Exactly.
Which are the necessary and which the unnecessary pleasures? And, like his father, he keeps under by force the pleasures which are of the spending and not of the getting sort, being those which are called unnecessary?
Obviously.
Would you like, for the sake of clearness, to distinguish which are the necessary and which are the unnecessary pleasures?
Necessary desires cannot be got rid of, Are not necessary pleasures those of which we cannot get [E]rid, and of which the satisfaction is a benefit to us? And they are rightly called so, because we are framed by nature to desire both what is beneficial and what is necessary, and cannot help it.
True.
[559] We are not wrong therefore in calling them necessary?
We are not.
And the desires of which a man may get rid, if he takes pains from his youth upwards—of which the presence, moreover, does no good, and in some cases the reverse of good—shall we not be right in saying that all these are unnecessary?