SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning, that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are seeking in the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?
PROTARCHUS: Far greater.
SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who presides over the ceremony of mingling.
PROTARCHUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two fountains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Tell me first;—should we be most likely to succeed if we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?
PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.