Philebus | Page 5

they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The
question is asked, whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or
some nature higher than either; and if the latter, how pleasure and
wisdom are related to this higher good. (2) Before we can reply with
exactness, we must know the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of
knowledge. (3) But still we may affirm generally, that the combined
life of pleasure and wisdom or knowledge has more of the character of
the good than either of them when isolated. (4) to determine which of
them partakes most of the higher nature, we must know under which of
the four unities or elements they respectively fall. These are, first, the
infinite; secondly, the finite; thirdly, the union of the two; fourthly, the
cause of the union. Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or knowledge of the
third class, while reason or mind is akin to the fourth or highest.
(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed
pleasures there are three classes--(a) those in which both the pleasures
and pains are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in which
there is a pain of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when you are
hungry and are looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which the
pleasure and pain are both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there are four
kinds: those of sight, hearing, smell, knowledge.
(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical and
productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The pure
part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like
carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher
than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is

also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively
theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the truest
and purest knowledge.
(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.
First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the
impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to
discover what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There
are three criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are
clearly more akin to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix
the places of both of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is
measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason
and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to
pure pleasures; and here the Muse says 'Enough.'
'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the
metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I) the
paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or elements;
(III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge; (V) the
conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the
relation of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.
I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic
of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by
showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence
of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by
well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems
to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed
illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense
('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites was a
sufficient answer to them. He will leave them to Cynics and Eristics;
the youth of Athens may discourse of them to their parents. To no
rational man could the circumstance that the body is one, but has many
members, be any longer a stumbling-block.
Plato's difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot
understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be
broken up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at
once. Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one or
Being, by the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind could
no longer imagine 'Being' as in a state of change or division. To say

that the verb of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere unit, is to
us easy; but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought such an
analysis involved the same kind of difficulty as the conception of God
existing both in and out of the world would to ourselves. Nor was he
assisted by the analogy of sensible objects. The sphere of mind was
dark and mysterious to him; but instead of being illustrated by