l, and good and evil. As there are two things, let us call
them by two names--first, good and evil, and then pleasant and painful.
Assuming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil knowing that he
does evil. But some one will ask, Why? Because he is overcome, is the
first answer. And by what is he overcome? the enquirer will proceed to
ask. And we shall not be able to reply 'By pleasure,' for the name of
pleasure has been exchanged for that of good. In our answer, then, we
shall only say that he is overcome. 'By what?' he will reiterate. By the
good, we shall have to reply; indeed we shall. Nay, but our questioner
will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, 'That is
too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he
ought not, because he is overcome by good. Is that, he will ask, because
the good was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil'? And in answer
to that we shall clearly reply, Because it was not worthy; for if it had
been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not
have been wrong. 'But how,' he will reply, 'can the good be unworthy
of the evil, or the evil of the good'? Is not the real explanation
that they are out of proportion to one another, either as greater and
smaller, or more and fewer? This we cannot deny. And when you speak of
being overcome--'what do you mean,' he will say, 'but that you choose
the greater evil in exchange for the lesser good?' Admitted. And now
substitute the names of pleasure and pain for good and evil, and say,
not as before, that a man does what is evil knowingly, but that he does
what is painful knowingly, and because he is overcome by pleasure,
which is unworthy to overcome. What measure is there of the relations
of pleasure to pain other than excess and defect, which means that they
become greater and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree?
For if any one says: 'Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs
widely from future pleasure and pain'--To that I should reply: And do
they differ in anything but in pleasure and pain? There can be no
other measure of them. And do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the
balance the pleasures and the pains, and their nearness and distance,
and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other. If you weigh
pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or
if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less; or if
pleas