[107] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 20 D-E, 61 C, 67 A. αὐταρκεία, &c.
Sydenham, Translation of Philêbus, note, p. 48, observes — “Whether Happiness be to be found in Speculative Wisdom or in Pleasure, or in some other possession or enjoyment, it can be seated nowhere but in the soul. For Happiness has no existence anywhere but where it is felt and known. Now, it is no less certain, that only the soul is sensible of pain and pleasure, than it is, that only the soul is capable of knowledge, and of thinking either foolishly or wisely.”
[108] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 22 B, 61 A.
[109] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 61 E, 64 C. τὸν ἀγαπητότατον βίον πᾶσι προσφιλῆ.
Aristotle, Ethic. Nikomach. i. init. τἀγαθόν, οὖ πάντα ἐφίεται.
Seneca, Epistol. 118. “Bonum est quod ad se impetum animi secundum naturam movet.”
Inconsistency of Plato in his way of putting the question — The alternative which he tenders has no fair application.
In submitting the question to individual choice, Plato does not keep clear either of confusion or of contradiction. If this Summum Bonum be understood as the End comprising the full satisfaction of human wishes and imaginations, without limitation by certain given actualities — and if the option be tendered to a man already furnished with his share of the various desires generated in actual life — such a man will naturally demand entire absence of all pains, with pleasures such as to satisfy all his various desires: not merely the most intense pleasures (which Plato intends to prove, not to be pleasures at all), but other pleasures also. He will wish (if you thus suppose him master of Fortunatus’s wishing-cap) to include in his enjoyments pleasures which do not usually go together, and which may even, in the real conditions of life, exclude one another: no boundary being prescribed to his wishing power. He will wish for the pleasures of knowledge or intelligence, of self-esteem, esteem from others, sympathy, &c., as well as for those of sense. He will put in his claim for pleasures, without any of those antecedent means and conditions which, in real life, are necessary to procure them. Such being the state of the question, the alternative tendered by Plato — Pleasure, versus Intelligence or Knowledge — has no fair application. Plato himself expressly states that pleasure, though generically One, is specifically multiform, and has many varieties different from, even opposite to, each other: among which varieties one is, the pleasure of knowledge or intelligence itself.[110] The person to whom the question is submitted, has a right to claim these pleasures of knowledge among the rest, as portions of his Summum Bonum. And when Plato proceeds to ask — Will you be satisfied to possess pleasure only, without the least spark of intelligence, without memory, without eyesight? — he departs from the import of his previous question, and withdraws from the sum total of pleasure many of its most important items: since we must of course understand that the pleasures of intelligence will disappear along with intelligence itself,[111] and that the pains of conscious want of intelligence will be felt instead of them.
[110] Plato, Philêbus, p. 12 D.
[111] Plato, Philêbus, p. 21 C.