philebus   

moisture replenishing the dry Place is a pleasure: once more, the

unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful, and

the natural restoration and refrigeration is pleasant.

Pro. Very true.

Soc. And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an animal is

pain, and the natural process of resolution and return of the elements

to their original state is pleasure. And would not the general

proposition seem to you to hold, that the destroying of the natural

union of the finite and infinite, which, as I was observing before,

make up the class of living beings, is pain, and that the process of

return of all things to their own nature is pleasure?

Pro. Granted; what you say has a general truth.

Soc. Here then is one kind of pleasures and pains originating

severally in the two processes which we have described?

Pro. Good.

Soc. Let us next assume that in the soul herself there is an

antecedent hope of pleasure which is sweet and refreshing, and an

expectation of pain, fearful and anxious.

Pro. Yes; this is another class of pleasures and pains, which is

of the soul only, apart from the body, and is produced by expectation.

Soc. Right; for in the analysis of these, pure, as I suppose them to

be, the pleasures being unalloyed with pain and the pains with

pleasure, methinks that we shall see clearly whether the whole class

of pleasure is to be desired, or whether this quality of entire

desirableness is not rather to be attributed to another of the classes

which have been mentioned; and whether pleasure and pain, like heat

and cold, and other things of the same kind, are not sometimes to be

desired and sometimes not to be desired, as being not in themselves

good, but only sometimes and in some instances admitting of the nature

of good.

Pro. You say most truly that this is the track which the

investigation should pursue.