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Pro. I understand you, and I see that there is a great difference. For the self-restrained are always held in check by the advice of the proverbial expression nothing too much, which guides their actions; but intense pleasure holds sway over the foolish and dissolute even to the point of madness and makes them notorious.
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Soc. Good; and if that is true, it is clear that the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains originate in some depravity of soul and body, not in virtue.
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Pro. Certainly.
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Soc. Then we must select some of these pleasures and see what there is about them which made us say that they are the greatest.
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Pro. Yes, we must.
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Soc. Now see what there is about the pleasures which are related to certain diseases.
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Pro. What diseases?
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Soc. Repulsive diseases which the philosophers of dislike whom we mentioned utterly abominate.
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Pro. What are the pleasures?
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Soc. For instance, the relief of the itch and the like by scratching, no other treatment being required. For in Heaven’s name what shall we say the feeling is which we have in this case? Is it pleasure or pain?
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Pro. I think, Socrates, it is a mixed evil.
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Soc. I did not introduce this question on Philebus’ account; but unless we consider these pleasures and those that follow in their train, Protarchus, we can probably never settle the point at issue.
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Pro. Then we must attack this family of pleasures.
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Soc. You mean those which are mixed?
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Pro. Certainly.
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Soc. Some mixtures are concerned with the body and are in the body only, and some belong only to the soul and are in the soul; and we shall also find some mingled pains and pleasures belonging both to the soul and to the body, and these are sometimes called pleasures, sometimes pains.
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Pro. How so?
