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Soc. My meaning is certainly not clear at the first glance, and I must try to make it so. For when I say beauty of form, I am trying to express, not what most people would understand by the words, such as the beauty of animals or of paintings, but I mean, says the argument, the straight line and the circle and the plane and solid figures formed from these by turning-lathes and rulers and patterns of angles; perhaps you understand. For I assert that the beauty of these is not relative, like that of other things, but they are always absolutely beautiful by nature and have peculiar pleasures in no way subject to comparison with the pleasures of scratching; and there are colors which possess beauty and pleasures of this character. Do you understand?
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Pro. I am trying to do so, Socrates; and I hope you also will try to make your meaning still clearer.
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Soc. I mean that those sounds which are smooth and clear and send forth a single pure note are beautiful, not relatively, but absolutely, and that there are pleasures which pertain to these by nature and result from them.
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Pro. Yes, that also is true.
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Soc. The pleasures of smell are a less divine class; but they have no necessary pains mixed with them, and wherever and in whatever we find this freedom from pain, I regard it always as a mark of similarity to those other pleasures. These, then, are two classes of the pleasures of which I am speaking. Do you understand me?
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Pro. I understand.
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Soc. And further let us add to these the pleasures of knowledge, if they appear to us not to have hunger for knowledge or pangs of such hunger as their source.
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Pro. I agree to that.
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Soc. Well, if men are full of knowledge and then lose it through forgetfulness, do you see any pains in the losses?
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Pro. Not by their inherent nature, but sometimes there is pain in reflecting on the event, when a man who has lost knowledge is pained by the lack of it.
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Soc. True, my dear fellow, but just at present we are recounting natural feelings only, not reflection.
