FOOTNOTES:
[56] Plato is one of the very few Greek authors none of whose work has been lost. He shares this good fortune with Xenophon. Of the dialog Plato was practically, if not actually, the originator, and the form has survived to our day.
[57] From "The Republic." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. In this famous work Plato describes an ideal commonwealth.
[58] The speaker here is Glaucon, Plato's brother.
II
GOOD AND EVIL[59]
I suppose that you are satisfied at having a life of pleasure which is without pain. And if you are satisfied, and if you are unable to show any good or evil which does not end in pleasure and pain, hear the consequences: If this is true, then I say that the argument is absurd which affirms that a man often does evil knowingly when he might abstain, because he is seduced and amazed by pleasure; or again, when you say that a man knowingly refuses to do what is good because he is overcome at the moment by pleasure. Now that this is ridiculous will be evident if we only give up the use of various names, such as pleasant and painful and good and evil. As there are two things, let us call them by two names—first, good and evil, and then pleasant and painful. Assuming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil knowing that he does evil. But some one will ask, Why? Because he is overcome, is the first answer. And by what is he overcome? the inquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able to reply, by pleasure, for the name of pleasure has been exchanged for that of good.
In our answer, then, we shall say only that he is overcome. By what? he will reiterate. By the good, we shall have to reply; indeed, we shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, that is too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by good. Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil? And in answer to that we shall clearly reply, because it was not worthy; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. But how, he will reply, can the good be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of the good? Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion to each other, either as greater and smaller, or more and fewer? This we can not deny. And when you speak of being overcome, what do you mean, he will say, but that you choose the greater evil in exchange for the lesser good? This being the case, let us now substitute the names of pleasure and pain, and say, not as before, that a man does what is evil knowingly, but that he does what is painful knowingly, and because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome. And what measure is there of the relations of pleasure to pain other than excess and defect, which means that they become greater and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree? For if any one says, Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs widely from future pleasure and pain, to which I should reply: And do they differ in any other way except by reason of pleasure and pain? There can be no other measure of them. And do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true? I am confident that they can not deny this.