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever saw or
imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any time, past,
present, or future.

SOCRATES: Right.

PROTARCHUS: But when we see some one indulging in pleasures, perhaps in
the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful nature of the
action makes us ashamed; and so we put them out of sight, and consign
them to darkness, under the idea that they ought not to meet the eye of
day.

SOCRATES: Then, Protarchus, you will proclaim everywhere, by word of
mouth to this company, and by messengers bearing the tidings far and
wide, that pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor yet the second,
but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable, and the like, the
eternal nature has been found.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been now said.

SOCRATES: In the second class is contained the symmetrical and beautiful
and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if you reckon in the third class mind and wisdom, you will
not be far wrong, if I divine aright.

PROTARCHUS: I dare say.

SOCRATES: And would you not put in the fourth class the goods which we
were affirming to appertain specially to the soul--sciences and arts and
true opinions as we called them? These come after the third class, and
form the fourth, as they are certainly more akin to good than pleasure
is.

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

SOCRATES: The fifth class are the pleasures which were defined by us
as painless, being the pure pleasures of the soul herself, as