42
Pro. What pleasures and what method do you mean?
42
Soc. It has been said many times that pains and woes and aches and everything that is called by names of that sort are caused when nature in any instance is corrupted through combinations and dissolutions, fillings and emptyings, increases and diminutions.
42
Pro. Yes, that has been said many times.
42
Soc. And we agreed that when things are restored to their natural condition, that restoration is pleasure.
42
Pro. Right.
42
Soc. But when neither of these changes takes place in the body, what then?
42
Pro. When could that be the case, Socrates?
42
Soc. That question of yours is not to the point, Protarchus.
42
Pro. Why not?
42
Soc. Because you do not prevent my asking my own question again.
42
Pro. What question?
42
Soc. Why, Protarchus, I may say, granting that such a condition does not arise, what would be the necessary result if it did?
42
Pro. You mean if the body is not changed in either direction?
42
Soc. Yes.
42
Pro. It is clear, Socrates, that in that case there would never be either pleasure or pain.
43
Soc. Excellent. But you believe, I fancy, that some such change must always be taking place in us, as the philosophers Heracleitus and his followers. say; for all things are always flowing and shifting.
43
Pro. Yes, that is what they say, and I think their theory is important.
43
Soc. Of course it is, in view of their own importance. But I should like to avoid this argument which is rushing at us. I am going to run away; come along and escape with me.
43
Pro. What is your way of escape?
43
Soc. We grant you all this let us say to them. But answer me this, Protarchus, are we and all other living beings always conscious of everything that happens to us of our growth and all that sort of thing—or is the truth quite the reverse of that?
43
Pro. Quite the reverse, surely; for we are almost entirely unconscious of everything of that sort.
43
Soc. Then we were not right in saying just now that the fluctuations and changes cause pains and pleasures.
43
Pro. No, certainly not.
