Philebus | Page 8

of measure.
b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a first
cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a first cause
with God, and the final cause with the world, which is His work. But
Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from confounding God with
the world, tends to identify the first with the final cause. The cause of
the union of the finite and infinite might be described as a higher law;

the final measure which is the highest expression of the good may also
be described as the supreme law. Both these conceptions are realized
chiefly by the help of the material world; and therefore when we pass
into the sphere of ideas can hardly be distinguished.
The four principles are required for the determination of the relative
places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we should
proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accordingly, before
assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he must first find
out and arrange in order the general principles of things. Mind is
ascertained to be akin to the nature of the cause, while pleasure is found
in the infinite or indefinite class. We may now proceed to divide
pleasure and knowledge after their kinds.
III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a generation,
and in all these points of view as in a category distinct from good. For
again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of the nature of the
finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly allied to, knowledge. The
modern philosopher would remark that the indefinite is equally real
with the definite. Health and mental qualities are in the concrete
undefined; they are nevertheless real goods, and Plato rightly regards
them as falling under the finite class. Again, we are able to define
objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so far as
they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule and
measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of the
body are more capable of being defined than any other pleasures. As in
art and knowledge generally, we proceed from without inwards,
beginning with facts of sense, and passing to the more ideal
conceptions of mental pleasure, happiness, and the like.
2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as absolute.
But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode of regarding
them; the abstract idea of the one is compared with the concrete
experience of the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge may be
viewed either abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the mind
(compare Aristot. Nic. Ethics). The first is an idea only, which may be
conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of
pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But
when we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same
defects are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon

them is equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a
state of intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure
always. The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at
another seems to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness,
or of eating after hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of
unconsciousness and indifference. Change and alternation are
necessary for the mind as well as for the body; and in this is to be
acknowledged, not an element of evil, but rather a law of nature. The
chief difference between subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge
in respect of permanence is that the latter, when our feeble faculties are
able to grasp it, still conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which
cannot be got rid of.
3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of
pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to
Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as the
Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from another, as the
transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared with the supposed
permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us the distinction is
unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that the continuance or
life of things is quite as much to be attributed to a principle of rest as of
motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later view of pleasure is found in
Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many points, e.g. in his view of
pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his distinction between bodily