135 Compare, respecting this Platonic view, Republic, v. pp. 478-479, and pp. 583-585, where Plato contrasts the παναληθὴς or γνησία ἡδονή, which arises from the acquisition of knowledge (when the mind nourishes itself with real essence), with the νόθη (p. 587 B) or ἐσκιαγραφημένη ἡδονή, εἴδωλον τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἡδονῆς, arising from the pursuits of wealth, power, and other objects of desire.

The comic poet Alexis adverts to this Platonic doctrine of the absolutely pleasurable, here, there, and everywhere, — τὸ δ’ ἡδὺ πάντως ἡδύ, κἀκεῖ κἀνθάδε, Athenæ. viii. 354; Meineke, Com. Frag. p. 453.

In the Phædrus (258 E), we find this same class of pleasures, those which cannot be enjoyed unless preceded by some pain, asserted to be called for that reason slavish (ἀνδραποδώδεις), and depreciated as worthless. Nearly all the pleasures connected with the body are said to belong to this class; but those of rhetoric and dialectic are exempted from it, and declared to be of superior order.

The pleasure of gaining a victory in the stadium at Olympia was ranked by Greeks generally as the maximum of pleasure: and we find the Platonic Sokrates (Republ. v. 465 D) speaks in concurrence with this opinion. But this pleasure ought in Plato’s view to pass for a false pleasure; since it was invariably preceded by the most painful, long-continued training.

The reasoning of Sokrates in the Philêbus (see especially pp. 46-47) against the intense and extatic pleasures, as being never pure, but always adulterated by accompanying pain, misfortune, disappointment, &c., is much the same as that of Epikurus and his followers afterwards. The case is nowhere more forcibly put than in the fourth book of Lucretius (1074 seq.): where that poet deprecates passionate love, and points out that pure or unmixed pleasure belongs only to the man of sound and healthy reason.

136 See the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus, pp. 366-367. Compare Republic, vii. 526 C, vi. 504 C.

The Sokratic method, in creating consciousness of ignorance, is exhibited not less in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (iv. 2, 40) than in various Platonic dialogues, Alkibiades I., Theætêtus, &c. We read it formally proclaimed by Sokrates in the Platonic Apology.

Aristotle repeats the assertion contained in the Philêbus about the list of painless pleasures — ἄλυποι γάρ εἰσιν αἵ τε μαθηματικαὶ, &c. (Ethic. Nikom. x. 2, 1173, b. 16; 7, 1177, a. 25.) He himself says in another place (vii. 13, 1153, a. 20) that τὸ θεωρεῖν sometimes hurts the health, and if he had examined the lives of mathematicians, especially that of Kepler, he would hardly have imagined that mathematical investigations have no pains attached to them. He probably means that they are not preceded by painful appetites such as hunger and thirst. But they are preceded by acquired impulses or desires, which in reference to the present question are upon same footing as the natural appetites. A healthy and temperate man, leading a regular life and in easy circumstances, knows little of hunger and thirst as pains: he knows them only as appetites which give relish to his periodical meals. It is only when this periodical satisfaction is withheld that his appetite grows to a painful and distressing height. So too the φιλομαθής; his appetite for study, when regularly gratified to an extent consistent with health and other considerations, is not painful; but it will rise to the height of a most distressing privation if he be debarred from gratifying it, excluded from books and papers, disturbed by noises and intrusions. Kepler, if interdicted from pursuing his calculations, would have been miserable. Jason of Pheræ was heard to say that he felt hungry so long as he was not in possession of supreme power — πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ, Aristot. Politic. iii. 4, 1277, a. 24; thus intimating that the acquired appetite of ambition had in his mind reached the same intensity as the natural appetite of hunger.

137 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 41-42. In the Phædon (p. 60 B) Sokrates makes a striking remark on the inseparable conjunction of pleasure with pain generally.

138 Plato, Philêbus, p. 33 B.

139 Plato, Timæus, pp. 43 A, 44 D, 69 D, 70-71. The same fundamental idea though embodied in a different illustration, appears also in the Phædon; where Sokrates depicts life as a period of imprisonment, to which the immortal rational soul is condemned, in a corrupt and defective body, with perpetual stream of disturbing sensations and emotions (Phædon, pp. 64-65).

Aristotle observes, De Animâ, i. p. 407, b. 2:— ἐπίπονον δὲ καὶ τὸ μεμίχθαι τῷ σώματι μὴ δυνάμενον ἀπολυθῆναι, καὶ προσέτι φευκτόν, εἴπερ βέλτιον τῷ νῷ μὴ μετὰ σώματος εἶναι, καθάπερ εἴωθέ τε λέγεσθαι καὶ πολλοῖς συνδοκεῖ.

We find in one of the Fragments of Cicero, quoted by Augustin from the lost work Hortensius (p. 485, ed. Orelli):— “An vero, inquit, voluptates corporis expetendæ, quæ veré et graviter dictæ sunt à Platone illecebræ et escæ malorum? Quis autem bonâ mente præditus, non mallet nullas omnino nobis à naturâ voluptates esse datas?” This is the same doctrine as what is ascribed to Speusippus.

140 Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. vii. 14, p. 1153, b. 5; x. 2, p. 1173, a. 8; Aulus Gellius, ix. 5. “Speusippus vetusque omnis Academia voluptatem et dolorem duo mala esse dicunt opposita inter se: bonum autem esse quod utriusque medium foret.”

Compare Plato, Philêbus, pp. 43 D-E, 33 B.

To whom does Plato here make allusion, under the general title of the Fastidious (οἱ δυσχερεῖς) Pleasure-haters? Schleiermacher (note to his translation, p. 487), Stallbaum, and most critics down to Dr. Badham inclusive, are of opinion, that he alludes to Antisthenes — among whose dicta we certainly read declarations expressing positive aversion to pleasure — μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην Diog. L. vi. 3; compare ix. 101, and Winckelmann, Frag. Antisthen. xii. Mr. Poste, on the contrary, thinks it improbable that Antisthenes is alluded to (see p. 80 of his Philêbus). I confess that I think so too. Mr. Poste points out that these δυσχερεῖς are characterised by Plato (p. 44 B), as μάλα δεινοὺς λεγομένους περὶ φύσιν:— whereas we are informed that speculations on φύσις were neglected by Antisthenes, who confined his attention to τὰ ἠθικά. This is a strong reason for believing that Antisthenes cannot be here meant; and there are some other reasons also.

First, in describing the δυσχερεῖς, Plato notes it as one among their attributes, that they hold in thorough detestation the indecorous pleasures (τὰς τῶν ἀσχημόνων ἡδονάς, ἃς οὓς εἴπομεν δυσχερεῖς μισοῦσι παντελῶς, p. 46 A). Now this is surely not likely to have been affirmed about Antisthenes. It was the conspicuous characteristic of the Cynic sect, begun by Antisthenes, and carried still farther by his pupil Diogenes, that they reduced to its minimum the distinction between the decorous and the indecorous.

Next, we may observe that these δυσχερεῖς, whoever they were, are spoken of with much respect by Plato, even while he combats their doctrine (p. 44 C). I think it not likely that he would have spoken thus of Antisthenes. We are told that there prevailed between the two a great and reciprocal acrimony. And this sentiment is manifested in the Sophistês (p. 251 B), where the opponents whom Plato is refuting are described with the most contemptuous bitterness — and where Schleiermacher, and the critics generally, declare that he alludes to Antisthenes. The passage in the Sophistês represents, in my judgment, the probable sentiment of Plato towards Antisthenes: the passage in the Philêbus is at variance with it.

I imagine that the δυσχερεῖς to whom Plato makes allusion in the Philêbus, are the persons from whom his nephew and successor Speusippus derived the doctrine declared in the first portion of this note. The “vetus omnia Academia” of Aulus Gellius is an exaggerated phrase; but many of the old Academy, or companions of Plato, probably held the theory that pleasure was only one form of evil, — especially the pythagorising Platonici, adopting the tendencies of Plato himself in his old age. That Speusippus was among the borrowers from the Pythagoreans, we know from Aristotle (Eth. Nikom. i. 4, 1096, b. 8).

Now the Pythagorean canon of life, like the Orphic (both of them supposed by Herodotus to be derived in great part from Egypt — ii. 81), was distinguished by a multiplicity of abstinences, disgusts, antipathies, in respect to alimentation and other physical circumstances of life — which were held to be of the most imperative force and necessity; so that offences against them were of all others the most intolerable. A remarkable fragment of the Κρῆτες of Euripides (ed. Dind., vol. ii. p. 912) describes a variety of this purism analogous to the Orphic and Pythagorean:— Πάλλευκα δ’ ἔχων εἴματα, φεύγω γένεσίν τε βρότων, καὶ νεκροθήκης οὐ χριμπτόμενος· τὴν τ’ ἐμψύχων βρῶσιν ἐδεστῶν πεφύλαγμαι. Compare Eurip. Hippol. 957; Alexis Comicus, ap. Athenæ, iv. p. 161. See the work of M. Alfred Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, vol. iii. pp. 368-384.

It appears to me that the δυσχερεῖς, to whom Plato alludes in the Philêbus, were most probably pythagorising friends of his own; who, adopting a ritual of extreme rigour, distinguished themselves by the violence of their antipathies towards τὰς ἡδονὰς τὰς τῶν ἀσχημόνων. Plato speaks of them with respect; partly because ethical theorists, who denounce pleasure, are usually characterised in reverential terms, as persons of exalted principle, even by those who think their reasonings inconclusive; partly because these men only pushed the consequences of Plato’s own reasonings, rather farther than Plato himself did. In fact they were more consistent than Plato was: for the principles laid down in the Philêbus, if carried out strictly, would go to the exclusion of all pleasures — not less of the few which he tolerates, than of the many which he banishes.

These pythagorising Platonici might well be termed δεινοὶ περὶ φύσιν. They paid much attention to the interpretation of nature, though they did so according to a numerical and geometrical symbolism.

141 Plato, Republic, x. p. 607.

142 We read in Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric (Book i. ch. 7, pp. 168-170) some very good remarks on the erroneous and equivocal assertions which identify Truth and Good — a thesis on which various Platonists have expended much eloquence. Dr. Campbell maintains the just distinction between the Emotions and Will on one side, and the Understanding on the other.

“Passion” (he says) “is the mover to action, Reason is the guide. Good is the object of the Will; Truth the object of the Understanding.”

143 Plato, Philêbus, p. 45 D. ἐν ὕβρει μείζους ἡδονάς, οὐ πλείους λέγω, &c.

So in the Republic, also, ἡδονὴ ὑπερβάλλουσα is declared to be inconsistent with σωφροσύνη (iii. 402 E).

144 This argument is carried on by Sokrates from p. 351 until the close of the Protagoras, p. 357 A. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἡδονῆς τε καὶ λύπης ἐν ὀρθῇ τῇ αἱρέσει ἐφάνη ἡμῖν ἡ σωτηρία τοῦ βίου οὖσα, τοῦ τε πλέονος καὶ ἐλάττονος καὶ μείζονος καὶ σμικροτεροῦ καὶ ποῤῥωτέρω καὶ ἐγγυτέρω, ἆρα πρῶτον μὲν οὐ μετρητικὴ φαίνεται, ὑπερβολῆς τε καὶ ἐνδείας οὖσα καὶ ἰσότητος πρὸς ἀλλήλας σκέψις; … Ἐπεὶ δὲ μετρητική, ἀνάγκῃ δήπου τέχνη καὶ ἐπιστήμη.

Yet Plato in the Philêbus, imputing to the Hedonistic theory that it sets aside all idea of measure, regulation, limit, advances as an argument in the case, that Pleasure and Pain in their own nature have no limit (Philêbus, pp. 25-26 B, 27 E. Compare Dr. Badham’s note, p. 30 of his edition).

The imputation is unfounded, and the argument without application, in regard to the same theory as expounded by Sokrates in the Protagoras.

At the end of the Philêbus (p. 67 B) Plato makes Sokrates exclaim, “We cannot put Pleasure first among the items of Good, even though all oxen, horses, and other beasts affirm it”. This rhetorical flourish is altogether misplaced in the Philêbus: for Plato had already specified it as one of the conditions of the Good, That it must be acceptable and must give satisfaction to all animals, and even to all plants (pp. 22 B, 60 C), as well as to men.

145 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 A. μέτρον — τὸ μέτριον — τὸ καίριον.

146 Plato, Philêbus, p. 58 B-D.

147 Plato, Philêbus, p. 59 C. ὡς ἢ περὶ ἐκεῖνα ἔσθ’ ἡμῖν τό τε βέβαιον καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ὃ δὴ λέγομεν εἰλικρινές, περὶ τὰ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἀμικτότατα ἔχοντα — ἢ δευτέρως ἐκείνων ὅ τι μάλιστά ἐστι ξυγγενές· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πάντα δεύτερά τε καὶ ὕστερα λεκτέον. 62 A: φρονῶν ἄνθρωπος αὑτῆς περὶ δικαιοσύνης, ὅ, τι ἔστι, καὶ λόγον ἔχων ἑπόμενον τῷ νοεῖν … κύκλου μὲν καὶ σφαίρας αὐτῆς τῆς θείας τὸν λόγον ἔχων.

148 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 E.

149 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 A-B.

150 Plato, Gorgias, pp. 501 A, 518 A. Compare Republic, i. pp. 341-342.

151 Plato, Republic, vii. p. 522 B.

152 Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 7, 2-8. The contrast drawn in this chapter of the Memorabilia appears to me to coincide pretty exactly with that which is taken in the Philêbus, though the preference is reversed. Dr. Badham (p. 78) and Mr. Poste (pp. 106-113) consider Plato as pointing to a contrast between pure and applied Mathematics: which I do not understand to be his meaning. The distinction taken by Aristotle in the passage cited by Mr. Poste is different, and does really designate Pure and Applied Mathematics. Mr. Poste would have found a better comparison in Ethic. Nikom. i. 7, 1098, a. 29.

153 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 E. οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτοῖς συνακολουθήσειαν, εἰ μὴ μονάδα μονάδος ἑκάστης τῶν μυρίων μηδεμίαν ἄλλην ἄλλης διαφέρουσάν τις θήσει — where it is formally proclaimed as an assumption or postulate. See Republic, vii. pp. 525-526, vi. p. 510 C.

Mr. John Stuart Mill thus calls attention to the same remark in his instructive chapters on Demonstration and Necessary Truth (System of Logic, Book ii. ch. vi sect. 3).

“The inductions of Arithmetic are of two sorts: first, those that we have just expounded, such as One and One are Two, Two and One are Three, &c., which may be called the definitions of the various numbers, in the improper or geometrical sense of the word Definition; and, secondly, the two following Axioms. The sums of Equals are equal, the differences of Equals are equal.

“These axioms, and likewise the so-called Definitions, are (as already shown) results of induction: true of all objects whatsoever, and as it may seem, exactly true, without the hypothetical assumption of unqualified truth where an approximation to it is all that exists. On more accurate investigation, however, it will be found that even in this case, there is one hypothetical element in the ratiocination. In all propositions concerning numbers a condition is implied without which none of them would be true, and that condition is an assumption which may be false. The condition is that 1 = 1: that all the numbers are numbers of the same or of equal units. Let this be doubtful, and not one of the propositions in arithmetic will hold true. How can we know that one pound and one pound make two pounds, if one of the pounds may be troy and the other avoirdupois? They may not make two pounds of either or of any weight. How can we know that a forty-horse power is always equal to itself, unless we assume that all horses are of equal strength? One actual pound weight is not exactly equal to another, nor one mile’s length to another; a nicer balance or more exact measuring instruments would always detect some difference.”

154 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 52 D — 57 B.