A life of Intelligence alone, without pain and without pleasure, is conceivable. Some may prefer it: at any rate it is second-best.
In the definition above given of the conditions of pleasure, as a re-action from antecedent pain, it is implied that if there be no pain, there can be no pleasure: and that a state of life is therefore conceivable which shall be without both — without pain and without pleasure. The man who embraces wisdom may prefer this third mode of life. It would be the most divine and the most akin to the nature of the Gods, who cannot be supposed without indecency to feel either joy or sorrow.[34] At any rate, if not the best life of all, it will be the second-best.
[34] Plato, Philêbus, p. 33 B. Οὐκοῦν εἰκός γε οὔτε χαίρειν θεοὺς οὔτε τὸ ἐναντίον; Πάνυ μὲν οὖν οὐκ εἰκός· ἄσχημον γοῦν αὐτων ἑκάτερον γιγνόμενόν ἐστιν.
Desire belongs to the mind, presupposes both a bodily want, and the memory of satisfaction previously had for it. The mind and body are here opposed. No true or pure pleasure therein.
Those pleasures, which reside in the mind alone without the body, arise through memory and by means of reminiscence. When the body receives a shock which does not go through to the mind, we call the fact insensibility. In sensation, the body and mind are both affected:[35] such sensation is treasured up in the memory, and the mental part of it is recalled (without the bodily part) by reminiscence.[36] Memory and reminiscence are the foundations of desire or appetite. When the body suffers the pain of hunger or thirst, the mind recollects previous moments of satisfaction, desires a repetition of that satisfaction by means of food or drink. Here the body and the mind are not moved in the same way, but in two opposite ways: the desire belongs to the mind alone, and is turned towards something directly opposed to the affection of the body. That which the body feels is emptiness: that which the mind feels is desire of replenishment, or of the condition opposed to emptiness. But it is only after experience of replenishment that the mind will feel such desire. On the first occasion of emptiness, it will not desire replenishment, because it will have nothing, neither sensation nor memory, through which to touch replenishment: it can only do so after replenishment has been previously enjoyed, and through the memory. Desire therefore is a state of the mind apart from the body, resting upon memory.[37] Here then the man is in a double state: the pain of emptiness, which affects the mind through the body, and the memory of past replenishment, or expectation of future replenishment, which resides in the mind. Such expectation, if certain and immediate, will be a state of pleasure: if doubtful and distant, it will be a state of pain. The state of emptiness and consequent appetite must be, at the very best, a state of mixed pain and pleasure: and it may perhaps be a state of pain only, under two distinct forms.[38] Life composed of a succession of these states can afford no true or pure pleasure.
[35] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 33 E — 34 A. ἀναισθησίαν ἐπονόμασον … τὸ δὲ ἐν ἑνὶ πάθει τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ σῶμα κοινῇ γιγνόμενον κοινῇ καὶ κινεῖσθαι, ταύτην δ’ αὖ τὴν κίνησιν ὀνομάζων αἴσθησιν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου φθέγγοι’ ἄν.
[36] Plato, Philêbus, p. 34 A-B. σωτηρίαν αἰσθήσεως τὴν μνήμην.
Μνήμη and ἀνάμνησις are pronounced to be different.
[37] Plato, Philêbus, p. 35 C. τὴν ψυχὴν ἄρα τῆς πληρώσεως ἐφάπτεσθαι λοιπόν, τῇ μνήμῃ δῆλον ὅτι· τῷ γὰρ ἂν ἔτ’ ἄλλῳ ἐφάψαιτο;
35 D. τὴν ἄρ’ ἐπάγουσαν ἐπὶ τὰ ἐπιθυμούμενα ἀποδείξας μνήμην, ὁ λόγος ψυχῆς ξύμπασαν τήν τε ὁρμὴν καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ ζώου παντὸς ἀπέφῃνεν.